History

Apr 14 2021

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The best job I ever had…

By Don Aitkin | Books, Economy, History, Politics, Research, Society | 14 Comments

We were sitting around the dining table, dinner over, really, but still chatting. I threw into the discussion a theme I had been talking about with my driving son on a recent Saturday. My companions are used to me doing this sort of thing. ‘What’s the best job you ever had?’ They looked at each other. One is a retired graphic artist, another is a retired gas fitter, a third is a former Treasury guy, and the fifth is a former Army officer, and he spoke first. He’d only really had one job, in the army, and he’d enjoyed it, rising…

Mar 31 2021

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The Lord of the Rings

By Don Aitkin | Books, Environment, History, Language, Society, Theatre | 13 Comments

For the last few days I have been revisiting the mammoth film version of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I first encountered the story via a three-volume Christmas present from my wife in 1961 (I think), and was immediately enthralled. The depth and the breadth of the story were beyond anything I had ever read before. It took some days to read it, to go into the appendixes, and to marvel at the thoroughness of the detail. Then I read it again, and kept going back to it for some years. A few years later I…

Dec 09 2020

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Our 30th Prime Minister

By Don Aitkin | Climate Change, Environment, History, Politics, Religion | 9 Comments

Our Prime Minister is not someone I have ever met. At 52 he’s much too young! The last PMs I knew moderately well were Paul Keating and John Howard. Morrison has been PM since August 2018, though it seems that he has been there much longer. Perhaps that’s because he’s been around for some time. He was the state director of the Liberal Party in New South Wales twenty years ago. He made his way into the Parliament as the MP for Cook in NSW in 2007, and served as shadow minister shortly afterwards in a variety of portfolios. In…

Dec 02 2020

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A tribute to my leading lady

By Don Aitkin | Health, History | 23 Comments

Those of us who live in aged care facilities don’t exactly live with death, but it is about us all the time. From our quite pleasant environment in Canberra there is only one way to go — up or down. We trust that our friends have all gone up, to God in his heaven, or whatever an equally enjoyable dwelling place might be. There is one here who might benefit from going down, but we’ll leave him out of it. I don’t know what the average length of residence here might be, and I haven’t asked. I’ve been here a…

Nov 17 2020

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The sine wave in politics

By Don Aitkin | History, Politics | 12 Comments

I’ve had another a spell in hospital, with ‘septic shock’, and this essay was written, ready to go, a week ago. No matter. It makes no less sense (or more) now than it did then. A few weeks ago I was chatting with my grandson Jesse about his next assignment in Politics which centred on the right/left divide, and I put to him the issue of the slow move of bodies politic from one side to the other, a sort of sine wave, a gentle smooth regular movement like an ocean swell. You could see it happen over time, and…

Mar 08 2019

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On the downfall of George Pell

By Don Aitkin | ABC, History, Media, Politics, Religion, Society | 81 Comments

I should begin by saying that I am not a Catholic, and not even a Christian in any practising sense. I have said this before, but it is a necessary opening to this essay. I add to it the fact that I have never spoken to Cardinal Pell nor heard him speak save on television, though I have read a good deal of what he has written. With these caveats in mind I would argue that the sentence on Pell was wrong in terms of natural justice, for the details of the alleged crime were simply improbable in the extreme. They…

Mar 01 2019

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Oh dear, elections are approaching

By Don Aitkin | Climate Change, Economy, Environment, History, Politics, Society | 20 Comments

For weeks now there have been short election ads urging viewers to vote for a new party, Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party. The really old ones amongst us, that is, people older than me, will remember another UAP which flourished in the interwar years in part because of a Labor split. But there have been no ads from the majors. It hardly matters, since the nightly news telecasts have abundant image and text about the coming election and the daily promises made by the leaders. But I guess we’ll see a proper Labor or Coalition ad once there is an…

Feb 22 2019

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There’s nothing like a good ban!

By Don Aitkin | ABC, Environment, History, Media, Politics, Religion, Society | 34 Comments

The ABC announced the other day that the ACT Government was considering a total ban on single-use plastics, like plastic bags, knives, forks and other picnic and fast-food essentials. The relevant Minister said that the Government thought a ban was a good idea, but the community ought to be involved, so there would need to be a discussion paper. We in Canberra have a lot of discussion papers. What effect they have on public policy is rarely clear. Before I could gather my own voice, I heard my wife say, loudly, ‘What a silly idea!’ and I agreed. It is…

Feb 12 2019

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Climate change: has anything actually changed?

By Don Aitkin | ABC, Books, Climate Change, Environment, History, Media, Politics | 437 Comments

For some time now my only exposure to the world has been through five minutes of radio news on Classic FM, plus some TV news at 6 pm (how much I get is affected by our dinner time at this nursing home). But, bit by bit, I’ve been hearing and seeing more. The coming elections in Australia and NSW have rather passed me by, though I have become more impressed than I once was by the Prime Minister’s capacity to speak cogently and apparently without notes. The issue that has grabbed me most, especially in the last few weeks, has…

Nov 02 2018

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An unexpected hazard of using email

By Don Aitkin | History, Language, Media, Society | 29 Comments

I was an early user of desktop computers, and I think I bought my first Apple IIe in 1988. Throughout a series of ISPs and an apparently unending set of Apples I have had a relatively untroubled run with these devices. Indeed, I wonder how I ever managed to write and publish without them. It was certainly a much slower process in the days of typewriters. Well, what follows is instructive. Read on. The English is not great. I have redacted my password and my email address, and done some editing for neatness. Hello! I’m a programmer who cracked your…