I love wine. But I am influenced by expert ratings and gold stars on the bottle – I can’t taste every wine before I drink it! Over time, I’ve felt that the number of wines receiving high ratings and gold stars has increased significantly – when was the last time you say a wine rated below 90? A bit of numerical analysis supports this: either wines are highly over-rated…or Australia has the best wines in the world.Read More »
Respected thinker Clive Hamilton’s new book, ‘The Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia’, is very scary essential reading. This book’s deep research opened my eyes to China, especially now that Xi is President for life. It’s essential reading because it exposes so much that has long term impacts. If we don’t recognise these factors soon, it may be too late.Read More »
Following the irony of environmental leader China (??) refusing to be the recipient of the world’s ‘recycling’ rubbish, Australian government responses seem to be: ‘OMG, we’ll have to stop recycling’. Another chance for Australia to be a world leader looks like going begging. Surely there’s a better response than putting our head in the sand, as plastic and other recyclable products pile up on ocean beaches, in fish and in us, all over the world.Read More »
I spent 20 days recently with a CEO friend on a group trip with other very smart common friends. After observing her management of the group and reflecting on my own pretty effective use of time, I concluded that effective CEOs, having more energy (a topic I’ve blogged on before), just get a lot more done in their day than the average person. Here’s how.Read More »
Another stage in the sexual equality revolution has finally arrived. I’m thrilled – and stunned – by the rapid spread from Weinstein to the outing of many other outrageous men to #MeToo and now to #meNOmore, as women across the world stand up in many industries against the organisational and reputational power which men have exerted over them. We’ve come a long way since Mad Men.Read More »
Got a call this week from a salesperson from a traditional electricity retailer. It confirmed to me what is rotten in the electricity industry, the lies being told about the causes of high prices and what we need to do about it.Read More »
To be cool, we are supposed to use Apple, Facebook, Uber, Airbnb , Amazon, eBay, Google, IKEA, bookings.com, wotif, expedia and many other online-centred organisations. But there’s just one small problem. These, and no doubt many other similar tech-based organisations don’t pay any tax in Australia. What should we do?Read More »
Recently, journalists at The Age went on strike for a week in protest at yet another large cut in staff numbers, claiming that independent journalism was at great risk if this cutting continued. Though I sympathise and value some of The Age journalists, particularly the commentators and analysts, I’m afraid they are like people promoting sailing ships when steamships arrived. The time of newspapers is over. Let me explain.Read More »
As most of us despair the deceit, wilful blindness, self-centred arrogance and corruption of many politicians and leaders in all of our countries, I wondered how do we find a new way to reconfigure the process, create a genuinely new framework for rethinking our societies? We’ve had capitalism, centred on the power of money and markets. We’ve had communism, centred on making everyone equal. We’ve had socialism, centred on protecting the weak. We’ve had dictatorships, centred on a few powerful people making decisions for the rest of us. We’ve had democracy, centred on equal rights to speak and vote. We’ve had religion, centred on the basis of blind faith in the mystical. We’ve had royalty, centred on the power of a specified family.
All of these have their weaknesses, as we are too painfully aware. I propose a new political philosophy of ‘peoplism”. Peoplism focuses a government on what people actually need. Let me explain how it would reframe our priorities and decisionmaking.Read More »
I went to a Rugby Union game one night recently, followed by an Aussie Rules game the following night. The contrast could not be greater. I once found Union an interesting game, especially when the Barbarians were playing (a guest team dedicated to attractive play, rather than winning). But over recent years I’ve found I prefer Rugby League to Union and AFL by far to either. Whatever happened to Union? It seems to have missed the changes which most games have made to themselves to become more attractive to spectators wanting more action, more entertainment. I have some ideas for how it could catch up.Read More »
