World Class

Corporate Sydney

2008-11-06T10:31:00.002+11:00

Previously on world class I have portrayed Sydney as a truly world-class city, but I did so in ignorance of the incredibly vibrant and creative corporate sector that is even now establishing itself, hive-like, at Macquarie Park. The electorate that so faithlessly rejected John Howard at the last Federal Election would surely have remained blue if only the workers resided near where they labour to improve on civic perfection.

Truly, the lunch breaks at my new daycare for adults provide prismatic insights into Sydney's collective personality, which fragments along the age-old lines of masters and servants. Fortunately for the servants, the recent notion of "contractor" provides good remuneration and little risk to one's creative mojo. Indeed, the workplace is really a place to discuss just how world-class the Australian rugby league team has become and other forms of sublimated masculinity. It is a place of rare beauty, and its efficiency is even rarer. One only hopes it is funded by foreign currency so that the weak dollar does not imperil the opportunity to consume world-class products.

There is a town in South Ontario

2006-06-12T10:17:00.000+10:00

Toronto

Toronto is a world class city. It creditably puts a great deal of effort into world class fare (the World's tallest tower, the Hockey Hall of Fame) while failing dismally at a discipline not worth succeeding in. Its downtown area, coopted for so many Hollywood films, is similarly crap, as is its Greektown, where the restaurants aren't even called Piraeus or Agape, but The Greek Place and Time for Greek. It has no inner suburbs as such, just Downtown and a gridded sprawl. Yet this is great place. People are very friendly. It feels like a considerably smaller place, people are interested in each others and in travellers and everyone seems happy. The University of Toronto is perhaps the World's most impressive truly broad-based metropolitan university, with a beautiful and functional campus.

Simcoe/Port Rowan

Were Simcoe and Port Rowan cities, they would be world class cities. The size of the towns can best be expressed in Tim Horton'ses (a doughnought and dripolator coffee joint founded by a hockey star who died in a car crash... the food is pure Canadiana), Simcoe having three and Port Rowan none. Downtown Simcoe is designated by a sign marking it so. There are large numbers of Caribbean and Mexican fruitpickers around in June. In Port Rowan, Mexican Mennonites can be seen walking home from their fields. These German-speaking people work in Ontario in the summer and Mexico in the winter and the women wear their traditional long-sleeved dresses and scarves. The friendliness of people in these towns puts even Toronto to shame.

London

London, Ontario, is a world class city in a way its namesake could never be. Its finest feature is the University of Western Ontario, with the most beautiful campus on Earth. Australian universities would die even for the nouveau buildings built in sympathetic hues to the older Oxfordian touches. A true gem.

The subject of so many dreams

2006-06-04T08:03:00.000+10:00

New York City is a world class city.

So elusive is the essence of New York's greatness that it doesn't even engage in many of the fields upon which the world class claims of other cities lie. Coffee, for example. Weather too. The four days I have been here consisted of two sweltering and humid nightmares that went well into the night followed by forty hours of various degrees of deluge.

The news has come to Harvard

2006-05-30T04:00:00.000+10:00

Cambridge, Massachussetts is a world class place. The trains are cute, that's for sure. They reminded me of the very oldest London Underground lines. The streets look like the newer areas of English university towns and the buildings are straight out of 'The Boy Who Could Fly.' The few graduate students I have met in the Harvard Classic Department (from which I write) have shown the twin problems of being stressed about finishing their work and being stressed about the value of their work. It's rather cute.

My final days in LA were good fun. Walked down Santa Monica Boulevard to the beach (about 15km, through Beverley Hills). No mugging. Went to a non-descript Middle Eastern restaurant; pretty mediocre, and the price adds up. Also saw a Klimt exhibition, consisting of paintings reclaimed from the Austrian government (having been requisitioned by the Nazis) at the County Museum. The American art was good too. Saw Koreatown; it's the rebranding of an area where a lot of damage was done in the Rodney King riots. A lot of Korean tourists hanging out there! There is hope for the Fitzroy Gardens' miniature Tudor village yet.

The Other Other Side of Summer

2006-05-27T16:58:00.000+10:00

Los Angeles is a world class city. I was certain from the moment I saw the US Customs and Border Protection Service (?) describing itself as 'a world class law enforcement service' at immigration.

Everyone thinks I am gay, including gay guys and girls I am hitting on. A number of misconceptions have been quashed. For one, having seen a variety of corn-fed Americans in England, I have realised that Angelenos brown, white and black are largely shorter than me. It is true that LA Asians have achieved or exceeded height parity with their cohabitants, but that's pretty short.

Next, Angelenos are generally not fat. Taking the train (after a shuttle bus) into and out of the city to Hollywood, the relatively poor commuters were almost entirely well fit. The only particular concentration of fat people I have seen was in the Mission de Los Angelos de la Reina so on and so on puebla theme church on the site of the old Chinatown in the city. These presumably middleclass Latino families were pretty tubby, kids especially. I'm pretty sure the parents had me spotted as an overfriendly Irish priest, so I couldn't quiz them on their diet. I saw a freeway mural nearby with aspirational kids playing in a sort of zero sum ascent of man, two Latinos, two whites, two blacks and an Asian, which I would say would be about an accurate spread for LA County. The relocated Chinatown is the biggest and most Westernised Chinatown I have ever seen (I got some pho at a Vietnamese restaurant with some kind of capsicum or unpickled jalepenos on the side! No pizzle in 'the lot'); first I wondered what the point was, then I didn't.

LA is one of the most pedestrian friendly cities I have ever seen. Granted, this is because there's no-one else on the footpaths and I am yet to be mugged, but it's really easy to get around if you're after a scenic stroll.

Boganwear is very big in West Hollywood, LA's marginally gay area. The accountancy bogans of Richmond have plenty to look forward to when they exhaust supplies of Elwood, Lonsdale and Industrie kit. I think I saw a soft toy sewed onto a shirt.

People are strangely upfront about their tastes. I saw a black guy with all his windows open cranking G'n'f'n'R, for example. Jim Steinmann tribute hour is every hour in most restaurants. I read about the 'Soap Locks' of New York circa 1880, whom I think resonate in LA's many examples of the sort of kids you see around Melbourne dressing like people in 1994 dressing like punks in 1985 trying to evoke 1976.

Went for a walk up something steep called Hollywood Drive. Pretty intriguing; nobody else walking up it, but a few dicks on motorbikes.

I think they water down the already weak ales here. Hard to get drunk. LA food seems to have passed through first a process of dumbing down, then of weirding up. Think McDonald's Greek Lamb Souvlaki Wrap and apply it to any food you can think of. But that's fun. Pink's hotdog stand was extraordinary... a fifteen minute wait for a premasticated frankfurt on a sugary bun, but it was so crap it had to be authentic.

Saw a band play in a little bar on Melrose. Was impressed both by the essential crappiness of the music and the professionalism of the vocalists and players. They are certain to make it, they must do. Abominable outfit, the rhythm section with Morrisseyesque bouffants underlaid by bald patches. Met some cool people at another bar and talked Cheap Trick and GBV and Mexicans (two blokes recently and respectively mugged and jumped (a form of mugging with no financial transaction; purely for fun)) by some variant of Wabs that I couldn't understand. Told the qualified electrician to apply for skilled migration to Southeast Queensland ASAP.

Right-sized mining tragedy

2006-05-10T09:08:00.000+10:00

Validated as world class news by an Oprah cutaway, the two surviving miners have emerged from the Beaconsfield pit. Great news, to be sure, and possibly somewhat nostalgic for Americans whose own miners suffered a similar disaster two broadcasting seasons ago, but spare a thought for the thousands of Chinese, Russian and other NESB miners who die every year. There's a touch of the Late Show deathaliser about this. US broadcasters might be interested to know the first Australian soldier died in Iraq recently, apparently shooting himself while cleaning his pistol; surely the Australian people deserves a pat on the head for that?

If there were ever any doubt of Australian exceptionalism and unreformability, check out Peter Costello's eleventh budget. I particularly like the 'we've pulled through the bad part of the hundred-year climate cycle' part. Does that mean we can afford to shout ourselves a Labor government?

Grant McLennan

2006-05-08T14:03:00.000+10:00

Grant McLennan died in Brisbane on the weekend.

You think of 'Cattle and Cane,' the lips of the technically beleaguered Robert Forster counting out its Byzantine rhythm. As Grant had taken to singing as the song's coda in the recent incarnation of the Go-Betweens, 'Further and higher and longer... and older.'

As you would expect, the world class cities to which this blog is devoted were much illuminated by Grant's work. I have often wondered whether, in Palm Sunday (Onboard the SS Within), 'five days from Melbourne, and I didn't feel so good myself' was a translingual pun (mal/bon); in any case it seemed to capture the gentle cynicism of the place nicely. The video of 'Streets of Your Town' consists of beatiful images of late 1980s Sydney, surely its high point for the second half of the twentieth century and probably in its history (the irony being there are so many poor films made in Sydney now that that 16 Lovers Lane halcyon glow no longer obtains). Why did we go to Elvis Costello at the Sydney Festival this year and miss the Go-Betweens?

Calling out to all you

2006-04-30T16:02:00.000+10:00

OK, we've punished ourselves long enough waiting in vain for AdSense to pay us our money. We've missed the launch of Kokoda: The Movie, this year's tasteful Anzac Cove antics, the recent 'world classing' of UNSW, and the AFL's failure to purchase a siren loud enough for the umpires to hear. We're back on it now, though.

This email forward is from Cleo. I particularly love 'They would need to live in Sydney,' which has finally made it into the lexicon, like 'They would need to live in Canberra' used to go with Prime Ministerial aspirations.

> Subject: successful, intelligent and self-confessed geeks
>
>> Do you have any spunky, single, male friends aged between 20 and
>> 33yo who are successful, intelligent and self-confessed geeks?
>> They would need to live in Sydney and want to be photographed by
>> CLEO for an upcoming story along the lines of "the new breed of
>> eligible bachelors". Think Ben Lee, Seth Cohen and Wil Anderson.
>> Maybe they work in IT or politics, science/medicine or own their
>> own business. Maybe they play music, paint or write? Whatever they
>> do, they must be smart, cute and geeky, in that sweet, awkward
>> kind of way. If you have someone that fits the bill, please ask
>> them to email through a brief description of themselves, some
>> contact details and a photo to sgawthorne@acpmagazines.com.au
>> <mailto:sgawthorne@acpmagazine
>> s.com.au>.
>> Any further queries, feel free to email or call me.
>> Sarah Gawthorne
>> NEWS EDITOR
>> CLEO
>> office: 02 9282 8602
>> mobile: 0414 517 770
>> email: sgawthorne@acpmagazines.com.au

Who is this Seth Cohen and how did Victoria lose the Prince Off even without him?

Google AdSense

2006-04-13T12:34:00.000+10:00

So one further comment on the Google AdSense fiasco. It seems we are not the first to be bitten by Google's world-class accountability to content providers. If anyone knows about a better ad provider, please tell us! It seems Mr Melbourne refuses to write if there's not some beer money in sight.

Ooooh

2006-04-04T16:04:00.000+10:00

Proving Margaret River is far from world class, someone throws a bottle at Ben Lee on the same night he leads NSW to an emphatic victory...

Click away!

2006-04-04T10:59:00.000+10:00

Apparently, the blandishments we have directed against readers to click on ads is not acceptable practice. Either that or there is something wrong with the algorithm used for computing how much sheer attantion we garner. Come on, if anything advertisers get more value for money on World Class as we draw attention to the Seven Wonders of New South Wales and other marvels! Keep clicking, I say.

Prince Off

2006-04-03T20:45:00.000+10:00

The kabbalistic causistry done, World Class's much-anticipated Prince Off has been completed in time for us to start thinking about just who has the hottest Asians.

Despite flirting with a change of allegiances, Ben 'The Bonds Prince' Lee proved the decisive factor for Sydney. His ability to squander his family legacy is renowned, his Jewishness better than average, his Non-Jewishness not terrible either and his brains, creativity and lateral thought shine like a Maskil on mescal against the obsidian darkness of the NSW Anglican soul. His running mate, Rodney Adler, had less to offer, particularly in terms of mental powers, given he has been busted smuggling stock market tips out of a minimum security prison... Elizabethan Marrano he ain't, but he held his end up well enough.

Victorian Maccabites Poppy King and John Safran were simply outclassed. To be fair, Mr King only ever really had a self-made fortune to squander, which is hardly impressive, and only really shone in the field of primal creativity, importing as Poppy did a lipstick that really stuck. Mr Safran, similarly self-made, did rather well considering, with a near mastery of Yidishkayt and excellent mental powers. Three cheers for Sydney.

NB 'Princes' of all backgrounds were considered for the Prince Off.

Here is the scorecard:

Lee Adler King Safran
Squandering 9 9 NSW 4 2
Yidishkayt 6 2 Vic 3 7
Goyishkayt 4 0 Draw 1 3
Brains 8 6 NSW 5 7
Creativity 6 5 NSW 7 8
Lateral thought 8 4 Vic 3 10
NSW Victoria

Total: 70 60

World Class consumption

2006-04-03T13:01:00.000+10:00

Australia's greatest producer of coffee beans has pronounced Australians the World's best coffee drinkers on news.com.au:

"Australians lead the world in the population's understanding of coffee," Queensland grower Ian MacLaughlin said.

"There is no doubt we drink a better coffee even though they developed espressos ... but I would say Australians would have more espresso machines per head of population" (MacLaughlin's failure to get the urbanely authentic plural of espresso's right is hopefully a typesetting error).

Melbourne, a freethinking, zag-zigging city so resistant to Starbucks that Gloria Jeans has to run the Borders instore cafes, would have to agree that, by any measure of 'sophistication,' we are the best.

It seems Australia's teenagers are also the World's best premixed alcohol and Bailey's drinkers, although it can take until the early twenties for palates to mature enough to drink Bourbon and coke. Furthermore, the French are now copying Australian wine styles, the hills of Bordeaux and the Loire Valley bursting forth with such varietals as Australian Sparkling, Dry White and Passionpop. Just as Suntory must import Scottish water for its scotch, the French should definitely have to import ready chipped Australian old growth forest if they want to trade off Australia's peerless reputation in the field of wine.

The Long Arm of La Claw

2006-04-03T09:14:00.000+10:00

NB Our somewhat flitting partners Laclawyers (click on them above if you see them!) service the 'entire Sydney metropolitan area', with branches as far out as Chatswood, Parramatta and Carlton. Has the Committee for Sydney finally identified life in the outlying reaches of the Great When (fully sic, as they say in Sydney)?

Sydney's woes

2006-04-03T08:34:00.000+10:00

Firstly, my April Fool's Day joke fell flat. The concept was a) the Replacements are re-forming, b) they are going to play a comeback gig before a boxing match at Madison Square Gardens and c) Tommy Lee would be joining them on keyboards and percussion. Little known to me, the American housemate on whom I was playing this joke actually had heard that the Replacements are back in the studio. I limply added the boxing match, but really the whole pretence had lost its force. You can't win them all.

A Monash University study (that's Monash Uni, outereastern Melbourne, not Monash Uni, Central Queensland or some similar boggle to the mind) has suggested that second generation Lebanese Muslim Australians (largely settled in Sydney) do considerably poorer in life's traditional areas of expertise than Lebanese Christian Australians (largely settled in Melbourne). Pending instruction in modern day auto de fe techniques by Brother Abbott at the Sydney Opus Dei centre, World Class's jury is still out on whether Melbourne's own cocaine-conviction exile Tony Mokbel is a Christian or Muslim. He was the founder of a betting ring called The Tracksuit Gang; would be a pity if the Lebanese Muslim achievers in SBS's Western Sydney cultural bridge Pizza were denied authorship of even that innovation. Like many of Australia's warzone migrant settlement plans, these two groups were quietly kept apart, arguably detrimentally. This stark bifurcation in fortune of course reflects the same situation in Lebanon itself and in the United States and is a great shame considering how impressively the country had held together before extremism took hold in the 70s.

Historical coverage

2006-04-01T10:46:00.000+11:00

Checking to see whether World Class is googlable, I stumbled across an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about Melbourne's subpar performance, followed by some heated meta-debate in which the people of Sydney discuss just how above this rivalry they are. World Class has a long way to go!

There was also some bloke from Adelaide who was actually pretty funny, but the url eludes me. Then there is theAustralian College Information Centre, which is pretty amusing.

Anglican alms race

2006-04-01T09:04:00.000+11:00

Melbourne's two Anglicans have spoken: Sydney Anglicanism is bad for the spirit. While some would say Melbourne Anglican resolve never recovered from the advent of Little River Band, a new book is set to take the Sadducees of Sydney Town to task:

Dr Porter's book says Sydney is hostile to the full equality for women and homosexuals, and in worship is no longer genuinely Anglican. It says the rising power of the Sydney diocese is reshaping the Anglican Church in Australia, pushing it to the right.

Yesterday Dr Sherlock said that by "Sydney" he meant a mindset, rather than every Anglican who lived there. He said Sydney Anglicans would not engage with people who thought differently — even other evangelicals.

A spokesman for the Sydney diocese, leading layman Robert Tong, said Dr Porter and Dr Sherlock represented a 19th century form of Anglicanism that was marginal worldwide. He said Dr Porter's book had not caused a ripple in Sydney.

Come on now, surely the only 19th century form of Anglicanism that is marginal worldwide is the Anglican kind. Unfortunately, Drs Porter and Sherlock fail to see the direct correlation between a religion's oppression of women and homosexuals and its appeal, generally to penitent women and homosexuals.

Hyping the Games Overtime

2006-03-31T12:37:00.000+11:00

By the way, most of these ads seem to be about the Commonwealth Games. What are we going to do when the games are over?

World Class needs the John Singleton touch

2006-03-31T08:50:00.000+11:00

Sydney admen John Singleton and Ken Done are sorely letting World Class down. Where are the Sydney ads? While the missionary zeal of these Melbourne-oriented ads is commendable, it would be good for readers (460 in just under a month) to compare the national demographic catheter's entertainment facilities to Victoria's world-renowned Bangalore Herogram Centre. I'm sure if Tony Abbott heard about how we treat our nuns to world class wine cellar accommodation he would be piqued into action!

Arguably the only thing stopping Sydney offering similarly world class function facilities is the cost of actually refurbishing a Sydney Harbour ferry. With Morris Iemma's 'give us back our GST' campaign directed against the great Robin Hood of Malvern and the people of the futured states, it may only be a matter of time before Sydney will again have something to offer. Let me tell you, when Victoria footed the bill for Federation all those years ago, at least it had the self-respect to set up a prohibitive tariff system to make the outlay back on Gloweave and Vegemite sales.

2006-03-30T19:06:00.000+11:00

Spotted just up the road from my place:

I'd just like to say I'm not in anything with Ben Lee.

A free plug for an advertiser

2006-03-30T19:02:00.000+11:00

One of our Google-selected sponsors (thanks Google, thanks sponsor) promises the following as their opening gambit:

MelbourneVenues.com.au is proud to offer a diverse selection of Melbourne's most unique and captivating venues.

Soak up the gothic atmosphere in a 19th-Century wine cellar, cruise the inner-city waterways aboard a refurbished Sydney Harbour Ferry, or drink in the views of the city, the river, the bay or Albert Park Lake at a choice of locales.

If that's not world class I don't know what is.

How much Melbourne can Melbourne take?

2006-03-29T15:46:00.000+11:00

When I was a student at one of the greatest universities in southeastern Australia, I had a classics lecturer who would project a picture of a Roman city being excavated in North Africa. Just like Melbourne, this handsome and world class city had cropped up during a resource boom. Just like Melbourne, it had main street leading up from a river, featuring a transport hub, a library, then a bathhouse, leading all the way along to a university. The death knell was sounded for the city when the main thoroughfare was closed to all but pedestrian traffic. Is this coming true as we speak?

Rumble in downtown S (Sydney)

2006-03-28T13:45:00.000+11:00

'The Labor Government has allowed crime to spiral to the point where it is now easy to confuse Sydney with downtown LA (Los Angeles)' says Michael Gallacher, NSW Opposition police spokesman. If he were in power, he would probably brag with the very same world class point of comparison.

Well, if South Central's Bloods hope to establish chapters in Sydney's bitchingest barrios, they'll have a lot of still-pissed Swannies fans to answer to for naming rights.

Howard talks straight, rating plummets

2006-03-28T08:22:00.000+11:00

I suppose that's the last time John Howard says anything nice about Melbourne. Further to Mr Sydney's reportage on the kiss of death, Edna, Medea-like, has spread her poison on the City of Gold and Scissors.

Yeah no but, Tony

2006-03-27T16:45:00.000+11:00

The comfy bloody country Tony Blair has seen in action in Melbourne and northwards these last few days may seem like heaven to Blair and anyone else from Britain, but the respect is strangely mutual.

For Australians, the Commonwealth Games is either a peculiar and irrelevant opportunity for Australian athletes to stand out against each other, or a wonderful opportunity to do the same. For the British, the Commonwealth in general has been both a source of labour and a repository of responsibility in the sixty years since the Empire came apart. On the one hand, Britain needed West Indian nurses and Pakistani mill hands after the Second World War, and Kenyan fields for Tesco to recolonise, on the other it has also generally upheld what sentient Britons see as its obligation to the peoples of the Commonwealth during emergencies (eg the flight of Asian East Africans during Idi Amin's reign). Britain really seems to get very little credit for this. On the other hand, Australia's welcome to Commonwealth citizens has been limited, the exception that proves the rule being (white) South African emigres before and after the fall of apartheid, who can't be blamed as individuals for wanting to leave but whose skills are sorely missed.

Britain never has satisfactorily managed what they have belated identified as multiculturalism (multiracialism, certainly, ghettoism, yes; Britain must be the only country in the World where the same rotisserie sausage can be sold as doner kebab, shwarma, souvlaki and so on), but it has been generous beyond its means. On the other hand, Australians seem totally uninteresed in the fact we got the sweetest end of an imperial deal that Britain is still addressing. Australia's drive for an ex nihilio view of its own provenance perhaps betrays the country's incorrigible, if sometimes cute, immaturity.

Powder blue yarmulke tossed in the Yarra

2006-03-27T15:21:00.000+11:00

In a turn up for the books, Sydney musician Ben Lee, whose main credential in both Sydney and Melbourne was always that he is not from Melbourne, has performed his music at last night's Melbourne Cricket Ground spectacular. Conspiracies abound that he was just there to make the Paul Kelly-John Farnham duet of Up There Cazaly sound sensational have been denied from the top down. The question is, has Ben made it in Melbourne, and, if so, what implications does this have for his position on the NSW side of World Class’s Interstate Prince Off?

In private correspondence, Mr Sydney has begged not to be forced to go into bat for Lee, which he saw as the popcultural equivalent of defending Singapore against 107 million Sandhurst-trained Japanese stormtroopers with bicycles and a distinct lack of manners. Well, it looks like you might not have to.

This latest foray in the southern hemisphere’s most precious culture is merely one in many for Lee. Many other Melburnian proclivities have been noted over the years. For example, covering the Kylie Minogue hit Confide in Me. Perhaps falling short of the hermeneutic force of Nick Cave’s spoken word version of Better the Devil You Know, interpreted by some as wise counsel to erstwhile Melbourne Football Club president Joseph Gutnik (the devil he does know will not be disclosed by World Class), Lee’s Kylie number rang as authentically Camberwellian as Geoffrey Rush’s portrayal of the Marquis de Sade. A move to Melbourne seems imminent, proving once and for all that if you can’t make it in New York, Melbourne is the next most respectable place to try.

Ben has all the hallmarks of a prince; less talent than his parents, a parentally-funded career in the beaux arts and so on. Melbourne will be tabling an attractive package that includes a busking pitch right next door to the 'Let there be Wok' hawker-style outlet of Lord Mayor John So's Dragon Boat Restaurant on AC/DC Lane. The Gloweave factory has been put back into commission constructing a navy blue skullcap that will trap any amount of human sweat under even Ben's sizable jewfro. World Class’s consulting expert on apostasy, Rabbi Ezra Spicehandler of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, has been asked to adjudicate in OKing the move. Just say the word and impresario Michael Gudinski will spawn a whole backing band for your defence of this goldene medina.

Peter Garrett is world class

2006-03-27T12:57:00.000+11:00

There's no doubt the ex[*]-Midnight Oil frontman is the stuff of dreams and nightmares for many in the Australian polity. Similarly no-one can doubt that the Sydney Morning Herald's interviews furnish fewer insights than the average ladies magazines' coverage of a celebrity divorce.

In other news six athletes from Sierra Leone have sought asylum in Sydney from the Dame Edna-infested Commonwealth Games closing ceremony in Me!bourne.

[*] Everyone's an ex-<something> these days. I read that to mean either people aren't doing anything anymore or history is full.

2006-03-26T22:43:00.000+11:00

Click on an ad, make us rich.

Apparently it is still not too late to catch a flight to Me!bourne for the Commonwealth Games, where it seems they have rounded up enough English-speaking foreigners for a few games of hockey and netball. If you're quick you just might catch a glimpse of the teflon suits, Tony Blair and John Howard, engaging in some mutually enjoyable backscratching.

Coonan achieves what the Victorian Right could not

2006-03-26T21:37:00.000+11:00

As usual, the hard righties of the north show the southerners how it is done. Michael Kroger, ex member of the ABC board and sometime lofty chieftan of the anaemic Victorian blue-bloods, famously failed to correct the devious and covert bias of the "for all of us" national broadcaster, although he did manage to piss off a lot of lefties, so it wasn't all bad.

Compare with Coonan, however; not only is she in the business of doing business on a Government letterhead (around the time our mate Michael undertook the Herculean task of cleaning the A(ugean)BC stables), but she found time to both not fill two ABC board positions and eliminate the staff position! (Oh yes, and monkey around with the media laws, how could I forget.) Her logic is again of the John Howard school of the impeccable and infallible:

As the staff-elected director has been elected by staff rather than appointed, there have been claims that the position creates uncertainty about accountability.

If I were running a university philosophy department I would be madly sacking staff so I could afford to bestow honorary doctorates on both the PM and Ms Communications for such beautiful and original contributions to that staid old discipline.

Howard delivers the kiss of death to Melbourne

2006-03-25T22:51:00.000+11:00

Melbourne's world class "news pictorial" the Herald Sun — coincidentally the most popular brand of toilet paper in the country — makes a lot out of one of John Howard's minor pronouncements at the Commonwealth Games this weekend. Our esteemed leader obviously misspoke, uttering "Sydney" when he meant his city of non-residence, Canberra, which is clearly so much more aggregated (bleached) than either of the others.

Some malcontent writing for The Australian has tried to intellectualise it, cataloguing some of Sydney's successes and claiming them to be failures. He obviously prefers the supine civic pride of Melbourne, and has a need to boost his self-esteem by siding with the public statements of the big boys.

While muttering about some Abbott-sanctioned cleansing of the gene pool, a nameless Trashograph hack took out the Dictionary of Cliche and did Sydney the disservice of attempting a defence. Being nowhere as keen as the Mexicans on the subliterate tabloids, we Sydneysiders really should retain our self-satisfaction through silence, as no-one has so far pretended to do more than pulling an opinion out of their arse. Heh, move along, nothing to see here...

The PM, a long-term Sydney resident, obviously prefers disaggregated urbanity over flying trams and community cohesion, and there are several million other Australians who have a similar unfamiliarity with the warm hand of friendship. We've got a world class police force up here that knows all about the plot, so what do we care for all this comparative nonsense? It is but the whine of those who don't yet know they have lost.

Drive by shooting

2006-03-24T12:53:00.000+11:00

Finding new ways to manage Sydney's remarkable and largely undetected population decline that square with Tony Abbott's private beliefs is a great challenge. Enterprising drive-by shooters in the city's south western nadir were at least showing an interest in random euthanasia if not the motor skills to pull it off, when Dubbo and Greater Newcastle joined the fray of what is becoming wild escalatio towards the accolade of being New South Wales's smallest city. Let's hope this rubbish stops soon.

2006-03-21T13:20:00.000+11:00

I have no idea what this means, but I like the sentiment from Sydney cartoonist Bruce Petty (NB the only attempt by World Class to avoid legal wrangles is the executive decision not to consider one-man B'nai Brith Joseph Gutnik for wearing the Big V in the upcoming interstate Prince Off).

World class to five decimal places

2006-03-16T20:09:00.000+11:00

Sometime this week was World Pi Day, but Queensland Doge Peter Beattie has taken it upon himself to sing the praises of a number of perhaps even greater significance. With one of his post-Fitzgerald Inquiry officers of the law blowing an impressive 0.196% blood alcohol level after a traffic accident, Beattie had no choice but to go into even greater detail to defend his constabulary (four of whom have blown over .05 in the last month): 'I believe this is not typical I believe this is a tiny, tiny per cent. This is not good enough, but I have faith in 99.99999 per cent of our police officers as being world class.' Certainly a number high enough to impress, while pragmatically leaving room for one bad apple in every ten million Queensland officers.

World Class has trod lightly around the Commonwealth Games, not so much out of fear that they are not the world class spectacular they have been partially sold and partially not sold as, but to allow them to shine in their own Melway infused light. Premier Bracks has already deemed Melbourne 'one of the best international cities in the World' as a result of the opening ceremony. But, really, what the opening ceremony (which I didn't watch) did achieve was a world class parochialism that pandered not at all to the tastes of anyone not actually from here. That's genuinely cool.

Those world class Commonwealth Games

2006-03-16T17:40:00.000+11:00

Truly the gold diggers of Ballarat must be distant relatives of Sydneysiders, for they have seen the light.

There's just too much world-class activity at the moment, this country is really going off.

Mt Druitt, taking one for the team

2006-03-16T16:59:00.000+11:00

Mr Melbourne, showing his beret-sympathiser credentials, clearly does not understand the grand Sydney tradition of taking one for the team. If he were to live here he'd comprehend just how much Sydney suffers in order to gift just one world-class locality to this great nation. Instead he is off drinking boutique microbrewed beer in some trendy bar in Richmond enjoying the products of our city's hard labour.

The people of Mt Druitt know just how important a rosy red sunset is to the people living on the coast and are therefore prepared for the minor inconveniences of a shorter life and longer commute to work. Once again, we work as a team to deliver on our world-class potential - some get all the benefits, and others pick up the tab, just as God intended. Mr Melbourne harbours some passe twentieth-century socialist agenda, wondering why the ALP cannot get it up anymore, while Sydney just gets on with it.

The new media laws have the potential to bring Uncle Rupert's world-class touch to every city in Australia, not just Brisbane and other unmentionables. Our beloved leader has already scotched the advertising-on-the-ABC line, using that clever politico-logical brain of his:

And there is an argument, of course, that there's a limited pool of advertising dollars and if they are spread further around then it makes the position of the commercial TV stations, well, it alters their position, because they don't get any public funding.

I could've sworn that the Feds were pumping dollars into propaganda at a rate that the ALP could never dream of; heck, my old mate Tony Abbott got $60 million for anti-abortion noise-making just for losing the RU486 "conscience" vote. One may also recall that Michael Duffy claimed:

It can even be argued that businesses have the right to reach the educated middle class through broadcast media, which the ABC's near-monopoly largely denies them. Fairfax and The Australian certainly suffer from being unable to advertise on 702 ABC Sydney or Channel Two. (Incidentally, under the existing legislation the ABC could run paid commercials now on its very successful website and its podcasting.)

in the truly world-class Sydney Morning Herald, no less. It is just so incredibly grandiose to be that concerned for Uncle Rupert's bottom line, and only a hard righty could see so far through all the left-wing bullshit surrounding any mention of the ABC.

So the short story is that the advertising budget in Australia is of a fixed size, even though the economy is growing, and that the ABC should not be allowed access to that budget as it might harm the export of AUD to those in more need of them than us. Everyone clear on that? Great!

Time to pay some attention to that meddling Simon Crean from Victoria... everyone knows Kim is doing us all a favour as the ALP leader, so just shut up and wear it. God this rightwing shtick wears thin.

'Changes bad news for diversity'

2006-03-15T08:02:00.000+11:00

So claims Victorian Federal Senate whip and hack Stephen Conroy, in his part-time job as Opposition communications spokesman. Which begs the obvious question, exactly how much has real world diversity in Australia's media suffered from what amounts to the programming branch stacking of the public broadcasters in recent years, the ABC and Football Bloody Football, as they strive to pander to the interests of wafer thin bands of world class boganity whose tastes are equally served, subtitles or none, by the commercial networks?

Get behind Kim

2006-03-14T17:59:00.000+11:00

Sadly, there probably isn't quite enough room behind Kim Beazley to make up the Senate quorums he would need to get hold of some sort of power at the next election. Nevertheless, NSW Premier Morris Iemma seems quite insistent that this is the thing to do. The irony of the Taffy Right is that the less seats they manage to retain at each election, the more powerful they become, since they represent not Labor voters who actually voted Labor, but Labor voters who didn't vote Labor and therefore hold the potential key to resurrection. When are these clowns going to take Howard on at the trace racism and profound antiintellectualism of the people of western Sydney; it's not as if they're above it on principle.

A capital status Sydney can secure

2006-03-12T11:20:00.000+11:00

In news just in, Sydney need not worry about losing its capital cachet just yet. Despite the underestimated decline in Sydney's population (see previous post) due to, amongst other things, the death of Kerry Packer and the seventy-odd loyal employees whose kidneys were fitted to the great man's digestive tract like so many feet in a crystal slipper, Sydney is still producing a physical miasma that more than rivals its glimmering cultural one. And so Tony Abbott salivates at the prospect of hitting Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone up for preferential admittance of more of the celebrated Rockchoppers who shaped the sandstone heads of Sydney's magnificent harbour; at least they don't go in for cremation, or confuse things by wearing funny clothes in public. Inordinate smog levels would also appear to be rising from the milk frothers of inner Sydney's Omaha-like pantheon of coffee chains due to the supererogatory loyalty of inner Sydneyites to the early 1990s beverage the caffe latte. Ever ones to thumb their noses at the evolving tastes of the avant-Starbucks peripheries of the planet, the people of inner Sydney have no problem whatsoever with appearing less than fashionable if it means keeping the mortgagees of Camden and Mount Druitt under an ambient pall of darkness and a federal government even their Labor Right can seem to the left of.

Melbourne's heart is an open book

2006-03-11T07:55:00.000+11:00

'State has new designs on world' reads yesterday's Age, which is a change from just having the wood on it. In an extraordinary move that crept up below World Class's radar, Melbourne has relaunched itself onto the international stage with a first-rate logo. Unveiled by John Brumby, a man whose carnal tendencies were once equated by Jeff Kennett to Jeff's own dear propensity for freestyle corruption, the matching Victoria and Melbourne logos reflect the multi-toned azuredness of what was formerly known as Me!bourne and The Greatest City: in the Southern Hemisphere.

While some would chuckle archly at the sardonic blueness of the motif, it is the 'open book' shape of the letters themselves that intimates the Melburnian trait of dressing in black and reading Camus. On cue, naysayers were quick to poke their invidious noses in, such as Vince Frost of Frost Design in Sydney: 'I just think this looks incredibly weak,' he said. 'For me it's really lacking in an idea. It doesn't feel modern or fresh and that's the kind of city Melbourne is... It's a lost opportunity to do a timeless piece of design.' No, Mr Frost, the sheer ephemerality of the design itself is a critique of Melbourne's dynamism, and the breakneck 'four seasons in one day' Procopian anecdota that is life here.

Guerilla anthropology in East Richmond

2006-03-09T12:50:00.000+11:00

Satisfaction amongst visitors to Melbourne has hit new heights, as the North Korean ship captain detained for three years while waiting to be acquited of importing heroin into the country vows to return to Australia as soon as he can.

While it was not entirely clear whether Julia Gillard was calling for an end to factionalism or to the factions that make up 100% of Labor Party membership and seemingly more than 100% of its voters, it does present interesting possibilities for Labor in the lead up to the next election.* The Righties must be eying up the prospect of a split; at least you could count on Tony Abbott voting DLP. Meanwhile, the NSW unions are looking to sell off their spectacular retreat to fund a campaign to fight industrial relations changes. Not a bad piece of economising when you consider the Movement will have Kirribili back at their disposal in, oh, 2064.

In other news from the nation's caravan park, a youthful Sydney band called Red Alert has arrived in Melbourne. Wandering around South Richmond from closing time to closing time, eventually the band was stumbled on in a classic sharehouse backyard, where they entertained well into the night. It is not known what these kids sound like when they plug in, but they are indefatigably nice. Especially impressive was their appositional use of the word 'heaps,' suggesting that the youth of Sydney are keeping more true to the Cronulla-whitefolk-fighting-lifesavers ethos of Puberty Blues as opposed to the Cronulla-whitefolk-defending-lifesavers-against-the-Levantine-horde ethos of recent times.

*Almost as interesting as the possibilities for the Liberals. eg Why shouldn't Alexander Downer be the next Prime Minister?

The Green Light

2006-03-08T22:49:00.001+11:00

Sydney gives world class green lights but this time we have to share the glory around.

Not satisfied with mere substantially unchecked power, another world class product of the town of pomp, ceremony and German vineyards, Nick Minchin, has revealed that the Feds think one half (the unwashed half, naturally) of the industrial relations equation need no longer bother to show up to the table. It's bloody awesome, Howard for life, and all that — before long we'll have the sweetest little world-class benevolent dictatorship in full swing out here, and everyone knows that's as efficient as things get.

World class Labor Party

2006-03-07T23:00:00.000+11:00

Only in Melbourne could such a pyrrhic victory be so feted. An attempt to head off further speculation about the absence of hard righties of gold digger stock has gone horribly wrong, and the Lefties are again backs-to-the-wall, balls-in-the-mincer. Really, their political platform makes as much sense as living in St Kilda, and everyone knows the Left is too pure to ever sully its hands with power. Hence the Greens.

Those boosting Ms Gillard are kidding themselves, and even if she were the hottest thing of the political moment (a position I have already categorically refuted), she's been dating the boys from the wrong end of town. Whilesoever the world class NSW hard right ALP machine is standing behind the world class political genius Morris Iemma it is clear the Feds will be saddled with Beazley. KRudd might be a goer if he can remember where the knife is and how to use it.

As always, Gerard Henderson unleashes his razor wit in an us-versus-them tirade of pure logic. Of course "Howard-Hater" is a perfectly reasonable word choice, for what else could drive someone away from John and Jeanette's beneficent egalitarianism? It simply must be unreasoning hate, most probably by those envious southerners. Through careful application of selective quotation and a most astute insistence that Labor continue to lug their whale around well after the Japan-sympathisers of the ALP have had their way with him, Henderson once again proves he has everyone's best interests at heart... but falls short of perfection. It is bleedingly obvious that Keating is still to blame for it all.

'Another lonely elderly death in leafy Sydney,' reads ninemsn

2006-03-07T09:00:00.000+11:00

No, John Howard hasn't been summoned to the great Channel Nine boardroom in the sky.When even Kerry Packer is admitting death, you have to wonder how many of Her Majesty's New South Taffies are in fact still with us. With a galaxy of cheaper-than-Vancouver-but-more-expensive- than-Wellington media stars that reads like Zimbabwe's absentee voting roll, it is suspected that the population of Sydney may in fact have fallen below that of Newcastle for the first time.

Sydneysiders have always had trouble distinguishing between a long life and a slow death. Eric Bogle even wrote a song about it. Paul Kelly would have at least mentioned the names of a few suburbs while capturing the autumnal light straining through the imitation rosella and gumnut leadglass motif, but Bogle got as near to capturing the pain of Sydney living as he could be expected to without actually collaborating with Tim Freedman.

Meanwhile, World Class's focus on Victoria's shameful lack of right wing talent has been highlighted by the preselection non-deselection of Simon Crean.

In the meantime, the NSW Right is being forced to source its leader from the badlands of Western Australia. If Beazley has any ideas of compacent mediocrity, he does not need reminding that no-one fails to relate to the Australian people quite like Simon Crean. And with Victorian countenance Julia Gillard on the rise and patronising Kim all the way, the factional mutually assured destruction continues apace.

Sydney is the Queen of Australia (and proud of it)

2006-03-06T23:29:00.000+11:00

Mr Melbourne appears to be hung up about the relative sizes of Mexico City and Sydney when this nation federated. What's that go to do with anything? Sydney has always been world class, even back when the Aborigines were running around trying to avoid the business ends of the friendly muskets of Captain Cook's welcoming committee.

Clearly Sydney's sister-city arrangements were formulated to make the other city feel better about itself, unlike Melbourne's, which look like the door list of a Smith Street methadone user's group. Once again, Sydney is playing a different code of football to the rest of the nation, and no, it's not gridiron. (Who could conflate the American with the aerial ping-pong? Ah, a Melbournian!) The Kiwis are happy, having given up most of their armed forces - Sydney has taken a benign interest and they know things will work out OK. It is the way of all things.

The Sidney Myer Music Bowl? Does anyone apart from the CIA know where that is? Most would probably take it to be an incomplete tennis court, likely to be named "The Lleyton Hewitt" in honour of all the people who emigrate from Adelaide. It's one of those migrations that improves both places.

The cold dead fact-machines of the south have clearly fed Mr Melbourne a dud line: The Australian has always been published in the ACT by Australia's finest export, Rupert Murdoch. Truly Sydney would hug him to her bosom if only the Packer family left any of it free. The rumour is that James will be weaned in the coming weeks, and once that Herculean task is done we might see what we can do.

I am bored with this trivia. Another key facit to the world class act that is Sydney is the performance of it's universities. Whereas the University of Melbourne must write its own rankings to make it appear to the uninitiated that it is comparable to ANU, the Sydney univerisities know they are beyond compare and resolutely refuse to play this game. There seems to be some confusion in Melbourne that the aim should be quality, which is ridiculous when one considers all the under-employed over-educated people giving the city a bad name. Heck, without the annual Comedy Festival there would be millions dying in the streets from a lack of income, or charity, as those who've been know it to be.

Sydney, of course, has had a bums on seats, or more correctly, bums on stairs / floor / corridor / door policy for a long time now and it's working out great - we have the best Asian chicks in the country.

ABC TV ran a puff-piece on Julia Gillard this evening, somehow ignoring Bronwyn Bishop's righteous claim to being the hottest babe in the Australian Parliament. Those from the Insular Peninsula know she looks great in a bikini on a surfboard at Narabeen, and vote accordingly. As with Jeanette, the plebian postcodes just can't feel the love.

San Francisco files one home

2006-03-06T21:13:00.000+11:00

In what was initially interpreted as a black day for the world class aspirations of both Melbourne and Sydney, Joan Ryan of the San Francisco Chronicle has produced the apotheosis of world class journalism (must be read to be believed).

Before Mr Sydney discovers that this can be gloried in in Sydney's vicarious way, it must be admitted that San Francisco is in fact Sydney's sister city. Mind you, what kind of sister city is called 'he'? Sure, both cities have nice bridges, serious penal history and gay communities harbouring deep resentment at a flagging ability to shock the planet, but truth be told Melbourne has inarguably had more to do with San Francisco's rise to an extroverted insecurity Sydney can only gauchely ape. Where did all the really gungho Fortyniners go when the gold ran dry? Whose goldfields yielded the transpacific fortune upon which Stanford University was founded? Face it, Frisco, Melbourne (not LA and certainly not Sydney) made you the Ednaesque mediocrity you are today.

It must be noted that Melbourne has a visionary consistency of sister city Sydney could only dream of. At every opportunity to zig, Melbourne zags. Melbourne has mingled menses with Osaka (pronounced by Lord Mayor So to be 'as gwey as the City of Gold and Scissors is gween') , Thessaloniki ( which is, of course, the World's fifth largest Greek city, after Athens, New York, Chicago and Melbourne), pristinely atrophied St Petersburg, uberchic and fast democratising Milan, and Boston. Second guesses all, and everyone knows Boston is really just an understated* way of saying New York City. And Tianjin? Even Melburnians don't fully comprehend the level that is working on, although we laugh knowingly for the benefit of everyone else in the airport art cinema.

To know how deeply Sydney's poor timing at not quite being the largest city at the time the Australian colonies agreed to federate hurts (see Mr Sydney's Canberra rant below), lo, Sydney actively seeks national capitals with which to form sister city relationships. But which capitals has it managed? Absolutely, positively Wellington.

Apart from that, Sydney has assembled Portsmouth (where its convicts set out from?), Guangzhou, Nagoya and Florence.
Guangzhou? Let it be known, it took Victoria's first couple Jeff and Felicity Kennett to put that place on the map with their dodgy share dealings, a full decade after its morganatic marriage to the Moose Jaw of the Western Pacific. Nagoya? Nagoya? Not really Kanto, not really Kansai, and certainly not Kyoto. Oh dear. Finally, Florence, site of the elderly Gough Whitlam's first intimations with culture. For all that, Melburnians are bighearted enough to give credit where it is due, and San Francisco remains Sydney's world class sister city.

*Some would say, very understated.

Sharper than Batman's Scissors

2006-03-05T14:25:00.000+11:00

Melbourne's riposte to the Sydney Opera House is not Federation Square, which is clearly the southern hemisphere's answer to Times Square. The Sidney Myer Music and Xtreme Sports Bowl will do us fine, scene as it was of the the Seekers' triumphant return from beatification by Archbishop of Canterbury Barry McKenzie in 1965, leading a crowd of 793 000 through the vinegar strokes of low Anglican ecstasy.

As for traffic issues, it isn't about unreliability per se, but the disjunction between appearances and reality. The innovation of adding expected time of arrival screens to some of the city's tram stops has Victorians in a Pavlovian thrall the equal of any Sydney traffic jam.

Mr Sydney's willingness to lay the prestige of his city on the shoulders of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor is a desperate gambit. Surely it is the nuclear program they're not telling you about that counts. And that is located in a wombat's lair of catacombs somewhere beneath the Merri Creek in Northcote, where the real Douglas MacArthur and Arthur Fadden continued to direct the Manhattan Project long after the dummy capital was moved to Brisbane. It is believed Mr Sydney is conceding as much with his gallimauffry of gridiron metaphors.

As for Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, we see crystalised the tragic Australian trait of believing ourselves able to laugh at ourselves. Maybe they achieved that, but the true internationally recognised Australian trait is the inability to take anything serious seriously. A blanket position of taking absolutely everything seriously stymies so much otherwise commendable enterprise in the Great Sioux Falls of the North.

Certainly Mr Sydney may have the jump on with his internal live links, a la spyware baron Dale Begg-Smith, Vancouver-born Winter Olympian and predestined New South Taffy of the Year (note how The Australian has dropped the Torino as the declamation against our latest international hero revs up). But here's some of that palaver about Melbourne's world class prosperity, lifted from Sydney's national lossmaking broadsheet, The Oz:

Source: AAP
Wealth moves to Melbourne

March 04, 2006
LIVING standards in Melbourne have outstripped those in Sydney as NSW's economy struggles and housing affordability slumps.

The Sydney and Melbourne Prosperity Indexes show the average Melburnian is 6.5 per cent better off than they were six years ago, whereas Sydneysiders are only 1.6 per cent better off, newspapers reported today.

The average Sydney wage now can pay for 907 litres of petrol, compared to 1098 litres in Melbourne, the study found.

High petrol prices, the increasing difficulty in repaying home loans and falling property prices mean even Sydneysiders with assets are experiencing a drop in living standards.

2006-03-04T22:14:00.000+11:00

A Parthian shot indeed. The slings and arrows of an over-educated Mexican trouble not the scions of the mighty Rum Corps. Whereas he can only martial cold, dead facts, we have many, more universal, themes at our disposal, and we will decide who expounds them, and the manner in which they are expounded, as is clearly the sovereign right of the world class.

First cab off the rank: for all its pretence to culture and civilisation, where is Melbourne's riposte to the Opera House? It's been forty years now and... what's that? Federation Square? Clearly this reflects the lack of vigour in the southern reactives, who are too busy getting Tanya'd to pay attention to the main game, which is most certainly not the AFL.

This ceaseless amassment of inconsequential ephemeral verities rings hollow in the face of realcity rhetoric. As always, it comes down to who has the bomb, and that would be us. An ex-honcho of the Sydney tertiary circuit had a grand vision of a nuclear Australia (where we would be able to identify the "real" Australians by their friendly glow, dang those pesky newcomers), and while his vision is yet to be fully realised - blame it on the soft-right Sussex St machine, they know not what they ought - it is a vision that could only be concocted in this world-class city. The pup at Lucas Heights surely has the capacity to produce enough fissile material to be consequential, whatever piddling medical applications it is wasted on currently. Again, Sydney demonstrates its greatness by taking one for the team, half of whom are off-side and passing the ball forwards while sporting the biggest wedgies in history.

A claim that Toorak even rates as a suburb shows how deeply disturbed our Southern friend is. Far it is from the rolling green hills of Kirribilli and Admirality Houses, from which Janette benignly surveys all that is good in our grand country. Those who are far from her gaze cannot comprehend the feelings of warmth and predation that a 1950s housewife can radiate, and the overwhelming desire of the populace for them. Truly she sends a stronger signal than the nearby SBS transmitter, and the best the ladies of Melbourne can do is... get Costello to squeak on their behalf.

The wise and strong base commander in Dr Strangelove was right to be worried about his precious bodily fluids, and it was for similar reasons that Sydney removed the blight of efficient public transport from its streets. That Melbourne retains its trams bespeaks of a primitive socialist instinct in the people, a lack of will to be real individuals and simply drive everywhere. Until Melbourne has world-class traffic jams it is quite obviously not world-class.

As for all this flummery in the gutter press: the Mardi Gras is ample evidence that Sydney not only provides a world class gay experience, it is indeed world leading. No other part of the country even comes close. All that other noise merely provoke "whos?" and "whats?" from the people with enough brains to know where to live.

World Class News Wrap

2006-03-04T17:10:00.000+11:00

Parthian shot indeed from Mr Sydney on the day an international survey has proven 'Why Melbourne is a more prosperous city than Sydney.' As the promo for Channel Seven News proclaimed, 'and a survey shows just how good it is to live in Melbourne.' A white cat briefly confirms the magnetic appeal of the great Jerusalem of the South by catching a removal truck in Sydney and winding up, like in an independent school chapel sermon, on the streets of St Kilda. Finding that the reality did not live up to the glittering image of lawn bowls, Dougie Howserisms and water taxis (?) presented in the Sydney Life of Us, the cat has since returned to the Emerald City, 'just the way he likes it.'*

Ten News has won an international award from the Melbourne Press Club for its coverage of the Bali Nine saga. I imagine the news team was out of Sydney, certainly the kingpins were (can't they stick to branch stacking like civilised multiculturalistas?)but the casual magnanimity of the Melbourne Press Club shines its world class light again.

Toorak, the southern hemisphere's most world class suburb, last night played host to a dinner to celebrate ten years of the Howard Government. The world class self-justifications of egg-throwing protesters made the Berkeley Free Speech Movement look scatty. Congratulations to John, Jeanette and all the protesters, disturbing all round.

Tonight's Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras does not have the class of last night's East Richmond Vendredi Gras (the hottest March night in two years), an eluctable triumph of gumbo, beer and world class Rutherglen port.

In the biggest blow to German prestige since they were pushed back to Sarajevo at Gallipoli, a German backpacker was robbed of his money and van in Elwood today. The unsurprising news? He hopes eventually to migrate to Australia.

2006-03-04T13:29:00.000+11:00

Sydney is a world class city, but unfortunately Canberra is not. The reason that the capital of this righteous nation is set in acreage previously held sacred by both Aborigines and sheep farmers is that Melbourne simply could not accept Sydney's self-evident preeminence.

Melbourne's crime against Sydney has since compounded into a crime against humanity; to require 300,000 world-class bureaucrats to reside in that cultural wasteland clearly beckons United Nations intervention. Give it back to the sheep, shout the people of Sydney. As the UN has never bothered to fill it's Viagra script, we invite the Scandinavian countries to invade the ACT and absorb it into their Volvo ("To Roll") world-class aesthetic.

2006-03-03T08:35:00.000+11:00

Where Else but Queensland?

As a great man once said, 'Probably Bali.' While the degree to which Tony Abbott will go to have something to apologise about is commendable, he is not yet in the world-class category of Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, a man who admits full responsibility for a balls up at least once an opinion polling cycle. Victorians have long felt a sense of kinship with Queenslanders, fantasising as Victorians do that the northern horde can remember not to pronounce the 'a' in Queensland (mind you, transmigrant Victorians seem to be the main offenders).

In the field of right wing politicians, Melbourne has long suffered a dearth. The problem is, not only do the native patrician variety (Stanley Bruce, Malcolm Fraser) and pseudo-patrician variety (Robert Menzies, Harold Holt) appear near-extinct (excepting Ted Bailleau), they probably wouldn't quite count as right wing in today's world class World. Even Jeff is looking a bit wet by current standards, although Henry Bolte (whose spirit lives on in the work of Herald Sun firebrand Andrew Bolte) will always stand as tall as Joh. Come on, from the squattocrats to the new Monash and Deakin University law cohorts, moomba!* It's your responsibility, before the neo-DLP ethnic right openly swaps sides.

The world class credentials of Jeanette Howard are unconvincing at best, from afar at least. But then, her matriarchal designs do not extend beyond Sydney's North Shore, which, it is suspected, is 'just the way she likes it'.** If it Peter Costello does succeed in waltzing the world class female vote to victory, it can only be hoped that Tanya will find some world class moves of her own.

*'Aboriginal' for 'Let's get together and have fun.'

**Watch this space for World Class's interstate Prince Off. Sydney looks settled on an imperious Ben Lee/Rodney Adler tag team, while Melbourne is struggling to put together a force out of the born middle class John Safran, Poppy King (although he may be disqualified from the Prince Off for being too old) and Barry Kosky (who may yet be deemed too young to qualify as a kosher-certified enfant terrible). Message to Bram 'The Sunraysia Prince' Presser: You keep on knocking but you can't come in.

2006-03-02T23:33:00.000+11:00

The celebration of ten years of John Howard PM has been truly world-class. The mere fact that Janette has journeyed to Canberra to be with the big man at this triumphant time of world-class achievement speaks for itself, not that the non-members of Sydney society could recognise such sacrifice when they saw it. She who has made Dame Edna, the Melbourne suburban superstar housewife, so thoroughly redundant, deigns to be seen in a plebian postcode, and moreover converse with the unwashed. The First Lady goes well beyond the call of duty and still the press wants more; is it not enough that she has brought Tim up to be an unthinking reactive? People in those other unmentionable parts of the country are so impossibly gauche.

Clearly the mark of a world-class city is the quality of it's right wing politicians. Melbourne has not managed to crack a hard-righty since the mighty Jeff was unseated by the colourless Bracks, whereas Sydney is a veritable factory. Tony "if offence was taken, it was withdrawn" Abbott, master of the retractable dog-whistle (I do hope he patented that) is a case in point. The kicking he got from undiscovering his son last year has been completely forgotten, and he didn't even get a chance to break the arm of the ex-flatmate who concocted the prank all those years ago. Such restraint is truly a world-class demonstration of a sense of humour and humility that one could only learn in a Sydney seminary.

...and not only do we furnish Australia with it's most rabid supporters of the beautifully coherent radical-conservative-neo-con-centre-right political platform, we also pay those other states to hang out with us in this world-class Federation! Such largesse is truly something that only world-class Sydney could afford.

Adelaide has a free-hold on world-class pomposity, but that is only because the other cities stopped competing in 1856. Indeed, I believe some geneticists (from Sydney, naturally) are studying the Downer strand of humanity in the hope of isolating a restorative for the future monarchs, to counteract some of the effects of fierce inbreeding.

World class for women!

2006-03-02T11:50:00.000+11:00

Australian treasurer, and frustrated Melburnian idealist, Peter Costello sets out his vision of a world class woman-friendly habitat. A sort of cross between Gloria Steinem and Hugh Hefner, Costello has first class treatment planned for the fairer sex.

From The Australian

Costello turns to helping women

Steve Lewis, Chief political correspondent
March 02, 2006

PETER Costello raised the prospect yesterday of turning Australia into the most female-friendly country in the world as he outlined his reform vision on the 10th anniversary of the Howard Government.

The frustrated prime ministerial aspirant continued to expand his policy agendas yesterday, saying he also wanted Australia to embrace "first-class" policy settings and forge an "energy freeway" into Asia and the US to lock in the prosperity of the past decade.

The Treasurer said Australia was already in the "front row" of nations that have embraced affirmative action to improve the status of women, but more had to be done.

A week after speaking out on multiculturalism, he signalled greater spending on childcare and more women-friendly policies in the workplace.

Last month, Mr Costello broke from the Prime Minister in casting a conscience vote for a bill to remove the veto power of the health minister over the controversial RU486 abortion pill. The bill was passed with strong cross-party support from female members and senators.

Yesterday, Mr Costello denied Australia was a sexist country. "Australia is not a perfect place ... but, you know, are we bad by international standards? No.

"We are actually quite good by international standards and, you know, I think we can be quite proud that we have had a good tradition of female equality. But I just think it can be better."

2006-03-02T11:04:00.000+11:00

Many people in the international community have been wondering what happened to the 2003 initiative to market Melbourne as 'Me!bourne.' While still seen on some advertising material and the yumcha trolleys of Lord Mayor John So's Dragon Boat Restaurant, the rebranding has not caught on quite as hoped. It reminds us of the time some midwestern town renamed itself with an exclamation mark on the end, or when the capital of New Zealand changed its motto to 'Absolutely Positively Wellington.' By extension, the Me!bourne initiative was clearly a world class one, but the masses cannot always be expected to keep up with the cutting edge.

Which brings us to the successful arrival of Torino on the world class scene. It is suspected that this had originally been conceived of as a rebranding exercise, but, due to the erstwhile obscure nature of the place before its world class Winter Olympics, the name took two steps forward in the quest for digestible exotica by cutting out the middle man. Bravo Torino! A similar triumph was achieved at the Nagano Winter Olympics, where the law of the penultimate was blown out of the water by world class commentary, and in Kabul and Qatar's recent forays onto the world stage. Quite how Melbourne, or Me!bourne, is going to establish its true self on the tongues of Americans everywhere is one of those tantalising world class challenges for the future.

2006-03-01T14:01:00.000+11:00

Melbourne is a world class city. An uber-cool world class city. With a sense of humour partially intact. Sure, its denizens are more arrestingly understated about its glory than most, but that is their way.

And I cite Janice Breen Burns in yesterday's Age.

Black is back?

"WE'RE an intellectual lot down here," said Melbourne Fashion Festival director Karen Webster about our tendency to wear black.

She got a few laughs at the festival's first-day lunch yesterday, but more nods of agreement. Apparently we do fancy ourselves a cut above those northern cities far more fond of colour. Now that black is back, she observed: "For a lot of us, it never went out."

2006-02-28T23:21:00.000+11:00

Sydney is a world-class city. Heck, it's just put on a world-class festival featuring a world-class artist who gave world-class performances. If there was room for improvement the crowd surely couldn't find it. It was, indeed, nothing more than they deserve, the residents of this cosmopolitan elysium.