I HAVE just discovered Australians use six billion plastic bags annually. Doesn’t matter if you’re a spoon-fed incontinent babe-in-arms or an incontinent spoon-fed nonagenarian, you have 300 plackie bags against your name. Same if you live in the twin cities, which is responsible for the consumption of — wait for it — 48 million of the damned things! You could wrap up Magnetic Island one rock at a time and still have enough left over for the groceries. Not all Australians carry the burden of responsibility for this, however. My wife would sooner go out in public with no drawers than be seen with a plastic bag. It is part…

ELECTION time. What a relief! Once again I have been given the opportunity to exercise my democratic right to choose who stuffs up the running of the state. That should be easy. If you look back through the newspapers for the past 150 years it appears that every government has always stuffed up. It’s funny that we rant on about how incompetent the government is, but we never rant on about the incompetence of the people who choose them. When the government announces it’s raising taxes or reducing the pension, you never see a newspaper headline that’s says to the reader: YOU IDIOT! Voters — the majority of them anyway…

MY grandson is 10 months old. I think it’s time I introduced him to the Bruce Highway. I won’t let go of him, of course. I shall hold him under one arm while I run backwards and forwards across the road. He’ll be quite safe. Maybe. What d’you mean… irresponsible? It’ll be fine. I mean… all those vehicles are being driven by sentient human beings; people who wouldn’t want to harm a baby — or its idiot grandfather — if they could possibly avoid it. It’s not as if I’m going to tuck him under my arm while I feed crocodiles or anything. Funny thing – you need a licence…

TODAY I am 60. There are restaurants out there that will offer me cheap meals. In some places in the world I can get into movies for half price, or pay less on the buses. I’m thinking of suing. I demand the right to pay full price! I demand the right to be treated as a real person; to be not patronised by slips of girls in shops who call me dear; and to cut my own toe nails! It’s plain ageism, is what it is, and there’s a law against it. I had less money when I was 25 but no one offered me cut-price haircuts then, when I…

THERE is a wooden elephant lurking behind the dresser. I noticed it when I shuffled downstairs in my dressing gown and slippers looking for something ordinary to eat. Something unfestive, like cornflakes. Its ear is missing. It was like that 15 minutes after it was unwrapped. The dog threw it back up on Boxing Day, along with the remains of the turkey, one of those little blower things, and a tiny plastic ballet dancer from a cracker. But without an ear, which he must have digested. I have ignored the elephant. I’m more concerned about the hand behind the sofa. I think it’s attached to a person. Who has been…