ANZAC DAY - Some alternate thoughts

How much more of this ANZAC crap can we all stand? Commemorating a military disaster - referred to afterwards as "Churchill's folly" and causing said Churchill to be sacked from the War Cabinet - Gallipoli was an insane plan to invade Turkey. No-one quite knows why as it would have had no effect on the real war on the Western Front but the Brits used mainly colonial troops - Australians and New Zealanders - as they were thought to be expendable.

Those troops were not fighting for our way of life or our values but British colonial, imperial and economic policies. Basically they were mugs even if well meaning ones. After the disaster there was a fear that Australians would be so outraged at the slaughter of their young men for nothing that they might withdraw from the war which they had no real stake in anyway except as lackeys of the Empire so Charles Bean and Keith Murdoch - the execrable Rupert's dad - dreamed up the media spin of all time. Despite no land...

Terrible news comes from Sydney that my dear friend, and brilliant artist, Martin Sharp has passed away from the emphysema that has plagued him for many years.

Thankfully I was able to visit him some months ago and spend three wonderful days in his delightful company, although I did fear at that time I would never see him again. I first got in touch with Mart to say how much I liked his article in the Bulletin about Tiny Tim, his later lifelong project.

I was amazed when he rang me and invited me up to his lovely house Wirian in Bellevue Hills Sydney. We had a fantastic time together, tripped at Luna Park (now that's a story) and cemented a lifelong friendship which, although it has now ceased in this vale of tears, will go on forever in Eternity (he loved Arthur Stace) until we meet again somewhere over the Rainbow.
When I came up he had decided to sell the house - he was short of money as always - but I talked him out of it and h...