We’ve got a number of controversial irons in the fire at the moment, and three of them impinge on areas that have had significant impact on my own life, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have definite opinions about:
The tobacco industry and smoking. I’m an ex-smoker whose nose still twitches when I pass someone smoking on the footpath.
Poker machines and gambling. I might not have been an addictive gambler, but I could easily have been and escaped that fate by the skin of my teeth.
Binge drinking and taxation issues relating to alcohol. After all, if I’m not an alcoholic I have an addictive personality and have a long term interest in the Australian wine industry.
The decline in (or more accurately the disappearance of) ideas from political discourse as issues relating to the above matters are pushed onto the back burner or distorted in the daily battle for dominance of the news cycle.
So, given those considerations, the chance to put together eight hundred to a thousand words every so often and clarify my own thoughts on an issue seems a fairly worthwhile exercise.
Your mileage on these matters, of course, may well vary, but, hey, it’s a free country, right?
Or it allegedly was, last time I looked.