The PR Blog

Florence Nightingale is well remembered as the founder of a nursing order. She was also revered as a saintly vision by so many suffering and wounded soldiers during the bloody Crimean War of 1845. 

From her ministering to the sick by the feeble light of a hurricane lamp, Miss Nightingale became immortalised as, “The lady with the lamp.”

Soyer, on the other hand, was a Frenchman, an author, a flamboyant egocentric, also a culinary genius. So how did these two unlikely souls come together? Perhaps it is not as strange as it first appears. 

When I was a lad in Western Australia, the 5th of November used to be an eagerly awaited event. 

That was Guy Fawkes Night, commemorating the apprehension in 1605 of conspirators who plotted to blow up the British Parliament and were hanged and quartered.

Just the sort of thing a young Flysa could get excited about. 

The Catholic conspirators lead by Fawkes, placed thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in an undercroft beneath the House of Lords in order to assassinate the Protestant King James 1 during the opening of Parliament, and place his young daughter Elizabeth on the throne as a puppet Queen.

When I was a kid, we used to play a game called “ stacks on the mill “. It essentially meant that a kid would lie down and the rest of us would jump on and form a pyramid and chant “ stacks on the mill, more on still “ until the pile of kids collapsed and the poor kid at the bottom of the stack would drag himself or herself out from under the pile of bodies and breathe again. 

It was a great game to play – unless you were the poor kid at the bottom of the stack. And I think that we, these days,  the normal people, are the poor kid at the bottom of the stack. Let me explain.

When I was a kid, I came across some evangelical material with a tag line that has stuck with me ever since. “If being a Christian became a crime in your country, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

Over the years, as my church attendance waxed and waned, the phrase kept coming back to me, perhaps to give me a little prod, for which I’m now thankful. But overall, it didn’t bother me all that much. But in the last few years, a generalised, perverted form of the phrase has slowly but surely crystallised in my mind.

“If being [insert attribute] became a crime in your country, would any evidence be enough to save you?

As net zero strangles Australian industry, Australia is becoming green, powerless and defenceless.

History holds lessons which we ignore at our peril.

Japan was opened to trade with the US in the 1850's. They were daunted by the naval power of Britain and the US but were determined to catch up.

In the 1930's Japan attacked China, Mussolini attacked Ethiopia and Hitler planned how to avenge WW1 in Europe. Britain's PM Chamberlain negotiated with Hitler and proclaimed he had achieved "Peace in our Time".

But Churchill warned:

"Britain must arm. America must arm. We will surely do it in the end but how much greater the cost for each day's delay."

Beersheba is a name that should resonate with every Australian with the same ease and reverence as Gallipoli.

Sadly it does not.

Because the charge on the desert city of Beersheba on 31^st October, 1917 is the most outstanding piece of military daring and execution ever undertaken in the military history of the World.