Category: Enmore

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What hope the Liberal candidate?

OK, the Liberals have a snowflake’s chance of winning our local seat of Marrickville in the forthcoming NSW state election, so they can let any muppet have a go. But if this is the best election flyer you can come up with, Ramzy Mansour, then who are you kidding?

Photo of Ramzy Mansour's election flyer

Consider:

  • If you can’t even organise someone who can cut paper in a straight line, what makes you think you can run the state of New South Wales?
  • If you can’t raise the $3000 to professionally print the 45,000 leaflets necessary to hit your electorate, how little support do you actually have?
  • If you can’t do the basic financial management to understand that for large print runs, offset printing is a lot cheaper than photocopying, why on earth would I trust you with a billion-dollar state budget?

1 out of 10, can do much, much better.

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Competitors or colleagues?

On Friday night I ran into three local restaurateurs chatting in the street — proprietors respectively of Sydney’s best Lebanese restaurant Fifi‘s, Greek meze specialists Kafenes and The Razor’s Edge.

While I’ve eaten at Fifi’s several times and can vouch for their wonderfulness, which is why I stopped to chat too. I haven’t tried the others — but they both have excellent reputations.

The guy from The Razor’s Edge left to set up for dinner. And then the guy from Fifi’s mentioned that his kitchen hands were late and he had to go too. Maria from Kafene’s reaction: “Do you need a hand?”

Restaurants across the road from each other are meant to be arch enemies, aren’t they? Or are they? This cooperative approach to business was inspiring.

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Why The Greens won’t win Marrickville

By all rights, The Greens’ candidate for Marrickville in the forthcoming NSW state election should be a shoe-in. This is The Greens heartland, and Fiona Byrne is a local councillor and presumably knows her patch. Labor incumbent Carmel Tebbutt, the Princess of Marrickville (so-called because her husband Anthony Albanese, the Prince of Marrickville, is the Federal ALP member for the equivalent district, Grayndler) has to dissuade us from thoughts that the NSW ALP government is rotten to the core. And environmental issues are at the top of the agenda.

But it won’t happen. And here’s why…

Earlier tonight, my post-gym dinner-and-drinks led me to the Carlisle Castle Hotel. It was a quiet night, and my gym partner and I were almost alone in the front bar until Fiona Byrne and her entourage turned up after a candidates’ forum at the Newtown Community Centre.

Continue reading “Why The Greens won’t win Marrickville”

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5 species of birds: delight!

Another reason to love this village: just walking to the post office, I encounter five different species of birds!

Rainbow lorikeets (noisy and obvious, but still pretty), Australian magpies (confident and my favourite), Australian ravens (with their languid calls), noisy miners (yes, they’re noisy!) and pigeons.

OK, the skyrat pigeons can go. But the rest are just wonderful — even the aggressive miners. And add to that the family of pied currawongs that live nearby and several other species and you have a wonderful community in which to live.

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My village really is home

When Clover Moore, Sydney’s time-share Lord Mayor and state MP, started talking about “a city of villages”, I thought she was giving it a tug. (No anatomical pedantry, thanks.) But now it’s the city’s official slogan, and a few relaxed Sundays have persuaded me she’s got it right — at least for the inner and inner-west villages which have some historical reality.

Photograph of Enmore Rd, Enmore

This photo ain’t art. But last night’s view from the front bar of the Warren View Hotel really does say “This is my village”.

From the art nouveau shell of the old post office on the left — apparently used by the mission of Our Lady of the Snows to help the local homeless — and past the over-priced pharmacy to The Sly Fox Hotel, and then on the other side with its medical centre, pharmacy and greengrocer no-one goes to, this is our Victorian village.

Sure, the Golden Barley Hotel is technically in Enmore too, and it’s only just down the hill a bit. They’re nice people and all — but it just feels like it’s in the next village, Marrickville.

But just was is it that creates this sense of “my village”…?