Some of their drivers enjoy high-speed duels!

When you're writing for a major international magazine like The Spectator, it's usually pretty safe to make up columns about weird foreign people living in foreign countries. The only problem I see with this particular column, by Tim Heald, is that it's about Sydney and parts of Sydney that I know fairly well. And it's all crap!

He starts off on safe ground, whinging about the public transport system, something that we all do from time to time. 'The trains are unreliable' he moans, 'and Central Station is a nightmare.' I don't see anything wrong with Central Station myself, but we'll let him have his whinge.

I love this bit:

buses swirl past stops during rush hours because they’re full, and some of their drivers enjoy high-speed duels with each other.

I wish I'd been in one of those high-speed duels. Whenever I caught a bus in Sydney, I seemed to sit across from a raving alcoholic, and the buses hardly ever went anywhere.

The preferred form of travel for those venturing out of town is by air — as anyone visiting the Italian-dominated suburb of Leichhardt can testify. Leichhardt is on the flight path not far from the airport and every few seconds a big jet thunders overhead...

He should try visiting Marrickville. And what's with this 'air travel' being the preferred form of transport? Perhaps he should take a drive on the Pacific Highway.

And how about this bit?

St John’s College, where I’m spending a half-semester, is an imposing Victorian Gothic complex in an otherwise grotty part of town. My wife and I are living in the old gatehouse on the busy Parramatta Road opposite what appears to be a groovy house of ill-repute and near to more dealers in white wedding dresses than even Barbara Cartland could have imagined. The College and the university feel, to me, ill at ease with their environs.

I'm not sure how he can see this as an 'otherwise grotty party of town'. Perhaps if you take out the university, the colleges, the few statues dotted around the Prince Alfred Hospital, the various libraries, the Anglican college on the corner of City Road, and the sporting ovals... And if the university is 'ill at ease' with its environs, what does he make of the cafe and bookshop culture on King Street or Glebe Point Road? I guess university students or professors don't need to eat, talk, or read books.

Hey, maybe I'll take a trip to England and write an article about it for the newspaper. I'll be sure to talk about the 'dilapidated suburbs of Old Blighty' and the 'ramshackle tenements' in which I stayed, as well as the 'neurotic combination of the groovy West End types' with the 'anxious Tweed-and-Tennyson set'. Throw in about twenty more adjectives, and I'll have my column.