Norm Abjorensen has made a life and career in Canberra. But he doesn’t like it. I mean, really doesn’t. vut he’s been here ages. Was it something we said? A mate sent me this link to an article in the UK’s Spectator.
Nice of him to bash Canberra in an overseas publication. Why not in the Crimes? Why not on RiotACT?
As the comments show, it is a bit recycled….amd apparently he has been getting a bit of a touch up on Facebook too.
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Please do go on Cleo, I’m sure we are all fascinated by your observations of Canberra from 35 years ago!
Oscillate Wildly # 25
I could go on and on and on, I agree with Norman Abjorensen, sorry to hurt your feelings! 🙁
farnarkler said :
I have, came home, still love the place. Have lived in Europe, the US and the UK. What you or someone else thinks of Canberra matters not a jot to me.
I have found enjoyment in every place I have ever lived or visited. Some people are just miserable, no matter where they live. There are fun things to do in Dili. Some of the comments here also lead me to believe that many posters live in houses devoid of mirrors
Sonja, go and live somewhere of similar size for a decent length of time not just six months or so, come back and see what you think about Canberra.
As a lifelong Canberran, I get pissed off with people who move here for work, then bitch and moan about how the place sucks.
Don’t like my hometown? Fk off to where you came from.
I have to put up with a number of people like this at my current job. Among the most inane comments: “This place ruined my shoes”. Uh-huh.
Bashing Canberra is like shooting fish in a barrel; too easy.
astrojax said :
I like both Canberra and London, but for different reasons.
Thumper said :
was meant to be ironic, to juxtapose the pretension of the story with the pithy amount of any demonstrable fact therein while playing on the nature of the abode of the writer against the abode of the attacked…
i like london too – canberra sucks.
Roadrage77 – all good. I’ve been here over 30 years and have worked in both PS and private industry. We have all walks of life here – and I find Canberra no more pretentious than many places around Australia or in the UK or USA – for the most part though the folk I come into contact with, either through music, the footy, down at Jammo, in the Wig etc – all pretty down to earth folk doing their bit for themselves, family and community.
Maybe you’ve come across different folk. Mind you I have met some pretentious buggers – at the Holy Grail, when Parliament is sitting. They are not locals.
Roadrage77 said :
Duzzin mean we can’t pick the eyes out of posts.
TheObserver said :
I’ve been searching high and low for a scientific device that will measure pretension so that I can conduct an experiment and publish my empirical results but so far I haven’t had any luck.
I agree there are pretentious pockets in other cities like Toorak that put Canberra to shame, but I’m just making an overall opinion-based observation, hence the writing of it on an internet forum, not a scientific journal.
Washington DC’s issues have less to do with perceived pretentiousness and more to do with people shooting one another.
Btw, I commend you on using the phrase “lucked out” correctly. 😉
Raodrage 77: this statement: “I tend to agree that in Canberra there’s more pretension per-capita than anywhere else in Oz”
Again – on what basis? Have you lived in other cities and regional centres across Australia. By what yardstick is this judged? What sampling data are you comparing pretension against – or are you merely being pretentious in pretending to know stuff that is basically only an uninformed opinion?
For all its advantages in education, assuming you were educated in Canberra, your post does make me wonder what they are teaching in schools.
And BTW – for sheer pretension try the North Shore or Toorak.
The moral of the story is, gross generalisations are for stupid people.
Amongst the X number of people I know and associate with in Canberra, none of them come even close to the supposed petty, pretentious, status obsessed, close minded caricatures in this article and posts like Justins (*shakes fist*).
Maybe that’s because I lucked out and the other 99.9% of the residents in Canberra are like that. Or maybe its because people like that exist in every city, but Canberra is an easy target to group them all together in (the whole public service wankers thing). I wonder if Washington DC has similar issues.
I smell a PhD thesis in there somewhere.
I tend to agree that in Canberra there’s more pretension per-capita than anywhere else in Oz.
TheObserver said :
It’s the constitution. It’s MABO. It’s just … the vibe
Wow Cleo, that certainly proves that Canberra sucks!!
Justin
Please provide evidence or proof of your assertions:
” the ‘culture’ of Canberra is narrow-minded, provincial and mean-spirited. We are a city of petty officials, many of whom have egos which far outstrip the small amount of real power they have”.
“Many of us have ‘jobs’ which produce no tangible result, but we do not care. The job is simply a means to acquire a little bit more status, to be able to utter a meaningless phrase like ‘I’m an EL2 over at DEWHA’ and to regard that as an achievement in itsel”.
Where is the “we” Kemosabe? Kindly quantify the evidence behind these bullshit assertions….or is it just opinion based on your own unhappiness?
london sucks
Dunno about that. I kind of like it, lots…
I love it, I thought it was my imagination, but he is right, I remember back 35 years ago, when travelling form Sydney to Melbourne, we stopped at Canberra for some lunch, which was the main old shops then, and only one’s, we went into the milk bar and ordered hamburgers, we were told that they were finished for the day, it was 2.30pm, I was shocked, could not believe it, as in Sydney or Melbourne you could get a hamburger or whatever anytime of the day or night.