Samuel's Blog

Another Prime Minister…and another one to come?

Good morning Lawsie,

Your final week, a lot of us are going to be very very sad by Midday on Friday.

Anyway, congratulations on seeing in yet another prime minister…do you think you could stick around for the next one?

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

November 26th, 2007 at 10:00am

I’ve got three songs on standby for tonight

Happy election night Stuart, John and Steve

I just thought you might like to know that I have three songs on standby tonight.

If it's a Labor victory, then for Kevin and Julia I've got "We've only just begun" by The Carpenters
If the coalition win and John Howard keeps his seat, then for John Howard it's "Still the one" by Orleans
And if the coalition win but John Howard loses his seat, then for Peter Costello it's "It's My Party" by Lesley Gore (with lyrics such as "Nobody knows where my Johnny has gone" it was hard to choose anything else).

Have a great night, I'll be tuning in right through until midnight!

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

November 24th, 2007 at 05:30pm

Happy 60th Birthday Graham

Good morning John,

I would like to join you in wishing Graham a very happy 60th birthday today. I look forward to hearing Graham's calls every weekend, and I hope he has a great birthday.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

November 24th, 2007 at 02:00am

Silly Reasons

Good evening Stuart,

This email contains electoral content…you might want to hold it over seeing as you're not discussing the election (much) tonight.

Well over the last few nights you really have heard all the reasons for voting against people:

Vote against John Howard because Work Choices introduced an unpacking fee on fridges

Vote against Kevin Rudd because he will jeopardise marriages.

The thing that worries me is that these people are able to vote!

Have a great weekend, I'll be listening to you tomorrow night…far better than the television coverage I hope.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

1 comment November 23rd, 2007 at 10:30pm

Election Tips

Good evening Stuart,

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict the coalition to win the election by two seats in a minority government. I'm also going to tip that a coalition front bench MP will lose their seat, but it will not be John Howard.

Whilst I think the swing to Labor will be impressive, I don't think it will be enough, especially in some of the key marginal seats, to get them enough seats to take power.

I can only hope that this limb I am going out on does not collapse.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

5 comments November 21st, 2007 at 09:00pm

Macleod’s Daughters

Good afternoon John,

Macleod's Daughters is being cancelled…finally some good news! I know I don't have to watch it, but I can't escape the promos…they are bad enough.

Even better, less than eleven hours of political advertising to go. This is turning out to be a very good day.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

6 comments November 21st, 2007 at 01:30pm

Humidity

Good evening Stuart,

I just stepped outside for a few minutes and was shocked by the level of humidity in the air. It's a nice warm evening in Canberra (24 degrees at the moment) but the humidity is climbing very quickly and is currently on 62%. Canberra isn't usually a place that I find has a high level of humidity when the temperature is above twenty degrees, so going outside and finding the conditions to be quite uncomfortable was a bit of a shock.

I only hope this isn't a sign of the weather I can expect over summer as that would be very difficult to deal with.

I remember the rule you had on the overnight show "If it matters to you, it matters to us". I hope that rule is still in place because otherwise this email is destined for the chopping block!

Have a great night!

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

5 comments November 19th, 2007 at 10:00pm

Your mystery voice

Good afternoon John,

I hadn't noticed it before, but listening to your mystery voice today, I have to say that he sounds an awful lot like a certain ABC TV personality who interviewed John Laws last week. I had never noticed the similarity between the voices of the two people before, but they are fairly similar.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

4 comments November 19th, 2007 at 01:00pm

The "Big" Artwork for Canberra

Good morning Mike,

One of your emailers suggested that Canberra should have a "big" artwork for Canberra, much like we have the Big Banana, Big Merino etc

How about The Big Roundabout. It not only represents the roads of Canberra, but also the inherent bureaucracy of Canberra.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart

November 19th, 2007 at 08:00am

Bryan Martin

Good morning again John,

I finally remembered the other thing I wanted to mention to you earlier (not that it would have been fair to make my call any longer).

As I'm sure you're aware, race caller Bryan Martin retired on Saturday. Well, before he retired, 3AW's breakfast hosts Ross Stevenson and John Burns had a very good, lengthy interview with him, and they have put a video of the interview on the MyTalk website at http://www.mytalk.com.au/Stations/Talk/3AW/Pages/3AWbreakfastPAGE.aspx

If you get some time during the week to watch it, I think you'll enjoy the interview.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

November 19th, 2007 at 03:22am

Santa

Good afternoon John,

I was just listening to your interview with the lady from the Santa recruitment firm, I found it quite amusing when she said the standard greeting for Santa is "good morning or good afternoon young man or young lady"…I dare say that if Santa said that to me, I would have to ask Rudolph if Santa had been taking his pills.

On a more serious note though, I agree with you that Santa's "Ho ho ho" is not the most important childhood tradition despite was a supposed expert may think, however I still find the annual photo with Santa to be an important tradition to me…I accidentally missed out last year but I have no intention of doing so this year. Apart from anything else, it's a good way to keep track of the years in a photographic form.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

4 comments November 15th, 2007 at 01:30pm

A song for Andrew Barr

Hi Mike,

Re your comment yesterday afternoon about Andrew Barr going around in circles and sweeping things under the carpet, I propose a new song for Mr. Barr:

The wheels on the Barr go round and round
Round and round
Round and round
The wheels on the Barr go round and round
All day long

The Barr and the carpet go sweep sweep sweep
Sweep sweep sweep
Sweep sweep sweep
The Barr and the carpet go sweep sweep sweep
All day long

The issues with Barr are "not my fault"
"Not my fault"
"Not my fault"
The issues with Barr are "not my fault"
All day long

I'm sure you could add a few verses to that if you want to.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart

1 comment November 8th, 2007 at 11:30am

CityRail Tips

Good morning Clive and Abe,

I was looking at the CityRail website for some reason (that I can't recall) a short time ago and spotted an amazingly insightful "travel tip" which read "Do not obstruct the doorways."

I can only hope that there aren't any people (young children excluded) that actually need to be told this.

I've attached a screenshot of it for your reference.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

1 comment November 2nd, 2007 at 01:00am

London’s Surveillance Network

Good evening Stuart,

I was watching Foreign Correspondent on the ABC tonight as they had an interesting story about the surveillance camera network in London. As a regular watcher of "The Bill" I am well aware of the fact that London has an extensive surveillance network which is often used by the police to help solve crimes.

I was interested by the fact that they have a central control room though as I was not aware of this, and they have people in there watching the cameras and alerting various authorities to issues in the city as well as using a public address system to talk to people who are littering or doing other misdemeanours, and that the police and parking inspectors sometimes have cameras to help with collecting evidence.

I think the whole idea is fantastic, it helps solve crimes, it makes it harder to appeal against things where there is video evidence, and it just makes the whole system of law enforcement and general civil order so much more efficient and reliable. I don't like the idea they are considering of systems that try to predict what you might do, as that is just a technical nonsense, but the existing systems are great especially the traffic cameras that keep a look out for wanted vehicles etc.

Britain plan on making the system a national one, and I think we should start setting up a similar network here…the bottom line is in my view, if you don't have anything to hide, then you've got nothing to worry about. Bring on the cameras!

By the way, the ABC will most likely have the story online at http://abc.net.au/foreign/ tomorrow. I think you'll find it to be quite interesting

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

15 comments October 30th, 2007 at 10:30pm

Sleeping

Good afternoon John,

The easiest way for me to fall asleep when I'm not tired is to lie down in a darkened room, and try to stay awake. Unfortunately I have to tell you that I usually try to stay awake by listening to the radio.

Of course if I am tired, I just have to close my eyes for a few moments and the next thing I know it's at least eight hours later.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

5 comments October 30th, 2007 at 01:30pm