Mick's Blog

Spring Catalogue #267

Posted On Sep 03, 2023 | Aviation,Military Biography,Military General,Special Forces and Airborne,The Great War 1914-1918,Vietnam,World War 2 1939 - 1945 | No Comments

Welcome to our Spring catalogue September 2023. The much-welcome rain has again settled in here in Perth although not heavy, it is continuous. Skies will clear up from here on into a beautiful, sunny spring.  
I watch a fair bit of TV these days as I’m not as mobile as I once was. I’m appalled at the deluge of gambling ads that seem to prevail daily. There’s obviously a lot of money being thrown around and it appears all the teams in the NRL are sponsored by one gambling company after another. Not only that, the ads are imbecilic and ridiculous. The companies that put these things together are obviously on a winner—no doubt they make a lot of money from the gullible among us. The bulk of us are however, getting sick and tired of it all and can only hope gambling ads in all their forms, go the way of cigarette advertising. We’ve always been a country of larrikins, drinkers and gamblers and are probably the only country where a horse race ’stops a nation’. Without sounding like a hypocrite, I do buy lottery tickets knowing that here in the West the proceeds go to charity.  
The book world is being flooded by a multitude of publishing houses producing a plethora of new titles weekly. 90% of the flood is in fiction leaving 10% for factual and historic stuff. I know it’s all about making money and maybe some of that money trickles down to the long suffering authors. Once a book is accepted by a publisher, the author gets around 5% of the retail price meaning a book that sells at $30, $1.50 comes back to the author. So a print run of 10,000 will only generate $15,000 for the author. (he could make more on the dole). So, the really big sellers like Prince Harry, an A lister with millions of fans, makes stupendous sums on a very ordinary book all because of his constant headlines. Rant is over.  
This catalogue is again dedicated to those service men and women who gave they all for this country and are no longer with us or are doing it hard. Also to those who continue to serve and are at government’s beck and call.    
Vaya con Dios    
Mick & Jo