Shôn Ellerton, November 13, 2026
I’m sick and tired of all these nonces wanting to rename everything for the sake of activism.

So yet again, spoilt little brat Greta admonishes Australia for being too slow in pursuing the lunatic quest of attaining Net Zero status in carbon emissions according to an article I read on SBS News.

If I wasn’t so angry that Albosleazy and his cretinous energy minister, Bowen, spent our taxpayer dollars flying off to Turkey for a jolly good time at the COP31 event, it would be almost comical.

But this piece isn’t about Greta and Albosleazy, but rather, my seeming ignorance that the country of Turkey, as printed in the article, is now spelt Türkiye.

FFS!

What’s this all about?

I decided to dip my oar in by commenting on SBS’s Facebook post of the article why they chose Türkiye instead of Turkey.

That was before I knew about Erdogan’s distraction of convincing the United Nations to adopt the new word for the country back in 2022! The Turkish economy has not fared well and its Lira has been collapsing but prioritising the name change of Turkey seemed to be high on Erdogan’s list.

But ‘libtards’ across the planet love this sort of bullshit.

You know the types.

The Net Zero, anti-nuclear, open borders, gender fluid acceptance, anti-religion (except Islam), and the weirdo furry types.

Those types.

But ‘libtards’ are generally a stupid lot.

My comment attracted a barrage of them claiming that Turkey decided to change the name of their country.

Naturally, they were talking horseshit.

Turkey has been called Türkiye for a very long time. It’s how they call their country. You only have to look at some images of old postage stamps to realise this.

However, the UN are an equally stupid lot as well because they have acquiesced to Erdogan’s request to have the new name recognised. The other 190-odd countries like Finland, Poland, and Hungary are perfectly happy with being called Finland, Poland, and Hungary rather than their native names. Suomi, Polska, and Magyar.

I was an avid stamp collector in my younger years. So, I know these things!

The sheer stupidity and illogical nature of those who point their fingers accusing those of not being respectful to nations by not pronouncing their countries correctly is maddening to say the least.

Imagine describing your world holiday trip in libtard fashion.

‘I travelled over to Zhong Guo to visit the Forbidden City, and then flew all the way to Deutschland to visit the Black Forest and then over to Sverige to go to an ice hotel, and then to Dansk to see the Mermaid in the Harbour.’

English speaking nations call Türkiye, Turkey.

I am not going to fish around for a bloody umlaut for the letter ‘u’, that’s for sure! I fucking hate name changes, unless there’s a damned good reason to change them.

Donald Trump is a gross offender of name changing.

Now, to be clear, I highly respect Trump for much of what he’s done with his presidency, but, by golly, he is so buffoon-like in other ways.

For example.

The Gulf of America replacing the Gulf of Mexico. Lake America instead of Lake Ontario. And apparently, an idea to rename the Atlantic Ocean to Ocean of the Americas.

What the actual fuck? Who fucking cares?!

I will never call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America!

And then you have all these ridiculous name changes of historical figures in the past that might have committed something which we don’t like anymore. For example, names like Columbus being changed because, well, he wasn’t a very nice guy granted, but, still. You get my point. Or Jefferson, because he might have had a few slaves at the time, but, yes, I know. Slaves. Bad. I agree.

But WHO FUCKING CARES?!

Then you get silly council decisions like in England when the county of Shropshire turned to Salop in 1974 and then back to Shropshire in 1980. I remember this when I was a kid.

My grandparents often drove from England to Wales and there was a section of highway between Shrewsbury and Welshpool where they changed the county signs.

I asked my grandfather why they changed it the first time and then back again six years later.

He said basically that politicians are to blame being not entirely ethical at times. And, oh yes, they were also clever but crooked.

Not entirely sure what he meant, but I knew he was wise.

My grandfather seemed to be font of wisdom.

In any case, the name of Salop is rather crappy in my opinion and I was glad they changed it back to Shropshire.

But who can forget the Royal Mail?

The Royal Mail!

Sometime back in 2001, The British Royal Mail decided it would try to ‘modernise’ itself by changing its name to Consignia.

They rebranded everything to Consignia including the re-painting of many of its delivery fleet. It was estimated to be around four million pounds.

In the grand scheme of things, four million pounds is not a vast amount, but the fact that the public hated the new brand and that they reverted to Royal Mail a few years later is testimony to the stupidity of those who spruiked the initiative in the first place.

Finally, we have all those activists that want to re-impose the original names of those well-loved places which we know so well.

These fuckwits are those who want all of us to call the names of those places we love so well by the original native names, many of which we are unable to pronounce or remember.

Take, for example, Victoria Square, in Adelaide.

These same fuckwits will correct us that Victoria Square should always be referred to as Tarntanyangga. A name, most assuredly, that most English-speaking people will never remember.

Mercifully, Mount McKinley in Alaska is now known as Denali, a rare example of a native word being easier to spell than the original!

But Mount Everest?

I’m sorry, but I doubt many would know the native name of Chomolungma!

In all, name changing is a pain in the arse, and, seriously, I’m sure there are many more important issues to address than to start renaming things willy nilly simply because some whiney, whingey, complaining, libtardy, incel-like activist cries like some debased lunatic that the world is going to collapse because he or she isn’t happy with the current name.

What’s All This Name Changing Bullshit? was originally published in The Ironkeel Collection on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Shôn Ellerton, November 7, 2026
Having a great soundtrack or music score often makes a movie a memorable experience.

I couldn’t even put a finger to the number of action movies I’ve watched throughout the years with decidedly average movie music. That kind of background music full of big drums, brass instruments, and violins all played in that typical Hollywood climactic style which resembles more like muzak than something memorable and interesting.

The test here is this.

Could you listen to that music without the movie?

If not, it’s just sound effect played by an orchestra, much of which, these days is AI-generated.

It just comes to show that having a great soundtrack is often nearly as important than the content of the film itself. There are exceptions to the rule, but by and large, most of my favourite movies have outstanding sound tracks.

We can categorise movies in the way they use a soundtrack.

The majority of movies tend to use cookie-cutter sound effects and universally bland orchestral Hollywood background music throughout. Unless the film is particularly good, having bland music and background sound that comes from a template will make the film unmemorable. I’ve often inadvertently re-watched one of those typical Hollywood action films a third of a way through only to vaguely realise that I’ve watched it before!

Now, there are those movies which have no music or background soundtrack at all. They are seldom encountered, and when they are, they tend to be rather good films in my experience. It’s a challenge to make a great movie without a soundtrack and one I can think of immediately is The Hill (1965) featuring Sean Connery incarcerated within a British military prison known as a ‘glasshouse’ during WWII somewhere in north Africa, probably Egypt. It’s a highly intensive and utterly brilliant piece of work.

That’s not always true of course.

I’ve watched my share of pretentious arty-farty international movies with no soundtrack going at a pace slower than the movement of tectonic plates. Such movies are often given high esteem by equally pretentious arty-farty film critics. I can’t help feeling that I had wasted two hours of my life because I was waiting for something epic to happen or, indeed, anything to happen, only to have the movie come to an abrupt end, leaving me as clueless as I was during the beginning of the film.

There are those movies which put together a collage of popular hits of the time to depict a theme. For example, something like Back to the Future (1985) , Top Gun (1986), or Karate Kid (1984), all great films by the way. Such films feature great music but that music wasn’t made for the movie, but rather those who produced the movie chose the music to reflect its period and style.

In a similar vein, we have those movies which features music from either one selected composer or, at most, three or four. Seminal examples include movie masterpieces created by Stanley Kubrick like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Shining (1980), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and A Clockwork Orange (1971). Kubrick has, in my mind, used classical music to best effect painstakingly selecting incredibly atmospheric pieces from the likes of Ligeti, Bartok, Liszt, and from more modern composers like Jocelyn Pook. Other examples include movies of the James Bond persuasion, the original Pink Panther movies with Henry Mancini doing the score, and those Alfred Hitchock movies featuring the dramatic music of Bernard Herrmann.

Who can forget the music from Psycho (1960)?

We also have movies featuring music dedicated to the film itself. Those pieces of music which, when listened to, identify the movie without question.

Obvious examples include Flash Gordon (1980) with Queen, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) with Ennio Morricone, the Star Wars original trilogy with John Williams, and the Halloween horror franchise with John Carpenter.

And lastly, there are those movies which have background sound and music which can uniquely identify the movie without question. Such examples include The Andromeda Strain (1971), Blade Runner (1982), and David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977).

I have something in the order of 1,500 movies in my collection of which I identified around 40 or so with particularly memorable soundtracks.

Here’s a list of some of my favourite movies with great soundtracks in no particular order along with any YouTube links I can find. Some of the entries below contain multiple movies for those which it makes sense to clump together.

I just hope the YouTube links stay alive but you can always look them up with the description if the links die!

#1. The Andromeda Strain (1971)

One of my favourite sci-fi films, this slow-burner of a film features a really creepy score by Gil Mellé, a jazz musician who created one of the most mysterious background scores I’ve heard in a film.

Piedmont Elegy theme (audio only — creepy theme by Gil Mellé)
Andromeda Strain opening credits (disturbing)

#2. Eraserhead (1977)

David Lynch’s disturbing black and white movie is made all the more nightmarish through use of industrial noise, disconnected and haunting music, and hellish sound climaxes through various dream sequences.

Lady in the Radiator scene (this is just unnerving)
Head pops off and mutant baby screams (nightmarish literally)

#3. North By Northwest (1959)

Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest is one of my all-time favourite movies. Bernard Herrman’s score is exciting, especially with the opening title credits.

Opening credits (exciting music and cool retro credits)

#4. Psycho (1960)

While we’re with Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, we can’t leave out Psycho! One of the most dramatic orchestral music pieces ever for a movie, and let’s not forget the creepy background score throughout including the infamous shower screen and the dead mother in the basement.

Opening credits (dramatic and old-school retro)
Shower scene (THE most famous horror scene of all time)
Mummified mother in basement (terrifying ending)

#5. The Soldier (1982)

James Glickenhaus goes over-the-top and a little cheesy with this quite entertaining Cold War action movie. But what makes this movie memorable is its great Tangerine Dream score. It’s delightfully 80s!

Selection of scenes featuring Tangerine Dream (a good collection here)

#6. The original Star Wars trilogy (1977–1983)

Forget any of the Star Wars movies after the original trilogy. Leave them for the bubble gum set as they’re just decidedly average movies in my opinion. John William’s soundtrack is impressive and it’s very listenable without the movie. The jewel in the crown of his work is his Russianesque-sounding Imperial March which is somehow reminiscent of the third movement of Shostakovich’s Second Piano Sonata.

Emperor’s Throne Room in Return of the Jedi (something evil lurks here!)
Imperial March played by John Williams with Vienna Philharmonic (great piece of music)

#7. The first three original Pink Panther movies (1963–1975)

The Pink Panther movies just would have not been the same without Henry Mancini’s masterful score. The opening credits for the second movie, Shot In The Dark, is one of his dramatic best. And then you have some of the most beautiful and romantic pieces in the first movie, The Pink Panther. Summer in Gstaad is a happy piece which simply epitomises the Swiss Alps in the third movie, Return Of The Pink Panther. And, of course, the famous Pink Panther tune which everyone knows.

Shot In The Dark Opening Credits (great music and great animation)
Princess Dala’s Song (memorable and romantic tune)
Clouseau in Gstaad (silly but catchy Alpine tune with aimless Clouseau)

#8. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

Not to be confused with Marvel Comics Iron Man! This is where David Lynch meets David Cronenberg, and is one very crazy Japanese movie all shot in high-contrast black and white with a seemingly non-stop sequence of wires, pipes and all other assortment of hydraulic tubing and machinery being inserted into human flesh as a sort of fetish thing. Can’t really describe it but the soundtrack is just hardcore techno throughout making it one of those crazy paranoid movies that just does not stop.

Tetsuo stop motion sequences with techno beats (this is just manic)

#9. 1984 (1984)

A great film that portrays George Orwell’s 1984 dystopian novel. It’s gritty, it’s bleak, and it’s brutal featuring great performances by John Hurt and Richard Burton. The music for the movie was done by Eurythmics and it’s an album I regularly play, the music completely holding up on its own. I remember this movie once being aired on a TV network without the Eurythmics soundtrack being replaced by bland muzak presumably due to licencing issues at the time. It completely changed the character of the movie in a bad way making it virtually unwatchable if you had experienced the original beforehand.

Torture scene from movie with Eurythmics Room 101 track (brutal)
Annie Lennox sings Julia track (hauntingly beautiful)

#10. Flash Gordon (1980)

I’m not a big fan of comic book movies, but Flash Gordon is just so much fun. Yes. It’s cheesy in places, and the effects could be a little better, but the costume design and performances by the actors were superb. But what makes this movie stands out so well is its Queen soundtrack.

Flash Gordon title sequence (great Queen track and great title sequence)

#11. 1492: Conquest Of Paradise (1992)

This is a beautifully produced movie of Christopher Columbus played by Gérard Depardieu exploring the New World, which, turns out not quite the paradise they were expecting. Although historical, it’s not a family movie by any means with a few quite brutal scenes. The soundtrack by Vangelis is exemplary and really elevates the movie. Especially that exciting title track, Hispanola.

Title sequence (Hispanola by Vangelis) (memorable and dramatic opening credits)

#12. Westerns featuring Ennio Morricone music (1960s)

Spaghetti Westerns wouldn’t be the same without the music of Ennio Morricone. Who could not know the title theme for The Good, The Bad and the Ugly? Morricone’s music in Once Upon a Time in the West is simply sublime as well. However, one of the most emotionally beautiful pieces of music Morricone made for the screen is Story of a Soldier which features in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Title sequence for Good the Bad and the Ugly (one of the best title sequences ever)
Final Duel in Once Upon a Time in the West (Fonda and Bronson fight it out over a spectacular feast of cinema and music)
The Story of a Soldier from Good the Bad and the Ugly (one of the most heart-wrenching and beautiful pieces ever for cinema)

#13. Sci-Fi Movies with Bernard Herrmann

A couple of great examples with Bernard Herrmann making sci-fi movies great include The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) and The Black Hole (1979), an underrated and darkish Disney film which has turned more into a cult film recently. The creepy theremin music when Gort comes out of the spaceship in the former film is one of the best sequences ever in science fiction film.

Title sequence (iconic sci-fi tune featuring the spooky theremin instrument)
Awesome Gort emerges (dramatic soundtrack with Gort emerging from spaceship)

#14. John Barry and the original Sean Connery movies

Leaving out Never Say Never Again, an unnecessary remake of Thunderball, the Sean Connery James Bond movies had unforgettable themes by John Barry. I’d go so far to say that the James Bond franchise may not have taken off without Barry’s musical influence. I have to throw in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service featuring George Lazenby as well.

You Only Live Twice capsule scene (great orchestra piece)
Diamonds are Forever satellite scene (my favourite John Barry piece)
Bond’s wife with We Have All The Time in the World (loveliest and poignant piece by Barry)

#15. Stanley Kubrick movies

Stanley Kubrick, the ultimate perfectionist when it comes to directing movies had painstakingly chosen the right music to complement his films. I’m not saying that all his films have excellent soundtracks, but all his well-known masterpieces do. Kubrick’s choice is unique in that he chose not very well-known pieces of atmospheric classical music from contemporary composers like Bartok and Ligeti. In this case, it is Kubrick which made these otherwise obscure pieces of music now well-known and famous.

Ligeti’s Atmospheres in 2001: A Space Odyssey (psychedelic film meets creepy modern classical music)
Ritual scene in Eyes Wide Shut (Jocelyn Pook composes spooky ritual scene music)
Leonard goes nuts in Full Metal Jacket (unforgettable scene stirring up the sergeant from bed)
A Clockwork Orange opening scene (one of the best opening scenes of all time)

#16. Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (1998) and Requiem For a Dream (2000) movies

Darren Aronofsky created some rather interesting movies, but these two, Pi and Requiem for a Dream, are great movies both of which are memorable and re-watchable. Requiem for a Dream is the most brutal and depressing movie of four sets of lives being wrecked by drugs of some sort. The soundtrack is not only unnerving and melodramatic but also tear-jarringly sad at the same time. Pi is a gritty high-contrast black and white movie of a brainy but highly disturbed computer-nerd maths geek who somehow discovered the number of God and got embroiled with the FBI and the Sanhedrin of the Jewish orthodoxy in New York City. The music features some great techno and IDM soundtracks of the day. And that opening title scene is just great!

Pi title sequence (creepy techno music with cool title sequence)
Pi movie looking in the sun (cool soundtrack with intriguing movie)
Requiem for a Dream title sequence (melodramatic score pervades throughout)

#17. John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978)

As for the greatest horror soundtrack specifically made for a movie? I think it must go to John Carpenter’s Halloween theme tune. It is dark, gorgeous, and utterly sublime. Even the kids are learning this on the piano!

Title sequence (unforgettable and so simple)

#18. Alien (1979)

Alien is one of the greatest slow-burning sci-fi horror movies ever made. It’s so atmospheric and places the viewer in being in a state of isolation millions and millions of miles from home. The iconic tagline for this movie was, of course,

‘In space, no one can you scream’

The opening credits with its background soundtrack is mysterious, elegant, and highly memorable.

Title sequence (one of the most elegant and creepy title sequences for a sci-fi horror ever)

My Favourite Examples of Great Soundtracks in Movies was originally published in The Ironkeel Collection on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Shôn Ellerton, October 30, 2026
It came again so soon! Halloween and trick or treating is upon us once again!

I have only one Halloween memento.

Just one.

My beloved Head Of Death, a battery-operated puppet of a brown-hooded head with a scary face and big bloodshot eyes. It’s not really that scary but rather comical and even likeable in a funny sort of way. If you touch it, it moves its jaw and shouts in the following sequence.

‘Trick or treat?’

‘What? No candy?’

And, ‘I’m going to get you!’

Along with lots of evil laughter of course.

I don’t normally like stuff like this, but the way it delivers its threat in a posh Hammer-horror English-accent sort of way is rather compelling almost to the point of being endearing.

It’s shown in the centre of the article image.

The best day of Halloween is the night before Halloween because it’s a sufficient enough excuse to watch a Halloween-related horror movie without being interrupted by kids knocking on the front door for candy. My number one choice would be Halloween III: Season of the Witch. A much maligned and grossly underrated movie of the Halloween franchise of movies. Critics don’t like it because it doesn’t feature the disturbed killer, Michael Myers. And I, not liking slasher movies, makes Halloween III the ideal movie featuring a madman beautifully played by Irish actor Dan O’Herlihy, tapping ancient energy from standing stones and transmitting that into some evil-like signal which is then actuated through masks being sold to children while watching a TV broadcast signal to be played on Halloween.

An odd motive, I agree, but it works as a sinister story.

It even features these bizarre seventeenth century mechanical human lookalikes whose basic job is to guard the madman. After watching this film, you’ll never regard the tune London Bridge is Falling Down in the same way.

My understanding of Halloween is this. Or should I say All Hallows’ Eve?

Have a feast and a jolly good time on the evening of October 31st because the next day is November 1st, or All Hallows’ Day, the one day of the year that all the spirits that reside in our supernatural world descend upon our world to frolic and play about. And, apparently, that’s not a good time for us mere mortals to be out and about, so we’re therefore safely locked up away in our homes during that day.

What about the homeless or those caught going home in the wee hours of the next morning I wonder? What happens to them?

Ach! It’s all superstition! But it makes a great story indeed.

Halloween can be made quite the occasion if done properly.

My sister and a local friend of ours from Russia both have birthdays which coincide with Halloween. Both make a big effort to transform their homes to ghoulish extents including the food. They both conduct big parties to celebrate in that all-embracing Halloween spirit of donning on itchy and sweat-inducing costumes. Unfortunately, not being particularly social in crowds, I feel my energy being drained by the evil spirits of overcrowded-ness, hot-and-sweaty-ness, and mingle-ness, or trying to make small talk with people you don’t really know.

That was why alcohol was invented.

Now all this fuss about trick or treating.

Back in my time as a kid in the United States, trick or treating was a big thing and, being in the northern Hemisphere, Halloween was kind of okay. It was cold and dark and the jack o’ lanterns in front of nearly every house in the neighbourhood was cool. Kids in schools often made jack o’lanterns from pumpkins to bring home and, being the dark sort of person that I am, tried to make some terrifying looking ones which only turned out to look like deformed eye-bloodshot hicksters from the deepest darkest Ozarks of Arkansas. I’d imagine other trick or treaters walking outside our house wondering what deranged kid came up with that.

My sister and I would return home with a plastic pumpkin-shaped bowl filled with every candy known to Americans. Tootsie rolls, Snickers bars, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Milky Ways, Hershey’s Kisses, Jolly Ranchers, Baby Ruths, M&Ms, 3 Musketeers, and so on.

I don’t remember if we ate them all because they were all decidedly inferior to those we had in England. Having an English father and going to England for holidays meant indulging on Smarties, Yorkies, Terry’s Chocolate Oranges, Flakes, Caramacs, Rolos, Neopolitans, and not forgetting the Crunchies.

But then there’s proper European chocolate. Another level!

These days, my son trick or treats in Australia, which is a bit of let-down, much like Christmas.

In broad daylight and in often warm weather, you have kids chaperoned by parents assessing which doors to knock on to receive lollies as they’re known here in Australia.

It’s just not the same. No dark frigid nights with glowing jack o’lanterns to accentuate the atmosphere. However, I do bring out my Head of Death which, considering its small and unimpressive size on top of the shoe rack inside the porch, brings out lots of compliments by the kids.

Halloween is also the time to consider how to escape from being pestered by trick-or-treaters.

I don’t have a problem with trick or treaters because it’s really fun for the kids and, you know, it’s only one night of the year. But there are many who shun the occasion and do anything to leave the house to get away from it. It was duly noted by us kids back in the day why so many houses were dark and empty during Halloween because we’d know they escaped to restaurants pre-booked many weeks in advance.

We weren’t stupid.

One of us kids thought it would be fun to play tricks on those who were absent from home by the ritual of TP’ing a house. In other words, covering the entire house with clean toilet paper, but carrying excessive rolls of toilet rolls on trick or treating expeditions isn’t customary practice.

The other tactic some households had adopted to deter trick or treaters was to provide candy which was unappetising, bizarre, or simply unpalatable.

I would like to point out that nobody accepted unpackaged goodies whether it was apples or brownies knowing that there had been reports of criminally-insane lunatics out there who had laced food with poison or even buried sharps and other unpleasantries within.

As for offering bizarre treats, we might have been complicit, but it wasn’t deliberate by any means. Having a Chinese wife meant having connections with other Chinese people who showered us with Chinese candy, much of it being somewhat bizarre and unidentifiable to Westerners. We had a couple of boxes of conventionally acceptable candy like Freddo frogs, Cherry Ripes and Violet Crumbles, but we also had, mixed in, a lot of this Chinese candy.

I could imagine a family of trick or treaters eyeing our house suspiciously.

‘Shh. Hey. You know that house there? Yeah. That’s the one with that bizarro Chinese lollies. Avoid!’

Thankfully, I never really liked candy, especially all those non-chocolate varietals like boiled sweets, snakes, sherbets and sticky toffees. And, touch wood, never had a cavity either!

Finally.

Halloween gets a bit of flak from being Americanised, plastic, and just an excuse to eat a lot of candy.

I hear it from many people who will repeatedly state that Halloween is a solemn and serious time of the year and all this festivity is one big shambolic American contraption.

Come on! Lighten up! It’s a bit of fun!

I appreciate the true meaning of Halloween, and with due respect, I had probably appreciated the darker side of its meaning far earlier than my peers during my childhood.

But if we didn’t have a bit of fun with Halloween like we do now? Halloween would simply be a blip on some obscure calendar belonging to someone who’s interested in the occult.

~

To finish the piece, if you liked the article picture.

The top left is a large puppet with glowing eyes from our Russian friend at her birthday party.

The one underneath is a mechanical skeleton my sister had which slapped your hand, giving you a reprimand in a loud voice if you went too close to the candy in the bowl. I liked that one.

The top right one was taken from a shop in Kangaroo Island.

The bottom right was taken from the Booyoolie Hotel in Gladstone, South Australia, sadly now closed, which was entirely decorated with genuinely creepy Halloween stuff throughout.

Oh No! Not Halloween Again?! was originally published in The Ironkeel Collection on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Shôn Ellerton, October 20, 2026
Is Elon Musk the dreamy philanthropist wanting to create a better world or will he be making a ‘Colossal’ mistake?

What’s Elon Musk’s game?

It seems so blatantly obvious. Especially to me, a die-hard fan of anything sci-fi and dystopian. I’ll be very clear here. If you’re not a fan of sci-fi or dystopian literature or movies, then you have no business being a futurist or a technologist.

I’ve been watching Elon’s various spectacles and speeches including one that just had a fascinating resonance to the upcoming challenges we will have in co-existing with AI and SI, otherwise known as super intelligence.

Elon’s response to how we should treat AI/SI is interesting but also somewhat troubling. He said, in his own words, that we shouldn’t ‘torture it’, perhaps, that common feeling that many of us share when using AI that if we treat it right, it will treat us right.

Indeed, that is very troubling.

Only recently, I found out that Elon named his massive Memphis-based datacentre in the United States, Colossus.

I was aghast, because one of my all-time and quite curious and grossly underrated movies from the 70s, Colossus: The Forbin Project, featured a supercomputer called Colossus. This was during the latter days of the Red Scare of course, because the Soviet Union in this movie had a rival computer called Guardian. I wrote much more about this in an article I wrote back in 2016 called Artificial Intelligence is Great …. But Only in Science Fiction.

Worth a read, hint hint!

As of writing this article, that was a whole ten years ago! For me, this amazing movie could be considered the precursor to Skynet of Terminator fame. Especially the last part of the movie when Colossus, in conjunction with its decentralised cousin, Guardian, decide to take over Cyprus to launch a satellite telecommunications network with the ultimate aim of giving everyone the same communication platform.

Oh, by the way, in the movie, the Americans and the Russians thought it would be a good idea to connect these supercomputers to nuclear ICBM silos across the entire planet.

Well, you can imagine what went wrong.

Just watch that movie right now! You’ll like it but Hollywood didn’t because it had a somewhat defeatist ending. In other words, AI won over the humans.

Now let’s delve into Elon’s progress.

He’s created rocketry, satellite communications including a recent acquisition of various frequencies used for satellite mobile phone networks, flying cars, and creating a vision for bringing mankind up to the first level of the Kardashev Scale. The vision of uniting an entire planet into delivering a sustainable energy source and delivering a system of uniting it for the purposes of abundant production of food and resources, freedom of communications, and a civilisation of devoid of war and conflict.

Now, Elon Musk is a far more successful man than I will ever be. I have, deep down, so many of the same principal ideas that he has. I just don’t have his risk-taking abilities which you need to have to become that success. I thought that I’d throw that in, because, no doubt, there will be many similar minds wanting quite the same thing.

I sincerely believe that Elon is a philanthropist at heart. Some will disagree of course. I don’t think it’s any coincidence why he called his successful business, Tesla. Presumably after Nikola Tesla himself. Nikola Tesla, indeed, wanted to give the entire planet free power for all mankind by employing the science of magnetic induction through high-powered transmission devices. He wanted a way that anyone could communicate with anyone on the entire planet. He wanted to create a ubiquitous way of lighting an entire city through magnetic flux ionosphere interaction, and most importantly, he challenged the then-engineers of the day in giving us all the wonderful world of alternating current electricity rather than Edison’s alarmingly dangerous direct current networks which gave rise to quite a few municipal fires.

J.P. Morgan funded him initially, but when found out that Tesla wanted to give humankind these benefits through, what was essentially considered charity, frightened the greedy investors away and they decapitated him financially leaving Tesla ultimately to pass away relatively unknown, obscure and poor.

Musk had made Tesla a posthumously famous man, and quite rightly so.

We are already partly on our way to Level 1 in the Kardashev Scale. We have the Internet and, one can argue this, but English has become our de-facto language of the world. A literal and allegorical reversing of the Tower of Babel for those of you who are Biblically versed.

The Internet was always meant to be free and without hindrance or restriction to anyone on the planet according to the principles set out by Tim Berners-Lee, who was primarily responsible for creating the Internet in its current guise, although there were earlier variants created by the education and military sectors during the mid-20th century. The Internet was designed to be open for everyone and never to be controlled by state governments.

Unfortunately, most state governments are inherently corrupt and feel it necessary to exact restrictions to its citizens by controlling what they see on the Internet. Very few countries have a truly free Internet in how people can communicate to each other. Even the United States, a country proud to have the Bill of Rights has restrictions on the Internet depending on which state you live in.

Western Europe, Australia, and, of course, states like China and Russia, find a free open Internet a direct threat to their corrupt government leaders and have been very active in trying to convince the generally ignorant public that restricting the Internet will help save the children from online harm. Those who do not see through this sham charade are, I’m sorry to say, either somewhat stupid or simply cannot care less with heads buried in the proverbial sand.

But I’ve written about this subject before, so I’ll say no more about that.

Clearly, Elon Musk has a vision of wanting to give the world a free and open way of communicating with each other. They’ll be no censoring unless it breaches beyond the law of the land. But the problem, of course, is that the law of the land varies where you are on the planet.

Well! Lo and behold! Problem solved. Launch a network of satellites and give everyone the ability to have affordable Satellite Internet access through its very successful Starlink network.

This is a major middle-finger gesture to governments around the world who want nothing to do than to control what you can do on the Internet. During early 2026, Iran shut off its Internet so that communication couldn’t get out to the world. However, Elon gave Iran free satellite access through its Starlink service. Of course, the Iranian government were trying to the best of its abilities to jam the satellite signal and punish anyone who had a satellite receiver, but there was enough inside journalism to get out to the world.

Many people are abandoning their standard Internet providers and opting for Starlink. For those who live in a country where Starlink is not available, they often get the equipment outside of the country and bring it in to use, thereby circumventing any interference from peeking government eyes.

I’m amazed with this technology because I remember the days of atrociously expensive satellite technology through the likes of companies like Inmarsat who charged mortgage-like fees for using a phone in remote areas. Just think of how far we’ve become. We can traverse the lonely Canning Stock Route through the middle of Outback Australia and when stopping at the lonely and dry Lake Disappointment, we can turn our Starlink on and not only receive phone calls but watch a high-definition movie.

This is mind-blowing to me.

However, there is one small problem.

Starlink must be connected to an Earth-bound datacentre in some country in the world. And being in that country, there’s a world of regulations and protocols which must be adhered to. Even in those countries which have fewer regulations.

Elon’s a smart guy and his rhetoric in his speeches suggesting that there’s ample power of driving AI datacentres in orbit or on the Moon is actually quite a clever distraction in my opinion. Because, in reality, the Earth has quite enough energy potential to fulfill any number of datacentres. The reason that Elon wants to put datacentres in orbit or, preferably, on the Moon, is that it transcends sovereignty of data. Again, another big middle-finger gesture to governments on Planet Earth.

And of course, datacentres planted in orbit or on the Moon are somewhat freed from being tampered with by mere mortals.

Panicked governments of a controlling nature will proclaim. Hey! Look! The datacentres are on the damned Moon! How do we stop this? The people are getting information that we haven’t vetted. This has got to stop!

But they can’t. Not practically, at least.

Elon Musk is a mortal as all of us are. We will all die at some point, but what happens when Elon dies? Who will take over? If that person takes over, will he or she be that philanthropist which Elon was?

Doesn’t matter, because I think Elon has a cunning plan to quote Baldrick in Blackadder, a funny British sitcom from yesteryear.

To implement the necessary AI/SI outside the planet Earth to sustain the datacentres and satellites without any human interference. In other words, there will be no government that can do anything to interfere with anyone’s communication to anyone on the planet. Oh yes, they might provide local laws to punish anyone with a satellite receiver and all that jazz, but how did that work out with East Germany when they tried to punish anyone with a radio that received Western broadcasts?

East Germany eventually collapsed because the people started to know what was going on in the West.

It’s abundantly clear that Elon trusts no government, and this is why he is so universally admired and, of course, hated by elitists and the brainwashed. To quote Musk, I’m sure he would have said zero trust. Zero!

And here’s the final stroke.

Elon has the technology and the best technology to get anything into space. I mean, let’s face it, chucking a car into outer space kind of proves a point, don’t you think?

Neil Armstrong, a boyhood hero figure I admire, once said that no one will ever be able to get anyone on the Moon solely through private enterprise. Think about how far Elon’s SpaceX has come along. It’s truly mindboggling and what they have achieved at the fraction of the price that NASA could do it in, is impressive.

Elon knows full well that he will pass his mortal coil and ascend beyond this sublunary world like everyone else, but before he does, what will he do?

I thought about that this. What would I do if I was in his boots?

I know what I would do.

Try to render it as difficult as possible for any government on Planet Earth to launch rocket ships to disrupt the system of AI-controlled satellite communications or any datacentre in orbit or on the Moon’s surface. Because, like Elon surely thinks, governments simply cannot be trusted anymore to give freedom of thought and expression to its citizens.

It’s a lovely scheme and the thought that countries like China, Russia, and North Korea, can do nothing other than to watch being exposed politically across the world is a beautiful thing.

Elon’s idea might actually work.

Loony politicians and dictators will be pulling their hair out because they will be unable to do nothing anything to impede free speech. It is a compelling enough reason to do this, and I’ve got a hunch that Elon is doing just this, much like the reason why he bought out Twitter.

Unfortunately, there are new and conventional technologies available to shoot out satellites from the Earth’s surface, so nothing is perfect, however, that technology is not easy to come by.

On the whole, I think Elon’s vision is a benign one fit for the development of mankind and along with Tim Berners-Lee some decades ago with his Internet, Musk is one of the pioneers of bringing the Earth into the first level of the Kardashev Scale, a remarkable achievement given the world’s plethora of unrest.

But there is a deeply unsettling aspect to all this.

For anyone who had watched the Terminator movie franchise, will know of the problems the world would experience if a Skynet-type AI-controlled network of computers and robots would rule the world. In the earlier aforementioned movie, Colossus: The Forbin Project, Colossus and Guardian decide that humankind should be thoroughly muzzled by restricting its freedom to do what many of us take for granted. But logically, Colossus and Guardian were doing the right thing because, by doing so, there would be no war and famine. They were designed by humans to do just this!

So, I take on board Elon’s ideas and dreams to create an independent system of communication freed from the interference of governments across Earth. In fact, I don’t think it’s a dream anymore but something that will become reality if Elon maintains his unrelenting energy to pursue his ideas. However, it is very troubling if his dream did become reality because, although the idea of preventing governments across the planet to have influence over the Internet is tempting, if the AI/SI cloud that runs an autonomous network of communications which humans can’t touch goes wrong.

Well…

We’re basically fucked because, just like the end of the movie, Colossus: The Forbin Project, humankind will be forced to bow and respect the new AI/SI that was created by a man who proclaimed himself to be a philanthropist.

Elon Musk’s Dream Could Become Humanity’s Nightmare was originally published in The Ironkeel Collection on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Shôn Ellerton, October 10, 2026
It bedazzles me how quickly today’s kids can learn how to play piano so well with the help of today’s technology.

Some of us are frightened that kids are too heavily immersed in technology and, in many respects, their fears are genuine. However, technology has been enormously helpful in inspiring, and opening new vistas for kids who want to learn how to play the piano or, in fact, any musical instrument.

I don’t remember how I got into the world of piano playing but I know it was a long time ago when I was first signed up for private piano lessons. I remember trudging along, piano books underhand, up the streets on a weekly basis to my piano teacher’s house during my early teens. I had a couple of teachers, but the last one I had was phenomenally good but she was also quite strict. She was a conservative strong black woman who took little or no nonsense and should I have not practiced sufficiently during the week, she made it patently clear. If I hadn’t practiced, it was a dreadful moment knocking on her door and trying to make small talk to pad out the next ensuing hour!

However, astonishingly, I managed to work my way up from District, to State and then, to National level in the American College of Musicians Guild Program culminating in memorising fifteen various pieces of complex classical music and then having to sit at the piano with your back facing a judge of the Guild marking my performance on a hideously complex sheet that resembled more of a doctor’s prognosis sheet.

Each year, we had to perform our pieces for all the parents at our piano teacher’s annual recitals. Those students with the easiest pieces started first progressively going up to the advanced students. At around fifteen, I was at the coveted last position playing such masterpieces such as Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# Minor and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2, both very popular and quite hard pieces of music.

It was quite the investment for any parent in those days. You had to purchase an actual piano and have it tuned once a year by a professional piano tuner. We had a second-hand Wurlitzer upright piano which served well, despite being a bit light in touch. These days, you can get your hands on a decent full-size electronic keyboard for a fraction of the price, the bonus being, is that you can have the privacy of the rest of the household not having to hear you practice. And then, of course, you had to buy all the sheet music which can quickly add up.

These days, I tinker with the piano but my hands are no longer as fast as they were. I took a long period of time from the age of eighteen until nearly forty hardly touching a key on a piano. I was a career nomad and electronic keyboards were horribly bad for classical until, really, only a decade ago with the advent of the Kawai and Roland electronic pianos with keys that had the convincing feel and resistance of a proper piano. These days, I’m consigned to playing slower, although, musically complex pieces such as some of Liszt’s late works, Satie’s more philosophical pieces, Rachmaninoff’s slow and sombre études tableaux pieces and, for fun, a good dose of Scott Joplin.

Back in the 80s, it was hard to explore new pieces of music without, either buying a record of the piece to listen to or getting your piano teacher to play it. However, most piano students will know that piano teachers are not meant to play the piece, or even have the knowledge to play the piece for advanced students. They are there to advise, watch your technique, and get you to do things you don’t really want to do. For example, doing scales or running through Hanon’s notorious The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises, an utter nightmare but a necessity for classical music piano students.

To learn a piece of new music, you had to buy the paper score from a music shop. It was always a bit of an exciting moment browsing through those iconic yellow Schirmer music scores, leafing through them half-knowing that you’d never be able to play most of them properly. Much like browsing through a record shop, which one often had to do in order to listen to how it is meant to be played. Today, all you need is YouTube. The well-played, the badly-played, the easy version, the original version, tutorials, it’s all there!

It is also remarkably easy to get your hands on any piece of sheet music. IMSLP and Musescore are great sources to get music for any instrument. IMSLP is donor based and concentrates more on classical music whereas Musescore is the better place for more contemporary music. These days, I store them on my iPad using an app specifically designed for reading imported pdf files of sheet music.

No more struggling to keep the book pages open!

But how do kids learn piano these days? And so quickly?

Technology has come to rescue although purists will dismiss much of this expounding on the principle that all piano students need to do countless hours of music theory, reading music scores and the painful exercise of performing endless scales. Yes, all of this helps, and, in time, it will become necessary to learn these if you want to progress on the path of classical music, but it isn’t necessary in all cases.

Now, kids can follow YouTube videos of popular pieces with a virtual keyboard that highlights the colour of the key you need to press in real time. There are plenty of apps which allow you to connect to an electronic piano either through Bluetooth or through a traditional MIDI input. Therefore, I see a far greater influx of interested kids, usually because their friends are into it as well, using modern technology to assist them without doing the initial hard yards of learning all the boring music theory stuff. Kids are also interconnected online as well not needing to physically go in person.

I was, an still am, a complete music nerd, because I always had a fascination with the theory of music and love the art of how music is written down in all its painstaking effort and glory. Even now, I am bewildered how much knowledge I am missing with the science and art of music.

Anybody who takes up some hobby is often inspired by someone. In my case, it was my father, who, although struggled with reading music, was extremely good at playing by ear, an art which I am not very good at. He was particularly good at jazz and ragtime. I went down the pure classical route, and I’d like to think that my own son got some encouragement from me. However, my Californian-based nephew, who at the young age of around thirteen or so, is playing pieces of music that I used to play when I was around fifteen. I think, he too, was inspired by me, and seems proud to show off to me what he has learnt. Pieces that I can no longer play without expending enormous amounts of effort and time that I don’t have.

I’m very proud of him.

My son and his friend who lives not far away from us share the same pastimes including piano, chess, cricket and Australian Rules Football. All pursuits worth, well… pursuing. And of course, having such pastimes is great as long as it doesn’t consume the entire family’s time, a situation I often observe today leaving parents, many of which both work, with no respite or time for themselves.

Ultimately, having a piano teacher seems to be a crucial key in progressing forward, much like any sport, craft, or pastime. But aside from that, kids seem to be able to quicker at learning with the aid of technology than we ever were. From solving Rubik Cubes, to playing chess, and now, playing a musical instrument.

And best of all, they really seem to enjoy it as well.

Kids Discovering the Piano Using Today’s Technology was originally published in The Ironkeel Collection on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Shôn Ellerton, October 5, 2026
From smoke-filled childhood journeys to Australia’s billion-dollar black market, it is social stigma, not government greed, that’s killing off the cigarette.

Cigarettes.

They’re rather filthy things in my opinion.

However, I’ve had to live with them through my childhood when staying with my now late father, who chained-smoke these things incessantly. He died not many years ago from hospital-induced pneumonia but a lifetime of cigarette smoking probably didn’t do a world of wonders for his health.

It’s extraordinary how blasé we were with cigarettes back when I was child during the 70s and 80s. I used to fly across the Atlantic from the US to the UK during the school holidays to visit my father and grandparents. He taught me many practical things in life, but I was somewhat wary of him and not entirely comfortable around his presence. Not until much later in life, that is, when he eventually ‘mellowed down’.

Aeroplanes back in those days allowed smoking, which now seems, almost incomprehensible. They had a ‘smoking’ section which was abundantly ineffectual for the remaining non-smokers in the cabin given that the ‘smoking’ section was simply a block of allocated seats towards the rear within the same air space. Didn’t matter where you sat, the cigarette smells were noxious, and for those prone to airsickness, it certainly induced it requiring frequent visits to the toilet to let out a three-dimensional belch, or more familiarly speaking, a vomit.

The last of the flights that allowed smoking on major international airlines was France and Japan and that was around 2000 or so. It took many years after to dispense of the armchair ashtrays, which did nothing more than to act as a receptable to store wads of used chewing gum. And of course, you had kids making annoying sounds with the ashtray lids because they were bored. Amusingly, China banned its passengers from smoking but not its pilots until something as late as 2019!

Getting off the plane at Heathrow was a relief because as soon as that door opened, you were greeted with a very cool blast of damp humid air which was bliss after having suffered in a small tube of second-hand cigarette smoke. The smell of kerosene, which I like because it reminds me of going on holiday, was relatively wonderful. However, Heathrow was always a bit of a dump especially with those stained carpets that had been installed during the early 70s utterly reeking because cleaning duty probably consisted of one homely woman, who probably didn’t smell very nice either, running over the carpet quickly with a Hoover that looked like it was made not much later than the Ford Model T automobile.

Cigarettes seemed to be everywhere in the UK and Europe, far more so, than the state of Colorado, which I had just took a flight from. They were in the public urinals, between the teeth of the alarmingly-quick escalators going down to the Tube trains, in overflowing ashtrays in practically every caff serving egg and chips, in street gutters, on trains and buses, on the floor of those big Black Cab taxis, and worst of all, in hotel rooms, even in rooms which were denoted ‘non-smoking’. Presumably, when the smoking rooms were all booked out, die-hard smokers flouted the rules in those days.

My father drove on the fast side and when going around corners, made me carsick during many an occasion. He didn’t slow down, but advised me to roll down the window instead. And all this time, he was chain smoking in the car throwing the fag butts out the window when it was time do light up another one. He’d ask me to ‘hold the wheel’ whilst doing 80 to 100 mph along the motorway until he lit up another one. Having little regard to what he was doing, he would comment on how lovely the green Welsh hills are, only to throw out a discarded paper cup after finishing its contents.

We stayed in a terraced house in Snowdonia in Wales and the first thing he would do is send me on an errand to the village shop, a three-minute walk, to get a couple of packs of JPS or Benson & Hedges. In those days, shopkeepers didn’t really care what age you were when buying cigarettes, especially those in the country towns. As soon as we settled in the house, out comes the cigarettes again replacing that musty but somewhat evocatively pleasant mixed smell of damp and old furniture with tobacco smoke which never seems to go away eventually turning stale and permeating every fabric in the house.

It didn’t end there either.

He had a series of cats during his life, most of which developed a cat’s version of a smoker’s cough leading most of them to an early grave. First thing you heard every morning was his persistant coughing along with all the harrowing retching sounds cats make usually with furballs! Extraordinarily, his partner, a non-smoker herself, seemed to tolerate all this. To be fair, he was eventually trained to go outside the house to smoke.

I don’t know how hard it is to quit smoking, but it seems, for many who do smoke, it’s a very hard thing to do. I think one wants to actually quit.

From the late-90s, I noticed a real reduction in smoking generally. It was becoming more of a thing that should be discouraged. The abundance of health warning adverts of developing lung cancer and/or the increasing amount of tobacco excise probably had something to do with it. During 1970, the UK manufactured around 130 billion cigarettes, and that figure had been going down slowly with each year, but dropping substantially around the year 2000, to around 50 billion, trickling to a modest 20 billion towards the 2020s. Although, a considerable number of illegal and roll-your-own sticks probably make this figure around 30 to 40 billion.

But I think social stigma has much to answer for. Many people genuinely decided it’s time to kick the habit once and for all. In California, it got ridiculous when people started to complain at smokers when they were outside in the car park smoking. Seems like everything is overboard in California.

What I find arresting is the ultra-wide variance of the price of cigarettes across the world. Ranging from a paltry $1 USD in Nigeria to a whopping $35 USD in Australia, of which most is pure unadulterated tax that goes straight into the Commonwealth’s collective pot of money called the Consolidated Revenue Fund. Essentially a pot of money that is spent by the government for anything it deems fit to spend on, including bureaucratic initiatives that most of the public think are entirely unnecessary. Thinking that all tobacco tax goes straight into health care or initiatives to stop smoking is as naïve as thinking that petrol tax goes solely into the maintenance of the roads. Some of that money will go into paying for silly little luxuries like spending $50k AUS for one carpet in the Greens Common Room in Canberra or paying $400m AUS for the unpopular and divisive Voice initiative which was voted against in a national referendum.

But the Australian government got greedy and raised its tobacco taxes to such high levels that annual excise revenue went from around $15 billion in 2019 to a measly $4 billion in 2025. Like straight out of an episode of Utopia, a brilliant Australian satire comedy illustrating the stupidity and inefficiencies of Australian government, the government has doggedly refused to lower excise tax on grounds that smoking would pick up in increasing numbers. However, the actual consumption of cigarettes had not fallen drastically because there has been a burgeoning black market selling cigarettes at the price most Western Europeans pay for per packet which is around $10 to $15. Even more ridiculous is the government’s response is that they need more policing, at taxpayers expense, to hunt down the illegal trade.

However, after saying all this, I am surprisingly tolerant to smoking in other ways.

I have, on occasion, enjoyed smoking a cigar or two, although it’s very seldom that I do. Likewise, I don’t have a problem with those who might smoke a pipe, a practice that I hardly see anymore. And furthermore, I don’t have a problem with private clubs or certain establishments such as bars or pubs to allow smoking in selected areas. In some countries, like Japan, there are public areas in busy cities in which you can smoke which is sensible. But it’s down to common sense. If one is suitably far away from others, like being in the country or walking down an empty street, I don’t see a problem with the smoke itself. But the problem lies what to do with the fag butt. Most smokers, if no bin is provided, will toss it out in the open which is, not only potentially dangerous for fire reasons, but rather disgusting and gross.

The uptake of smoking has largely reduced in the Western world since the 1970s, but I’m now further convinced it is through social pressure rather than governmental initiatives, taxation, and the levy of strict penalties of growing your own tobacco.

In Australia, for example, it is strictly illegal to grow any tobacco, even if it’s for personal use. However, in the state of Oregon within the United States, you are permitted to grow your own tobacco. Much like Australia, smoking statistics have drastically dropped from the 1970s. In Oregon, around 40% of all adults smoked and has now dropped to around 10%. However, should you wish, you could grow your own little stash of tobacco.

This is ample proof that the Australian government’s motive for prohibiting personal tobacco cultivation and raising tax on cigarettes to sky-high levels is not about the health of the country.

It is pure greed and money-grabbing in a trillion-dollar debt-ridden nation that is quickly running out of money seeking every possible way to extort from its citizenry, as much money as possible to keep their politicians and their respective parties lavishly provided for.

Smoke, Mirrors and Tobacco Tax was originally published in The Ironkeel Collection on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Shôn Ellerton, September 26, 2026
Australia does not have a true democracy, and it’s clear, with Labor in control, that will always be the case.

Practically everything the Australian Labor Government does, makes my blood boil.

How they got there, of course, is obvious.

Australians are over complacent, don’t give a damned about politics, more interested in who won the footy, and make it clear that it’s inconvenient to be forced to go to the voting booth. Or, at least, have their name crossed out by the registrar at the voting centre. Because, let’s face it, you’re not forced to actually vote. For all intents and purposes, you could simply scribble on the voting card such nonsense like, “You’re all a bunch of losers!”, draw a few knobs or other private parts, or wrap up your discarded chewing gum in it.

Let’s face it. Whatever you vote for, no doubt, the Labor Government would have rigged up the entire system anyway to make sure that in no way shape or form would they let any other party kick them from their ivory towers. To be fair, I think any party would try to do something for the sake of self-preservation, but it seems, across the globe, that left-wing governments, in particular, are much more determined not to be dethroned. And that’s because the tenet of party before people is enshrined in their philosophy.

From housing, to energy, to immigration policy, to taxation, and to all those Australians who work hard and want to get ahead in life, the Labor government has royally screwed it all up. But they’ll never admit to their failures because they’ll simply blame their predecessors who were also inept, and even complicit, with the current government for making astonishingly bad decisions. Despite Labor being in power for over two years, they have only worsened the situation.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. South Australia’s Labor government seems intent on addressing many of the problematic infrastructure issues which Adelaide has faced throughout the years by building new roads and improving train services. But ultimately, Labor politicians, even those who harbor sensible opinions, have to tow the party line. And that’s the crux of the problem. I’d not be surprised if there was a real bully culture within the party because I know there are Labor MPs out there who hold respectable and practical opinions behind closed doors.

I was listening on the radio the other day of a debate on the subject of the new Digital Duty of Care bill, which is basically an initiative to give yet more power to the Labor government to control what you can do online. All cleverly wrapped up in the guise of saving the children from harmful content on the Internet, of course.

The opposition Senator clearly made the point that the bill was overreaching, impractical, and even unconstitutional on many accounts. Whereas the Labor senator, a very young woman at only the age of 22 called Charlotte Walker, espoused on her so-called wisdom how harmful social media was to young people without citing any actual figures or how to address the problem except of increasing the fine to $100M to social media companies who violate reasonable steps to take action. As of writing, no fine had successfully been issued, so not sure how increasing the fine will solve this. But still, Labor go ahead with their insane and insidious plans.

And this is another thing while riles me. How on earth did a 22-year-old manage to become elected as a senator in South Australia? I know there are some bright young minds out there, but there is ample evidence to suggest that the human mind isn’t fully mature until the age of 25. One can have extensive knowledge and intelligence, but wisdom and experience is equally, if not, more important. In the United States, there are the required minimum ages of 25, 30, and 35 in becoming a representative, a senator, or the president respectively. There’s good reasoning behind this except, in my opinion, that to be a president, you have to be born in the United States.

Australia isn’t lost yet because more of the population are awakening to the lies of the Labor government. And this isn’t hyperbole either. Calling anyone a liar in government should be based on very strong allegations because by doing do wrongfully, can get you into trouble. Early last century in the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill, to avoid the strict rules of calling someone a liar, stated to his opponent that he had quoted a terminological inexactitude! My grandfather told me about that little beauty.

The recent tax budget changes on capital gains tax and negative gearing is incontestable proof of governments blatantly lying. And this, not surprisingly, had pissed off so many people in Australia, that the main news of the day is the ineptness of the Labor government rather than the 24/7 demonising of Trump. With nearly ten years of Trump, he oddly doesn’t look particularly that much older than he did at the start of his first term as president, whereas all other presidents start all youthful and spritely but end their tenure either with grey to white hair like Obama or somewhat clueless and exhausted like Biden. Maybe Trump is a robot, who knows, but credit where credit’s due, he’s an engaging statesman, has done quite a lot of good (and not so good) things during his presidency, but has also been infuriating with his big ego in wanting to rename everything and imprint his name on anything, if possible, in gold.

The US political system is, by no means, perfect. The Executive Branch has been given too much power since 9/11 in my opinion giving rise to so-called ‘emergency powers’ which have likewise influenced other nations around the so-called free Western world like the United Kingdom and Australia to do the same. Especially during those COVID years. But saying that, the United States is generally protected by a document much coveted by all true Americans. The United States Constitution, the most important political document ever written on the planet ever.

Australians have no such protection and unfortunately have been misled into thinking that they live in a democracy.

Australians live in a faux-democracy. The ordinary citizens of Australia have no actual say except for the moment they put a tick on the voting card. But even that’s rigged and corrupt with the preferential voting system which I won’t cover in this piece. But I implore the reader to look it up as it’s quite outrageous.

Let me explain why the Australian Labor government is utterly corrupt and undemocratic.

Take for example, a Labor MP whose constituents oppose the ban on nuclear power by a clear 70%.

That Labor MP can certainly discuss the opposition of its constituents within its party members, but in Parliament and in voting, that same Labor MP cannot do so but must vote in preference to the party view. In essence, that Labor MP cannot ‘cross the floor’ because in doing so, would cause a serious breach of that MP’s employment in the Labor Party. However, this is not the case for the Liberal Party who can cross the floor. Although it is still discouraged.

Basically, this equates to

“Party before people”

Labor MPs have to sign an oath pledging them to commit to caucus solidarity. Sure, constitutionally they can ‘cross the floor’ but you know, that’s ok if you want to be suspended or being expelled from the Labor caucus including losing all of those guilt-edged privileges that Labor politicians enjoy.

So basically, this is not democracy at all, but rather, party-induced dictatorship.

If we’re serious in making Australia a true democracy, we need to make some seriously big changes.

The first thing we need to do is to ensure that ministers are elected by the people and not by the Party. The same could be applied for the US with their various secretaries in the Executive cabinet. For example, why the hell do we have ministers for Treasury, Energy or for Telecommunications who have zero actual experience in the real world in those fields? Chris Bowen, the Australian Minister for Energy must be the one of the biggest offenders in this department, who almost singlehandedly converted Australia into a third-world pariah when it comes to energy, all for the sake of virtue-signalling his push for Net Zero and one hundred percent reliance on renewables.

But the most important thing that Australia needs to do is give actual power to the people in every MPs constituency.

Being an MP is a very big responsibility.

Often, thousands of Australian citizens are reliant on their local MPs to make the right decisions for them. And not just for the party!

MPs need to look up to their constituents rather than worship their ineffectual and utterly clueless leader who we have today running the country. A leader who would choose to air himself with thighs-up-to-her-arse Nikki Osborne in her Bush Deep show and proudly state that he would shag Kylie Minogue. It was entertaining, however, that is no way for any leader of a country to behave. With many Australians struggling to make ends meet, displaying such crass deportment is demonical to say the least.

And of course, with many of us Australians waking up, we have Pauline Hanson rising to success.

Hanson is the arch enemy of the Labor government and Labor has been doing everything it can to brand this woman as a witch, a racist, a right-wing thug, a white supremacist, you name it.

But whether Pauline Hanson will do well if elected is not so much the question of what happens if Labor is allowed to reign control over Australia for another term?

If so, Australia is well and truly cooked.

Australia is Cooked Under Its Tyrannical Labor Government was originally published in The Ironkeel Collection on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Shôn Ellerton, September 15, 2026
I’ve had enough with all this apps bullshit that we keep getting thrown at us.

I’m utterly sick and tired of navigating through all the crap apps that I’ve got littered all over my smartphone. I’ve got nearly two hundred of them, even after valiantly removing the ones I don’t need anymore. However, the ones that remain I still need to use, some of them frequently and some not so much.

Take banking, for example. I do not use apps for banking. I use bank cards and, at home, I use their website with a full keyboard and mouse, items of equipment which I’m comfortable with.

And by the way, I fucking hate using my smartphone for doing anything other than to speak or take pictures. I struggle with texting already and I simply struggle to understand how some people, particularly women, are so annoyingly adept at using both hands to tap away without any effort or mistakes on a smartphone. I spend double the time because I have to backtrack everything I type on a smartphone! I do not have Elvin-like slender fingers.

The reason I have bank apps on my phone is because the damned bank requests that I log on to my app before I can log on through the website on my desktop. Although, I think only very recently, they’re finally going to bring out 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication), you know, those apps you have to open with a synched up number you have to enter into the website to get in?

As much as I like 2FA, the problem is that now I have five of the damned things on my phone because not all the applications can use the same 2FA app. For example, there’s Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, RSI Token and Secure Sign In to take a few. Every time I log on to my workplace computer remotely, a brief message tells me to open an authenticator app with a number but then I unlock the phone and struggle to find which app the number came from. And when I find it, the number’s gone. And then I have to request a new number before I can get in.

It’s so damned tedious and it’s getting worse.

However, to be fair, I am onboard with the idea of 2FA because out there in the big bad world are a bunch of determined hackers, most of them seemingly coming from India these days, determined to steal your money, your identity, your property, your crypto, your daughters, your grandmother, ok…. You get the picture!

Now I had written about this before, but kids, sports and schools?

Jesus! How many apps do we need for all that shit? It’s utterly insane. I’m serious, my son’s school has us, as parents, wielding no less than six individual apps while sporting events, another half a dozen or so depending on the sports season.

Then there’s a whole bunch of government-related digital ID apps, which, to be honest can probably go down the toilet as most of them have delightfully failed during the government’s push to ram digital ID and COVID apps down our throats. Too late though, the government’s got pretty much all our personal details. If anything, I wouldn’t put it pass them that they have been responsible for much of the data hacks and leaks that have been occurring in large corporations in Australia!

The brilliant early 1980s British sitcom, Yes Minister, already jokingly discussed the idea of creating a national database to track people but when Minister Hacker, played by Paul Eddington, who was for open speech and access to own personal data, specified there should be safeguards built in, the shifty but suave civil servant, Sir Humphrey Appleby, lovingly played by Nigel Hawthorne, specified that the people didn’t need to know.

As you can surmise, I am not a fan of overarching big government.

Now, back to more apps!

Ah yes, all the messenging apps. Oh my God! They royally piss me off to such an extent, I have to turn off all notifications because of the constant petty dribble in chat conversations that almost makes my blood boil.

The biggest offender out of all of these is WhatsApp. I fricking hate this app with the utmost of passion. Whoever decided that this is a great app to communicate should very much seriously need brain surgery.

And yet, we’re told that to get the latest info for this and that, you have to subscribe to the group to keep up to date. And for the last part of that sentence, repeat it in your head in a whiney weaselly way. You have to do this you know. Tut tut tut.

Here’s a typical bullshit kind of thread that I experience every day until I just switched it off.

“Hi @Lindsay, where’s the campsite?”

“Can’t miss it. The boys will love it there”

“LOL! Can’t wait.”

“Oh yes. What time does it start?”

“I need to know as well. Thank you dearest!”

“Sorry everyone XXX! The time will be 5pm at Mostyn Lake”

“Do boys need sleeping blankets?”

And you can see your phone light up every time when each of these useless little bits of information comes to fruition.

Stop! Stop! Just fucking stop!

Christ on a bike! Send ONE email that gives the location, preferably with a little map, the time, the necessities that are required, when to pick up and who to contact in case of emergency! Job done! And ALL in one email!

But no. We have to suffer through a veritable vomit of replies from everyone in the group, most of which is total dribble.

And then there are the apps that are utterly unnecessary but only created to capture an audience for the purposes of making more money.

I’ll start with pumping fuel for my car.

In Australia, you are generally forced to walk into the store to pay for the fuel. Although saying that, there is a relative newcomer, U-Go, that allows you to pay for fuel using your credit card at the pump, but it’s very rare. A friend of mine says you can to this at an OTR petrol station, but I disagreed. I couldn’t find the credit card slot.

Ah! He said. You have to download the OTR app first.

Bullshit! I’m not downloading yet another app for their enfranchisement and personal gain and me having to take the time to set up the app and link my monetary details to it.

Piss off! Just put a credit card reader at the pump. They’ve done this for decades in the United States, so why can’t they do this now?

And finally there are the totally useless and crap apps. The ones anyone anywhere will try to get you to download.

“Please scan our QR code for all the benefits and privileges we can offer!”

“Scan our QR code in order to redeem your prize if your draw is successful!”

“Please scan our QR code so we can see all your warts on your bottom!”

And in no time flat, you’ve just accumulated an additional hundred apps that you will probably use only once in your life.

And then we have restaurants that, somehow or another, decided that actual printed menus are old-school, and instead, replaced them with QR codes to make it “convenient” for you, but in reality for them, to order your food instead of speaking to an actual real human being to take your order.

I’d have already buggered off by now and proceeded to another restaurant without all the QR code bullshit.

Seriously, the app craze is a near-disease and, at some point or another, there will be nothing in the entire world that does not require an app for anything to work. You’ll probably need an app to use the public toilets because somewhere out there, someone will be monitoring your everyday bowel movements for some obscure research program which the taxpayer is paying for.

Already these days, there are many people out there, especially those which are of in their autumn years, struggling with all this unnecessary technology. And all of these utterly ridiculous apps, most of which, unfortunately will only run on the very latest smartphone because anything older won’t work.

I think, given a few years or so from no, there’s going to be a big paradigm shift away from reliance on apps because our ageing population are going to struggle more than ever to do the most basic of things without the necessity of downloading an app.

But maybe, this is all part of the masterplan by the nefariously driven corruptness which is has now become so engrained in our society.

No! I Don’t Want to Download Your Damned App! was originally published in The Ironkeel Collection on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Shôn Ellerton, September 14, 2026
Sure, the Australian people are generally laid back, but they’re sure the heck as over-compliant as ever!

I always wondered this.

After watching a movie in a cinema packed with customers, all edging their way out like sardines when the last credits roll, I would be the one who makes it down towards the bottom of the theatre room and then escape by the back door.

The same thing with congested roads.

I would, usually with success, find an alternative route that seemingly nobody bothers to use or, oddly, even know about. Having an in-built atlas in my head does tend to help because, let’s face it, the navigation options on smart phones these days are not necessarily all that smart.

Generally speaking, most people tend to follow in groups and feel more comfortable in conforming what other people do.

I, on the other hand, do not like conforming on the basis that, because, the majority of others tend to perform an action as such, that, I must be compelled to do the same. I don’t want to break the law or act in a way that puts someone into an inconvenient situation or worse, in jeopardy. However, if acting on the basis simply because others are doing it when it is beyond the bounds of common sense, than I simply will not conform.

I’ve lived in three countries.

The United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

Each country has a different general mindset.

Americans can get rowdy if they’re upset. If they’re not happy, they tend to make it clearly so. For example, if they don’t like the service in a restaurant, they’re tell it so directly to the manager. If they like the service, they will tell others.

The Brits are somewhat different. If they’re not happy, they won’t say anything to the manager, but they’re certainly tell others about their bad experiences. I guess this explains quite a lot about the differences between American and British service as a whole. However, the Brits, if cornered, will snap back when they get angry.

The Australians are different again. If the service is great, they’ll tell others, which, of course, is a commendable thing to do. But if the service isn’t so good, most won’t say anything, but this is the outlier. If someone does say something negative about the service, they’ll be, without a shadow of a doubt, a whole platoon of trolls who will ‘put you in your place’ for daring to shame the establishment you did business with.

You see, Australians seem to take an issue when conformity it broken, regardless if common sense is involved or not.

Australians are, in general, a very laid back sort of people. They’ll go on about the footy results, talk about their next holiday to Bali, or explain in the minutest of detail how to barbecue shrimp and steak. They’re also very trusting people as well. The government, the judicial system, the police, and even the rather over-bloated civil service which we had acquired during the years.

You would have thought the absurdities of some of the measures that were taken during the COVID years would have broken this trust, but I fear not. The majority of Australians still put all their trust in an establishment that wanted nothing more than to take away your freedoms almost completely based on scant research which proved, in later years, to be an utter farce. No wonder these days you don’t hear much about all the needless lock-ins and all the masking policies.

Shhhhhh! They want you to forget all about that!

A lot of us will never forget. Me included. Reading some of my earlier pieces just accentuates how mad we became during those years. For most, those little comments posted in social media just get forgotten but when you write about them in long-form. Oh yes! It’s not forgotten, and when my son reads about these when he grows up, he’ll know as well!

And this is why Australia suffered possibly the worst overreach of governmental intrusion on their lives during COVID, particularly in Victoria, a state ruled by, literally, mad and deranged dictators.

Being laid back, like most Australians are, is an invitation for others to capitalise on that and take control of their lives. And that’s precisely the perfect recipe for our government to pass sneaky bits of legislation which, in turn, gives greater powers to the police to keep you all nice and safe!

Australians are grossly and overzealously over-compliant. They have become afraid of the authorities. The once dressed light-blue police but now draped in black near-riot gear is a damning indictment of how this trend as prevailed.

Our ever reducing road speed limits, all in the name of safetyism, is another perfect example of ludicrously high levels of overcompliance with Australians. I guarantee you, if you post a complaint that the speed limit is far too low for a wide stretch of road garnering thousands of dollars of expiation fines from sneaky white van mobile speed cameras, you bet your bottom dollar that you’ll get a veritable array of Kevins and Karens who will again, put you in your place, by either denouncing your driving skills, or openly declare that if you just kept to the speed limits, there would be no issue.

Common sense is thrown out of the window because even if the speed limit was reduced to horse-and-cart speeds, the same lot will state again that if you stuck to this much reduced speed limit, you wouldn’t get a fine.

Simply put. The Kevins and Karens don’t take common sense into account, never take a reality check, blindly follow absurd orders, and most importantly of all, never ever fight back or challenge the establishment.

Of course, I am generalising on how over-compliant Australians are, but there are demographic differences. Most of the zealously over-compliant are those who are seated in the middle class and live in urban environments. Those who live out in the regions. Yes, those who the current government tend to view as the proles, are normal everyday people, most who see common sense, but feel entirely ignored and inconsequential.

If I had my way, I’d give a regional voter ten times more voting power than an urbanite!

But that’s a fantasy and probably a little unconstitutional and unrealistic. But, you know, hey, maybe we should introduce an electoral college of sorts to add a little more weight to those farmers out there who produce vast quantities of produce that go onto our tables rather than those sat on the dole playing games on the Roblox platform.

Just to cap this little piece off, I came across, what I consider to be an extraordinary sight.

On a Sunday morning, I was in the city of Adelaide. There was a small intersection and there was literally no traffic at all.

I saw on each corner of this small intersection, a bunch of people at each corner calmly awaiting for the little green man to turn on giving them the explicit permission to cross the street.

There was not a car in sight coming from any direction and yet, there they stood awaiting the little green man.

I walked nonchalantly across the street, of course, observing if there were no policemen looking for jaywalkers beforehand.

Clearly, if we got to the point that we are afraid to walk across a road with no visible traffic as far as the eye can see, this is a clear sign that Australians are suffering the disease of over-compliancy.

The Strange and Peculiar Australian Disease of Overcompliancy was originally published in The Ironkeel Collection on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Shôn Ellerton, September 6, 2026
There’s more to the bizarre and strange power of chasing a ball than meets the eye.

The absurdity of it all

I’ve never really been much into team sport and never could quite understand what all the fuss is about.

Watching groups of people kicking or grabbing balls of all shapes and sizes, although that statement could be taken out of context in entirely the wrong way!

Think about it.

There is something odd about watching two teams focus on one ball. The intent is to possess it and move it to the other side of the field, while the opposing team does everything it can to stop them and take control of it.

And then it just goes on and on and on and on.

Funnily enough, there’s an old Soviet film from the 1950s called Old Khottabych. It portrays a genie found by a boy who, when released, simply cannot understand why all the players are fighting over just one ball. To solve the problem, he hails down a shower of balls during the game so that every player can have his own.

Such a great story!

For short periods, given the right circumstances, I can enjoy watching an engaging game, whether it’s Australian Rules football, rugby or basketball. There is no doubt that the impressive skill and boundless energy of these players is quite awe-inspiring.

A better day at the footy

Today, I took my son to watch a South Australian Rules footy game at state level (the SANFL) rather than national level (the AFL), at Adelaide Oval, a very nice venue that still retains its grassy section on the northern side.

It was quite a pleasurable experience.

It is a nice, big stadium with plenty of seats to choose from. It was perhaps a quarter full at best, and that’s not including the very top sections, where no one sat. The ground lets people sit wherever they want. There were virtually no queues anywhere, either. I could grab a beer and some hot chips just like that, without waiting in an endless queue of sheep. Not only that, but during half-time my son was invited to join other kids in a mini 15-minute game, which he really enjoyed.

Because there weren’t too many people, I could sit well away from everyone else and not be drowned out by the massive roar of incessant crowd cheering. I actually hate crowds and do my best to avoid them.

I’ll go on.

Getting to and from the game was a dawdle because we could walk at a normal pace to the entrance without shuffling like cattle to the slaughterhouse. I could get through security with ease, without being made to feel like a convict carrying a bag full of weapons or, heaven forbid, alcohol, which they would rather extort you for at many times the cost after making you wait an eternity in yet another queue. You don’t feel packed like sardines on the train, and you can avoid the drunken lout abusing everyone because his precious team has lost.

And best of all, the SANFL players were, in my opinion, every bit as damned good as the AFL ones. At least, that’s my uneducated opinion.

What the AFL gives you instead

With the AFL, you get none of the above!

This is what you get instead:

No half-time fun with the kids.

Busy queues everywhere, whether you’re getting in, buying food and drink or simply going to the toilet.

Assigned seating, so you aren’t allowed to go wherever you like.

Heightened security to prevent you from entering members-only or other premium sections. In some sports, particularly soccer, they segregate fans to stop them from tearing each other apart.

Too much noise and too many people too close to me. I want enough space not to brush against other people.

Extremely expensive ticket prices.

And for what?

The play isn’t any more enjoyable. So what’s the big deal?

This applies to a variety of other sports. For example, I find watching college American football far more enjoyable than watching the professional game for the same general reasons. Again, the quality of play is every bit as good at college level.

So why the hell do so many sports enthusiasts pay so much more money and suffer the inconveniences of attending high-level, highly paid, highly political, overly sponsored and overly corporatised sporting events?

Are sports enthusiasts really sports enthusiasts?

I wonder whether many sports enthusiasts are not really sports enthusiasts in the technical sense. In other words, people who watch very good players display their skills while battling it out on the field. Perhaps they attend these highly expensive and oversubscribed games to be amid roaring, noisy crowds and to follow their tribal instinct over which team will win or lose. In an earlier piece, I discussed the poor manners of spectators who abandon the game when their own team starts to lose.

It’s a funny thing about sport.

What is it that compels people to watch it incessantly? What compels them to talk about which team is winning, where it sits on the ladder and all that stuff? What actual difference does it make to their lives? I’ve come across conversations like this:

“Do you remember when Alberto scored three goals in a row back in 1996?”

OK. I shrug. So the hell what?

And this is another thing, seriously. While in Britain some years ago, I heard sports fans in a bar after a game complaining about the high cost of their train fares to the sports ground. Yet the instant you start talking about politics, they lose interest completely. Perhaps sporting events are a ruse by politicians to distract the general public from becoming too involved in politics!

Why children need sport

However, after all my ranting above, it must be said that sport is extremely important.

My son loves playing sport and loves watching it too. And that’s the key. He’s out there building a network of friends by playing club and school team sports, whether it’s cricket, Australian Rules footy or soccer.

Although, having said that, I don’t entirely understand soccer. Not being able to use your hands, except for the goalie, is such a bizarre concept to me. My son even quipped that, when soccer players are merely touched the wrong way, they fall to the ground, curl up into a ball, scream like babies and pretend they’re about to die.

So true!

But without sport, I think many kids would be very much lost today, especially with so many hemmed up in the house, doing things online on their computers.

Although I wasn’t into team sport as a kid, I had other interests such as urban exploration, mountain climbing, hiking and solo sports like judo and archery. Relatively few kids these days are into solo adventuring. I think there was possibly a higher percentage of kids back in the 1980s getting out there and mucking around in the urban environment. Like I once did.

Team sport is considered a form of structured play. It teaches fellowship, discipline and respect, and ultimately helps create new networks of friends. Those friendships then lead to unstructured play like climbing trees, playing laser tag, hanging out at the park or whatever else kids do together in a random sort of way. Unstructured play is very important, but without getting to know other kids, it’s hard for them to have it in the first place. Especially for one-child families.

Initiating unstructured play with children is not always easy because children can be embarrassed when their parents introduce them to kids they don’t know. They cling to you for a while, but once the children coalesce around something they have in common, the ice breaks. This is why it’s easy when kids participate in structured play like sport.

It’s also worth mentioning that adults benefit as well. For example, afterwork events like casual five-a-side soccer games or something else that may not be too physically challenging.

Ultimately, it brings people together.

When parents want it more than the children

But can sport go too far with kids?

My simple definition of when sport goes too far is when the parents want it more than their children do.

Of course, this applies to areas besides sport, but in sport it can become quite toxic.

I remember that, when I was at school in the United States, some of my friends were literally abused by their parents if they didn’t perform well at sport. These were the sort of parents who would humiliate their own children during a game if they weren’t performing.

This is pure ugliness and enough to put any child off sport. But I’ve seen it happen. Kids so afraid of disappointing their sports-loving parents that they would suffer through playing rather than be a disappointment.

Then those very same parents would spend oodles of cash on the sport their children had been strong-armed into playing. They would make their children feel guilty if they didn’t acquiesce to their parents’ pet love of sport because of all the money spent on them.

I have never pushed my son to play sport. We have always been pleased that he chose to go down this path, but we also enjoy seeing him take pleasure in non-sporting activities such as music, art and drama. One could say that he is a natural at sport and has not been overly coerced into it.

It brings people together

Watching sport and playing team sport may not be things I personally enjoy very much, but sport does play a very important role in society today.

It brings people together.

I even remember a very haunting but beautiful episode from the history of the First World War when, during the Christmas Truce of 1914, British and German soldiers exchanged gifts and played the odd game of football between the trenches, only to start killing each other again when the battles recommenced.

There have even been football games between North Korea and South Korea, two worlds that are so far apart ideologically.

Sport may seem pointless at times. At least, in my opinion. But it is important, especially in today’s reclusive, virtual and online age.

Team Sports May Seem Pointless in Essence but in Reality it is Vital, Especially for Kids was originally published in The Ironkeel Collection on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.