Hi Crikey. just wondering if you read Andrew Bolt’s column from last week Write goes wrong in the Herald Sun site on Friday. It’s the typical Bolt whinge about anything and anyone to the left of himself, but the following paragraph struck me:

Compare: 150 years ago, Britain had the population we have now, and writing then were Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray, Tennyson, George Elliot, Charlotte Bronte, Wilkie Collins and Matthew Arnold – none funded by governments. Who, pattering at their grant-maintained keyboards, have we to match just one of those names?

Now I would never accuse a fine journalist and all round decent human being such as Bolt of publishing work that is not entirely his own, but that argument and the writers mentioned sound awfully familiar. I’m sure I’ve read something very much like it in a book not so long ago. Not sure who it was, the only name coming into my mind is Bob Ellis (and I don’t think it was an argument of Bob’s, he was writing about a conversation with someone else). I’d love to know if you or any of your subscribers can recall reading the same argument somewhere else. In the mean time I’ll just sit back and admire the work that Mr Bolt is doing to make Australia a more tolerant and generous nation.

cheers

shane walsh