Tale of two cities: vain Sydney trumpets its supremacy to itself

This article was published in The Sydney Morning Herald 26 October 2009

Melbourne is a sad, obscure backwater of no international relevance. Sydney, by contrast, is a place of sun, beaches and the Olympics. Both claims were made in a Heckler column, published in 2004 by The Sydney Morning Herald, arguing with all the originality of Vanilla Ice that Melbourne was inferior to Sydney.

More on the weather in a moment, but mentioning the Olympic Games was unfortunate. It only reminds us that Sydney was 44 years behind. Specifics aside, the piece was a strange artefact: a message directed ostensibly at Melburnians, published in a Sydney newspaper. This is like sending a message to capitalist fat cats by distributing a sternly worded pamphlet at a Socialist Alternative meeting.