The Future


At the end of last year Ipsos Mackay published a report on consumers’ attitudes to the future.

Man, was it bleak!

Hardly anyone, regardless of age, gender or background, thought the future would be better than the past.

Here are some of the comments that were made in the fieldwork for that report:

“The boat people coming in. If they start coming, they’ll swamp us.”

“Crime is going to get worse.”

“The gap between rich and poor will get a lot worse and not just other countries, here in Australia too.”

“That’s how the future is going. American culture is going to dominate everything.”

“We won’t have the services. No enough people paying tax.”

“In ten years we’ll be like London. You have to be scared of ten year olds in London.”

“Our stimulation levels will get more and more elevated. Something will have to be really big to get people’s attention.”


And this is just a taste of all the terrible things awaiting us in the future, according to the participants in this study.

At the end of the fieldwork, the team wondered what was causing people to feel so despondent about the future. As someone currently reading a lot of Australian history, there are many ways we are now better off than we were, say, fifty years ago (let alone a hundred years which is not long in the scheme of things). Are we hard-wired to be nostalgic about the past? Are we bracing ourselves for an unknown future by being deliberately pessimistic? Or is this pessimism merely a symptom of our lack of faith in our leaders to adequately address the problems of today, let alone tomorrow? All three probably and one of the consistent themes in our research over the last two years has been consumer anger about short-term thinking in government and corporate life.

You can hear me discussing this report with the lovely Antony Funnell from Radio National’s Future Tense program:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/futuretense/stories/2010/2811132.htm

More information can be found about The Future here:

http://www.ipsos.com.au/knowledgecentre/news/100128.aspx

There is one quote that never made it into the report, which I just love. The young man responsible said this in the context of a broader discussion about the impact of technology on our ethical behaviour.

“I have more faith in humanity to believe that internet porn will lead to a decline in personal integrity.”

Schiaccia briaca


Few people outside Elba would have heard of this cake. The name roughly translates as ‘drunken tart’. I could make a million jokes about this but it’s hardly necessary.

As long as I can remember, every Easter or Christmas or special occasion, my nonna would make this along with paneforte. My mother has made it less regularly, but has thrown herself into the practice of late, perhaps for nostalgic reasons. This Christmas, for the first time, she showed me how to make it, an exchange of knowledge from mother to daughter which has been happening for decades, perhaps centuries.

Neither my nonna nor my mother used an official, written recipe, albeit they do exist.

http://www.altacucinasociety.com/recipes_detail.asp?id=83

There is even a group on Facebook dedicated to this unassuming but incredibly tasty cake.

Here is what my mother showed me:

Take a cup of raw walnuts and almonds, chopped, and a cup of sultanas.

Add half a cup of sugar, a pinch of salt and two cups of self-raising flour. Mix.

Taste. Add more sugar if needed. The dry ingredients should feel lumpy but not too lumpy or the cake will fall apart easily when cut.

Combine a cup of Muscat with a cup of olive oil. Working quickly, add the wet ingredients to the dry, adding more flour if need be to make a stiff dough. Press into a medium sized lined cake tin. Make indentations in the top of the dough and then sprinkle sugar and some oil and Muscat mixed together over the top.

Bake in a medium oven until brown and a skewer comes out clean.


In my first attempt I used raisins instead of sultanas. I will try making it with some pine nuts and honey next time around.

When my husband and I went to Elba four years ago it was was autumn, the off-season for tourists and very quiet. We couldn’t find a proper bakery to buy some Schiaccia and the locals warned us off the commercial stuff. On Elba, Schiaccia has a pinkish crust because they tend to used Aleatico rather than Muscat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatico