Regular reader James Farrell has asked me to launch a competition with an appealing prize. He says

John, can I have your permission to hold a competition?*

I was just recruited to give a ninety-minute talk in Krakow in January on the Australian Economy.

What the hell am I going to say?

The question: what are the five most important and/or interesting things about the Australian economy from a Polish point of view? Keep it very brief: I don’t need you to write the lecture for me.

I should stress that I’m not getting paid for the talk, apart from an airfare from Budapest.

The prize is a bottle of whatever fancy Polish grog someone recommends to me. I’ll send it to you when I get back.

Entries close Friday noon. So as not to disadvantage the earlier respondents, I place no limit on the number of entries per person. But a later entry would need to be sufficiently differentiated from an earlier one by another competitor to beat it.

A ninety-minute talk! Those Poles must really have some Sitzfleisch.