Unkind critics used to say I had to visit Scotland for re-training after reportedly buying two beers in the same month.

Reverting back to my pre-Covid work routine of visiting Scotland and several other countries over several weeks, now on the final leg back to Queensland, I can report back observations from a simple sailor on the state of several nations.

My pal O’Brien, a long-term critic of bloated Western governments, had just arrived back a month earlier from a multi-nation trip and advised me that all UK and US government departments had trebled in size, not at the coal-face such as...