By Hans Ebert
Chairman and CEO, We Enhance Inc.

It’s my built-in alarm clock but if I don’t listen to the repeats from Perth Racing Radio’s Big Breakfast Show at 4am, my day is undone.

(Source: RWWA)

Yes, call me a pathetic woos, but life is all about horses for courses, our differences make us one and when David Shortte, Wes Cameron and Richie Bell come on air at 6am, it’s compulsive listening, not just as a racing fan, but as a kid who grew up listening to radio and painted pictures his mind.

Video might have killed the radio star, but in this day of apps and saps, racing radio is a far greater medium to reach a new audience than people might think.

(Source: Vimeo CDN)

For racing, racing radio today is just waiting for a face lift and I’ll throw my support behind Shorrte and company.

Sure, it has interviews with Hoss, Ben, Little Joe and Pernell Roberts and the whole Ponderosa about racing, but one can hear this chameleon changing.

Everything old is new again and just needs to be re-introduced and enhanced for a new audience.

Right, Hoss?

(Source: Zap 2 It)

“But it’s in Peeeeerth,” some in Oz will moan. “No one cares what happens in Perth.”

(Source: Ilendoo)

This is the same dumbass thinking of supposedly “International” music companies that sign up acts from around the world, and do squat to market them as there are the usual Global Priorities to bow and scrape in front of ‘cos that’s the way it’s always been and the circle shall not be broken no matter how shattered it is.

(Source: Lemon Free)

Do U2, Coldplay, Rihanna etc need marketing? Of course not. But great unknown bands from places like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Oz etc do. But marketing efforts for these acts are token affairs with the obligatory promo tour and which is why most of the world has never heard of Denmark’s now-defunct Nephew, Mew- a brilliant band also from Denmark- my mate Ben Semmens from Wales, even the fantastic Placebo and Sarah Blasko from Oz whom I fell in love with after seeing her at the ill-fated OneMovement Festival in Perth.

How someone like the experienced Michael Chugg could fuck this event up is bewildering- and which would and could have brought music, fashion and horse racing together along with a new generation of race-goers- and from around the region.

(Source: Celebrity Access)

So many promises, so much bullshit, and then one big Bowel Movement despite that first year of bringing in David Holmes, Manager of Coldplay, songwriter Diane Warren and some real twats present for the free ride and act like big swinging dicks.

(Source: WTF Content)

Wannabe big swinging dicks are all over racing like a rash- parochial, petty-minded has-beens and never-beens, some of whom who have never traveled outta their safety and comfort zone and smelt the yum cha and taken a year off to live dangerously and take things to the limit.

(Source: Adib Born)

I’m not telling people how to live their lives as I have trouble enough living my own, but I have no regrets about anything I have seen, where I’ve been and with whom and for why and when and where I am.

(Source: Healthy Place)

It’s a life’s journey, I undertook on my own and one which will continue when I’m laid six feet in the ground. But while still in this space and time, and to paraphrase, John Lennon, it’s time for racing clubs to come together for the new future of the sport as the old present needs to be cut off like a cancer.

If there is rivalry and petty politics between racing clubs in Victoria and NSW and Western Australia barely gets a cursory glance, what are the chances of a global racing partnership that can only benefit all?

(Source: Reseller Me)

How do sponsors look at us as a sport where, like the ailing music industry, we need their marketing dollars and data base of different customer segments- and how to sell them on what we have?

Today, music companies are seen as the enemy to music fans. Why? Ignorance, arrogance and very parochial thinking.

(Source: Word Pandit)

Parochial thinking has been a major roadblock in the progress of horse racing- that and a my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours attitude by one racing executive in Oz. He tried to bluff the wrong person- and lost. Badly.

(Source: Facebook)

Like the music industry, horse racing needs a leader with a vision. Until then, it’s a penny ante game of blindman’s bluff played by the usual suspects- in Oz, in Hong Kong, in Europe, in Japan- and antiquated rules and laws and Big Brother Is Watching antics.

(Source: SOD Ahead)

Like Gordon Gekko, greed is dead and so is Big Brother.

As the Beatles sang, I am you and you are me and we are altogether.

Or, despite what Lennon sang, we can no longer afford to only Imagine- about life and what matters to us. Put horse racing into that bag.

Now is the time to just do it with no procrastinations, no corporate drivel and the ability to see the Big Picture by those looking with new eyes and fresh minds.

The rest? Who fucking cares? They never saw that slow train coming.

(Source: Kiobolas)

Dylan did and which is why he warned, Don’t follow leaders and watch your parking meters. The lunatics have taken over the racing asylum.

Dedicated to the only woman who has ever mattered. And she’s no mare. Great lady.