Apparently, Melbourne will soon overtake Sydney as Australia’s largest city. I’m not saying this is a good or bad thing, but that’s certainly a lot of bike lanes, green paint and ‘shouty white arrows to nowhere useful’ we need to construct by 2030. Melbourne City Council needs to get cracking and maybe put the anti-Invasion Day citizenship ceremonies on hold and focus on the real issues whatever they are.

I read somewhere else that Melbourne has regained its crown as Australia’s most livable city and tenth in the world rankings. Also we’re the world’s friendliest people though this may have been a rounding error or one of those online scams where a former Somalian ambassador promises you $500,000. And this is all true. We, Melburnians are highly likeable and may even help you with your map if you look lost, speak passable English, and we don’t have anything else better to do.

Just don’t piss us off by trying to take any of our spurious ‘world’s best’ accolades off us, or our Tennis Open or Grand Prix, or race that stops the nation or the Grand Final or Boxing Day Test. I could go on, which is a very Melbourne thing to say.

All these accolades are swell, if you enjoy reading travel industry marketing products, which I often do while waiting for a delayed Qantas flight to Bali at Melbourne Airport. The glossier the better. The bike lanes help too, because when you’re sitting in one of our world famous traffic jams you get lots of time to just stare out of the window at our city and inhale the existential vibe that is probably smog from the stalling cars.

Like Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp and whoever built that safe injecting room near a Richmond primary school and now wants to build another one near Flinders Street railway station, which is the city’s iconic and main arrival point, I’m a glass half-full kind of guy.

If you’re not from Melbourne or refuse to come here for personal reasons, like a Sydney drug vendetta gone wrong, or you’re a Kings Cross identity declared bankrupt and wearing an ankle bracelet you can’t jimmy off and put on the dog, let me explain.

The trick to making your city the biggest, most livable and most hooray-for-everything when you don’t have the natural advantages of a magnificent harbour or a thriving industry in A-list celebrities wanting to sell a book, is to introduce shiny baubles that attract the international visitors and distract the locals from the weather. It’s like those inflatable tube men you often spot spiralling outside used car yards holding signs saying there’s only two days left.

Which is how we end up with our shiny new, summer-only Yarra Zip Line ride which represents every Melbournian’s secret desire to dangle meaninglessly above a desultory, brown Yarra River while watching wealthy private school kids paddle past in their row boats. I used to do this when I attended a prestigious Toorak private school that overlooked the Yarra but back then it was considered bullying and my parents had to pay a lot more money for the privilege.

We also used to have a Ferris wheel in the Docklands that has now ground to a halt, but that just reminded arriving tourists of a giant roulette wheel and made everyone want to go to Crown. Now we have the new Shane Warne statue at the ‘G’ which actually looks nothing like Shane except in a certain light, coming from Light Tower 8 during the Big Bash. In fact, the nearby Teddy Whitten statue looks more like Shane Warne if it weren’t for the football, Footscray jumper and seasonal mud.

How seriously should anyone take these World’s Best lists? Isn’t this just contrived marketing, useful for live crosses to the Today Show which until recently was being hosted by Blocky, the new Nine political correspondent, due to the summer break?

God, I miss real-Blocky, and Cash Cow, with their homespun, simple approach to family finances – ‘Jane? Jane from Thornbury? Is that you? You’ve just won yourself $50,000.’ Well, that will cover the energy bills until May.

These days, all that cosplay budgeting wisdom is gone as Seven and Nine go instead with po-faced, self-important financial experts trying to sell their books while telling us to reduce our debt, buy renewable, put money in our super and maybe cancel next year’s trip to Bali because there’s an unmarried bonk ban in place anyway.

All of this is debatable and the white noise of interstate rivalry. Like Kenny Rogers, when it comes to debating which city is best, you need to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run.

Alternatively, it’s a matter of how hard you hit the keyboard when posting angrily. Keyboard rage, is a big thing in the world’s most livable city, as it is also the cultural capital and we all think we’re writers. There’s also car park rage, supermarket rage and how close can I park my jet ski to the foreshore of Sandringham Beach when my children are playing in the shallows rage. There’s also ‘turn that bloody boom box down’ rage but that is a whole different essay in the Conversation by the decibels and Marxism professor at RMIT.

I do wonder about the validity of these lists and titles. At the same time that Melburnians are told we are becoming the biggest city, we’re also being told everyone is leaving due to Dan and Covid and moving to the Gold Coast or Auckland with Jane Caro.

Confused? Not really. Some years ago, a tourism campaign depicted Victoria as a gloomy rolling ball of twine slowly unraveling with Kate Bush on a bike chasing it through a forest. Though it may not have been Kate Bush, just someone pretending to be Kate Bush on an Arts grant.

This is very Melbourne. There was also some benign fantasy giant figure in gumboots who I took to be Crown Towers. I think they get married at the end, take in a dinner and show, and then move to Queensland ‘for the weather’.

All things considered, I think this is about right.