Always was, always will be a smokescreen
We should chat about WeChat…
‘Rules are rules!!!’ Scott Morrison insisted, during the Djokovic saga. Well, ‘rules are rules’ unless you’re Scott Morrison trying to…
The re-enthronement of capitalism: are ‘woke’ investment funds falling behind?
Over many years now, superannuation funds have been orientating their investments towards options that avoid unapproved Environmental and Social goods…
Always was, always will be a smokescreen
As Roger Scruton wrote: ‘The fictions were far more persuasive than the facts, and more persuasive than both was the…
A truckie’s view – my view
It will come as a huge surprise that everything in your house, on your street, in your supermarket, in fact…
Madman Mark McGowan – the tinpot dictator of Australia
Throughout the era of Covid, we have made numerous comparisons of governments and the restrictions they impose to past regimes…
Tony Abbott for PM – of Britain!
The conservative stalwart broadcaster Mark Steyn has made the suggestion, in apparent seriousness, that the British Tories should draft Tony…
Omicron roars through, but I only hear crickets
Since Omicron has spread so vigorously throughout the fully vaccinated and unvaccinated alike, and considering too that the unvaccinated (or…
Big tech eugenics
Just when you thought the all-pervasive power of the State could not get any more intrusive, governments have begun manipulating…
Springtime for liberal interventionists
It’s springtime for liberal interventionism. Russian President Vladimir Putin may not have intended it, but he is doing a good…
Who cares about partygate?
Does anyone else feel uncomfortable with the idea of the police investigating the elected government? I have laughed and fumed…
Downing Street braces for Sue Gray’s party report
It’s groundhog day in Westminster as once again hacks and ministers ask: when will Sue Gray’s report come out? On…
Putin’s big bluff
My first visit to Ukraine was in 1994. We drove to a village about three hours south of Kiev. The…
Dear New Zealand, it’s time to end Covid discrimination
Dear New Zealand, It’s a shame that we as a country have decided to follow a policy of discrimination. Supporting…
Heading towards dystopia – what happened to New Zealand?
In the clash between authoritarianism and democracy, we know what is winning hands down. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, far-left on…
Let’s not copy New Zealand’s mistake with ciggies
New Zealand this week banned smoking for the next generation. Those under 14 will never be allowed to legally smoke…
New Zealand embraces gender ghosts as the national religion
From where I sit from across the ditch it appears ‘the land of the long white cloud’ is encased in…
Skating on Thin Ice
The Winter Olympic Games will be held from February 4-20 in a ‘green, safe and simple’ way, and for that…
GOAT becomes scapegoat
Is God a djoker? First, we’ve had the historical irony that during the cowboy days of the Wild West, banks…
The reckoning has begun
The West’s Covid-19 strategy of lockdowns, mass vaccinations and extreme curbs is losing credibility by the moment, even if various…
Cancel ‘Invasion Day’
Here’s a step towards restoring national unity as we observe Australia Day. Issue every non-Aboriginal citizen who uses the term…
Dangerous ideas
‘Australian Lamb. More tender than border control’ quips an ad in the annual campaign run by Meat and Livestock Australia…
Playing to the peanut gallery
I did get a chuckle the other day when Dr Nick Coatsworth, former deputy chief medical officer and infectious diseases…
A week in the life of Brandon
Was last week the worst week any US president has ever suffered in nearly two and a half centuries of…
Business/Robbery, etc.
Be careful what you wish for. Climate activists — including investment managers of other people’s money such as union-dominated superannuation…
Jeremy Irons in House of Gucci
Any attempt to fictionalise the Gucci story runs into the same difficulties as Ridley Scott’s handsome and absorbing film, House…
West Side Story
How strange to revisit the Nova in Lygon Street, Carlton, where a lifetime of films have been experienced, after an…
The Cardinal’s books
There are a thousand overtly artistic things to talk about at this summer moment including the new Sidney Nolan exhibition…
Sigrid Thornton
It was the thought of Stephen Sondheim’s death that made us watch Imelda Staunton in Gypsy. It’s the second musical…
For Glasgow – with love and squalor: The Second Cut, by Louise Welsh, reviewed
Never, never kill the dog. It’s rule one in the crime writer’s manual. Cats are bad enough, as I can…
The Georgians feel closer to us now than the Victorians
‘The two most fascinating subjects in the universe are sex and the 18th century,’ declared the novelist Brigid Brophy when…
A tale of love and grim determination: Zorrie, by Laird Hunt, reviewed
When Zorrie Underwood, the titular character in Laird Hunt’s deeply touching novel about an Indiana farm woman, is pregnant, a…
Rejecting the Raj: Gandhi’s acolytes in the West
Madeleine Slade, born in 1892, was a typical upper-class Victorian daughter of empire: a childhood riding around her grand-father’s estate…
The dark story behind Bambi, the book Hitler banned
The extent of Walt Disney’s grasp of the natural world remains unclear. After the Austrian author Felix Salten sold the…
The misery memoir of a devoted polyamorist
The rules of sex can kill. In 1844 an angry mob shot Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, for his…
How the net finally closed on the Nazi henchman Andrei Sawoniuk
Fedor Zan was 18, working on the river closing sluices, when, on a winter afternoon in 1942, he saw his…
The great Chinese puzzle: how to adapt the language to modern communication technologies
Any student of Chinese will sympathise with the 17th-century Jesuit priest Fr Emeric Langlois de Chavagnac when he wrote: ‘One…
