Trump not to blame for Poilievre loss
What’s wrong with this election?
I understand it’s a cost-of-living crisis, but I sacrificed one of my coffees and bought the Sunday Telegraph (don’t tell…
Dutton should not fear Trump
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton wounded the feelings of MSM by referring to them collectively as ‘hate media’. ‘I have no…
The Sun should take out a restraining order
Western governments are spending trillions of dollars covering the world in solar panels. Now they want to dim the Sun.…
Pope Francis has died aged 88
Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church, has died aged 88. The Pope had been seriously ill in hospital for…
Trump not to blame for Poilievre loss
The left-of-centre (make that left-of-the-Canadian-centre, which is mightily left-wing) Liberal Party has won Monday’s federal election in Canada. Mark Carney,…
If we can’t talk about Welcome to Country, are we truly one and free?
Events in Melbourne have shown how strongly differing political views can dominate mainstream discussions. It’s concerning that past political perspectives…
One freebie at a time
In a political age defined by opinion polling and a 24-hour news cycles, one strategy is remarkably consistent: the word…
The con in conclave?
Warning: spoiler alert! The Pope is dead. No, seriously. In a stark confluence of life and art, the conclave that…
The AI elephant in the Australian tally room
The global tech sphere has exploded in a supernova of investment with billions of dollars pouring into artificial intelligence research…
Albo’s Mediscare has gone nuclear
Anthony Albanese is desperate to hold on to power. He revels in being an underestimated political underdog. Behind the scenes,…
A tale of two island nations
An old Pastor told me decades ago, ‘People should focus on what they do have, not what they don’t have.’…
Labor’s litany of lies
With time running out in the countdown to the May 3 Federal Election, Australia’s future may well depend on how…
Why the Coalition will lose
While I’m not a prophet – or the son of a prophet – I’m going to make a political prediction…
Give Nashos another run
In July 1972 I turned 21 and became eligible to cast a ballot at the next federal election. I had…
Will the real Dutton please stand up? (feat. Albo’s Morons)
Peter Dutton needs to take some inspiration from American rapper, Eminem. Eminem doesn’t give a toss what people think of…
Do not believe the polls
Why have we not learnt this lesson? Has everyone forgotten the 2019 election? Or the Trump election? Or the Voice…
Where’s the proof, Albo?
Some readers may recall the existence of my defective television set. It is permanently set to Channel 2. I inherited…
The perils of pusillanimity
When the so-called ‘moderate’ MPs in a Westminster conservative political party remove a sitting prime minister from their own party,…
I lost my job because of trans activism
The UK Supreme Court’s ruling, which unambiguously states that ‘sex’ and ‘woman’ refer to biology in the Equalities Act and…
Why war trumps peace
War is as pervasive as the wish for peace is universal. Hostilities have already resumed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and…
Pope Francis the Catastrophic
Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday morning at 88 years of age, has been described repeatedly as ‘a pope…
When Albo goes to Rio
This week’s Channel Nine leaders’ debate crystallised the dire predicament facing the electorate. A Prime Minister whose woke green-left ideology…
America holds the Trump card
‘Unlimited power in the hands of limited people,’ wrote Alexander Solzhenitsyn, ‘always leads to cruelty. It is not that evil…
Lest we regret
The bargain offered by the Unicorn in Alice in Wonderland is, ‘If you believe in me, I’ll believe in you’,…
Taxing milkshakes won’t solve the obesity crisis
It was supposed to be the broadest shoulders who were going to fund the government’s overspending. Now it seems to…
Spain needs time to recover from its power outage chaos
By six o’clock this morning, electricity had been restored to 99 per cent of Spain. Restoring people’s sense of security…
Who cares about globalization?
Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” was the culmination of a 30-year insurgency against the global economic system. It was the most…
Mark Carney won’t change Canada for the better
Apparently Canada hasn’t taken enough punishment yet. After a close, hard-fought race that extended into the wee hours of the morning, Mark…
Jacinda Ardern and the empty politics of ‘kindness’
Just over two years on from stepping down as Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern is awaiting the imminent…
307,000 Voices
Growing concerns at the impact of unregulated free speech around the world, and especially in the English-speaking West, are understandable.…
New Zealand’s cringeworthy new tourism slogan
‘Everyone must go!’ New Zealand’s new tourism declares, but so far almost everyone seems to be cringing. The prime minister…
The sacred sites fandango
The second-highest mountain in New Zealand has been granted ‘personhood’ by the NZ parliament because it is regarded as the…
Will Trump join the strongman club?
A passable Antipodean
Isn’t it strange the way the popular and high art aspects of our culture keep connecting and intersecting. A friend…
The way the imagination works
Easter was almost on us when the suggestion came. There was talk of a new Narnia film underway and of…
The zenith of art
Last week your columnist cut a paragraph stating that the original Melbourne Higgins in My Fair Lady, Robin Bailey, and…
Unsurpassable
It’s a weird connection but they say Donald Trump is devoted to his presidential predecessor Andrew Jackson who was popular…
‘Death is a very poor painter’: the 19th-century craze for plaster casts
On the morning of 7 May 1821 an urgent task was performed at Longwood House on St Helena. A day…
Bloodbath at West Chapple farm
Fifty years ago, the blasted bodies of three unmarried siblings, members of the Luxton family, were discovered at a Devon…
My adventures in experimental music – by David Keenan
David Keenan acquired his craft as a music writer, he says, from reading the crème de la crème of critics…
Adrift in strange lands: The Accidentals, by Guadalupe Nettel, reviewed
Borders have always played an important part in Mexican literature. Not only geographical/political frontiers but the more porous boundaries between…
Friends fall out in the English civil war
In April 1636, two aspiring lawyers, eager to make their way in the world, corresponded about the state of affairs…
The benign republic of Julian Barnes
Not long into this essay I found myself wondering if it would have been published if the author were not…
The road trip from hell: Elegy, Southwest, by Madeleine Watts, reviewed
Throughout her quietly compelling second novel, Elegy, Southwest, Madeleine Watts conjures a sense of trundling steadily towards disaster. The narrator,…
The story of food in glorious technicolour
Have you ever suffered from museum blindness? A complete overwhelm at the sheer amount of stuff – often quite similar…