Simon Collins
I can’t be the only Speccie reader who’s lost sleep thinking about the Crown Resort employees awaiting trial in China.…
Simon Collins
Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Agri, Big Pharma… every industry these days seems to have its bogeyman collective, the theory…
Simon Collins
It’s a little know fact that when French aristo Baron Pierre de Coubertin averred that ‘the important thing is not…
Simon Collins
I may have been labouring under a misapprehension. In all my years in the advertising caper I’ve always believed that…
Simon Collins
Currencies will plummet, markets will crash and there will be rioting on the streets of capitals. Followed, perhaps, by the…
Simon Collins
Whether or not Australians get to vote on the subject of gay marriage later this year, nobody would dispute the…
Simon Collins
Given the popularity of Channel 10’s I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here it’s hardly surprising that other networks…
Simon Collins
Crosses may have huge symbolic significance for Christians but the physical reality of crucifixion is something most of us only…
Simon Collins
Working my way back to Australia after a long exile in the US, I stop off in London the day…
Manchester reunion
One of the enduring benefits of emigrating at an early age is that you are not expected to attend school…
Simon Collins
If the Aussie dollar could be said to have gone up and down like a bride’s nightie over the last…
Dogzheimers
How far should a man be prepared to go for a free meal? Two weeks ago I came 12,000 miles…
Dope ‘em up
Australian athletes only managed to get two silvers at the Beijing World Athletics Championships. But the good news is that…
Driving Dixie
I am driving my son from Washington DC to Charlottesville, Virginia, for a two-day ‘orientation’ at the university he will…
Normandy landing
When you’re told by a Harley Street specialist that you’re not, as you had feared, about to cark it, you…
On ‘mateship’
Has Australia’s most valuable currency lost its value?
London notes
I can see the London Eye from my hotel room, but for a panicky, hungover moment this morning I thought…
Diary
I have added a few days onto a London trip to visit my mum in South Wales, and as I…
Tony, Nigel, and the older voter
Could there be method in the madness of Tony Abbott’s list of politically incorrect ‘gaffes’?
The Yanks are too childish to play rugby
Watching the American Eagles get slaughtered by the All-Blacks proved too much for the home crowd
South African notes
“Cape Town is a lot like Sydney,” an ex-pat yarpie had assured me. But as I’m driven through the township…
Scotland always was a foreign country
It’s tempting to look for parallels between the Scottish independence vote and our own republican referendum.
Ethiopian Diary
My partner Billy and I are in Gondar, in north-eastern Ethiopia, a few bone-jarring hours’ drive from the Sudanese border.…
