flat white

The Great Covid Debate

Recently, dedicated vaccine supporter Jack the Insider took on NSW Libertarian MP John Ruddick, who has opposed Covid vaccines from…

28 Mar 2024

Australian Universities Accord to take the hammer to TAFE

Amid an acute nationwide worker shortage, only the political class in Canberra would propose something as counterproductive as the takeover…

28 Mar 2024

Is corporate Australia ashamed of Easter?

This week, Holy Week for Christians, I went to a Westfield shopping mall in Melbourne. Being the week before Easter,…

28 Mar 2024

The art of ugliness

All art is political, said Orwell. To say otherwise is a political statement. In a time of mass society and…

27 Mar 2024

The era of informed consent is over

In a significant blow to patient autonomy, informed consent has been quietly revoked just 77 years after it was codified…

27 Mar 2024

Mass migration and state ‘Voices’ fuel distrust in democracy

Opinion polls from around the world show an accelerating decline in trust in democracy. In a recent American poll, only…

27 Mar 2024

Ad-free media? There is no ad-free media…

Commercial media promotes goods, services, functions, and political messages for those prepared to pay for these services. The government-owned ABC…

27 Mar 2024

Carbon Pawprints: North Korea has gone to the dogs, and so have environmentalists

In 2020, the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un, ordered the confiscation of dogs owned by those living in the…

27 Mar 2024

Health insurers experiment with nine-day fortnights

It is reported that health insurer BUPA is ‘trialling’ a nine-day fortnight for its staff, meaning it is looking to…

26 Mar 2024

E-scooters and e-bikes are on the rise. Will we ever walk again?

In 2022, Utrecht (Holland) was ranked the world’s most bike-friendly city. Australia seems keen to compete, with the number of…

26 Mar 2024

Fatal flaws exposed in the Net Zero transition. What is to be done?

According to NSW’s Ausgrid, the most recent AEMO draft Integrated System Plan (ISP) for electricity supply will require $325 billion…

26 Mar 2024

If the ABC reforms itself, would you watch it?

After decades of denial, the ABC has finally picked up a mirror and taken a good long look at itself.…

25 Mar 2024

War stories

I just love a war story – not about actual war, mind you, but about the mind-boggling snafus in the…

30 Mar 2024

Do as we say, not as we do

For a regime that regularly and loudly protests about interference with its sovereignty, the Chinese Communist party is quick to…

30 Mar 2024

Crypto is useless money

In 2013, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss filed the first application to operate a bitcoin exchange-traded fund in the US. The…

30 Mar 2024

Catherine and cancer

Princess Catherine of Wales has cancer. So does King Charles III. So does Sarah Ferguson, the former wife of Prince…

30 Mar 2024

Netanyahu’s dilemma

I wouldn’t be Benjamin Netanyahu for shekels. But if I were him, I hope I’d act with the same resolve…

30 Mar 2024

It’s your white guilt, not my white privilege

Browsing a bookshop online recently, I came across the familiar acknowledgement of the traditional First Nations owners and custodians of…

30 Mar 2024

Who’s happy now?

I’ve long been sceptical of big chunks of social science research. Take the hard sciences – where these days various…

30 Mar 2024

Unsustainable returns

Commentators and politicians who talk endlessly about the electricity grid’s inevitable transition to renewables seldom bother with the detail that…

30 Mar 2024

US businesses are falling out of love with Xi’s Chinese dream

A US diplomat in Beijing once told me a story of an American businessman hospitalised in the city of Ningbo…

28 Mar 2024

NeverTrumpers have found a way to hit Donald where it hurts

With Donald Trump confirmed as the Republican nominee, a group of NeverTrump conservatives have tried to hit the former president…

28 Mar 2024

Galloway suggests Obama involvement in Moscow attack

The fall-out continues from Friday’s attack on Moscow concert hall attack in which 139 people were reported dead. Russian officials…

28 Mar 2024

Britain is falling out of love with the NHS

Rishi Sunak doesn’t speak much about his five priorities these days, apart from inflation, which ‘halved’ as promised. On NHS…

27 Mar 2024

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Why is New Zealand’s deputy PM rowing with Chumbawamba?

In their musical heyday, the English anarchist punk band Chumbawamba enjoyed a reputation for having an irreverent attitude towards those…

22 Mar 2024

New Zealand’s imperial judiciary

If you cast your eyes across the Tasman right now, you can see the beginnings of an imperial judiciary, the…

2 Mar 2024

Subversion within New Zealand

Recently querying why New Zealand governments make annual January pilgrimages to the Maori Pa at Ratana, to celebrate the birth…

24 Feb 2024

Did Maori MPs mean to insult King Charles?

The co-leaders of New Zealand’s Māori party, Te Pāti Māori, have defended their actions at the swearing-in ceremony at parliament…

6 Dec 2023

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Aussie life

Memory is tricky. Wandering the Paris end of Collins street sipping espresso, waving to paroled Extinction Rebellion protesters, and thinking…

30 Mar 2024

Language

We wordsmiths have a principle that ‘a text without a context is a pretext’. This matters because of what some…

30 Mar 2024

The battle of the racehorse trainers

A famous American horse-handler – after seeing an English trainer who had been his assistant starting to win races back…

30 Mar 2024

Its pointless arguing with an Irishman

‘Why are those pipes sticking out of the wall like that?’ said the bathroom fitter, surveying the work the plumber…

30 Mar 2024

Stories of the Sussex Downs

This amazing book is itself a little like a flint, a misshapen stone egg of the Sussex Downs. It resists…

30 Mar 2024

The horrors of the Eastern Front

Ten years ago David Cameron, as prime minister, pledged £50 million for the centenary of the first world war. The…

30 Mar 2024

Why today’s youth is so anxious and judgmental

What’s not to like about a world in which youths are involved in fewer car accidents, drink less and wrestle…

30 Mar 2024

On the road with Danny Lyon

A Google search for ‘Danny Lyon’ produces more than eight million results in 0.30 seconds, yet the celebrated American photojournalist…

30 Mar 2024

Caught in a Venus flytrap: Red Pyramid, by Vladimir Sorokin, reviewed

Interest in Vladimir Sorokin’s works in translation tends to focus on their extremism and dystopia – trademarks of his fantastically-rendered…

30 Mar 2024

Resolute, dignified and intelligent: Elizabeth II inspired loyalty from the start

It was George VI who first called his extended family ‘the Firm’. Today, with so many injuries and key players…

30 Mar 2024

The world’s largest flower is also its ugliest

Plants regularly lose out to animals in the charisma stakes. In Pathless Forest, Chris Thorogood seeks to promote a new…

30 Mar 2024

How country living changed the lives of three remarkable women writers

Very fine hot day. (Bank Holiday). Sound of band in Lewes from the Downs. Guns heard at intervals. Walked up…

30 Mar 2024