Hamas resurrected?
The Great Covid Debate
Recently, dedicated vaccine supporter Jack the Insider took on NSW Libertarian MP John Ruddick, who has opposed Covid vaccines from…
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…
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,…
The art of ugliness
All art is political, said Orwell. To say otherwise is a political statement. In a time of mass society and…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
War stories
I just love a war story – not about actual war, mind you, but about the mind-boggling snafus in the…
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…
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…
Catherine and cancer
Princess Catherine of Wales has cancer. So does King Charles III. So does Sarah Ferguson, the former wife of Prince…
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…
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…
Who’s happy now?
I’ve long been sceptical of big chunks of social science research. Take the hard sciences – where these days various…
Unsustainable returns
Commentators and politicians who talk endlessly about the electricity grid’s inevitable transition to renewables seldom bother with the detail that…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Subversion within New Zealand
Recently querying why New Zealand governments make annual January pilgrimages to the Maori Pa at Ratana, to celebrate the birth…
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…
Did he/didn’t he?
Good witches and witches dubbed bad and born green. Wicked is one of those pieces of musical theatre that will…
What a strange thing
It sounds irresistible, doesn’t it? A National Theatre Live version of a play by Jack Thorne (the magician who conjured…
Steve Harley was no one-hit wonder
Celebrity deaths range from the ‘tragically young’ (Amy Winehouse) to the ‘I thought they’d gone years ago’ (Peregrine Worsthorne) and the monumental (Michael Jackson). But there’s another…
Another popular feast
Miriam Margolyes was not wrong – however intrepid she may have been – to remark to Her late Majesty the…
Aussie life
Memory is tricky. Wandering the Paris end of Collins street sipping espresso, waving to paroled Extinction Rebellion protesters, and thinking…
Language
We wordsmiths have a principle that ‘a text without a context is a pretext’. This matters because of what some…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…