The heir of Orwell
It took 1,084,170 words for JK Rowling to tell the story of Harry Potter. Spanning seven books and a decade,…
Oh no, don’t meme me!
Leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, is terrified of memes. Specifically, Winnie-the-Pooh. Since July 2017, the harmless bear has…
How not to play warcraft
The Australian Labor Party has drifted a long way from its roots and is now more about the welfare of…
Other options for the economy?
In the UK, inflation figures were stated to have been disappointing, with CPI falling down from 3.4 per cent to 3.2 instead…
The Liberals, coal, and nuclear power
In a famous 1963 speech, US civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr. said: ‘I have a dream that my…
The war on misinformation is a sham
Anthony Albanese claims to be fighting a war on so-called ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’. He recently exclaimed that ‘Australians want misinformation…
Net Zero by 2050: fantasy, or eco-imperial impoverishment?
As the years pass since the 2015 Paris climate conference made Net Zero by 2050 the global elite’s Holy Grail,…
ANZAC Day: recognising the dangers our soldiers face in times of no conflict
On Anzac Day it is important we recognise the sacrifices made by those who have served Australia and New Zealand’s…
Australia needs to assess security relations with Turkey
As we commemorate Anzac Day, and the fallen Australian soldiers who fought and lost their lives at Gallipoli, now more than ever…
Labor’s Middle East folly
Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s call to her Tehran counterpart urging Iran to promote stability in the Middle East is indicative…
Port Macquarie educator fired during Covid slams medical authoritarianism
Mandate victim, Kassi Gilmour, has slammed medical authoritarianism. The former New South Wales school teacher was fired for refusing to comply with public health…
Fearless sons and daughters of Anzacs
Fearless sons and daughters of Anzacs, today we commemorate the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at…
Punishing Petrovsky
It was Walter Map in his 12th century work ‘On the Trifles of Courtiers’ who created the character Eudo, who…
Albanese abridging too far
We have a serious problem in this country with governments wanting to silence views they don’t like. Let me remind…
Do fact-checkers check the facts?
Government should never have the power to determine what is or is not the truth, let alone silence dissenting views.…
Even Bernie Fraser thinks it’s a dumb idea
I’ve said it before, but Albo really has a way with words. You know the sort of thing: good is…
The Cass review and gender woo
The Cass Review into Britain’s National Health Service’s child-gender care services has recently been published. The review demolishes the entire…
Immigration challenges in the era of Islam
The motion was never going to pass, but the debate was needed in 2017 as much as now. The Sydney…
Community safety or grubby politics?
The highest duty of a government is the safety of its citizens and the current Labor government has betrayed this…
X rated
I am truly surprised. In fact, I am staggered. I thought there was not a single menber of parliament in…
How America plunders Britain’s tech economy
The UK government tells a confident story about Britain’s tech business acumen. In one 2023 example, a press release from…
Liverpool is trashing its maritime history
Three subjects are branded onto the Liverpool psyche: football, music and seafaring. While the first two remain in rude health,…
Who asked France’s celebrities for political advice?
Since 2012, the French actor Omar Sy has lived in Los Angeles. One of his houses has included a sprawling…
The monstrous experience of surviving boarding school
Charles, Earl Spencer published a blistering denunciation of his prep school days – complete with constant corporal punishment and child…
Why New Zealand is cracking down on immigration
The government of New Zealand this week tightened the country’s working visa rules in order to stem historically high numbers…
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…
The Xi files: how China spies
Taylor Swift is a rotter
Taylor Swift has released another album spilling the beans on her private life. ‘I’d written so much tortured poetry in…
The barbarity of this man
It’s a spectacle a lot of people would kill to see: Hugo Weaving in a Sydney Theatre Company co-production of…
Shylock and the Nazis: the truth about Shakespeare’s most infamous character
None of William Shakespeare’s characters are more controversial than Shylock. The moneylender from The Merchant of Venice may be the…
The music of their eloquence
It was a tweet by the novelist Joyce Carol Oates that warned us PBS, the American public broadcaster, had done…
Aussie Life
Almost exactly 50 years before James Cook’s first encounter with the Gweagal and Gameygal peoples on the shores of what…
Language
Writing in the current issue of Quadrant magazine, Paul Prociv says, ‘The field of Aboriginal affairs is awash with sloppy…
Where does ‘stuff’ come from?
Pelham, the hero of the novel of the same name (which came out in 1828, the first year of The…
Louis XIV would envy your life
Some things in life acquire an outsize popularity which defies all common sense. The outlandish appeal of such things cannot…
The naming of cats
All sorts of animals have been kept as pets over the centuries. We know of sparrows in Catullus and John…
The slave’s story: James, by Percival Everett, reviewed
Rereading The Adventures of Huckle-berry Finn can be a saddening experience. It’s not just the oft-repeated n-word that jolts, then…
The identical twins who captivated literary London
The dazzlingly beautiful identical twins Mamaine and Celia Paget were born in 1916 and brought up in rural Suffolk –…
Alone and defenceless: the tragic death of Captain Cook
The principal purpose of Captain James Cook’s last voyage, which began in Plymouth on 12 July 1776, was to discover…
What does Christian atheism mean?
Two opposed camps can only have a fruitful debate if they agree on what it is they disagree about. A…
Four female writers at the court of Elizabeth I
Almost a century ago, in A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf claimed that if William Shakespeare had had an…
The circus provides perfect cover for espionage
The hall was before me like a gigantic shell, packed with thousands and thousands of people. Even the arena was…
Hero and villain: The Two Loves of Sophie Strom, by Sam Taylor, reviewed
Counterfactual thinking can be compelling. We imagine love affairs missed out on, tragedies averted. What if I hadn’t boarded that…