flat white

Gene-splicing our way to success?

Having only recently re-watched the superb Jurassic Park Spielberg film based on Michael Crichton’s book (of the same name), I…

20 Aug 2024

Labor’s recession we didn’t have to have

Federal spending is set to increase to its highest level since the mid-1980s, pandemic spending aside, at 26.6 per cent…

20 Aug 2024

Welcome to Country!

As a 20th Century Scot, arriving in Australia as a migrant teenager when assimilation was the base criteria for migrants…

20 Aug 2024

We Brits never realised how good we had it under Boris Johnson

Just under two years ago, the UK Conservative Party made the ridiculous decision to oust former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.…

20 Aug 2024

Rome was exhausted by its greatness. Are we next?

By casting our minds back to Rome, one orients themselves in a place of marching legions, splendorous festivals, and swarming…

20 Aug 2024

Women and wealth: inheriting $3.2 trillion in the next decade

What a turnabout. Half a century ago feminism was all about celebrating women’s success. There was huge excitement about women’s…

20 Aug 2024

Making masculinity toxic

An apparent spike in sexist and misogynistic behaviour by male students has given rise to a new training program for…

20 Aug 2024

Defending Dave: Australia’s biggest online rally for free speech

Australia’s biggest ever online political rally for free speech is happening tomorrow night from 7-10pm (AEST) following the attack on…

19 Aug 2024

NAPLAN: doom, gloom, and blame

The release of NAPLAN data last week unleashed a flurry of doom, gloom and blame. As if we needed further…

19 Aug 2024

Dave Pellowe reported to HRC for replacing Welcome to Country with Psalm 24:1

The Church and State Australia (CSA) ministry founder, Dave Pellowe, faces a complaint put before the Queensland Human Rights Commission…

19 Aug 2024

Miracle worker Tim’s stellar career in the Labor circus

Say what you like about Tim Pallas – his career achievements are, by any measure, remarkable. From abattoir worker to…

19 Aug 2024

UK puts misogyny and Islamic terrorism on an equal footing

UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced Labour’s plan to expand the Terrorism Act of 2000 to incorporate acts of…

18 Aug 2024

Our tinpot tyrannies

I am reliably informed that the former premier of Victoria, Dan Andrews, regularly strolls down Collins Street in Melbourne’s CBD,…

17 Aug 2024

Australia’s jihad-supporting government

Time to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth. The Australian Jewish community was conned by the Labor party prior to the last…

17 Aug 2024

China goes for gold in South China Seas

For those who like their sport served with a side order of geopolitics and didn’t want to see the last…

17 Aug 2024

Perils of two-tier rule

Authorities are reprising the techniques of managed messaging and gaslighting deployed with great success during the Covid years to exercise…

17 Aug 2024

Get tougher now on border patrolling

Recently another four boats transporting economic immigrants were found on the West Australian coast, up in the Kimberley region. The…

17 Aug 2024

History in remote hills

For almost a century, geochemists have been making minerals and rocks in high-pressure high-temperature laboratory experiments. Water fluxes melting rocks…

17 Aug 2024

Kamala Chameleon

Perhaps the greatest pretence at the Democratic National Convention is that Vice President Kamela Harris was the enthusiastic first choice…

17 Aug 2024

Our woeful elites

Somehow the label ‘ruling elites’ doesn’t quite do it. There is too much of a whiff or stench of the…

17 Aug 2024

The selfishness of defecting to another country

Elite sport is a selfish business. It’s all about achieving success for yourself. However much others have contributed to your…

20 Aug 2024

How Israel is clearing Hamas out of Rafah

Rafah, Gaza The heat, the sand, the soldiers. I’m in Rafah, a war zone unlike any other. As a former…

20 Aug 2024

Putin takes revenge for the Kursk attack with glide bombs

In the sprawling and unlovely village of Billopilya, only five miles from Ukraine’s border with Russia, when death comes, it…

20 Aug 2024

Biden bids a late-night farewell to the DNC

Chicago Monday night at the Democratic National Convention served as a protracted thank you and farewell to President Joe Biden…

20 Aug 2024

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Kiwi life

New Zealand in crisis Given the destruction the previous Labour government inflicted on this country, and the damage caused by…

29 Jun 2024

New Zealand’s carbon sequestration problem

Ongoing concern about climate change has fuelled debate about the part carbon sequestration might play in reducing New Zealand’s net…

19 Jun 2024

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…

10 Apr 2024

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

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Aussie life

O wad some pow’r the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us! said Robbie Burns. And nobody…

17 Aug 2024

Language

There are times when I am tempted to think that English, in general terms, is richer and more colourful than…

17 Aug 2024

The myth about electric car owners

Every time I write about electric cars, there is an explosion of hostile comments online in which readers angrily denounce…

17 Aug 2024

Dear Mary: how can I deter the creep at my pub quiz?

Q. I have been pitched into a social dilemma regarding Glyndebourne, which I live near to but don’t go to…

17 Aug 2024

Saved from certain death at Auschwitz – by playing the cello

Bees and mammoth bones, a shipwreck, horse urine (preferably female), a 17th-century craftsman and a 20th-century genocide. Playing an extended…

17 Aug 2024

The juicy history of the apple

In Food for Life, Tim Spector’s book on the science of eating, the author gives the chemical makeup of a…

17 Aug 2024

The enduring charisma of Brazil’s working-class president

A better title for this book might have been ‘Lula: A Drama’. In the first of two long- anticipated volumes,…

17 Aug 2024

Is it wrong to try to ‘cure’ autism?

Is autism the worst thing that can happen to a person? Is ABA – Applied Behaviour Analysis – the right…

17 Aug 2024

Tales with a twist: Safe Enough and Other Stories, by Lee Child, reviewed

Lee Child has sold more than 200 million books. He reckons his royalties at about a dollar per book. He…

17 Aug 2024

How could Hitler have had so many willing henchmen?

Eight decades after the second world war ended, for how much longer will we produce massive books about Hitler and…

17 Aug 2024

Her weird name was the least of Moon Unit Zappa’s problems

On Frank Zappa’s first date with Gail Sloatman, he blew his nose on her skirt. As acts of territory-marking go,…

17 Aug 2024

Whoever imagined that geology was a lifeless subject?

Rocks are still and lifeless things, and geologists are men with beards whose emotional bandwidth is taken up with an…

17 Aug 2024