Australia’s OpenAI hack is a wake-up call
Defiling Asimov’s Laws
Laymen concerned by the encroachment of AI assume CEOs and world governments are designing the digital age loosely around the…
Silence of the Lambie
Remember when Jacqui Lambie fantasised about throwing Elon Musk in jail? I had forgotten until Damian Coory pointed it out…
Kevin Rudd might be … right(?!)
Carrying on the great political tradition of ‘never buggering off’, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is back – sort of…
The Chalmers diet
Sydney’s working class look hungry. By that I mean, they are getting noticeably thinner. My advice to the political class…
Albanese is talking to empty rooms
The picture from New York last week tells you most of what you need to know about Australian foreign policy.…
Gough Whitlam called
Everyone knows it. I know it. You know it. Households know it. Business knows it. The IMF and OECD know…
The Sydney Sweeney revelation
Well, knock me down with a feather. The advertising world has discovered that, wait for it, sex sells! It turns…
Germany at a crossroads
The recent German state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and in the city state of Berlin give cause to consider the…
If Albanese is a ‘global citizen’, we should Section 44 him
There’s always one… Albo is Australia’s (global) village idiot. For proof of this, he received the Atlantic Council Global Citizen…
Parents are leaving. The law still wants one kind of school
Parents are not waiting for a white paper. They are leaving. Queensland’s figures are plain. Registered home education rose from…
In defence of disagreement
Charlie Kirk was one of the internet’s most divisive figures. Like many, I disagree with much of what he said.…
The little red man and the unthinking generation
Every morning I walk through Brisbane’s red light district. Nowhere in Queensland is there such a proliferation of red lights…
The academic pursuit of error
I hear so many commentators repeat the mantra: ‘We should teach them how to think, not what to think!’ This…
The legal case for Reform UK
Whilst on holiday in Egypt, I visited the site of the Lighthouse in Alexandria, now a Citadel near a Casbah.…
Vale Gary ‘Angry’ Anderson
Two bands defined my youth – AC/DC and Rose Tattoo. This week we lost the lead singer of the latter.…
Armageddon and Artificial Intelligence
Just when some online worry-warts and so-called ‘climate experts’ are starting to ease a little on warnings that the end…
Alex Antic: reformer, victor, and future leader
Something extraordinary happened last week. South Australian Senator, Alex Antic, won the South Australian Liberal Party presidency. Not a moderate.…
Why the Lord’s Prayer still matters
I am proud to be reading into the Western Australian Parliament a petition initiated by Cáit Folan-Sfakianakis calling for the…
The ‘loose cannons’ of The Spectator Australia
During my latest annual pilgrimage to Europe, I met many ‘conservatives’ who professed to be sympathetic to the themes developed…
Two budgets away from fiscal responsibility
The Australian colonies did comparatively very well in economic development and prosperity. Surely we can repeat this, given that we…
GLOBALIST IN CHIEF – Albanese accepts his award & Trump cancels ‘Fake News’ Media | S3 Ep 21
This week… Javier Milei ‘rips the United Nations to shreds’. Albanese’s good little globalist award. Digital Duty of Censorship… I…
SILENCE OF THE ROYALS – Spencer’s memoir and the death of the last Royal carriage maker | S3 Ep 20
This week with Professor David Flint. Does the ghost of Princess Diana still pose a threat to King Charles’ legacy?…
PLEASE EXPLAIN! Why politicians are getting salty over satirical cartoons… | S3 Ep 19
This week… Jacqui Lambie’s rant over One Nation’s Andrew Hastie ‘traitor’ cartoon. Who dragged Albanese’s mother into the political conversation…
Not OKKK
‘Is it heartening for you to see someone like anti-immigration Pauline doing well in Australia?’ asked the Channel Nine journalist.…
Bad laws outlive their victims
England once taxed daylight. It did so for 155 years. That is the number to keep in mind as we…
Time to abandon Snowy 2.0
All tunnels face geotechnical problems from unknown unknowns. In the Channel Tunnel, huge water pressure opened fractures; there were swelling…
Reporting on self-serving twaddle
In my line of work, I read a lot of self-serving twaddle. Arguably, most of what I read is self-serving…
Brown study
Any normal person would know that at my advanced age and imminent senility, the last thing I should be doing…
Taylor & Canavan must stop the preference leak to Labor
Because the enemy is from within, the next election is probably the most crucial in our nation’s history. If the…
Dire strait
After several months of watching his popularity plumb new depths, Prime Minister Albanese must have been looking forward to an…
Unite the right? In Australia we did that
Britain is again debating how to ‘unite the right’. In the Telegraph last week, Lord Frost – Boris Johnson’s former…
If I’m far right, so was JFK
Okay readers, give me two generalisations about the democratic world over the last fifty years. Well, first off, we can…
Germany’s political earthquake
We think we’ve heard it all before: a European election heralded as a great victory for the right against open…
Aussies teed off
When it comes to sinking the career of Anthony Albanese, the scandalous ‘Golfgate’ should be a hole-in-one for the opposition.…
A phalanx of unelected commissioners
I am often in the car around 5 p.m., having helped with the school/kinder pickup. It’s a great joy hanging…
Tactical voting is Burnham’s secret weapon
For Andy Burnham the biggest challenge is to avoid going down like Gordon Brown, who passed up the chance of…
Ukrainians are struggling to keep going
Each time I fly back to Odesa, my hometown, to see my family, I notice how things have changed since…
How ‘Little Boy’ Japan grew up
In 2005, the Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami wrote that the nickname for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima –…
Are Welsh nationalists the ‘Postman Pats’ of international terrorism?
The first ministers of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have a clear message for Westminster: Your ‘time is coming to…
Ranulph Fiennes and the perils of depriving liberty
Sir Ranulph Fiennes reached the summit of Everest at the age of 65. After eight years in the military, including…
The death of Brian Brindley
When Brian Brindley, who held his 70th birthday party in 2001 in the Athenaeum Club, returned from the lavatory, he…
Was Coltrane overrated?
John Coltrane was born 100 years ago this week, and jazz lovers are in a sentimental mood. Coltrane, who died…
Is Estonia really preparing for war with Russia?
“Prepare for war,” was the message from Estonian EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas to the European Defence Agency last…
Man City may have damaged the Premier League beyond repair
Hands up anyone who knows what happens now that Manchester City have reportedly been found guilty of nearly all of…
What should we have expected from the US-China summit?
The summit ended as it started – with Donald Trump raining lavish praise on his guest. The meeting was one…
What would Orwell have made of the term ‘un-British’?
There are few adjectives more abused than ‘Orwellian’. Sometimes, though, there’s nothing for it but to resort to Politics and…
How Kemi Badenoch saved the Tories
Most voters have no idea they are happening, but party conferences can set the tone for what follows. Last year’s…
Why you shouldn’t shrug at New Zealand’s greyhound racing ban
Greyhound racing ended in New Zealand on August 1. Those who neither own a greyhound nor care for the sport…
A New Zealand republic in Jacinda Ardern’s lifetime?
New Zealand’s former Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, believes the nation will become a republic within her lifetime. We have heard…
The row over English becoming an official language of New Zealand
Parliamentarians in New Zealand have been limbering up for an oddly unedifying debate over what ought to be the most…
What they don’t tell you about Christmas in New Zealand
‘I still think New Zealand the most beautiful country I have ever seen,’ Agatha Christie marvelled in 1922. Evidently she’s…
The autistocracy: the men on the spectrum who rule our world
An elegance that is hair-raising
Sometimes cultural news is just bad news. Everyone was delighted at the thought that Joanna Murray-Smith’s Switzerland was being turned…
A gorgeous evocation of the natural world
The world of artistic expression runs in a thousand ways. The Melbourne Symphony’s Spring Gala – paralleling the Opera’s Wagner…
A man of great suavity
They were both films that stay in the mind from a lifetime ago. Peter Pan is J.M. Barrie’s contribution to…
The sexiest kind of rock star
It’s strange and sad what the world throws at us. We are assailed by musicals – a production of Reg…
The myth of authentic English food
There were two butcher’s pork pies in my bag that also contained a copy of Lewis Bassett’s The Full English.…
An overpromised land: Farewell to Eden, by Sebastian Faulks, reviewed
Farewell to Eden, Sebastian Faulks’s 18th novel, is a timely masterpiece; a riveting story of war and lost love across…
The Cavalry in the Clouds: tales of the airborne Great War
The first aeroplane flight in Britain was made in 1909 by John Moore-Brabazon, holder of the first British pilot’s licence.…
Rain never stopped play – cricketing feats of Victorian Britain
Drawing on contemporary newspaper reports, this splendid book recreates cricket’s watershed year, 1864. At the time, Kit Harris explains, football…
Madness, mutiny and murder in the Canadian Arctic
The elegant, charismatic and narcissistic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson wasn’t the average adventurer that Alaska attracted in 1912. When he arrived…
A fatal mistake: Time Being, by Jude Cook, reviewed
Jude Cook’s intriguing third novel, Time Being, opens with a bang. A philosophy lecturer has been shot dead through the…
Around Britain with a theodolite: a celebration of the Ordnance Survey maps
It took six years, starting in the summer of 1784, for the Board of Ordnance to establish the baseline of…
The Great Uprising: Doom Painting, by A.K. Blakemore, reviewed
We can never know whether a historical novelist really gets it right, but there are clear missteps. One is ascribing…