flat white

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me an EV?

My car hasn’t been travelling very well this year. OK, it is nearly 13 years old, but it has been…

11 Oct 2025

Marrying the mirror

The English journalist Matthew Syed has written about the quiet tribalism that seeps into parts of modern Britain – the…

11 Oct 2025

Victoria going Caracas

The time has come when all Australians, not just Victorians, are forced to pay for the Andrews and Allan governments’…

11 Oct 2025

Dazed Libs should heed their own history

Can things get any worse for the Liberal party? It’s lost voters and members, and recent leaders have failed to…

11 Oct 2025

Lawyers and legacy media

Do readers recall the incident three years ago when someone tried to kill the US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh?…

11 Oct 2025

Climate corruption

After lodging my submission, as punishment for being on the wagon, I read the other 168 submissions to the Orwellian-sounding…

11 Oct 2025

Protest the protests

At time of writing, anti-Jewish activists have announced their intention to conduct a hatefest at the Sydney Opera House on…

11 Oct 2025

From Gaza with hate

Last week, Grumpy Greta, the pint-sized prophet of Climate Doom cum Hamas hobgoblin, claimed to have been abducted by Israel…

11 Oct 2025

Who killed the London Stock Exchange?

Stock exchanges around the world compete with each other to entice the most exciting companies to sell their shares on…

12 Oct 2025

It’s getting harder for scientists not to believe in God

Many Baby Boomers are sceptical about God. They think that believing in a higher power is probably incompatible with rationality.…

12 Oct 2025

What Margaret Thatcher meant to Hungary

It is a most fitting tribute: an iron and steel statue of the Iron Lady in a city once behind…

12 Oct 2025

Japan has a bear problem

In a scenario out of a horror film, or Werner Herzog documentary perhaps, Japan is experiencing a spate of bear…

12 Oct 2025

Rex Landy: women’s rights activist arrested

Four years ago, in this very publication, I made a prediction that a Māori women’s rights activist in New Zealand…

1 Oct 2025

Winston Peters tells UN New Zealand will not recognise Palestine

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, has delivered the nation’s official comments on the Palestine issue to the United Nations.…

27 Sep 2025

Four years on the run: New Zealand’s fugitive dad shot dead by police

A fugitive father who vanished into the rugged bushlands of the Waikato region of New Zealand with his three children…

8 Sep 2025

Is Jacinda Ardern hiding from Covid scrutiny?

During the five years Jacinda Ardern led New Zealand, much was made of her ‘transparent’ style of touchy-feely leadership and…

8 Sep 2025

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Aussie life

Talking with an old friend recently about relations between the sexes, I said men these days don’t know if they’re…

11 Oct 2025

Language

Do you know Banjo Paterson’s ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ I asked? Yes, was the answer, I have it off by…

11 Oct 2025

Dear Mary: How do I avoid offending old friends if I don’t recognise them at a party?

Q. I am shortly to attend a big London party at which I will see many old acquaintances. However, first…

11 Oct 2025

Is something ‘greenlit’ – or ‘greenlighted’?

‘It’s got to be greenlighted,’ said my husband, as though saying so made it true. I had been complaining of…

11 Oct 2025

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Dressing the word salad

We owe the ghostwriter of this book a debt of gratitude. A novelist called Geraldine Brooks is cited as a…

11 Oct 2025

Justin Currie’s truly remarkable rock memoir

In 2022, at the age of 58, Justin Currie – singer, bass-player and main songwriter with the Scottish rock band…

11 Oct 2025

Will Israel always have America’s backing?

Marc Lynch is angry. The word ‘rage’ appears six times on the first page, and comes in response to Israel’s…

11 Oct 2025

The radical power of sentimentality

When Samuel Richardson’s Pamela was published in 1740, it unleashed something unprecedented in literary history. This epistolary novel about a…

11 Oct 2025

The gay rights movement threatens to implode

In the UK and elsewhere in the West, lesbian and gay rights have largely been won. Over the past two…

11 Oct 2025

A literary Russian doll: The Tower, by Thea Lenarduzzi, reviewed

A girl in a tower. The words trigger instant curiosity. Who is she? Who locked her away, and why? Was…

11 Oct 2025

The traitor who gives Downing Street a bad name

Samuel Pepys didn’t much like the subject of Dennis Sewell’s new biography. Sir George Downing (1623-84) was for a short…

11 Oct 2025

A death sentence for Afghanistan’s women judges

Quiz. Which country had a successful court named the Court for the Elimination of Violence against Women, where women could…

11 Oct 2025