flat white

Why and how China secretly supports climate hysteria

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.  Sun Tzu, The Art of War.  Climate hysteria around the…

26 Feb 2020

How is only teaching climate catastrophism in schools discussion and debate?

One of the central tenets of a worthwhile, rigorous and balanced education system is there is room for disagreement, discussion…

26 Feb 2020

Revealed: the sickly state of the National Electricity Market

This year’s annual report from the regulatory collective that is the Energy Security Board awards itself gongs for overseeing a…

26 Feb 2020

Sick, sad and confused

I feel tormented this week. I want to drink. I want to suck dick.  I want to self-destruct. I’m fighting an…

25 Feb 2020

ScoMo can’t kowtow to China over coronavirus

On Saturday, the Morrison Government announced that it was partially lifting its China travel ban to allow Chinese Year 11…

25 Feb 2020

Forget dumbing down of schools. What about dumbing down of teachers?

As students returned to school over the past few weeks, a new crop of graduate teachers was well-equipped to talk…

25 Feb 2020

Harvey Weinstein shows the system works

It doesn’t matter what side of politics you’re on.  Neither does it matter which side of the culture wars you…

25 Feb 2020

Memo Dr Bandt: coronavirus concern is not racism

When Green’s leader Adam Bandt tweeted about last week’s shooting in Hanau, Germany, it became evident that he does understand what racism is. …

25 Feb 2020

Bless their hearts: every Democrat is a loser in South Carolina

Former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg said at least one accurate thing in South Carolina on Tuesday night: ‘Russia doesn’t…

26 Feb 2020

A bare knuckles fight between Bernie, Bloomberg and Trump

The Nevada caucuses confirm that Sen. Amy Klobuchar has clung to the ledge by her fingernails as long as she…

26 Feb 2020

How coronavirus can save Hong Kong

The coronavirus has enforced a hiatus in Hong Kong’s widespread political unrest with worries about transmission stalling protests. Dissatisfaction with…

Pete Buttigieg is a slightly less gay version of Obama

On Valentine’s Day, Mayor Pete and his hus-bear Chasten managed to once again charm absolutely no one, barring a few…

26 Feb 2020

The truth is out there

Appearances can be deceiving, and the silver-haired, conventionally-dressed older couple who squeezed on to our table at a Tamworth Country…

21 Feb 2020

Blacklisting sceptics

A mini ice age may be about to start, at least according to an alternative and heavily disputed theory of…

21 Feb 2020

Globalism is dead

‘Globalism is dead. Long live globalisation’. For Mr Lee Howell, managing director of the elitist World Economic Forum, this is…

21 Feb 2020

Return of the coal-fired poltergeist

Like the snows of Kilimanjaro that refuse — despite Al Gore’s inconvenient predictions — to vanish, Malcolm Turnbull is back.…

21 Feb 2020

High Court of Wokeness

Last week our top court, the High Court of Australia, garbed itself in the fashionable attire of the cult of…

21 Feb 2020

Business/Robbery etc

‘Last week’s ‘panic-sell’ advice from one of Australia’s many purveyors of emailed stockmarket wisdom had no evident impact on an…

21 Feb 2020

Bad hair day

In the photograph, masses of black hair – profuse and grotesque; a polluted waterfall – gush through a hole in…

Entebbe: the sequel

The Arab League has joined the Organization of Islamic Countries in formally rejecting the Trump plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian…

15 Feb 2020

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Bruce Beresford at home in Birchgrove 2018

Sydney’s Archibald has the name and the fame, but there is a new kid on the block: the Darling Portrait…

21 Feb 2020

No Pay? No Way!

As a sort of protest, I am not going to the opening of No Pay? No Way! at the Sydney…

15 Feb 2020

The Happy Prince

Many people have had a go at it. Ever since Oscar Wilde published The Happy Prince and Other Tales in…

7 Feb 2020

Luca Micheletti and Anna Dowsley

A taciturn Glaswegian and an unlikely knight of the realm, David McVicar has directed several of Opera Australia’s most admired…

1 Feb 2020

Why Bloomberg will be president

Gstaad I was not aware that there is a group of Spectatorfans who meet in French-speaking Switzerland. They contacted me…

21 Feb 2020

How to sample your own urine

Seven round the table for dinner. Wild mushroom risotto. I was told to sit next to Michael. Good. Michael makes…

21 Feb 2020

As long as jokes remain legal I’ll keep on making them

Mr Benn has been in touch because he wants a right of reply to an article I wrote about my…

21 Feb 2020

Cyrname was lucky to survive his shocking fall at Ascot

Few jumpers have a better record at Ascot than the Paul Nicholls-trained Cyrname. He triumphed in the Betfair Chase at…

21 Feb 2020

Shades of the prison house: the ghosts of suicides fill our prisons

About the time Chris Atkins’s cell was slammed shut at Wandsworth Prison for the first time, I was sitting on…

21 Feb 2020

Metternich gets a makeover

This is a giant Teutonic forest of a book, to be progressed through with determination as if by seasoned infantry;…

21 Feb 2020

Hell and high water: eco-anxiety dominates Jenny Offill’s latest novel

Lizzie, the narrator of Jenny Offill’s impressive third novel Weather, is ‘enmeshed’ with her brother, according to her psychologist-cum-meditation teacher.…

21 Feb 2020

Why were Kraftwerk such a colossal success?

Everything about Kraftwerk was odd. They had no front man, they seemed to play no instruments and their strange, electronic…

21 Feb 2020

Home was not where the heart was for the Enlightenment’s intellectuals

Emily Thomas is a distinguished academic philosopher who has ‘spent a lot of time by herself getting lost around the…

21 Feb 2020

Wouldn’t the migrant crisis make fantastic reality TV? Timur Vermes’s The Hungry and the Fat reviewed

The context for The Hungry and the Fat, Timur Vermes’s new satirical novel, is not as far-fetched as all that.…

21 Feb 2020

It’s easy to forget how many respectable people embraced eugenics

Between 1923 and 1931 the publisher Routledge produced ‘Today and Tomorrow’, a series of 110 short books by intellectual luminaries…

21 Feb 2020

Dr Livingstone becomes a dead weight: Out of Darkness, Shining Light, by Petina Gappah

The scope of Petina Gappah’s impressive novel is laid out in the prologue: the death of the Victorian explorer David…

21 Feb 2020