It doesn't matter what any government says: you are essential
The last thing we need is a bill of rights
Over a century ago the great American jurist James Bradley Thayer warned against handing social policy decision-making over to the…
Big Public Health’s tobacco tactics haven’t worked with smoking. Why should they work with obesity?
I’m not one for personal criticism, even dumb, socialist, hypocritical, anti-everything Greens. But if I were, I would put public…
New polling: the emperor has no clothes
It’s official — or as official as it can be. The emperor — the Prime Minister, actually — has no…
It doesn’t matter what any government says: you are essential
One of the foundational concepts upon which western civilisation is built is the Judeo-Christian insistence that every human being is…
Australian schools need a tough love reboot
Pupils, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. You choose. If Australia can’t improve our international K-12…
The only two figures you need to know in Newspoll today
One fascinating figure is missing from today’s Newspoll – the margin of error. As a quick glance at the table…
The Oldest Culture: Science
The third in a series of articles examining Dark Emu-style claims. These days we hear a lot about what a…
It’s Doctor Demento
Poor old John Hewson has been dumped as a columnist with the Nine chipwrappers for the great crime of being…
Did Dom Cummings save the Queen?
For a man who professes to despise the media, Dominic Cummings is certainly adept at courting it. The former No…
Kicking out the cranks won't save Labour
There is a problem with Sir Keir Starmer’s reported plan to expel 1,000 Labour members associated with ‘poisonous’ groups, and…
No Love for pornstar Brandi at the Turning Point summit
Porn star Brandi Love made waves at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in Tampa this weekend after the group…
How the Pentagon got rich from Afghanistan
The departure of American troops from Afghanistan is being lamented (or hailed — see the Chinese press, passim) as a…
New Zealand's transgender debate is turning nasty
New Zealand was the first country in the world to give women the right to vote in parliamentary elections. But now,…
Will fairy dust power New Zealand?
Wishful thinking, allied to government incompetence and the ambition of our Prime Minister, is lining up trouble ahead. In one…
Kiwi Life
One of my goals over the coming months is to watch an entire rugby game for the first time in…
New Zealand’s worrying battle over transgender rights
Last year, the equalities minister Liz Truss set aside laws which would have allowed people to self-identity as the legal…
Wink wink, nudge nudge!
The Australian, to its credit, has obtained reams of (heavily redacted) evidence under Freedom of Information that the government of…
The new religion of diversity
Readers of this fine publication have no doubt, on occasion, wondered from where this new, woke religion called ‘diversity’ emerged.…
The force is strong in the CCP
Like a Jedi mind trick, deception involves subverting an opponent with misleading information and intentions that conform with their expectations.…
The rise and rise of the Australian elites
I had the fascinating experience of having the author of The Lucky Country lecture me back in 1974. It was…
On the woke/green path to oblivion
When I was still a school girl, I started to read the Economist. My geography teacher had a commerce degree…
Farewell to Parkes’ vision splendid
Ten years ago, Western Australian Mines Minister Norman Moore proposed that the state secede and rely on China for its…
Hunt goes off script with ivermectin
‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety)…
Aux bien pensants
NSW under dictatorship As the dictatorship was intensified over New South Wales, the provisions of new decrees were announced as…
Martin Clunes
Just as the lockdown imprisons the people of Sydney those in Canberra have had the chance to see that exhilaration…
Opera Australia’s production of Otello
Lockdown must be making me irritable; an article during the week really got me going. It concerns two forthcoming productions…
Ethos
A Sydney lockdown on the heels of Melbourne: what price entertainment? It seemed natural as ever to have recourse to…
Jaime Martín
They’re changing guard at our two major orchestras; the Melbourne Symphony and the Sydney Symphony. A couple of months ago…
The life cycle of the limpet teaches universal truths
Adam Nicolson is one of our finest writers of non-fiction. He has range — from place and history to literature…
Germany’s post-war recovery was no economic miracle
Lord Macaulay wrote that ‘during the century and a half which followed the Conquest there is, to speak strictly, no…
The power of the translator to break nations
No one ever raised a statue to a translator, disgruntled adepts of that art sometimes complain. I beg to differ,…
She didn’t go quietly: Caroline Norton’s campaign for married women’s rights
When Caroline Sheridan married George Chapple Norton in 1827 she ceased to exist. According to the legal status quo, as…
The man at the heart of punk: the late Pete Shelley recalls his Buzzcocks years
Manchester, in the words of the artist Linder Sterling, is a ‘tiny little world’. Nearly three million people live in…
A matter of life or death: Should We Stay or Shall We Go, by Lionel Shriver, reviewed
Leave or remain? That’s the question hanging like a cartoon sledgehammer over Lionel Shriver’s 17th novel. Although she makes merry…
The US tech companies behind China’s mass surveillance
In January, the United States declared that China’s brutal treatment of the Uighur people in Xinjiang amounted to genocide. ‘I…
Richard Dawkins delights in his own invective
The late Derek Ratcliffe, arguably Britain’s greatest naturalist since Charles Darwin, once explained how he cultivated a technique for finding…
