flat white

BOM-shell

Not content with changing historical data to protect the image of Climate Change (sorry ‘homogenising weather data and closing stations…

22 Oct 2022

The rings have lost their power

Well, I can cancel my Amazon Prime subscription again. The last episode of The Rings of Power came out recently.…

22 Oct 2022

Floods and droughts are nothing new

There is nothing unusual about floods, fires, droughts, homelessness, and hunger – they have always been part of the human…

22 Oct 2022

NDIS: improvements that make things worse

Sometimes, when English is insufficient to describe a particular situation, we have to turn elsewhere. German has a terrifying phrase ‘verschlimmbesserung’ or…

22 Oct 2022

Mount Warning banned! Which park will be next?

In June this year, the New South Wales ‘Liberal’ government announced plans to hand over control of all our NSW National Parks…

22 Oct 2022

Rob Roos and Rowan Dean on the abuse of rights

The admission Dutch conservative member of the European Parliament, Rob Roos, dragged out of Pfizer representative Janine Small has thrown…

21 Oct 2022

Australia’s dumbed-down schools are going nowhere

Over the last month, there have been yet another two initiatives designed, supposedly, to improve the performance of Australian schools,…

21 Oct 2022

Dirty dependency: superannuation and ESG

Condemning those who have glued themselves to roads to create chaos, the (now former) UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman hit out…

21 Oct 2022

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Lessons have not been learned about child sex abuse

This week, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) published its long-awaited final report. It describes in harrowing detail…

21 Oct 2022

The town John Fetterman ran is in ruins

Americans concerned about the economy — once again voters’ top priority — are turning their backs on the left. “Democrats’ momentum…

21 Oct 2022

Will Boris get the numbers he needs?

The question on everyone’s lips tonight is whether Boris Johnson can get 100 MP nominations by Monday. This is the…

21 Oct 2022

A bluffer’s guide to (yet another) Tory leadership race

Here we go again – another leadership contest, another round of intense Westminster blather. Lightweight would-be commentators may feel their…

21 Oct 2022

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New Zealand’s pandemic science is cracking up

For the best part of a year, Kiwis were urged to get vaccinated to protect their families. However, this week’s…

15 Oct 2022

Jacinda & Ursula

Looking at the problematic behaviour of both the President of the European Union and New Zealand’s Prime Minister, I’m struck…

15 Oct 2022

Tyranny’s higher education production line

Reflecting on Jacinda Ardern’s recent attack on free speech at the United Nations, British pundit Brendan O’Neill astutely declared that…

14 Oct 2022

Shadows over New Zealand

Not only have we seen the passing of a universally admired and much-loved woman who, as Queen Elizabeth, dedicated her…

1 Oct 2022

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Best of times, worst of times

I almost never sign group letters or put my name to group efforts aimed at correcting some governmental or administrative…

22 Oct 2022

Bursting the bubble

In complex and chaotic times, our reliance on ‘sensemaking’ institutions is greater than ever. Media and academic institutions are at…

22 Oct 2022

A real tipping point

Climate catastrophists are very keen to talk about tipping points. So let me steal their thunder and talk about the…

22 Oct 2022

Elon, meet Paul

Xi Jinping, expected to be installed as the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party for a third term this…

22 Oct 2022

Adrift in a Hobbesian world

It is a safe bet that Sir Robert Menzies would be deeply disturbed by the latest amendments to the national…

22 Oct 2022

Gillard’s guilt

It is a terrible shame the chief legacy of our first female prime minister seems to be her so-called ‘misogyny…

22 Oct 2022

Nord Stream whodunnit

Moscow blames hostile actors for last month’s underwater explosions that blew up the Nord Stream pipelines connecting it to Germany.…

22 Oct 2022

The media and the Constitution

After the 2016 presidential elections, it became obvious that the US mainstream media had abandoned its vocation of being both…

22 Oct 2022

One night in a Gentlemen’s Club

How fascinating it is to see that Australia’s Brendan Cowell is playing John Proctor in the new English National Theatre…

22 Oct 2022

Swerves of warmth and coolness

One of the great things about the Australian Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet is that the kids love it. Even the…

15 Oct 2022

A sapphic rom-com not to be missed

What a relief it is that Virginia Gay’s adaptation of Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac should finally have opened in Sarah…

8 Oct 2022

Footy versus ballet?

All the different aspects of a culture collide and interconnect. Melbourne is the undisputed capital of Australian rules football (which…

1 Oct 2022

Aussie life

Australian manufacturers have long been obliged to alert consumers to health hazards. As soon as we found out that peanuts…

22 Oct 2022

Language

Richard Littlejohn wrote recently in Britain’s Daily Mail about an 18-page Inclusive Language Guide which has been sent out to…

22 Oct 2022

The death of humour

New York Rodney Dangerfield was the American Benny Hill: lewd, funny and not exactly politically correct where the weaker sex…

22 Oct 2022

My grandsons have sensed weakness – and it’s costing me

The grandsons are putting two and two together. Grandad is always lying down and groaning when they video call and…

22 Oct 2022

A cinematic offer we could not refuse

Francis Ford Coppola’s superb film The Godfather changed American cinema and, by extension, American culture. The film had it all:…

22 Oct 2022

The rocky path to Christian dominance in Europe

Mutilated, strangled, suffocated or beaten to death: these are just some of the methods used to get rid of popes…

22 Oct 2022

Was Mussolini’s wilful daughter his éminence grise?

In 1930, when she was 19 years old, Edda Mussolini married Galeazzo Ciano. His father was a loyal minister in…

22 Oct 2022

Why Ronald Blythe is so revered

Ronald Blythe, the celebrated author of Akenfield, is to turn 100 next month, and to mark his centenary a beguiling…

22 Oct 2022

Artistic achievements that changed the world

‘Astonish me!’ was the celebrated demand that the impresario Sergei Diaghilev made of Jean Cocteau when he was devising Erik…

22 Oct 2022

Horribly described sex: The Last Chairlift, by John Irving, reviewed

Some time ago I was a guest at a book festival in France where we were invited to dinner in…

22 Oct 2022

Mitfordian mischief: Darling, by India Knight, reviewed

It takes chutzpah to tackle a national treasure as jealously loved and gatekept as Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love.…

22 Oct 2022

We love you, Uncle Xi!

In 2015, I had lunch with an old chum of Xi Jinping. He described how China’s most powerful leader since…

22 Oct 2022