Victoria has no 'hyper-infectious' covid plague - and no accountable government
Why shouldn’t Facebook block news?
Facebook warned us in September that they would block news. Today they have followed through on their word and you…
Zucked! How to get your fresh SpecOz updates
Like the rest of the Australian media, our benevolent overlord Mark Zuckerberg has decided to bar us from his platform,…
Immunity passports and the the Leviathan of public health despotism
In his recent book Virus e Leviatano, the veteran Italian journalist Aldo Maria Valli analyses how coronavirus has led to a form of health despotism replacing the rule of…
Ensuring a future for the humanities in Australia
Back in 1951, the great conservative institution-builder William F. Buckley Jr. wrote a book about Yale University. However, what he described occurring in New Haven would ultimately apply more…
Can Parliament House become a less ugly workplace?
Federal parliament this week has been rocked by revelations by a former adviser to the now Defence minister, Linda Reynolds,…
Victoria has no ‘hyper-infectious’ covid plague – and no accountable government
So the lockdown has been lifted and the Premier is letting us out. We can go outside without worrying about…
A warning on windpower from deep in the heart of Texas
Were the South Australian blackouts in 2016 precursors to those that have occurred in Texas during the past few days? …
Meet the new generation of MPs plotting new paths to prosperity
It seems with each passing year strong, principled, and individually held positions on issues economic, social, and political are being usurped by self-interest and…
Rush Limbaugh was a giant of talk radio
The news of Rush Limbaugh’s death is certainly the end of an era. The voice of conservatism for over three…
Labour’s damning silence on Brexit
The Labour party has updated the old metaphysical question: ‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is…
The danger of the work from home revolution
The work-from-home (WFH) revolution has clearly won hearts and minds. According to KPMG and the Financial Services Skills Commission, half…
Consequences for Cuomo?
In a matter of two weeks, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s reputation has slid from that of smug Emmy Award winner to…
The ‘Great Reset’ is a globalist power grab
You think things couldn’t get much worse for so-called free speech than Twitter and the rest of the global censors…
Censoring creativity
When the creator of the ‘wall of sound’ died recently, the BBC declared in its headline ‘Talented but flawed producer…
Business/Robbery, etc.
It’s an unintended consequence that poses a major internal threat to the $70 billion Australian coal exports that are a…
Forestry fudging
Under pressure to adopt an essentially meaningless policy, a promise to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, Scott Morrison’s federal…
Hello, darkness
There’s something deeply disturbing going on in America which should concern freedom-loving people everywhere. It has been decades in the…
Sez WHO?
The joint China-World Health Organisation investigation into the origin of the Covid pandemic was always going to be a farce…
Trump: best days yet to come
Any fair minded, objective juror would agree that Donald Trump was never guilty of the high crime for which he…
Andrews vs the Christians
As long as the federal government is awarding Australia Day honours on the basis of individual sporting prowess then Australian…
The Dig
It was gratifying to see such a quiet and impeccably made film as The Dig make it to independent cinemas…
War Amulet, 1800s, Persia, Powerhouse Collection
Second thoughts are sometimes better thoughts. The NSW government had second thoughts about closing down the Powerhouse Museum at Ultimo…
Das Rheingold
You could hardly ask for a more exorbitant return to mainstage theatre than a production of the first part, the…
Robyn Nevin
The Adelaide Festival program describes her, accurately, as ‘our finest stage performer’. Robyn Nevin is appearing there (2 Feb-14 Mar)…
In the trenches
I can hardly recall a more engaging and uplifting biography than this life of Major-General William Holmes, who was killed…
On the track of a mysterious recluse: Maxwell’s Demon, by Steven Hall, reviewed
This is not the age of experimental fiction — it’s Franzen’s, not Foster Wallace’s. That shift was on its cusp…
What does ownership of land really mean?
At the end of the last century, Simon Winchester bought 123 acres of wooded mountainside in the hamlet of Wassaic,…
The cannibal feast: Mother for Dinner, by Shalom Auslander, reviewed
Seventh Seltzer is a nice family man, working as a publisher’s reader in New York, who happens to come from…
Who in their right mind would choose to be a forensic psychiatrist?
When police were called to a block of flats in north London at the beginning of 2002, they expected to…
Francis Bacon: king of the self-made myth
In 1953, Francis Bacon’s friends Lucian Freud and Caroline Blackwood were concerned about the painter’s health. His liver was in…
The serious rows at Marvel Comics
In August 1961, two middle-aged Jewish New Yorkers, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, launched a new superhero comic book for…
From cheap sex comedies to gritty brilliance: British culture comes of age
As readers of a certain age will realise, Looking for a New England derives its title from ‘A New England’,…