Walk for Life
This was not the first time I marched at a Walk for Life, but it was the first time I…
Four-year terms: an outsider perspective
Australia’s current Prime Minister has suggested that Commonwealth Parliaments should go four years between elections, instead of the current three.…
Hobson’s leadership choice for Vic Libs
Over the weekend, the Melbourne media were full of fevered speculation that a challenge to struggling Victorian Liberal and Coalition…
The cheap renewable thrill of climate protests
On March 13, 2024, Greta Thunberg was dragged away from blocking the Swedish Parliament entrance for a second day. She…
Reject education furphies
Despite the additional billions invested over the last 30 years, countless educational enquiries and reports, several national reform agreements, and…
Labor’s Brisbane horror election night could be a trap for the LNP
Queensland held its local council elections Saturday, which would normally be a big yawn outside the Sunshine State, except for…
Australian banks need to be making much bigger losses on their lending
At a recent event I met and had a long chat with a retired economist who, in his professional career,…
‘Hell to pay’ if gender equity activists get their way
Every year, like clockwork, the grievance industry works itself into a righteous fury over the annual Employer Census results compiled…
Voiceless in Victoria: farmers horrified by renewable energy fast-tracking
‘It takes too long:’ Solar and wind farm blockers to be weeded out to fast-track renewable projects. That was the…
Puberty blocker ban shows public opinion turning on gender ‘affirmation’
This week in Britain, a landmark historical move to ban puberty blockers in gender clinics has been motioned and overseen…
Dystopian Google Gemini shows why misinformation laws are flawed
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. No matter how many revelations came to light of the rampant political…
Woke tropes informing Australia’s Gaza response
ACT Senator David Pocock wrote about Australia’s response to the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza recently. The next day, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong…
Hey scientists, it’s OK to express dissent
The public policy madness of the Covid years seems less and less believable with each passing week and month. Many…
Fed up and grumpy
Maybe I’m becoming a grumpy old woman – OK, I’m already a grumpy old woman – but I am getting…
Blowback to ESG tyranny
The world’s largest financial asset manager, BlackRock, has admitted that its bottom line could be hurt as a result of…
There’s something in the water
In a recent TikTok video, a youngish US woman demands to know, ‘Am I the only one who didn’t know…
Kategate
It’s four years since 11 March, 2020 when the WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic and with the media awash…
Top five reasons to vote for Trump
In 2016, I didn’t know much at all about Donald Trump and, initially, I viewed his candidacy for President with…
Dunkley opportunity missed
Apart from the election of the next US president and leader of the West, the most important issue facing Australia…
We need an Aussie Samizdat Prize
In his blunt, plain-spoken way Donald Trump often says things that are true but that few other politicians will articulate…
Putin crowns himself president of Russia again
As expected, following a three day ‘vote’, Vladimir Putin has once again crowned himself president of Russia. As of 9…
Princess Kate, photographs, and the great thirst for significance
When Photogate, or Kategate, or whatever we end up calling it, first became news, I remember taking one look at…
Meet the Russians in Serbia who voted against Putin
Today, Russians in Serbia are heading to the polls to cast their vote and protest against what many see as…
We need to talk about war
‘Don’t mention the war!’ Remember that? Today, war seems nearly all that European leaders want to talk about. The prospect…
New Zealand’s imperial judiciary
If you cast your eyes across the Tasman right now, you can see the beginnings of an imperial judiciary, the…
Subversion within New Zealand
Recently querying why New Zealand governments make annual January pilgrimages to the Maori Pa at Ratana, to celebrate the birth…
Did Maori MPs mean to insult King Charles?
The co-leaders of New Zealand’s Māori party, Te Pāti Māori, have defended their actions at the swearing-in ceremony at parliament…
Kiwi life
Given the UK’s Rishi Sunak sacking Suella Braverman for saying what many others would feel – that the police were…
Joe Biden’s dog is out of control
Another popular feast
Miriam Margolyes was not wrong – however intrepid she may have been – to remark to Her late Majesty the…
Moody shifts of tone
It’s interesting to see a new production of The Sound of Music is on at the National Theatre (a somewhat…
Power beyond eloquence
It was fascinating to catch up with the Grammys the other night. There was the cheering sight of Miley Cyrus…
An all-but-lost treasure
Tennessee Williams is still looking like one of the greatest playwrights of the twentieth century and the plays he wrote…
Aussie life
Much has been written of Australian soccer captain Sam Kerr’s big night out in the back of a London cab.…
Language
When we use Old Aussie we might call a bloke a ‘cove’ – but why? Why is an adult male…
Cheltenham gave us a taste of what is to come
Writing a fortnightly column about a sport happening daily can be cruel. These words had to be delivered before the…
Are hyenas really relatable?
A new television wildlife series called Queens (the ruling kind, not the screaming kind) shows competition among hyenas that involves…
How ever did the inbred Habsburgs control their vast empire?
In 1960, Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Manuel Lucena Giraldo tell us, Lucian Freud went to the Goya Museum in Castres in…
The dirty war of Sefton Delmer
There is an obvious problem with trying to judge who ‘won’ a propaganda war. Unlike its physical counterpart, there is…
How much would your family stump up for your ransom?
‘I can’t quite believe I’m here, having a steak dinner with a killer,’ writes Jenny Kleeman, as she sits with…
Work, walk, meditate: Practice, by Rosalind Brown, reviewed
Practice is a short novel set in a ‘narrow room’: one day in the life of an Oxford undergraduate writing…
Conning the booktrade connoisseurs
Literary scandals – like actual scandals – come and go. Who now recalls, or indeed cares less about, the hoo-ha…
You are what you don’t eat
If asked to think about food preservation for a moment you might picture an aproned woman boiling oranges for marmalade…
The end of days: It Lasts Forever And Then It’s Over, by Anne de Marcken, reviewed
How do you picture the end of days? ‘When I was alive, I imagined something redemptive about the end of…
The stark horror of Barbara Comyns’s fiction was all too autobiographical
Barbara Comyns’s reputation rises and falls like a Mexican wave, making her one of the most rediscovered novelists of recent…