to 2431: Pride of place
Each of the pairs of unclued lights is a CITY (formed from the letters in the yellow squares) and its…
Why does someone keep sending me furniture?
When a new vacuum cleaner was delivered to my house last week I assumed it was a belated birthday present…
England’s rugby team are embarrassingly sore losers
Sports events come and go, but good manners, as William of Wykeham might have put it, last for ever. Or…
Dear Mary: What should I do about a Lib Dem friend who can no longer take a joke?
Q. I sent a WhatsApp message to a Lib Dem friend of 15 years. ‘How are you finding being a…
Back in the Babington Triangle: Roth Bar & Grill reviewed
The Roth Bar & Grill exists on an art-farm called Durslade in Bruton, Somerset, which is also the country outpost…
Why is a ladybird called a ‘bishy barnabee’?
People in different regions like to think their dialects incomprehensible to outsiders, yet they can usually come up with quite…
Caroline O’Connor is the Spider Woman
They wrote musicals based on the most unlikely material but John Kander and Fred Ebb enjoyed ultimate success with Cabaret…
Rampant antisemitism
Australia was recently shaken to learn of the horrifying news of two blatantly antisemitic incidents within Melbourne’s public schools. One…
Simon Collins
‘We are assessing the concerns raised and will investigate whether the program met our editorial standards,’ said the ABC’s managing…
Dutton’s dinner diary
I want to speak as a proud member of the Abbott cabinet, but I also want to speak as a…
Energy notes
The world needs more Australian coal, not less Most fairy tales contain important life lessons and as the father of…
Allan, James Allan
I have to confess that I’m a little bit insulted that no one in the totally impartial and apolitical Commonwealth…
Fran’s feminist fascists
‘I thought there would be a range of views on this in the panel,’ said wannabe full-time Q&A host Fran…
The carbon dioxide trap
Many people who discuss climate change believe that if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise so does the Earth’s temperature. This…
John Lennon’s friend imagines
For several years in the 1950s Peter Jones shared a desk with John Lennon at Quarry Bank High School for…
Labor’s lamentable loss
The question Labor grandees Craig Emerson and Jay Weatherill should have asked in their review of the ALP’s loss in…
Rock star
Any fears that the Tony Abbott Testimonial Dinner on Sydney’s north shore last week would be a rather maudlin or…
England diary
In two recent visits to England, the ostensibly Conservative government has allowed the Extinction Rebellion extremists to shut down central…
How Corbyn got his broadband nationalisation numbers wrong – by a factor of three
John McDonnell today explained that the broadband nationalisation plans are perfectly affordable – upkeep costs would just be £230m a…
The unseemly race to increase the size of the state
‘Elect me once more and we will finish off socialism for good,’ declared Mrs Thatcher before the 1987 general election,…
The voters the Conservatives plan to persuade to win a majority
In this election, the Tories hope to persuade voters who have never backed the Conservative party before to turn blue.…
Emmo calls out Twitter, lynch mob madness explodes
Craig Emerson is a former federal Labor minister and parliamentarian who represented the Queensland seat of Rankin from 1998 to…
Two years on from “marriage equality”, basic freedoms are under threat
As the nation today marks the second anniversary of the vote to redefine marriage, we remain in the grip of…
The chances of a Tory majority have increased this week
Four weeks from now, voters will be heading to their polling station, and the result of this election remains unpredictable.…
