Gloriously un-PC: Chris Lilley’s Swiftian, scabrous, gleefully misanthropic Lunatics reviewed
‘Unfunny, boring and utterly unrelenting,’ says the Guardian’s one-star review of Chris Lilley’s new sketch series Lunatics (Netflix). And if…
It made me want to go to sleep and never wake up: Vampire Weekend’s Father of the Bride
Grade: B– One of the things not to like about Vampire Weekend, other than their cloying preppiness, Ezra Koenig’s ingratiating…
A lament for the UK and the US
New York Here’s a question for you: if your wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, toy boy even, lied repeatedly to…
Will the Mistral drive me to murder?
So far this latest Mistral wind has blown for two and a half weeks. The Mistral is said to blow…
I’ve reached scandal saturation point
A letter before action, or something that looked very much like it, arrived on my doormat from an insurance company.…
Farewell to the greatest jump jockey of all time
So the Silver Fox has called it a day. We will never see Ruby Walsh, the man whom even Sir…
Bridge
Imagine you are on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. You have just won £500,000 and cannot go home with…
Revolutionary
The French Defence appears to be somewhat cautious in nature but can in fact lead to disruptive middlegame clashes. It…
no. 553
Black to play. This is from Carlo-Haast, Grenke Chess Open 2019. There is a saying in chess that when you…
The full English
In Competition No. 3097 you were invited to submit a poem about Englishness in the style of a well-known poet.…
2407: Stickmen
The unclued lights, four of two words, individually or as a pair, are of a kind. Across 11 After…
to 2404: 1+2 = 3+4
The first and second letters of the unclued lights are the same as the third and fourth ones. All the…
The UN’s extinction warning doesn’t add up
Anyone watching the BBC’s News at Ten on Monday would have been surprised to learn that economic growth poses a…
Why don’t we see more big infrastructure projects?
In 2012 I finished a meeting in Berlin and headed to Tegel airport. Apparently mine was a historic flight, since…
Dear Mary: What should you do when friends invite you to lunch but don’t offer wine?
Q. I was invited to birthday drinks in London. On my way there the name of someone I haven’t heard…
Save us from fads and change for change’s sake
There is no new thing under the sun. Over the weekend, I read a book which was alarmingly relevant to…
Do MPs actually know what ‘fungible’ means?
‘No darling,’ I said, ‘nothing to do with mushrooms.’ My husband had responded to my exclaiming ‘What does she think…
Free speech: a right-wing conspiracy?
As a founding member of the United Nations, Australia played a pivotal role in the negotiation of the UN Charter.…
Character building
Having fired off his first challenge in paragraph one (‘Read every word of this book, but don’t believe a word…
Brown study
Last week, candidates from all parties were starting to drop like flies as they were disendorsed by their parties for…
Business/Robbery etc
The Australian Financial Review last week stood out like an island of integrity in a sea of journalistic mendacity when…
Dis-con notes
How to Vote, conservatively With only a week until the election, we Dis-Cons (disaffected conservatives) face a dilemma. A Labor…
Robotaxis to the rescue
Australia enjoys some of the least reliable and most costly electric power in the developed world. There’s some argument about…
Were the Del-Cons wrong?
Well, the election is almost here. In a little over a week we’ll know if Scott Morrison has pulled off…
