A Berlin Wall moment for political correctness
Because we’re all so obsessed with what it was that made the Nazis tick, we tend to overlook the bigger…
A wake-up call for Parliament
Parliament is the cockpit of the nation, but MPs have been on autopilot rather a lot in the past 40-odd…
The Spectator’s Notes
The English tradition of dissenting judgments in important civil cases is a good one. They are often better than the…
Adult entertainment
The mid-life crisis novel, I think it’s fair to say, is traditionally a male form. But in Louise Doughty’s Apple…
Trading places
After any other US election it would cause little comment that the new president had chosen the British Prime Minister…
Turnbull is toast
Most people are bemused when I predict that Malcolm Turnbull won’t be prime minister by the end of the year.…
Business/Robbery etc
It’s not just a headwind; there’s a gale coming. The ‘global headwinds’ blamed by the Turnbull government for last week’s…
Brexit’s biggest political victims: Ukip
Perversity is a much undervalued British trait, much more redolent of our real psyche than queuing, drinking tea or being…
Don’t begrudge Gillard her gong
In her Australia Day column for the Herald-Sun, Rita Panahi decried the giving of Order of Australia honours to former…
I was a teenage white invader
I have a confession to make: I’m one of the invaders. My ancestors did not come to these shores with…
What’s so bad about January 26?
This week, Warren Mundine proposed that Australia Day should be moved from January 26 to January 1, because the 26th…
Fairfax celebrates Australia Day
Fairfax is celebrating Australia Day in its own inimitable style. Here’s a screenshot from The Age’s website from early this…
The Order of Australia: still a substandard product
At a conference of the Samuel Griffith Society in August 2014 Sir David Smith KCVO, AO delivered a paper entitled…
Time to expose the public health boot boys and their media droogs
This week the public health Pooh-Bahs opened self-righteous fire on yet another front. A public health Pooh-Bah is a self-appointed…
Forget the Australia Day stunts, let’s just celebrate
Be warned. In recent years it has become the custom to spoil what would otherwise be an enjoyable Australia Day…
But they’re not honourable…
The Honourable Andrew Fisher, prime minister on three occasions between 1908 and 1915, was one of the very few politicians…
Follow Trump: dump the renewable energy target
The Trump victory came with his pledge to take the US out of the Paris agreement on climate change. This…
Fighting fading curtains in the Sunshine State
It’s a state divided, sibling against sibling, family against family, community against community, city against country. It’s not America under…
Meat & Livestock Australia deserve an Australia Day roasting
“Aren’t we all boat people?” is the question posed by Meat & Livestock Australia’s current pre-January 26th holiday marketing spiel.…
Time to invade Turkey again
The time has come to box Johnny Turk’s ears again. Turkey – the homeland of St Paul the Apostle and…
Big trouble upstream
At a wedding a few years back a very gloomy looking guest, a well-known Geordie actor as it happens, arrived…
A myth that keeps growing and growing
I had lunch recently with an assistant head of a leading independent school and he told me about their ‘growth…
The turf
You had to feel for ITV’s new racing team on their opening day at Cheltenham. It was cold, wet and…
An emperor’s inauguration
Given that Donald Trump is not the most popular president the USA has ever seen, even among his own party,…
Barometer
Starting cold Why is US Presidential Inauguration Day always on 20 January? — The date was moved from 4 March…
