Polling failure and fraud
Apart from empowering the British people and returning sovereignty to the United Kingdom, Brexit has exploded the myth that betting markets…
Gay Marriage – what the plebiscite question should be
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the 2011 census found about 33,700 same-sex couples in Australia. About 17,600 couples…
Will July 2 give us a dinky-di UKIP of our own?
The most intriguing and under-reported titbit that emerged from last year’s #libspill came in the form of an offhand comment…
In Praise of the Oyster
I do love a good oyster. And I love the fact that here in Toronto it’s okay and acceptable to…
A democratic future for the 75 per cent
You needed only to look at the headlines to realise things had not gone to plan. They were damning; Time…
Sod the Scots (and Australian reporting of Brexit)
Apparently the Scottish are taking their cues from Sir Oswald Mosley these days. Following the destruction of fascism in World…
Don’t take health care reform off the election agenda
Monetarism: tick. De-nationalisation of industry: tick. Europe: big new tick. The results of the Brexit referendum are more significant than…
Labor’s love-hate relationship
Despite the media’s classification of 2016 as a close run contest modern Labor is performing at an historically low level…
Del-Con Notes – D-Day
With the election only days away, it may be useful to re-state the modus operandi Del-Cons should bring to the…
Exit fairness in Brexit reporting
“Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts,” the very first item in the…
Nooooooo!
And so the time has come to choose. The election campaign, which at best can be described as uninspiring and…
Australian notes
Brexit, Del-cons and Trumpkins Later this week it begins. The voters will have their say. First it will happen in…
A sadder, wiser referendum
In June 1975, I was given the heavy responsibility of writing the Telegraph’s ‘light’ op-ed on the conduct of the…
Jonathan Church
To mis-quote Lady Bracknell: losing an artistic director after just 9 months ‘smacks of carelessness’. That is exactly what has…
Turnbull’s Judgement (Day)
This is the second time Malcolm Turnbull has led a national political campaign. The first one ended in tears. This…
Standing with the Yarts
Recently, tweets featuring #istandwiththearts flooded the internet. It was meant to scan ‘I Stand with the Arts’, but I initially…
Business/Robbery etc
The Reserve Bank of Australia has just provided the best election guide for this boring, overlong, misdirected 2016 federal election…
Brown study
I don’t agree with the mainstream media that the election campaign has been dull and boring, except when the media…
Our health debate is terminal
Many politicians in recent history have found it more rewarding to dupe the public with half-truths and hyperbole rather than…
The child is father of the man
Are writers born or made? The answer, by the end of Love from Boy — a selection of Roald Dahl’s…
The artist as lover
Roland Penrose (1900–84) was a Surrealist painter and object-maker, a collector and art world grandee, a writer and organiser of…
2266: 587
Around the perimeter starting at one corner run two lines of a verse (ten words). Two unclued lights give the…
The blank on the map
‘Is Geoff Dyer someone on your radar?’ inquired the courtly literary editor, inviting me to review this book. What a…
The mystery of the waggle-dance
The Dancing Bees is a romantic title, evoking fantasy and fairy tale rather than scientific rigour, but actually this book…
The great depression
If it was not yet ‘The Age of Anxiety’ in 1947, when Auden published his long poem of the same…
