Brown study
What an eerie coincidence there was last week between Tony Abbott’s visit to Afghanistan, the virtual end of the war…
Melbourne’s academic ‘Potemkin Village’
While reading this book I was reminded of the great ‘scandal’ among New York’s intelligentsia in 1982 when the then…
Good night, sweet prince
Hamlet Belvoir, Sydney, until 1 December While the actual Prince of Denmark was charming Sydney crowds during his visit to…
Songs of love and hate
As Sunday night’s storm clouds gathered, one of rock’s great polymath-storytellers whipped up a tempest of his own on the…
Heston’s brown Dinner
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, a brown cavern in the Mandarin Oriental hotel, Knightsbridge, has won a second Michelin star. These…
The best of times, the worst of times
The comic book Asterix in Switzerland is full of joys, not least the many jokes about Swiss obsessions with tidiness…
Songs of love and hate
As Sunday night’s storm clouds gathered, one of rock’s great polymath-storytellers whipped up a tempest of his own on the…
The human condition in a scuffed yellow line
My preferred route from the Times’s offices in Wapping on to the main road takes me across a precinct then…
The thrill of the bore draw
A successful gambler once told me: ‘Never bet on football, never bet on multipliers, and never ever bet on football…
The thrill of the bore draw
A successful gambler once told me: ‘Never bet on football, never bet on multipliers, and never ever bet on football…
Australian Notes
Good to see the names of another 11 writers added to the Circular Quay Writers’ Walk in Sydney. But can…
Tackling health tourism
It's not cruel to ask foreigners to pay for NHS care — it could recoup billions and relieve overstretched staff
Portrait of the week
Home The government agreed a guaranteed price for electricity that persuaded a consortium led by the French-owned EDF Energy and…
Letters
Ridley’s wrong Sir: In last week’s issue the former Northern Rock chairman rejoiced in the ‘good news’ that climate change…
Arbitration by hedgehog
Since trial by jury is so expensive, government is keen to cut costs on legal aid by ‘alternative dispute resolutions’…
How the Tories can win the next election
Cameron must counter Miliband's promise to freeze energy bills with a 'retail offer' of his own
What do we call the people who abducted Maria? It’s a minefield
With hordes of them expected to settle in the UK soon, we'd better sort out what to call them
Why can’t the BBC be impartial in the climate change debate?
The Beeb constantly resorts to 'experts' whose arguments are bigoted, feeble, fatuous, fallacious and stupid
What is Facebook? That’s the problem – nobody really knows
The beheadings furore shows we forget that social networks aren't public spaces — they're profit-seeking firms
A new nuclear plant is better than a stab in the dark
Plus: Any nuke news is good news; why I'm sure energy companies aren't exploiting me
PCs gone mad
With crime rates plunging, the police are pouncing on innocents instead — and attacking freedom
