Record business collapses… I am not surprised
Was Lehrmann’s presumption of innocence left in the ‘lions’ den’?
It was over dinner that a former senior Australian Federal Police investigator brought it up. A question no one appears…
The modern obsession with ‘green’ investment
The recently deceased Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway was arguably the most successful investor ever. He was noted for his…
‘E-safety’: the new thought police
Give an inch and they’ll take a mile – it is fair to say Australians are waking up to the…
Is there a plot afoot to get rid of Albo?
Speculation, of course, but Albanese is either uncommonly talented in the art of self-destruction, or Labor is getting ready to…
Record business collapses… I am not surprised
A record 7,747 companies hit the wall in the first nine months of this financial year, according to last weekend’s…
Men: locked up without trial
This is an experienced criminal lawyer talking about the men, the increasing proportion of our prison population, who find themselves…
What’s mined is yours
If you thought you understood the seemingly endless line of new Indigenous terminology, two more were recently coined by the…
Australia’s global advocacy for the suppression of free speech
The Australian government has recently announced its plan to rejuvenate its contentious ‘misinformation and disinformation’ legislation, which had been shelved…
The Covid vaccine is dead! Long live the Covid vaccine…?!
Did you know that four years after the Great Covid Pandemonium erupted, vaccine mandates are still being enforced in the…
Energy fog – trust your lying eyes
Attending an Anzac Day service, I only noticed the fog as it lifted and the sun emerged. In a similar…
The heir of Orwell
It took 1,084,170 words for JK Rowling to tell the story of Harry Potter. Spanning seven books and a decade,…
Oh no, don’t meme me!
Leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, is terrified of memes. Specifically, Winnie-the-Pooh. Since July 2017, the harmless bear has…
Punishing Petrovsky
It was Walter Map in his 12th century work ‘On the Trifles of Courtiers’ who created the character Eudo, who…
Albanese abridging too far
We have a serious problem in this country with governments wanting to silence views they don’t like. Let me remind…
Do fact-checkers check the facts?
Government should never have the power to determine what is or is not the truth, let alone silence dissenting views.…
Even Bernie Fraser thinks it’s a dumb idea
I’ve said it before, but Albo really has a way with words. You know the sort of thing: good is…
The Cass review and gender woo
The Cass Review into Britain’s National Health Service’s child-gender care services has recently been published. The review demolishes the entire…
Immigration challenges in the era of Islam
The motion was never going to pass, but the debate was needed in 2017 as much as now. The Sydney…
Community safety or grubby politics?
The highest duty of a government is the safety of its citizens and the current Labor government has betrayed this…
X rated
I am truly surprised. In fact, I am staggered. I thought there was not a single menber of parliament in…
The NHS has finally seen sense on biological sex
Sex is a biological fact, the NHS declared this morning. Seriously, if the health service was ever in any doubt…
Why Britain’s Rwanda Bill has rattled Emmanuel Macron
Britain’s Rwanda Bill has exposed the deep divisions in France between how the people and the political elite regard mass…
Watch: Deputy FM accidentally announces leadership bid
It’s a gaffe a day with the SNP. Even with hapless Humza stepping down, the Nats are still slipping up.…
The truth about Ireland’s £600 million Brexit ‘bonanza’
Ireland is reaping the benefits of a Brexit bonus to the tune of €700 million (£600 million). It is not…
Why New Zealand is cracking down on immigration
The government of New Zealand this week tightened the country’s working visa rules in order to stem historically high numbers…
Why is New Zealand’s deputy PM rowing with Chumbawamba?
In their musical heyday, the English anarchist punk band Chumbawamba enjoyed a reputation for having an irreverent attitude towards those…
New Zealand’s imperial judiciary
If you cast your eyes across the Tasman right now, you can see the beginnings of an imperial judiciary, the…
Subversion within New Zealand
Recently querying why New Zealand governments make annual January pilgrimages to the Maori Pa at Ratana, to celebrate the birth…
The Xi files: how China spies
Taylor Swift is a rotter
Taylor Swift has released another album spilling the beans on her private life. ‘I’d written so much tortured poetry in…
The barbarity of this man
It’s a spectacle a lot of people would kill to see: Hugo Weaving in a Sydney Theatre Company co-production of…
Shylock and the Nazis: the truth about Shakespeare’s most infamous character
None of William Shakespeare’s characters are more controversial than Shylock. The moneylender from The Merchant of Venice may be the…
The music of their eloquence
It was a tweet by the novelist Joyce Carol Oates that warned us PBS, the American public broadcaster, had done…
The naming of cats
All sorts of animals have been kept as pets over the centuries. We know of sparrows in Catullus and John…
The slave’s story: James, by Percival Everett, reviewed
Rereading The Adventures of Huckle-berry Finn can be a saddening experience. It’s not just the oft-repeated n-word that jolts, then…
The identical twins who captivated literary London
The dazzlingly beautiful identical twins Mamaine and Celia Paget were born in 1916 and brought up in rural Suffolk –…
Alone and defenceless: the tragic death of Captain Cook
The principal purpose of Captain James Cook’s last voyage, which began in Plymouth on 12 July 1776, was to discover…
What does Christian atheism mean?
Two opposed camps can only have a fruitful debate if they agree on what it is they disagree about. A…
Four female writers at the court of Elizabeth I
Almost a century ago, in A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf claimed that if William Shakespeare had had an…
The circus provides perfect cover for espionage
The hall was before me like a gigantic shell, packed with thousands and thousands of people. Even the arena was…
Hero and villain: The Two Loves of Sophie Strom, by Sam Taylor, reviewed
Counterfactual thinking can be compelling. We imagine love affairs missed out on, tragedies averted. What if I hadn’t boarded that…