… where politics & culture meet
I emerged from the WA premiere of This Changes Everything in a foul mood. To get to the cinema – in Innaloo: not the most charming neck of the woods – I’d had to sit in heavy traffic for an hour and a half, moving barely at all. Arriving at the cinema one minute before... Continue Reading →
Parnassus after all is not a mountain Reserved for A.1. climbers such as you; It’s got a park, it’s got a public fountain. The most I ask is leave to share a pew With Bradford or with Cottam, that will do … Reading these lines from ‘Letter to Lord Byron’ (1936) on this, the occasion... Continue Reading →
The official launch of the Australian Liberty Alliance in Perth on Tuesday afternoon brings to a head a disturbing trend in Australian politics: the tendency of the anti-Muslim right to cast its ideology in what we might call ‘civic nationalist’ terms. Taking its cue from the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, whose Party for Freedom was... Continue Reading →
When Geert Wilders assumes the podium at the launch of the Australian Liberty Alliance tomorrow evening – looking, one assumes, as he always does, like a Disney prince in a hall of mirrors – he will do so not just as the representative of a particularly nasty strain of anti-Muslim prejudice but as a living... Continue Reading →
‘I was born with a natural disposition toward shallowness’ writes New York Times columnist David Brooks in his introduction to The Road to Character. As Brooks would be the first to admit, this isn’t a bad quality for a columnist to have: the demands of regular opinion writing are such that the big-name commentator is... Continue Reading →
East Grinstead in the 1980s was not the most fascinating place for a teenager. Its historic buildings; its pioneering hospital; the fact that it adjoins the Ashdown Forest, one of the finest examples of heathland in England and the model for the Hundred Acre Wood, in which Pooh and Christopher Robin were wont to frolic:... Continue Reading →
It may surprise you to know (but then again it may not) that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were in favour of free trade. For them it was one of the glories of capitalism that it could move across the globe at will – transforming everything in its path, ripping up the past and tearing... Continue Reading →
Even as Yanis Varoufakis was resigning as Greece’s Minister of Finance last week, he was proclaiming a victory for democracy. The July 5 referendum, in which the Greek population rejected the austerity measures imposed upon it by the Eurozone countries, was, he said, a ‘unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage’.... Continue Reading →
In July 2014 a gay rights activist named Gareth Lee ordered a cake from Ashers bakery in Belfast. The commission was for a large square sponge bearing the legend ‘Support Gay Marriage’ and the logo of an organisation called QueerSpace. It was also to feature Bert and Ernie, the Sesame Street characters whose sexuality is... Continue Reading →
‘I take a bath every month,’ Elizabeth I is purported to have said, ‘whether I need one or not’. Clearly, hygiene standards change, and it is very honest of Ruth A. Morgan to confess, in her preface to Running Out?, to her ‘love affair with the washing machine’ and ‘penchant for long, hot showers’. But,... Continue Reading →
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.