The electorate of Goldstein was named after the suffragist and women’s rights activist Vida Jane Goldstein. She was born in Portland, Victoria in 1869, the eldest of five children and…
Read More
Media should speak more forcefully to the decay in our democratic systems, instead of running interference for ossified and self-serving political cartels. Unsurprisingly, representative democracy will only be rescued by itself - which is to say, by voters overwhelming the vested interests who have proved so adept at gaming it. The emergence of quality independents in 2022 might just be how that rescue begins. (https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7567771/election-2022-a-chance-for-something-better/)
I suspected Nick Coatsworth was out of his depth in the modern world when he responded to a question ‘So who are the people to listen to?” asked of him…
The idiotic James Morrow has been one of the sources of hilarity and ridicule here before, mostly as one of the monumentally gullible, obsessively antiscientific ‘three stooges’ on Sky News…
I love the game of cricket, but have never been much good at it. I used to play for my university, but only in third and fourth grade. Watching the…
I think one of the key things that happens is that there is a belligerent demand for people to position themselves as victims. If you look at the cohort of people who are savagely antivaxxer, not the people who are scared, not the people who are simply misinformed; but if you look at the cohort who are savagely antivaxxer, they tend to be life’s losers. That’s who they are, and those people can either take on a personal narrative of ‘I’m a victim’ or ‘I’m an idiot’, and the ‘I’m a victim’ is a far happier outcome and a far easier thing to resolve. It’s difficult down at the shallow end, and that’s where they are, frankly. (The Drum [45:46], https://iview.abc.net.au/video/NC2107H229S00)
In a previous article on this blog on the decline of religion in English-speaking countries, I mainly concentrated on its decline in Australia, but also related what was happening in…
There were rumours of Gladys Berejiklian being asked to run for a federal seat for many months before her canoodling with Daryl Maguire became public knowledge, but it only really…
I am reading ‘Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist’ by Kate Raworth1,2, and not knowing much about economics, it has been a revelation to me. Every…