Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
A Storm is Coming on the Chiltern Hills
Prince, Prince-Elective on the modern plan,
Fulfilling such a lot of People’s Wills,
You take the Chiltern Hundreds while you can—
A storm is coming on the Chiltern Hills.
—G.K. Chesterton
When a Member of Parliament in Britain decides to retire, he applies for the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, which as an office of profit under the Crown is incompatible with representing the people and requires his departure from the House of Commons. The other way of leaving the Commons is to be voted out by your constituency electorate at election time. By and large MPs prefer to leave voluntarily. Many of them must now be thinking that a sinecure in the Chilterns is better than a principality in Utopia.
For in the short time since Theresa May postponed Britain’s departure from the European Union from the long-promised date of March 29 to October 31—which itself may be postponed yet again—the log-jam that has been UK politics for the…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
