If COVID takes the cake when it comes to hysteria, climate-change alarmism is not far behind -- the grim prospects each elicits keeping choirs of garrulous 'experts' before the cameras. Meanwhile, the virus of China's predatory ambitions rolls relentlessly along. A little perspective would not go astray

Read More

We have heard much lately of women's empathy, their charity, how they care more about people, the community, the environment. Let me balance this sexist stereotyping with its obverse: Manifested at the ballot box, those same alleged virtues have long fouled the political process, the sainted Margaret Thatcher being the exception that proves the rule

Read More

Why is capitalism so often in the firing line of Christian churches? Perhaps they believe the Bible's enjoinment to share with the poor does not sit easily with the acquisitiveness that drives free enterprise. If so, today's Good Friday holiday is as good a moment as any to read this essay from Quadrant's archives and think again

Read More

The Porter case tells us everything we need to know about the pathetic age we inhabit, from its rabble-rousing media hacks to mediocre politicians and talentless toadies enjoying unnatural relations with office furniture. By the way, aren’t those aforementioned desk molesters gay? Hardly mentioned, as it's hetero males who are the designated targets

Read More

Using a grievous assault on a woman or, as recently in London, the heinous murder of a woman, as an opportunity to vent against men in general is not productive. Men are as outraged by such crimes as are women. Men don’t have the answer as to what can be done to prevent the evil of some. Neither do women

Read More

Ladies, be wary of putting yourselves in vulnerable positions, including getting blotto in social situations, as the right to go unmolested is not recognised by villains. Lecturing and hectoring men who are not villains, which is to say the vast and overwhelming majority of us well-behaved XYers, seems rather silly

Read More

MinterEllison's CEO took it upon herself to send a comforting email to the law firm's employees, whom she blithely assumed would be dismayed to learn Christian Porter had become a client. That ignorant and ill-advised memo would be deeply shocking were it not a reflection of the sadly familiar spirit of an era in which mob rule so often trumps the rule of law

Read More

Study England's ledger of national morbidity, as I have been doing to occupy my idle hours, and deaths in 2020 show an unsettling 13 per cent increase. Compare this with the average of the previous five years, however, and the figure that emerges is an increase of just 2 per cent, which hardly justifies the pounding the panic button has been taking

Read More

There is a world of difference between a complainant and a victim. Yet when crimes of a sexual nature are being alleged the term victim is often thrown about. Implicitly this suggests that a crime has indeed been committed and someone, often known, is the culprit

Read More

I watched with a dismay -- nay, disgust -- as Victoria's Liberals either supported or abstained from voting on their state's appalling Conversion Practices Prohibition Act, much as their South Australian counterparts endorsed the vile Termination of Pregnancy Bill. Make no mistake, evil is not merely afoot, it is endorsed by those who should be its most determined foes

Read More