In Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass, a would-be assassin attempts to excise his soul from the stain of murder by “pre-emptive penance”. Every day of his life, Father Luis Gomez performs intense penance for sins he hasn’t committed. The idea is that doing so builds up a “credit
Save us from left-wing politicians desperate to save their electoral bacon against all odds. Faced with collapsing poll numbers, left-wing governments will do what left-wing governments always do — only more so. Spend, spend, spend: the more of other people’s money they can waste, the better. No mountain of debt
There’s something very noticeable about people who haul their kids along to “Drag Queen Story Hour”, or celebs who parade their they/them offspring for the paparazzi. The overwhelming smugness. The obvious, preening joy at the attention they’re receiving. They’re merely the latest iteration of the infamous
It’s a well-known fact that nobody is allowed to talk about, that transgenderism is heavily correlated with a range of mental health issues. Indeed, more and more psychologists are summoning the courage to publicly state the grim truth: “gender dysphoria” is not a standalone condition, it’s a co-morbidity.
If a flying saucer landed on the outskirts of a Nebraska farming town and the locals completely ignored it, and went about their humdrum business, they’d be sneered at as brain-dead rednecks. What if the aliens persisted in trying to get attention by walking into the town square? And
As George Orwell pointed out so long ago, the left are hypocrites at heart. They rail against ‘exploitation’, but their standard of living ‘demands that the robbery shall continue’. Nowhere is that more true than when it comes to the housing crisis. For all their pearl-clutching about renters and bastard
The Albanese government boasts about its record number of Muslim MPs. How’s that working out for them? Bear in mind, too, that some of its most senior ministers preside over seats with sizeable Muslim voting blocs. The government’s very hold on power largely depends on Western Sydney – dominated
Many years ago, I was debating the so-called “climate crisis” with a left-wing mover and shaker. He was adamant that the global population had to be reduced to two billion people within the next 50 years. Running some quick calculations brought up some disturbing outcomes of his policy. If this
One of the most persistent tropes in fiction, from Sherlock Holmes to superheroes, is the ‘criminal genius’. In real life, though, criminals are almost always far from geniuses. If they were that smart, they’d find legal ways to make buckets of money. And geniuses often make pretty lousy criminals.
In the comedy The Switch, the protagonist early on briefly encounters a homeless person who appears to be narrating his inner thoughts out loud, in a continuous, verbal, stream-of-consciousness. Taxi. Taxi driver. Taxi, taxi, taxi, taxi. Fat, pedaling, hooker-looking bitch. Pig-faced… Pig-faced, gimpy, limping mama. Man-boy. Little man-boy. Beady-eyed little
When it comes to Maltese food, pastizzi are essential. These succulent parcels of crisp, golden, filo-like pastry are the signature Maltese snack, sold as street food and indispensible at family gatherings. There is really nothing else quite like them: spanakopita are perhaps the closest, but pastizzi are in a class
It’s strange how many supposed “mysteries” persist in the popular imagination, long after they’ve been pretty much solved. The Bermuda Triangle, Stonehenge, the Tunguska explosion, the “Missing Link”. And, of course, how the Great Pyramids were built. There’s not much mystery left about how the pyramids were
It’s quite often said that people got rid of their records and bought CDs, now they’re getting rid of their CDs and buying records. I never did either. I kept all my records and bought CDs. In fact, I bought a bunch of records at bargain prices when
There’s a mania, lately, for “repatriating” museum pieces collected during the “colonial” era. To which should be applied a rule of thumb, first suggested by YouTuber Carl Benjamin: if we had to dig it up, you never wanted it, anyway. Apocryphally, a frustrated Howard Carter reminded stonewalling Egyptian officials
History is littered with the unintended consequences of disastrous environmental policy. However well-meaning. As Michael Crichton outlines, in his novel State of Fear, “management” of Yosemite has lurched from one disaster to another. To protect elk, park managers shot wolves. Elk populations exploded, stripping trees needed by beavers for dam-building.
