AT school in Townsville just after World War Two we used to sing “There’ll always be an England” at the top of our tiny voices. The robust patriotic song, written in 1939, looks a little shakey in 2012. In Britain today most people accept that the country is on its knees but citizens – at…
I went to the British Library’s current exhibition anticipating that it would be interesting. What I didn’t expect was that it would move me to tears. Writing Britain is a history of landscape presented through works of literature, from the original manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to Dickens and Woolf. It reunited me with some…
The shocking overnight news from Fairfax – 1900 job cuts and press closures in Sydney and Melbourne – comes like a bolt from the blue. I’m lying. It was entirely predictable. Australia’s oldest newspaper group has been run by dolts, social climbers, profit gougers, chancers and failed business types for at least 30 years. Fairfax…
I first arrived in London 45 years ago on the P&O passenger liner Oronsay. It was a six-week trip that cost me 200 bucks. I spent my first night in the Mount Pleasant Hotel, a two-star lodging previously used as a hostel for drunks and down-and-outs. This time I arrived on Royal Thai Airways (Brisbane-Bangkok)…
John Lanchester’s novel Capital, which I began reading in the plane on the way over, is great preparation for a visit here. In it he takes the inhabitants of a gentrified London street – everyone from the financial trader to the family in the corner shop – through the GFC. It’s a funny, touching, hugely…
ONE of my literary heroes, Robert Louis Stevenson (Kidnapped and Treasure Island), once said: “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” In the past I shared the great man’s view, but not now. Travel for “travel’s sake” is tourism and, to…
THE right-wing H R Nicholls Society will hold its 32nd annual shindig in Melbourne today with the usual conga-line of trade union haters.Guest speaker at tonight’s dinner will be Kathy Jackson, national secretary of the Health Services Union.Yes, that’s the Ms Jackson who is leading the campaign to have Craig Thomson, Labor MP for Dobell,…
We’re embarking on the next phase of the great adventure – this time in Europe. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you our reports and thoughts on developments there. In the months since Come the Revolution was launched in Australia Alex has spoken to hundreds of people in bookshops from Brisbane to Bowral,…
Linda Scott, Labor’s candidate to oppose Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore at the September election, has form.She was Labor’s candidate to oppose Ms Moore for the seat of Sydney at the State Election in 2007.In the run-up to the election Scott received a generous $20,000 campaign donation from Kristine Keneally, MP for Heffron who eventually…
Thirteen months ago the Gillard Cabinet approved the introduction of Migration Employment Agreements between the giant mining houses and the Department of Immigration.It followed intense talks between Gillard and the mining groups over the mining tax. Gillard wanted an across the board agreement with Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Xstrata and the Australian mining billionaires and…
