Category: Britain
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Rudd’s party reform: the real agenda
When the Federal Parliamentary Labor Caucus meets in Canberra on Monday, July 22, it will be a red letter day in the 120-year history of Australia’s oldest party. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has seized his return to the Prime Ministership and his soaring popularity to insist on a dramatic reform of the Labor Party. He…
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Ms Gillard prepares a legacy for herself
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has switched her attention from winning the next election to legacy-building. As her re-election hopes grow dimmer, Australia’s first female Prime Minister is concentrated on establishing her place in Labor history. Take the May Budget, the final budget before the government faces the electorate on September 14. It was not a…
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What was Thatcher’s greatest crime?
An epitaph for Margaret Thatcher, the grocer’s daughter from Grantham? “Reactionary, vindictive, mean-spirited, philistine, cruel, quintessential little Englander.” High points of her cold brutality included the war over the Malvinas (Falklands), crushing the miners’ strike and the Fleet Street print workers (for her ally Rupert Murdoch) and planting US cruise missiles in England after brutally…
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Thatcher and the class divide
Spare me all the guff about Margaret Thatcher. British Labour leader Ed Miliband says that “we can disagree and also greatly respect her achievements”. Here in Australia Labor leaders, including Julia Gillard and Penny Wong, follow suit. I don’t respect her. We didn’t have “disagreements”. We were on opposite sides of the biggest battle between…
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Scottish writer’s stand on Palestine
There’s sad news about Iain Banks, the Scottish novelist. He has cancer, and only months to live. His brilliantly imaginative novels include The Wasp Factory and The Crow Road, and he can also write in a lighter vein. I liked his satirical post-9/11 thriller Dead Air. There must have been something in the air in…
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Who drove nurse to commit suicide?
An official inquiry in London has vowed to leave no stone unturned in investigating all the circumstances of the suicide of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, the 46-year-old mother of two. What unbearable pressure was placed on Mrs Saldanha after she unwittingly transferred a prank call from a Sydney radio station to the ward where Mrs Kate…
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NSW Labor’s revival starts at the Radisson
Sam Dastyari has two jobs: general secretary of the NSW Labor Party and head honcho of the state branch of the right-wing faction known as Centre Unity. How do I know? I’ve received an email invitation from Dastyari to the 2012 Centre Unity Christmas Party on Tuesday, December 18, starting at 6pm. The card ends…
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Behind the Israel-Hamas conflict
It’s a fortnight since President Barack Obama was re-elected to the White House and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has started to feel the heat. On the eve of the election, “Bibi” went to the UN General Assembly in New York and produced his ludicrous poster at the rostrum depicting the supposed time line for…
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A many-splendoured writer
Han Suyin, who died in Lausanne last week at the age of 96, was a writer who bridged cultures. Born in imperial China of a Flemish Belgian mother and a Chinese father, she was best known in her lifetime as the author of the 1952 satirical novel of Hong Kong expat life, A Many-Splendoured Thing,…
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Behind the savaging of Sir Jimmy Savile
The English are passing through one of their periodic fits of morality and the cause célèbre de jour is the late disc jockey Jimmy Savile. Why do Australians have to be dragged into this morass of English public hypocrisy? Here’s some background to consider … Jimmy Savile, a hugely popular radio and TV presenter, was…