Category: Britain
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook Bye bye Bronny – behind the sacking of the Speaker
The sacking of Speaker Bronwyn Bishop is a significant blow to the hard right coterie supporting the “Mad Monk”, aka Prime Minister Tony Abbott. She is a factional warrior and a bag lady for the Liberal Party’s NSW division. She joined the Liberals at the age of 17 and camped in the Senate from 1987…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Peter Smark praised by Vietnamese war hero
The late Australian journalist Peter Smark is recalled with affection and respect by Vietnam’s most honoured spy, Pham Xuan An, whose double life made a major contribution to the NLF’s 1975 victory. Smark was a war correspondent in Saigon in the early 1960s when An worked for Reuters (later he became a senior reporter with…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Alan Jones and Rene Rivkin’s Oxford scholarship: for whom?
In May 2002, convicted Sydney stockbroker Rene Rivkin was desperate to obtain bail and avoid serving a weekend detention sentence. His friends rallied and wrote in glowing terms to the judge hoping to persuade him that Rivkin should be spared the shame and humiliation of a weekend at Silverwater Jail. One of those to write…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Oz mercenaries in the Boer War
Between 1899 and 1902 some 16,000 Australian volunteers travelled to South Africa to take up arms against the Dutch white settlers. Australia’s irregular militiamen, i.e. mercenaries, served under the Union Jack using arms and ammunition supplied by the British army. Some “bushmen” travelled at their own expense but most were paid with private donations from…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Please, don’t erect a shrine in Martin Place
I walked through Sydney’s Martin Place on Wednesday, June 3, the day after vandals smashed windows of the Lindt Café, the scene of the fatal siege last December. The footpath was crowded with television cameras, photographers, tourists and rubber-neckers. People were taking “selfies” with the café as a backdrop. In their own way, so was…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Abbott starts having delusions of grandeur
The age of entitlement is over, according to Tony Abbott, but not for his own family. While he orders Australians to tighten their belts to rein in the ballooning deficit, Abbott is loosening his own, and we are footing the bill. The family’s latest taxpayer-funded scam is to turn the historic Kirribilli House into their…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Abbott’s Budget heralds an early federal election
This week’s Federal Budget was not about Australia’s economic future. And it wasn’t about the future of the country either. Its overriding purpose was to rescue Prime Minister Tony Abbott. It was the “Save Abbott” budget. It sets the stage for a snap federal election between now and the end of the year. He has…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Only a Royal Commission will tell who’s got Bali blood on their hands
A royal commission remains the only way to establish the facts about the complicity of John Howard’s security committee, the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and ASIS in the arrest the Bali Nine drug smugglers and this week’s execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Senator Nick Xenophon’s well-meaning parliamentary committee inquiry should not become an…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – ANZAC spirit tainted by Abbott and greed
Politicians, the media, the RSL and the military lobby have kicked an own goal. Incredibly, they have managed to tarnish the Anzac legend and turn off a large number of Australians. How did they do it? By crassly politicising the event and grossly commercialising it. The Abbott Government invested some $200 million in the 100th…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Abbottwatch latest: he’s a goner
Tony Abbott is gone as Prime Minister. The only pertinent questions are how and when. All this week’s speeches, interviews and TV broadcasts are the actions of a desperate politician trying to save his skin. They won’t work. When he said that 2014 had been a “year of achievement”, voters shrank in horror. When he…