Make Australia Great Again!

It’s not hard to make the argument that on many fronts Australia has regressed in recent years. Our standard of living in real terms has diminished over the term of the Albanese government. Whilst our GDP, masked by record migration might have increased, our percapita GDP has fallen. We have endured high levels of inflation […]

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Breaking Through the Woke Barrier

Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist. In his 1979 book Distinction, Bourdieu introduced the concept of symbolic capital. In contrast with more conventional notions of resources, such as wealth and material assets, Bourdieu argued that symbolic capital is the resource available to an individual on the basis of prestige, celebrity status and public recognition. A […]

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The Palestine Dilemma

On 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists emerged from Gaza to commit an horrendous atrocity against Israeli civilians. This deadly incursion has been well documented so I won’t elaborate on the gruesome details. Inevitably Israel responded with deadly force in order to deter further aggression and to rescue the civilian hostages that Hamas had kidnapped during […]

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The Downside of a University Education

At the age of eighteen, I left my family home in Charters Towers to start an engineering degree at James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville. In those days it was quite an extraordinary thing to do! In my high school years I can only remember two students in the cohort that I knew ahead of […]

Continue Reading

Make Australia Great Again!


It’s not hard to make the argument that on many fronts Australia has regressed in recent years. Our standard of living in real terms has diminished over the term of the Albanese government. Whilst our GDP, masked by record migration might have increased, our percapita GDP has fallen. We have endured high levels of inflation […]

April 20, 2025

Breaking Through the Woke Barrier


Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist. In his 1979 book Distinction, Bourdieu introduced the concept of symbolic capital. In contrast with more conventional notions of resources, such as wealth and material assets, Bourdieu argued that symbolic capital is the resource available to an individual on the basis of prestige, celebrity status and public recognition. A […]

April 11, 2025

The Palestine Dilemma


On 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists emerged from Gaza to commit an horrendous atrocity against Israeli civilians. This deadly incursion has been well documented so I won’t elaborate on the gruesome details. Inevitably Israel responded with deadly force in order to deter further aggression and to rescue the civilian hostages that Hamas had kidnapped during […]

March 27, 2025

The Downside of a University Education


At the age of eighteen, I left my family home in Charters Towers to start an engineering degree at James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville. In those days it was quite an extraordinary thing to do! In my high school years I can only remember two students in the cohort that I knew ahead of […]

March 15, 2025

The Perfidy of God


Well, after this essay my soul is likely to be sentenced to eternal damnation in Hell, but I can’t but help share with you some of my reservations about conventional religious beliefs. Traditional monotheistic religions have been largely constructed by those who have claimed to have had particular, personal access to God. In ancient times […]

February 27, 2025

The Manufacturing of Muhammad


Some years ago I wrote an essay which I titled The Most Famous Man who never Lived which critiqued the mythology that had been created to support the notion that an extraordinary man, who purported to be the Son of God lived on this earth some two millennia ago who held the keys to eternal […]

February 18, 2025

Recovering from Wokeness


I have written in previous essays of how wokeness has permeated the fabric of Western democracies. In many ways it has impacted on our sense of self with its promotion of identity politics and its denigration of our history and traditional culture. Consequently we are encouraged by the left to view ourselves very differently to […]

February 10, 2025

The Waning of Woke?


Whilst in my younger years I was much more progressive in my political point of view, as often seems to be the trend (we can only hope for the same with Greta Thunberg!), But as I’ve grown older I must confess I have become more conservative in my thinking (in case you haven’t noticed). My […]

January 28, 2025

Some More Thoughts on Knowing, Consciousness and Time


In 2009 I published a little book of parables which was titled Augustus Finds Serenity. In the introduction to the book, I outlined the reason why I had sought to use the medium of metaphor and parable to outline the concepts that I thought were useful in helping people live more fulfilled lives. I started […]

January 18, 2025

In the Beginning


In the Beginning In The Sound of Music, Julie Andrews sang: Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could.. (Lyrics from Something Good.) I suspect she wasn’t trying to make a philosophical statement but in fact she made a very profound statement. When we study cosmology we try to understand how the universe began. Science suggests […]

January 5, 2025