Journal
Articles
Rise again
EVERY TIME ANYONE asks me how I came to Australia, I tell them I was adopted from China. It’s...
Shanghai Baby
On the surface of the globe, for living matter in general, energy is always in excess; the question is...
Sous chef
They have to go. – Trump This is how I remember you: Thursday nights, stray curlsstrong arms, beads & masks,...
I am building a wall
when they ask me what i’m doingat the end of this long campaignwhen they ask which course i’m pursuingthese...
The restorationist impulse
THE CHILDREN COME home from school to be greeted by their mother, who is wearing an apron. They then...
So you want to rule like an autocrat?
NOTE FOR CANDIDATES The word ‘populist’ has lately come to mean white nationalist, alt-right blogger, neo-fascist and so on. These...
Europe, June 2016
The flight path on the screenacross the aisle is a green linejoining the dots from Manchesterthrough Amsterdam, Bucharest,now Istanbul,...
What isn’t there
I DON’T KNOW how to write about something that isn’t there, such as longing. My entire life, it seems,...
When everybody does better
POPULISM – THE WORD – is surging. It has become the label of convenience for journalists, commentators and politicians to pin...
Poking mullock
Q: Did you hear the one about that politician you hate from the party you despise? A: The establishment and...
Discontents
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, the economist Joseph Stiglitz published a book called Globalization and its Discontents (WW Norton, 2002). For...
Sound, drums and light
IN MY LATE-TEENAGE years, I found myself for a time hovering on the border of bogandom. In those long-gone...
