"You need to have a government that supports local culture, that is not frightened of it and supports the arts. When you have a government that is frightened of the arts and starts slashing and cutting all over the place, it makes people fearful and people constrict and that is the opposite of creativity.
"If you look at London now, obviously there's been enormous flaws with the Blair government but, having spent the best part of a year there recently, it has really opened up and that's a lot to do with the pride in cultural product that seems to happen under Labour governments."

a parish priest in Suffolk[,] will be at the county’s Waveney Greenpeace festival this weekend to hear eco-confessions in what is thought to be the first dedicated confessional booth of its kind

"Scores is a gentleman's club and Mr Rudd behaved like a gentleman."

Scores is a strip joint and Mr Rudd behaved like a typical patron of a strip joint.

...the white indigenous English working-class is now the one group you can insult without feeling the breath of the Commission for Racial Equality on your neck, which makes it pretty damn cowardly apart from being what I call “social racism”...

If the Left could rid themselves of this snobbish elitist attitude, they might actually have a chance of understanding the people they look down upon.

In case you hadn't noticed, the global warming debate has now escalated from a minor skirmish to an all-out war. Although we who are skeptical of the claim that global warming is mostly manmade have become accustomed to being the ones that take on casualties, last week was particularly brutal for those who say we have only 8 years and 5 months left to turn things around, greenhouse gas emissions-wise.

On Friday, just before the Bulletin came out with its story that Peter Costello had talked big of toppling John Howard - a story damaging to both - Sportingbet noticed something strange.
It was getting a flood of bets - up to 30 - backing Malcolm Turnbull as the next Liberal leader. One bet was of $10,000, and the odds were driven down from $6.50 to $3.10.
“It’s a good, old-fashioned plunge,’’ the head of Sportingbet told 3AW’s breakfast show this morning.

Traitors are either shot or imprisoned. I wonder which Robert Kennedy has in mind for the skeptics.

At the same time as appearing in the 1972 film The Godfather, Al Pacino was apparently engaged in absolutely no organized crime.

The Government's $37 million campaign to sell its workplace legislation was in tatters last night after allegations that an actor in a Workplace Authority advertisement was himself a bad employer who ripped off junior staff to the tune of thousands of dollars.

Joe Hockey last night pulled the ad "Protection for under-18s" off air after The Age asked him about the history of one of the actors, Damien Richardson, who until recently had a painting business employing youngsters.

On the Edge of Silence
A Chorus of Women will use drama, poetry and music to create an emotional response to climate change that explores how science and the arts twine together to speak deep truths.
The presentation will be followed by a discussion about climate change science and policy with the audience and invited participants.

standing around in the Stone Age muttering that no good will come of this new-fangled wheel business, it will just create a two-tiered society: those with wheels and those without.