This week we remember the election of John Howard's Government, twenty-five years ago.  How the time as flown.  Mostly Howard is remembered with affection.  Some even have suggested that he was our greatest prime minister.  Was he that good?  Was his Government the best?  Sober reflection is required, and hindsight helps.

The current penchant that governments and many citizens have for "Covidocracy" looks like becoming permanent.  This is despite the initial promise of the silver bullet vaccine.  Those who, quite legitimately, question the efficacy of the jab, are prone to made pariahs.  Rather, they should be lauded as the rational ones among us, and thanked for pointing out the massive contradictions of vaccine politics.

Around a year ago, Rush Limbaugh was diagnosed with late stage lung cancer.  He has now passed away.  Like the also recently departed Sir Roger Scruton, Rush was a conservative titan.  He also revolutionised American media.  I penned this article - unpublished until now - i early 2020.

What we now know as "Big Tech" was once a series of little techs, brave start-ups taking on the world.  Not only did these entrepreneurs end up overturning the business world.  They have taken over everything.  And the result is far from pretty.

The Victorian Parliament recently passed horrific legislation designed to solve a problem that does not exist and, in doing so, trod all over the rights of families, medical practitioners, those experiencing unwanted same sex attraction and the Church.

The Christian churches, their beliefs, their sacred practices and their pastors are under attack.  From new atheists, secularists, progressives - and from the state itself.  The state's assumption of extraordinary and dictatorial powers during the year of Covid has not been without impact on the Church.  The Covid state has imposed all sorts of restrictions on the faithful.  Caesar has taken more than his due.

Losing Trump was just like losing Abbott.  Two feisty conviction politicians with much in common have been lost to the West.  Their many enemies are grinning.  We will miss them both.  (A version of this article appears in the 6 February 2021 edition of The Spectator Australia).

The great Margaret Court is under attack.  Again.  For being a Christian with mainstream Christian beliefs, about marriage.  Our society stands at the brink, when citizens are vilified for having mainstream beliefs.

The year 2020 will go down in history as the year China's long-term strategies for global domination and short-term tactics to achieve it paid off big time.  And they used a virus to do it.

The journalists Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon are outstanding practitioners of their craft.  They have written a must-read, cracking story of Australia's worst ever legal fiasco.  Naturally, it involves Victoria Police.