Author: Warwick McFadyen

Alas and alack to be these three syllables: oversight. It’d be exhausting. The work never stops. You get hauled out of bed, away from family and friends such as overshot and overside, at the drop of a hat. You’re on constant call, any time of the day or night. You’re thrown into situations not of your own

How dumb is a rock? The time has come for an answer. We simply cannot have the US President, Donald Trump, hurling it about with gay abandon into public discourse, without an answer.  In the latest incident, Trump described Rex Tillerson (above left), who for barely more than a year was his secretary of state,

“The gift of time in reflection has provided some clarity …” It reads as the opening words of a philosopher, sitting in a bower, contemplating life and offering to the trees and sky an essence of what he or she now would utter on something important, something of a distilled universal nature. But no, not

Terror comes in waves. The first is the bullet, knife or bomb. Then, the maiming or the death. Then there is the grief. The third drops into lives like a large stone dropped into a lake; it radiates out, slams into those directly affected and touches others with fainter ripples. Sometimes, it drowns those over

The race that stopped the nation stopped the horse. So death becomes us, becomes even more part of our culture, but not in a way that grasps us by the throat and sends us into gasps of grief. No, we say it’s tragic and move on. Culture’s collateral damage really. It’s not as if a

The storm in the teacup that was the proposal by Virgin to publicly laud Australia’s war veterans with priority boarding and onboard announcements to other passengers of their presence seems to have faded into the ether.  Which is where it should stay and from where it should never have arisen. After a barrage of criticism,

In a secondhand bookshop, a remarkable discovery has been made. An exercise book, yellow-paged and time-worn, would seem to be an alternative, and abandoned, version of the classic novel Lord of the Flies.  This one, say those who have read extracts, appears to be set in the early 21st century. Adults have replaced the boys,

A park bench. It is spring, the earth is returning to life, a faint warmth can be felt in the air. Two friends are discussing their finances. Rosencrantz: We need a plan no one has thought of. We need a plan to make money that is so original it is startling in its simplicity. We