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To infest: (of insects or animals) be present (in a place or site) in large numbers, typically so as to cause damage or disease. “The house is infested with cockroaches.” Late Middle English (in the sense ‘torment, harass’): from French infester or Latin infestare ‘assail’, from infestus ‘hostile’ – Oxford Dictionary People of good heart don’t
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Right, you blue and white striped clowns. The game’s over. It’s time to straighten up the pair of you and all your mates, too: Barrie Cassidy, Fran Kelly, Ian Henderson, and Jon Faine, to name a few. Living off the Crown’s coin, while honest Australians toil away the hours maintaining life and liberty. You’re all
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I’m not sure what world we’re in anymore. The leader of the free world meets a tyrant, one who oppresses his countrymen and women. They emerge after talks as friends. All that had occurred before when, as enemies, they would huff and puff and threaten to blow the other’s house down, gone as surely as
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“I have the absolute right to pardon myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?’’ Indeed. Thus spoke American President Donald Trump. Thus did Trump don the moral and political garb of kings through the ages, from the Sun King, Louis XIV, of France, who ruled beyond the grasp of
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Sometimes, you just get stopped. It’s not a freight train coming at you. It’s not a hurricane tearing towards you. It’s not the rush of traffic bearing down on you. It’s not a question you can’t answer. Sometimes, it’s the voice from a person you don’t know. They’re singing. You were doing one thing –
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Where to find solace in these days of disillusion? How to keep your head above water as the tide of self-interest from the political class rises and, contrary to the natural order, shows no signs of receding? We live, of necessity, under tiers of government, but one that runs under all is the government of
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These are the freedoms we cherish: the freedom not to be asked for identification for no reason, the freedom not to be suspected of being an enemy of the state. The freedom not to be frogmarched out of an airport terminal. The freedom, when asked for identification, to say no. The freedom not to be
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Welcome to the wake. There’s food and drink, tequila mostly, and weed, lots of it, and there’s a band on stage. The band leader says he’s Glenn Miller, but he says he feels like Perry Como. He’s joking. Maybe he believes he needs to, after all, if he didn’t laugh, he’d cry. It’s a wake,
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The whisperings have begun. The Nobel laureate for Literature, if recent history is repeated, may visit these shores this year. There’ll be no readings in quiet surrounds, no book signings nor handshakes. This laureate sings his body of work electric, most of the time. If Bob Dylan does return to Australia, he will be 77.
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Earlier this year, before the Victorian Opposition Leader Matthew Guy zeroed his attention to the highways and roads of this traffic-jammed city, he posited the view that it was a damn fine idea to send the police back into the classroom. Ten schools deemed to be “at risk” (the parameters of risk aren’t quite known)
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