So in the Cimitière Montmartre I found one of my heroes. Émile Zola   That is to say, I found the memorial. He is interred at the Panthéon. Why a hero? Amongst his many writings Emile Zola wrote this, which is as relevant today in our political discourse and climate as it was almost [...]

Source: fromupnorth.com on Pinterest   On this definition most of the press, radio and television – at least the “popular” versions – are very small indeed. So are most of the politicians who spewed their vitriol over the last week, including especially Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and the country’s most boring politician since [...]

Where has Sir Roger been? Why has he been absent from his adoring public? Well, first and least, how could Sir Roger satirise Australian politics any more than Australia’s laughingstock politicians were doing by themselves? How could he point out the ridiculous any more clearly than the ridiculous politicians themselves? It is an unavoidable fact [...]

Here is Sir Roger’s advice on asylum seeker/immigration policy for Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and the rest of Australia’s panicked, “pragmatic” [=unethical, immoral and stupid] political elite who are slavishly, and in terror, reacting to the unholy self-righteousness of the christian right, the egomaniacal commentariat and the ignorant unwashed. It comes straight from the bible [...]

Sir Roger does not wish to marry a man. To put it another way, while Sir Roger and Dorothy have many good friends in common, Dorothy and Sir Roger are not Facebook buddies. And Sir Roger does not think that his personal preference for his own life is of any moment or interest whatever in [...]

  The Pacific solution didn’t work. We know that. It made too many people go mad (unless, of course that’s the point and Tony Abbot is in favour of that).   Here’s an idea! While Julia and Tony are cat-fighting over who can think up the most brutal, vicious and inhumane treatment of people seeking [...]

  So Immigration Minister Chris Bowen is moved by humanitarian motives. Probably in the same way as his predecessor Philip Ruddock was a fair dinkum believer in the values of Amnesty International while he was ruthlessly screwing the lives of countless fellow human beings. “Let your heart bleed publicly for the oppressed while cruelly oppressing [...]

What a fucking load of motherfucking dickheaded bullshit those cunts in the Victorian parliament are, trying to impose old-fashioned tight-arsed, pursed-lipped, prune-faced, shrivelled-up, broomstick-arsed moral values on a free people, with their proposed laws against swearing in public. Goodbye barracking at fucking footie matches, for one thing. Or having a bloody beer in the pub. [...]

  David Hume, hero of the Enlightenment, father of skepticism, linchpin of democracy and human rights and freedoms, Happy 300th Birthday! Sir Roger has some understanding of how Hume felt when he said this: “Here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet [...]

Today we celebrate the marriage of an unemployed¹ man, the son of a barking madman and a kindergarten teacher, to a fashion accessory buyer, the daughter of a flight attendant and a flight-attendant-made-good as a mail order salesman. Nothing wrong with that, of course. There are many people who get married every day with a [...]

Some things are just wrong. And xkcd knows where they are: in your head. What are your three wishes, readers? And who do you really want to be rubbing your lamp? And here’s two genies for the price of one. It’s mine, mine, all mine! I’m rich! I’m independently wealthy! I’m comfortably well off! Why [...]

Just a heads up on the NSW election result. As you already know – and here’s something you can bank on – despite all the talk of “change” and “new eras in NSW politics”, nothing is going to change except the names of the people who take the money and the names of the “mates”. [...]

Sir Roger tells me he really didn’t want to have to write anything today. He has a new pair of Wellington boots and they are chafing his heels. He just wants to put his feet up and go to that nothing box men go to where women are not allowed. Perhaps this will help you [...]

Urgent? What a joke! This morning Sir Roger explosively sprayed the breakfast linen with half-chewed soldiers, the boiled egg in which he’d been dunking them and the Dom he’d being trying to wash it all down with, before bursting into such loud and violent laughter that his butler was so alarmed that he stood behind [...]

“Proud to buggery!” Apart from the wallaby scrotum duffle bags, what did Oprah ask Sir Les to dump? When did Australia discover sex? What have we done about it?