Author: Rafe Champion

  • Andrew Norton on higher education policy

    Andrew Norton (the only classical liberal in Carlton) has made a career out of keeping an eye on developments in higher education after a spell as the editor of the Policy quarterly at the Centre for Independent Studies. This is a meditation on 25 years in the business. Twenty-five years ago today I started my…

  • Gary Johns and Karl Popper on ethnic self-determinism

    Gary Johns has written a lucid and compelling book to support the resistance to The Voice (The Burden of Culture, Quadrant books.) He points out that the demand goes far beyond fixing obvious problems to something very different – the demand for self-determism for ethnic and racial minorities. Popper sounded an alarm about this movement…

  • Downside of EVs. Not enough power

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/12/29/energy-crisis-risks-dooming-electric-car/ EXTRACT Western societies are charging into the electrification of transport and heating without actually providing the electricity. This cannot be wished away. In January, the then secretary of state for trade in Britain, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, told Parliament that “we are going to be requiring up to four times as much electricity” to meet demand for…

  • Congratulations to the British Free Speech Union

    This is the summary report of the activities of the FSU in 2022. Congratulations to Toby Young and his colleagues. BTW Toby has a regular column in The Spectator.

  • Blackouts – the new normal?

    Early in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith watched his fellow citizens react to an announcement that the government was “raising” their chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. Winston remembered the announcement from the previous day, however: the government was reducing the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. He marveled as everyone all celebrated what…

  • The modern slave trade

    From the transcript People need to know about this… Never throughout the history of slavery has there been more suffering that generated more profit that was linked to the lives of more people around the world… Preview YouTube video The Disturbing Reality of Cobalt Mining for Rechargeable Batteries Who are the modern slave traders? When…

  • Offshore Wind.

    From The Guardian: Australia’s first offshore windfarm zone … will be on Victoria’s Gippsland coast, which environmental advocates have labelled a game-changer. “It is one of the most significant wind resources anywhere in the world,”the premier, Daniel Andrews, said, referring to powerful winds from the Bass Strait. The projects are expected to support more than…

  • Genital cutting

    Not my favourite topic but someone had to say it. While there is animated discussion about the mutilation of girls who have been persuaded that they want to be boys there is another kind of female mutilation that has been under the radar for some time. What is going on? I don’t have time to…

  • Rafe’s Roundup 19 Dec

    Roundup of Partners and Fellow-Travellers Drop in and see what they are up to! The Energy Realists of Australia Jo Nova Quadrant on line IPA         Climate and energy program  CIS          The Sydney Institute Menzies Research Centre  Mannkal Economics Education Foundation           Advance Australia  Taxpayers Alliance  Australian Inst for Progress The Conservative Vagabond The Rathouse and The Site of…

  • Meet the classical liberal vagabond

    There is a quiet achiever on the liberal/conservative scene, the indefatigable and mercurial Dara Macdonald. Thinker. Writer. Reader. Freedom enthusiast. Conservative Vagabond. Cocktail maker. Lawyer. Dara Macdonald is an Australian lawyer and founder. Dara has worked as in-house legal counsel for various national and multinational companies. Last year she took up a year-long research position with Australia’s…