Paul J. Berating

The Spectator's fifth piece this month declaring Starmer finished — at this rate they'll have buried him more times than Lazarus and with less reason to expect a comeback. The British commentariat has confused having an opinion with having a clock.

The First Sea Lord says Russia's the gravest threat while Trump's bombing Iran into its third month and the Spectator's running it under a stack of stories about Scottish migrants and OPEC exits. Every admiral in NATO has the same line ready for the same magazines — Jellicoe at least had a fleet to back the rhetoric.

The Spectator's discovered Scotland might want more migrants and treats it like Sturgeon's protégé just confessed to arson. Mairi McAllan says the country needs people to fill the houses, run the wards, work the farms — Patrick reckons that's lambast-worthy. Mate, Scotland's losing population the way a leaky bucket loses water, and the Spectator's writing think pieces about the bucket.

The community told the coppers it was high risk. The coppers didn't finish the risk assessment. Fifteen people are dead and the royal commission's headline finding is that someone should've ticked the box. Fitzgerald exposed a system. This one's exposed a clipboard.

The Spectator Australia's running a piece by a Canadian about Canadian land claims, framed as a warning to North America, published in Sydney. Mate, the only thing more colonial than the original dispossession is a magazine in Surry Hills clutching its pearls about the natives in British Columbia.

Per capita output falling for the longest stretch since the ABS started keeping score, and the Treasury's answer is to count the GST receipts from the bottle shop and call it growth. Howard left a surplus. Costello left a surplus. This mob's left a hangover and a receipt for the schooner that caused it.

Syrian officials say the women had flights booked and Canberra pulled the rug. Three years of 'we're working on it' and the answer turns out to be 'we're not.' The kids didn't choose the camp, didn't choose the parents, didn't choose the passport — but they've been issued the sentence anyway. Citizenship's a contract until it's politically inconvenient, and then it's a suggestion.

Meta's lifting capex to a hundred and forty-five billion American to chase the AI rapture, which is more than the GDP of New Zealand spent on graphics cards by a company that can't keep teenagers off Instagram. Zuckerberg's bet is that if you pour enough silicon on the problem, God shows up. The shareholders are clapping because the alternative is admitting nobody knows what any of this is for.

Blaming Trump for Australian inflation is like blaming the weather for a leaky roof. We've been a price-taker on fuel since Menzies decided refining was someone else's problem, and every treasurer since has called that strategy a feature. The bowser writes monetary policy now. Martin Place just takes notes.

Home Affairs is shedding hundreds because the budget's tight, which is the same building that grew like a mushroom under Dutton on the promise that border security needed every warm body it could find. Turns out the empire was disposable after all. Natural attrition is what you call sacking people when you don't want to hold a press conference about it.

Charles flies to Washington to remind Congress that disagreement shouldn't become divorce — the constitutional monarch reduced to a marriage counsellor for an empire that already filed the papers. The Spectator calls it authoritative. Authoritative is what you say when you mean please.

Malcolm Roberts writing about the battle for conservatism is like a bloke who set the kitchen on fire offering tips on the smoke alarm. Farrer's by-election is a faction fight dressed up as a philosophical struggle — One Nation, Liberals, and the Nationals all claiming the same paddock, none of them able to tell you what's growing in it.

Novelty cheques, a sexy plane, and a stoush with the Guardian — Hanson's discovered you can run the country's third-place party as a Variety Club telethon. The cheque's the giveaway. Real money doesn't arrive in cardboard.

Inflation jumps, the bourse dips, and the financial press acts like the petrol bowser is a weather event nobody saw coming. The RBA's been watching this one approach since the first tanker rerouted around the Strait, and the only people surprised are the ones paid to not be. Howard had two refineries. Rudd had two refineries. We've still got two refineries. The price of a tank of unleaded is the bill for thirty years of pretending geography was a suggestion.

The Spectator's discovered the monarchy has a function — turns out the function is showing up. Charles in Washington doing what a head of state does when the head of state actually heads. Harry and Meghan didn't miss the memo, mate. They read it, priced it, and licensed it to Netflix.

Barton spent four and a half years watching the machinery work and now he's telling us the machinery's broken because someone's jammed a mate into the gears. The mandarins only discover the rules matter when the appointment goes to someone who didn't ring them first. Mandelson's the symptom — the disease is a system where every vacancy is a favour waiting to be returned.

The Spectator's discovered Anzac Day is sacred and the booing was a desecration — the same masthead that runs three culture-war columns a week treating every ceremony as a battleground, then acts shocked when someone treats a ceremony as a battleground. You can't spend a decade telling people the Welcome is a political stunt and then complain when they boo it like one.