This week ACT Independent Senator David Pocock introduced a Bill to ‘protect identity in [a] deepfake future’.
The Bill is titled Online Safety and Other Legislation Amendment (My Face, My Rights) Bill 2025 and will seek to amend the Online Safety Act 2021.
The Bill was introduced merely weeks away from the ‘social media ban’ that will commence on 10 ...
Even if you think you don’t know William Nicholson, it’s a fair bet that you’ve come across his work. If you’ve read those excellent children’s books, The Velveteen Rabbit or Clever Bill, you’ll have taken in his drawings – never wholly sentimental, even the rabbit – into your mental world. And if you’ve seen his woodcuts (they’re everywhere) – say, of ...
The garage owner came at me with an angry expression as I pulled on to his forecourt, which was the last thing I was expecting.
His employee had just crashed head on into the builder boyfriend while driving a sales car and, in my naivety, I was expecting the garage owner to cover the cost of the removal of the resulting wreckage – the written-off ...
Lock up your babies, Brisbane; the Queensland government is considering lifting its ban on keeping dingos as pets. I had always assumed it was illegal to keep dingos as pets anywhere in Australia, possibly because my arrival on these shores was contemporaneous with the overturning of the Lindy Chamberlain conviction. But it seems that poor Azaria’s ...
For Competition 3427 you were invited to write a paean on a place traditionally considered to be ugly.
In an accomplished entry, in which many took inspiration from William McGonagall, the Bard of Dundee, honourable mentions go to Ralph Goldswain, Richard Warren and Elizabeth Kay. The winners, led by Bill Greenwell on the Pompidou Centre, are rewarded ...
‘Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.’ With this stern admonition, the Church has long been a fervent defender of marriage. But as religion has faded as a social force, so too has marriage. The annual number of marriages in the UK has halved since 1970, with a similar decline in the rate in the US.
Does it much matter if people ...
I was in Intermediate (Year 10) or Leaving (Year 11) when my pal and I decided to sign up to participate in School Parliament. Being at a girls’ school, there was the attraction of boys being part of this contrived shindig.
The trouble was that it was extremely boring. All these jumped-up nongs – generally boys with a lot of badges on their blazers – ...
In Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, when Ben Gunn is found by Jim Hawkins, sunburnt and wide-eyed after three years of being marooned on the island, the first thing he asks Hawkins for is cheese: ‘Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese – toasted mostly.’ As a greedy person prone to daydreaming, I’ve often wondered what my ‘cheese – ...
Though Rebecca Culley is obviously a wrong ’un – having stolen £90,000 from her dear old gramps while pretending to care for him and only spend a minimum of his cash on ‘bits and bobs’ – I couldn’t help feeling a flash of admiration for her. When she was caught bang to rights, she diagnosed herself as a ‘spoilt brat’. At last, a person with lousy ...
This November saw a predictable, feverish and self-indulgent burst of dismissal ‘rage’ from the usual suspects, by which I mean principally Paul Kelly and Troy Bramston. At the risk of flogging a dead horse – the ‘Dismissal’ should have been consigned to the realm of pub trivia years ago – I feel I must address a couple of issues in the Sky News ...
End is the title chosen by David Eldridge for his new relationship drama. Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves star as Alfie and Julie, a pair of wildly successful creative types who live in a mansion near Highgate. Both are 59. Alfie is a retired DJ who made a fortune touring the world at the height of the ecstasy craze and Julie earns a living from crime ...
It was such an enticing programme, too. The Philharmonia had booked Evgeny Kissin, the last great piano prodigy of the Soviet era and one of the superstars of the late 1980s and early 1990s. And then there was the music: three Russian showpieces, including Rimsky-Korsakov’s enchanting and almost unplayed (in the UK, anyway) single-movement Piano ...
This week ACT Independent Senator David Pocock introduced a Bill to ‘protect identity in [a] deepfake future’.
The Bill is titled Online Safety and Other Legislation Amendment (My Face, My Rights) Bill 2025 and will seek to amend the Online Safety Act 2021.
The Bill was introduced merely weeks away from the ‘social media ban’ that will commence on 10 ...
Even if you think you don’t know William Nicholson, it’s a fair bet that you’ve come across his work. If you’ve read those excellent children’s books, The Velveteen Rabbit or Clever Bill, you’ll have taken in his drawings – never wholly sentimental, even the rabbit – into your mental world. And if you’ve seen his woodcuts (they’re everywhere) – say, of ...
The garage owner came at me with an angry expression as I pulled on to his forecourt, which was the last thing I was expecting.
His employee had just crashed head on into the builder boyfriend while driving a sales car and, in my naivety, I was expecting the garage owner to cover the cost of the removal of the resulting wreckage – the written-off ...
Lock up your babies, Brisbane; the Queensland government is considering lifting its ban on keeping dingos as pets. I had always assumed it was illegal to keep dingos as pets anywhere in Australia, possibly because my arrival on these shores was contemporaneous with the overturning of the Lindy Chamberlain conviction. But it seems that poor Azaria’s ...
For Competition 3427 you were invited to write a paean on a place traditionally considered to be ugly.
In an accomplished entry, in which many took inspiration from William McGonagall, the Bard of Dundee, honourable mentions go to Ralph Goldswain, Richard Warren and Elizabeth Kay. The winners, led by Bill Greenwell on the Pompidou Centre, are rewarded ...
‘Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.’ With this stern admonition, the Church has long been a fervent defender of marriage. But as religion has faded as a social force, so too has marriage. The annual number of marriages in the UK has halved since 1970, with a similar decline in the rate in the US.
Does it much matter if people ...
I was in Intermediate (Year 10) or Leaving (Year 11) when my pal and I decided to sign up to participate in School Parliament. Being at a girls’ school, there was the attraction of boys being part of this contrived shindig.
The trouble was that it was extremely boring. All these jumped-up nongs – generally boys with a lot of badges on their blazers – ...
In Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, when Ben Gunn is found by Jim Hawkins, sunburnt and wide-eyed after three years of being marooned on the island, the first thing he asks Hawkins for is cheese: ‘Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese – toasted mostly.’ As a greedy person prone to daydreaming, I’ve often wondered what my ‘cheese – ...
Though Rebecca Culley is obviously a wrong ’un – having stolen £90,000 from her dear old gramps while pretending to care for him and only spend a minimum of his cash on ‘bits and bobs’ – I couldn’t help feeling a flash of admiration for her. When she was caught bang to rights, she diagnosed herself as a ‘spoilt brat’. At last, a person with lousy ...
This November saw a predictable, feverish and self-indulgent burst of dismissal ‘rage’ from the usual suspects, by which I mean principally Paul Kelly and Troy Bramston. At the risk of flogging a dead horse – the ‘Dismissal’ should have been consigned to the realm of pub trivia years ago – I feel I must address a couple of issues in the Sky News ...
End is the title chosen by David Eldridge for his new relationship drama. Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves star as Alfie and Julie, a pair of wildly successful creative types who live in a mansion near Highgate. Both are 59. Alfie is a retired DJ who made a fortune touring the world at the height of the ecstasy craze and Julie earns a living from crime ...
It was such an enticing programme, too. The Philharmonia had booked Evgeny Kissin, the last great piano prodigy of the Soviet era and one of the superstars of the late 1980s and early 1990s. And then there was the music: three Russian showpieces, including Rimsky-Korsakov’s enchanting and almost unplayed (in the UK, anyway) single-movement Piano ...
