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Donald Trump – flying high above the real world
Trump is at it again, backed up by the GOP, claiming not only to be wholly and on every matter sinless, but to be above the laws by which ordinary mortals have to live. Questioned on financial irregularities which have caused his accountants to drop him like a hot brick, he pleads the 5th; and … Read more
Issey Miyake – from atrocity to joy and hope
Creativity emerging from destruction is another redemptive tale from the life and talent of Issey Miyake, the Japanese fashion designer, who has just died aged 84. He was seven when the US detonated an atomic bomb over his hometown of Hiroshima. He was riding to school on his bicycle at the time. “When I close … Read more
Martin Lewis – talking money sense to paralysed politicians
UK Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis has condemned the government for acting like “zombies” over the energy crisis, as he warned of the “cataclysmic” rise in bills, which are likely to more than double by January. Plus inflation sending food prices up, mortgages and rent rising. All the while BJ skips off on holiday after … Read more
Archie Roach – singing his people’s pain
Archie Roach, the Aboriginal singer and songwriter who forced white Australia to confront a dark chapter in the nation’s history has died. When he was three or four, he was taken by social workers from his parents and sent to be “resocialised” by a white foster family and he never saw his birth parents again. … Read more
Empress Sissi – running away from herself ++ Crown Prince Rudolf
Royal devotees are due a binge-feste next month with The Empress, a six- parter about Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Sissi), a hyper-active and unconventional 19th Century monarch with a stressed family life. Married at 16 to Emperor Franz Josef I who was passionately in love with her, she rebelled against his dullness and restrictive court … Read more
Olivia Newton John – not all sugar and cream
Olivia Newton John, the bubbly blonde, girl-next-door country pop star who struck a chord in public affection has died of the cancer which has plagued her for thirty years. Her breakthrough role opposite John Travolta in the 1978 film Grease saw her catapulted to world wide fame as it became the highest-grossing musical film ever … Read more
Jeannette McCurdy & Kit de Waal – banishing childhood blues
Misery memoirs are still going strong with another couple of nightmare childhoods being laid bare. Jeannette McCurdy, teen star of “iCarly”, was a poster child for children’s TV, seen weekly by millions, her face on Hollywood billboards, T shirts and party balloons, every little princess’s dream but it was all a gigantic lie. Her … Read more
India & Pakistan – remembering a bloody birth
The searing memories of the orgiastic savagery following the partition of Pakistan and India in 1947 are still raw as both countries head for their 75th anniversary. 10 and 20 million people were uprooted at a day’s notice along religious lines, with large-scale violence and an estimated death toll over a million. A … Read more
Newt Gingrich, another Gemini – blamed for the GOP rot
Anguish and outrage fuel “The Destructionists” a new book by journalist Dana Milbank on the warping of the once respected Republican Party and the collapse of American democracy. He pins the start of the rot on Newt Gingrich’s rise to prominence as Speaker in 1994 and his deliberate promotion of dirty-tricks politics and disinformation, resulting … Read more