BELGRADE, THURSDAY “GET OUT OF MARKETING NOW!” So says Professor Gavin Doodly-Munchausen of the Pointless Life Pursuits Institute, a European Union philosophy think tank, based in Lourdes, France. The institute has recently conducted a large study of human pursuits across the European Union, and beyond, and ranked them with respect to philosophical principles laid down…

BELGRADE, THURSDAY IT WAS A WOOPS moment at Ukrainian Headquarters. A junior officer charged with preparing the final draft of the beleaguered nation’s much-publicized plan for a crushing counter-attack against its Russian invaders, to be spearheaded by German Leopard tanks, noticed that the date specified for the offensive, 22 June, was the same as that…

FROM K. PHILBY IN MOSCOW AND G. BURGESS IN CAMBRIDGE AND SALISBURY, ENGLAND YOU CAN ALMOST hear the wheels of escalation grinding forward: Russia has declared that British public officials are now legitimate targets in its war with Ukraine. The Russian statement, from former president Demitry Medvedev, was in reply to British Foreign Minister James…

DEFENCE WRITER, PERCIVAL WINTER, MAJOR GENERAL RTD RECENT DRONE strikes against Moscow have caused some NATO leaders to pause and draw breath with respect to the conflict in Ukraine. Up until now, the alliance’s politicians, and even some of their military thinkers, had believed that NATO might supply Ukraine with weapons and keep a tight…

FROM ROCKY AYRES, NORTHERN TERRITORY EDITOR WITH ALL the hullabaloo about the shortage of housing in Australia, many statisticians have missed a slow moving disaster creeping up on Australia: the ever increasing population of grey nomads. Recently released figures suggest that by the 2080s the grey nomad population will exceed the settled population, with most…

EDUCATION REPORTER, D. CALCULUS FORGET SWITZERLAND. FORGET ENGLAND. FORGET AMERICAN MILITARY COLLEGES. AND FORGET HOGWARTS. The world’s most exclusive school is actually in outback Australia. The Outback College for Young Ladies of Good Families charges $1 million a year, not including extras. Each student has her own house, complete with servants, gym, Jacuzzi and swimming…

HEALTH DESK DECLINING MARRIAGE statistics around the globe may have a scientific as well as a social basis, as doctors conclude that certain groups of married men are more likely to suffer dementia than their single brothers. “It’s a fine line,” explained Dr Malthus Krippen, “because we’re dealing with numbers that include people who have…

FROM MOSCOW REPORTERS SUCH IS THE INTEREST among Russian troops in the axing of Phillip Schofield from Breakfast Television show This Morning, that Kremlin bigwigs suspect the whole sordid soap opera, which has garnered vast amounts of coverage in the British press, is actually a diversion to draw Moscow’s attention away from troop build ups…

LONDON EDITOR THE PROSPECT OF Britain’s Royal Air Force training Ukrainian fighter pilots, as declared by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, raises two interesting questions: 1) does this mean Ukraine will be receiving F35 and Typhoon Eurofighter jets from NATO, as they are the mainstay of Britain’s air force? and 2) is there is a chance…

IRISH EDITOR AND WIRE SERVICES IT CAME out of the blue on a BBC live discussion program. Ulster Unionist politician Danny Kennedy, whose party has not had the best of recent local council elections in Northern Ireland, admitted to telling his Irish Nationalist rivals, Sinn Fein, that their running so many candidates in his electoral…