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Category Archives: Marriage

Drawing a long bow – Gillard and cohabitation

Bettina Arndt wrote a piece in the SMH the other day which Paul Norton at LP has described as a “Bondi cigar“, and I must say I’m inclined to agree with Paul’s assessment. Jason Soon alerted me to the piece in the first place, and I must say I’ve stolen his heading for my post [...]

The Noble Experiment

Until I came to do the research for my MPhil, I didn’t realise that Prohibition — that great failed exercise in mass planning — was also known back in the day as ‘the noble experiment’. I learnt of the alternative moniker through Daniel Okrent’s superb history — Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. [...]

Mummies and Daddies

I was interested to read today that a woman has failed in her legal bid to stop her former partner from encouraging their six-year-old daughter to call his new partner “Mummy D”. Unfortunately the judgment doesn’t seem to be available online yet. [The mother] said encouraging the term of endearment was ”an incendiary action” by [...]

Jacob’s Ladder

It was all polite smiles and meticulous protocol as Jacob Zuma met the Queen yesterday afternoon. But just hours before he left for his state visit to Britain, South Africa’s flamboyant President revealed what he really thought of his hosts. In an astonishing interview given shortly before he boarded his flight to London, Mr Zuma [...]

Forgiveness is overrated

One of the advantages of being a skeptic is that you don’t have to reject positions articulated by religious figures just because you think they believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden, but also because you think that core chunks of their doctrine — including bits often regarded as wholly good and reasonable [...]

O Mistress Mine!

I was fascinated to see that the first case under the new s 4AA of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) has been settled out of court. According to the recent article in the Herald Sun: A cheating husband has paid his former lover more than $100,000 under Australia’s new “mistress laws”. In the first [...]

Sometimes you get the bear (sometimes the bear gets you)

Muslim militants in Kashmir have been having a hard old time of it lately. Having learnt the hard way that No really does mean NO (even when attempting marriage by capture)… Three militants stormed into Rukhsana Kauser’s home in a remote village in Jammu region on Monday and started beating her parents in front of [...]

The more the merrier?

Keysar Trad has written an article in The Age today calling for Australians to reconsider their attitudes to polygyny (where a man has multiple wives). He says: Who someone marries first is an accident of history. If a man who has an affair had met his mistress before his wife, he may have married her. [...]

Libertarian Writing Bleg

As a few people around the place know, I’m currently writing a novel. I’d originally had grand plans of getting it finished before starting at Oxford in 2007, but that didn’t happen. It does look likely that it’ll be finished by the end of this year, however, which is both a great relief and slightly [...]

The Amazing Disappearing Assets

Anyone who has a superannuation fund or the like has probably watched their assets drop in value to a massive degree over the last year or so. Right now I’m glad I don’t have my money tied up in shares. The drop has been so sharp that it has produced some interesting legal problems. Take, [...]