Vale Wendy Richards

We learned this morning of the death of Wendy Richards who finally succumbed to breast cancer after a long struggle, she was 65.

Wendy was a favourite on the small screen for in Britain for many, many years both as a ‘blonde bombshell’  Miss Brahms in the classic series “Are You Being Served”, and as the [...]

What does it mean to be “British”?

Some statistics have been released which, if correct, maye you wonder what’s happening over in ‘dear old blighty’.  The figures released imply that 1 in 9 people living in Britain were born ‘overseas’.
Globalisation, cheap travel, easy migration and wide differences in living standards have encouraged people to move in ever greater numbers from place to [...]

Cloud Computing – getting closer!

The concept of ‘cloud computing’ had me very confused for a while, I really had no clue what these buzz words actually meant., or what benefit it would give me. Eventually ‘daylight dawned’ and I not only understood what the pundits meant, I discovered that I’d actually been using it for some time!
At [...]

Mohamed al Fayed – a real reason for complaint?

You really have to ask yourself if there is something to the continuing complaints of Mohamed al Fayed (the owner of Harrod’s) that the ‘powers-that-be’ (including Secret Service, the Royal Family, and the police) in the UK are conducting a conspiracy intended to ruin him… in other words… people are out to get him… and have [...]

From bad to worse.

The fires are not yet out… the death toll not finalised… and Melbourne suffers another blow as projections of some of the long term issues become clearer.
This time the problem is water supply. Rainfall in the catchment area for Melbourne is already at its lowest on record, and the dams are currently only at 30% [...]

Insanity in the UK.

The level of bizarre behaviour of institutions in the UK is getting out of hand. Soon they’ll be on a par with the lunatics in the USA.
Current in the list of oddities is the case of two grandparents who were told that they were too old to look after their grandchildren… and were then told [...]

So much for that

I must have fallen out of the habit of daily blogging suring the ‘enforced’ break over the holidays. Yesterday for example, the site hardly entered my thoughts except at the beginning of the day when I realised I had no time to cough let alone write.
Yet despite having my little netbook at hand all day, [...]

Death toll etc.

The death toll currently still stands at 181 but there are areas yet to be accessed by police and there are known dead waiting to be moved and counted amongst those lost. The end total is still estimated at ‘300′ but it will be some time before anything like a final ‘exact official figure’ can [...]

The first arrest.

Police have arrested a 39 year old man in connection with the blaze that killed 21 people and wiped out 36,000 hectares of South Gippsland. The man’s solicitor said his client was “in a fragile state” and needed immediate psychological support.
Police consider the cause of fires started at Marysville, Murrindindi, Buxton and Narbethong to be ’suspicious’. If [...]

Firebugs or Natural Disasters or… ?

Theories are beginning to be mooted about the causes of the Victorian Bushfire Disaster, and whilst they are many and varied it appears nearly all contain an element of ‘truth’ about them that could explain just what went so horribly wrong.
To make it a little simplet. it’s useful to look at the situation in several [...]

The environmentalist.

The kids went out in the garden a weeks or so ago and found an old bowl we’d been using under a tap as an extra water source for our dogs. Over the months it managed to develop a hole a few cms from the bottom so was pushed to one side. Still, it does hold [...]

So close… yet… ?

Just for reference I thought I’d share a photo I sourced from The Australian newspaper showing just how close the fires were to Melbourne itself. You can see the burned out trees from the suburb of Kinglake and in the distance… near distance… the city itself.

The wheel turns.

The fires in Victoria are still burning though some overnight rain has given the firefighters some chance of finally gaining a measure of control over the course of the twenty-one blazes they are currently dealing with. Currently no more homes are under threat, as far as we’re aware but of course the clean-up has yet [...]

Soul of a Nation

We’re relative newcomers to Australia having only been here 15 years or so, but ‘new’ or not we *feel* Australian, which is really strange when you think just how*huge* this country is.
What brought it into perspective was the concern we feel here in Sydney for our fellows down South in Victoria where they are suffering [...]

And… we’re back.

So here we are again after the long summer break raring to go with a load of topics to discuss. Yet what a place to begin. With the possibility of 300 or more people dead in the worst bush-fires Australia has seen hanging over us it’s hard to restart the blog with anything positive.
That we’d [...]