A whale of a time.

The baby humpback whale found stranded and motherless in Sydney Harbour, and named Colin… later Colette, was finally ‘euthanased’ in Sydney Harbour yesterday.
There’ve been all sorts of stories about her and the way she was/wasn’t aided by government agencies etc and there is now talk of a *summit* of experts to try to establish guidelines [...]

Insane in America

The USA is determined to address what it sees as possible criminal or terrorist potential by temporary workers. It’s doing this by deporting people, who have committed an offence, back to their country of origin. This seems quite reasonable, except that they are doing this regardless of the time they’ve spent in the US, or [...]

Smiley Miley

It’s possible some of you might never have heard of singer Billy Ray Cyrus, but I’ll bet there are a lot fewer of you who’ve never heard of his daughter Miley who has been making a name of her own with her alter ego as “Hannah Montana” especially if you have kids around you!
Over the [...]

Guilty even if proved otherwise?

There have been some interesting and subtle changes to the way the law works in the UK. For example a recent decision has established that someone is ‘guilty by accusation’ even if it’s been proved those accusations are in fact false!!
The case of John Pinnington who was falsely accused of sexually assaulting three of his [...]

Schapelle Corby - not forgotten!

Schapelle Corby (aged 30) is an Australian woman currently serving a 20 year prison sentence after being convicted for smuggling drugs into Bali. She has protested her innocence from day one and continues to do so despite the possibility that an admission of guilt coupled with an appeal for clemency to the President might result [...]

Faces of Australia: The quality of mercy.

In 2003 Graeme Wylie was diagnosed Alzheimer’s’ disease and he finally died at his home in Cammeray in March 2006 aged 71
Shortly afterwards Shirley Justins (below right), his partner of 18 years was arrested and charged with manslaughter. His long time friend 75 year old Caren Jenning (below left) was arrested and charged with being [...]

Suburban Starvation

Somehow over the past few months, two eighteen month old twins were allowed to starve to death by their parents in Sunnybank Hills, a Queensland suburb. Their bodies were discovered by an eleven year old sibling who went into their room to try to locate the source of a foul smell in the house and [...]

Racist Australia?

Over the time we’ve been here we’ve got almost used to the incipient racism underlying a lot of Australian society. The one thing in it’s favour is that it isn’t hidden away and that people are quite open about it which at least means it is able to be discussed freely.
However occasionally underlying racial tensions [...]

Waltzing Matilda - historical archive?

An interesting slant on Australia’s favourite folk song, and ‘almost national anthem’ has emerged thanks to the work of Dennis O’Keefe who spent 15 years researching the story.
The fundamentals seem to be that Banjo Patterson, who wrote the song, was ‘courting’ the daughter of the squatter who owned the land where the events took place [...]

Remembering Rahma el-Dennaoui

After several years no word has been heard about the fate of little Rahma el-Dennaoui missing now since November 2005 with no clue about her whereabouts.
We ran a short story on her disappearance in 2007 (Spare a thought… ) but nothing has yet been heard.
One of the problems hampering the police search was the limited [...]

Victory!! One in the eye for Jodie Powers!!

Some of you may remember that this blog has always been a constant supporter of Schapelle Corby. However Jodie Powers (below right), a ‘friend’ of Schapelle’s sister Mercedes, went on air in a TV program (Today Tonight) run by the Seven Network and said some pretty nasty things about the entire family.
Understandably, with her sister [...]

On the road again.

Seven years after being impounded by police, the orange and white Volkswagen Kombi driven by Peter Falconio when he was killed and his girlfriend abducted has been ‘released’. As crucial evidence, it’s been kept under cover all this time but is now out on the compound with crashed and stolen vehicles waiting a decision by [...]

Drip, drip, drip, drip…

That ‘dripping’ is the sound of the steady erosion of privacy and individual freedom as the UK descends still further into the realms of Big Brother and the advent of the Police State.
Bizarrely, to me at least, it’s a Labour government that is currently creating a Data Communications Bill to be presented as part of [...]

It’s a bit alarming.

Was talking to a guy on Friday who had been burgled recently. He was telling us how he, his wife and daughters had been in the house at the time and how the thievess
s had bashed their dog to keep it quiet, taken the keys to his and his wife’s cars, loaded them with their [...]

Lady Di unlawfully killed?

I think that verdict was the least that could have been found. Yet there are *still* unanswered questions even allowing for the months of evidence and the twenty million pounds the inquest has cost. We still need information concerning the White Fiat Uno that reportedly sideswiped the car she was travelling in. We also need [...]

Interesting!

Odd that the mother of little Shannon Matthews should be arrested for ‘perverting the course of justice’. Really makes you wonder what she did!
All sorts of suppositions could be correct… or wildly off the mark. My favourite was that the ‘kidnap’ was a complete fake from go to whoa and that they did it to [...]

More preventable death on the roads.

Was reading a story about a father who arrived at the scene of a road crash where two of his young sons, his sister in law and two of her children were being loaded into stretchers. As he was checking on his 9 year old son, he was informed the 6 year old had died [...]

Pumpkin’s father captured!

September 17th saw us publishing a picture of a three year old New Zealand girl called Pumpkin (real name Xue Qian Xun) who’s father had apparently abandoned her at a railway station.

We later learned that Pumpkin’s mother had been found dead in the boot of the car outside the family home and that her father [...]

The Law is an Ass!

In Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens said “the law is an ass” and over the years the legal system has shown that there was good reason for his comment. Since his day of course things have gone slowly and steadily downhill to the extent that in the UK a woman is being made to stand trial [...]

Another death sentence

Yet again another Australian was sentenced to death for heroin smuggling. This time it was Hong Viet Nguyen a 40 year old of Vietnamese descent caught with 95- grams of the drug in his clothes.
And how much did he sell his life for? Just US$10,000.
You have to wonder at what’s happening in these people’s minds [...]

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