“Starting on Monday,” our Staffie said, “you need to take me for a 30-minute walk, twice a day.” He confessed to sneaking a peek at an article in The Guardian about a new law in Germany, known for our purposes, as the Dog Act. The Guardian reported that Germany’s agriculture minister, Julia Klöckner, is introducing the new law, based on evidence that many of the nation’s 9.4 million dogs are not getting the exercise or stimuli they need. Under…
In spring, as the poet said, a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of conspiracy. Wait! I just misquoted Alfred Tennyson and there’s a one in eight chance that someone under 34 will believe the quote is authentic. While the new season takes tentative steps towards summer (tulips and daffodils flowering), imported conspiracy theories have taken root in Australia. The media noticed; with The Australian, the New Daily, The Guardian and 60 Minutes among those…
As a kid growing up in the North Island of New Zealand, I don’t recall ever seeing dust storms of the type seen in the Australian outback. In recent weeks, we’ve seen clouds of ochre dust blowing in from South Australia. The worst dust storms converge on the eastern seaboard, shrouding cities in an eerie, fog-like miasma. You may recall the really bad one (September 2009) when motorists in Sydney and Brisbane drove with their…
One of those ubiquitous news portals this week outed The Australian Women’s Weekly for a string of what we in the journalism business used to call ‘howlers’. The AWW meekly apologised for mis-naming TV personality Richard Wilkins as ‘ Rachael’ in its front cover feature, one of several glaring errors. The knife job from Mumbrella (the news portal to which I originally referred), drew sharp comments from (ex) journalists. As the auld wifies used to say…