Nathan Hobby’s blog

Press Council upholds complaint against The West Australian - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

This news item is strange absent from The West Australian’s website.

The finding against The West illustrates for me that the paper will do anything for high circulation and doesn’t care much about journalistic standards. It seems to me that under Paul Armstrong’s editorship, the paper has become more like a tabloid, a daily Sunday Times. What do you think?

I also hate the way a popup ad which takes a few second to kill hits me everytime I open the site. I know I could easily change my settings, but I bet they’re relying that people are lazy like me and keep forgetting to.

Riot cops prepare for Sydney’s ‘worst-ever’ violence : thewest.com.au

I hate the way they’ve locked the whole of Sydney down. The establishment is throwing everything it can against the protestors. It has all the power and all the money, and it would dearly love there to be no voice of dissent. No-one to say to Bush and Howard: you have done evil!

Stephen King mistaken for vandal in Alice - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I’ve sometimes thought of secretly signing my book when I see it in a bookshop. I’ve never actually done it surreptiously, though.  I  asked the assistant at Floreat Forum Book Exchange if she wanted me to sign my book, and she said ‘no’. Stephen King has the right idea - just go ahead and do it.

http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=145&ContentID=37511 

The story has been building up for days. At first she was just missing, mysteriously, after a Bootscooting class. And then yesterday her car is found in Subiaco. And then a trail of oil into King’s Park and recently disturbed soil.

It feels, reading the paper and listening to the news, that the media has this expectation: today there will be a body.

And Perth, voyeuristically, waits. I peer into King’s Park from the bus on the way to work, but I don’t even see any police cars. Somewhere in there, a body.

King’s Park seems a place for bodies. Recently, there were weeks of stories in the local paper about a missing Nedlands man, Benjamin Roberts. His poster was up at the local supermarket. He looked familiar; maybe I met him once. And then the postscript: a tiny article in the local paper saying that police had confirmed a body found in King’s Park was that of missing Benjamin Roberts and no suspicious circumstances were involved. Between the lines: a suicide, and, hence, thankfully, not a media fanfare. I felt so sad reading about it. He was my age.

A few years ago, a homeless woman was found dead in King’s Park. She had no family.

King’s Park has taken on a sinister aspect in my mind. A place of secrets. A place of death. Like the aquifer in Tim Winton’s The turning.

Rising cost of living hits low paid - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

In WA, average wages have gone up 5%; rental by 17% and food by 11%. This is why the mining boom is bad! It’s created two classes of people in Western Australia - those that win and those that lose. I hope all the minerals run out soon.

(Yes, I realise that would be disastrous for the economy.)