Fri 14th Dec Todays News

Happy birthday and many happy returns Milan Limbu,Ramsen Oraham and Icweekly Show. Born on the same day across the years. Remember, birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

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Read this while we’re still free to publish

Andrew BoltDECEMBER142012(6:46pm)

I know how much pressure newspapers feel under now that the Gillard Government is considering - or threatening - new controls on the media and on media owners.

I know this for a fact, and know this well-understood threat will grow only greater in the election year. I know also the names of Labor ministers concerned how free speech is being threatened by more desperate members of the Government.

If you think this all too conspiratorial, consider what has just happened in Britain, where the Daily Telegraph was working on a story on an expenses rort embarrassing to one of the Ministers considering he Government’s response to the Levenson inquiry - Britain’s version of our own Finkelstein witch hunt.

The two calls made by government heavies to the reporter and editor should instantly end any debate on the need to give government more control over the media. It should end that debate in Britain and also here.

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Not just the DJs - what about the hospital

Miranda Devine – Friday, December 14, 2012 (10:46am)

IN the frenzy of blame-laying following last week’s suicide of nurse Jacintha Saldanha at a London hospital after a prank call from 2Day FM, all the heat has been on the radio station and its young presenters.

But now questions are being asked about King Edward VII Hospital’s treatment of the two nurses who unwittingly divulged details of the Duchess of Cambridge’s pregnancy-related illness to the Australian DJs.

One of three apparent suicide notes left by the nurse at the centre of the royal hoax phone call criticised staff at the King Edward VII hospital where she worked, the Guardian has learned.

Jacintha Saldanha, 46, was found hanged in her apartment in the nurses’ quarter of the hospital in Marylebone, central London, by a colleague and a security officer, an inquest into her death heard on Thursday. Three notes were found, two at the scene and one in the nurse’s belongings.

She was found dead three days after two DJs rang the hospital from Australia posing as the Queen and Prince Charles in a prank call which Saldanha answered and put through to another nurse on the ward where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated for morning sickness.

The dead woman’s family has been given typed copies of the three handwritten notes by the police and has read the contents, the Guardian has been told.

One note deals with the hoax call by the DJs from 2Day FM, another details her requests for her funeral, and the third addresses her employers, the hospital, and contains criticism of staff there, the Guardian understands from two separate sources. 

And an eminent British radiologist, who works at London’s famous Guy’s hospital, says the hospital appears to have failed to safeguard its royal patient’s privacy.

“Patient confidentiality is of paramount importance in medical practice,” he writes in an email.

“King Edward VII Hospital must be well-used to dealing with Royalty and the rich and famous so that when they failed to screen a silly and not very sophisticated hoax call regarding a royal patient they must have been greatly embarrassed.

“It is astonishing that the call was ever put through to a nurse working with patients and that there were no very clear instructions that any such call should be directed to the senior nurse in charge or a hospital administrator.

“The Australian radio station has been pilloried in the press for their action but the apparent failure of the hospital to have an effective system in place must share responsibly for this terrible tragedy.”

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WEAVING AND FISHING

Tim Blair – Friday, December 14, 2012 (2:41pm)

The true horror of climate change hits northeastern India: 

In hundreds of households women are now compelled to take up weaving, daily-wage labour and other related activities to make ends meet, and in many areas, women of the households are taking up fishing … 

It doesn’t get much worse than this. We deniers have a lot of apologising to do.

FISH UPDATE. Flick to page 36 for a perfect Christmas gift idea: lifelike fibreglass barramundi, finished in automotive acrylic and costing just $10 per centimetre.

Andrew Cappo, the Darwin artist responsible, also preserves mudcrabs.

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MOORE MATHS

Tim Blair – Friday, December 14, 2012 (1:21pm)

Michael Moore farewells a generation: 

I’m very optimistic about the future, young people. Adelson and all those people will be gone, just like the people who voted for Reagan, the older generation that really was behind Reagan. You know, if were 55 or 60 years old in 1980, when Reagan ran, you’re dead now. They’re not alive, they left. And when they left, you know, things got better. Nothing against – my dad is 91. 

So Mike’s dad was 59 when Reagan first ran for President. And he’s not dead. 

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BETTER THAN A BICYCLE

Tim Blair – Friday, December 14, 2012 (12:02pm)

The flags are a nice touch:

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Afghanistan, Burundi and Liberia are the unhealthiest places for women, but not in the top 10 for men .. a sign that women are not equally respected in these nations ..
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the youth vote may go to the ALP, but as they gain life experience and see that what the ALP say is not what they do, and what the conservatives offer is not empty promises but a realistic vision, they will feel betrayed .. by those they trusted. One thing worth noting, those people who apparently betrayed this starry eyed believer were once those 'amazing people' too only many were corrupt back then, too.