The PR Blog
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- Written by: Op-Ed Monty
I was 12 years old when "The Prisoner " came out. Sometimes, I would sneak out of bed and watch it from the hallway when my parents were engrossed in watching the TV. I will never forget my fascination with some bloke running around a quirky town being chased by giant bubbles and mini mokes were the go-to vehicle of the time. It confused me and intrigued me. No doubt, my parents felt the same way. It was hardly the same as watching " I love Lucy " or " Rawhide " but it surely got my little grey cells working overtime.
"The Prisoner," a British television series created by Patrick McGoohan, first aired in September 1967 and ran for 17 episodes. It followed the story of a British secret agent named Number Six, played by McGoohan himself. Set in a mysterious and surreal village, the series explored themes of individualism, freedom, surveillance, and the power of the state.
Number Six’s line - “I am not a number. I am a free man” - is not just a catchphrase. It is a refusal to let the collective rewrite the terms of his existence.
A lone juror who will not move, even when eleven others and the machinery around them want him to, occupies a similar position: one person insisting that his own judgment is not for sale.
Read more: I am not a Number. I am a Free Man
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- Written by: The PR Blog
THE GREAT MULBERRY VACCINATION SCANDAL
A Ratty News investigation by Roderick “Whiskers” McNibble
I knew Dusty Gulch was in trouble when Dusty McFookit started counting his mulberries.
There were thousands of them.
And, according to an order issued by the very sinister Prentis Penjani on instructions from Honkland Central, every one of them was required to be vaccinated against Fowl Flu.
The reasoning appeared to be that birds ate mulberries.
Read more: The Strange Case of a Goat, Mulberries, a Pie and Dodgy Directives
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- Written by: The PR Blog
Is Australia Becoming a Pub With No Affordable Beer?
Oh, sure, the beer is still there. The taps are still running. The glasses are still being filled.
It is affordable beer that is becoming the problem.
It is the customers who are beginning to disappear. Some have stopped buying the second beer. Some have stopped ordering dinner.
Some are sleeping in the carpark.
And some are simply staying home.
Perhaps that is the modern Australian version of A Pub With No Beer.
A pub with beer - but increasingly without the people who used to drink it.
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- Written by: Op-Ed Happy Expat
The War Did Not Begin on 1 September 1939
The details of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and the Nazi seizure of Germany fill volumes far beyond the scope of an article written for this site.
This piece therefore begins with the years immediately preceding the Second World War and looks at them primarily from the German side of the ledger.
The detail remains stunning, if not terrifying: a party that began as a noisy minority, never won an outright majority in a free election, and still, through a mixture of popular support, street violence, political calculation and the misjudgement of better-placed men, took hold of what had been one of the most advanced states in Europe.
The rest of Europe watched, protested, bargained, conceded - and failed to stop the process until it was almost too late.
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- Written by: Op-Ed Monty
Read more: The Weimer Republic Mk II - The Powder Keg of Collapse?
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- Written by: Op-Ed Shaydee Lane
There are memories that refuse to grow old.
The 29th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death has had me thinking about the day it happened nearly 30 years ago.
I still get emotional when I remember it.
Not the footage.
Not the flowers outside Kensington Palace.
Another room. Another set of faces. A kindness that had no business being there. It is a true memory. It has never faded. And something that I have never understood. Until now.
And it all down to a tattooed hand, a solemn face and an unexpected gesture of kindness.
So off we go, again, down memory lane and having a cup of tea...
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- Written by: Op-Ed Monty
The result of the recent bi election in Secret Harbour in WA sends a powerful message.
Australia was never built on timidity. It was carved out by men and women who faced droughts, floods, and wars with grit, courage, and an unshakable belief in the fair go.
Yet today, that fair go is being strangled, and Aussies are saying " Enough. "
Ordinary Australians are being priced out of their own homes, left to sleep in cars and tents, while politicians in Canberra open the gates to mass migration on a scale our forebears could never have imagined.
We are told to stay quiet, to swallow the line that questioning this is “racist,” while our way of life - our language, our culture, our unity - is chipped away. The same spark that lit Eureka smoulders again, and if ignored, it will roar into flame.
Read more: From Eureka to Extinction ? Or Is This Our Eureka Moment?
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- Written by: Op-Ed PP
A Dispatch from the Pointy End
Foreword By Roderick (Whiskers ) McNibble, Senior Investigative Rodent & Occasional Correspondent
Every now and then, the Gazette receives a story which makes us stop, put down the cheese sandwich, and wonder whether the person writing it has ever heard of occupational health and safety. This is one of those stories.
It comes from a gentleman known to us simply as PP, who spent many years travelling around the far north of Queensland, working in places where the roads are questionable, the rivers contain things with teeth, and the definition of a "safe working environment" appears to have been left open to interpretation.
PP tells the story in his own words. We have not altered the account.
We have merely added this introduction because, having read what follows, the Gazette has developed a rather awkward suspicion that Mayor Dusty McFookit may have had a previous life somewhere north of Cairns.
We have absolutely no evidence for this. Dusty denies it. PP has not been asked. For the moment, therefore, we shall simply report the facts. And leave the reader to draw their own conclusions.
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- Written by: Op-Ed Ratty News
PLUMBING!
The Mayor Has Finally Met a Pipe He Can't Fix
A Special Medical - Plumbing Bulletin from Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble
Senior Investigative Rodent & Occasional Plumbing Correspondent
There are times when a journalist must put aside the usual trivialities of politics, corruption, government overreach and the suspicious disappearance of three crates of lamingtons.
This is one of those times.
Mayor Dusty McFookit is sick.
And while certain irresponsible rumours have suggested that the Mayor is merely hiding beneath the floorboards of the Dusty Dingo Pub to avoid his civic responsibilities of posting here on the Dusty Gulch Gazette, the Gazette can now confirm that he is genuinely crook.
Read more: The Dunny Dilemma - Pissing Napalm Is No Laughing Matter
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- Written by: Op-Ed Monty
“Some of us may forget that, of all the Allies, it was the Australians who first broke the spell of invincibility of the Japanese Army.”
- Quote from Field Marshall Sir William Slim, Commander of WW2 Commonwealth forces in Burma (and later Governor General of Australia).
And that first fracture in the Japanese Land Forces strength came at Milne Bay in September 1942. Alongside Guadalcanal weeks later, Milne Bay marked the first land defeats of the Japanese, shifting the Pacific war’s momentum.
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- Written by: Op-Ed Shaydee Lane
Where Do the Children Play?
I have no opinion to offer publicly on the Lindsay Clancy case.
What caught me this morning was the children.
Sometimes the present has a strange way of sending us back to places we haven’t thought about for years.
This morning, when I was reading about Lindsay Clancy's case, I wasn’t looking for " Bad Minnie.". But she found me.
I certainly wasn’t thinking about a business college in Invercargill more than thirty years ago.
Something about the story sent my mind wandering backwards, and suddenly I was standing in a cemetery in Winton again, surrounded by a group of my students, looking at a patch of ground where, according to local legend, nothing would grow.....
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