Though there are many unknowns surrounding the death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, what is starkly evident is that there are no winners in the aftermath of the prank. Images of her stricken family reveal just how badly things went wrong.
It appears that Saldanha played a very small role, merely answering the call from the two Australian DJs and putting it through to the appropriate staff member. It was not Saldanha who revealed royal medical details.
Having listened to the recordings, I understand why no one was more surprised than 2Day FM DJs Christian and Greig when their silly accents fooled staff, and they found themselves discussing the Duchess’s condition with her nurse. However, in the context, why should nursing staff be knowledgeable about silly Australian accents, and why should they be expected to be on the alert for pranksters?
Clearly hospital protocol regarding access to information about royalty and celebrity needs a review, not to protect those luminous beings, but to protect hospital staff who look after them. Surely it wouldn’t be difficult as a matter of course, to direct all inquiries to a PR professional and leave the medical staff to do their jobs untroubled by pranksters.
It’s the nature of the prank that it takes its subject unawares, and plunges her or him into immediate confusion and self-doubt. The nurses involved may well have felt there was something amiss, and found themselves in the unenviable position of having to make a spilt-second decision that either way would backfire. What if they’d hung up on the Queen? What if they’d wrongly questioned her authenticity? The victim of a prank can never win.
I am interested to know how hospital management treated Saldanha. While a spokesman has been at pains to reassure her family and the media that she was not formally reprimanded, that doesn’t mean she wasn’t shamed in other ways within the hospital system, by administration and other staff. Was Saldanha held solely responsible because she answered the phone and put through the call? What about the nurse who gave out medical information?
DJs Greig and Christian have been widely blamed for instigating the prank that apparently led to Saldanha’s presumed suicide. However, it seems to me that like Saldanha, they are in some sense scapegoats for managerial hierarchies that have in both cases failed to adequately protect their coal face workers. Greig and Christian performed the prank, a prank that was approved by the station’s lawyers, and that was situated in a station culture of pranks. Apparently, the DJs can only air what is approved by management.
Saldanha, Christian and Greig have in common a position of being small but very visible cogs in powerful managerial wheels that are largely hidden and protected from public scrutiny.
No matter what one thinks of them, the careers of Greig and Christian may well be over. They are bearing the brunt of global fury at the dreadful outcome of the prank. At any time several layers of 2Day FM management could have pulled the plug. Nobody did. Will any management heads roll at the station?
Jacintha Saldanha is dead. Will any action be taken against the hospital management that failed to implement protocols to protect staff and patients from violation of privacy?
What is needed is an ongoing exposure of the normalised managerial culture that allows those with minor decision-making privileges to become scapegoats for the less visible but extremely powerful individuals who are running the show. Ultimately these individuals are responsible when things go wrong, and they are responsible for the culture of the institutions they control.
No Place For Sheep 
Lots of ‘wrongs’ here. It seems that commercial interests in both print and sound media are the corrupters of society. We are as much ‘wrong’ in reading and listening to those as the instigators. Why do people listen or read stuff that lowers instead of raises levels of awareness and understanding?
We never listen or view any commercial radio or TV nor buy Murdoch (in) conspired print. The world is now aware of Australia’s role in that affair. We pay a price.
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Thanks for this article, Jennifer.
Before too much comment goes up, there are two points that need to be taken into account. They are that time-zone differences played a very significant part in the unfolding of events (it was around 5:30AM GMT when Jacintha Saldanha took the call), and that the presumption of suicide was ENTIRELY a MEDIA-driven thing.
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=5530#150676
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It is important to maintain a perspective on protecting people’s privacy and of course their personal state of health. We cannot allow harm, but it should be no less clear that the decision to record and broadcast a prank that revealed nothing particularly private or sensitive in nature, therefore involves itself with the harm from embarrassment alone. Wanting comics or entertainers not to make cheap jokes at royal people’s expense isn’t unusual. But trying to legislate for it is problematic for any form of comedy, except perhaps self-deprecation, because so very little of humour involves zero risk of offence.
Maybe we ought to have a fair use provision as is done in the United States, just so that it is clear that embarrassment is not protected. Otherwise making laws against jokes being unfunny or simply not to your taste shows a pretty poor understanding of the difference between a misplaced attempt at humour and something more malicious.
And nor in so doing would we be saying that nothing is to be done about it, or no penalty paid when entertainers overstep bounds of taste. It is hard to see how the couple involved in this stunt will be able to return to their previous employment. Perhaps the more difficult task to unravel then is how such a minor error of judgement, if any was made at all, has in the mind of that poor nurse, blown so completely out of proportion as to make her position seem utterly hopeless. Part of the answer to that I would hazard may be found in the over the top condemnations this lousy prank is receiving from a range of other quarters. We might well not just need to say “lighten up, it’s a joke”, but say as well that we need to lighten up on one another!
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I agree, HD, these things ought to be regulated by the radio station, not the law. Had a death not ensued, nobody would have thought much about the prank, even Charles thought it humorous. The response of authority is what alarms me – how much better if both managements accepted responsibility for the systems failures that preceded this outcome, rather than scapegoating their workers when the unimaginable happened. Nobody could have foreseen the tragedy, but once it happened, the responsibility for fronting up and handling it ought to be with the bosses not the workers.
Of course I don’t know, but I imagine Saldanha may well have been subjected to some pretty bad stuff in her work environment, and in such situations it’s up to management to set the tone.
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I don’t think I want to make it my business to speculate about the personal circumstances surrounding the nurses’ suicide. Obviously things that could be found to help others would be useful, and will hopefully emerge in the wake of these tragic event. What I really don’t see is how there was any harm at all in that prank beyond embarrassment.
What I think may happen is that people draw a certain sense of security from knowing that they can always condemn paedophiles and genocides, and that royal people enjoy a certain amount of respect. It is as if to say that in a world that revaluates social norms, religious certainties and matters of taste, and often does so as Tom Waits so succinctly put it, “along the bottom line”, there are for some of us nevertheless boundaries that delimit soundness from anarchy. It is simply the case that they take refuge in something that sees humour as deeply transgressive in many of its forms and therefore generally expresses antipathy towards any and all forms of offense.
I don’t think it belittles the matter of the suicide in the slightest to say to those people who take offence that the mere fact of their offence justifies nothing whatsoever.
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After all this time passing, that hospital has achieved a Spooks-like clampdown on the hundreds of people who must come and go daily. The Inquest revealed nothing new. The Second Nurse seems not to be hounded by media and nobody on staff has sold her name to the redtops.
I do not understand why a nurse with drug access would hang herself.
Why none of her workmates visited her during the 72 hours between answering the phone and doing so; how the ‘NHS accountant’ father was not told the scandal news by workmates, whether JS took the next day off work, or if she blithely did her shifts Tues Wed and Thurs. Something is not right.
Why do ‘we’ need to know? because we are hammered daily with all the other stuff on the event.
That Morrissy publicly blamed the nauseous Duchess who slept right through the whole thing, is also appalling. How do I know she did? Because the mysterious Second Nurse told us all.
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Jennifer re your focus on the hospital failure: I have now seen the YuToob promo advert of the hospital and their guy mentions ‘military’ five times, one of these claims it “‘is run with military precision”. He must not have seen Blackadder’s Major Darling.
My blogpost focus is the depression of the nurse and I extend an invitation to you to visit and comment – I do not sulk over negative comments either, so feel free. x x
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‘management’ is a Registered Charitable Institution and has begun a fund for the Saldanha/Balboza children. Their solicitors must be in deep discussions of damage control and avoiding legal action.
I am dismayed that more people are not criticising them for their HR and Management fails.
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A little more current illumination as to how matters unfolded, FWIW:
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I just tried to copy and paste this comment here because I think it’s worth reading, but something wouldn’t let me.
Basically it calls the British press for blowing up the prank and thus putting Saldanha under immense and sustained pressure. Interesting, as Forrest notes, that the Daily Mail has removed the comment.
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I assume it was the text of the comment made in response to the Daily Mail article (somewhat indistinct in the imported tweet above) that Jennifer was trying to post here. The following is a transcription.
“So the Australian radio station played
a little prank. No bones broken and a few
laughs had. That’s until the press blew it
out of all proportion and made it front
page news for days. Who put this nurse
under suicidal pressure? The Australian
radio station or the British press? Now
the press get a second bite of the cherry.
A nice juicy death to keep on the front
pages for a couple more days – and some
good British righteous indignation to go
with it. Pass the sick bag. The dishonesty
and hypocracy (sic) of the press has no
bottom to it. And if you buy the stinking
newspapers then you’re part of the problem.
Johnny T, Brighton 8/12/2012 1303 [hrs GMT]”
Note that both the original commenter, Johnny T, and the person who had made a screenshot record of the comment while it was still up, and tweeted the take-down by the Daily Mail, Dan Barker, are UK-based.
Dan Barker’s tweet has, at time of posting, been retweeted 3179 times, and ‘favorited’ 458 times. See: http://twitpic.com/blghij
Also note that the comment taken down was the very first comment made in response to the Daily Mail’s invitation of “Why not be the first to have your say?” They asked for it. They got it. Not liking it, the DM took the comment down. The DM, having been caught out by Dan Barker in doing that, then took the original article, with its remaining comments, down, and then REPUBLISHED it verbatim but with no provision for comments!
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Just to keep the record completely straight, here is an amending tweet from Dr Evan Harris regarding the Daily Mail comment removal issue:
It seems that it was the FIRST comment to the DM news item that primarily constituted what the DM saw as a problem. What then is contained therein that could be seen as a ‘problem’?
With the advantage of hindsight, in the form of the knowledge that the Coronial Inquiry has now been adjourned to 26 March 2013, I suggest that the problem posed by the now infamously-removed comment was that it made very plain a connection between the existence of a UK media focus upon the prank call BEFORE the reported suicide of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, and the new twist in the news that followed after it.
It should be borne in mind, as so very well put by poster ‘annodyne’ in her blog entry to which she linked in her post of December 16, 2012 at 10:28 am, that:
“The other fact-of-the-moment is that
all the many reports of rampant sexual
abuse by multi-various figures of power
and popularity in the UK, have been
eclipsed by this ridiculous baying for
the blood of two Adelaide radio announcers.”
Not to mention the fallout from the Leveson Inquiry into the UK print media that had then just recently become public.
One normally-to-be-expected consequence of the delay imposed by the adjournment of the Coronial Inquiry until next March would be that public recollection as to timeline sequences of events is likely to be less clear than if the full findings of that inquiry were to be published while everything is still fresh in peoples’ minds. Perhaps there have existed dots in this saga that some interests would hope the public never become able to join up.
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Fine work Forrest, but I know from experience that coronial inquiries do actually take time; the backlog is horrendous unjust and unfair to all concerned, but there is no reason to suspect any ulterior motives. Britain is not yet a police state, though that is its tendency, over the last 30 years in particular. Consider the democracy index :
Click to access EIU_Democracy_Index_Dec2011.pdf
Norway rates no.1, Australia no.6. Britain is no.18, USA no.19 – not far above the flawed democracies of the likes of Israel no.36 and India no.39 – but pity the North Koreans at no.167.
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Doug Quixote,
I would, by nature, normally incline to accept your advice as to expectations of time constraints and backlogs in relation to matters coronial. I derive the impression from your posting on ‘Sheep’ that you are, or have been, involved in the practice of law. I, by contrast, most definitely am not.
My problem is that the only involvement I have ever had with respect to a coronial inquiry was as a potential witness in a matter involving a workplace death. I got to observe at first hand the avoidance of the taking of what appeared would have been statutorily mandated testimony, and a subsequent denial of access to the transcript of such inquiry, one that had been conducted in open court, during which hearing throughout I had been present. That was denial of access, for purposes of after-the-event perusal, to THE COURT’S transcript, supervised, in the courthouse, not the refusal of any request to be supplied with any copy thereof!
The seemingly-avoided testimony would have been as to whether deliberation on the part of the deceased had been a factor in the lead-up to that workplace death. Such avoidance could have been seen as being to the advantage of bureaucratic entities involved that had shared a role in events prior to the death in question.
By now DQ, I guess you can see reason for the jaundiced view with which I have observed the drip-fed, contradiction-riddled, common-sense-defying MSM reportage surrounding what has come to be known as the ‘#royalprank’, reportage that has been so ably highlighted by ‘annodyne’ both here and on her blog.
That my jaundice regarding matters coronial has been acquired in Australia, while this workplace death has occurred in the UK, is neither here nor there. That, the virtual identity as to the legal and constitutional environments within such inquiries routinely take place, is why the Statute of Westminster 1931 is in Halsbury’s ‘Laws of England’. And it just so happens that right at this very time ‘request and consent’ legislation under the terms of the Statute of Westminster 1931 is, at the behest of Her Majesty’s UK government, awaiting Parliamentary approval in at least one of the three other Parliaments from which such request and consent must be obtained: Australia’s.
Could it be feared that a Coronial Inquiry into the workplace death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha conducted in the glare of publicity, and before a public recently ‘informed’ enough to start questioning the seeming inconsistencies in the reporting of this matter, might in some way adversely impact the passage of proposed legislation touching upon the Succession to the Throne? Could that be the real reason for the adjournment?
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The Coroners documents are not for release to anyone who asks. The senior next of kin (spouse etc) has access, and other family members will need to prove relationship to the deceased. If you want access, go through the next of kin.
Do you not see a problem if anyone can access sensitive transcripts and documents – noting that coronial evidence is not necessarily to the standard required for Court proceedings.
I am at a loss to see any link with the Succession to the Throne legislation. It affects us, since the monarch is our Head of State; one excellent reason why we need to become a republic.
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Followed your link and found this typical mis-reading of the incident: “Peter Vintner @pvandck “What’s the difference between impersonation to obtain personal information & impersonation to obtain money? Both fraud surely?”
PVintner needs to listen to the tapes. The female radio host did NOT claim to be Her Maj at any time. She asked in a silly Sloane accent to “speak with my grand-daughter Kate”.
Why did the nurse not think it might be the mother of Carole or of Michael Middleton?
Every good telephonist knows to inform the extension of the caller’s identity ie “Hi 2nd Nurse, I am putting through Mrs Carole Snr for the Duchess” oh wait, JS was not a telephonist but a trained nurse. Another hospital fail. Oh wait 2: It’s 5am – who would ring at 5am?
The confluence of factors in the first report of this whole saga, has caused me to follow it all, making many bookmarks, and I have been stunned by the multiple contradictions through it all.
PVintner assumes the call’s purpose was “to obtain personal info” ?. I suspect they just wanted to deflate the pomposity of the ‘hospital of Royal choice’, which claims in it’s homepage to be “run with military precision” (and I do recommend you watch the CEO claim this in the video).
Since they had a ‘trained’ nurse on all night duty answering the switchboard and living alone away from home, with existing issues with other staff, and in the knowledge that her psychiatrist of last January suggested she could attempt suicide again … many are still quoted as blaming the radio people.
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Flashback (reminder) to an earlier succinct post, in regards to the nurse who actually has a name.
(Jacintha Saldanha,)
“gerard oosterman December 13, 2012 at 11:59 am #
Yes, it is all her fault.”
Are we back on the “How dare she be so cruel and selfish to others.” Bandwagon?
To blame the DJs completely is as inane as saying their actions had no effect on Nurse Jacintha Saldanha’s suicide.No coroners findings will deliver peace to Saldanas family, nor the DJs minds.But there is an undeniable focal point which will always define the situation,whether we like it or not.If this event destroys the prospect of future ‘pranking’ (humiliation belittlement,bullying) , good.Who knows, such a drive, may even save a life or two in the process.
And ,no, the hospital and staff are a long way away from being off the same perilous hook.Nor should they or the radio station management be.
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no ‘we’ are not back on any ‘how dare she’ bandwagon. Hypo – are you even listening? I am suicidal. If I do it today, and leave a note saying it was your relentless sniping at me on this thread that tipped me; would your friends be presenting a case for your defence? Would they be saying that ODyne had chronic issues at play well before she entered Jennifer’s blog?
They would be saying – “Well how could Hypo know how delicate AOD was. It’s just blogging for goodness sake” etc etc
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..and just as I do not know what is in your head,no-one ‘really’ knows what was in Jacintha Saldanha’s.
Yet many claim to.
It is a sad and complex case,which so far has done everything BUT focus on her (and generally) depression.
Like many things in the modern information Thunderdome, this event has turned into a ghoulish forensic soap opera.
Peace, for what it’s worth.
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AnnODyne:
“The confluence of factors in the
first report of this whole saga,
has caused me to follow it all,
making many bookmarks, and I have
been stunned by the multiple
contradictions through it all.”
Multiple contradictions indeed, together with very curious nuanced use of language. Almost as if the drip-feed of information/misinformation was designed from the outset to encourage people to mis-read the incident. I am questioning now just when was the ‘outset’ in relation to this incident?
Was it when the unconsciousness/death of nurse Saldanha was reportedly discovered?
Was it from the time that the hoax call was made by the DJs?
Was it from the time that the hoax call was planned and vetted by 2DayFMSydney management?
Or was it from some time before 2DayFMSydney had become involved in any capacity, with a deliberate selection of the King Edward VII Hospital as a target by some consortium of UK media-related interests perceiving a need for a high-profile beat-up story? That is, with both 2DayFM and the King Edward VII Hospital having been used in, rather than necessarily knowingly party to, at the outset, what eventually transpired.
With all of the seeming diffusion of responsibility as to the planning of the prank, the legal finessing that accompanied it, and the evident preparedness for damage control borne witness to by the speed with which the Twitter accounts of the DJs were closed (in the wee small hours of the morning in Oz) within minutes of news breaking of the death of Jacintha Saldanha, I’m increasingly favouring the fourth scenario as being ‘the outset’. In all of its potential complex permutations and combinations as to involvement of individuals.
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It just hit me like a bomb, the significance of this.
“without fear or favour” only applies when directed toward the investigation of others.
I can’t beleive the cowardice and god knows I’m no hero.
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I agree, it seems the the weird fixation the UK media have on the Royal family, has blown this almost ‘trivial at first’ issue out of proportion. Sacha Baron Cohen seems to make millions of dollars through television pranks almost yearly, yet 2 DJ’s make a short phone call and become the scapegoat in all of this. I find it sad that this women’s death has been enveloped in this crap in the first place, only she knows the depression that brought her to that place, yet the media all of a sudden become some sort of spiritual mediums who know the exact reasons behind her death.
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And there are people here and elsewhere who seem to have the power to penetrate her last thoughts.
The depth of sorrow attached to this can be seen when you see the family whose faces seem to reflect a mixture of confusing emotions.
Whose would not?
Their mother,and wife is now known a s the royal prank nurse.
You will carry that tag forever as will her loved ones.
I for one consider she was much more in life and deserves much more since dying.The collateral damage from this event spreads far and wide.If she was bullied at work,the bully/ies would not be feeling an iota of guilt.
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EDIT
She will carry
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I think that management will eventually be held to account.
But what hasn’t been mentioned (much) is the role of culture in this suicide. Why would Saldhana take her life over what many would regard, in the end, as a trivial issue? And why would would she visit such torment on her husband and children over a prank call? Surely a good part of the blame can be placed on a deeply irrational attitude to shame.
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So, the relentless hounding of Saldhana by the press, her most likely sacking as a result and with the stigma carried for the rest of her life. Her career ruined. Her cultural background. This could not be seen as having had a contributing factor?
What is it that makes this a mere ‘prank’? Are the Sandilands, Bolts and A.Jones’ of this world all so hilariously gifted with ‘pranks’?
I looked at the footage of the prank before the suicide and for the life of me could not detect any sliver of comedy or prank. Just a bit of old fashioned and world renowned Anglo bullying and, as always, at the cost of others..
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That says a lot of it for me, too
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yes Ray, irrational. I am hoping that after the Inquest today, it could be revealed that there is another issue. I am fascinated that the upstairs nurse who answered the transferred call and faffed on about liquids and tidying her up etc, has not been named. WTF?
Since the hospital is insanely costly, one would think they would put media/security-trained people on the phone the moment a ‘Royal’ is admitted. I would have phoned the Duke if I had known all this when he was there.
Nurse Saldanha had a rotten life commuting between London and Bristol and hardly ever seeing her family. She has not ‘taken’ her husband’s name. That’s not very ‘Indian’.
Maybe the Revelation To The World that they are not ‘married’ (whatever that means) is what drove her. 72 hours elapsed and hubby insists that he knew nothing of the incident we all did.
No family or neighbour or friend of his kids, or workmate of his said to him “hey man, your wife’s hospital is big news’.
In which case, all who have thundered on those poor radio kids, might also repair to the library with a revolver.
while here, may I thank FGumpp for that DM commenter link with the 3700 people agreeing with someone saying what we both just said
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In one report I read that she was a deeply religious Catholic. ??? She would have known that suicide means hell.
This is very strange.
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Yes, it is all her fault.
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That’s NOT my point Gerard. How dare you suggest otherwise.
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I hope not, but it seems as if you were somehow hinting at her suicide as an act of foolishness and irresponsibility without considering, to my mind, the dreadful mitigating circumstances. You mention, ‘in the end’ a ‘trivial issue’.
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If Jacintha Saldanha felt ‘in Hell’ on earth, (suicidal) she would likely not have perceived another Hell as a worse option.
This is so sad.All suicides are.
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Hospital management might have scapegoated her. Her own colleagues might have been really bitchy to her as nurses often are. She might have feared the response of her in-laws for bringing shame on the family. She might have had a secret she thought would be dredged to the surface by the gutter press. She might have coincidentally been planning it for weeks. She might have just read Shogun and taken it to heart. She might have been murdered by a royal obsessed crank.
The game of pick your favourite scapegoat for the nurse’s death and run with it isn’t a pretty one.
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As with Gerard Oosterman, this comment is pertinent.
In this case it adds to Jennifer’s question about whatever line was taken by management with Nurse Saldanha, because whatever it was,it sure didn’t help Saldanha cope with being made a fool of by the radio station.
Any one who has ever been lumbered for a hospital stay knows how seriously the better nurses take their work and how utterly crucial they can be for patients in deep strife looking for skilled treatment and reassurance.
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An utterly PREMATURE investigation. The inquest into the death of Jacintha Saldanha hasn’t even yet been held.
In the link, a ‘pastoral letter’ from Australia’s Cardinal Prince of the internet, Stephen Conroy. He of the red underpants headgear.
Interesting inference in the SMH article that, in all of the beat-up (and attempted cover-ups?) over this most unfortunate event, the ACMA may not as yet be in receipt of any complaint of substance about 2DayFM.
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Surely ACMA cannot concern itself with the real facts behind the nurse’s death though in any case.
They should be about formulating and regulating a reasonable code of conduct. It’s not as if her suiciding from shame would make the conduct any worse, or her having planned it weeks ahead makes the conduct any better.
The much more obvious risk to her was her losing her job, but the hospital would be taking a big risk by sacking her – the risk of widespread negative publicity or a wrongful dismissal case would be huge.
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having planned it weeks ahead WOULD MAKE … don’t want anyone accusing me of saying she planned it beforehand.
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“planned beforehand?” 10 days later we are informed:
By Wesley Johnson, Home Affairs Correspondent 4:01PM GMT 23 Dec 2012
Jacintha Saldanha, 46, was treated in intensive care at a hospital in Mangalore, India, in January, after reportedly falling from a building.
It came just nine days after she attempted to commit suicide with an overdose of pills during a family visit to India
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‘If’ the hospital did pan to sack her I doubt they would give a seconds thought to publicity.
It would be her word against the ‘Hospital to the Royals.
Maybe working at such a place is fraught with ultra stressful situations simply because of that very fact.
I think its so sad that after suicide,even in her recent passing, her life is now only about this one event.
She may well have been responsible for saving and enriching the lives of thousands over the period of her career.I hope at some point we hear about that.
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EDIT
‘plan’ to sack her
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I agree that the DJs and the nurse are just the visible tip of a very large iceberg. Not only is there the press, the advertisers, the lawyers, the royal worshippers, and the governments, but also all the people who love a prank and all the people who love to follow a juicy tragedy in the news. As I said in my own recent blog post on the subject, it takes a village to make a tragedy–in this case, a *big* village.
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So many issues here it’s hard to find a starting point.
However I have said elsewhere that the whole prank/real life/real harm slapstick industry sucks.But it sucks in a world where there are shallow voyeuristics who like to rubber neck other peoples pain and or misery.
All the way from Funniest Home Videos,Jackass,Prank patrol(teaching kids to scare/harm/humiliate/embarrass/torment at an early age)etc.
It’s yet another form of bullying, AFAIK.
While this poor nurse may have been in a fragile state, and this prank the catalyst,she may well be alive had it not occurred.I think we must presume this is the case.If we apply some empathy I think it’s hard to conclude otherwise.Then there are the two DJs who may also suffer permanent harm from this event.
Not too many winners,really.
What about the Royals? (I know paparazzi goes with the territory but….)
This invasion of privacy and infantile Royal obsession is also a societal wrong.
And sadly it’s a profitable one.
Had the baby popping princess been left off the front pages etc.
Charles?
I think he saw a humorous throw away line as a way of dealing with yet another infantile intrusion,and I think the actual comment preceded the tragic and lonely passing of Jacintha Saldanha, or at least I am sure he was unaware of her state..Like many others, he would probably wish he hadn’t said it.
However I would like her death to also be a catalyst.
A catalyst where the community finds a way to begin a discussion which brings an end to this reality TV,prank,invasionary media pus.
That needs to begin with us ( the shocked and concerned) using every opportunity to express our rejection of this medium.Blogs and comments like these are a good start.
(I realise that regarding reality TV etc,I am probably talking to the converted,here.)
I would also point out as others have that the large slab of rubber necks who thought this was hilarious in the beginning are in the main, the same zombies now baying for the blood of the two DJs.
Fail.
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And of course, while media focusses resources on this sort of shit to distract the public, a million stories that deserve to be told remain forever buried
Be it a mother fighting for her and her kids survival in Sudan, some bloke locked up in a detention centre wondering about the family he hasn’t seen for three years, or millions of stories of sober people, quiet achievers like Nurse Saldanha.
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Does no-one want to mention the British media?
They are the prize arseholes who picked up the story and ran with it!
All the way no doubt to pestering Saldanha around the clock.
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doug quixote,
Read my post of December 13, 2012 at 12:06 pm and that of ann odyne December 13, 2012 at 10:19 am.
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Quite right Forrest; I seem to have overlooked that post.
The British media is utterly obsessed with royalty, royal brides and royal baby-making activities in particular.
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I guess media,period.(Sure the UK lot reek,but look at ours.)Yep there are fine journos etc, good newspapers,TV etc, but sadly the punters drive the wagon.
“We like this shit”!”Give us more!”
(We being mainstream consumers of the pesterazzi, we are talking about,here)
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DQ, but we started it, I wrote about it on the other blog, not you orthe other bloggers there thought there was anything to be concerned about …
We started it here and the English press might have added to it, and who knows what the hospital staff did…silly, stupid, unfunny prank, who was laughing, not me, not the Indian nurse..
I wrote about how one idiotic phone call can end up having horrible consequences…
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Your comment is right, Helvi, but I’d balance it out by saying the English press and media is rightly regarded as notorious even by our low standards and Doug is spot on to point it out.
So much for the Leveson Inquiry and the aftermath of Milly Dowler’ macabre tale, as far as they are concerned.
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Filed under the category of ‘that’s not a knife,THIS is a knife….
Aaagh notorious.Depends what you mean by it.I think the spotlight is well and truly on us, and the pommie press will slam dunk us every chance they get.
(even if the sentiment of Jones is shared over there)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-13/jones-to-apologise-after-calling-lebanese-muslims-vermin/4426692?section=justin
If Jones was banned we may have a leg to stand on,but out there in urban street, some people will fight fang and claw, for ‘hate speech’ disguised as ‘free speech’,simply because we need to have extremes as examples for some reason.
Surely this is blatant racial vilification.As such he is not a fit person to broadcast.His actions could easily endanger lives and disrupt civil peace.
I am not buying this as any sort of suitable penalty, at all.
Keep in mind we have called for the expulsion of resident Muslim clerics and refused entry to foreign shit stirrers.
This is also an example of how the regulations are pathetic,the penalties way too soft and that the idea of self regulation is more often than not, not only a toothless tiger, but it’s a convenient escape clause.
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As has been the case since Prof Flint demonstrated that shock jocks, tabloid scribblers and tabloid tv are to be freed of the constraints of manners, facts, human courtesy and public scrutiny, for no better reason than, “that’s business”, after Cash for Comments.
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Keep in mind that this is same media who demand that some sort of ‘extra’ control be foisted on electronic media/blogs etc.
Prostestething too mucheth?
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Helvi, finally we agree on something! “silly, stupid, unfunny prank, who was laughing, not me, not the Indian nurse..” I refuse to listen to radio except for AM for an occasional news update. The commercial stations nauseate me….mostly programmed to feed news/music repetition like something out of “Soylent Green” or “1984”. and if enough people laugh the crowd mentaility requires others to join in…..Its why moronic shows like “Australia’s funniest home videos” can attract an adoring fan audience of mostly cruel humour…..thanks for the comment
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There’s no defence of rank idiocy, the point I made a couple of days ago in my own blog about this sorry episode.And I agree that management heads should roll as well, if any empty craniums end up rolling anywhere. The crass belief that any “celebrity” (and that includes British royals) is a legitimate target for invasions of privacy, nuisance calls and pranks is part of the problem. Crappy radio stations are too.
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Latest about the Coroners report
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-13/british-nurse-took-her-own-life3a-police/4427162?section=justin
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FWIW a report by The Guardian newspaper on the Jacintha Saldanha inquest: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/dec/13/jacintha-saldanha-hanged-prank-call?CMP=twt_gu
Of particular note from that report:
“[Detective Chief Inspector] Harman said: “There are a number of emails that are of relevance in helping us establish what may have led to this death and we are also looking at the deceased’s telephone contacts.”
It seems that on Twitter, I am now BLOCKED by @guardian . I can only wonder why.
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Paywalled, but someone may have a subscription. Opening sentences indicate Jacintha Saldanha is credited with leaving notes critical of work colleagues at the hospital immediately prior to her death.
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Bob Ellis draws an interesting parallel with the plot by Ashby, Doane and Brough, backed no doubt by Abbott, Pyne, Brandis and others, whose “prank” is/was an extended one designed to kill the Speaker, at least politically.
A physical death would probably not have upset them unduly.
http://www.ellistabletalk.com/2012/12/14/a-death-deferred/
Discuss.
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Comparing political scum, to Nurse Jacintha Saldanha’s tragic death and obviously the means with which she died, drags her family and loved ones into another fray, not of their choosing and probably of no interest to them.
This is not aimed at DQ specifically, but I think the least we can do is use her initials when we talk about her, if not her full name.
That said, it seems the limits of destructive tactics used on a political foe, are endless and with little signs of a humane streak,The facts show that it is the coalition side are the main offenders and the expert administrators of such tactics.They know who they are.
They have bragged endlessly of using those themes and anything else to maintain power.
Many an opponent and/or public servant has been crushed in their headlong rush to destroy, for political gain.
You’ll get no argument from me about that,but maybe we could leave Jacintha to her own history.
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So, you care more about a nurse who committed suicide in London than the attempted murder of the Speaker of the Australian Parliament.
Are those your priorities, or would you like to reconsider? Take your time.
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Point 1You’re an idiot.A weak tool.
Point2Leave this nurse alone, or explain why your pathetic political allegiance means you should prostitute her and her family.
Point 2.
Pont 3 If you have an accusation of attempted murder go to the police.
Point 4.f you have no evidence admit yourself to a psychaitric hospital immediately.
Point 5 And take your pathetic sidekick persona Macabre with you.
Point 6 Never speak to me again.
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DEIT for other readers.
For obvious reasons, and in my haste to respond to this ‘unit’ I did not bother to check the spelling.Apologies,please adjust it for yourself.
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Wow!.
Not even Bob Ellis is this devastating toward recalcitrant posters.
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You really have lost the plot. You are the one who replied to my post Dec14 6.18pm.
The rest of your rant deserves no reply whatsoever.
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“Are those your priorities, or would you like to consider? Take your time.”
I can’t see that either of them have common ground. What has a stitch up by political conspirators got in common with the prank that set off the series of events and psychological angst that led to the nurses suicide?
One was inane, but unforeseen – and the other was an intricately plotted collusion by a swaggering bunch of ethically bereft political hoons.
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No.
They are similar in their calculated ignoring of the rights and humanity of their victims, their dishonesty including as to their own motives amongst themselves, including the hospital administration, it appears and their demonstrable utter hatred of the truth, in situ or spoken of.
The radio antic can be seen as badly thought out if seen in isolation, except that such antics are not isolated but stock formulas stuff followed faithfully by tabloid press, radio and TV executives that involved a deep underlying contempt for the audience and the individual victims of stunts, unless this thought represents too much exposure to Media Watch on my behalf.
The system can finger you, but god help you if you fight back, usually.
Both antics involves lies told at someone else’s expense, or with no concern for the welfare of the subject, or to actually do harm in Slipper’s case or with the hospital scapegoating Saldanha to shut the public and press up.
In both cases, incidents and people would normally be “buried” very quickly and the only reason we know about the back door antics of people in authority in these cases is because the intervention of freakish game changing luck factors, eg the plot against Slipper coming undone as the plotters end up in the web they weaved for someone else,or Saldanha;s despairing suicide.
These things were both initiated and done for the shallowest of reasons and they continue a process of dehumanisation that ends at the gates of the forced labour camp or detention centre and those who have been “un-peopled”, inside.
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Excellent summing up, Paul…yes, I can see your point.
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Well said ,Paul, we are not all made of ‘sterner stuff’, there are a lot of vulnerable people out there.If some prankster or political plotter can handle some of the rougher stuff, it does not mean that we all can…
I’m toughening myself on the Ellis Blog 🙂
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Thank you Paul. The parallels are there; the degree of intent is different, from intent to mislead and embarrass in nurse Saldanha’s case, indifferent to any likely injuries, to deliberate attack with at least reckless indifference to the victim’s welfare in Slipper’s case.
There is a very serious issue in both cases; my point to Hypo was that a deliberate and false attack on one of the highest office holders in the country may well be the bigger issue for us here in Australia.
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With respect to your first paragraph, Hypo, well said!
Speaking with respect to derailment of the discussion from the sad, but now-perforce-matter-of-public-interest workplace death of Jacintha Saldanha, there are certain parallels between this whole series of events and the sequence of those surrounding the Granville rail disaster of 1977.
It is from the clarification as to sequence, and as to what really is cause, and what really is effect, that this discussion will produce anything of lasting merit in a commentariat frenzy of rushing off to judgement.
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And yes, I too have posted off-topic on ‘Hey Mr Tamborine Man’, but only after I asked Jennifer and she agreed. I picked that topic because it appeared to have exhausted its currency.
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DQ, just read your comment over at Ellis’ site and commented on what a pathetic gang the Tories looked on the evening news tonight, although I must have botched its sending. Abbott crestfallen, STILL won’t cut Brough loose. Hockey, a bellicose, dummy-spitting empty fart of a comment and finally the most satisfying site of all apart from Brough, Julie Bishop caught red-handed with teeth gnashing.
In Britain, it looks as though attention is now really settling on the hospital authorities mishandling of Saldanha’s case. Little people can’t fight back, but just possibly maybe, their ghosts can when a scapegoating or arse covering is botched.
Both stories are out of “Yes Minister” or “House of Cards”, without the humour, because satire masquerading as reality has proved much less amusing than the publicity stunt departments of tabloid media could have predicted.
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Paul,
I’m sorry I missed the troupe of performing political midgets….I do like your line: “Hockey, a bellicose, dummy spitting empty fart of a comment…” (Best one I’ve heard all day 🙂
But honestly, there’s no way Abbott can hang onto Brough. I think they thought they could bluff their way through, hoping it’d blow over, but the judgment is so damning of Brough’s part in the shenanigans that it’s almost beyond believable that they’ve all lined up behind him.
Dumb and dumber…..
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Zigactly, Poirot.
I wasn’t exaggerating about the news item, SBS or two it was.
I have never seen such a woebegone looking gang of dead-end people as these and can’t get past how struck I am with the similarities beween these people and the Tea Party politicians in the states, another raggedy bunch of delinquent, hostage-taking and pop-eyed psychopaths.
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I knew in my bones the hospital attitude had something to do with this tragedy.
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Its been like getting blood out of a stone, the gleaning of little snippets of seeming revelation from what would be expected to be the more authoritative sources in relation to this matter. The controlled release of MSM news?
Reinforces the bumper-sticker question ‘Is your news limited?’, doesn’t it!?
Here’s an un-paywalled report, I think the one referred to in my earlier tweet import.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/prank-call-nurse-criticised-hospital/story-fnb64oi6-1226536709181
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Yes JW. The still anonymous 2nd Nurse intrigues me.
Did the 2 of them have a row after?
More than one report says she was alive when found. The DJ’s did not claim to be Her Maj, just Kate’s grandmother (other of Michael or Carole?) Barboza has been described in more than one report as Jacintha’s ‘partner’. He has a right to see the original notes she wrote, not the ‘typed’ copies we have been told of. it all stinks.
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You are absolutely spot-on about something stinking in respect to this whole story, if by that you mean how the story has been promoted and maintained in the MSM, annodyne.
“More than one report says she was alive when found”
Correct. The relevant bit from a Daily Mail report timestamped [Friday] 7 December 1420 GMT :
“A Scotland Yard spokesman said yesterday: ‘Police were called at approximately 9.25am on Friday, December 7, to a report of a woman found unconscious [at] an address in Weymouth Street, W1.
‘London Ambulance Service attended and the woman was pronounced dead at the scene.
‘Inquiries are continuing to establish the circumstances of the incident.
‘The death is not being treated as suspicious at this stage’.”
Here is the link to that Daily Mail (Mail Online) item:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2244608/Jacintha-Saldanha-death-Australian-radio-station-boss-refuses-sack-Royal-prank-DJs.html
There are just so many serious distortions of what can be shown to be the truth in that item it is not funny. For example, like the claim as to the DJs deleting their Twitter accounts AFTER receiving backlash. WRONG!
The Twitpic shows a tweet by @MatthewRudd put up at 3:19AM AEDST Saturday 8 December, observing that the Twitter accounts of the DJs had already been deleted WITHIN MINUTES of the story breaking in London, where it was still Friday 7 December and around 2:00PM GMT! There had been no time for backlash!
The fact that the family of Jacintha Saldanha would in the normal course of events be entitled to the originals of the farewell notes testifies to the fact that such are seen as possibly constituting some form of forensic evidence relevant to the still-ongoing Coronial inquiry.
You’re right, annodyne, something definitely stinks so much that the ACMA inquiry here should be stopped in its tracks until the inquest findings are delivered.
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Establishing the time sequence:
https://twitter.com/MatthewJRudd/status/277083115225247744
https://twitter.com/MatthewJRudd/status/277084966414852096
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So using the logic used to compare a non-existent murder plot with the tragic suicide of Jacintha we can expect a barrage of . “don’t worry about the latest massacre of children in the USA,let’s get Abbott and save Gillard and Slipper.’
Never mind where is the humanity,where is the sanity.
None of you ‘actually’ read what DQ wrote.
Amazing.
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I did, Hypo.
I wonder whether, given the dismissive brevity of response, he read what I posted here: https://noplaceforsheep.com/2012/04/22/coalition-moral-high-horse-is-nothing-but-a-braying-donkey/#comment-14457
In the light of hindsight, and that of an upcoming Statute of Westminster enabling consent request from the UK government for it to be able to alter the law in relation to the succession to the throne, is an explanation now at hand for the grubby way in which the delegitimisation of Slipper was attempted?
Bearing in mind that of necessity the recent events in London inevitably also are capable of being seen in their own way as touching upon the succession to the throne, is it time for a wider view with respect to this whole matter?
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It probably is, (Republican discussion) time, but I don’t think anyone needs to use another persons family/ life/death who is in no way connected.
Ellis could fight the the cause an a more specific front,and Macabre could try borrowing a little intelligent reasoning or compassion.
“IT” always demanding others think before posting.
Let’s be clear.The words used were these;
“So, you care more about a nurse who committed suicide in London than the attempted murder of the Speaker of the Australian Parliament.”:
Where are his facts?Why has he or Ellis or whomever has the evidence of this capital crime,not reported it to police?
The Slipper affair has nothing to do with Jacintha’s death.Her body is hardly warm and people are denigrating the situation, by dragging the two issues together.
Macabre must spend so much time listening to Ellis et al ‘it’ thinks Gillard and Rudd are the only things on earth.Oh yes and Shakespeare impersonators.
Crassius maximus.
Priorities Forrest,priorities.
“So, you care more about a nurse who committed suicide in London than the attempted murder of the Speaker of the Australian Parliament.”:
The answer is yes,and that’s because one of the scenarios is real.
The other is lunatic city.
Strangely not one comment from the usual suspect about ICAC.
It seems they are not worthy of comment.
Talk about hypocrisy.Let me guess,it’s a right wing witch hunt.
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“The Slipper affair has nothing to do with Jacintha’s death.”
Indeed. And at the outset:
“Discuss.”
It was as direct an attempt at a thread hijack as I have ever seen. Just thought I would give a hint as to where it could end up if it was to succeed, and what interests might suddenly be seen as being affected by Constitutional, as opposed to political opportunism, considerations in such circumstances.
You’ll get no argument from me, Hypo.
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There had been no comments on this thread for about a day. I think I am entitled to rejuvenate the discussion by drawing a parallel.
I freely admit that my language was hyperbolic, and deliberately so. Provocative, and Devil’s Advocate.
Those disliking what they see as hijacking may feel free to ignore it, or to draw the discussion back to the main theme as they see it.
I do not in any way seek to downplay the tragedy of this young woman’s death; rather to point up the parallels.
And as for the tragedy in Newtown Connecticut, it is almost beyond words.
http://www.ellistabletalk.com/2012/12/15/newtown-twelve-hours-later/
Bob’s article, and my comments following.
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Your doing no such thing.You are point scoring while using a tragedy and making shit up about an attempted murder.The words are there in black and white.
Your now even lower than Howard, your only hero, mentor and one true love.
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For me, some of the best comments coming out on this stuff come from Dali, the Bob Ellis commenter.
That the courts and other institutions be NOT employed as launching pads for criminal purposes, is the inference (s)he draws from the judge’s comments in the Ashby case.
We have watched the libs, employing both the courts and public forums like parliament and media, advance any number of falsehoods in the past.
The two most blatant examples are refugee policy and aborigines, although we don’t forget the wars on women, greens, gays, unemployed and intellectuals and remember despairing of them ever being bought to book, particularly after recalling Howard giving tabloid press and media carte blanche, via Flint, from Cash for Comments onwards and the subsequent antics of Bolt, Jones and co.
We have watched public and quasi public institutions employed regularly to legitimise racism, sexism, neoliberalist expropriationist apologetics, and other forms of dishonesty or bigotry.
But with Slipper and Thomson, the error crept in.They were not bagging asylum seekers locked up so as to be unable to reply, or discredited raggedy aboriginals visibly angered by the invasion of their communities by white goons on a hypocritical, slanderous mission to save the Howard government’s skin at the expense of poor black people.
Facts could be checked and legal action instigated and the judge eventually concluded that the Right was shamelessly and dishonestly following, as usual, the misappropriation of institutions and their legitimacy as launching pads for campaigns of slander and innuendo involving collateral damage to irrelevant parties like nervous breakdowns, even death, significantly of the type that drives whistleblowers to suicide.
Like wise in Britain, vested interests had found yet another a useful Milly Dowler type, in Jacintha Saldana, until this menial’s despairing and perversely timed suicide drew attention back to the mix of bureaucrats, tabloid media and vested interests who had patsied her so easily, as Abbott and Aussie msm patsy defenceless people so easily.
As I see it, Abbott follows the example of Al Capone. They couldn’t get Capone for racketeering, so they got him for income taxes.
What Abbott and his friends should have been “done” for re aborigines and refugees, they’ve ended up getting done for over Slipper and Thomson.
Similarly, other tyrannical faces of the system, monarchy-worship, bureaucrats and media and press, are “done” on Saldana for the same reason, the callousness of the outlook finally inducing manifest human damage for weak reasons and lies, undoing what is usually left unexamined for the convenience of the privileged.
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Well said Paul, and indirectly, Dali. Trying to use the Courts to spread their evil propaganda has backfired; just how badly remains to be seen.
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This may be so,but the rot is set on both sides.What we have is a Mexican stand-off.
Otherwise we would have had an enquiry into what Howard et al did by now.
Either the two parties believe in morality and justice or they don’t.If they did they would use one to pursue the other and change the coal front for the better.Labor has buckets of shit on the coalition and vice versa.That’s just one reason we don’t see litigation.If both sides had no baggage the atmosphere would be civil.
They are as bad as each other.When the dust settles on the NSW ICAC enquiry or the Gillard cheer squad actually acknowledge the final findings,whichever comes first, you will see that the parties themselves are just conduits for pricks with an agenda.
Both parties have factions and the factions call the shots.Sadly the factions call to a piper who is a mix of business,MSM and corrupt and greedy individuals.
There’s not much hope for any positive change for the next decade as the so called intellectuals of our society STILL remain fixated with tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber.
Every time I hear an apology for faux Labor I see a wasted opportunity.
A solution for indigenous issues and refugees or real action on climate change is just as far away under Labor as it is under Liberals,because they are slaves to the same types of masters.
Ferguson alone has put back any reduction in greenhouse gases by at least 15 or 20 tears.If he crossed the floor no-one would notice.
We could demand that either party set up a Royal Commission into the opponents dealings.Why don’t we? Because we know it will never happen.And I doubt we have the will power to want it to happen.The faceless men and big business lick each others scrotum’s.Any investigation will bring down both majors.Tea Party Twins.
Abbott will self destruct soon enough,but then the coalition will substitute ‘bad cop’ for ‘good cop’, and continue with business as usual.
There are none so blind as those who are partisan fuck-knuckles.Except for the self righteous deluded believers who parrot that the other side is worse.
Well you can file that particular myth with all the rest, in, the same basket as,
“I drive better when I’m pissed”
“No more taxes”
“I won’t come in your mouth”
“things will be different,next time”
“the second amendment gives us the right to bear arms”
“I’m not a racist but”
and
“my wife doesn’t understand me.”
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The two truest are,”my wife doesn’t understand me” ( thank god I’m single, btw) and “I won’t come in your mouth”, followed closely by, “things will be different next time” and “I drive better pissed”.
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The cheque is in the mail.
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Apologies for omitting the obvious,
“I don’t recall”
“the honourable member”
“I’m not a racist but”
” I have nothing to hide”
“service”
“hospitality”
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It didn’t take long for a idealist to turn into a cynic, did it?
Or is it just that the holier-than-thou attitude adopted requires a certain descent from the high ground? Now only Marilyn still left up there.
Sic transit gloria.
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Have the federal police asked you where they buried Slippers body yet?
Getting an opinion/ analysis from you, is like asking you forr evidence or proof of anything.
All you offer is piss and wind and beginners lessons in semaphore solutions to waving the same old tattered, non-solution Tea Party flag.
Never has anyone preached so much as practised so little as you.
You= The Prattler.
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But they have barf bags on planes for travel sickness. Poor girl though.
Always enjoyed the Them song “Gloria”, early Van Morrison.
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‘Barf Bags’ pretty much sums up some of the more ignorant passengers, as well.
The kind who like to lay seats back as far as they can as often as they can.
Arseholes.
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Here’s a topic for the adults.(Which JW may move somewhere appropriate?)
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/14/1337551/michigan-guns-classroom/?mobile=nc
Maybe now the faux Labor govt and some of the states will take a closer look at the rise of the Shooters and Fishers party before it’s too late.I don’t think we should allow the two activities to be rolled into one party for starters.I must say I don’t fear a bloke with a fishing rod,but someone with an arsenal?Why would someone need (be allowed) any more than one gun?
Look at the rapid rise of guns used in NSW crimes lately.
And I am not sure if and how many, but I believe there was talk(if not action) on the teaching of shooting at Aussie schools front.It’s a sport, don’t you know.
What a relief to know we are surrounded by athletes.
Imagine how ‘sporty’ that makes the Yanks.
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Good post Hypo, We all watched Bowling for Columbine shook our heads wondering what the Americans were thinking too proliferate so many weapons, and hoped it might make a difference without knowing how.
Now I see the gun lobby are calling themselves the shooters and fishers party, which really pisses me off because I occasionally like to fish and I want nothing to do with guns. I think they’re trying to dupe us into buying an inclusive label that insinuates that fishing is under threat when it isn’t. Maybe that’s a bit like all the Baptists, Mormons, Catholics and Protestants who get behind so called Christian candidates when we know quite well in fact that some of them have more in common with Richard Dawkins than they do with each other?
Sometimes there are rises in gun crime, but as often as not there’s a halting decline over time while other social conditions remain fairly stable. I don’t think there’s much evidence to suggest we’re in anything like the position America is. Pardon the bad pun, but I think we’ve dodged a bullet on that score, we don’t seem to suffer from the illusion that violence solves anything to nearly the same degree. And for that I think we really ought to be both thankful and vigilant in keeping it that way.
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The rapid rise in NSW shooting incidents is an alarm bell.
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Yes, Hypo, it is a big worry, shootings in South-West Sydney are almost a daily occurrence.
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I could give you a long an detailed explanation of why but violence declines with improvements in social conditions and with reductions in opportunities for outbreaks of it such as reducing numbers of guns and knives on the streets.
In a socially advanced society like the US we may be inclined to say its a bit of both on the correlation of disadvantage with guns. It is only when you look at the sheer number and availability of guns than you really seriously have to factor in a lack of gun control. By the time you’re doing that you’re looking a homicide rates averaging an order of magnitude higher than comparable societies.
Drawing the same conclusions about Australia simply doesn’t work given we’ve better gun control than many European countries with comparable or lower homicide rates. What we’re more likely to be seeing are areas of social disadvantage where the incidence of violence has become concentrated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership_rate
You can use those two links to verify a lot of what I’m saying.
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Finland has a very high gun ownership, yet most killings are done by alcohol addicted marginalised men using a knife or any other sharp object, most murders are not premeditated, they are done by drunks having an argument.
My good friend’s brother was killed over five dollars by his best mate, both intoxicated.
Lately there has been some copycat mass shootings by Internet inspired youngsters.
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And yet it’s impossible to shoot people with a gun you don’t have hold of.
Like the guy on the teev (regarding the latest US massacre) said this morning.We are not living in a war zone.
There is no such thing as a civilised society if they use extremists to distort their own amendments, to justify owning an arsenal full of war weaponry.
I have a slim chance of outrunning a guy with an attitude and a knife,of even surviving some wounds if nabbed, or a club , a fist whatever.
No such chance with a gun.
We need citizen protection BEFORE gun owner rights.Period.
Police stations should become gun repositories.(possibly other highly secure venues) Gun users should be licensed and then pre-hire the gun for legitimate pursuits as needed.All license holders would be psyche and DNA tested prior to getting a users permit (license) .
Perhaps,just perhaps farmers can get special exemptions, but even they need to be limited to gun number and size.And the security of them needs to be increased.Farmers, too, should be psyche tested.
All license holders to be retested every two years.
The idea that a person can own several guns of varying capacities,which sit around idle for most of time says two main things.Firstly we do not need that many guns or people with that many guns, and second it is a testament to a power process in the gun owners mind.Neither scenario is justified and neither instils me with any confidence.
“Have gun will use it.”
If you don’t believe me look at death by gun and assault by TASER,in the police forces.
We need less guns now.No matter what the death rate says.Have a look at the gun ownership stats since Howards buy back.
Segue,
The Shooter and Fisher party (deceptive) naming thing is a tactic the red neck lobby like to use.The forest industries grass roots (heavily industry laced and funded) is known as Timber Communities Australia.
They are the most vocal group,who claim the most community relevance to politicians at all 3 levels,when in reality they are basically industry mouth pieces
Interestingly the previous name of the same group was the “Forest protection Society”. Fancy that, protection by way of clear felling.
Un-segue,
If you want a real fright, visit any shooting website, or read some US blog reactions to the latest tragedy.
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I want to say more that will be pertinent to this in response to Doug’s post as well, but basically I don’t think you can take a problem manifesting itself as a right to protect oneself and readily flip it into a right to be protected by somebody else. I just isn’t a notion that is in the least bit credible to gun owners in America.
I think you can sell the notion that if you can’t own a weapon of mass destruction then you ought not be able to own a widening range of other offensive weapons. Most importantly of all though, the notion of a need for protection has to credibly and progressively be pushed aside. You can arguably still have the right to bear arms without having the need, and in that sense because American politics is what it is removing the need has to be part of the equation.
And yes I agree gun nuts can be fairly extreme. Take the fellow from Georgia who called himself “Professional Russian” put on an accent and started the Youtube Channel FPSRussia, where he posts videos of himself basically shooting a lot of guns and blowing shit up. Given that he’s not even Russian you’ve got to grudgingly admire his chutzpah and his 520 Million views. He spends big on some of his videos because he’s earning very well from this.
So whether this stuff just plays to males with an overdeveloped hypothalamus and underdeveloped orbitofrontal cortex, I don’t know. But I do know that a lot of people can enjoy that or the Discovery Channel without going on rampages, whereas those who really ought to be psych tested before they’re let off any kind of leash certainly don’t represent enough of the vote to effect political change.
As to your segue; another prime example was that the British Ministry of War effectively changed it’s name to the Ministry of Defence right at the outbreak of WW2. Mating strategy? I think so!
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The US is socially advanced in many ways but it features an underclass, and many disaffected individuals who are under high stresses; its safety net is defective and those in receipt of support are looked down upon. It is not an egalitarian society except in its political theory.
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The thing I wanted to add that takes in your comment was simply to expand on the idea that really people going postal is more of a copycat thing and less of a numbers game than I think we tend to think.
I distinctly remember one expert expressing considerable concern at the attention Anders Behring Breivik got following the 2011 Norway attacks. Not that he doesn’t differ significantly from Adam Lanza in that he had something of a political motive, twisted as it may have been. What concerns psychologists is that people see the attention these events get and identify with the misunderstood loner too easily.
That said statistically high gun ownership and elevated homicide rates do go hand in hand with obvious monotony. As an overall refection on any society that wants to reduce levels of violence this is a no brainer. It just doesn’t happen to be the most pertinent observation to make about school shootings.
The real thing to keep in mind when it comes to these kinds of shootings is the same thing John Howard focused on after Port Arthur. Getting rid of semi-automatic weapons can save lives when for reasons we can’t always control shootings do occur, and Lanza carried two Pistols and a semi-automatic combat rifle. Apart from just begging the question why anyone needs such an offensive weapon in peacetime, I think we can argue as I have above, that if you don’t need weapons of mass destruction then maybe by gradual extension you can also do without a good many other things in your arsenal. In America for now that may just be the best way to push back against gun violence.
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Annodyne’s posts of [Thursday] December 13, 2012 at 10:19 am,
[Friday] December 14, 2012 at 8:19 am, and
[Saturday] December 15, 2012 at 8:58 am
contain some of the most utterly pertinent questions. The more one revisits them, the more other questions they beg.
Her “I do not understand why a nurse with drug access would hang herself.” fair screams out for refocussed attention. I don’t understand that either.
Her “I am fascinated that the upstairs nurse who answered the transferred call and faffed on about liquids and tidying her up etc, has not been named.”. Me too, and more so each time I revisit this post.
Her “The still anonymous 2nd Nurse intrigues me. Did the 2 of them have a row after?”.
Or had there been a row (whether or not involving the still anonymous second nurse, or for that matter Jacintha Saldanha) around three hours earlier BEFORE Jacintha put through the hoax call at 5:30AM GMT? That is, at around 2:30AM GMT, which would have been around the time the last of a series of calls claimed to have been made by 2DayFMSydney to the hospital PRIOR to the prank might have been received at the unmanned reception desk by night shift nursing staff. A row something along the lines of “Do NOT answer the bloody switchboard! This is a night NURSING shift, and we have more to do than field incoming calls! I’ll bloody well crucify anyone that does!”. Yet at 5:30AM Jacintha, perhaps unknowing of there having been such a row, answers the switchboard and puts a call through.
Her “More than one report says she was alive when found.”. The BBC Breaking online news, one of the first to break the story of Jacintha’s death, referred to her as having been “found unconscious” in what we now know to be her apartment in the nurses’ quarters associated with the hospital. The ten minute discrepancy between reports claiming that to have been at 9:25AM GMT and 9:35AM GMT could well be explained as being the time of first being reported to police, and the time police attended at the scene, respectively.
I haven’t seen anything published as to when her night shift would normally have ended, assuming her to have done one on the night of 6/7 December. Nor have I seen anything as to the duration of the shifts she routinely worked. But why was she discovered unconscious in her quarters when she was, WHILE STILL ALIVE? Were they shared quarters, with some other nurse coming off shift discovering Jacintha in a bad way shortly before 9:25AM GMT? Or was someone sent looking for Jacintha because she had not either returned to duty after a break, or failed to show up for another shift (‘doing a doubler’)?
All of which speculation leads into questions of workplace practice and culture, and thus straight back to management as per JW’s “I knew in my bones the hospital attitude had something to do with this tragedy.” of her post of December 15, 2012 at 7:21 am, not to mention the title of her blog item itself.
Specifically, it leads to further speculation as to whether there existed a tacitly accepted practice of the taking of ‘stay awake’ medication by staff called upon to perhaps cover staff shortages on other shifts at short notice, and in turn to that as to whether some interaction between ‘sleep inducing’ and ‘stay awake’ medication may have been the cause of Jacintha’s unconsciousness and subsequent death.
But what am I saying? That the reported hanging is a cover story? Seemingly very cruel to the bereaved if it was. And if so, whose cover story? If I am not mistaken, as at the time of the adjournment of the Coronial Inquest (to March NEXT YEAR) the toxicology report had either not been received by the Coroner, or was not released for publication. Would such a speculative scenario carry with it an implication that the notes reportedly found in Jacintha’s apartment might have been forgeries?
In the light of this line of speculation, Ray (novelactivist)’s observations, in his post of December 13, 2012 at 11:28 am, are not so much out of left field as might at first be thought. If a cover story as to the death is involved, Jacintha’s inferred beliefs may have been something not on top of mind to those attempting to set a scene that might deflect attention away from an area perhaps long known to be one of concern to management, the taking by staff of sleep-inducing and/or sleep-delaying medications.
All of which is less likely to be out of place against the background of annodyne’s observation that “Nurse Saldanha had a rotten life commuting between London and Bristol and hardly ever seeing her family. Perhaps because she stayed in London during her working week Jacintha was seen as one of the hospital’s ‘go to’ people for plugging unexpected gaps in rosters, and perhaps a ‘willing horse’ was just pushed too hard, or unwittingly over-used.
What I do see in all this saga is a MSM (or significant parts of it) moving heaven and earth to elicit and harness-up public outrage in a cause all its own, the hobbling of social media. The genuine social media reaction tended very much to be along the lines of ‘how sad’ rather than of ‘blood on their hands’ twitter-hate directed at the DJs. Any Australian-based perception of global reaction was more one arising from the time the story broke, Friday afternoon in the UK, mid-morning east coast USA/Canada, and dawn west coast USA/Canada. The total VOLUME of traffic on Twitter over the first 24 hours was insufficient/as yet too unco-ordinated as to hashtags to trend. 2DayFMSydney received most of the Twitter reaction, and it probably seemed so large here in Australia because it had the bulk of the English-speaking world awake and aware when the news broke.
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It looks like Jennifer’s ‘knowing in her bones the hospital attitude had something to do with this tragedy’ is bang on the money! Slowly, bit by bit, the MSM dribble out the relevant information.
This link is via a Google search to the same article and defeats the paywall: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/hoax-nurses-body-returned-to-india/story-fnb64oi6-1226537709418
And YES, according to this news item, there was an unresolved workplace issue that pre-dated the making of the hoax call! According to the Sunday Times item, that issue had been the subject of a formal complaint to management.
The complaint had reportedly been resolved by management placing the work colleagues involved on different shifts, rather than taking the disciplinary action requested by Saldanha. I wonder who’s work-life arrangements were most disrupted by this action?
What a timely and wonderful scapegoat 2DayFMSydney and the DJs turned out to be in the circumstances.
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I can tell you from direct, experience of several events.Bullies are rarely sacked.They are clever manipulators of senior management and are devious enough to engage their psychological tortures where there are little if any traces of evidence or witnesses.They often seek and enact retribution if confronted.It’s in their nature.Recruits in a certain govt department I know of(and possibly all) are openly told at an HR induction that sometimes it’s better to just quit than pursue bullies.
Kneecapping is too good for them.
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Check.
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Hypocritophobe:
“They often seek and enact retribution if confronted.It’s in their nature.”
On reflection, and in relation to the lines of speculation opened up from annodyne’s observations, CHILLING, in the light of the syndicated Sunday Times news item published by The Australian only hours after my posting of those speculations on December 16, 2012 at 10:50 am.
Jacintha Saldanha had effectively, and with all due propriety, ‘confronted’ in then recent days another staff member (her junior or subordinate) according to that news item.
If that un-named other staff member was also in truth a workplace psychopath …….
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Yes indeed.
Being an avid ‘over breakfast’ laptop reader of dailymail.online commentors, today They Have Spoken. Overwhelmingly they have green-arrowed criticism of the nurse, and red-arrowed criticism of the radio people; Many have said they are sick of the issue. Maybe because of the drip-feed facts and the contradictions. a week of being told the radio stn did not ring multiple times, now we are told she took those calls and told nobody. Suicide is a vicious spiteful act. It is not ‘done’ to one’s Self, but done to others – as in “I’ll show you.”
Two normal night nurses flung into the world spotlight would have been on chatshows by now, and offered big cash for their ‘story’. it still all stinks.
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Agreed it still all stinks. Perhaps for reasons of their own the police have had to play it the way it appears to have been played.
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I consider your appraisal of suicide to be way too simplistic, and dismissive as well.
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I am going away now to hang myself because hypocrite has made me look stupid in public
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Please please please do not be flip or make fun of suicide, its is an extremely painful time in the life of family friends and hopefully the survivor. Unfortunately I spent a period of time as a suicide counseller many years ago, the reasons can be as simple as “I’ll show you” as Ann says but there are many many others (its not always for selfish reasons) and it is far from as simple as you think to prevent. If thats all that was required one free hit on the aggrieving person by the victim would be enough to solve the emotional anger….but its more complex and depression is often anger turned inward or suicide is driven by a complete loss of hope or belief that life is worth living for any of many many reasons. I suggest if you want to make fun of suicide you volunteer sometime as a counsellor for Lifeline…..then write a reply here afterwards…Insensitivity is a form of death, lets hope your not displaying yours
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Zero, you make me laugh, YOU have been a suicide counsellor, you have lived in outback, you have been a pharmacist, a doctor, you are working in a old peoples’ home, your dog died, you never had a dog, your son John uses your computer, you share a house and your computer with AJ, you are related to English royalty, you related well known Oz political figures…..
You badmouth the NPFS blog, you have no mercy for asylum seekers, Norway is the worst country in the world…
Why are you doing all this?
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“Zero, you make me laugh, YOU have been a suicide counsellor, you have lived in outback, you have been a pharmacist, a doctor, you are working in a old peoples’ home, your dog died, you never had a dog, your son John uses your computer, you share a house and your computer with AJ, you are related to English royalty, you related well known Oz political figures…..
You badmouth the NPFS blog, you have no mercy for asylum seekers, Norway is the worst country in the world…
Why are you doing all this?”
Firstly Im glad I made you laugh, you appear to need a regular humour implant from the tone of your posts…
Please cut and paste me claims that you ascribe me to saying and claiming all those things…pharmacist? doctor? working in old peoples home? (I did say I support two elderly people but I dont work in an old peoples home, both live independantly) What dog? Who’s John? AJ I do share a computer with, I AM related to English and Scottish Royalty as it happens but so? I do know quite a few pollies, I have never bad mouthed NFPS, cut and paste please!!! No mercy for asylmu seekers? Who says – I think you are confusing policy opinions with intentions – Cut and paste please! Norway is the wrost country in the world?? Where did you dredge that one up from? References for yet more trumped up assertions….Helvi your either the worlds worst detective (Not related to Inspector Clouseau are you?) or just a really really confused person, in either event evidence please or just do what you usually do and go away and sulk for a few days
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Obviously Ann is in touch with ‘the other side’ and knows what motivates all suicide victims.
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I choose not to make any more comment regarding suicide, its a personal matter and I wont reply to posts related to it, thanks all
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Zero, not a very clever reply, it proofs that I’m right about knowing all your pseudos, from UL, The Drum, Bob Ellis and NPFS, and another one, I think…
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Helvi, Names, Nicknames and proof please? Or dont you have any? Go on I could use a laugh….until then you have proved nothing….or perhaps thats because you have nothing?….go right ahead – name them all – Im sure Im not the only one waiting with bated breath (or alternatively yawning with boredom at another empty assertion)
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zero, play your silly games all you wish,I’m just letting you know that you are easy to spot, nasty is as nasty writes….
Change your style and and at least try to be more compassionate; that might fool even me.
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Helvi – I noticed your backdown and non answering of what was a simple question, you put it out there now back it up! What little credibility your opinion’s had for me now count for nothing, – no proof, no evidence, and a little fraudulent of you to make false assertions about another person, just out of interest have ever been in trouble with the police? Do you have a history of this? I deal with workplace fraud from time to time, the false accuser always gets the worst of it…..so again I offer you the opportunity to name names, nicknames or whatever else you have to prove I have multiple ID’s, more wordy or deflective non answer’s just basically state you have nothing….and yes Im calling you a blatant liar….and you yourself seem to be supporting that label…..so what have you got? sweetness?
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No, no, don’t do it Ann ODyne! What if it wasn’t suicide at all, but simply made to look like it? Then everything will have been for nothing! What if it was stupid to make you look stupid in public? Look at what this is doing to your good name. Don’t do this to us Ann. Talk to us!
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thanks FG
everything I said – Suicide is a vicious spiteful act. It is not ‘done’ to one’s Self, but done to others – as in “I’ll show you.”– is what my own psychiatrist said to me. I am however, smarter than the average nurse and carry with me at all times a scalpel and a fresh blade.
Jennifer writes a wonderful blog, but after the first 15 comments it turns into a snipey juvenile slanging match and I vow to never return. I have 7 blogs since Feb 2005 and have never been snipey ever.
I will revert to anodyne right after I say I could slap that nurse. All around her claim she had Faith, but she obviously did not pop around to her priest in her hour of need.
My personal traumas a nothing compared to those of many people who do not resort to a vicious selfish act that makes life very difficult for those left behind.
On Christmas when the birth of Jesus is commemorated most hypocrites just spend money excessively and pig-out on food. I will be thinking of Miss Mel Greig.
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I don’t think suicide is viscous and spiteful…I think that to lose the impetus for living to such a profound extent, one must find themselves inhabiting the loneliest place in the universe.
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Well after that outburst and your know all theory of suicide I don’t think you need me to make a fool of you.
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This is in answer to annodynes last(so called post.
thanks FG
everything I said – Suicide is a vicious spiteful act. It is not ‘done’ to one’s Self, but done to others – as in “I’ll show you.”- is what my own psychiatrist said to me.
{Based on his experience or attitude.Which is either a lousy attitude or meant to somehow convince those considering suicide to not.I recommend you get a second opinion,or at least name him so people who need help can avoid him/her}
I am however, smarter than the average nurse and carry with me at all times a scalpel and a fresh blade.
{Smarter?
I think a nurse might carry drugs.Less mess,more peaceful}
Jennifer writes a wonderful blog, but after the first 15 comments it turns into a snipey juvenile slanging match and I vow to never return. I have 7 blogs since Feb 2005 and have never been snipey ever.{Congratulations,but you seem to be making up for it now}
I will revert to anodyne right after I say I could slap that nurse. All around her claim she had Faith, but she obviously did not pop around to her priest in her hour of need.{Umm have you seen what priest are capable of doing?How do you know she did not?I mean HOW do YOU know?}
My personal traumas a nothing compared to those of many people who do not resort to a vicious selfish act that makes life very difficult for those left behind.
{That’s true,but I try to empathise on what would it be like to be so low to ignore all of what you say and still try or even succeeed.Some,not all MAY be selfish in part}
On Christmas when the birth of Jesus is commemorated most hypocrites just spend money excessively and pig-out on food. I will be thinking of Miss Mel Greig.{Quite true,but you need to tell that to the believers who are doing it so they can be smitten and get in Goddies bad books.Christmas is a joke religiously and by waste of resources period.
When I see the Christians with the biggest mouths practising what Jesus preached I’ll pay attention.It won’t be in my life time or my grandchildren’s either}
Nobody made you look stupid.You are too thin skinned.
You wrote (without EVER quoting it as anyone elses words)
“Suicide is a vicious spiteful act. It is not ‘done’ to one’s Self, but done to others – as in “I’ll show you.”
I wrote in reply
“I consider your appraisal of suicide to be way too simplistic, and dismissive as well.”
So I see your outburst as infantile.
This is what I wrote way earlier,
“If Jacintha Saldanha felt ‘in Hell’ on earth, (suicidal) she would likely not have perceived another Hell as a worse option.
This is so sad.All suicides are.”
That ‘sadness'(futility/tragedy) applies to the victims and those they leave behind.If you (directly or by way of your shrink(in this case) ,cannot actually perceive that someone could actually want to end their own pain, so bad, so finally, but were driven by revenge or inflicting hurt then, you fit right in with that strange Christian cult of let God and the priests sit in judgement, and or sort it out..Good for you.We both agree Christmas is a farce,so I won’t wish you a merry one
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Please sign the petition by clicking on this link. It’s the only sensible thing to do.
uavSqkKeiA9S
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Sorry the link doesn’t marche; try this one,
http://www.change.org/petitions/international-court-of-justice-at-the-hague-bring-the-us-pro-gun-senators-to-justice?response=1efa63853adf&utm_source=target&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=signature_with_comment_on_unsponsored_petition
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Gerard,
you accidentally uploaded your own email on that link.Best get JW to delete the post and try again before you get spammed to death.
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I tried to add my support to the petition,but as with every other Change Org petition, I try to sign, I always get some sort of error message,no matter what I try.Sometimes it tells me my Javas needs updating(not true) or OOps could not find the page.
Even in IE.
I even notified them and I never heard back.I hope I am the only one who has this issue or they will be losing a lot of sigs.
It’s frustrating but I think I might unsubscribe.That way I won’t see the worthy causes I cannot support.
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Yes, others have commented the same, yet others have signed. Very frustrating.
Don’t understand it.
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I see the news of the usual pre- Christmas US shooting horror, right on schedule, starting to turn up in posts.
Watching the news. it was desolately pitiful, but for some reason am back to Ann O Dyne’s comment a while back concerning the responses from people to a point she was making as, “you’d have thunk I’d machine-gunned a kinder class”..
Many a true word spoken in jest.
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Given Abbott is Howard’s love child, I vote we send him over to America with a bullet-proof vest and a loud hailer, to
“STOP THE GUNS!”
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I suppose it’s superfluous to add that I imagined that as the very worst thing a person could do. little kids. 20 tiny coffins.
We don’t want a crime like this, just so we can find out some teachers have heroic presence of mind and care for their class beyond themselves. Bless them.
it appears that the boy’s mother was insane and they were her registered guns. which makes the laws insane. there is a boy near Ballarat with ‘fine upstanding parents’ who had no idea he had an absolute arsenal. Who else in Victoria is the same?
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Made the same point on FB to US friends who despair of seeing the current regime turned over. Whatever Howard did wrong, everyone remembers he did get it right on gun control after Bryant’s Pt Arthur rampage.
The problem is an unscrambling the egg one.
Can you imagine them getting the Armalites and Kalashnikovs off the crime gangs in the cities and right wing militias, out in the sticks?
The right wing TeaParty types are actually trying to get over the counter sales for rocket launchers, let alone machine guns, so abandon all hope ye who enter here.
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PW,
With all due respects to the crime gangs,
“Can you imagine them getting the Armalites and Kalashnikovs off the crime gangs in the cities and right wing militias, out in the sticks?”
So far the slaughter of the innocents is done by anyone but.
It seems there must be some sort of line they don’t cross.I dare say if the cowards who massacres on this scale went into an open prison they would not last 5 seconds,and I seriously doubt the screws would ‘see’ who did it.
We expect the bad guys to commit crimes,even with guns.But this,this is sub human behaviour.And the call from the gun lobby (already) to tackle mental health issues before gun control is a sure sign the gun lobby are not fir to carry guns,let alone lobby anyone.
As the bloke (ABC24 Uni Professor,American Politics??)in this mornings interview pointed out,many of these mass murderers show no signs of mental illness aside from the occasional ‘introversion personality.There would have been no outward warning signs.
Reduce the number and power of guns ASAP, it’s the only sensible starting point.
And running up yo any sensible change it would not shock me to see copy cat behaviour,before the curtain comes down.
What Gerard is intimating is a good start.We need to name and shame the enablers of the gun culture from the top down.And we also need to get the shooters and fishers party separated/renamed into two separate and openly transparent groups for the sake of knowing who supports what.
The world cannot let this to callous over until it is just an accepted lot for some people in the wrong place wrong time.
The level of evil is unfathomable.
What becomes of the traumatised survivors?How will they behave later on in life?
This really needs to be dealt with ASAP,One US Federal law, and I really think they need to get the highest judges in the land to oversee constitutional change for a safer America.Number 2 has to go, or at least reflect what it was always meant to.Not a calling to shoot first ask questions later.
Patriotism is the main driver of this gun ownership crap.
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Sorry about spelling and grammar,time to fix the light in here…….
I’ll leave the correction challenge to the reader this time.
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I guess that’s the very strange thing about US politics and perhaps our own, too: that community leaders have developed immunity to even extremely harsh criticisms.
Nothing shames them.
Nothing rammed home the reality of this more than being conscripted into Facebook, then ending up considering what a group of very bright statesiders desperately fighting to keep Rmoney out had to say about the last decade, eg Cheney-Bush and the oil wars, the global financial meltdown (or hijack, as far am I am concerned) and the rise of the Tea Party, dragged untimely from its womb of apathy back in the middle ages.
You can attempt to shame and blame, same as you do with shockjocks and politicians, but as long as there is a Murdoch type control over media and press the message will never properly be put out and as we know from Slipper, Gretsch etc, the mass media will always alibi their stooges.
You get one or two occasionally, but the system is tight and built to withstand scrutiny and alteration on the whole.
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Yes sirree,
I guess that’s it, I fell for idealism again.
America has made it’s bed, and now one way or the other we all share it.
My only advice to Americans generally would be try not to get too attached to other Americans.You just never know when the time will come for someone in the equation to take the other out.
It’s just abhorrent to think that kids that age had no say/choice/chance/future.If that cannot sway a culture,I guess nothing can.
I think that in amongst all this there are probably thousands of Americans thinking that ‘yeehaw I will teach my kid to use a gun so good, that one day when the bad dude visits school little BillyJoeJimBobb can blow him away.’
Anything to justify perpetuating sheer, rank, red-neck stupidity.
I forgot to mention religion AND patriotism are pillars, in this gun US culture.
Pretty soon home schooling will go through the roof in America.
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Hypo,
Can’t remember whether I’ve posted this link here before.
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/12/ameria-y-ur-peeps-b-so-dum.html
I think you’ll agree with what Joe had to say.
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Try again…
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/12/america-y-ur-peeps-b-so-dum.html
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It’s huge!
I admit,for now I skimmed and hope to get back to it later.But this jewel dropped in my lap.
“What America really needs is a wall-to-wall people’s insurrection, preferably based on force and fear of force, the only thing oligarchs understand. And even then the odds are not good. The oligarchs have all the legal power, police, jails and prisons, surveillance and firepower. Not to mention a docile populace.”
Sounds familiar.And people die to keep this shit going.
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PL:EASE READ THIS.
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Sorry, the Joe Bageant…
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Unfortunately the NT outack still has its fair share of resentful people who still bristle over the surrendering of guns since Port Douglas, most seem to be either One Nation or Shooters and Fisherman party members but its a significant enough minority to be a worry. One nation polled 21% in one of the towns for instance. Some claim the need for a gun to control feral pigs, buffaloes etc but theres enough drug and alcohol affected types to be a real worry…and they truly believe the government has done the wrong thing restricting licences to sporting shooters, members of military and police only….I hesitate the guess the number of hidden caches still out there protected for when needed by bikie gangs and the ever present drug runners…..scary
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Cattle station owners are generally one molecule away from the pure blooded red necks of America.I have witnessed their hateful bigotry in person.
Their attitude to conservation can be seen here.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-17/rm-williams-plans-cattle-on-carbon-farm/4429550
It couldn’t be a conservation opportunity, oh no, it must be a war on poor destitute,misunderstood graziers.
Trampling and eating a wilderness followed by rotational burning is not land management boys.It’s eco-vandalism.Erosion is a not a tool.
A few cattle stations get converted to a reserve and they all declare war,
Hrrmf.
Farmers in general are just whirlpools of negativity, who love living in a bubble with archaic views.These days progressive farming is an oxymoron.
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While I generally agree with your remarks regarding farmers negativity – there are a few of the more enlightened younger set that practice good farming management so I wont tar them all with the same brush. Having lived a decade in the outback, I can see how easily negativity creeps in, it isnt an easy life by any means and you are at the mercy of the weather, redneck invaders, excessively high monopoly pricing and sometimes just not enough food or money to go round in a bad year…none of that justifies the need for a gun…..I find it alarming that the male suicide rate in those areas is so high….like they have no hope left. Some arent able to change to an easier city lifestyle, farming is all they know – there lifes work. They just dont have the education or mannerisms required to get a job in town and have a mutual distrust of city slickers anyway especially National MP’s. The slow drawl sometimes puts employers off too (although in my experience I know plenty of slow talking intelligent types).The bush – For some its romantic to see paintings of old rusted tin sheds in rosy sunset but for me it represents tough Australian harsh strugglers
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I’m not tarring them ALL with the same brush either.
Just the 95% that dominate the skylines, as in the attitudes I described.
Young progressive farmers who embrace positivity and sustainability are so low in number so as to be seen as ‘weirdos’ by their dominant peers.
Why do you think WA’s first GMO contamination case was supported legally/financially by the largest farming groups, and attacked by mainstream farmers.All he did was farm organically only to have his farm derailed by GM contamination from over the fence.The WA Ag minister started this shit fight with his ideological hatred of all things environmental, and headlong race into lazy street.
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The Rural Finance Commission who provide farmer loans many years ago opened the books to those wanting to supply the organic, natural market, like all business sectors, some did well, some didnt….roughly the same failure/success rate as mainstream farmers. Its a niche market but even the Australian Wheat Board started accomodating produce from GM free and organic farms and this bumped up the number they trade in to 21 different types of crops. Even You are right that there is a hatred of greens, filthy hippies, and a few other unprintable names they tend to throw at them but really those I know personlly running these types of farm dont need to socialise or even have much to do with old traditional farmer types….they endure, sustainability seems to work and yep sometimes they get spray contamination from nearby farms but their committment level to the idea is high and the results are apparent when you look how healthy the kids are….I dont think its lazy of mainstream farmers to chemically treat crops or grow GM, its just uncaring, ignorant and damn the consequences, sub standard soil management there too no doubt, but eventually the whole thing collapses on itself – just take a look at some of the over farmed areas in Australia and USA for example
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Yes, fellow Non-sheep, we may well despair of ever achieving gun control in the USA. One difficulty is that the dialogue is monopolised by right wingers who repeat the NRA mantras : “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and one which goes “if only you are well armed enough you can protect your family from the evil ones”.
I proposed a Constitutional Amendment to Bob Ellis, thus :
“The right of the people to bear arms shall not extend to the manufacture importation or use of such arms for private vendetta or for the pursuit of private quarrels.
The Congress shall have power to enforce this provision by appropriate legislation.”
I don’t hold any hope of any such amendment being passed, but
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[but] one must try. I searched in vain for some reasonable proposal by an American, but found none. Others are welcome to try their luck.
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Here’s the contents (below in full) of an email from a source I have never heard of which arrived in my email inbox this morning.I expect it will be part of a world wide spamming strategy.I also expect it will inflame and enrage the next round of gun lunatics.This is what the sane world is up against.
There is no space left in the gun debate for reason,action,optimism,hope or idealism,IMHO>
__________________________________________________
Quoted in Full.
*********************************************
”
The primary-school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, approximately 45 miles from the Colt Arms Factory, is just another one in the long line of government psyops designed to persuade the public to allow the government to take away their guns, and their means to defend themselves against the government and the banksters that the politicians really serve.
The small children murders are designed to create hysterical emotions in women to get them to demand that guns are banned. If that doesn’t work they will continue with their evil agenda with worse and worse atrocities on younger children, until they get their way and disarm the people, so that they cannot fight back against government tyranny.
Newtown is the U.S.A.’s Dunblane, which was orchestrated in Scotland in 1996 by the British establishment, to whip up hysteria in order to ban all handguns from the U.K. It was a follow-up to the Hungerford Massacre in England in 1987, which was carried out by mind-controlled Michael Ryan, who then shot himself so he could not be questioned, and it was used to ban semi-automatic rifles and shotguns.
It’s always the same people behind it – the gun-grabbers who want the people to be defenceless against the gun-grabbers’ employers – the banksters who own all of the politicians. They get their politicians to pass legislation for them, in order to remove the people’s freedoms and means of defending themselves, and enslave them in a draconian police-state, under a mountain of debt, and then exterminate the useless-eaters.
The Dunblane massacre was supposedly carried out by Thomas Hamilton, who was a paedophile and procurer of children, for a high level paedophile ring involving senior members of the Tony Blair Labour-Party shadow-cabinet and others. The massacre served two purposes, it achieved their desired handgun-ban and killed the abused children, so they could not be witnesses against the elite-paedophiles. They then had the findings of the inquiry sealed for 100 years, which is proof of the above.
Like Newtown there were two shooters, Hamilton and a hit-man who shot Hamilton and made it look like Hamilton committed suicide after shooting 16 children, so that he couldn’t be questioned. Hamilton was found in the school gymnasium slumped against a wall and still gurgling, when an off-duty policeman PC Grant McCutcheon entered the gym and saw two semi-automatic pistols, one on either side of Hamilton’s body.
The autopsy revealed that Hamilton was killed with a .38 revolver. These people always slip-up with their crimes. There was no .38 revolver for him to have shot himself with. Thus, there was a second shooter who killed Hamilton.
Similarly, the first reports from Newtown were of two shooters, just like mind-controlled James Holmes in the Denver Batman Cinema massacre, the story then quickly changes to just one.
Columbine was similar, in that a team of shooters in black outfits were seen there and the two accused were on mind-altering prescription-drugs.
Wake up and see the pattern and their modus operandi and don’t fall for it. Never let them take your guns, except from your cold dead hands.
All of these are staged events to whip-up hysterical public support for banning the people from having guns. It works the same in every country – Hungerford in England, Dunblane in Scotland, Port Arthur in Australia and the list in America is endless, because of the Second Amendment and the people having a pro-gun culture. That makes it much more difficult to break the Americans’ love of guns and the Second Amendment, which was put in place to protect the people from the government.
Gun bans work well for tyrants. They worked well for Hitler, Stalin and Chairman Mao, to name just three.
If you want to stop these massacres, wake-up and get rid of the banksters, their puppet-politicians and all gun-grabbers; arm teachers and ban gun-free zones.
From one who can see the pattern and hopes to enable you to see it too.”
*********************
Unquote
___________________________________________________________
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Wow. You’d like some of what ever they’re drinking, smoking or taking.
Wild trip!
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The same ID who sent this shit has also been sending spam bagging Windows 8, and upsetting many forum folk who think their personal details have been hacked.It appears the software some forums use has assisted in the process,but cynic that I am I reckon many sites flog details to people who flog details to people who…. etc, and eventually we all get spammed anyway.
That does not explain what goes on the cruett of the gimboid who pinned this shit.
Euthanasia is looking better every day.Or as the man said,’someone get the chlorine,the gene pool could do with a good clean out.’
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It is truly depressing. The sort of rubbish put out in that email does not need to be true, just to be plausible enough to those already suspicious of their own governments.
The mention of “cold dead hands” gives a fine clue to its origins, the NRA.
Most Americans are fine people, but there also seem to be more than enough nutters to ther square mile to take them all to Armageddon.
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Who wrote the second amendment ,Osama Bin Laden?
He may as well, have.It’s working like a treat.
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On December 17, 2012 at 10:58 pm #
“Poirot wrote
I don’t think suicide is viscous and spiteful…I think that to lose the impetus for living to such a profound extent, one must find themselves inhabiting the loneliest place in the universe.
Which I agree with and said similar things.
AnnOdyne has gone now,but she claims her ‘compassionate shrink’ reckons it’s the act of spiteful,vengeful etc people.
I seriously wonder if her shrink is (A) a Christian and if so (B) a Catholic.
I think even a real Jesus would consider unnecessary suffering or death something to be saddened by, not something to look at with disgust and disdain.
The potential which is lost is infinite.
The older I get the more concrete reasons Christians put up, to write them off as immature and malleable individuals who leave the ‘courage of their conviction’ (in other words responsibility for their actions and words) to an ever diminishing humanitarian vacuum, they call god.Thank god I’m an atheist.
Killing in the name of..
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Some of the most absurd fundamentalist types think that the massacre of 20 children is God’s Judgement on the USA (or the bits of it they don’t like).
God’s Will. Nice to be able to say “God is on my side” is it not?
Any reverses can of course be ascribed to “God is testing us”.
If their god behaves as they think he does, not only does he not deserve to exist but he should be hunted down and exterminated.
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Funny thing suicide, some thing else based on a firmly held belief of a moment. There’s a paradox, it can be both rational.even altruistic, yet the most self indulgent or even narcissistic act an individual can perform, some times on misinformation and totally false fears
The euthanasia people tell us it can be exceptionally rational, for example if the Gestapo is knocking at your door or you have along and indeterminate time to suffer a debilitating illness.
Yet you feel with Jacintha Saldanha enough happened in a short space of time for her to BELEIVE, herself, that her life had become valueless, pointless and irretrievably flawed.
To say she took the last desperate act out of pique involving an (immature?) character flaw, or was so pressured by the run of things that she reached a tipping point without knowing, that had her feel so out of control of her ship that she felt constrained to take such a desperate measure, is not for someone like me to to judge, this would be risky,even arrogant and disrespectful, without much thought before hand.,
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psychiatrist was Jewish. practice on St.Kilda Road. took his holidays over Christmas though.
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Many parents take holidays at Christmas time, because kids are having their school break. I run a successful business when the kids started school; I closed the shop during all the school breaks, and lost a lot a money…
This is just a thought I had when reading your post, nothing to do with Christianity or Jewishness… .:)
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I notice a little rancour creeping in today.
I don’t get it. Most of us agree on the basics, isn’t it just the nuancing?
It’s complex, takes a few days to percolate it all through and process it in the mind so lets not jump to conclusions before pause for further reflection.
None or very few people in the Saldanha or Slipper stories appear to have acted well and may be in Saldanha’s case, Jacintha Saldanha herself also exhibited a character flaw, under intense pressure, in suiciding.
Now some of it seems to be about whether the shockjocks and the radio station ought to be tar and feathered.
Figuratively speaking, I’d say yes, their general lords/ladies of the universe mentality means they just didn’t stop to think or care. Too bad if something DOES go wrong..
So, its a moral failing, yet Annodyne is right also.
If you can’t breath without a guilt complex that your breathing has robbed someone else of their air, or dare not move because it might disturb someone else, it’s not going to be much of a life. Saldanha ultimately was the one who made the final decision and someone’s managerial “workplace psychopath” has had a win
The stunt wasn’t done with the express purpose of driving anyone, or one individual in particular, over the edge. It was a joke to amuse the demographic and keep making money to pay the rent.
Here is a similarity to the Slipper antic. Both Brough and co and the radio station were trying to make hay at someone else’s expense. Things went wrong, people got hurt and as a judge involved with the Slipper case more or less said it was about the hijacking of what belongs to the community as platform to peddle personal agendas and tell lies: Brough for denying a smear campaign and the radio station for lying to its dolt listeners that it meant them well when it was only using them to stay in business by amusing them with crap about other suckers at their expense.
In which case, the time comes for the wider community to spit them out. So be it, just let me work up some spit.
But it is true that the incident is symptomatic of other things for which various people involved need not be personally excoriated to the point that their breathing ceases.
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Sorry, last sentence should read, “the incidents are symptomatic”
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You are right Paul. Rather like a marriage in a way. The rancour creeps in as we all tend to forget the things that led us here in the first place and argue over the nuanced differences we recognise in each other.
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Better than marriage, though!! One can walk away and return without the anguish and recriminations!
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Paul Walter,
At the risk of appearing to further legitimise one or more of the several thread hijacks that have been attempted on this topic in Jennifer’s well-understood absence, there is a distinction that needs to be made clear with respect to your linking of 2DayFMSydney’s prank with Brough’s attempted smearing of Slipper.
2DayFM’s DJs were trying to make hay at the expense of a perceived stuffiness of a stratum of UK society that is identified with the formulation and upholding of the various protocols surrounding public ‘access’ to the Royal family. Nowhere in their wildest expectations was personal harm or serious embarrassment to anyone envisaged as arising out of that prank.
Brough’s involvement in the smearing of Slipper, by way of contrast, was with malice aforethought. Brough was out to make hay at Slipper’s expense, and that for the advancement of his own interests. Having absented himself from consideration for pre-selection in 2010 for his old seat of Longman (which he had lost in 2007), by reason of his having at that time resigned from the LNP over an organisational dispute, Brough wanted endorsement by the party he had rejoined for the adjacent seat of Fisher, the one currently held by Slipper, so as to be able to continue in his interrupted intended career.
For as long as Brough’s party endorsement remains in place, it will be up to the electors in the Division of Fisher as to whether Australia ‘dodges a bullet’ in relation to Brough. Here is some insight into what well might be considered behaviour of a ‘workplace psychopath’ had it occurred outside a social context:
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/mal-brough-and-the-art-of-losing-gracefully/
Had Malcolm Farr given this account before the revelations about Brough in relation to the Slipper affair, it would have been seen as being petty at the least, or an exercise in outright personal vindictiveness. Today it has the status of evidence. It records a witnessed case of off-the-clock outrageous behaviour in a social context that if substantiated by the witnesses would have seen Brough thrown out of any sporting club. Had it happened in a military social context, it would have seen Brough fronting his Commanding Officer the very next day, at which time his career card would have been indelibly marked, to the future benefit of the troops he may otherwise have advanced to command.
Read it. Its ‘Paths of Glory’ stuff! And a serious warning to the electors of Fisher as to what Australia may be foist with if this career continues to be enabled.
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He was a contemptible influence during the Aboriginal Intervention.
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He seems to have seriously lost the plot. Over a social cricket match? Just as well he wasn’t say, the police minister . . . Farr might have been tasered or shot whilst escaping.
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My post of December 18, 2012 at 8:04 am has suffered from link rot. Limited News (or could it be the deployment of a GCHQ-style online conversation disruption tool?) has seen fit to de-couple the direct link to Malcolm Farr’s article ‘Mal Brough and the art of losing gracefully’.
Courtesy of ‘@vincentwight’ here is a replacement link that presently works:
http://t.co/LAEIuYTkrK
Let’s see what, if anything, happens to it.
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An anodyne commentary upon such things as thread hijacking, coincidences, memorial avenues of trees in the Western Districts, and elegies in country churchyards.
Two Per Verse: An homophonic tribute too grey.
Convergent tangents serendipitous
meet where there’s no place for sheep.
Half the fifty shades of Gray
celebrate the ploughman’s homeward way
at dusk in churchyard elegiac
of Mee, Arthur, the encyclopaediac.
Here yesterday, in unknown debt to Gray
that yard elegiac went on to yield
LOCSTAT: rendezvous on battlefield
in France. The Ant Hill.
Hell and gore.
Film without a name it saw
after the end of that sad war.
Perverse to be without a name
Gray’s “Paths of Glory …” gave it fame.
And while we ask ‘what’s in a name?’
tangents converge at The Nek, the same
near an earlier domicile of the Gauls
(named from an earlier war with the Boers)
with the names near the same in the battles’ courses
‘The Ant Hill’. Colonel Antill,
The Third Light Horse’s!
Dead serendipitous, war’s courses.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paths_of_Glory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Nek
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173564
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Just to make it clear that I was not intending the rubbing of salt into any wound in opening my post of December 19, 2012 at 5:42 am with the words ‘An anodyne commentary …’, I put it on record that I did not detect the slightest hint of any deceptive pseudonymicity in any of the four slightly different expressions of the userID ‘annodyne’ that have appeared in this thread.
Her use of the phrase ‘I will revert to anodyne after …’ in what appears is intended as a farewell post to ‘Sheep’ makes me think that I might have in some way provoked that decision. Attempts at humour are always fraught with prospects of misunderstanding, especially around such sensitive issues as suicide, and perhaps ‘annodyne’ took my line of ‘Look at what this is doing to your good name’, in my immediately preceding post of December 17, 2012 at 4:40 pm, as intending a snide swipe at the slight differences in userIDs of what is pretty evidently the postings of one and the same person.
I must confess to not having visited until recently the text link in her post of December 16, 2012 at 10:28 am. To save viewers the trouble of scouring the thread for it, I will repost it here: http://bwican.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/casualty-ward-off.html#!/2012/12/casualty-ward-off.html . It is well worth a visit, highlighting as it does many of the inconsistencies that seem to have surrounded this from-the-start-dripfed story, and making some interesting observations and speculations of its own.
Perhaps I didn’t state directly enough what I was implying in saying ‘What if it wasn’t suicide at all, but simply made to look like it?’. With a Sunday Times news item claiming the existence of a workplace issue about which Jacintha Saldanha had complained to management before even the making of the hoax call in the first instance, the prospect of nurse Saldanha having even been in some way ‘set up’ for the receipt of the hoax call as a ‘target’ cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Please reconsider your vow never to return to ‘Sheep’, annodyne. As JW says, “… Yes, there is far more to this story than we yet know…”. There is something deeply wrong behind all this, and your insights and perspectives on what should be a continuing discussion would be most helpful.
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I did not vow to never return, I meant that everytime a thread gets from radio/hospital to war/aborigine, as this one also has. I despair.
The ‘various’ of my names is due to dumping the apostrophe which turns into %& and looking really stupid. ann o’dyne
Just back from Jocelyn Scutt at Online Opinion thanks FG, thrilled to see confirmation of my own opinion (as are we all) and hanging out for March Inquest. My close friend Brownie gave Ms Scutt QC the same as I have said here –
‘The silence of the hospital is deafening, and hopefully this will change after the March inquest. They must have had a security process in place, but at the 5am point of a night shift endured by a woman living away from family all week, and previously diagnosed as depressed, with a medical suggestion that she not be left alone – well.
Compounded by the 2nd upstairs nurse, of whom, strangely, we have heard no name, no plea or opinion.
Such a costly hospital would have calls from POSH accents all the time – half the surgical staff would sound like any HRH and both nurses would know posh from tosh in a second, and, at no time did Mel say she was ‘the Queen’. In my opinion, the radio station announcers have a case for getting an apology from the baying and ill-informed public lynch mob.
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The radio show has now been made defunct.So the two hosts are now out of a job I presume.I think the notoriety will probably follow them,whether the blame is theirs or not. And I suspect the radio station will show equal support to them as Jacintha Saldanha recvd from her employee and colleagues.
The ripples continue to spread.
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For the record:
Also, there is a possibly related article by Dr Jocelyn Scutt on OLO, see:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=14610
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Another post just for the record.
I find the claim as to intervention on the part of ‘Buckingham Palace’ interesting, as it seems to parallel the inferences as to such involvement in Dr Scutt’s OLO article ‘Pernicious authority and poor administration or just bad journalism’, to which I have provided a link in my earlier post of January 29, 2013 at 10:23 am.
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And for the record, Greg Barns’ response:
As can be seen, this view is Greg Barns’ opinion, but I’m thinking it should be respected as being an informed one. I think Greg is a barrister.
In a way, it could be considered to be corroborated by the, to me, curious way in which the police were at first careful to avoid any inference as to suicide being involved in Jacintha Saldanha’s death, but as the coronial inquiry commenced, they reported that she had hanged herself, as if to say “oh yes, she hanged herself, didn’t we make that clear?”
Even though they had been at pains all along to stress that there were no suspicious circumstances to the discovery of her demise.
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Good point, so which other household-name would have inspired the idea of calling them at their hospital?
It brings us to the fact of The Environment in which the call was made.
Everybody seems to have forgotten that it took only 2 hours for 500 paparazzi to set up ladders and a wall of lenses – the little street was jammed with barricades, and every worldwide media went la-la with the HEADLINES. an avalanche of asininity. it was frightening and over nothing.
I suspect William will not let them turn his wife into a repeat of his mother’s ‘royal experience’, and that it was only the unexpectedness of this severe pregnancy-nausea that caught him off-guard.
One can only hope that Processes Are In Place to control this before the poor little Third In-Line actually appears.
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For the record, I heard on Channel 9 news last night that Michael Christian, one of the former 2DAYFMSydney DJs involved in the prank call, is now back on air in another job.
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Just to provide a little more positive reference, this vexnews tweet contains a link to a Guardian news item confirming Michael Christian’s return to work for the same media company as owns 2DAYFMSydney.
I infer from that news item that Mel Greig may also be returning to work in some as-yet-to-be-determined capacity. It would not be surprising if she were to be still undergoing counseling in relation to the aftermath of the hoax.
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Sad with the Guardian, or “Grauniad” as many have affectionately known it. the last couple of years.
it seems to have retreated into timidity and conservatism.
The blowharding concerning the announcers is parallel to the their monitoring of that other notable Aussie, Julian Assange; symptomatic of a retreat to Cameronist “Hope and Glory” jingoistToryism.
For this sort of rubbish was a real journalist, Andy Worthington, exiled from broadsheet journalism, in a process similar to what has been done to Fairfax and public broadcasting here.
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That’s what I don’t get.Why is her grief more important than his?
The public tears?
Her gender?
This has been the way since they got the spotlight shone on them.
I would welcome some sort of reason which identified why she needs more support than him.
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Just to continue the updating, it looks like the ‘trial balloon’ constituted by Michael Christian’s return to the air waves has indicated that it is now safe, in terms of the abatement of lynch-mob hysteria, for Mel Greig to soon also return to 2DayFMSydney’s airwaves: http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/life-looks-cheerier-for-radio-dj-mel-greig/story-e6frfmq9-1226589151760
All of which is indicative that it was the radio station, rather than exclusively the DJs, that was responsible for the prank.
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Just for the record, some time between my post of December 21, 2012 at 9:56 am and the present Google has been evil. A link I posted to AnnODyne’s blog, http://bwican.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/casualty-ward-off.html#!/2012/12/casualty-ward-off.html , now delivers one to a confusing Google registration page.
US government sponsored deliberate disruption of linkages, IMO.
I wonder why? Could the following post give a clue?
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Just the other day I tweeted this:
Keith Vaz was the UK MP who was prominent in supporting the surviving family of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, in the days following the tragic reported apparent suicide that purportedly arose from what had come to be known as the #royalprank.
Hindsight sometimes gives insight into things which, at the time of their occurrence, seemed strange or inexplicable.
One of the things commented upon by poster ‘annodyne’ was the total absence of any information as to the identity of the second nurse, the one reported as having taken the hoax call in the ward and having passed the information to the 2DayFM DJs. Something that could explain such total absence of identifying information as to someone so central to events would be if that second nurse was someone who had been inserted into the hospital’s staff by a UK intelligence organisation.
The weekend over which the media storm erupted in relation to the Royal Prank was the same as had been advertised for the voting in The Guardian’s online ‘Person of the Year 2012’ quest. Needless to say, the Royal Prank issues completely overshadowed both the voting window for the Guardian poll, and the anomalies that surrounded the determination of its result, one that ended in Bradley Manning (not the Guardian’s favourite) being named Person of the Year. Manning’s court-martial had then yet to take place. Such a result could have been seen as embarrassing vis US-UK relations in the Assange/Manning context.
The anomalies that surrounded the Guardian poll are commented upon here, and in following posts: https://noplaceforsheep.com/2012/12/03/hey-mr-tamborine-man/#comment-59129
Information as to the pre-existing medical condition of depression in relation to nurse Saldanha is something that would doubtless have been knowable to the UK Intelligence Service. It is not inconceivable that, armed with such knowledge, intelligence operatives could have pushed Saldanha in the direction she perhaps herself took in the end, more or less ‘to order’ as the basis of a massive public distraction from an anticipated PoY poll result favouring Manning.
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You really think they were that ruthless ( the Dennis Kelly event proved they ARE vicious, as regards psyching out)?
Maybe they just used Saldanha as a bunny to discourage media intrusion on the royals, without expecting the bunny to suicide?
I must admit, the case you have mounted deserves a little more thought than some have been prepared to offer and thought the Salon piece a pretty fair summary of dirty deeds done dirt cheap level behaviours, generally.
As the doco “Mediastan” points out, journalism looks fraught at the moment globally and it does seem the Grauniad walks a bit of a tightrope.
My sense is that there has been a concerted effort from without and within to actually geld it, as has happened here with public broadcasting and broadsheet newspapers.
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paul walter,
I think we need to view the then impending Guardian online poll for Person of the Year 2012 as the backdrop to the whole Royal Prank saga. It was a well publicised event planned to occur over a specific window of time known well in advance. There was well-founded fear at what we might call GCHQ-level in Britain that then-Pfc Bradley Manning might win that contest.
Just how embarrassing that anticipated, and subsequently to be realized, Person of the Year win was seen as being can be judged from the US government’s unbelievably arrogant intention to not produce a transcript of the Manning court-martial when it was held subsequently later in 2013. It was an embarrassment of the US government exceeded only by that occassioned by the production of a transcript in that default by a lone citizen at her own initial expense, that of Alexa O’Brien.
Online voting for the Guardian’s ‘Person of the Year’ was scheduled to take place over three days: Friday 7, Saturday 8, and Sunday 9 December 2012.
The Duchess of Cambridge had been admitted to the King Edward VII Hospital over a week previously, suffering from acute morning sickness associated with her pregnancy. There is nothing more attention-getting in Britain than anything having to do with prospective heirs to the Throne. The Royal Prank was, to all outward appearances, set in motion in the early hours of the morning of Tuesday 4 December 2012, London time. There followed three days of MSM and social media exposure of the prank. Then on the Friday morning, came reports of the workplace death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, who had done naught but put the call through to the second (and to this day unidentified) nurse who did all the disclosing as to the Duchess’ condition. MSM and social media went ballistic baying for the blood of the two DJs.
Although in an earlier post to this now very long thread https://noplaceforsheep.com/2012/12/13/the-hospital-and-the-radio-station-when-management-fails-who-pays-the-price/#comment-59403 I suggested a UK print media led orchestration of the publicity storm, I think we have to look above that level for the orchestration, with all participants, press, hospital, members of the Royal family itself, 2DayFMSydney, the DJs, and, in the ultimate, nurse Saldanha’s very life itself being used to create a diversion from the feared outcome of the impending Person of the Year poll. With Keith Vaz MP, with his likely privileged knowledge as to Intelligence services activities arising out of his role as Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, there on the ground for covert damage control of what had all along been a government sponsored event.
Not even, in such circumstances, a management failure on any participant’s part, but a snowballing breach of public trust. The Surveillance State right out of control! No wonder the Coronial inquest was delayed and delayed. No wonder we have heard little of what, if any, its findings were.
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“it’s findings were” – have they actually held it? I have a news alert for all the key words that must have failed me. IF The 2nd Nurse was in fact a trained operative guard then the training in non-physical aspects needs a shake up. She blabbed and had obviously never heard a Christmas Message to know what Her Maj really sounds like.
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The inquest was adjourned again from March 2013 to September 2013, but I do not think it has reached the finality of a formal report.
“She blabbed and had obviously never heard a Christmas Message to know what Her Maj really sounds like.”
Unless nurse Saldanha introduced the caller as ‘one of Cate’s grandmothers’, which would have been exactly consistent with the transcript of the hoax call, and would thus have been a person of whose manner of speech the second nurse would not necessarily have been familiar. HM is not one of Cate’s grandmothers.
The deeper one digs with respect to the publicly available claimed evidence, the more exonerated of any possible impropriety Saldanha is! But of course she is not available to testify as to the precise terms in which she passed the call through, because she is dead!
The very carefully constructed terms with which the hoax call opened may have indeed, perhaps with the aid of inside information, been such as to GUARANTEE that the call would be passed through. Hospital staff may even have been instructed as to the prospect of Cate’s grandmothers’ ringing in.
All of which points to intent and orchestration of the call, and of the two witnesses one is dead and the other mute and unidentified. And for all we know, by now, maybe even also dead.
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Iodyne, you are missing the point.. Forrest’s contention is that the thing was set up as a distraction, particularly at the height of the Guardians adventures with Julian Assange/Chelsea Manning, in which case the second nurse did exactly what was intended… eg it was anodyne to the Establishment in GB after they lost control of the Assange problem.
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How could MI5 get the Sydney radio jocks to “set up a diversion”?
One’s IQ would have to be very very low to be fooled by their idiocy. Even I, at 5am would be thinking Her Maj has a slave to handle calls right up to getting the actual Duchess on the line. It all smells. However, the scene you describe is exactly what the Company pulled off with preventing Petraeus from having to testify re the very suspicious events at Benghazi. Those 2 hot military chicks fighting over him, his wife not flouncing off. Whole thing a Diversion.
I hope you all watch Spies Of Warsaw Sunday night SBS. Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais superb script last week.
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I think you might make a better script consultant than a political advisor. In general movie plots are just about the only thing that conspiracy theories are good for.
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Trust no-one. Three Days Of The Condor is one of my all time favourite films, knowing the plot makes no difference, I can watch it anytime. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073802/
And don’t get me started on why Diana Spencer was not wearing her seatbelt. My car screams blue murder until mine is done up and I am surprised that Mercedes lacks this feature.
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I think you are being hard on Forrest Gump, hudsongodfrey.
He has produced a plausible, if somewhat unlikely event chain.
IoDyne gladly admits to this plausibility and even embellishes with an added example of how things might work at this murky end of the system.
I suspect Forrest will be back to explain further his thoughts- the ghosts of Dennis Kelly and Aaron Schwarz, to name just two, demand it.
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Actually I had responded to iODyne, and I believe she took it in the spirit that was meant.
There’s a difference between reading between the lines if you’ve spotted a legitimate concern and putting the cart before the horse. I have some doubts at this stage, but the way these things work is that you investigate if you can and resist the urge to project more than you ought.
In fact I tried to help Forrest do what he evidently thought was appropriate. I only hope I haven’t inconvenienced our host in the process, but fear I might have done slightly for which I apologise if I have.
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They know how tabloid msm operates.. because of the morbid ongoing fascination inculcated as to the breeding habits of the upper crust, it would be inevitable that some org or other would finally break through, particularly with management encouragement.
I have to admit I found it striking, the lack of interest in the second nurse from tabloid msm after the event became serious with Saldanha’s death.
Most would think it more likely that Saldanha’s death gave media a good story and more skillful editors would be glad to employ a diversion if their org is under pressure for other reasons.
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“How could MI5 get the Sydney radio jocks to “set up a diversion”?”
I would envisage that as being relatively easily put in train via some ‘old boy (or girl) networking’ at the corporate level of 2DayFMSydney with some acquaintance or former associate with UK media, government, or quasi-governmental links that was also linked to ‘MI5’ or GCHQ or whatever is the relevant agency. A tip or suggestion from the UK end that a ‘harmless’ prank of a certain sort, perpetrated within the window of opportunity constituted by the Duchess of Cambridge’s hospital admission, might prove beneficial to 2DayFMSydney’s interests, coming from a previously reliable source, might have been all that was necessary to set things in train.
It would not be all that hard to envisage the ‘networker’ at the 2DayFM end introducing the idea of a hoax call to the DJs in such a way as to have the DJs think it was their own idea. The DJs may well have developed the detail of the prank themselves. What is now evident is that 2DayFM management vetted the legalities that could be foreseen as surrounding the prank, BEFORE it went to air. There was knowing corporate involvement from the outset.
At the UK end, and known only to those who putatively had planted the seed of the idea for the prank, the window within which it had to occur was bookended by the foreseeably likely duration of the Duchess’ stay in hospital, and the weekend of 7,8,9 December, the time set in place for the already publicised Guardian Person of the Year 2012 online poll. No other participant, witting or unwitting, would have needed to know in advance what was in fact to be discovered on the Friday morning London time.
As iODyne has observed earlier in this thread there is evidence as to some sort of foreknowledge of the prank having existed within the UK media:
Due to the ongoing media hype that had commenced on the Tuesday, everything necessary to increase its intensity and create a tweetstorm was either in place, or on short notice to move, by the end of Thursday.
There was either close corporate monitoring of the media circus surrounding the prank, or there was a corporate contact in 2DayFM that was able to be warned of developments in London who had the authority & CAPACITY to delete the Twitter accounts of the two DJs at 3:19AM AEDST ON A SATURDAY MORNING IN SYDNEY!
There appears to have been some sort of intended continuing corporate 2DayFM committment to the story in which the stakes had suddenly been upped.
And don’t get me started as to the tragic death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi. Stevens who only weeks before had been in Stockholm, where I think he had a target pinned to his back on account of knowledge he may at that stage not have even known he had. Stockholm where the bomb went off on 11 December 2010. Stockholm, from where in 2010 the US anticipated shortly rendering Assange to the US. Assange whose WikiLeaks concept enabled Manning’s document dump. Manning who it was feared was about to become The Guardian’s Person of the Year 2012, and subsequently did.
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Impressive analysis and I curtsey. Yes, the anticipation of legal issues is a surprise considering the complete ridiculousness of the opening conversation of That Phone Call. Nobody would have expected it to go any further, and even the DJs said that.
Since you mentioned Stockholm may I force in here a regret of mine: in the first days of Assange Girl trouble I was trawling and I swear I found information that the US defence was about to build huge base in SWE pointed at Putin, big development bucks. I believe this is what caused the Big Turnaround between him being told he could go home, and then turning into World Most Wanted. Somebody from Langley pointed out to the swedes they had better do what DC wanted. Silly Swedes failed to see they had the upper hand because with real estate location is everything.
Anyhow, my regret is that I failed to bookmark the source of this base deal. sigh.
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The explanation that the US would deny intelligence sharing to Sweden if it did not cooperate in the rendering of Assange is urban legend, the icing concerning the US using Assange to cosh Swedish/ Russian relations is new to me but sounds horribly feasible..two birds with one stone.
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I did not say the US would deny intel share. They had an agreement to invest 500 bazillion kroner just as those women were star-swiving JA. Obviously discussions were held to sway Sweden into reversing their ” you are OK JA” verdict. It went ahead and since then, sweden has been spending that money to buy ‘tracking stations’ in Canada, Chile, Thailand and China.
http://www.sscspace.com/universalspacenetwork Read the list of their ‘customers’. Honeywell is a front in Australia for BAE systems and it has former managers of Northrop grumman also on that list, and they are all tangled up with SERCO to who Our Govt paid 600m in 2012 for the running of our refugee prisons eg xmas island. Recall the sercos guys who fell asleep and the violent prisoner escaped in Thailand? oh I despair.
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Star Swiving…. Is that you? Creative methinks.
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A variation of the old Rolling Stones
“Starf-cker” meme.
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thank you for your contribution re the validity of this discussion.
One of the irritants of the MSM is that they hammer us with a headline till we are sick of it, without ever answering many questions the headline makes us ask ourselves.
I am old enough to have purchased The Female Eunuch when it was a new release and the author Dr Prof. G Greer advocated the use of the auld word ‘swive’ instead of ‘fuck’. It could have been fwive of courfe, that s /f thing of old manuscripts is hilariouf.
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Am old enough to remember this “swive” issue back in the mid seventies; it preoccupied the Adelaide Advertiser and its “Letters to the Editor” columns for days.
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Indeed the song Star Fucker was exactly what x-ed my mind!
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Mighty song, wasn’t it hudsongodfrey
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Jeez you guys!
You know what I hated this story then and I’m beginning to hate it even more now. I don’t like royal people! Radio shock jocks, who’re never as funny as they imagine they are, give me the shits. And I feel sorry for the nurse, but at some point learn to take a joke people!++
Beyond that any more of this indulgent conspiracy theorising and I’ll have to do something really drastic! I’ll have to agree with Doug.
It’s starting to have me wish the old threads had a use by date.
++ I never mattered whether the joke was funny or even tasteful. It did matter that it was clearly intended as a joke.
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.Well, hallelujah, HG!
The thread may be old, but the issues are not and the subsequent antics involving the (global) Surveillance/Security State have not ameliorated, they have likely become infinitely worse; just think of the “Operational Matters” bullshit, to make it clearer.
It is entirely correct that the thing should be revisited at this point, when enough time has passed for rethinks, clearer heads and fresh approaches.
Is it not true that conspiracy theories flourish in a authoritarian (global) state, given the suppression of information (consider the stuff released by the whistle-blowers and hackers) eg, WHAT has been suppressed, along with the bizarre overreactions from politicians and governments, over the intervening span of time?
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Yes I think it is true that conspiracy theories flourish in an authoritarian state….. Hell I even think that conspiracies exist. I have a lot of time for Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden’s efforts for that reason.
I also think that in a choice between a conspiracy and a stuff up, put your money on the later every time!
Another way of putting it might be to say that just because you know they’re lying to you doesn’t mean it follows that you know the truth.
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Just reading Lenore Taylor on burnt asylum seekers..also some vile slander from Sen. Johnson directed at nascent auntie
I reckon, here at least, its both.
Fancy not even being touch with those alleging the burns incident.
Fancy THEN, claiming the ABC “misreported” it??
How would they know?
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How would they know?
I imagine, and here I can only surmise, that they know what they want the answer to be, they work back from there and by their enormous powers of deduction reverse engineer the version of history they want written. Then they remind the ABC who their paymaster is and supposedly it’s all over bar the shouting.
If that’s the case then what they’re doing has a lot in common with the modes of thought that conspiracy theories employ, only in reverse.
If we assume that members of the armed forces didn’t show up calling African people monkeys and somehow being involved with how their hands came to be burned then the only thing to argue about is whether there were actually shooters on the grassy knoll. C’mon you all know how this bullshit works!
And it’s any wonder decent intelligent people are jumping at shadows?
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No! Never let it be said that you agreed with me!
As you may recall I find little to recommend most conspiracy theories.
(DQ sighs)
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Please I may have been agreeable, but I’m pretty sure I meant that you agreed with me. 🙂
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Urban legend that may well have grown from leaked cable STOCKHOLM 748 of 2008.
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11370#193223
Sorry about the link rot, but iODyne may know how to access that cable these days.
The Stockholm blast of 11 December 2010 was, IMO, a ‘Five Eyes’ job if ever there was one. A hurry-up for the foot-dragging Swedes to put in place a HSPD6 style extradition process.
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Returning to the matter of the workplace death of Jacintha Saldanha (and in the process sidestepping the post indenting limitations of the site), let us take up from the start of the Tuesday 4 December 2012 King Edward VII hospital night shift with a ‘hypothetical’.
What if the two nurses had been briefed at the start of the shift as to the prospect of a call, or calls, coming in from the grandmothers of Cate, Duchess of Cambridge, in circumstances of neither grandmother having in fact expressed such an intention to the hospital? Remember, it was the claim, as borne out in the transcript of the call, as to being (one of) Cate’s two grandmothers that got the call put through.
One of the first things to have come out in any witch hunt by the hospital management following the prank, at a time while nurse Saldanha was still alive, would have been a claim by two witnesses in agreement as to their having been effectively warned to expect such a call from a grandmother. If there had in fact been no foreshadowing of such a call by either grandmother, something as to which in due course testimony from the grandmothers and/or parents of Cate would be expected to be obtained, would this not then beg the question as to why the nurses had been intructed to expect a call by management?
In the circumstance of the pranksters having introduced themselves in exactly the forewarned terms, with someone in management having putatively briefed the nurses in advance, would that not point the finger of suspicion as to complicity in the prank at someone in the hospital management hierarchy once it became known family members had given the hospital no cause to expect such a call from them?
iODyne has earlier in the thread pointed out the claim as to the ‘military precision’ with which the hospital operated.
What if there exists within the hospital management structure someone who is in effect a permanent liaison officer with Britain’s security services? Given that royalty, and other British and foreign VIPs are prominent users of the hospital, discretion and the potential for security risks would be expected to be fairly high on management priority lists. The existence of such an appointment would be no surprise.
What if such a channel was used to emplace operatives appropriately qualified to routinely work undercover in the hospital? Would it be all that surprising? It would have been easy in such circumstances to select nurse Saldanha as someone who was vulnerable as a subsequently claimable fall guy in a blame game who could later be believably seen as likely committing suicide.
But who says that in reality during those first three days of the Royal Prank that nurse Saldanha had become the victim of a management blame game? Management were at pains, AT THAT TIME, to say she was NOT! It was only AFTER HER DEATH that such claims or inferences came into the open. The nasty little sleeper that would have been of concern to whoever it was that putatively warned the nurses to expect the call would have been the expectation of two witnesses in due course testifying as to the fact of that warning having been given.
On the morning of Friday 7 December 2012 the number of those witnesses reduced by one. One persons word against another as to whether any warning was given to expect a call from a grandmother on the morning of Tuesday 4 December 2012, and that only if the second, still unidentified, nurse had any continuing interest or need in defending her actions with that claim at any subsequent inquiry.
Suicide is such a neat explanation. What caused the London Metropolitan Police to change their apparent tune on it?
But this has only been an ‘hypothetical’.
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Of course, in this hypothetical, if the still unidentified second nurse was HERSELF an undercover operative for the security services, and was HERSELF the conveyor of the postulated warning to nurse Saldanha as to the possibility of receipt of a call from one of Cate’s grandmothers, the postulated permanent security services liaison officer at the hospital would have had his work cut out for him, wouldn’t he?
Presuming that nurse Saldanha would have been one of the first persons interviewed by management after the prank call, and that she in good faith would have claimed to have been warned to expect such a call and put it through, management’s next task would appear to have been to interview the second (unidentified) nurse in an attempt to corroborate that claim. I’d bet anything you like that the permanent security liaison officer would have been one, if not the sole, representative of management at such second interview, if one even took place.
If the second nurse, as an undercover operative, had been under instruction to pass such a forewarning on to nurse Saldanha as to cause the call, when it came, to be put through, then that would point to complicity in the prank on the part of the security services should that ever be revealed to any management not in the know as to security services arrangements putatively permanently in place at the hospital. That may have been bad enough, but if it ever became public, such would have been catastrophic for security service credibility, let alone the reputation of the hospital.
With the public, and perhaps none of hospital management outside of the security services liaison, knowing of nurse Saldanha’s perfectly good explanation for having put the call through, she could go on with her rostered (and perhaps some stand-in) shifts as if nothing had happened.
Should this have been something like the scenario that in truth prevailed, then the demise of nurse Saldanha on the morning of Friday 7 December 2012 would have been most fortuitous for the security services. With no one outside of the services other than perhaps someone in very senior management in the hospital with strong motives to keep quiet, all that had to be done to keep government involvement secret was to spirit away the 2nd nurse operative under provisions of legislation protecting against disclosure as to identity of such persons. Doubtless this is what has occurred.
It might be instructive to read this earlier post to this thread in the light of this ‘hypothetical’:
Was that top comment to the Daily Mail, unwittingly, just too good an encapsulation of what is postulated to have been a government-sponsored exercise in distraction of the public that it could not be allowed to remain on display as a top comment?
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Undeniably believe that which you said. Your favorite justification seemed to be
on the net the easiest thing to be aware of. I say to you, I definitely get annoyed
while people think about worries that they just do not know
about. You managed to hit the nail upon the top and also defined out the whole thing without having side
effect , people could take a signal. Will probably be back to get more.
Thanks
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Hi there, I wish for to subscribe for this blog to take most up-to-date
updates, thus where can i do it please help.
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For elderly or disable people, there are many different options available to attend worship service without leaving the house.
As technology progresses, cab companies continue to do all they can to keep up and to incorporate new equipment into
their vehicles. When it recognized a pattern, a meaning was assigned.
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On Sunday 1 June 2014 Channel 7 program ‘Sunday Night on 7’ aired a segment titled “Mel Greig: The true story of the royal prank call”. Here is a link to it on their website:
https://au.news.yahoo.com/sunday-night/a/24040369/mel-greig-the-true-story-of-the-royal-prank-call/
It reveals that Mel Greig, shortly after the DJs had made the successful prank call, and BEFORE it had gone to air on 2DayFMSydney, had emailed station management suggesting the disguising of the responding nurses voices if indeed the prank was to go to air at all.
It appears station management have acknowledged that Mel Greig took this action.
This claim is important, because it places the responsibility for the broadcasting of the prank squarely upon station management, management that decided to proceed despite being warned by Mel Greig of her professional misgivings as to the prank. The claim becomes even more significant in the context of what action management took when, after the prank having been broadcast on 2DayFMSydney for several days, news broke of the workplace death of Jacintha Saldanha being attributed to the prank call.
That action is borne witness to by the tweets I have embedded earlier in this comments thread in this post made on December 15, 2012 at 12:16 pm AEDST:
The tweets by Matthew Rudd* (@MatthewJRudd) and Craig Bell (@Ambraneri) made over a seven minute period between 0312 and 0319 hours AEDST on Saturday 8 December 2012 appear to provide a record as to what action station management took and when. Matthew Rudd’s final tweet in that sequence is telling:
“Odd. The priority of @2dayfmsydney has been to delete the Twitter accounts of the jocks rather than take the prank call off their site.”
Odd indeed, on the face of it. However, I believe the failure at that point to take the prank call off air is evidence of the degree of 2DayFM management committment to the running of the prank in the first case. I believe it to also constitute evidence of a very close corporate monitoring of developments surrounding the prank DAYS AFTER IT HAD FIRST BEEN AIRED!
In the Sunday Night on 7 segment Mel Greig would seem to still be beating herself up for not having ‘tried harder’ to prevent the Royal Prank from going to air. For what its worth, I don’t think she would have had a snowball’s chance in hell of ever stopping it no matter what she did! It has all the hallmarks of having been an orchestrated event in its entirety, in which both she and Jacinta Saldanha were ruthlessly used in a UK government public opinion management operation designed to reduce fallout from the foreseeably likely result of the UK Guardian ‘Person of the Year 2012’ online poll.
*Matthew Rudd’s Twitter profile describes him as a semi-retired (presumably UK) DJ. He would thus presumably have had a reasonably well based expectation as to the actions of 2DayFM management in such circumstances.
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Great commentary FG. and there is still no Inquest, and the name of that 2nd nurse is still secret. A Student Of The Year Award was given to the son of the nurse who (may have) killed herself. His results were excellent.
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Listening to the recording of the prank call broadcast on the ‘Sunday Night on 7’ program, I thought I heard the second nurse identify herself as ‘nurse Elizabeth’. Not that that of itself tells us much, but the way it came across was as a routine expectation of a requirement to so identify oneself as a member of the hospital staff if fielding a call.
That would seem to indicate an expectation on the part of staff that if a call was put through, information was to be provided relatively openly, together with such identification as to by whom it was being provided. It is difficult to believe that ‘nurse Elizabeth’ would not have recognised nurse Jacintha Saldanha passing the call through as a fellow member of the nursing staff. To me, this smacks of there having been a degree of expectation all round between the two of them as to the prospect of inquiry as to the condition of the Duchess of Cambridge by a family member such as, for example, a grandmother, during that shift.
A set up? One that would rapidly be revealed as such in any half way competent cross examination at an Inquest?
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An interesting footnote with respect to the sequence of events during the early morning of Saturday 8 December 2012, Sydney time, is that possibly provided by this tweet:
It purports to be one made by Mel Greig. (Whether it really was such is something only Mel Greig could confirm.) The interesting thing about it is the time at which it was posted, 4:41AM AEDST, and the fact that it is the only tweet there has ever been from that Twitter user account. Such could be indicative of Mel Greig, having first become aware of developments in London some time after the closure of the DJs’ Twitter accounts that they had been used to using at around 0319 hrs AEDST by 2DayFM management, finding she had lost access to her Twitter, quickly opening a new account. Perhaps she was shortly after advised by management not to post anything further on social media.
There is around an hour and twenty minutes separating the two events. Had it been Mel Greig herself who closed her Twitter account at 0319 hrs, one would have thought management would have been advising her THERE AND THEN to make no more social media posts. All of which points to management possessing the capacity, on its own, to close those accounts.
Could that have been because they were expecting unspecified further developments with respect to the prank, and had their finger on the trigger, as it were, when those developments happened?
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“It purports to be one made by Mel Greig”
A new account needing her same name? check the variant spellings.
We must never forget the behaviour of Hospital Management before the suicide. It was too military. Real people would have held indoor meeting of press and introduced both nurses, all saying Mucho regretto, all AOK now, move along please. That hospital is hiding something more than the name of nurse 2.
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“A new account needing [Mel Greig’s] same name? check the variant spellings.”
You do well to highlight the prospect of the moribund Twitter handle ‘@GreigMel’ being a parody account. I had noticed the spelling variations in the surname. One explanation of them could have been stress on the part of the real Mel Greig, should it have been she who actually registered this account in some degree of shock at that time. Another could be that such a (obvious?) parody may have been in the immediate interim needed as a basis for journalistic licence to attribute blame for an alleged suicide well before there was any confirmation that such was indicated. The ‘#RoyalPrank’ hashtag was already in place as a conduit through which to channel the Twitter reaction, should the beat-up that took place be ‘required’.
This whole exercise was, in my opinion, one critically dependent upon the time differences between Sydney and London for its success. Perhaps the almost immediate cancellation of the DJs’ recognised/authenticated Twitter accounts by, presumably, 2DayFM station management, constituted an unexpected problem to those putatively overseeing in the UK the whole orchestration of what I contend to have been a media diversion in attributing blame. These days the ‘Volkischer Beobachter’ publishes cross-platform in the new language of Nazism, English.
Anyway, the real point is that this little footnote to history may leave its own little evidentiary trail as to the establishment of that account, should the real Mel Greig and/or those who put the SN program together be unable to shed any light on the circumstances of its establishment on Twitter.
It will be interesting to see whether there is any follow-up by Channel 7 to these timing issues, now that they have been raised here on Jennifer’s most useful Blog. I suppose that depends upon what the real motivations behind the running of the obvious story of the injustice done to the one who showed the most journalistic professionalism, ON THE RECORD, were.
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Just for the record, I have tried to give a heads-up as to at least some commentary in relation to the Royal Prank following Channel 7’s recent SN program here:
and here:
Perhaps MSM has a problem interfacing with anonymity in the blogosphere.
What I do find interesting is the generally supportive tone of the comments relating to Mel Greig on both the SN site and Clementine Ford’s article on Daily Life. This is a sharp contrast to those on the Twitter hashtag conversation ‘#royalprank’ after 0320 AEDST on Saturday 8 December 2012. It makes me wonder whether the persona management software of which Aaron Swartz and Julian Assange warned the world may have been deployed on Twitter in an attempt to mould perceptions as to what public opinion was in relation to the alleged outcome of the Royal Prank. It must also be remembered that until it was claimed that the prank had caused a suicide, even the ‘#royalprank’ conversation itself was generally supportive or tolerant of the prank, right up to the Prince of Wales himself.
I must admit that although I watched the Royal Prank tweetstorm develop in real time, and was online because I had an interest in the outcome of the concurrent UK Guardian ‘Person of the Year 2012’ online poll, I did not connect the former with the latter until after the Manning court martial.
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Just for the record:
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Today is the day we discover how and why the identity of The Second Nurse has been a 21-month secret.
From TimesOfIndia: ‘Two crucial witnesses — the matron who had put Saldana on duty that fateful morning when the two Australian DJs made the hoax call, and the nurse who finally gave out details of Middleton’s condition including her suffering from acute morning sickness — will appear in Court on Thursday. The inquest is listed for two days.
Other witnesses could include the colleague and security officer who found Saldanha’s body at staff quarters near the hospital. Former King Edward VII hospital chief executive John Lofthouse may be present alongside the lead police investigator. The matron in charge at the time could also be called to help examine Saldanha’s state of mind after the hoax.’
It has appeared in print that that Ms Saldhana had been in a long running dispute with another nurse. I do eagerly anticipate what the hospital management have to say for themselves.
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It is interesting to see, with the holding of the long-adjourned inquest into the death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha on 11 & 12 September 2014, how some parts of the story have seemingly changed.
The Guardian (UK) headlined an item by Caroline Davies published on Friday 12 September:
“Jacintha Saldanha inquest: nurse had no history of psychiatric illness”
The third paragraph of the news item read:
“Her husband, Benedict Barboza,
broke down as the coroner, Fiona
Wilcox, asked whether, to his
knowledge, his wife had suffered
any psychiatric illnesses or depression
in the past, or had made any attempt
to harm herself. Wiping away tears,
the accountant replied: “No.””
This contrasts with a news item http://www.news.com.au/world/radio-prank-call-nurse-jacintha-saldanha-on-anti-depressants-after-two-suicide-attempts/story-fndir2ev-1226542581126 , one linked to in AnnODyne’s post of December 29, 2012 at 12:05 pm to this thread with the red text link ‘she could attempt suicide again’.
It seems we are intended to infer that Jacintha’s partner, Benedict Barbosa, knew nothing of the events described as having taken place during that family visit to India. Yet paragraphs 15 & 16 of the linked report place him there:
“Although Ms Saldanha’s family
have previously said she did not
have a history of depression,
new reports suggest she has been
battling the condition since at
least December [2011] last year.”
and
“That month, Ms Saldanha, her
accountant husband Benedict Barboza,
49, their son Junal, 17, and adopted
daughter Lisha, 14, attended a
family wedding in Shirva, north
of Mangalore.”
The seeming contradiction of Barbosa’s reported testimony at the inquest is obvious. It is particularly interesting in the context of the King Edward VII hospital’s denial of knowledge at the inquest as to nurse Saldanha’s claimed battle with depression.
Much more remains to be explained here.
I have said this before in this thread, but I will say it again:
“One normally-to-be-expected consequence of the delay imposed by the adjournment of the Coronial Inquiry until next March [and in the end for more than 21 months until September 2014] would be that public recollection as to timeline sequences of events is likely to be less clear than if the full findings of that inquiry were to be published while everything is still fresh in peoples’ minds. Perhaps there have existed dots in this saga that some interests would hope the public never become able to join up.”
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This is a link to the Guardian news item referred to in the previous post:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/jacintha-saldanha-inquest-no-depression-duchess-of-cambridge
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Extensive reference is made in other news sites to claims as to Jacintha Saldanha’s battle with depression in the year or so prior to her death. This is one such news item:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/2day-fm-to-disclose-phone-records-to-jacintha-saldanha-inquest-20130903-2t26a.html?gclid=CJzz4e__5MACFQNvvAodaYcAmA
This item makes reference to a UK Sunday Times investigation into the tragedy that “portrays Saldanha as a deeply troubled woman”.
That such widespread press reportage of depression-related issues having affected Saldanha, in the face of reported denial as to knowledge of them by her husband Benjamin Barboza at the inquest, should go seemingly unremarked by the Coroner is surprising.
One would have thought that, if substantiated, such reports would have acted to further support the coroner’s finding that the death was a suicide. With the seeming contradiction between Barboza’s testimony and those widely published reports unaddressed, should not the public be questioning why Saldanha should have been thought to have been so prone to suicide if she was NOT battling depression? Especially so if the King Edward VII hospital was as supportive and understanding from the outset of nurse Saldanha as it claimed at the inquest to be.
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Hospital concealing something, no doubt.
As to ‘chronically deeply troubled’, there is a particular personality type who might seize on an opportunity to benefit out of something they were going to do anyway (Refer to The Mikado ‘I’ve got a little list’ if you like). The claim that “the Australian radio” was the cause “and they should pay my mortgage” would have me taking action if I was Mel Greig’s Dad.
This would get a courtroom where exciting questions could be asked.
If an accountant cannot pay out a mortgage after 20 years what hope for the rest of us financial amateurs.
He is in Bristol she is in London.
Varying surnames shows how much love there was.
If he rings her every night how come she failed to discuss the apparent horror of her ordeal.
How come none of his workmates mentioned to him, or the 2 kids schoolmates, the thing the entire country was talking about, every single headline everywhere and 200 journos in the street FFS.
There have been no photos proffered to support ‘bubbly personality’ as claimed.
I just hope sleazy Keith has stopped stroking that girl and wonder why her mother didn’t swoop in from India and get her out of the maelstrom.
I am worried about Mel Greig and wish a pox on all who made those many threats at her. They, and Keith Vaz should be worrying about the hundreds of Indian women who have been violently killed in the time since JS died by her own hand.
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Good article
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