Inert Vic cops spark international umbrage

There have been lots of violent offences with a racial angle  in Melbourne but because most of the offenders are black, the cops have got used to hushing them up -- which is the diametric opposite of what they claim to do

“They lied to me. At first they said the attackers were under investigation. Later they said they didn't know who some of them were."

A South Korean student whose finger was chopped off has spoken of his frustration with a police investigation into the incident.

Mr Chang, who is keeping his identity concealed, and a friend were attacked by a group of teenagers while sitting in Box Hill Gardens in Melbourne at night in September.

The attackers severed his left little finger and broke his arm. Mr Chang, who has worked as a designer and is left-handed, fears the injury will affect his ability to work in future.

“I feel so embarrassed and humiliated,” the TAFE Box Hill Institute student, 33, said. “I don't want to go outside alone. I haven't even told my family about what happened. They don't know.”

Over the past two months two other Korean nationals, a 33-year-old Sydney man and a 27-year-old man from Brisbane, have also been attacked, fuelling outrage in South Korea, with media reports questioning whether Australia is a safe place to visit.

Two weeks ago, French woman Fanny Desaintjores was threatened by passengers on a Melbourne bus for singing French songs. One man said “speak English or die”, while another commuter shouted: “I'll f---ing boxcutter you right now, dog.”

Victoria Police is continuing its investigations into the assault against Mr Chang after the South Korean government requested they conduct a "more thorough and fair investigation", capture the perpetrators and compensate the victim.

The Foreign Ministry of South Korea also demanded Australia "come up with measures to prevent future incidents", the Korean broadcaster KBS reported.

Mr Chang, from Seoul, still believes Australia is a “safe and good country”, acknowledging every country has its share of offenders. But he said he was “unhappy” about the ongoing police investigation.

A spokesman from the Korean Consulate in Melbourne told Fairfax Media they formally requested Victoria Police to “carry out a thorough investigation that will also eliminate perceptions of unfairness and inadequacy from the victim and Korean public”.

Mr Chang had declared he was told by police he was responsible for the brutal attack because he “was in the wrong place at the wrong hours”, sparking alarm in Korea.

But the spokesman said that while police eventually apologised for the remark to Mr Chang, he may have “misunderstood the intention behind it, taken in the wrong way due to cultural differences”.

The Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported Mr Chang was approached by a group of teenagers who asked for a cigarette. When he refused, they assaulted him while shouting the words "f---ing Chinese".

Mr Chang blacked out during the attack and was taken to hospital, where his little finger was reattached.

Victoria Police has told Fairfax Media a 14-year-old boy from Doncaster, Melbourne, was charged the day after the assault.

SOURCE





Australia the world's second-best place to be born: study

Just behind Switzerland.  I think this is pretty right, if only because of our largely untroubled economic climate

Australia will be the second-best country in the world to be born in next year, a study says.

The "lucky country" scored 8.12 out of a possible 10 points, just 0.1 behind Switzerland, The Economist's Intelligence Unit said in their 2013 where-to-be-born index released last week.

Following closely behind were Scandinavian countries Norway, Sweden and Denmark. New Zealand was ranked seventh with a score of 7.95, while Nigeria came in 80th and last with 4.74 points.

The magazine said the list, the first since 1988, was compiled using a combination of surveys - where people said how happy they are - with objective determinants about the quality of life.

"Being rich helps more than anything else, but it is not all that counts; things like crime, trust in public institutions and the health of family life matter too," the unit's director of country forecasting services, Laza Kekic, said in a statement.

Indicators used include geography, demography, social and cultural characteristics, government policies and the state of the world economy.

The list was dominated by smaller economies, with larger European economics such as Great Britain (27th), France (26th) and Germany (16th) languishing further down the list. The US, which topped the 1998 list, came in 16th.

Australia was ranked 18th on the 1998 index.

Last year, Australia was ranked second behind Norway in the annual United Nations Human Development Index.

It was the second year in a row that Australia was ranked second to Norway on the UN index, which looked at indicators including education, health, per-capita income and life expectancy.

SOURCE





Fascist "planner" wants to dictate how big peoples houses can be

Sure to be a Leftist.  She thinks she can say what people "need"

A ROW over so-called McMansions on the city fringe has revealed a split between the Baillieu Government and its chief planning adviser.

Professor Roz Hansen, chair of the ministerial advisory committee for the Metropolitan Planning Strategy, has called for a campaign to discourage families from building huge homes in new estates.

"Do you really need four bedrooms, four bathrooms, the home theatre, play area, formal and informal living areas?" she told the Herald Sun. "What is it costing you to run this and do you really need all this space to be able to function as a household?"

Prof Hansen said families hit by rising mortgage stress on the urban fringe would have more money in their pockets if they chose to have less space.

But Planning Minister Matthew Guy said families shouldn't be criticised for their housing choices.  "It's a bit undeserved because families have different needs," he said.

"A large portion of families live in our growth areas, so that's why you find in our growth areas larger family homes because predominantly that is the housing type out there."

SOURCE






Homeopathy regime is rejected as judge tells parents to immunise child

Homeopathic beliefs can be a dangerous mental illness -- as shown in this case.  The mother believes in her homeopathic "vaccinations"  DESPITE the fact that her daughter got whooping cough, a very nasty and sometimes fatal illness.  Homeopathic potions are just water so have placebo value only

A JUDGE has ordered a couple to immunise their eight-year-old daughter according to government health guidelines, in a rebuke to the homeopathic regime pursued by the mother.

But the father will shoulder the cost of doing so.

The mother had sought in a injunction in the Family Court to stop the father and his partner from immunising the child without her written permission.

She made the application after discovering that her daughter's stepmother had secretly taken the child to a medical centre to have her immunised against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, polio, HIB, measles, mumps, rubella and meningococcal C.

Previously, the mother had been arranging homeopathic vaccines.

She told the court that she adhered to a "simple and healthy way of life", that included eating organic food, using non-toxic cleaning products and sending the child to a Rudolph Steiner school where the toys were made from natural products such as wool, wax and silk.

Most parents at the school focused on "building up the immune system of the child through homeopathics", she told the court.

But when the girl was five, she contracted whooping cough, and the father and his new partner became concerned that she was not vaccinated, possibly placing their new baby at risk.

The stepmother then took her to the medical centre for a course of traditional immunisations, with the support of the child's father, but without the mother's consent or knowledge.

This upset the mother, in part because it engendered feelings of disempowerment, but also because she feared the health risks of traditional immunisation.

She told the court: "The homeoprophylaxis regime is more than adequate for her needs, provides her with immunity against childhood diseases and does so in a far safer and more risk averse way."

A doctor in homeopathic medicine told the court that homeopathic vaccination was safe and effective, whereas traditional vaccination had short- and long-term risks, including a link to ADHD and autism.

But Justice Bennett accepted the evidence of a doctor at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, who said there was insufficient evidence of the effectiveness of homeopathic immunisation to justify its replacement of traditional immunisation.

The links to ADHD and autism had been disproved by studies in Scandinavia, France and the United States, the doctor said.

Justice Bennett said the risks associated with traditional immunisation did not outweigh the risks of infection.

"It appears to me that the efficacy of homeopathic vaccines in preventing infectious diseases has not been adequately scientifically demonstrated," she said.

However, the mother has lodged an appeal.

The case is one of several before the courts that involve differing philosophies over childhood vaccination.

The Federal Magistrates Court was asked to intervene between two parents disputing whether their daughter should be immunised in 2010, resulting in an order for the child to undergo the immunisation program recommended by the federal Health Department.

SOURCE