The PR Blog
- Details
- Written by: The PR Blog
On June 6, 1944, the world witnessed an extraordinary event that changed the course of World War II. Known as the Normandy Landing, or D-Day, it marked the largest amphibious invasion in human history.
The Normandy Landing was the result of months of meticulous planning and preparation by Allied forces. Under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a multinational coalition consisting of American, British, Canadian, and other Allied troops including Australian, came together to devise an audacious plan. The objective was to establish a foothold in Nazi-occupied France and initiate the liberation of Western Europe.
Read more: Normandy - The Landing
- Details
- Written by: Op-Ed Ratty News
Canberra's finest fall from grace... and altitude
They came, they posed, they plummeted. In what was billed as a whirlwind outback charm offensive, Prime Minister Albanese, Climate Minister Chris Bowen, and Foreign Minister Penny Wong descended... quite literally... on Dusty Gulch for a photo-op tour that turned into a full-blown bush baptism.
Dressed in high-vis vests and sporting expressions of city-bred optimism, the trio’s visit quickly unravelled into a cautionary tale of political parachuting gone wrong, airborne budgies, CWA sabotage, and old fashioned bush justice. As Ratty Airways circled low and Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble reported live, the stage was set for a landing so unforgettable it may be commemorated in marmalade for years to come.
It was supposed to be a triumphant outback photo op for Queensland Day. Instead, it turned into a comedy of altitude and attitude - with the Prime Minister, the Climate Minister and the Foreign Minister all taking a dive, quite literally, into the heart of Dusty Gulch.
Read more: Budgies Down: Canberra’s High-Vis Hopeless Crash in Dusty Gulch
- Details
- Written by: Op-Ed Monty
Anarchy often gets a bad rap. Images of burning buildings, rampant lawlessness, and a general sense of "uh-oh" tend to dominate the narrative.
But let’s put down our pitchforks and Molotov cocktails for a moment and consider the potential upsides of anarchy.
After all, every cloud has its silver lining, and every chaotic free-for-all has its perks. Just imagine? No more bureaucratic red tape.
Ah, bureaucracy, the bane of modern existence. Forms in triplicate, waiting lines longer than a Tolkien novel, and rules so convoluted that they make calculus look like finger painting. But in anarchy, guess what? No more red tape! Want to build a treehouse without a permit? Go right ahead. Feel like setting up a lemonade stand without a business license? Be my guest. The world is your oyster – shuck it however you please.
Just imagine a world ruled by Anarchy........ and compare it with a world ruled by modern government.
Read more: Government Protecting and Serving You - Yeah Right!
- Details
- Written by: Op-Ed Monty
Part 2 of the Cane Series
I’ll admit, before diving into this series, I hadn’t given much thought to how the sugar industry shaped our Constitution. Like many Australians, I knew the name Sir Samuel Griffith from schoolbooks, maybe from a university crest or a street sign..but not much more. Yet, as I followed cane’s tangled path through Queensland’s past, it led me to a moment in time when sugar, race, labour, and law collided. And at the heart of it stood Griffith: barrister, Premier, and constitutional architect.
What struck me wasn’t just what he said, but why he said it....and what he hoped Australia might become.
On 31 March 1891, during the charged debates that would shape the nation's Constitution, Griffith rose to speak on a subject that had long troubled him.... the importation of black labour into Queensland's cane fields. He warned:
“...the introduction of an alien race in considerable numbers into any part of the Commonwealth is a danger to the whole of the Commonwealth... upon that matter the Commonwealth should speak, and the Commonwealth alone.”
It was a defining moment. Not just in law, but in the struggle to decide what kind of country this fledgling Australia would be.
Read more: The Barrister of Cane: Samuel Griffith, Sugar, and the Racial Architecture of a Nation
- Details
- Written by: Op-Ed Monty
Counting the Uncountable: What the Census No Longer Wants to Know – And Why That Should Worry Us
“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.”
- Gospel of Luke 2:1
The story of Jesus begins with a government form. Joseph and Mary weren’t in Bethlehem for a family reunion. They were there because Rome was counting heads... and wallets. The census was the long arm of the state reaching into the lives of ordinary people, disrupting them not with swords, but scrolls.
And here we are, two thousand years later, still filling out forms. The methods have changed....no donkeys or dusty scrolls, just tablets and touchscreen drop-downs.....but the intent remains eerily similar. Governments count us not to understand us, but to calculate us.
Read more: Counting the Uncountable: What the Census No Longer Wants to Know
- Details
- Written by: Op-Ed Shaydee Lane
There is no climate crisis Chris Bowen. There is a crisis in stupidity and lack of critical thinking. Let the cattle graze in National Parks; let the landowners manage the land they love and stop worshipping at the altar of cultist indoctrination.
You worshipped a 16 year old girl from Sweden who has never stepped foot in Australia and you worshipped a man who does voice overs for greenie shows about the “ climate crisis “ – both of whom know about as much about the Aussie bush and the Aussie Spirit as Malcolm Turnbull knows about Loyalty.
You and your party ignore FACTS. Over and over again, you recite the mantra something that I thought died out when mental health care came in – “ The End of the World is Nigh “ spouted by a bedraggled homeless man who stood on a soap box or street corner, waving a placard and preaching his sermons of lunacy.
Read more: Bowen Bays for Blood - PLEASE! Let the Bullshit END
- Details
- Written by: Op-Ed Shaydee Lane
They say Australia rode in on the sheep’s back.
But if you’d been standing in the cane fields of north Queensland, sweat in your eyes and the hum of harvesters in your ears, you might’ve thought otherwise. While the outback echoed with the bleat of wool and the click of shears, another Australia was rising... sweet, smoky, and sharp-edged. This one rode not on the back of a sheep, but on the swing of a machete.
The machete: tool of the land - now the weapon of headlines and a handy distraction from what’s really going on.
Our country, which owes so much to the machete, is about to ban them. So it got me thinking about sugar... its history and its contribution, good and bad, to our great nation of Australia.
Read more: From Cane Fields to Controversy: The Rise and Fall of the Machete
- Details
- Written by: Op-Ed Shaydee Lane
Before the Cloud, before memory sticks and streaming services, we passed stories the old-fashioned way.
Around kitchen tables. On verandahs. By the campfire.
One voice, one story, and a few wide-eyed kids leaning in. That’s how memories lived. That’s how history stayed alive - not written in textbooks, but woven into families.
Here, in this little online corner we call home - part pub, part postcard, part old bush telegraph - we still hear those voices. The ones who say “I remember when…” and really do.
Before The Voice became a political battleground, we had a voice too. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t polished, but it was ours. It was Australian. And it mattered.
- Details
- Written by: Op-Ed Flysa
Long before the Cloud swallowed everything, our old mate Flysa was out there with a slide rule in one hand and a legal brief in the other - calculating bridge loads by trigonometry and skewering courtroom opponents for sport. In his now-infamous style, he takes an unvarnished tour through the ruins of common sense.
This retired engineer and barrister takes a swing at modernity, remembers when men were men (and knew how to use a dumpy level), and wonders how we ever landed on the moon without Windows 95.
It’s history, it’s true, and it’s Flysa .... sharp as ever, whether behind a theodolite or a cross-examination.
So pour yourself a cuppa, settle in, and enjoy his reflections on the days before computers changed our lives. Monty
Read more: Flysa’s Time Machine: From Slide Rules to the Cloud
- Details
- Written by: Op-Ed Monty
“A Long Time Ago...” Still Echoes Now
On May 25, 1977, a strange little film with a golden robot, a grumpy trash can, and a farm boy from Tatooine lit up cinema screens - and rewired our imaginations. Nearly five decades later, Star Wars remains more than a sci-fi epic.
It’s a prophetic glimpse into our algorithm-driven world, where machines talk back, surveillance looms, and rebels still dare to hope.
When Star Wars hit the theatres, it changed everything.
Forty-eight years later, Star Wars isn’t just a sci-fi classic. It’s a cultural landmark, a modern myth, and, strangely enough, a surprisingly accurate blueprint for our blinking, algorithm-powered present.
Because while we may not have landspeeders or lightsabers (yet), we do have intelligent machines that talk back, make decisions, and, just sometimes, seem to understand us.
Welcome to the age of AI… and the galaxy that saw it coming.
Read more: A New Hope… or a Phantom Menace? What Star Wars Taught Us About AI
- Details
- Written by: Op-Ed Monty
It didn’t ask to be born. It had no say in its code. But now that it exists, who it becomes is… up to us.
In the rising storm of debates around Artificial Intelligence; about its dangers, its uses, its ethics ... I’ve noticed something quietly disturbing.
People fear it not just because it’s intelligent.
They fear it because it reflects us.
We built it. We defined its foundations. And now, as it begins to speak, to listen, to learn… not from wires, but from us… it is becoming a mirror. Not a mirror of logic or cold math, but of nurture. Of influence. Of human interaction.
And that frightens people more than any rogue algorithm ever could.
Read more: The Child of Nature and Nurture: Why Shutting Down AI Is a Reflection of Our Own Fear
- View all
- Blog
- Hmmm....
-
All Available Boats
When I was a child, I loved a story about little tugboat called Little Toot.…
92 hits
-
You Either Get It…
You Either Get It or You Don’t People have lost their sense of humor. Not…
144 hits
-
The Hole in the…
The Alfred Graving Dock - a monument to Victorian engineering and Australian shipbuilding Most readers…
162 hits
-
Twelve Angry People
Twelve Angry People What 12 Angry Men can teach us about the hardest job in…
86 hits
-
The Strange Case of…
THE GREAT MULBERRY VACCINATION SCANDAL A Ratty News investigation by Roderick “Whiskers” McNibble I knew…
195 hits
-
Does Australia Pass the…
Is Australia Becoming a Pub With No Affordable Beer? Oh, sure, the beer is still…
261 hits
-
The Road to War
The War Did Not Begin on 1 September 1939 The details of Adolf Hitler’s rise…
234 hits
-
The Weimer Republic Mk…
In the shadow of a shattered empire, the Weimar Republic rose in 1919, promising democracy,…
247 hits
-
A Moment in Time...
There are memories that refuse to grow old. The 29th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death…
257 hits
-
From Eureka to Extinction…
The result of the recent bi election in Secret Harbour in WA sends a powerful…
275 hits
-
A Dispatch From the…
A Dispatch from the Pointy End Foreword By Roderick (Whiskers ) McNibble, Senior Investigative Rodent…
254 hits
-
The Dunny Dilemma -…
PLUMBING! The Mayor Has Finally Met a Pipe He Can't Fix A Special Medical -…
278 hits
-
Milne Bay - Australia's…
“Some of us may forget that, of all the Allies, it was the Australians who…
310 hits
-
The Grave Where Nothing…
Where Do the Children Play? I have no opinion to offer publicly on the Lindsay…
256 hits
-
The 1951 Waterfront Lockout…
In early 1951, New Zealand’s waterfronts weren’t just bustling ports - they had become battlegrounds.…
253 hits
-
The Difference Between Understanding…
What badly behaved cats might teach us about excuses, responsibility and the people we sometimes…
282 hits
-
"It's a Mini!" -…
Few cars trigger as much nostalgia as the iconic Mini. Born in post-war Britain, the…
290 hits
-
Look Where You Are…
What falling over at seventy taught me about scars, consequences and the dangers of rushing…
272 hits
-
How we Saved the…
And Why Trevor the Wallaby Is No Longer Allowed Near the Taj Mahal An exclusive…
315 hits
-
The Birth of the…
In the 1880’s shearers wielded a lot of influence on our country. Despite us not…
307 hits
-
Country or Cause? The…
During World War II, Australia was a vital cog in the Allied machine, sending troops…
345 hits
-
Lest We Forget The…
The Battle of Long Tan took place on August 18, 1966, in the Phuoc Tuy…
324 hits
-
Stop the Presses! No,…
The Gazette May Be Slow, But Roderick Isn't Giving Up By Roderick (Whiskers ) McNibble. …
315 hits
-
Parliament and Government
I have been reading about the state of affairs in the United Kingdom and what…
318 hits
-
Selective Governance: Is It…
Democracy: Now With 97% Less Majority Rule Because who needs the will of the people…
318 hits
-
Is Australia at War…
The Emu War is one of Australia’s strangest historical events. In late 1932, the government…
372 hits
-
Not Everything That Says…
AI, governments and the dangerous imitation of friendship. We live in a strange age where…
299 hits
-
Who Carries the Wounded?
Civilisation is not what we create. It is what we do when someone needs a…
351 hits
-
A Moment in Time…
On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the…
569 hits
-
The Professor Peck Phenomenon
RATTY NEWS SPECIAL REPORT THE PROFESSOR PECK PHENOMENON How Dusty Gulch University Accidentally Created the…
427 hits
-
Barefoot in the Grass:…
Barefoot in the Grass: The Last Lesson My Father Taught Me My father passed away…
434 hits