Open Thread – Weekend 6 July 2024


Spring, John Atkinson Grimshaw, late 1800s

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Rosie
Rosie
July 8, 2024 7:29 am
Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
July 8, 2024 8:14 am

Dr Faustus
 July 7, 2024 9:54 pm

Daniel Andrews has engaged one of Australia’s most expensive silks in a bid to keep secret his phone records from the day of a near-fatal 2013 car crash with a teenage cyclist.

Without going into any of the factual or legal details, just on the shifty behaviour exhibited, you would have to conclude, Far King Guilty M’Lord

Quite so.
Had he rung 000 and/or a local GP first up, later calls can be explained away.
If he has rung, for example, his Chief of Staff who may or may not have connections in VikPlod, it starts to fray at the edges.
The Chief of Staff then has his phone records put under scrutiny and the daisy chain is pieced together. CoS gets off phone to Hunchback and calls, say, the Area Commander for the Peninsula.
Nek minnit the Plod in the car are forgetting their breath test kit procedure.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 8, 2024 8:28 am

There you go, all you ex – servicemen. That’s what the Albanese Government thinks of you.
“Nothing is too good for our veterans, and that’s precisely what they’ll get. NOTHING!”

Veterans ‘left behind’ by looming legal service closure
Matthew Denholm
15 hours ago

110 comments
A lauded national legal service helping veterans fight for their entitlements, compensation and rehabilitation is being quietly axed, prompting warnings they will be left to the mercy of legal “sharks”.
The Defence and Veterans Legal Service faces closure because of a federal funding “cliff”, despite a 41,000 backlog of stalled claims and expectations that findings of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide findings will generate thousands more.
The nationwide service is prized by veterans because its support and guidance is expert, free, confidential and independent of government and military bodies.
However, its funding ends in September.
If the service, also known as DAVLS, is allowed to close, there are fears many veterans will resort to fee-for-service lawyers and advocates, some of whom are described by veterans as “sharks”.
“Applying for compensation can be difficult and veterans often seek legal assistance during that process,” said Katherine McKernan, executive director of National Legal Aid, which set up the service in late 2021.
“Sadly, some law firms charge large amounts for legal support that is freely available from DAVLS … High fees are also being charged by some fee-for-service advocates – non-lawyers who don’t have to cap their fees when helping people to apply for veteran entitlements.
“The compensation claim process is complex and can be stressful, so access to specialist legal help is critical. We are concerned that if the service ends in September, veterans could be left behind without access to free legal help.”
Ms McKernan said the ­expertise of DAVLS’s lawyers and staff would be lost if it disbanded in September.
With the funding cliff approaching, its staff has already halved from about 40 to about 20.
Veteran Billy Starr’s almost 30-year wait for compensation – after being physically injured, bullied, sexually harassed and raped in the army – was resolved only after she obtained assistance from DAVLS.
After discharging in 1994, Ms Starr was never told about entitlements and described her later experience of seeking compensation as “hell”.
“I was so exhausted by the whole process – if DAVLS hadn’t helped me, I would have given up,” the 54-year-old said.
“The outcome they achieved is phenomenal.
“There was a really important human element too. They had genuine care and compassion, and they had my best interests at heart. That is what veterans need.”
Without DAVLS, she feared others seeking justice would fall victim to “sharks”.
“There’s a lot of people making money out of this at the moment,” she said. “There’s a vulnerable group of veterans, so people start to target them because they see that they may not have the capacity to manage an application.
“And then that causes the ­veteran more financial distress – or they just give up.”

Zippster
Zippster
July 8, 2024 11:13 am

“How does an evil like anti-Semitism find its way there?

boeing or airbus

BobtheBoozer
BobtheBoozer
July 8, 2024 4:29 pm

Great… The last comment is at 1113.
No amount of cookie deleting will bring up what was visible 2 hours ago.

  1. Musk and Vivek are going to turn eliminating public servants into the most popular spectator sport of 2025.

  2. Hmmmm. Better to have the trojan horse inside the walls and nullified, than outside the walls looking for a chink…

  3. The US fcks up like any other country, but its ability to correct is amazing. Very true to say nothing…

  4. We’ll see what happens when the tariffs bite, and we repudiate the postal service benefits that has enabled China to…

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