VINCENT city council has softened its stance on convicting people sleeping rough in cars in the city. Camping out in cars in Vincent’s streets was banned after backpackers ruined it for everyone with their boozy, messy sleepouts. The council will now only enforce the ban after receiving a complaint from a resident, ratepayer or police…

ANOTHER shop in the heart of Beaufort Street is closing. Zakka Box, opposite Lawley’s Bakery, is pulling down its kimono after selling Japanese homewares and gifts for just three years. Zakka owner Yuka Cork pulled out of her monthly lease after the landlord told her he was planning to redevelop. “I had no choice really,…

FOR the first time in nearly a decade the WA Museum will display a rare collection of Australian toys. The toys are drawn from a diverse collection of 24,000 childhood items, donated by Edith Cowan University in 2009. The collection includes toys, clothes, school equipment and other childhood items. Many toys are ingenious home-made creations,…

WA GREENS senator Scott Ludlam describes his political career as on a ”knife-edge”. He says the decimation of the Greens in the March state election—dropping from five to two MLCs—was a wake-up call: “In a perverse way the result has galvanised the party and attendances at party meetings have rocketed since the state election,” he…

WHERE is John Hyde? That is the question people have been asking since the former Perth Labor MP was defeated at the state elections three months ago. The loss meant it was the first time in 18 years Mr Hyde held no elected office. The former journalist and actor joined Vincent council in 1995 at…

THE burgeoning sport of bicycle polo is looking for a new home. Perth Cycle Polo player Scott D’Mello says players set up at carparks around Mt Lawley but they’d like something more official now the newly created sport is reaching the big time. “We had the Australasian championships in Perth last year and we had…

  KINGS PARK authorities have removed the tree where Barbara Campbell, 87, buried the ashes of her daughter Penny Easton in 1992. Easton was the Perth lawyer who killed herself after becoming embroiled in a political scandal that was to consume Carmen Lawrence’s Labor government and become known as the Easton Affair. Having scattered her…

Keen on the right name SEEMING to be in chit-chat with Stirling’s top brass and the Mount Lawley MP Michael Sutherland is “Stuart Keenan MP…” (page 2; Camera frenzy caption, May 18, 2013). Mr Keenan has previously evaded my radar, as the saying goes. My chattering friends wonder how often he’s mistaken for Mt Lawley’s…