Bigger means cheaper PAUL COLLINS of Coolbinia is critical of the proposed amalgamation of councils (Voice Mail, March 8, 2014). Mr Collins refers to “community of interest” locations (eg, Inglewood’s community of interest location being centred on Beaufort Street towards Mt Lawley, not Morley). With all due respect to Mr Collins, the concept of an…

LAUGHTER was the last thing I expected from Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, a play full of dark themes including domestic violence. But Australia’s Sigrid Thornton is such a superb actor that her comic timing is perfect as faded southern belle Blanche Dubois, in this Black Swan production at the State Theatre. Director Kate…

PUBLIC housing tenants have been told to remove car shelters and carbay markings they’d installed to help manage carparking at their Smith Street complex. The WA housing department has already brought in contractors to remove numbers from the bays, saying the three-year-old enhancements were unauthorised. Julius Re, 82, says the improvements help “make life a…

DECISIONS made in secret have skyrocketed at Vincent, with the council tripling the number of times it went behind closed doors in five months. Till October the average number of secret items was a smidge over one per meeting, but CEO John Giorgi has recently been putting many more on the for-your-eyes-only list. Mayor John…

P A R E N T A L   W A R N I N G   A D V I C E The following story includes a naughty word, the sort of word young Tristan or Chelsea probably hears every day in the playground, or catches on TV where it’s said with gleeful abandon.…

STIRLING residents annoyed at rubbish cluttering their verges could end up paying $45 for a skip, as the council canvasses residents on new waste collection services. The council came under fire last year when it switched to one annual verge collection, resulting in a slow pick-up and piles of trash sitting on verges for weeks.…

HOMEOWNERS may be required to shell out more than $8000 each for underground power around Moir, Brookman and Lake Streets. Lake Street local Roy Gilbert opposes the underground power plan, fearing it could cost up to $10,000 per property given the way so many infrastructure projects run over budget. He says most of the neighbours…

SENIOR Vincent council staff aren’t keen on rolling out underground power across the rest of the city and, according to one councillor, seem to be deliberately obstructive. Last year the elected council asked staff to prepare a strategy to roll it out but new special projects director Gaby Pieraccini—brought in to take big projects out…

ABOUT 15,000 people made their way to St Patrick’s Day festivities in Leederville last weekend, organisers report. Karen Hennessy from Irish Families in Perth says about 6000 lined the streets for the parade, with bigger numbers coming along to the festival. She says they were pleased as punch they’d retained numbers during the day, and…

THE Menora synagogue will stage an opera written by Jewish prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. The Emperor of Atlantis—a dark fable about death and love—was devised by Viktor Ullmann and Peter Kien while imprisoned in Terezin, Czechoslovakia in 1943. The opera was rehearsed but the Nazis never allowed it to…