THE Water Corporation has pulled the plug on its $150 million facelift in Leederville, announcing the project has been “indefinitely delayed”. Vincent council had approved the massive project in October 2011, allowing the Water Corp to knock down its two-storey HQ and build six towers, each between 10 and 27 storeys tall. These were to…

Stories by DAVID BELL: VINCENT mayor John Carey is furious Perth city council has secretly polled his ratepayers. Perth-appointed pollsters have been phoning Vincent residents asking questions about amalgamations, including whether they want their small council’s suburbs to be kept together, and how they’d feel about being in Perth. Mr Carey says he recently met…

KIDS will be pleased to know, with Christmas around the corner, that there’s more than just fun to online gaming. A study by Edith Cowan University Associate Professor Mark McMahon (right) has found social and educational benefits too. His evidence refutes the popular view of online gaming as anti-social. With games becoming more interactive ‘gamers’…

THE first sods have been turned on the new $11.2 million Mt Lawley primary school. Construction should be completed by the end of next year, in time for enrolments in 2015. The 100-year-old school was burnt down in July 2012 and the teenage arsonists sentenced to eight months’ gaol. The Mount Lawley Society and hundreds…

THEY’VE done it again: Vandals have damaged the public artwork at Ellesmere Reserve. Near-neighbour Bob Kucera called the Voice reporting the artwork—IMAG_NE by Emma Anna—was vandalised Friday night. “It’s become quite a feature in the area and it’s disappointing to see some low-life cretin come along and do something like that to it,” the former…

BOARDED up brothels on Roe Street are some of photographer Pippa Tandy’s earliest memories of growing up in Perth. Remembering Perth’s red-light district as a teenager, she tells the Voice: “You hurried past.” Then Perth, not Northbridge, it was known colloquially as “the Latin Quarter”, an area of gambling dens and unsavoury characters, where ordinary…

A FILIPINO man and his wife from Bedford have organised a fundraiser for the Typhoon Haiyan disaster, dismayed to hear corruption is stopping funds getting to his home province. Rhay Rom says his relations in Ormoc City and Merida were without food for five days and had their homes destroyed after Typhoon Haiyan struck in…

“ONE man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” says Mt Lawley MP and South African ex-pat Michael Sutherland. “Some people think of Nelson Mandela’s early years as controversial, but you have to look at his life in totality. “Apartheid was iniquitous and demeaning towards black people. “I respect Mandela and the monumental changes he achieved.”…

A NEW design has been approved for the old Playhouse Theatre site near the St Georges Cathedral in Perth. It’s second-time lucky for the project, after Perth city council approved an initial design in February 2011. While the Playhouse was demolished the replacement project never saw the light of day. Now a nine-level office building…

IT was a quiet affair at this year’s Perth city council AGM, with the couple of ratepayers who’d showed up easily outnumbered by council staffers. A conspicuous absence was former councillor Lyndon Rodgers, who didn’t show to receive his certificate of service after his re-election bid failed in October. Mr Rodgers, often at odds with…