Perth city council, August 6, 2013 SOLID GOLD jewellers will be made to pull down an unauthorised sign it erected on a heritage building in the Hay Street Mall. At Tuesday’s meeting Perth city councillors unanimously ordered the vertical sign be removed. “It would set an undesirable precedent for similar signage on the heritage facade,”…

Outrage over forced council amalgamations THE VOICE SAYS: Premier Colin Barnett may have dreamed of Anchluss, of a seamless stitching together of borders with grateful, pretty frauleins casting flowers at his feet, but the reality is anything but. His merger plans have been greeted instead with almost universal opprobrium, and with good reason. He’s had…

Special reports by Stephen Pollock Liberal revolts A Liberal party branch president has condemned the Barnett government over forced council mergers, saying it “lied to the voters of Mt Lawley and Inglewood”. Former Stirling city councillor Paul Collins, who’d sought preselection as a state election candidate, says the merger will be “an absolute disaster for…

The vast majority of Mt Lawley and all of Inglewood will shift from Stirling and Vincent into a merged Bayswater-Bassendean super-council. No-one saw it coming and it’s sending shockwaves through the leafy suburbs. Under premier Colin Barnett’s plan, only a tiny sliver of Mt Lawley spills the border, shared between Stirling and Perth. Aghast Mt…

Drunk planning students could do a better job at drawing the new borders between Perth and Stirling says urban planner Matt Buckels. “If you got a bunch of average first-year planning students and got them drunk and asked them to rearrange the Perth/Vincent border I doubt they would do as bad a job,” says the…

Special reports by David Bell Traders lament loss of Vincent ‘I think we might get lost in a bigger council’ Businesses that are to shift from Vincent to Stirling council are worried their concerns will go unheeded by the bigger, more corporate council. Dean Schulze runs the Beaufort Street 24-hour chemist. “I’m greatly concerned,” he…

Bayswater mayor Terry Kenyon is one of the few WA mayors happy with the Barnett Merger. His council will merge with Bassendean and the new boundaries expand westward to Alexander Drive—rolling in all of Inglewood and most of Mt Lawley—and eastward to Reid highway, taking Noranda. Cr Kenyon says Morley will become the strategic heart…

A Mount Lawley culture-vulture will ride from Perth to Sydney to raise funds for Parkinson’s research. Lucy Harper, a curator at the WA art gallery, is ditching her fusty monographs for a bike and will spend a month cycling 4300km across the Nullarbor. Her dad Bruce was diagnosed with Parkinson’s 24 years ago, aged 50:…

ALANNAH MacTIERNAN says her Liberal opponent Darryl Moore may be too delicate for the hard knocks of politics. Darryl Moore was a no-show for two live debates with the Vincent mayor, who is Labor’s federal candidate for Perth, and he continually ducks media questions. He point-blank refused to appear with Ms MacTiernan on 6PR Drive…

An anti-457 visas billboard has been erected on the building that houses the campaign office of federal Perth Liberal candidate Darryl Moore, a vocal supporter of the 457 scheme. The CFMEU wants employers to put more energy into training local apprentices, rather than going overseas for skilled labour. The Voice rang Mr Moore to ask…