Thursday 9th of May 2024
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some medals are well-deserved...

clowne rmedal

Others to be so honoured today include former Howard government foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer, astrophysicist and joint Nobel prize winner Professor Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory, and the director of the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture in Canberra, the Reverend Professor James Mitchell Haire.

Mr Uren's award states it is for ''eminent service to the community, particularly through contributions to the welfare of veterans, improved medical education in Vietnam and the preservation of sites of heritage and environmental significance".

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/tom-uren-a-man-of-letters-pow-mp-oa-20130125-2dccr.html#ixzz2J2PWOC2Y
''I'VE been hit with open hands, closed fists, pieces of wood, iron bars and bamboo about two inches in diameter,'' Tom Uren says.He was hardly more than a boy then - a prisoner-of-war and slave of the Japanese in his early 20s on the Burma-Thai railway.

But Tom Uren would take many more hits as his long, often controversial life wore on, and he rolled with them all and refused to lie down.

Today, aged 91, with most of his opponents fallen away - and a lot of them forgiven by him, including the Japanese - he will receive the highest honour his nation can bestow on a civilian: Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia.
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in the lead crystal ball....

May: Secret plans reveal a 25-storey bronze sculpture of the late Kerry Packer will dominate the Barangaroo casino complex. The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, hails it as ''the Colossus of Sydney, an inspirational magnet for international high rollers worth billions''. Julian Assange makes a daring escape from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, foiling a sleepy British bobby by disguising himself as paedophile broadcaster Jimmy Savile in rose-tinted sunglasses and a gold lamé´ tracksuit. Economist Chris Richardson predicts the federal budget will produce ''the greatest economic crash'' since his last prediction.

June: The first edition of The Sydney Mining Herald leads its front page with a stirring poem by proprietor Gina Rinehart: ''Time for Australia to get cracking/Let's have lots more very essential coal seam fracking.'' New subscribers are offered a free pie and a beer at Randwick with co-owner John Singleton. Kylie Minogue is named to top Labor's Senate ticket in Victoria, with Julia Gillard exulting at ''another great leap forward for Australian women''. Tony Abbott drives a forklift backwards into a drain at a Queanbeyan sewage farm. Bundled out in straight sets in his first round at Wimbledon, Bernard Tomic assures a press conference he is ''the greatest since Rod Laver''.

July: Indigenous leader Noel Pearson proclaims the independent state of Capricornia, with himself as President for Life. In the US, the shooting massacre of 36 infants at a preschool in Tineaville, Nebraska, prompts the National Rifle Association to call for all American children over the age of five to carry a gun. Barry O'Farrell announces Sydney's new airport will be at Longreach in Queensland. A radical scheduling move causes ABC TV to complete an entire week without British actor Stephen Fry appearing in any program.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/future-schlock-as-more-of-same-in-store-20130125-2dbps.html#ixzz2J2RuIvtc