Good morning Wimmera,
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There's no shortage of happenings in our quiet corner of the state, and unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons.
It was only on Monday that Horsham police praised the behaviour of tourists and locals alike following a relatively quiet Labour Day weekend.
Yesterday, we woke to the news that a man was shot in Horsham. Very confronting news.
Speaking at the scene, Detective Detective Senior Sergeant Travis Kerr said the Melbourne-based Armed Crime Squad are involved.
"Police are appealing to anyone in the in the area that may have CCTV footage, heard or saw anything that was peculiar or have dashcam footage or to like if they could contact Crimestoppers or the Horsham police station," Det Snr Sgt Kerr said.
Two men suffered life-threatening injuries and were airlifted to hospital in Melbourne.
The man appear in court on Friday morning and the case was adjourned until late-July.
Combined with several road fatalities and 2023 is looking very grim.
In times like this, it's important to look for the positives.
Straight from the top shelf, Penny Penfold won the Spirit of Racing Award.
Plus a Warracknabeal family sings praises to Ronald McDonald House support following their daughter's treatment.
Yes, it's not all doom and gloom. You just need to look a little harder.
Have a great weekend!
Ben Fraser, Editor.
All this outrage is simply outrageous
In The Echidna newsletter turned one this week, which is pretty cool. It boasts almost 10,000 readers from across Australia.
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Here is: 'All this outrage is simply outrageous'.
Bringing you all the latest apologies, complaints and promises to do better from the perpetually outraged, highly scandalised and deeply offended world we live in...
The world's largest producer of denim clothing, Levi Strauss, issued an unreserved apology and withdrew its popular range of "ripped" jeans yesterday following complaints that pants with designer holes and slashed knees mocked and belittled poor people. The United Poverty Council said more needed to be done to end the "immensely offensive" fashion trend of shredded clothing. "People wearing $300 jeans that are deliberately torn during the manufacturing process display startling arrogance and disrespect for millions who cannot afford to patch their clothes," the council said. "Governments need to outlaw the well-off pathetically pretending to identify as the poor."
Westfield and other shopping centre developers will create more parking spots directly outside supermarket doors following a backlash over the introduction of Parents with Prams parking areas. Community activist groups Older Men With Arthritic Knees, Menopausal Women with Tricky Bladders and People Who Can't Park Between Two White Lines told a Human Rights Commission hearing that specially-designated car parks like Parents With Prams discriminated against other deserving community groups who were still being forced to drag their groceries to their cars over "cruel distances using trolleys with dodgy wheels".
The Society Against The Incorrect Use of Commas, Apostrophes and Semicolons announced it would form a "Grammar Coalition" with Opponents of People Who Send Text Messages in Capital Letters And Use Too Many Emojis. The new coalition will stage protests outside Apple and Google headquarters calling for mandatory spelling and grammar-checking software on all the world's mobile devices.
The Union Of People Who Like Emojis And Don't Give A Rat's About Spelling says it will launch legal action to overturn any move designed to enforce "woke" spelling and grammar. The union says the move would discriminate against people who identify as "free-form spellas" - a rapidly growing segment of the population who claim their alternative spellings constitute "the true langwitch of humianity which has already been adopted by several headline writers at the Daily Mail Online".
The publishers of Moby Dick, one of the world's best-selling and most beloved novels, announced yesterday its title would be shortened to "Moby" following a letter-writing campaign by 10,000 men named Richard angered over "centuries of inappropriate commercial use of the nickname we have used since the Middle Ages".
Thousands of middle and late-aged women rallied in city streets across the country yesterday demanding changes to the name and genetic structure of the plant dracaena trifasciata - commonly called Mother-in-Law's Tongue. "Such a name perpetuates tired stereotypes of an endearing and beloved family member," said a spokeswoman. "And it's time someone got rid of those pointy, sword-like leaves and replaced them with something softer."
The prospect of a multi-billion-dollar class action by bewildered patients has forced the Australian Medical Association to apologise for decades of indecipherable handwriting by doctors on prescriptions and referrals. Handwriting by GPs will be phased out by 2026 and replaced with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic-based keyboards.
Federal parliament will vote on a private member's bill banning the use of the thumbs-up hand sign frequently employed by politicians being photographed after casting their vote on election day. The bill was drafted after a nationwide campaign by the Italian Heritage Society, which claimed the thumbs-up sign - originally used by Roman emperors to indicate if a slave or gladiator should be put to death - had been "callously and culturally misappropriated".
AFL club St Kilda and NRL club St George have agreed to change their names to Kilda and George following complaints by Vatican lawyers that using the appellation "Saint" constituted a breach of international trademark laws and was "highly offensive to followers of those who have attained true sainthood, particularly given the poor performances of these clubs in recent years".
Consumer advocate group Truth In Retailing has called for supermarket cashiers to stop using phrases like "Have a nice day" and "How's your day going?" because such statements "are shallow platitudes, mean nothing and force customers to needlessly interact by smiling and responding with equally superficial replies while remaining in a state of permanent shock over the store's rising prices".
The International Society of Comedians and Satirists says its members will retire en masse next week, claiming satire was dead in the modern world. "We just can't compete anymore with the real world," the society said. The rest of the world immediately condemned the society for its "incendiary and provocative language " and demanded a formal apology.
HAVE YOUR SAY: What are you outraged about? Do people seem angrier these days? Has society lost its sense of humour or is our "culture of outrage" really about righting wrongs and giving long-oppressed individuals and groups a voice? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
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