No compensation for 100-year-old PoW Fred Collett - hero misses out

FRED Collett is a true-blue Australian war hero but the Federal Government has turned its back on the 100-year-old World War II Digger in his moment of need.

Mr Collett escaped the clutches of the Germans in a rickety old wooden dinghy at the height of the war, dodging bombs at sea for three weeks to warn fellow soldiers of the enemy advance.

But 69 years after his daring escape from a PoW camp in Greece to the island of Crete in April 1941, the Federal Government has told the ailing war hero "you're not eligible" for compensation.

Mr Collett believes the Government wants him to "hurry up and drop dead" in his rundown shack at Mount Ossa, north of Mackay, after the Department of Veterans' Affairs "controversially" knocked back his claim for a one-off $25,000 payment for being a PoW in Europe.

Its very hard to fathom a government who will gleefully spend hundreds of millions of dollars investing in the suffering and misery of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars but miserly and scrooge like, will deny a 100 year old man a pittance. All I can say is Governments only think in dollar terms and votes NOT in human values and they will only shit on you as soon as you turn your back.

Read more at: news.com.au

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Obama orders hospital visitation rights for gays, lesbians

Washington (CNN) -- President Obama has asked the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a rule that would prevent US hospitals from denying visitation privileges to gay and lesbian partners.

The president's Thursday memo said, "There are few moments in our lives that call for greater compassion and companionship than when a loved one is admitted to the hospital. ... Yet every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindnesses and caring of a loved one at their sides."

Gay and lesbian Americans are "uniquely affected" by relatives-only policies at hospitals, Obama said, adding that they "are often barred from the bedsides of the partners with whom they may have spent decades of their lives -- unable to be there for the person they love, and unable to act as a legal surrogate if their partner is incapacitated."



It was about time something was done about the archaic, cruel and barbaric rule barring same sex partners from hospital visitation rights.

I would simply ask anyone who disagrees with this new policy, what would you feel if you were barred from visiting your lifelong partner?

Read more at: CNN Politics

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Huckabee likens gay marriage to incest, polygamy

WASHINGTON — Mike Huckabee, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012, says the effort to allow gays and lesbians to marry is comparable to legalizing incest, polygamy and drug use.

Huckabee also told college journalists last week that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt. "Children are not puppies," he said.

And this moron is going to be a 2012 Presidential candidate? God help America!

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