Strange times
FREMANTLE psychiatrist Kevin O’Daly’s call to stop Strange Company’s proposed new sister bar from opening next door to his premises on High Street, is worth questioning.
Especially due to his claims, that it would adversely affect clients who are battling to overcome alcohol addiction.
In your article “Petition to block bar” (Herald, June 16, 2017), it appears that Dr O’Daly has gained many of his signatures from his current and previous patients.
Is this ethical?
To name the sister bar as a ‘boozer’ is reactionary and without substance.
It is not a pub.
Further, in your previous article “Hangover for Clinic” (Herald, June 9, 2017) for O’Daly to suggest the small bar’s ‘disco music’ would adversely affect consultations is outrageous.
It conjures up the misguided notion that loud music would be pumping out of the new bar and wafting from below ground into the street and upstairs to his consultation rooms.
Strange Company are not into loud music.
They prefer a caring, relaxed atmosphere where people gather to talk while the music soothes and enhances conversation.
At ground level with open doors, their music is barely audible from the street.
Perhaps West Australia’s chief psychiatrist Dr Nathan Gibson, who backs Kevin O’Daly’s efforts to stop Strange Company’s new initiative, would like to accompany me to 10 High Street to actually see the location.
It would not take much to realise the misinformed views O’Daly is spreading about the bar.
If Dr Gibson would like to observe how Strange Company operates, how astutely considerate they are of the community they serve and their residential neighbours, he might like to join me to partake in their top cuisine.
I doubt very much that neither he nor I, along with others who gather there, would be likely to walk out reeking of ‘booze’, loud and legless.
I’d imagine the small sister bar with seating for about 50 clients would add to the life-giving atmosphere found at Strange Company, a place that is likely to prevent people from accessing psychiatric services.
Dr Suzanne Covich (PhD)
Healy Road, Hamilton Hill

I love Freo
AFTER reading some negative letters and articles recently about Freo in the Herald, I would like to say that I love Freo.
I walk in and around this city at least five or six times a week.
I love the creativity of the shops and cafes and bars and the friendliness of most of the shopkeepers, the ‘come & try’ programs the council puts on for its seniors, the street art, a lot of the buskers, the parks and street trees, and its beaches and its festivals.
My husband and I (in our late 60’s) often walk into town at night going to functions, cafes, restaurants and bars.
We always feel safe.
We welcome Fremantle council’s plans to have more people living and working in the city to help keep it alive and vibrant and able to survive as a city into the future.
The more people that are on the streets night and day, the safer it is.
Freo does have a certain “grunge” to it thankfully, it’s where people live.
From early days there have been people complaining about feeling unsafe in Freo, nothing’s new there.
However it also has a strong community, an engaged council and as someone who has travelled the world, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
Pat Winnacott
High Street, Fremantle 

Dog of a meal
AUSTRALIANS are entitled to be angry and disgusted by reports that tourists in Bali are routinely being fed dog meat.
Dogs are not on the menu in Australia, and the Bali dogs, according to eye-witnesses, suffer appallingly cruel deaths before being eaten, often sold falsely as chicken satays.
Many are poisoned, adding further risk to the unwitting consumer.
But before demanding that your satays come from another animal, spare a thought for the billions of chickens killed just as inhumanely every year.
These chickens endure miserable lives in filthy, overcrowded factory farms and probably never see the sun or take a breath of fresh air until they are put onto trucks and sent to slaughter.
Chickens are genetically bred to grow so large and so fast that their legs, lungs, and hearts often can’t keep up—their upper bodies grow six to seven times faster than they would naturally.
Many of these animals suffer crippling leg deformities, lung collapse, and heart failure.
When the chickens are about seven weeks old, still infants, they are thrown into crates to be loaded onto the transport trucks.
Many suffer from broken wings and legs.
After they are unloaded, these chickens are hung, still fully conscious, upside-down by their often broken legs in metal shackles before their heads are passed through electrically charged water that immobilises them but does not render them unconscious.
Unless they have died from stress and abuse before they’re shackled, these animals are still alive when their throats are slit, and die slowly of blood loss.
They then enter the scalding-water tank for feather removal.
Because many of them flap and miss both the immobilisation bath and the throat-cutting blade, they are scalded to death.
The only safe way to ensure you are not eating dog satays is to request tasty, nutritious vegan food.
Ashley Fruno, associate director
PETA Australia