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Sky News AU
17 hours ago
- Business
- Sky News AU
‘Disgusting display': Millionaire under fire for striking deal with renewable giant to host mammoth wind turbines in rural NSW
A millionaire who resides in one of Sydney's most exclusive suburbs has been scorned for striking a deal with a renewable energy giant to house massive wind turbines on his properties in rural NSW. Residents in the regional NSW town of Bowning have claimed a renewable energy company's campaign to construct wind turbines taller than Sydney's Crown Tower throughout the local community is turning 'neighbour against neighbour." The $1.6 billion Bendenine wind farm, spearheaded by renewable energy giant Wind Prospect, seeks to construct up to 90 wind farms in the Yass region in rural NSW. The project, which is still currently in the initial feasibility phase, has generated widespread tension within the town after it was revealed major landowners had cut deals with the company to have the collosal turbines erected on their properties. Will Kelly, who spends his time between a $7 million mansion in Sydney's Bellevue Hill on the eastern suburbs and an expansive family farm outside Yass, is set to house the vast majority of the turbines on his lands while his farming neighbours were left out of negotiations, according to the Daily Telegraph. Mr Kelly was pictured on Tuesday morning by The Daily Telegraph having a hit at the Royal Sydney Golf Club, which requires an entry fee of $25,000 and a yearly payment of $6,000. When asked to confirm if he was hosting 60 of the 90 turbines on his lands he said 'it's not 60' and that the matter was 'confidential.' Emma Webb, a third-generation wool farmer and Bowning local, told Sky News the consequences of the development were 'huge' and that the 'community, and our landscapes will never be the same again' if the project went ahead. 'Every day, I'm fielding phone calls from neighbours who are not coping with the stress. Farmers who have worked their entire lives to care for the land and whose entire wealth and legacy is tied up in that land who feel an overwhelming sense of powerlessness," Ms Webb told Sky News host Peta Credlin. Ms Webb, whose family have lived in the Binalong-Bowning region since the 1950s, said there was a degree of 'moral superiority' in Wind Prospects attitude. She said locals were asked if they wanted to keep the lights on which she blasted as "really condescending'. 'It was quite a disgusting display last week of arrogance and entitlement to the point where they just stopped trying to sell it to us, they just told us it's a state-significant project and we have a licence to do this from the very top and we're charging ahead in the face of overwhelming community opposition," Ms Webb said. The mother of three said the saga was dividing 'neighbour against neighbour' and that the fight with 'developers is behinds closed doors and that's part of the problem, they have one-on-one meetings and that's a really big part of the problem.' Local farmers have slammed the lucrative club of land owners, including Mr Kelly and his brother Sam who owns the conjoining property for arranging clandestine deals with Wind Prospect. Many of Bowning's 1000 residents gathered at the town hall last week to interrogate Wind Prospect's senior executives and voice their outrage at their neighbours including the Kelly brothers who they say betrayed their trust and ruined their business models. They said the imposition of the 260m high turbines would drastically reduce the value of their properties. Glen Miller, a local sheep farmer, said at the meeting his land holdings formed the entirety of his livelihood, and that he had been 'paying the Commonwealth Bank for 40 years'. The farmer said the wind turbines if approved would border his property and would substantially reduce his lands worth, and that he was mortified by the move. Wind Prospects managing director Ben Purcell told the community forum concerns about a "30 to 40 per cent reduction" in land value were not necessarily a direct result of the proposed wind project and that there were a "lot of figures that influence land values". A NSW government spokesman told The Daily Telegraph that 'Private landholders are able to make choices about how they develop their land, subject to planning approvals.' Ms Webb said the community would 'continue to fight this. We love this place. This is my family's home. This is My children's future.'
Daily Mirror
20 hours ago
- Science
- Daily Mirror
Alarming warning of killer whale attacks on British coast after close shave
Two sailors sent out a mayday distress call after their French yacht Azurea was attacked by killer whales off the coast of Spain on Monday, sparking concern about orca British sailors have been warned today about the risk of being rammed by killer whales after orcas attacked a yacht in Spain. Skippers should switch off their engines if they encounter killer whales in water off the coast of Britain, experts have stressed. Two sailors sent out a mayday distress call on Monday after their vessel called Azurea was attacked by orcas off the coast of Spain. The French yacht was rammed at about 2pm local time, two nautical miles from the town of Deba. Rescuers who saved the pair, one of whom was a 60-year-old man, said such incidents were "uncommon" so high up in the Atlantic. However, an expert at a British university did not rule out that similar incidents could occur in future. Professor Volker Deecke, an academic at University of Cumbria in the conservation of marine mammals and behavioural aspects of conservation biology, said: "UK sailors transiting the hotspots should definitely familiarise themselves with the guidance. The same guidance applies for sailors encountering any killer whales in Cornish waters." The academic told the Daily Telegraph the guidance given to sailors in the Strait of Gibraltar includes to stop the boat engine and lower the sails immediately if orcas are spotted, turn off autopilot and echo sounders and not to make loud noises in an effort to scare the creatures away. Other advice includes avoiding hotspots in the first place and, most crucially, to stay in shallow waters of about 20 meters in depth. Earlier this month, wildlife experts confrmed the first sighting of Iberian orcas in Cornish waters. This again has led to concern British sailors should take care in waters around the Southwest of England in particular. It is thought incidents like Monday's close shave have reduced off the coast of Spain following efforts by authorities to remind sailors of the safety protocol. Dr Javier Almunia, director of the Loro Parque Foundation, told The Telegraph: "The behaviour has reduced, at least in the Gibraltar Strait, by around 90 per cent following the recommendations of the Spanish authorities." But killer whales are known to approach vessels from the stern and hit the rudder before losing interest once they have stopped the boat, in a phenomenon that scientists have struggled to fully explain. Some marine biologists believe that the whales may be attacking out of boredom. Prof Deecke, whose Master's degree at a Canadian university was about killer whales, added: "During interactions, the animals remain cool, calm and collected without any of the behavioural signs of aggression such as splashing or vocalisations."
BBC News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'We haven't gone beyond her': How the plays of Sarah Kane sent shockwaves through the 1990s
Thirty years ago, the late British writer's debut play Blasted was castigated as a "feast of filth". Now though, revivals of her work are showing she was ahead of her time. Blasted, the 1995 debut play by the late British playwright Sarah Kane, begins with a couple, Ian and Cate, entering a Leeds hotel room. Ian, a tabloid journalist, is unimpressed, and in the following moments he brandishes a revolver, utters a stream of racist slurs, and commits acts of sexual violence against Cate. It is easy to fixate on these details which set the tone for a play that only gets more harrowing, building to a truly sickening final scene. Warning: This article contains content that some may find disturbing or upsetting With its staging at London's Royal Court Upstairs, Blasted became the biggest theatrical cause célèbre in the UK for decades – and reviewers were scathing. Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph called it a work "devoid of intellectual and artistic merit" and even suggested that Kane was mad. Jack Tinker from the Daily Mail's review was headed "This Disgusting Feast of Filth". Many of the press viewed Blasted as a grotesque waste of taxpayers' money, mindlessly squandered by a 23-year-old enfant terrible who was – shockingly – female. The critical tide later turned, with some of those reviewers apologising to Kane for misunderstanding Blasted. Thirty years on, Kane is part of the theatrical canon – a production of 4.48 Psychosis, the final play she wrote before taking her own life aged 28, is currently running at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, while a revival of her 1998 work Cleansed is being staged by director Rebecca Frecknall at North London's Almeida Theatre next year. While revivals of Kane's plays are not universally appreciated, they always invite new responses and revelations in relation to contemporary conflict and oppression. But at the core of each work is an abstracted meditation on love. "No one play is the same as the other," Graham Saunders, Professor of Drama Arts at the University of Birmingham, tells the BBC. "It would be difficult to believe that the writer of Blasted was the same person who wrote 4.48 Psychosis". Alongside playwrights including Mark Ravenhill and Patrick Marber, Kane was part of a movement in British theatre in the 1990s often described as "in-yer-face", a phrase defined in the New Oxford English Dictionary as "blatantly aggressive or provocative, impossible to ignore or avoid". Yet that is what many of the critics who saw Blasted attempted to do – to run away from the confrontational aspect of the play by burying it with outrage. Midway through, a third character enters the play: a soldier who details war crimes he has witnessed, confronting the repulsive Ian with the realities of conflict. Kane does not merely gesture towards the then-contemporary horrors of the Balkans War, but rips the stage open and has them erupt into the theatre itself. Blasted removes the temporal and spatial distance between ourselves and trauma, forcing us to face the very worst of humanity. Kane's route to notoriety The daughter of a journalist, Kane was born in 1971 in Brentwood, Essex, and rejected her Christian suburban upbringing from the age of 17. In Ravenhill's obituary of Kane upon her death in 1999, he quotes her saying: "There is an attitude that certain things could not happen here. Yet there's the same amount of abuse and corruption in Essex as anywhere else, and that's what I want to blow open". She drew influences from her musical loves (including Joy Division, Pixies, and Radiohead), modern playwrights, (especially Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter), and classical drama. The latter influence was brought to the fore in Kane's second play, Phaedra's Love, first performed at London's Gate theatre in 1996. Taking a story already given stage treatments by Seneca, Euripides, and Jean Racine, Kane's attention moves to Phaedra's stepson, Hippolytus, and dissects the taboos of incestuous desire. Phaedra's Love ends with an extreme act of mutilation. It is no wonder that Kane's plays are infrequently performed, not only for their challenging subjects, but because they pose enormous staging difficulties. Fellow writer and friend David Greig recalled that Kane said to him that the reason why she featured unstageable images in her plays was because "whatever they do they're going to have to do something interesting". In Cleansed, which premiered at the Royal Court Downstairs in 1998, Kane jokingly decided to "punish" the director, James Macdonald, for making her do a rewrite. After finding a dead rat in her cutlery drawer, Kane included the direction: "The rats carry Carl's feet away." Carl experiences some of Kane's most shocking violence, being subject to the most extreme of torture from a man called Tinker – the surname of the aforementioned Daily Mail journalist who whipped up the lambasting of Blasted in 1995. During the run of Katie Mitchell's staging of Cleansed at London's National Theatre in 2016, a press furore rose again as audience members fainted and walked out at the play's horror. But to focus on the violence is to miss the meaning of Kane's works. Cleansed is set in a university where Tinker leads an institution designed to rid society of its undesirables, while a group of inmates attempt to save themselves through love. Kane was inspired by A Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes to compare extreme torture to the agony of being in love. Like Barthes, Kane finds the two experiences share the situation of panic, wherein there is no possibility of return. To fall in love is to be lost, forever. Cleansed is graphic, but it is heartachingly beautiful – the lovers Graham and Grace dance together, with her emulating him, until "she mirrors him perfectly as they dance exactly in time". A sunflower bursts through the floor. At another point a field of daffodils covers the entire stage. Light and beauty frequently shine through the most pitiless scenes. Ravenhill recalled that upon telling Kane that he thought Cleansed was brilliant, she smiled and replied, "Yeah, well, I'm in love". A couple of months later, when she directed Georg Büchner's Woyzeck at the Gate, Kane removed the possibility of redemption for any of the characters. "Yeah, well, I fell out of love," Kane explained. As explored in her final two plays, 1998's Crave, and 4.48 Psychosis, Kane had fallen out with the idea of love itself. She wrote Crave under the pseudonym Marie Kelvedon to detach herself from the associations of her name, allowing her to explore a free-flowing poetic narrative through the voices of four characters called C, M, B, and A. The characters mostly exchange single lines, until A bursts into a long monologue about all the little romantic things she wants to do with her lover. The stream of consciousness twists and turns between anger and love in the manner which defines Kane's worldview. Her death and legacy Later, A says, "Death is my lover and he wants to move in". This chimes with the emotions of her final work, 4.48 Psychosis, which explores a state of mind "at 4.48 / when desperation visits". The work comprises 24 sections, without directions or indication of setting, not even of how many actors should perform it. The revival currently running is directed, as it was first time around, by Macdonald, and features the three original actors: Daniel Evans, Jo McInnes, and Madeleine Potter. "It's a play about being a human being," Potter says. "The circumstances might have to do with depression and suicidal despair and psychosis. But the journey is a recognisable, human journey – the search for connection and the longing is universal." Evans reflects that, while Kane took the play form to a different place, "it's almost like we haven't gone beyond that yet – no one has discovered what the next stage is." McInnes adds: "Hopefully this production might have helped inspire new writers to come forward." More like this:• The Shakespeare play that makes audiences faint• Why Requiem for a Dream is still so divisive• Why Gen Z is nostalgia about 'indie sleaze' The Guardian critic Michael Billington dubbed it "a 75-minute suicide note" in his 2000 review. Kane struggled with severe depression and tried to kill herself once before she did so in 1999. But while 4.48 Psychosis might be its artist's cri de coeur, it is as reductive to call it a suicide note as it is to say the same of Sylvia Plath's Ariel poems. After her death, Kane's agent Mel Kenyon said: "I don't think she was depressed, I think it was deeper than that. I think she felt something more like existential despair which is what makes many artists tick." However, in a letter to the Guardian, playwright Anthony Neilson retorted that, "No one in despair 'ticks'", and that, "Truth didn't kill her, lies did: the lies of worthlessness and futility whispered by an afflicted brain." Far more important in terms of Kane's legacy is to focus on the ways in which she played with theatrical form. Reflecting on the power of Kane's work today, Graham Saunders observes that they "respond to #MeToo and issues of coercive control and sexual violence in ways that weren't even recognised or acknowledged when they were first written". Other themes which also come through strongly now include mental health, which is a subject now discussed more openly than when Kane was alive, and body and gender dysmorphia. Imagery recurs in Kane's poetic writing. The emergent flowers in Cleansed recall the end of the first scene of Blasted. Ian and Cate discuss why she came to the hotel with him, ending with him saying, "I love you", and her saying, "I don't love you". Ian picks up a bouquet of flowers and holds them out to Cate. At the start of the second scene the flowers are ripped apart and scattered around the room. Love and beauty have never been shown to be more fragile than in the fraught theatre of Sarah Kane. 4.48 Psychosis is at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 27 July; Cleansed is at London's Almeida Theatre from 21 July until 22 August 2026. * Details of organisations offering information and support for anyone affected by mental health issues and sexual abuse or violence are available at -- For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Metro
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
The most 'absurd' show on the BBC just dropped 6 new episodes
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Comedian Diane Morgan's widely praised BBC series Mandy has finally returned for another batch of chaos. The Philomena Cunk star, 49, has written, directs and stars in the sitcom where she plays the titular heroine – the 'hapless, jobless Mandy'. '[Her] daft adventures mostly end in disaster. She's got Big Dreams, but can she actually be bothered?' the show aptly describes itself. The theme tune? Barry Manilow's Mandy of course! Each season contains six bite-sized episodes making it the perfect one-week binge in which we see Mandy get up to genuinely bonkers hijinks with Morgan's quintessential flavour of character acting. Seriously, one episode opens with her stark naked on a table, save for some sushi adorned around her body, followed by a host of businessmen digging into their dinner. In another, she is entirely convinced she has eaten an old man's dog. Essentially, it's the kind of show that needs to be seen to be believed. The show also boasts a wild list of guest stars including Maxine Peake, Natalie Cassidy and Shaun Ryder to name a few, if you can believe it. Over the years it has made a mighty impression on viewers. 'Absolutely loved this show, so silly! Watched it with my mum and we still quote it haha,' Mat W wrote on Rotten Tomatoes. 'Stupid, stupid, stupid, predictable, cliche and utterly childish. Loving every minute of it,' one anonymous user quipped, saying one episode left them 'crying with laughter'. 'Diane Morgan is a comic genius: writer, director, comedienne, actress,' another anonymous user praised in a five-star review. 'The Quirkiness of Mandy is its best feauture. And its running time of 15 minutes works really well. Diane Morgans performance in Mandy is unique and different,' another echoed. 'Full of absurd and subversive humour,' Piotr W agreed. Critics are in agreement. 'It's bold and ludicrous, but economical too. It don't mean a thing. It is, however, a glorious release from all those things that do mean a thing,' The Time shared. 'This was enjoyably escapist comedy, daft for the sake of daftness, and all the more welcome for it,' the Daily Telegraph echoed. Although the humour may not always land with The Guardian warning it is 'not as tight or laugh out loud funny' and The Independent agreeing it's provokes wry smiles rather than belly laughs.' An official synopsis for the fourth season reads teases that she'll continue 'to live hand-to-wonky-mouth, cooking up enough dodgy side hustles and trashy cash hacks to hopefully climb up into the squeezed middle and out of the squashed bottom.' It adds: 'Constantly harassed, pursued and persecuted by her benefits officer (Tom Basden), Mandy finds solace in her friend Lola's (Michelle Greenidge) salon, drinking in the heady aroma of cheap bleach and Minty Pig nail polish.' More Trending Discussing how she settled on the tone of the show which is apparently based on a woman she met once, she once told The Guardian: 'Most people nowadays are doing downbeat, naturalistic comedy. I wanted to do something mad and silly. I crave silliness. 'A bit of pure escapism. It's turned out much weirder than I imagined. It's quite visual, like a Viz cartoon, but I'm happy with it.' Mandy is available to stream on BBC iPlayer. View More » This article was first published on July 15, 2025. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Where did it all go wrong for MasterChef after BBC show's scandals? MORE: Who will replace John Torode and Gregg Wallace on MasterChef? The latest updates MORE: Lisa Faulkner reveals secret to long marriage with John Torode as MasterChef scandal rages on
News18
6 days ago
- Sport
- News18
'He Has Learned Nothing In 57 Tests': England Great Blasts Batters For Stupid Shots
Last Updated: Geoffrey Boycott has lashed out at England batters for losing their wickets while playing aggressive shots which he considers is a product of Bazball. England cricket legend Geoffrey Boycott has slammed England's top order, urging them to abandon the Bazball ideology and show more discipline with the bat following their recent Test collapse against India. In his Daily Telegraph column, Boycott did not hold back, condemning the 'stupid over-aggressive shots" from several English batters and specifically targeting Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope for severe criticism. 'Stop giving your wicket away to stupid over-aggressive shots because you can do better and England want more from you," Boycott wrote. 'The coach Brendon McCullum has said recently that England don't talk about Bazball and need to fine-tune their approach to batting. So no excuses anymore." Known for his blunt observations, Boycott questioned Zak Crawley's place in the team, suggesting it's time for the opener to step aside after numerous failures. 'How many more chances is Crawley going to get? He has learned nothing in his 57 Tests. A waft in the first innings caught behind and a front-foot drive in the second innings to a wide sucker ball caught at gully. It was just a replay of too many of his dismissals. Time to go. Five hundreds and an average of 31 is not good enough." Ollie Pope also faced Boycott's ire, with the former cricketer accusing him of blindly following the aggressive Bazball approach. 'His problem is when he first goes in he is hyperactive, fidgety, like a cat on a hot tin roof. Pope starts like a millionaire, a shot a ball, as if he already has a hundred to his name," Boycott observed. 'Early on the captain and coach sold Bazball to all the players and Ollie seems to have bought into it 100 percent and is so keen to show he is a disciple. Perhaps he feels he must play positive and aggressively or he won't keep his place." Boycott advised Pope to take inspiration from England's most reliable batter. 'He needs to go back to basic batting which is to assess the situation and bat accordingly, not bat slavishly to an ideology or how he thinks the captain and coach want him to play. Take a look at Joe Root. Joe does his own thing and makes runs and he is the best batsman in the world." There are rumours in England's cricket circles that Pope could be dropped for young talent Jacob Bethell, while Crawley may remain. Boycott was outraged by this idea. 'I hear and read comments about dropping Ollie Pope and replacing him with Jacob Bethell. Pope has done better for England than Crawley. In 59 Tests he averages 35 and has 10 centuries. Yes, with his talent it should be better, but he has played a few remarkable innings to help win matches for England." Boycott concluded with a caution about the critical role of a No. 3 batter and how Crawley's position affects the middle order. 'A number three is part opening bat if the team loses an early wicket and part middle order… able to play strokes after a good start by the openers. Fat chance of that with Crawley up front. Number three is a very specialist position. Most opposition bowlers can't wait to get their sweaters off to bowl at him. Can you imagine what the Australian seamers are thinking about this winter's Ashes series? If Starc doesn't get you, Hazlewood and Cummins will." With IANS Inputs Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
