Neil Walker Journalist

CONFIDENCE in senior leadership at Frankston Council is low, according to the first staff survey conducted at council for many years. The results of an employee “alignment and engagement survey”, seen by The Times, reveals just 25 per cent of survey respondents believe council’s “senior leadership team has a vision for council that inspires me”. A low 36 per cent think “our senior leaders act with integrity” and just 30 per cent believe “our senior leaders are good role models”, the staff surv

WHEN Maria Peters looks back on a 30-year career at Chisholm TAFE Institute she says it is the camaraderie between staff she will miss most of all in retirement. The CEO decided last year to step down at Chisholm Institute on 31 December and hand over the chief executive officer reins of the vocational education college’s campuses to successor Dr Richard Ede. “I know I’ll miss the people and I’ll miss the intellectual stimulation but I’m just looking to have some time to re-energise and I’ll a

EVERYONE wants everything now in today’s fast-paced world and that’s a modern trend new business founder Marshall Hughes hopes will see success arrive by bypassing the post. Hughes is one of several business entrepreneurs hoping to strike it big by starting in Frankston and building an enterprise to compete with big business. The 44-year-old founder of Passel, “a same-day delivery solution” for retailers and shoppers, is poised to roll out the first stage of a metropolitan Melbourne wide launc

DOCTORS need to start helping themselves as well as others. That’s the message a Frankston Hospital cardiologist hopes to spread by encouraging medical profession colleagues to show support for the all-too-often hidden sufferers of depression in their ranks. Dr Geoff Toogood hopes a “crazysocks4docs” day last Thursday (1 June) when medical colleagues wore bright and “crazy” socks will become an annual event to let doctors, nurses and anyone working in the at times highly stressful medical prof

The haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate but Def Leppard are due more credit in rock and roll’s history books than critics generally give them. Taylor Swift certainly thinks so. The biggest pop star in the world right now performed with Def Leppard in 2008 as part of a US series called Crossroads that paired modern musicians together with their idols from yesteryear. Swift reckoned that singing the likes of the hit song Photograph with the band was “my childhood dream come true”. “My mom

COURTNEY Barnett is so hot right now. The 27-year-old Northcote based singer-songwriter’s debut album Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit has cracked the Billboard Top 20 in the US and soared to the top of alternative album charts all over the world. No appearances on The Voice Australia or the recently axed Australian Idol shows required. High-profile US news site Salon described Barnett as “the new Bob Dylan”. High praise indeed. But speaking to the singer-songwriter another

Veteran Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen will bring his inimitable gravel-and-honey voice to Australia in November for a national tour. To mark the return of the 78-year-old troubadour, Neil Walker reflects on his most recent album: 2012’s Old Ideas. Sometimes, crime pays. Old Ideas, Leonard Cohen’s first album in eight years, would never have existed if his accountant hadn’t pilfered money from him, forcing Cohen out of self-imposed exile and retirement in a Zen monastery. Leonar

Media outlets tend to broadcast any information they can glean from social network sites, giving killers their “15 minutes of fame”, writes Neil Walker. We’ve all done it, journalists and generally inquisitive types alike. When someone does something incomprehensively shocking — such as a high school shooting, say — and their name is released, we immediately hit Google and try to find the person’s social media websites to read what they’ve been writing recently and have a good gawk at any photo

Boosted by her Hollywood success, crusading legal eagle Erin Brockovich has attached her name to numerous firms, including Shine Lawyers in Australia. But does she know about Shine's shady past, asks Neil Walker Remember Erin Brockovich? The 2000 film starring Julia Roberts as the titular legal secretary who fought evil big business and won financial compensation for the small Californian town of Hinkley, where residents suffered illness as a result of corporate pollution, was a box-office hit w

Did Sydney radio's 2GB talkback host Chris Smith read any of the newspaper and magazine articles trotted out at this time of year about the dangers of misbehaving at office Christmas parties? Obviously not. Smith has been suspended indefinitely without pay from his afternoon show on "Australia's most famous and popular talkback radio station" - as 2GB modestly dub themselves - for allegedly groping female colleagues at 2GB station owner Macquarie Radio Network's Christmas party last week. It's