BREAKING NEWS Police FINALLY arrest three Australians behind Bali gangland hit who now face the death penalty - as their desperate attempt to flee the island is revealed

Three Australians have been arrested over the shooting of two Aussies in a brutal attack in a Bali villa, after they allegedly tried to flee the holiday island.
Zivan 'Stipe' Radmanovic, 35, and Sanar Ghanim, 34, were shot just after midnight on Saturday at a villa in Munggu - in Badung Regency in Bali's south - in an attack believed to be linked to Melbourne 's feuding Middle Eastern crime syndicates.
Radmanovic died at the scene after he was shot twice in the chest and once in the foot, while Ghanim was rushed to Kuta's BIMC Hospital with gunshot wounds.
Ghanim is the former partner of Danielle Stephens, who is the stepdaughter of slain Melbourne gangland boss Carl Williams. He was discharged from hospital on Sunday, using a wheelchair and nursing a bandaged leg, and has refused to co-operate with local authorities.
Bali Police Chief, Inspector General Daniel Adityajaya, confirmed on Wednesday that three Australians had been arrested in relation to the shooting - the suspected gunmen, and the individual who allegedly planned the attack.
'One suspect was arrested at Soekarno-Hatta Airport while attempting to leave Indonesia. The other two had already left the country but were successfully brought back to Indonesia thanks to cooperation with Interpol,' Mr Adityajaya said.
He said the suspects had changed vehicles multiple times in a desperate bid to flee Bali.
'First, they used a motorbike, then switched to a white Toyota Fortuner, which was later found in the Tabanan area.
'After that, they changed vehicles again, this time to an XL7, and traveled to Surabaya.
'They then attempted to leave the country via Soekarno-Hatta Airport. However, with the joint efforts of Metro Jaya Police and the National Police Crime Unit, we were able to prevent (one of them) from leaving Indonesia.'
Asked about the charges the suspects would likely face, Mr Adityajaya said: 'They may be charged under Article 340 of the Criminal Code for premeditated murder, which carries a maximum sentence of the death penalty.'

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Daily Mail​

2 hours ago

• Daily Mail​

Shock details emerge about Audrey Griffin's killer and his 'sleepless' final days before he was found dead in a jail cell

The man charged with murdering Audrey Griffin before taking his own life had been on a drug binge and had not slept in five days when he was arrested. Adrian Torrens, 53, was accused of murdering Ironwoman athlete Ms Griffin on March 24 and leaving her body half-submerged in Erina Creek, on the NSW Central Coast. The 19-year-old had left the Hotel Gosford at about 2am and was walking along The Entrance Road, towards her father's house, for about an hour when she came into contact with her killer. Police alleged Ms Griffin was killed during a 'physical altercation' with Torrens, who'd been headed to the home of his estranged wife Michelle Torrens after she'd taken an apprehended violence order against him. Investigators initially ruled Ms Griffin's death a case of misadventure but received a tip which led officers to arrest Torrens in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Surry Hills on April 21, one month after the teenager was killed. Police claimed Torrens' phone had pinged near her body and his DNA was found under one of her fingernails. Torrens was taken to Sydney's maximum correctional facility at Silverwater Prison and locked in a glass-fronted single cell. Torrens hadn't slept for five days following an intense drug binge around Sydney, the Sunday Telegraph reported. Prison workers were on high alert and kept Torrens under the 24-hour surveillance of a special risk intervention team. Additionally, he was ordered to wear prison greens, which cannot be torn, in order to minimise the risk of self-harm as he withdrew from drugs. 'He was 53 years, which is considered elderly for an Aboriginal inmate coming off drugs,' one prison guard said. 'Any human that does not sleep for five days is on drugs.' Following several sessions with counsellors, Torrens was moved into a shared cell. It was there he asked a fellow inmate if he could borrow a razor. He claimed he wanted to be clean-shaven for his court appearance the next day. However, the courtrooms were closed the following day for Anzac Day public holiday. Torrens used the twin-blade razor to take his life and, despite the best efforts of officers and later paramedics, was pronounced dead at 4.50pm on April 24. Torrens (left) used a razor blade to take his own life following a five-day drug bender in Sydney and three days behind bars His body was not moved until a relative could formally identify him, in line with Indigenous cultural practices. The Coroner is now using CCTV footage to piece together the final moments of Torrens' life and check for any breaches of care as part of a public inquest. At the same moment Torrens died, Ms Griffin's loved ones were holding a vigil for her at Terrigal Beach. Her mother, Kathleen Kirby, received the phone call informing her of her daughter's killer's death as the event ended. Torrens' suicide meant Ms Kirby and Ms Griffin's father, Trevor, would never be able to seek courtroom justice for their daughter's death. 'She was my best friend, a better version of myself,' Ms Kirby said. 'Anger is not the answer, this is now my time to grieve.' Ms Griffin's body was discovered face-down in blue-green algae-infested water at 3.34pm on March 24. Her father arrived at the scene at the same time as officers. 'Imagine what that was like, having to identify your own daughter?' he said. The crime scene was just 11km from the home of Michelle Torrens, which she previously shared with the killer. In an exclusive interview with Daily Mail Australia, she revealed she'd received several threatening messages from Torrens on the night of Ms Griffin's murder. 'He rang me 12 times and because he was blocked, I was receiving them as text messages,' she said. 'He started calling from 7pm and the last phone call was at 12.10am on the night he killed her. 'He kept threatening to kill my son and I. My children are completely traumatised.' A distraught Michelle said both she and Audrey had been let down by the legal system. 'My heart goes out to Audrey's family,' she said. 'I do feel let down by the police and the judge, on the first night of the AVO, the very first AVO, the police took four hours to come here to do a welfare check. 'When he breached his AVO [that was taken out] to protect me, they took five months to find him. 'I lived in fear he would carry out one of his threats.' Torrens was hit with the latest AVO just two months before Ms Griffin's murder. He was prohibited from stalking, assaulting or threatening his estranged wife, recklessly destroying her property, or harming her two dogs. That AVO was due to expire on July 15, 2026. He'd avoided jail a few months earlier, in October 2024, after using a carriage service to harass, menace or offend his wife, which broke the rules of an earlier AVO. He pleaded guilty to the charge but was only handed an 18-month community corrections order. At that time, Torrens had a history of breaching an AVO from a previous partner. He had stomped on the woman's chest, broken her arm and threatened to kill her with a knife. Torrens had also been jailed in 2014 and 2018 for theft, fraud, assault, intimidation and twice breaching an AVO. His ex-wife told the Telegraph she still lives in fear of retaliation from Torrens' associates. 'He was coming for me that night,' she said. 'He called me at midnight, and 12 times that day. He threatened me and the children. 'He took Audrey instead, my heart goes out to her family.'

The Guardian

3 hours ago

• The Guardian

When I think about the burglar menacing my mother, the memories are slippery. She wasn't chirping. She was screaming

My mother is chirping, like a small bird. I laugh. What a fun game. And when I run through the house to find her, there is a man in a balaclava with a knife to her throat. She is not chirping. She is screaming. The expectation of one thing when the opposite is true. And yet in my memory it is still a chirp, not a scream. When I think about the robbery, even now, decades later, it is my toes that tingle. My ankles. I was four at the time. Or five. I do not remember. Time, what a slippery thing. My friend Hayley was over to play. Sometime after the chirping, the man with a knife to my mother's throat told us to go upstairs to my room and not to open the door. I do not remember this happening but, when I reverse-engineer the events, I know it to be true. Until it's not. Maybe it was my mum. Maybe my mum had told us to go to my room and not to come out. What I do remember is sitting on my bed. I remember a dollhouse at the foot of my bed, its white pointed roof. I remember thinking we had to jump from the dollhouse to the bed. We could not let our feet touch the floor. If we did, the burglar (Did I know he was a burglar then? The intruder? The man?) would be able to reach through my bedroom floor and grab our feet, our ankles, his arms stretching up through the ceiling above him. We could not let our feet touch the carpet. I remember standing on the street. I remember the police. I remember my mum's wrists, bound with rope. I remember begging the police to take off the rope. There is no in-between. There is the chirp/the scream, the man, the dollhouse, the feet through the floor, the wrists bound with rope. 'I don't know,' she says, in the years that follow, when I ask her the man's name. 'I used to know. But I always forget. It wasn't relevant. He was caught. I didn't want his name in my head.' I don't know his name. I don't know if I ever did. If it was a detail I knew and then forgot or never knew at all. I know he drove a blue van. Whenever I see a blue van now, my toes tingle. My ankles. I think of the dollhouse and the floor, my knees tucked up under my chin. More than 30 years later I receive a message on a social media account I rarely use. It is Hayley. She apologises, knows it is out of the blue, but wonders if I may be free to talk about the robbery. The incident, she calls it. I try to identify the emotion that bubbled up when I saw Hayley's message in my inbox. It was not fear. There were no flashbacks of the event. The incident. No terror or anxiety. No apprehension. But the feeling was sudden and strong and all-consuming. Red, hot shame. Before I meet Hayley, I tell my mum. I ask her if this is OK. Yes, she says. I ask her again if she remembers the robber's name. No, she says. Is he still in jail? I'm not sure how long he got in the end, she says. But is there anything else you want to know? She says that it was a Friday afternoon. That kindergarten was a half-day on Fridays, so she had picked us up early and taken us home. That my two older brothers weren't home from school yet and my dad was at work. That Hayley and I were playing in the living room after eating lunch, and a man came up behind her. I asked if he had a knife. A boxcutter, she said. My mother is chirping, like a small bird. I laugh. What a fun game. And when I run through the house to find her, there is a man in a balaclava with a boxcutter to her throat. She told him that there were two young children in the house and that he could take anything he wanted, do anything he wanted to her, but not to touch the children. Do not touch the children. That when he attacked her, she had screamed and we had rushed in and she said to us slowly, calmly, go upstairs to your bedroom, close the door and do not come out. And that we went upstairs and closed the door. And that the man told her to take off all her clothes. That he had covered her head with a pillowcase so she wouldn't see his face. That he tied her up, and that he led her around the house naked and bound from room to room to room. And that she didn't stop talking. She was a social worker and had worked at a rape crisis centre. She knew from what she heard there that she could not remain faceless and nameless. That she needed to become a person to him, that he was less likely to hurt her; or less likely to hurt her as badly, if she could personalise herself. Even while she was naked. Even with a pillowcase over her head. And so she talked about my brothers and school and holidays and what we liked to do on the weekends and our favourite foods and hobbies and my dad and which music we liked, as he led her from room to room to room. Take whatever you want. Do not touch the children. At one point, after what felt like a few hours, he threw her on to the couch in the living room, face down, wrists bound, head covered. And then there was silence. She waited a few moments. To make sure it was over. To make sure he had left. She did not move. Did not make a noise. She waited longer. And longer, still. She wriggled her wrists through the rope, and that was when he came back. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads At some point, not then, but later, she heard the front gate slam. That was when she ran, wrists loose from their binding. Ran to throw a dressing gown over her naked body. Ran to my room. Bundled us up into the bathroom, the only door with a lock, grabbing the landline phone as she ran, closing the door behind us to call the police. As she says this, I can picture the loops of the phone cord under the door. I ask her if he drove a blue van. No, she says. He didn't drive a blue van. I do not have a memory of the dollhouse, except for in this memory. Its sharp, pointed roof. Growing up I played with my brothers' hand-me-down toys. Trains. Blocks. Transformers. I have no memory of the dollhouse, except for in this memory. A memory in a memory. A house in a house. Did I own a dollhouse, or invent it? Invent the danger of the pointed roof. I meet Hayley near the hotel where she is staying in South Yarra. She lives interstate now and is down for a few days to visit her parents. Her dad is not well. I ask her how often she thinks of the robbery. Often, she says. I'm so sorry, I say. She says that after her mum picked her up from our house, they went to buy a present and that was that. That they never spoke of it again. Which made her think about it more. That she never came over to my house after that. That whenever her sisters have mentioned my name in the decades that followed, I'm referred to as Hayley's First Best Friend. It's only then that I start to wonder what else was taken that day. The table where we are sitting is sticky with spilt beer. Yeasty and heated by the December sun. She remembers my mum screaming, she says. She remembers us running in and seeing a man on top of my mother, pinning her down, with a screwdriver to her neck. She remembers he told us to hide, or he would kill us. She remembers the fear. She remembers being told to go upstairs to my room and not to come out. She does not remember who said this. She remembers the waiting. She remembers sitting on my bed reading Mr Men books. She remembers my mum opening the door, the way she grabbed us, running to the bathroom and locking us in. She remembers the phone dragging behind her as she did this. She remembers my mother in her dressing gown. She remembers the phone call to the police. Her memories are crisp and fully formed. They are in her mind's eye, she says. I tell her that because of my mum's experience as a social worker she knew to talk and talk and talk, to not stop talking. That she told him over and over again not to hurt us. She calls my mum brave. She says she's a hero. Hayley is also a social worker. My mum and Hayley are the only social workers I know. I'm jealous that she remembers the phone call. Remembers the bathroom. Remembers the dressing gown. I do not tell her why my mother was in a dressing gown. She doesn't ask. I ask if she remembers the dollhouse. Remembers that he drove a blue van. No. And no. She asks if he was caught. Yes, I say. I ask if she was told that there was a trial and that he went to jail. No, she says. She had spent every day since then thinking he could be anywhere. There is a file in my dad's filing cabinet about the robbery. I know this because every few years when I ask my mother if she remembers the man's name and she says that she doesn't, she says there is a file in my dad's filing cabinet and I can see it if I'd like to. I never ask for the file. Even after Hayley asks to speak to me. Even after Hayley asks me his name and I say I do not know. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion It is years after my conversation with Hayley that I ask for the file. Another hot day, in another December. It feels urgent and important in that moment but I can't explain why. A repurposed manila folder, a thick White-Out block on one side and, over the top, my dad's pointed handwriting: ROBBERY. Inside there is a subpoena for my mother to appear in court. We command you to attend, it begins. It includes the man's name and the charges against him. I wait to feel something. Burglary (eight counts); Aggravated burglary (one count); false imprisonment (one count); indecent assault with aggravating circumstances (one count); armed robbery (one count); damaging property (one count); theft (one count). I wait, and wait, and wait (three counts) and feel nothing. His name is underwhelming. I feel almost embarrassed to see it. It is boring. There is nothing that hints at the violence it contains. It's comical in its ordinariness. After I see it, I Google his name on my phone. No trials appear in the search. No burglaries. A LinkedIn profile for a plastics CEO in Alabama is the first result. A news article about a sculptor. An obituary for a cinematographer. I check to make sure I have spelt his name correctly and giggle because I realise I have searched for a completely different person. First name. Middle name. Last name. All completely wrong. In the time it took for me to look away from the subpoena and search for him, I have given him a new identity. I look at my mother's statement, typed and faded. The one that has been in my father's red filing cabinet for 39 years. The drawers that creak when they're opened, the lock that doesn't quite work. My mother was 39 when it happened, and it is 39 years later that I read her statement. I don't know what this means. Her statement talks about arriving to our house. How she parked in the garage and Hayley and I ran inside first. How she collected armfuls of shopping and then came inside with them. I picture plastic bags digging into her forearms, leaving a mark, the garage closing behind her. I try to picture my mother at the age of 39 but can't. I can only picture her the age she is now. My image of her constantly updating, overriding the previous versions of her. Her written statement describes the way Hayley and I were playing piano in the lounge room. And I can hear the clank of keys. The laughter. And as we were playing, how she was grabbed by the wrists. The way she struggled. Fought back. Was thrown to the floor. And I can hear her chirp, her scream. In her statement it says he held a yellow screwdriver, its shank to her neck. There is no mention of a balaclava. My mother is chirping, like a small bird. I laugh. What a fun game. And when I run through the house to find her, there is a man with a screwdriver to her throat. Also in the statement: the things she said. The things he did. The things she pleaded with him not to do. And yet I still feel nothing. Blank. As if I am reading about someone else and not my mother. Which doesn't make sense actually because when I do read about these things in the news, I feel waves of anger. I feel instant rage, my body prickly with heat. In the statement she described his hands. A plain gold ring on the third finger of his right hand. Wide hands. Short, fat fingers. The hand which held a yellow screwdriver to her neck. It is these hands that make me feel something. Rising bile. I picture them hairy, though there is no mention of this. I have invented it. And in the days that follow, this is the image that returns to me. Wide hands, short, fat fingers. Hairy knuckles. My breath catches and I count to slow it. Three counts in. One. Two. Three. Three counts out. One. Two. Three. We moved house straight after the robbery. I do not remember the layout of the original house. The colour of its walls. The feel of it. I remember the house we moved into afterwards. Its brown laminate benches. The way the front door swivelled. The sound of the rain on the skylight. The tread of the carpet. There are memories that I have that don't belong to me. My parents and my brothers lived in San Diego before I was born. I remember the sound of their voices, the cereals they ate, their visit to Disneyland, that time my middle brother almost drowned and was pulled out of the pool by his curly hair. I know these memories as my own, constructed from stories repeated around the dinner table and photos yellowed around their edges. Their hand-me-down toys and their hand-me-down clothes and their hand-me-down memories. Before the trial my mother was told to stick to the facts. That after the man was arrested, he told the police that he would not contest anything if they were fair with him. I know what 'stick to the facts' meant, she said. Do not be hysterical. Do not play the victim. I roll the memory of the robbery around in my mind, try to press it like a bruise until I can feel something. Wait for the ache of it. But it's dull, out of reach. I play with the memory and change it. I open my bedroom door. I run to her. I scream. I flail my arms. I bite and kick. My four-year-old self. Or I don't. I am quiet and I tiptoe to the phone, and I call the police. I do something. Anything. But that is not what happened. Stay in your room. Do not come out. I write his name in a note in my phone. I scroll back. My car registration. Our alarm code. Our wi-fi password. Another password that belongs to something I can't place. An old shopping list. Canned tomatoes. Red wine. Writing-related questions: Staring at magpies so they don't swoop you. They remember your face. Is this true? I never checked. The robbery. It's there. Between the magpie and a shopping list. A years-old note to self. The robbery. And again, as I scroll down. A Joan Didion quote, an idea for a character, a podcast recommendation, notes from a doctor's appointment, words without context: Longing (for what?). And The robbery, the robbery, The Robbery. Sometimes capitalised. Sometimes not. I look at his name. The last entry. First name. Middle name. Last name. I hold my thumb down on the screen. Press on his name. Four options appear: Mark as completed. Deadline. Priority. Delete. I press delete. I let the other reminders stay there. The robbery, the robbery, The Robbery. I will continue to forget his name. I don't know if I ever owned a dollhouse. My feet will continue to tingle when I see a blue van. This is an edited version of The Chirp/The Scream which appeared in Australian Book Review's June issue as runner-up in the 2025 Calibre essay prize. You can read the essay in its entirety here

Telegraph

3 hours ago

• Telegraph

Don't blame the police – it's woke politicians who have given up on fighting crime

SIR – Commentators are far too quick to abuse the police for prioritising certain crimes above others ('Faith in the police', Letters, June 15). We must stop this, as at the sharp end of policing we have constables obeying orders from their seniors. Who controls senior police officers? The politicians we voted for. Twelve months ago they were Conservatives; now they're Labour. They are all tarred with the same woke brush. Our constables are treated with derision because they are the face of policing. Shame on our politicians. Peter Gittins Stirling SIR – Many senior police officers, often over-promoted because they hold degrees, have turned policing on its head with their politically correct pursuit of social-media offences. In 1979, my first shift sergeant told me that, if you allow a man to go unpunished for stealing something as small as a Mars bar, it won't be long before he returns to empty the shop. He held similar views on graffiti and anti-social behaviour. I challenge senior officers to run a six-month experiment: flood the streets with officers out of their cars, arresting anyone who commits an arrestable offence, no matter how minor, and see how quickly such behaviour subsides. This would be especially effective if the Crown Prosecution Service were to back up the police with court action, as it did after the recent riots. Tim Davies Lampeter, Cardiganshire SIR – As a resident of Bournemouth, I want to see more officers of the calibre of Lorne Castle on our streets, willing to take action against troublemakers and make our town safe. Yet this officer was dismissed for gross misconduct after tackling a masked 15-year-old suspect to the ground and holding him down while telling him to 'stop screaming like a b----' (report, June 20). With crimes going unsolved and unpunished, it is fair to say that faith in policing in Dorset is nonexistent. Mr Castle was sacked because his actions had supposedly undermined public confidence in the police. However, it is quite apparent to me that the opposite is true: in sacking him, the misconduct panel has damaged public confidence. Can we therefore expect its members to be removed? Barry Gray Bournemouth, Dorset SIR – Daniel Hannan deplores the state of public areas in Britain, along with growing threats to personal safety ('Britain is turning into a Third World country', Comment, June 15). In smaller communities, where councillors care little for grandstanding, public life goes on as it should. In Norwich, the Covid-era habits of guerrilla gardening, after-hours litter-picking and police liaison have endured, and are being adopted more widely. 'Friends' groups who take care of provincial railway stations across the UK are pioneers in this area. What was a default task for underemployed railway platform staff has been taken up by community activists. Thomas Carr Norwich A shift in British values SIR – As I approach my 75th birthday, I reflect on how values have changed over my lifetime. Respect for our elders was drummed into us during my youth. Today, we have a Government that is willing to take winter fuel support away from pensioners, and tax inheritance that would otherwise go to heirs. To cap it all, it now seems likely that we will have to navigate the intricacies of assisted dying ('Assisted dying Bill set to become law', report, June 20). It will be quite a job to ensure that there is no coercion, no fear of 'doing the right thing' to avoid being a burden, and that the professionals are driven by the right motives. A viewing of the cult film Soylent Green might help us understand the kind of dystopian future towards which we seem to be headed. Tony Wolfe Penrith, Cumbria Lebanon's liberation SIR – Those Lebanese dancing under missiles fired at Israel (report, June 18) ought rather to cheer the Israeli planes heading for Iran. After decades of death, destruction and economic collapse, can they still not see the enormous damage that Iran, via Hezbollah, has inflicted on their once peaceful land? What have they gained from being a centerpiece of Iran's 'axis of resistance' against Israel? Israel and Lebanon once peacefully coexisted. It was even jocularly noted that if any Arab country first made peace with Israel, Lebanon would be the second to do so. Hezbollah was the reason that Lebanon had no president for two years; Israel's loosening of its tight grip on the state is what finally broke the impasse in the legislature. In violation of UN-brokered agreements, Hezbollah militarised south Lebanon below the Litani River. The day after Hamas's October 7 massacre of innocent Israeli civilians, Hezbollah initiated daily rocket fire into northern Israel, leading to massive destruction and the flight of tens of thousands of residents. Subsequent fighting has yielded yet more destruction and depopulation on the Lebanese side of the border. With Hezbollah and its patron, Iran, weakened, Lebanon has a real opportunity to free itself from their malignant yoke. Should it succeed in doing so, Israelis would be among the first to dance and cheer, welcoming a renewal of friendship. Richard D Wilkins Syracuse, New York, United States The logic of Sizewell C SIR – Research suggests that Sizewell C nuclear power station (Letters, June 20) will cost approximately £12.5 million per megawatt to build. The Rolls-Royce small modular reactor (SMR) units are estimated to cost less than £5 million per megawatt. Sizewell C is unlikely to be commissioned before the mid-2030s, allowing for the usual delays. Overall build time for the SMR units is estimated to be four years, including testing and commissioning. Given that the small reactors are less than half the price and can be built twice as quickly, why are we bothering with Sizewell C? Ian Brent-Smith Bicester, Oxfordshire SIR – I was interested to read your report (June 18) about Westinghouse wanting to site a large nuclear power station at Wylfa on Anglesey. The Nuclear Industry Association keeps repeating the mantra that Wylfa is the best site in the UK for a large nuclear station. Unfortunately, it is forgetting about the grid constraints that give Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, headaches elsewhere. As the National Energy Systems Operator has said, the grid in North Wales will be near capacity by 2030, and a new line of pylons will have two national parks and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to negotiate before fighting through the Midlands to southern England. The south-east of England will be deficient in renewables, so to minimise total system cost, that would be the best place to site a new station. Dr Jonathan F Dean Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales Llannerch-y-medd, Anglesey Training nurses SIR – In the 1980s, I taught at a girls' secondary school in Sittingbourne, Kent. Following a good basic education, at 16 many of our pupils went on to become nurses at local hospitals (Letters, June 15). When the university degree requirement was announced, the careers adviser – a lady of considerable experience – said: 'That's the end of the British nurse. Many of our girls do not want to aspire to degrees. We will lose a huge number of competent, caring health professionals.' Why have successive governments ignored this crisis? Ministers should work towards providing high-class, on-the-job training for those who have already proved themselves capable of following their chosen career. Jeannette Meyers Ashford, Kent Fallen Angel SIR – In a prime spot in Lavenham – England's best-preserved medieval village – stands the 600-year-old Angel Hotel. It has been a public house since 1420. For want of a tenant, this once convivial meeting place now stands empty, neglected and forlorn. When I came to live in Lavenham 35 years ago, the Angel was thriving and profitable. With the right management, it could quickly regain its former popularity and become a magnet for tourists from all over the world. As for the locals, we would flock back to a well-run village pub. David Brown Lavenham, Suffolk Lunches box SIR – My sister and I started school in 1950. For lunch (Letters, June 15) we took a bread and dripping sandwich in a greaseproof bag with our names on. The teacher took these offerings from us on arrival and put them in a box with all the others. There were no fridges then. They were given out to the appropriate child at lunchtime. Jan Denbury Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire Lads and ladies SIR – It appears that using the term lads in the workplace when there are females present could count as sexual harassment (report, June 12). Further, a recent complainant may be entitled to compensation. With this in mind, I will contact all the bars and restaurants that my wife and I have visited in recent years and demand redress for sexual harassment. Phrases such as 'Hello guys', 'Is everything OK with you, guys?', or 'Would you guys like to see the dessert menu?' surely fall into the same category. I wonder if I can find a sympathetic judge. Vic Storey Dereham, Norfolk When offices ran on ink and blotting paper SIR – With reference to Vivien Womersley's letter (June 15) on inkwells in school desks, I had to refill them and change blotting paper at the bank after I left school aged 16. The manager used red ink, and my hands ended up covered. Veronica Lown Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey SIR – I was gratified to read Vivien Womersley's recollection that the typical ink monitor from her school days was 'a trusted, steady-handed classmate'. My own appointment as ink monitor at a Hornchurch primary school in 1955 gave me useful experience in the responsible allocation of resources. However, I then went into academic life, where I fear I wasted much ink. Shanacoole, Co Cork, Ireland