If you’re a shark lover, go here and complain in the comments.

While it lasts, and for its novelty value, what about finding hookers via Google Maps street view? (We have some spelling issues with the heading: Googling or Googleing?)

“The Strip” refers to any local venue in any city. In Newcastle, Australia, it probably means Maitland Road, Islington, where the Ladies of the Night ply their trade. WorkChoices made it a 24-7 venture.

A concerned reader supplies this alert:

The most difficult task a Newcastle Homestay parent has is explaining to the pure-as-the-driven-snow Chinese 17-yo student, on her way to Hunter Tafe at Tighes Hill, why so many slags line the streets.

As much empathy and sympathy I have for these poor girls (the slags, not the students) they really are a sorry lot, and do not, in general, present well!

I’m genuinely sorry for them, as – not being holed up in that purple house at Sandgate – they must risk street time dealing with the psychotic, abusive trolls trawling them.

I thought you might be interested in these Google street views and the action on Maitland Road, Islington, Newcastle, NSW, Australia.

Right outside Street number 230, a well-know “pot supplier,” to be precise :0))

What do you make of it?

For posterity, we went and snapped a bunch of Google Street view angles while they are still cached.

What fun.

It raises many issues, privacy being foremost. Are Google Street images admissible as evidence in a courtroom? 

Are these girls prostitutes? Which most are standing on the footpath who are not waiting for a bus – or appear to be waiting for a bus but clad in thigh-length boots. Or not standing, but walking towards, or away from, the nearby TAFE, and not carrying books – or, if carrying books, walking on the street instead of footpath with pretend-hitchhiker’s arm outstretched .. you get the idea.

Are the vehicle licence plates readable?

Enjoy this Google street map location – before it’s refreshed in another Google drive-by, and give us your thoughts.

We agree it looks like street action.

The driver, apart from unconcernedly plonking his 20y/o Commodore illegally right on the corner, seems equally nonchalantly ashing a fag through the driver’s window.

Ho hum, just another day on the street.

Done this before, by the look of it. But what, exactly?

If, as it seems from the blurry zoom in the top picture, one of the girls lobs into the rear seat, he the driver might well be the pimp, or his lowly-paid agent, or simply in vehicular disguise .. or a client You get the idea.

Or they might be two lasses from the local primary school buying ice creams from Mr Whippy whose van is in dock and doing the rounds in his wife’s.

I dunno!

What I do know is I don’t want the missus waving hard copy of this in my face, with my unique green & gold hummer sporting those ruby red spinning bling rims cruising the strip, illegally parked, illegally transacting, doors open, whore’s ass hanging out.

Thanks for nothing, Big Google Brother.

PS: Oh, and the “pot supplier”? Just the local gardening supplies, Pots-R-Us.    :0))

Government owning a stake in any private U.S. company is objectionable to most Americans – me included.
[U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson]

Objectionable?

We, the people, should find objectionable not returning profits from services and infrastructure to maintain and grow them, rather than featherbed lifestyles of the selfish greedy who spurn “the public good” aka “the commonwealth.”

In the same momentous week our beloved PM lost his ruddy banker’s complexion, found his pinkish roots, and denounced the failure of "extreme capitalism."

Obscene failures in corporate governance which rewarded greed without any regard to the integrity of the financial system" [were factors behind the collapse].

.. regulators should set higher capital requirements for financial firms with executive remuneration packages that reward short-term returns or excessive risk-taking"

Take notes, Paulson.

Meanwhile a metaphor of the financial world crisis played out in a Qantas Airbus as one of its onboard computers chose to ignore sensory input and, as if synchronised with the DOW, scribed a roller-coaster ride across the skies that damaged unwary punters and crew, while captains of air-expertise grappled futilely with the controls.

Having limped belatedly back to Perth, one A330 Airbus was dressed down, grounded for the foreseeable, sent to its hangar without fuel, and had Internet privileges suspended.