William John Stapleton

Список книг автора William John Stapleton



    Not for Publication

    William John Stapleton

    With Thailand preparing for the ASEAN Summit of 2015, the welfare of visitors to the so-called Land of Smiles has become a major issue. Every day tourists are bashed, robbed, drugged and murdered; many of these incidents going unreported in the press. <br><br>European, Australian, American and Chinese governments have all warned Thailand that the welfare of their citizens while on Thai soil has become an issue of major concern.<br><br>Not For Publication is the final novella of The Twilight Soi series which relate how an unlikely but commonplace story of a foreigner being robbed and deceived in Thailand became a national and international incident. The works, which have their origins in the City of Black Eyed Angels aka Bangkok, use a sociological technique called participant observation to explore the corrupt liaisons between the city&#39;s go-go bars, the mafia, the police and government officials. As well, written in a style somewhere between reportage and memoir, the books tell a deeply personal but all too common a story of a foreign tourist getting into trouble in the heady but treacherous atmosphere of the so-called Land of Smiles.

    Bangkok Busted: You Die for Sure

    William John Stapleton

    The unique enterprise A Sense Of Place Publishing has just released its newest publication, Bangkok Busted: You Die For Sure. This is a deeply personal story by author William John Stapleton on the fallout after he wrote a book about being robbed, lied to and deceived by one of the city&#39;s go-go boys and the subsequent personal distress and widespread public ridicule he endured.<br><br>Few foreigners are crazy brave or stupidly insane enough to tell their often embarrassing and humiliating stories of falling for the practiced love lies peddled to them by Thai sex workers.<br><br>Such stories have resulted on the heterosexual side of the ledger in books such as My Private Dancer and Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye. In the author&#39;s case he wrote The Twilight Soi, a book which made him a reviled figure by the Thai public who swallowed the lie that the book was an insult to Thailand, to its culture and to its sex workers. It is not and was never intended to be any such thing.<br><br>&quot;Most people in Asia cannot imagine why anybody would write a story admitting to their own stupidity and misguided conduct in falling for the &#39;I love you very much I miss you very much&#39; patter of their prostitutes, either male or female,&quot; Stapleton says. &quot;For a start, I first wrote the Twilight Soi and now Bangkok Busted: You Die For Sure because painters paint, builders build and writers write, and that&#39;s what do.<br><br>&quot;The story I related is so bizarre that I would not have believed it if it had not happened to me. The Thais were outraged that a foreigner as imperfect as myself should object to being robbed, cheated and publicly ridiculed. But I wanted to tell this story partly because I did not want what happened to me to happen to anyone else.<br><br>&quot;These men often make easy prey. They are lonely, they are out of their own comfort zones and away from the spying eyes of friends, family and work colleagues, often are without obligations of work or children for the first time in their lives, and run off the rails in the torrid atmosphere of Asia and its bars. They often enough end up suiciding.&quot;

    The Final Days of Alastair Nicholson: Chief Justice Family Court of Australia

    William John Stapleton

    Refusing to hide, Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia Alastair Nicholson, scheduled to appear before an inquiry into family law and child support, entered Australia&#39;s Parliament House in Canberra via the front door on the 10th October 2003.<br><br>As Chief Justice of one of the most unpopular courts in the country, Nicholson had become a key figure fuelling discontent with Australia&#39;s political, bureaucratic and judicial wings of government. With millions of Australians having gone through the shredder of the country&#39;s divorce regime, he had become a focus for community discontent.<br><br>So heightened had the debate around Nicholson become that politicians rightly feared the general public were losing faith in the country&#39;s governance.<br><br>Nicholson was arguably the single most outspoken, certainly the most controversial judge ever to serve in the Australian court system; deeply hated by some, admired by others. Politicians from both sides of politics had reason to fear his ever ready tongue.<br><br>The appearance before the Inquiry of the one man who had done more to shape the nature of Australian family law than any other individual had been looked forward to by his critics with a kind of wonder and anticipation, a fascination for the grotesque.<br><br>Despite a plethora of Inquiries, including a devastating critique from the government&#39;s chief adviser on legal matters the Australian Law Reform Commission, doubt was not a trait Nicholson ever displayed in public.<br><br>Was this the inquiry which would finally nail him to the wall?<br><br>To the chagrin of his critics, Nicholson showed not a sliver of regret or self-doubt. He has continued to be outspoken since his retirement from the bench and move into academic life.

    Chaos At the Crossroads: In the Beginning

    William John Stapleton

    In 2003 the then Prime Minister of Australia John Howard announced an inquiry into family law and joint custody, otherwise known as shared parenting, Family law was the country&#39;s single most controversial area of law. It was also the layperson&#39;s most common point of interaction with the legal and judicial system. The Family Court had been a source of individual pain and public controversy since its foundation in 1975. The announcement received front page coverage and delighted of father&#39;s groups nationwide. The Prime Minister declared that he was drawn to the notion of shared parenting, an issue on which the previously marginalized, disenfranchised and often ridiculed fathers&#39; groups had been campaigning on for years. The reform of family law was a tipping point issue. with an increasingly large body of disgruntled litigants and disenfranchised fathers, Australia&#39;s politicians faced a significant degree of discontent, anger and outrage from their constituents. 90 pages 26,000 words.

    Chaos At the Crossroads: State Created Pain

    William John Stapleton

    Despite the heat the issue of divorce, separation and the welfare of children had been generating for decades, the Australian Government was slow to address family law reform. While more than a million children were listed with the Child Support Agency, an institution as roundly and profoundly despised as the Family Court itself, politicians were reluctant to move into such an emotionally charged and gendered arena. Finally, with an increasingly large number of disenchanted constituents, the government had little choice but to move. As one Member of Parliament said, the level of anger in the community was &quot;frightening&quot;.<br><br>The massive wave of supportive media following the then Prime Minister of Australia John Howard&#39;s announcement of an inquiry into joint custody in mid-June of 2003 demonstrated that Australia&#39;s wiliest conservative politicians had hit on a raw nerve. Whatever the faults and frustrations in the prolonged and frustrating path towards shared parenting that was to follow, the Inquiry itself produced solid evidence on the state of dysfunction prevailing in the courts and bureaucracies dealing with the more than 50,000 couples a year who had fallen out with each other; but not with their offspring.<br><br>No one reading the transcripts of the Inquiry, which conducted hearings around Australia and took hundreds of submissions, could be left under any illusion about the distress being caused by the prevailing sole-mother custody model.<br><br>This book traces the history of family law reform in Australia and its contentious treatment of non-custodial parents by the Family Court, usually but not always fathers, and documents its resistance to change despite the public odium in which Australia&#39;s Family Court is often held. What happened in Australia has relevance for fathers and campaigners for divorce reform around the world.<br><br>The series, which evolved out of what is now the world&#39;s longest running father&#39;s radio program Dads On The Air of which the author was a founding member, is the most complete record available of the prolonged push to change the nation&#39;s dysfunctional family law system.<br><br>This is the third book in the series Chaos At The Crossroads, which is the most definitive record ever published of the long struggle for family law reform by fathers and their sympathisers, as well as second families, grandparents and non-custodial mothers. The books are designed so they can be read separately or together. Others in the series include The Birth of Dads On The Air, Chaos at the Crossroads: In the Beginning, State Created Pain and The Final Days of Alastair Nicholson.<br><br>37,600 words.

    Chaos At the Crossroads: The Birth of Dads On the Air

    William John Stapleton

    Dads On The Air, often shortened to DOTA, is a community radio program which began in western Sydney in August of 2000 with a small group of extremely disgruntled separated men who had no experience of radio and no resources. The author of Chaos at the Crossroads: The Birth of Dads On The Air, William John Stapleton, worked as a mainstream journalist and was the only one with any media experience.<br><br>The series of short books in the Chaos at the Crossroads series tell the story of the long struggle for family law reform in Australia, not just by separated fathers, their supporters and their lobby groups, but by grandparents and other family members cut out of children&#39;s lives by the discriminatory and destructive sole-custody model purveyed by the court.<br><br>Chaos also tells the story of how, from the humble beginnings of a disheveled group of disgruntled separated fathers, Dads On The Air became the world&#39;s most famous radio program dedicated to fatherhood issues. <br><br>The program evolved with the information revolution. The technology which would allow a small group of people with few resources to make available a weekly 90 minute radio program and give it the penetration and power it went on to achieve simply had not existed five years before. Dads On The Air has over time interviewed almost all the world&#39;s leading national and international activists, advocates, academics and authors.

    Bangkok Busted You Go to Jail for Sure

    William John Stapleton

    Of all the thousands of stories he had written across his lifetime, author and journalist William John Stapleton had never been happier to write the words &quot;The End&quot; than when he completed The Twilight Soi series with the short book &quot;Bangkok Busted: You Go To Jail For Sure&quot;.<br><br>The series began in an anguished state after the author wrote a book detailing the decline of Bangkok&#39;s famous strip of go-go boy bars known as Soi Twilight, a narrow street adjacent to Bangkok&#39;s oldest red light district Patpong and telling the deeply personal, embarrassing and hurtful story of being ripped off by one of the streets better known denizens.<br><br>Much had changed in the two years since he began the series.<br><br>The writer finally got his pet project, A Sense of Place Publishing off the ground and finally settled in his current city of choice, Bangkok.<br><br>But one thing that did not change was the vengeful pursuit of those who did not want to succeed.The book exposes routine robbery of tourists, issuing of death threats to those who did not voluntarily walk away after being stolen from and the tentacles of corruption that ran up and down from the colourful neon lit strip known as Soi Twilight.

    The Twilight Soi

    William John Stapleton

    The Twilight Soi dwells on the dangers of one of the world&#39;s most beautiful and intoxicating cities, Bangkok. It is named after one of Bangkok&#39;s more infamous small streets, or sois as they are known. <br><br>Soi Twilight runs off the main thoroughfare of Surawong in the centre of Bangkok&#39;s oldest entertainment district Patpong and is known to travelers around the world. It is here where touts from go-go boy bars such as Ocean boys, Bangkok Boys and Classic Boys hustle for the attention of local and international tourists.<br><br>The Twilight Soi began in an angry place – over theft and deception. But applying Western, or in the author&#39;s case Australian, notions of loyalty, honesty, fairness, decency and an abhorrence of deceit do not apply in a country as profoundly different as Thailand. For historical reasons Australians intensely dislike personal treachery or the betrayal of friendship. Standing on these principles in a city like Bangkok marks you as a fool. Ultimately being angry both at your own foolhardiness and the actions of others embitters and harms yourself, no one else. This book ends with more understanding than it began. <br><br>Many of the problems experienced by foreigners in Thailand come from the extreme cultural differences with the West. In Australia a man&#39;s word is his honor. A liar is the lowest form of life. In Thailand only a foreigner would be so rude as to point out that the story told in the morning bears little or no resemblance to the story told in the afternoon.