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The past year has proved that Australians are still witty, fun-loving and mostly unreconstructed and we absolutely love them for it. Please don't let the politically correct bollocks that is threatening to change everything gain traction. Here are some of our favourite stories.

The people of Kuala Lipis in Pahang, Malaysia, have long wondered about the two men, apparently British, who lie in the city centre's graveyard. Time ravaged the stones and now the people have restored them. But they still want to learn about the two men who came to their town and stayed.

The University of the Basque Country says that the primary reason for failure of dental implants is bacterial infection. Researchers think they've come up with a solution.

More stories are coming in about IKEA and the way it treats its customers. A change in the colour of a product but describing it as the same colour is pretty close to everything bad a company can do to long term customers wanting to match existing furniture. See the pic to see just how bad this is.

Prince Harry, the younger son of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, has largely stayed out of the public eye. As he becomes increasingly remote from the prospects of succession to the Crown, there has been less interest in him. Until someone decided that the fact that he's got a girlfriend justified going postal on the two who, it has to be said, are not yet close enough to be termed "a couple." Here is a statement issued yesterday by Kensington Palace, the name given to the Royal Family's press office. It is notable that the wording is modern, trendy (quite unsuitable in many respects) English with words such as "co-workers" and the use of the term "Ms" and "in the hopes that." Or perhaps it was targetted at the American market. That's no doubt deliberate but it is, in our view,...

After yesterday's article about IKEA's discriminatory practices, a reader contacted us to say that she was charged for the service at IKEA's Damansara, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, shop but it didn't work.

IKEA has long exercised passive discrimination against those who choose to go shopping alone, with awkward trolleys, complex routes to car parks after check-out and even barriers to prevent solo-shoppers taking their purchase-laden trolleys to their cars, having to leave the trolley unattended while the car is found in an often large car park and brought back to the door. Recently, the company introduced another form of discrimination: this time against women, parents with children, the aged, infirm and disabled.

When 38 year old Paul Wilson ordered a takeaway meal from The Indian Garden in the small North Yorkshire village of Easingwold, one of a chain of restaurants owned by Mohammed Khalique Zaman, Wilson made it clear that he was allergic to peanuts and that his meal must be prepared without any. The order was marked "no nuts" and the words "no nuts" was written on the container. Wilson died from an allergic reaction, Teesside Crown Court has heard.

Amazingly, a cosmetic surgeon in the UK does not need to be a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He just needs a medical licence (and sometimes not even that) and a scalpel (or a syringe or some shiny tech). In the highly lucrative - and highly competitive - world of "procedures," the General Medical Council says things have to change.

It's four years since author Jefferson Galt posted this article to his blog. It bears repeating.

I'm at home, somewhere in the French countryside.

Today's a free day! I don't mean it's a day with nothing to do (although, actually, that's pretty much the plan) I mean it's a day that is normally left out of calculations.

29 February 2012. A bonus day every four years.

And a day that some cultures claim has special meaning.

"We're all grown ups," said my father. "We all know what's happening and we all know what's going to happen. We just have to get on with it."

There's an old, bad taste, joke that the longest ten minutes in the world is waiting for last night's date to dress and leave. That has nothing on waiting to die.