My house could be carpeted instead of tiled and laminated.
All flat surfaces, clothing, furniture, and cars would be hair-free.
When the doorbell rings, my home wouldn’t sound like a kennel.
When the doorbell rings, I could get to the door without wading through all the fuzzy bodies who beat me there.
I could sit on the couch and my bed any way I wanted, without having to take into consideration how much space several fur bodies need to get comfortable.
I would have enough money, and no guilt, to go on a real vacation.
I would not be on a first-name basis with 6 veterinarians, as I put their yet unborn grandkids through college.
The most used words in my vocabulary would not be:
“out,” “sit,” “down”, “come,” “no,” “stay,” and “leave it ALONE”.
My house would not be cordoned off into zones with baby gates and makeshift barriers.
I would not talk ‘baby talk’. ‘Eat your din din’. ‘Yummy Yummy for the tummy’..
My house would not look like a day care centre, with toys everywhere.
My pockets would not contain things like poop bags, treats and an extra leash.
I would no longer have to spell the words B-A-L-L, W-A-L-K, T-R-E-A-T, O-U-T, G-O, R-I-D-E, S-U-P-P-E-R, and C-O-O-K-I-E.
I would not have as many leaves INSIDE my house as outside.
I would not look strangely at people who think having ONE dog/cat ties them down too much.
I’d look forward to spring and the rainy season instead of dreading them as ‘mud’ season.
I would not have to answer the question: ‘Why do you have so many animals?’ from people who will never know the joy of being loved unconditionally by the closest thing to an angel they will ever encounter.
I was just checking the radio schedule for tonight’s start to the AFL preseason competition and noticed something which I was hoping would come out of the new radio broadcast rights. Crocmedia, who produce “AFL Live” for regional stations, headed up by Rex Hunt and Sandy Roberts, are listed as being streamed tonight.
This is fantastic news, especially for those of us who really enjoy listening to Rex Hunt call matches and were disappointed to find out that he was leaving Triple M at the end of last year to move exclusively to Crocmedia.
I can’t confirm that Rex will be calling the three matches tonight between Richmond, North Melbourne, and Hawthorn, but seeing as tonight’s games are in Melbourne and are the only ones which Crocmedia are covering this weekend, I’d say that it’s a pretty safe bet…hopefully.
Either way, Saturday and Sunday afternoons with Rex Hunt this year are going to be awesome.
(Crocmedia and other AFL radio broadcasters are only permitted to stream their coverage via afl.com.au and not via individual stations’ webstreams)
UpdateCrocmedia do not appear to be covering tonight’s matches after all. Oh well, later in the preseason or when the main season starts I guess…it’s probably a bit hard to convince all of the small regional stations to cover relatively unprofitable preseason matches. End Update
A couple weeks ago I had a very nasty experience in a supermarket. After it happened, I sent an email to 2UE’s John Kerr about it which he read out on the air. I deliberately omitted the details of the store in question at the time as I thought it was only fair to write to the manager of the store and allow him or her time to reply and correct the issue before deciding whether it would be necessary to make my grievances public.
After this, I wrote a detailed letter to the manager of the store in question, however they have not replied yet. They have had more than enough time to respond, and I believe that they have ignored me. I gave them the opportunity to avoid negative publicity, but they apparently don’t care, so I am more than happy to announce that the store in question was the Woolworths supermarket in Dickson.
My next step will be to write a letter to the head office of Woolworths and include a copy of my original letter. Before I do this though, I feel that it is only fair that I bring you up to speed on what happened as the email to John Kerr, which I posted on this blog at the time, was quite vague and did not include all the details of the incident from that night or the other incidents. For your perusal, a copy of the letter which I sent to the manager of Woolworths in Dickson follows.
My five-page letter of complaint, with a two-page attachment: a printout from my internet banking service showing the disputed transaction. In the background, Nattie, who had decided that a footstool would be a comfortable place to sit for a while.
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
PO Box 1272
Dickson ACT 2602
February 6, 2012
The Store Manager
Woolworths Dickson
1 Dickson Place
Dickson ACT 2602
Dear Sir/Madam:
I am writing to you today to express my concern, disappointment and disgust at the behavior and attitude of some of the staff in your store in their recent dealings with me. I have had a few run-ins with your staff which, as isolated incidents, have annoyed me but not bothered me enough to care much about them, but the latest run-in offended me greatly and, when added to the previous incidents, is enough to make me want to avoid your store entirely.
I work about a five minute drive away from your store, and often work odd hours, so your store is a convenient place for me to pick up a few items and I usually do this at least two or three times per week. The incidents of late are enough to make me want to instead use the services of the IGA in Watson or, as they are not open as long as your store is, the Coles Express service station across the road from your store. The extra cost of doing so is worthwhile if it means that I will be treated with respect by the staff.
If I may crave your indulgence for a few minutes, I will endeavor to explain what has brought me to this decision, starting with the most recent incident which, to my mind, is the worst of the bunch.
On Saturday night (the 4th of February) I was at work and, upon finding out that the person on the shift which finishes a few hours after me had called in sick and that I would be required to stay back for an extra hour or two to cover for this person, I decided to use my half-hour meal break to visit your store and pick up some snacks to keep me going through the night. At about 11:10pm, I entered your store and proceeded to pick up a packet of Allens Strawberry and Cream lollies and a packet of mini easter eggs, which I then took to the self-serve checkout, but not before I was nearly bowled over by one of your staff moving stock around on a large trolley, who was not looking where he was going.
The first available checkout was the first one on the right as you walk in to the checkout area from the store and, as tends to be the case with these machines, it was neither accepting nor dispensing cash. I had hoped to get rid of a few coins with this purchase, but alas EFTPOS was the only option. This was a tad frustrating as it seems to be a bit of a waste to use EFTPOS for a $4.37 transaction, but so be it, I proceeded with the transaction. While I was using the checkout, I noted that the security guard was watching me with some interest. Once I was finished paying for my items (I have attached a printout from my internet banking transaction summary page which shows that this occurred at 11:14pm and was, as previously stated, a $4.37 transaction. The transaction is highlighted on page 2), I opted not to have a receipt printed as I would only have thrown it out as soon as I left the store anyway, picked up my items and walked towards the exit. Just after I had gone through the theft detection machine (which I should point out I did NOT set off), the security guard who had been watching me for some time stopped me and asked me if I had paid for the items.
“Yes” I replied.
“Show me the receipt” was his response. (He clearly was not versed in the ways in which the self-serve checkouts work, or he would know that they only print a receipt if asked to do so).
“I didn’t request one from the machine” I replied.
He then replied “If you don’t have a receipt, then I don’t believe that you paid for those items”. I did not say it at the time, but I was thinking that this was strange as I had seen him watching me use the self-serve checkout and wondered what he must have thought I was doing at the checkout for all that time. He then tried to ask the other staff in the area if they had seen me pay for the items, but they all ignored him. As he could not get confirmation from any of the staff, he told me that he did not believe that I had paid for the items, but I should leave with them anyway.
I was a tad confused by this, and offended that I was being called a thief and a liar. At first, I went to leave the store, and I did get out the door, but then the fact that I was deeply offended got the better of me and I walked back in and walked over to the security guard. I politely tried to gain his attention by saying “excuse me”, but he turned his back on me, so I tried again slightly louder and he started to walk away from me, so I tried again, a bit louder again, after which he turned and faced me. I informed him, calmly but in an annoyed tone of voice, that I was deeply offended by the way he had treated me; that I had seen him watch me pay for the items; and that as a matter of principle I was not going to leave with the items while he continued to accuse me of theft. I planted the items on the counter in front of him and informed him that the store could keep the items, and that I would be writing to the manager to complain about his conduct. I then walked out.
For the record, I have no problem with being challenged by security staff and accept the fact that you need to have measures in place to prevent people from walking off with items for which they have not paid, and I have previously consented to bag searches in stores when asked and have always been cooperative if I have set off a theft detector for whatever reason (usually it is a malfunction, although on one occasion it was due to a half-packet of AA size batteries which I had forgotten were in a bag that I was carrying). I have never, however, actually stolen an item from a store, nor have I ever been challenged by the security staff in your store for any reason, until Saturday night anyway.
In this case I believe that your security guard (who I note was wearing a Wilson Security uniform and is therefore probably not a direct employee of your store) overstepped his authority and was highly unprofessional in his conduct considering that there was no proof that I had stolen anything, and that the evidence in fact pointed the other way as I had not set off the theft detector when I walked through it, and the security guard had watched me using the self-serve checkout.
If more time had been available to me then I may very well have argued the point with him until he believed that I was not attempting to steal anything, and I probably would have done this by opening internet banking on my phone and showing him the transaction record, however as I was on a meal break from my job, I did not have the luxury of such time.
I believe that this needs your attention, not only because the security guard was incredibly rude, but because your staff paid no attention to his request for confirmation that I had paid for the items, and also because he was willing to let me walk off with items which he believed were stolen, which I am sure would horrify you as a store manager who is ultimately responsible for the bottom line of your store.
Unfortunately this is not the only incident which has caused me to decide that your store is an unfriendly place to shop. I don’t have dates for these other incidents as they were not big enough in my mind at the time to jot down the times at which they occurred, but I believe that they need to be brought to your attention anyway.
Firstly, your staff have been rude to me before on multiple occasions. On one occasion I was purchasing a cheese and bacon roll from the self-serve cupboard of your in-store bakery. As I picked out the roll, it occurred to me that I might need some assistance processing the roll at the self-serve checkout. I took a photo of the barcode on the shelf from which the roll had come, just in case the barcode would be useful. I then went to the self-serve checkout and asked the supervising staff member if she could show me how to buy the roll at the checkout, and I informed her that I had a photo of the barcode if it helped at all (Dendy Cinemas have previously scanned ticket barcodes off my phone, so I know that it is possible). Your staff member’s response to my question was a reasonably loud and angry tirade about how I should know how to do this myself and that I must be stupid if I thought that a barcode on a phone would be of any use. She then went on about how it was “obvious” that I should push a certain set of buttons on the screen (which she did quite quickly and without any attempt to check that I had some understanding or recollection of which buttons she had pressed) and then she wandered off mumbling under her breath.
It may very well be true that in the mind of a supermarket employee, the buttons which need to be pushed in order to make a checkout perform various functions are obvious, but it is a bit much to expect that a member of the general public would contain this knowledge, and it is definitely going a few steps too far to abuse a member of the public for not knowing these things.
On another occasion, one of the self-serve checkouts did not dispense change. It was only 20 cents, but I raised the point with the supervising staff member who informed me that as I could not prove that the machine had not dispensed change, she could not help me. It was clear that she thought that I had pocketed the 20 cents and wanted a further 20 cents to which I was not entitled. Yet again, on this occasion, I was on a meal break from work and was wearing a shirt bearing the logo of the company for which I work (a well-known company, I might add, but the details of which are irrelevant) so it seemed a bit odd that she would think that I, as a working person, would want to spend extra minutes in a store just to extort 20 cents from it.
Strangely enough, the staff in your store have never been rude to me away from the self-serve checkouts. They are rarely ever cheerful, but they do tend to at least be polite away from those machines.
On the subject of the self-serve checkouts, this is another problem which I have with your store. The upkeep of these machines is appalling. It is almost impossible to find a time when all of them are working properly. Most of the time at least one machine will be out of order, and the rest of them will be either only taking EFTPOS or only taking cash, and your staff do not take kindly to it if I want to wait to use a machine which is accepting my preferred method of payment, and they have very nearly started an argument with me over it on more than one occasion.
Then there is the fact that the things don’t seem to be cleaned very often. On more than one occasion, things have been spilled or smeared on the machines’ displays or the area which used to be the bagging area before the plastic bag ban was introduced. On more than one occasion I have had to wash my hands and/or the items which I have purchased after using these machines due to this problem. It is a matter of basic hygiene and public safety that these machines should be kept in a relatively clean state. You wouldn’t leave a spill on the floor of an aisle for longer than absolutely necessary, and your staff should be maintaining the same level of vigilance on the self-serve checkouts.
Unfortunately all of this, with the latest incident at the top of the list, has caused me to want to avoid your store at all costs, and the Woolworths brand as well. I do not enjoy being abused by your staff; I do not enjoy using unclean equipment; and most of all I do not appreciate being treated with contempt when I, as a customer of your store, am paying to keep the store running and the staff employed.
I would greatly appreciate it if you could, at the very least, investigate the first incident about which I have written and get back to me about it. You will find a copy of my bank records for this transaction attached to this letter, and I believe that you will have CCTV footage of the incident. To help you in locating me in the footage, on the night in question I was wearing an NYPD hoodie (it is official merchandise from the New York Police Department, so the letters NYPD are plastered across the front in giant yellow letters as per the NYPD logo which I am sure that you would have seen on television at one time or another, so it should be easy to spot). The rest of the incidents, while I would like you to be aware of them, do not need a response as I can not reasonably expect you to respond to incidents for which I do not have dates and times, although I would hope that you will talk to your staff about proper ways to deal with the public and about the importance of keeping the store clean.
Your actions in this regard will probably not bring me back to your store straight away, but may make me decide to revisit your store in the future if your response is good enough and if your staff smarten up their act considerably.
I should probably also note that, a few hours after the run-in with the security guard in your store, during some quiet time at work, I wrote an email about the incident to 2UE’s John Kerr who proceeded to read out my email on the air of 2UE in Sydney, 2CC here in Canberra, 4BC in Brisbane and a number of other radio stations around the country. I did not mention the exact location of the store in which this incident occurred (it would have been quite unfair of me to do so without contacting you about it first and giving you a chance to respond), however I did mention Woolworths and Canberra, so I would imagine that the Woolworths head office will have received a Media Monitors report about the email by now.
It would be safe to say that the security guard in your store put me in quite a bad mood, and it is not the first time that I have left your store thoroughly unsatisfied with the experience.
Thank you for taking the time to read this rather long letter. I hope that it helps you to improve your store, and I look forward to your reply with much anticipation.
An email to 2GB’s Andrew Moore (with some extra bits added to make the context clear for people who did not hear the on-air topic)
Good morning Andrew,
Penalty rates are an interesting dilemma. While I agree that there should be some sort of extra incentive to work weird hours, I also don’t think that I should receive a heap of penalty rates for choosing to work odd hours.
My job contains a whole set of convoluted and expensive penalty rates which see me earn anything from 20% to 100% more than my base 38 hour wage per week. Admittedly my base rate would make me a rather low income earner, so I think a decent compromise would be to increase base rates a bit in exchange for simplifying penalty rates. Odd hours rates and public holiday rates should stay in a simplified form, but weekend rates are just wrong if I only work 38 hours per week. We don’t live in a society where business only occurs on weekdays, and it is expected by most people that businesses will operate on weekends, so it is silly to pay people extra for working on what is effectively an arbitrary two days of the week.
That’s my view…I’m sure there’s a few million other views out there.
Last night on the Ten Network’s “The Project” actress Magda Szubanski spoke in support of gay marriage, and about the fact that she is gay. I’m not going to discuss that in this post because it is really a distraction from her big comment of the night which I’m not sure that anybody really picked up on. Just for the record, I have no problem with Magda being gay. I do, however, disagree with her stance on gay marriage, but I respect her right to hold her view.
The comment that I found most interesting and alarming though, was her comment at the end of the interview. After stating that she would not take a pill, if one existed, to “cure” gay people of a genetic predisposition to being gay, she was interrupted and then sought permission to make one final statement. That statement was this:
If they want to look at a genetic predisposition, look at the genetic predisposition for prejudice and intolerance.
Find a pill that can cure that, put in the water. Bang! Problem solved.
If you want to see the comment for yourself, it’s at approximately the 14:30 mark of this video.
Now, let’s look at what Magda is advocating here. She wants a pill which cures everyone of prejudice and intolerance. That is patently absurd. Intolerance, in particular, is a perfectly normal part of human nature. We, as people, do not tolerate many things, such as murder, rape, theft, people driving on the wrong side of the road, etc. We are intolerant of many things for our own safety and security, and as part of our own moral code. To go to an example a bit closer to what Magda was talking about, I do not tolerate gay marriage as it goes against everything that I believe in, however I am more intolerant of violent and/or threatening behaviour, and thus would protest against a move to legalise gay marriage, but would not attempt to stop a service if it were legal. I may, however, attempt to have the law overturned.
Prejudice, in this case, would be justified as well. I would not need any information about the people involved to know that I disapprove of a gay marriage. I would, as a simple side-effect of the fact that I do not agree with gay marriage, be justified in being prejudiced against any given gay marriage before it occurred. This fits the definition of a prejudice perfectly (which is “a preconceived preference or idea”). As long as I do not attempt to stop the legal service by force or by intimidation, my intolerance and prejudice in this case is simply my opinion…and opinions are allowed.
Prejudice is also acceptable, for example, in the case of preferring local produce over imported produce. You don’t need to know where the imported fruit, meat, etc comes from in order to reach the conclusion that you would prefer to support local grown products, produced by local people. Without testing the quality of every single piece of imported produce for yourself, you are making that decision on the basis of some pre-formed assumptions (which may be evidence based, but that evidence doesn’t necessarily cover every piece of imported produce), and are therefore prejudiced.
So, to examine the practicality of Magda’s idea of cleansing everyone of intolerance and prejudice, there are two ways in which it could work. People could be tolerant of absolutely everything, resulting in tolerance of murders, rapes, etc. I doubt that this is what Magda wanted to see.
Rather, what Magda appeared to be advocating is cleansing people of particular intolerances and prejudices. In other words, enforcing a particular world-view. This is worse than the “thought police” telling someone off after they have announced their view of something as it is actually mandated thought control. What Magda advocated last night was that governments should spike the water supply in order to make people think a certain way. Apart from the utterly intolerable intrusion in to the mind of the individual, think of the potential of such a move. We might never need elections again as everyone would agree on everything, even which politician should be our national leader and, without any forms of disagreement being possible, our effective dictator.
It was quite frankly the single-most horrifying idea that I have heard put forward on national television for as long as I can remember. I actually doubt that Magda would want any of what she advocated…I suspect that she really just wants everyone to agree with her position on gay marriage, but alas, Magda, one of the great things about our country is that people are free to peacefully disagree about things, and I guarantee you that you do not want to live in a society where thoughts can be banned, or even worse, made impossible by some form of mass-drugging of the population.
Samuel
(h/t Channel Ten for the image of Magda Szubanski on The Project last night)
Did I hear you correctly? $200,000 for a branding campaign for the carbon dioxide tax? Well I’ll gladly submit this effort for free in the hope that they won’t spend any more money on the project.
“If you’d just believed us in the first place, we wouldn’t need to spend more of your money to invent false evidence to convince you that the planet is warming…but you didn’t believe us, so we’ll tax you until you do.”
I wonder how our beloved Treasurer Of The Year plans to produce a surplus with wasteful spending like this?
A belated “welcome back” Andrew.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
Indeed I did hear it correctly. The Daily Telegraph has a report today about the federal department of Climate Change spending $200,000 on a branding campaign for the carbon dioxide tax.
It's a shame (for me at least) that you are going to be away for the next couple of weekends as I don't have to work over the next couple of weekends and so it would be a good time for me to call you. But alas, you'll be away and I hope that it is not a shame for you, but instead is a jolly good time for you and for Rhonda.
About romantic songs, my favourite romantic song is "A You're Adorable". I like the version sung by Jo Stafford and Gordon MacRae. Perry Como also released a version of this song which was more popular than the Stafford/MacRae version, but I think the Stafford/MacRae version is nicer as it really sounds like they're a couple who are deeply in love and are serenading each other with lovely compliments.
In regards to last week's gigantic email, I did write a letter of complaint to the manager of the store in question, but have not heard back as yet. Perhaps it is taking him or her a while to read the five-page letter that I sent.
I’m very pleased by the results of today’s elections in the Republican race for the Presidential nomination.
Rick Santorum, my preferred candidate of the remaining bunch, won all three states that were up for grabs today. He won Minnesota and Missouri by a big margin, and Colorado by a fairly narrow margin over Mitt Romney, but by a larger margin than he defeated Romney back in Iowa.
Today wasn’t the biggest day for the allocation of delegates by any means, but the victories are welcome all the same. If nothing else, it guarantees that the battle will go on for a bit longer, and I happen to think that will favour the more conservative candidates as the less conservative ones will have to spend more time fighting their own records, leaving the more conservative candidates to do what has really resonated with the electorate…fighting Obama and his horrendous record.
Sorry to deviate way off topic like this, but I’ve changed my mind about the self-serve checkouts and wanted to let you know why.
I used to think that they were a great idea and a time-saver, especially when I only have one or two small items, but increasingly I have been frustrated by them. This evening just gone, the final straw broke.
After finding out that I was going to have to stay at work for longer than I had expected due to a staff member calling in sick, I decided to use my meal break to go to the Woolworths about five minutes drive from work to pick up some snacks. This was around 11pm. I went in, picked up two small snacks, and took them to the self-serve checkout. As is often the case, the machine’s cash dispenser was out of order and the machine was only accepting EFTPOS. I was hoping to pay with some loose change, but $4 on the card isn’t a huge deal…just inconvenient.
Once I had completed my purchase, I told the machine that I did not want a receipt as I would only have thrown it away anyway. The security guard watched me finishing up at the machine, and then stopped me after I had been through the theft detection alarm and had NOT set it off. He asked if I had paid for the items, and I said that I had. He then asked me for the receipt, showing a clear ignorance of how the machines work. I told him that I had not requested a receipt, but it was clear that he did not believe me and made a comment to that effect. He then started asking the staff there if they had seen me pay for the items, which seemed odd to me as he had been watching me use the self-service checkout, but none of the staff in the store seemed interested in his question.
The guard then made it clear that he did not believe me, but told me to go anyway. I started to leave, but I was incredibly offended, not just with the tone he had taken with me, but with the fact that he had watched me use the machine and saw that I had not set off any security alarms, and yet still stopped me and showed a complete ignorance of how the store’s machines work, and a complete contempt for everything I had said. So I turned back, attracted his attention (which was difficult as he turned his back on me at first and then tried to walk away from me) and informed him that I was very offended by his conduct and that, as a matter of principle (as I don’t appreciate being treated like a thief when the evidence clearly shows that I am not one) I was leaving the items at the store and I would be writing a letter of complaint to the store manager. I then planted the items on the counter in front of him, and left the store.
As I was on a meal break from work, I did not really have time to argue the point with the security guard. If time had been available, I would have gone in to internet banking on my phone and shown him the record of the transaction and requested an apology.
This is not the first time that I have encountered grief at the self-service checkouts. Often, they are unclean, having had various items spilled on them. Quite regularly they do not deal with cash and will only take EFTPOS or vice-versa, which is a problem which rarely ever afflicts the staff-run checkouts (on one occasion, the machine did not give me change and the staff refused to help on the grounds that I could not prove it…it was about 20 cents so I didn’t bother to argue the point) and on one particular occasion when I was purchasing a loose roll from the in-store bakery, a staff member yelled at me for daring to ask how to pay for the roll which did not have a barcode.
While this may indicate an attitude problem with the staff, I have to say that whenever I use a regular checkout with a staff member processing the sale, the process is always pleasant and the staff member is usually friendly.
I shall not be using the self-serve checkouts again, and I shall also be writing to the manager of the store in question, and probably will not be going back to that store any time soon. Other supermarkets are due to be built near it soon, and I dare say that they will be getting my business in future.
We do often hear the term “bungle” used in relation to government programs, usually with a caveat that “the opposition claims that…”, but I think I heard something new today.
2GB’s 5pm news bulletin contained a line declaring that the NSW Government had stuffed up the new contracts for the disabled student transport scheme.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
NATALIE PETERS: Macquarie National News at Five. A few showers tomorrow, tops of twenty-two degrees. Good afternoon, I’m Natalie Peters.
The state government will spend an extra one million dollars this week alone to ensure all students with a disability have transport to and from school.
It’s offering some bus drivers revised contracts for term one, after a stuff up before Christmas meant a number of the contracts weren’t finalised before the return of school this week, leaving more than seven hundred students stranded.
Labor claims it alerted the Minister to the problem last Monday, but Premier Barry O’Farrell says while pen may have been put to paper then, it wouldn’t have been received straight away.
BARRY O’FARRELL: What Mr. Picoli said at yesterday’s press conference was he became aware on Wednesday. Thursday, the Department of Education put out a media release, and I got an email update from Adrian on Sunday that said that, not only had further operators pulled out over the weekend, but seven hundred and forty families were unlikely to have transport yesterday morning.
It is true, and it seems that the government have even acknowledged it…but still, hearing a newsreader say that a government had stuffed up came as a bit of a shock. It was, however, a very welcome shock and I was very glad to hear a newsreader who was not afraid to be direct about telling the truth. Keep up the good work Natalie.
(h/t Audio: Radio 2GB. Images: Natalie Peters’ Twitter profile page, and Barry O’Farrell’s NSW Government profile page)
Please accept the wish of the undersigned of a greeting which you may find acceptable given all of the reasonably foreseen and unforeseen circumstances which may impact upon your decision as to what constitutes an appropriate greeting, as may have transpired between the time at which this message was sent (which may either be the time at which it was sent by the sender, or the time at which the sender did conceive of the original idea to send the message, whichever is appropriate, but not the time at which the message was received) and the time at which it was received, taking in to consideration any delays in transmission of a technical nature which may have been or may not have been beyond the control of the undersigned, as determined at the complete discretion of the appropriate party or authority for such determinations.
It is the undersigned’s great pleasure to inform you that the hard drive and DVD mentioned in previous communications are now in the hands of agents of the government who, at the time of taking guardianship of said items, were engaged in argumentative bickering over what time of day constitutes the best time of the day to count the money in their tills. Presently and currently as the production of this missive is attended to by the undersigned, a government vehicle has arrived at a designated point near the aforementioned location of the aforementioned agents of the government, to make haste with the facilitation of the transportation of the aforementioned items in an effort to secure the timely provision of the service for which the items were placed in the guardianship of the government, and for which the government received a mutually agreeable amount of monetary compensation.
Yours forthwith and with the appropriate amount of deference and friendly thoughts and wishes,
The Undersigned
Samuel
(the aforementioned undersigned)
With the exception of the photo, which was not included in the original message, this is a message which I sent earlier this afternoon, having been inspired to an extent by the convoluted conversation which the post office staff were having about counting money and how the post office’s policies affect the counting of money. The photo, which was taken a few minutes after the message was sent, was added to provide some context as to who these “agents of the government” are.
For what it’s worth, “agent of the government” is a term Leo Laporte uses in his live-read commercials for stamps.com where he talks about a post office employee coming and picking up whatever it is that you are trying to post via the services of stamps.com. It’s a good description of post office employees.
If the rest of the Parliament doesn’t withdraw support from them, surely the in-fighting will be the end of them seeing as the poll numbers are just getting worse and worse.
I’m at a loss to explain the two-party preferred figures. Labor and the Greens both lost ground on their primary votes, and yet the Labor number is unchanged. Are Newspoll assuming that all non-Liberal/National votes automatically get distributed to Labor?
Meanwhile Julia Gillard has suffered quite a personal setback after the events of the last few weeks.
During the break – marked by the Prime Minister dumping her written agreement with Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie on poker machine reforms and the controversy over her office’s role in triggering a riot on Australia Day – Ms Gillard’s personal standing fell. Satisfaction with the Prime Minister dropped from 36 per cent last month to 33 per cent last weekend.
Ms Gillard also gave ground to the Opposition Leader as preferred prime minister, with her seven-point lead last month halving to three points as her support fell from 43 per cent to 40 per cent while Mr Abbott’s was a steady 37 per cent last weekend.
(h/t Dennis Shanahan, Political Editor of The Australian. Note: subscription required to view entire article.)
I have to say that I’m happy that the ban on unleaded petrol is New South Wales has been scrapped, but I’m also a bit miffed that they came to the decision last night. If they could have just held on for another day, then I would have been able to get around to writing about how stupid I thought the idea was. You see, I was actually looking forward to the opportunity to prove that, on occasion, I disagree with politicians who are usually on my side, and I’m not afraid to take them to task over it.
PREMIER Barry O’Farrell has backflipped on his controversial ethanol policy, dumping a government ban on unleaded petrol due to begin on July 1.
The cabinet decided yesterday to dump the ban a week after the leaking of secret cabinet documents revealed that Energy Minister Chris Hartcher had tried and failed to get the ban dropped last month.
The dumping of the ban came after it was revealed Mr O’Farrell was proceeding with it despite advice to the contrary from Mr Hartcher, his department, the ACCC, the Crown Solicitor and two independent reports.
The ban on normal unleaded fuel was supposed to force petrol companies to make more E10 fuel to meet the mandate of 6 per cent of all fuel being made with ethanol.
(h/t Andrew Clennell of The Daily Telegraph)
To be completely upfront about this, the ban would not have affected me as I don’t use regular 91 octane unleaded petrol. I’m pretty sure (yes, mechanical me and my lack of mechanical knowledge) that my car is supposed to run on 95 octane petrol or higher, but apart from that I have had problems with previous vehicles which I put down to the 91 octane fuel. All that said, I do treat the 91 octane fuel as a backup measure if premium 98 octane unleaded petrol is not available and I need fuel. I refuse, absolutely refuse, to use the ethanol stuff.
In theory, ethanol-blended fuel is safe in modern vehicles, but as I understand it, the fuel is less efficient and so any cost savings at the bowser are quickly offset by the fact that you use more of the stuff. There was also going to be the spectacular problem that it was not going to be possible to produce enough ethanol to meet the demand, which would force the price up, potentially making the premium unleaded fuel cheaper than the ethanol-blended fuel. And then there were the strange exemptions which were going to be granted to service stations, allowing some of them to sell regular unleaded for short periods of time…a product which was not going to be manufactured because it would be almost impossible to sell due to the ban, and for which the logistics were never worked out as service stations would either have to keep an underground tank on standby for the regular unleaded or clean out the ethanol-blended tank for a day of selling the regular unleaded, after which they would have to clean it out again before putting ethanol-blended fuel in there.
Madness!
It was also part of a plan to reduce New South Wales’ carbon dioxide emissions so as to prevent mythical man-made global warming. More madness.
But to my mind, the biggest problem here was not all of that, but rather the fact that due to a poorly thought-out government policy, competition was going to be reduced, choice was going to be reduced, and the consumer was going to suffer.
POWERFUL 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones has been revealed as having passionately lobbied the state government to stick with a 6 per cent ethanol mandate which marked the end of unleaded petrol.
The former Liberal speechwriter-turned-talkback radio host unexpectedly arrived with ethanol company boss Dick Honan to a meeting with Deputy Premier Andrew Stoner last November during which Mr Jones lobbied for the mandate.
The meeting occurred a month before Mr Stoner pushed successfully in cabinet against a proposal from Energy Minister Chris Hartcher to dump the mandate.
(h/t Andrew Clennell and Evelyn Yamine of The Daily Telegraph)
I assume it was an ill-conceived attempt to help farmers…but surely a conservative radio host should know better. Haven’t we learnt all that we ever needed to know about the perils of having governments pick winners and losers in industry of late? Even those with the shortest of memories could point to the multiple collapses of subsidised solar energy companies in the US as example of why we don’t support governments that want to do this sort of thing.
Just in case you happen to be the one person who is likely to try to visit my photo gallery today (it doesn’t get much traffic any more, one or two people a day at most), please note that it is currently offline for maintenance.
I’ll say more about this later today when I’m done. For now, you can try to visit it if you like, but much of it will be working sporadically for the next little while.
Update:The photo gallery is now back online. There are one or two minor changes, but I’ll address those in a separate post as, although the changes from a user perspective are small, the changes from the backend are not.
Now if only the Republican candidates would spend a little bit more time on this subject and how they would fix it, and a tiny bit less time on attacking each other. Don’t get me wrong, the in-fighting and the vetting of each other’s records is a good and healthy thing, but sometimes I wonder if they spend just a little bit too much time on it and not enough time on the things which are affecting the day-to-day lives of the rest of the people in the country.
If they want to look at a genetic predisposition, look at the genetic predisposition for prejudice and intolerance.
