Archive for April 18th, 2007

ACTION Timetables

Hello Mike and Mike,

Looks like we ruffled a few feathers inside ACTION Management. I still don't know how that email got to air but frankly I no longer care, it was a good thing that it did, and on behalf of everyone in Canberra who uses buses, thank you.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart

Informational Update 11:00PM: This talkback email needs an explanation. This morning I copied on to this blog an email I sent to 2CC for informational purposes about a rumoured change to ACTION’s weekday bus timetables. I sent that email on Monday at a time when it was still a rumour which was likely to change at any moment given the whimsical nature of ACTION management.

On Tuesday morning Mike Jeffreys read out the email during the 2CC Breakfast program, this was not what I expected, in fact I didn’t even know that Mike Jeffreys had a copy of the email, however it made the information public, and clearly gave ACTION, their governing body TAMS (Territory and Municipal Services) and transport minister John Hargreaves a jolt. It was no longer possible to easily deny the plan had ever existed, and they wouldn’t be able to easily change their mind about it.

Today Mr. Hargreaves and ACTION have announced “extra services and the re-introduction of certain weekday routes” to begin on the 30th of April. The announcement is pleasing, although I will reserve judgement until I actually have had a chance to review the updated timetables. At first glance it looks like they have expanded the service to roughly the limit of possible modifications without scrapping the current timetable completely. It is probably close to the limit of the remaining bus fleet too.

End Informational Update

April 18th, 2007 at 10:29pm

Another John Kerr Lunch

2UE’s John Kerr is having another lunch, this time it will be at one of Sydney’s best restaurants, Liquidity. It will be a two course lunch starting at midday on Tuesday and I will be in attendance. I’m not sure if there are any places left, but if you’d like to attend the cost is $40 and bookings can be made by calling (02) 8223 3866.

Samuel

April 18th, 2007 at 03:29pm

The Persiflage Returns

I have been pleasantly surprised over the last few months to see that the number of hits on the Samuel’s Persiflage feed have not dropped, and that despite the lack of recent episodes people are still subscribed and looking forward to more episodes.

I’m pleased to be able to announce that Samuel’s Persiflage returns later this week with a new episode, and I’m sure that for people who don’t read this message, it will be a pleasant surprise in return for their loyalty.

Samuel

April 18th, 2007 at 01:55pm

2CC’s Drive Show Gains A Computer Segment

2CC’s drive show has gained a computer segment, Wednesday afternoons at 3:30pm (I’m making an educated guess on the time). Mike Welsh will be joined by Peter Saville who regular listeners may recall from his previous work on 2CC’s drive show in 2003. People from Mike’s old stomping ground of Tasmania might also remember Peter from his work with ABC Local Radio in Tasmania.

Samuel

1 comment April 18th, 2007 at 01:15pm

It’s the first nightmare I’ve had in ages!

Long-term readers of this blog would know that I like to write accounts of my dreams, those same readers would probably struggle to remember one of my nightmares. Well generally I don’t have them, but as I had one yesterday I should write it down for your amusement.

The dream starts with WIN Television’s local news and the tail end of a report about something. In the dream I wasn’t actually watching the news, the news telecast seemed to be the dream. Anyway at the end of the report Peter Leonard appeared with the next story, and it was him saying that he was driving on the federal highway and got his car stuck in the rather deep gravel trap at the off ramp to the Hume Highway’s southbound lanes, Phil Small then said to Peter with a chuckle that he has been accident free for 15 years, they chatted about their age and what colour the lines on the road should be for a few moments before deciding that they should go to the report on Peter’s accident.

The dream then moved to the site of Peter’s (now cleared) accident. I was standing there looking over at the Hume Highway (looking strangely like Parkes Way) and noticed one car on fire, a lot of debris, and a lot of damaged vehicles scattered all over the place, but there was no traffic anywhere. I spotted a shed on the other side of the road, the sign on the shed said that it was the depot for the New South Wales Parks and Wildlife Service’s Hume Highway Forest division. I decided that they would be the best people to help in this situation and went over to the shed.

When I got there I met the deputy park ranger who said I could speak to the chief park ranger who was out the back, I went over to the back door whilst the deputy park ranger headed towards the kitchen. Something didn’t seem right, and I couldn’t quite work out why I recognised the deputy park ranger, but I went off to find the chief park ranger anyway. As I was heading towards the back door a handful of injured people walked in the front door, and just as I reached the back door the chief park ranger walked through it with more injured people. The chief park ranger was none other than actor Anthony LaPaglia, and he asked me to go and get the deputy park ranger as he was “ready for his assistance with these people”.

I said nothing but noticed Anthony LaPaglia was walking towards the wall with various gardening tools and saws on it, I started to walk around the corner to the kitchen and noticed the deputy park ranger (who I now recognised as actor Craig Charles) was holding a bunch of very large knives, by this stage Anthony LaPaglia was holding a large saw and a hedge trimmer. Both of them were preparing to attack. My instinct was to run, but I instead told them that some movie they had both been in (no such movie exists in real life) had been terrible, and reminded them how much money the film company lost due to it. For some reason they stopped walking towards the crowd, and melted whilst screaming.

The crowd and I then rushed across the Hume Highway and took refuge in the back yard of a house where we all started putting pegs on the Hills Hoist rotary clothes line.

The dream, or more correctly, nightmare, then ended.

Samuel

April 18th, 2007 at 11:19am

New ACTION Timetables Coming Soon

Seeing as an email I didn’t send to Mike Jeffreys somehow got in to his hands and was subsequently read out on the air on 2CC, I might as well publish the information here. The more public the information is, the harder it will be for ACTION or Territory and Municipal Services to change their minds.

It would appear that the government want ACTION to come up with a new set of timetables to expand services in the middle of the day, before the end of the school holidays. Considering that it generally takes months of wrangling between the Transport Workers Union and ACTION for any timetable change to occur, I find the deadline amusing, none the less the plan makes sense.

At the moment a lot of drivers have a split shift where they spend a couple hours on “depot duties”, then go home for a while, and come back for the evening peak period. The plan is to turn the depot duties in to extra buses during the day. There are a few issues with making the new shifts work as ACTION have sold quite a few buses, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a new timetable by the end of next month.

Samuel

April 18th, 2007 at 07:27am

The United States of America Needs Proper Gun Control Laws

Following the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, Australia took the correct and mature decision that the only way to even attempt to prevent a repeat of that tragic event was to enact proper gun control laws. No law will ever prevent everything, but our gun control laws are a fine example of how to properly manage firearms.

The United States of America, following yesterday’s terrible and tragic Virginia Tech University shooting which, with 32 people killed, is the worst school shooting to date, need to accept the fact that until they enact proper gun controls, the massacres will continue.

It’s not just the massacres either, multiple times every day a shooting occurs in the US. To give you some idea of the scope of this, a Google News search for the word “shooting” in the headline of stories published by US news agencies from the 18th of March to the 16th of April (to exclude the massive number of stories about the massacre) returns 12,812 stories. It is important to note that articles from various news sources about the same story are usually grouped as the one story by Google News. In the first twenty stories alone, seven of the shootings were fatal. In the feedback to one of those stories, a Louisville Courier-Journal online reader wrote “I wonder what you people do when Louisville goes on one of it’s two to three week stretches without a homicide” to which another reader replied “Perhaps you can refresh my memory; I seem to have lost it.”

How can anyone feel safe in a country where shootings are this regular? Surely it is time that the US overturned the archaic second amendment, namely the “right to keep and bear arms”. The second amendment states “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

Well it is completely beyond me how constant shootings and intermittent massacres can be considered “a well regulated Militia”, or conducive to the “security of a free state”. The second amendment was ratified on December 15, 1791, at a time when the US may have seen a need for people to bear arms in an effort to uphold the security of the state. It is ridiculous to think that there is a legitimate need for this amendment in this day and age.

Australia’s gun laws are by no means perfect, as shootings do still very occasionally occur, but they are a model which the United States should examine and follow. In a democratic society it is the responsibility of the government to protect the citizens who elected them, and the second amendment’s total aversion to any form of proper gun control does nothing other than make the US government negligent.

Samuel

April 18th, 2007 at 03:15am


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