Samuel's Blog

What would you do?

Yesterday afternoon Nattie and I went for a walk. As part of that walk we passed a public housing complex primarily for older, retired people. Nattie and I know a few of the people who live in this complex and they are generally nice people, some of them have dogs which, for the most part, Nattie gets on with pretty well.

On this occasion we did not meet any of those people, as we only briefly passed the block, however I did notice something out of the ordinary on one of the patches of grass. I took a closer look and realised that it was an ACT Housing rent payment card which had been dropped.

The lost payment card, with identifying information removed

These cards are by no means necessary to pay the rent electronically, however paying in person either at a Canberra Connect shopfront or at an Australia Post outlet is more or less impossible without the card, and in all likelihood the owner of the card will probably not notice it is missing until they next go to pay their rent, which could very easily see them fall behind in the payments.

I picked up the card, and as I didn’t recognise the name and there were no residents outside for me to ask, I made a decision to take the card with me, for the purposes of returning to ACT Housing, who can subsequently return it to its rightful owner. This decision was based on the conclusion that in the area the card was in, the next person to come along and consider picking it up, would most likely not do so for such a noble reason, and the card would probably end up in a bin or some other inappropriate place.

This got me thinking, many cards, be they bank cards, ID cards, membership cards or something else, have a return address on the back in case they are lost or stolen. Often people keep their DVD rental store membership card on their keyring, making the DVD rental store a de facto lost-and-found for keys. In some cases there is no return address, but a few minutes of checking the company name would provide an address.

So would you, if you spotted an ID card, bank card, or other card of some importance to the owner, try to return it to its owner, either directly or via the agency named on the card? I would imagine that there are a number of people who wouldn’t, and if you’re one of them, I would be very interested to find out why you wouldn’t try to return the card.

To the same extent, do you think I have done the right thing by picking up the card and mailing it to ACT Housing?

Samuel

3 comments May 7th, 2007 at 02:45pm

Grass Roots

Whilst perusing the television guide yesterday I noticed something which pleased me, at 11:40 last night ABC Television were screening a repeat of their excellent political drama series Grass Roots. When I eventually tuned in at 11:50 after remembering that it was on, I was even more pleased to note that it was the first episode of the first series, meaning that I am now able to watch the entire first series once again, albeit at a peculiar hour. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why television stations insist on screening great programs late at night and junk during prime-time, but I suppose I should be thankful that they bother to screen great programs at all.

Grass Roots focuses on the internal rumblings of the fictional Arcadia Waters council, in a suburb of Sydney. The show is in my view the Australian version of Yes Minister, showing a masterful grip on the politics and bureaucracy of local councils, with the necessary addition of mild but biting satire to make sense of it all.

The series currently being shown by the ABC was originally screened in 2000, and the second series was produced in 2003. It was unfortunate that the show never got a third series as the second series (without giving too much away) ended with many open questions, however it could quite legitimately be argued that enough plot points were wrapped up to justify the end of the show, whilst leaving things open in much the same way that politics never really ends.

Prior to the days of Quizmania on Channel Nine I was quite partial to the repeats of another brilliant Australian drama, Water Rats, which used to screen at 1am on Tuesdays, and I’m glad to finally have another Australian drama to enjoy in the wee hours.

Grass Roots currently screens at 11:40pm on Sundays on ABC Television and runs for a bit under an hour.

Samuel

3 comments May 7th, 2007 at 08:58am

It Was Terrible

Seeing as I tipped Richmond to defeat Geelong, I think it is quite fair for me to say that Richmond’s embarrassing loss was, in one word, terrible.

I’m not sure if it’s a record, but Geelong must be very happy with their thrashing of Richmond by 157 points, 35.12.(222) to 9.11.(65).

It must have been an incredibly boring game to watch, most of the quarters went for well over 30 minutes due to the number of goals scored, and whilst I congratulate the Cats, I’m glad I wasn’t watching as I wouldn’t have had any chance of sitting through it, instead I was more than happy to just watch the scores tick by on the MyTalk Live Scores website whilst doing other things.

Samuel

May 7th, 2007 at 01:55am