A shared currency between Australia and New Zealand has merit but is unlikely to eventuate, NZ Prime Minister John Key says.
Speaking to a business luncheon in Melbourne, Mr Key said adopting the Australian dollar would mean NZ forfeiting control of its monetary policy.
[..]
“The reason I don’t think it would happen is not actually because of parochial, political reasons.
“I think it’s because then again you have to abandon, from New Zealand’s perspective, control of monetary policy.”
Mr Key said NZ needed to retain its fiscal independence in case of an economic catastrophe, such as an outbreak of foot and mouth disease.
Only then could there be an enormous correction in currency to try to offset “economic carnage”, he said.
Sovereign nations with their own economies, customs and laws should have separate currencies, unless they feel like giving away more than just control of their currency to some central bureaucracy like the European Union.
A few weeks ago I noted that the controversial Cash For Clunkers program was underway in the US, since then it has been embroiled in all flavours of fiasco. The US government so badly underestimated how many people would use it, that the program ran out of money within days, and the government hastily threw more money at it before they disappeared for their August holiday.
Back when I wrote that original article, I was contacted by an outfit called Donate Car USA who were informing me of some of the interesting pitfalls in the Clunkers program. I noted their email, but never got around to writing anything about it. They have since contacted me again, and updated their notes on the Clunkers program, and I think the information is worth sharing.
To qualify for the Clunkers program, you have to be both selling and old car, and buying a new car. In effect, you don’t actually make any money as the cost of the new car well and truly outweighs the cost of the old car. In addition, there are some interesting rules:
Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date
Only the purchase or lease of new vehicles will qualify you for the federal funding
Trade-in vehicles must get 18 miles or less per gallon
Vehicles must be in driving condition, plus registered and insured for the full year prior to the trade-in
The gas mileage rates are so low that only very poor mileage cars like SUVs or trucks will qualify.
And if your vehicle happens to be worth more than the $3,500 or $4,500 rebate amount, well tough luck, you don’t get any government money.
The fact that the program ran out of money with such tight rules is extraordinary, and makes me wonder whether funds were reserved for each application, pending inspection of the clunker in question rather than only being allocated after cars were officially deemed to be clunkers…in which case I expect we will start to see a lot of people very upset that their car doesn’t qualify.
So what do people do if they want to get rid of an old car in the US, but don’t qualify for Clunkers, or don’t want a new car, or just don’t want to go through the hassle of selling. This is where Donate Car USA steps in, making it easy to donate a car, in some cases regardless of whether it is running, to a charity of the donor’s choosing.
Still, it’s a case of giving away something, which might not be an easy thing to do for many people, so they’re offering an incentive…from their website:
And to thank you for deciding to donate your car to charity, instead of participating in the Cash for Clunkers program — when you donate your car to one of our 400+ fine charities — just tell your operator you’d like the $300 Free Grocery or Gasoline Rebate when you make arrangements with us for the free car donation pick up.
Now that’s a charity which understands its target audience. The “what are we going to do with that car on the lawn” brigade who are probably struggling a bit with the economy in the shape it is, and unemployment heading the way it is…a large market of people who would probably like to help out someone else and be able to make their own lives a tad easier at the same time. It’s a darn good deal, and I haven’t even touched on the possible tax benefits yet.
I would strongly advise anyone in the US who is considering getting rid of a car which they may think is a “clunker” to check out Donate Car USA and see if it’s right for them. There’s a lot more information on there than I could ever hope to represent here, and one would assume that their staff can answer any outstanding questions.
Now, are there any similar programs in Australia? Somehow, I doubt it.
A rarely used word appears in today’s AAP stories about Australian ambassadors and Chinese gas deals.
While Chinese state media has said little about the 50 billion Gorgon gas deal .. an editorial in the China Daily newspaper claims Australia’s sinophobic politicians are leading an anti-China chorus.
Sinophobia is the fear of China and the Chinese. It is effectively a version of xenophobia directed specifically at China. I wonder how many people today, when they read that, will think the journalist responsible for the story is actually talking about xenophobia?
The Rudd Government’s Preventative Health Taskforce is understood to have called for the weight-loss industry to be regulated in a report handed down last month.
[..]
It wants a wide-ranging review of diet products and a common code of practice drawn up covering the cost, the training of counsellors and the promotion of the diets.
The Dietitians Association of Australia is backing the recommendation.
A spokesman told The Daily Telegraph all commercial diet programs should be assessed by a body of experts similar to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which assesses drugs for safety and efficacy before they can go on sale.
The association said regulation should require businesses marketing a diet program to provide evidence to a panel of experts showing what percentage of those who used the diet kept the weight off two years after starting.
So, in other words, let’s kill the diet industry by requiring all diet programs to have a two year unprofitable trial before it can be examined by a panel of experts for some unknown period of time, after which it might, and I stress the word “might”, be able to go on sale.
The article continues with what appears to be the moronic reasoning behind the taskforce’s idea.
A Choice survey of pharmacy diet programs published earlier this year found they were successful at helping people shed kilos in a hurry if followed closely – but they did little to change a person’s lifestyle in the long term.
Errr, sorry, but that’s not what diet programs are there to do. Diet programs are there to help people lose weight, usually they will encourage a healthy lifestyle afterwards, but the staff of these diet programs can’t force people to live a healthy life after the program ends…that is a personal choice. Diet programs should not be punished by the government because people choose to return to their old ways.
You’d think that the government doesn’t have enough to do or something, so they go in search of new things to annoy us with. Seriously, roads, rates, rubbish, some schools, some emergency services, and leave us alone to make our own choices.
No surprises in the fact that this happened on a “cheap” day. 121.9 cents per litre.
Call me cynical, but if I didn’t have other things to do, I’d set up a stakeout in the carpark opposite, and see if they unlock the unleaded bowsers before a tanker arrives.
I don’t think there’s a better to get yourself some publicity than calling for a banning!
The World Cancer Research Fund warned parents to stop serving the processed meat, saying they could lead to bowel cancer.
Instead of a total ban on the ham sandwich, limiting the amount of processed meat a child ate was a better option, Cancer Council nutrition manager Kathy Chapman said.
“If a child is eating ham sandwiches every day they are potentially missing out on fresh vegetables and important nutrients,” she said.
Healthier fillings include tuna, salmon, egg and salad sandwiches.
Dietician Susie Burrell of Westmead Children’s Hospital in Sydney said a ham sandwich once a week was OK.
Eating a ham sarnie causes cancer? These ham-fisted food fascists are just pig ignorant
The article, which I think may actually be an opinion piece, is even better.
Surely an occasional ham baguette with spread-u-lite butter and free-range mustard can hardly be a risk?
Oh, you bet it can, says the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF). If children eat bacon, ham, salami and other types of processed meat during their formative years, it will raise the risk of them contracting cancer – bowel cancer in particular – over a lifetime.
It will also encourage a bad ham habit. The brats might get to like the evil pig meat stuff. So it is better, the charity says, that children learn to view processed meat as an occasional treat, if it is eaten at all.
In the latest in a long line of food scares, this one scares me more than most.
First, in the typical manner of these over-arching health warnings, it is so unfair, particularly on those who already have this type of cancer for no other reason than they lost out in the genetic lottery. Now they will be dismissed by some as merely selfish hot-dog guzzlers who had it coming.
Also, this is not merely a health caution, it is – if you read between the lines – sly, anti-meat propaganda. They are messing, once more, with our carnivore minds.
The WCRF claim that a recent survey has shown that two thirds of the people in Britain did not know that eating processed meat increased the risk of cancer. This, apparently, despite the scientific evidence about a link being ‘convincing’.
I like that ‘convincing’, don’t you? What I would say about that ‘convincing’ is that it is unconvincing.
And surely there is enough pressure on adults to be good parents without accusing them of poisoning their children by slipping the occasional ham-on-rye into their satchel?
I can see, perhaps, that if you bought the vilest, past-its-sell-by-date, Barbie-pink ham you could find, crammed a pound of it between two slices of sugar-rich white loaf then forced it down the gullet of little Timmy or baby Lola every school day from the moment they started nursery until the tykes graduated, then, point taken WCRF. It might not be too healthy.
Yet it is the charity’s tacit suggestion, odious and unsettling, that we are raising a generation of tongue-lolling, drooling slope-heads who will be unable to differentiate between smoked ham and smoked heroin when the moment comes.
One slice of breaded Wiltshire and the fools will be lost to civilisation. The bad karma of Parma will live with them for ever.
What the health police seem to want us to do is nurture an army of mini-Howard Hughes types in knee-socks; freakish, food dictator children who will scream at chocolate, refuse to eat anything but the purest substances and insist that their lunch is wrapped in banana leaves to avoid carcinogenic plastics or the threat of bisphenol-A from their thermos flasks.
Does that sound far-fetched or even hysterical? Well, thanks to the constant meddling of the health police and their blizzard of mixed-message warnings over the years, it has already happened.
Doctors are reporting increasing incidences of something called orthorexia nervosa; the latest fashionable boa constrictor of an eating disorder to grip the middle classes.
Described as a fixation on righteous eating, it affects mostly well-educated, middle-class men and women over the age of 30. Well, it would do, wouldn’t it? You won’t find starving tribesmen in Darfur obsessing about the organic origins of their sugar-free orange juice.
[..]
Devoted orthorexics avoid anything containing sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, yeast, soya, gluten, dairy and corn. Extreme cases will also avoid any foodstuffs that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or that contain artificial additives.
It is a little like anorexia nervosa, except with extra carbs, and followers must think they are going to live for ever. If you waved a bacon sarnie under their noses, they would faint with horror.
[..]
Searching every day for fresh supplies of things like soy milk, wheatgrass juice, wild Tibetan goji berries, pure premium coconut water, hempseed and organic grain quinoa? It must be exhausting.
I’m looking forward to an improved average speed on my next trip to Deniliquin (which is a mere two weeks away) as those annoying 12 kilometres or so of roadworks near Gundagai have been completed. (I could be sure it was more than 12km of roadworks…but I’ll trust the article for now) No more utter boredom of driving through an 80km/h (or worse) zone thinking “so where are the workers anyway?”…unless it’s a Monday in which case they were there. I never quite understood why a single carriageway road needed to be slowed down to 80km/h on days when roadworks weren’t actually taking place.
THE final 5km section of the Hume Highway duplication between Albury and Woomargama will open to motorists today with little fanfare.
Meanwhile, a ceremony involving NSW Roads Minister Michael Daley and member for Riverina, Kay Hull, will be held further north at Coolac at 11am when the Hume Highway bypass of the village is officially opened.
[..]
The $179 million Coolac bypass involves 12km of dual carriageway between 12km and 24km north of Gundagai and 4km of existing road between the Dog on the Tucker Box and Muttama Creek.
I suppose this means I won’t see the “roadworks next 300km” or similar sign near the Sturt Highway exit either.
It has been quite a week in the list of blogs I frequent. A week ago (I forgot to mention it at the time…I think I noticed after I had tripped on the stairs and just wanted to sleep away the pain) GrodsCorp shut down, with site owner Scott Bridges citing his plan to travel through India and the middle-east as the reason.
I’ll miss GrodsCorp. I almost always disagreed with them, especially of late, but it was a fun way to see what the other side of the political divide was up to, and I quite enjoyed reading the site. It’s unusual for me to regularly enjoy a site that I disagree with, so they (Scott and contributors) deserve credit for that.
I am also somewhat relieved. Back in the day when The Spin Starts Here was outranking this blog in Google searches for my name, it was great to have GrodsCorp in the top three results with their profile of me. These days, with this site having a great Google ranking, and The Spin Starts Here’s vitriol no longer online (yes, we’ve patched up our differences, but having some of that stuff being presented as fact to people who didn’t know better was not helpful) that is not so convenient as the profile is dated, and I have matured and grown significantly since then. I’ll also admit that my political views have moved, and my understanding grown, since my abortive run for the federal seat of Fraser in 2007. I’m leaving my copies of that stuff online for the fun and nostalgia of it, but it is nice to know that it’s not going to be one of the dominant things to appear when searching for me in the future.
Scott is continuing his online presence in the form of a personal blog, so he won’t be disappearing completely (unless he becomes the president of the combined nation of Indiastan during his trip, in which case an army of “journalists” can do his bidding for him), but I will still miss the GrodsCorp dynamic anyway.
Padders over at The Right Aussie has stumbled upon what is quite clearly a case of racism favouring Aborigines from The Pharmacy Guild of Australia and our beloved federal government.
Today whilst reading the Western Magazine, a weekly publication inserted into regional newspapers, I made a cursory glance over two advertisements covering the full right hand side of page nine
[..]
The ad at the top of the page was offering three scholarships to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, valued at $15,000 each (to a maximum value of $60,000); and the ad below it – obviously applicable to everyone else – offered 30 scholarships at $10,000 each (to a maximum value of $40,000).
[..]
But it doesn’t stop there.
I quote a portion of the text from the first ad (for Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders):
Students interested in studying pharmacy at university need to have an interest in health, communication and science.
And from the other ad (for everyone else):
Students interested in studying pharmacy at university need to achieve high marks in English, Mathematics and Chemistry.
So, one can only draw the conclusion that not only will Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders get an extra five grand per year for doing the same course, but it is hard not to infer that the matriculation requirements are not as rigorous as those for non-Aboriginals.
The full ads are visible at the above linked page.
So when will this nonsense end? Why do we need to single out Aborigines for special treatment here? Would it be too much to ask to expect them to compete with everyone else for the scholarships on a level playing ground?
Clearly this is aimed at the supposedly lesser-educated Aborigines, and is designed to give them a better chance at making something of their lives. It doesn’t make any sense though because if I, as a non-Aborigine, chose to drop out of high school and then wanted to study pharmacy, I would have to do the bridging courses of my own volition…I wouldn’t get an extra handout to assist me or motivate me, my motivation would be the chance to reach my goal. If an Aboriginal person can’t be motivated to do bridging courses and then apply for a scholarship on the grounds of eventually reaching their goal, then why should we be paying them an extra five thousand dollars and set aside places for them, when truly motivated people could take those spots for less money?
The bottom line is that we shouldn’t…but try and tell that to Kevin “Sorry” Rudd.
But for whatever reason, Kim Jong Il didn’t want Bill around doing much talking either, and sent him back along with an offering to Barry Bamster of a few US citizens, hoping that Bill will never be sent to North Korea ever again, lest they need to have one of their missile tests while his plane is coming in.
Perhaps, Barry, you can make Bill your ambassador to Antarctica…he can take Al Gore with him to report on increases in ice levels.
(thanks to Heather Kydd for the link to the video)
This time around though, I think it’s a crying shame. I have almost no time for the comments section of RiotACT, however when it comes to the stories themselves, I think RiotACT has performed an incredibly valuable service to the ACT, especially under John’s guidance over the last year or so.
If there is one thing for which I have to give John credit, it is being the source of pressure which led to the AFP’s media unit getting press releases online more than once per week. Whilst I have access to the press releases through their direct distribution to media outlets, I do appreciate the fact that AFP stuff is now online in a timely manner.
On a less positive note, I’m reminded of what I said to a friend on the phone the day John returned to RiotACT…”it won’t last, there is no way it will be profitable”. I’m sorry that I was correct. As much as I disagree with John on a number of issues, the fact that he built RiotACT in to a respected local news outlet, respected not just by the public, but by the rest of the media as well, is a testament to John’s hard work and dedication. Alas John has succumbed to the financial needs which press on all of us, and is off to fulfil those needs.
It looks like RiotACT’s future is going to be similar to its past. Not for profit, volunteer driven, and leeching off the ABC with the occasional bit of self-inspired brilliance. Sad really. The loss of a decent independent news service.
This does make me wonder one thing though. If RiotACT can’t be profitable, how does Rupert Murdoch expect a pay-for-access lockdown of his online news services to be profitable? Rupert might have more readers, but when more than half the articles on his sites are recycled news agency articles which are freely available elsewhere (heck, Google hosts copies of Associated Press content), a pay-for-access version of his news services would have to be really really special to turn a buck.
YOUNG indigenous offenders could be sent to work on a cattle farm in northern NSW instead of jail in an Australian first aimed at curbing incarceration rates.
The property Balund-a, near Tabulam in the state’s far north, will house up to 50 men and women aged between 18-35 who would otherwise be sent to prison.
Corrective Services Minister John Robertson said he wanted to address the high indigenous incarceration rates, with more than one in five inmates in NSW jails of Aboriginal descent.
Well Mr. Robertson, it will certainly do that…but how many 50-people-per-year farms are you going to need in order to make a useful dent in those statistics? And what exactly are you trying to get at with this sentence?
Mr Robertson said so far, 13 of the 14 would-be inmates who have spent time at Balund-a have avoided time behind bars upon their return to court.
There is no context for this sentence. Either it means that 14 people who have been to the farm so far have re-offended and didn’t receive a court sentence, in which case I fail to see how it’s related to the story, or it means that people sent to this farm are being sent back to court once they are done, so that a judge can have a look at their report card and decide whether to send them to court, which would be an amazing waste of time for an already overcrowded court system.
Mr Robertson continued:
“If we can keep 50 young Aboriginal men and women in this region out of prison each year and give them a chance to make something of their lives, then the program has been a success.”
And what about the rest of us? If Aboriginal offenders are worthy of a rehabilitation farm, why aren’t the rest of us worthy of it? What makes them so special?
The most amazing thing about all of this is that, elsewhere in the country, similar programs are being conducted in prisons, not outside of them.
It is based on existing Aboriginal programs in prisons such as Yetta Dhinnakkal near Brewarrina and Warakirri at Ivanhoe.
Is Mr. Robertson so obsessed with statistics that he can’t see his way to implementing such programs in the safe environment of his state’s prisons rather than on remote farms?
Regardless, as long as such programs are being offered to Aboriginal offenders and not to everyone else, it’s a racist policy.
Apparently the percentage of people in prisons who are Aboriginal has never been higher, and the government wants to lower that percentage. That’s understandable, but perhaps it’s time that they investigated the living conditions of Aboriginal children. Aborigines aren’t criminals by nature any moreso that white folk (for lack of a better term) are, so there has to be a reason why they are growing up and turning in to criminals at a much higher rate than everyone else. I think it has to do with the way they are being raised as children.
Over the years I have seen many Aboriginal families come and go through the area in which I live. Almost all of them have been visited quite regularly by the police, almost all of them have been “known” as drug-dealing households, and almost all of them have had incredibly foul children. What chance do these kids have? It’s a well established fact that the pre-primary school years have a huge impact on children and shape their future. If you grow up in a household with criminal tendencies (or worse) then you are very likely to see such activity as “normal”…your morals will have been corrupted. If the government is serious about preventing Aborigines from becoming criminals, then it needs to take a good, hard look at the environment in which these children are growing up.
Once they’re all grown up and out there causing havoc, and on “not you again” basis with the local cops, it’s too late for “rehabilitation programs”. By that stage what is needed is the solitary confinement prison system which I have talked about before.
Yesterday Woolworths announced that they are launching their own pre-paid mobile phone service which will run on the Optus network. Woolworths are touting it as a simple solution with a single price structure and no confusing “cap” deals. On that front, they are right, however when it comes down to the actual cost of it, it’s not quite as cheap as Woolworths might like us to believe when compared to other providers.
The basic deal is:
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.15
Flagfall: $0.15
Cost per text message: $0.15
Coast per MMS: $0.50
Sounds good on the surface of it, but that has more to do with the fact that other providers have made their own deals sound expensive by charging you in credit rather than real money, and converting real money to outlandish amounts of credit.
For example, Vodafone’s advertised pre-paid rates are:
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.88
Flagfall: $0.35
Cost per text message: $0.28
Cost per MMS: $0.50 (video messages cost $0.75)
Optus:
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.78 (charged in 60 second blocks)
Flagfall: $0.35
Cost per text message (to other Optus pre-paid users): $0.25
Cost per text message (to other carriers): $0.29
Cost per MMS (to other Optus pre-paid users): $0.25
Cost per MMS (to other carriers): $0.29
Video MMS does not appear to be supported.
Telstra:
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.39
Flagfall: $0.30
Cost per text message: $0.25
Cost per MMS: $0.50 (video messages cost $0.75)
Virgin Mobile caps:
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.45 (charged in 60 second blocks)
Flagfall: $0.40
Cost per text message: $0.25 (free to other Virgin Mobile users)
Cost per MMS: $0.60
Video MMS does not appear to be supported
Virgin Mobile Bean Counter:
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.10
Flagfall: $0.25
Cost per text message: $0.10
Cost per MMS: $0.60
Video MMS does not appear to be supported
Naturally there are many more providers and options, but this is enough to run some comparisons on for now. The above prices are all in “credit” rather than real money, so to find out the real cost they need to be converted back in to real money. In most cases, the more you recharge with, the more “credit” you get for your money. For the purposes of this comparison , I’m going to calculate the cost of using the services after recharging with $30 and $50. As the Woolworths services is clearly aimed at the lower-budget end of the market, there’s not much point in running comparisons against the more costly options, however I will include links to the plans so that you can run your own comparisons. I’m also rounding all figures to the nearest cent for readability purposes.
Costs in real money:
Woolworths Mobile:
Credit is equal to real money in this service
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.15
Flagfall: $0.15 Link to plan.
Vodafone $29 cap:
$29 of real money equals $150 of credit. Therefore each dollar of real money is equal to $5.17 of credit.
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.17
Flagfall: $0.07
Cost per text message: $0.05
Cost per MMS: $0.10 (video messages cost $0.15) Link to plan
It’s worth noting that this plan also provides an additional $150 of credit specifically for use when calling other Vodafone customers.
Vodafone $49 cap
$49 of real money equals $350 of credit. Therefore each dollar of real money is equal to $7.15 of credit.
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.12
Flagfall: $0.05
Cost per text message: $0.04
Cost per MMS: $0.07 (video messages cost $0.11) Link to plan
It’s worth noting that this plan also provides an additional $350 of credit specifically for use when calling other Vodafone customers.
Optus “Bigger and Better Freecalls”
Credit on these plans is equal to real money, however the $30 plan comes with 300 minutes of free calls and 100 further minutes of free calls to five Optus pre-paid numbers which you nominate. The $50 plan has 500 free minutes and 150 further minutes of free calls to your nominated five Optus pre-paid numbers.
There are a gazillion other plans and options, each with their very own list of difficult to compare extras and addons.
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.78 (charged in 60 second blocks)
Flagfall: $0.35
Cost per text message (to other Optus pre-paid users): $0.25
Cost per text message (to other carriers): $0.29
Cost per MMS (to other Optus pre-paid users): $0.25
Cost per MMS (to other carriers): $0.29
Video MMS does not appear to be supported. Link to plan.
Telstra:
Telstra organise their caps as “packs” which you buy with your credit balance. Credit is equal to real money.
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.39
Flagfall: $0.30
Cost per text message: $0.25
Cost per MMS: $0.50 (video messages cost $0.75) Link to plan.
$20 text pack: 12 cents per text message
$50 text pack: 10 cents per text message
$20 photo MMS pack: 37 cents per message
$50 photo MMS pack: 34 cents per message
$20 talk pack: 37 cents per 30 seconds (plus flagfall) charged in 60 second blocks
$50 talk pack: 34 cents per 30 seconds (plus flagfall) charged in 60 second blocks Link to “plus packs”.
Virgin Mobile $35 cap:
$35 of real money equals $180 in credit. Therefore each dollar of real money equals $5.14 of credit.
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.09 (charged in 60 second blocks)
Flagfall: $0.08
Cost per text message: $0.05 (free to other Virgin Mobile users)
Cost per MMS: $0.12
Video MMS does not appear to be supported Link to plan.
Virgin Mobile $45 cap:
$45 of real money equals $320 in credit. Therefore each dollar of real money equals $7.11 of credit.
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.06 (charged in 60 second blocks)
Flagfall: $0.06
Cost per text message: $0.04 (free to other Virgin Mobile users)
Cost per MMS: $0.08
Video MMS does not appear to be supported Link to plan.
Virgin Mobile Bean Counter plan:
Money and credit are equal in this plan.
Cost per 30 seconds: $0.10
Flagfall: $0.25
Cost per text message: $0.10
Cost per MMS: $0.60
Video MMS does not appear to be supported
It’s amusing that this plan is advertised as being a cheap plan for people who want the “best deal around”, and yet it actually costs more than the most expensive of the Virgin caps. Link to plan.
It’s quite clear from all of this that Woolworths are not the cheapest of the lot, however with the complexity of the plans offered and advertised by the rest of the mobile providers (and I haven’t even come close to examining the entire competition), the Woolworths plan does come across as being a simple and cheap option. The competition have their own “credit for cash” deals to blame for this because, as much as “$320 credit for $45” sounds great, the advertised call rates in credit don’t sound great. The fact that it takes excessive use of a calculator to compare the plans also works in Woolworths’ (and Virgin Mobile’s Bean Counter plan’s) favour as most people won’t bother.
Woolworths also have another plan here which they aim to use to gain some extra market share. They are going to stop selling recharge credit for other mobile providers in their stores and “participating fuel outlets”. It’s cunning, but considering that I buy all of my credit via the Internet or phone call using a pre-registered credit card, it’s not a killer blow.
I’ll be interested to see how much market share Woolworths manage to pick up. Their plan simplicity will probably get them a decent chunk (not huge, but decent) and with any luck will have the knock-on effect of forcing other providers to clarify their plans, which would benefit all consumers.
As I noted the other day on Facebook, these months are going too quickly, and it is hard to believe that it’s time to do another monthly update of Barack Obama’s polling figures. It’s safe to say that July was not a good month for Mr. Obama by any means, be it due to a backlash to his plan to socialise healthcare, his decision to put himself in the middle of a private dispute between a professor and a cop, turning it in to a national racial debate, or being the bloke in charge when a government program (Cash for Clunkers) had its budget so badly underestimated that it ran out of money within days, throwing buyers and dealers in to a state of confusion.
July saw the raw approval and disapproval lines crossing, so that most of the latter half of the month saw more people disapproving of Obama’s work than approving of it. I should also point out that there was no polling on July 3, 4 or 5 due to the Independence Day holiday.
In June we saw the “strongly approve” vs “strongly disapprove” figure, known as the “Rasmussen Approval Index”, cross in to negative territory. In July we saw it in free-fall. Data courtesy Rasmussen Reports, LLC
As usual, to put this in context, here are the graphs for all of 2009. Data courtesy Rasmussen Reports, LLC
These numbers must be starting to cause some concern for Democrat officials who would be well aware that conservative commentators are pushing for as much of a backlash against the Obama administration in next year’s mid-term elections as possible. On the flipside, those of us on the conservative side of the fence are very pleased that these figures are showing that the gloss has well and truly worn off. Obama is no longer being viewed in terms of his personality, and is instead being judged on his performance.
