Samuel's Blog

Labor leadership spill 11:16am

It’s being recounted apparently. We wait, and wait, and wait…

Samuel

February 27th, 2012 at 11:17am

Labor leadership spill: 10:50am. Unofficial breaking news: Gillard wins 73-29.

Breaking News: It looks like Julia Gillard has won.

Multiple sources saying she has won by 73-29. It’s a leaked and unofficial figure. Stand by for more.

Samuel

February 27th, 2012 at 10:50am

Labor leadership spill 10:05am

Julia Gillard just walked in. It looked like she had 9 or 10 people with her. Kevin had more…but it’s the vote that counts I suppose.

Samuel

February 27th, 2012 at 10:06am

Labor leadership spill: 10:00am

They’re walking in. I counted roughly 12 people walking in with Kevin. Only 40 more votes needed Kev!

Samuel

February 27th, 2012 at 10:03am

The view from the lawns of Parliament House

The media have descended on the lawns of Parliament house, from their Sydney abodes. Here is the view.

Sky News on the right, Sunrise on the left.

Sunrise hosts on the left, interview a politician on the right. Why not just bring him in to the tent?

Sunrise hosts Melissa Doyle and David Koch

Rob Oakeshott being interviewed by Ten, whose hosts are back in the studio.

The Today Show’s Karl Stefanovic with someone (Update: it’s former advisor to Kevin Rudd, Lachlan Harris).

It’s almost a tent embassy of its own.

I can’t see the ABC, but I’m sure they’re here somewhere.

I think it’s a radio stunt as this person appeared to come from the general direction of the Mix 106.3 car, and was giving an interview to someone on the phone, but it looks like Karl Stefanovic gets at least one vote to become the next Prime Minister.

Samuel

Update: Here’s Kevin

Update: Tony Abbott has arrived, and looks set to appear on Sunrise after Kevin.

Another update: Look at the media swarming around the Sunrise tent with Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott there.

And my goodness, aren’t they excited when he tries to get to his waiting car.

A final observation: After Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott appeared on Sunrise from out the front of Parliament House, Kevin Rudd was driven to Parliament in a government car, but Tony Abbott walked. Remind me who was supposedly more environmentally friendly?

Samuel

February 27th, 2012 at 07:37am

Predictions for the Labor leadership showdown

I have been asked (not here, but elsewhere) to predict who will win today, and how many votes Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd will receive.

By the looks of it, only 102 Labor MPs will be voting today due to one of them being absent. This means that 52 votes are needed for there to be a winner. The main problem I see for both sides here is that, if the result is not a landslide (and I am not expecting a landslide) then the loser can cling on to some credibility and make this happen all over again later in the year. For stable government, a landslide is required. Without a landslide, I expect a general election within the year.

To be clear, if the loser receives more than 35 votes, then I expect to see a general election before the year is out. If the loser receives more than 45 votes, then I expect to see a general election called within the next six months.

My prediction for today is that it will be close. I expect Julia Gillard to win, but I don’t expect her to get more than 62 votes. I predict that Julia Gillard will receive between 59 and 62 votes (inclusive) and Kevin Rudd will receive between 40 and 43 votes (inclusive). If I have to pick an exact figure, then I’ll go 61-41.

I seem to be expecting a closer vote than many are, but I doubt that Kevin Rudd would have wanted this unless he knew that he could command a respectable number of votes. To the same extent, Julia wouldn’t have called the leadership spill unless she believed that she would win. I think there are enough people in the Labor ranks with fond memories of poor-but-higher poll numbers under Kevin Rudd to want to give him another chance, but not enough who want to return to his style of dictatorial leadership to make it happen.

Meanwhile, I note that Padders has interviewed a “Parliament House insider” over at The Right Aussie, and they are both expecting a much clearer victory for Julia Gillard. The “insider” is predicting a 74-28 win for Julia, while Padders is predicting a 70-32 win for Julia.

Oh, I forgot to mention what I think will happen if Kevin Rudd becomes Labor leader. That one falls squarely in the “general election to be called within six months” basket.

Samuel

February 27th, 2012 at 07:10am

The circus meets today

An email to 2GB’s Andrew Moore

Good morning Andrew,

Well it’s finally arrived, the day of the great circus meeting. Later today the clowns will meet under the big top on the hill in Canberra to vote for a new ringmaster.

Did you know that both of them are magicians? Both of them recant magic phrases such as “moving forward” “let me say this” “clean energy future” and “Mr. Speaker”, and without fail, every time they utter one of these magic phrases, money vanishes from the Treasury coffers!

I’m tipping that Julia will stay in charge, but regardless of the outcome, I don’t think anything will change for the better.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

February 27th, 2012 at 04:11am

The Sunday Bits for the 26th of February, 2012

Good morning.

Based on some feedback, I have decided that in order to make these Sunday Bits posts a bit easier to navigate, they will now contain a list of contents, and headers at the start of each section. I hope this makes it easier for you to read the bits that interest you, and skip the ones that don’t, rather than simply skipped the entire post due to a small section which doesn’t interest you.

In this edition:
* A prediction for tomorrow’s Labor leadership showdown
* The first radio ratings of 2012
* 2UE dumps their only weekday ratings winner of 2012
* Why telecommunication monopolies are bad
* A review (well, almost) of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
* Mount Majura in the fog

A prediction for tomorrow’s Labor leadership showdown

Tomorrow morning at about 11am we will know, one way or another, who will lead the Australian Labor Party for at least the next few days, and who will probably be sworn in as Prime Minister when Governor-General Quentin Bryce returns to the country on Thursday or Friday.

(Thanks to Jane Turner from 7HO FM in Hobart for the image)

My prediction is that Julia Gillard will win, but not because she is a better leader. I expect her to win on the basis that the agreement with the independents and the Greens was made with her, and not with the Labor Party. Julia Gillard was very clever when she made sure that the agreement was made with herself and not the Party as it helps to secure her position as leader, a position which she would have known would, at some stage, come under threat due to the tenuous nature of minority government.

Electing anyone other than Julia Gillard as Labor leader potentially puts the agreement with the cross-benches under threat, and could potentially lead to a new general election. At this time, based on current opinion polling, Labor do not want to risk an election which is likely to see them annihilated.

For the record, I doubt that the Greens will ever back out of their effective coalition with Labor, as they really need Labor more than Labor need them, but the independents are another story as they might see disassociating themselves with the current disorganised mess as a way to secure their seats.

On the off chance that Kevin Rudd or some other as-yet unnamed contender takes over the Labor leadership, they have the advantage of having the Governor-General out of the country until at least Thursday, giving them time to negotiate to keep the independents and the Greens on-side…because it would be terribly embarrassing and destructive to themself and the Labor party to take over as Prime Minister and then immediately have an election called due to a no-confidence motion succeeding in the parliament.

Also, while it is true that a state governor could swear in a new Prime Minister in the absence of the Governor-General, I doubt that it will happen as a new Labor leader won’t mind waiting a few days to shore up the numbers.

***

The first radio ratings of 2012

During the week, the first metropolitan radio ratings for the year were released.

On the whole, it wasn’t a great survey for commercial talk radio. In Sydney, while 2GB remains on top of the ratings by four whole percentage points, they did lose ground, losing 0.8 percentage points. 2UE went up by 0.3, mostly on the back of weekend ratings, but lost ground on most weekday shifts and remain a fair way down the ratings pile.

Sydney’s leaderboard is:
2GB: 13.4%
ABC 702: 9.4%
2DAY FM: 8.3%
WSFM: 7.8%
JJJ: 7.4%

The biggest winner was Triple J which went up 2.7% to 7.4%. The biggest loser was 2DAY FM which went down 1.6% to 8.3%.

Last place belongs to ABC NewsRadio on 2.2%.

In Melbourne, 3AW remains on top but, like 2GB, took a bit of a hit. MTR lost ground in every timeslot, although it is worth noting that some of the survey period took place while MTR were taking extra programming from 2GB, so the next survey will give a better indication of how the local news cutbacks have affected MTR. Interesting, for the first time in a very long time (many years I believe), 3AW’s Neil Mitchell did not win his timeslot. He lost 3.5 percentage points in the morning timeslot, dropping from 15.7% to 12.2%, meaning that the local ABC station’s Jon Faine is now winning mornings on 13.7%.

The leaderboard in Melbourne:
3AW: 12.8%
ABC 702: 12.3%
Fox FM: 9.6%
Nova: 8.5%
Gold FM: 7.4%

The biggest winner was Nova which went up 1.5% to 8.5%. The biggest loser was shared between Fox FM and Melbourne’s 91.5FM which both went down 1.3%, Fox to 9.6% and 91.5FM to 2.9%.

Last place went to MTR1377 and ABC NewsRadio, both on 1.4%.

In Brisbane, 4BC bucked the trend for commercial talk stations, going up by 0.9 percentage points.

Brisbane’s leaderboard:
97.3FM: 14.1%
ABC 612: 10.9%
Nova: 10.5%
B105: 10.2%
Triple M: 9.4%

The biggest winner was 97.3 which turned a narrow lead in to a massive one by gaining 2.4% to sit on 14.1%. The biggest loser was Triple M which lost 1.7% to drop from 4th to 5th, drop out of double digits, and sit on 9.4%.

In last place, yet again, ABC NewsRadio on 1.5%.

In Adelaide, FiveAA lost ground but remained in second place. Of particular concern for FiveAA has to be their afternoon drive shift which lost a whopping 6.3% to drop from 1st place to 5th place.

Adelaide’s leaderboard:
Mix 102.3: 14.1%
FiveAA: 12.1%
SAFM: 10.7%
ABC 891: 10.6%
Nova 9.6%

The biggest winner was Triple J which gained 2.7% to sit on 8.3%. The biggest loser was Mix 102.3 which lost 2.3% to sit on 13.6%, retaining first place due to FiveAA also losing ground.

In Perth, 6PR lost ground as well, losing 1.2% overall and losing ground in every timeslot. Howard Sattler suffered the biggest loss, losing 3.4%.

Perth’s leaderboard:
Mix 94.5: 16.2%
96FM: 11.8%
92.9FM: 11.7%
ABC 720: 11.4%
Nova & Triple J (tied): 9.5%

The biggest winner was 96FM which went up by 2.4% to 11.8%. The biggest loser was 6PR which went down by 1.2% to 8.1%.

Last place went to ABC NewsRadio on 1.2%.

The one consistent thing across all of the surveyed cities is that NewsRadio is in last place. How thankful the NewsRadio staff must be that it is not a commercial operation, and doesn’t need to make money, because if it was, heads would roll and changes would be made. For the rest of us, who pay for NewsRadio through our taxes, what a shame it is that we are paying for a service that almost nobody listens to, when in other countries all-news formats have been made commercially viable…even without the advertising, NewsRadio could reach a much larger audience simply by making some changes that have been proven to work elsewhere, but as long as the tax dollars keep rolling in, there is no incentive to do so, as thus, they won’t.

***

2UE dumps their only weekday ratings winner of 2012

Back to Sydney we go, and 2UE’s perennial game of shuffles is on again. Sport’s Today, which was dumped at the beginning of last year, is back, albeit with two extra hosts. It reclaims its old 6pm-8pm timeslot, bumping Murray Olds and Murray Wilton who have shared the 6pm-9pm timeslot over the last year to mixed success.

The Two Murrays, combined with Mike Jeffreys until midnight (as the publicly available data goes from 7pm-midnight) lost 2%, the station’s largest loss. It seems quite bizarre then that The Two Murrays are being placed in to the weekday afternoon slot, formerly hosted by Michael Smith and recently hosted by Stuart Bocking since Smith’s axing, when Stuart Bocking delivered the station’s largest weekday gain of 0.6%. Even stranger, Stuart has been dropped from the schedule completely. He remains on the payroll though, as is expected to be retained as a fill-in host, but I think it’s safe to say that Stuart deserves better given his recent performance.

Sports Today starts tomorrow. It’s likely that Mike Jeffreys’ night program will start at the earlier time of 8pm. The Two Murrays start in their new timeslot in a week, so Stuart Bocking probably still has the coming week in the timeslot.

Meanwhile it is rumoured that David Oldfield might also succumb to the game of shuffles, to be replaced by a duo of Prue MacSween and Tracey Spicer. David Oldfield has failed to make a dent on rival Ray Hadley’s ratings, and I highly doubt that anyone can make significant inroads there, so I understand the move to an extent.

I don’t have access to demographic breakdowns of Ray Hadley’s ratings, so this is all somewhat informed conjecture based on the callers to Ray’s show, but I have always thought that Ray’s ratings primarily come from a male audience, and an older female audience. 2UE have clearly attempted to attract a younger audience, and I suspect that they have a shot at attracting a decent-sized 30 to 6o-year-old female audience with a duo of Prue MacSween and Tracey Spicer. This is a demographic which, to my ear at least, is dominated by FM music stations and possibly ABC 702, and as such lacks any strong commercial talk presence. Talk radio generally has a more engaged audience due to the nature of the programming, and thus if 2UE can successfully build a reasonably sized female audience in that timeslot, then they could attract a new set of advertisers. Alas, I fail to see how The Two Murrays could retain that type of audience, and think Stuart Bocking would be much better at retaining a female audience, as women seem to absolutely love him.

***

Why telecommunication monopolies are bad

On Thursday, Telstra suffered a rather nasty outage on their network, apparently caused by an issue between themselves and Dodo, which took down their entire Australian data network for the better part of an hour. This caused issue beyond Telstra as many other internet service providers use Telstra’s network for various bits of their connections, however as other providers also hook in to networks other than Telstra’s network, many were able to route around Telstra and minimise the disruption for their own customers.

Some providers, my ISP Internode included, had almost no disruption as Telstra are not their primary network provider.

It’s a bad thing when a large player has an issue, but imagine what would happen in the case of a monopoly. The monopoly goes down, and this takes everyone down.

Now, aren’t you glad that in the not-too-distant future, everyone is going to be relying on the infrastructure of the National Broadband Network?

Ahh yes, the government-owned NBN Monopoly…is it any wonder that some worry about the possibility of the government having a “kill switch” for the internet once the NBN is in place? Even without a kill switch, the NBN will make us all reliant on a single network, which is precisely what the distributed nature of the internet was designed to prevent. It’s certainly not what I call “progress”.

***

A review (well, almost) of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

On Friday I went along to Dendy in Civic to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a movie which is set during the cold war years and involves a sacked British spy being asked to investigate the possibility that there is a Russian spy embedded at or near the top of MI6.

The movie is quite dense, and requires a lot of attention. Turn away or lose concentration for a minute, and you will miss vital information. This is a bit of a problem as the movie also makes you think, and there’s not a lot of time between informative bits of the movie in which to think.

It’s a very enjoyable movie, partially because it doesn’t waste time explaining things which are patently obvious, and is therefore aimed at an audience which enjoys working things out for themselves.

Without giving away any detail of the ending, I will say that it leaves you somewhat satisfied, but still wanting more, and also leaves you thinking and putting together some of the dots that the movie doesn’t fully explain.

I enjoyed it, but want to see it again on DVD (yes, I am one of those people who has not upgrade to Blu Ray yet) so that I can pause and rewind the movie occasionally to check things.

The movie is rated MA, but I can’t work out why. “Strong Violence” is the reason according to the consumer advice, but the violence in the movie is really extremely intermittent and no worse than a shooting or two, and a beating. Even with the sex scenes, I see no good reason for this to be rated higher than M.

Four and a half stars from me. I would have given it five stars if the movie had taken just a bit more time to explain the ending. Then again, maybe it did, and I missed those plot points while I was thinking.

***

Mount Majura in the fog

Finally, a photo to leave you with on a mostly cloudy day in Canberra. It’s not from today, but was a nice sight earlier in the week anyway. Mount Majura, with the airport radar obscured by fog.

Samuel

February 26th, 2012 at 09:10am

Distraction in the middle of something important

I was watching a bit of ABC News 24 a little while ago (yes, I know, me watching ABC News 24…it’s a very rare occurrence indeed…I was going to watch Becker on Eleven at midnight, but Southern Cross replace it with some el-cheapo clone of Quizmania so I decided to watch the top of the hour news instead) and while I was generally quite impressed with their coverage of the Labor leadership kerfuffle and a few other things about the way in which they are putting together news packages, there was one thing which I thought was really very odd.

A package about the leadership kerfuffle aired as the lead story on the midnight eastern news bulletin. At the beginning of it was a bit on how Kevin Rudd’s house is apparently the headquarters for his leadership challenge, complete with footage of someone who either was, or looked like, Bruce Hawker, walking through a gate. There was also footage of Kevin Rudd’s daughter and her partner walking towards Kevin Rudd’s front gate and having to almost battle their way through a pack of journalists who were asking her questions which she had no intention of answering. That’s fair enough, she did after all put herself in the public sphere on this issue by making a public statement on the issue on Twitter.

The odd bit came just after her and her partner walked through the gate. A voice can be heard to say “Oh my God, what a s***fight” (although they did not obscure it as I have). From watching it, it is entirely unclear whether this voice which was heard was that of Kevin’s daughter’s partner, or that of a journalist or other media person. There is no super to provide attribution to the voice, and no visible mouth emitting the words.

It was odd, but it’s News 24. Like any news service, stuff does occasionally slip through which perhaps shouldn’t, and given that it’s late at night I would not have been surprised if this had just “slipped through”…and I wouldn’t have minded.

But it didn’t just “slip through”. At 12:18 eastern, Lateline was replayed on ABC News 24, and at the start of Lateline was this same package, this same footage, and not surprisingly, the same mysterious voice uttering the same words.

(The package can be viewed on the Lateline website at http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3439356.htm. My apologies for not embedding the video, but the ABC do not appear to permit direct embedding of their videos)

This really made me wonder whose words they were, because if they were the words of Kevin’s daughter’s partner, then I can completely understand leaving them in, although I probably wouldn’t have done so myself under the same circumstances as, although it makes it clear that the pair were not enjoying the media attention, we already got that information from the way they reacted as they walked through the press pack. But if they were the words of a media type, then they add no value to the story whatsoever and should not have stayed in as the pair were already well through the gate by the time the words were uttered, and even if they hadn’t been well through the gate, the words could have been obscured.

The Lateline website (linked above) provides a transcript of that section of the package.

TOM IGGULDEN, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Kevin Rudd’s Brisbane home is campaign headquarters for his leadership tilt. It’s a family affair – even his expectant daughter came.

REPORTER: (to Jessica Rudd) Do you think he’s got a really good chance against Gillard?

REPORTER II: What do you think of Gillard?

JESSICA RUDD, KEVIN RUDD’S DAUGHTER: Sorry…

REPORTER III: How’s the pregnancy going?

REPORTER IV: Oh my God, what a s***fight.

(Again, I’ve obscured the word, they did not)

So it was a media person. Then why was it left in? What possible value could it have had? I could understand an oversight in the original airing of the package on Lateline, but this is the ABC we are talking about here, an organisation with more behind-the-scenes people and more bureaucratic signing-off-on-stuff procedures than most media outlets could even begin to imagine…if it was an oversight, it should, and I dare say would, have been picked up by someone and edited out before the package went to air again, and before the transcript appeared on the website.

But then, the transcript is on the website. The transcript would have been derived from the same text which produced the closed captions for the package. The very presence of those words in the transcript indicates that somebody decided that the words should be present in the package. That, I find odd. The fact that, after seeing that they were the words of a media person and not of Kevin Rudd’s daughter’s partner, somebody didn’t question it and have it removed before it aired again or before it went up on the Lateline website, is poor judgement. Admittedly, it may have been difficult to remove it from the replay of Lateline in markets which do not take it live, and dropping it from the video on the website would have been an awful lot of extra effort which may not have been worthwhile, but removing it from the transcript and from future airings of the package in subsequent news bulletins, would have been quite simple and prudent.

The reason this bothers me is that, like Mark Riley’s puns in Seven News’ political packages, the words add nothing useful to the story, but distract from it instead. The rest of the package, and indeed the rest of the coverage of the leadership kerfuffle was quite exemplary. I was particularly pleased by the fact that the reporter, Tom Iggulden, made sure that the staged cheering when Julia Gillard walked in to an office was reported as just that, staged cheering. He did this by showing footage of the supporters rehearsing their cheering for the media act…and this is the type of reporting that I have been waiting for as I have had a problem with the long-standing tradition of journalists watching people rehearse a “reaction” and then reporting it as “spontaneous”. Tom Iggulden deserves to be congratulated for this.

I won’t harp on about it any longer though, as I’m sure that every political journalist in the country has had a very long day and has a bunch of very long days ahead, and on the whole they do tend to be doing quite a good job of covering the leadership kerfuffle, which is itself a distraction in the middle of something important, as the job of governing the country is being neglected while the governing party try to work out how to govern themselves…and while I would argue that the country is probably better off for not having Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd meddling in the affairs of the nation for a while, it is also true that the country suffers when the incompetence of a government shines a light of uncertainty on everything that it is supposed to be managing, especially when the people who are vying for power are espousing policy positions which they have never espoused before, leaving us all wondering where they actually stand on anything.

Samuel

February 25th, 2012 at 01:40am

NRL finals system scrapped, and the farce of the Labor leadership battle

An email to 2GB’s Andrew Moore

Good morning Andrew,

It’s good to see the NRL commission making decisions, as the NRL seems to have lacked proper decision making for a long time, but I don’t like their decision to scrap the McIntyre system. I like the uncertaintly of the first week. I like the fact that only the top two teams are guaranteed a second chance. I like the battle among the rest. But, the decision has been made, and there are more important things in the world…

Sadly Kevin Rudd is one of them. Hopefully his resignation as Foreign Minister will help to bring down this farce of a government. The situation is so dire that you could see Simon Crean’s eyes light up when he realised that even has half a chance of being Prime Minister.

It’s ridiculous Andrew. We need an election. The people should decide this one, because it’s clear that the politicians can not.

Have a good weekend.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

February 23rd, 2012 at 04:51am

Sympathy vote for Kevin

By now you have probably seen, or at the very least heard about, this video of Kevin Rudd swearing in frustration after he failed, multiple times, to read a script in Mandarin off a teleprompter.

(Warning: Language Alert. This video is NOT censored)

To put the situation in a bit of context, Kevin Rudd is not quite the master of Mandarin that some believe he is. He can speak the language to a passable extent and would be able to get by in most day-to-day conversations on normal, mundane topics, but he can not read the language. As such, when he was attempting to record this video for a Mandarin-speaking audience, the sound of the Mandarin had to be converted to English letters for him to be able to read it on the teleprompter. Unfortunately it seems that the people responsible for the speech have written the sentences in a more convoluted way than was absolutely necessary (in much the same way that it would have been simpler for me to write “Sadly the speech writers used more difficult language than they had to” in the sentence before this interjection) and this tripped Kevin up quite a bit.

As happens with most people who struggle to read a script for a recording, be it video or audio, Kevin got annoyed with himself.

I have to say that, the video as released, seems to work in Kevin Rudd’s favour. It elicits a sympathy vote as everyone has known for ages and ages that he has a temper, and the release of the video appears to be a malicious attempt to smear him by showing him to be even more prone to temper tantrums that was previously thought. I don’t think it was a malicious release though…I think it was made to look that way, but I think a Kevin Rudd supporter has released it to elicit a sympathy vote for the reason listed above, and for sympathy with his plight in struggling to read a foreign language aloud.

If this was truly a malicious leak, the bits of the video where Kevin Rudd appears to be declaring Mandarin to be a stupid and overly-complicated language would be more heavily emphasised, and the bits which clarify this to be about the way it has been written by the speech writers, and not about the Mandarin language itself, would have been removed.

Just the way it has been edited, and the interesting timing when the Labor Party leadership rumours and tensions are reaching fever pitch, makes it seem to me as if this is a concerted effort by someone, possibly with Kevin’s knowledge, but not necessarily with it, to boost Kevin Rudd’s popularity.

If polling is released later this week which shows that Kevin Rudd is immensely more popular than Julia Gillard, I will not be surprised; and if that happens then I fully expect a leadership challenge and an election to be called a short time thereafter in the hopes that a “honeymoon period” will carry Labor across the line without the need for tenuous support from Greens and independents. It does seem to be about the only hope Labor have right now based on recent polling trends.

Samuel

February 19th, 2012 at 05:24pm

The horrible service of Woolworths Dickson

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.

Yours Sincerely,

Samuel Gordon-Stewart

2 comments February 17th, 2012 at 07:30am

Magda Szubanski advocates the mandatory drugging of the entire population to cure “intolerance”

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.

(The embedded video is not working properly in some browsers. The direct link to the video is http://theprojecttv.com.au/video.htm?movideo_p=39696&movideo_m=162684 if you’re having issues watching it. Thanks to Lynn to reporting the issue.)

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)

5 comments February 15th, 2012 at 06:08am

$200,000 to brand the carbon dioxide tax?

An email to 2GB’s Andrew Moore

Good morning Andrew,

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.

February 13th, 2012 at 04:31am

Some fantastic news from the Republican race

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.

Samuel

2 comments February 8th, 2012 at 06:27pm