I could be mistaken because there appear to be satellite issues tonight causing parts of words to be replaced with blips and blops, but did I hear you refer to "talkbock radio" at the top of the show? Could this be related to the "Bock of the 90s" from one of your previous haunts?
In regards to tennis at the Olympics…I can't stand tennis! Golf and Lawn Bowls need to be added to the Olympics, shall I leave it in your capable hands to organise that? I can see it now, Stuart Bocking, Australia's first golfing gold medallist.
The offer by Pakistan to give each and every one of our cricket players a "presidential style security team" is very generous, but it doesn't change the fact that DFAT considers it to be a dangerous country.
I don't think that Cricket Australia have any right to decide whether the team go or not. It should be up to each individual player to decide whether they want to go in to a dangerous situation in which they have a decent chance of not coming home in one piece.
It's either that, or add a clause to the players' contracts which says something along the lines of "Thou shalt go wherever the chaiman of Cricket Australia decrees".
Seeing as it's Mark Knopfler's birthday, do you think there is any chance of you playing Going Home, the theme of the Local Hero (John Stanley's theme music)?
I'd be ever so appreciative if you could, it's a great piece of music.
Regards, Samuel Gordon-Stewart Canberra
For those of you who are wondering what I’m going on about, here’s the best version of the music that I can find on YouTube.
19 countries in nine months? No wonder the solution to everything is a website with a list of prices…the Internet's the only way Kevin 07 can keep up with the latest news in the country he's supposedly running.
I wonder if anybody's told him that there's an entire department of diplomats and he doesn't have to be the ambassador to everything? And um, when do I get my share of the frequent flyer points from all of these trips that I'm helping to pay for?
I tuned in to a few minutes of the swimming last night and I have to agree that Bruce's commentary was flat, which surprised me as he covered the 2006 Commonwealth Games in partnership with the late great Clinton Grybas and their commentary was spectacular. That said though, I'd prefer a flat Bruce over Ray Warren whom I just can't stand commentating anything let alone swimming.
Personally I think Seven should have outsourced the AFL coverage to Fox and simulcast the matches much like they do with the Sunday game in some markets when Fox have the more relevant match for the region. Doing this would have enabled them to send Dennis Cometti to the Olympics to relive his fantastic swimming commentary of the 2000 games.
I don't really care about the Olympics though so I'm glad that Dennis is here doing a great job with the AFL. I'll be interested in the Olympics once they add golf and lawn bowls to the schedule.
In reply to the question of whether I have ever seen a dog walking a human, the answer is yes, every time my dog takes me for a walk. I have almost no say in which direction we go or how often we must stop to sniff things…and for some reason, whenever I want a quick walk, the directive from my canine overlord seems to involve a lot of very slow walking and a stop every half a metre.
It’s very clear who wears the doggy coat in this relationship!
I'm disappointed with Channel Seven and Prime Television in Canberra this evening. In Melbourne the AFL started half an hour early at 7pm to allow Seven to screen the entire match before the opening ceremony of the Olympic games. Normally in Canberra we would get the AFL match at 8:30pm on a one hour delay, however tonight they've been running various shows about China and the Olympics since 7pm, and they're not going to show tonight's AFL match until 7:50 tomorrow morning.
I suppose I can be happy that they;re not replacing the overnight shopping at 1am with the AFL and I can therefore watch it at an almost sensible hour, but I would have been much happier if the AFL had been screened at 7pm in Canberra.
I see that the ACCC have decided that their amazing solution to everything, a website with a list of prices, would be a good idea to keep the supermarkets in line.
For petrol I can almost understand it because it’s a very small number of products which can easily be compared between outlets…I don’t, however, see how “grocery watch” is going to have any chance of succeeding when each supermarket has thousands upon thousands of products. The only way that such a website would work is if either the supermarkets are required to report their prices each day which would take a bit of work, especially for smaller outlets who might want to have some discounts during the afternoon, or if the ACCC were to pay people to walk around each store every day noting the prices on a portable computer which reports back to the website.
Having the supermarkets do it would mean that they need to spend more time monitoring their own prices, a cost which would effectively be passed on to consumers, and having the ACCC run the monitoring operation would require a massive increase in their budget, which would get passed on to us as an increase in taxes. Ultimately, for the website to work, our cost of living would have to go up…it hardly seems worth it to me.
As for mandatory unit pricing…well that idea has been floating around for ages…it’s nice to see that the ACCC know how to take credit for an idea though.
Just listening to you talking about the smog being visible within the swimming complex in Beijing. To find a similar amount of fog in Sydney you don’t need to look any further than the M5 tunnel…although I suppose the big difference is that no athletes are trying to compete in the M5 tunnel.
Imagine what the swimming venue would be like if it was filled with cars!
I listened with interest to the caller you had on just after the 10pm news (I think his name was Tom) who said that he usually has to wait one to two weeks just to see a GP here in metropolitan Canberra.
I live in Canberra and I have a doctor who bulk bills at one of the ACT government health centres and I almost never have a problem getting in on the same day. They have a rule that you must ring to make an appointment to see the doctor and I think this helps with the congestion problem, and admittedly the spots do fill up quickly…it's basically a "call by 9am or you'll have to wait until tomorrow" situation, but I find it extraordinary that there are clinics which have accepted that many patients that they can't see anyone for at least a week. I've had three different GPs in the last twenty years and I have never had a problem with being able to make an appointment to see a doctor on that day.
I know that it's a difficult decision to move doctor because your GP gets to know you and your medical history quite well, but I really think that in Tom's case, he should "shop around"…there are a number of doctors in Canberra who are for more expedient than his doctor.
I hope you're well…you're certainly sounding quite sprightly!
You're right, "Love Song" by Sara Bareilles is great song…my toes were tapping the whole way through that and I went and bought it from iTunes as soon as you finished playing it.
I've got two tips for you for the weekend. An omen bet in the horses, Caufield Race 5, number 6, Heavenly (it's the right weekend for it), and in the AFL, the Bulldogs to defeat the Cats by 11 points in a close encounter at Skilled Stadium tomorrow afternoon.
I'm sorry to hear that Scott Burgess from Water Rats is going through marital problems, but to the same extent it doesn't really bother me, just like almost every other "celebrity" story. I do hope that his problems are sorted out quickly.
To answer your question, the show ended on the seventh of August 2001. It was a great Australian drama and I was sorry to see it go, but it was also good that the producers were informed that Channel Nine wouldn't be renewing the program and they therefore had a chance to write a good conclusion. The show ran for six years.
Channel Nine have been repeating the show in the wee hours of the morning in recent years, and I believe that it will be on at some stage tomorrow morning. I try to watch it when Nine repeat it, and I'm slowly building up a collection of the DVDs of the series.
I also noticed that a couple weeks ago the New South Wales police named their newest boat the "Nemesis", which just happens to be the name of the main police boat on Water Rats. All they need now is a "Harpie" and a car named "Water Police 200" and they'll have the full set!
I tuned in half way through your pet of the week segment and I didn't know that you were talking about a pet…so I was a tad shocked when I heard a woman telling you that "Bindi is up for adoption and people can pick her up from the shelter". The first thought that popped in to my mind was "Gee, the Irwin's are getting stanger".
Thankfully that wasn't the case. Bindi the dog sounds like an adorable pet.
2cc Jane’s “editorialising”. My saying is “I don’t rant, I editorialise”. Samuel
I like 2CC’s SMS functionality. It might cost me 55 cents to send them a message, but it’s immediate and it’s worth it, especially for things which don’t warrant a phone call.
On Tuesday you were talking about the amount of coffee people consume per day, and you also didn't seem to like the cold coffee which was sitting on your desk at the time.
I usually have four or five cups of coffee per day, most of them will be after 3pm. During the day I'll probably take a very long time to drink a coffee while I work. The coffee which is on my desk at the moment is about 25% consumed and has been here for nearly two hours. I'll probably finish it just before lunch.
I'm quite partial to cold coffee, I think it tastes better than hot coffee but that could just be because I struggle to taste warm things.
It's great to have you on the morning show, I hope you've enjoyed your couple of weeks filling in for Pricey and that you come back again soon.