Archive for Soapbox
Pathetic Parliaments
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Leaders who lie
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s sad that we no longer have any ability as a community to hold our leaders accountable for their words or promises. Take our current Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd and his current decision to spend $38 million dollars on an advertising campaign supporting his new resources company taxation. Quite apart from the fact that the application of simple logic would tell any thinking human being that the expenditure is immoral …
He was asked in 2007 if he would resign if he had not delivered this system within his first term.
Mr Rudd replied: “In terms of establishing the office of the auditor-general with clear-cut guidelines to whom every television campaign is submitted for approval before that television campaign is implemented, you have my absolute, 100 per cent guarantee that that will occur.
“One hundred per cent guarantee and each one of you here can hold me accountable for that.”
But two months ago the auditor-general was sidelined from the job.
Somehow, when you have achieved power the phrase “one hundred percent guarantee” actually means, well nothing I guess!
Anyone got any idea how we can elect honest persons to be our leaders, and failing that, how do we force them to remain honest, or depart? As far as I am aware Rudd hasn’t even felt the need to explain his change of heart.
Unfortunately, those who aspire to power seem to be the ones who know that those over whom they exercise power are totally apathetic.
Is it unreasonable to expect telco gouging to be stopped?
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A colleague, knowing that I had recently fallen foul of yet another telco for thousands of dollars of “excess usage charges”, sent me this link, presumably thinking it might make me feel better.
Instead, it prompted me to recall that this is the fourth time a telco (a different one each time) has gouged, or attempted to, gouge me.
I am unable to use the services of one large Australian Telco because, even though they do not attempt to collect it, they retain a record of a debt in their system. So, if I attempt to sign up for a new service, they accept my application subject to the payment of an eight year old $14,000 debt.
Another luckily collapsed under the weight of its rich and powerful promoters while suing me for thousands in excess usage.
Yet another continued to charge me $500 per month for services which were available from other vendors, and to their new customers, for about $90 per month. In this case I was an early adopter of a new service and ended up paying several thousand dollars more than the provider charged later signups for the same service. They hid behind their “contract” to insist on payment. Read More→
Storm in a Teacup?
Posted by: | CommentsI know it is just a game, and I know I have more important things to do than post this blog entry. But, I can’t help wondering what it is that I am missing about the ginormous kerfuffle encompassing Victoria and the NRL.
According to the official Storm website there are 36 players on the NRL squad. In the absence of any better information I will assume that this number is not unusual. So, what is the magnitude and significance of the overpayments?
Read More→The VicPolice Text Message
Posted by: | CommentsIn case you are not aware, VicPolice sent (or caused to be sent) a SMS (text) message to somewhere between 1.5 and 5 million mobile phones yesterday. It reads
Extreme weather In Vic expected Mon night & Tues. High wind & fire risk. Listened to Local ABC radio for emergency updates. Do not reply to this msg.
I have been pondering my attitude to the VicPolice text message all day — and after discussing initial responses with other individuals, and reading a fair range of Web based public reaction, have arrived at at somewhat less inflammatory conclusion than what I had earlier today. But, my opinion perhaps is not as favorable, or forgiving as the “consensus”.
It would seem that the general consensus of opinion is that the message was, “a good thing”, or at least “not a bad thing”. This is based on the premise that it could only be good if more people were advised that there was an increased fire risk today and that it was a minor inconvenience if you already knew, or were not in a risk area.
However, a text message is directed to an individual, from an individual or organisation. Even if the message is “broadcast” to a large number of individuals, the message itself, arriving at a single mobile phone, is not a broadcast a message in the normal sense of the word. Therefore I conclude that, a personal message sent to people who have no exposure of risk, is unlikely to be effective.
It would be ridiculous to suggest that anyone living in high fire risk areas in Victoria was not aware of the risks they face and the need to monitor those risks. After all, the current risks are largely from the same fires that have already caused so much tragedy. So, the text message to them achieved nothing. And the text message to everyone else equally achieved nothing as the recipients were not at risk. Thus, the telecommunication companies who we are told were required to carry the cost of this exercise, simply wasted their time, bandwidth and money.
The underlying problem is of course is that it is virtually impossible to accurately predict a level of risk justifying that extreme measures be taken to advise the public. Equally, it is virtually impossible to identify exactly who is at risk. For example, today one could reasonably suggest that those most at risk were in fact non-Victorians visiting fire prone areas of Victoria. The shotgun approach of VicPolice apparently would not have reached many, if any of these at risk people.
Also, I would suggest that observations about lack of warnings on Black Saturday, by those who did suffer loss, did not relate to the general warnings before Saturday, but the apparent lack of specific warnings in relation to the nature and severity of the threat to individual towns and communities after the fires were raging.
In conclusion, without implying that the authorities were doing anything other than attempting to provide a service to the community, I doubt that the experiment could in any way be described as a success. And, in case you think this unreasonable, I am defining “success” as making a significant number of individuals who were unaware of the risk that they personally faced, take steps to protect themselves and their property.
Is it only me who is confused?
Posted by: | CommentsI have been debating with myself whether or not to make this post, ever since the announcement of the Royal Commission into the Victorian bushfires was announced. Each time it was mentioned I was sure I heard a figure of $40 million being the cost of the enquiry. No, I thought, I must have misheard the figure — maybe it was actually $4 million.
So now I am confused. Why, because it appears that the Victorian government has allocated $10 million to aid the 7000+ victims of the bushfires (something less than $1,500 per head), but four times that amount to find out why they are victims.
The royal commissioner will have about $100,000 per day to spend during his enquiry. Some quick arithmetic gives the result that the commissioner could employ about 500 people earning average weekly earnings for this amount. On the other hand, most royal commission money is paid to lawyers. If there were 100 lawyers involved in the enquiry, there would be $400,000 per head available to them.
It also crosses my mind that governments are generally very quick to announce royal commissions, but notoriously slow at adopting any recommendations they might make. If we are to spend $40 million on an enquiry it had better be good enough for every last recommendation or suggestion to be adopted without any question from the government at the time.
So, is it only me who is confused?
No to Australian Bank "Disloyalty" ATM Fees
Posted by: | CommentsAustralian Banks are apparently not making enough profits so have announced new ATM fees including a “disloyalty” fee for using another bank’s ATM machine. The new fees means that we could be paying $5.00 for a visit to an ATM! Read more about the plans here.
This has to represent all that is bad about our banking system and the way that banks are taking advantage of technology. Firstly, how can anyone suggest that we do not suffer under an evil cartel. The bank leaders in Australia could form a synchronised swimming team and not even have to practice before winning gold at the Olympics. Secondly, can you imagine any bank having the gall to require their tellers to demand $5.00 from customers before serving them? Unfortunately, it’s easy to rip an estimated $200 million per year from customers when it’s done by a machine!
OK, maybe their synchronised actions do not qualify as a cartel in the legal sense, but I’m sure that Joe Citizen wold be unimpressed by arguments that it is pure coincidence that the banks all raise and lower interest and fees by remarkably similar amounts, generally within hours of each other.
Anyway, inspired by a campaign against a stupid copyright law change in New Zealand which has seen the Twitter trend #blackout reach Number One spot, I’m launching #disloyalty to see if we can send a message to any banks considering this unfair fee.
At the time of the launch, a search of recent tweets referring to the disloyalty fee found just one result from @sdipietr
And another thing, I’d love to hear an explanation from from St George (Westpac) why a credit card charge in a shop is reflected in my account balance in real time, but the reversal of the same transaction – 5 minutes later, same credit card, same eftpos machine, same computer system, same everything except the direction of the money flow – takes 3 or 4 days to be reflected in my balance.
