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On a recent trip to the supermarket, I spotted this interesting piece of advertising:
I don’t know about you, but if I was CSR I would be pretty annoyed that my product had been singled out and jammed into the faces of customers as being the “bad choice” against the in-house brand.
Doesn’t seem quite right to me.
We all agree the recent spate of flooding up and down Australia’s eastern seaboard of epic – and some say biblical – proportions has been a terrible disaster. The final damage bill will probably be never accurately known, but will undoubtedly also be of epic or biblical proportions. It will certainly be massive.
There has however been a lot of political opportunism going on, at a time when it really shouldn’t be about politics.
Greens leader Bob Brown was attributed as saying “coal miners caused the floods” – and although this quote has been shown to not be entirely accurate, he certainly did say in a press release:
“”It is unfair that the cost is put on all taxpayers, not the culprits””
“”Burning coal is a major cause of global warming. This industry, which is 75% owned outside Australia, should help pay the cost of the predicted more severe and more frequent floods, droughts and bushfires in coming decades. As well, 700,000 seaside properties in Australia face rising sea levels.””
So while he didn’t exactly say “coal miners caused the floods”, he clearly labels them a “culprit”. Although the comments are most likely more destructive than they are useful, he’s not the only politician using the floods as a political platform.
Opposition leader Tony Abbott stated in a recent radio or television interview – (I missed it myself and if anyone has a link, I would be grateful) – in a thinly-veiled attack on the current budget deficit, that a cleanup of this magnitude required a “strong budget surplus”.
What?
Homes and lives have been destroyed – (and in some cases still in the process of being destroyed) – and he wants to make it about his budgetary surplus crusade.
Gutless. Utterly gutless.
Later, he has called for the scrapping of the National Broadband Network project, using the funds for the flood rebuild. Of course, blocking the funding for the NBN – a 10 year project – does not make that funding available to use for the rebuilding effort.
The NBN is to be funded from government debt and external investment, with its business plan demonstrating that the network itself will self-fund the repayment of that debt over the life of the project.
Scrapping the NBN will not release any significant amount of funding that could be used for flood relief. Yes the money has to come from somewhere, but Abbott seems primarily concerned about the precious budget surplus. What about the huge number of jobs the construction of the NBN will bring to Australia? Do we just forget those? Do we ignore the value to the economy they would provide?
The latest news is that the government are considering introducing a once-off taxation levy for all Australians to help fund the effort. You know, to lessen the effect on the budget?
| PM Flags Levy to Pay for Flood Recovery |
So what does Tony say about that?
“”I’m opposed to unnecessary new taxes and that’s what this is””
So he’s worried about the budget, yet considers this effort to minimise the effect on the budget an “unnecessary new tax”. The article goes on to state that “the Coalition says Labor should stick to its surplus promise and appears set to oppose any extra levy to fund a multi-billion-dollar rebuilding package”.
You can’t worry about the state of the budget, but oppose something designed to minimise damage that would be caused to it by this unfortunate situation. People without jobs, who are struggling to make ends meet, who are without homes, and who have just lost loved ones don’t give a rats arse about budget surpluses or deficits.
Get a grip Tony. On reality.
Stop the flood of political bullshit – and lets get on with helping these people get on with their lives. Donate to the Premier’s Flood Relief Fund.
UPDATE: Thanks to @Drag0nista for finding the original quote regarding “strong budget surplus” from Abbott, documented here, and at the Liberal Party website in this article.
Well, yet again this morning, thousands of commuters from the western suburbs of Melbourne and Geelong had their daily travel severely disrupted, after a power failure at Newport station disabled signals and points.
Now, I’m the first to accept that unexpected things happen all the time, and that running an integrated public transport network is undoubtedly difficult, but the regularity of problems at Newport are becoming monotonous.
Whether it be extreme heat, heavy rain, theft of copper, or intervention from wildlife – as is claimed happened this morning – Newport seems to be a regular spot for massive failures that disables large chunks of the network.
| Commuters Powerless as Possum Zaps Power to Trains, Homes |
Okay, so the problems happen – and despite the inevitable frustration life does go on.
However, many people on the Geelong line in particular gave up completely this morning and went home – how much productivity was lost today?
For many, it would have been the first working day of their year. For others, they would have been starting new jobs today – imagine how they felt and how “good” they looked to their new employers turning up two hours late, as many of us did?
Newport has become a single point of failure. As a key junction on a major line, an outage there is devastating for the on-time running and performance of the entire Melbourne train network, and the regional V/Line network’s South Western line.
Where the problem lies is contingency. There is none. There is a single physical regular point of failure, but elsewhere there are many points of failure – and they have nothing to do with possums electrocuting themselves on power lines.
It’s called communication, being honest in that communication, and being timely in that communication. Lets look at some quotes from the above article.
“The possum electrocuted itself on residential powerlines in Newport at 3.58am, short-circuiting a switch controlling power to Newport railway station as well as 430 homes and businesses in Newport and area, said a spokesman for electricity company Jemena.”
Okay, so this happened at 3:58am. At this point, something should have happened. Someone should have figured out this might cause a problem or two, or several hundred thousand.
Contingency should have started at this point. Someone should be contacting bus companies and putting them on standby. Organising drivers, and getting ready. I heard numerous reports this morning of ample buses being available, but no drivers to drive them.
In the end, after three hours to do something, very few buses turned up to deal with the few thousand people stranded without an alternative to get to work.
This is a failure of process, and should be embarrassing.
Further, a work colleague – (when I eventually arrived) – who travels from Hoppers Crossing on the metropolitan network through Newport at about 6am said there were no delays for her.
Yet this happened at 3:58am? Were trains being sent through despite signal and points failures – (unlikely) – or is “3:58am” a load of cobblers?
This seems to be a failure of honesty. Next quote:
“Passengers travelling from Geelong had been urged to find an alternative to the train to get to work today.”
Nope. Wrong. As I sat on my 7:04 train at North Geelong this morning – (for 89 minutes) – there were any number of announcements about there being “no new information” as to what was going on. There were repeated calls over about 45 minutes that buses would arrive in around “5 to 10 minutes”.
Eventually five arrived – (carrying between 200 and 250 people out of the 600 or so on the train) – but there was no urging to find alternatives to the train. In fact, more often than not, the conductor on this service stated that it was “probably going to be quicker to stay on the train”.
Next quote:
“Mr Kelly, who said the infrastructure failure had affected V/Line’s busiest period of the morning, urged passengers travelling to ring V/Line to check today’s timetable.”
Why? Are you changing the timetable? Umm, no. This is just PR rhetoric to make people think they are “looking out” for the customers. If they were looking out for the customers, they would have started organising buses at 3:58am – (or is that 6am?). Next quote:
“But limited service had resumed by 9.3am, [sic] with trains expected to be running back on schedule by lunchtime.”
With reference to the previous quote, if normal services are running by lunchtime – (not long after a lot of people actually got to Melbourne if they even did at all) – again, why do we need to check today’s timetable? More rhetoric, or just making stuff up on the run to seem on top of things? Next quote:
“V/Line spokesman James Kelly said all services to and from Geelong were cancelled as a result of the power outage.”
Umm, no. They were not cancelled. They just sat at platforms – (noting tweets from other people, there were trains stuck at at least Geelong, North Geelong, Corio, Lara and Little River) – going nowhere, all of which originated after 3:58am, since the first train out of Geelong every weekday morning is at 4:45am.
I received two SMSs at 6:49am – allegedly sent at 5:48am – stating that one peak train was delayed for 30 minutes, and another off-peak train had been replaced by coaches – nothing about there being a massive failure of the network.
That’s just incompetent.
Yes V/Line – things go wrong, and they are unavoidable. What is avoidable is your complete lack of respect and service to your customers when things go wrong. Stop treating us like we are idiots.
So fix it, and while you’re at it, lobby the new government into actually spending some money to fix the problems that seem to plague Newport!
Then we won’t be so pissed off.
In one for the nerdy mail system administrators out there, I spotted a rather uncommon SPF result in my SMTP logs this morning.
If you know your SPF, you’ll know that no matter what IP address a piece of email comes from, with these records, the email will ALWAYS pass an SPF lookup. Clearly an interesting spammer tactic, and a demonstration as to why SPF is far from perfect, given you can put anything you like in the records.
I’ve discussed SPF before, and while it is certainly useful, what I saw this morning demonstrates that a better approach is needed.
Spotted this one in Woolworths while doing a spot of last minute New Year’s Eve shopping:
What exactly is a “wood buring oven”?
Here is some modern technology explained, complete with laugh functionality for your enjoyment on New Years Eve!
Happy New Year to everyone – see you on the other side…(tomorrow)…
We don’t get to see it very often, but today we saw the score which makes the hair on Richie Benaud’s neck stand up:
Tyoo for tyoo tyoo tyoo. Marvellous.
Scanning the Foxtel EPG this evening, I came across this rather ambiguously named program starring comedian Jimeoin:
I’m hoping they mean “ice” – as in frozen water – and not something else!
Funny!
In yet another thoroughly weak attempt to broadside the NBN, The Australian newspaper has come up with this latest piece of drivel:
| NBN Battery Recycling Could Add $240m |
Even if it does add that much to the total cost of the NBN – (and I’m in no position to judge how the recycling industry operates) – it sounds to me like a $240m investment in jobs in the recycling industry. That is, it would CREATE jobs. You know, get more people off unemployment benefits?
Is there nothing the NBN can’t do?
Through the National Broadband Network (NBN) business plan, released yesterday and available here, it becomes apparent that the NBN will allow for third party mobile service providers to use the network to expand their coverage.
Specifically, on page 48 of the plan, under “Backhaul Service to Mobile Base Station”, it states:
“The Plan assumes that NBN Co may offer carrier grade services on normal commercial terms to mobile operators in areas where NBN Co already has fibre, but will not build additional transit backhaul in areas beyond those specifically needed to service NBN Co’s own requirements.”
What this means is that mobile service providers – such as Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone Hutchison Australia for example – will be allowed to build towers to expand their mobile coverage footprint, and use the NBN to provide backhaul transmission to and from those towers.
If they want to build towers away from NBN-operated fibre links, they will have to provide their own backhaul – either directly to their own networks, or to a location within the NBN fibre footprint for backhaul to their networks. There has been some debate as to whether the NBN would allow for such connectivity, but the question seems to now be answered.
For consumers, this is a big win.
One of the largest blockers to the expansion of mobile coverage is the expense of building backhaul into tower locations. By using the NBN, this build cost will be largely eliminated, and make filling all those annoying mobile blackspots cheaper and easier to fill.
Another positive for the forthcoming build of the NBN.