Tomorrow the Australian state of Queensland, where I live, introduces its first fuel tax. Petrol will be 9¢ dearer per litre. Imagine my surprise when I tried to pull into a petrol station this afternoon and the whole forecourt and the major road that turns into it was packed with people queueing for ‘cheap’ petrol. I have never seen anything like it. Mass hysteria. You’d think that petrol was on ration or something.
Do the sums.
The average tank (should it be near empty) would take 50-60 litres. Multiply that by 9 and you get a $4.50 - $5.40 per tank saving. And people are queueing up for that saving? By waiting in a queue for 10 minutes they’re probably burning a quarter of their savings anyway. And in the big scheme of things a $5.00 saving is nothing.
My time on this earth is worth more than anything money can pay for so I went down the street to an empty BP station and paid a premium (5¢ more) so I could get home early and feed the cat!
An article with the above title appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald today.
My answer is no it won’t kill it off completely. Blogging is far too individual and less obsessed with permanent one to one connections. There’ll always be a role for blogs. Most importantly you can own your blog, not just be a user of a proprietary interactive service.
I almost forgot that I have a weblog. That’s good I suppose, I used to live for the thing 6 years ago and now I am too busy too worry about telling any other bugger either what I think or what I’m doing.
For interest’s sake I am sitting at my desk with a burmese cat purring away on my lap, 4ZZZ’s prisoner show on in the background and it is pissing with rain. There you go.
Twitter that you fuquers!
Good photos coming soon as another trip to Melbourne is not far away.
Just when I thought everything was cool I have another thing to worry about. Pig flu. Bugger it!
I thought the global financial crisis, SARS, bird flu and terrorism were all that we had to concern us in the first decade of the 20th century. Apparently not.
Finally, someone in Australia’s media has mentioned what I have been barracking for all along. If money can move freely around the world, then why not people?
Australia was built on migration. Unless you are of Aboriginal descent you are the child or grandchild or great grandchild or great-great grandchild or great-great-great grandchild of an immigrant. Simple. Immigration made Australia what it is today. Why not keep it going?
No borders.
For only the second time in my life I am having a newspaper delivered to my house in the morning. The first time was when The Age offered 6 weeks free delivery in Melbourne to attempt to sucker me into getting it delivered permanantly. Their offer didn’t work because I had no money then. Now I do - well, not too much but enough for me to arrange to get The Australian delivered.
Paying was the easiest bit. You can spend a fair amount of money online if you’re not careful. I know by looking at my iTunes account after a few beers on a Saturday night. The delivery of the service (pretty simple - throw a paper over my fence) has not been all that smooth.
Firstly, it took the deliverer 2 weeks to finally deliver the correct paper. I kept getting The Courier Mail. I am not illiterate or gullible enough to believe anything written in that roll of toilet paper. That’s why I chose The Australian (both owned by Rupert though).
Secondly, the paper stopped arriving. After a few phonecalls everything is now running smoothly but I think the deliverer has it in for me. He throws the thing hard now. Very hard. It lands on the carport roof, rolls 5 metres and under a bush or behind a plank of wood. He even aims at the front windows (and hits) at least twice a week. Hopefully he doesn’t do it with the Saturday paper considering it contains a magazine and 15 supplements and has the kinetic energy of an RPG when it comes to a halt.
Beware the angry paperman!
One of the only good things about Brisbane is its subscriber supported radio station - 4ZZZ. Now it is streaming - 4ZZZ for Winamp/iTunes/others (.pls file) or 4ZZZ for Windows Media Player (.asx file).
Watch out all you men of the world.
Nature is already designing the male of the species out of existence.
I love seeing signs tampered with by adventurous members of the public. Today while driving from Brisbane’s northern suburbs into the city I spied this little beauty on the ’school sign’ belonging to the Wooloowin state primary school. It was removed to show a blank sign by the afternoon. So much for the School Watch system designed to protect schools from vandalism and arson!
A somewhat altered sign outside a school in Brisbane.
The 4 day long Easter break is nearly over again. And what have I achieved in this 4 day sabbatical?
I have set new personal best sleeping times.
I have painted some skirting boards in the house.
I have read Saturday’s Australian newspaper twice.
I have thrown out so much crap in my home-office desk that I have nearly filled up my 240 litre council rubbish bin.
Oh, and watched 3 AFL games and consumed (only) 16 cans of beer.
How was your easter?
Last weekend I returned for the first time to the city I consider home. Melbourne.
Having avoided going back there for 3 years and 4 months, the better half and I jumped on a Qantas 737 at Brisbane Airport and just ‘hung out’ in Melbourne for 3 days. We caught up with a few friends, family and old ‘aquaintances’ (mainly pubs, cheap Vietnamese restaurants and bottleshop owners). I went to my first AFL game in a couple of years on Saturday night (Bris. v Carlton) at Docklands and afterwards walked back to where we were staying via the CBD, Collingwood and Clifton Hill.
Smith St. in Collingwood has retained its urban grunge even tough a few ‘beautiful people’ have moved in. The city seems the same. And good old Northcote has moved ahead in leaps and bounds since I was last there although the ‘beautiful people’ have moved in there also.
For a small city on a world scale, Melbourne has everything we’re after. And I’ll be doing whatever I can to get back there over the next 2 or 3 years. It takes moving to a provincially minded city like Brisbane to make you realise how good the place you used to live was.
Said...