As grocery prices bite one North Coast resident thinks it's time for price fixing to return

Each day we hear that the cost of food is getting out of control and it is beginning to develop into a bigger problem than global warning.
It is time to reintroduce price fixing to stop the greed of our large supermarkets and also the greed of our banks.

Up to 1000% mark up is just not on. After the war it was 331/3% and the country managed. People could budget and live comfortably. Now that things are getting out of hand it is time to get rid of the middle man as he is not needed and let the profits go to where they belong namely, the producer.

Economists will disagree but if the situation can't be corrected by present day practices new drastic measures must be undertaken to rectify the situation.

Fair go for all, not just the rich and the greedy.

APPSIE
Clarence Valley

* Guest Speak is a North Coast Voices segment allowing serious or satirical guest comment from Northern Rivers residents

Our Janelle brings home $2.2M in family support funding

After what seemed like an unending drought when Nationals Ian Causley was the Federal Member for Page, it feels good when Labor's Janelle Saffin announces that five family support programs have secured funding to continue running.

The reality of course was that Page did receive some Commonwealth money during the Howard era, but the Nats did not go out of their way to make sure the Clarence Valley got a decent slice of the cake.

Let's hope our Janelle can keep it up, because the NSW North Coast has a lot of catching up to do.

Finally Miranda Devine almost hits a nail squarely on the head

In The Sydney Morning Herald this week.

 

"In that way it was, as Rudd said, a uniquely Australian exercise in egalitarian conviviality, with captains of industry, media moguls, politicians, generals, film stars, doctors, teachers, journalists, prostitutes, public servants, scientists and lawyers (lots) munching chicken wraps from recycled cardboard boxes - and being bullied equally by the McKinsey-esque "facilitators" who ran the meetings, pro bono.

The mushy quality of the Big Ideas that came out of the summit - the cliches, vague motherhood statements and the bleeding obvious - was not the fault of the summiteers but these management consultants.

Of the 10 facilitators, seven were professional management consultants, at least three formerly with McKinsey & Company. It is their business to turn concrete ideas into gobbledygook, and they did not disappoint.

Amid a flurry of paper, whiteboards, marker pens and Blu-Tack, clear ideas were churned up in the management jargon-generator and spewed out as empty slogans, "priority themes" and concepts worthy of little more than a PowerPoint presentation. It took until mid-afternoon on Saturday for a woman in our group, the media "substream" of the governance "stream", to cry: "I'm sorry but I don't get the difference between a concept and a theme."

This prompted a storm of pent-up fury from exasperated summiteers.

As The Economist journalists John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge wrote in their book on the lucrative management guru industry, The Witch Doctors, such facilitators have infiltrated corporate life, and are the "new, unacknowledged legislators of mankind".

Their language is "remarkably flatulent … If you buy the argument that the lingo of management theory is the language by which … people run companies and governments run countries, then it's no small thing when that language doesn't make sense."

In Canberra, it was the journalists, creatives and doctors who were most peeved their good ideas had been "lost in translation". The business streams didn't seem to notice.

Exasperated with his recalcitrant mob on Sunday, the governance group facilitator, Tim Orton, a Rhodes Scholar, former McKinseyite and founder of The Nous Group management consulting firm, told them their Big Ideas needed to be reduced to a "slogan on a T-shirt by 4pm". It was close to the truth."

Dawn Services - where's ABC TV?

Although this morning's Anzac Day Dawn Services were very well attended many people (especially the aged, ill and infirm) were not able to to get to a service.

Hence, one has to ask why the national broadcaster, the ABC, did not see fit to provide a live television broadcast of a service.

Surely, it's not beyond the ABC's capacity to cover at least one of the services. Pay TV provided coverage of the service conducted in Sydney's Martin Place, but the vast majority of persons who may have been keen to watch a service don't have pay TV.

Gallipoli's Lone Pine Cemetery - floodlit as workers prepared for today's dawn service.

Photo: Penny Bradfield (The Age, 25 April 2008)

Anzac Day 25th April 2008

Corporal Athol Goodwin Kirkland
34th Battalion Australian Infantry A.I.F.
Aged 23 years and 2 months
Killed in action between 3rd and 5th of April 1918
Resting forever in an unknown grave, Villers-Bretonneux, France

Lest We Forget

NOTE:

On 27 April 2015 it was reported in The Sydney Morning Herald that Athol Goodwin Kirkland’s grave had been identified in Crucifix Corner Cemetery outside of Villers-Bretonneux and a headstone with his name, rank, battalion and the inscription “I once was lost but now am found” erected and unveiled in the same month.

The Figg Family descendants of May "Maisie" Webb nee Kirkland rejoice in the finding of a beloved brother of May Webb, an uncle to her children, grand-uncle to her grandchildren and, great-uncle and great-great-uncle to the younger generations alive today and one who has always been treasured in family memory.

A sight for sore eyes - Kevin Rudd in his underwear

The Sydney Morning Herald's Anabel Crabb has sighted PM Kevin Rudd in his underwear.

Speaking at the Sydney University's Young Women’s Leadership Academy, Crabb said she was talking to Rudd in New York when he was Opposition foreign affairs spokesperson, and he went into a menswear store to buy some new clothes. She walked in at just the wrong moment, and nicknamed him ‘Calvin Rudd’.

This story has come to light thanks to Great Lakes College student Alisha King who attended the Academy.

Speaking to The Great Lakes Advocate, King said she can’t keep a straight face when she sees the Prime Minister on TV, and she blames Sydney Morning Herald political writer Annabel Crabb.

The Advocate reports 16-year-old King was one of only 22 girls accepted from more than 1000 applicants statewide for last week’s Young Women’s Leadership Academy.

Crabb revealed she's seen the PM in his underwear after King asked if she had any funny stories.

Now, for the best part of The Advocate's report:

The tale of the PM in his CKs rather turns the tables – he’s a better known observer of New York stripteases than practitioner – but the Leadership week was about more than gossip.

Leadership is a slippery thing to define, but Alisha discovered it can be simply knowing when to take a back seat.

“We learned leadership is about listening to everyone else and then making a decision,” she said.

“Most of the girls were really smart and worth listening to. They all had different talents like debating, drama and the piano.”

Alisha’s rap sheet suggests she’s also worth listening to.

The year 10 Great Lakes College student is a science prodigy, specialising in marine technology.

She tops history, geography and phys ed, plays A grade soccer, state touch football and stars in Les Miserables and Mr Zarbouvray in her spare time.

Of course, you’ve got to know how to walk.

“One of the sessions was about walking and making your presence felt,” Alisha said.

“The best way is chest out, shoulders back. It’s about symmetry, so if you dress and carry yourself in a symmetrical way you have presence.

“One of my tasks was to walk in and get everyone’s attention without saying anything, and I did it pretty well.”

It was a schedule crammed with pilates and yoga in the morning, courses with names like ‘Utilising the first ten seconds: Impact and Influence’ in the afternoon and treats like Tom Stoppard’s political comedy Rock ‘n’ Roll at night. There was a trip to the art gallery for the Archibalds exhibition. But the best part for Alisha was the diverse roll call of speakers like Crabb, academic luminary Catharine Lumby and 2007 Young Australian of the Year Tanya Major.

“Tanya was my favourite speaker,” Alisha said.

“She told us how we can achieve anything, and we should take every opportunity.”

The Academy was a chance to learn from talented women and weigh up future options; the business world didn’t impress Alisha with its 90 hour weeks, but Earth sciences did. And there might be some new friends.

“We all got each other’s emails, and everyone was crying at the graduation,” she said.

“It was amazing the bond we formed after just a week.”

What was that again, Malcolm?

Shadow Treasury spokesperson Malcolm Turnbull doesn't know where to turn now that inflation has risen to over 4 per cent.

 

Mr. Turnbull diddled about on inflation during an ABC 1 Insiders program last February when he was challenged about his view that inflation wasn't that important an issue.

Now he twists and turns over the latest inflation figures from the Reserve Bank.

 

The rise in inflation is awkward for Opposition Treasury spokesman Malcolm Turnbull, who has repeatedly accused Mr Swan of exaggerating the threat of inflation and criticised the Reserve Bank for raising rates.

Mr Turnbull said yesterday the world financial crisis would put more upward pressure on interest rates and slow economic growth.

"That is why I encouraged the Reserve Bank not to raise official rates earlier this year and to wait to see how the international situation developed," he said.

 

Perhaps Malcolm is now also reassessing his earlier opinion that The great risk to inflation now under Labor is a break out in wage inflation.