Winter now no barrier to tick poisoning for local pets?

The Northern Star reported last Friday:

Dog owners are being warned by experts that mild winters are causing ticks and mosquitoes to remain active, as well as ensuring the survival of most of their larvae, meaning greater numbers of offspring in the warmer months.

Lismore veterinarian Richard Creed said yesterday that he knew of six cases of paralysis ticks affecting dogs this month alone.

Angourie

Angourie

Visit Sean Scott Photography and Ocean Art for more great snaps.

Unhappy with EBay? Users explains why

Anyone who has ever over time looked at items for sale on eBay would have noticed some hilariously puffed up item descriptions, obviously phoney buyer/seller feedback history entries and sometimes the odd fraudulent offering.

One regular eBay user now details how common shills are on the auction site.

SHILL BIDDING

In eBay's own words, "Shill bidding is bidding that artificially increases an item's price or apparent desirability", and it's just as common on eBay as it is in any motor auction room up and down the country. But just because that dodgy geezer in the sheepskin coat, upping the interest on that Mondeo, is all part of the "charm", it doesn't mean it's OK on eBay. In fact, it's a criminal offence and there have been several prosecutions, here in the UK. Not only that, but eBay's rules prevent you bidding on items being sold by your friends, family and (take note) your work colleagues! The only exceptions are purchases made using the "Buy it Now" option or fixed price listings. So how can you recognise if you're being taken to the cleaners? Well, this is one of the easiest frauds to carry out, so many shill bidders are going to leave some clues for you. Check the number of bid retractions a bidder has - we can all make mistakes, but could we really enter the "wrong amount" over and over again? See if the user IDs are in the same format, or look similar in more obscure ways. Look out for sellers who immediately relist an item - wouldn't you try to communicate with a non-paying bidder first, instead of arbitrarily relisting straight away? Although it's easy to manipulate, have a look at the location given by the IDs concerned, and remember that eBay's "distance from seller" feature can be used to weed out those sellers who deliberately enter the wrong location (see my other guides for details of how this feature can be used to your advantage). Does the pattern of bids look right? Finally, although I'm not allowed to provide a link, there is at least one on-line tool that allows you to enter the eBay IDs of both the seller, and the suspected shill bidder, to view the historical transactions between the two parties, but you'll have to do a search for that one.

He also lists nine other scams.

While another user is so incensed with what he sees as eBay's refusal to adequately police the practice of false bids that he has written a lengthy case study.

Homeless fact sheet for the Richmond-Tweed area on the NSW North Coast

Living as we do on the NSW North Coast in a physically beautiful coastal environment with a constantly shifting sea of tourists in our midst, it is often easy to overlook some of the less palatable facts of life such as the level of homelessness some areas experience and the impact that has on the individuals and families involved.

Excerpt from Mid-July 2009 Northern Rivers Social Developmental Council newsletter:

The Richmond-Tweed Region has a total of 1765 people [1638 non Indigenous and 127 Indigenous] experiencing homelessness.

Much homelessness in the region is hidden, as 50% of the recorded homeless population in the Richmond-Tweed Region are living temporarily with friends and relatives.

10% are living in specialist homelessness services.

29% of the homeless population in the Richmond-Tweed Region of NSW are living in improvised dwellings and on the streets.

Within the Richmond-Tweed Region, Tweed Heads has a rate of 66 per 10,000 non Indigenous people and 81 per 10,000 Indigenous people facing homelessness every night.

Lismore has 64 per 10,000 non Indigenous people and 401 per 10,000 Indigenous people facing homelessness every night.

An additional 85 per 10,000 non Indigenous people and 135 per 10,000 Indigenous people within the remaining Richmond-Tweed statistical division are facing homelessness every night.

In NSW as a whole, 27,374 people are homeless tonight.

Of these 6% are living in the Richmond-Tweed Region of NSW.

The Richmond-Tweed has l3% of the State's population.

Lismore's community garden begins to grow

Lismore City Council has agreed to provide land to a Commonwealth Dept. of Health and Ageing funded joint project of Rainbow Region Community Farms Inc and the Northern Rivers Social Development Council which will establish and run a community garden.

Garden plots will be organic and use only hand tools.

Anyone who would like to get involved with the community garden can call Linda on 6620 1815 to register their interest.

Full story at The Northern Star A garden, but not common

Carbon reduction labelling in the supermarket aisles?

Planet Ark has a new website devoted to its partnership with U.K. The Carbon Trust.

This new site is called Carbon Reduction Label and it invites Australian business and industry to join in a scheme to have products, including food and other grocery items, identified by their carbon footprint.

Planet Ark hopes to have the scheme running by 2010.

This type of labelling will assist shoppers to calculate the amount of greenhouse gases produced in the manufacture of goods and allow a more accurate calculation of an individual or household's total carbon footprint for each shopping trip.

Who's complicit? The newpaper? The newsagency? Or both?

Although home subscribers to the Daily Examiner have become accustomed to finding all sorts of rubbish inside their papers the recent inclusion of a scratchie ticket hit an all time low.

Trying to tell youngsters who have access to a mobile phone that a ticket similar to that shown is something less than a "winner" is a hard call.

The next door neighbours' youngsters found their Mum and Dad's paper contained a "winning" scratchie. So the youngsters, reckoning a prize was just waiting to be collected, sent a text message to the promoter ... and several text messages later ... a prize was theirs. Their 'prize' was one of the 7,999,898 "advertised" prizes that was access to Pixel Multimedia Pty Ltd's 'free' games site .(That's right, there are almost 8 million of these bodgy prizes.)

However, the 'free' games wasn't all the youngsters were lined up to receive. They were also about to 'receive' two txt messages every week and they'd pay the princely sum of $10 a week for the messages.

Thankfully, the youngsters woke up to the rort and stopped the messages being sent to them.