Centrelink Call Centre Blues: a true story

During a North Coast flood event a person I know rang Centrelink to see if he could fax his fortnightly Newstart form to the Grafton office instead of submitting it in person since he was cut-off by flood waters.

The conversation went like this:

Centrelink Call Centre: Sorry sir, you must present yourself to the nearest Centrelink office.

Newstart Recipient: I can’t get to Grafton because the roads are flooded.

Centrelink Call Centre: I will pull up the map of your area…………......
Sir we’re in luck. The nearest Centrelink office is in Yamba, you may hand your form in there.

Newstart Recipient: Does your map show a blue line between Iluka and Yamba?

Centrelink Call Centre: Yes sir.

Newstart Recipient: That line is called the Clarence River and it is in flood.

Centrelink Call Centre: Can’t you get a ferry or boat to go across the river?

Newstart Recipient: The ferry is closed because of all the trees and dead cows, not to mention flood water, coming down the river.

Centrelink Call Centre: Well sir, you will just have to go to the next suburb and catch the train.

Newstart Recipient: Iluka does not have a next suburb unless you count Woombah and to get there I have to cross another river called the Esk and it is in flood as well. The road is closed.

Centrelink Call Centre: Just go to your local train station.

Newstart Recipient: The nearest train station is in Grafton and to get there I would have to cross the Clarence River twice and travel along roads that are closed because of the flood.

Centrelink Call Centre: Please hold the line, sir. I will get my supervisor.

Then the above conversation was repeated.

The result of this was that the person was finally given permission to fax their form into the Grafton office – which then promptly recorded a breach of compliance and stopped the dole payments.

Today is 2009 Blog Action Day on Climate Change

Click on image to enlarge

15 October 2009 is Blog Action Day when the blogosphere is encouraged to post about and discuss climate change.

Over 5,000 bloggers in 125 countries are taking part according to the organisers.

Taking personal responsibility for your carbon footprint is a good way to start tackling climate change (see chart above), but by far and away the most important step one can take is to ensure that your local council, as well as state and federal members of parliament, know how important the issue is to you and your family.

Start demanding that all tiers of government stop talking and start acting on greenhouse gas reduction and climate change mitigation. Telephone, write, email, fax, tweet, post online today!

No I won't be Kindle-ing......

I've looked into the e-book phenomenon and I've decided that Kindle (or whoever else puts out a digital book reader in the future) won't be getting my custom.

In the first place, I know that a book in print on paper will not breakdown - as long as my eyes last out so will the book.

My eyes of course are important to me and I'm not sure that anymore peering at font on a bright background is good for these older orbs - or for younger ones for that matter.

If I drop a book when reaching for the loo roll it may curl its corners or even damage its spine, but that's nothing a little sticky tape won't cure - if I regularly drop a Kindle I might not have a workable screen for long. And if I drop it in the bath......

When I haven't got money for the latest bestseller, then my local library is sure to be getting a copy in for no cost to my good self. E-books aren't free.

Books don't need nasty parts like lithium thinga-me-jigs and can eventually return to the environment with less negative effect.

I have old discs and tapes which can't be used anymore because technology changed too fast - printed books can last hundreds of years. The family bible is now over 400 years old.

So Kindle away world - I'll continue to hobnob with real books.

Australian National Water Week begins on 18 October 2009 with a less than subtle hint on raiding coastal rivers: ACVP

From A Clarence Valley Protest yesterday:

Australian National Water Week begins on 18 October 2009 with a less than subtle hint on raiding coastal rivers

National Water Week is almost upon us and it is hard not to be a bit suspicious of this particular event as it seems to be primarily pushing the barrow of the big water utility companies.

After all, the week is co-sponsored by the 40 year-old Australian Water Association which identifies itself as Australia's peak water industry body, having the largest – and most broadly based – membership, connecting professionals around the country and across all water-related disciplines. AWA has over 4,000 individual, and 700 corporate members nationally.

Created water supplies of course mean money to many of these companies and not just as sources of drinking/agricultural water.

The multinational Maunsell AECOM which currently employs the AWA president Peter Robinson is in the business of:

• Land, sea and air transportation
• Hydro and geothermal power generation, transmission and distribution
• Mining and heavy industry
• Natural resource management and rehabilitation
• Buildings, infrastructure construction and management

The National Water Week website contains a resource page which should ring alarm bells for the NSW North Coast as it implies that a high percentage of freshwater could be safely diverted inland from coastal rivers and specifically mentions the Clarence River in Turning back rivers inland.

Definitely not a good look for National Water Week. Nor is it one that inspires confidence that the other co-sponsor, the Federal Government, really does understand the reality of coastal living or how hard local councils and communities work towards achieving water sustainability, though remedial water work on river systems and imposing permanent mandatory water restrictions in the Clarence Valley and voluntary permanent water saving measures in the Richmond and Tweed Valleys.

The Rudd-Conroy national plan to filter the Australian Internet, according to the Australian Computer Society

Chart from OrzeszekBlog
Click to enlarge

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has just released a report on the Rudd-Conroy plan to censor the Australian Internet aka plan to implement a mandatory national ISP-level Internet filtering scheme.

Now it's no secret that ACS was and is generally in favour of the Rudd-Conroy plan, but even it felt compelled to point out the following blindingly obvious.

There are a number of issues that need to be addressed when it comes to the implementation of ISP based filtering, including:

• sites can easily be renamed and so the names will not match the black or white list;

• language translation (often automated) often produces mistakes and so international sites may not be filtered effectively;

• lists must contain domain names as well as IP addresses to be highly effective;

• not all applications work well with a proxy server and so the performance of the ISP can degrade;

• push technologies (such as RSS) often bypass the proxy server and deliver content directly to the user so circumventing the filtering process;

• not all users access the Internet via an ISP;

• many sites have mirrors and multiple URLs and if these are not included in the black list then the filtering process can be circumvented; and

• proxies can degrade ISP performance particularly during periods of high traffic – they become bottlenecks and can reduce Internet speeds;

• mandating or architecting a network so that all packets pass by a filtering point can create performance problems, duplicated traffic paths and may increase the bandwidth costs for ISPs.

The report also canvasses the real possibility of overblocking sites such as Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and any other hosting site where users share the same basic URL.

The full ACS 2009 report with a few handy hints concerning methods of circumventing ISP-level filtering: TECHNICAL OBSERVATIONS ON ISP BASED FILTERING OF THE INTERNET.

Cattle kindergarten duty

To my relief I managed to have some success on cattle kindergarten duty.
The calves hung around me till it was time for the mid-day feed, then they scampered back to their respective mothers and I headed home to avoid the afternoon shift.

We'd filled in the morning weeding wild cotton bush, a job that has to be done preferably before flowering finishes and seed sets.

The calves were very interested in the concept of pulling something out of the ground and not eating it, one of the small things their mothers had obviously forgotten to teach them.
They sniffed the growing mounds of weeds with interest. Some taste tested the plants and soon decided that it did not taste good.

The more adventurous discovered that there was good grass where the cotton bushes once stood and took full advantage.
It didn’t take long before they were all feeding around in the area cleared of weeds.

It soon became apparent that calves can eat grass quicker that one lone human can weed cotton bush.
Luckily we were near the dam, I went for a swim and the calves paddled and played chase on the bank.

By 11am we were under the trees on the north side of the dam, the calves had their naps as I dried off in the sun with young Arnold Bully lying next to me contentedly chewing cud.
I think he is proud of his surrogate mum.

Featured drawing from Simon Streatfeild's The Animator

If you are reading this you might be one of Ruperty Pooh's "flat-earthers"

News Corporation put out a press release of its master's words on the occasion of

the World Media Summit in Beijing, China.

Here are the really funny bits from Rupert Murdoch's speech:

"Too often the conventional media response to the internet has been inchoate. A medium once thought too powerful has often seemed impotent in the past few years. Of course there should be a price paid for quality content, and yet large media organizations have been submissive in the face of the flat-earthers who insisted that all content should be free all the time. The sun does not orbit the earth, and yet this was precisely the premise that the press passively accepted, even though there have been obvious signs that readers recognize the reality that they should pay a price. There are many readers who believe that they are paying for content when they sign up with an internet service provider, presuming that they have bought a ticket to a content buffet. That misconception thrived on the silence of inarticulate institutions which were unable to challenge the fallacies and humbug of the e-establishment. The value of content has been volatile in the past decade but we are entering another decisive phase in which device makers are again courting the creators of content. I have sensed that shift in recent days during my travels in Japan and South Korea where I met some of the world’s leading electronics manufacturers. These companies don’t want their customers to be served a diet of digital dross, and yet that will be the inevitable consequence if the worth of content and creativity are not appreciated. The Philistine phase of the digital age is almost over. The aggregators and the plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph. "