McDonald's versus Yamba: it's one minute to midnight for this small coastal town

It's one minute to midnight for the small NSW North Coast town of Yamba.
Will the town prevail or will the foreign multinational subsidiary McDonald's Australia?

From The Daily Examiner today:

BY THE end of today, the people of the Clarence Valley should know if a McDonald's fast food outlet will be built at Yamba....

Now it is time for the councillors to decide.

This afternoon the seven councillors who have not declared a pecuniary interest will vote on the application....

Councillors yesterday declined to say which way they would vote, saying they would go into this afternoon's meeting with an open mind.

Deputy Mayor, Cr Jim Simmons, said while he had no comment before the meeting, he could see several issues with the development.

"The increased traffic to Treelands Drive is a concern of mine, however, I feel that the opening hours of the business are unjustified," he said.

"The midnight opening hours have the potential to create social problems.

"It will be interesting to listen to the debate and I will be making my decision in the chamber."

The deputations presented at last Tuesday's Environment, Economic and Community Committee meeting changed Cr Craig Howe's opinion on the matter.

"Before last week's meeting, I was sitting on the pro-McDonald's side of the fence," he said.

"The deputations that were presented were very good and drew attention to several potential issues.

"The applicant has done everything correctly. The application was made for a business to be operational in an area that is correctly zoned. We need to make a decision that will be in the public's best interest. That decision is not always popular, but will hopefully be right in the long run."

Councillors Ian Dinham and Pat Comben also declined to give a definite answer, saying that they wanted to hear all of the pros and cons and wanted to consider all of the information before they cast their vote.

Cr Ian Tiley refused to comment, saying he preferred to keep all debate confined to the walls of the chamber.

Councillors Sue Hughes and Margaret McKenna were unavailable for comment as The Daily Examiner was going to print.....

"Play It Again Sam" Maclean 28th & 29th May, 4th & 5th June -Yamba 6th June 2010

Play It Again Sam

Connie De Dassell

presents

A Musical Extravaganza

featuring local artists

and the

Maclean Music Academy Ensemble

performing sets from

Annie

The Music Man

The Sentimental Bloke

Chicago

Oklahoma

West Side Story

My Fair Lady

Sister Act

Performances at:

Maclean Civic Hall - 28th & 29th May and 4th & 5th June 2010 at 1.30pm

Yamba Bowling Club - 6th June 2010 at 1.30pm

Tickets: Carney's Shoe Store Maclean Ph: (02) 6645.2334

Priceline Pharmacy Yamba Ph: (02) 6646.1131

Graphic from Google Images

New political parties seeking registration this month and how you can object

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has advertised the following applications for registration as a non-parliamentary party under the provisions of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (the Electoral Act).
Knock yourself out objecting to any or all of them. Starting with the T(I)CS!

___________________________

Name of Party: Secular Party of Australia
Abbreviation of party name: No abbreviation requested
Proposed registered officer: John August
Address: 12/225 Darlinghurst Road
DARLINGURST NSW 2010

___________________________

Name of Party: Australia First Party (NSW) Incorporated
Abbreviation of party name: Australia First Party
Proposed registered officer: Anthony Pettitt
Address: 165 Garfield Road
RIVERSTONE NSW 2765

___________________________

Name of Party: Building Australia Party
Abbreviation of party name: Building Australia
Proposed registered officer: Raymond Robert Stanton Brown
Address: 5 Windarra Place
CASTLE HILL NSW 2154

___________________________

Name of Party: The Climate Sceptics
Abbreviation of party name: T.C.S
Proposed registered officer: Anthony Kenneth Cox
Address: 51 Lawson Street
HAMILTON NSW 2303

___________________________

"The above applications have been made by the secretary and another 9 members of each party and states that the parties wish to receive election funding."

If you believe that any of these parties should not be registered because, under the Electoral Act:

• the party does not meet the eligibility criteria for registration; or

• the party's application has not been correctly made; or

• the party's name and/or abbreviation are prohibited,

you may lodge an objection. Objections must be received by the Funding and Disclosure Section of the Australian Electoral Commission by 15 June 2010, must be in writing and include your name, street address, signature and the grounds for your objection.

Objections can be sent to the:

Funding and Disclosure Section
Australian Electoral Commission
PO Box 6172
Kingston ACT 2604 or
faxed to (02) 6271 4555 or
scanned and emailed to fad@aec.gov.au

For more detailed information on objecting to an application for the registration of a political party, please consult the AEC website at the following link, or contact the AEC by fax or email as above, or by phone on (02) 6271 4667.

Be afraid.......

Tony Abbott takes us back to the future in his 2010 Budget Reply.

Foreshadowing a return to Work Choices in a Mark III version.

Ever the reckless political gambler he starts his final para with the line
"The die is cast."

So who works for McDonald's in Australia?

Fair Work Australia in its 23 April 2010 decision stated in part that:

The Agreement not only fails to satisfy the no disadvantage test, on various levels it significantly compromises industrial standards that would be expected for agreement-reliant employees.....
I do not believe the employees could be considered to have genuinely agreed to the Agreement. I would dismiss the application for that reason alone....
I propose also to direct that a copy of this decision be forwarded to the Fair Work Ombudsman, given the evidence suggesting the applicant or its licensees, or both, may have been underpaying some employees.

So who exactly are McDonald's 80,000 employees Australia-wide?
They are predominately under 21 years of age, female with an English speaking background, work as casuals in the multinational's 780 fast food stores and most are paid the percentage rates for juniors.
McDonald's opened its first Australian store in 1971.

McDonald's workforce taken from the Fair Work Australia decision:

Male employees: 37,200 (46.5%)

Female employees: 42,800 (53.5%)

Employees from non-English speaking backgrounds: 28,800 (36%)

Employees who are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: 2,400 (3%)

Employees with disabilities: 2,400 (3%)

Employees who are not otherwise categorised: 46,400 (58%)

Full-time employees: 7,888 (9.86%)

Part-time employees: 7,656 (9.57%)

Casual employees: 64,456 (80.57%)

Employees under 21 years of age: 65,600 (82%)

Employees aged 21-45 years: 11,200 (14%)

Employees over 45 years of age: 3,200 (4%)

Slug Boy disappears leaving no trail, but a few red faces in his wake?

Those old enough to remember when evening newspapers were still part of the social fabric will fondly recall those rather improbable fillers in the righthand column of the page.

These snippets often recycled urban myths as news for Australian readers, who were still many decades away from the 24 hour news cycle and Internet access which hopefully has led to an increasing sophistication when assessing what the mainstream media has on offer.

However, it seems that urban myths and hoaxes continue to find their way into print.

The latest media report to exhibit signs that journalists have been the victims of a classic Australian leg pull was a report which ran last Wednesday that; The ABC has been told that a 21-year-old caught rat lungworm disease after he ate a slug as a dare some time ago.

On the basis of the original media reports the NSW Health media unit issued this media release on Thursday:

NSW Health is warning people of the dangers of eating raw slugs, which although extremely rare, can cause meningitis.
Animals, including slugs and snails, can carry a range of infections, including bacteria, virus and parasites that may infect people. One parasite (or worm) carried by slugs and snails is Angiostrongylus (also called rat lung worm). The adult form of the worm is found only in rodents, and infected rodents pass larvae in their faeces which snails and slugs can eat, getting infected.
NSW Health understands that there may be a suspected case in NSW of rat lung worm, however as this is not a notifiable disease and for privacy reasons is unable to provide further details.

A spokesperson was also on radio talking about this rare condition which had allegedly seen the young man hospitalised for a month.

By then media was also online asking for more details from the general public; Do you know more? Text 0424 SMS SMH (+61 424 767 764), email us at scoop@smh.com.au or direct message on Twitter @smh_news.

The story was posted on Digg and by Friday was up on Twitter with b3ta_links repeating that: Some Australians Aren't Terribly Bright: Man eats slug for a dare. Now critically ill in hospital.

On Saturday morning it was starting to unravel, as Caroline Overington writing in The Australian suggested that all may not be as it seems because no-one could find the man who was the subject of the original story and NSW Health apparently admitted that it knew nothing more than what journalists had told it; We got calls about it from the media and we responded to that," a spokeswoman said.

If this story is a hoax, I wonder if the mischief maker got his or her inspiration from the ABC's News In Science webpage on 20 October 2003 which also reported a man eating two slugs for a dare and developing the very same medical condition in Man's brain infected by eating slugs:

Whatever the case this story is off and running - Google's search engine had man eats slug indexed over 2,000 times and by Saturday morning most of these references were to the Australian story.

Image from TNT Magazine

Demanding, arrogant, out of touch, superficial, narrow-minded. How many Australians see federal political leaders

Image from ABC's The Drum

With a curious dissonance developing between general support for the policies Labor is taking to the 2010 election and level of support shown for the Prime Minister in recent opinion polls, perhaps it isn't really about policy at this point but more about personality as seen filtered through a media lens.

According to the Essential Research weekly report on 10 May 2010:

There was majority approval of all recent changes to Australia’s taxation.
The most popular proposal was to increase superannuation contributions from 9% to 12% ‐ 74% approved and 17% disapproved.
63% approved increasing taxes on cigarettes and alcohol.
More than half approved cutting company tax rates (54%) and higher taxes on the profits of large mining companies (52%).
78% of Labor voters approved higher taxes on mining company profits (11% disapprove) and 56% of Liberal/National voters disapproved (35% approve).
Increasing superannuation contributions received high support from both Labor (85%) and Liberal/National voters (72%).
61% of both Labor and Liberal/National voters supported cutting company tax rates.
63% of Labor voters and 69% of Liberal/National voters approved increasing taxes on cigarettes and alcohol.

However Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott are not so clearly differentiated on personal attributes in the table below:

Kevin Rudd has only slightly better ratings than Tony Abbott across key positive attributes such as hard‐working (+5%), a capable leader (+5%) and trustworthy (+2%).
The main differences were that Kevin Rudd is perceived as more demanding (69%/52%), less narrow‐minded (43%/53%), more superficial (52%/44%)and more complacent (38%/30%).

Comparison of Leader Attributes

Click on image to enlarge