Category Archives: Australia

Boxing Day sales madness in Sydney – animal instincts at their best

Posted on by Brad Heap

Bondi Junction Mall

Yesterday was Boxing Day. In Australia and New Zealand that is code for sales. New Zealand malls can get pretty crazy during Boxing Day sales, for instance, it is not unusual for the Albany Mega-centre carpark to be full before 9am. However, in Sydney the craziness went to a whole ‘nother level.

The two big department stores – Myer and David Jones opened their flagship stores at 5am. I am not so desperate to get up that early so instead I headed to Bondi Junction at 8am. Bondi Junction was surprising not as busy as I expected I manage to even get into the fitting rooms at Myer and bought some clothes relatively pain free.

However, heading back into the city to face the chaos at Pitt Street Mall was probably not the best move. At the best of times Pitt Street is busy but this was like trying to exit a rock concert. Police, and security was trying to keep the crowds flowing but ultimately it was just a giant scrum to get into Myer.

Inside Sydney City Myer was a crowd that made The Warehouse on a busy day look empty. Getting between levels of the store required you to stand in a queue as security opened and closed escalators to control the crowd. Once on the level you wanted it was just shoulder to shoulder people where you didn’t have a chance to browse over clothes instead you just had to glance at the mess of piles of abandoned clothes hunting for the right size and then hanging onto it for dear life as you decide if you actually want to buy it or not.

Shopping and especially sales brings out the most interesting primordial behaviour in people. It is quite literally every man, woman and child for themselves. Also it is consumerism at its worst. I saw families with shopping trolleys overflowing with clothes. Sure the sales are a good way of getting good stuff at a good price, however, seeing the behaviour of some people reminded me of just how animal we are. Continue reading →

NSW Labor’s Public Transport Solution – Paint All Buses Blue

Posted on by Brad Heap

The SMH today reports that the state government wants to paint all private buses blue and white, the same livery used on STA buses. The government will pay for the repainting of the buses arguing that it will make buses easier to identify.

Metrobus in sydney

Labor Red Metrobus

Sydney Buses, PMC bodied Mercedes-Benz O405 (Mark 5)

Liberal Blue STA Bus

Buses being different colours depending on location actually makes sense and is used in many different cities around the world. If you see a yellow bus you will know it is most likely going to Castle Hill for instance. Painting them all one colour means you have to stare at the small location display of every bus going by. This isn’t easier, it is in fact a lot harder to identify a bus.

There are some days I wish that NSW Labor was just a comedy group like The Chaser and real governance happened somewhere else. However, these clowns are actually in government and are extremely good at wasting money on silly ideas.

Painting all the buses the same colour will do nothing to improve public transport. Spending money on more buses, bus-lanes, and integrated ticketing will.

The cynic in me wonders if NSW Labor is working with a genius marketer to paint all the buses blue and white to subliminally represent the opposition Liberal Coalition. While the new, flash, and fast state-run Metrobus network has bright Labor red buses.

Commercials in the Domain

Posted on by Brad Heap

Last night was the annual Carols in the Domain in Sydney. I was going to go in person but ended up watching the TV broadcast from home because this weekend I seem to have become a nigel-no-mates as everyone has gone out of town for the holiday.

The carols, the show, the broadcast, etc was really well done and ran without a glitch. However, the one comment that everyone was making on twitter, and driving me nuts, was the over the top product placement.

These days you expect ads and sponsorship at events. However, what I don’t expect is Jack Black singing an altered version of Little Drummer Boy with lyrics advertising his latest movie flop, or a group of children emailing Santa via a Samsung Galaxy Tab through Telstra which the kids informing us Telstra gives us a little more giftness.

These two examples were probably the worst of it, but every time one of the MCs spoke they name dropped a sponsor be it Woolworths, MLC, NSW Government, etc.

Maybe my blogging and moaning about it the following day shows that the advertising worked, I remember the names and I have been no so subliminally informed about them. But once upon a time Christmas wasn’t just all about commercialism, especially carols!

Then again the modern revival of Santa Claus was sparked by Coca Cola so maybe advertising really is the reason for the season.

On a lighter note the start of the show right on sunset shows the size of the crowd and parts of the beautiful city I live in:

It’s not the alcohol we’re drinking, it’s the caffeine.

Posted on by Brad Heap

There is a gem of an article on news.com.au today:

PUBS are likely to be banned from selling energy drinks on tap with both the Government and Opposition committing to tackling the issue.

… highly-caffeinated drink Mother is on tap at 95 pubs and clubs across the state, despite NSW Health officials warning energy drinks, mixed with alcohol, can provoke sexual assaults and an increased rate of violence.

Health minister Carmel Tebbutt will look at banning energy drinks on tap and will put the issue on the agenda at a cabinet committee.

The next thing I expect is the BAC (blood alcohol concentration) limit for driving to be replaced by a BCC (blood caffeine concentration) limit.

The reality is alcohol causes much more problems than caffeine and I don’t see any moves to ban that.

People not criminals, freedom not detention

Posted on by Brad Heap

One of the fundamental rights of the west is the idea of freedom. Political freedom, personal freedom, religious freedom, cultural freedom. However, it seems if you come from the east in order to gain your freedom in Australia you must first be treated worse than the prisoners who founded this nation.

Throughout this week there have been a number of protests and problems at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Western Sydney. This week’s problems began with the suicide of a Fijian earlier this week before spreading to protests from Sri Lankans and then Chinese asylum seekers. However, in the past month there have been protests and problems at detention facilities in Darwin and asylum seekers have once again become a political football.

The Australian Government’s response these problems is both predictable and wrong. The SMH earlier this week reported:

Julia Gillard will send the Immigration Minister to East Timor in spite of a warning from the head of a government advisory group that incidents of self-harm at Villawood detention centre are beginning to spiral out of control.

The Prime Minister is forging ahead with the so-called ”East Timor solution” after speaking to her counterpart in that country, Xanana Gusmao, about building a regional processing centre for asylum seekers.

The problem of course with this is it does not solve any problem and only makes conditions for these people worse, by shifting them to a country that is not a signatory to declarations on treatment of refugees and the like and therefore creating more problems and treating these people even more like animals.

A few weeks ago another article in the SMH looked at the treatment of asylum seekers last time they were processed off-shore:

…everyone left on Manus and Nauru was gradually brought here.

Some rotted on the islands for more than five years; some went mad waiting; but in the end, the largest single group of people fed through the Pacific solution ended up where they were always heading: Australia.

It’s a unique ambition: no other country on earth has managed its refugees this way.

This is what happened last time: Australia spent about a billion dollars processing 1637 boat people on Manus and Nauru. (Do the maths: it’s a horrifying $600,000 per head.)

The the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, tight-lipped and diplomatic, is understood to be appalled by the prospect of going through all this again. The closing of the Nauru camp a few years ago was welcomed by a UNHCR spokeswoman as ”the end of a difficult chapter in Australia’s treatment of refugees and asylum seekers”.

Now it’s on again, backed by both government and the opposition. For those of a Machiavellian turn of mind, failing to find anywhere to resettle the refugees we process in some offshore dependency is frankly all to the good. The detour to Nauru was never, in itself, much of a deterrent to people smugglers. What helped kill the trade was leaving refugees to rot there for years.

We can stop the boats. That’s the ambition of both sides of politics. And it isn’t hard if we are willing to be cruel. We can order the navy to force them back to Indonesia – operations the navy loathes – or send their human cargoes off to island prisons for indefinite detention.

Those strategies work. But they leave a humane country facing a hard question: how brutal are we willing to be?

Earlier this week The Gruen Transfer had the subject of their “The Pitch” segment to be on so called “Boat People”, it is a good watch and really hammers home just how bad Australia treats people who are not from the west.

The best satire isn’t just comedy, it is a powerful message

Posted on by Brad Heap

Last night the Chaser did their election wrap up show. During the show they aired the clip below. The sad thing about the comedy in the skit is that the message is quite true. Depending on the final count Australia may have elected its first ever indigenous politician. New Zealand elected its first indigenous MP in 1868 and since then has had over 80 Maori MPs (20 in the current Parliament). It is good to finally see some progress in Australian politics, they are only 140 years behind NZ. One can only hope that the rest of the barriers of racism and oppression will fall and Australia will embrace their cultural roots as much as NZ does.

Safe Trains or Rushed Trains?

Posted on by Brad Heap

In the Sydney Morning Herald today there is a beat up over the delays in the construction of new trains to replace Sydney’s old air-conditioned trains. Currently the project is months behind schedule and rapidly becoming a disaster for the state government. The track taken by the SMH in its article argues that shortcuts should be taken in the safety of the trains to speed things up. Naturally I completely disagree and believe safety should be the first priority but have a read:

RailCorp’s stringent controls have caused huge delays in the building of carriages…

…with Australians it’s mainly technical requirements. We think the burden is not necessary.

NSW laws require that an eight-carriage Waratah train must be built to withstand a head-on collision at a speed of 55km/h without any structural damage or passenger injuries. In China the bar is set at 10 km/h.

As pointed out by a fellow workmate, one can only wonder what the accident and death rate is on the Chinese railways compared to Australia. The old Sydney trains are very worn out and need replacing, but I would rather wait a year to get things right rather than a rush job that could result in serious problems.

Photos: Bring on summer – A day in Manly

Posted on by Brad Heap

I spent this afternoon exploring Manly in Sydney’s North. While the photos show a beautiful day (it was clouding over by the mid afternoon) the temperature was still quite cool. Bring on summer.