Crikey

Missing context for the Courier-Mail story on who knew what and when on Gordon Nuttall is that aggrieved staffer Jacqueline King was a candidate to replace Terry Wood as party assistant secretary — but lacked the numbers despite backing from the (heavily anti-privatisation) ETU. There is talk she will stand with ETU support at the Federal election as an independent — against Andrew Laming in Bowman.

How can Graham Samuel claim that there is “competition” in the Australian supermarket industry when, for example, Coles at the Broadway Shopping Centre in Sydney, has recently gobbled up an adjoining store for the sole purpose of establishing a new deli, fruit and veg and butcher section, as prospective category killers for the newly renovated Harris Farm Markets downstairs and the butcher shop, two doors down.

The Broadway Shopping Centre is locked into a long term, exclusivity deal with the Coles Group and thus houses a Coles supermarket, K-Mart, Target and a barely ever patronised, total waste of space, Bi-Lo supermarket.

The nearest “competition”, if oligarchic duopolies count as competition, is Woolworths in Leichhardt, several kilometres away.

Myer is set to announce a further delay to the reopening of the flagship Melbourne Bourke Street store, which is undergoing massive renovation. A big part of the store was to reopen for Christmas, but will now not open until well into next year due to additional issues in construction. The store accounts for about 10% of total sales and missing the Christmas period will cost Myer millions.

How you use this is up to you, but this is absolutely delicious. I have a copy of the newspaper hot off the press so to speak. My tip is  — Right wing wingnut alienates right wing Christian wingnuts The East Gippsland Shire Council at its last meeting endorsed a submission prepared by council officers to the Victorian Climate Change Paper, and as reported in the Bairnsdale Advertiser (11th September p6 ) Councillor Ben Buckley, a serial pest and wingnut, opposed the submission by claiming that climate change, “… is the greatest hoax since Christianity”. One devout fundamentalist Christian Councillor known as “The Voice”, maintained his equanimity but I doubt very much if many of his fellow fundamentalists will feel so inclined.

Yesterday the Herald Sun ran an article by Jill Singer pointing out areas in Australia and overseas where women’s rights have gone backwards. Several women I know including myself submitted on-line comments supporting the article - none were published on the site but many anti-women comments were. It seems the whole thing was staged so that the HS could demonstrate how no one supports women’s rights. Here are some of the more revealing comments:

Satch of Ascot vale Posted at 2:48 PM Today
You just dont get it Jill, This is nature, Yin and Yang. Men will always dominate women. Just accept it and your life will go along much smoother.

Tim of Melbourne Posted at 3:00 PM Today
Feminisim is irrelevant in today’s society. So suck it up princess and just worry about what fabric softner to put in the wash.

So much for the same Defence Legal clowns who cocked up the whole Australian Military Court, see below, they can not even work out how to pay themselves: For you info DGADFLS, Director General Aust Defence Force Legal Service. DALS: Director Amry Legal Services. You can work the rest out for yourself:

From: Cumming, Penny LTCOL
Sent: Thursday, 10 September 2009 15:56
To: DSG - DL - National
Subject: Immediate Suspension of Usage of DLD ARTS [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

UNCLASSIFIED

Ladies and Gents,

ON BEHALF OF DALS:

With immediate effect, DGADFLS has suspended all permanent legal officer authority to authorise ARTS expenditure. As some of you may be aware, the budget allocation to DLD for ARTS was cut by approximately 40% for this financial year. Additional advice was received last Friday that a further cut has been imposed due to a misallocation within DSG. The ARTS allocation is therefore less than 50% of what was expended last FY.

Without visibility of all outstanding claims for training days, it is impossible to quantify the amount of ARTS remaining. It is therefore necessary to cease authorisation of ARTS expediture for a short period of time in order to process all outstanding claims. Once this has occurred, a budgetary management system for ARTS usage will be implemented to ensure ARTS is used according to priority based on need rather than the current, ‘first in, first served’ system. To this end please ensure that all ARES members under your command or for whom you are responsible are directed to finalise all outstanding work under ARTS and submit their claims by COB 18 Sep 09.

Obviously there will be cases where R1s have been approved but the work not yet completed. In these cases it is recommended that the tasked legal officer either expedite completion of the task to enable lodgement of a claim for payment by 18 Sep 09, or if this is not possible, that as much of the task as possible is completed within the identified timeframe and any outstanding tasks be handed back to the permanent officer.

I appreciate the dramatic impact this will have both upon your people as well as current workloads. This is a significant challenge and will impact upon all permanent and ARES legal officers. I ask for your understanding and cooperation whilst the new systems for ARTS management are being developed and put in place.

Your attention is drawn to DI(A) Pers 116-12 Voluntary Unpaid Attendance by Members of the Army Reserve, which may provide a means for ARES legal officers, if authorised, to attend to some matters, e.g., AIRN, on a voluntary basis. You should not normally ask ARES members to volunteer, and even if you did there would be no detriment if they declined.

As this direction is being provided through your TECHON chain of command, I ask that you ensure your military chain of command is made aware of the issue and the impact this will have on the provision of legal support across the ADF.

Please direct any queries you may have in relation to this direction to LTCOL Penny Cumming.

Text from msg which will be released this afternoon is detailed below.

Penny

P. Cumming
LTCOL
MA to COMD CS and ISTAR Gp
and DDALS

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