Class Action

 I am not a fan of these 'no win no fee' lawyers. I guess the odd case might be needed but it's just promoting the litigious way of things.  The banking royal commission got a confession out of AMP about charging fees to customers for no actual service. This caused the share price to fall. So now AMP have been taken to court by their shareholders for that drop in earnings.  I happen to have AMP shares which have been increasing in number via dividend reinvestment. So whether you want to or not I am part of the class action.  Like the department store, there are two chances it might all just go away, Buckley & Nunn.

 

Foreshore Pshaw

I related the situation at the start of Summer where some community group started brush cutting and left great mounds of cut scrub then walked away as they had run out of money.  I spied two safety vested vagabonds with a grass cutter behaving in a suspiciously councilistic manner.  They had a tape measure for the placement of yellow plastic caps at precisely the right distance.  Grass was removed and yellow caps placed in seemingly random locations on both sides of the foreshore fence.  If anyone has ideas on this please let me know.

yellow placement highlighted

Sun soaked sky sets soon

What does it take to change a light globe?

Depends where the light is.  It's a bit of a dull day here today so a new globe outside is not much of a newsworthy item but you do need a truck with a scissor lift to get to the top of the pole. Nothing gets by without us spying or hearing the tale.  Such as the conversation plainly heard from 100 metres away where the community group doing some brush removal at the start of the year, actually ran out of funding.  So the piles of now dried perfectly match worthy fire risk kindling have been removed by the council two months later. 

The Brush Off

Light Bulb Moment

Environmental Comparison Units

I don't think climate change is a problem as I reckon the climate has always been changing. Global Warming on the other hand is a convenient reason for many to get their budgets increased.  I think we waste too much money on some of this stuff.  There is no doubt there are problems because we are here. I have an idea about how to compare all things. If we had a simple number that ranked all things according to there environmental degradation then it may be easier to work on a particular issue.  I already know how to improve the world! Eat Less Exercise More! This is a compromise answer. You could get more nasty and suggest removing the fashion industry or the Pet industry or the Alcohol industry but that is not going to happen.  However back to my theory.  If you could add up units of certain commodities across the life of a product, meaning from design, manufacture, transport, installation, maintenance and disposal you could get a comparative score.  Recycling would yield a negative number to add in. The score could be the addition of a one for every litre of fuel used, and a one for every kilometre traveled and another one for every year it takes to break it down to dirt. A further one for each kilowatt of energy used etc.  A big job. I already suspect that batteries would be one of the worst consumer contributors.  For example what if you saw two toys, one that was a wind up with an ECU of 1045 and a battery operated one with an ECU of 18,567.  Maybe you wouldn't bother making the second one in the first place.

Windup fun

Arm River

I scanned photos of a walk we did late last century. The scanning was early this century and it was the walk that was last century. The digital output was not good. The mechanism then was to pull the photos thru a slot to do the scan. They came out with furrows across them. My current flatbed would do a better job so I did the whole lot again.  Some have been printed with the latest technology of the time in a panoramic style.  They still look pretty good.

For a change there are a lot more photos in this series however due to blog limitations I have a cut down set here. There are over 100 photos I have made into a separate film.

Dyson

Not only does no one turn down the bed, I have to make it myself.  We have been a bit slack with vacuuming as well, no cleaners are coming to this house. We now have two Dyson vacuumers, one upstairs and one downstairs. Don't get the hand held battery one. They only last 7 minutes. As we were touring around Europe, Dyson appeared in most toilet blocks.  At first it was just an eye on the willie, so that when it was put away, water would flush automatically. Then there was the Dyson tap that dried your hands as well. The ultimate was the pee bowl with TV screen. Blokes need to concentrate on their aim although I did see one guy trying to pee on the screen.

Power Cord

7 minute battery

What no penis dryer!

Infringement

On our way to look at this house 6 months ago I got a ticket for going 64 in a 60 zone.  It has taken all this time to get the address changed and the amount reduced from $2700 (corporate) to $200 (personal). Then on their web page it was announced that they had closed the case associated with the infringement number. I thought this may have been due to a letter I wrote owning up and promising to do better next time.  Not So Fast.  We got a new infringement number today but at least the amount was still $200 but the address was wrong.  I submitted the same letter again for a review of the case, this time via the web page as it is a new infringement number so I can ask to be let off, again.  I could always just pay the fine. 

Speedster

Redirected mail

We have paid for a redirection of mail for a 12 month period but it seems not all mail is included. I assumed anything going to the old address is sent off to the new address. Not so. It goes according to who it is addressed to and even that hasn't worked properly. A heap of mail was building up at the old address and thank fully the new owners took it to the real estate agents. There was mail for six people who were formerly living there.  I have lost track of some of those ex boy friends, ex girl friends and where they now live.  Worse than that is all the company mail, including tax requirements and other important documents.  There were fine notifications and a car rego notice, all of them now expired and with extra penalties. There was one which I could not workout, as there was no real way it was going to get to me. It was prompted by a change of address request I sent them. They returned a confirmation to the old address in an envelope marked "under no circumstances to be redirected'.

What the!

Infringement Present

Got a Chrissie present from the Dept of Compliance.  Seems I was driving at 64km p/h in a 60 zone.  The last time I had one of these it was a similar type of speed.  So minimal over the limit it is hard to know they can accurately measure it given all the shut downs with incompetence.  And you just know there is something screwy about this when you read the amount of the fine at $3171.00.  It's the weekend then it's Christmas, this has saga written all over it.

Merry Christmas

Rose Street Paper Culprit

I went into the newsagent in Rose St and asked him whether he delivered papers to our house. He looked up the address and confirmed he was delivering them.  I said our street was traditionally zoned to another paper round. He started to look a bit concerned and said it wasn't him, he was just following orders from Head Office.  So you are really a Secret Agent, I said. I am 61 and I have never met a secret agent, I said.  He was getting confused now.  I said I need the paper cancelled and no questions asked about catchup payments or I will report you the "Paper Round Boundary Disputes Commitee". The paper was duly canceled.

No more papers at the door

Annual clean up

The council maintains a tradition where once a year they will come round and pick up a pile of tidbits that you can leave on the front nature strip.  We do not have a trailer so this is our rates at work and we always find something for the dustman.  Now you know where a lot of yesterday's blog subject ended up.  Generally someone else takes our old stuff before the dustman comes along but this year that someone decided the only way they could load the cupboard we left out, was to unload some body else's chairs.

This would have taken a while to clean up

Berry Good Poo

Had another session up a rickety ladder cleaning off dark matter from white surfaces. We have tracked down the source to a tree next door where dark currant like berries are hanging in bunches by their thousands.  The electric company has severely cut this tree and now there is an explosion of berries. I'm thinking some flock of fruit eaters are stuffing themselves silly then getting spooked and crapping their selves during a hasty retreat.

Top of the Ladder 

Unprocessed Poo

Collendina Report No 156

It needs to be recorded that a 30 degree day was achieved on 20/04/2016.  This was a as good a beach day as you could expect in the middle of summer.  Except when we went for a wander down the beach and our stuff was raided and the theft of my buttered roll was detected.  Yesterday's inductee Max was just 50 metres away. Then there was the tradie who was supposed to be working on someone's van but said it was too good on the beach so just happened to have his surf board in the back with his tools. Then there was the metal detective who did look a bit hungry, sluicing that wand of his from side to side then side to side again. He seemed to be pocketing stuff from time to time. Like a gold ring it looked like but not a sandwich.  Not sure if it has a sandwich mode anyway in order to detect sandwiches. Then there was Mike the nudist who went past on his bike. But we did find the culprit in the end. I managed to get his mug shot below.

Suspicious tradies

Sandwich Mode Apparatus

Running Plovers

Gull the thief

Uberration

Seems to me UBER has a new product that is more efficient.  Governments have been caught out because they overcharge for taxi licences.  They can't have it both ways. This is not a new idea, GOV ride sharing schemes were always being promoted back in my MMBW days. UBER does that. There are lanes on the road where you can only drive with more than one person in the car. UBER does that. Keeping cars to a minimum and reducing gas emissions is a priority, UBER does that. Governments will start removing the rip-off licence fees soon, which should calm taxi drivers as well. How about this - what if taxis could also double as UBER cars when they are not busy.

Thank your mother for the rabbits

In my years of travelling I have never had rabbit. So when the stuffed rabbit was on the menu I chose to give it a try however there was a look of anguish from across the table. Are you sure she says, it may not be any good she says. Why I say, because you may have to pick buck bullets out of it.  You mean small lead pellets? Yes no one bought the rabbits in the shop so we ate the rabbits but you had to pick out the buck bullets.

I couldn't help observe the ice cream gormandizing that goes on here. The ice cream cones are as big as people's heads. It quickly runs down their hands and onto the ground. There are sticky trails leading every where often ending in ice cream blobs that have just been thrown there because they can't stuff any more down their throats. Then it gets walked in and is worse than dog shit. Ah that feels better.

left over ice cream as well

small ice cream eater