A reason for rejoicing and sorrow

The death of Osama Bin Laden is a reason for both rejoicing and sorrow.

The end of the leader of one of the most militant extremist groups going around, has to be a reason to be pleased. Extremism of any flavour is abhorrent but when it is used to justify wholesale butchering, it ascends to a whole new level.

The death of anyone in stupid, pointless conflict is also a cause for sorrow. However there is a distinct possibility that Bin Laden's passing shall be seen as creation of a martyr thereby birthing yet more violence, more reprisals and so the cycle would continue.

Far more intelligent people than I have been unable to come up with a resolution of the issues behind the rise of militant extremism so I shall not attempt to do so here. However blatant manufacturing of excuses to go to war as exemplified by the Bush Junior administration, supported by Britain's Tony Blair and Australia's John Howard, not only fail to address those concerns, they created far more. Let's be honest - we were presented with a complete load of bullshit to justify that Coalition of the Willing or whatever the heck it was called. The phrase Weapons of Mass Destruction eventually became nothing but a bad joke because of the way it was used in the Iraqi context.

There are times when I briefly consider worrying about environmental issues is a waste of time as we will have already killed ourselves off as a species before environmental problems could do so.

an end to the Comsuper saga - almost

An end to the saga about my superannuation invalidity pension and Comsuper is almost here.

Last Wednesday I received advice that Comsuper were about to make me an offer to resolve this whole mess that they created. To refresh your memory, as well as months of poor information and messing around, Comsuper recently decided that yes, they had underpaid me but at the same time they had also failed to deduct the right amount of tax deductions leaving me a whacking great tax bill to be repaid to Comsuper before June 30.

Under a national scheme introduced in 2009, many victims of government department 'defective administration' can now seek compensation. Now we're not talking multi-million dollar settlements like the things you see reported in the press coming out of the courts. The object of this compensation exercise is merely to return the victim to the position that they would have been in had the loss not occurred.

Last Thursday I received the official offer and accompanying documenation that I had to return which included an indeminty for Comsuper from further action over this matter. Seeing as I was getting what I wanted so I had no qualms about agreeing to the proposal.

I now have confirmation that my arrears and compensation payments (which reimburse me for additional tax deductions being taken from my arrears) are now being processed.

We're almost there. It's only taken some six months, but we're almost there. But I shan't be saying it is definitely closed until I have actually received the payments in question.

On a more positive note of sorts, I am assured that the details of my case have been passed to relevant members of the Comsuper executive in order to demonstrate just how shoddy their 'service' has actually been. So hopefully no other poor sod has to go through the garbage that I had forced onto me.

A return to the saga of the pension...

I have previously blogged about the ridiculous saga of trying to have my small invalidity pension reinstated and receiving arrears owing to me. I previously warned potential superannuation retirees under Comsuper to be worried. Well things have now well beyond suggesting people be worried. It is instead time to be bloody panic-stricken based on the latest developments.

The latest in this saga is that at long last, after going through three formal complaints processes, Comsuper agree that yes, they still owe me the best part of $1,000 in arrears. But they can't give it to me. Why? Because the stupid phuckers had not been making the correct income tax deductions from my pension last year. Yet this matter came up in early December last year and I was assured that not only had they fixed things, there were no further tax installments outstanding. Complete and utter bullshit as it turns out.

So I now have to wait on an application for compensation to sort the mess out.

Isn't it absolutely outrageous that the Trustee of a Goverment superannuation fund can simply forget to deduct income tax instalments! Even worse when they know about it months earlier, claim to have fixed the problem only to really just let it fester until becoming a much greater concern and financial burden on the pensioner.

Along the way, I have now conclusively proven that:

• Comsuper lose documents but will attempt to put the blame on the superannuation fund member, claiming the documents were not provided;
• It is impossible to sight a copy of your actual file even under Freedom of Information as all Comsuper will allow you to sight is a copy of the electronic file (well it wouldn't do to let the poor sod of a member find hardcopies of all of these documents they claim said member never sent!);
• Comsuper will not initiate any contact with their pensioners whatsoever even when they have overpaid/underpaid/forgotten to pay etc;
• Comsuper routinely do not bother to respond to matters at all;
  
• Comsuper staff think nothing of telling blatant lies to superannuation fund members; and
  
• Comsuper are simply incapable of even elementary mathematics.

Now matters are in the hands of the Comsuper CEO. Assuming it eventually wends its way to his In-Tray. With luck, by about next October he might have gotten around to glancing at it. Of course by that time I will probably be facing prosecution by the Australian Tax Office for failing to pay my income tax deductions, but let's not let a little thing like a criminal conviction get in the way of things, shall we?

Julia, my Julia, what a sickly, sickly display

Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia. The US Houses of Congress. What a sickly, sickly sweet combination.

The Red Roughy's [for my North American friends, that is a brightly orange coloured fish] performance was the most grovelling, sycophantic thing I have ever seen. And to think that not long ago we were sticking the boot into John Howard for his blind following of Georgie Wubblya Bush.

Should the US need any further proof that for whatever reason, that Australia blindly follows wherever they may lead, it just needs to look at how eagerly Howard threw us in with Georgie Wubblyah that Saddam had whacking great piles of Weapons of Mass Destruction laying around all over the place. Tripping over them he was! I tell ya boy, them things was blowing up all over the place, soon as spit terbaccy on 'em! Never mind it has since been amply demonstrated that intelligence services, both US and Australian, were saying "actually, we don't think that's quite correct." But off we toddled, part of the Alliance of the Terminally Dyspeptic against the Axis of Really-Quite-Naughty-Boys-Indeed or some such claptrap sounding like the cover of a Marvel comic. All based on a whopper, a prevarication, in short, a lie. So our friends in North America already know that we can be sold the Brooklyn Bridge at ease. They didn't need reminding.

No, I am not setting out on an anti-US rant. The great love of my life was a Seppo* after all. But in this day and age, was it really necessary to carry on like a grateful colonial native, ever so grateful to Bwana and his White Fella Magic for the used shirt and stick of barley sugar, hopeful that by licking the boots long enough, a plug of tobacco might also arrive?

Julia, I am embarrassed, and that sure as shit ain't easy to do.

*rhyming slang - Septic Tank = Yank

they get rehab, we just get in trouble

Ricky Nixon has really screwed up. I doubt anyone will contest that statement. But has anyone ever noticed that for the rest of we poor sods, if we crack up or have problems with the drink, whatever, we just become part of the numbers game that is Australian pyschiatric care and that's pretty much it? Two trips to the funny farm myself, and overcoming alcohol abuse. But if you are 'somebody', you get 'rehab'. Britney Spears has a mental breakdown, she goes into 'rehab' in what was apparently a private psychiatric facility. Charlie Sheen continues his years of erratic behaviour, he has to go rehab. Michael Douglas couldn't keep his pecker in his pants, he needed 'rehab' for sexual addiction. I am surprised that Shane Warne hasn't been into 'rehab' for his habit of failing to keep it tucked away in his undies. How many trips to 'rehab' has Brendan Fevola gone through? And now that Ricky Nixon is in trouble, he also has to go into 'rehab'. No, he says, there was nothing actually going on with the girl in question, although to be fair, her credibility is about on par with Joe Hockey denying Liberal Party leadership aspirations, but to cope with it, Nicco (as we called him at school - that's my lame claim to fame) has to go into 'rehab' to cope.

You name it, it seems to be covered these days by the 'panacea' of 'rehab', some special form of 'treatment' for 'special' people who are somehow better than the rest of we poor slobs.

Here endeth the rant

Q: When is a gift, not a gift?

A: When it is a Borders Gift Card.

The international Borders bookselling group has been in difficulties for some time now. That is hardly news in itself. The operations of its Australian arm were bought out a little while back by the corporate group that includes Angus & Robertson booksellers. I recall reading some media speculation not long ago which was suggesting the Australian Borders operations were likely to survive due its divorce from the US Borders, which was in turn expecting to crash. Hard. Soon.

Earlier this week, news broke that the group containing A&R and Borders was going into Voluntary Administration ie going broke.

Earlier this evening I was down the street, doing a little shopping. I happened to walk past the local Borders. To my surprise, the following signs were prominently placed in the store's entrance.

Due to Borders being placed in Voluntary Administration, the administrators are redeeming existing Gift Gards when the transaction is double the face value of the card.

EXAMPLE

Gift card value = $50
customer needs to spend another = $50
total transaction value needs to be = $100

This is outrageous.

A customer has come in and paid say $50 to Borders, receiving a 'gift card' with a face value of $50. This is a commitment to honour that 'gift card' by the bearer presenting, to claim goods to the value of $50. In contractual terms, the payment is called 'consideration' and is the sealing point of an implicit contract being present. Why are Borders are not allowed to unilaterally change contract conditions simply because they have gone into voluntary administration! Could you or I get away with pulling a stunt like that? Could a car dealership accept payment for purchase of a car but then suddenly decide to refuse to hand over the keys unless the full purchase price is forked over a second time? No way. But will Borders get away with this form of corporate theft? Almost certainly. Because for some strange reason, our society supports that sort of behaviour, despite all the supposed laws to the contrary.

Out of curiosity, I then went for a walk past the nearby Angus & Robertson outlet. Interesting that no such notices were present there.

Fair suck of the sav, Channel Seven!

Gee I really, really hate it when I find myself defending Tony Abbott. Well, to be honest, I am pretty sure that this is a first time. But I'm still unhappy about it.

OK, so what actually happened? Tony Abbott, leader of the Australian Opposition, was in Afghanistan, visting Australian troops. While in conversation with senior officers, he was filmed making the comment 'shit happens'. Australian prima donna television network, Channel 7 aka Prime, captured the footage. They were very quick to start claiming this was Abbott dismissing the latest death of an Australian soldier on active service in Afghanistan as 'shit happens.' That is not what happened. Watch the footage for yourself. This comment was made in a far broader context. That didn't stop Prime however from ambushing Abbott, playing the footage for him on a laptop and quizzing him over the angle that he was so dismissive of the death of Lance-Corporal Jared MacKinney.

Fair suck of the sav, you lot. Tony Abbott does not need Prime's assistance in making an utter dill of himself. He has shown his true colours and hypocrisy often enough over the past few years. But in this instance, Prime and the reporter in question, Mark Riley, have been guilty of nothing other than twisting the facts in a cheap ratings stunt. Spare a thought for a moment for his poor widow, 26 year-old Beckie MacKinney. Her husband and father of her young son, Nathan, has just died on active service. Beckie now has to relive all this over and over again, for no other purpose than Prime trying to score a point or two over arch-rival, Channel Nine.

Abbott being one of those individuals that so many of us just love to hate, Prime and Riley decided to play fast and loose with the facts in order to blow up a 'story' that didn't actually exist.

It is stunts like these that make me ashamed to be generally grouped with the media as a writer (having been so informed in no uncertain terms by a journo on a previous occasion after letting rip on the media). However I am not a journalist and make no pretense of being so. I am a story writer, primarily a fiction writer. And so should Mark Riley probably be after last Tuesday's stunt.

Unfortunately, Abbott does not get it all his own way. His response to Riley was to stand in quivering, rage-filled silence for some twenty-five seconds. He honestly looked like he was about to up his fist and clock Riley one on the jaw. But it was his later response that gets my goat. Jug Ears Abbott has come out, jumping up and down about how dare the media take a tragedy and use it just to push their own agenda.

Hold on a minute. Isn't this the same Abbott who has been using the floods in Queensland and elsewhere in Australia as a simple excuse to start pushing his own political agenda of unseating the current Federal government? And as usual, he doesn't let the facts get in the way too much. For example, his biggest platform has been that because of the floods, followed by Cyclone Yasi, the proposed National Broadband Network should be dumped. He then states that the loss of mobile communication (cell phones for my US friends) in the area hit by the cyclone is somehow proof that the NBN won't work. Ahhh excuse me Jug Ears. Mobile comms relied on physical broadcast towers that were damaged in the cyclone. The NBN will run on optic fibre cable buried underground and safe from the tender attentions of cyclonic winds.

Of course this also happens at the same time that press releases, email and a website statement all appear under Abbott's name, followed by requests for donations to the Liberal party for a fund to fight and cease imposition of a national levy to pay for rebuilding of shattered Queensland. In other words, don't give money for Queensland flood relief, give it to the Libs instead. Abbott denies all knowledge of this request going out. He and his mates then claimed it is common practice and referred to the Labor Party doing a similar email request only a day or so before. The only problem however was that the Labor Party request was for people to donate funds to flood relief funds, not a political donations grab.

For Abbott to go claiming Prime/Channel Seven have used a tragedy for their own purposes is nothing short of appalling hypocrisy as he has been doing exactly the same thing but on a larger scale.

If all this wasn't PR-suidcide enough, while Abbott is wandering around flood- and cyclone-ravaged parts of Queensland, accompanied by the non-entity that is the leader of the National Party (does anyone actually know who that is these days?), the Nats leader decides that is exactly the right time to start publicly claiming that Queensland premier, Anna Bligh, has let all of Queensland down during the floods and cyclone.

Give me a break. Just at present, Bligh is rapidly approaching sainthood status in parts of the country due to her non-step efforts during these crises and her frank and honest presentations to the press. There was a complete absence of any spin or political grandstanding. No make-up, tears, even appearing like a drowned rat at one point. And this wasn't stage-managed opportunism. This was genuine. Even if the subsequent Inquiry into the floods finds her government 100% culpable (which is not that likely given she hasn't been in the job long enough to be responsible for any and all infrastructure problems), that should not detract from her frank humanity during that terrible few weeks. But Jug Ears's partner in crime, leader of the Nationals, thinks it is a good time to go for her jugular. How many votes will that ultimately cost them in Queensland?

So, Channel Seven, Tony Abbott and his mates do a damned good job of screwing up all by themselves. They do not need dodgy stunts like that pulled by Mark Riley. The management of Channel Seven should be bloody ashamed of themselves for ever allowing this appalling stunt to go ahead. And how dare you put me in a position of having to defend Jug Ears!!

Meanwhile, that other commercial television network with the morals and attitude of a cheap used car salesman, Channel Nine, are probably now congratulating themselves for not dreaming up Prime's stunt for themselves, considering how it is blowing up in Prime's face, big time.