Get Boxtox while you're young???

Headline news today in Australia is so-called cosmetic 'king', Napoleon Perdis, claiming that women should be turning to Boxtox much younger. According to Perdis, women should be getting jabbed with Botox by the time that they turn 3o.

The article I have linked to above does not mention that age of 30. However I saw Perdis in interview on Australian television earlier tonight and I can assure you that he did indeed make that claim.

Just what precisely is wrong with aging 'gracefully'? With looking after yourself with proper nutrition and facial care that does not require injecting yourself with foreign matter that gives you all the facial expression of a brick. But it is not just Botox that Perdis claims these younger women should be using. They should also be getting their faces treated to laser treatment.

Where this became particularly disturbing was to see just what impact these sorts of stunts are already having. I watched a woman in her early 20s, getting a Botox treatment. Her justification? She is already getting the occasional wrinkle and the price of beauty means those have to be removed, presumably at all costs.

You just have to look at how many young women, even adolescents, have been starving themselves for years in pursuit of supposed ideals of beauty which publicly insist that only impossibly thin is beautiful. With the likes of Perdis now openly pushing for younger women to resort to facial injections and laser treatments, we shall almost certainly see younger and younger women resorting to this sort of nonsense.

Ironically, this stunt, obviously done to support Perdis releasing a book, occurs at the same time that the push to show women as natural in magazines, is gathering momentum.

What on earth is wrong with admitting that we have lumps, bumps and other things?

In my opinion, Perdis deserves a major kick in the butt for his comments that will almost certainly have an irresponsible impact on the young.

Where there's smoke...

The Australian government has just announced the intention to introduce new legislation that will require oil companies to no longer share price information.

This raises an important issue. It is hard to imagine government introducing something like that unless it had evidence that the oil companies were indeed sharing price information. So it is a pretty fair assumption that the oil companies have indeed been sharing price information.

Why would oil companies, all competitors with each other, be sharing price information? The is only one plausible explanation - that they are sharing price information in order to collectively set prices? No other possible explanation would make the slightest sense.

Now if the oil companies are sharing information to collectively set prices, that is considered anti-competitive behaviour.

There is a little organisation called the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Their entire reason for being is to enforce matters such as the Trade Practices Act. Their remit involves taking action against anti-competitive behaviour. Yet the ACCC has for years allegedly been unable to find any evidence of such behaviour by the oil companies. But it now appears to have been something of an open 'secret' with enough evidence existing to warrant passing of legislation to stamp out the practice.

Just exactly why was the ACCC unable to find the same evidence? Former head of the ACCC, Prof Alan Fels, the man behind the push to remove Parallel Import Restrictions on books, who declared those who opposed the move to be ill-informed and ignorant, was apparently unable to find evidence that was clear enough for others to find.

I have said it before in this blog - just exactly who was the ignorant one, Prof?

The oil companies have been blatantly manipulating prices to suit themselves and engage in price gouging at the expense of the consumer for who knows how long. And the regulator was proven to be completely and utterly useless in combating that situation.

Pathetic. Simply pathetic.

Being My Own CEO

It is time to take a break from my now perpetual rants against the telecommunications industry and turn my attention to something else that I am passionate about.

There are a number of people in the world that I really admire. One of them is Tyra Banks. That admiration is not just because I think she is absolutely gorgeous. Tyra is one very clever and accomplished lady. She made it to the top of her profession but has gone on well and truly beyond that.

One thing that I particularly like about Banks is the way that she freely shares things with people. On one hand, it probably makes good business sense to do so, keeping and further developing that fan base. But even if that were the only reason she does so, emphasis on if, then so what? We all need professional mentors, whatever our calling or vocation. And Tyra Banks certainly has plenty worth paying attention to that goes way beyond the world of being a model. The silly side of me has an almost overwhelming desire to make crass comments here about just exactly what I would like to be 'paying attention' to, but frankly I respect the lady far too much to do so. I do not let too many opportunities go past to make a joke but that is one I shall pass on. :-)

Over at her website (www.tyra.com), Banks is sharing her tips on becoming your own CEO, taking control of your life and profession. This program neatly dovetails with her long-running theme of the importance of not just having dreams but pursuing them.

I have joined the Tyra Banks 'Inner Circle' over at her website. And I am paying particularly close attention to her Be Your Own CEO column. Each week we get another step or tip as Tyra shares the things she has learned over her rather illustrious career.

Now and again I have the privilege of interviewing interesting/fascinating people. Tyra Banks is waaaay up the top of the list of people that I would dearly love to interview. However that is unlikely to be happening any time soon. In the meantime, I am quite happy to simply learn from her.

I recommend this Be Your Own CEO program to everyone.

Peace and out.

Telstra? '3'? It appears I spoke too soon!

First, the latest Telstra developments.

After all of my problems trying to get assistance, now that I have finally been refunded for the dud product, all of a sudden Telstra staff are falling over themselves trying to do things for me. First there was an email, suddenly expressing concern that I have had complaints about their service. Then a whole new Customer Service person is calling me, having assigned an entirely new Complaint Resolution case. Naturally when I called back they were not available and I did not receive a return call in response to my message. Situation normal. But they wait until after I have been refunded for their dud product and after I had confirmed receipt of the refund before suddenly wanting to assist? WTF??

I also heard from 3 today by email. First there was a blurb apologising for the distress I experienced. Then, in response to my quite specific complaint about 3 continuing to sell a product while assuring customers that they will receive service on their network when in fact the network is not broadcasting in that location at all and they have known this for weeks but kept on making bullshit promises to the contrary, 3 have entirely ducked the matter. Instead, I am told that due to privacy restrictions, they may not discuss any aspect of the matter.

What a load of absolute, prime-grade bullshit. The Information Privacy Principles that form the core of the Australian Privacy Act, 1988, specify what personal information about individuals may not be revealed. For 3 to hide this entire matter under a veil of secrecy, claiming 'privacy' restrictions, is absolutely pathetic. Just as well that I have already reported them to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. I have now reported this latest stunt to them as well.

How can anybody ever trust organisations who are quite prepared to pull stunts like that?

Why did they bother?

Am I the only one who watched tonight's re-launch of Hey Hey It's Saturday (now on Wednesdays) and wondered why they bothered?

OK, so their couple of reunion specials did well, but those were sort of retro looking back, remembering, blah blah. But 're-launching' something only to do the same things they were doing 20 years ago? It just seemed tired. Sure, it was nice to see the lovely Lavinia Nixon again and I have to say that the young lady playing the violin in the new house band not only can play a real storm, she is absolutely dead-set gorgeous. But aside from that, Red Symons and Wilbur Wilde just did the same sort of gags they were doing way back when. Johnathon Blackman is even reading the same voice-over scripts from at least fifteen years ago. Daryl Somers still can't tell a gag to save his life.

If we are going to just dig something up from the television graveyard, try and do something more than just the same old thing, otherwise, why not not just dig Graham Kennedy up from his hole in the ground and re-launch In Melbourne Tonight. Or perhaps resurrect Bob and Dolly Dyer with Pick A Box (Dear Lord that shows how old I am, even if I was just a wee tacker at the time)?

The Telstra saga over... sort of

I have now settled for a refund from Telstra that has been paid direct to a bank account, having confirmed that has been received.

Several days ago, I found a contact for Telstra's CEO and sent a very strongly worded complaint. I have received a reply this morning.

On behalf of our CEO, David Thodey, thank you for contacting us about your prepaid service. I apologise for the service issues you have experienced. Your loyalty to Telstra is valued. We are committed to a prompt resolution of this matter and a member of our team will be in contact with you.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to address your concerns.

Regards

Executive Customer Contact Team

Yet another assurance of 'prompt resolution'. However I have received my refund. No doubt this will be written up as a successful resolution of complaint action. As far as I am concerned, it was anything but a successful resolution. It is staggering to realise that Telstra's complaints and higher levels of tech support are so overwhelmed that they cannot cope. Surely that should be a sign of things being anything but right?

At the end of the day, despite more than two weeks of trying I was singularly unsuccessful in having any contact with the mysterious Level Three technicians, despite it being determined on Day One that this was required. There were repeated attempts to offload the blame onto my equipment despite products from Telstra's competitors working on the laptop in question. And after Telstra staff refused to accept the product for forwarding to technicians unless I coughed up a bond, their only suggested solution was to have me wear the cost of mailing it in myself. Like hell I was. If the purchase contract had specified me wearing costs of 'return to base' servicing, then perhaps that would have been fair enough. But that was not mentioned anywhere.

For some reason, Telstra seem to feel entirely justified in charging a premium for certain products while providing an utterly sub-standard level of service and support. Not to mention my previous rant about how well they manage to hide the presence of their Complaint Resolution Centre from its customers.

I have been a customer of Telstra's for more than twenty years. During my long-distance courtship of the great love of my life, Telstra could have probably paid an extra dividend to shareholders just from my international phone calls to her. I really think I deserved far better treatment than I received. Needless to say they are losing all of my business from now on.

If David Theody and his staff are genuine in their remorse, then there would be an immediate major overhaul of the way that they do business. But that would cost money so it is a pretty safe bet that this won't be happening. Instead it is just we poor slobs, the users, who have to wear the consequences.

Bulging Bellies and Follicle Follies

I need a new pair of pants. But clothes shopping has become one of my pet hates.

Once upon a time, all I had to do was pick a pair off the rack and get the hem taken up. People with my then-sylphish waist were all intended to be 6'7” bundles of animated pipe cleaners. But as I have advanced in age, the dreaded middle-age spread arrived. Now it is a juggling act between finding pants that fit, that are not so tight that the seam at the back takes cover between my hairy buttocks, that I can put my hand into the pocket without something tearing, that makes my gut look a little less prominent but all the while avoiding the look of an over-sized potato sack with a pair of feet attached at the end.

Forget 'does my bum look big in this?' It is more a case of 'does my fat gut bulge out over the top like a hideously malformed muffin top?' The real irony is that I have a serious case of beer gut – except that I haven't had a beer in more than eight years.

Back in the Rubenesque days, women with more 'fulsome' figures were the epitome of all that was desirable. When is it going to be the man's turn? When are going to see male models that reflect what all too many of us end up like? Forget the rock-hard abs down the catwalk. What about the soft-bellied bloke with thinning hair that is going grey and his bad knee from a football injury giving him trouble because the weather has turned cold?

And then there is... the hair. Just what, pray tell, was the Dear Lord thinking of, when he decided it would be a good idea for men to loose the hair on the head, replacing it with follicle outbursts else where in the body? Do we really need tufts of hair deciding to emerge from our already-deafening ears? Was it really necessary to give us things emerging from our nostrils like lima vines, other than boogers? And why oh why, the tufts of hair appearing on the back where only an over-active contortionist could reach?

According to Darwin, we have evolved from the great primates. I suspect as we blokes get older, our bodies succumb to racial memory and start trying to devolve back to our origins.

I need a new pair of pants.