1. Yes, that is the Great Australian Bight below so I must be on a plane.
Three hours out of my timezone and feeling appropriately grumpy.
Even the flight attendant mistaking me for a famous Sri Lankan cricketer has not lightened my mood.
I did once score 3 runs batting at number 8 against the State Schoolboys XI, but that's the height of my achievement.
There is a woman across the aisle who has not shut up for 2 hours. She is wearing a glittery black and white striped pants suit (like a zebra at a circus).
The people you meet when you don't have a gun. Or a Taser. What actually is the penalty for homicide (when you're nor a policeman, that is)?
2. My cricketing hero Mike Hussey, "Mr Cricket", has done awful things to his leg. He will miss the rest of the One Day matches against the Poms and probably the entire World Cup. I am devastated.
3. Eldest son Toby missed out on the Sydney Theatre award for his supporting role in 'Measure for Measure'. Hugo Weaving won it. No one would have been more surprised than No.1 Son if Hugo hadn't. Very generous lot these actors.
At least the production won a gong, which it richly deserved.
4. Reading all this rubbish about trying to get Julia to impose GST on imports below $1,000. How truly silly. It would obviously cost much more to collect the tax than the revenue it would produce.
But thank you Mr Harvey Norman for bringing to the attention of the Australian public (as if they need reminding) that one can buy stuff overseas cheaper on the web than here in Oz.
What is the agenda here?
(1) The FT suggests it might have nothing to do with trying to get a 'level playing field', just a way of setting in place an excuse for lower-than-expected profits at the next Harvey Norman / Myer etc AGM. Let's face it: The 10% GST is neither here nor there when the price difference is 50% even including postage.
(2) My jaundiced view (and that cute Qantas flight attendant hasn't refilled my glass in, oh at least 5 minutes) is that it simply creates a necessary 'casus belli' (Casus belli is a Latin expression meaning the justification for acts of war) to 'justify' these big companies taking their website business off shore to China or wherever workers get paid 55c an hour. The big companies need that 'justification' to deflect consumer criticism. Call me cynical.
Competing with websites is a nightmare for an Australian independent "bricks and mortar" bookseller like Elizabeth's. 60% of our turnover goes on wages and rent as opposed to less than 10% for a website seller. The long term possible effect of that is the demise of retail as we know it.
Yes, good news for the consumer on purely a 'cheaper price' basis - but we might be losing a pleasurable dimension of our daily life in the process.
We have to work on making the retail experience in our bookshops something not matched by twirling a mouse over a website...
At Elizabeth's, we are certainly doing our best. I mean, we have even put couches in our warehouse shop and will do in our new King Street shop! And Elizabeth's staff not only can actually read, but have at least 3 dozen university degrees between them.
5. GST on books. By the way, (and I have bored people about this for years including Andrew Murray - over an uncomfortable dinner party at a mutual friend's place) I have not forgiven Senator Murray - that terribly bright but misguided Rhodes Scholar Rhodesian ex-liquor salesman who was the architect of the betrayal- and am still angry at the Australian Democrats (who, of course, eventually got their just cream caramels) for selling us out on GST on books 10 years ago.
Even the Poms don't put VAT (GST) on books!
And even if the 10% isn't bad enough, it's the cost of compliance that is a heavy burden on independent booksellers and all micro businesses.
6. Ah, here is another item on the news: "WA Drivers the worst in Australia".
Yes, I'll agree with that. WA drivers see someone trying to merge into their lane as the equivalent of suggesting their sister earns her money horizontally.
It may not be much fun driving in the UK and Europe (unless you're on the autobahn in a borrowed Porsche), but at least overseas drivers know how to admit my little 1.2 litre Corolla el cheapo hire car merging in front of their Bentley R Turbo and do so graciously.
In Oz, I alternate between my terribly bourgeois (but frighteningly twin turbo charged fast) mafia black 335i coupe and my totally silly red 1989 XJS 12 convertible. Which keeps my mechanic in holiday houses at Eagle Bay.
Maybe that's why nobody lets me in.
Three hours out of my timezone and feeling appropriately grumpy.
Even the flight attendant mistaking me for a famous Sri Lankan cricketer has not lightened my mood.
I did once score 3 runs batting at number 8 against the State Schoolboys XI, but that's the height of my achievement.
There is a woman across the aisle who has not shut up for 2 hours. She is wearing a glittery black and white striped pants suit (like a zebra at a circus).
The people you meet when you don't have a gun. Or a Taser. What actually is the penalty for homicide (when you're nor a policeman, that is)?
2. My cricketing hero Mike Hussey, "Mr Cricket", has done awful things to his leg. He will miss the rest of the One Day matches against the Poms and probably the entire World Cup. I am devastated.
3. Eldest son Toby missed out on the Sydney Theatre award for his supporting role in 'Measure for Measure'. Hugo Weaving won it. No one would have been more surprised than No.1 Son if Hugo hadn't. Very generous lot these actors.
At least the production won a gong, which it richly deserved.
4. Reading all this rubbish about trying to get Julia to impose GST on imports below $1,000. How truly silly. It would obviously cost much more to collect the tax than the revenue it would produce.
But thank you Mr Harvey Norman for bringing to the attention of the Australian public (as if they need reminding) that one can buy stuff overseas cheaper on the web than here in Oz.
What is the agenda here?
(1) The FT suggests it might have nothing to do with trying to get a 'level playing field', just a way of setting in place an excuse for lower-than-expected profits at the next Harvey Norman / Myer etc AGM. Let's face it: The 10% GST is neither here nor there when the price difference is 50% even including postage.
(2) My jaundiced view (and that cute Qantas flight attendant hasn't refilled my glass in, oh at least 5 minutes) is that it simply creates a necessary 'casus belli' (Casus belli is a Latin expression meaning the justification for acts of war) to 'justify' these big companies taking their website business off shore to China or wherever workers get paid 55c an hour. The big companies need that 'justification' to deflect consumer criticism. Call me cynical.
Competing with websites is a nightmare for an Australian independent "bricks and mortar" bookseller like Elizabeth's. 60% of our turnover goes on wages and rent as opposed to less than 10% for a website seller. The long term possible effect of that is the demise of retail as we know it.
Yes, good news for the consumer on purely a 'cheaper price' basis - but we might be losing a pleasurable dimension of our daily life in the process.
We have to work on making the retail experience in our bookshops something not matched by twirling a mouse over a website...
At Elizabeth's, we are certainly doing our best. I mean, we have even put couches in our warehouse shop and will do in our new King Street shop! And Elizabeth's staff not only can actually read, but have at least 3 dozen university degrees between them.
5. GST on books. By the way, (and I have bored people about this for years including Andrew Murray - over an uncomfortable dinner party at a mutual friend's place) I have not forgiven Senator Murray - that terribly bright but misguided Rhodes Scholar Rhodesian ex-liquor salesman who was the architect of the betrayal- and am still angry at the Australian Democrats (who, of course, eventually got their just cream caramels) for selling us out on GST on books 10 years ago.
Even the Poms don't put VAT (GST) on books!
And even if the 10% isn't bad enough, it's the cost of compliance that is a heavy burden on independent booksellers and all micro businesses.
6. Ah, here is another item on the news: "WA Drivers the worst in Australia".
Yes, I'll agree with that. WA drivers see someone trying to merge into their lane as the equivalent of suggesting their sister earns her money horizontally.
It may not be much fun driving in the UK and Europe (unless you're on the autobahn in a borrowed Porsche), but at least overseas drivers know how to admit my little 1.2 litre Corolla el cheapo hire car merging in front of their Bentley R Turbo and do so graciously.
In Oz, I alternate between my terribly bourgeois (but frighteningly twin turbo charged fast) mafia black 335i coupe and my totally silly red 1989 XJS 12 convertible. Which keeps my mechanic in holiday houses at Eagle Bay.
Maybe that's why nobody lets me in.
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