There was a good cross section of Aussie events and achievements last week that warranted mention in my new congratulations column. These included the following:

Sport – Aussie 31 year golfer Adam Scott’s win in the World Golf Championship held at Akron, Ohio (USA) last weekend.

Sport – Congratulations to the “ retired “ Melbourne Football Club champions Ron Barrassi,Garry Lyon ,Hassa Mann and John Lord attending last Saturdays game at the MCG to support the Demons and their inspiring President Jimmy Stynes following their recent turmoil.

Business – Congratulations to Westpac’s Economist for last month predicting Aussie interest rates will go down at a time all his peers were predicting the reverse.The knock on events from the USA Government debt debacle and loss of its AAA credit rating has seen local bond and bill interest rates fall between 30 to 40 basis points at a time the market was heavily short ie, taking sell principal positions on the expectation rates will increase.  A lot of short covering has been witnessed.

Politics – Congratulations to the Labor Government in supporting the long overdue need for a high-speed rail link (or very fast train-VFT) from Melbourne to Sydney. While Tony Albanese was confident this $2Om initial report will gain wide support for spending between $60 to $108 billion, he, and the media forgot to mention this VFT
Project was promoted by Elders IXL back in 1986 when I was CEO.

Elders initiated a joint venture with Kumagai (NSW) and TNT where the JV parties financed various studies on the VFT feasibility where they used prior studies carried out by the CSIRO.

A copy of the 12 page summary of the”VFT – a fast railway between Sydney ,Canberra and Melbourne” Proposal was issued in September 1986 and is stored somewhere in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library (Bar Code no.093115) where all other sound private enterprise initiatives to Government normally end up.

More on this VFT proposal in next weeks JDER

Manners – Congratulations to the various Aussie newspaper editors giving their journalists more space to write about and join the Anti -Bad Aussie Manners campaign which Ita Buttrose and I started some time ago. Last week three different newspapers had interesting anti-bad manners articles.Surprisingly Rupert’s Melbourne Sunday Herald Sun had two articles with the normal conservative Financial Review allowing Deirdre Macken to use her regular popular prime back page column to write on ”Manners maketh the modern world”.

Also Bernard Salt, in his weekly column in last Saturdays Weekend Australian property supplement to announce his appointment as President of the new “Society For Normal People” (SFNP). This was a natural reaction to the high number of SFNP membership applications he received already by email, over a 100, and high response to his new Facebook
You can join up at Facebook/SocietyForNormalPeople(SNP)

More about these manners articles next week on JDER

Demographic Analysis – Congratulations to the unknown demographic student or graduate, who put together a very helpful and clever gender analysis and their relationship to non-living life situations. You can all read his or her’s report below and have a laugh at a time when there’s not too much to laugh about, if you read the front page newspaper headlines everyday.

Have a good week.

Go the Blues !

Regards

John D Elliott

MALE OR FEMALE?

You might not know this… but a lot of non-living objects are actually either male or female. Here are some examples:

FREEZER BAGS: They are male, because they hold everything in…but you can see right through them.

PHOTOCOPIERS: These are female, because once turned off…it takes a while to warm them up again.

They are an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed…but can also wreak havoc if you push the wrong Buttons.

TYRES: Tyres are male, because they go bald easily and are often over inflated

HOT AIR BALLOONS: Also a male object… Because to get them to go anywhere…..you have to light a fire under their arse.

SPONGES: These are female…because they are soft…….squeezable and retain water.

WEB PAGES: Female…because they’re constantly being looked at and frequently getting hit on.

TRAINS: Definitely male… Because they always use the same old lines for picking up people.

EGG TIMERS: Egg timers are female because….over time…all the weight shifts to the bottom.

HAMMERS: Male…. Because in the last 5000 years……they’ve hardly changed at all…and are occasionally handy to have around.

THE REMOTE CONTROL: Female. Ha! You probably thought it would be male…but consider this: It easily gives a man pleasure, he’d be lost without it…and while he doesn’t always know which buttons to push…he just keeps trying

NEW LAW: With the high rate of attacks on women in secluded carparks … especially during evening hours … Bolton Town Council has established a ‘Women Only’ carpark at the Tesco shopping centre. Even the parking attendants are exclusively female so that a comfortable and safe environment is created for patrons.

Below is the first picture available of this world’s first women-only parking lot inBolton!

Send this to all the women you care about…..and to any men who appreciate a good laugh!