the public house

Higher Education

2012-01-29T10:56:00.001+10:00

University degrees are supposed to mean something.

They are a distillation & condensation of other people's experience. Perhaps many lifetimes of experience, condensed into a few years of learning.

Thus a graduate with a degree is supposed to be already in possession of knowledge that would otherwise take perhaps a decade or two to learn the hard way.

Mine Host is somewhat forgiving of mistakes by the low-paid, particularly if they are his employees.

However he is ruthlessly demanding of those who are degree-qualified.

Especially those who hang out a shingle & charge multi-hundreds of dollars per hour for their expertise.
They are granted little latitude for error. Mine Host is remarkably unforgiving of mistakes made by degree qualified people.

Their degree is supposed to say they are bristling with knowledge & expertise in a certain field. They are supposed to be expert.

Socialist Outcome?

2012-01-28T10:28:00.002+10:00

Hmm, judging from the barrage of email & a couple of comments, the previous post wasn't very clear in meaning.

One role in Mine Host's organisation that pretty much requires formal qualifications is that of accountant. An accountant was hired, with a degree from a certain university.

This turned out to be to date one of the bigger hiring mistakes of Mine Host's.

The damage done to Mine Host's image & reputation, not to mention the damage in the internal processes & accountancy software, was beyond parallel.

Mine Host has employed plenty of complete nitwits. However this one was without equal.

That this dud was packing a university degree was incomprehensible.

Mine Host does not accept that this person passed the examinations required to qualify as an accountant.

The blighter was too stupid to post a letter. Mine Host gave them a pile of urgent letters to post (mail is a sensitive area, and the accountant is one of the few people trusted to handle it). A week later the letters were still sitting between the keyboard & the monitor screen.

A bit got said about this, in response the degree qualified person looked up at Mine Host, smiled like an idiot & nodded like a marionette.

The letters remained on the desk a further two days. The idiot wasn't competent to post a letter and responded to most anything by nodding furiously & smiling idiotically.

It is not known who sat the university examinations in this person's place, or if perhaps the pass grade was lowered to accommodate the full-fee paying students. But this person cannot have demonstrated a standard of scholarship sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the accountancy profession.

For heaven't sake they were too stupid to post letters, or answer the phone, or even to place a phone call. They couldn't even be relied upon to place a lunch order.

It took months to fix up the mess. The cost in grey hairs, never mind dollars, was immense.

Yet a professor (Mine Host has this professor's name copied down diligently, in case they ever meet) has put their signature to a piece of parchment to say that this person has satisfied certain academic thresholds. When clearly no such achievement had occurred.

For heaven's sake, the coot couldn't even be depended upon to be able to write their name on a piece of paper.

Such was the scale of the discrepancy between the representation on the degree, & the reality, and such was the loss, inconvenience & damage to Mine Host, that he is now gun shy about hiring anyone with a degree from that university.

Universities have no excuse when they issue a degree under false pretences, the quality of the graduates is the quality of the university.

A quick phone around to a few other employers brought a series of stories that the quality of graduates from this university isn't what it used to be.

A phone call to a family acquaintance who marks papers for this university revealed that they were under pressure to "pass" students regardless of their scholarship standard, & the shame of this was the cause of this acquaintance's impending parting from this university.

Mine Host's money is too hard earned to risk it by dipping his toe in that pond again. "Graduates" of that university will have to look elsewhere for a job. (Or perhaps conceal their dud degree from employers.)

Disqualified from Employment

2012-01-26T10:23:00.003+10:00

Due to bitter experience, Mine Host will never employ anyone with a degree from Deakin University.

It is Mine Host's considered opinion, based upon experience, that employing a Deakin University graduate is a gamble no employer can afford to take.

The Many Causes of Disease

2012-01-25T09:43:00.001+10:00

The boss is quite ill.

This illness presents him with quite a dilemma: Should he lean over the porcelain throne? Or perch atop it & use it for the intended purpose?

The illness is quite horrid, none who see him would wish to be afflicted so.

The boss' throat is raw, his digestive system is bubbling as if it contained a witch's cauldron, his eyes are bloodshot from the continuous involuntary expunging of fluids & stomach contents. The boss has noticeably lost weight already, he will have lost quite a bit more before the illness has run its course.

Despite his outward exhibitions to the contrary, Mine Host has little sympathy for his subordinate.

For the illness is preventable, very preventable.

What was the cause of this illness? Lack of hygiene? Contact with a "carrier"? Bite from a microbe or mosquito or somesuch, that carried the bug?

No. The illness was actually very easy to prevent. Pretty much caused by failure to apply IQ to a given real-world scenario:

The boss had summoned the cook to the office for a "no-coffee" discussion, which culminated in him sacking the cook, subject to a notice period...
... then being as it was just about lunchtime, the boss instructed the cook to prepare him a hearty meal.

Age of the Internet

2012-01-17T09:30:00.005+10:00

Computers arrived long before the internet.

In the mid-late 1990's computers were beginning to appear as playthings in households. A household having one was at this time something to remark upon, but not overly so.

By 1999-2000 it was possible to connect to the internet. However it was a plaything only. Very little could be done on the "internet" besides chatrooms, some personal emailing & reading bit of basic (american) news & suchforth.

The cost of each time you connected, all at the highest trunk call long-distance telephone charge, on a 14k connection, meant the internet was something one didn't connect to more than a couple of times each week.

Mine Host first used email (& thus the interet) for business purposes in 2004. In that year he sent 4 work emails. These were all to the accountant, & were sent purely for the novelty value. It would have been easier & cheaper to either phone or send a fax. It took upwards of 10 minutes to get to the point where an email could be sent. When surfing it could take several minutes load a webpage. Websites that were more than one page just weren't worth bothering with, as the time & money it took to navigate that website would far exceed any benefit.

Any email that had an attachement (containing graphics) would take between 20 & 45 minutes to send/receive. At long distance (trunk call) rates this was too expensive, and presented quite a problem if someone sent you one, as there was no choice but to receive it, if you cut the connection, you'd only have to recieve the attachment at another time.

Even the word "Draft" superimposed diagonally accross each page of a document would be a graphics file of sufficient size to choke the transmission.

Before the internet could become a work tool it had to first become both cheaper & faster than a telephone call.

That did not come to pass until 2005. In that year Mine Host sent several emails, but still they mostly were all to/from only his accountants & solicitors, however they were no longer for novelty value, but were fair dinkum business communications. (This is also the year Mine Host commenced blogging.)

In 2007 the question one asked (or was asked) changed from "Do you have an email address?" to "What is your email address?".

This was the moment when the internet had become a part of business life.

Shortly after this it became law that pubs must have an email address. Many pubs have forgotten this, and probably are unaware of which email address is registered to their name with the state government. Not that it matters, as the state govt has never yet used this email address database to send us all an email!

Also at about this time the major supplier of wine & spirits created an online order form, which a couple of years later was upgraded to fully integrated real-time online ordering. However, to this day the same supplier does not use email for communication with us. It is to this day all done with telephone calls to/from their travelling rep, or to their head office.

All government forms are now downloadable from the internet (we use plenty in the pub trade, I can rattle off the code number of more government forms than I care to mention).

Also we use the internet heavily for research. Now that most things are to be found on the internet that is.

However, for those who accuse Mine Host of being "behind" in his use of the internet, it must be pointed out that what happens in, & is provided to, the major metropolitan areas is not necessarily available in most of this great nation.

And, as a parting stinger to those who say I must use the net "more" for business, it must be pointed out that neither of the two major breweries are enabled for internet interaction with customers. We have to order by hand written order form, faxed in to them, or else place a verbal order over the telephone.

None of the minor suppliers have online ordering. All foodstuffs, cleaning & packaging products, & minor items are ordered by phone or fax.

To clarify: Of the more than One Hundred suppliers with whom Mine Host deals regularly, only One has online ordering facilities, and None use email to communicate with customers.

How can one possibly use the internet more for business, if those with whom one does business will not use it? (Many of them multi-national corporations - one being the world's largest liquor company).

We've struck a Bad'Un 'ere Sarge!

2012-01-04T10:44:00.009+10:00

"What are you doing standing the pub doorway checking proof of age as people enter?" barks the 1st year female (& undersized) police officer.

"I'm pub staff, just doing my job" calmly replies the lad in the ironed white shirt & black trousers.

"If you're going to talk like that, I'll arrest you!"

(Oh Gee! I wish she'd say that to me! It'd make my day!)

Hmm......

Greenhorn police constables are the bane of a publican's life.

We show incredible tolerance to them, as they humiliate themselves pretending to be seasoned police officers, not realising their training wheels are comically obvious.

A female police constable has approached the front door of the Wayside Tavern. It is well before midnight. Belligerently she accused the lad at the door of allowing entry to "an obviously intoxicated person". The lad, an apprentice plumber in his day job, looks blankly at the young & diminutive police lady. He has no idea what she is talking about.

"He bounced off the walls of the shop, all the way down the street, he tried to smash the public phone box, you can't have missed him!" (This statement is contradicted by the video evidence from the Wayside Tavern's security cameras. Also the constable lady did not see the man on the street, but is relying on hearsay from a staff member at the next pub.)

"He's inside, but he isn't overly intoxicated, and he didn't attack the public phone box." says the lad. (A statement that is supported by the security camera footage).

This brings an arrogant tirade from the police officer. She roars that this man was "obviously drunk", that he had savagely attacked the phone box, & so forth. (Remember, she is basing this all on hearsay, thus she would be well advised to give equal weight to the word of my lad)

The officer lady, in deep enough already, spits forth some more unwise statements: That Wayside Tavern security staff are "always" absent their posts at critical times, that they are "useless", etc etc.

She cannot possibly have any idea if what she has said is true, as this is her first visit to the Wayside Tavern. We've never seen her before. She's been in town less than 2 weeks, and never before worked night shift.

The next belligerent question is why he is not wearing a "security badge"?

He replies that as he is not a security guard, he is not supposed to wear a security guard badge.

The greenhorn police constable lady then asks why he is there.

He replies that he is Wayside Tavern staff, that he is at work.

It is bad enough so far, but now she makes the statement with which this story began, that in the circumstances is a most unwise threat to make:

"If you're going to get smart, you'll be coming with us!"

(Being at work is not an offence for which one can be arrested.)

The Geisha or the Springbok?

2011-12-23T10:18:00.001+10:00

The Australian beer industry has two main breweries:
One is Japanese, the other
South African.

The Japanese brew Queensland's most popular beer.

This brings new & interesting considerations into their marketing strategies. Eg, the exchange rate of the Japanese Yen to the Australian Dollar, the prevailing financial climate of Japan (tsunami, earthquake, etc), are perhaps more important than the ambient financial climate or market share in Australia.

When the brewery was New Zealand owned, the aforementioned were not considerations.

The shenanigans & quirks of beer buying are complex. Not everybody has the intellectual horsepower to cope with dealing for beer. It takes quite some years to learn & develop the skills. The breweries are experts, & greenhorn publicans, who have made a direct entry to the trade, are lambs to their slaughter. (As opposed to those publicans who have worked in the pub trade, been taught by skilled mentors, & know the ropes).

Any fool can fill in a brewery order form each week for the beer they want. Do this & you'll be uncompetitive, and if you're not already a small timer, you soon will be.

Filling in an order form each week is something you might get away with if your pub is bar trade only. Due to the comparitively low volume & high margin of bar sales, mistakes aren't as critical, nor are there the traps for new players.

In the modern era, breweries are notable for two things:
1/. Using unconscionable blackmail to pressure pubs to sell for low margins, and
2/. Not understanding the logistics & costs of long distance freight. (They think all pubs are located beside the brewery & make only a token - if any - allowance for freight costs or time delays)

This second point reached its nadir in the state of Victoria few years ago when (what is now the South Africans) ran a "brewery fresh" campaign, forcing pubs to hang a sign out the front informing how many days old the tapped kegs were. The South Africans are the only brewery in Victoria. Thus they felt empowered to pull a monopoly stunt like that. They'd never be game to try it in any other state. They'd be handing their market share to the Japanese on a plate.

How many days ago the keg was brewed? Who are they kidding? There is no sane reason for this, they are working purely on the street punters being ignorant of brewing. This must have got some of their bigger customers offside. It would have been nearly the ruination of some of their smaller clients.

I shudder to think how this would have worked in parts of the country where beer is delivered to pubs only eleven times per year!

Shotgun Wedding

2011-12-21T13:42:00.004+10:00

The (heavily undersubscribed & outdated) Australian trade union movement has been bleating somewhat of late about how the workforce is "casualised" & how such workers do not "have certainty" etc.

I can relate to some of that. I don't have certainty. Tomorrow I may be out of business, forced onto the wallaby & having to hump bluey.

On boy, would some certainty be handy around here! But nobody is going to legislate to guarantee me a certain number of patrons each week. I am at the mercy of lots of variable factors. Many of them totally beyond my control.

Under unfair dismissal laws, the cost of removing unproductive/disruptive staff is so great that like many small business employers, I am loathe to hire. I hire no more than I need to, & have eliminated all of the peripheral & small jobs in my business.

This is purely because the less staff on the payroll, the less risk I face under the Fair Work Act.

It is that simple.

In the 1990's short term contracts & labour hire were expanding. Purely because employers were not prepared to expose themselves to the risks of hiring permanent staff. The Fair Work Act will see a return to those circumstances (alternatively your job moves overseas.)

Introduction of (say) a 6-month threshold after which casual/temporary staff will be entitled to a permenant position will lead to 5-month non-renewable contracts for the more marginal workers (NB: just about every job title lower than "executive").

Result: Less permanent jobs than before, and less certainty for most workers.

.... or just change the law so that firing staff is easier than divorcing a spouse.

It is that simple.

Central Control

2011-12-17T14:55:00.003+10:00

Bushfire raging pretty much out of control. By now it has burned several hundred thousand acres, and has even rated a (passing) mention on the news.

Only a passing mention, because it is burning hundreds & hundreds of miles from both the capital city of the state, and the coast. It is not even burning within a hundred miles of the nearest town.

It would become a newsworthy bushfire if it met one of the following criteria:
(a) It started burning down the houses of people who are too silly to put in firebreaks & other precautions.
(b) It was a "bit closer" to civilisation so that journalists could cover the story, i.e. handy to commercial accommodation, telephones, etc.
(c) It was fought by uniformed "firefighters" who use a "procedures manual" & come equipped with a spokesman, office, press conferences, fire trucks with fancy paint jobs & flashing lights, etc.
(d) The firefighters were making lots of mistakes, perhaps even managing to burn a couple of "fire trucks" or even a firefighter or two.

Instead the fire was in country where the few inhabitants were wise to fires, and no buildings or civilian lives were so much as threatened, never mind burned.

The fire was being fought by locals, using equipment that was selected for functionality, not for the words "Fire Truck" stencilled on the side.

Those fighting the fire knew how the fire would respond to any given conditions & were not taking risks with their lives. Their command structure was as simple as deferring to the man whose judgement they most respected.

The fire was still burning, & was out of control, nobody was taking it lightly, but they felt that they'd be able to contain it without loss of life or property, & no more than a couple of thousand square miles burned to cinders.

This wasn't good enough for Central Fire Control in the state capital city. They issued command after command, which those on the scene had the good sense to ignore.

Boiling with indignation at being ignored by a bunch of hicks, an expert from Central Fire Control rushed to the scene to take command of the situation. (Well, it took a day for him to arrive.)

Upon arrival the expert displayed an official letter or some sort of trump card that established he was now "in command" of this fire & had the full force of the law behind him.

His first act as Commander was a display of incompetence, hubris, & inexperience. He set out to "inspect" the fire (several hundred thousand acres & still burning, in rough impassable country)

The first thing he did on his "inspection" run was to promptly burn himself to death.

Within an hour of arriving on the scene.

The attention of Central Fire Control was now occupied with the "sad loss" of one of their own, they paid no more attention to the fire, or how it was fought, or anything.

Thus, idiotic diversion nipped in the bud, everybody promptly went back to fighting the fire.

Without any loss of life or property.

Unjustified

2011-12-16T12:10:00.001+10:00

Nothing like a fresh new accent (& attitude) around the place.

New bar attendant is fresh from the UK. One of the parts of it that did not have recent riots.

However she states authoritatively that the riots were "justified".

Layabouts smashing their way into shops & looting the contents. Shops built & owned by hardworking individuals, who eke out a living, putting in 12 - 15 hour days, year on end, only to have it smashed & looted by layabouts.

Justified? Never.

What would have been justified was the shopkeepers using shotguns to kill anyone who tried to smash into their shop.

Contractors Terminate Contract

2011-12-15T13:45:00.000+10:00

Two security guards, employees of the company that contracts to the Wayside Tavern, walk into the offices of the Liquor Licencing Inspector.

They are there to report their (indirect) employer, the Wayside Tavern.

They report that the Wayside Tavern is routinely packed with "too many" patrons, that the "legal ratio of patrons to security guards is often exceeded (there is no such ratio, legal or otherwise).

The really good part: They state that they are "scared" to go to work, as there are "lots of fights" inside the venue.

The Liquor Licencing Inspector draws back, asks them if their job description really is "Security Guard"? Then advises them to "give the game away" if they are actually scared at having to handle the odd scuffle here & there.

He then pointed out that if they are unable to handle their job, or are unhappy with it, that they should be taking it up with their boss (the head of the security company) rather than with Liquor Licencing.

His actually prefaced his sermon to them with the phrase "How about you fellers grow a pair....?"

Of course these guards & their firm are now former contractors. The Licencing Inspector telephoned to inform of the actions not only of the security guards, but of their boss, who had phoned the same Licencing Inspector to make the same complaint.

On the basis of this phone call, the security company's contract was terminated the same day.

And She acts Surprised when it turns out this way?

2011-12-13T10:58:00.000+10:00

Let me get this straight:

The state government oversees/encourages a massive blowout in the size of the Qld Health bureacracy.

However, writing letters & filling in more forms & holding more "management conferences" is not what makes a sick person well again.

That is done by doctors & nurses.

Now, without a trace of irony, the state Premier, who has caused the exponential increase in health bureacracy, says that the bureacracy will have to be curtailed, as it is "a bureacracy out of control" and that it is oversized.

Gee, wonder whose fault that is?

Scientific Methodology

2011-12-11T15:30:00.002+10:00

"This is a Dangerous Situation, Shut the Pub Immediately!"

Friday night late (or Saturday morning early if you like, as it was half an hour after midnight.)

The two police officers, walking the beat, presented at the front door of the Wayside Tavern.

The Constables hold a brief conversation with the doorman. As a result of this conversation one of the Police Officers then says there are "too many" people in the pub, orders the doors to be closed and no more people are to be admitted to the premises.

The head of security proceeds poste haste to the pub office. The office, containing the control room, is manned by a senior staff member whenever the pub is trading.

The orders from the office are for the pub's doors to reopen immediately, and to not close again under any circumstances, regardless of the braying of any low IQ cop.

This incenses the two police, who purposefully march to the office, exhibiting a very matter of fact manner........

This'll be brief. And it was:

The police engage in a terse rant about how there are "more than 400 people" inside the pub, and that this is "too many".

Question one: You coppers didn't count heads, as you've been to the front door only, so how do you know how many people are inside?
Official Police Answer: The doorman's scanner has registered 420 persons scanned in.

Question two: Hmm... 420 scans tonight, how many of those have since left the premises?
Official Police Answer: ".............."

Question three: Regarding those 420 scans, how many of them are double or triple scans? (Qld driver's licences are notoriously difficult to scan, we regularly have to scan twice)
Official Police Answer: "............."

Question four: Here's a copy of the Liquor Act ("grunt" as I lift it for them, "thud" as it lands on the desk) Please point to the part which legislates that a pub cannot have 420 people inside?
Official Police Answer: "............"

........so endeth the conversation with police. They turn on their heel and depart the premises. We dont' see any police officer again that night.

If a publican who ran away from high school coz it shore had too much books 'n' hard stuff like that, can make such mincemeat of two fully trained & sworn in Queensand Police officers (with degrees), it is no wonder they are continually made fools of in courtrooms!

Dancing in the Street

2011-12-10T11:46:00.002+10:00

A very quiet Saturday night. They happen sometimes.

There is a three-piece band playing, $2000 fee and nobody to hear it. A handful may drift in later on. The night won't cover bar wages. Never mind the band fee.

The band leader asks do they really have to persist with this charade?

......Only if they want to collect the fee.

He absorbs this, isn't happy, but grudgingly will keep playing.

Their music is on the "heavy" side of "pub rock". Probably a bit too heavy for this town, it'd only work if the pub was already crowded.

The two guitarists are wearing transmitter packs, to avoid being tangled in wires. These packs are on their back, transmitting to the amplifiers. This means they don't have to stand on the one spot.

So: In joker mode, being as they've argued with me about continuing to play, and there are no customers, they walk all around the bar all the while playing, the sound continues to blare from the stage.

This takes some getting used to, as all one's conditioning is that music eminates from the point where it is played. One's trained instincts are suddenly wrong, this is difficult to cope with.

Being a Saturday night the street is deviod of traffic. There is barely a car going down the street every half hour or so.

I suggest we move into the street, for a change of scenery.

The drummer has to remain at his post, but the guitarists, the barmaid & I move accross the street to the median strip.

The band keeps playing, which is quite surreal. There is only a slight plinking noise from the guitars in the street, and the music continues to blare from the amplifiers in the pub.

All four of us dance (well, shake a little) to the music, then drift back inside.

Several more times over the next few hours we repeat the exercise. The guitarists find it great fun, & stand in a lane of traffic each & play, like wild men of rock or something!

(There is no traffic, being a Saturday night)

Fire in the Shrubbery!

2011-12-06T10:22:00.002+10:00

Off the top of my head I can't recall what this drink is called, but there was strong demand for them in the first half of the year.

They are a favourite of mine. Whatever they are.

It tastes every bit as classy as it looks!

Shut Up & Watch

2011-12-05T10:13:00.007+10:00

The police station receives a report of a pretty fair brawl in progress, on a sheep station.

The report is received just on dark. By the time someone gets there it will be well & truly night. An officer is dispatched to attend the scene and investigate the possible disturbance.

It is 60 miles to the sheep station. All of it on unsealed roads.

Upon arrival the officer observes what appears to be a large scale brawl still in progress, there are upward of 80 people involved. It is also brutally violent.

Two men detach themselves from the melee and approach the police vehicle.

The policeman is wondering what to do. He is heavily outnumbered, the brawlers are all shearers, New Zealand Maori shearers. Clearly they are sorting something out amongst themselves.

["What idiot called the police?"] thinks the officer, with malice.

The two Maori who have detached from the blue boldly stride directly up to the officer, pick him up bodily & sit him on the bonnet of the police 4wd. One removes the officer's pistol from its holster & tosses it onto the front seat of the police vehicle.

The officer is petrified.

In a heavy NZ accent one of his minders advises the policeman to sit where he is, not move, do not intervene, do not attempt to use the police radio, and when it is all over he will be allowed to leave unharmed.

The minders then lean back on the police 4wd, one either side of him, fold their arms & do not move. They don't look at the officer again.

When the police officer arrives back in town in the early hours of the morning, he reports that at the scene were in excess of 80 persons, males & females who appeared to be New Zealand citizens, all of whom refused to talk to police, no obvious signs of a riot & nobody who had seen anything. There may have been an incident, but with 80 people saying they had no idea what he was talking about, his investigation inevitably came up no trumps.

He tells his comrades what actually happened. Nobody says a word. But for the grace of god it could have been any one of them...

... tomorrow, or next week, it could be.

You Shouldn'ta Joined if you can't take a Joke!

2011-12-04T11:31:00.002+10:00

The current law firm has engaged in a spot of ...er... exuberant billing.

Attached to every invoice, and a part of the costs agreement, is literature informing the client on the procedures of disputing a solicitor's bill.

First heading on the list: "Talk to your Lawyer".
[...talk to your lawyer about the bill. Once your lawyer understands why you are concerned, they will explain the costs and may agree to review the bill...]

The bill is Five times the estimate given in the costs agreement.

So Mine Host talks to the lawyer. Here is the amount of understanding & explanation he got:

"If you didn't want us to do this, you shouldn't have signed our costs agreement!"

Hmmm, seems like I'll be brushing up on my procedures for: "When bill disputes turn acrimonious."

Live Bands

2011-12-03T11:46:00.001+10:00

A live band, playing in a pub.
A most risky tactic for the pub.

It is a gamble: That you will have increased custom to pay for the band, and then some.
It is a one-off gamble. That is, there is no residual effect, as there would be from say new furniture. You are paying a lot for live music, and can only use that music while it hangs in the air. As soon as it is gone, so is any benefit.
Tomorrow night, or next week, you'll have to think up something new all over again (perhaps a different band - but who knows how it'll turn out?)

Most likely it will pan out so:
First off you will require smelling salts. This will be of invaluable assistance for coping when you learn the band's fee.
The band will have a list of demands for extras on top of the stiff fee (no band plays for less than $1000 per night, booked for a minimum of two nights. Well, last time I used one anyway)
(a) They will want "free drinks all night" for the band & also for their groupies. Answer: NO
(b) They will want overnight accommodation for all the band. You don't have much choice in this. Usually they'll sleep almost anywhere, however if you don't have space you'll have to use motel rooms, and that gets expensive!
(c) They will want free meals for all band members.

At gig time the band will start off with dirges, that steadily empty the pub. People will slowly stream out.

The band will knock off for regular breaks of up to 3/4 of an hour. During this time the pub will continue to empty.

If you are lucky, or have made an astute choice of band, they will be playing the sort of music that "works" in your pub.

By the end of the gig the band will have warmed up and be playing livlier stuff, that had they played this to start with, the pub would now be full of people.

With very few exceptions this is how your live band experience will be.

It mostly won't be worth the effort.

The Mean Streets

2011-12-02T10:11:00.002+10:00

The Tool brothers "ruled" the streets for a time. Amongst their own circles they had a "reputation". They preferred darkened alleys, or milling crowds after the pubs have closed.

The cycle of seasons rolls around, and several hundred Tongans arrive in town, for some intensive field work. Yep, several hundred of them!

Tongans are physically huge, and stereotypically no strangers to street level violence.
They are also hard physical workers and usually in peak condition.

It took only one night for the streets to undergo a change of management.

Apparently the changing of the guard was, as spectator sports go, very unpleasant. The Tool bros. weren't seen on the streets again until weeks after the last Tongan left town.

The Tool bros, without any sense of irony, went to the police to complain that they couldn't even walk the streets in their own town.

One of their girlfriends wrote a series of letters to the editor about the "injustice" of it all.

This served only to convince us that she was not making a short term injudicious choice of boyfriend, but was in fact terminally dumb.

At the Wayside Tavern we thought it quite funny. So did every other pub in town.

The Tool bros. have not had quite the same air of gravitas about them since.

Bit hard to pull off acting the toughest bunch around when everybody has seen them get the flogging of their lives, heard them squealing like a pig (yep, high pitched squeal) for mercy, for help, for anything.

Where do you Get Yours?

2011-12-01T10:33:00.001+10:00

A sodomy joke to an audience of ex-cons wouldn't have produced a more uncomfortable silence....

All I did was ask for a cup of tea.

Five of us were crammed into the waiting room of the Barrister's chambers.
One of the two receptionists had enquired if anybody would like tea/coffee.
Only one taker, me.

Not because I was the client, & a cup of tea would (microscopically) help mitigate the several thousand dollars the meeting was about to cost. Just that I thought in the circumstances the more caffiene in me the better, and it would keep my hands occupied.

To the inevitable supplementary question: "How would you like it?"
I had answered, in time honoured fashion:

"Same way as my girls please, black & sweet"

.....It seemed nobody present had heard it put this way before.

The girl going for the tea was paused in mid-step.

My solicitor, an athletic fresh graduate from a legal family, supposedly a macho "blokey" type, blew his cover by saying "It's okay, he's from the country"

(Implication: "Don't blame me for this, my client is a backward hick and doesn't know any better)

Never one to take condescension very well, & mindful of the maze of coffee carts etc we had to negotiate to get into the building, I said out loud to nobody in particular:
"As opposed to city boys, who go down to the street & pay for it"

Now there was a silence in the room.

One of the older expert witnesses, clearly a chap who'd had some field experience in his life, suppressed a smile.
The rest of them were as if a broomstick has been used on them in place of a rectal thermometer.

Victory was mine! (And this in a room full of people whose profession was thinking on their feet in a courtroom)

Otto? Isn't he Mr. von Bismarck?

2011-11-30T10:49:00.002+10:00

Not having written for a while on eligible females who turn out to classless and nowhere near as intelligent or broadminded as they believe themselves to be, it is time for another in the series.

The star of this episode was yet another who dwelt in an inner city suburb in one of our great metropolitan areas, Sydney. I never did find out which suburb she lived in, nor her occupation. But it would have been something suitably "toney".

Conversation with her was certainly a challenge, as to her celebrities & the Sydney "A-list" social scene was the most highbrow of subjects. (You're already starting to get the picture)

I would never be so narrow minded as to call those topics the most trite, trivial and irrelevant of subjects (not to mention pretentious). In the interests of charm & better interpersonal relations I made an effort. Nothing is as novel or broadening to the mind than to meet & interlocute with someone whose worldview is entirely different from one's own.

However I fell at the first hurdle.

This broadminded & savvy city girl, with the most cosmopolitan of outlooks (yeah, right!) made a comment (without any sense of irony) about "pretentious types" and how they "sit at Otto's" and watch the world pass by.

Years later I was to learn that "Otto's" is/was a Sydney restaurant frequented by the "A-list", however at the time it meant nothing to me, she may as well have spoken in Greek.

Thankfully she kept talking and gave me some context, it seemed Ottos was a fancy noshery prone to trotting out highbrow tucker.

It just so happened that the day before I'd been at a place called "Cafe Otto" in the suburb of Glebe.

Thinking this was the place she meant, I made an observation about not only the attractiveness of the .. er... view onto the street in Glebe, but the tucker produced by this cafe.

As I found out years later, this was not the cafe she meant, nor the view she was speaking of. It wasn't even the same suburb.

Without another word she got up & left. Just like that!

For some time I pondered what faux pas I'd made. It would have been handy had she at least had the courtesy to say "bye" or something.

After considerable reflection the most plausible explanation I could come up with was that she believed I'd deliberately & obtusely pretended to not know of "Ottos". (After all, the whole world knows the restaurants in Sydney where the A-list linger over brunch).

Misson Creep

2011-11-29T10:57:00.002+10:00

The council health inspector attends the Wayside Tavern for an "inspect & certify" of the kitchen.

Usually a routine event, this year it has a new dimension. The health inspector is a new one, a recent graduate in his forties.

He looks like a forty year old uni student too. Scruffy hair, nose ring, slighly offbeat manner, etc.

He has a lot to say about "sustainable kitchen management", and has far too much to say about our "use of plastics" in the kitchen (mainly tupperware containers & glad wrap).

It gets to the point where Mine Host, through slitted eyes, wishes the hippy would skip the greenpeace lecture and just get on with looking for cockroach infestations or whatever it is he is supposed to do.

Finally the hippy/sermoniser tears off the white copy (or is it the pink copy) of his inspection sheet and hands it over.

The inspection is finished.

His job is to inspect for defects & the like. He exhibited little to no interest in that (ie, his job).
He degree of interest in the "sustainability"(?) of our kitchen management, and in our use of plastics, was a most unhealthy one.

Your Blessing is Requested!

2011-11-28T11:45:00.005+10:00

"The Splintered Shingle" were a musical duo (Rusty & Jenna) who played the Wayside Tavern from time to time. Rusty was a big, lean, rawboned type, Jenna a petite & worldly blonde.

.... In the middle of a song, one of the patrons staggers forward to speak with Rusty. This often happens, someone will ask one or the other muso do they know this or that song, or somesuch.

This request is different:

"Mate, is it okay if I root your missus?" The bloke doesn't even seem all that drunk. He'd have to be though, or suicidal, to rile up such a rough looking bloke as Rusty, who'd be three times his size.

The look on Rusty's face was priceless.

His instinct is to reflexively drop this feller with a straight right.

Rusty stares down at all the gear around him, looks back up at the... er.. hopeful suitor, looks back down, you can practically see what he is thinking: "This is a $2,000 guitar I've got strapped to me, I can't just throw it down & belt this joker into next week...."

While Rusty ponders his dilemma, the hopeful suitor loses interest in the deal & wanders away, disappearing into the crowd.

For the remainder of the night, in the break between each set, Rusty runs a thoughtful & very careful eye over the crowd.

Squalid Third World People

2011-11-26T11:55:00.006+10:00

Mine Host has sponsored quite a few immigrants to this land.
Some of them have even been worthy of it.

It is a reasonable assumption that cultural differences notwithstanding, that some courtesies or good manners are universal. This should go without saying.

Not so!

A sponsored migrant (Singapore Chinese) working at the Wayside Tavern, was offered accommodation in Mine Host's own house. Free of charge. This isn't any imposition. Mine Host is often away on business, and doesn't spend much time there anyway.

However cultural norms of sharing someone's house for free are very different in Singapore. (Or so it would seem.)

Coming from a developed western nation, one with a reputation for cleanliness & orderliness, one would expect to find someone who is culturally & civilly on much the same wavelength as Australia. After all, migrants from Singapore are all over the country, fitting in without problem
(yea yea, Singaporeans can be robots, but for comparison look at the "adjustment difficulties" that come with Sudanese.)

One would expect the following behaviour, as it is how Mine Host would conduct himself in similar circumstances:
Use the house like it is your own, watch the TV, use the kitchen, relax in the garden etc. Pull your weight in the household & houseyard chores, share & share alike the food, keep the place tidy, don't break anything, don't rock the boat. In short: Act like it is where you live.

More or less the unspoken rules of house-sharing.

However, not in Singapore! (or so it would seem)

At some point the housemate purchased some potatos. As you do. These were stored in a basket used for that purpose in a darkened part of the kitchen.

The potatos sat there for so long they rotted. This can happen. When detected, perhaps by the rotting smell, one simply throws them out & cleans up the mess.

Not in Singapore. (or so it would seem)

The potatos rotted to the point that you'd think it would be impossible to not notice, they turned to mush & dripped down to form a rotten mess on the floor.

Ahh... she can't miss it now. It is more or less in the middle of the room. It'll soon be cleaned up.

However the mess lingered.

By this time kitchen hygiene Singapore style was on trial.

Then Mine Host went away on business. He did not return to the house for a month.

Upon returning (the full month later) it was noticed that the *splatter* of rotten potatos was still right there on the kitchen floor tiles. Though it was well & truly dried by now.

You actually had to move the kitchen chairs to avoid stepping in it. At this Mine Host point decided to see just how long before this woman cleaned up her spuds.

She didn't.

Three months later, when the Singaporean couple moved out, having bought their own house, the *sploop* of rotten potato was still there on the floor.

It was actually Mine Host's mother who cleaned it up.

Swine

2011-11-25T11:05:00.001+10:00

The Police "Liquor Compliance" squad (or whatever they are called) are in town. We've seen these two officers before. They are most tiresome.

Lurking outside the doorway, the officers stare at the public in an unfriendly manner, intimidating the meek. (Crikey, we're in the hospitality game, & these goons strut around acting like SS, & generally putting out an atmosphere of aggression!)

Then it really goes pear-shaped.

One of the departing public, having ceded inhibition to Bacchus, makes a gesture or something that rouses the ire of the shaven headed Constable Brutus Spartacus of the Police Liquor Compliance squad.

A few words are exchanged. The departing patron is clearly unhappy with the Police Liquor Officers. This is understandable, the officers are exuding an air of aggression that seems deliberately designed to raise the hackles of passers-by members of the public.

Suddenly the departing patron is face down on the footpath, officer Brutus Spartacus atop him, truncheon around the patron's throat.

"Call me PIG! Did you call me PIG?" squeals officer Brutus Spartacus in a high pitched voice (thus confirming the diagnosis).

Everybody in the street has stopped & is watching. Horrified.

Then officer Judas McDumbknuckle releases his victim, stands up, & allows the young man to stumble off.

Anyone else care to try doing that in public to a passer-by who (so softly that nobody else hears it) allegedly uses a nasty-wasty namey-wamey on you?

Sometimes events such as this assault reinforce to the observer that the lapsing of the code duello is possibly most lamentable moment in history.

For officer Trueheart Stoutman wouldn't be so quick off the mark were he & his victim to be each holding an "equaliser" & allowed to shoot to kill.

Life Skills

2011-11-24T10:39:00.001+10:00

You spend your life surrounded by people who have skills you take for granted so much that you don't consider them skills.

Then you have a moment of shock when you discover that an otherwise functioning adult does not have a skill that is possessed by everybody you have ever known.

In my head I can conceptualise the difference between 10,000 acres & 10,500 acres. I know exactly how big each is. I can do the same for square miles. I know 900 square miles from 800 square miles. But I don't expect many people outside my upbringing to be able to do the same.

But some things you believe are universal.

I can remember the stunned moment when I first realised there are adults who haven't a clue about distance, that telling them something is "a hundred miles away" meant the same to them as saying "ten miles away" or "a thousand miles away".

A bigger shock was when I realised there are plenty who have little understanding of temperature.

Today I encountered a business owner aged in their thirties, who is totally unable to read a weather map. It was nothing more than an abstract drawing to them.

To me the chart said "we're going to get under some very heavy rain in a few hours", and as it is a picture, said it much more clearly than were it to be printed here in text in the English language. A weather map is something you grow up deciphering & reading.

Or so I thought.

It seems that us country boys have some skills that our urban cousins never get around to developing.

Police Fabricate a Law!

2011-11-23T10:43:00.001+10:00

The next pub along is having a busy night, then all of a sudden they just up & close, pushing everybody out onto the street a couple of hours too early.

Wonder why?

It seems that a cop walking the beat ordered them to close, for no reason other than there are "too many" patrons inside for the number of security guards on duty.

This was a curiosity, now it's turned into the funniest thing I have seen in ages!

For I happen to know the Liquor Act. (Gee, wonder why?)
There is no requirement for any ratio of patrons to security guards.
In fact there not even a requirement to have any security guards.
Police do not have the power to arbitrarily order a pub to close.

The constable who ordered them to close is obviously completely clueless. (How dumb can you be, using powers you don't have?)

Then again, that publican, a greenhorn know-it-all, without the faintest clue of any of the provisions of the Liquor Act, has gone ahead & complied with a false directive.

Nothing like seeing one who believes they are smarter than you making a public fool of themself. I'll stop laughing in a few months.

There is a wiser head in the station though (probably sitting on a Sgt's shoulders), as by the time the incident gets into the newspaper it is written up as: "Police advised that there may be a safety risk due to overcrowding, and the venue manager voluntarily closed early".

Rubbish! The joint wasn't anywhere near to a capacity crowd. In this jurisdiction there isn't even a fire regulation on the number of people that can be inside a building. You can crowd a pub with people until the walls burst outward, if you wish.

I'll stop laughing in several months time!

Weight & Balance

2011-11-22T10:53:00.002+10:00

Dave Harris is a regular at the Wayside Tavern. Short & cheerful, a tyre fitter by trade, he works hard & drinks hard.

A deep thinker he isn't. He's also rather a worry at times. Drunk or sober, he rarely comes accross as fully coherent.
He's also physically one very tough cookie, as tyre fitters tend to be.

There are circular bar tables, the right height to sit at on a stool.

This particular night he climbs atop one of these tables, and stands there. This is scary stuff, the table wobbles, he is drunk to the point that he has a "sway-up" anyway. It will be quite a fall.

And fall he does.

Tap dancing when he should have shuffled (or something), the table flies out from under him, scrabbling with his feet to stay on it, he manages only to point himself headfirst at the tiled floor.

When he hits, his head is likely to split open like a ripe watermelon.

Halfway to the floor a hip snags the seat of a barstool. This levels him, and he lands *splat* horizontally on the tiled floor (instead of head first).

He stands up, shakes his head, remarks that that "sure dazed" him a bit, weaves his way to the bar & has a few more rums. Observing him most carefully there seems to be nothing wrong. Well, nothing more than usual.

He goes home at closing time. Full of trepidation I barely sleep. He'll almost certainly have a brain haemorrage. In the morning he'll be dead in bed.

This is the sort of unhappy & unpredictable event that results in a life changing lawsuit.

However the next afternoon he is in again after work, as usual. He gets drunk & seems no sillier than usual.

After a few weeks have passed, and nothing adverse seems to have happened to him, I put the incident out of my mind.

Years later he's still going strong. Still not making any sense, still working hard in a tough job.

Do it with Style

2011-11-21T11:09:00.001+10:00

The leading vice amongst the staff is excessive promiscuity.

As vices go this isn't all that much of a worry for me. Except for the minor irritation of enforcing the rule of no "friends" in the living quarters.

The only other associated problem is that excessively promiscuous staff very quickly "go through" much of the town, thus swiftly reaching their use-by date.

For certain staff, once they are at the point where very few of the clientele are trying to seduce them, their work performance drops off. And so there is the problem of firing/hiring.

Most of the excessively promiscuous staff are rather unhappy at the social contempt that accrues to them as a result of their...er... lifestyle.

If he can get to them early enough, Mine Host informs them (if they are prone to listening) that most of negative fallout resulting from excessively promiscuous behaviour is due to not going about it with style.

That were they follow the example of ladies who are products of English Public Schools, they won't be having these problems. For they can get away with doing just about anything, provided they do it with style.

This usually gives them something to ponder. Most of them are quite tickled at the thought of being viewed as "stylish", rather than as "town bike".

Occassionally one of them actually manages to carry it off with style, and dare I go that far, sometimes even with panache.

Example:
Usual behaviour: Discuss over the bar, publicly, in coarse detail, who will be doing what to whom. Do it in the manner of a coarse XXX film script.
Stylish behaviour: Actually discuss this sort of stuff discreetly, in private.
Usual behaviour: Leaning forward over the barbeque in the backyard with tonight's one-night stand behind you, hoist skirt up to the armpits and right there under the spotlight remain passive while one-night stand collects payment for the dozen or more vodkas he has bought you. (repeat each night with a new one-night stand).
All this under the spotlights, without a thought that the rest of the staff may be still up, silently drinking on the verandah & able to see everything.
Stylish behaviour: Mysteriously disappearing, without being obviously in the company of anybody. Reappearing in the same manner, with dignity intact.

It isn't really all that difficult. Yet so few of them manage to make even the first step toward "stylish behaviour".

They'll Fight Each Other (if nobody else steps up)

2011-11-20T10:11:00.000+10:00

Reasonably quiet night in the pub. Only a few New Zealanders in the bar. Maoris all. Not much else happening anywhere else in the building.

Ooops... spoke too soon. There seems to be some sort of bad blood among the Maoris.

Oh no.... they're from two different tribes. Someone is carrying on about how high-born their mob is. This is not well received by the other mob.

The mood feels nasty. The younger blokes are starting to hiss & clench fists. This could be really really really violent.

A quiet chat to a couple of the older (grey haired) blokes. They don't want any trouble, they just came down with their respective clans for a few cold ones. They nod to each other & then use their clout as elders to silently order their mobs to stop it. A quiet lecture is given about how they are not there for this.

The one who started banging on about how high-born he is gets taken aside by his elders & advised that he should go home. He complies.

As a courtesy the elder fellows are given a couple of drinks on the house.

There is no need for this, as they all among some of the highest paid workers in the nation. Which is why they have all left New Zealand & come to beyond the black stump.

Phew! That was close. Anybody who has seen serious Maori on Maori violence will know what I mean.

Anybody else can get an inkling of what I may have been in for by watching "Once Were Warriors"

Fixing Problem Gambling

2011-11-18T11:30:00.005+10:00

A few years ago, Queensland had a really really memorable Premier guy, hopeless except for two things:

He was a great retail politician & a larger than life identity.

His performance as custodian of our state was such that he should be in Jail. For in a time of booming resources, of the state being in receipt of royalties you can't showjump over, he managed to pretty much run the state broke.

All that aside, one populist stunt of his was a measure to "reduce problem gambling". Specifically poker machines & the "damage" they did.

In the current writings about proposed poker machine reform, it has escaped the notice of all Qld journalists (trained investigative reporters, one & all) that poker machine protocols in Qld are very different to NSW.

The maximum bet per spin in Qld is Five Dollars. Half that of NSW.

Qld poker machines will accept banknotes up to $20 denomination. NSW poker machines will accept any denomination banknote.

Qld used to accept higher denomination notes. Then 10 years ago this really smart Premier guy decided to "limit problem gambling" by eliminating from poker machines all notes above $20.

Actually it went much further than that. The amount a player could insert into a machine was limited to $20 (4 spins of the reels) during play, when the amount of credits lowered, a second $20 or other note would be allowed to be inserted, but total credit could not be more than $40.

You can imagine how this went down with the players, constantly having to stop & feed money in.

This worked. Poker machine play in Qld came very nearly to a halt. Within a couple of days some very high profile publicans were phoning government ministers to gloatingly inform that their pub no longer was liable to pay the extra super-tax applicable to high gaming turnover pubs.**

Govt ministers failed to see the joke. They had implemented the reforms in the belief that it would make no difference to poker machine turnover.

Within a few days the government demonstrated their committment to gambling reform by reversing the limit. To save face, the limit to $20 notes remained, but players could now shove in enough money to buy some serious "zone-out" time at a poker machine.

The story does not end here. For now comes the really good part, that is known to very few, is now revealed by whistle-blower me:

When the abovementioned restrictions were slapped on poker machines, the following day the TAB saw one of the largest turnover increases in history.
Even though the poker machine restrictions were reversed within a week, the gamblers who went to the TAB did not return to poker machines.

There are people whose gambling needs involve placing a significant amount of money at risk.

They can do this on the horses.

In the Wayside Tavern people bet up to $5 per spin on the poker machines. In the PubTAB there are punters who will bet up to $10,000 on a single race. Some of these fellows will make several bets in the range of $2,000 - $6,000 over the course of a single day.

This eclipses poker machine activity.

No measure to minimise the harm of gambling is going to work unless all forms of gambling are equally restricted (including scratch tickets & lotteries), but especially the new forum of online gambling.

Attacking poker machines is merely a populist political stunt by unsophisticated (read: none-too-bright) plonkers who have little to no knowledge or experience of any form of gambling.

**(Yes, there is a super-tax on "very high" pub gaming profits in Qld, has been for more than 10 years, something else that has slipped past every last member of Qld's cohort of trained investigative reporters.)

Some you just Can't Please

2011-11-17T11:29:00.000+10:00

A travelling couple have their evening meal at the Wayside Tavern.
They complain about everything. But especially about the price.

$7.50 for a square meal (with steak!) was the price at the time. A very good deal.

They whine to the kitchen staff about every aspect of their meal, the time it took to prepare, the quality of the staff (that went down a treat with the kitchen brigade) the quality of the cutlery, and of course the price.

Apparently where they came from, at the Dumbville RSL club, one could get 10 times the meal for a much lower price, blah blah blah.

She was a slatternly looking slug, he a sour visaged grump. One could easily believe they had chosen to excise all joy from their lives.

Their parting comment was that the unhappy dining experience at the Wayside Tavern had "tarnished" their round-Australia trip!

Just how bitterly they felt became apparent over the next few months, as a series of postcards arrived from various places on their journey.
These postcards raved about the low prices, good service, & great range of goods on offer in every town they visited north and west of the black stump. Unfavourable comparisons were drawn between every pub/newsagent/supermarket and the Wayside Tavern.

When they returned home they even sent a postcard from Dumbville. It had a photo of their church, the message stated that they were praying for a rapid bankruptcy for the Wayside Tavern, which they maintained shouldn't be far off, given the poor quality of the staff, the overpriced meals, etc etc.

They were praying for some good person to take over, so that other travellers would not have their life ruined by experiencing the horrid meals & dreadful service I was providing.

Hot Trio

2011-11-16T10:15:00.000+10:00

Phone call from an acquaintance who may or may not be a bookie.
The call is brief. Three races & three horses.

This information is written on an easel blackboard in the bar.
Two of the horses come in. Those who bet on all three tips clean up properly.

Several staff & customers are most distressed that they didn't know about the tips. "Mate, if you've ever got information like that, phone me at home, at any time!"

Nope. The tips are written up in the bar. You've gotta be in there to see them.

Nobody ever knew where I got the information from. (er... assuming hypothetically that I was receiving such information)

This may or may not have happened every week for a couple of years, ending only when the bookie passed on.

In all that time, either two or three of the three tips would win. Once, and once only, did only one of them win. (Assuming this story is real, that is).

The punters had a reverence for that small easel-mounted blackboard that had to be seen to be believed. (Assuming this story is true, that is).

Wait Your Turn Mate

2011-11-15T11:27:00.004+10:00

Scene: Hospital waiting room
(What used to be called "Casualty", now thanks to lots of people being unable to separate real life from what happens on a TV screen, it is known by some inappropriate american term, "emergency" or somesuch)

Time: After midnight.
Cast: Mine Host, injured relative, another injured young male person (he looks like a Ringer).

Dialogue:
Injured relative: (noticing that another injured person is clutching his arm & is grimacing in pain.) "What'd y'do to your arm mate?"

Ringer: "Pretty sure it's busted, fell off a horse" (his hat is tucked under his arm)

pause......

Injured relative: "Mate, it's after midnight, what're y'doing riding horses at this time of night?"

Ringer: "I wasn't. I've been sitting here since 5 o'clock this afternoon. It happened while we were yarding up earlier today."

Conclusion: Qld health service needs to bring back Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen. The health system actually worked when he was in charge of the state.

Pigs by Name

2011-10-13T19:05:00.006+10:00

A recent post defended a fancy pub, one with a fancy name. Subsequent events have caused Mine Host to abandon the defence of his industry comrade.

Despite the posh fancy name, there is nothing fancy about the treatment at the Pig & Whistle.

The long, long wait for table service on the occassion of Mine Host's earlier visit has turned out to be the norm, rather than a once-off. (Tip for those wanting lunch in Brisane, you'll spend most of your lunch hour just waiting for a waitress to approach your table, & even then it'll only be an afterthought to her)

This is bad enough. However on the most recent (& final) visit by Mine Host to the Pig & Whistle, as a parting barb he was asked for ID (after paying, though while still at the cash register.)

Still rankled by the slow service and waitress attitude that bordered on insolent, Mine Host was pushed over the edge by the manner of her request (for ID).

It seems words such as "please" aren't in her vocabulary, she didn't properly explain why ID must be sighted to leave the premises, and her tone of voice could not possibly have been described as hospitable.

In a textbook display of affected calmness Mine Host departed without any outward manifestation of just how insulted he was. No barbed parting comment to the waitress, no pause outside to give a vehement "forks" to the facade, nothing.

But the Pig & Whistle has made its last dollar from Mine Host. Plenty more pubs in Brisbane.

The sooner the Pig & Whistle is bulldozed out of the middle of Queen Street, & something else, perhaps a concrete slab, replaces it, the sooner Queen Street will be enhanced.

Wrongdoer

2011-10-11T10:38:00.005+10:00

The Fair Work Ombudsman investigates minor workplace complaints. Underpayment of wages, non-payment of allowances, employees being overworked, that sort of thing.

In reality they investigate almost nothing, they are too lazy.

Upon receipt of a complaint they write a letter to the targeted employer, urging that employer to "resolve" the complaint. (translation: to pay the amount of shakedown money demanded)

This letter is followed by a telephone call. The telephone call makes oblique references to "full investigations" that may uncover who knows what, whereas if the complaint is "resolved" first (ie, the shakedown money is paid), there won't be any need to investigate & see what the employer is really up to. The FWO inspector then advises that the best outcome would be for the employer to "resolve" (pay the shakedown money) the complaint immediately.

If this resolution does not happen there will be further telephone calls, all using every emotional/manipulative trick in the book to urge the employer to "resolve" (pay the shakedown money) the complaint.

When the deadline passes without the complaint being resolved (the employer neglects to pay the shakedown money), the FWO will have to switch from aiding & abetting a shakedown, and go do some actual work.

Only at this point will they even bother to have a look-see at the complaint to see if it has any merit. They will demand the employer provide them with copies of all paperwork, timesheets, notes, payslips etc. that could be remotely relevant.

They don't even check which award or industrial instrument applies, instead they demand the employer do that for them. They really are that lazy.

At this point the complaint will be found to have no merit (well, every complaint against me anyway). They will write a letter to both parties stating such.

Favourite part:
In the glossary accompanying the initial letter from the Ombudsman, the disgruntled (former) employee is termed "the complainant" and the employer (that would be me) is termed "the wrongdoer".

A more incendiary bit of terminology you'd do well to find a government department using on someone who doesn't have a blemish to their name.

Inexhaustible Discount Coupon

2011-10-10T10:07:00.006+10:00

Lynn Edwards, one of the live-in staff at the Wayside Tavern, and thus part of the family that is the staff, is a backpacker, as some of the staff are from time to time.

She often discusses the trials & adventures of backpacking overseas. Mine Host is a receptive listener, having backpacked to something like 39 countries, and can relate to tales of how even the most budget of budget travel can have incredible financial pressure.

She & her girlfriend confided that in addition to many of the usual tricks of the budget traveller (eg, sponging a bed from people one barely knows, living on bread & cheese, hitching in trucks, etc etc) from time to time they "had to do" things that being girls they weren't really happy with.

On occassion some of this was elaborated upon, things like wearing tighter upper body clothing beside the highway to increase the chances of getting a lift, or working in a bikini for higher pay & higher tips. (Mine Host struggled a little with this latter one, as they'd both work in nothing but Victoria's Secret underwear, were he to allow them)

Then without realising it, one day she burst the balloon:
She was recounting how as an impecunious traveller, on the opposite side of the world (blah blah blah) she'd had to do things she wasn't proud of, just to ensure a clean bed & nourishment etc etc. During this conversation she revealed that the tattooist in town would do tattooing for free on girls, provided they were completely naked during the entire application of said tattoo.

It transpired she'd been "forced" by economics into this arrangement, Three times.

Out of His Depth

2011-10-09T10:47:00.002+10:00

An official in the Fire Brigade, from his high rise office down in the Big Smoke, arbitrarily decrees that ("for safety reasons" of course) all fire alarm units in licenced premises must be "upgraded" to a certain type within 6 months.

The only manufacturer of this "certain type" of fire alarm is in Perth, and when contacted reveals that it will take them at least 3 years at full production capacity to manufacture enough to meet this sudden need.

The Fire Brigade official, at the 6 month deadline, suspects that not all licenced premises have complied. He obtusely commences site inspections, and fines venues for non-compliance.

He is stunned when his fines are challenged in court, stunned at the reason for the challenge (inability to procure commerical supply) and even then, does not comprehend why the challenges are upheld. That is, that that judges actually ruled against him, when it was a regulation that licenced venues comply).

How did he ever get above the level of "boy who washes the fire engine"?

Framed!

2011-10-08T12:48:00.007+10:00

Hands up if you've ever been interviewed by a journalist.
Hands up if you've ever been subsequently misrepresented by that journalist?
(Golly, everybody kept their hands up!)
Hands up if you've ever had a journalist misrepresent their motives to you? Who hoodwinked, or lied to you, not chasing news to report, but instead something they could twist to fit their preconcieved notions?
(Funny, most people still have their hands up!)

Click through to the picture to read this one:

The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) has been the most respected & revered broadcasting voice across the land. When I was a kid the ABC radio was the only transmission you could get. Messages were broadcast over it, for many communities. (No longer a requirement in this day & age when every householder has a telephone.)

When the bulk of Australia received a TV reception for the first time, in the late 1980's, ABC TV was the last to get into action. We had the commercial stations long before we had an ABC TV reception. (Perhaps that was a sign of the decline.)

In the bush respect for the ABC is now sub-zero. Respect has been replaced by contempt. For this the ABC can blame only itself. There is a special hell where these reporters are destined for, where unending fires burn one alive in perpetuity. Deservedly so.

This outfit (ABC) should no longer be funded by taxpayer money. From a broadcaster that passed messages to listening remote communities (eg: search & rescue operations, urgent meetings when the government was about to foreclose on more than half the stations in the district, etc.) it is now an outfit that is not only working against the interests of the taxpayers who fund it, and the people who have depended upon it, but is also working against the national interest.

Price Gouging

2011-10-07T19:28:00.003+10:00

The Reserve Bank of Australia has been conducting an inquiry into electronic payment fees charged by merchants. That is: the fee added on when you pay by credit card "That will be an extra 3% sir, for payment by credit card".

This fee is a stiff one. It was costing me roughly $1,000 per week, there is little choice but to pass it on. Like all such charges & price rises, it is quite some time before most people actually pass it on (contrary to popular/journalist belief about "greedy businesses").

The fees charged to the merchant can vary greatly. A big merchant, with huge receipts by card, may be paying about 0.5% of every transaction. A small merchant, say a tiny coffee shop which doesn't take much card, may be (effectively) paying as high as 7%, or even more if you pay by American Express. This is why many small business will not accept American Express, they cannot afford to.

It is also why the fee charged by the shop can be quite high if you pay by American Express.

If the Reserve Bank carries out its promise, and next month makes it illegal for merchants to charge a fee (or caps the fee) expect to see many businesses henceforth refuse to accept credit card payments.

Here is a totally fictional scenario, about a hotel. This hotel is fictional, and is in no way meant to depict my place:
Currently a room is (say) $100 per night. Pay by credit card = $100 + 3% fee = $103 per night.
Then the RBA ups & declares the 3% fee to be illegal?
In this (totally fictional) scenario, the room rate is then changed for 2012 to $103 per night. Pay by cash or other cost free method, as many do (eg. account, direct deposit, etc), and this fictional hotelier will be kind & allow you a "once off" $3 per night informal discount.

The enquiry has recieved submissions from many interested parties. Including the credit card companies.

Visa & Mastercard had much to say in their submissions about merchants "gouging" customers, by as much as 1% in some cases.

Golly gee whillikers! Look who is talking! How is their form? Anybody ever noticed what the "extra fee" for late payment is on their Visa or Mastercard? Anybody ever noticed the interest rate on their Visa or Mastercard?

We Collect, You Pay.

2011-10-06T10:57:00.003+10:00

Proposed by the government is a Super-Tax on large mining companies.
This tax will (cough) "pay for" the retirement savings of the working population.

How?

The govt will pull a swifty by passing a law forcing employers to pay an extra 3% byond each employee's wages into a retirement superannuation fund. (Currently 9%, will increase to 12%.)
Employers who happen to be a company will have a reduction in income tax of 1%.

Govt receives big tax $$ from mining co's.
Employers pay an extra 3% of payroll.

Why is no journalist asking the obvious question of the government?

Yes, there will be a reduction in company tax of 1%.

Employers who are not companies (there are many) get nothing, but have to pay 3% extra of payroll.

Government ministers (& apologists) are lying through their teeth when they say that a big tax on profitable mining companies will fund superannuation increases. Or else they are too stupid to understand how it will work.

Employers who are companies get a tax cut of 1% of taxable profit, but pay an extra 3% of payroll.
For a significant number of employers (if not most) payroll is up to 5 times greater than taxable profit.
We'll choose an example of (say) a pub. This pub is owned by a company and makes a taxable profit of (say) $100,000. Thus the tax cut will "give" this pub $1,000.
The payroll for this pub is $400,000. Thus the extra superannuation payment is $12,000

Costs go up by $12,000
"Paid for" by $1,000 less income tax.

Government (& apologists) are either lying or stupid if they claim this big-feller mining tax will pay for superannation.

Lying or stupid. There is no third option.

His Party, He'll have it where he wants to

2011-10-05T10:21:00.003+10:00

Fred Nerk was a constant pain for staff. Retired, he'd spend as much time in the pub as his pension allowed. He seemed to have no interests, not horse racing, football, discussion of the day's front page, not anything.

Except drinking. If ever staff attempted to brighten his day by speaking with him, he'd repay them by pressuring them to give him free beer.

He was a snivelling no-account, and had been one all his life.

It was hard work to serve him a beer. Very quickly we grasped that unless payment was visible on the bar beforehand, it was going to be painful getting the money.

He'd try to slip it in with a nearby shout, or suggest that his drink had been paid for by someone "the night before" & now he was here to claim it. He'd claim that his mate/son/whoever was on their way down to drink with him, they had his money & they'd pay "when they arrived". etc etc etc.

Ever cunning trick in the book he tried, every day. It was tedious. He even claimed illness. He'd been diagnosed as terminal, & "surely that's worth free beer?"

Turned out his diagnosis was a fact. Possibly the only truth he'd ever told. He'd disappear for several days/weeks at a time, for chemotherapry, or radiotherapy, or something.

One of his sons came in one day, & asked could they hold "dad's wake" in the front bar. We hadn't even heard that he'd passed on.

It is called a "public" bar for a reason. There is no need to ask. People hold wakes in pubs all the time.

On the appointed day the next week in shuffled all his sons, some friends, people who'd known him, several hangers-on, & anybody else who felt like a drink.

Something didn't seem right. Yep. Right there in the middle of the group was Fred Nerk himself. Still alive.

It transpired that he'd decided to hold his wake the week before he died, so he could enjoy it too. Indisputably he was very crook, as during the wake he didn't ask us once for free beer. Then again, plenty of others were shouting.

Somewhere between 7-14 days later he'd passed on.

Noisy Rabble

2011-10-04T11:18:00.006+10:00

Oh boy, was last night's Q&A ever a waste of broadcasting spectrum!

The panel:
(1) Some Slovenian professor of something or other. Difficult to understand him. He dressed & presented like a slob, or to be kinder, like an absent minded professor. And he acted it too.

(2) A nice lady (Kate Adie) who'd been a BBC journalist forever. She looked like she would have been interesting & could have been drawn out well. But the subject matter all night was inane, & she was in with a rabble. Waste of a potentially very good panellist. She looked & carried herself rather like Helen Mirren.

(3) Some youngish bloke who could have been sent from central casting to play a university commo type. May have been interesting, but he didn't come out that way. Or perhaps I was doing something more interesting whenever he spoke, like going to boil the kettle.

(4) Some nubile sheila (Mona Eltahawy) who looked for all the world like Nana Mouskouri with curly hair. Don't know who or what she was meant to be, but she was stark raving mad! Bonkers! Hyperbole this is not, as the woman is off her trolley. Bordering on certifiable. Her only hope of redemption is to reveal that during the show she was high on some illicit substance.
In a textbook example of wasted potential, and mindful that women over 30 have the face they deserve, she would have been a "hot ethnic babe" in her 20's, but her nuttiness goes back a long way, & she is well on the way to being downright unappealing, despite having the raw potential for "hotness-in-her-40's" that many women would kill to have.
Alas, the woman is irredemably nuts. No mention on her wikipedia page of her marital status (a key piece of information for eligible bachelors - such as Mine Host) though this is one case where Mine Host would probably pass up even dinner, conversation & a good bottle of red.

(5) Greg Sheridan. The only panellist I've heard of. A newspaper columnist. I've seen lots of disparaging references to him online in discussion groups (translation: He sometimes writes stuff that skewers the hard political left) I can't recall if he is a supposed to be a lefty or righty. Given the performance of the others on the panel (drug-addled, descending to merely confused) I'd have said he was the panel's "token conservative", except the show does on occassion completely neglect to have a conservative on the panel. (Yeah, the ABC really is that hopeless)
Another wasted panellist. Remove the noisy rabble, & introduce some interesting topics/questions & he'd have made some interesting contributions.

There's One in every crowd

2011-10-03T11:01:00.003+10:00

To the great consternation of army officers, when seeking a post-service career, it is always their N.C.O's who are sought out by civilian recruitment firms.

For it is the N.C.O's who know how to run things. Officers spend their career passing on other people's orders, making a few inconsequent minor decisions, & are also there to be the "fall guy" if a sane decision by their Sgt is thwarted by the enemy.

This is why so many former officers end up on the government teat, in a meaningless job somewhere in the public service (eg riding as a passenger on long haul bus trips, recording in a notebook the driver's breaks) whilst their Sgt has a real job, as head of an engineering department working on the Boston Harbour Project, or something like that.

There are of course smarter & more capable former officers, who enter a profession that has some meaning, and where the pay is more than they drew for wearing jungle green. But boy-oh-boy, do plenty of 'em end up selling vacum cleaners or somesuch.

Then occassionally one turns up who slipped through the system. We are blessed with one particular Duntroon graduate in our federal parliament. One could be forgiven for thinking this person is a serial malcontent, as he has at various times been a member of almost every political party, from one end of the political spectrum to the other.

Notable recently for threatening to throw the toys out of the cot if he doesn't get his way on a whole shopping basket of 10th-tier policies, he has also managed to cry his eyes out in parliament. (Must have been one real macho he-man platoon commander).

One's military experience can be ruined by being stuck with an officer who is bad news. Wonder what it was like to be in the battalion commanded by this deep-voiced confidence-inspiring macho-man? (That was a joke, he's a whiny voiced sniveller) It must be stressed here that fragging is a very bad thing to do, and this blog does not, repeat does not, mean to imply, in any way, that the bullets that killed this particular C.O. should have had anything other than "made in Japan" written on them. (Or whatever the modern equivalent is, "halal approved by Mullah Omar" or somesuch.)

How did this..er.. former officer... ever get through the selection process for Duntroon?

How did they know he was a Fake?

2011-10-02T10:48:00.001+10:00

How did "the press" know he was a fake?

From the link:
A fake Batman has marched into Christchurch central police station demanding to know what emergency had triggered the "bat signal" - white light beaming through the sky.
The caped crusader, dressed in full superhero garb of mask, cape and tights, was insisting that the White Lights of Hope, which commemorate the earthquake anniversary, bear an uncanny resemblance to the bat signal.

Read on at the link to see how New Zealand police handled the matter.
(clue: New Zealand is a rather commonsense country, free from most of the red tape, the "blame somebody else" attitude, the nanny-ish guardrails around everything, & other restrictive rules that have come to blight society in most "developed" western nations)

Bankruptcy IV

2011-10-01T10:35:00.004+10:00

From the 2nd of September:

"If one is to be bankrupted, it is always imagined there will be a tangible reason, & a person to blame.

E.g You have made a rash decision, & can blame only yourself. Or you have a lowdown mongrel of a bank manager, & thus have someone you can seethe over & plan to shoot, or something.

Either way, you could expect to have lots of warning, i.e. to be trading poorly for a while beforehand, or be having difficulties meeting bank commitments etc.

It never entered my head that it could pop out of nowhere, that you could be trading profitably, looking to expand, everything going fine. The *pop* along comes an event that you never imagined would happen to anybody. There is no person to blame, no rash decision been made."
The spectre of bankruptcy is no longer looming, I can sleep again. And I made this offer:

"Anybody who can guess what it is that has caused such trouble will be allowed open slather in my wine cellar."

Nobody came close. Some great stories, but nobody guessed anywhere near to it.

The bank was very good about it. Much much better than expected.

The problem? I couldn't get insurance. No Australian underwriter would offer me insurance. The reason: I am located north of 23 degrees latitude, & insurance companies will not offer commercial property insurance to anybody north of 23 degrees.

I had expected there would be a last minute quote, but instead for several weeks I was totally & completely uninsured. (Public liability insurance was no problem, otherwise I'd have been in even worse trouble.)

My preferred insurance brokers, a huge worldwide firm, was finally able to find insurance for me on the international market. This was no joke, putting a country pub into a market that is designed for the insuring of entire fleets of oil tankers or something.

The insurance was finally cobbled together via 8 different underwriters. Quite an effort.

The cost as 1/5th of profitability.... When I entered the pub trade property insurance was about 1/70th of profitability. Increase in risk is negligible. Increase in real terms, in cost of replacement has been negligible.

Very few people believed me. The insurance industry became heated when I sooled the politicians onto them. My industry association was ambivalent, but after phoning a few insurance companies themself, oh boy did they ever believe me. The Liberal & National party responses varied between laughing ("You're in a pickle mate!" - from one very well known LNP politician, who actually laughed as if it was the funniest thing heard all week. This was not helpful)

My local member at least pretended to give a toss. Every ALP politician I contacted was extremely helpful, & escalated the predicament (it'll affect the bulk of businesses north of 23) at either state or federal level.

My ALP federal politician, within 30 minutes of being phoned by me, traipsed straight accross Canberra to thump the desk on my behalf with certain powers. For their trouble they received this response: "Your consitituent is making this up."

That was action within 30 minutes. The first LNP politician to call me back took half a week to do so. All they had to say was how lucky it was I had phoned them, as the ALP "won't even bother to help you mate."

Why is lack of insurance critical? It is a condition of bank finance. Without insurance the bank has cause to instantly withdraw their finance, force a sale. In such circumstances the sale would be for a fraction of what would be termed a "fire sale price", being as the incoming buyer would be buying something they cannot insure.

This is a possible explanation for the (to me) strange behaviour of the past few months from a couple of other pubs in town.

New Faces

2011-09-30T21:08:00.002+10:00

Last night's QandA panel (er... well, caught up with it online last night)

(1) Janet Albrechtsen. Heard of her. Conservative columnist. Much better looking than expected. She has class. Sharp of mind, she should be on the panel more often.

(2) Rob Oakshott. Independant federal politician from NSW. To call him a political lightweight would be praise indeed. Very few people Mine Host would term "moron", very few (not saying he is one.....) The man apparently won every booth in his electorate at the recent federal election. My forecast: At the next election he'll lose at every polling booth. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't understand the mentality of rural areas (real rural areas, where everybody has a rural job, not hobby or alternate farmers). The ....er... fellow was braying on (like a donkey) that the "age of the independant" has arrived. With no sense of irony, this came from the lips of the man whose actions have ended the "age of the independant". Bob Katter excepted, come the first election, there is unlikely to be one independant in any state or federal parliament. This has proved to be the case so far.

(3) Helen Coonan. Political heavyweight. Former minister in the Howard government. Little was done to draw out of her all that she could contribute to a panel discussion.

(4) Some fellow whose name has already been forgotten. A minister in the current federal government. Political lightweight. Former union hack. Couldn't even keep foul language out of his casual panel comments. No class, no style. He means well, but has been promoted above his level of competence. Shows how little talent the federal government has available.

(5) Mark McInnes. An actor, though haven't seen him in any show/production. He writes a column for the Courier Mail. Thoughtful & interesting fellow.

The usual host was away this week. This need not be a bad thing. He was replaced by Virginia Trioli. She has learned from last time & did a far better job than when last she ran the show. She drew some of the panel out quite well.

Big mistake this episode: Not having one of the early questions asked by a good looking sort planted in the audience.

Don't break the law, Just make your own instead!

2011-09-29T10:33:00.001+10:00

Mine Host is caught up in litigation with his landlord, a merchant bank.
"McBank" is the uncrackable code name that shall be used for this bank.

The case swings on a (very thick) contract. The contract is so thick it is stapled & bound in what looks for all the world like heavy duty sticking plaster.

Specifically the case swings on a few clauses (as it always does).
The pages upon which these clauses are printed are not endorsed with the Mine Host's signature or initials.

This is because a sheaf of about 20 pages has been added to the contract, after it was signed.

All pages show the wear & tear of having been unbound, unstapled then restapled & rebound. Except of course the inserted pages, which not only are pristine, they are a slightly different colour.

Every original page in the contract is endorsed with Mine Host's signature or initials. The newly inserted pages are not.

It is clauses found amongst these newly inserted pages that will hang Mine Host.

And hang him they do. McBank produces a fax they purportedly sent announcing that they will be inserting after the fact new clauses into the contract.

The existence of the "fax" and the altered contract were unknown to Mine Host until they were provided as part of Discovery. Until that moment, he had been unaware of their existence.

Mine Host's lawyer ruefully advised that the "fax" meant that the (effectively entirely new) contract was valid, and there was no choice but to roll over.

If Mine Host is ever in the big city with a skinful of rum, God Help any person in his proximity who declares they are an executive of McBank.

Best Mushroom Recipe Ever!

2011-09-28T10:23:00.006+10:00

Motivation: Charming reader Ellie the Kitchen Wench has posted a link to a recipe for mushroom appetisers.

Action: Wayside Tavern chefs received snap instructsions & have just cooked Three different mushroom appetiser recipes.

Purpose: To compare the Three recipes for taste & presentation.

Result: The Mushroom, Tofu & Chicken Dumplings are exquisite!

Pretenders: Walnut & Mushroom Pesto tart, and Herb stuffed Mushroom.

History: The Wayside Tavern is no stranger to herb stuffed mushrooms, for years we've been making them for functions. These are nice. The tart is also very very good, not something we've made much of in the past, but we'll consider it again.

Winner: The Mushroom Tofu & Chicken Dumplings are first class! The staff & passing guests have all (with one or two exceptions, who will be dealt with later) voted it winner!
1st Mushroom Tofu & Chicken Dumplings
2nd Daylight
3rd Herb stuffed mushroom
4th mushroom & walnut pesto tart

Instructions for Readers: (this means you) These three recipes are in contest run by the mushroom growers assn. Go right now to the contest website and vote for the Chicken, Mushroom & Tofu Dumplings.

$15,000 - $20,000 - $30,000 - How much is it worth?

2011-09-27T09:50:00.010+10:00

Unnoticed by the lay public, the federal government since (the change of govt in) 2007 has been most erratic in its shotgun approach to immigration policy.

Dictated to by the Trade Union movement (a collective mentality that is far from forward thinking) the new government immediately made drastic changes to the sponsoring employer's obligations for "457" (temporary business skilled entry) visas.

That it is visa subclass number "457" may be a hint that there are visa subclasses aplenty. Off the top of my head I currently employ people who are variously on, 010, 119, 417, 457, 485, 573, or 857 visa subclasses. Were I to bother opening the filing cabinet I'd almost certainly find a few more subclasses currently on the payroll.

A few ill-researched & one-sided articles in newspapers, prior to the election, and your average unthinking lay person may have had the impression that a "457 visa" was effictively a return to slave labour, whereby an employer could bring in "loads" of people from overseas, pay them below subsistence wages for long hours of work, and keep them locked up in a corrugated iron shed on the jobsite.

Such events are breaches of both Industrial Relations law, and of the sponsors obligations under the immigration act.

Making drastic changes to sponsoring employer's obligations is of course, not going to affect employers who are wont to treat their staff as above.

Thus under union pressure, the government changed the requirements, for visa subclass 457.
No other subclass was touched.

Sponsoring anyone on visa subclass 457, a time consuming & expensive exercise at the best of times, and done only in sheer desperation, became a legal liability that could lead to bankruptcy of the sponsoring employer.

457 visas were dropped by employers, like a hot potato.

The unions were happy with their first step in the direction of a renewed "White Australia Policy"
The government were happy ("We sure showed those mongrel bosses a trick or two!")

Employers desperate for staff (where else do you get 'em?) commenced using different subclasses of visa. Many of these are effectively instant citizenship.

What had been a working system of temporary skilled entry, became a black market, by shady immigration & employment agents, selling Australian citizenship to completely unqualified, & more or less unvetted queue jumpers.

As soon as they land in Australia they can walk away from both their sponsor and their obligations. And they do abscond once in-country, as the Immigration dept (govt) is not seen to enforce, or even care about, people who breach the conditions of their visa.

No wonder there is a black market in citizenship. The price started at $5,000 but as soon as the gypsies realised what a goldmine it was (i.e. how much people are prepared to pay for Australian citizenship) the price skyrocketed.

From a standing start, via this blackmarket, it takes less than a year to become an Australian Permanent Resident. With citizenship to follow automatically.

Or the federal government could make the 457 visa subclass back into what it was designed to be, in the process killing off the brutal penalties for the sponsoring employer.

After all, they've just changed the English language & work permission conditions for student visas. To prop up the jobs of university academics.

Professional Journalist

2011-09-26T10:28:00.004+10:00

The local newspaper runs a news article about me. A most inaccurate & unfair article. The entire article is fabricated subjective assumptions and is bristling with lies. It is very surprising that the newspaper printed it.

The article seems vaguely familiar.

Then recognition dawns! It is almost word for word a transcript of what Mr. Motelier was spitting at my doorman early that morning.

It transpired that Mr. Motelier had lurched drunkenly home, taken two-finger aim in the general direction of the keyboard, and put what he had been saying into an email, one spattered wiht the spellngi anf puntcuaiton errora of the drunkn typist, then sent it to the "newsroom". (Hick newspapers in yokel towns don't have newsrooms, they have one room of desks, with about 5 open-plan cubicles.)

The senior journalist at the newspaper had printed it word for word. In that same day's edition. And put her own name on the byline.

The 2-i-c and I had a rather unhappy interview with the senior journalist, where she backed herself further into a corner.

None of what she had written (correction: what had been ghostwritten for her by a drunken motel owner) was true, and could easily be demonstrated to be untrue.

Her story unravelled quite easily. Journalists often aren't good debaters, particularly when they are defending a lie. She had written about what happens inside the Wayside Tavern and on Front Street, between 2 and 3 am.

When asked what she thought of the atmosphere inside the Wayside Tavern at that time of morning she (the "journalist" who had put her name & reputation alongside the research & writing of the article) reacted in a most superior manner:
"I'd never go into your grotty pub at that time of night"

And the words came from her own mouth. It was too easy. Getting her to say it wasn't even challenging.

Professional Motelier

2011-09-25T10:42:00.006+10:00

About 1am the owner of the motel staggers accross the street to the Wayside Tavern & stands facing the doorman.

It looks good when replayed on camera. The motelier lurching erratically accross the street, then stands swaying like a palm tree in a strong wind.

By the look of him he's got an entire bottle of scotch inside him.

After a short time (possibly to remember where he was) he begins to berate the doorman. It looks fantastic on camera, stabbing finger pointing, swaying on the feet.

He is carrying on about the "damage done to the street" by the Wayside Tavern. He alleges that drunks are lurching along the street at all hours of the night, that after we close there are people "pouring onto the street, vomiting everywhere, throwing empty beer bottles into gardens, smashing windows" and so on.

The only drunk we've seen on the front street, at any time of the day or night, is Mr. Motelier himself.

None of the allegations are even possible. There are no "gardens" in the CBD, our patrons do not exit onto that street, nor do people carry "beer bottles" out of the Wayside Tavern late at night.

Finally Mr. Motelier, seeing he is not getting anywhere with the doorman, loses his bundle completely & storms off, lurching back accross the street to home.

The camera replay demonstrates that his sense of direction hasn't improved any in the half hour he's spent sobering up at our front door.

Heaven only knows what got into him.

Bankruptcy III

2011-09-23T10:28:00.001+10:00

Averted!

The longest 3 weeks of my life.
Now I can sleep again.

I'll allow another week for anybody to guess what the strife was.

I'm a Police Officer, I Know Best!

2011-09-22T10:06:00.004+10:00

The police "flying squad" (or whatever they are called) of "liquor compliance" officers are in town. These police operate independently to the actual Liquor Licencing dept.

Liquor Licencing cannot be happy with this police squad going around creating havoc, leaving it its wake the impression that it is in cahoots with the Liquor Licencing Division.

The bar manager is at the door, in conversation with the two police "liquor compliance" officers.

A young man fronts up to the door, ready to come in.

One of the "flying squad" officers steps forward & declares the young man "too intoxicated" to be served, and that we must not let him into the pub.

It was a stupid call. The young man had certainly been drinking, but unduly intoxicated he was not. He was a nice young country fellow, wouldn't have been a problem in a pink fit.

We could have ignored the police officer's "suggestion", and enforced our decision to admit the young man. But in the interests of good police relations we didn't.

The only outcome? A decent young man had his evening ruined.

Not only did the police officer have an abrasive attitude and a nasty mentality, he had poor judgement.

Almost every staff member saw what happened. None of them believed the young man was intoxicated.

"And they wonder why they are called Pigs" summed up one of the girls, under her breath.

What the staff saw was a police officer too stupid to judge if someone was blithering drunk.
The astute staff saw a police officer callously lying, then using his badge to enforce that lie.

We Ain't Got No Jurisdiction....!

2011-09-21T11:16:00.010+10:00

Police, particularly the more clueless, may have it in for the pub trade. However there is one demographic in Australia for whom the police seem to really have a special dislike.

The Army.

Put simply: Police loathe soldiers.

Why do the coppers have it in for the army?

Perhaps because civilian police have no power over the armed forces. In a garrison town it may be different, but in the bulk of the nation, if the local copper locks up a solider, nothing much will happen to him, apart from the MP's get a drive in the country to pick him up & then drive him back to the battalion.

That arrested soldier may be officially in trouble, but unless he has actually committed a crime, he'll be viewed somewhat favourably by the MP's, as like all of us, they don't mind:
Forgoing a couple of day's square bashing and saluting.
To go for a drive to the bush & back.
In what is effecitvely their own private Landrover.
With no superior officer in sight.

Of course, if the local coppers pick up a soldier in a garrision city & lock him up, and the MP's have to come & get him, that soldier is in more strife than Flash Gordon.

If a country copper locks up a soldier, there had better be a good reason. Youthful exuberance that does not extend to any actual damage (which is 99% of street or liquor offences) is not enough reason for a junior police officer to start something that will go all the way to the Commissioner's office.

Thus the police are impotent. And soldiers know it, but usually don't press the matter unless the police get out of hand, which police sometimes do.

How much do police actually loathe uniformed soldiers who are out for a drink? They detest them with a passion. The dislike runs deep, is mostly hidden (even some police wives are unaware of it) and the police hatred, when you see it exposed, is confrontingly shocking in its violent intensity.

Unless the soldiers actually assault someone, or commit some other tangible offence, all the police can do is scream at them. Soldiers know they have the option of ignoring the screaming.

It doesn't help the police mood that in such situations they are usually outnumbered by at least 30-to-1. By fit young men. Who have been drinking. And the nearest policeman may be a couple of hours away if he can be bothered waking up to answer the phone.

I've seen it play out a few times. I'm for the soldiers. Very pleasant to watch.

Mastermind it is Not

2011-09-20T14:00:00.005+10:00

Mine Host has, for quite some time, been an occassional watcher of the ABC TV show "Q & A"

Beings sans TV it is watched online, in arrears. The benefits of online catch-up are twofold:
(a) The rolling feed of twitter comments accross the bottom of the screen are too small to read, thus the viewing experience is enhanced.
(b) One can keep the show minimized, bringing it up only when it sounds as if it is getting interesting. Thus one can catch the show without having to sacrifice an hour of one's life.

Last Night's panel:
(1) Some previously unknown philosopher. There is a reason he is unknown. His name is already forgotten. His contribution won't be noticed or missed.

(2) Jim Wallace. Former commander of the army's mechanised brigade, former commander of the SAS Regiment. He certainly didn't rise to high command by mistake. He exuded the quiet confidence of a competent achiever. Now a christian lobbyist, but one with his two feet firmly on the ground. Didn't speak any rot, however he has yet to re-jig his points to fit them into a brief soundbite. The student/unemployed contingent of the audience considered him a laughing stock. Considering the (cough) contribution made to the world by students and/or unemployed makes one wish Samurai were still allowed to test the sharpness of their blade by arbitrarily lopping the head off the occassional unworthy whose path may cross theirs.

(3) Kristina Keneally. Former premier of NSW. Didn't realise until this show what an intellectual lightweight she is. It is beyond comprehension that one so shallow was elevated to premier. Of course, she only got the position because the party had no hope of being reelected, and putting up as leader someone who looked very rootable was the only trick they hadn't yet tried. Her contributions to the panel were nothing more than fluff. She has no depth, and certainly no ability. Mine Host will struggle for years with how a political party could promote an uncredentialled airhead such as her to the job of leadership of the nation's most populous state.
She has nothing positive to contribute to any discussion.

(4) Cristina Rad. A Romanian V-logger. Very attractive, and not as clueless as some of the token hot young babes who are invited onto the show. Yet to make her contribution in life, she is a young woman very angry at the world.

(5) Gerard Henderson. The token conservative (though last night sharing the role with Jim Wallace) apt to succinctly point out hypocrisy & inconsistency in the arguments of his detractors, he is not one to debate against without being fully prepared.

Each week there is a supposed theme (last night there was no obvious theme). Questions are taken from the audience & from online submissions. The questions are carefully vetted & the entire show choreographed.

Possibly intended to be a serious current affairs forum, the show in practice it has turned out to be more of a tragicomedy. And that is before it began its current long slide to triviality.

Misguided Nanny State

2011-09-19T11:55:00.001+10:00

One of the more misunderstood current affairs topics in Australia at the moment is "poker machine pre commitment".

A proposal by the minority federal government, prompted by one independant politician who holds the balance of power.

Each gambler will have to apply for & be granted a "gambling card", similar to a driver's licence or credit card.

Before commencing gambling, the player will "pre-commit" an amount they are prepared to lose, & their card will not allow them to play beyond that point.

So the theory goes. And so the theory will fall apart in practice.

It will work about as well as a similar system that would limit, say, the number of cigarettes a smoker may purchase.

There will however be quite an impact upon poker machine revenue.
Applying for the gambling card will deter overseas tourists. Carrying around the card (never mind applying for it) will deter the casual/discretionary punter.

The deadline set for introduction of appropriate technology is 2014. There isn't yet a machine developed that will be compliant with the new technology.

It won't be possible to manufacture, ship, & install a replacement machine for every poker machine in the country. Never mind the lead up time to develop a pre-commitment compliant machine.

And it isn't just a matter of developing a new machine. An entirely different machine will have to be developed for each state. For each state has different computer protocols & (insert secret computer jargon here) methods of communication.

Actually a second machine will have to be developed for each state, as in each state the casino protocols & computer communication languages are different from those in pubs/clubs.

Once a machine is developed it isn't a matter of, say, converting a NSW machine to Qld protocols. They have to start development all over again from scratch. This is why a game you will see in NSW does not appear in Qld until a year or so later.

18 is the right age.

2011-09-18T11:15:00.007+10:00

Who are Queensland Police? Someone has asked.

They are the police in the state of Queensland. Each state makes its own laws, and has its own police force. The police officers are "lifers" in their respective forces.

The police are a disciplined, uniformed service, that one is sworn into.
A serving police officer may be posted, or transferred to any police station in the state.

The state is 1,800 miles long, and 1,200 miles wide.

Most police officers join as 18 year olds, direct from high school. Recruiting shortfalls of recent years have led to a portion of the annual recruit intake being older. This is not always received well by those who have joined at 18.

Incredibly, at a public meeting the Station Commander (he joined the force aged 17) in a grave tone of voice told us all what dark times are ahead for the public, now that the force is accepting recruits aged in their 20's.

Most police officers are posted to my town for only a couple of years. This includes the station commander.

The police are answerable to nobody in the community, only to the police hierarchy, run from the capital city, a thousand miles or more away. It is like dealing with any other government department full of lifer public servants.

All the police live together, in their own street behind the police station. Single police live in a barracks, married police in a row of police cottages. Nobody else lives in that street, they all back onto the police station.

I have never seen any other living arrangements for police. Except in towns where they go one step further & live inside a fenced compound, which really exacerbates their "them & us" mentality.

Selling Private Information

2011-09-17T12:42:00.012+10:00

"Hey mate, can you gimme her phone number?"

We'd hear this at closing time probably 4 times each night. It is spoken in a conspiratorial whisper, as we shove 'em out the back door.

Half the boys who come into the pub are panting over one of the staff, Racquel. Polynesian, and incredibly beautiful, she looks very like Catherine Bell (TV star, was in a show called JAG for years) Except Racquel is 18, very attractive, with a very demure manner. And much much slimmer than Catherine Bell.

She bestows a lovely smile, all the boys think they are in with a chance, that the smile she gives them is more special than the smile she gives to all the others.

But she doesn't give them her phone number, only a sweet smile.
Hence there is always someone asking for her number. Racquel is stunningly beatiful, alluring, etc etc.

Explanations that it is not our policy to give out the private phone numbers of staff are often met with a surreptitious $50 note.....

.... which we slyly pocket, as we scribble a phone number onto the back of a beer coaster.

We get another $50 for the staff party.
The taxi firm gets another call from someone who needs a ride home.

So continues life behind the bar.

You Need More Security

2011-09-16T11:15:00.005+10:00

Update: I've actually posted on this subject before. I think the wording of the earlier post was better.

If police are called to a pub, you can almost guarantee that they will make two statements:

"This joint needs more security", and
"You need to close right now".

If some lunatic government ever gives police the power to order a licenced premises closed, then quick as a flash we'll be back to 6pm closing (on a de facto basis)

"Pubs just fill people up with grog, and then when someone's wallet is empty, or the pub can't handle the drunk, they throw them out onto the street & make it a police problem".

I've heard this clueless statement not just from constables, but from officers who have enough experience to know better: Sergeants, and even Station Commanders.

This from people who seemingly are unable to observe & understand the pub trade, yet claim to be trained observers, and affect an ability to solve crime.

The pub trade hasn't have worked that way during the lifetime of most currently serving police, yet the belief is widespread. Actually it never did work that way, as back in the old days, the police made it clear that pubs were on their own if there was any trouble.

If only we could vote for our police.

Bankruptcy II

2011-09-15T14:30:00.004+10:00

There is light on the horizon.
I may be remaining in business.
Not out of the woods yet.
It has been an anxious fortnight.

My situation is not completely unique.
But it is not faced by anybody south of 23 degrees latitude.
Nobody has yet guessed what has gone wrong.
One of the difficulties has been that lobby groups in Canberra refuse to believe what has happened, & state that it is not possible.

The attitude of the Liberal & National parties toward an external threat that may wipe out small businesses, has been utterly disgusting. They couldn't care less.
The attitude & assistance provided by the Australian Labor Party has been first class.

He wanted some exercise

2011-09-14T10:44:00.005+10:00

After a ban of several months, a bloke was readmitted to the pub. He didn't play up that same night, and after a few weeks went by, we started to think he really had grown up.

On this particular evening inside the pub, he king hit a passing stranger, knocking him to the ground. Then exited the premises.

The victim now had a crushed eye socket, he'll require craniofacial surgery.

Ambulance & Police were called.

Two police officers turned up, stood on the footpath having an extended conversation with the attacker. Once inside, the police became nasty at me, as they do, about how the attacker might have gotten into a state where he'd do something like that.

Having had rather enough of clueless constables, I pointed out that the attacker was the fellow they'd spent so much time speaking to outside. Obviously he wasn't in such a state that they'd been able to detect anything amiss, them being trained observers & all.

They'd told him to go home, and so he had. (Walking in a straight line).

He'd only been in the pub an hour. He'd hit the victim because he "felt like hitting somebody".

A couple of weeks later the police went round to the attacker's house & arrested him for the assault.

Not Fat or Ugly

2011-09-13T11:45:00.002+10:00

"Hi my name is Joe Blow, im a Qualified chef, im a hard, punctual and reliable worker. Ive been travelling chefing for the last 4 years i can commit for at least 2 years. Please find attached a brief resume for any more information please contact me on 0123456789

I can start this asap. i couldnt find any photos but im australian of australian back ground, not fat, not ugly, nothing wrong with me and you wont have any shocks, im well presented."

It was the 2nd paragraph that got him hired. I've never read anything quite like it in a job application.

M'lud, I was under stress, I was scared I'd be caught.

2011-09-12T10:42:00.006+10:00

If I'm tried for murder, I want it to be in front of this judge.

Police turn up to arrest you, you produce a firearm, discharge it several times, stopping only when police officers shoot you down. You have managed to shoot only one police officer.

In court your defence is: "I was scared of being arrested, I only wanted to warn the arresting officers so I could run away, naturally I pulled a gun out & opened up, but I didn't mean to hit any of them, honest!"

Your defence for carrying an illegal concealable firearm is: "I carry a concealable firearm, because I'm afraid of being picked on because of my religion, honest!"

How much indulgence would you expect from a court? Really?

The glaring question: Why did the prosecution agree to a judge only trial? I'm not saying this was a fix, but... er... why not a jury trial?

The facts as I see 'em: Cops came to arrest him, he resisted arrest by starting a gunfight. He shot a policeman, the gunfight ended only when police shot him.

I smell a cock & bull story (who doesn't?) by Mr. Mahmood Yusef (or whatever his name is).
Quite obviously I am too stupid to understand the matter, and were I "in possession of all the facts", like a real smart & sensible judge would be, I would see the matter in a more accurate perspective.

10 years ago

2011-09-11T13:21:00.005+10:00

Very late at night, walking past the boarders lounge, where a few staff & lodgers were watching TV said: "You should have a look at this."

The TV station had cut into programming & was showing an unfolding dramatic event.

Watched for a while, trying to catch up with what was happening, it seemed that airliners had been flown into skyscrapers in New York city. Rather an horrific thought, thriller novel material, that never in your wildest dreams you'd expect to see in real life.

The finer details of New York city don't have much relevance to working stiffs on the opposite side of the world, thus the words "World Trade Centre" didn't mean much to any of us. Big cities are big cities, especially when they are on the other side of the world.

I searched my memory and suggested, (hoping I'd got the name right): "They'll go looking for Osama bin Laden for this." I seemed to recall that he was some sort of shifty Arab type who'd been in the frame for some sort of bombing attack on some US embassies or warships, or something.

Went downstairs & told the staff at work that airliners had been deliberately crashed into skyscrapers in New York. They scoffed at me & flatly refused to switch on the TV, not wanting to be seen falling for a prank.

It seemed to be a big event, but not one of such scale that I'd phone up anyone to tell them about it. Not at that time of night. I woke up my parents, & told them, they were disgruntled at being woken. There are always heavy duty events happening somewhere in the world.

Most people I knew found out when they woke up to it the next morning, by which time it was really big news. And I wished I'd been bold enough to contact them a few hours prior.

Interesting snippet: It was the first time I could remember that anyone had bothered to watch TV at that time of night, or that I had bothered to pay attention to what was on a TV screen.

But soap sales wouldn't have declined.

2011-09-10T11:41:00.012+10:00

Skepticlawyer, longstanding occassional commenter on this site, one of Mine Host's engaging reads, and noted for her propensity to make blog posts that are 2,000 words long, has posted on manners & broaches upon gentlemen courteously taking "no" for an answer.
The ensuing comments thread mentions an apparently well know case where a lady, one with seemingly no class whatsoever, dates a man & afterward treats him very badly.

I've had the experience of bumping into a few women who turned out to be classless and nowhere near as intelligent as you'd first think. Though they'd see themselves as the opposite, by dint of nothing more than dwelling in inner suburbs, & having been tertiary educated.
Narrow minded & bigoted (they'd see themselves as the opposite) I've had them just plain stop talking to me, for what would be the oddest reasons.

Here's one I lost about 3 seconds of sleep over:

(a) I'm only guessing, but I never heard from this one again after I opined that a "stop the war" rally in Sydney (in 2003 or thereabouts) was a golden opportunity that had been missed: A couple of well sited Vickers guns, several minutes of enfilade firing, and you'd have raised Australia's average IQ. Without having lost one useful citizen.

The rally in question was the one where NSW Premier Bob Carr (an opponent of the war) was attacked by an "anti-war" crowd. My observation had focused subtly upon that point.

I wasn't being contrarian, merely making conversation with one who represented herself as broadminded & able in a highbrow manner to "discuss & dissect" a wide range of current affairs topics. (Yeah, I saw then just how much detached discussion she was capable of.)

She wasn't even polite enough to say goodbye. Actually she didn't say anything, it was only the passage of time that clued me in that she'd cut me dead.

She was a film editor or something like that. Lived in the inner city Sydney suburb of Glebe, or Ultimo.

She Didn't Get the Job

2011-09-09T13:07:00.006+10:00

And it wasn't because of the carefully prepared stationery.
Nor that she overlooked her current phone no.

Free? Still too Expensive!

2011-09-08T11:14:00.005+10:00

A special order was received!

Pleased with service from the butcher shop, to show their appreciation a customer wished to send them a carton of beer.

We accepted payment over the phone & delivered to the butcher shop the requested beer (the most popular brand, in bottles, full strength alcohol, "heavies").

Unsmilingly they silently accepted the box of beer.

Later that afternoon we took angry telephone call from the butcher shop, in which they denigrated the brand of beer they had been supplied with, and demanded we replace it with something suitable.

In the name of good customer relations we agreed to swap the beer for another of their preference.

They sneered as they plonked their free carton on our counter & with a curled top lip accepted the replacement box, sourly vocalising their displeasure at the way we had treated them. (Never at any stage did they say "thank you".)

They never bothered to enquire which of their customers had shouted them a carton of beer.

Their response to being given free beer was to bitch about how it hadn't been given to them in an appropriate manner, and how it had ruined their day.

The attitude exhibited above is more common than you'd first think.

Dead email

2011-09-07T15:24:00.009+10:00

The business email has stopped working.

It transpires the email address has been closed.

"It was closed sir, because you requested it be closed."

The email address has irretrievably gone into "quarantine" & will be not be available for Seven years.

Not happy with this, I demand the reinstatement of the email address.

"Sir, all calls to this centre are recorded for coaching & training purposes, your call to request the closing of that email address will have been recorded, if you escalate a complaint that recording will be produced."

I escalate a complaint. No recording is ever produced. (Gee, wonder why not?)

I quite naturally want the scalp of the clerk who killed my email address. However Bigpond (the ISP) are rude & defensive.

Next stop for me: The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.
The TIO requests me to first try to sort it out with the person about whom I am complaining.

Hmmm.... (After that)......

The TIO says that since I cannot sort it out with Bigpond, then there is nothing that can be done.

(Why do we bother to fund a Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman?)

You couldn't make it up!

the Head Start Protocol

2011-09-05T10:12:00.006+10:00

A girl is bleeding all over the place.

Busted nose & lips.

The woman who did the damage to her face is now threatening to grind a broken beer glass into that same face.

It is after midnight. Several hundred are in the bar.

Guards restrain the assailant before the glassing can occur. The injured girl wishes to press charges.

The police are telephoned and advised of the incident.

"Mate, there's only two of us working tonight, can you ask the offender her name? We can't handle something like that, just toss her out onto the street & we'll get around to her sometime in the next few days. Don't let her back in tonight!"

(How much head start do the cops want to give 'em?)

So guards evict the assailant. The victim goes to hospital.

I am just waiting to unload onto the first: journalist, police officer, liquor licencing inspector, or politician who suggests the reason our youth are bashing each other senseless is that I have been "Failing to practise Responsible Service of Alcohol."

Bankruptcy

2011-09-02T11:54:00.001+10:00

Update: No, the Carbon Commissioner has not given me the grandaddy of all fines for overgassing the beer. (Think again, funny person who emailed that)

Update 2: No, I'm not being shut down for encouraging hate speech after someone was overheard mumbling "Gillard's gotta go!" into their beer. (Gillard is the name of the [current] Prime Minister)

Update 3: On a serious note, it has nothing to do with any government agency. In fact both state & federal Labor Party politicians have been of invaluable help.

If one is to be bankrupted, it is always imagined there will be a tangible reason, & a person to blame.

E.g. You have made a rash decision, & can blame only yourself. Or you have a low down mongrel for a bank manager, & thus have someone you can seethe over & plan to shoot or something.

Either way, you could expect to have lots of warning, i.e. to be trading poorly for a while beforehand, or be having difficulties meeting bank committments etc.

It never entered my head that it could pop out of nowhere, that you could be trading profitably, looking to expand, everything going fine. Then *pop* along comes an event that you never imagined would happen to anybody. There is no person to blame, no rash decision been made.

The spectre of bankruptcy is looming, I won't be sleeping much for many days.

Anyone who can guess what it is that has caused such trouble will be allowed to pretend that they have open slather in my wine cellar (no actual access allowed, as by then the bank will likely possess it.)

Remember, there is no person responsible, and it could happen to anybody who has their business tied up in a tangible compact asset (like a pub).
It is not even an event (like a natural disaster, or closure of a nearby military base full of customers) & realisation of it crept up in only a few short days beforehand.

When I finally tell you all (coz nobody will guess it) you'll never imagine it could have happened the way it did.

Romeo Alpha Papa Echo

2011-08-31T10:24:00.001+10:00

Guards have intervened to halt a suspected rape. (see previous post)

This is serious stuff, thus the police are telephoned. The call is diverted to a regional city "Yes sir, not much we can do, there is only one car 'on' in your town, & they are dealing with no end of skirmishes elsewhere"

The police officer hasn't absorbed what was reported to her. I try again. It seems to not soak in. I speak carefully & clearly into the telephone:

"Romeo Alpha Papa Echo, I say again, Romeo Alpha Papa Echo, in progress, Wayside Tavern."

Half an hour later the police car arrives.

Meantime guards have secured the male alleged perpetrator, assisted him to dress, & accompanied him to the hotel office.

For half an hour an obviously distressed young man sits in the office gossiping, smoking furiously, gulping down tea. The reason why he is there is not discussed.

Then police arrive & take him away.

The female victim has by this time got dressed. She arrives at the hotel office, to discover that her 'friend' has been taken to the police station.

She is in an advanced state of intoxication. She is adamant that she has not been raped. She sits in the hotel office, gossiping, smoking furiously, gulping down tea. The reason why she is there is all she can talk about.

She cannot imagine why the police have arrested her boyfriend. However, arrest is a serious thing, & not so easily undone.

Rape is serious, the detectives were woken. One arrives at the Wayside Tavern. He has spoken to the male prisoner, & wishes to interview the female alleged victim.

Upon seeing the alleged victim, the detective arches his eyebrows at Mine Host. Clearly the woman is much too intoxicated to interview.

However, pragmatism reigns supreme. It is a busy Saturday night. If the police can release the prisoner, they can get back out on patrol.

The woman is taken accross to the police station, where she makes a statement. (The state she was in she'd have done well to be able to sign her name.)

As a result of that statement her 'friend' is tossed out of the police station. The matter is ended. The two police on roster get straight back out on patrol.

Every law has a time when it must be ignored.

Tonight that was: "Police must not take formal statements from persons who are incoherent."
And for those who are observant, we also ignored: "Thou shalt not smoke inside a pub".

The Unsung Working Man

2011-08-30T10:33:00.001+10:00

"Rape" is screamed.

Later, nobody can say who screamed. It is after midnight. There were more than 500 people in the bar.

The rape is apparently in progress inside the Gents. Guards attempt to force their way in, as the door is blocked. This reinforces the belief that a rape is in progress.

Inside they find that one cubicle is locked. There is something not quite right about what is happening inside it.

More than one person is in there, at least one is female. When guards make entry they find a male & a female, "at it."

Both have taken all their clothes off. This is diverging from conduct associated with a rape.

The guard who made entry to the cubicle is on his own, except for the ..er...pair who were already in there. (Must have been rather cosy with the three of them.)

Half-a-dozen males attack the guard & attempt to enter the cubicle to "get the rapist." The guard fights them off.
Then another half dozen males attack the guard & attempt to enter the cubicle to "rescue their mate."

The guard is punched & kicked aplenty, his cries for help cannot be heard. He's backed into the cubicle, with the amorous/rapist pair squeezed behind him. Otherwise he'd have no chance.

All the while there is an endless crowd of males coming & going to use the toilet facilities. They dodge around the brawl. (Yes, it really does happen like that.)

The Guard knows there will be no "Hotel guard intervenes to save rape victim" headline. There never is. These blokes put in some heroic efforts, receiving little but sneering from the press & the authorities for their trouble.

These blokes are middle-aged working stiffs, putting in late shifts as guards to pay mortgage, put food on table, send kids to uni, or perhaps pay maintenance. They take seriously their responsibility to keep patrons & premises safe. Salt-of-the-earth.

(Pumped up young ethnic types, with Robert De Niro accents, bulging gym rat arms, carefully oiled skin, trimmed eyebrows & metrosexually moisturised face? You'll only find those down in the big smoke, usually at CBD venues.)

Afterward the guards prowl the venue, grabbing & tossing out those who had attacked the lone guard in the gents. They throw out about twenty males. In a most unceremonious fashion.

The Drinks Cabinet

2011-08-28T10:53:00.002+10:00

For the viewing pleasure of Paco. This is right beside my home kitchen.

Unwavering Gaze

2011-08-26T11:26:00.001+10:00

This photo is of the interrogation of a Kempetai (Japanese equivalent of Gestapo) Non-Com.

The photo is taken just after the war. Interrogating is an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force. The fellow on the right is an American Soldier, there to translate.

The Japanese soldier had been posted to the Kempetai in Sandakan.

Those reading this who know their history will have just had an adrenalin shot into their veins, as they understand what this interrogation is.

The Japanese prisoner has a "Who, me?" look on his face. I've seen that look a thousand times. It is used by every lowlife unsophisticate who is caught.

Sandakan Prisoner-of-War camp contained Allied (mostly Australian) & Indonesian personnel. Six Thousand prisoners in total. It was the starting point of what is known as the Sandakan Death March. All the prisoners in Sandakan camp were marched to another camp. It matters not where the other camp was, as none made there alive.

Of the circa Six Thousand in Sandakan p.o.w. camp, only Six Australian soldiers survived the war. By escaping during the death march.

Which brings us to the Fourth fellow in the photo. The one holding the Owen gun. The one whose task it is to guard the prisoner. A task he is conducting with a grim determined resolve.
One look tells you he is an Australian soldier. His dress, his armament, the angle of his slouch hat, and the way he carries himself.

And the set of his mouth. The iron expression on his face.
He knows very well who his prisoner is.

Chequebook Security Procedures

2011-08-25T10:34:00.001+10:00

"What procedures do you have in place to ensure your cheques are written only by authorised people?" Sneered the "Business Banking Relationship Officer" from the bank.

My reply:
"An expectation that your bank will not issue my chequebooks to strangers."

Not much he could say to that.

The bank had issued Six Hundred of my cheques to people who are not signatories to the account. Of these circa Sixty were written & presented by the time I detected something amiss.

The phone conversation was a rather "hot" one.

5-Star Rating

2011-08-24T10:57:00.002+10:00

Mine Host is engaged in a phone argument with the Company that measures the accommodation "star" rating system.

They are, as always, one of the rudest & most unreasonable outfits I have dealt with. It is little surprise that more & more accommodation businesses are opting out of a star rating.

The star rating is a simple checklist. A questionnaire on a clipboard, boxes ticked or crossed, answers evaluated, then pay for the inspection before you learn your new Star-Rating.

The argument with the Star Rating company began when they phoned (as they do every year) and glibly instructed me to rejoin the star rating system.

I retorted (as I do every year) by stating that I won't consider rejoining unless they adjust their inspection checklist to ensure I am given the rating I deserve.

The problem is there is no form of heating whatsoever in any of the Wayside Tavern's guest accommodation. Without in-room heating I won't get 4 & 1/2 star rating.

There is not, & never will be, a heater used in my town. Ever. Nobody owns one. We run air conditioning to cool the rooms every night of the year. The star rating company makes no allowance for accommodation operators located in the Torrid Zone.

Thus the requirement for heating is unreasonable. One imagines this is similar to how motel owners feel when denied a 4-star rating because their car parking is too far from the room, but then see the Hilton getting a 5-star raing (indisputably there is no car park space way up in the sky at the door of those rooms.)

I suggested (as I do every year) that if the star rating inspector really wants the room to be warmer, that they open a window, they'll then have all the heat they can handle.

The phone call ends badly for the star rating smarty-pants (as it does every year.)

Pay Rise for Everybody!

2011-08-22T22:14:00.001+10:00

A Meeting of all staff is called. A few things are discussed.

They are told that the law says henceforth I will pay an extra $40-$50 each week, for each of them. Oh boy oh boy, is this news welcome!

I then explain that the money will not be paid to them, but direct to the state government. I would rather pay it direct to them, as it is calculated according to how hard they work.

This is payroll tax.

By their reaction it is clear the staff would prefer to have the pay in their own bank account. They demand of me that the money be paid to them, as it is "theirs".

I don't disagree with them, but explain the law says I must pay it to the state government.

The receptionists exclaim that our State Member of Parliament is arriving later that afternoon, booked in for a five-day stay. (now just how about that for coincidental timing of the payroll tax announcement)

The meeting gets out of control. (hehe) They work out for themselves that it is this politician's government that has "taken" their pay rise.

Nothing like a representative of working people's party copping the full ire of the working people.
I got to watch five full days of it!

Proceed two kilometres, then turn Left....

2011-08-20T08:46:00.002+10:00

Cross posted at Adrian the Cab Driver's Blog.

There is only one way to leave Brisbane airport by road, and that is to travel two kilometres then turn (left for the city). This cab driver, one of the new guard of Indian student drivers, needed the GPS to get him out of the Brisbane Airport, the longest cul-de-sac in the country.

"Lennons" was the destination. With experienced drivers this would have been sufficient. Or perhaps I'd have to say "The City please mate, Lennons Hotel". The driver refused to accept there was such a hotel, until he phoned a friend (who must have used the phone book, or google, or something).

Lennons Hotel is fair smack in the middle of the city, it fronts onto the Queen Street mall, vehicle access is via a rear laneway. Queen Street Brisbane, in front of Lennons Hotel, has been closed to vehicular traffic since 1988. The GPS in the taxi was unaware of this 25 year old street closure, and directed us to drive down what used to be Queen St.

Queen Street is now covered in kiosks, fountains & pubs, it even has a full roof over it. The "cabbie" couldn't process this. Hopeless without the GPS, he went into denial, taking me for a drive around the adjacent financial district, then came back for a second go at Queen St.

In the intervening 5 minutes Queen street hadn't magically opened to traffic.

Favourite moment: The manner in which pedestrians scattered like chooks when my "cabbie" revved the engine outside the casino then pointed the nose of the cab at Queen St. For a minute I think he intended using "speed" as a method of overcoming an obstacle known as "architecture".

However he then decelerated, before haring off for a few more trial laps of the financial district, which included two attempts by my driver to eject me (& luggage) onto Edward Street.

Curtly explaining the outcome for him if he had a go at removing from the cab me & my luggage two blocks from my hotel at midnight, I suggested he "stop & ask another taxi driver". We first had another tour of Charlotte, Market, Eagle & some other streets.

On the Adelaide St. taxi rank another driver demonstrated how to reach Lennons. With hand movements. It was one block away, around a corner.

Simple enough you think?

About this stage I stopped trying to help the driver, if he cannot find a hotel when he is within one city block of it, and instead gets lost, what help could I be?

This time we surged down the Albert Street mall. To the bug-eyed amazement of pedestrians we wended & wound through the crowd & around obstacles. Then we toured the financial district again, before having another run along the mall in Albert St.

By the third time we went up the Albert Street mall, the pedestrians & I were giving knowing nods to each other.

Finally the driver stopped right in the middle of the mall & alighted. Leaving they keys in the ignition, the motor running and the door open, he wandered off into the crowd to see if he could find Lennons by himself, or something.

The evening, which I had thought couldn't get any better, then reached a rather unbeatable climax by........

........ a 13yo Samoan kid jumping into the driver's seat & hijacking the taxi. With me in it.

The "hijack" came to a quick end when the Samoan lout realised, via the method of six foot of irate passenger grabbing a handful of his shirtfront, that his crime of opportunity had been poorly researched.

It was midnight, I'd flown two legs with Qantas, had been in the taxi for about an hour & a half, (for what should have been a twenty minute journey) and I wasn't in the mood for the night to end with me having a starring role in "High-speed police chase Brisbane".

Just Like a Rubber Ball

2011-08-19T17:31:00.001+10:00

A fellow is exhibiting aggression. Part of the lingering crowd on the street after the Wayside Tavern has closed.

There were 500 people in the bar at closing time, and half an hour later there are still quite a few lingering on the street outside.
Most of them are engaged in the usual activities, hugging, talking, vomiting, etc.

But this fellow is determined, as some are prone, to belt someone up.
He speaks quite aggressively to several people in turn, then lines up & takes a swing at a nearby chap.

The punch is quite a good attempt, not one you'd like to stop.
The intended target bobs & weaves such that the blow misses, then gives one back.

The return fire was quite a good punch.

The aggressive fellow went down. Just like a tree chopped off at the base.
He went down quite hard, as when he hit the bitumen he bounced.

You could see daylight under him, he'd have risen six inches or so before falling again & laying there.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Upscale? They're just landfill between Pubs!

2011-08-18T13:40:00.001+10:00

Browsing online news, always good for the light relief provided by the proliferation of semi-literate headlines, occassionally yields some actual news.

One snippet detected this week was a stoush between a between a shopping centre developer in the Queen Street Mall in Brisbane, and the operator of a chain of pubs-cum-alfresco-eateries that are fair smack in the middle of the street/mall.

The shopping centre developer was claiming that the Pig & Whistle pub (now there's a name for you) "lowered the tone" of the surrounds, and wants them "out" of the mall.

The (cough) journalist writing the story called the Pig & Whistle a "backpacker's bar".

It seems the mall is going "upscale" with some pooncey shops selling pooncey gear.
The news article mentioned the following new shops, which - along with some others - will purportedly "improve" the Queen Street mall:
Chanel (a thing you change on your TV)
Louis Vuitton (how to pronouce that?)
Gucci (something you say to babies when you want them to sleep)
Swarovski (Deserter from the Polish army, or leftover letters from a game of Scrabble?)

Actually they are, in order:
Chanel. A perfume shop.
Louis Vuitton. A suitcase shop.
Gucci. Not sure what it sells, but the word is familiar, though pronounced Goochy, just like the Cricketer.
Swarovski. Never heard of it, could be the mountain next to Koscuiszko for all I know.

Mine Host, a reguar visitor to Brisbane, finds the Pig & Whistle very handy. Usually arriving into the big smoke late at night, he checks into whichever pub along Queen Street that would have him, then pops along to the Pig & Whistle for a drink & some late night tucker.

Noticeably absent from the Pig & Whistle:
(a) Backpackers, though there can be a few there, they are mostly in minority. The price of Pig & Whistle drinks will keep them away anyhow.
(b) Bad or Tasteless behaviour. It is mostly well dressed, upscale people, quietly having a few drinks & sometimes a nibble. There is often some very well dressed and very good looking sorts (of the ethnic variety) there, alas they are never alone.
(c) Dishevelled or disorderly patrons. I repeat, it is mostly well dressed, upscale people, the type who would drop dead rather then enter an *ugh* pub.

Mine Host can think of plenty of reason to pop into the Pig & Whistle, despite the inescapable sound system, & the TV screens being tuned mostly to unwatchable rubbish.

Conversely, Mine Host has got to this point of his life without ever knowlingly laying eyes upon any of the 4 shops mentioned above, & can think of no circumstance in which he would ever cross their threshold.

Remove the Pig & Whistle, have only pooncey shops with the nichest of niche markets, & the Queen Street mall will be dead.
And Mine Host would have to move to the Stamford Plaza or the Park Royal.

By all means put in shops that nobody can tell you what they sell, but do not remove the pubs. They are the lifeblood of the Queen Street mall.

Besides, Mine Host has such fun in the Pig & Whistle.
The staff are often barely able to understand his accent, they have little to no knowledge of the Liquor Industry customs in Qld, but they mean well, & are very polite & helpful.
They persist with selling drinks in weird sized glasses.
"Do you want an 'arf or a pint sir?" (NB: they should be asking "7 or 10 sir?")
"er... I thought I was in Queensland"
"?????"
"(sigh) make it a small one"
Major sin: Pig & Whistle does not keep their glasses in the fridge.

Pig & Whistle is where Mine Host spent one of the most engaging afternoons of the past year, ensconced with his solicitor over a bottle of red, deep in idle chatter. (sigh)

Census with Integrity

2011-08-13T13:37:00.001+10:00

Another National Census has come & gone.

No census forms were submitted for the Wayside Tavern. (though 160 persons present overnight)
No census forms were submitted at the previous census five years ago. (100 persons present overnight)

Last time:
The census officer was a recent former employee of the Wayside Tavern. (Anyone who actually believes the govt line that the census taker will be a stranger ain't never been "west of Strathfield.")
Good looking & pleasant, she was nevertheless extremely scatterbrained. She dropped off forms, explained how to fill them in, etc.

We never saw her again. She phoned a couple of times, asking me to take the forms to her mother's workplace. (Anyone who actually believes the govt line about the anonymity of the census taker.....etc)
Would I have taken the forms to her mother's workplace? Moot point, as she never revealed where her mother worked..... She was extremely scatterbrained.

This time:
We didn't see the census taker, or any census forms, before the census. The census taker (at least it was a stranger this time) called in to collect the forms. When I pointed out that we could hardly fill in forms we don't have, she became quite short with me.

She had dropped the forms in, & spoken at length with "one of your staff" instructing on what to do on census night, etc etc.

It transpired that she'd given all the forms & half an hour or more of instruction to whichever barmaid had been nearest the door one day a couple of weeks ago. The barmaid has long since moved on to another town (without forward address) nobody has ever seen a form.

The "census collector" didn't seem to care much that there were no forms to collect. She left, making it plain she wouldn't be back "Oh well, I'm only doing it for the money anyway! What do they expect?" were her last words, spoken over her shoulder as she departed empty handed.

Dinner

2011-08-11T14:20:00.001+10:00

This smells & tastes every bit as good as it looks!

A lot of time & effort goes into the kitchens at the Wayside Tavern. We have testimonials from many of the highest figures in the land, to the effect that they "didn't expect this sort of food here" & "I cannot remember when I last ate this well" (the last quite recently from Qld's highest ranking public figure)

I am proud of the food. It is a constant effort to maintain standards & to strive for a better dining experience for patrons.

I'm sitting on it

2011-08-09T10:10:00.001+10:00

Mine Host is the chairman of a (very minor) government sponsored liquor industry advisory group.

This involves little more than meeting now & again to eat sandwiches,
....and to discuss violence & matters of public disorder.

The membership is top heavy with public servants, most of them in "care bear" type roles.

Result;

1/. Talk is being presented as Results. A non-tangible (speech) being presented as a tangible outcome. This is new territory for Mine Host.
2/. People who matter, the liquor licencees, have grown tired of turning up only to listen to droning.

However, despite lack of interest (except from public servants, who seemingly have no objection to either free sandwiches or to wasting time on unproductive stuff) there is still the occassional meeting, notable more for the comical aspects than for anything else;

1/. The public servant taking the "minutes" has no idea how to keep minutes of a meeting. However they do manage to sanitise what passes for minutes to remove anything controversial, or that will reflect less than positively upon the meeting (this they don't stuff up).

2/. Lots of these public service types, who seem to do little more than wear a tie & look dour, will occassionally call Mine Host "the chair".
Every single time this happens, I get off the chair & hold it up where it can be seen.

....They have long since learned to stop referring to me as "chairperson". They prefer to avoid confrontation.

I know my native language. A chair is what people sit on. The chairman is the role they voted me into. The correct form of address is "Mr. Chairman" (or if a lady: "Madam Chairman")

They spend all their careers absorbed in a world where procedure matters more than outcome, & they don't even know basic meeting protocol?

NO Vacancy!

2011-08-06T11:58:00.001+10:00

Mine Host, in the big smoke on as-yet-incomplete business, is staying at the Hilton for a few days (as one does) and decides to extend his stay by one night.

The reception desk shakes their head "Sorry sir, we are overbooked for tomorrow night, you will be unable to extend"

Several times during the evening & into the late night an approach is made to the reception desk, in the hope there has been a cancellation. Alas nothing changes.

In his room at 2am, packing (as one must when one is being booted out) and having just worked out, after several days, how to use the in-room internet, Mine Host logs in to the Hilton web-booking site. (The Hilton Brisbane sets quite an intelligence test for those intending to use the in-room internet, I've been caught by it before)

The Hilton site offers one a wide range of room choices. A booking is quickly made. An emailed confirmation of the booking arrives promptly. (The stay has just been extended, heh heh heh)

A visit to the reception desk (with emailed confirmation in breast pocket) brings an unchanged answer, "Overbooked tomorrow night sir, you will be unable to extend".

In the morning a rather terse conversation is had with the "guest services manager", as she takes some time to grasp the point. When she does grasp it, there is (through gritted teeth) a credible response: "Sorry about that sir, I'll be talking to the overnight team about this"

Another Hilton Brisbane snippet: They rarely restock the minibar during your stay. This saves money, but rather defeats the purpose of a minibar.

End of an Era

2011-08-03T20:25:00.006+10:00

When reaching for the comb this morning, it was not there.
Neither was it anywhere else. A search of the room revealed nothing.
The room is at the Hilton in Brisbane.
The comb is a cheap coloured plastic men's hair comb.
A detailed search revealed nothing.
A thorough ransacking of the room & luggage revealed nothing.
It was there yesterday morning, on the vanity unit.
Today it is gone.

My mother bought it for me when I was a nipper.
It is the only comb I have ever owned.

I have used that comb on my hair every day for 34 years.

Preventing Liquor Violence

2011-07-31T22:14:00.005+10:00

Sporadically appearing in the news is "alcohol fuelled violence".

There is much written & said about the attributes of Crowd Controllers, calls for new & tougher laws, penalties, shorter trading hours, curfews, lockouts etc.

Most of this is aimed at Liquor Licencees. There has been an explosion of regulation, such that at the Wayside Tavern one key staff member wastes, pardon, is occupied for one full day each week, dealing with the paperwork of compliance minutae.

There is considerable regulatory heat brought to bear on licenced premises & licencees. We are continually lumbered with requirements for "more security guards" "more courses in Responsible Service of Alcohol" & are threated overtly & covertly with ever more dire penalties if there is even a whiff of "trouble" in our premises.

The State Premier makes big noise about "harm minimisation" & how licencees & the govt shall "work together" to cure "alcohol fuelled violence" blah blah blah.

Here is how much support we get:
Two males kick off inside, they demand (for no reason) to be paid $7,500 cash, claiming this is a gambling win they are "owed". There appears to be no trigger for this demand. They become quite unreasonable.

Senior staff attend, discuss the matter with them. The two males are incredibly rude, crude & abusive to this female staff member. A hotline (manned all night) is phoned to check if there has been any sort of gambling win, or event that may have caused them to believe they had won something. There isn't.

The head of the security company happens to be nearby, he talks to them. They unload further rudeness & abuse onto him. He escorts them outside onto the street.

This is where they really kick off. They offer to "fight anybody". Then they attempt to reenter the premises. It takes three very robust security guards to keep them out. They attempt to throat punch the guards. They won't stop. The police are called.

Observation of the video footage shows this is no ordinary scuffle or the like, there is real menace in the air, these men are either "on something", or for some reason they are keyed up far beyond what can usually be expected.

Arrival of the police calms them down. However there is considerable video footage of what happened, & the head of the security company is left in a shredded shirt & a shredded & torn parka.

The police talk with the pair for a minute or so, then instruct them to go home.

One security guard is up for a new shirt & new parka.
Two men (& any others watching) have learned there is no penalty of any sort for some of the roughest behaviour one can engage in outside a boxing ring.

Tomorrow, or sometime soon, the premier will be talking of further impositions upon the liquor industry, as we "can't keep our act clean".

Mine Host's observation:
If all the Premier's current paperwork can't stop these people kicking off, how is even more paperwork, tighter inspection of a pub's manager's register & security guard accreditation going to help?

Perhaps she could try imposing some actual penalties for bad behaviour. Just a thought.

Dessert

2011-07-30T23:39:00.003+10:00

Packs rather a punch, even without the chaser/side dish!

Why they Serve

2011-07-29T12:34:00.010+10:00

An early boss of Mine Host's has recently resigned a role he had held for most of his adult life.

That of Captain of his Fire Brigade.

For almost 50 years he'd been a member of the Fire Brigade. He'd fought (and beaten) fires inside his brigade area ranging from billy boilers to some of the largest scale & most newsworthy fires the nation has seen.

He knew how any particular fire would behave in a given set of conditions.

The men in the Fire Brigade deferred to him because of his experience, reliability & the soundness of his decisions.

For they served in the Fire Brigade for the same reason as he:
To protect their livlihood, their loved ones, & their community, from being burned.

Fire Brigade HQ in Sydney issued a written directive.
His written response was posted to Sydney: "No"
Fire Brigade HQ in Sydney contacted him for clarification. (The word "No" requires clarification?)
He clarified: "Your directive does not make sense, if I carried it out our brigade's fire-fighting capability would be reduced. So the answer is No."

"Your opinion is irrelevant sir. This is a directive of the NSW Bush Fire Brigade HQ in Sydney (or whatever they are called) & you must carry out this directive, as it is from your superiors."
Response: "I am the Captain of the Dry Gully Fire Brigade. In fire fighting matters my opinion is very relevant. I am elected by my peers, my experience is extensive. I have fought (names several notable fires) and I have never lost a house, farm, or a person to a fire. By the way, I'm a free Australian citizen & a wheat farmer, I don't have superiors."

"I am the Grand Poobah of issuing directives to you hicks in Bush Fire Brigades, and I have lotsa scrambled eggs on my uniform epaulettes to prove it. You don't even have a degree." (He actually said that last phrase word-for-word, "you don't even have a degree")
Response: "Listen youngster, I have fought (again names several notable fires), how many have you fought?"

*....brief silence....*

"What is important sir is the application of new laws pertaining to Bush Fire Brigades. These laws say you must not attend a fire, nor carry out any fire-fighting activity, without my orders to do so. Once ordered to attend a fire, you must obtain orders from me before any escalation in activity, or any change of plans."
Response: "No, I won't be taking your orders, I prefer my fires extinguished."

"This is the law sir. You have no choice."
Response: "If I have to dance to your BS while houses burn down, then there's no point being in the Fire Brigade."

Then the Public Servant (who didn't understand that for some people "Public Service" is a verb) played what he believed was a cunning trump card:

"Sir, you are a few months short of 50 years of service in the Fire Brigade, once you reach the 50 year milestone you will be awarded the 50-year service medal. This medal is a recognised decoration, to be worn in public or with evening dress."

Response: This is the point at which he resigned the post he'd held for most of his adult life.

The medal would only have languished in a drawer in the bedroom. He'd no more have worn it in public (sheep sales, tractor field days, etc) than he'd have worn leather B&D gear.

Wrong Number

2011-07-27T12:05:00.002+10:00

As does everybody, The Wayside Tavern has a telephone number listed in the White Pages (the telephone directory).

Out of the blue a letter from Telecom arrives, informing that effective the end of the month, "service 07 9876 5444" would be withdrawn from use. (This is the Wayside Tavern's number as published in the White Pages)

A "Waddya mean by this?" phone call was placed to Telecom. Reply: "You shouldn't have that number, so it is being suspended from use"

Telecom had allocated that number some decades ago, when STD phones were connected.

The response did not waver: "You haven't the right to that number sir, thus it will be removed from your account"

There wasn't a person in Telecom, with or without personal clout, to whom Mine Host did not appeal.

At the end of the month that one number went dead. Pleadings to Telecom to return the number fell upon deaf ears.

For the next three years that number remained listed in the White Pages, despite every attempt by Mine Host to remove it & have it replaced with the new phone number.

Heaven only knows how many phone calls we missed because diallers could not find our number. Local businesses would resort to walking down to see us, because the number they had for us didn't seem to ever work.

In the years since Mine Host has sporadically dialled the number, it remains dead. It was never given to anybody else. Mine Host cannot fathom why it suddenly was suspended, after umpteen years of it being the Wayside Tavern's published telephone number.

The new number is: (say)
07 9876 3444.
The old number was: (say)
07 9876 5444.
Other numbers we had before, & still have include: (say)
07 9876 5443
07 9876 5445

You couldn't make up this stuff.

Unsafe Procedure

2011-07-25T14:00:00.002+10:00

The Manager revealed to Mine Host that there was a problem with the safe door, consequently he was unable to get at his operating float & takings.

The "problem" with the safe door was that it was locked.

And nobody knew how to open it.

It had been locked several days previously, by accident, & now it "wouldn't open".

Mine Host didn't insult the manager's (now somewhat tarnished) intelligence by asking "does anybody else there know the combination?" (this is one of those things that separates great men from journeyman bosses, something Mine Host learned by observation in his early jobs)

It was then revealed that the manager had contacted his predecessor to enquire about the combination.

Mine Host didn't even bother to ask how the predecessor responded. This is where Mine Host went as close to losing his cool (with staff) as he has for many a year. The predecessor is persona non grata with Mine Host, and the manager was asked the reasonable & pertinent question: "When would it have occured to you that I may know something about the gear in my own pub?"

Mine Host then, without realising it, went & used hisself some cuss-words. This may have given the manager the impression that contacting the predecessor had been a bad career move.

Lasting impression: What is the point of a safe if you are only going to push the door closed, but not lock it?

Not one of Mine

2011-07-23T11:18:00.001+10:00

Fronting the cashier console at the truck stop, Mine Host plops his late night snack purchases on the counter.

The attendant is most unappealing. This young slattern is dressed in a particularly ill-designed tracksuit, is overweight & has the dead eyes of someone who cares not a whit for the world. Though she is barely old enough, Mine Host hazards a private guess that she is a single mother, as likely was her own mother.
She has that dead, dullard, unmotivated demeanour one expects from the terminally entitled & terminally unintelligent.

The usual staff appear like a jack-in-the-box. Filipinos all, they are her antithesis. Dressed in pressed uniforms, with a cheery demeanour & a bright sparkle in their eye.

As a trio they are a clear example of why employers are desperate for overseas workers. The bottom of the barrel has been well & truly scraped in Australia.

Anyone who doesn't have a job in Australia plain doesn't want one.

A charming Filipino lad is training the puffy faced & unwashed female caucasian. He supervises as she processes Mine Host's purchase of three separate items.

A sausage roll,
A pie,
A bag of Smith's chips.

She lethargically picks up the nearest item,the sausage roll, and waves it in front of the scanner.

*beep* *beep* *beep* She waves it back & forth, registering it three times.

She then pushes all three items back to Mine Host, & quotes him the amount shown on the cash register....

..... the Filipino lad smoothly & unobtrusivly presses a few buttons on the register to void the latter two of her scans, then asks her to scan the pie & the chips as separate items in the sale.

She has no idea why he "stopped" her sale. There is no confusion or misundertanding in her eyes, just dullness. If he wants her to scan it this way, fine. And while ever he is standing there beside her, she'll probably do sales "his" way.

It is patently obvious that she will never understand what was wrong with just picking up the sausage roll & scanning it three times. After all, there were three items in the sale.

Beware! Thieves are Everywhere!

2011-07-19T23:56:00.001+10:00

Big excitement! In broad daylight a car has been stolen from right in front of the Wayside Tavern!

Mid-afternoon and two middle aged tradesmen lurch out of the Wayside Tavern. They've had a very good day, only to discover their work truck is not where they parked it!

Brows furrowing they look up & down the street, it isn't parked anywhere in sight.

Broad framed brothers, still in their work clothes, they become most frantic. It is not just a matter of having to walk home, all their tools, ladders, etc are in their work truck.

They phone the police to report the theft. Two constables attend and take details from the now irate brothers.

This is serious business. The two constables make enquiries. The truck is located in the carpark of a pub at the other end of town.

In search of whoever drove it there, police descend upon this other pub!

Plenty of excitement & plenty of gawkers, for this is the most exciting thing to happen in weeks.

It turns out half the people in this other pub saw who drove the truck there & parked it. It was two middle aged brothers in tradesmen's clobber.

It transpired that the two brothers had begun their drinking that morning in the Wayside Tavern, parking out the front. On a whim they'd driven up to the other pub for lunch, later walking the couple of miles back to the Wayside Tavern to continue their session.

They'd completely forgotten their excursion, & flatly refused to believe what they were told. They hotly demanded the police "do something". Their attitude was most vengeful.

The police went away & left 'em to it.

Pay up or Speak Clearly

2011-07-17T23:54:00.001+10:00

"Gissacanejewce" barks Dave Drongo, his mate Brian Boofhead says "Makutoo".

They are leaning on the bar ordering drinks. Mine Host can barely decipher what they are saying. (They are asking first for a rum, and then "make it two")

Heidi von Cuteshape, the German backpacker bar attendant, has no hope of understanding them. This is their cunning plan. In their narrow worldview, speaking rapidly to her in obscure slang demonstrates their cultural superiority over someone whose first language is not English.
Mr. Drongo & Mr. Boofhead believe they are impressing her with their Ockerness.

Heidi thinks they are twits.

She has been instructed how to deal with exactly this situation:

Serving a pint of Guinness to Dave Drongo, & a Creme de Menthe (ooh la la) to Brian Boofhead, she quickly scoops the money from their pile, & informs them that they'll only be served again once they drink their "order".

Seeing the look in her eye, and the "you pair asked for that" mirth from the other drinkers, they reluctantly comply.

Result: An outbreak of clearly enunciated speech among the clientele (when ordering from NESB bar staff).

Cover Charge

2011-07-12T09:00:00.004+10:00

Scene: Streetfront of the Wayside Tavern
Time: 10.30pm
Cast:
Kamate (square jawed, barrel chested crowd controller)
Mr. Annoying Lout (member of public well known to Wayside Tavern staff)

Action: Kamate stands stalwart by the front door, with folded arms.
Mine Host is loitering off to one side, but is not part of the action.

Mr. Annoying Lout approaches the front door (and Kamate) with false bravado.

Mr. Lout, who is persona non grata at the Wayside Tavern, reaches into his pocket and offers Kamate cash to admit him.
"Will y'let me in for twenty bucks mate?"

Kamate (a man of few words) accepts the proffered $20 note, swiftly trousering it.
Mr. Lout struts through the door & into the foyer. He has gone two paces when the large hand of Kamate grabs him by the collar & reefs him backwards out through the front door.

"You said you'd let me in for $20!" Mr. Lout bleats indignantly.
"But I didn't say I wouldn't toss you straight out again" glares Kamate, leaving the $20 firmly in his pocket.

Kamate resumes standing firmly by the door, with arms folded.
Mr. Annoying Lout slinks away into the night.

There is no cover charge to enter the Wayside Tavern.

What about the Rest of Us?

2011-07-11T15:50:00.004+10:00

Today, in the wake of an overnight assault upon a police officer, the Qld Police Union is stridently demanding mandatory custodial sentences for those convicted of assault upon a police officer.

Fair enough.

The Police Union president says the high number of assaults against police are because of "drugs, alcohol & weak laws".

Fair enough. Weak laws would be the principal reason, daylight second.
Though to this list Mine Host would add: Complete lack of respect for authority.

What about the rest of us? Why not mandatory custodial sentences for all those convicted of assault upon someone who is doing a job of work?

Some hideous assaults have at times been carried out against staff of the Wayside Tavern. To the eternal shame of (Qld Police Union) president Ian Leavers' outfit, not all of these assaults have been that thoroughly investigated.

Often little to no interest is shown by police in assaults upon people who though performing a paid job of work, are not police officers.

For last night one of the staff at the Wayside Tavern was assaulted in the course of their duties. Watch with interest to see if Mr. Leavers' members are as diligent in prosecuting this assault.

My bet: The police will have to be pushed every step of the way, otherwise there simply won't be a prosecution.

Perfect Timing, JUST PERFECT!

2011-07-04T23:23:00.003+10:00

Unconscious, in a rapidly enlarging pool of his own blood, a man lays in the middle of the dance floor at the Wayside Tavern.

The hushed circle of patrons stand back.
The lights come on, the music goes off.
Trade slows to a trickle.
The Ambulance is called.

One a.m. on Sunday morning.
The Wayside Tavern was really hopping!
This was the busiest couple of hours of the week.

More staff are at work than at any other time of the week. The dance floor is standing room only, the backyard is likewise. (Post-smoking laws, the backyard of a pub is usually busier than anywhere else.)

Stalwart Security Guards patrol the premises, indoors & out.
Every precaution that can be taken has been.
Floodlights turn the enclosed backyard into a football field.
Every patron has their ID scanned & recorded at point of entry.
Security cameras record onto watermarked hard drive.

This wasn't enough. In a split second one fellow on the dance floor has struck another with his fists. The damage is extensive. In the after action summary it seems that there may have been provocation.

The victim is knocked out. This is quite rare, for most pub dust-ups (especially among the middle class) are notable for the lack of damage done. This time there is quite a lot of blood, it forms an increasingly large pool around the prone victim's head.

The victim remains knocked out. He stays out for Ten minutes. In Mine Host's considerable experience, this is possibly the longest anyone knocked out in his pub has remained unconscious.

The ambulance attends, they take quite some time to load the patient. Then the pub staff commence mopping up the thick lake of blood.

It has been 45 minutes from first punch until the pub can trade again. About half of the day's gross profit has been foregone in this time.

The victim refuses to press charges.

The police decline to even charge the attacker with disorderly conduct on licenced premises. (They usually do decline, a legacy of last year's "improvements" - courtesy of the State Government - to the police prosecution process)

So continues life behind the bar.

No bread? So why not just eat cake?

2011-06-29T23:39:00.006+10:00

Scene:....... The Big Smoke.
Location:.. Pharmacy.
Time:........ Late at night.
Cast: .........Very Attractive Pharmacist, & Mine Host.

Action: Getting prescription filled 15 mins prior to closing time. Mine Host - the only customer - wanders around the shop. The place is empty, she did not say "come back later", perhaps she'll fill the prescription right away.

No sooner has Mine Host commenced idly browsing the perfume & hair dye aisle, than one of the assistants says "Sir, your prescription is right to go, whenever you are finished" (When I'm finished? Do they think lurking in their aisles & gazing idly at manicure equipment & band-aids is my preferred recreational activity?)

Whisking himself to the prescription counter (and to the pretty and oh so attractive thirtyish pharmacist) Mine Host makes a quip about how swiftly the prescription had been filled. With the ice thus broken, Mine Host continues on to reveal a snippet about his hometown that is always of intense interest to Pharmacists.

She doesn't pay much attention for a few seconds, proceeding with using the cash register etc, then the words click and she looks up, her pulse quickened & interest picqued, not quite believing what she has heard, and enquires again where Mine Host is from...?

As with many over-urbanised Australians, this lady hasn't the faintest recognition of Mine Host's province, never mind his hometown.

Nor does she care a whit about the nation that exists beyond the outer suburbs. This shows in her face. She is only interested (out of professional amazement) in the tiny fact about his locale.

Faintly grasping just how far Mine Host is from home, she enquires why he has come so far. Mine Host trots out his off-the-rack answer to this question: "To see solicitors, accountants and the like".

Her face (otherwise intelligent & exuding professional competence) showed such utter incomprehension as to why Mine Host didn't use law/accountancy firms in his hometown. (there actually aren't any)

This girl has been to university, gained professional qualifications, practised her profession for some years, has an intelligent face that says she is reasonably up to date with current affairs & the world around her, and that she has a carefully considered opinion on many of the issues of the day....

...But she hasn't the faintest clue that the services she takes for granted, and the facitilites available to her, are available only to the urban dweller, that the rest of us have to travel, sometimes for more than a day in each direction and at the cost of more than a week's wages, just to access these services.

Her face shows uncertainty & some disdain. She had thought him well adjusted & intelligent. She stares at Mine Host as if he just outed himself as one of the muttering homeless.

She stares because when one is a pretty & savvy pharmacist girl in the big city, one doesn't take their eyes off nutters who walk into one's pharmacy late at night. Just in case.

That Mine Host is of a different race was not an issue for her, only that despite exhibiting some apparent intelligence, he had come out with the obviously ridiculous statement that he had travelled perhaps thousands of kilometres to access professional services. She didn't curl up her top lip. She showed no contempt, merely pity & incomprehension.

Bigotry, no matter what form, is such a disappointing thing to be on the receiving end of - especially when the bigot is one who by dint of their education, upbringing & intelligence should know better.

And she had such kind eyes, and they reflected quite a lot of intellectual rigour, what a shame.

Horrific Workplace Injury (Part 2)

2011-06-27T21:22:00.006+10:00

Cecil Steptoe made a common-law claim for workplace injuries.
This claim was lodged several weeks after he finished work.
No report of injury was ever made to his employer.
He did not seek initial medical attention for the injuries until Three weeks after he had ended his employment.
The claim was for $410,000 (Four Hundred and Ten Thousand Dollars).

His claim stated that he entered a guest room at the hotel, to replace a faulty castor wheel on the ensemble bed.
Using his knee to raise the ensemble bed a few inches, he unscrewed the faulty wheel by hand and screwed in the new one.
(This story is false. Cecil Steptoe didn't do any work even when specifically instructed to. He would never have done any work, no matter how minor, on his own initiative. Had he entered the room with his boss, he would have remained idle and watched sourly as the boss did the work.)

Some days after replacing the faulty castor wheel (according to his claim) he experienced pain & discomfort just above his knee, in the leg he had used to lift the ensemble bed.

The Medical Evidence stated that:
The injury was a non-specific soft tissue injury.
The injury was unable to be detected by any known diagnostic method/implement/device, not by sight, ultrasound, pressing to see if he yelled, x-ray, or any other method.
The injury did not manifest itself every day.
(This last was added when Mine Host, as part of discovery, put in his observation that Cecil Steptoe did not always limp, at least not on the same leg, and furthermore it hadn't prevented him on several occassions from playing cricket most vigorously on the beach with a group of schoolteachers)

Discovery, as part of the legal process, is nothing more than an innocent target being forced to tip off a vexatious or lying complainant about holes in their fake complaint, thus allowing said complaint to be adjusted accordingly.

Workcover (the insurers) and their legal firm, both contacted Mine Host. After rapidly dispensing with their rantings, ravings & threats over the employer having not submitted any paperwork, or even filled out an injury report (the employee having never reported the injury didn't seem to readily register with them) they then got down to brass tacks:-

There would be a "conference" between Workcover & solicitors on one hand, and on the other the Claimant & some slimeball personal injury lawyer. A lady from Workcover telephoned Mine Host & informed him that it is "nice" if the employer can come to the conference, and "input from the employer" is appreciated in such conferences.

Mine Host raised the spectre of the cost (in time & money) that would be incurred were he to travel to Brisbane for this conference. The Workcover lady was unable to process the concept that not eveybody lives in, or within easy reach of, the capital city.
She became even more unsettled when Mine Host gave some idea of what his input would be:

Mine Host provided a quick opinion on the probity, ethics, & usefulness to society of the slimeball law firm representing the Claimant (it was obvious that Mine Host, were he to be present, would "unload" this character opinion at the conference) also gave an (accurate) character reference on the Complainant, followed by a rather acidic observation on Workcover themselves, who were not even challenging the (cough) medical evidence listed above.

This all made the Workcover lady most uncomfortable, especially when Mine Host stated that Cecil Steptoe "wouldn't be forgetting which leg to limp on" - that was, not if he rode up to the conference in the same lift as Mine Host.

When the conference occured it was without Mine Host being present - the invitation probably got lost in the mail or something.
The claim was settled for circa $150,000 - Mine host's worker's compensation insurance consequently went up by $20,000 per year (due to Mine Host's newfound bad workplace injury record)

Workcover did not provide any information to Mine Host about his options for appeal, or to force a review of the matter. That these avenues had even existed was only discovered some years later. This omission was deliberate.

The legislation which allowed this type of claim to happen was brought in by former Premier Peter Beattie. Mine Host struggles with the idea that someone deliberately created legislation that does little but provide a fat living to lowlife personal injury lawyers, at the expense of the taxpayers of Queensland. The Queensland Worker's Compensation scheme is now broke. All the money has gone in uncontested payouts in cases such as this one. Most of the money goes to personal injury lawyers, who could not get such cases off the ground without a medical professional who is prepared to perjure themself.
The supine staff at the worker's compensation scheme are just as complicit in this, and more so those who call the shots at Qcomp.

It is enough to cause people who actually work for a living to vomit.

This claim is far from the largest that has been claimed from Mine Host. None of the cases involve someone who was actually, you know, injured at work.

Horrific Workplace Injury (Part 1)

2011-06-24T23:35:00.002+10:00

In recent decades one of the more intelligent moves by the UK was the exporting in the 1960's & 1970's to Australia of one of the less desireable cohorts of society. Once ensconced in the promised land, this cohort manifested itself as the "whingeing pom" or "pommy trade union leader".

Most migrants are motivated by a desire for an opportunity to have a better life.
This cadre were sour & disgruntled with their perceived lot in the UK, and no less sour & disgruntled upon discovering that Australia too placed some priority on "work" instead of "rights".
How much a better place Australia & Australian society would be today were it not for the arrival of this particular lot of freeloading rodents. Endless shame they bring to those of British origin, by dint of a shared land of origin.

One of these oxygen thieves, hired as an assistant manager, was the catalyst for a change in Mine Host's recruiting policy.
The policy change: Nobody is hired without first a photograph being sighted.
Mine Host's heart fell at the very instant he sighted Cecil Steptoe alighting from public transport. Had he first seen a photograph of this fellow the unhappy scenario in Part 2 of this post would never have unfolded.

Cecil Steptoe was tall, thin, cadaverous of complexion and indolent to the extreme. He looked every one of his 57 years + another 57. Lack of character shows in the face; the visage of Cecil Steptoe was one of sullen, sour blandness. Mrs. Steptoe too fitted the stereotype, right down to the dressing gown, slippers, hair curlers & meek personality.

The unfair dismissal laws of the time prevented Mine Host taking the common sense way out. However it wasn't difficult to get rid of Cecil Steptoe, as he didn't take kindly to constant suggestions that he do some actual work. Notice was soon given, though the Steptoes remained occupying staff accommodation (and kept hoeing into staff tucker) for some days between finishing up his "employment" (when describing the actions of Cecil Steptoe the word "work" could never conscionably be used) & catching onward transport.

During this time of departure hiatus Cecil Steptoe exhibited a slight limp, which Mine Host didn't think much about, except to note that the limp would manifest itself in either leg. (It says something of his mentality that though he was faking a limp, he didn't pay enough attention to it to remember which leg was supposedly the afflicted one).

Then, several days after finishing work, this blight upon the nation finally boarded public transport (spouse also) & departed.
Possibly the laziest person one would ever encounter, Cecil Steptoe was entirely devoid of initiative. Were he to walk past, say, the front gate banging in the wind, he would pass on by leaving it as it was, rather than latching it open. (For very good reason the previous sentence was written with "were he to walk past..." rather than with "were he to observe as he walked past....")

Every cent of pay he received was received under false pretences, every morsel of food he ate was undeserved and would have been better used by being fed to a dog.

Ever since, all job applicants have been requested to provide a photo.