Here's Why

I just had a conversation with a Telstra employee about my increased bill. They claim that they have no record of me ever having a pension. I spoke to a Telstra sales person just last week who looked up my records and confirmed my pensioner discount. And very week for months I've been bothered by phone plan people, even door-to-door.

Telstra now say that they only give the Pensioner discount to customers who have long distance and local calls with them. So I don't get a discount anymore. They also claim this has been the case for two years. When I complained that I was never notified, they go back to saying their records show me as working for (get this): "Gab Prior and Matt".

When I first acquired this landline, I was in a share house with Gabrielle and Matthew, I wasn't working for them! Obviously their databases are corrupt, and totally trusted. The phone guy tried to persuade me that I'd never spoken with Telstra or written to them with my pension number, because it wasn't in the database.

So if there's no pensioner discount, and the line rental is outrageously higher (the copper was paid for decades ago), then there is no longer any point in dealing with Telstra. I refuse to make a deal over the phone or door to door. I need to see the figures on paper to see that any new plan is a better bargain than what I'm paying.

Telstra just changed from monthly to 3-monthly billing in advance. So my bill went up 3 times. If they're going to bill ahead instead of behind, then they are no better than the ISPs. They warned in their letter about the quarterly billing, but NOT about billing in advance.

I notice I'm still being charged $3 per month for the crappy ten year old phone they supplied. What a complete rip-off. Its somehow more blatantly offensive now that they're charging me three months in advance.

I haven't seen any evidence of any other company offering a Pensioner discount, but I might start asking for it from every phone plan scam artist. Sadly they will never commit their promises to paper.

For $60 per year, I may as well have a phone that does Skype and webcam.

Have a butchers at this: a new tax world - Business - Business - smh.com.au John Garnaut writes:
"Those on existing benefits... would face an effective marginal tax rate of 30 per cent rather than up to 104 per cent...Sadly, this fantasy seems a long way off."

Shadow of doubt over Nazi claims - National - smh.com.au
A Tunnel Rat sewer urchin had his car and house searched during the race scares last Sunday. They found a gas mask, a gun is a gunsafe, and evidence that he had visited a "Fightback" website.

If you take the risk of following the link from the Sydney Morning Herald to Fightback, at least you know you'll be bailed to the custody of your Mum.

AlterNet: WireTap: Slavery Beneath the Golden Arches?
This must be where Australian farmers got the idea of shipping in Chinese farmhands instead of providing working conditions that attract locals.

Laws against slavery are worthless if they're not rigorously enforced.

All fishing in Sydney has been banned indefinitely because seafood from the Harbour is poisoned with 35 times the WHO safe level of dioxins.

Extension of harbour fishing ban likely ABC
Sydney Harbour commercial fishing halted ABC

None of the reports name the corporations who dumped all this poison into the harbour. There is no indication that the people poisoned, the fishermen rendered jobless, nor the cost of cleaning up will be borne by the polluters. They are just referred to as "industries in Homebush Bay", whose poison sediments have spread everywhere for many years.

The State government hasn't committed to payng for any of this either. They're just hoping that some of the most persistant industrial wastes in the world will go away in a few months - or that the electorate will forget about it.
The poison didn't just happen yesterday. The Primary Industries Minister's angle is that its not his fault that the WHO have lowered the safe amount of dioxins. He admits the current levels are as bad as they were when he checked ten years ago.

Maybe the fish that survive the poison can replenish the unsustainably over-fished ocean.

Ironically, the tabloid TV shows recently bullied fish shops for not displaying where fish was from so that people could avoid buying foreign food. Now the same origin labelling laws can help you avoid food grown locally.

Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists | Applefritter
Find non-conformists from freely available data and a few shell commands.

Work loses its point for low-skilled - National - smh.com.au
John Garnaut is at the Negative Income Tax promotion again! This time he's quoting Professor Mark Wooden, deputy director of the Melbourne Institute, in the Journal of Political Economy.