Gas! Gas! Gas! It's a ... Bill!

This week I finally sorted out my gas bill. This is the 3rd one in a row I've had to query.

Original amount invoiced: $255
After adjustment (and many phone calls): $80

I knew $255 was excessive when the previous bill, which had been during winter, was only $92. Mind you, I also had to argue to get that one reduced from the $179 originally charged.  Note the recurring theme here as to whose favour the discrepancies are in...

It's hard to understand why it's so hard to work out a gas bill when it's simply based on meter readings taken at each point in time.  Surely, it's just about subtracting the numbers to determine the usage and then applying the calculation.  No doubt however, there's some amazing piece of technology somewhere that's constantly screwing it up.

Sadly, it's taken 3 months to resolve this, which means that I'll shortly receive another bill.  Hopefully I won't complete the full year with every bill having been in dispute.

The First Since...Oh, The Last One?

So we have a new pope and all the media outlets are gushing about how it was 1000 years since the last non-European.  Who was that guy?  Where was he come from?  And what was going on 1000 years ago that this occurred?  I have no idea.  They just love passing on that piece of trivia without any of the context.  Now I know I can look all this up on the internet but why should I have to work out the ending of the story?  It wasn't me that started telling it.

It's just like how you hear about some athlete setting the 2nd fastest/highest/heaviest/most whatever in history.  They never tell you about the original.  Perhaps they just figure you're so parochial, you'll only want to know about "your guy" or the one from "your time". 

Meanwhile, if it's taken us a thousand years to elect a pope from outside Europe, perhaps those medieval types weren't as unprogressive as we like to think they were and perhaps we should be less obsessed with "our time".

Freedom From Choice

One of the tragedies of a federal system is that you have a lot of politicians. If it's not bad enough having to put up with the bickering federal parliament, we also have to plumb great depths of despair at the state level.

And things are bad in this state.  On the one hand if it wasn't bad enough to have endured one of the most ineffective and corrupt state governments in NSW history, we now have the unsightly race between ex-ministers scrambling to distance themselves from Eddie Obeid and shouting loudly how little they had to do with him.  It's remarkable - he apparently accumulated all that money and an Order of Australia without anybody knowing him. 

You would think any change could only be for the better but unfortunately, the crooked only seems to have been replaced by the cretinous. 

Govt::  Need some infrastructure?
Public: A second airport would be good.
Govt:   Um no, but how about a floating helipad in the harbour instead? Or, perhaps a second casino, you  know, with a view of the one we already have?  Or how about we start mining for gas under your home?

Thankfully, the public uproar resulted in two of these braindead proposals getting dropped (sadly building of the casino goes ahead regardless) but why should it take a public outcry for the correct decision to be arrived at.  None of these schemes would have been on anyone's list of things that needed doing, so where do these very bad ideas come from?

Given their huge mandate, you'd think the new government could tackle some of the big issues in the state but the only difference between this government and the previous one would appear to be whose nest is getting feathered. 

Government of the people, by the people...but for whom?

Preaching to the Converted

Why is it that when I am watching a DVD/Blu-Ray, I have to sit through a lengthy advertisement telling me why I should I buy the DVD.  I've done that - that's how I'm now watching this stupid advertisement. 

It annoys me so much that I might start exploring other options.  That piracy one they mention looks interesting...