Earlier this month I had the pleasure (or rather displeasure) of flying away for a short break with fledgling airline company Strategic Airlines but returned home a few days later courtesy of the brand new outfit known as Air Australia.
The two flights were like Chalk and Cheese – they may as well have been two different airlines!
Yeah but who’s Guy Fawkes anyway?
What..? Not another chapter left out of the Australian History syllabus. – Guy and a few mates tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament (and in particular the House of Lords) in London UK, back in 1605. The plot failed, Guy got caught, convicted of treason and summarily executed.
Ever since then, the English (and in later years the British and nowadays all its colonies) have celebrated the failed plot by burning an effigy of Guy Fawkes and letting off heaps of fireworks on the 5th November each year. This gave rise to its more colloquial names of ‘Bonfire Night‘ or ‘Fireworks Night‘.
Enter the Nanny State… Australia.
Australian Tax Returns for Individuals are due at the end of each Australian financial year, that is June 30th to you and me.
The ATO (Australian Tax Office) gives us a few months to get it all together and submit it to them, so that takes us up to October 31st. After this date… to quote the ATO, “..penalties apply..”. Scary stuff!
So that makes today the day for the ATO deadline for Tax Return Submissions – right? Well not necessarily, and here’s why.
You need to make a quick trip and have to book a short haul flight across Australia! A quick glance at the Internet serves up cheap flights from JetStar, Virgin Australia and until recently Tiger Airways. Prices are much of a muchness as are departure times. Who do you fly with?
Some of us will take the cheapest option albeit only say $10 difference, others may choose the departure time albeit only 30 minutes difference and others like myself will make their decision based on brand loyalty.
Brand loyalty you say… is that still relevant in the modern competitive era?
Take a look at this picture and tell me honestly… which one do you think is the RAW sugar?
There’s nothing more annoying than sitting down at your local café for a nice cuppa coffee and a read of the Sunday paper, than having it all destroyed by putting WHITE sugar in your coffee!
You’re in a relaxed mood and reach for the sugar and grab what you rightly would think is the RAW sugar sachet, tear it open and casually pour it in… you don’t take time out to read the label, you don’t pour it slowly to check the contents, you don’t think, you just do it automatically.
All your actions are instinctively based on the colour coding of the sugar sachets.
Invariably it all goes wrong.
Everybody remembers Motorola and their technological marvel when they unveiled their first ‘mobile phone’. Walking down the high street lugging this 5kg battery.. you new then you were at the cutting edge of technology..
But you could even look a bit further back than that. The military has been using ‘mobile phones’ as far back as WWII.
Today we take our ‘flip top phone’ and ‘smart phone’ for granted but what about tomorrow. What will our communication devices of the future look like?
For much of the last decade everyone has been banging on about achieving Work | Life Balance so much so that it has almost become mainstream thinking. Society embraces it and employers tolerate it – it’s a fait accompli.
But what about Work | Eat | Play Balance, isn’t that sort of the same thing..?
Er… No, and that’s precisely the point!
Yup, you heard right!
As preposterous as it seems, Channel 7 continues to drive its audience towards the illegal act of movie piracy. Night after night they show ‘full length’ cinema movies laced with advertising. Advertising on TV is nothing new and it’s something we have all grown to expect AND accept. After all, it’s traditionally the business model upon which TV stations are based.
BUT Channel 7 has taken things a step further.
I mean, you’ve got a head full of stuff and ‘cannot see the wood for the trees’ scenario yet add some water to the mix and viola, everything becomes clear. Is this possible?
Take for example, you’re standing in the shower with the warm water flowing over your head and down your face, your eyes are firmly shut and all you hear is the sound of running water – at that moment, do you have billions of thoughts rushing through your mind or just a singular overiding thought?
The riots that ran from the 6 – 10 August this year, in London and the Midlands caused death and destruction and has left authorities bemused as to why and how? Why did these riots start and How did they gather such momentum so quickly?
The first of these questions (the Why?) has academics pointing the finger of blame, squarely at the authorities and the current socio-economic climate. The second question (of How?) seems less topical and less important BUT that is laughable if it wasn’t so frightening.