Monday, August 16, 2010

Standing up for a fair shake of the sauce bottle

Julia the PM (at time of writing anyway) was asked by a reporter in Townsville yesterday "Should tomato sauce be free with a meat pie".

Now, for some perverse reason that has become a source (excuse the pun) for much mirth in the media, but I think it needs a little deconstruction.

As this blog is all about the little things in life that bug me, it is perhaps an appropriate conundrum to investigate.

So, harking back to my youth, until these little bits of packaging came on to the scene tomato sauce was free. it came in a bottle on the counter at your local shop or a squeeze bottle at the condiments area of the footy canteen.

Now in those days you were buying a pie, not the condiments. You did not have to pay for the sauce on your pie. You did not have to pay for the salt on your chips. And you did not have to pay for the sugar in your tea or coffee. (Yes, dear reader, in my youth they sold just as much teas as coffee at the footy!) Condiments were free.

Then came packaged servings of tomato sauce in the era of economic rationalism.
Now, I like some aspects of the "user pays" system, but these goals should not be at the expense of the "server your customers well" idea.

To me, supplying condiments is a "cost of doing business" rather than a "profit centre" issue. Good business people who care about their customers and not charging a petty 10c for a little disposable packet of sauce always get my patronage. So bring back the condiments counter and the sauce squeezer please and get rid of portion control - that is what your customers want! And another thing, about those bloody disposable sauce sachets...

er, see ya at half past...

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Now I'm really pissed off...

The Wilderness Society is having a go at the "missing in action" pollies on climate change and the environmental front.

Greg Hunt and Peter Garret have been AWOL since the campaign started; well it is a junior ministry! Don't even get me started with Penny 'Puppet' Wong.

I know there are many issues that we need to take into account to help the country develop, help people live safe lives and keep the world in peace.

However the single most important over-riding issue is our living environment. Without the clean earth that we live on, life cannot go on. Without clean air, we will slowly get sick. Without a way past the short-sighted rent-seekers in industries who pollute, we will loose hope.

Our grasping for every new technology has put a barrier between us and the world around us. We have become like monarchs in our castle who don't actually know what is going on really deep down in the kingdom below them. The powers that be seem only to listen to the shrillest voice - pushing short-term self interest over the interests of the planet - yet they are also locked in the castle and equally clueless.

Pollies, just listen to the people. The voters who have their say but once every three years. Just bloody fix it, get it over and done with just like the vast majority of the scientific community say it needs to be done. Don't wait until it is too late. Don't be the ones in the history books blamed for mass extinction of species.

Or are you all just too gutless?

(sigh... er, see ya at half past...)