The more things change...

Today I write of the proposal that Australia Post provides a range of banking and financial services at post offices nation-wide [1]. This initiative results from two facts: the gluttonous major banks threaten to lift mortgage interest rates above the Reserve Bank’s official rate increases [2], and Australia Post’s revenue and profit are falling [3]. I recall writing on this topic before, so I searched Farmdoc’s Blog. I found two posts on this theme – and they’re remarkably similar to each other. That I posted one in July 2008 [4] and the other in July 2009 [5] is a reason for me to go easy on myself for this repetition. I’ve no idea if the post office bank idea will fly. If it does, it’ll definitely be competition for the current banks. And it may curb their avarice and socially destructive excesses [6]. However it’d undoubtedly be corporate, with the attendant negative connotations of corporatism. Though corporations are staffed by humans, they lack humanity. For example the large Aussie telcos are resisting a government push for them to take action to reduce mobile phone ‘bill shock’ [7]. Regarding the post office bank proposal, my 2-cent bet is that it’ll happen. If so, we’ll return to how it was when I was a lad and post offices were agents for the (then) government-owned Commonwealth Bank. Oh the more things change, the more they stay the same. Ho hum.

List: '10 things the modern bogan loves'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. The word ‘charitable’. My dictionary defines it as ‘giving, generous, kind, lenient’. I see myself as a reasonably charitable fellow. More so as I’ve gotten older. I’ve come to see, and appreciate, that by and large people do the best they can, given their background and their resources. And so to bogans. Wikipedia says bogan (which rhymes with ‘slogan’) is Australian and New Zealand slang, of unknown origin, usually pejorative or self-deprecating, for a person who’s perceived to be from a lower class background, or someone whose limited education, speech, clothing, attitude and behaviour exemplifies such a background [1]. An Age article last Monday [2], titled ‘How to spot a bogan’, contains a list of ‘10 things the modern bogan loves’. It seems that non-bogans as well as bogans are fascinated by boganism: Monday’s Age article’s a promo for a new book titled Things bogans like [3] which stems from a blog of the same name [4] which includes a list of (up to now) 184 such things [5]. And several other blogs are devoted to boganism [6, 7, 8]. On one level it’s kind of funny. But taking a charitable view, the bogan subculture’s no more idiosyncratic than other subcultures including, say, the corporate subculture which is generally not considered pejorative. Ho hum.

Mole Creek's new tourist information sign

Mole Creek started out in the 19th century as a camp for loggers and trappers [1]. Nowadays it’s a tourist town [2]. I’ve heard the B12 road west from Deloraine through Mole Creek towards Cradle Mountain [3] is Tasmania’s busiest tourist road. True or apocryphal? I’ve no idea. Most of Mole Creek’s businesses are geared to tourism: caravan park, guesthouse and restaurant, craft shop, hotel, café, rental cottages, B&Bs [4]. The hotel and café provide tourist information. From late Autumn (i.e. Easter) to early Spring (i.e. now) – the tourism off-season – the village hibernates. But in the past few days, coinciding with the Victorian school holidays, it’s started to stir: a sprinkling of cars with mainland licence plates, couples and families eyeing the craft shop’s display window offerings, people excitedly pointing cameras at the snow-capped Great Western Tiers [5]. All are signals the 2010/11 tourist season’s begun. To celebrate, and to help the tourists orient themselves and navigate to local natural and man-made attractions, we have a new sign. It’s on a giant board across from the guesthouse. The same board used to sport an amateurish sign. Recently a signwriting crew painted it over, then hand-painted the new sign. As the photograph shows, its style’s art naïve [6] – kind of. For wider views, click here [7]. Me? I like it – mainly as it’s not corporate. I think the world has far too many signs. But this one’s a good ’un. You betcha.

farmdoc's blog post number 536

Each year, the AFL Grand Final crowd’s mainly corporate, so the ‘people’s finals’ are a week earlier, i.e. the Preliminary Finals. Like it or not (and I don’t), in western countries large corporations are dominant institutions. Some multinational corporations are more powerful than national governments. Corporations thrive on their imponderable and opaque jargon and code-words. But they also assert proprietorial rights over everyday language. For example in 2000 Ansett Airlines’ slogan was ‘Go Your Own Way’. (In 2001 it did. Into liquidation.) Ignoring this slogan’s banality and speciousness, it’s beyond me how any corporation can trademark commonplace words. But they can. And do. Ditto symbols. The common or orchard apple, say. According to the electronics mob Apple Inc., nobody else can use an apple symbol without risking litigation. Including Woolworths (photo). I relish two corporate monsters fighting each other. I hope they both lose. Here is an illustrated account of Apple Inc’s jousting with several alleged infringers of its self-imposed hegemony over its eponymous fruit. Cor! I hope Apple and its apple symbol both rot. In hell. In contrast, I have no issue with unique corporate words. For example, ‘Xerox’ and ‘Google’ used as verbs. But Google executives prefer ‘Google’ not be used as a verb since doing so threatens its trademark. As sharefarmer Sharon says: ‘Here’s 40 cents – go phone someone who cares’.