Wonderful news from the Australian Border Force and the Australian Tax Office this week that a combined effort to smoke out illegal tobacco growers had turned up 1.5 tonnes of excise-able product worth an unpaid $1.3 million to Australia’s battling taxpayers.
Quoting Assistant Commissioner Sharon Huey from the Australian Border Force (ABF) and Assistant Commissioner Peter Vujanic from the Australian Tax Office (ATO), PS News was able to reveal the full story of the sting and heist with quotable quotes from each of the ACs.
“Cracking down on the illicit tobacco market is a key focus for the ABF,” Assistant Commissioner Huey was quoted in the official report as declaring.
“Every crop we seize and destroy burns another hole in the illegal tobacco trade,” Mr Vujanic was quoted as saying in the same official report.
But the ever eagle-eyed PS-sssst! can be quoted as asking why the AC from ABF had the full title “Assistant Commissioner” bestowed upon her while the AC from the ATO was demoted to a mere “Mr”.
Is one Assistant Commissioner a higher rank than the other? Is one more important than the other? Or perhaps is the Tax Office simply more frugal in its use of titles.
Whatever the reason, we’d like to know it so if you know, feel free to share it with us. We’ll even throw in a fabulous free book prize as an incentive.
Send your reasons, guesses or explanations to [email protected] where the wisest or most entertaining will be rewarded.
Court caught out
To the recurring subject of the demise of the Australian language now with another unattractive literal choice made by an otherwise wise Australian institution turning its back on the perfectly usable English word that has served the nation for decades.
Regular readers may recall the Sydney Morning Herald’s embarrassment a few weeks back when it chose to use ‘byelection’ ahead of the more traditional ‘by-election’ in its news coverage despite the rightful guardian of the word – the Australian Election Commission – endorsing the hyphenated version.
The latest misstep to pop up and niggle PS-sssst!’s eye has been committed by a much-loved and revered national institution that should know better, indeed moreso than most.
The guilty party is the High Court of Australia which has opted for the unattractive, unAustralian US concoction ‘Judgment’ as the way to spell ‘Judgement’ on its website homepage despite the much preferred Australian and English spelling readily available.
PS-sssst! wonders why, if the Australian Electoral Commission can take the word ‘Australian’ in its title seriously, the High Court of Australia chooses not to.
On the bright side of course, it could just be the oversight of a junior webpage designer and therefore easily corrected.
On the darker side it could be that the High Court is a hotbed of Australian republicans and is sending us a loosely veiled message!
Either way, let us be the judge, rather than the judg!
No go postie
To a fascinating story from PS News’s wide world of PS News now in which a postman in India was caught out and sacked for not delivering letters for 10 years.
With a commitment to his job that gives the rest of the public service a bad name, Assistant Branch Postmaster in the village of Odhanga, in Orissa State, Jagannath Puhan owned up to not delivering thousands of letters in his career, dropping them off instead at an abandoned post office where they piled up until some children found them recently and, pardon the pun, blew the whistle.
His excuse was that for several years he couldn’t walk properly so couldn’t deliver anything.
What makes the story depressing from a PS point of view is that not one member of the public complained about not receiving their letters despite ATM cards and bank passbooks being among the discoveries in the old PO.
It makes one wonder if there are any other public services being provided by the PS that could be side-tracked for 10 years without anyone knowing.
Any suggestions? Keep them to yourself!
The full story of Postman Puhan can be accessed at this PS News link.
Revealing giveaway
To this week’s weekly giveaway now in which two lucky readers have the chance to win a free copy of the family-friendly novel What the light reveals by Mick McCoy, reviewed by Rama Gaind last week.
To claim a free copy, all Rama needed in her quiz were the names of McCoy’s aunt and uncle submitted on an email entry sufficiently agile be among the first two to emerge from the now infamous PS News ‘Barrel of Booty!’.
The answer Rama was after was Bernice and Dave Morris and the winning entries came from Stephen P of the Department of Home Affairs and Michele B from the Department of Defence.
Congratulations to Stephen and Michele and thanks to all who took part. The prize books will be on their way to the winners very soon.
For another opportunity to join the PS News army of Rama’s quiz conquerers, simply follow this link to this week’s giveaway and try your luck. It’s free, it’s unique in the PS and you have to be in it to win it.
Good luck to all who do.
Headed off!
And finally, as the proverbial pot with a history of calling its proverbial partner the kettle black, PS-sssst! has managed to do it again with a headline better described as a head-spin!
Finishing off last week’s columntrivia with the good news that reader Peter M had won a fabulous book prize, PS-sssst! chose to introduce the story under the controversial heading ‘Maths still matter!”, as if good grammar in headlines doesn’t.
Just because a singular word ends in ‘s’ doesn’t mean it’s plural, so a headline that treats it as plural is singularly incorrect.
PS-sssst! acknowledges it got it wrong but also acknowledges that the usual tsunami of accusative accusers among our failed to pick it up.
Could this be a case of the tree falling in the forest and no-one hearing it therefore it didn’t really happen?
We’ll take it.
QED!
Till next week…..
