Regular readers of PS News will be aware of the apostolically devout coverage regularly given to the wonderful work of the Federal Government’s Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the ACCC.
While it is unlikely to be a sentimental throwback to the editor’s 12 months as secretary of the National Consumer Affairs Advisory Council in the 1980s (when PM-in-training John Howard was the Minister) the positive reporting is more likely to be due to the ACCC actually active in protecting consumers’ rights, a virtue the paper-ridden NCAAC of its day found too strenuous.
While there has always been an undertow of concern that ‘Competition’ in ACCC’s name comes ahead of the much more deserving ‘Consumer’, it has only recently been drawn to PS-sssst’s attention that the Commission’s full name is even more discomforting.
A close reading reveals its reference to ‘consumers’ is limited to just one, and one only, ‘Consumer’. To wit: See the official logo above!
While PS-sssst! would never doubt the ACCC’s doubtless commitment to the rights of all Australian consumers, it would have thought that such a powerful, successful and well-loved agency would go into battle for them by the thousands and millions, not just one single battler at a time.
Or, Heaven forbid, could it be that our endeared ACCC is breaching one of its own rules and is practising false advertising?
Where’s a consumer advocate when they’re needed?
Dated advice
Staying in the company of wise advisers and experts, the following sliver of wisdom comes free of charge from PS News’s accountant, who like many private accountants around Australia doesn’t have much to count while Corona keeps virussing.
“When writing the date of a document in 2020” the accountant recounts, “Be sure to use all four numbers”.
That’s so, she says, because signing or recording a document with the simple ‘20’ as the year leaves it unwisely wide open to interference should someone choose to add another number to it so it looks like it was prosecuted on a different date.
A signature signed off as ‘15 June 20’, ‘15/6/20’ or even ‘June 15, 20’, could easily be prosthetically reconstructed into ‘15 June 2017’, ‘15.6.2018’ or ‘June 15, 2019’, for examples making it hard in the extreme to prove which date it was executed.
And for those among us who keep the dates unexpected world records are broken, the date the PS News accountant offered that information FREE OF CHARGE was 5/6/2020.
Dining time
Celebration time now with PS News’s international famous and nationally loved dining superstar Christine Salins publishing her 600th Dining column for PS News this week.
Mixing Panna Cotta with nostalgia, Christine revisits her first and 500 th recipes, sharing the delight of conjuring up healthy, easy-to-prepare meals for busy working readers keen to eat well but with little time at the end of a busy working day.
Needless to say the Dining section has been among PS News’s most popular attractions on 599 occasions up to now, with even more delicacies and delights in Christine’s ‘Recipes for Busy Workers’ lining up for her next 600 offerings.
And for those of us who enjoy the thrill of concocting creative cuisine, Christine’s classic combination of Panna Cotta and Nostalgia is just lingering to be nibbled at.
Her Dining section can be tasted at this PS News link.
Giving away again
To PS News’s giant weekly giveaway now in which Rama the Redoubtable sprinkles freebies around our resourceful readership, adding class and character to their book batches and DVD digests simply by solving her quizzical quiz questions and joining her winners’ circle to score this week’s treasurely trophy.
The prizes for the week are two copies of psychologist Karen Morley’s thought-provoking and realistic guidebook Beat Gender Bias, free to first correct entrants who can name the engineer and Boral Ltd chairperson who contributed foreword of the book, the name of whom was Kathryn Fagg.
The first two correct entrants to greet the bouncing Barrel judges were Rosemary S from the NSW Department of Education and Gregory C from the Australian Tax Office.
Congratulations to Rosemary and Gregory and thanks to all who joined in. The books will be on their merry way soon.
For another chance to chance your Rama luck, simply visit her latest DVD review at this PS News link and her next book offering at this link.
Good luck to all who do!
Unpermittable
And finally, news from Western Australia that the WA Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development has alerted the residents of Fremantle that the imported red fire ant has been seen in the area and they should take steps to have them removed.
“Fremantle and Western Australia as a whole (are) at risk from this nasty pest,” the Department warned.
“A Quarantine Action Notice (has been) issued for parts of Fremantle …. prohibiting the movement of material that could harbour the ants without a valid permit.”
Very wise action of course.
There’s nothing more annoying than ants turning up to be harboured when they haven’t brought their permit!
Till next week….
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