Opening up with an emphasis on good luck and lucky good readers this week by placing the redoubtable Rama Gaind front and centre delivering her latest collection of grabs and giveaways in the form of free books and/or DVDs open to one and all who take up the Rama challenge and answer her (embarrassingly!) simple quiz questions.
Carefully collected for the edification, elucidation and enjoyment of PS News’s already knowledgeable readers, Rama’s sacrificial offerings this week are copies of the DVD movie thriller An Imperfect Murder starring Sienna Miller and Alec Baldwin.
To take a place among the three winners, all we needed to do was answer Rama’s poser and name the actor who plays the role of detective in the film.
That actor was Alec Baldwin and the successful entrants whose correct answers were first out of the PS News Barrel of Booty, were Voret C from the Australian Taxation Office, Phillipa J from the ACT’s Access Canberra, and Elizabeth P from the NSW Government’s shiny new Department of Regional NSW.
Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to everyone for joining in. The DVDs will be on their way to their new homes very soon.
For another of Rama’s weekly winners’ chances, simply follow the steps to her latest free Book at this PS News link and/or her hand-chosen DVD giveaway at this link.
Good luck to everyone who does.
Jabs shot at!
A happy report now that PS-sssst! is not alone raising its eyebrows to the media’s painful use of the word ‘jab’ instead of ‘injection’ when reporting on the delivery of the COVID-19 vaccine to the world’s chosen vaccinees’ arms.
As indicated last week, the Oxford meaning of ‘jab’ is to ‘poke roughly’, which is hardly a needle of encouragement when the goal should be to attract as many receivers as possible to front for the vaccination plunge and play their role in starving the baneful COVID pandemic into departure and dissolution.
But fortunately, media professionalism is not all lost with growing numbers of the world’s less-than-learned reporters moving away from ‘jab’ in favour of the more traditional alternative of injection: i.e. ‘shot’.
Incredibly, even the English-challenged United States reporters can be seen, heard or read dropping the brutally unpleasant ‘jab’ in favour of the friendlier and intensively more appropriate ‘shot!’.
In media we trust?
And while we’re prodding the media, PS-sssst! wonders if their cheers of success over Facebook’s about-face by agreeing to pay chosen outlets for their news stories might not come back to haunt the already confused and crippled media industry.
PS-sssst! wonders if in the years ahead, the unpredictably uncontrollable platforms like Facebook, Google and others come to realise that the amounts of money they’re paying to news gatherers for their news items could exceed the amount it would cost them to simply get together and gather the news themselves.
If so, what will our news services look like then, with our local news businesses out of business and the all-embracing world-wide platforms free to serve up whatever fake, false or fanciful news they fancy?
Potentially, an international case of being careful what we wish for!
Numbers game!
And (almost) finally, the warmest words of welcome to the 624 very wise and soon-to-be very well-informed members of the PS News family who chose January and February to sign up as new subscribers and find out what’s happening in Public Services around the nation.
A hearty ‘well done’ and thanks to each and every one of you. You can be assured we will do our best to make your experience with PS News as fruitful, informative and positive as it can be!
For the record, the welcome newcomers took the PS News readership to a very healthy 168,603, spread across nine separate editions headed up by the national Australian Public Service, followed by Victoria’s PS, the NSW PS, Western Australia PS, Queensland PS, ACT PS, Tasmanian PS, South Australia, PS and the Northern Territory PS.
PS in the PaSt ….. March 2011
Another trip back 10 years to read again what Australia’s Public Services were dealing with in the first week of March 2011.….
This time in 2010 Australia was rallying troops to send across the Ditch to help the community of Christchurch after its devastating earthquake.
The response included 73 urban search and rescue experts, engineers from the NSW Department of Services, Technology and Administration, up to 200 NSW Police and 116 Victoria Police, and four ACT firefighters. Queensland sent search and rescue teams, police and paramedics.
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To disasters at home, in the wake of devastating floods and Cyclone Yasi, Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh demanded streamlining of the Premier’s Disaster Relief Appeal after delays in processing applications were revealed.
“We’ve experienced dual natural disasters beyond the magnitude of anything we have experienced in history,” Ms Bligh said, but she was concerned and disappointed that some Queenslanders in the worst-affected regions had still not received payment weeks after the event.
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The Australian Bureau of Statistics released what Director of the Bureau’s Land and Industry Statistics, Mark Lound described as an “exciting new way of viewing statistical data”.
Powered by the new service Google Earth, the graphic-based Land Account showed detailed information on areas of land from the size of a single city block to giant agricultural parcels, integrating social, economic and environmental data.
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In the ACT its shared services agency, ‘InTACT’, was able to defend Territory Government websites from 646,700 cyber attacks in 2009–10.
Of the attacks, 78,000 were rated as high severity, 565,000 as medium and 3,700 as low, according to the Common Vulnerability Scoring System standard.
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Hundreds of Victorian babies were set to benefit from Melbourne’s first Breastmilk Bank, which was opened at the Mercy Hospital for Women.
Minister for Health, David Davis said the Bank would collect, screen, pasteurise and store donor milk for sick, premature and extremely small babies whose mothers could not supply sufficient milk themselves.
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Meanwhile, in Western Australia’s east Kimberley, Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) experts were investigating whether cane toads were to blame for the deaths of four freshwater crocodiles.
Wildlife Officer at DEC, Len Terry said while only one crocodile could be autopsied due to the animals’ decomposition, it was likely all had died from digesting cane toad toxins. DEC and the University of Sydney were continuing research into the impact of cane toads on freshwater crocodiles.
Till next week……
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