Kicking off in the national capital this week where Australia Post has officially recognised the city’s Belconnen township with a rare ‘postmark’ featuring the image of a public artwork, the Belconnen Owl.
Publicising the rare and symbolic giant statue chosen for the postmark, the local Post Office manager cleverly announced how he expected the local residents to welcome the honour bestowed on their owlish idol with a positively owly opinion.
“Sending a letter from the Belconnen post office any time soon?” the PO manager asked.
“The recipient might get a real hoot out of it,” kaboom!
A hoot indeed!
Acrimonious acronym
To the world of aggravated abbreviations now where the not-so accurate acronyms live and the groans of the pedants pierce.
And the winner this week is the Western Australian Department of Health whose excellent medical information program is keeping highly sensitive personal and medical details of COVID-19 positive people and their close and casual contacts.
While the WA Auditor General was of the opinion the Department could protect the people’s personal information more securely, PS-sssst! is of its own opinion that the official acronym could also benefit from a little less creativity.
The Department put it this way: “WA Health’s Public Health COVID-19 Unified System (PHOCUS) collates highly sensitive personal and medical information…..”.
The rude puritan PS-sssst! would put the acronym this way: PHCUS or in a pinch, PHeCUS!
Just as the Auditor General expressed an opinion PS-sssst! claims to be the Acronym General also expressing an opinion.
Winter winners
And just when we thought it safe to stay in Canberra on the expectation that such cleverliness couldn’t get any cleverer, the national capital’s City Renewal Authority put on a good show to show it could.
Unveiling plans for enjoying Canberra’s cool winter weather in a few weeks with a range of wintry attractions coming to the capital’s town centre, the Authority created cleverness itself, announcing an outdoor ice-rink is to be installed in the city as a fun feature during the July school holidays.
And what better way to promote the event than with a headline guaranteed to raise heads?
“We’re developing a winter installation that is aimed to WOW the Canberra community,” the Authority declared.
“(It’s) a Winter-ful experience in Civic Square!”
One could say that Summer’s it up!
Recipe book for good management
Opening up Rama Gaind’s weekly golden giveaway now with this week’s self-managing high performance textbook Resilience Recipes: Making space for wellbeing that works by Fleur Heazlewood.
To become a proud owner of Resilience Recipes, all we had to do was advise Rama on the number of years of corporate leadership Ms Heazlewood has, the answer to which was 20 years.
And the first two readers to pop out of the PS News Barrel of Booty with the correct answer were Michael C from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and Marina N from Queensland’s Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy.
Congratulations to Michael and Marina and a big thankyou to all who took part. The new books will be on their way to their new owners very soon.
For another chance of joining Rama’s good luck army, simply visit her latest reviews of the Book Keith Urban at this PS News link and/or her DVD A Day to Die at this link and follow her instructions.
In the meantime, enjoy PS News, enjoy Rama’s reviews and enjoy the excitement of (possibly) becoming another PS News prizewinner.
Good luck!
Deadly numbers?
And finally, back in Canberra, the city’s road users are being encouraged to take a pledge to drive in such a way that other road users will survive.
Directing his call to the community at large, the Minister promoting the pledges argued that people were being ‘seriously injured on ACT roads’ and the recent National Road Safety Week was an opportunity to remind all that road safety is everyone’s responsibility.
He became even more concerned when addressing fatalities on the city’s roads.
“Minister for Transport and City Services …. said too many people are killed….”
Excuse PS-sssst?’s pedantry, but if the current number is too many, what is the number that is not too many?
Such a shame ‘0’ is not a number!
Until next week…..
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