Good news for parents in the ACT this week with the Education Directorate (ACT doesn’t have Agencies or Departments, it has Directorates!) that many of the Territory’s schools will be taking their enrolments for 2022 soon and were starting to hold information sessions any day now.
“Attending your local school’s information session gives you the opportunity to check out the facilities, meet current students and hear about their experiences,” the Directorate advised lucky parents.
It also offered the parents to: “ask questions about the school, it’s courses and programs…..”
The Directorate doesn’t say what answer the parents can expect if they were to ask how to correctly use an apostrophe in the word ‘its’!
Languishing Language
Staying with grammatical gymnastics, KR of the federal Industry portfolio has gone into bat for the English language lamenting the quality of the spelling in a PS News report a week or two back.
Quoting word-for-word a spokesperson for a police force resurrecting an airport-based project now that the pandemic was showing signs of resistance, PS News was in KR’s firing line for accurately quoting the spokesperson’s quotation choosing to spell the word ‘traveling’.
“I don’t care if it’s a direct quote from a press release,” the punctilious KR contended.
“Can we at least pretend there are other ways of looking at the world than through tiresomely ubiquitous American lenses and acknowledge that there was a whole set of other spelling rules before Microsoft?”
Point taken KR!
Our only defence is that that’s what then police person actually said.
Like the crumpled old journalists we are at PS News, our goal in life is to be accurate – even if that includes reporting inaccurate quotes. The alternative, in our minds, is that to do anything else is to flirt with the inexcusable evil that is censorship.
However, for raising the issue for our readers, a fabulous PS-sssst! Pack is on its way to KR for sharing the thought with us.
Armageddon outa here!
Meanwhile back at the ACT, the readers of a recent announcement by the Territory’s transport gurus could be excused for preparing to get ready for the end of the world.
Declaring the good news that the national capital’s light rail public transport system is officially marking its two year anniversary, an official newsletter from the local Government drew a line on the ground as if to say that was as much as we’re going to get!
“As Canberra’s light rail gets ready to celebrate its second birthday on April 20, we look back at the last two years of its life …..” the newsletter promised.
Its last two years? Not much of a life for a $600M project!
The ever compassionate PS-sssst! assumes however that the newsletter probably meant to say the past two years.
Long shortcoming
And now an overdue visit to a break-out of PS-sssst!’s legendary incompetence with an apology to Brad M of Queensland’s Right to Information Services whose wisely and timely admonishment of one of PS-sssst’s shortcomings some weeks ago was unceremoniously demolished when it failed through sheer incompetence to comment on it at the time.
Hot on the task of spotlighting a typographical blunder in a story about the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) which reported people with disability ‘taking’ contributions from their communities instead of the intended ‘making’ contributions, PS-sssst! had the nerve to harangue the guilty typist by telling them how just one misplaced letter could seriously change the meaning of a sentence.
In his wise and well-put admonishment, Brad correctly accuses PS-sssst! of ignoring its own advice by misplacing a letter itself in another part of the very same story.
“I was just reading PS-sssst!” Brad opened his case gently.
“In the first article about typos you had one yourself referring to the NDIS as the DNIS in the fifth paragraph.”
And he’s right!
But, as the fair and reasonable gentleman Brad is, he went on to deal with our dismal dejection.
“Of course I assume it was deliberate to see if we were paying attention!”
If only that was true!
Well trained giveaway
To Rama Gaind’s generous gift of a giveaway now in which a basketball team of lucky readers are to be crowned winners of the intriguing book Night Train to Varanasi by Sean Doyle.
To join Rama’s winners’ circle, entrants needed only tell her the alternate name for Varanasi which she made clear in her review was Benaras.
The five lucky winners whose correct entries emerged first from the PS News Barrel of Booty were Viviana G from the Western Australian Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, Terry L from the Department of Defence, Helen W from the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority in Canberra, John L from the Federal Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, and Mike P from Services Australia.
Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to everyone for joining in. The books will be despatched shortly.
For another chance to join Rama’s Army of wistful winners, simply try your hand at one or both of her current giveaways by visiting either her review of this Book Flawsome at this PS News link and/or her other reviewed Book Leader By Design at this link.
Good luck to everyone who does.
PS of the PaSt again!
Another trip down history lane now to revisit the public sector of 2011 and wallow in the goings on of the public sector a full 10 years ago.
Unleashing the PS Past: 26 April – 3 May 2011
1. This week 10 years ago, the Department of Defence announced a new service contract to provide a fivefold increase in its internet capacity and greater security.
The $52.9 million contract was to replace Defence’s existing single internet gateway with parallel managed services.
2. Australia’s National Measurement Institute (NMI) this week 10 years ago came to the rescue of a New Zealand laboratory damaged in the recent Christchurch earthquake.
Minister for Innovation, Senator Kim Carr said NMI was helping the company Greentide rebuild important microbial culture collections, as well as an important collection of fungi and other microbes indigenous to New Zealand, that were badly damaged in the earthquake.
3. To New South Wales where the Office of Environment and Heritage confirmed this week 10 years ago that cane toad tadpoles had been found for the first time in Sydney.
The breeding site was found at Taren Point industrial area and the Minister for Environment, Robyn Parker said the Office of Environment and Heritage and Sutherland Shire Council had been working together for the past year to combat the pest.
4. To Victoria for what was believed to be a world first when the Minister for Health, David Davis said the State’s air ambulances would now carry blood products to allow paramedics to administer transfusions at emergency scenes and in the air.
Mr Davis said Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance paramedics had been able to give blood transfusions to seriously injured people for more than five years, but the blood products had to be brought to the scene from local hospitals.
“Air Ambulance Victoria will be the first paramedic-operated helicopter service in the world to have paramedics carrying and administering blood products,” the Minister said.
5. Also this week 10 years ago, a University of Queensland study found that politeness was not dead among Australian drivers.
The study of driving behaviour in Brisbane looked at who was polite and who was selfish at traffic intersections.
UQ PhD student, Redzo Mujcic and Professor of Economics, Paul Frijters analysed intersections where commuters had the option to let someone from a side road enter the main road or to keep going and save themselves a couple of seconds.
The authors said the results suggested evidence of widespread altruism in society, with more than one-third of the random commuters willing to forgo some precious seconds to do someone else a favour.
6. And in Western Australia, a research team led by Department of Agriculture and Food scientist Associate Professor YongLin Ren received national recognition for a breakthrough in post-harvest technology to rid stored grain of insects.
The Cooperative Research Centre for National Plant Biosecurity Science Exchange Award for Impact on Industry was awarded for the team’s development of a cost-effective low-oxygen technology as an alternative to phosphine fumigation of grain and the management of insect resistance.
“What is most exciting is that the process provides the grains industry with a viable chemical-free treatment,” Associate Professor Ren said.
Until Next week…..
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