Another year, another assembly last week of the finest in public service excellence acknowledged and applauded by Her Majesty the Queen for their dedication and commitment to their Australian communities well over and above the expectation or demand of the jobs they signed up for.
And, as always, if PS News accidentally leaves out a recipient in its annual coverage of the honours, the friends, colleagues and workmates of any omitted dedicated and committed medallist are quick off the mark to let us know.
And so it was this year when the list failed to mention that CSIRO’s Chief Scientist, Dr Cathy Foley (pictured) was welcomed by the Queen as an Officer of the Order of Australia for her distinguished service to research science, the advancement of women in physics and to professional scientific organisations.
The former Dr Foley PSM is now Dr Foley AO!
Name game
And while on the honours honour roll, if there’s one deserving recipient selected to join the Member of the Order of Australia there’s a fair chance it will be the gentleman from Western Australia who was honoured by her Majesty for his services to the State’s accounting profession.
He could also have been honoured for his service to aptonymism – the art of being named after your own profession – as he appears on the list as Mr Ross Ledger AM.
Queen of ages?
And lastly from the Honours ritual, a tch-tch to the small number of readers who let us know they thought our introduction of the Honours list as: ‘Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has marked her 2020 Birthday….’ was disrespectful.
We part-heartedly apologise but really don’t.
It never crossed our mind someone could assume we were referring to the Queen celebrating her 2020th birthday this year.
Winning with Rama
To Rama Gaind’s weekly giveaway now in which a lucky reader has the chance to add a new book to her or his bookcase simply by answering Rama’s never-very-hard quiz question about the book that’s up for grabs.
This week’s prize is a copy of Rebecca Freeborn’s ‘persuading read’ The Girl She Was, on offer to the reader who can tell Rama which character in the book sent the Facebook Messenger text to Layla?
The first entrant to break out of the PS News Barrel of Booty with the correct answer – it was from her former boss’s wife – came from Donata L of the Victorian Department of Justice and Community Safety.
Congratulations to Donata and thanks to everyone who took part. Donata’s new book will be on its way very soon.
For another chance to give your giveaway skills a work out as a volunteer member of the Rama Army, simply follow this PS News link to her latest DVD prize and this link to her current DVD offering.
The best of luck to all who do!
A link and a nod
And finally, regular readers of PS News will have noticed – and perhaps taken advantage of – the handy ‘PS News links’ that sign off many stories in PS News by whisking a reader direct to the report, document, statement or other actual source of information that led to the PS News story being reported in the first place.
To say the links are popular with readers is to under-link them as the average week sees around 5,000 linkers link on to find out more or just find out for themselves what the full story is.
And for the inquisitive statisticians in our midst, the popularity chart in recent weeks have been the NSW TAFE’s offer of free career courses during the COVID pandemic (514 clicks); The Federal Public Service Commission’s Circular on how to return to work when the pandemic is over (460); the Australian Institute of Family Studies survey of COVID affected families (374); and the WA Crime Commission’s findings on PS misconduct (256).
Another reason to read PS News: The ‘Link’s’ on US!
Till next week…….
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