A very Happy New Year to the army of PS News PS-ssssters around the nation, thrilled to be back in harness to serve our fellow countrypersons for another creative year of public serviceness.
We’ll all be thrilled to know that while we were enthusiastically vacationing to re-energise our energies, at least a few media-word stranglers were busily resurrecting a rarely used the old word ‘furlough’ they thought they’d invented but which they were simply misusing.
“Many businesses have placed their staff on furlough” was a common comment, in recent weeks as was “one company had furloughed tens of thousands of its employees” etc etc.
So, what is a ‘furlough’ and how can we out it to use ourselves?
Not like that, unfortunately!
According to Mr Oxford, ‘Furlough’ is a noun (so we can’t be furloughed) meaning a ‘leave of absence, especially a permit given to a soldier to be absent from duty for a stated time’.
So, unless we’re a soldier we are unfurloughable!
Such a shame the word itself can’t be ‘furloughed’ in favour of the dozens of other terms that actually mean non-soldiers can have some time off!
Essential workers missed
Far be it from PS-sssst! to enter the chaotic world of COVID-taming but a recent decisive decision caught our pandemic-free eye as well worth having a jab at.
Departments of Health around the nation are doing their Herculean best to cope with the epi-pandemic scourge of our lifestyle with their latest challenge being to allow ‘essential workers’ to stay at work without spreading the country’s chaotic COVIDic complaint.
While the ‘essential workers’ identified for the special attention have been named as those supplying groceries, petrol, energy, water and freight, PS-sssst! is of the view that the most essentially essential workforce in the country has been overlooked and should be added to the top of the list immediately.
How can Australia hope to shake off COVID without employing its essential workplaces above all other workplaces, its Public Services to lead the way supported of course by their imperatively indispensable well of wise wisdom, PS News.
We’re ready if you are!
In ten we trust
A special mention of accidental creative excellence now with the rare use of a rare verb in the English language almost being used correctly.
Just before Christmas last year, the national Productivity Commission released a research paper reporting on the fares being charged by public transport around the nation and whether they cover the costs of providing the service.
It found they don’t.
“Fares have not been particularly equitable or efficient, and have not kept pace even with the recurrent costs of running our public transport systems,” the Commission concluded wisely.
“In some systems, fares do not even cover 10% of operating costs.”
Which is a fortuitous percentage because the Commission introduced its report with a warning that the COVID-19 pandemic was impacting seriously on the number of passengers choosing to use public transport.
“COVID-19 has decimated public transport patronage and revenue in all Australian cities,” it warned.
And, as every irritating school kid knows, to ‘decimate’ something is to cut one-tenth from it, which is an easy and fortunate fit for the Commission’s 10% reference above.
Congratulations to the Commission for seeing the foreseeable.
Serendipity anyone?
Rat catching
And finally, may all our prayers be with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in its exercise to come down hard on shops and suppliers ‘gouging’ their buyers of the do-it-yourself COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) by marking up prices of the Tests by the hundreds.
For the record, the wholesale price of the Tests has been reported as around $3.80, a 50% mark-up of which would be around $5.70.
A rare case in which the acronym applying to the products – RATs– applies more appropriately to the seller than the product!
Till next week…..
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