Woolworths' range shrinks again

This time last year, I went to Woolworths and bought myself a calendar. This year? No longer stocked. So yet again I went to the friendly Indian guy just outside Woolworths and got what I wanted. He even had a range of 8 different calendars to choose from -- all at the very reasonable price of $2.00.

I realize that Woolworths is no longer a variety store but became a grocer years ago. But about a quarter of their stock is non-grocery lines so the distinction is a tenuous one.

And the use they do make of shelf space often makes very little sense. Why do they have yards of shelf-space devoted to Coca Cola? Do they think that people will buy more Coke if they have 100 identical bottles to choose from rather than 50?

I have quite a lot of Woolworths shares so I fear that the firm has recently fallen into the hands of business school types, or some other airy-fairy types who are good at corporate-speak but know nothing about selling. Let me tell them the most basic truth of all about selling: If you don't stock it, you can't sell it. As basic as that is, the top brass at Woolworths don't seem to get it.






Some more of that wonderful government "planning"

Brisbane is suffering severe water rationing while a major dam in the region is overflowing! Beat that! Why? They built the dams and the pipelines but forgot about the treatment plants!

A $900 MILLION pipeline pumping water from the Gold Coast to Brisbane is operating at full capacity while the Hinze Dam continues to send millions of litres of water over the spillway each day. The Southern Regional Pipeline was commissioned last month and in the past six weeks has been sending 70 million litres of water a day north via the Molendinar treatment plant. About 50 million litres of water is diverted to the Mt. Crosby treatment plant to dilute the foul-tasting water Brisbane residents have encountered following the big storms late last year. The other 20 million litres is sent to Logan residents.

SEQWater Grid acting chief executive Barry Dennien said no more water could be sent to Brisbane. "The capacity constraint from the Hinze Dam is not the amount of water in storage," he said. "It's really about how much you can get out of the treatment plant, and we've got the treatment plant running flat out at the moment."

Between 200 and 260 million litres of water are pumped from the Hinze Dam each day to the Gold Coast and Brisbane. Acting Premier Paul Lucas said the capacity of the grid had to be weighed against the cost to households. "We will continue to augment our water supply infrastructure but we must balance any extra supplies against extra cost to consumers," Mr Lucas said.

While water restrictions have been suspended on the Gold Coast, Brisbane residents continue to face high-level restrictions. Gold and Sunshine Coast residents can do everything from washing their boats and cars to topping up the pool and water gardens. But Brisbane residents can use the hose for no more than half an hour once a week. That has not stopped Gold Coast Mayor Ron Clarke saying that Brisbane should keep its hands off water from the overflowing Hinze Dam. He was concerned that the water going to Brisbane would see the region forced back on to water restrictions. "It's crazy. We've been send- ing 50 megalitres a day for over six weeks. Brisbane doesn't need it," he said."

Opposition LNP spokesman Tim Nicholls said the water grid was flawed and better planning would have reduced the need for water restrictions. "The whole purpose of the water grid is to re-allocate the water throughout the region," he said. "If it were working properly you would think there would be equal amounts of water available whether you lived in Brisbane, or the Gold Coast, or at Pine Rivers or Redcliffe."

However Acting Premier Paul Lucas said the opposition was being hypocritical. "I'm surprised the opposition is calling for the Gold Coast to send more water to Brisbane when it has repeatedly told people there and on the Sunshine Coast that they were getting a raw deal," he said. "This is despite the fact that in recent years both the Gold and Sunshine Coasts were in drought and would have been able to benefit from the water grid now in place:"

The article above by Mitch Gaynor appeared under the heading "Coast's water let spill" in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on 4 January, 2008






Exodus from Queensland government schools continues

The public school system has lost more than 55,000 students to private schools since Labor won Queensland in 1998 and rebranded it the Smart State. Figures obtained by The Courier-Mail show a 3.4 per cent drop in public school students compared with the private sector, from 1998 to 2007. And of the 206,000 extra private school students in Australia over that time, about one in three has been from Queensland. The net result means just 68.6 per cent of Queensland students attend state schools.

Over the decade, annual education funding has dropped 3 per cent as a proportion of total government funding, to 22 per cent. A spokesman for Treasurer Andrew Fraser said the decrease was "because of an elevated focus on health funding" and total spending should double, from 1998 levels, to $8.17 billion this financial year.

Deputy Opposition Leader Mark McArdle claimed the march out of state schools showed parents did not trust the Government to deliver quality education. Falling literacy, numeracy and behavioural standards in classrooms were the main reasons parents were aggrieved, he said.

Even as the economy slows dramatically and widespread job losses loom, more Queensland parents are choosing private, paying upwards of $15,000 a year. Brisbane parents Ben and Lisa Wavell-Smith said they had chosen St Elizabeth's Primary at Tarragindi for their daughter Malena because the Catholic school "brand" delivered a better, more rounded education than state schools. "You get the feeling also teachers seem to be more involved in their school," Mr Wavell-Smith said.

A week before Christmas, Premier Anna Bligh set terms of reference for the Masters Review into Queensland's underperforming primary school system, leaving the door open for Professor Geoff Masters to investigate any "systemic cultural issues (within Education Queensland) that are inhibiting performance", including bullying of teachers by EQ staff.

Experts say recruitment and retention of quality teachers is pivotal to a student's success. Former Queensland Studies Authority chairman Professor Bob Lingard said state school teachers were regularly blocked from promotion by self-interested EQ bureaucrats. "Often we get those promoted because they go along with what's happening with those above them," the Professor said. "If you want schools to do better, you have to get rid of some of those broader inequities as well."

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Child homicide rates reduced if spanking banned?

This is totally illogical. Because feral parents injure their children, everybody else is to be restricted? Ferals ignore the law anyway. Injuring a child is already an offence. There is no need for further laws -- just better enforcement and better vigilance over feral parents

Child homicide rates could be slashed if parents are banned from smacking their children, according to new research by Australian doctors. Revealing that a third of child homicides are caused by "fatal child abuse" linked to corporal punishment by parents and carers, psychologists have called for smacking to be outlawed. Of the 165 cases of child homicide committed in New South Wales W between 1991 and 2005, 59 were caused by physical punishments with young fathers and stepfathers the biggest culprits.

The call is being backed by Australian Childhood Foundation chief executive officer Joe Tucci, who said the risks associated with physical punishment were too great to allow smacking to continue. "I believe there is a link between the community acceptance of physical punishment and children who end up being killed," he said. "If you look at some of the cases in Victoria over the last four of five years, those kids that were physically beaten the carer who did it started off trying to physically discipline them and went too far.

New Zealand - which banned smacking in 2007 - and the US are the only comparable nations in the world with higher rates of child homicide than Australia, and lead researcher Dr Olav Nielssen from Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital said it was time for Australia to follow international lead. "A third of the homicides were due to fatal child abuse and any measure that reduced it is worth considering it," he said. "Everyone laughed when Sweden introduced it (smacking bans) 30 years ago, but in the 15 years after they did they didn't have a single case of fatal child abuse and a lot of other countries have followed suit. "I think most families could give it up and find other ways to control and discipline children and maybe one of the things we have to think about is alternative ways to train vulnerable families in better parenting skills."

As well as being responsible for a third of child homicides, Dr Nielssen said hitting children created a circle of violence with abused children often becoming bullies at school and involved in anti-social behaviour in the community. He said smacking bans, combined with strong public education about ways to better discipline children, would make the biggest difference in reducing Australia's child homicide rates. Writing in the Medical Journal of Australia, Dr Nielssen and his colleagues also called on colleagues to act on the first signs of mental illness among parents to save young lives.

They found 27 instances where children were killed by someone during psychotic illness, which may be reduced if doctors recognised and treated the first episode of psychosis. Five children also died after carers gave them methadone, leading for calls to end "take away" doses of methadone so that the treatment was only provided to adults under supervision.

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