Jack's Birthday

It's Jack's birthday tomorrow, he will be thirteen. So happy Birthday to Jack.
Woof

Any additional comments can be sent to mark_brickel@hotmail.com

Low income and housing

The Brotherhood of St. Laurence is a charity that works with the poor of our community. Many years ago they helped a project I was involved in for kids. They were the first to see the benefits of the program we were running and gave seed money [when government wouldn't] to get us going.
Today I read in the paper their assessment and proposals for dealing with the chronic shortage of housing for low income people. I have added their link here . In times of large surpluses why are we giving very rich people tax relief, when they are already wealthy and ignoring an ongoing problem in housing. The price of houses is way too high and in part it is because of government policies and tax incentives.
Lets hope that if the Labor party win the next federal election we will see more public housing built.
Woof.


Any additional comments can be sent to mark_brickel@hotmail.com

The Future fund Etc.

Firstly here is an article in todays Age newspaper written by Kenneth Davidson. Explaining the whys and wherefores on the Future fund that the federal government has set up. It is a multi-billion dollar lie.

Secondly I had a thought about the use of energy in our society. One of the best ways of conserving future [carbon based] energy supplies is to use less. And that is where I realise we have a problem. Not only have we been encouraged over the last 50 years to consume more. We now have privatised power supply companies that have been bought from governments with the belief that they will have ongoing consumption. There is no incentive to conserve or use less. Less use means less profits.
I think we will find that the economic rationalists that have taken over economic debate and policy have come at the worst possible time for this planet. Their, spend at all costs, approach to wealth creation. Doesn't sit well in this environment of global warming and restraint in fossil fuel usage.
Woof.


Any additional comments can be sent to mark_brickel@hotmail.com

What have they done to deserve this?

What has this bank been up to, to make such a profit that it can pay it's CEO a staggering $3.5 million. I have nothing much to add to the article below except to say I think it is reprehensible and must be adding to societies costs. To say it is a private matter between employer and employee is wrong. This bank enters into numerous publicly financed contracts from which they are making excessive profits. This is the bank behind the attempted takeover of Qantas from which they had hoped to glean billions of dollars.
It stinks.
Woof.

May 16, 2007 - 8:14AM

Macquarie Bank boss Allan Moss's staggering $33.5 million pay packet is an example of "corporate social irresponsibility", a leading welfare campaigner says.

Mr Moss was yesterday rewarded with a $12 million pay rise after overseeing a record annual profit at Australia's largest investment bank.

Michael Raper, of the National Welfare Rights Network, said today Mr Moss's salary was unjustified, but conceded little could be done about it.

"It's certainly excessive, it's unjustified, it's unnecessary, and I think it's actually harmful to the overall social fabric to our whole society," Mr Raper told the Nine Network.

"But there isn't much we can do about it. It's a private company; they can do what they like.

"It's not corporate social responsibility we're seeing here, it's corporate social irresponsibility - to be paying such excessive wages and increasing income inequality to the detriment of society generally."

Macquarie - sometimes dubbed the "millionaires' factory" - yesterday reported a 60 per cent lift in annual profit, a record $1.463 billion for the year ending March 31.

Last year, its executives pocketed a total of $207.1 million - up 50.9 per cent from $137.2 million in fiscal 2006.
"People save lives day in, day out. That sort of thing is worth enormous amounts of money, they don't get that kind of money," Mr Raper said.

"How can this be worth 109 times what the prime minister gets in a year? The most responsible positions in the country - the treasurer, the PM, the head of treasury, those sorts positions - they get nowhere near this."

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Hurry up with the next election

Having heard the Treasurers budget on Tuesday and the Opposition leaders response last night, I just hope they have this inevitable election sooner rather than later. Though my waters tell me it will probably be later.

The longer they leave the Opposition leader to stew in his own rhetoric the better chance the government have of retaining office. A month ago I would of not thought this, but Mr Rudd [Opposition] is proving to be a boring sort of speaker with little or no charisma. Already he is playing to an imagined television audience that likes to see hand wrenching and false smiles.

I still think he has a chance to win the next election, mainly because we are ready for a change. The old saying we don't vote knew governments in we vote old ones out. I do believe it is going to be a very boring campaign and I for one will be reading something other than political speeches. Here are a couple of funny blogs I recommend as alternative reading.

London Girl

The Japing Ape

Woof

Any additional comments can be sent to mark_brickel@hotmail.com

Qantas

Hoooray the Qantas bid has failed to reach the 50% acceptances so for the time being it has failed. I don't think the failure is for the reasons I would like them to be. It is because the shareholders thought they could get a better price. The lesson learnt for me is that where money is concerned it's not how much you have, it is how much you can make.
I read this interesting article in The Age newspaper about wealth and happiness. It seems to be, that you are happiest, if you have enough to live but are not too wealthy you then become unhappy.
Well read the article and then reflect upon the unhappy bastards who want to buy out Qantas and other cashed up entities.
Woof.
Any additional comments can be sent to mark_brickel@hotmail.com

Telecalling

Those unsolicited phone calls, the pleas for money or your time, just as you are about to sit down to diner, should now be a thing of the past here in Australia. Thanks to a new service provided by the federal government.
There are one or two problems with the service as far as I can see and it is only a day old so maybe public pressure will change these.
One is that it can't be used on phone numbers that are not primary domestic use. Why should small businesses have to put up with these unsolicited phone calls any more than a domestic situation.
Two the organisations that are exempt from this registry are churches and charities and groups doing surveys. Well they seem to be the main offenders at 7pm when you are just about to sit down for dinner.
So I have registered my numbers in the vain hope I can eat my tea uninterrupted.
Woof.

Any additional comments can be sent to mark_brickel@hotmail.com

Politicians

I have decided I don't respect Politicians like I used to. The other day the deputy leader of opposition in Canberra was interviewed. In the interview she continued to use the same couple of mantras firstly to emphasise her point but soon it became a meaningless mantra. It no longer sounded true, original or believable. She sounded like a liar covering her tracks by saying the same thing over and over in the attempt to make it right. It may well of been right but the over use of catch phrases doesn't endear me to their cause.
This came on the back of reading an article about exactly this sort of behaviour by a politician. I had thought it was confined to politicians who were older and used this style of interviewing to avoid scrutiny. Not someone young fresh and looking to be in Government if they win the next election.
Now I realise that politicians of all persuasions are being schooled in how to handle the media to basically negate an interview and to speak in slogans, instead of having a discussion or debate.
Probably seen as good tactics by the spin doctors, it smells of a brave new world to me.

Woof.

Any additional comments can be sent to mark_brickel@hotmail.com

More on Qantas

Kenneth Davidson has written a great piece on the sale of Qantas and has managed to make sense of what I have known but not had the words to get across. Basically it is to do with shareholder responsibilities and ripping the financial guts out of a company. Here is his Article from The Age newspaper.

Woof.

Kenneth Davidson
April 30, 2007

Whichever way you look at it, the shareholders are passengers on a one-way trip to nowhere.

"THE company at law is a different person altogether from its subscribers." (Lord Macnaughton, House of Lords, 1897)

"Shareholders are not in the eyes of the law part owners of the undertaking. The undertaking is something different from the totality of the shareholdings." (Lord Justice Evershed, House of Lords, 1948)

So who owns Qantas? The question is not as silly as it seems. When I say I own my house, everybody understands that I can use it for my own enjoyment and dispose of it as I wish, subject to the relevant planning laws. But when somebody buys shares in Qantas, the shareholder has none of these rights, apart from the right to sell the shares.

Qantas shareholders (apart from its directors and senior executives who also have shareholdings) have nothing to do with the running of the business. So rather than asserting the shareholders own Qantas, it is more accurate to say that the Qantas shareholders own their shares in Qantas.

So who owns the company? This question is less important than, who is responsible for the management of the company and in whose interests? Only the directors are responsible for the company as an ongoing entity in itself as distinct from its employees, its shareholders, its creditors and its customers, who have interests in aspects of the business.

The idea that the directors of a public company are responsible only to its shareholders is a recent idea, largely promoted by neo-liberals such as Milton Friedman, and it has gained popularity with the rise in the threat of hostile takeovers. The interests of shareholders may be synonymous with the interests of the company, but not always.

Even if APA succeeded in making Qantas a private company, APA's structure ensures the liability of the owners will be limited to the money put into the business by APA. And based on the information available thus far, that will only be about 25 per cent of the liabilities that will be created as part of the takeover package.

But if directors operated according to the idea that their responsibility is to shareholders rather than the company itself, how do they resolve conflicting shareholder interests? These include those who would prefer for tax reasons a share buyback against those who prefer dividends, or foreign shareholders who are not subject to capital gains tax against local shareholders who are, or those who want immediate capital gains because they want to exit the company against those who are interested in a long-term stream of earnings.

Apart from limited liability, the main advantage of listing on the stock exchange is the listing provides liquidity and a vehicle for speculation against an asset or collection of assets that are fundamentally illiquid. Even so, some businesses in energy, telecommunications and transport (including Qantas) that have been privatised in the past decade are still seen as providing a public service.

There are two models of corporate responsibility, according to British economists John Kay and Aubrey Silberston, who wrote a seminal study of corporate governance in the mid 1990s. These are the Anglo-Saxon agency model adopted by Britain, North America and Australia, where the company interest is served as a by-product of maximising shareholder value, and the trusteeship model common to Western Europe and Japan, where directors are expected to weigh the balance of the conflicting interests of current shareholders with the interests of present and future shareholders, employees, customers and the public.

The trusteeship model, which is still embedded in the law and practised increasingly in the breach, fits best with the prime responsibility of management to enhance the long-term development of the capabilities of the business.

The agency model, which the initial bid by the APA partners pretended to address, stands in direct conflict with the role of the sharemarket, which is to divorce the time horizon of investors from the time horizons of the companies in which they invest.

What would be the response of shareholders if Qantas unions proposed a deal in which they got $400-500 million from the company in fees and an up-front payment of $4 billion financed by debt in return for a cut in wages offset by a profit-sharing deal? Union claims are weighed in the balance against the interests of the public and company interest. Why not shareholder claims?

The point is, faced with a Treasurer who is incapable of acting in the public interest, unless directors weigh the interests of shareholders against the interests of the company, who is there to do the job?

The public and shareholders who look at their Qantas shares as an annuity rather than a vehicle for speculation have been badly let down by chairman Margaret Jackson and chief executive Geoff Dixon, by whichever criteria of directors responsibility is used.

Either the two of them were remiss in not returning $4 billion in funds to shareholders before APA made its bid or they failed in their fiduciary duty by not recommending against the takeover proposal when they knew that it involved APA ripping $4 billion out of the company. Let's be blunt. Either the directors have been guilty of running a lazy balance sheet or they have not. If not, they are recommending a bid that endangers the long-term viability of the company. Worse, they expect to profit personally if the APA bid succeeds.

Any additional comments can be sent to mark_brickel@hotmail.com

Where did the rain water go?

It rained here in Melbourne over the weekend and it was a lovely sight. Unfortunately not for very long and we need way more over the next few months.
I'm not sure how you can measure the rainfall on a city. I know the weather forecasters will tell you we received 10 mm. but that is not the whole picture. If you are in the country and there are open fields and dams etc. the water just falls where it falls with some run off after the ground has absorbed it's fill. But here in the city all the surfaces are hard and impervious. The water runs off almost immediately. Off it goes down the spouting into the drains and off down to the streams/rivers and ultimately the sea.

Yep all you people who live in cities that collect their rain water like London, you read that correctly. Here in Melbourne we just let the rain water run down into the sea.

Why I don't know, so when the pollies are telling us about expensive schemes to make drinking water out of sea water or collect water from the far north of Australia, both very expensive. You tell them that when it rains in our cities we should save every drop of it and return it to the water system.

Forget rain tanks in back yards they can be hazardous. We need to look at water collection like our forefathers did and come up with schemes that can make a real difference and guarantee additional water for all Australians.

A note for Mandy: We are going to have a new government this year and it will probably be a change to Labor. But it will be as you said much of same.
Woof.

Any additional comments can be sent to mark_brickel@hotmail.com