Back in the olden days of 2004
Just following-up the post the other day about high fuel prices, more than anything, hopefully forcing action on public transport.
TonyH pointed me to this excellent article by George Monboit, who notes that so far there is no such action, and that high fuel prices are in fact the biggest thing currently helping to reducing carbon emissions:
What I know and you may not is that the high price of oil is currently the only factor implementing British government policy. The government claims that it is seeking to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, by encouraging people to use less fossil fuel. Now, for the first time in years, its wish has come true: people are driving and flying less.
…
In other words, your (OPEC’s) restrictions on supply – voluntary or otherwise – are helping the government to meet its carbon targets. So how does it respond? By angrily demanding that you remove them so that we can keep driving and flying as much as we did before.
Apparently some road engineers feel a similar way. Of all the things going, petrol prices are helping congestion like nothing else.
But what I really wanted to highlight was this article from the heady, optimistic days of 2004:
Melbourne motorists are likely to pay up to $1.08 a litre for petrol today but the good news is further significant price rises are unlikely.
RACV government relations manager David Cumming yesterday forecast that the New York crude oil price had peaked at $US44.50 a barrel at the weekend after markets reacted to the fresh woes at embattled Russian oil giant Yukos.
The RACV believes that while prices have peaked, they are unlikely to drop considerably for the rest of the year.
However, Mr Cumming said claims reported in the media yesterday that Australians would pay between $3 and $4 within the next three years were “absolutely nonsensical”.
Well, we haven’t reached $3 yet. But I wonder what David Cumming would have said about predictions for 2008 of paying $1.60 per litre, or crude oil trading at $130 per barrel.
There is some kind of a peak happening here, and it’s not the prices.
(The pic is from a Crikey article yesterday: “Fiddling with excise as the world burns”, though it no longer appears on the page.)
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Socialising on PT
Public transport is by its very nature a social experience. Which probably explains the number of Overheard in Melbourne posts from PT.
It’s not all people with noisy phone ringtones, those with annoyingly sniffly noses, and raucous teenagers. These are the people I’ve randomly run into on the train/tram/at stations in the last couple of years, not counting those I was travelling with anyway:
- My mum
- My dad
- My sister and her husband
- Andrew W
- Stefi
WK - Veronica W
- Naomi D from an old job
- Steve C, my sister’s business partner
- L, my ex-wife
- Fraser B from the Greens
- Kerryn W from PTUA
- Ashley G from the Herald Sun
- Phil R from an old job
- Cam T
- Clay L from The Age
- Martin whose surname I can’t remember
- Helena C
- Karl T from PTUA
- Peter G from uni
- Chris L
- John D
- Michael R
Apologies to anybody I’ve forgotten. And there’s others who occasionally spot me.
Always good to have an unexpected chat with a friendly face.
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Tomorrow’s news tonight
Sometimes I’m up late.
Sometimes it’s close to midnight.
And sometimes, I decide to stay up just that little bit longer, to midnight, to check tomorrow’s newspaper. Because The Age usually pushes its new stories onto their web site at midnight. The front page may not be updated, but the National news page is.
I used to be impressed that shows like Lateline would show you the next morning’s newspaper front pages, but in reality, they’re probably more-or-less nailed down by mid-evening, so perhaps it’s not quite that impressive.
Of course, if I do stay up late, I’m tired the next day. Informed but exhausted. Not such a good idea after all.
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Oh, crikey
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That’ll sort ‘em out
I was helping on a PTUA stall back in January, at the Sustainable Living Festival. It was interesting to talk to the different people coming by.
One guy expressed disappointment about car pollution. He said some people would never want to part with their cars.
This is not an opinion I entirely agree with. People make travel decisions based on what’s quickest, cheapest, safest, and if you give them options that are as good, if not better, than driving, then they’ll take them. Some people also think about what’s cleanest, but that’s not often the first priority.
He didn’t seem to agree. Rev-heads will never give up their cars, he said. He sounded quite depressed about it. They don’t think about air pollution and global warming, he said. They just want to drive everywhere in their big grunty wasteful cars.
Personally I think the bigger problem is the government holding back on giving people alternatives. But I said something that cheered him up immensely.
“Don’t worry about it. Peak oil will sort ‘em out.”
He thought about this and smiled. “Yeah.”
Petrol last week reached $1.629 per litre in Melbourne, a new record, and there are predictions of $1.70 per litre soon. Around the same time, crude oil also reached a new record, US$135 per barrel, with OPEC saying they could do nothing to prevent higher prices because they are pumping at capacity.
I know people who have no choice but to drive are taking a financial hit from all this, but amongst all the doom and gloom, I can’t help but smile when I see the silver lining in the cloud.
Because surely sustained rises in petrol prices, if nothing else, must force governments to stop blowing billions on freeways and start giving people real transport choices. (Like, actual quality PT services, rather than spending up big on ticketing systems… or spending up big on tiny petrol tax cuts.)
Before half the city goes broke.
- Greens Blog: Oil price rising, how surprising
- Australian fuel is cheap (compared to the rest of the world), says Shell
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The merger
I’m a St George Bank customer.
Given the proposed merger, it seems that soon I’ll be a Westpac customer, despite what Westpac management are saying.
During yesterday’s briefing, Ms Kelly was adamant the branch network would be maintained, saying even when a St George branch and a Westpac branch were side by side in the same street, they stay open.
C’mon, get real. It would be irresponsible of any bank’s management to do something like that. And remember what happened to the Bank of Melbourne? Yup, gobbled up by Westpac.
If management is at all competent, inefficient operation on that scale just doesn’t last in a commercial environment.
Amusingly, I went into the St George Collins St branch a month or two back to deposit a cheque. At the time they’d installed a ticket system for getting service with a teller. And had a bloke out the front showing people how to use the ticket machine. (Take a ticket for the desired transaction, wait for your number to be called up.)
The guy was so enthusiastic that he pulled a ticket out of the machine for me as I walked in the door.
But I was depositing a cheque, so I didn’t need a ticket — I’d use the fast deposit envelope and box.
I went off to fill in my envelope, and he was left standing with the extraneous ticket.
Next time I went in there, he was gone.
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Possibly a meaningful social statistic (or not)
On the grade 5 class contact list, there are 19 kids. Of those 3 (including mine) have two home phone numbers.
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Are you my mummy?
Doctor Who fans, rejoice. Acclaimed writer Steven Moffat, who wrote some of the most memorable (and Hugo-award-winning) recent stories such as Blink and The Empty Child, has been appointed the next Lead Writer and Executive Producer of the show, taking over from sometimes-loved, sometimes-loathed Russell T Davies.
“My entire career has been a Secret Plan to get this job,” said Steven Moffat. “I applied before but I got knocked back cos the BBC wanted someone else. Also I was seven.” — Doctor Who web site
Would he be over-stretched? Hopefully not – he wrote four series of Coupling on his own. (Coupling included one character who was a secret Doctor Who fanatic, who in one very funny scene had a dream in which women were riveted by news of classic lost Doctor Who episodes being found.)
Moffat also wrote Press Gang, back in the day, as well as the Doctor Who spoof The Curse of Fatal Death. And I’d forgotten that he wrote the screenplay for Spielberg’s new Tintin movie.
So the future of Doctor Who looks very bright indeed.
(Reminder to commenters: Please, no spoilers for those watching Australian broadcasts.)
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