How many times does the mayor’s photo appear in the council newsletter?
A few years ago I noted that the Glen Eira News local council newsletter featured six photos of the mayor in twelve pages.
The current mayor is Jamie Hyams, who I’ve met a couple of times, and I’m happy to say has an interest in improving public transport — I believe he was behind Glen Eira joining the Metropolitan Transport Forum to help lobby the state government for better services.
The latest edition of the Glen Eira News just arrived, and Cr Hyams photo features seven times in sixteen pages — a slight reduction in photos per page, from 0.5 to 0.44.
How do other council newsletters rate?
Australia Day thoughts
Happy Australia Day.
Some thoughts:
1. Spotted this morning, some glorious Australia Day supermarket multiculturalism:
2. I was a Flag Monitor in grade 6. Along with my mate Mark, we put the flag up on the school flag pole. Apart from a minor hitch on the first day when it went up upside down for a short time, there were no issues, though I’d imagine doing the same job for the Elizabeth Street roundabout would be somewhat more time consuming:
(I’m probably safe in assuming they go up and stay up.)
3. I was pondering, as debate about immigration and asylum seekers rages, if our Federal politicians are familiar with the second verse of our national anthem. (It was originally the third verse. There were originally more in the song, but the national anthem only incorporates the original first and third. We used to sing both in high school, at assemblies and so on.)
Obviously one should be wary about determining policy from lyrics written circa 1901 (much of the song was written before 1878, but this verse was added for Federation), but still, I’d love to hear Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott’s interpretation of them.
Beneath our radiant Southern Cross
We’ll toil with hearts and hands;
To make this Commonwealth of ours
Renowned of all the lands;
For those who’ve come across the seas
We’ve boundless plains to share;
With courage let us all combine
To Advance Australia Fair.In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia Fair.
Happy Australia Day (and make sure you have a ticket)
The words on the left are from I Am Australian, by Bruce Woodley:
We are one, but we are many
And from all the lands on earth we come
We share a dream, and sing with one voice:
I am, you are, we are Australian
Wikipedia says the song was written in 1987. I’m pretty sure either that year or the year after, we sung it at Speech Night at Melbourne High School. (Woodley, like his fellow seekers Athol Guy and Keith Potger, went to Melbourne High.)
How many people watched the fireworks in different cities?
Happy new year. This was the view last night from Footscray, looking along the Maribyrnong towards the City. By the time they’d finished, there was something of a smoke haze. (From where we were, we couldn’t see the spire fire.)
I was curious how many people turn out to watch fireworks for New Year’s Eve in different cities around the world. Here’s some figures I found looking around on Google News, and watching SBS News.
(I’ve tried to stick to post-event figures, not expected attendances, and have only used cities where an actual hard estimate was given, not a vague one like “hundreds of thousands”. Got a cite for other figures? Let me know.)
Obviously in the northern hemisphere it’s winter, and cold weather would put people off. But watching the footage and reading the articles, it’s clear that these events are major drawcards for tourists as well as locals.
In many cities NYE is obviously a major event — including in Melbourne — and takes a lot of organising of fireworks, street closures, emergency services and transport.
It’s funny to think that just twenty years ago, there was no official marking of New Year’s Eve in Melbourne. I remember going into the city for the countdown in about 1993, waiting for midnight (no fireworks that I recall) then hurriedly catching the last tram home at about 12:05am.
1999 into 2000 was the first time I recall it being a major event, with all-night trams and trains (for the first time?). Then it seemed to get some momentum in terms of crowd numbers, with more and more each year, but the organisation fell short, with no all-night transport except Nightrider until the now infamous 2003-04 debacle.
Since then things have been a lot more organised, and as the city has grown, people have also responded to the event, with about double the crowd last night compared to 2003-04.
Someone made some comments the other day about New Year’s Eve bringing people together, a shared experience that strangers can enjoy together. That might be misty-eyed, but I like the sentiments. Certainly I wished some strangers a happy new year last night.
Tags: New Year's Eve
6 comments
Bye bye Movember
I’ve got through Movember.
I shaved the mo’ off. Ultimately, it was always going to go after the month was up.
By week three I thought I’d got used to it, but in the final week, the itching seemed to get worse. Maybe I was conscious that it was about to come off.
It’s certainly more hassle having a moustache than not. If you’re clean shaven, you just shave everything each morning; with the moustache you have to keep it trimmed so it doesn’t get out of control, but not accidentally trim it back too much so it looks too much like a Hitler moustache.
In the warm weather, it gets sweaty.
When I sneeze, it gets snotty.
And ultimately, I didn’t really like how it looked.
Others may like having facial hair, but it’s not for me.
So I shaved it off
So it came off. And you know what… afterwards, it was still itchy. Argh.
Half a mo’!
Fundraising
As of last night, I’d reached $825. There seemed to be a burst of activity on Tuesday, perhaps following a pleading Tweet. Thank you to all who donated — every amount, big or small, is appreciated!
It’s not too late if you wish to throw a few dollars in: Daniel’s Movember page
Tags: Movember
2 comments
Four days of Movember to go (and a bit of Monty Python)
Four days to go, and here’s this morning’s picture (in the rain).
The whole moustache business reminds me of this Monty Python sketch… skip to 30 seconds in for the relevant line.
At this point I’m looking forward to the end of Movember. From a maintenance point of view, it’s easier to just be clean-shaven, and I thought I’d got used to the itching, but it still bugs me from time to time.
Donations have slowed down, so if you’ve been holding off, jump in now! Any amount, big or small, appreciated!
Tags: Monty Python, Movember
1 comment
The mo thing is catching on
Tags: Movember
2 comments
Movember: any Modern Warfare/Call Of Duty fans want a limited edition USB drive?
Are these Modern Warfare: Call of Duty 3 “Captain Price” USB drives, sent out as part of Movember, really “limited edition”, or are there eleventy-billion of them out there?
Although I’d normally subscribe to the view that one can always use another USB drive, I’m wondering… would any of you MWCOD fans pledge a donation to Movember to buy it?
It’s still wrapped in plastic, and with a little box it came in. I’ll cover the postage to anywhere in Australia. Click here to see it bigger.
Anybody interested? What am I bid? (Leave an email address if you want it.)
