Rusty Raven

My cold has mostly gone but my sinuses are still full and it’s causing my teeth to ache. I hope it’s not a sign I’m getting a sinus infection or something, I have an appointment to have a broken tooth with a root near the sinus cavity removed next week and I’m a bit concerned a sinus problem could prevent that happening. I’ve been waiting months for this appointment already.

I have switched mostly to men’s socks - my feet are right at the top of the standard size range for women, which means they are more stretched and wear holes quicker. The larger sizes of women’s socks are often a bit too big and less available, but the standard size in men’s business socks tends to work well.

I don’t think it was so much an overreaction to Covid or excessive spending, I think it was more a case of not spending in the right way, so most of what was spent was wasted.

The whole point of lockdowns was to slow the spread to allow medical services time to increase the capacity to deal with a higher volume of patients, but that didn’t really happen. If they had spent their money on things that would increase capacity, streamline process etc. it would have led to the ability to clear a lot of backlog of patients, reduce ramping etc. when that capacity was not needed for Covid. That obviously hasn’t happened.

I don’t work in the hospitals but I expect the experience there was similar to my organisation - the potential problems were ignored early on when it would have been the best time to do something, then when Covid hit a lot of money got splashed around on short-term initiatives so managers could feel they were doing something (thanks for the free food, but really a waste of money), but no effective longer term changes were met. This is combined with workers leaving because of overwork and insufficient staff numbers and pay making it hard to recruit and retain new people, which is the culmination of years/decades of insufficient funding.

Having gone through a few royal comissions at work I can quite confidently say it won’t do anything. A few executives get tossed out, some minor cosmetic changes get made and the staff all get new uniforms with the new logo on it. All of the real systemic and funding problems that are the root cause remain.

I have been sorting out some end of financial year stuff and am pleased to say I have exceeded my Superannuation balance goal for the year.

I also received an awesome amount of bank interest, especially compared to previous years where interest rates were so low they were barely worth considering. I do have Coles Mastercard to thank for a lot of it though, as they gave me a 0% for 15 months offer which allowed me to max out my card at no cost and leave nearly $10k in a savings account earning hundreds of dollars in interest payments.

As the time of posting was 5 seconds early this seems to indicate that it took about 4 seconds from when you posted it until when it was actually done. So you might need to post at 11:59:56 to get an exact midnight posting. More investigations may be required to confirm.

Yeah, they’d be happy to charge you with dumping it. Doesn’t mean they’d do a thing to investigate it being dumped on you in the first place.

That looks really good. Much fancier than I was expecting.

I can imagine. The superannuation group on Facebook has been filled with people thinking about making last minute contributions and being shocked to find out the funds have processing timelines and it is already too late. Forward planning is something many people lack.

I once dreamed I had seedlings growing in my legs.

I’ve been waiting to see what the Victorian Remuneration Tribunal comes up with for the politician’s salary increase this year and it is still not released. Cutting it a bit fine as it is supposed to be implimented on 1/7.

I would support it if they decided to just put off deciding until next year and make them lose out on a pay rise altogether this year, and maybe next year too, so they can experience the situation most of the govt. employees are put in every 3-4 years when their EBA is up for review and the employer just refuses to negotiate. I really think the politician’s wages should also be capped at whatever their policy for maximum pay rises in the public sector is.

I think I’ve caught one of the viruses going around, I’m starting to get a sore throat. Covid test was negative at least, so I can still count myself a member of the small “never had Covid” group. But if I’m part of the “feels like swallowing razor blades” group that someone went home from work with yesterday that will be little comfort.