Queensland to slash public transport fares to 50 cents for six months from August. A brave experiment, Premier.
Prediction: It's never as simple as they claim. We'll probably see heavy use/crowding on the services with useful, usable timetables. Little difference on the services and in the suburbs and towns where PT is slow and infrequent - in those areas almost everyone will keep driving. https://statements.qld.gov.au/statements/100402#Queensland#PublicTransport
The words “the agent accidentally sent a lease renewal to the tenants” are the only reporting of the real story here. So, the tenants got a lease renewal, and by golly they thought they had a lease renewal? How is this anyone’s fault but the agent’s, and then the landlord’s for choosing to be a jerk about it?
I get that “The tenants denied ABC's request for comment”, but seriously, you therefore, with the exception of that one sentence above, ONLY attempt this from the POV of the landlord???
And, sorry, let me get the world’s smallest violin for the guy who had a $2000 expense after (a) SELLING a BLOODY HOUSE and (b) turning upside down the lives of the tenants who RECEIVED A LEASE RENEWAL.
After watching the latest, excellent @notjustbikes video about the introduction of even more 30 km/h streets in Amsterdam, this one by Chris Cox from Brisbane, feels like it could be an addendum.
The Brisbane Times reporter Felicity Caldwell is a legend.
New at my Patreon... From Brisbane's Roma Street Station, I travelled 1,325km into western Queensland aboard a classic sleeper train - the Spirit of the Outback:
I was on a self service check out in Coles today..
The lady supervising the area came over..
Looked at all my purchases..
Said..
I'm just checking.....
Checking what ....... I asked..
Oh..what you're buying..I dunno what to make for dinner.. I'm looking for inspiration..
Ever since Bruce Ruxton died in 2011, Australians have struggled to find a way to make ANZAC Day cringeworthy, manipulatively sentimental, insensitive, attention-grabbing, disrespectful, inauthentically mythologised, and downright embarrassing.
At last, we have all that and more — thanks to the Queensland government's Virtual Veterans AI guide to World War I. Hurrah to the Queensland Government and the brave techbros at TalkVia AI who merged the horrors of war and the horrors of an "AI" LLM chatbot. slow clap
I tried to see this replica 16th century pirate ship that one guy built over 10 years but apparently it sails around and is not a permanent fixture. So doing my obligatory visit to Urangan Pier.
You can see why the pier is so long 868m (originally 1.1km) when the tide is out like this. Also saw an Australasian Darter on the pier. #HerveyBay#Queensland#Birds
Queensland: "Doctors are acquiring RSV, COVID and influenza in the state’s hospitals in rising numbers, sparking the state’s peak medical body to call for urgent action to better protect medics in an already struggling healthcare workforce."
Did you know that #SharkCulling programs in #NSW and #Queensland have never been assessed under our national environment laws ?
That’s despite the fact that #nets and lethal drumlines in NSW and QLD have caught 174 #CriticallyEndangered grey nurse #sharks in the past decade, killing 70. Over the same time, a massive 538 threatened marine #turtles were also caught across both states, with at least 183 killed.
@guardian this morning is reporting on a woman do went looking for help from several #Queensland police stations and got, wait for it.. fuck all help.
The cops said she was cop shopping. Why is that needed? Three days later, her estranged husband tied her to a clothesline, poured petrol on her, and set her alight, in front of her 3 kids, aged 3 to 9.
This bot monitors the Australian energy market price predictions published by AEMO. If it looks like price of electricity is about to go wonky @qldgridbot will toot about it.
I'm still fine-tuning the thresholds for what's considered an interesting event – right now that's a price peak of above 50c/kWh. I'm aiming for less than 5 toots a day.
Let me know what you think. Retoot for visibility please!
I have obtained information about hospital-acquired COVID-19 from Queensland Health. From Jan-22 to June-23 an average of 14 people caught C19 in hospital each day, and one of these died each day. The data only lists deaths in the hospital, we don't know how many died soon after discharge.
The Queensland AMA has written to the CHO "expressing members' concerns about rising COVID cases and inadequate infection controls within Queensland Health hospitals". They have now published the letter and the non-answer here: https://www.ama.com.au/qld/correspondence/CHOcovid
It does not address the doctors' concerns at all. It just says that each hospital should make their own rules, proportionate to the current risk.
In spite of the acknowledged current wave of COVID, here's an example of current guidance from a typical Qld hospital:
Visitors are welcome at Metro South Health facilities, and are asked to help keep patients safe by:
practising hand hygiene
staying home if you have any flu-like symptoms
avoid visiting hospitals, aged care, or disability care centre while you have any cold or flu symptoms.
As well as being totally inadequate, point 3 seems to assume you'll ignore point 2.
The policy of leaving it to individuals to manage their own COVID-19 protection has now been extended to health care generally, resulting in vast disparity between the safety offered by different services. If I buy a fridge, I get to see a star rating and can have confidence that what I buy will have that level of energy efficiency. I can be confident the fridge meets safety standards and it won't electrocute me. If I enter a public building I don't have to check that the fire doors work. But if I am taken to hospital with a broken hip it's pot luck whether I'm exposed to avoidable airborne disease.