The election date will be Nov 3. This is based upon the bookings made with Australia Post for mass mailots by the coalition – including in Bennelong. The Coalition recently cancelled their November mailouts and have maintained October ones.

Just received an 8 page glossy newsletter from the Member for Solomon – Dave Tollner. Not one mention of the Federal Intervention – does this mean that the Libs don’t see it as an election issue or are they hoping that the middle classes of Darwin and urban surrounds don’t give a rats about black fellas?

A mate of mine works at the call centre dealing with incoming calls for the Government’s NetAlert “initiative”. He works in the Canberra call centre that apparently has ~30-40 staff manning the phones. Apparently there’s also a call centre in Melbourne with ~190 people manning phones. Up until this week, my mate was taking 1-2 calls per day. This has (slightly) increased now that it’s been officially launched over the weekend, but he basically gets paid (a reasonable amount) to sit and read, do crosswords etc. I wonder how much of the $189 million of the initiative (I think it is) is being wasted on useless things like this.

As of 10.00pm Tuesday, the Westpac website has been down for over 24 hours. What is happening at Westpac? After up to two days of no online banking facilities for some customers, and patronising rubbish dished out on those who hung on for eternity to ask what was going on, Westpac has managed to put up a lame apology with links that still weren’t reliably working at 0642 eastern time. Westpac needs to reveal how its entire online banking system can so comprehensively fail for such a long period.

For years, Andrew Johns has been a regular at his racing mate’s “finest short stay boutique hotel” in Sydney’s Camperdown. Regular group bookings for NRL players are commonplace – same go’s for the jockeys – they like to book out the whole top floor. I know this because my ex girlfriend worked there and has shagged them all!

Everyone has known about Joey forever. There has been a complete ban by both taxis and hirecars in Newcastle on picking up Joey for years. It was even hinted at a few years back in one of the Sunday paper which ran an article on the luckiest cabbie in Sydney – who was sent to Newy to pick Joey up for the Footy Show, but they didn’t explain why he couldn’t get in a Newcastle taxi. He has also been banned from over half the nightspots in Newcastle for more than five years.

Could it be that the one ecstacy tablet found on Joey Johns in London is a publicity stunt for the impending biography to be released in November. A “tell all” or a “furphy.” 

Fairfax billing systems have glitched causing, at least some, BRW subscribers to be doubled billed. After receiving my call querying the amount which showed on my bank statement they said the error was due to problems with their systems, and refunds would be made in the next day or so. $235 billed twice, could be a windfall if it happened to many of BRW’s subscribers.

Word is that ACP has won the bidding to buy Emap’s largish stable of Australian magazines — including such illustrious titles as Zoo, FHM, New Woman and Shopping for Baby — in a spirited contest over News and Pacific Magazines. But will the ACCC allow Australia’s dominant magazine publisher become even more dominant?