Myer became the world’s first department store to launch a fuel offer this week (that is, department store not appended by the word ‘discount’). That’s right, shoppers can buy designer brands like Calvin Klein, Missoni — and petrol. In another act of marketing desperation, the store has signed a fuel deal with United Petroleum at a limited number of stations. Long the domain of supermarkets and discount stores like Kmart, Big W and Target, fuel has been a good traffic driver for shoppers conscious of that extra four cents.

The Age today included a strange supplement — ‘Making the New Melbourne’ — which seemed little more than a nice, fluffy lift-out with, well, nice and fluffy stories about how Melbourne has changed. A big part of it was about how The Age has changed by moving to the Docklands in a spanking new building. Sharp-eyed observes will have noticed across the ‘1925 – 2009’ photo spread on page 4 and 5 (isn’t this 2010?) an image showing the new Age building unfinished. Ironic…

Federal MP Dr Dennis Jensen at his finest –– circulated to all members and staff at about 5:30pm yesterday:

All

I am sorry to have to cut and paste my email of last year once again on this issue, but DPS seems to be unwilling to accept that they are involving themselves in a political campaign. Perhaps half of parliament should be involved in Earth Hour, and shut all the lights off, and the other half involved in Human Achievement Hour, and turn all the lights on. In that way, we could say that DPS remains apolitical. Otherwise, once again, DPS is involving itself in a political campaign and taking sides in a political argument.

Just to remind you, this is what I sent last year (seems nothing has been learned):

All

In my view, this is utterly inappropriate. Earth Hour is a political campaign run by the WWF, and as such the DPS should not be involving itself, or us, in a political campaign. It is fine for individuals to choose to subscribe to this “initiative”, but it should not be something that is overtly supported in any official capacity. I would urge the DPS to retract official support from this campaign.

Kind regards,
Dennis Jensen