The original plan was to fill up a trolley full of shopping – all the smallest packets possible – go through the checkout and try to pay with my Visa Debit card by pressing Credit. Of course Woolies now refuse this, forcing you to press Savings or Cheque – but not everybody has those functions on their Visa Debit Card. Cue ranting and storming out in a huff. But then i thought it wouldn’t be fair on those behind me in the queue (because they never have enough people working on shift), or the poor checkout chick who’s probably gone thorough this before.

So the target is their Head Office instead, using their ever-so-friendly website which allows you to cancel your Everyday Rewards card online.

I am cancelling my card in disgust at Woolworth’s recent policy change in refusing to accept Visa Debit cards as a Credit transaction.

By forcing me, the customer who pays your wages, to use a Debit transaction, you are forcing the payment to go via the EFTPOS network rather than the Visa network.

As a Credit Union customer, I get slammed on EFTPOS transactions because of the high charges that the major banks charge non-profit institutions like Credit Unions, unlike Visa or Mastercard charges. So this results in a transaction charge to me.

Woolworths may argue that it has the right to refuse payment methods. However you don’t have the right to tell me to switch my financial services provider to continue shopping at your store, which is what i have been told by your representatives.

I also have the right to boycott all Woolworths Limited’s stores, and to tell as many people as i can to do the same.

Good riddance, see you at Coles.

Simon

I wonder what Marketing-approved Standard Response I will receive?

Not to be outdone by the Victorians, in the weeks that followed, a Sydney archaeologist dug to a depth of 20 feet, and shortly after, a story published in the Sydney Morning Herald read: “New South Wales archaeologists, finding traces of 130-year-old copper wire, have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network 30 years earlier than the Victorians”….

One week later, the Courier Mail in Brisbane, Queensland, reported the following:”After digging as deep as 30 feet in his pasture near Beenleigh, Queensland, John Brown, a self-taught archaeologist, reported that he found absolutely bugger all. John has therefore concluded that 130 years ago, Queensland had already gone wireless.

Just makes you proud to be a Queenslander!

At a national conference of the Australian Hotels Association, the general managers of Cascade Brewery
(Tasmania), Tooheys (New South Wales), XXXX (Queensland), CUB (Victoria) and Coopers (South Australia) found themselves sitting at the same table for lunch.

When the waitress asked what they wanted to drink, the GM of Tooheys said without hesitation, “I’ll have a Tooheys New..”

To which the boss of Coopers rejoined, “I’ll have a Coopers, the King of Beers.”

And the bloke from Cascade asked for “a Cascade, the cleanest draught on the planet.”

The General Manager of Carlton & United paused a moment and then placed his order: “VB.”

The head of XXXX smiled and said “I’ll have a Diet Coke.”

The others looked at him has if he had sprouted a new head.

“Well,” he said with a shrug, “if you poofters aren’t drinking beer, then neither will I.”

Dave and Jim were a couple of drinking buddies who worked as aircraft mechanics in Sydney. One day, the airport was fogged in and they were stuck in the hangar with nothing to do.

Dave said, “man, I wish we had something to drink!”
Jim says, “me too. Y’know, I’ve heard you can drink jet fuel and get a buzz. You wanna try it?”

So they pour themselves a couple of glasses of high octane booze and get completely smashed. The next morning, Dave wakes up and is surprised at how good he feels. In fact he feels GREAT! NO hangover! NO bad side effects. Nothing!

Then the phone rings. It’s Jim. Jim says, “hey, how do you feel this morning?”
Dave says, “I feel great, how about you?”
Jim says, “I feel great, too. You don’t have a hangover?”
Dave says, “No, that jet fuel is great stuff – no hangover, nothing. We ought to do this more often.”

“Yeah, well there’s just one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Have you farted yet?”
“No.”
“Well, DON’T! ‘Cause I’m in fucking London!”

The Government, in its new initiative to become the world’s leading Nanny State, has decided that it is their right and duty to tell us what we can and cannot think, say and see on the Internet and other media. And remember kids, these people mostly live in Canberra, the most boring city in the world. Need I say more?

What has happened recently? (Historically? See here). Well ..

• Bulletproof Networks hosts the very popular Internet forum, whirlpool.net.au. ACMA don’t like Whirlpool, particularly as a lot of discussion about Australian ISPs performance and their views on Internet Censorship, happens on there. A user posted a link to an anti-abortion website which apparently is on ACMAs blacklist. Bulletproof was immediately issued with a takedown notice and a threat of being fined $11,000 per day. Out of the blue of course, because ACMA’s blacklist is kept secret. More information reported in The Australian newspaper

• Somewhere on the Internet, somebody has posted Denmark’s blacklist. Someone else submitted a link to ACMA aiming to highlight the futility of maintaining a secret blacklist. ACMA responded by blocking access to that website, and their press release about it. US Tech Blog Wired takes up the story.

• Someone claims to have located a copy of the ACMA Blacklist. It has been reported by the Sydney Morning Herald that the blacklist has been posted on the Internet. It is found to contain perfectly legal websites, such as a that of a dentist, a tour operator, a YouTube profile and a MySpace page.  Senator Conroy quickly issued a press release denying its the blacklist and threatens:

“ACMA is investigating this matter and is considering a range of possible actions it may take including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Any Australian involved in making this content publicly available would be at serious risk of criminal prosecution.”

• Coincedentally, whistleblower website, WikiLeaks, has been inaccessible from a number of Australian locations today. Not one to draw conclusions, but they are quoted in The Australian:

While Wikileaks is used to exposing secret government censorship in developing countries, we now find Australia acting like a democratic backwater. History shows that secret censorship systems, whatever their original intent, are invariably corrupted into anti-democratic behavior

• Finally, respected organisation for press freedom Reporters sans frontières, has put South Korea and Australia on its “Under Surveillence” list in its 2009 Internet Enemies report, due to their recent measures that endanger online free expression. Australia now joins states like Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and Yemen in holding that dubious honour.

Chief Censor Sentator Conroy has aleady admitted his fitering scheme will be used to block legal material as well as illegal material (you know, the kind of stuff you can buy on the top shelves of newsagents – except if you live near a mining site, then its right by the cash register instead). The initial law was strictly to block illegal material such as Child Pr0n* and material that incites terrorism and other evil stuff like that. However now the somebody-please-think-of-the-children thought police have got their way and this has been expanded to “inappropriate” sites … legal gambing sites for example, like BetFair.com, are apparently on the blacklist. Of course, it would not suprise me if the Aussie equivelent of the RIAA, the ARIA, and the MPAA are fevereshly lobbying their cause, persuading Conroy to block peer-to-peer technologies in this filter, fresh on their success in New Zealand.

Unfortunately, the fact that the Nanny State forgets is that as soon as you make something illegal, all that happens is its driven underground. Techologies already exist that will bypass such censorship. Look at drug smuggling which is rife thoughout the world and mostly illegal. Even worse, they also make it more difficult for the authorites to locate and capture the bastards involved in activities such as terrorism and child pr0nography.

My previous position, that this funding should be diverted to the AFP and international legal authorities to track down, capture and castrate (no anasthetic)  people involved in these dispicable acts and then lock them up for life, still stands.

Restricting debate and enforcing your views through legal means on others in a Nanny State solution only drives the problem further underground. More debate here, and here, and here … while we still can.