The Concatenate

AAP, via News, informs us that the board of the large Australian retailer, Colorado, has decided to recommend shareholders take up the offer of the Singapore based private equity firm Affinity Equity Partners.

“ARH’s [Affinity's Australian division] increased offer, together with the proposed fully franked special dividend, implies a value to most existing Australian shareholders of $4.82 to $4.93 per share”

Now we’ll see if the apocalyptic vision offered by protectionists, about the danger of foreign Private Equity buyouts, eventuates. One would have to suspect that Affinity might restructure, but will not want to wreck the business.

The Age has a story on Cricket Australia’s erratic response to their under-priced Ashes tickets being bought and sold for their real value on eBay.

They’re invalidating the tickets, and not giving any notification of which tickets have been cancelled.

Now if Cricket Australia were serious about ensuring only the people who bought tickets from them used those tickets they could have printed names on the tickets and validated them on the day with photo id.

If Cricket Australia genuinely cared about making sure “battlers” had access to their events they wouldn’t charge such outrageous prices for food and drink inside the venue.

But instead Cricket Australia is just angry this new fangled internet thingy is allowing fair prices to be set in a transparent market, and it might force them to change the way they’ve done things for 120 years (as they were complaining on the radio this afternoon).

We are, after all, talking about an organisation that resisted actually paying players what they’re worth until Kerry Packer threatened to take the players and the game away from them.

The US media, in this case MSNBC, is getting excited by a Sydney brothel “The Site”, which is offering a unique customer loyalty scheme whereby 20% of a petrol bill can be redeemed for a discount off the fee for their “services”.

We should not be surprised if such an industry resorts to blatant self-promotion.

The Minister for Trade, Mark Vaile, has put out a media release saying that negotiations on the Free Trade Agreement with China are going ahead, with a week long round of talks kicking off today in Beijing.

More important is this paragraph down the bottom:

“Australia will insist that services market access negotiations begin, at the very least, by the end of this year. I do not want to see a significant gap between services and goods negotiations. We have always said this must be comprehensive and concluded as a single undertaking”

AAP, via Yahoo, have a story on the aging Liberal Senator, Ross Lightfoot, leaping nimbly on to the bandwagon seeking to defend the moral probity of all Australians by deporting a 30 year old American woman for daring to fall in love with a 17 year old Perth boy:

‘Liberal senator Ross Lightfoot wants federal police to “scoop up” Karen Anderson, put her in an appropriate detention centre and deport her. “This is not Thailand, and is not the other parts of the world where this sort of thing is tolerated,”… Senator Lightfoot said most Australians were moral, decent, law abiding citizens’

Because the rule of law is much less important than getting up on a high horse.

Karen Anderson is understandably a little surprised at the amount of national media her legal relationship is attracting.

The Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator Chris Ellison, has put out a media release calling for tenders to provide fast helicopters with which to nab illegal fisherfolk.

This on top of an increasingly substantial naval force now patrolling under the Customs ensign.

The ABC, via Yahoo, is reporting outrage at the $200,000 a year the failed property mogul Norm Carey has been allowed by the federal court as living expenses while liquidators go through the wreckage of the Westpoint property investment group.

Sadly the investors who’ve scuppered their retirements by putting money into Westpoint won’t be getting $200,000 a year to live off.

Supressive Downer

The SMH has a story on the lengths Alexander Downer can go to ensuring that no-one in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade finds out about anything which might upset them. This time it’s a letter regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq being buried.

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Reinado jailbreak

The Australian leads with a jailbreak by Australia’s man in East Timor, Major Alfredo Reinado. It was a bit embarrassing when the Portugese arrested our fellow, bunkered down next to an Australian Army post, for his part in the violence that sparked the last Timor crisis. It would have been a lot more embarassing if he’d ever got to trial and been tempted to spill his guts. As arrangements seem to have been made for the Major and his men to get out of jail free we can only assume he’s got records held somewhere (possibly with his wife in Perth?), as opposed to a prison mishap ending the risk he poses. The Age also has a take on this.

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Fiends amongst us

The Daily Telegraph is appalled by the 2,400 convicted (and released) pedophiles lurking (or just living depending on your point of view) in “our communities”. The Terror would like parents “who want to protect their children” to be allowed to know who these people are. Large tattoos on their foreheads perhaps? How about branding them?

(more…)

The ABC has a story the State Liberal leaders of Australia being summoned to Canberra to get lessons on winning from the Federales.

I wonder what they’re going to teach them?

Wait for Paul Keating to take control of a State? (seems unlikely)
Use the levers of power to bribe key electorates? (hard to do from opposition)
Use fear of change to minimise your own negatives? (notso hotso from opposition again)
Use Government advertising budgets to gain preferential treatment for your own advertising campaigns? (again tough from opposition)

If the Federal Libs honestly think their ongoing success is something that can be taught to State oppositions they’re a lot more impressed with their own abilities than is healthy.

AAP, via Yahoo, has a story on the High Court deciding against the way the law firm, Firestones, was running contingency fee class actions with an opt in provision.

Essentially Firestones were approaching businesses wanting to join a class action offering to pay the legal costs in exchange for a third of the damages payout they hoped to gain.

This much is entirely legal, what got them in trouble was trying to get the proceedings started with a hope to get more plaintiff’s signed on as the matter proceeded.

AAP, via New, reports that Prime Minister Howard is calling on State Governments to push out the urban sprawl further still.

“If they had sensible land release policies and they stopped using the development process as a money raising device you would have cheaper housing for young people,” Mr Howard said. Mr Howard said urban sprawl, which in many Australian capitals already exceeded more than 100km, may be a price the nation had to pay to solve the problem of unaffordable housing.”

So now you know.

AAP, via Yahoo, has the news that Australia’s aged Leopard tank fleet is beginning to go on the block.

Any potential buyer will need to get the approval of the German Government.

The ABC, via Yahoo, has a report on plans to introduce “Pay before you pump” at petrol stations throughout Sydney’s SouthWest which have been particularly affected by “drive-off” petrol thefts.

These stations are mostly to be found in Sydney’s Bankstown and Liverpool.

I imagine it will have to become increasingly common practice as our enterprising petrol thieves will probably be willing to drive a bit to get their free petrol.

[First filed: August 30, 2006 @ 11:34]

The UK’s Daily Mail has a story on plans by Universal-Vivendi to give away their music for free via the proposed SpiralFrog online service (not available before December and no plans at all to offer it here in the colonies).

There is a forlorn hope that advertising revenue will materialise to make the whole thing viable.

Artists with Universal include (according to their wikipedia entry: Bon Jovi, Jay-Z, Mariah Carey, Eminem, Luciano Pavarotti, U2, Kanye West, and 50 Cent.

UPDATE 1: Apparently (according to NewsRadio) the new service is going to require the downloader endure a 90 second audio ad per song as well as the song self-destructing after 6 months, and no mp3 format, and only the one major label signed up.