Hervey Bay Gossip

It seems that the successful candidate at last Saturday’s by-election was Sue Brooks and the Returning Officer will officially announce the results later this afternoon.

Ms Brooks based her campaign on a very conservative approach to future tourist developments here in Hervey Bay and so her election raises some interesting questions about the thinking of the voters in the city.

Whether or not she will actually have much of an impact on the Council and the way it operates remains to be seen but it will be interesting to see what transpires over the coming months.

It would be nice if Ms Brooks continued to communicate with the electorate - at the moment it’s almost as if members of Council are enveloped in a cone of silence from the time they are elected.

The threat of the world bird flu decimating the earth’s population has had one unexpected side effect. We can now see how the multi national drug companies think and view their consumers.

Roche manufacturers one of the drugs that seems to be effective in the treatment of the illness in humans but they can’t manufacture enough of the drug to meet the projected demand if the disease does mutate into the human population. So with the very real threat of a huge death toll if the disease does spread to us is Roche doing anything to release the drug’s formula to other manufacturers so that they can help meet the huge demand?

Well yes and no - they have licenced four generic drug manufacturers to produce the drug but even that is not enough. And they are obviously more interested in making money from the situation than really helping.

Taiwan announced over the weekend that they had given up trying to negotiate a deal with Roche and were going to produce the drug without any form of licence from Roche.

Here in Australia, where there is a Roche plant and it does produce the all important drug, we have been told that there will be no guarantees that the drug will be supplied to Australia first. Instead Roche are taking the high moral ground and saying that the drug will be distributed world-wide.

Nice one Roche; Australia gives you the tax breaks and the skilled workforce that you need to make your grubby millions but you aren’t interested in repaying us when the hard times come.

With the sound of the Indy cars still fresh in our ears here is a story that comes from the Renault Formula 1 team who have had great success this year with their V10 race engine.

To celebrate their championship victory this year they have actually made one of their engines sing - and what else would you expect the engine to sing but “We Are The Champions.”

You can find the full story and a link to download the engine’s rendition of the song right here.

At least it’s a change from all those bass enabled stereos that currently roam our streets with a car attached.

Yesterday was another one of those perfect Queensland days. So why weren’t you down on the beach enjoying the beautiful morning?

The beach and the cycle track were alive with people but we sure missed you and if you weren’t there you were really missing a day that made it feel good to be alive.

And just so you know what you were missing out on here are a couple of photos taken on Scarness Beach looking south and north at 8.30am yesterday.

So now you know what you’re missing I hope we’ll see you there next Sunday - with weather and days like this you wouldn’t want to be dead for quids

Your scribes are currently subscribed to an Internet broadband plan that is supposed to deliver 256kb per second download and 64 kb per second upload. And oh how we wish we could get what we pay for.

Last week it took over seven hours to upload just part of a major project that we were working on for a client and if we had tried it on the weekend it would have taken even more time. On Saturday instead of downloading at 256kb per second we were getting just 17kb per second download and uploads of around 60kb per second.

And so we are among those who watch the developments that are taking place in the power industry that are going to give us the sort of Internet speeds that we need.

Broadband over power lines has been trialed successfully in Tasmania, it is in use in a few places in Europe and now over 50,000 homes in Cincinnati are using it so come on Ergon when can we have it?

Oh, in case your wondering about the relative speed of broadband over power lines just compare our pathetic 17 kb per second with the 130 mb (yes that is megabytes) per second we could get if we were accessing the internet via the power lines.

America gave us the drive through fast food outlet and they even have the drive through banking system where you can cash cheques without even getting out of your car but now they have gone one better.

In Rockville Maryland you can now have a drive through flu shot.

Sometimes I despair of what this world is coming to - I can remember a time when a trip to the doctor consisted of 5 minutes to treat whatever ailment I might have had and 10 minutes discussing the hobby that he and I shared.

Now I see a doctor who rarely turns and faces me … instead I talk to his back because he’s more interested in getting everything entered into his computer. And soon I won’t even have to waste time getting out of my car to be treated … God help us if they ever start offering fries with that.

In the ‘whatever happened to …’ category I have to ask: whatever happened to the plans to expand Bay Centro?

If my memory serves me correctly major expansion plans were announced last year and by now we should be looking at a much bigger Bay Centro full of new specialty shops. Instead all we see is the same old Bay Centro but with a couple of shops either empty or soon to be empty.

What’s happened? Hervey Bay is bursting at the seams but Bay Centro seems to be shrinking despite those great expansion plans.

Another little birdie twittered in the ear of one of your scribes this week and the gossip is that Harvey Normal will soon be moving from its store on Boat Harbour Drive at Pialba. A new purpose built store is going up out at Eli Waters.

Woolworths are also moving into Eli Waters so I am told; although you may not recognise it as Woolworths because the word is that the store will be set up under the name of one of their subsidiaries.

Have you ever wondered about the PIN number that you use when you withdraw money from an ATM? Where does that number come from and how is it generated?

What if other people have the same PIN number as you?

How would you know if anyone has the same PIN number as you? The banks always warn us never to divulge our PIN numbers and most of us don’t so how would we know?

Back in the early 1990’s it seems that many people in the United Kingdom did have the same PIN number and criminals - some who actually worked inside one of the major banks - were aware of that fact and were exploiting the situation.

Phantom ATM withdrawals were rife and people were losing lots of money. One criminal who ultimately went to prison admitted to having stolen over 750,000 pounds and there were others who took more but were never caught.

The problem with these phantom ATM withdrawals almost brought British banking to it’s knees and you can read the full story here.

Was something similar possible in Australia?

We may never know but the banking system may not have been as secure as we thought.

A little birdie tells me that a well-known cafe owner turned the big 40 yesterday.

Happy birthday Terry - you don’t look a day over … diplomacy forbids me to take that one further.

But if you’re headed for the Bayaroma at Torquay today don’t expect to see Terry there. I am told that he had arrangements in place well before the big day for others to cover for him just in case.

The older you get the longer the recovery time mate