Sunrice and CEO Rob Gordon

Well, I've tried to do the right thing - even the 'write' thing - by trying to contact this most elusive company online, both by phone internet and and my computer internet. As you CLEARLY don't want to hear from me in either of those ways, I am now going public as my last avenue of recourse before I take legal advice, because you are obviously Hell-bent on ignoring me. Fine, so be it!

I will address my comments, specifically, to the latest CEO of the Sunrice company that I'm aware of, through online research... are you there, Mr. Rob Gordon? If not, you're about to find out that not all publicity is good publicity - I kid you not, after all the efforts to contact you via your company resulted in total abject failure. This medium will not fail because it is merely the start, if you opt to continue to ignore me.

I have some photos that I want you to see, Mr. Rob Gordon, CEO of Sunrice. These photos are not pornographic but they DO highlight my problem with some of the products that your company puts its name to! Here's the first problem...

These are the products I bought today, having been accustomed to seeing a statement about the product being Gluten Free. As you will see from the photo, your product now contains GLUTEN but I bought it in the full expectation that it was still GLUTEN FREE. I now feel cheated so very much and attempted t contact your company, Mr. Rob Gordon, but you clearly chose to ignore me that way, so I have no choice but to tell the whole world how you cheated and defrauded me - and how many others, who will experience the most horrendous symptoms of gluten indulgence, when everyone had TRUSTED you, obviously in error.

Here is a screen shot of my previous attempt to "keep this between us"...

As you can see, I've tried my hardest to keep my complaint between your company and me, but you've clearly chosen to prevent any contact with your company. I am a Coeliac sufferer who depended on your "previously gluten-free product" and perhaps not the only customer who'll be upset by your move away from a gluten free product, if my complaint via this medium allows it to become PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE. I have suffered a financial loss due to my dependence on your product and now have no alternative snack option.

Thank you so very much, Mr. Rob Gordon and https://www.sunrice.com.au/consumer/contact-us/

The Role of Cameras in Road Safety

(a)    People as the Basic Problem

The Queensland Police website makes 3 statements on the page for “Camera Detected Offences” at :–

https://www.police.qld.gov.au/programs/roadSafety/infringement/default.htm

1.    The Camera Detected Offence Program is a road safety initiative aiming to reduce the road trauma on Queensland roads.

2.    Speed and red light offences are recognised as life endangering and are a major cause of road accidents. Aside from the tragedy of road deaths, road crashes place a high cost on the community each year through hospital and health care costs, lost productivity in the workplace and the use of emergency services.

3.    Speeding reduces reaction time and distance which increases the likelihood of road crashes involving other road users.

I’m sure that nobody would dispute the connection between speed and incidence of collisions involving other vehicles (including bicycles) and/or pedestrians. Any loss of life on any road is a tragedy and, accordingly, speed limits need to be set and all drivers must have enough personal discipline to abide by those limits.  But do all drivers always abide by those limits?

Clearly not – hence there is a need for enforcement by means of penalties that will have a severe impact on the offender. This is not to say that bad things won’t happen while abiding by a speed limit, or any other rule of law. There is much more than driver education and discipline – there must be dedication to the concept of “defensive driving”, which seeks to minimise the risk of collision with all other road users; this requires drivers of ALL kinds of vehicles to keep their mind on the primary job of driving their vehicles safely.

Does that happen? No, it does not and the situation seems to get worse as more and more vehicles come onto our roads. Discipline has, it seems, gone out the window and it’s almost as if drivers must constantly try to prove how much better they are – and how much more they deserve to be on the road – than those few who abide by speed limits. As one who earns a living as a driver, I see it all the time – ill-discipline and even ill-temper, in control of vehicles that, unfortunately, don’t seem to be pulled up by the Highway Patrol often enough to improve road safety for everyone else.

How can road safety be improved in a way that is fair and reasonable yet deals as harshly as possible with those who have no regard for other road users? If you accept those statements above, extracted from the Queensland Police website, you might think they’re on the right track.  But are they?

(b)    The Cases Against Me

To date, I have been on the receiving end of a Traffic Infringement Notice on three (3) occasions – once in 2013, once in 2014 and once already in 2015 (as of March 2015, anyway).  In each case, the notice of fine and demerit point turned up in the mail anywhere from 3 weeks to 2 months after the offence.  I do not dispute the evidence of my breach of the law but merely want to know what has happened to me in the time between these offences and receipt of the fine.

Was I involved in a collision with another vehicle? No.
Was I involved in a collision with a pedestrian? No.
So… where is the evidence to support the very first statement on the Queensland Police website? How was road safety improved by these fines?

How were my offences detected?

Well, the first one certainly had me dead to rights because, as soon as I received the notice, I knew what I’d been doing at the time of the offence and, indeed, I had been rash enough to boldly blow through a 60 KMH sign at a speed just a bit under 70 KMH.  The camera that caught me was this one :–

Can you see it? Maybe the next photo will give you a better idea of it.

There it is, atop a pole used to support a street light.

Can anyone say that it is not a hidden camera? I had been under the impression that the Police are legally prevented from hiding themselves but, clearly, the same requirement does not apply to the cameras they use.

The second occasion was pretty much like this :–

I’d seen it as I turned from a side street to the highway and my initial reaction was that I was okay because my speed was just under 50 KMH in a 60 KMH zone. But then it dawned on me that I was in an active School Zone so the speed limit was 40 KMH! I was pretty sure that I was history for that one and, indeed, the fine duly turned up in the mail.

The most recent fine was, to my way of thinking, the most dastardly of them all, because the cop was concealed like this :–

He was shielded by thick vegetation on a median strip, such that traffic heading north along the highway could not see him at all though he was clearly visible to traffic heading south. He was aiming the “gun” at the rear of vehicles heading north, as they passed by his hiding spot.  So, yes, I guess I’ve always been wrong about cops not being allowed to hide from us.

While I will always accept the evidence that I broke the law, I will never accept that the fine had any immediate, positive or negative effect on my driving, or the safety of other road users. The fact remains that, by the time I received the fine, I had still not been involved in any sort of collision and, therefore, nobody had died or been injured by me. So where is road safety in all of this?

(c)    The Case for Road Safety

The case for “road safety” might be enhanced if the Police had a more prominent presence on the road and pulled over motorists who had broken the law.  It might then be argued that the involvement of the Police in stopping the motorist had physically prevented a collision later on. Of course, if the offending motorist was to subsequently be involved in a collision, the argument point would be moot!

I’m sure that every driver has seen systems such as this, used to detect those who exceed a speed limit, or run through a red light :–

People who run a red light are, without doubt, at greater risk of causing a collision that might well involve collateral damage to property as well as damage to other vehicles, as well as death for one or more people. I’ve seen people inadvertently run a red light because they saw the green light at the NEXT intersection before seeing the red light at THIS intersection. I’ve seen the red light camera flash repeatedly for a vehicle that had stopped over the line because the light turned yellow and red before the vehicle to make a turn.

Thus, there can be as many reasons why a red light camera does not contribute to road safety – most especially in cases where 2 or more intersections ahead are controlled by traffic lights that operate on different phases to each other. This is a problem which remains unaddressed so can we also say that the State and local level governments are also contributing hazards to road safety?

The next system is widely known as “flash for cash”. A vehicle by the roadside, unattended, with signs front and back – albeit not especially conspicuous in size, colour or position. The camera flashes and the government gains extra revenue without having to refer to it as a TAX.

So I must ask again, where is the case for road safety when the only offence is a speed that exceeds a nominal limit? Have you seen a sign similar to this one :–

Is this really the way to improve road safety, or are we just paying an undeclared tax for breaking a law? I think the two are very different, without any evidence of the offending driver being involved in a collision due to his/her use of a speed in excess of a nominal limit.

Is it the case that the cameras are really a very high tech way to improve safety, or have the cops finally learned all the lessons that Ned Kelly could teach them?

Alternatively, could these cameras possibly be a tax by another name? A way to keep greedily grabbing money from hard working slobs by those who don't actually have to perform any real work inside a government bureaucracy?

What Is Happening With Climate Change?

How often has it happened in the past, I wonder, that a tropical cyclone has dared to venture so far South? Take a look at this :-

At the time, a Tropical Low entered the Coral Sea from the Gulf of Carpentaria and was predicted to become a second Tropical Cyclone – so very late in the season – albeit being further predicted to move away from the coast of Tropical Far North Queensland.

I accept that Tropical Cyclone Sandra was predicted  to remain a very safe distance away from the coast of New South Wales.  What I find very difficult to accept is that this sort of thing is normal and has happened at all before, let alone being a fact of history.

The question needs to be asked, therefore :- How many of these Tropical Cyclones have ventured south far enough to monster Lord Howe Island?  If there's a trend in history then fair enough, but I'm flat-out thinking of any such situation having existed in the whole period of my miserable yet lengthy span of life.

In the absence of a historical trend, would these occurrences – so late in the cyclone season – be evidence for climate change?

Fluoridation – Beware the Ides of March!

So, the Cairns Regional Council was in such a rush at its meeting of 30^th January 2013, that it wanted to be rid of the costs of Fluoridation by 13 February 2013 – and to sell off the Fluoridation infrastructure as soon as possible.  Why was there such an unseemly rush?  The Council would have us believe that they had taken account of the views of the majority of ratepayers and merely acted on the basis that the people didn’t want such a “poison” in the water supply.

In other words, our Council preferred to listen to superstitious mumbo-jumbo rather than to the authoritative voice of medical experience and advice about the dental benefits to all residents within the boundary of the Cairns Regional Council Area.  They have seen fit to place the dental health of ratepayers’ families – especially the very young children in the community – at high risk.  Who will then be responsible for the extra dental costs incurred by a Council that has abrogated its duty of care in this matter?

And I come back to the question… why was there such an unseemly rush?

Well, the rush has been stemmed – at least for a short time – as the Council has become aware of a need to provide 30 days’ advance notice of this very strange and totally unjustifiable intention to the Department of Health.  Will this provide an opportunity for the medical profession to state its case in favour of retaining water fluoridation?  If so, will the Cairns Regional Council take any heed of the advice of people who actually know what they are talking about?

Or will the superstitious mumbo-jumbo continue to sway an ignorant Council that seems happy to ignore its duty of care to ratepayers?

It seems to me that the answer to this lies in the answer to the other question – why was there such an unseemly rush?  According to The Cairns Post, the Cairns Regional Council is apparently so broke that they can't provide many of the services they’re obliged to provide.  Did our Councillors see an opportunity to cut costs and gain revenue from a sale of Fluoridation assets, under the guise of responding to community concerns?

Those same concerns that have absolutely no foundation is established medical fact and can only be seen as superstitious mumbo-jumbo.

The 30-days reprieve for Fluoridation and, as a result, the dental health of ratepayers in general and an entire generation of children in particular, expires on 15 March.  Hence, as a well-known Shakespearean dialogue would caution :- Beware the Ides of March!

Cairns Regional Council – Cash-strapped!

Last year, I established that the Cairns Regional Council was so broke that it had no money to seal a single driveway, despite an initial undertaking to do so.  Now we learn that the largess of our elected council, most ably demonstrated by their decision not to levy development application charges, has now put them into a position which, in any normal business, would almost equate to bankruptcy.  If the reports in The Cairns Post are to be believed, the Council is out of pocket in the sum of 14 MILLION dollars.

It seems clear enough, at least to this writer, that every ratepayer within the area of the Cairns Regional Council is footing the bill for this largess and it is US who will end up paying for it with higher charges – and less chance of services such as a simple driveway.

There seems to be no quick fix for this, so how about this for an idea :-

Every ratepayer within the boundaries of the Cairns Regional Council area shall be shareholders in those developments approved by Council.  Effectively, it is us who have given that 14 million dollars to the property developers, so we must be entitled to a share of the profits from the enterprises.  All those in favour?

AYE!