Wednesday 28 September 2022

Another interesting week in this funny ol state of ours.  

Some of you may recall that last Thursday was a public holiday for our National Day of Mourning for the late lamented Queen Elizabeth II.  Some sections of our community used the day for a National Day of Protesting, protesting about the usual things, the monarchy, the flag, the constitution, free lunches and haircuts for uni students, no vaccinations, etc and the usual bunch of unwashed and ill-informed protesters turned up to block the city streets.

Well, last Thursday afternoon was also my usual shift at the Shrine, and lo and behold a small group of the great unwashed and ill-informed had decided to move their little part of the protest to the Shrine forecourt.  

Due to concerns about what mischief the protesters were going to get up to the Shrine went into "lockdown" mode with the doors closed for about an hour or so.  Visitors inside the Shrine building were allowed to leave but no new visitors were allowed in.  

The police formed a cordon across the forecourt between the protesters and the Shrine and after some attempts by the protesters to provoke the police the protest finished and the protesters departed to "Anarchists R Us" headquarters for scones and tea.

Unfortunately the forces of good (AKA the thin blue line) were not required to use rubber bullets, flash bangs or pepper spray to disperse the crowd, now, that would have been exciting.

After the protesters dispersed we opened the doors and crowds came flocking in.

Something else happened last week, now what was it???  Oh, that's right we had a footy grand final.  For a grandy that was going to be the grandy of the the century it was a bit of a letdown.  Geelong beat Sydney by a gazillion points (I can't be bothered looking it up).  From the first bounce Sydney was never in the game.  Apparently the celebrations in Geelong have been very low key with none of the locals very interested.  

It is funny how grand finals are often very one sided and a close one is the exception rather than the rule.

Talking about one sided, how is this for a scoreline.  This is the result from an AFLW game over the weekend - 96 points to 1 point, I think that in the footy vernacular this is either a shellacking or trouncing, if either of those terms are strong enough.

We have a state election looming and each party is trying to outdo each other in promising to spend billions on various magnificent projects which is funny cause it is money that we don't actually have.

The first Tuesday of the week next week which is when the RBA announces what is happening interest rate wise.  The smart money is on another rise, probably another .5%, take that gen Xs, Ys and Millennials.  When your mortgage rate gets to 17% you can complain, says a poor old hard done by Baby Boomer.

I have had a look at the covid numbers for the last week but given the variations in reporting dates and periods by the states the numbers are a bit meaningless.  That said the numbers all appear to be heading in the right direction.  Nationally active infection numbers are down 10,000 for the week from 62,000 to 52,000 and Victorian active infection numbers are down from 9,800 last week to 8,510 this week.

Although 1st dose vaccinations are remaining steady at 98.1% (aged 16+) and 2nd dose steady at 96.4% there has been a slight increase of .1% to 69.1% for 3rd dose, 4th doses have increased by .5% to 23.5%.  

Given the irregular nature of the covid reporting I will keep an eye on the numbers and report any significant movement either good or bad.