Alabama and Radio Stations

I was discussing radio stations with someone this week. More specifically, formats. Stations do sometimes change their format and sometimes the change is radical. The gentleman with whom I was speaking had asked why they do that and I was reminded of USA station that was, as I recall, an all-Elvis station. They became an all-news station and the change was precipitated by a revealing event. The band, Alabama, was coming to town and the radio station offered free tickets on air. When nobody phoned they knew it was time to switch to a format which would garner them some listeners.

Speaking of Alabama, the band has a museum in Fort Payne.  It’s worth seeing if you have an hour to kill while in Fort Payne. A beautiful area in a beautiful state.

Famine of Family

Family is a great thing. I mean having one and being part of it. With the birth rate as low as it is in many Western democracies, millions of people don't have siblings. It is estimated, for example, that in Italy by 2050 two-thirds of the people will have no brothers and no sisters, and since neither of their parents will have had brothers or sisters, they will have no cousins nor uncles nor aunts either. That changes the dynamic of social interaction. It encourages a new context for people's dealings with each other. I don't know all the ramifications of this situation but I am under the impression that a lot of them are not healthy. 

It appears to me that prior to the twentieth century, conversation was a highly developed art, serving as it did as entertainment. Intellects and wit were sharp, and repartee was a pastime. The twentieth century brought a wide variety of entertainments, but they were often shared with family. Social media has now transported people into virtual worlds through which these people can be distracted from the vacuum of ordinary life and immersed in a reality of their own liking. A substitution for family interaction.

By its nature, such a new world can be shut down and turned off like a light switch when a person wants free of it.  Not so easily done with a family. Within a family a person needs to face problems and solve them rather than running away from them. This builds character and broadens personality. 

Whining a bit about CRA's SRED Claims Reviews

What is the likelihood of changing a CRA reviewer’s mind after they have made a proposal about your claim?  I have seen such a change occur….more than once…..but such a result is a minority outcome.

This is unfortunate because I am increasingly finding that to CRA, SRED is whatever the RTA reviewing the claim says it is. Reviewers have a knack for sending lengthy documented refusals that are very short on technological information and reflect no relevant hands-on experience with the technology that is the context of the claim. Too often I am seeing reviews done by people that display no evidence of technical proficiency in the activities for which the reviewed claim has been made.  At once time I thought that such experiences were isolated, but I have become jaded, and I am forming the impression that perhaps there is an agency wide strategy within CRA to reduce claims and wear out claimants, albeit politely.

This is not to imply that your review will be done by incompetents. There are some very bright reviewers, and some really helpful ones, but the fact that appeals to SRED related assessments are now several times what they were a few years ago should say something about what is happening.  The data at this link is informative: https://www.scitax.com/pdf/Bulletin.55.Statistics.Reveal.Dramatic.Increase.in.SR&ED.Appeals.11-Apr-2014.pdf.

Life in the Australian Army

Text of a letter from a kid from Eromanga to Mum and Dad. (For Those of you not in the know, Eromanga is a small  town, west of Quilpie in the far south west of Queensland)

Dear Mum & Dad,

I am well. Hope youse are too. Tell me big brothers Doug and Phil that the Army is better than workin' on the station - tell them to get in bloody quick smart before the jobs are all gone! I wuz a bit slow in settling down at first, because ya don't hafta get outta bed until 6am. But I like sleeping in now, cuz all ya gotta do before brekky is make ya bed and shine ya boots and clean ya uniform. No bloody horses to get in, no calves to feed, no troughs to clean - nothin'!! Ya haz gotta shower though, but its not so bad, coz there's lotsa hot water and even a light to see what ya doing!

At brekky ya get cereal, fruit and eggs but there's no kangaroo steaks or goanna stew like wot Mum makes. You don't get fed again until noon and by that time all the city boys are buggered because we've been on a 'route march' - geez its only just like walking to the windmill in the bullock paddock!!

This one will kill me brothers Doug and Phil with laughter. I keep getting medals for shootin' - dunno why. The bullseye is as big as a bloody dingo's arse and it don't move and it's not firing back at ya like the Johnsons did when our big scrubber bull got into their prize cows before the Ekka last year! All ya gotta do is make yourself comfortable and hit the target - it's a piece of piss!! You don't even load your own cartridges, they comes in little boxes, and ya don't have to steady yourself against the rollbar of the roo shooting truck when you reload!

Sometimes ya gotta wrestle with the city boys and I gotta be real careful coz they break easy - it's not like fighting with Doug and Phil and Jack and Boori and Steve and Muzza all at once like we do at home after the muster.Turns out I'm not a bad boxer either and it looks like I'm the best the platoon's got, and I've only been beaten by this one bloke from the Engineers - he's 6 foot 5 and 15 stone and three pick handles across the shoulders and as ya know I'm only 5 foot 7 and eight stone wringin' wet, but I fought him till the other blokes carried me off to the boozer.

I can't complain about the Army - tell the boys to get in quick before word gets around how bloody good it is.

Your loving daughter,

Susan