Good and Bad

Time to think about the last week

On the plus side,

Volunteers and community Spirit.   People everywhere and so positive.

I think the government as a whole performed well.  There were plenty of warnings on TV and after the flood there seemed to be sensible things coming from the mouths of politicians.  I have been quite impressed by Campbell Newman and Anna Bligh.  Also the local councillors Milton Dick and Nicole Johnson.

Both State and federal government have assistance packages in place.  Hats off to the Feds.  Easy & Simple criteria and  $1k per adult and $400 per kid. 

I think the church responded really well.  I was so pleased to see that at 2am Heather had opened our church and turned on the lights.  Set up tea and cofee.  She then went back to bed.  In the morning there were 15? people who had just moved in.  Moggiil UC seemed to be the centre of organising at Moggill.  I heard Andrew Solomon on the radio on one occasion early on inviting people in for tea and cofee.  While on the subject of tea.  It seems Shri Lanker (I think) and Dilmah have donated a gazillion tones of tea.  The best foreigh aid support I can think of.

The mobile phone networks stayed up.  So good.

The negatives for me have been of the petty kind.

The biggest brick bat should go to the police for over zealous behaviour.

The most public example around here was that on Saturday they closed Oxley Rd in front of the golf driving range.  Now I can live with the road being closed when it is covered in water.  In this case no water.  Occasionally a car would sneak past somehow so it was obviously passable.  Yet they closed it.  So the traffic backed back to indooroopilly bridge.  With the centenary highway bridge closed, indooroopilly bridge became the main river crossing and the police managed to screw that right up and of course by sending the traffic through the side streets they made it all the more difficult for hundreds of residents cleaning up.

Then of course in Warwick, Lewis got a ticket for driving on a "closed road" even though the water was no longer on the road.  Mind you I heard someone on the radio comment on the free and generous distribution of tickets in Warwick.

Two good reasons to remember that the system is not your friend and that these days the thing to do is avoid the police and be self sufficient.  Remember if you need them say for a home invasion or mugging, they will be so busy elsewhere giving out tickets for minor infringements that they will be unable to attend your emergency.

The next award for stupidity and unreasonableness though must go to the BCC employee who fined some one for having a "Directional Sign" at Moggill pointing to go to the Uniting Church for flood assistance.

Mind you that person only just trumps the BCC library person who fined one of our neighbours for returning flood damaged books yesterday.  This was not the lady on the counter.  She was following an edict sent to her on her computer.

So even though Campbell Newman was saying intelligent things, the BCC bureaucracy was in full swing in its "we know better than you how to manage your life" mode.

the  electricity is a good example of bureaucracy gone mad.  When energex came round our street, they pulled the pole fuses from all the houses that had water damage (or so I though).  Even though I showed the enegrgex man that an electrician had replaced our one power point that had gotten wet and that the fuse box was well above high water, because I did not have the "Form 2 or Form 3" and actually did not know the name of the electrician, the energex guy pulled the fuse anyway.  Turned out the local sparky from up the road had gone through my house and checked it and he did not have blank "Form 2's or 3's" because he always submits them "on line" as he did for us.  Pity the fellows in the truck were not "on line".  OK so time passes and the power in the street comes back on but not in our house.  I ring energex to push it along and they tell me there is a known fault in our street and apologise for no power.  I insist the power is on in our street just not in our house.  The kind energex girl calmly and kindly commiserated with me but reminds me that there is a known fault in our street which must be fixed before they will dispatch a crew to replace my pole fuse.

The really bizzare twist is that almost all the houses that were in the deepest water all still have their pole fuses and the lights are on.  I guess shift change happened before they got that far.

Update Tuesday 18-JAN-2010 9:30am : 
Phoned Energex and was greeted by a happy computer that informed me that they know about a serious power outage in Calston St Oxley.  That's me I figure since except for my Next door neighbour, the rest of the street has power.  When I finally manage to speak to a human, She kindly informs me that my power was restored at 4:05am.  Well blow me down I think.  I am sure the pole fuse is still taped to the pole.  I thought that is quickly confirmed by Megan who runs out and takes a look.  So the takes my details and the details for #21 again and promises to contact the crews.

Update Tuesday 18-JAN-2010 4pm:
Phoned Energex again.  Same story.

Now lets not forget the state education department who do not insure teachers personal property on school grounds.  Since the government is so poor at providing resources to teachers, they end up developing  their own resources.  In fact pretty much everything of real use apart from computer hardware seems to be the teachers personal property.  So when the water goes through the classroom, the teachers open their wallets and throw money down the proverbial government toilet.  You wonder why state education is so bad.