Shopping online means range, price and, of course, service

Let’s begin with an admission: I sometimes shop online.

Why? Beyond being remarkably cheap, I have whatever amount of time I like to consider my possible purchases, it is easy to compare products and prices, the range is near endless and although the face-to-face contact is missing, the service is spectacular.

The benefits of shopping online are massive and to combat them, local traders need to consider what it is they do, upgrade every aspect of their service and make the most of what they are, local.

My online shopping begins with research that takes me to “stores” primarily in Great Britain and America and from those two places I can usually find what it is I’m searching for.

Many things I go online to buy are not items I would expect local stores to stock and being aware of that, I understand that it would be necessary to order it.
It is right there that the local trader hits their first hurdle. Ordering something is not an issue, but I would like to know it has actually happened and have some written acknowledgement of that action, exactly what I get when I shop online.
Besides having my order confirmed online, I’m then told when it has been dispatched from the warehouse and depending on what level of freight I’ve paid for, when I can expect it to arrive.
Secondhand books (above right) are an interest of mine and locally, and that is wherever I happen to be, I’m mostly simply directed to the area of interest to be confronted by a mass of books.
Searching through the books can be interesting in itself, but online I simply type in the title and I’m given a range to consider ranging from ex-library books to never read near-new books or, if I’m looking for something special, I’m able to consider “collector’s” books.
The local trader has the huge advantage of being just that, “local” and should exercise that edge to cater for customers’ specific needs and add to their business the things that attract people to online shopping – service (and more service), price and range.

Rich benefits awaits communities that adopt cycling

The rich benefits awaiting any centre that embraces cycling were explained recently in Melbourne.

Shepparton was not specifically mentioned, but implicit in the comments of the bicycle manager from Portland, Oregon, Roger Geller (right, centre), was the observation that people here need only adopt cycling to access those benefits.
Mr Geller spoke to more than 100 people at the University of Melbourne and then repeated his story about the transformative value of cycling again two days later as the keynote speaker at Melbourne’s Bike Futures conference.
Portland is in every way different from Shepparton, but the essence of Mr Geller’s message migrates without any lessening of its worth.
Shepparton, along with all other communities, has evolved around the mobility allowed by the motor car and easy access to cheap fossil fuels and in a time when there was no knowledge of, and therefore interest in, such things as climate change.
All that has changed – oil is becoming scarcer so will, in the foreseeable future, become impossibly expensive and it is now clearly understood that human actives are impacting on our climate.
Cycling can play a significant role in easing those difficulties.
Portland did not have any sort of real cycling culture 20 years ago, but now 10 per cent of “Portlanders” consider cycling as the prime means of transport.
In a city of nearly 600 000 that is a significant number and retailers, about 130 of them, reacting to the social change have asked for on-street car parking in front of their shops to be replaced by bicycle parking, “corrals” as they are described .
Portland has 500 km of developed bikeways, both on-road lanes and specific bake paths, and every day they are busy with commuters on bicycles traveling about the city.
Those developed bikeways cost about $60 million, which is equivalent in cost of two kilometers of traditional inner-city freeway.
The savings in road costs are obvious and with research illustrating most car trips are just six kilometres and as bicycles travel nearly as fast as a car, they save money and help the environment, and beyond that cycling boosts our broader wellbeing.

Was a new government really needed or were we just in want of novelty?

Recently I listened as a fellow talked about how governments, good or bad and even if they are of the former variety, reach the end of a cycle.

Is that the case or is the idea of novelty is so entrenched in modern communities that people reach out, and vote for, a new government just as they search for a fresh novelty?
The success of our modern consumerist world hinges on our raging desire for novelty, a concept that underpins the new models of widgets each year paradigm, although the changes may only be cosmetic.
Our drive for novelty is helped along by our insatiable need for new, whether that be a new widget or, as the case in Victoria just recently, a new government.
This conversation is not about our displaced government being good or bad, or whether that which replaced is better or worse, rather it is about entropy, the fact that everything we know and understand is subject to depreciation and, ultimately, death.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics explains entropy, but here is not the time or place to discuss it, rather simply consider the decay of all around you, including yourself, and in accepting the reality of entropy, live with it rather than attempt to forestall it.
Governments that have reached the end of their “cycle”, assuming they are still operating relatively successfully, have simply not refreshed their image sufficiently to underpin their novelty.
It is a sad state of affairs when the future wellbeing of our communities hinges on our distorted, and often perverse, need for novelty, something fresh and so something new, not necessarily better, rather just fresh and new.
Also, it is worth noting that the word “new” is considered to be the most powerful word in advertising lexicon, followed closely today after decades of mass produced foods by the term “fresh”.
New and fresh appear to be antidotes to entropy, a concept most might not think about too much, but which are instinctively reassuring to people who are presently wrestling with the possibility of their demise brought about by human induced changes to our climate.

As it will be for all of us, a winning streak ends

Future Christmases for many extended family members will not be seasons of joy.

A niece’s husband, whom I did not know too well, died just two days before the annual celebration after failing to recover from a heart attack.
The father of two, only in his mid-forties, had collapsed while making deliveries and by the time he had been found, attempts, made to resuscitate him and then taken to hospital, his brain had suffered lasting damage.
His family knew he had wanted to donate his organs and so after it was determined that his brain was irreparably damaged and recipients were organized, his life support equipment was turned off.
Brian lived in another part of Victoria and so I had little to do with him and strangely knew more about his kids as my wife kept me abreast of their movements through Facebook.
And so although he was somewhat of a stranger to me, his final scene was unexpected and sudden, he was family and his death was a shock.
I can’t imagine how traumatic it will be for immediate family next Christmas, the Christmas after and I can only guess at how difficult it will be in following festive seasons.
There is a strange finality about death that seems to escape our understanding and every time we encounter such a moment involving family or friend, promises of living a better life erupt, but in the maelstrom that is life, rarely, interestingly, are those promises ever kept.
Life, no matter our approach, is a vibrant affair and that, alone, outside whatever affiliations we might have or superstitions or addictions we have, warrants care and respect for it is a fragile thing and our time here is limited.
Poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen (above) discussed the vibrancy and fragility of our lives in his poem, “A Thousand Kisses Deep” when he wrote:


The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat.
You win for a while, and then it’s done –
Your little winning streak.
And summoned how to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it’s real,
A thousand kisses deep.

From a muted sunsent to the outbreak of good sense

The muted sunset of 2010 gathers in the west and then we turn to look east in the hope of seeing a spectacular sunrise marking the beginning of an equally breath-taking 2011.

Hope will be insufficient if 2011 is to be something better than the year about to end, as more than that along with good intentions is needed.
The latter, it has been said, pave the road to hell and so if the year ahead is to be pivotal for humanity we will need to abandon our expansive way of living; the seeming dislike we have of the other; our misplaced distrust in science; our love for addictions that are blatantly fallacious, along with disturbing superstitions many abide by that contribute nought to humanity’s wellbeing; and the perverse belief that force will resolve any disputation.
We simply cannot allow 2011 to be a year of more of the same – the time for chat, research, reports, talk-fests and the seemingly never-ending referral of matters to committees is gone.
The year ahead needs to be one of commitment; we need to commit to limiting our greenhouse gas pollution; we need to commit to a more restrained way of living with our governments leading the way to help us to build self-reliant communities; we need to commit to learning about, understanding and introducing a steady-state economy in which we abandon the growth ideology and embrace a paradigm that is about quality as opposed to quantity; we need to commit to thoughtful reasoning about humanity’s place in the universe accepting that we are here by chance and that in itself being such a beautifully wondrous thing that we should celebrate life and stop the perplexing passion we have for slaughtering each other.
Other things I’d like to see here in 2011 – an understanding and embrace of true equality; a serious move toward republicanism; the erosion of misogynistic religions, in fact the complete shift away from religions allowing for a genuinely secular state; and the outbreak of good sense to see alcohol, our most socially damaging legitimately available drug, take the same route as smoking.

Bill has never flinched and retreat is not in his vocabulary

Bill Hickford, the fellow I knew, never flinched.

And that trait was on show again just the other night when he confronted a knife wielding burglar in his Shepparton home.
Bill led the GV Centre Committee through difficult times when I was involved, maybe 20 years ago, and although circumstances made his role both challenging, and often controversial, he never flinched.
That admirable way of living is what our community needs more of and although the positive aspects clearly outweigh whatever might be considered negative, Bill, sadly, felt the sharp edge of the downside early Friday morning.
Bill had an acute sense of right and wrong, although such an instinct was unimportant when unusual noises led him to investigate, followed by his confrontation with an armed intruder and a subsequent struggle in which Bill was stabbed 13 times.
No instinct was needed; Bill would have simply known it was wrong to have an unknown fellow, armed with a knife, roaming about his darkened house.
Was the break-in planned or was Bill’s house simply chosen by chance?
Nothing points to the former and so it would seem the latter prevails, however the intruder had not accounted for the fact that inside was Bill, a fellow who does not have “retreat” in his vocabulary.
The passion for right a wrong is a personal power that Bill will need to enlist as he draws on reserves to repair the damage wrought as wrestled with that intruder to his Kialla Lakes (above) home.
For long I have wondered why bad things happen to good people and this seems to the epitome of such a dynamic, but I’m still mystified.
Law and order protagonists will use this to again beat their drum, but the issue is broader and deeper than a simple argument for more police.
Rather it is a symptom of an ill-society, one that is rich in inequality, promotes ideals unattainable for most, makes violence attractive and appear as an avenue to success and suggests that gratification is there to be taken.
Bill is one of the good people, who now struggles after encountering one of those bad things.

Christmas offends, but I just love it

Christmas offends my sensibilities – but I just love it.
Christmas was born with the birth of a myth that invokes Christianity and became a marketer’s dream when the idea of gift-giving captured the modern mind.
Christmas, in its present form, worsens difficulties the world faces with the exhaustion of resources and encourages a way of life that is the antithesis of a sustainable world.
Christmas and climate change, or global warming if you prefer, seem unrelated, but are inextricably linked with industry working overtime and ploughing through resources to churn out what it is we want, rather than need, for this festive season.
Christmas does, however, have a positive dimension in that it encourages altruism throughout December, a generousity that is largely in retreat for the rest of the year.
Christmas is for many, wrongly and yet understandably, a real or imagined deadline for tasks ranging from the completion of projects to decision time about relationships or other personal moments of consequence.
Christmas gives oxygen to a lie that may seem innocuous and fun, but in a subtle manner illustrates to those at the heart of the deception, our children, that they should treat those in authority with some suspicion, bringing on an uneasiness that has the potential to surreptitiously trouble them throughout their lives.
Christmas, despite its Christian underpinnings and its consumerist overtones brings about brief moments that point to the richness of humanity and in so doing unearths the warmth, connectedness and collaboration that will be essential if humanity is to find the capacity to dispense with its differences and stand as one, rather than many, in confronting emerging difficulties.
Christmas for me will be particularly enjoyable as it will be the first I have spent with my one and three-year-old grandsons, something about which I often feel distress for long have I believed that we should all live where we live, meaning families should not be in disparate parts of the country, or even worse, overseas.
Christmas brings its dilemmas, but for me it is a particularly special time and I trust it is exactly that for you – season’s greetings!