That's Interesting!

The Qantas dispute

admin — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 20:09:01 +0000

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and TWU boss Tony Sheldon were personally negotiating the final elements of what looked like a deal, and sources say big hurdles on pay and conditions had been cleared, in principle at least.

Joyce told Sheldon that the demand could not be legally met under the terms of the Fair Work Act – and he maintained that the rest of Qantas’s offer would be taken off the table if the TWU did not sign off.

Mr Joyce says he is hoping the Fair Work panel will order a termination to all industrial action, saying a suspension order might not be enough to get the fleet back in the air.

Mr. Joyce said the airline’s fleet of 108 aircraft in up to 22 countries would remain grounded until Qantas reached an agreement over pay and work conditions with the unions representing pilots, mechanics and ground staff.

“Unions rightly give 72 hours’ notice before industrial action, but Qantas management has given no notice before this wildcat grounding of their fleet,” he said in a statement on the union Web site.

In Los Angeles passengers began arriving at the Qantas airport counter shortly after the FWA decision was handed down, hoping the earlier they arrived the more chance they would have of getting a flight.

He said the unions had sought a suspension of the protected industrial action for up to 120 days but the panel had decided that such a move would not provide sufficient protection against the risk of economic damage to the tourism and aviation industries.

He said termination of the industrial action would allow for further negotiations between Qantas and unions for 21 days, which could be extended for a further 21 days if progress is being made.

ACTU national secretary Jeff Lawrence said Fair Work Australia’s made it very clear in its decision that union action wasn’t actually causing significant harm to the economy.

Doubts will remain as to why Mr Joyce and his management team could not convince the company’s staff of the need for substantial change, and of the consequences of a lack of workplace flexibility.

Qantas grounding cripples Australian air travel

admin — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 04:29:17 +0000

The central point here is the action of Qantas, the action of Qantas management, is absolutely out of proportion to any action that has been engaged in by the union movement.

Mr Joyce says he is hoping the Fair Work panel will order a termination to all industrial action, saying a suspension order might not be enough to get the fleet back in the air.

“Qantas has made a decision to ground its airline, affecting 80,000 passengers, when its workforce has no industrial action planned across the country,” he said.

The Transport Workers Union is calling on Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce to face this afternoon’s hearing and explain why he did not give any warning before grounding the airline.

The decision by Qantas to lock out its staff from Monday and cancel all flights immediately was taken at an emergency board meeting early Saturday and comes after weeks of escalating tension between the airline’s management and unions.

The regulator Fair Work Australia reconvened an emergency panel at 1200 (0300 GMT) on Sunday to decide whether to order an end to industrial action by both unions and management.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said his planes could be in the air again by late Sunday if the panel ordered a termination of all industrial action, but he warned an order to simply suspend it would not be good enough.

How ‘flipping’ websites can make you money

admin — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:37:48 +0000

”To add value to real estate, you must do something significant, labour-intensive and, usually, expensive, like building a new bathroom.

”But with websites, you can make small changes such as building links from other sites or improving the overall look for little cost.

Among his success stories is forextradingstrategies.org, which he bought for $10 and sold for $10,000 after spending $100 to have SEO-friendly articles written for the site.

In fact, many of Barrie’s freelancer.com staff of more than 100 come from the site, a situation he says represents a ”seismic shift in the world’s labour markets”.

Needing 1000 pieces of data entered into a spreadsheet, he was unable to find anyone to do it and reluctantly placed the job on getafreelancer.com.

”It was perfect,” says Barrie, who realised the world’s labour-market model was potentially on the verge of dramatic change and immediately set about building a similar site before discovering getafreelancer.com was for sale.

”They are just as smart as us, just as motivated and want a job just as much as we do.”
Barrie cites the example of a young woman in the Philippines who now makes $400,000 a year turning out logos for businesses and websites around the world.

Flippa last year hosted the sale of FaceMash.com ($30,000), Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook predecessor, famously created during his time at Harvard University, as well as Retweet.com, which was sold for $250,000, and BlogTopSites, which went for $117,000 in April last year.

”I’d found this little site, called webmaster-resources.com, run by a guy named Matt Mickiewicz out of Canada,” says co-founder and former Sausage Software programmer Mark Harbottle, who this year made his debut on the BRW Young Rich List with an estimated wealth of $40 million.

After achieving several years of 150 per cent growth, the pair, still living in different hemispheres, decided to spin out the website sales arm into Flippa.com.

”I had no idea if it was going to be three months or three years when I started but today I get to do what I love and this whole experience has allowed me to do lots of cool stuff, especially helping others with great ideas,” Harbottle says.

”And it all started with a $400 investment in a little Canadian website.”
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Tips

Unless you just want a pretty site or to bulk up your digital portfolio, don’t just buy a site simply because you like it.
Look into the quality of the user base, how many users (and how many of them are active), where they’re coming from and how they are being acquired.

Flipping resources Flippa.com THE world’s No.1 marketplace for digital goods is crammed with more than 100,000 potential sellers of flappable sites and buyers of flipped sites.

Why Even Resolute Dieters Often Fail

admin — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:30:38 +0000

In an interview, Dr. Hall said the longstanding assumption that cutting 3,500 calories will produce a one-pound weight loss indefinitely is inaccurate and can produce discouraging results. A more realistic result, he said, is that cutting out 250 calories a day — the amount in a small bar of chocolate or half a cup of premium ice cream — would lead to a weight loss of about 25 pounds over three years, with half that loss occurring the first year. Dr. Hall noted that typical weight-loss programs result in significant losses over a period of six to eight months, followed by gradual weight regain in the years that follow.

Dr. Hall and his colleagues wrote that “all reduced-energy diets have a similar effect on body-fat loss in the short run” and that “some diets can lead to reduced hunger, improved satiety, and better overall diet adherence during a weight management intervention.”

Why Even Resolute Dieters Often Fail | nytimes.com

Unique Water

admin — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:27:50 +0000

He’s long boasted of its curative powers for anything from arthritis to asthma, and high blood pressure to migraines, and now after ten years, science and clinical trials indicate he may well be right.

The early indications suggest magnesium bicarbonate could help combat some of society’s biggest killers, including heart disease and stroke, and also assist with arthritis.

“There was a brilliant survey done in the United States, with 1.7 million people, where it showed that those people with high albumin levels, high plasma albumin levels, lived longer and had a higher survival rate if they had serious diseases,” Dr Bennett explained.

However Dr Lyn Tozer wants to see more Australian clinical trials conducted into specific illnesses, now that the doors been opened on magnesium bicarbonate in water.

“And there’s definitely, most definitely a need to utilise magnesium bicarbonate or Unique Water in further trials just to see how good it performs with people who are sick.”

Unique Water – www.uniquewater.com.au

Australian homes are the most expensive in the English-speaking world

admin — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:34:58 +0000

Whereas other housing markets – most notably Ireland, the United States, and the United Kingdom – have crashed and burned in the wake of the global financial crisis, Australia’s housing market has remained steadfast, so far avoiding the painful corrections experienced elsewhere.

Included in the report is a cross-country comparison of total housing assets against gross domestic product – a simple but effective measure of Australian housing valuations across time and relative to other English-speaking nations.

Finally, the report also breaks down rental returns relative to mortgage and term deposit rates in order to gauge the attractiveness of residential property investment for both the geared and un-geared investor.

Therefore, the average dwelling purchased over this period by an investor using finance (rather than savings) has been negatively geared, meaning that the investor has essentially been paying their dwelling a dividend in the hope that the dwelling repays them with some capital growth.

Thus the report shows that the investment fundamentals currently do not stack-up for Australian housing unless there is strong capital growth – a questionable prospect in the current economic environment.

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