Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Welcome to Visitor 20,000 - and food prices revisited

Today visitor 20,000 arrived.

Visitor 10,000 arrived back on 23 February. My first tentative post on this blog - all it said was "this is a test" - was on 18 March 2006. So if my maths is correct, it took me eleven months to get to 10,000, eight months to get the next 10,000.

Visitor 20,000 searched google australia on food prices.

Back on 24 July 2007 I put up a post, Food Prices in Australia. A key point in that post was that at a time of apparent increases in affluence we should not forget that there were people struggling to put food on the table for whom even a $2 shift in the price of a chook could have significant consequences.

The post is still getting hits. So far it also also attracted two thoughtful comments.

On 14 September wildschwein added some thoughts from her own experience as part of a family spending more than 50% of family income on rent. Then on 13 November anon added a post linked to the establishment of a food coop in the Mollymook/Ulladulla area, an area I used to know quite well when I worked in Canberra.

I will now follow up with some new posts, maybe on several blogs, but not tonight Geraldine, I really feel too tired.

I seem to have been writing a lot more on social policy and also civil liberty issues than I used to. Here I am grateful to Club Troppo's missing link for mentioning no less than two of my recent posts. To quote:

Jim Belshaw conducts an in-depth examination of the history and current problems of the NSW Department of Community Services. Something of a dry argument but certainly an important issue. Jim also focuses on the just-revealed Tony Tran case, which appears to be an even more disgraceful and frightening example of unaccountable power in the Department of Immigration than the much better known Rau and Solon cases.

The Child Welfare post is dry, as are some of my other longer posts. But I am not writing here to entertain, just to give information and analysis. If I get one or two readers who find it valuable, then I have done my job.

Done my job? Doesn't that sound pretentious! Yet it is the way that I think about some of my more serious personal writing.

Finally, welcome to Mike who commented on Victoria's Cheeky Move. Apparently Mike is a long time reader, but this is his first comment. Do comment again!

Time to continue cooking tea. Tonight I have some beef in the oven ($11). I will serve this with baked spuds (brought in a 4kg bag for just under a dollar a kilo), broccolini (a bit over $2 for the bunch), peas (can't remember the cost) and some silver beet from the garden.

In all including gravy and spices, a bit under $4 per head with meat left over. Still a lot for some Australian families.

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