Why not give a proxy for the NRMA AGM - CO2

The NRMA makes an attractive offer "You will go into the draw for the chance to win one of 40 Caltex StarCash cards worth $500 each just by;

* appointing a proxy to attend and, if required, vote on your behalf if you are unable to attend the meeting, or
* by attending the 2008 AGM in person."

The more I think about it - the worse this seems, so I wrote to the NRMA...

"I want to appoint a proxy. I would appoint a proxy if I could find out other NRMA members apart from the Board Members who will be attending, and who are making a commitment to represent concerns that correspond to mine. The MyNRMA website is sufficiently advanced, with a member login system, to provide members an online forum for stating the concerns that they would raise at the AGM, and offering to represent members via their proxies, but I cannot find this on MyNRMA website. This would be the democratic way to promote a higher level of membership participation in the AGM. A possible petrol voucher to persuade me to give my proxy to a current Board member (it's pretty impractical for me to find anyone else with any clout to give my proxy to) on the other hand is not democratic - more a bribe with a tiny bit of largesse from those who already run the NRMA and control its resources.

And the concerns I would like to have raised? Although I am a motorist and NRMA member, I don't WANT to be a motorist to the extent that I am. I am rather a citizen who needs to travel, and who is concerned about many issues, especially the urgent matters of global warming, environmental sustainability and inequality. I would rather see the NRMA advocating better transport in general, including public transport and bicycle transport, and making the case for much, much more investment in public transport, instead of prioritising advocacy of measures to make it easier for the driver of the private vehicle to continue making more use of a private vehicle. Greener private vehicles yes, but public transport would make a much bigger difference to CO2 emissions.

Until I can find a suitable proxy, I will not be appointing one."

Flight attendants union working against members?

Shenanigans in which former flight attendant union officials are now running labour hire outfits - http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/ welcome-aboard-flight-to-lower-pay-cheques/2007/04/15/1176575687668.html - illustrate the poison that can easily take hold in union officialdom. Scott Rochfort in the SMH of 21 April digs deeper still in an article in News Review entitled "A case of cabin fever strikes Qantas" - which so far I cannot locate online. On 16 April, the day of the earlier report, I emailed the Rights at Work campaign, and still haven't had a reply.

"Dear Rights at Work,

I am very disturbed to read this story in today's SMH, disgusted to read that Maurice Alexander is a former union official. The article also says that "the [flight attendants's] union shares office space with Mr Alexander's labour hire firm. The union's domestic secretary Jo-Ann Davidson declined to comment."

I hope to hear that there are serious errors in this SMH report, and that whatever connection Alexander may have had with the union movement, they do not continue. I support Rights at Work. Alexander is (according to this story) profiting from running a scheme that attacks rights at work.

Please let me know the ACTU/Rights at Work response to these allegations.

In soldarity"

It's not easy to promote trade unionism if this is what union officials can get away with, undenounced, uncensured.

Working too hard to produce toxic junk

Many of us with jobs spend too many hours at work to maintain what is currently called "work-life balance". Several commentators say we have only ourselves to blame for being greedy consumers (Clive Hamilton, Ross Gittins). Then there is the global warming perspective - too much consumption of energy.
What about putting these 2 issues together and looking at solutions differently? Why should we all be trapped in a way of life based on decisions to produce goods and services, decisions that are made by a minority. Why should production of everything (transport, housing, food, health, entertainment, communication, clothing, everything) be decided by the people who own the means to produce them, being allowed to make guess what the rest of us can be enticed to spend our money on and make them a profit?
So - what if transport facilities were to be decided not by car manufacturers, petrol companies, ad they had no access to lobby governments or departments of main roads? What if the criteria for developing transport services were reducing fuel consumption and environmental impact, reducing gross expenditure on transport, reducing the labour hours involved in providing transport, sharing available hours of work amongst all workers involved in vehicle production and transport services, reducing the time taken to get places? Then we might come up with policies such as - increased public transport routes based on a wider range of vehicles, and free public transport; vehicle manufacture shifting the balance from cars to energy efficient public transport; rail not roads for freight; car depots for occasional personal use; bicycle facilities; free deliveries of groceries. We might find policies to reduce the need to travel, more children at local schools, help people to live near work.
But we don't have a collective basis for making these decisions, because "the market" gets to decide, and government works with what resources it can put together after "the market" has its way. We decide to travel by car, because public transport doesn't go where we want to, when we want to. That's the market. We don't have a "market" mechanism that lets us choose between effective public transport and driving. Who is "the market"? Supposedly us, so we are to blame. But "the market" is what we can all be convinced to consume, to pay for, as individuals. It is the opposite of us being able to make sensible, considered decisions in the common interest.