Re: Aussie rips offs
 

Not quite that black and white.....if the Local Government Area concerned wishes to improve the bridge/road/culvert/etc then they can do so - however, this is then called "betterment" and is not wholly eligible for funding under the Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery scheme.
The LGA has to pay a percentage towards the cost in any case. and if they wish to "ïmprove" or move the asset then they have to pay the extra. NDRRA can only fund (from a combination of Federal and State funding) the reinstatement of the original. The "betterment" portion has to be worn by the council, and the problem is that many councils are unable to find the money.

There were a lot of bridges like that one which really should have been rebuild higher after TC Tasha in 2010/11 but the councils simply couldn't afford it. Of course the obvious idea is for then Federal Govt to change the NDRRA Determination to allow more funding for betterment, but then where do you stop - how much betterment should be allowed?

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

Surely enough betterment so that it doesn't wash away again?


S

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

What's the bet, noone can bet how much better than betterment is enough?

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

:lol:

You would think so! Having spent just over a year working on reconstruction afer TC Tasha, only to see a lot of it wiped out again I do agree that the present system leaves a lot to be desired - a purely personal view here of course, nothing to do with my job. There is a lot of red tape even for reconstruction to previous conditions; the Queensland Reconstruction Authority had already been extended to June 2014 before the last lot of flooding, purely to administer TC Tasha rebuilds, last years floods in the west, and other outstanding projects from pre-Tasha, who knows where they go from here.....

Anyone suffering from insomnia can read up on NDRRA here - just don't trip over the red tape!

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

Sonny Jim went to a second hand uni book sale today where he snapped up a few bargains. What struck him is how many editions some of these books have been pushed out over a short timespan - six editions over less than ten years. And the pdf versions? ...None to be found anywhere.

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

They push out a new edition every year, basically. They move a few bits around, change a few bits, just so the lecturer can say "you have to have edition 23 because my references are not appropriate to the old edition". The idea, obviously, is to kill the second hand market and get the lecturer a bit more cash.

And yes, finding the scanned copies of the books isn't easy unless you are in the know, for obvious reasons. A collective and a cheap book scanner is the approved mechanism to overcome this if you really don't have the inside track - hell, in the US there are commercial firms set up specifically to scan books at $0.1 per page - for the lazy student collectives.

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

Makes sense, I guess. Any easy-to-find pdf versions would have been made unavailable using legal means by the uni book rip-off merchants who are protecting their highly lucrative income streams.

Does the same kind of practice (over-priced uni books) exist in the UK? It didn't in 2007 when I was studying for my degree.

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

No It's largely Australia's ridiculous publishing regulations - Wholesalers and merchants are obliged to purchase copy from Australian distributors, who mark up the costs. A bookshop isn't allowed to supply cheap copies obtained from overseas if there is an Australian publisher supplying the same article.

Nice little protection racket if you can get into it.


S

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

Which is why Aussie is probably going to be the first county in the world to have no bookshops - seriously. They're closing at a rate of knots in Adelaide because everyone just buys their books from Amazon.com.

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

Part of the issue is also that Oz is such a small market it's generally not worth actually printing the books here. Much easier to have a worthwhile print run, and get the economies of scale, if they are printed elsewhere and shipped to Oz. And where do they print proper English language versions of the book?

Yep, often the books sold here will be printed in the UK, then put on a pallet and shipped, by ship, to Oz.

When you are an afterthought at the end of a long supply line, you get the scraps and had better well have a decent profit margin to be worth the effort.

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

Sad but a fact of life/economics - I only buy online and have done for many year (I was using Amazon before they had a UK operation). Perth CBD has gone from 3 bookstores to 1.

Other countries will follow.

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

Smaller countries than Australia seem to manage it.

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

I only use Amazon. Would never think of paying Australian prices for books. It's madness paying $50 for something I can get for $20 and delivered in days.

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

I see. So books like "Australian Economics" are rich pickings for these publishers.

Re: Aussie rips offs
 

Yes, but how come they don't see it? How come the book publishers continue to lobby government to maintain their ridiculous monopoly position WRT booksellers? I don't see how they can fail to understand the economics of it. Same with that tw@t Jerry Harvey - How can he not see that it's far more than just the GST?

Even Dymocks want the book purchasing monopoly abolished - so they have evidently seen the writing on the wall.


S