wallydownundy

I sure am glad Angela Merkel isn’t Russian. Up for re-election this month, Merkel chose to take time off for a walk through the Tyrol mountains. Heading back to nature is a popular choice for European leaders. In July Russia’s Vladimir Putin went horseback riding and swimming in Siberia. In case you weren’t sure of his viability as a Prime Ministerial candidate in the next election, he issued beefcake photos to showcase his…health.

Before his election, Barack Obama took to the ocean. Subsequent publication of photos swayed a few female (and gay) voters away from Hillary. Result? We’re certain he’s healthy.

So with the leaders of America and Russia as examples, we should have seen official photos to demonstrate Angela Merkel’s health. After all a bracing walk through the Tyrol mountains should have provided plenty of photo opportunities. Yet enter “Merkel Tyrol” into Google image search and you don’t get a photo of Angela and mountains.

Well, let me clarify…

At least we know she’s healthy!

In the immediate aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, AMR Interactive publish a survey of 2,270 people about their views of various professions. With headlines screaming about bank failures and multi-trillion dollar rescue plans, it appears we don’t like bankers anymore.

Bankers rate down there with journalists, politicians and real estate agents. (I still have a soft spot for Annette Bening in “American Beauty” though.)

In this 21^stcentury world we’re in, we seem to hanker for the good old professions. Firemen, doctors, policemen and teachers aren’t what six year olds dream of being. It’s who we appreciate. Little kids don’t dream of being accountants. Well – very, very few have that passion!

So after being battered and bruised by the global economy we revert to our youth. Which is probably a good thing as we’ll need the energy of our youth to return to work as retirement savings are perilously diminished.

Damn – must be those bankers again!

I left America on a 12 month business visa in April 1990. I vividly recall my first day in Sydney. The airport hadn’t been upgraded. The washroom featured troughs. A person recommended via a friend in New York collected me to go to the movies. We saw “The Hunt for Red October.” I slept that night in The Mclaren Street Guest House, courtesy of my employer Edelman Worldwide.

I knew no one and was 12,500 miles from friends, family and home.

Five years later I was still in Australia. I’d been a permanent resident for a few years and Keating was up for re-election. Some pollster probably told him “new Australians” were more likely to vote Labor. Immigration laws were changed and a massive, national advertising campaign was underway. Permanent residents - like me - were encouraged to become Australian. I filled in the two page form, had my ever-so-brief interview and paid my $50 fee. Five weeks later I was contacted by South Sydney Council. My swearing-in ceremony would be on a Tuesday night at Paddington Town Hall.

That night was a “once in 50 years” storm. Massive trees bent like rubber. Storm-water flowed down the streets like a river. Undaunted my partner and a few friends rocked up to see me become Australian.  That was in 1995.

Since then I’ve lived here and abroad. My partner of 19 years is Australian. Our son - adopted from China - carries an Australian passport. And while he pronounces some words with my American accent, on holidays last month he asked for Vegemite for breakfast. I pay taxes and I vote in every election (not just to avoid the fine, but because the high tax rate compels me to get ‘value for money’).

I like to tell people I was born in America but I chose to be Australian.

This is a nation jam-packed with immigrants. Melbourne is the largest Greek city after Athens. Sydney’s Little Italy isn’t so little - it’s everywhere. Chinatown is several towns. And there’s a robust Vietnamese community. That’s without mentioning the Laotians, Maltese, French, Russians and more who make up our nation. Even the First Fleet was an immigration convoy.

But just last week a friend let slip their viewpoint. There was a job that needed to be done and they said it might be better done by an Australian.

I do confess I have a strong American accent. To this day every time I say Kookaburra my partner cracks up. My pronunciation of banana uses the wrong accent on the ‘a’. But Australian towns across the country are filled with rich and varied accents.

Deep down I know my son will always be seen as Australian. He’s been in school here since pre-school. My partner is first generation Italian-Australian. Not one in the extended family could return to Italy and call themselves Italian. Perhaps when I’m dead and buried here I’ll be considered Australian.

Clearly it is a sensitive spot. To those who question - I don’t own an Akubra. I do get the humour. I don’t live with kangaroos. I do eat Vegemite.

And I do care passionately about this country.

Perhaps that’s what makes me Australian.

Australian city centres recorded a major jump in vacant office space. Seems those armies of unemployed people are no longer in suits and skirts - nor are they in offices.

I wrote back in May about the issue: Commercial Property: The Other Shoe to Drop. Today writing for “Primespace” in “The Australian” Turi Condon reports a 40% increase in vacant office space. Nationally vacant space went from 5.9% in January to 8.3% in July. And companies are still not done shedding staff.

(BTW, it feels prescient to have used the “other shoe” title - especially when The Economist writing this week uses the exact same analogy in a sub-head for a story on commercial property.)

Commerical rents have plummeted, with drops between 35% to 50% in Brisbane and Perth. Meanwhile new space is coming on the market. In the next 18 months 1.3 million square metres is due to come on market. That’s the equivalent of all the office space in Adelaide.

Prognosticators say commercial property will be in the doldrums for three years. (They also see a tall dark stranger coming into your life, but details will cost you extra.)

In Berlin there’s a novel way to cover over slumping demand. In Potsdamer Platz a half-built office complex is masked by a ten story facade with a picture of a building painted on it. Did you read that correctly? A ten story tall painting!

That’s as good as the service now on offer to Los Angeles suburbanites. If they tire of brown lawns in their housing complex - due to mortgagee reposessions - they can pay $600 to have the grass spray-painted green. Yes - spray paint. Not those fertilised seeds used to start lawns (those require water). This is a quick-fix gloss-over to make your neighbourhood “new car” clean.

So here’s my business idea. Let’s sell cut-outs of busy professionals who can be propped behind vacant desks. We can create tableaux of typical office situations - Fred from accounts checking football scores. Mary in HR talking on the phone (with bonus sound loop of endless chatter!). The logistics department gathered in the boss’ office to settle the Seattle issue. This way today’s office workers won’t feel so lonely in their empty offices.

Who knows - if productivity improves we might lose a model or two to upper management!

Australia’s suffering one of the oddest -gate affairs. (Since Watergate every political crisis is -gated, like ‘Iguana-gate’ last year). Right now Ute-gate looks set to bring down the Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull.

For those in North America, a Ute is short for utility vehicle. In other words, a pick-up truck!

Where to begin? And how to abbreviate?

Earlier this year Opposition Leader stunned Parliament by accusing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of using undue influence to gain a used car dealer priority access to Treasury funds. (When all car financiers left Australia the government stepped in with emergency funding.) Seems this car dealer lent Rudd a used vehicle for electioneering purposes. Influence for mates? How dare he! (Until then I thought that’s what government was - silly me.)

The “smoking gun” was an email in the hands of Turnbull. Seems he failed to check the email’s authenticity before calling for the Prime Minister to resign.

Are you with me still?

Weeks later the Auditor General releases an official report. The email was a fake. Rudd did nothing wrong. Turnbull shot out of the gate too early. (The fake email’s author is a senior Treasury public servant now residing in a Canberra mental hospital.)

All pretty tatty even before you factor in two significant issues.

First - and worst - it appears to validate his claims of “never knowing the email was a fake”, Turnbull released documents. Included was a Q&A script used to coach the fake email’s author before he testified to the Senate. Oops. Seems you can’t coach a witness before a Parliamentary Inquiry. (Again, we’re all learning here!)

Second - and fatal - was the lost opportunity for Turnbull to respond like a…hmmm…national leader. Peter Hartcher from “The Sydney Morning Herald” captures it perfectly in today’s edition:

THE hue and cry over Godwin Grech and the fake email left the Australian electorate with one big question: does Malcolm Turnbull have the judgment to be prime minister?

Yesterday he had a prime opportunity to start addressing that question, to tell Australia what he had learnt from the debacle, how he would do things differently in future.

But instead of trying to restore the confidence of voters, he conducted a narrow, legalistic exercise to exonerate himself. (See full article here.)

Every day innocent Australians are killed in auto accidents. Yet it isn’t every day that a political career is killed by a used car - especially when, at the time of the accident,  that car is garaged a few thousand miles away from the victim.

Social media is changing the relationship between companies and consumers. In today’s fast-paced, on-line world it is a requirement for companies to actively monitor the numerous social media sites. In “The Wall Street Journal” journalist Sarah Needelman profiles a few, recent examples of companies listening on-line and replying rapidly. Ford was rumoured to be shutting down a fan site. Quick interjection by someone in the social media team saved the site - and it’s 10,000 fans.

Closer to home I wrote at Easter about a bad customer service experience at local department store David Jones. I was gobsmacked to receive a handwritten note of apology after I posted my story. That led to an updated entry on how David Jones won me back as a customer. If you can convert the disenfranchised you make then evangelical.

Last week I was asked for examples of companies that “get it” when it comes to social media. Any examples you can provide? And specifically - and banks doing a good job with the platform? Do advise!