Phil’s knighthood
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
On the Pulse took a double-take, scratched its head, chuckled and then went back to make sure the news of Prince Philip’s knighthood was correct and, yep, it was.
Since Monday the award has been called a ‘bit of a joke’, Northern Territory chief minister Adam Giles said he thought it was April Fool’s Day instead of Australia Day and Queensland Liberal, Warren Entsch, said he didn’t think it was a smart call at all. The backlash no doubt took Prime Minister Abbott by surprise.
But has anyone even spared a thought for the recipient?
His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, Baron Greenwich, Royal Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Extra Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Grand Master and First and Principal Knight Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (and his title goes on), already has a collection of about two dozen knighthoods from an assortment of countries, plus an array of various orders from all over the world and other stuff going back into the 1940s.
On the Pulse can see that obviously it may be a problem.
When you think about it, Phil lived in the ‘global village’ long before the term was invented, and all along (it seems) the villagers want to keep demoting him. Any wonder the poor guy is gaffe prone. The pressure must be enormous, and now those damned Australians go and do it again with a Knight of the Order of Australia!
Meanwhile, On the Pulse is just confused as to whether we should call him Sir Prince Philip, or Prince Sir Philip.
Cash in the bank
On the Pulse was flicking through the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics releases recently (as you do), when their latest report about today’s wages bubbled to the surface and fired its torpedo of factual figures at us.
Apparently in May 2014, one quarter of all employees received weekly total cash earnings of $1532 or more, and one quarter of full-time employees earned $1850 or more per week.
Ah, so not about On the Pulse, then.
But the compulsion to read on anyway was irresistible.
The report ‘Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours’ is released every two years and shows statistics on employee earnings and hours paid, broken down by occupation, industry and sex, among other things. It was the first time the ABS was able to break down the statistics by age and rate of pay. On the Pulse’s pulse rate fell at the revelation that 60 per cent of employees were employed full-time and received average weekly total cash earnings of $1569, and the median weekly total cash earnings of $1339 did little to stabilise that condition either.
Seems the top 10 per cent of full-time employees received weekly total cash earnings of $2548, while the bottom 10 per cent were paid $800 or less; and somewhere at the bottom there is where On the Pulse came in.
Late night at work
When the final page of Tuesday’s Times went to press at 10.07pm on Monday night it set a record. No one can remember the paper making it to press so late.
Of course the drama started nine hours earlier when the Times office lost power. Two hours later it had not come back on, so plans were put in place to move the newsroom to Glen Innes. While the date did not longer load on the front page (because it loads automatically and we had moved to a different computer system), the rest of the paper did make it to press.