Blog against theocracy - National Day of Secularism - 26 May 2007

National Day of Secularism
May the 26th

I have been tagged by Beep Beep, the wise sage responsible for Beep! Beep! It's Me.

How the “meme” works

This “meme” works in two steps; first the “Tagging stage” and then the “Blog against theocracy stage”. (the word "meme" incidentally, is one of the most pretentious words doing the rounds of the internet)

Tagging stage

If you are tagged by the meme, then it’s the same old format; mention this entry so people can see the rules and then tag five other bloggers (preferably Australian given the nature of the NDoT.).

Blog against theocracy stage

If you have been tagged then in addition to tagging others, it is also hoped that you will write a blog entry about the separation of Church and State in Australia. It could be a critique of Pell’s “normative democracy”, the historic anti-democracy sermonizing of Archbishop Daniel Mannix, inevitable discrimination by the funding of (approved) chaplains in public schools, the state backed imposition of bans on forbidden women’s dress or whatever Church-State issue you find important.

Preferably, such a blog entry would be published on the 26th, but there is no deadline as such. Just a couple of caveats:

1) the church-state anti-theocracy blog entry should mention the phrase “National Day of Thanksgiving”, possibly mentioning that the entry is a response to the NDoT, and
2) feel free to add the (again admittedly modest) banner.

I don't really know all that many Australian bloggers, and Beep and Plonka have already been tagged, but I will tag those I do know:

1. The Second Sight
2. Crazy World
3. Contempt


I'll have to leave the rest open.

Dikkii's financial tips #3: How do I reduce my bank fees?

Welcome to Dikkii's financial tips.

This is a new series where I attempt to provide some sort of guidance to financial matters without breaching the Corporations Act by actually providing advice.

Today, we'll be looking some more at bank fees. Specifically, how to reduce them, if not avoid paying them outright.

I'm going to look specifically at deposit accounts, today. I'll do a feature on lending a little down the track, but for most of us, deposit accounts are what we start out with. In today's banking climate, it is quite appropriate that we look at deposit accounts separate to lending, because more and more people are getting their loans through mortgage brokers, and you may even end up with a loan from some organisation that doesn't even have deposit operations. Or isn't even a bank, credit union or building society, for that matter.

There are many different types of fees that you might come across in using deposit accounts. We're going to stick to the main ones. In the process, I might use terms for bank accounts that I introduced in Dikkiis financial tips #2: Why are there so many different bank accounts? and so if you get lost, please click back here for help.

So let's get started.

1. Transaction fees

For personal accounts, these are normally fees for any withdrawals that you might make.

It's interesting to note that banks reserve the right to start charging for deposits and anything else, but to do so on anything other than business accounts will be PR suicide for the first bank that tries to do this.

Transaction fees will normally be quite low for non-cash withdrawals, such as through internet and phone banking channels, a little bit higher for cash withdrawals made through ATMs or EFTPOS, a little higher again if they're through a cheque facility and then completely outrageously high if done over the counter of a bank.

The good thing about these, is that most transaction and cash management accounts appear to have a reasonable amount of "electronic" withdrawals built into them fee free - like about 15 or 20, and at some banks, you might get an unlimited supply of these. By electronic, I mean ATM, EFTPOS, internet and phone banking.

Do not accept anything less than 15 electronic withdrawals fee free on your transaction account. Go for unlimited if you can. After a few transfers and bill payments, you'll be wondering where your free transactions have ended up.

One thing important to note is that where you have any kind of direct debit arrangement in place out of your bank account, these will normally be factored into your electronic transactions total. Always check to see how direct debits are itemised in the fee scheme of things.

Be prepared to pay top dollar for cash withdrawals over the counter of a bank branch - I don't think that there's an account left that gives much in the way of exemptions for these. You can expect to pay up to $4.00 per over the counter withdrawal if you like getting your cash from a person.

Interestingly enough, online accounts don't charge transaction fees at all, as a rule. However, you can only generally withdraw out of them over the net or telephone, so this kinda makes sense. I would counsel against opening any kind of online account that charged transaction fees.

Anyway, the moral of the tale is that if you make withdrawals through your bank's network of ATMs or use the bank's phone or internet banking facilities, you will save on transaction fees. Avoid doing withdrawals over the counter or via cheque facilities.

2. Account keeping fees

This is a bitch of a fee introduced primarily to recognise the fact that accounts don't maintain themselves. Usually, these will only apply to things like transaction accounts or cash management accounts - ones where you'd expect to be quite a lot of activity.

Online accounts don't usually charge these fees - but you still need to use them with a transaction account which will.

People who will happily complain about this one strangely don't appear to mind that they'll be charged up to $50 per month for monthly land line fees, or other utilities, even though bank account keeping fees can start from as little as $2.50 per month and only go as high as $6.00 per month, usually.

These fees normally come with catches.

For example - a small account keeping fee on a transaction account may have written into the fine print that only "electronic" withdrawals are allowed, that is, only through ATMs, EFTPOS, internet and telephone banking. You would normally expect to pay hefty transaction fees if you do a withdrawal over the counter in a bank branch, or operate a cheque facility.

If these are even allowed. This blogger is aware of quite a few transaction accounts where over the counter withdrawals are expressly forbidden, except in the event that you close your account.

For larger account keeping fees, you can expect maybe up to a certain number of over the counter withdrawals being made available to you fee free - like, you know, maybe two - before being hit with transaction fees for these.

Be aware that some banks like to offer a deal whereby they will waive account keeping fees if you keep more than a minimum amount in the account. This is a con. You will not maintain the balance, and will therefore be charged.

Also the minimums are usually quite high, often in the region of $1,000 or more. Given that these accounts are normally transaction accounts which pay extremely small rates of interest - if any at all - you would be better off keeping any money that you are not using in an account that earns more interest. Avoid these kinds of deals - banks need to know that his sort of thing will not be tolerated.

Try to keep your account keeping fees to a minimum - why pay extra for the privilege of using over the counter facilities if you don't need them?

Lastly, if you are paying account keeping fees, try to reduce the number of accounts that you use. Having a separate account with a cheque facility that you rarely use is a luxury if you are paying two sets of account keeping fees. Given that most state governments in Australia have stopped charging debits tax, if you require a cheque facility so badly, have one added to your everyday transaction account. You'll have more of a clue about balances in there before you write cheques than a separate account, anyway.

3. Other bank access fees

I get asked about these fees all the time, usually from people who really should know better.

Case in point: My good buddy, whom we call "Bob" has his bank accounts with a small regional bank. As a result, he can never find an ATM of his bank's when he needs one. So he has to use other bank ATM's.

Bob could be being charged up to $3.00 per go at using a bank ATM network that his bank is not maintaining and, therefore, getting charged for using.

Bob: This sucks. Why should I get charged for this?
Me: Well, ATM networks don't just maintain themselves, you know. Why should you get free access to other bank ATMs, just because your bank isn't wealthy enough to build their own network properly?
Bob: I love my bank. They support the community.
Me: Well they're clearly not supporting your community, because in all the time that I've known you, you've never been able to find one of their ATMs.

What Bob doesn't get, is that if he wants convenience, he's going to have to trade in the "community" feel of his current provider for it. Knowing Bob, of course, he'll blame the big banks for this, and come up with some conspiracy theory that has it as a plot by the big players to wipe out the small ones. But I digress.

One thing to look out for with other bank ATM usage fees is that usually balance enquiries at other bank ATMs are often charged the same rate as a withdrawal. A great trick here is to try a withdrawal - if you have no money in your account, the withdrawal won't go through, you will get a printout showing your balance, and you (in most instances, but not all) won't get charged the non-bank ATM fee. Of course, you may end up doing a withdrawal that you didn't need to do.

My suggestion here is to take advantage of your phone banking if you just want a balance.

Another thing to look out for is that some banks will charge an electronic withdrawal fee, or have an other bank withdrawal count towards your fee free total for your electronic withdrawals, on top of getting stung for the other bank ATM fee. Ouch!

The moral of the tale is, steer clear of other bank ATMs, unless your bank has some kind of deal in place where you do not get charged for using certain other bank ATMs.

Also, cash out at EFTPOS terminals is a great way to get around using another banks ATMs. Planned well, EFTPOS is an excellent way of doing this.

4. International transactions

These can be quite pricey. I've used ATMs overseas and regretted it afterwards. Usually, you could be up for as much as $5.00 per withdrawal, so you need to make every one count. Avoiding small withdrawals is a really good suggestion.

5. Overdrawing fees and interest

Never overdraw your bank account. Borrow from family and friends if you have to and ensure that you've got enough in your account at the end of the month to cover fees.

Keep mental tabs on the transaction and other bank ATM fees you're clocking up, or keep a small notebook if you have to. You only have yourself to blame if you overdraw your account.

Most banks will let you get away with a few dollars before they start charging fees - but they won't let you get away with a debit balance for a moment before they start charging interest, sometimes up to 25% pa or more.

And never, ever enter into a direct debit arrangement if you don't know when it's going to come out of your account. This is just being irresponsible.

Overdraft facilities by prior arrangement will save you on fees - but it is rare that they'll save you on interest. My suggestion is to avoid these unless you have a good reason for needing one.

6. Fee exemptions and hints

Transaction fees can be avoided - go for an unlimited electronic transaction deal or better.

Account keeping fees can also be avoided. Most banks offer fee exemptions to customers who have their lending under the same roof. Also, relationship balances can assist here as well - one bank offers a deal whereby if you have $50,000 or more in a relationship total, you'll get your account keeping fees waived. Relationship balances is usually the absolute value of all banking balances - deposit and lending - that you have with a bank.

Another deal that some banks offer is to be a shareholder. One bank has a deal whereby if you own more than 500 shares in them, you'll get charged no account keeping or transaction fees. Nice.

Students usually enjoy fee free banking. Be warned, though. If you are a tertiary student, you will usually need to visit the bank just after the start of each calendar year to get your exemption extended for another year.

Pensioners often get to enjoy fee free banking.

Other bank ATM fees and international access fees can't usually be waived for anyone. One bank that I do know, however, doesn't have very large operations in the state where I live, so they're offering to waive all other bank ATM fees provided that you link one of their Visa debit cards to your account. That's pretty good.

One last thing - if you've been charged a fee that you think you shouldn't have been, get a bank staffer to explain it to you. If you're still not happy with their explanation, mention the words "Banking Ombudsman" and just see how fast they move in getting your fees reversed.

But anyway, that's the minefield that is bank fees, or at least a start to them.

Other fees do exist - banks these days exist to get fee income - but hopefully we've covered the basic ones.

You have to know what you're paying before you can go shopping around, but you stand to save a fortune once you do. Hopefully this post has helped you out.

--
Dikkii's financial tips index

Standard but necessary disclaimer: This is not advice. Only a complete idiot would think that any of this constituted advice. It's not even vaguely reasonable to consider this to be advice. If you are in any doubt as to the content of this, see a good, independent financial adviser immediately. They do exist.

The late Rev. Jerry Falwell

I was going to post something about the passing of this guy, but my mother always told me that if you can't say anything nice about someone, it's better not to say anything at all.

Carnival of the Godless #66

The 66th Carnival of the Godless is up at The Atheist Experience, and yours truly has got The Meaning of Life up there for all.

My attention has been taken, this time aroung by a post at Symbolic Order by Aaron Ross Powell titled, "What atheism offers: Justifying a life's purpose."

A well written post.

Also, Bob, the Austin Atheist has put this up: How Not To Persuade An Atheist #1: Bypassing the Intellect . Excellent.

Elsewhere there is plenty of stuff for all so check it out here.

Check it out here.

Great debacles of our time: The failed Qantas takeover

This one was always one that had our full attention from day one. And it stands as an example of a pretty good lesson in how not to do a private equity deal.

The story goes like this - a company that is roundly considered an all-Australian icon, Qantas, is subject to a takeover, where the guys taking the company over is a small cabal of management in league with Macquarie Bank and a bunch of private equity financiers including Texas Pacific and Allco Finance Group and others.

Naturally, all the usual stuff comes out - the unions complain about possible off shoring of jobs, politicians complain in parliament about the possible loss of an all-Australian icon, staff complain about an uncertain work environment and the media lap it all up.

Anyway, institutions holding the shares refuse to sell and the whole deal falls down in a blaze of uncertainty in what was possibly the most anti-climactic end to a private equity deal yet.

Anyway, I found this whole thing amusing from start to finish. I would have found it even funnier if I didn't hold shares in Qantas and Macquarie Bank, but this was truly a debacle that ranks highly on our great debacles scale.

The first thing about this story was the degree to which management could not keep it quiet that they were going to attempt a management buy-out. Rumours abounded and bubbled around to the point where the ASX had to issue a please explain. Fortunately, by that point, the consortium funding this was ready to go public and so the deal financially came out. Not before, I'm sure, people read the newspapers and acted on the rumours which were, by that stage, smoking hot.

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who thinks that the ASX took far too long to act to get the rumours addressed. But this was funny stuff.

Anyway, the consortium's takeover attempt goes public and is embraced fully by the Qantas board after some weak attempts to show some form of neutrality. You do have to note at this point in time, and also throughout, very little disclosure has been made as to how many in management or on the board were in on this. It appears that disclosure only takes place these days when possession of the shares in the new entity takes place.

So the terms of the private equity deal are fairly attractive relative to the share price - $5.60 per share prior to a fully-franked dividend of $0.15 per share which means that the takeover offer price is $5.45 per share after the dividend is paid out.

Acceptances are slow coming. That's OK, the consortium is happy with this. They're expecting them bit by bit. But they're still confident that they'll get the required 90% acceptances to allow mandatory acquisition of the remaining shares by the cut-off date.

Meanwhile, some of the institutions are holding out. It's clear that quite a few of them do not want to sell.

One of them, Andrew Sisson from Balanced Equity Management breaks the silence that fund managers usually put up by publicly announcing that the offer by the consortium is simply not good enough.

It is clear at this stage that the bid is now in deep trouble.

It is at about this point, if memory serves me correctly, that the desperate consortium tries to pull a rabbit out of a hat. This was quite novel and really quite amazing for this type of takeover. The consortium extend their offer and says that they'll proceed with only 70% acceptances.

I found this bit hilarious - basically, they were saying that they were happy to allow 30% of the company to remain on the market.

This bit was always going to backfire for several reasons:

• Retreating to 70% acceptances looks desperate; and
• A new possibility for investors has emerged.

A new possibility for investors had emerged, and it was one which would have been particularly attractive to some, although admittedly not so attractive to others - investors had effectively been offered a once-in-a-lifetime entry in at the ground floor to a private equity deal involving a management buy-out.

Time was running out now.

To complicate matters, as they do, ever since the board of Qantas announced that they were approving the bid, hedge funds just could not help themselves.

Now what hedge funds do here is very simple. They go out there and, without breaching the mandatory takeover offer rules, they get their hands on as much of the company that they can, while taking advantage of the arbitrage difference between the buy price and the takeover offer price.

As a result of all the shares changing hands, Qantas, which is prevented by law from being owned by more than 49% foreign investors, is suspected to have breached this provision and it is thought that the amount of shares in the hands of overseas hedge funds may have cleared the 49% mark by a good portion.

What is also interesting to note, is that the hedge funds themselves signalled their intention for the fun and games to continue by issuing acceptances for part of their shareholdings in the hope that this activity could be stretched out. More on this later.

Anyway, hedge funds were in it up to their eyeballs and stood to make a killing should the takeover go through.

So the deadline approaches, and the consortium approaches every man and his dog on the share register attempting to get enough acceptances to enable the bid to be extended.

At the deadline, all they had to do was to get 50% acceptances, and an automatic extension of two weeks would have been added to the deadline.

It is at this point that the funniest part of this little arrangement happens.

Leading up to the deadline, it was clear that they had about 47-48% acceptances and they just needed one of the hedge funds to get on board - because it was clear that any of the Australian fund managers who were holding out would not be selling.

One of the hedge funds gives enough acceptances to get the offer over the line - but a full five hours after the offer lapses.

The bid is declared dead, but the consortium is not giving up.

Soon, after the Takeovers Panel rules that they will not be accepting this, and Qantas, and the consortium both publicly declare the bid is dead.

What emerges not long after that is a comedy of errors, as it is discovered that, if they wanted to, the consortium could have chosen to exercise a bit of fine print in the takeover offer that they appeared to be completely unaware of. This point was cut and pasted into the takeover offer at some point, and seemed pretty clear in that if a shareholder had issued a partial acceptance, the bidder could have deemed that a full acceptance had been issued.

If the bidding consortium had chosen to enforce this, this bid would be easily over the line. Of course, it should be noted that a long and costly court battle would have ensued.

Instead they chose not to.

The bid was finally dead.

The big losers from this were the hedge funds - as a result of this failed takeover, they're all having to sell their shares well into the red.

Will this takeover be resurrected? Maybe. They'd want to do it better than this, though. This was a foul-up of monumental proportions.

Disclosure: This blogger owns shares in Qantas Airways Limited and Macquarie Bank Limited.

Standard but necessary disclaimer: This is not advice. Only a complete idiot would think that any of this constituted advice. It's not even vaguely reasonable to consider this to be advice. If you are in any doubt as to the content of this, see a good, independent financial adviser immediately. They do exist.

Eternal life

If you read my post on The meaning of life, then hop over to Plonka's blog, where he has posted about the concept of Eternal Life.

It kinda complements my post a little bit, and I'm a big fan of the way that Plonka can put in so much detailed goddamn research into his posts.

He is one seriously focused dude. And life-threateningly polite into the bargain.

Check it out here:

Plonka's Blog: Eternal Life

The meaning of life

Hi folks. I'm not going to tell you The Meaning of Life today, instead, I'm going to talk about that age-old question:

"What is the meaning of life?"

This is a question that can, depending on what mood I'm in, either make me very irate, or very silly. In any event, it's not a question that I've ever seriously entertained myself, and I plan to discuss why, further down the page.

What does it mean? What is it all about? And what is its purpose?

I'm actually asking this about our question, and not about life, people. The question about the meaning of life is one of the slyest tools that proselytising theists like to use to ingratiate themselves onto freethinkers, and it's one that freethinkers such as atheists and agnostics prefer not to address.

But they should. This is a question that is not going to go away, no matter how hard we try, so let's have a look at it.

These days, usually whenever I hear this question, it's usually framed like this:

"Everybody thinks about the meaning of life."

I think that the presumption included within this one statement is breathtaking.

Let's have a look at some of the "leaps of faith" included within this sentence, and see if we can come to some sort of idea of what this sentence even means.

1. What do people mean, when they talk about the "meaning of life"?

This one has always confused the hell out of me. What is the meaning of life? I don't mean the meaning itself, really, I'm looking for someone to tell me about what they mean when they use this term.

I've heard a remarkably diverse number of answers on this very subject, but no one has yet been able to pinpoint a single definition that appears to have any degree of consensus.

Some answers include the following:

"What is my purpose?" - I'm uncertain of this as a possibility, as it appears to interpose a significant degree of vanity upon what is at first glance an answer about existence generally.

"Why are we here?" - This is a great example of a question that cannot be answered. If you were to ask me this, I would generally answer with the question, "If I give an answer, how are you going to prove me wrong?"

"What is our destiny?" - This is merely the first question with an attempt to remove the personal vanity. This is another great example of a question without an answer.

"For what reason are we alive?" - Finally, a question with a variety of possible answers. Personally, if this is given to me as a possible interpretation of the meaning of life question, I like to answer it with the most obvious answer there is - "A happy series of accidents involving mostly Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms." Unfortunately, this doesn't cut it with our intrepid questioners, so we have to move on.

"What is life's purpose?" - Yet another question with no possible answer.

Now I could go on and on with this, but it would appear to be, quite frankly, silly to continue.

What we have is a potentially limitless series of questions without answers that are designed to obfuscate and dazzle the respondant into a situation where they are overwhelmed by this potentially unlimited series of questions.

A more meaningful definition of "the meaning of life" is one that encompasses all of these - and yet this has no meaning at all. Apart from the grammatical impossibility of all of these forming a single "meaning", we still have no firm definition of what this is.

This does my head in sometimes, but why would anyone design a question to have no answer?

Why not ask these questions one by one?

The answer is God. The questions of the meaning of life really have no answer, but this is not important to the theist. What the theist wants you to do is to be so overwhelmed, and so dazzled by all the implications of whatever it is that you think that the question is all about, that it is immediately plausible amongst all this confusion that God exists as a way to make sense of it all.

I call bullshit.

"The meaning of life" is a gigantic red herring that renders all other questions secondary - yet it should not. It is through consideration of what is essentially a bogus concept that proselytizing theists are allowed to push their worldview onto the rest of us, and I really wish that it would stop.

It is also, a question without meaning. Theists have been allowed to get away with this one for years - and if you allow them to ask it without pulling them up, you're not doing them any favours, either.

Put simply, the term, "meaning of life" means nothing.

2. Does everyone think about it?

There's a fair amount of anecdotal evidence that suggests that a lot of people consider this question, and we've seen from the first point that no one knows what problem it is that they're supposed to be solving, when they ponder the "meaning of life".

To be fair, we live in a world where at every possible opportunity, lots of people are prompted to think about this question. And not just by theists.

In his somewhat erroneously titled, Hitchhiker Trilogy, Douglas Adams came up with an answer to "Life, The Universe and Everything". The answer was, quite famously, 42.

Adams makes my first point pretty well, in that he made the point that the answer would make no sense until you could come up with a workable question.

In the real world, we're unlikely to come up with an answer until we've correctly formulated a question first, but it's interesting to note that the person doing the prompting of the reader to think about the meaning of life, in Adams' case, was a staunch atheist.

But in the examples we've used, the most interesting thing about them is that a third party has prompted the thinker to think about the meaning of life.

Nowhere do we have an example of someone thinking about this question unprompted.

So in this light, what do we make of the claim, oft stated by theists, that everyone thinks about the meaning of life?

It is implicit in the claim that people do this sort of thinking unprompted, however it is my view that the stats on this simply don't exist. And therefore, in the absence of hard evidence to suggest that people do think about the so-called meaning of life unprompted, the only reasonable position that we can take is that of the null hypothesis - that not everybody thinks about the meaning of life unprompted.

3. What use is the "meaning of life" question to us?

We've seen that the question itself is riddled with flaws as to its meaning, and we've seen that no one (to my knowledge) has ever produced stats that confirm that people naturally think about this question unprompted.

Our next question is about how the hell do we come up with some sort of viable use for such a question, once we have answered it?

The question, at this point in time is too vaguely worded to be of any use to us, and we simply have to accept that the utter meaninglessness of the question means that consideration of this question without any definable terms is an exercise in futility.

If it has any use at all, it is as an example of a completely useless question that should never have been asked in the first place - your archetypal unanswerable question.

Apart from this, it is inefficient to consider such questions.

4. How can God hope to provide the answers to such questions?

Theists are used to this sort of thing. No matter how ridiculously formulated a question is, if you ask it, He will be able to answer, goes the line.

Allow me to provide an excellent example:

"Ailwehfo;ihwe;ip' p owejf' eopj' wegopjwe wro[j wervg wegjo[asdoj skl;jsdv'phiasdf ojbvo?"

Believe it or not, a theist will maintain that there is an answer to this question.

Never mind that I formulated this question by just hitting keys at random, a sort of tactile version of glossolalia.

I've heard a theist, in exasperation, say, "Never mind the question: God will provide the answer."

The utter uselessness of this statement is staggering. How can God presume to answer a question that has no meaning?

And, more to the point, how can He presume that this question, to which I attach no personal relevance, will suddenly become more relevant after the answer has been provided?

Lastly, how useful would such an answer be?

No theist can seriously believe that God answers undefined and irrelevant questions that no one asked, really, do they?

And, one last point, can a theist really get away with the claim that everyone thinks about this "question" unprompted?

Vale Lobby Loyde

It was scarcely over two months ago that I wrote an obituary for another giant of the Australian music industry - Billy Thorpe.

A name that will forever be linked to Thorpe is that of Lobby Loyde.

Loyde was at one stage a member of Thorpe's band, The Aztecs, and is the guitarist who is credited with having taught Thorpe how to beef up his playing.

Thorpe learned the guitar relatively late in his career, being merely the vocalist for the first few incarnations of The Aztecs. Thorpe wrote in one of his books that he was forced to learn the guitar when a guitarist dropped out, leaving him to carry on as guitarist and vocalist in the band at relatively short notice. Not long after this, Loyde joined the Aztecs, and is widely credited with having encouraged Thorpe to adopt the loud playing style that he was known for.

Loyde left soon after, but Thorpe and The Aztecs rocketed into their "purple patch" as it were, culminating with their now legendary set at the Sunbury music festival.

Loyde went his own way and formed a band called The Coloured Balls, which churned a psychedelic classic in the album, Ball Power, issued in 1973. This was a harder edged version of psychedelia than that which had done the rounds of Europe and North America, and is said to have pre-empted punk in it's intensity a good 3 years prior.

Sadly, however, they soon became the band of choice for Melbourne's then-burgeoning skinhead scene which, themselves, sprang out of the sharps scene. Loyde was not comfortable with this and fled to the UK where he developed a cult following, wrote a science fiction novel (since lost) and recorded a soundtrack album for the novel.

The master tapes of this album were released in Australia in 2007.

Loyde returned to Australia and briefly played bass with Rose Tattoo. He rejoined the band on guitar in 2006 after the death of the late Pete Wells. He was near terminal with cancer at this stage.

Tattoo vocalist Angry Anderson said this about Loyde, when he was inducted into the ARIA hall of fame:

More than anyone else, Lobby helped create the Australian guitar sound. Long before Angus (Young) or Billy Thorpe or the Angels or Rose Tattoo. Lobby inspired Australian bands to step forward and play as loud and aggressively as they could. People are still trying to copy it today.

Incidentally, Rose Tattoo have not had a good time of late. Wells himself died in 2006, and so did original bass player, Ian Rilen.

But anyway, it's a sad day for Australian rock and roll.

RIP.

All on for young and old

Honestly, the excitement never ends over at Action Skeptics.

If it's not one of Akusai's rivetting stories, it's something else.

Here is an absolute ripper of a yarn about Warriorschool - a cult within the Bunjinkan Budo Taijutsu school of martial arts. Magus even makes one of his rare appearances to regale us with the unsavoury part of the story - the bit where he was nearly indoctrinated.

The funny thing is that all of us know a story of people who've gotten a little "too into" their martial art of choice. Whether it's the meat heads at school who wanted new and more efficient ways of beating up the nerds, or the nerds themselves who end up forsaking their old buddies and spending too much time swotting up on the Tzus, Lao and Sun.

Anyway, Warriorschool appears to be as wacko as you get - a bunch of survivalists out to ensure that there is still a segment of society paranoid that we'll all turn to the person next to us, eventually, and crack their heads open like eggs.

In the middle of the story, a couple of bloggers purporting to be family lawyers representing the head of Warriorschool's wife make an appearance in the comments section asking for more information from Akusai and Magus. The timing is impeccable, although I worry that these guys are looking to serve some sort of defo suit on the Action Skeptics boys.

I found it a bit like how corporate cults like Landmark ingratiate themselves upon organisations in order to squeeze bucks out of the employees.

Anyway, this is their index page.

Part 5 promises to be incredible.

Dikkii's financial tips #2: Why are there so many different bank accounts?

Welcome to Dikkii's financial tips.

This is a series where I attempt to provide some sort of guidance to financial matters without breaching the Corporations Act by actually providing advice.

Today, we were going to look at bank fees, but they're going to make more sense if, before we do, we look briefly at bank accounts first. It is vitally important, that in this day and age, if you want to cut your bank fees, you must know what bank accounts you need, and what fee structure they're on. Only then should you be addressing the issue of what level of interest you'd like to generate.

Part of most people's misconceptions about bank fees come from the fact that they have entirely the wrong set-up for their accounts in the first place. This blogger has a weird and wonderful bank account set-up - if truth be told, I have a couple more bank accounts than I need, but then again, I don't pay any account keeping or transaction fees, so there's no loss there.

This post aims to have a look at why different bank accounts evolved, and what their purposes are.

We're going to look at deposit accounts, first. These are a bit more straightforward than lending accounts, and are what most people start their lives off with first. And we'll try to cover off on the main types:

• Transaction and cheque accounts
• Term deposits
• High interest savings accounts
• Cash management accounts
• Cash management trusts
• 24 hour accounts & 11AM accounts
• Online accounts

There are other types of bank accounts out there, but these are the main ones for personal investors.

1. Transaction and cheque accounts

These evolved from the old savings accounts and the old cheque accounts, which don't really exist anymore except in archaic, inconvenient and costly formats, such as passbook accounts.

Transaction accounts exist to provide day-to-day access to money - a sort of entry and exit point into and out of the banking system. Without one of these, you have very few ways to access your cash as and when you need it.

These days, you're sunk if you don't have ATM and EFTPOS access - which is what these accounts aim to provide. Most of them also provide a cheque facility on the side, should you need one and this is one reason why cheque accounts in their old form have largely disappeared. The cheque accounts of today are merely transaction accounts with a cheque facility.

Also, like most of the accounts in this list, transaction accounts should have phone and internet access.

Most transaction accounts pay minimal interest, if any. They are designed for transacting, nothing more. Keeping large wads of cash in these is usually a transitory thing.

2. Term deposits

These are pretty much the only type of deposit account that still exists intact from the "good old days". Essentially, a term deposit pays a fixed rate of interest for a fixed time frame.

There is pretty much no access to a term deposit until it matures - if you do, expect to pay an interest adjustment, which is normally unfavourable, and an administration fee which could be as high as $50. One should really only consider term deposits if they need to lock away a sum of cash for a short to medium term time frame with no requirement to access any of the funds. What if you need these funds in a hurry?

Another thing to be aware of when using term deposits. You are having a bet that interest rates will not increase over the time frame that your funds are invested. If interest rates increase, you have no one else to blame other than yourself if you start moaning about better rates that might be available in the future. This is a risk that you are taking when locking into one of these products.

3. High interest savings accounts (HISAs)

These appeared in the early nineties as a way of getting depositors to save. Most of these pay a bonus rate of interest should you satisfy some criteria.

It's interesting to note that they evolved from a specialised account which was known by some providers as the "Christmas Club Account". These were highly restrictive, yet effective HISAs.

The most common criteria appears to be a requirement that there be at least one deposit per month and no withdrawals in order to satisfy the eligibility requirements for bonus interest, but some also have account minimums as well. Because there is significant variance on this, be sure to read the fine print.

HISAs appear to have lost a significant degree of popularity in recent years - mainly due to the advent of the online account. For small amounts, the interest earned doesn't appear to reward the onerous bonus interest requirements by comparison with online acounts.

4. Cash management accounts (CMAs)

Cash management accounts evolved as an all-in-one solution designed to take care of large amounts of cash with higher interest but a full range of access, i.e. ATM, EFTPOS, internet, phone and cheque.

Normally, CMAs can have higher fees applying to them if their balances fall below a certain amount. Also, they usually only pay interest above certain balances. But this (interest) is usually quite high compared to transaction accounts.

CMAs have also been losing popularity in recent years as people realise that using a combination of a transaction account and an online account yields similar levels of convenience with minimal extra disruption.

Banks appear to be realising this, and some have started issuing more sophisticated CMAs that are targetting this market - these CMAs are probably more accurately termed online accounts with better access functionality. However, it remains to be seen whether these enhanced CMAs are successful.

5. Cash management trusts (CMTs)

A bit of a red herring - these are not bank accounts at all, but a special kind of managed fund that only invests in cash assets.

But given that most of them these days appear to have enhanced access facilities such as ATM, EFTPOS, internet, phone and cheque, and pay market rates of interest in arrears, quite a lot of CMT users use them in place of CMAs.

Be aware that fees are usually implied rather than explicitly charged, and that significant minimum balances are normally required. Also, like all managed funds, none of them come with a bank guarantee.

6. 24 hour accounts & 11AM accounts

These are extremely sophisticated bank accounts for people who need to have extremely large amounts of cash on hand at short notice.

They normally don't have any access methods, save for credit to and debit from a nominated account, however, they do pay top rates of interest and they generally have multiple storage facilities within the account - for example, you can generally designate a portion of the funds invested to be locked away in several term deposits within the account as well as having cash on call - as well as sweep facilities and consolidated reporting.

Seriously high minimums apply with these, and most retail investors will never require use of these.

7. Online accounts

These were the banking innovation of the 1990s. Basically, these pay a high rate of interest on all funds invested, and normally charge no account keeping or transaction fees.

This blogger regularly used to breathe sighs of sheer amazement as these accounts brazenly fought it out for market share with interest rates that were regularly over and above the official cash rate set by the Reserve Bank.

The catch is that you need to have a nominated account (normally a transaction account) set up for credits into and debits out of the online account, but with the advent of enhanced CMAs, this could be coming to an end.

It's also notable that some online accounts are getting more sophisticated themselves. This blogger saw one offered by a credit union that offered multiple storage facilities, much like in a 24 hour account. Unfortunately, some of the attraction of these accounts is in their simplicity - so it remains to be seen if this kind of innovation is successful.


Banks offer plenty of other types of deposit accounts as well, these are just the main ones. Others that you might come across are childrens' accounts, pensioner (deeming) accounts, Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) and others.

Also, we've really only looked at accounts for personal use - there are plenty for business use as well.

In my next post, I plan to tackle fees, although I might switch order yet again and put my case study in. Or do cheques.

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Dikkii's financial tips index

Standard but necessary disclaimer: This is not advice. Only a complete idiot would think that any of this constituted advice. It's not even vaguely reasonable to consider this to be advice. If you are in any doubt as to the content of this, see a good, independent financial adviser immediately. They do exist.