Self serve checkouts
COLES and Woollies are gradually replacing staff with self-serve machines claiming that they are doing it to facilitate faster and more convenient customer service. But that is not what they told their shareholders, instead giving glowing reports of cost saving. A finance journal did a survey and found that the cost to profit ratio of supermarkets had been falling since the late 90s but that the introduction of self-serve had reversed this trend returning to profit levels of more than a decade ago. This is purely due to job shedding. People using the self-serve should be aware that as ever more people use them, ever more jobs are lost.
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Robert Karl Stonjek, Kings Meadows.
Spirit of Tasmania
I COULDN’T agree more with the comments being written about the necessity to make early bookings on the Spirit of Tasmania. It also annoys me that we are expected to pay the full price when we make the booking. This means that if we have to book our passage months in advance, we lose the interest we would have gained on this money, thus donating the interest to the Tasmanian government. The long waiting time for a "ferry service" is a fundamental flaw in the term "ferry" - it is more a shipping service than a ferry.
Sheelagh Down, Shearwater.
Tassal
THE "independent" Marine Farm Planning Review Panel, set up by the state government, found that fears that Okehampton Bay was too warm and too shallow to sustain salmon farming, were groundless and that Tassal could go ahead. The Environmental Protection Authority ordered Tassal to destock a salmon farm in Macquarie Harbour that had created a dead zone in the World Heritage Area. The state government had given permission to exceed the recommended 14,000 tonnes by more than 40 per cent. As far as the government is concerned Tassal seems to be able to do what it likes. We seem to be seeing here yet another example of Tasmania's speciality: specific businesses being too close to a sympathetic government for the public good. Is Tassal the new Gunns?
John Biggs, Sandy Bay.
