Nick Renton's YouTube Videos

Assorted Movies - well worth watching

Mandelbrot Images using Tiera-Zon

A Collection of Controversial Essays by an Opinionated Writer

Nick Renton's fourth ebook was published in July 2007:




Details are available as follows:

Reflections of a Business Rebel


Some of Nick Renton's Books:




A promotional movie for the above ebook

A promotional movie for the three ebooks below

Three new eBooks

Nick Renton's first three ebooks were published in May 2007:







Details are available as follows:

Successful Public Relations

The Wit and Wisdom of the Money Experts

Successful Newsletters

EDITORIALS

DAVID HICKS: KANGAROO COURTS AND CONCENTRATION CAMPS

Why does not the Australian government insist that David Hicks, one of its citizens, who has been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for five years without charge, be tried in the same way as Americans suspected of having committed crimes - by traditional courts in front of a jury and on the United States mainland?

Furthermore, Australia should point out that a country which keeps unconvicted persons in solitary confinement brands itself as uncivilised.

THE VICTORIAN CHARTER OF HUMAN RIGHTS

A Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities has been in force in the State of Victoria, Australia, since 2007-01-01. A worthwhile start, but does this legislation go far enough?

Subjects which are not covered but which ought to be include the following:

• A right to a trial by jury for breaches of State law
  (compare section 80 of the Australian Constitution).
  
  
• Compulsory asset acquisitions to be on just terms
  (compare section 51(xxxi) of the Australian Constitution).
  
  
• Compensation to be provided to persons acquitted of crime
  (in respect of the legal expenses incurred, of any income lost and of any loss of liberty)
  
  
• A right not to pay multiple taxes on the same transaction
  (as, for example, in the case of the fire brigade levy, goods and services tax and stamp duty on general insurance premiums).
  
  
• A right to die with dignity.
  

CHINESE WALLS CANNOT WORK

Consider a financial institution that is acting as an adviser to a company that is planning to make a takeover offer for a target company. In that capacity it clearly has access to highly sensitive market information.

If that institution wishes to also act as a broker then it is expected to take steps to ensure that those of its staff as are working in the broking area are not able to become aware of such critical information until after it has been made public. This process is called "setting up a Chinese wall".

However, if the broking staff concerned are given a specific instruction from up high not to deal in shares of the target company for the time being, then that rather lets the cat out of the bag.

If, on the other hand, the staff are not given such an instruction and continue trading in the shares concerned either as principal or as agent, then the institution will be widely (and possibly unfairly) regarded by investors, regulators and the media as not having managed its Chinese walls properly.

The only practical solution to all this is for the Parliament to pass legislation prohibiting any institution from being both a corporate advisor and a broker at the same time. Those institutions that are already both would need to choose which of these two hats they wish to wear in the future.

THE RBA AND INTEREST RATES

To have short term interest rates set by the Reserve Bank of Australia at irregular intervals may have been useful in earlier times, but in this era of having a competitive environment as an economic goal it no longer makes sense.

Australians would be much better off if these rates were set by market forces - as already happens in the case of long term interest rates.

Another precedent is worth mentioning. Once upon a time it was thought necessary to have the exchange rate for the Australian dollar fixed by the authorities. This requirement was abolished in 1983, when the floating of the currency commenced. The roof did not fall in.

In any case, the assumption that monetary policy can fix the Australian economy on a "one size fits all" basis is a nonsense: the resource States are booming; the cities in the other States are pottering along; the rural sector is struggling in the drought; and so on.

Nick Renton receives his award as a Member of the Order of Australia

The Governor of Victoria, His Excellency, John Landy AC MBE, pins the medal on Nick Renton at Government House, Melbourne.

Nick Renton's Family

Granddaughters Zoe, Lucy and Nellie Seale

Daughter Heather Renton and Grandson Dominic Harvey

Nick Renton's House

And the Street outside the House:

Cartoon of Nick Renton by WEG

A VISIT TO EUROPE

Europe has many interesting places for tourists and, generally speaking, the people are friendly.

Long distance trains are of high quality, while local services in the major capital cities, although often very crowded, at least run at very frequent intervals.

However, to a visitor from Australia the common European practice of charging for the use of public toilets seems positively antediluvian - and quite unreasonable in the case of the toilets in certain institutions, such as museums, that charge relatively high admission fees.

It was also astonishing during a recent trip to find that the central Paris branches of a major French bank proved quite incapable of cashing travellers' cheques even when denominated in euros.

Lucy's Story

A short story by Nick Renton's granddaughter, Lucy Seale, when aged 3:

The giraffe went to the elephant's house and the elephant had cake with the giraffe.

The hippopotamus went to the elephant's house with the giraffe and they had afternoon tea. They had biscuits, chocolate biscuits.

And then who came along was the pigeons. And then the enormous giant giraffe came. And then who came was polar bears and then who came was the turtle and then who came along was the fish. And they had afternoon tea and cake and biscuits.

And then they played with each other on the seesaw. And then along came the hedgehog and they all played on the seesaws and then they all jumped on the trampoline because the elephant had a trampoline.

Then who came along was the zebras and then who came along was the penguins and then they all jumped on the trampoline.

They were going somewhere else to have a picnic with their friends. And then somebody else came along who was called the pigs.

Seeing oneself

A favourite image from the web:

Telstra

Telstra, Australia's biggest ISP, does not seem to be interested in preventing crime.

To elaborate, I sometimes use the e-mail address ner AT nickrenton.com. This gets redirected to my main address, which is nrenton AT bigpond.net.au.

One feature of ner AT nickrenton.com is that it also works for any other name preceding the AT nickrenton.com

Some time ago a spamster started sending out a large number of spam messages using forged sender addresses ending in my domain AT nickrenton.com - with the result that I have now received about 29,000 bounced messages. While I can filter these out and get them deleted from the server this does not solve what appears to be an ongoing problem.

I sent Telstra a sample of the e-mails showing all headers and asked Telstra to take steps to have the perpetrator caught and prosecuted for this criminal activity.

Telstra refused even to investigate, despite the fact that this wasteful use of the Telstra broadband must be costing the company money. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that I am the only user so affected.

Spoilt Family Cats