fitzroyalty

Prior to the Pinky Beecroft and the White Russians gig at the Brunswick Hotel last month my girlfriend and I had dinner at Tom Phat, somehere we had been meaning to try for some time. Its reputation for quality food at reasonable prices is deserved, and the service was very good. The menu is varied with dishes based on Indian, Malaysian, Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese flavours. Even more tempting dishes are listed on the specials board.

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Two new shops have joined the furniture precinct on Johnston St. Twenty21 had a small shop on Elgin St in Carlton and opened a larger one on the corner of Johnston and Hertford St a while back. Now the Elgin one has closed and Johnston St is established.

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On Sunday 10 August I went to one of the free events on the 2008 Stencil Festival program - a walking tour of various street art sites in Melbourne led by Fitzroy Library’s Amanda and well known local artist Deb. The event was worth attending because the participants learned a lot from Deb about how street artists do their work.

Deb and Amanda started the tour by leading the group of 30-40 people from the Fitzroy Library past the Whitlam Park project on the corner of Napier St and Moor St (opposite the Library) to the works on the corner of Napier and St David Streets.

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Fitzroy is bursting with community projects that incorporate art. I recently reported on the works exhibited in Safeway on Smith St produced by young people working through the Napier Studios. On the side wall of the Down Syndrome Victoria building in Whitlam Park on the corner of Napier and Moor streets is another Napier Studios project that deserves to be acknowledged. It was completed earlier this year but I had not looked at it up close to see the plaque until recently.

Read the Yarra Trams poster below.

This poster contains deliberate misinformation. It is pure propaganda and is designed to threaten people into validating tickets when they are not legally required to.

The actual offence is to travel without a valid ticket (a ticket that is current, not expired). There is no legal requirement to revalidate tickets in each segment of a journey within the time period of its validity (2 hours, daily, monthly, etc) and Yarra Trams admitted as such in 2006. See this Age article and my article of dubious validity for further information. Thanks to adrock2xander for the original story.

VALIDATION DOES NOTHING to inform Melbourne’s public transport providers about customer behaviour and the needs of public transport users because only about 30% of people validate. Yarra Trams knows this and we know they know because they told us so.

VALIDATION IS A CON. Take a stand. Always travel with a valid ticket (such as buying one from the coin machine on a tram, which is automatically validated, or buying a daily ticket at a newsagent and validating it at the start of the day) then don’t validate it again until you are legally required to.

I’ve already posted a complaint about this deceptive conduct with Yarra Trams and I plan to take it to Consumer Affairs Victoria and the Consumer Action Law Centre. Threatening consumers without legal foundation is an offence. Yarra Trams marketing material is criminal.