This delightful Angelfish table centerpiece of sideboard decoration has it’s metal seaweed bent over as if to flow with the current of the sea. At a total size of 37cm and made of metal with polystone angel fish adornments, it’s a very modern and very coastal decoration for the home.

The Starfish on the metal base makes it ideal for any designer looking to create a casual seaside feel to a home. The Angelfish series (from the Beachhouse Decor collection) are available in 3 other designs from Cargo Culture, Werribee Plaza, Werribee, Vic.

Australian retailers are often given a good price on goods purchased from their wholesalers only to later find the invoice charges them more for freight than the actual cost.

Australian freight companies (they are all treacherous) all charge customers based on either the cubic space of the consignments or the weight whichever is the highest.

Gifts and homewares product consignments almost always, weigh lower than their designated weight per cubic meter, so are charged on the basis of the cubic space they occupy and then a rate per cubic meter dependent upon the distance carried.

Interstate capital cities freight rates are cheaper, and then the more remote the destination (or number of depots) distant from that capital city, determines the rate per cubic meter (or rate per kg converted from their chosen kg rate per cubic meter).

Since a lot of retailers are paying freight on consignments regularly, they should know when they are being stiffed. Some don’t complain, “They just never come back”. However some wholesalers with periodic products like Christmas wholesalers must imagine that you won’t remember next year, as they seem to be more prone to sticking it to their customers with inflated freight components.

It’s a good habit to ask wholesalers at the trade fairs “is the freight cost based on actual cost”, because they will know in advance not to try this nasty little trick and you can later ask them to demonstrate the actual cost.

Good wholesalers will not only be basing their freight charge on the actual cost, but will also have lower than average freight costs because of the sheer volume they generate for their freight company and they will be passing that on to you.

Importer Wholesaler Santa’s Warehouse of Warners Bay NSW and PRD Nationwide real estate franchises of Newcastle and Lake Macquarie have jointly launched an annual Christmas Lights Competition for residents in their area.

Santa’s Warehouse normally opens their Warners Bay NSW warehouse in Lake Macquarie up to the public for a huge clearance sale from early November till a few days before Christmas and sell a lot of Christmas lighting including rope lights and outdoor rope light motifs, so they have decided to sponsor a local Christmas lights competition with $1000 of Christmas decorations and Christmas lights as the main prize, with a special prize drawn at random so that not only those homes with a really big show of lighting have a chance to win.

Participants can register at either the PRD Nationwide Newcastle & Lake Macquarie website or at santaswarehouse.com.au Christmas lights competition page and entry is free.

 PRD Nationwide real estate Newcastle or Lake Macquarie will erect a sign with details of the competition at every registrants home so that the community can be made aware of the competition and find out where to register themselves or where to find other homes to visit.
 Mark Kentwell, residential property director of PDR Nationwide Newcastle said that the two companies are hoping to get more people in the community behind the Christmas spirit of “peace on earth and goodwill to all men”

Australia’s greedy banks have enjoyed four interest rate cuts in the past 4 months. They have only passed on part of those cuts to mortgage holders in reduced interest rates and have passed on none of it to credit card borrowers. Credit card interest rates remain far too high.

Those Australian households facing financial stress with mounting credit card debt are continually being ignored by banks and by the ineffective Rudd government, who last month openly invited banks to only pass on part of the RBA interest rate cuts and who have also recently participated in further reducing low levels of bank competition by shamefully allowing Westpac to take over the St George Bank (formerly St George Building Society).

Australian banks have been gorging themselves  on fees charged to their customers in recent years because they have far too little competition.

How much do the Australian banks pay the major political parties  in “donations” to get such favorable treatment?

The Rudd government recently has taken huge swaths of money away from retirees who rely on interest rate investments by these massive interest rate cuts. Most of those same retirees have also had their superannuation pie slashed by share price devaluations. Yet the major beneficiaries of the interest income taken away from them have been the greedy banks.

If the junior politicians that we have running this country were sincere and serious about kick starting the economy, they would be making it law that variable rate products like mortgages and credit cards are tied to the RBA’s interest rate (and not by locking in a wider margin to start with).

While small businesses like Australian retailers are sweating on the consumer getting enough of a break to buy Christmas presents the bailed out big business banks are  screwing those consumers for unrealistically high interest rates on credit cards, with the Rudd government’s blessing.