If you read my last post, you know MT and I have been living our own version of a suspense novel (1 star – totally rubbish plot), waiting to find out about a government response to leases and rentals.
We finally heard from the Prime Idiot a few days ago, and after spending 4 minutes thanking everyone in the government like he was accepting a damn academy award, he finally, finally put us out of our misery. A ‘Code of Conduct’ is to be legislated that says commercial landlords must lower rents proportional to lost revenue, with half the difference being waived, and half being deferred, with the deferment being spread out out over the remainder of the lease. I have never been so happy to be 6 months into a 5 year lease. This will save the business and the jobs of 4 men. The legislation still has to be finalised, on a state-by-state basis, so curveballs are still possible, but if they adhere to the basics we should be ok. Of course, if they do stick with what Morrison announced, I’m going to have to stop calling him the prime idiot, because I’m painfully aware that this is far more generous than what a lot of countries are offering to business owners.
We also got re-stocked with TP yesterday when our tri-annual subscription arrived. Which sounds a little weird, but not as weird as when I say it’s from a company called ‘Who Gives a Crap’. Half their profits go towards building sanitary toilets in under-developed areas of the world, and I don’t mind the bamboo roll. You can buy it in the grocery stores, but they offer a discount if you buy direct, and a further discount if you ‘subscribe’, which is how we ended up getting a box of 48 rolls of TP delivered to MT’s office 3 times a year. This used to be a big joke, because, as you can see in the pics below, there’s no hiding what’s being delivered:
Now that we’re still in the midst of the Great TP Panic of 2020, I’m the one laughing (and sharing TP with anyone caught short). We don’t have space to store it, so we toss it in the attic.
By the way, anyone in the UK or USA who’s interested, they sell there too. Because people have lost their minds over TP, the Australian website, at least, has everything marked as sold out so they can continue to fulfil standing orders – not sure about US / UK availability though.
It was also announced this week that schools will remain shut for term 2, which is a relief for me as it alleviates my misplaced guilt about not being able to leave home to work.
So all in all, a weirdly ‘good’ week. All things being relative.