Some of the creases are so permanent they’re almost impossible to straighten without getting out the iron.

  The plastic-based money has been in use since the late 1980s and since then.

It has suffered all kinds of scrunching torture.

Police even add to the folding problem by advising people to screw up banknotes to test whether they’re genuine or counterfeit.     

They say a real note will stay screwed.

 But now there’s a new craze called money facing that involves a gentler  treatment of our plastic money.

 You fold a bank note in half, hold it in front of you and take a photograph  to create a hybrid face.

Although it’s adding to the crunched up notes, it’s people giving the queen  or Banjo a personal look.

With the central business district getting busier with Christmas shoppers, drivers should try to stay away from the traffic jams at the Anson Street pedestrian crossing that are just as frustrating as ever.

People still wander one at a time back and forth over the crossing in front of Woolworths, blocking traffic as far back as the Kite Street roundabout on the southern side and across Summer Street on the northern side. 

The Woolworths car park entrance creates more problems with pedestrians again blocking cars while they saunter across the footpath without a care in the world.

Wouldn’t it be great if the council ripped it out and put a fence up the middle of the block to force lazy pedestrians to the crossing at Summer Street or employed a lollypop controller.

You can burn up half a tank of fuel just sitting there waiting to get through.

A resident who lives near Cook Park wonders why the 80 sprinklers are turned on at night for two hours even when it’s been raining.

He says they’re probably spraying out about half a million litres a night and often the grounds are saturated and water runs out into the gutters in the street.

Three times a week, he says, would be better but not after rain.

The kerfuffle over Greens senator Larissa Waters’s claims that gender-marketed toys caused serious social issues in later life follows similar claims in London three years ago by political blogger Laura Nelson.

Senator Waters’s silly notion that promoting toys like Barbie dolls and pink jewellery for girls and GI Joes and big trucks for boys could lead to domestic violence and poor self-esteem was probably copied from Ms Nelson’s attack on London’s Hamleys in 2011.

And showing no traditional bulldog spirit, Hamleys caved in and removed pink and blue signs from the floors selling “girls” and “boys” toys from its flagship Regent Street store and replaced them with gender neutral red and white ones.

 Ms Nelson had accused the store of “gender apartheid”, saying the signs that separated the girls’ section from the boys indicated they should have different toys.

She argued the toy stereotypes influenced the behaviour of both parents and children.

It’s a lot of absolute rot.

Do kids actually care? They’ll go towards whichever toys they find appealing and if a girl wants a GI Joe or a big truck or a boy wants a Barbie, so be it.

The Shell petrol station in Summer Street has installed no entry signs on the Sale Street side of its bowsers to sort out thoughtless drivers.

 They’ve been entering the driveways from opposite directions and often cars at the pumps were nose to nose with others queued behind them, forming an effective blockade where nobody could move.

Drivers obviously wanted to park with the fuel filler cap next to the bowser.

That was one of the reasons cars parked in opposite directions to each other even though the hoses were long enough to stretch and there was no need creating the traffic mess that became normal on most days.

There’s still some confusion but drivers will adapt to the new entrance and things will soon sort themselves out.

Cars should enter from the Summer Street side and fill up facing Sale Street.

But three cheers for Shell. It will be much easier and less chaotic for everyone.

Marcos Ambrose, former NASCAR racer and just back from the US to drive in the V8s, is a keen Vegemite fan.

While living in the US and during a rain delay in practice for the Sonoma 350 he amused himself by making Vegemite sandwiches for the American race commentary team and it went over like a lead balloon.

  “It’s like salt on bread. I can’t even swallow it,” one said. “I may be the fastest man heading for the bathroom,” said another. And, “Oh my God. Are you sure this is edible?”

Obviously they weren’t happy little Vegemites like us, who grew up with the black, yeasty stuff that’s as much a part of Australia’s heritage as kangaroos and koalas.

But overseas people have never come to grips with its unique salty taste.

Ambrose will have his first race back home in the Sydney 500 this weekend at Olympic Park driving for the new DJR Penske team.

He’ll no doubt fire up his energy on a fill of Vegemite beforehand.

When a zoo’s gorilla dies, the keeper hires an actor to don a costume and act like an ape until the zoo can get another one.

He swings around, jumps up and down and draws a huge crowd before climbing a partition to the top of the lion’s enclosure next door.

He keeps up his acting until he loses his grip and falls into the enclosure.

Terrified, he yells for help.

 But the lion pounces, opens its jaws and whispers: “Shut up.

Do you want to get us both fired?”