STOP PRESS: Chequered flag for Orange hospital as Mostert makes a pit stop

When last year’s race winner Chaz Mostert crashed his Falcon in the Esses and broke a leg and wrist, he wasn’t taken to Bathurst hospital but was flown by helicopter to Orange where there’s a special unit to treat those injuries.

All weekend on national TV news bulletins, radio stations and in the metropolitan media the world was told Mostert had had successful surgery in Orange hospital and was on the mend

“In Orange hospital …”, “in Orange hospital …”, “in Orange hospital …” Money couldn’t buy better publicity.

And during the race the TV coverage that reached more than a million viewers several times switched to Mostert  in bed watching the race on TV.

It just goes to show how lucky we are to have a five-star hospital and teams of top-class medical specialists as good or better than anywhere else.

Now, if only there was somewhere to park.

READER Tony Callaghan reckons it’s time Orange had another race track.

He says for many years Orange has been the home of karts while mountain bike forest trails and street cycleways are also popular with a second skateboard and BMX circuit on the way at Anzac Park in additional to Moulder Park.

So now it’s time to fill a racetrack gap and he’s suggested Leewood industrial area as the ideal site, right next to Sir Jack Brabham Park.

With the southern bypass underway, an alternative rail crossing will become available for the Ash Street crossing and Leewood Drive can then be used for a race circuit.

He says the area is almost un-used on Sundays while the street surfaces are in good condition and would be suitable for racing.

The existing Leewood Park could be used for the pits and the old RTA building for administration.

Tony says it’s only the seed of an idea but with co-operation could put Orange on the map for intermediate racing.

Well it wouldn’t be another Mount Panorama, the road surface isn’t all that flash and there’d be a million reasons why it wouldn’t work but at least Tony has put the idea forward to get people thinking.

FIRST petrol stations ditched providing a service to customers and now Orange supermarkets and discount stores are turning us into their unwilling workers.

They’re trying everything they can to push us into serving ourselves rather than using the checkouts, which at times in the discount stores are as bare as winter trees.

Pretty soon the company bean counters will come up with more ways to cut staff and save money by asking customers to pitch in a bit more by stacking the shelves and doing a bit of cleaning while doing the shopping.

Then you collect what you want, pay for it with plastic at the self-service checkout robots and head off home, knowing you have done your part in helping get an employee or two sacked and changing forever the way we shop.

That will enable these places to become huge brilliantly-lit warehouses without the need for any staff and operated by self-serve customers while the owners sit back and watch the money roll in.

It’s making us forget that not that long ago real people served us our bread, milk, eggs, corn flakes, vegetables and washing powder and took real money off us and put it in a real till.

The bottom line to all this is that a trip to the supermarket or discount store will eventually involve no interaction at all with helpful assistants while the checkout robots telling you what to do will become the rage-inducing watchword of 21st-century shopping.

What better opportunity is there for corner stores to make a comeback so we can get some good old-fashioned service.

THERE doesn’t appear to be any big rush in extending digital radio to the bush.

In fact the way things are going, we mightn’t even get it because of the rise of competing internet-based music services.

Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide have digital radio and trials are going on in Canberra and Darwin.

But the Communications and Media Authority is still talking about establishing a planning committee to look into digital radio for the bush and whether the government should force stations to broadcast in regional areas.

DAB+ has lots of advantages over the traditional analogue AM and FM services and as well as a clear audio signal it transmits additional information your radio can display like program information, weather forecasts, news headlines and for music stations artist and track names.

More advanced digital radios allow the display of images for weather information, album cover art, presenter information and on some you can record radio programs for later playback or pause live radio while you answer the phone.

Digital radios are now appearing in new cars so will Orange radio stations queue up to get digital radio if the communications authority ever comes to a decision?

It will certainly be interesting because just staying on air is a battle for one of them.   

ABANDONED shopping trolleys are appearing again in streets miles from the shopping centre.

In some cases there’s two or three left in a heap and that probably means it’s the same people pushing them home several times a week.

The supermarkets have teams collecting trolleys but they mustn’t venture too far away.

 Council staff can impound abandoned trolleys and there’s a fee to get them out so it’s in the interests of supermarket managers to stop people wandering off into the distance with one.

Teacher: “Freddy, your essay on My Dog is exactly the same as your brother's. Did you copy his?”

Freddy: “No, sir. It's the same dog.”