MUST be the stress of being in the ratings period, but the conditions for much of MIX106.3’s listener-attracting on-air competitions seem to suggest no one can win them because, when CC looked, they were closed before they started. What a legal pickle:

OOPS 1. Rod and Biggzy’s radio show on MIX106.3 is running a competition inviting listeners to share in $20k to have their bills paid. Website entrants have to warrant they’ve read the terms and conditions. All good, except the competition runs between July 29 and August 23 but the conditions prescribe that: “If the prize is unclaimed the promoter will redraw a name at random selected from the entries on Monday 25th of February 2013”. Let’s hope they’re spared having to demonstrate that to the regulators.

OOPS 2. It gets slightly worse with “Rod and Biggzy’s 10 Grand Garden Game”, which admirably promises to refurbish Canberra’s worst garden. Despite the winner being announced on August 23, according to the conditions, entries closed on Friday, February 15, which probably means that anyone who’s entered since then is ineligible to win, which probably means everyone.

OOPS 3. Worse yet, the still-running “Rod and Biggzy’s Fireside Festival” competition is also listed as having closed on February 15, as is the station’s “Best of Canberra” competition, and the “Workday Walk In” competition ended on January 7, according to its terms and conditions.

OOPS 4. Sister station FM104.7 had a competition for a July 28 Wedding Fair competition that, according to its terms and conditions, closed entries on April 26. Presumably, everyone was ineligible to win that, too.

Museum abuzz

STAFF of the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House are abuzz with news than “The Hansard Monologues” (the political answer to “The Vagina Monologues) will be performed there on August 8-9. Katie Pollock and Canberra journo Paul Daley wrote the script, in which actors David Roberts, Camilla Ah Kin and Tony Llewellyn-Jones (pictured) will re-create the great speeches from the 43rd Parliament of Australia. Bookings to canberraticketing.com.au or 6275 2700.

Stinking claws?

KATTER’S Australian Party candidate for an ACT Senate seat, Steven Bailey, went to Bungendore for “a nice cup of coffee and some toasted banana bread”, discovered a petition against a supermarket redevelopment, signed it and pledged himself to the “plight of the people of Bungendore before the election and after – and regardless of the fact that they cannot vote for me”. What was in that banana bread? He then astonishingly went on to say: unsenatorially “And Woolworths and Coles can keep their stinking claws off of Bungendore too – you can almost smell them there now.”

Maintaining the rage

THE Tuggeranong Community Council is maintaining the rage with its online petition calling on WIN TV to reverse the month-old decision to move the broadcast of its Canberra news service to faraway Wollongong.

The plucky petition calls on WIN to reinstate the presentation of its local news to Kingston because the money-saving decision will have a negative impact on local news gathering, news coverage and the overall quality of local news and information in Canberra.

We’ve all had a bleat including Chief Minister Katy Gallagher, Federal member for Canberra Gai Brodtmann and local business groups, but the thick skins of Wollongong are not listening, doubtless encouraged by the fact the bulletin has barely missed a beat in the weekly ratings indicating the public doesn’t give a monkey’s. But if you don’t fight, you lose: join the petition at tuggcc.com

Parking a problem?

HAS TAMS Minister Shane Rattenbury parked the parking problem at the Yarralumla shops? Liberal MLA Steve Doszpot, a man given to walking to the shops, thinks the parking’s unsafe, especially for elderly constituents, with cars backing out from the pavement (and often into each other). Dossie, who hasn’t heard from TAMS since March, wants the nose-in parks changed to from straight to diagonal lines. Come on, Ratters, admit it, it’s brilliant!

Hills of gold

THERE’S money in them thar hills… so far this year, parking revenue at the National Arboretum has raised $100,000. GM Jason Brown is urging visitors to pay the despised fees because the money raised from the 250 car spots stays with the trees. But if the inspectors from the menacing Justice and Community Safety Directorate book you, the lolly goes down the hill to general revenue and we don’t want that, do we?

 Mike slows cycles

CLEARLY tremulous at the prospect of an unrelenting media campaign to have speeding cycle traffic calmed on Commonwealth Bridge, the bureaucracy has quietly rolled over and put a 10 kph limit on the shared pedestrian paths over the lake.

2CC’s talkback champ Mike Welsh had been agitating on air since April and in “CityNews” (“Mike vows to take on the Lycra louts”) in May for the welfare of pedestrians on the busy thoroughfares before something terrible happens.

Hmmms

ON the fourth desperate call to the ATO’s technical help desk, the taxpayer was told to forget lodging her return electronically via a Mac and go find a PC!

CANBERRA horror-fiction author Kaaron Warren has just won the novella category of the US Shirley Jackson Awards, for the literature of “psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic”. Warren picked up the award for her work “Sky” and tells CC she’s hoping the trophy arrives from America in one piece.

SEEN in a shop window in Beechworth, Victoria. “The fight against online shopping has started!” says wandering reader Chris Emery.