There’s low interest in such business matters

Well, we accused our bank manager of having a rather high interest in our business loan, but he claimed the opposite was true – he had no interest at all and couldn’t care less. He’s probably telling the truth for once. We’d been hoping the rates would drop, not just to cut our repayments, but also to induce the punters to pony up for some new technology. But alas, it seems the Reserve Bank is determined to give us the recession we didn’t need to have, and make sure we pay maximum rates for the privilege.

One day we’ll work out why they call the bank the “reserve” since it hasn’t reserved any of this pain for itself, and it doesn’t seem to be available in “reserve” to take over from the dud banks when they crash and burn. Anyway, just like most resellers, we’re not reselling anything much these days. We even tried offering interest-free purchase terms but that didn’t do any good. Anyone who qualified after the credit check for an interest-free deal could already afford to buy the whole shop with the spare cash they keep under the mattress.

We’re obviously in the wrong game if there’s going to be a recession. Who needs a new PC if they’re broke? We probably shouldn’t have dabbled in the property market either, but the nice man at the real estate office said house prices never ever ever go down, and then made us pay GST on his free advice. Our stock portfolio isn’t worth a cracker either, although that might be somewhat due to the nephew’s advice that we choose shares based on their alphabetical position on the stockmarket pages. Of course ABC is right up the top and we ran out of funds long before we reached Woodside way down the bottom.

So, all this technology is going into storage until the Reserve gets less reserved and the economy picks up again. Meanwhile we’re going to sell shoes. Yep. Everybody always needs shoes. And with the price of petrol these days everyone will be doing a lot more walking and wearing out their shoes. Uncle Tony’s got a Chinese great-great-grandmother so we’ve used his contacts to get a containerload of the latest shoes direct from the factory in Wee Scroo Yoo at unbeatable prices. He says this is the same factory that made all the shoes for the Olympics in Beijing – so we’re all set this time to make the best of the downturn.

Anyway, can’t spend all day gossiping, the container just arrived and we need to unpack the shoes and get them on the shelves. What’s this? Why have the shoes all got wheels on them? Say what? There’s a note here from the People’s Republic of China. We’ll send the nephew next door to the Chinese takeaway and get it translated. There must be a good explanation, surely. Ah, here it is. “Thank you for your interest in Beijing’s pollution reduction scheme. We hope it works for you too in your city. Here as requested are 50,000 pairs of roller blades for your citizens to use after all their cars are banned from the streets”.

Right then! Where’s Uncle Tony? Where’s that nephew? And has anyone got Penny Wong’s number? We’ve got an excellent proposal to make our cities greener.

Gotta go! Bank manager waiting!