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If you hand your licence in now you’ll save heaps.

Many shopping malls are expanding. Two near me are Eastland at Ringwood and Knox City at Wantirna. I used to work new Eastland and it was a nice little mall about 30 years ago. Today it is a jungle. I've only had to go there three or four times in the last year, and I have no idea where things are. I have to take my daughter as a guide. Knox City is pretty much the same. My regular mall is Forest Hill Chase, and it is still fairly small. But there are about a dozen shops or more closed for renovations at any one time. They move around to renovated shops so you've got to hunt for what you want, but it's still only three levels. There is no indication of any extensions. One of the travelators has been under repair, promised "soon", since last Christmas. Some stores, like the butcher, and JB Hi-Fi have left the mall and a few retail chains have gone into liquidation here and elsewhere (eg Rivers clothing and footwear). But new stores are moving in. KFC are about to open in the food mall, 20 metres from McDonalds, and a fourth audiologist/hearing aid shop is opening. There's a Coles, Woolworths, Aldi, and two Asian supermarkets.

They are all moving to Chaddie (Chadstone): https://www.consultancy.uk/news/12744/chadstone-shopping-centre-expansion-opens-its-doors Soon it will be visible from space if it isn't already.

Would bother SWMBO but not me at all.

I couldn't help noticing today as I walked through a shopping mall in Dubbo, how many retail chainstore premises had closed down. I must admit that most of these were clothing stores.

Bermuda triangle. Although my first thought was "British Aerospace are dumber"

Large corporations have a track record of destroying the real value of businesses they takeover. The M&A world is literally full of carcasses of the businesses that were taken over. I used to work for a large Aussie retailer, and most of the independent businesses it took over didn't realise the supposed gains, and some did depart the ASIC register. The best performing M&A type activities are where an operating company run by its owners take over acquisitions. Think turn-around venture capital firms that specialise in certain industries - and, although his Simggles chain is suffering - Solomon Lew (regardless of what you think of him - at that level, they are all the same). He has lived and breathed retail all his life, and his acquisitions tend to fare better than others, although he has had his bumps on the way. Publicly listed companies and funds are a recipe for disaster as acquirers. It is the reason why, on announcement of a deal, the share price of the puchased (prey) company usually goes up and the share price of the purcashing (predator) company ususally goes down (assiming both are listed).

Only when they break the laws of the land. Back to the Julian Knight thing.. I am findamentally opposed to making laws to permanently incarcerate named people. I understand it may have been done because, say a psychiatric assessment concluded there is no way back for him and he should never return to society to be a threat. Fair enough. However, all it does is expose weaknesses in our parole and probation systems. If these assessmnents were robust, they would be virtually giaranteeed of never letting him out anyway, unless he was genuinely no longer a threat to society. There are many cases where probation and parole have spectacularly failed in this area. I get the law can't cover evey foreseeability and maybe this one is justified, but in the backdrop of the current failures, they need to fix that whole system up.