BAT gears up for plain pack fight. A major national law firm has been engaged by British American Tobacco to challenge the plain packaging laws. It currently has half a dozen intellectual property lawyers running out of Melbourne working on it.

Logging in breach of agreements? Are you aware that a Tasmanian logging company moved to NSW, then accepted a government buyout and subsequently changed its business name? It is now being employed by Forest NSW to harvest in controversial areas of state forest on the far-south coast. Also there are numerous breaches of the forests agreement by logging companies, most of which have been recorded by activists but ignored by government and media.

Sheikh calls for climate rally. I received a robot cold call to my mobile number from GetUp and its spokesman Simon Sheikh. I’ve no idea how they got the number; if I gave it to them I didn’t expect to get robot calls, and their privacy pages say nothing about it. The call asked me to attend one of the climate change rallies yesterday.

Sydney paper misses the big news. Which Sydney eastern suburbs newspaper failed to mention one of the bigger local government stories of the year in it’s by-election week edition? This was despite publishing an initial story of interesting developments online…

Borders closes with a whimper. A clue as to why Borders failed as a retailer was to be found at the Bondi Junction shop on Saturday morning in the magazine section. A three-week-old copy of The Economist magazine priced at $20.50 for the “air mail” copy. The magazine sells in newsagencies in Woollahra and Double Bay the same morning for $11. It is printed in Singapore and air-freighted to Australia on Friday and on sale in some inner-city agencies just after 7am. And by the way, the “liquidators sale” at Bondi Junction was pretty miserable — general cuts of 20% on most books (many of course old). More like a mid-week sale at David Jones or Myer!