No Spice Girls for Australia

There will be no reunion concert for the Spice Girls in Australia. This is sad news. The group decided to call it quit after 3 months of touring. Their last concert will be at Toronto and it's happening on the end of this month (February 26th). The official statement said that the tour needs to come to an end due to family and personal commitments for Emma, Geri, Mel B, Melanie C and Victoria.

The Spice Girls planned shows around the world (Australia, China, and so on) but sadly only Europe and US were covered in the 3 months. For Australia, one show was originally scheduled for Sydney. Further talks from promoter suggest that they might be playing other cities as well but it is unlikely after this.

One tabloid speculates that the tour ended early because Victoria Beckham is too exhausted. She wanted to focus more on her family and her fashion business.

Well, it's a really disappointing news for me. I was really looking forward to their concert if it were to reach Down Under but that's not going to happen now. So, I guess I have to be happy with their CDs.

Parting message (and official news/statement) from the group can be viewed at their website, thespicegirls.com.

picture from thespicegirls.com

Interest Rate Rise Again

Yesterday, Australia got another interest rate rise. It is now at 7%, the highest level since 1996. The Reserve Bank Australia (RBA) wants to control inflation which is still high at the moment.

If you have a mortgage, the advice is to lock your interest rate right away because banks have yet to pass the latest rate rise to customer. This latest rise will increase your monthly repayments by about $40 (based on a $300,000 mortgage). News.com.au has a handy calculator to let you calculate repayments. It can be found here.

UPDATE: Commonwealth Bank is the first major bank to increase its rate by 0.30%.