kgwilson

I can only speak from my own experience as a volunteer with the SES but most of the paid professionals seem to spend most of their time working out how to rort the system by doing less and less for more and more. I am hopeful that the ICAC enquiry into corruption within the SES hierachy will sort a lot of this out. As a volunteer I expected support from the paid professionals but generally have only been kicked from pillar to post.

GST is a good way to ensure that the end user pays tax. The problem in Australia is that there are so many confusing exemptions, it is accountants who are the main benefactors (other than the Government). GST should have replaced stamp duty as it was supposed to and as it did in NZ where there are no exemptions & quarterly returns are simple so Accountants don't get any extra cream. The State system ensures that the States get their cake & eat it too.

As a nation we have become uncompetitive in the world with very high labour costs and very low productivity. I do not have access to the details (facts) but even if it is half true, labourers working on the Bangaroo project nominally earn around 55k but with all of the allowances, extra holidays & topups for various reasons apparently they can earn between 120 & 150k a year. It isn't any wonder that our manufacturing industry has all but disappeared. We have become the world's quarry & if the revenue from mining disappeared, we'd be in instant major recession. I took a year off in 2005 after engineering a redundancy & then tried to get a job. Admittedly I was living on the Sunshine Coast & did not want to move elsewhere. I was overqualified for almost all of the offerings with salaries less that half of what I'd been earning. I never even got an interview. I thought about changing my CV to dumb my qualifications, knowledge & experience down but then decided that would be dishonest. The answer was simple. If you can't get a job, buy one, so I did. I bought a run down Aluminium Fabrication business & built it up. I made just over 50 cents an hour in the first 6 months & by the end of the first year managed to put 20k in to Super. A year later that went to over 120k. The 2008 GFC saw a lot of the cashed up residents in the Noosa area instantly close their wallets but by then we'd diversified & had a lot of builders & Body Corps as clients so this saw us through. I was lucky. Since the GFC things have stagnated on the eastern seaboard, while those involved in mining in the fly in- fly out situation are doing very well. Quite a few people in my town do this as there is no work here & 2 of my ex employees now work in the coal seam gas industry west of Toowoomba. I sold up in 2010 & became a self funded retiree, moved south where living within a stones throw of the beach was affordable & there was an airfield within 30 minutes drive & began building an aircraft & became an SES volunteer. Our needs are relatively simple & I do not need a new car every year like some struggling families seem to want. Attitudes have to change. We are living beyond our means. Eventually the house of cards will come crashing down.

What is the point of a joke if it has a political preference? If it has. it is no longer a joke.

Ah ha now we have a motive for all of those earlier posts. BTW the States were all originally colonies, not countries. I don't think you'd find many Australians who'd consider any State a "Country". The only real thing that keeps the State system alive & well is the self interest of the politicians who would be decimated by its demise.

How a country is governed has little to do with population and at 23 million, Australia has about the same population as Mumbai in India. Twiggy Forest, Gina Rinehart & Clive Palmer are testament to where a lot of mining profits end up. Most of the rest goes to foreign owned companies and offshore shareholders. I also lump CSG extraction in with the mining camp & the thousands of wells being drilled west of Myles, Roma etc has been going on since the early 2000s & they still employ a lot of people. Having resided in a number of countries we are over governed with a level of bureaucracy rivalling the highest around. I am Kiwi born, married to an Australian & the form for permanent residency I needed to complete was 30 pages long even though I had been living here for various periods of time since the 1980s, own real estate, but wasn't here when the rules changed in 2001. It's not surprising people want to enter the country illegally as trying to do it the right way is a bureaucratic minefield. My German born neighbour has been here since the 1960s & he couldn't work out how to get his residency so employed an immigration lawyer. $20,000 later he got his residency.

Why do we need 5 levels of Government (well 4 in QLDs case)? State Government is now irrelevant given that the tyranny of distance and time has gone. Cross the border which is just some imaginary line & you are subjected to a raft of different laws just driving your car. Why do we need this so called upper house which can be populated by politically ignorant individuals who like cars & roo poo, & get less than 2000 votes but are there because of a ridiculously flawed preferential voting system. There are many governments that work well with just a local and national system. It not only gets things done but manages everything in a far more timely and efficient manner. All the hoo haa about how robust the economy is & how well we have done is a mystery to country Australians unless they have managed to get a job in the mining industry. We have 1/2 a trillion in debt, an extinct manufacturing industry an unsupported agricultural sector & a declining mining industry. What is going swimmingly well though, is the importation of everything & anything from China & real estate sales in the major cities. We are overpaid for a low level of productivity with the highest real estate costs in major cities in the world. If the mining industry dried up tomorrow we'd be in instant recession. Even with the billions still coming in from this sector the economy only grew by 2.2%. NZ that has few natural resources is forced to look for opportunities where possible & while partly because of high commodity prices, grew its economy by 3.5% in the same period & it only has 2 levels of government.

I am not really sure what "Australian Culture" is. I think if you asked 10 people you'd get 10 different answers & as more than 25% of Australians were born overseas that is hardly surprising. If you ask someone overseas they will more than likely give you an answer based on some stereotype like Paul Hogan, Barry McKenzie or Steve Irwin. i.e. A beer swilling, foul mouthed, beach & BBQ fanatic, crocodile wrestler, wearing stubbies & thongs. We have a very rich mixture of cultures from all over the world which provides great diversity and colour to our society & I would not for one minute want to take this away. What I think, is that we must preserve or secular system of separation of church/mosque/temple from government. Extremist views are usually from small disaffected minorities but get a very high profile from the press & those who like pointing sticks. They need to be dealt with quickly & effectively & the press should not sensationalise such issues. Interestingly the vast majority of such extremists are in fact Australian born. They are seen to belong to one group or another, be it a religion such as Islam or an ethnic group such as Lebanese, so everyone in those groups gets tarred with the same brush.

None of this is funny. It is all about prejudice and intolerance and taking an extremist minority as the accepted norm. WAKE UP. Why is it that we are considered a racist country by many other nations and people around the world. We seem to be obsessed with so called Asylum seekers. Did Italy become a different country when for 6 months they got over 10000 refugees a week fleeing the Lybian revolution. What religion were these? Italy never even considered offshore processing. I could go on but I fear that the entrenched opinions of some will never change.

People who act in the manner described usually have very low self esteem & do what they do for personal gratification. The advice above about talking to WHSO people is good. If you can not do this or you do not have a company structure you trust to deal with the situation, discuss the problem with your workmates who have been bullied also and collectively confront the person. Again if you cannot do this the best thing is to completely ignore this person. They thrive on reaction and so far this is working. If you do not react & just walk away it drives them crazy. The situation may get worse until the person finally realises that the required satisfaction from your reactions is not happening & they usually give up.

Correct though on days with good atmospheric conditions it may be OK but poor, blocky, or no reception at other times. The only thing the antenna supplier can do is improve the signal with bigger or better signal reflectors & a quality balun & mast head amplifier. They call them digital antennas but the signal is received in either VHF or UHF wavelengths & decoded into digital format by the TV tuner or set top box.

Poor spelling bugs me at times as well and when there is a built in spell checker in any word processor and in most browsers, there is no excuse. You often have to use the options or settings to change from American English which is the default, to English UK, South Africa, Australia Canada or NZ. In Google Chrome you can use any one of them as the spell checker. Otherwise everything you spell correctly that is different to American spelling will be underlined in red. I don't really know what the difference is between UK, Australian or NZ English as they all seem to be the same & completely different to American English. Grammar, well that is another thing. Some people think it is their mothers' mother.

Always backup what you can't afford to lose. There are plenty of free cloud storages around so it doesn't have to cost extra, only time to do it and maintain it.

Why do they need something that big?

The rules all changed on 26 February 2001. NZers who moved here after that are granted a special category visa which allows them to live & work here indefinitely. To become a citizen you must first get permanent residency ($3,750.00) then apply for citizenship ($260.00) total $4,010.00. We were married in NZ & my wife was given automatic citizenship & voting rights. Fee, zero other than the marriage certificate.

MMP is not a perfect system but it is far more representative of how people vote than the Preferential voting system we have here when your vote can be given to someone you can't stand. This is partly why I don't vote. I also think compulsory voting is undemocratic so I exercise my democratic right not to vote. The other part is that I am married to an Australian but I am still a NZer & so I have to complete a 40 page form to become a permanent resident & fork out $4000.00 for the privilege. What privilege? I am able to live and work here permanently without this. Can anyone see any logic here. I still can't vote so I then have to file an application to become a citizen. I already have Medicare & Seniors cards, I have paid many thousands to both state and federal governments in tax & stamp duty & am eligible for a pension so long as I am broke by the time I am 65 so what privilege do I get by becoming a citizen? You guessed it, I can vote. No I am forced to vote or I get fined. Now you tell me "Why should I bother given the quality of politicians."

If it looks like one, walks waddles like one, talks like one (no talks like a fishwife but 2 out of 3 ain't bad) its a pretty safe bet it is one. Quack Quack.

Who really cares anyway? What difference do you think any change now will make for the general populace let alone the results of the next election?

Turn it all off for a while. I have just spent a large part of my waking hours since lunch time on Thursday helping people after the devastation of storms, rain and flood. On Friday we started at 7am and finished just after 2am Saturday rescuing flood victims. Next it was fixing roofs and other repairs, delivering food and medicines to help those suffering to cope. It was very hard work and no pay but some of the most rewarding experiences of my life. This is reality. Some of the roughest crudest humans I have ever encountered turned into meek mild lambs when they found they had been defeated by nature & someone they had never met came to help. Sitting safely behind an electronic interface may provide some form of bravado and allow a difference of opinion to turn to nasty vitriol but cut the power supply, tear the roof off, ruin the comforts of life, communication and access to food and see what happens. Like all advances in technology the benefits are incredible but there is always a dark side. How we deal with this is the problem that needs resolution.

Great technology & really good optical zoom. I can't see why you would want to add a phone to it. Imagine setting up that shot of a lifetime & the phone rings. No not for me. Having a phone with a camera attached OK, but a good quality camera with a phone, bleargh.

1. Finish my plane & start aerial exploring. 2. See No 1.

My Avatar is the pointy end of one. It is a locally designed all aluminium 2 seat ultralight. The 100 is amateur built & the 200 factory built. Have a look at www.morganaeroworks.com.au for details. Cheers Kevin

My Gripe... :gaah:Banks and their bloody financial advisors or just financial advisors or mortgage brokers who are free because banks pay them a fortune & then take it all back from you with exorbitant interest rates and fees and charges like annual management fees and exit fees. Some even call them deferred application fees. What a crock. Ask them what these fees actually cover. They can't tell you. I know because I have asked. The way to get one over them though is to have a lot of money & then set your own terms. Pity that this excludes 99% of their customers victims. In 1994 I followed the advice of a financial advisor and as expected (now) lost most of my money. Since then I follow my own advice/instinct & it works a hell of a lot better than theirs. I went to a Storm Financial seminar in 07. They were exhorting their customers to invest big as the market was going down. No money? No worries, take out an even bigger mortgage. I got up & told them it sounded more like a pyramid or ponzi scheme than financial advice to me. I nearly got kicked out but managed to stay long enough to eat the nice tucker they'd ordered & tell everyone else not to go near them with the proverbial. Some listened, some didn't. Those who didn't lost their houses/pension/life savings. Some have managed to get a bit back from their main backer though. You guessed it our biggest bank. There are people that are happy with Banks though. These are their senior management & directors or ex of each sitting back with massive shareholdings ready to flog them off as soon as their mates now in the driving seat give them the nod when they can see a cliff along the financial road ahead.

If you want really good icecream go to NZ.

And one of the best Beatles tracks to boot. Perfect timing.