Bruce

Yep,OME, we see the power of advertising a lot. You can actually get people to vote against their own interests if you advertise enough. Look at Trump: a rich guy who presented himself as anti-establishment and lots of poor people voted for him. I read today how the US is so unequal that the richest 1% have 39% of the wealth, while the poorest 50% have minus 1.8%. Yet with advertising, a lot of the poorest 50% voted for less taxes on the rich.

We have a surprising inability to understand the extra risks of bad weather. Remember the story about Keating and the Polish presidente... smart guys all I guess, but unable to see that bad weather made flying unsafe.

And space, if you read about the arrival of the first fleet into Sydney harbour, you will read that the local aborigines didn't even look up from their oyster-gathering while the boats went past. Compared to D-day, not much of an invasion huh.

I reckon I've lived in Australia for longer than a younger aborigine so why should I be subject to them? Because their ancestors were here longer than mine? What a nonsense argument. If that were true, then those with the most australopithecine genes would be in charge. As for taking their land, well that sure was not me or my ancestors. They all worked hard and paid the going rate for any land they owned.

Copper was used for internal water pipes in houses. These days, plastic is used and it is much cheaper and easier to install. Aluminium, wrapped on a steel core, has been used for overhead power lines for years.

I agree onetrack. Right now I am modifying a farm buggy to electric and the electric setup is way simpler and quite cheap. About $1000 for the job. Electric cars should be cheaper than IC cars. As far as electric bikes go, they used to sell for $3000 but now they are down as low as $500, which is still quite a lot.

It's amazing that these calls work well enough to keep them at it. Years ago, I got a recorded message from John Howard before an election. Gosh, this will cost them big time, thought I... anybody who gets this will now vote against Howard's party. In fact, although they lost that election, the swing was less in the electorates they did that test.

I sure have Nev. A few weeks ago I was near the local courts and wondered about going in and being a spectator. A good way to learn the facts of life, I thought. But too busy so far. Does anybody know if you can just wander in?

Thanks litespeed, I had wondered about that aspect of the case where stolen files were used. Gosh we have fewer protections than in the US in some ways, or is their version of the ATO just as bad? I would have fought the republic referendum by asking people if they really wanted to remain subjects or become free citizens. Alas you have to be old to even remember the event. Another protection we seem to lack is double jeopardy. The ATO appealed the original penalty and my mate had no money after his first case to defend the appeal. And I wonder if there is any regular sanity test for judges? What if one gradually succumbs to alzheimers for example?

I thought it was the failure of Australia to support NZ that caused those rainbow warrior french agents to get away. Is there something I don't know? And it is my understanding that NZ have only applied the same restrictions against nuclear ships that San Francisco and New York have done. Now I know that the US refuses to say which ships are nuclear, at least to foreign countries. Good on NZ say I. It amused me to see that a nuclear ship was berthed in Melbourne for 2 weeks and the greenies who would protest against a nuclear power station near Broken Hill were conspicuous by their absence.

Nope OME, the active ingredient in head n shoulders is zinc pyrithione. There is another anti-dandruff shampoo that uses the selenium stuff. I think they first found selenium by spectroscopy of moonlight. Sorry to be pedantic.

I sure agree with OME and with space about the ATO. They probably sit in a dungeon with torture machines around while they hatch their plots of extorting money with menaces. A mate of mine was prosecuted by the ATO using evidence stolen from his accountant by the accountant's bitter ex, who had the keys to the files from the time the accountant had employed him. He stole random files and gave them to the ATO in order to punish his ex-wife. Fruit of the poisoned tree? A classic example. Maybe a rich man could have fought it on those grounds, although this is not the US. I don't know if there is that defense in Australia.

I think we actually owned a 79 Corona. The one we had used a 4 cylinder Holden engine. It was noteworthy in that it satisfied the pollution requirements of the day by means of blowing fresh air into the exhaust system to dilute the pollution down to satisfactory levels. This is not done nowadays, so I hope the pollution requirements have been better framed. When I figured out that that blower actually did, I removed the whole thing. This would have reduced the pollution from that car by the amount that was attributable to running that blower. A pox on that car, said I, thus anticipating the Corona virus by many years.

That global rise in sea levels 10,000 years ago might have some connection to the terrible Kangaroo Island fires. Aborigines who had lived on KI died out about 10,000 years ago and were not replaced by new ones. They died out as a result of selenium deficiency. Remember they used fire to help them hunt. A bad result of this is that KI has dense undergrowth, such that you couldn't walk through it, but a fire sure would burn better.

On the police state argument, personally I don't feel like I live in one. I go about my business with no fear of the police whatsoever, and I bet all you other guys are the same. Yes, we are over-regulated, but so are the police I know. For example, this mate of mine, who was at the time a policeman, didn't feel free to have a single glass of wine with his meal when visiting us on a weekend day. Why? Because it would be bad for him at work to have any alcohol in his system if randomly breathalized on his way home. I put the blame for over-regulation on the fools who want the government to protect everybody all the time.

Telstra were always slow payers. Once we visited our son and found a red-printed final demand for a telephone bill. The son later said that he was owed $10,000 months before that bill arrived and he had told them that he would pay when they did. Luckily, my wife, after an hour on the phone, found a sympathetic telstra person to sort out things. I said that they would just cut his phone off and it would take thousands of dollars and years of time to fight them legally.

OME, the flood story just doesn't pass the arithmetic test. Mount Ararat is over 15,000 ft, and according to the Noah story that is where he beached the ark. Australia would have been covered by kilometers deep water. Bass strait flooding is tiny in comparison. The biblical version is obvious nonsense. Gosh, how would the Aborigines have survived? Of course flood stories are common in prehistory. People lived near rivers, and they attributed just about any unexplained event ( like thunder ) to gods.

My father tried to join the RAAF but was stopped by that same lot. At the time, he was a night operator at the Alice Springs power station.Well at least he survived. Our military could not have been more stupidly managed at that time.

I'm one of your lot OME. We remember freedom. Maybe the over-regulated state will not withstand the coming storms of climate change, resource depletion and overpopulation. Well we will not be around to see it, which means we have lived in good times. In my own way, I try to resist by ignoring excessive regulations. I say that I do this in honour of my grandfather who fought in WW1 against what he saw as evil. But the fight he was most proud of was helping bash up some pommy MP's who had been bashing a tied-up pommy soldier. This was the story he told to the grandson on his knee. I am hoping that the aftermath of the fires will result in a lessening of regulation of landowners with respect to fire precautions. On our farm, we are prohibited from doing anything at all, I think. You would need to hire a lawyer to find out. I sent an email asking the PM weeks ago and from time to time get a response that my query has been passed on... not answered, but passed on...

There is a test of whether the senior priests believe their own stuff, and that is to see how many of them do suicide missions. AND the rest of them should be happy for him when one of them goes to paradise.

Russel Crowe, it just came to me.

There was a movie about Noah, with that NZ "The gladiator" guy being Noah. They had an ark as big as the bible said, which of course needed a forest of trees and robot-like angels as constructors. All arranged by god of course. What obvious nonsense, but good fun for a movie. What mucked the movie up was the bit about Noah going insane after the event.. they shouldn't have tried to stick so close to the biblical story. We like our heroes to behave better. I think the movie lost money.

I reckon the flood story is easy to explain: a smart farmer saved himself,his family and even some of his stock with a big raft. Then the story grew with the retelling. Big floods in the fertile crescent would have happened lots.

My marble was in there but it didn't come up. I would have gone without complaining, being young and silly at the time. Conscription was greatly favoured by the voters who thought it would make men out of the long-haired layabouts they saw down the street. But the army only wanted clean, fit and smart kids as they reckoned it was hard enough to train good kids let alone the hippy types. Conscription was favoured but the war much less so. Before the Gough election, there were many street protest marches against the war and it seemed to me at the time that the Libs were dragged very reluctantly out of that war. I'm sure williedoo is right, but I still think they were forced. At that time, I knew a colonel and I asked him why they conscripted such young kids, 20 year-olds. He said that at that age, they think they are invulnerable and so will obey orders to attack better. Well the motor insurance companies already knew this, they charged extra if you were under 25. Apparently your brain doesn't properly process risk until 25.

I have had sad emails from Striefeneder ( Glasflugel ) and Lemke-Schneider ( LS) about how awful the bureaucracy is in Europe. They need separate licenses, each costing many thousands, for every aspect of their work. For example, being responsible for AD's for gliders sold 50 years ago. As a result, a glider owner here owner needs to pay a yearly fee to get the same old paperwork as they did last year. The last new thing on the Libelle was 20 years ago. What a nasty way to help kill off an industry. This is enforced by our own GFA, not that they have much choice. Those Brussels bureaucrats are the only beneficiaries. My take is that the only product of bureaucracy is poverty and the poms are well out of it, that is if they are smart enough to de-bureacratise as they leave.