Marty_d

Oh this thread still going ...

I am not anti electric this and that, I am anti bu11shite, hype and ridiculous amounts of my money going to research that hasn't gone anywhere and isn't going anywhere until someone comes up with something that we simply do not understand yet, and that usually comes by accident when looking for something else.

 

My City of Chengdu, best known for Pandas, just up the road from my City of Deyang (I own houses and live periodically in both cities) is one of the leading vehicle environment cities in the World and has been since before I arrived here. All taxis, buses must run natural gas and motorcycles are completely banned other than electric scooters. Cars are all recent of course, Euro 4 minimum and it is 100% against the law to modify them in any way.

 

I can sit outside at an Ex-Pat's pub at one of the cities major intersections with a major bus stop 20 meters away with one stopping less than every minute, and talk to people in complete peace without smelling exhaust fumes, listening to loud sports bikes, Harleys or idiots in their turbo Nissan/Subaru/POS. The biggest danger is stepping in front of an electric scooter because they are dead silent and you don't hear them coming.

 

I agree that the pollution is merely moved elsewhere but isn't it better that kids can walk a city street without breathing immediate condensed crap into their lungs.

 

In the last couple of years there has been a huge surge in tiny electric cars, think of a Smart but smaller again, and along with all the millions of electric scooters, their is no registration required as long as it goes no faster than 40kmh. - imagine the Australian Government letting any unregistered vehicle on the road.

Sounds like paradise Bex, but smacking your 40kmh scooter into a smart car doing 60kmh is still enough to kill you or damage you seriously. Without registration who pays the MAIB / injury insurance premiums? Of course the same goes for bicycles here now, they're subsidised by other road user's registration but they're a minority and most bike riders are also car owners. If you have a city full of unregistered vehicles it would become a problem.

which of our brown coal generators is not required any more , the more solar and wind power generated the more normal electricity will cost because the brown coal station is still needed to generate all the needed power when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine but most of the costs of a coal power station are fixed ie makes no real difference wether they are generating or not which also a bit like the desal plant

Geothermal anyone? Temperature underground doesn't change much.

And mine - found a pic of someone in a 701 doing things that 701's shouldn't really do...

[ATTACH]47451._xfImport[/ATTACH]

You haven't lived until you've punched cards with a manual hole punch.rgmwa

What, no one born after 1965 has lived??

I remember spending hours on the TAFE's Commodore 64 playing "Sopwith". Simple yet fun.

And BASIC. How I miss programming in BASIC on my 1985 Amstrad with the green screen and tape drive. If I could have looked forward 30 years and seen what was possible with PC's, it would have seemed like magic. Imagine the next 30...

It seems to me that Windows more or less peaked with XP and progress has all been downhill from there. More complicated, fatter and less intuitive to use. Some should tell Microsoft that perfection is the enemy of good enough, but I guess that won't keep them in business.rgmwa

If you ask me, it peaked with 98 SE service pack 2.

This is why they have the Darwin awards...natural selection by intelligence

Trouble is, it takes no intelligence to breed early, thereby negating the effect.

The real crooks are the pollys who rape and pillage the average worker, I sure as hell don't get 69% of tax payer funded super which I can get my hands on after 10 years.They are the dirt bags of society.

 

I always wanted to join the police force except for the wages it is a disgrace what the country's emergency services personnel get paid.

I think a good platform for a new party would be to reduce politician's entitlements such as travel and super, back in line with whatever the average industry entitlements are. Wages are not really an issue, the PM gets around $500,000 (which is a fair bit but on the low side when compared to say a large corporation's CEO), having said that though I'd like to see them linked to either the inflation rate or APS agreements so they only go up by 2% per year instead of the 6-ish % per year the PM's salary has increased by since 2006 - but the perks like free travel for life after leaving the job, the aforementioned super, office and staff - are things that I think the majority of Australians would agree are undeserved.

Trouble is that most people seem to lose their ethics after becoming politicians so no one seriously tries to reduce their wages. Apart from Bob Brown that is.

Firstly i dont particularly like the mob that is in now, and no i didnt vote for them either.

 

Yep and at what price? how many Billion of $ did they waste, all the balls ups involved to hand that out.

 

Wow good thing not bad

 

Yep a real winner that one, i ask you what good has that done? really?

 

Just throw the figures up that the great RED actually got from the first 1/4 of tax time for this WONDERFUL new profit tax.

 

It cost more to set up than it got......... yep another winner there, and it is the reason why some of the job cuts have happened.

 

Seriously you believe the sh*t that they tell you about this, if you were to sit back and do about 3 years of reading you probably change your mind on this one

 

"the seas are getting hotter, arrrr well they should be by now"

 

Trying to get the country out of the inverted tail spin that labour put it in, and walked of the cockpit saying it still in good shape(for now)

 

they only been there for 6 months for crap's sake.

 

What for telling it how it is, well bout time someone had to balls to do it.

 

Ummmmm they shouldnt have been here in the first place duh, i spose it was the Gov's fault for all the boats that sank to ayy.

 

I got nothing to say to that really i am sitting here scatching my head as to how some one can be so.... (oh be nice Bones) blind, 1 just 1 issue from the last line, how many boats have turned up since the election????

 

Dont worry i can tell you, not a single 1 since early december, compared to about 10 the same time last year, but i spose in your meager mind thats nothing huh.

Hmmm... telling me I have a meagre mind (learn how to spell English unless you're a yank) doesn't really convince me that the "oh be nice Bones" worked.

And you're right. It is nothing. They haven't turned up on the mainland because they've been turned back to Indonesia, by warships that despite having every navigational aid known to man somehow still don't know where Indonesia's territorial waters are, in the process damaging relations with our nearest neighbour who has a population over 10 times greater than us.

As for the numbers of asylum seekers, this is the biggest political furphy ever. Compared to other countries we get absolutely bugger all, they will not change our economy one iota, yet somehow this is whipped up in the voter's minds as a "real" issue. Get a grip, real issues are education, jobs, medical, social, law enforcement, etc etc. Fifty thousand extra people - who by the way are costing us what? Half a million each per annum to keep locked away in other countries? - are not a real issue.

Anyway we've had this discussion on another thread and I'm not going to get into it again.

I love the way that every Lib, from the PM down to hardcore supporters, blames the previous Labor government for their own party's shortcomings.

What did Labor do? Hmmm... kept the country out of recession when the rest of the world were in it (that the "spending money" bit, which the Libs argued against, so thank f*ck they weren't at the helm in 2008)... Brought in the NDIS, which if you know or are related to someone with a disability, you will know is a damn good thing... Had the guts to actually say "sorry" to the aborigines, which little Johnny couldn't bring himself to do... Tried to bring in a super profits tax so the companies making obscene profits from digging up stuff that belongs to the entire country could actually contribute to it... Actually realised that global warming is caused by human activity, so put in place ways to encourage development of sustainable power generation (although they didn't go far enough). And I'm not even a Labor fan given their disgusting treatment of asylum seekers.

What have the Liberals done since winning power?

F&ck all. Oh, p*ssing off other countries, killing & maiming detainees, putting the axe to jobs, etc etc. Nothing positive that's for sure.

Yes, I didn't think it was much of a joke either. More of a chest-thumping exposition of a twisted ideology.

Just thought it's only fair to include a Liberal Party joke in this thread.

• Yep right on the money.
   
  

Thanks for proving my point Teckair.

Righty-ho boys and girls, I'm packing up my bat & ball and going home. This discussion is about to get into name-calling because as far as I can see, all the points have been made. I'm ignoring this thread from now on, so if you want to score points off me, go right ahead, but I won't see it.

I respect everyone's views about flying, obviously not so much when it comes to politics / religion / human rights, so it seems logical to restrain myself to the flying threads from now on. Have fun, play nice.

Cheers, Marty

Nah, for that one just really stupid.

So a virgin giving birth is believable, but thinking some navy officer made a simple mistake is "really stupid"? Wow. How silly of me.

As far as I am concerned you are in no position to be critical of anybodies character.

Sounds like you're a bit critical of someone's character yourself there Teckair.

An analysis of the world according to some people posting here: (apologies to Methusala if I've repeated any of your points...)

• If you care about the treatment of asylum seekers, you're a bleeding heart/watermelon.
   
  
• If you think the ABC has a balanced and unbiased view, you're a lefty/communist.
   
  
• If you think the Murdoch press is skewed to the right, you're a lefty/communist.
   
  
• If you care about the environment, you're a greeny.
   
  
• If you are concerned about Australian warships violating the borders of other countries, you're un-Australian.
   
  
• If you don't believe the asylum seekers burned their own hands as part of some cunning plan, you're naive/un-Australian.
   
  

Well, I for one would like to proudly declare that I am a bleeding heart watermelon lefty un-Australian communist princess greeny. According to that criteria.

Here, have some stats.....

http://www.news.com.au/national/a-world-of-long-term-welfare-for-refugees/story-e6frfkvr-1226050161428

Yes, a great shocker on the face of it, until you read the small print.

"The remainder were unemployed, retired, studying full time, engaged in caring duties, doing voluntary work or trying to start a business from which they had yet to receive income."

When the government states the unemployment rate in Australia is around 5%, do they base that on the entire population? No. It's based on those who are "participating" in the workforce, and excludes retirees, students, the disabled, pre-schoolers and anyone who is under-employed and has given up on getting full time work.

So what's the real figure if you remove people matching those criteria from the cohort? Good old Murdoch press, give the headlines but never balanced analysis.

How many of the terrorists involved in 9/11 entered the country as asylum seekers? 0.

How many of the terrorists involved in 7/7 (London) entered the country as asylum seekers? 0.

If Al-Quaeda or JI or any other nutjob terror organisation is going to attack Australia, they're not going to trust leaky Indonesian boats to get their suicide bombers here. They'll fly them in like they did with 9/11.

Unless you think it's a fair thing to also keep out "proper" refugees originating in Islamic countries (defined as others in this forum as being people who walk to the country next door and live in a camp until Australia gives them a visa), then the only thing you seem to have against them is that they're "queue-jumpers".

Seems a bit petty to me.

Well that's about the most optimistic view I've heard about someone with the perfect attributes to become a brilliant criminal in this country.Resourceful- A good crim has to be.

 

Used to living in danger (talk their way out of anything).

 

Used to dealing with corruption- put that with welfare & see how that goes.

 

Do you have any experience in dealing with the culture in that region?

Which particular region? Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Syria, Afghanistan....?

Short answer is no. Do you?

How childish

Someone explains that people in the centres are free to leave and go home.

 

Immediately someone else proves he can't read by saying they are deprived of their freedom.

 

And you do your best to inflame the situation by giving it a "Winner" label

 

How utterly pathetic.

Thanks for those well-thought out and helpful comments TP. It may surprise you to know that not only can I read, I can think too.

And thinking tells me that if you give someone a choice of staying behind razor wire, or flying them home penniless to the country they risked everything to escape and where they face possible torture and death, you can pretty much say there is no choice at all and that option can be ignored.

For those on the opposite side of this discussion, can I point out the benefits of letting asylum seekers in? Stay with me on this, it does involve putting aside your strongly held views for a minute and being objective.

1) They are committed. Meaning they have left behind their whole life getting here. This isn't a holiday, they've liquidated everything they could and paid a people smuggler to get them here. And if they read/hear/watch the news, which they probably do, they know they're gambling with their life to get here.

2) They are resourceful. If you have ever moved interstate, or to another country, you know the stress involved. Now consider that you probably have to organise it in secret, convert everything you own to currency - again in secret, organise travel across multiple borders and risk your hard-earned on a dodgy people smuggler.

3) They have probably been reasonably successful in their previous country. By this I mean work / business / whatever - because they have the money to pay a people smuggler.

What do these three things tell you? Committed, resourceful and able to earn a living. To me it means the following:

- They are unlikely to want to live on social welfare forever. Usually people who have had a successful career or business once, are likely to work towards having it again.

- They are escaping oppression or danger in the country they've left, so they are likely to have a sense of patriotism to the country that takes them in, because they're gaining freedoms that we take for granted.

- As they have probably experienced corrupt and brutal law enforcement in their country of origin, they are likely to be good law-abiding citizens.

- Contrary to the doomsayer's views, someone actively escaping a hardline islamic regime is very unlikely to be strapping on the C4 and heading for the nearest playground.

So in summary, you want successful people to grow businesses in Australia to improve the economy (because we all know a growing economy is the sole measure of success). So why would you want to keep the people who are most driven to achieve this, out?

Now let's hear the venom.

Smoke and mirrors again, the only relevance here is that , as a country, we seem to be apologising to a country that has consistently disregarded our borders for years, otherwise , I don't know the operational procedures for battleships nor do I care, this thread is about Indonesia and the ALP supporting a criminal activity and how ,it seems, every minor setback the government has in stopping these bastards from continuing is suddenly a big victory for the so called "human rights" brigade, I wonder how the families of those dead at sea feel about the way they're fleeced, loaded, and dumped by the Indonesian supported people smuggling business only to have the watermelon crew crying about minor details , if the ALP/green circus truly cared about the people rather than scoring political points they would've done more to stop the smugglers rather than create an environment conducive to their trade

"Watermelon"? Seriously? What, did your favourite conservative shock jock tell you that one?

What I find astounding is that a minority of "Australians " appear more concerned with Indonesia's sovereignty than Australia's ,they cry out how in humane it all is , but applaud the government that allowed hundreds to die at sea, they find great pleasure in problems with destroying the people smuggling racket, do you actually want a criminal trade in people to prosper, it's a good thing to stop the illegal entry into our country, and at the same time dismantle a disgusting industry that has had a free run for the last six years. But from some opinions if it was the ALP doing it ,fine, cause they were awesome! But heaven forbid the other lot actually doing what they said they would, yeh, I know it's a bit different to what we've been getting, but it could be a good thing,,,,actually doing something other than press conferences !

So if Indonesian warships started crossing into Australian territorial waters with no permission from Australian authorities, you wouldn't have a problem with that?

I hear Mad Dog admitted that the Navy has "accidentally" entered Indonesia's territorial waters... several times. I'd have thought those big warships would have GPS.

No, I object to people having those views forced on them, especially children.Our government is supposed to be secular, this benefits all religion.

 

You may have strong religious views, that's your right, but I have the right to question and disregard those same views, but not discriminate against you. Should I be discriminated against for not sharing your views, expect some problems.

M61A1, I think FT is being a bit tongue-in-cheek... subtle I know, but I don't think he's about to don the short-sleeved white shirt with tie and bicycle from door to door with a bible and earnest expression.

These people are free to leave at any time and their transport out will be arranged and supplied free of charge when requested. They are not forced to labour in any way and have plenty of free food, medicines and medical treatment, cigarettes plus the use of phones and generally a limited range of entertainment or basic sporting facilities. All questioning is done on a voluntary basis with no obligation to answer at all.

To refer to this as a 'concentration camp' is deliberate deceit and beyond wilful ignorance, any person intelligent enough to breath and speak would grasp the difference. It is also an attempt to belittle and demean those around the world that are or have been in an actual concentration camp; I have known some of these people who have suffered dreadfully and for this reason I despise your pathetic political propaganda and deception.

 

Proverbs 17v10 "A reproof enters more deeply into him that has understanding than a hundred stripes into a fool"

What is it then, Gnu? What do you call a place where you lock someone behind razor wire and deprive them of their freedom, without a court case, sometimes for years on end? Just because the facilities are better than WWII, doesn't change what it is.

As for the scripture quoting, I smell the whiff of hypocrisy that someone who follows a belief system that supposedly supports the less fortunate in life, defends wrongful incarceration and human suffering.

Weren't we always told in school that Australian's get treated equally?

Have you noticed how Abbott has changed since the election? Haven't seen him in the flouro vest once and you never see him on the news!

 

Not like the good old days, you couldn't shut him up about how good a government he would run.

That's because it's been brought home to him how being in government is a bit harder than slagging off while in opposition.

Kind of like if I were to sit at home telling a footballer on the TV how useless he is, as opposed to me getting into a game.