Jerry_Atrick

Doh! I got it.. Bit slow today

? I don't get the correlation, myself...

Corporate buzzwords and phrases. It was things like "bringing them along for the journey".. The latest is aligned.. as in "lets all get aligned".. These things are repeat ad nauseum... I am not sure people even know what they mean. P155es me off.

Little bit of a thread drift, but over here, they do not recognise common law marriage lie in Aus. In practice, if partner and I broke up, we could divide the property as per the legal (or any trust) ownerhip share.. anything that is legally hers stays hers, and anything that is legally mine stays mine. Mind you, the father has no legal access to the kids while they are under 18, but still has to pay for them.

It's incredible and you would not believe it, but we can have all this rain and still technically be in "drought". First, we have been, in relative terms, quite dry for around 18 months. Our underground resevoirs may not fill up (technically, may have enough leaks to lose a lot). For some reason, since I have been int he UK, there has been at least 3 hosepipe bans due to lack of water I can think of, and they were all after a decent spell of rain. Dare I say, privitasation at its best.

They say the first time you marry is for love; the second for money. Having never been married, I doubt I will ever find out.

I sometimes qquestion the wisdom of buying a heavier bike, but despite the electrical issues, my last ride back from London, and its general handling characteristics in the current weather has confirmed it. I am doing a few more push ups and squats per day - not because I keep dropping the thing, either.. but I do know I need to have a bot more strength than I do, should I drop it again. Once the electrical gremlin is sorted, and/or the weather warms up, it will be a beaut! Today, went to Yeovil - about 30 miles away to a brand new Infiniti Motorcycles store. It was in the car and took a bleedin' hour and a half. But, I picked up an opening deal on a diual set of intercoms; they were missing an adaptor plate for my helmet, so, on Saturday, we will be there on the bikes to get the intercoms fitted to the helmets. But, I was very thankful I took the car in the end. It absolutely hammered down for about 10 minute. It would have tested the best made motorcycle clothing. And the wind whippted up to about 20kts..

Bite the bullet.

Those Indian summers are far more frequent these days. But even when the summers haven';t been the best, the days are long with sunset going past 10pm, and sunrise a little after 4am. Combined with a more relaxed approach to drinking (at least where I lived in London and where I live in the South West), made loverly long but relaxing summer days, often watching them attempt to play cricket. Happy days!

I think there's a real market for a new political party, without necessarily experience of running a government, but with solid central policies that foster innovation/entrepreneurship and ensure the risk/reward formula rewards well those who take risks and succeed, but also ensures that those that participate are not left behind - i.e. striking the right balance. The right balance is different for different people - I get it - but at least the rational conversation to try and strike that balance. While I agree that it would be good getting someone in who has experience running the country, by being in parliament, you do get that experience even in minor or major opposition as you are exposed to the machinations indirectly and directly through parliamentary committees and the like. So, you would want them not to take government day 1, but maybe after one or two elections where they have had time to get that experience and build their numbers - and also prove their mettle - or not - to the electorate. The other reason is that (hopefully) they would come with little political baggage. For example, the issue Jacinta Allan in Vic has in tackling the CFMEU is just that.. a lot of this happened under her watch (and prior). also, when you represent the old guard, coming out and changing things is admitting you were wrong the first time, and the press love that; and people naturally question your competence. She is not the only one - Dutton is a second (although I think he didn't see any wrong he and the government he was very senior in did). For some reason, the electorate hates it when pollies admit they were wrong and learned their lesson and will do better - it's as if everything we try and teach our kids goes out the window when it comes to politics.

Despite this, according to a headline on The Age website today, One Nation are in with a decent chance: Reform here, and their predecessor party UKIP (effectively the same but rebranded), spent years without any seat in the House of Commons until the last election, where they got 4. The seat Farage holds is Clacton, one fo the more deprived areas in the country. Despite his voting record which will make the people of Clacton even worse off, they love him and his popularity there has increased. Because they only listen to what they want to hear and reject everything else. Pretty well much how society works these days, I guess. The fact is Hanson offers people who feel left behind, of which more of the population seems to be itself an issue that needs to be resolved), something to blame at least, and therefore an answer to the problems. People will expect to see these problems solved overnight, just as per Chump, but it will take a long time before they stop excusing her. Also, rusted on Lib voters can never see themselves endorsing Labor - it really is that simple. Libs are in no mans loand between what @pmccarthy correctly terms as Australian conservative values and the rabid right.. They will never compete with Pauline properly unless what is left of the more middle ground is hollowed out completely. Like Reform, they are more likely to pick up seats the longer out poltical malaise continues.

I have to admit.. as a bit of pyrophobe, I am happy they are not in common use anymore, but the engineering is interesting.

Don't talk to me about being wet! OK, we haven't had the floods that Aus got over the last few years, but crikey, we have had over 40 odd days of continuous rainy days (not always raining, but for a decent part of each day) and grey, grey, grey. Yesterday was a sunny day for most of it. I think everyone got sunstroke they were so unacclimatised to seeing any sun. And it only hit 6 degrees. Today; back to the rain..

Ask @red750 or @old man emu - they should know.

How I came to the UK is a looong story. To cut it short, my then fiancee and I split up, but for a year, she was still hanging around wanting best of both worlds. Muggins here allowed it for a bit, but to try and put some distance between us I took a 12 month contract in Traralgon. She was still hanging on, which is a bit rich since she initiated the split. Anyway, I decided buuggah it, I am going to move to the UK and use it as a base to see the world. The sofeare company that was putting in Software at Morwell power station had just started up a London office and when their people at Morwell learned of my plan, they offered me a job. So out here I came, and met parnter Atrick (never been married) and had two offspring. We moved to Melbourne in 2003, but both of us throught that at that time in our lives, London was probably the better option for us, financially and for the kids. And, it largely was. However, while I still do OK financially, 13 years of conservative rule and the kids growing up, Aus looks the better place now (just wish I had kids younger). I knew we were better in Australia when we moved out of London about 12 years ago now, and we almost did move. SWMBO needs a place to call home and we were having no luck finding a suitable place here, at any price. But just as we were about to start planning the move, a place same up and we bought it. That, IMHO, was a mistake as it really wasn't what we both wanted - one wanted it more than the other. Then this place came up, so we went for it, which was a mistake for the same reason - except the other wanted it more than the last one. The other mistake was this is a massive peice of work and we will lose money on this one (at least with the other, we broke even). Thankfully, house prices have just picked up a bit here. If we had moved to Aus 12 years ago, we would be sitting pretty with respect to a property and probably one or two rentals. So, we are close to finishing this place. I have to spend more time on the house than the keyboard. My son wants to study marine biology in Townsville or Hobart (but, Geelong (Deakin) will do as far as I am concerned). My daughter is wedded to finishing law in the UK, but her univeristy, which is something like 200th in the world ranking of law schools is affiliated with Melbourne, which is 10th.. so I am encouraging her to see if she can transfer to Melbourne, get her degree from Melbourne and if she wants to come back to the UK, she can do a masters at one of the better universities, which will cost her a lot less and she will be far more attractive to potential employers. I want to work a bit more in Aus, and truth is I will probably never retire until I am physically and/or metnally incapable of continuing. But, I don't want the pressure I have now, especially in the corproate environment as I am thoroughly sick of the politics (never been good at it) and where I work has really changed from being a great place where you can just get on with it and people are mutually supportive to back to the a dog eat dog world and executivemanagement than bend with the wind. I guess I am more cyncial these days. But, I wouldn't have changed moving out of Aus for the world. Just would have comeback sooner. I have learned a lot and it has taken me to place and allowed me to experience life in many countries as a peer and not a tourist. .I have many great firendships. Believe it or not, it has made me less uptight and a lot more tolerant. And opened my eyes to many things I would have shunned. So I consider it has made my life experience far richer than it would have been.