old man emu

I'm pretty sure that Trump got the details of how our GST is applied all stuffed up. Of course it's not a tariff. It is just a way for the government to make some money out of online purchasing. The government of the day (probably the Conservatives) just took advantage of the boom in online shopping.

Why not make your own coffin? We are all going to need one one day and who wants to burden family with making a decision about how your carcass is going to travel on its final journey. I'm about to sign up to spend $5000 for a headstone for my wife's and my grave. When she died, the family had to make some quick decisions about her funeral. We selected a very basic coffin, but that cost $1000 three year ago. For $1000 I reckon I can make one with bells, whistles and flashing neon lights. I'd rather leave a few hundred bucks in my estate to benefit the family that fork it out to a funeral director for something that will only be seen by others for a few hours. My Mum arranged her funeral ceremony years ago and has it all documented so that my sister and I just have to follow the bouncing ball. Here's a video about a group in New Zealand who have the right idea about organising their departures. I reckon that it's a good idea to try out at a Men's Shed. All the gear is there and all a bloke would have to do is buy the wood. When out ability to have a firm hand on the control of our lives, why not extend that to controlling how we go out? After all, who of us hasn't made their Will and kept it up to date?

Here's a project for this weekend:

There's a lot of selling on the stock market, but in some ways that might represent a correction to bring the market back to where it should be after a period of speculation. The lowering of the indices might make for sensationalist headlines, but that might be all it does. However, if the drop continues past what might be considered the correct level, then we can start worrying more. Am I correct, Jerry?

There's too many threads dealing with the Trumpster. I just posted something about beef sales in another thread. Basically I expanded on rgmwa's thought, mentioning also the effects of the Queensland flooding on the supply levels. I like Marty's work around of selling our meat through a third party. The problem our meat producers face is that there is a scarcity of countries where eating beef is customary. Either that, or the population does not have the money to buy it.

Fair enough to point that out. However, considering Trump's usual behaviour, you wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. They sound like pretty typical conditions for a Trump deal. Also, a few years ago Australia started imposing GST on purchases from the USA with a value of less than $1000. Apparently, according Sky News, that is one of the reasons Trump is imposing a 10% tariff on Australian stuff. A lot of countries will be wrangling for a reduction in the tariff their products attract. I wonder what would happen if a lot of countries decided to stop trading with the USA and set up other markets. I bet the US hamburger mobs are going into panic mode. Australia supplies a good proportion of their low fat ground beef, which is probably produced in those flood ravaged areas of Queensland. So the US market will be hit with a double whammy of higher prices due to the tariff and higher prices due to lack of supply. Those companies were suffering last year due to cost of living pressures keeping customers away.

The AUD has been hovering around $0.63USD for a while now. And the GBP is worth $1.30USD.

This is an interview on Australia's ABC. The interviewee seems to be presenting an unbiased appraisal of Australia's actions before and after Trump's tariff announcement. He speaks of the long, and important relationship between the two countries and implies that Pine Gap and US Troops in the Northern Territory are more important to the USA than to Australia. Ignore the title as it is a bit of clickbait.

Returning to electoral promises of money being seen as vote buying, I heard a candidate announce a grant to a community for something or other. What the candidate pointed out that before the grant had been approved, those seeking it had gone through all the preparatory work so that work would be able to start if the grant was approved. That prep work involved drawing of plans, obtaining the development approval, arranging contractors to do the work etc. This is the normal practice for these community grants. My Men's Shed is applying for a grant for building extensions and the documentation of these things has to accompany the application. So it seems that the promises made to fund local projects are not in fact promises, but the confirmation of grants that would have already been approved but not announced by whichever government body was making the grant. In other words, such a 'promise' is merely electoral spin.

That's why I think demerit points are a much more equitable penalty than monetary fines.

It would be a case of the bureaucracy rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

It is interesting to note that since 1973, several attempts have been made by the Labor Party to introduce a Bill of Rights to parliament but the legislation has never been passed. On the other hand, the Conservative former Australian Prime Minister John Howard has argued against a bill of rights for Australia on the grounds it would transfer power from elected politicians to unelected judges and bureaucrats. The idea of power being removed from judges at least seems to be being echoed at present on a continent to the northeast of Australia. When you have a look at the numerous individual documents which bear the title of a bill of rights (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_human_rights_instruments ) you can see that the concept of a basic, simple list of rights has been swamped by advocates of individual issues. God handed Moses only ten commandments, of which only four relate to behaviour in a society. It is Man who has created a plethora of commandments from those ten.

This was posted yesterday, 1/4/25. Interesting, even if you are not into militaria.

I watched a video involving a simple maths problem. The task was to find the original price of a packet of tea before a 7-1/2% tax had been applied. The video comes from the USA. I posted this as a comment: "Redo the problem after a 25% tariff has been applied." Got three likes already.

The "old farts" was meant to be humorous. Of course there would be a great diversity of opinion amongst the electorate regardless of their ages, however I was trying to imply that each of those groups grew up under different conditions from the other groups. That has got to have affected their outlook towards many subjects. Whichever Party can dial into those different outlooks would gain the most electoral support.

I can't figure out how I'm paying roughly $1.70 per litre in the country, but city folks are paying about $2.00. It used to be the other way around and the claim was that it costs money to transport the fuel. Have the oil companies acquired some sort of Star Trekian transporter beam to move fuel from the coast to the inland?

What we will have to watch is the demographic of the voters. Millennials (1981 - 1996) and a proportion of Gen Z (1997 - 2012) will definitely outnumber those born before 1964 and may be close in numbers to Gen X (1965 - 1980). How will those younger people vote. Who has listened to their hopes and fears? These are the people whose lives and those of any youngsters they have are just beginning. We old farts are looking towards life eternal. I don't think old farts can claim to set a course for the country into the future based on our experiences. I feel that the only thing that experience has taught me is that society is in a state of constant change.

Instead of concentrating on clearing up the dung heap, it would be better to begin with picking up the bits of dung. The use of outside consultants to the degree that has been done in the past is something that has denigrated the qualifications and experience of members of the Public Service. Qualified people chose to enter the Public Service for a lot of reasons that do not have wealth creation at the top of the list.

Strewth! He'll go 250 clicks on the off chance of a relationship, but won't drive a 70 click round trip for the benefit of his country! 😁 Seriously, I hope she sees you as a modern day Rudolph Valentino, and will fall into the arms of The Sheik

That's been a human trait since some warlord thought up the idea in antiquity. I don't think that we would whinge so much if tax money was spent on what the people really wanted. Just take a look at the Scandinavian countries. They get taxed pretty heavily, but it seems that the money is poured back into things that actually benefit the citizens. There's a lot of talk about government waste. Perhaps GON is correct and we need a DOGE to go through government expenditure with a fine toothed comb. As I said earlier, I've no qualms about a government spending a couple of billion on an educational facility aimed at producing people with skills the rest of the community needs. What I object to are these "fact finding" group trips overseas. In an age of instantaneous international communication, and access to information via the internet, why do highly paid individuals really need to go on these junkets? We have embassies and other representatives in most countries. Let them do the ground work and then the Ministers whose departments are involved can conference call. We've seen that some countries can discuss and plan military campaigns using a texting service.

Apps of that sort are only useful if you can use them. Not many venues in the sticks where one could use them. But, hey! I chose to live in a "remote" area and I'm just GON-ah have to cop it. The loyalty programs such as Fly Buys and the Woolworths one are pathetic. If you don't use your accumulated Fly Buy points within 12 months, they are lost. Woolworths used to give you one point per dollar spent. Now it's one point for two dollars. Takes a long time to spend $2000 dollars on supermarket items when there's only oneself, and there is the need to closely monitor the price of each item, which means shopping elsewhere. I only use my Woolies one if I go into Dubbo. I really should get a loyalty card for the local supermarket. The way that supermarket jacks up prices means I could live free throughout January on the points earned the previous year. I have one app that gives me a 4 cent per litre reduction in the price of fuel at United servos, but I think it only works in NSW and you have to have a Seniors Card to apply. There's a couple of United servos in Dubbo, but their best pump price today is $1.71 p/l. That' $1.67 with the discount. This morning I grabbed a few litres of 91 Octane locally for $169.9 and I can get it on the way home from Dubbo for $1.65 any day of the week. I try to use the discount when I go to Sydney. If I go to the United I normally use it's $1.69 less discount today. However the servo next door is often cheaper.

It's only a couple of days into the campaign and already I'm sick of being treated like a mug. So far no Party has announced anything that personally affects me, except perhaps for the temporary reduction in fuel excise, but what annoys me are the promised handouts for projects. It's not that I disagree with projects receiving support, it's just that the grant of support is vote bait. Let me give an example I heard of this morning. Albo announced support to build a major education facility in Adelaide to train nurses, paramedics and other types of health care people. Great idea to expand our capacity to train these much needed workers. However, is it realistic to think that the idea for this has suddenly popped up? Planning for such a facility would have been going on for a few years. We have a Federal Minister for Health, which means that there is a Federal Department of Health. Surely any requests for support would have been made to that department. I would rather Albo, or Dutton if he had been PM, say, "Over the previous couple of years "My Government" has been supporting the development of this facility by providing financial assistance and advice to the planners. That financial assistance has amounted to X million dollars. It is My government's intention to continue this support if re-elected and have budgeted for that amount to amount to Y billion dollars by the completion of the project." A statement like that shows that the government has actually been doing something. It removes the 'gunna' from the story and I would say would be a better indication of the Party's ability to govern than the sort of pork barreling promises we have become used to during election campaigns. Do you remember the "That wasn't a key policy promise" dismissal of an unfulfilled election promise following an election win? Don't try to buy my vote with promises of pie in the sky. Tell me what you have done as a government since you were elected so I can judge your performance. If it's not up to scratch, be prepared to sit on the opposite side of the chamber and put up with smaller offices.

Pinot Moor is a popular one for blokes with a certain condition.

The Cost-of-Living issue will be big in this election. It is clear however that governments cannot control the root cause - the behaviour of the corporate world. The ACCC recently carried out an enquiry into alleged price gouging by the supermarket chains. It reported that it could not find that this was happening, despite being told horror stories by suppliers and customers. Not being a Royal Commission, it could not compel witnesses to tell the truth, so the supermarket chains said what suited them. What was not reported on very much was that the ACCC found that the supermarket chains were just about the most profitable in the world. In its simplest form profit can be calculated using the simple formula Profit = Income - Costs. The supermarket chains go on and on about Costs, but aren't the costs of generating income tax deductible? Admittedly, a lot of those costs flow into the economy through wages (plus PAYE tax) and supply costs. However what is the source of Income? from the very pockets of customers. It seems logical that increasing Income means draining the pockets of customers. Governments can pass al sorts of laws aimed at controlling prices, but, as we have seen recently in the USA, everyone is now willing to challenge laws in the Courts, which either delays their introduction or results in their being rescinded. And if the laws hold up, where are the enforcers? It calls to mind the old acronym, BOHICA. (Bend over. Here it comes again.)

When I did the plumbing for the bathroom, I used those tap valves that are supposed to be easier for people with weak hands to turn off. I turned them off too hard and eventually the hot and cold taps would not open so I couldn't shower. This morning I bit the bullet and investigated the problem. I found that the rubber dome of the valves were stuck into the hole they were meant to seal. Winding the tap just caused the spindle shaft to move on the stem of the washer. I pulled the dome valves out and replaced them with normal type ones. Success!