octave

A Doveton milk bar worker was hit over the head with a metal pole by two masked men who then stole cigarettes and a cash register. Not to worry. Only another statistic.

Red do you honestly think I am saying that there is no crime in Melbourne? Do you think I am insensitive to the victim's crime?

Are you saying that I could not find instances of violent crime in other cities?

There are cities that have no crime, some cities have a lower rate of crime and some have a higher rate. We usually measure these things with statistics so we get a true representation of what is occurring. This in no way lessens the trauma of being a victim of crime but your anecdote says nothing about whether you or I are more or less likely to be attacked or injured or whether you are more likely to be a victim of crime in Melbourne as opposed to Sydney or any other city.

If the Libs had said that we can do better on crime than the current government I would have no problem with that. As it was they could have rightfully pointed out that in the last year there has been an 11% increase in sexual assaults but I certainly did not hear any mention (by either party) of that statistic.

A friend of mine owns 2 Thai restaurants, he is incensed at pollies pushing the line that people should be afraid to go out to a restaurant at night.

Anyway, my main points are:

There is no evidence that the average Melbournian is afraid to go out at night, some may, but that applies to most cities

A campaign could have been run by promising to reduce crime without resorting to the overreach of claiming that there is a "tsunami"

of crime and that we are all cowering in our homes at night.

It does concern me that sexual assaults have gone the other way and have increased by 11%. Although I think that needs to be addressed, I would not refer to it as a "tsunami", for me, it is about keeping it rational. By the way, all sides of politics do use this kind of overreach with various issues often successfully but I think people are becoming cynical. I am concerned about crime but not hysterical.

This tactic seems to have failed especially in the electorates where this was pushed the hardest.

My plea to all politicians is "please don't treat me like an idiot, I am rational and I don't like being to have to endure your attempts to win me over with emotion, I will check facts.

I did find this clip amusing and illuminating. "Chris Pyne forgets his lines"

Christopher Pyne is asked if he is afraid to go to restaurants in Melbourne

I think debt is not such a bad thing if it's sustainable. I suppose it depends on how much, and for how long to pay it back. Without government debt, we wouldn't get much improvement in society and infrastructure.

It's a bit like us. Without the buy now, pay back for most of your life plan, we'd all be living in bark huts. No brick homes with tiled roofs, no back yard swimming pools, no flash cars. The fine line is whether it's sustainable or irresponsible.

Exactly

Without ever going into debt could we ever build an airport a motorway or build railway lines. To take an example getting rid of rail crossings is expensive but they are also a drag on the economy, this applies to other infrastructure as well. I went into debt to buy my first home, I could have just paid rent out of my wage and initially been in a better financial state, however, years later I have no debt and do not have to pay rent to anyone. It is about having an appropriate debt to earnings ratio. I make use of the infrastructure that past governments borrowed for and paid back.

Of course, ANY crime is bad but the notion that crime is out of control is hysterical nonsense. The idea the Melbournians are afraid to go out at night is simply not true. You may be afraid to go out but I am not and I can assure that Melbourne is pretty busy at night. I am not saying there is no crime, every city regardless of who governs it has crime. The assertion that I question is the crime is out of control in Melbourne as opposed to any other city and certainly, the statistics suggest a fall in crimes although sexual assaults are up.

https://www.news.com.au/news/national/statistics-paint-clearer-picture-of-crime-scene-in-victoria/news-

story/db37465d0eb16e03760be826da8d8e18

Using fear is an age-old political tactic. I clearly remember when I lived in Sydney in the 80s a campaign advert that showed an elderly lady nervously peeping through the blinds and the sound of police sirens and flashing lights etc. There was also a voice-over about elderly people afraid in their own homes. It is an old tactic.

I work 2 days a week in Footscray and after work in the early evening I walk about 1 km to my car, my wife comes from her job in another suburb on the train and walks to the car, either we are foolhardy or extremely brave or perhaps just rational. lol sometimes we even meet at the African restaurant in Seddon (pretty scary eh?)

This is not to say that I am unsympathetic to people who find themselves a victim of a crime or that we should not looking for better ways of further reducing crime.

What we do know for sure is that either people's concerns over crime have been exaggerated or they did not believe the choice of government would change the situation or they thought other issues were more important.

Bottom line is this, the party that consistently pushes the crime out of control scenario lost and lost in a big way. If significant numbers of Melbournians are terrified then they did not show it at the ballot box

People are genuinely scared.

Are they, I am sure some are but when I go out at night the cafes and bars seem busy. I am assuming that you do not believe the official stats. If there is such alarm out there and if the blame belongs to this government then why the landslide? People I think are starting to become more discerning when presented with scare stories.

smash and grabs, house breaking, etc.

When you say "lost control of" I assume you are suggesting a massive increase in these crimes. I think one reason people turned against the Libs is this is the narrative they pushed but were unable to substantiate with facts. Of course, any criminal activity is of concern but to exaggerate and use fear for political ends is (I hope) becoming unacceptable. Also, does anyone really believe that a change in government would cause a large shift in the amount of crime being committed? Clearly, the electors in the sandbelt seats, where the fear campaign was used saw through it. The notion that in Melbourne people are "afraid to go out at night" was clearly rejected by the electors.

So was the result all due to state politics, or is it a bad sign for the Libs in the upcoming federal election?

I believe that the magnitude of the swing against the LNP would suggest that there are serious problems ahead for the federal government. I suspect the problem for the liberal party is the internal battle between moderates and the more extreme conservatives.

Locally, I suspect that people reacted against a scare campaign. I saw numerous interviews where opposition politicians would crowbar "crime out of control" into almost every sentence. When confronted with the actual crime statistics showing a reduction in crime they would just keep repeating the claims. Interestingly they did very poorly in the seats that were targeted with this scare campaign. It may just be wishful thinking on my part but I am hoping that people are wising up and are rejecting manipulation by fear.

Putting religion back in schools? Whilst this may be a vote winner with some people I believe it is not something that resonates with middle Australia.

Late in the campaign, the opposition announced that it would close the medically supervised safe injecting room in Richmond. My understanding is that this facility has saved lives. I could, of course, have been swayed by evidence, however, none was presented.

Federally the government has for some time been having an internal fight between the centre-right and the far right. I read a column by a conservative commentator who thought that if Dutton or Abbott had been PM then the Libs may have won in Victoria, this I believe is nonsense.

A little over a year ago more the 60% of Australians rejected the conservative agenda and voted for allowing same-sex marriage. Many of these voters must have been LNP voters. If the LNP does not learn from this and realize that there is not much of an appetite to move further to the right then they will become irrelevant.

And for a little sample of some of the talent up for election here is a great interview (reminds me of Clarke and Dawe)

Frankston candidate flounders on power station plans | Sky News Australia

Looks like it is no a particularly safe place for a journalist. List of journalists killed in Russia - Wikipedia

A lot of generalizations here. Specialist in private practice are well paid (as they should be) but I agree that at the top of the profession remuneration is over the top. What is an acceptable fee for a cardiac surgeon's services?

I am a private musical instrument teacher (some people think I charge too much) and I have a young student whose house I go to to teach. His mother is quite a senior Nephrologist in the public system. Their house is nothing special (although better than mine) I can assure you that they do not own any fancy cars, her partner drives a quite old 4wd which was probably expensive in its day and she drives a Kia. Their kids go to a private school and they do go overseas once a year. This seems fair to me, I am not envious.

The median pay for an Australian airline captain is $152569 and can be as high as $249110 this does not mean that most airline pilots are necessarily driving around in Ferraris.

On another note, I have been meaning to ask for some time, is everyone on this forum unhappy?

And, old K , lots of straight "A" students didn't get into medicine. There was a time when you got extra points for "English being not your mother tongue" and without those extra points, it was impossible to gain entry. Yep the first-year of medicine looked like a foreign-student gathering.

Are you sure abou that? When you say there was s time when was that time?

The Google news feed is a bit slow. The oldest report I can find on the latest terrorist arrests in Melbourne is four hours old. The story broke on the Iranian news hours before that. Red 750, do you know when the news broke in Melbourne?

It was reported on local ABC radio at about 8:50 which was abojt 10 minutes before the police press conference.

I have no idea about being a tourist here and needing medical attention however as a resident and having had a life threatening occurance I can only say that I am extremely grateful for the care I recieved for almost no cost that I would ot have recieved overeseas.

Not necessarily disagreeing with this but there are few countries in the world where I would rather be in the event of a serious illness or accident than this one.

Here is a look at a modern grid connected system.

there's not much you can do to increase the efficiency of a fridge.

A refrigerator cools by harnessing electricity to drive a compressor. The efficiency of the compressor has improved markedly and will probably continue to improve.

source: How your refrigerator has kept its cool over 40 years of efficiency improvements | ASAP Appliance Standard Awareness Project

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Let me just say that I do not believe there is an economic case for the average household to be totally off grid. In our case, we made the choice based on the fact that the nearest power lines were 4 KM away and the price of connection was astronomical, for a fraction of the price we installed our own system.

1 amp at 12 volts for 1 hour is not trivial for a battery, but it is only .012 kWh which costs a trivial amount from the mains.

Seems like a trivial amount to me. We had 405 Ah batteries, assuming we only wanted to run the batteries down to 50% we could have run one of the old quartz halogen bulbs (much more efficient lights available now) rated at 20 watts (about 1.6 Ah) for 131 hours. During this time we would, of course, have expected to be charging the batteries via solar panels. Of course in the real world, we ran many more appliances than just 1 light bulb.

We really need cheaper batteries for this green stuff to take over except in really remote places.

I would generally agree with that. I do not believe standalone is the way to go at this point unless you live away from the grid or you can afford the new technology and have an interest. Batteries have improved since I first installed our battery bank and they continue to improve and get cheaper but again I am not saying everyone should go off grid (I no longer live off grid)

My wife agrees with you guys. No way was she going to live with a converted chest freezer.So the planet loses out.

 

If she was wrong, you could buy a chest fridge at harvey norman.

I would suspect that modern fridges have become more efficient and the gains would not be worth the inconvenience. I do get amazed when I walk around an appliance shop by the size of some of the fridges. I can only speak for myself but I have no need for a fridge the size of an office block.

They say " a daily power as little as 55 amps...." which is meaningless. Amps are a measure of current, not power. And power is not what you pay for, it is really energy. kWh is an energy measure.

The relevance in a stand-alone system as we had is that the batteries are rated in amp hours, our batteries were about 420 Ah. I think from memory the compressor of the fridge would draw about 5 amps (60 watts /12 volts) Our calculation then would be 5 amps X the number of hours the fridge was actually operating. This tells us how long we can run our fridge before the batteries are flat. The input from the solar panels was measured by an amp meter the and what the house was drawing was metered in Ah. Most of our appliances were rated in Ah but I think the lights we used which were quartz halogen and were 20 watts but it was more convenient for us convert that to amp hours in order to determine our draw on the battery 20watts at 12 volts = 1.6 A, if we leave it on for 10 hours this will this will reduce the power the batteries capacity by 16 Ah, I am assuming the specs on page 6 are the Ah times the number of hours the fridge would operate in 24 hours and that is relevant to battery sizing as well as charging capacity.

The figure that matters is watts per dollar so you did good old K with your water heating. But now you need some system to stop the water going over 60 degreesBatteries... I reckon you summed it up well Yenn.

 

Batteries from hobbyking cost about $1 per watt-hour, that is $1000 per kiloWatt hour.

 

A fridge in summer uses about 6kWh per day, so that would need $6000 worth of hobbyking batteries to power for a day when no other energy came in.

 

A converted chest freezer of the same size would use 2kWh per day so would be just feasible. Funny how nobody makes such a fridge huh.

We lived for 21 years in an off-grid house There are plenty of high-efficiency low voltage appliances. Our fridge was converted from a 240 volt freezer into a 12 volt fridge. It was very efficient but I can't remember exactly how much power it drew. We bought all of solar gear from the Rainbow Power Company. These days they have a range of efficient fridges. Power usage figures here (page 6) https://www.rpc.com.au/pdf/evakool_upright_manual.pdf

Nobody seems to want to look at using solar to heats salts to store heat for producing off peak steam for turbines. It has been done I think in Spain and also germany, but obviously we don't get enough sun in Australia for us to do it here.

South Australia planning to build the world’s largest thermal solar plant

The UK also has a dense set of recharge points of varying types; but even fast charging takes a min of 20 minutes for most EVs... which means if I buy a car with a claimed range of say 200m, but it only really gives me 120m, then I have to tack on a bit of time to go for my 150m trip.

Agreed, for the urban school and shopping run, which is most people's driving, it is no game changer... except for that time when you one runs a low charge as they forgot to hook up the power overnight..

News flash---

My petrol head son just bought a BMW I3 REx (it has a 2 cylinder motor range extender.) Like this one

He's basically saying it doesn't make any difference to the range. That's extremely unlikely in reality. I run two heat pumps replacing the filament water heaters I had and they reduce the usage by about 75%. There has to still be a significant power use. You never get anything for nothing in these situations. Most refrigerators are heat pumps The reverse cycle is an added feature but the principle is the same. You get the actual heat from the ambient air but there are losses always Nev

Yes it is unfortunate that he says more than once that it "uses no power" however he does modify that to "virtually no power" I don't think he is lying, he is drawing his conclusions from the meter that provides information about the state of charge of the batteries and the predicted range based on current discharge. Presumably, this has some level of accuracy.

The leaf I drove around Wellington for a day was toasty warm when we got in as the owner had pre-warmed it for us. Normally it would only have been pre-warmed on a weekday when he would normally drive to work. He changed the programming (which he controls from his smartphone) to make this Sunday like his weekdays. Fifteen minutes before we got there the heater turned on, this did not impact on the range because as usual the vehicle was plugged in. We drove the vehicle for the whole day and at no time felt cold. The 2013 Leaf (not sure about later models) can heat the cabin air or use a modern and efficient method of heating the seats and even the steering wheel. In fact, When I was driving I requested the stearing wheel heat be turned off. At no time were we cold. I am assuming that the heating system is not a complete disaster since Norway (famously cold) has one of the largest percentages of EVs on the road, presumably, they do not have laughably small vehicle range and are not freezing to death.

What I find irritating is the people who swallow false information. Last weekend I was at a "friends" house. We had the same old arguments. He stated that electric cars are not and would never be viable. He stated (as he has on many occasions) that the batteries need to be replaced after 3 years. as usual, I proved that this was ignorant bollocks but I know we will have the same conversation next time we get together.

When I was toasty warm in this Nissan Leaf the range was reduced by about 10%-13% as the vehicle is charged overnight and very much a city car, the heater power draw is irrelevant.

I have shared this thread with the owner of this vehicle and they are happy to answer any questions.

For me, an EV is not yet economically viable but I look forward to the time when it is almost viable. I love innovative technology and I was an early adopter of computers mobile phones etc.

[

The servicing aspect eventually will be miniscule compared to the conventional engine/ transmission. The HEATER won't work too well though will it? Nev

Heat-Pump Cabin Heater

Agree with the above, but my point was the economics of the Kona petrol against the Kona ev don't stack up (i.e like for like car, different fuel/drive train), rather than say a Kona petrol against a Tesla...

And, while I agree on the way to work one wouldn't drop in to top the tank, but from say the state that originates dodgy phone calls to Sydney - may be a different story.

Jerry, I am not questioning your decision, in fact much respect for being open-minded enough to consider the options.

I live in Geelong and work near Melbourne around about 65km each way. A new Leaf would be great. Charge overnight. Would be great in Melbourne's rush hour traffic crawl. However, I would agree that it does not yet stack up if cost is the main selection criterion. When I moved here I bought a car specifically on economic grounds, I bought a 10-year-old Focus for 7.5k. I believe this is more economically rational than buying a new car or a 4wd etc. although many people choose a vehicle not solely based on economics

Quote "Our underfunded CSIRO is keeping Oz in the game: (Hydrogen).I was having a look at the English car maker. Morgan,

 

They have built a Hydrogen fuel-cell car, don't think it made it to production, just concept.

 

spacesailor

The economics, at this point, don't quite stack up as much, but they are getting there..

I am not sure whether EVs need to fully stack up economically before being viable. Internal combustion cars are not all equally viable. you can buy a new reliable car for $20k or $150k the overall cost of the $150K car may be more per km than the $20Km but some people are willing to spend more than the absolute minimum. My son who at last count owns 5 cars has a 12-year-old BMW which he bought 2 years ago for $15k the new price I believe was $150k. I would assume that it would not stack up in a purely economic sense. I am not saying that everyone should rush out and buy one. They are still not quite viable for me, however, I expect they will be soon.

In terms of charging, people for whom EVs make sense don't call in at the charger on their way to work rather, they charge it overnight or in the case of the Leaf I drove, free at work.