Old Koreelah

Back in topic, people have questioned how a Voice could help Aboriginal people. Just one concrete example was provided by Prof Marcia Langdon while addressing the National Press Club. She pointed out that during the recent Pandemic, Indigenous communities had acheived a remarkably low infection rate and no deaths (IIRC). How? Health authorities listened to the Indig people. Saved the country a bundle of money.

What happens to all that expensive experitise when the big project is over? After their Moon shot, America was awash with engineers and technicians and entrepreneurs setting up new ventures.
After Australia built the Snowy Mountains Scheme, we dismantled one of the world’s best engineering units.

Critics often decry the billions spent on The Space Race, but it has paid enormous dividends in new technology and may help save humanity, with an overdue realisation that we are all alone here; we don’t have a Planet B.

That clever campouflage netting over a huge aircraft factory is a story in itself, and shows how much they were spooked by Japan. Why they didn’t build their critical factories far inland I don’t know. During WWI Australia set up a steelworks and arms industry at Lithgow partly because it was out of range of naval guns.

Recently my wife and her friend stopped in the street to talk with a local Aboriginal bloke we all once taught. A few minutes later he dropped dead.

He’d had a life of health problems and had not been very productive, but was always very polite and respectful to us, his old teachers. Who knows what his life might have been like had he been born into a different world.

11 hours ago, spacesailor said:

But this " whitey " has descendants with a smidgen of " colour " in them , 

And do belong to some mob .

With of course a little help their cousins don't get .

Also a neice with Ms or something Similar,  and gets lots of help from the 

Compulsory insurance scheme. 

spacesailor

 

This seems to be at the centre of most resentment of our Indig people: the perception that they are getting something the rest of us don’t. (Often stirred up by overpaid radio jocks).

Plenty of white fellas have always got more than the rest- do we hate them too?

20 hours ago, willedoo said:

The Ukrainian defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, has resigned to avoid being sacked. The rumour mill has it that he might be offered the post of ambassador to the UK. The replacement defence minister is expected to be Crimean Tatar Rustem Umerov, head of the State Property Fund. That will probably make Ukraine the only country with a Jewish president and a Muslim defence minister. It will send a big message to putler that Ukraine is serious about regaining control of Crimea. Defence cooperation with Turkey will no doubt grow stronger with Umerov's appointment as Turkey considers the Crimean Tatars as kin.

Hard to imagine a future peace deal, but perhaps it should have Crimea become a Tartar Autonomous Region.

35 minutes ago, facthunter said:

Politicians would behave better if we voted more carefully. IF they can fool you they will because it's easier than doing the hard work the job requires. "They are ALL the same" is a cop out.. It's said when your side is found wanting. Nev

How many of us vote at meeting of our clubs, etc, much less stand for office?

Much as I hate vandalism, one black night it saved us. As we drove through an unfamiliar rural village looking for a friend’s address, I almost drove into a grain train that was crossing the street. The ONLY indication was occasional graffiti flashing past my headlight beam.

I tend to sit forward in urban traffic and move me head around a bit near intersections, but Old Man’s Neck is an impediment. 

It only takes one lapse to cause mayhem. A couple of weeks ago we were called to a level crossing fatality. Old mate was known to me, but younger and maybe his OMN disease prevented him turning to see the fast train approaching from behind his B-pillar.

But wait, there’s more!

Tailgaters deserve to be heavily fined. They must think they have the skill and reflexes of a Formula One racer, but they’re a menace to the rest of us.

Like most motorists, I drive at the GPS limit and usually pull over and let tailgater pass, but this morning a cretin had his bullbar filling my rear mirror. Why? Total impatience; I was overtaking a slower vehicle at 10 over the limit and was planning to then pull over and let him past, there being a very long, clear straightup ahead. But no, this moron had to be a road bully.

On the highway I keep at least a three-second gap ahead of me, but so many drivers cut in to fill that gap, as if they are in city traffic. My reaction time is slowing and it amazes me to see mature-aged motorcylists tailgating cars and trucks. They’d have no warning of dead animals and bits of retread on the road.

Two gripes, both sparked by today’s drive home from Newcastle:

I almost ran over a disabled person being pushed across the street on a sort of wheelchair. Luckily I saw them move out onto the crossing and stopped in time, but hadn’t noticed the red light.

Why? I’d just driven around a corner and there they were, on the street.

As I approached, I should have seen the pedestrian crossing lights, but was distracted by traffic on the roundabout. (Perhaps an amber light might have caught my attention, but the red blended into the bachground.)

Closer to the crossing, the red lights were obscured by the car’s A-pillar and the rear-view mirror. Being taller than average, I sit well back, so my field of vision is much narrower than most drivers. That’s a design fault in cars that tall people have to put up with, but the thickness of the A-pillar is something that should be addressed.

That solid barrier is far wider than the distance between your eyes, in every car except the 1972 Holden. I’ve been cutting people out of crashed cars for over forty years and can’t recall that Holden being less safe.
There is no structural reason for such a dumb design. Often there’s rubber seals and trim either side of it; bluddy poor design that’s thick enough to obscure a bike or even car approaching from your RHS.

On 1/9/2023 at 6:27 PM, onetrack said:

Well, it appears the authorities have nailed at least one of the scammers - but I reckon it's only the tip of the iceberg. What gets me, is the fact that this bloke is a total waste of oxygen, he's a permanent criminal, who's been jailed multiple times previously for fraud - and the judge effectively says he's an "entrenched and remorseless" offender - so she only gives him 6 yrs and 5 mths, and he'll be out again in 4 yrs and 6 mths to start up his scamming again.

It'd be nearly worth paying someone to top him in prison, f******* arsehole he is!!

In the good old days, the King/Emperor/Shogun/Don, etc. would either remove his head, or brand his forehead as a permanent warning to everyone he meets, that he is a defective humanoid.

On 3/9/2023 at 6:41 AM, Jerry_Atrick said:

I don't think it dawned on him the lengths Donny was prepared to go until he couldn't back out. But, to be fair, I am guessing not many people would have guessed what happened that day was actually going to happen.

You reckon?

5 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Having grown up surrounded by Aborigines I respectfully have to disagree with you jerry. In no way were they ever a "nation" and I never heard of them being so described until lately. 

I totally agree, Bruce. 

5 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Apparently, there was a nation in the Mississippi valley in the US, but by the time the first settlers arrived they were reduced to a remnant population which could put only a dozen or so braves into a fight instead of thousands. It was smallpox which did this, and the whites had no idea that it had happened.

I dunno if something similar happened here in Australia, but I don't think so.

Much the same thing happened in this country; the first white explorers in the Riverina expressed surprise at how few people they encountered.
A generation before, in about 1797, an epidemic of smallpox started in the new colony and quickly swept through indig communities, killing a large percentage of those who contracted it.

5 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Yes, trade did take place, as did communication. Apparently Stuart found that the Aborigines near Katherine called his rifles "musquats" even though these had not been used for over a hundred  years since the first fleet.

The trade routes pre-1788 were extensive and spanned much of the continent, bringing Asian artifacts and influences. A recent study of feral cat genetics indicates that Asia DNA predominates north of about Alice.

5 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

If there were not some interaction between tribes, they would have suffered more from inbreeding than they actually did. 

That applies all over the planet. Decades ago, one study of the very complex skin system in Western Desert peoples claimed it could ensure genetic integrity in a population of 50- a feat that the would have require the best computerised breeding program at the time.

2 hours ago, facthunter said:

You can hardly trust anything anymore.  Nev

That deserves a thread of its own.

In Poland during the Solidarność uprising, it was said that nobody trusted anything said by the Communist government, but they had faith in the Catholic priesthood.

At the same time in Italy, nobody trusted the church and the Communist Party, under Enrico Berlinguer, was held in high regard.

5 hours ago, spacesailor said:

Giving more dollars to those in need ! .

Zero of that $ 364.6 MILLIONS 

For this ' referendum '  will go to the " needy  " .

Just another layer of Bureaucrocrats.  To suck  out money from the coffers. 

spacesailor

Spacey I’m tired of people moaning about the cost of this government actually consulting the people; it’s peanuts compared to the billions the previous mob wasted on foreign consultants. They also casually wasted more than that in some pre-election stunts. 

Never say never; a few years ago I attended a large meeting to protest plans to dig up the Liverpool Plains for coal. The guest speaker Jack Munday told a similar story to mine: of growing up on a dairy farm before becoming a builders labourer in Sydney. How his union took firm action to protect our heritage.
 

Never, in all my dreams, could I have imagined a hall full of farmers giving a militant unionist and former member of the Communist Party a standing ovation.

4 hours ago, facthunter said:

I thought Big Juie got it in the rotunda.  Nev

Looked everywhere and couldn’t find which part of the body that is.

2 hours ago, facthunter said:

It's a long time since Rupee changed his nationality to American. Why is a foreigner allowed to Push some thing that concerns Australians…

Even a cursory investigation of his career would find him not fit to run a newspaper, let alone a global media empire.

2 hours ago, facthunter said:

Mostly? Well of course you have Overseas Mining Interests to start with. It's still Blatantly WRONG and the LIBS and NP are into OL King Coal and Gas Not Agriculture and the Environment and the Climate. .  Nev

Farmers are starting to realise that even the Nats put mining ahead of agriculture. 

Onetrack and others on here have made valid comments supporting the No case, but I’ve heard too many No supporters simply spouting stuff they read in the Daily Telegraph.

To me, this is like a red rag to a bull, yet another demonstration of the Murdochs manipulating Australian public opinion; they’ve been doing it for well over a hundred years.

On 1/9/2023 at 9:30 AM, facthunter said:

The NO vote says" If you don't understand it, Don't vote for it" and then proceeds to deliberately confuse it.  THAT was the trick ABBott always used.  Nev

“If you don’t know, vote no” has a catchy ring. But an informed vote is so much better. If finding out is easy – and it is – why not take the opportunity to cast an informed vote at a referendum of great importance for Australia?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/01/indigenous-voice-to-parliament-yes-campaign-what-you-need-to-know

11 hours ago, facthunter said:

He's probably been pulled over by a few cops. they say :FREEZE". There's hardly any REPS who are game to confront Donnie the Revenger. They are all gutless bar Pence and  that ex vice presidents daughter, Liz  Cheney. Nev

…and Pence was a fence sitter at best.

Who cares about the price of a stamp; in years to come, those letters to your grandies will be treasured relics if a bygone age. Future research into family history will have precious little to go on, unless emails and SMS messages somehow last that long.