Bruce Tuncks

Sorry to be so slow OME, but I don't understand the joke there. AND I never heard of phytophthera root-rot either... please tell us more.

Many of Roseworthy's best graduates finished up in France. Prior to about 1990, they valued "tradition" over science. Well the wineries who did the opposite made more money, and so they all changed.

You can do this legally in Australia but you must not be seen as the owner of the dwellings. Well I don't think so.

Be a bit careful about how much rent/board you charge. There was a story about some brazilian farmers caught up in anti-slavery laws. Apparently they were charging rent for huts about equal to their pay.

I think you will find it like child-care.... the official stuff is completely unaffordable, but if you look around when the time comes, there will be school-leavers and others who will be keen for the job. You would have to ask around and also maybe advertise a bit.

Think about getting a live-in servant guys. It's much cheaper for the govt to help people stay at home. I agree with what has been said about country life and I want to stay here as long as possible. Just think about it..... if you can offer board and food then surely there should not be too much to pay in wages, especially if those wages are subsidised.

Good stuff guys. I liked Perrottet's speech too even though I didn't stay up. The Libs need to undermine the Teal's base and stay away from the extreme loonies, even if those loonies have big money. There was a "right wing think tank guy " ( I suspect it should be called a coal-miner's lobby ) who referred to "the climate-change cult". So I looked up just what is meant by a cult and the deniers, like our guy, fit the bill exactly. The climate-change scientists don't remotely fit . As has been said, the new voters are less likely than ever to vote further right than our liberals are today. Each year, there are over 150,000 oldies die and about 180,000 new electors reaching voting age.

Most people are either leaders or followers... there is a test called the Myers-Spriggs test which will not ever be tried.

I forgot to mention Sir William Slim! That pedophile is still protected by a wall of secrecy. As if orphans had the wherewithall to gather hard evidence against the governor general ...

I liked your comment old K, but it is easy to think of examples where we have been kept in the dark... Hess and Assange are good examles. I grew up in the 1950's thinking Darwin had only been bombed once and I didn't hear about the Coniston massacre till I was over 60.

I agree that "the dumb Trumpists" vote against their own interests. The rednecks here were too smart to vote for Palmer though. ( In some ways similar, a fat billionaire looking for redneck support ) The psychology of worker support for Trump is real interesting. I like the theory that they were ready to suffer themselves via low wages as long as some others ( liberals) suffered more.

I reckon Howard's sale of gas ( 5 cents per litre ) was more stupidity than nastiness. I honestly think that he thought that Australia had unlimited gas, given the right policies.

How harmless are huntsmen really? My father reckoned they were and I remember him playing with one. But once I had one bite on a bit of straw and I saw venom on its fangs. Are there two species of big beige spiders?

3 snakes around here ( farm south of Edenhope ) so far this year.... 2 brown and one tiger snake. We thought the tiger snake may have bitten a lap dog and it cost us an overnight stay at the vets to find out the dog was ok. I have read, and believe, that the only people killed by snakes were at the time of being bitten, trying to kill the snake. In Alice Springs, one day we came home to see the next-door lady screaming and trying to hit a tiny snake on the road with a shovel. The snake was like a shoelace. We took over, and called the official snake-catcher who told us that this was a very rare spinifex-snake and he thanked us for saving its life.

When I went to school, there was just a fibro ( asbestos cement sheet) outer wall shell. I well remember using a noggin to store stuff on. There was a ceiling however., and a pedestal fan which aimed at the teacher's desk. We got a great education there, ( discipline administered kindly ) with the Barossa Deutsch teacher saving us from the pommy notion that working with your hands was demeaning. I sat next to an abo kid called Walter who came from Borolloola and went home there on holidays. Here's what I believe to be true for primary school kids .... they are like jugs and can only hold so much stuff, If you try to overload them it just goes to waste. So the Finnish thing about not starting school till 7 is correct and we should not get hung up over interruptions to their curricula. ( Finland kids beat ours by far in educational outcomes, I think they have discipline in their schools.)

I find it hard to understand how they can be homophobic and at the same time play that game where they all stop for a gang-bang ( they call it a scrum, but you only have to see one to know better).

OME, I use paypal all the time and reckon it's fairly safe. Once, I got my money back after merely threatening to complain to paypal. But one time a scammer did indeed pretend to be paypal. They got me by saying I would be charged for goods I had not ordered unless I proved who I was.... yep, it was a phishing scam and they got my bankcard number before I woke up. I should have looked more carefully at the opening page which was from italy! Well it cost me a trip to the bank to get a new credit card, but no money was lost. Anyway best wishes for your fly-in.

If the sugar tax was set at just enough to offset the extra costs ( medical etc ) then that would be a fair tax. It is not the role of government ( in my opinion ) to act like the nutrition police. But this does not mean that you should not get money back that you are spending on things the public wants. So the tax on EV's is fair to the extent that their costs are balanced out.... In this regard, trucks have a great deal of subsidy here. On damage to the roads, a truck is worth about a thousand cars. Bridges cost a hundred times more than they would if they were not designed to carry trucks. But then we all like the cheaper goods that subsidized trucks carry around for us. It is still not fair that city motorists should subsidize country groceries though.

There is a tax that the professionals are asking for and the paying public would abide.... it's the sugar tax. This substance causes more harm than anything else, and it is responsible for thousands of deaths a year. The lack of a sugar tax to me is clear evidence of corruption.

I reckon they have never forgiven the English for a few things, like how the English overtook them financially, and how English overtook French as the main language. The french were the first to live in proper rooms like we do ( "plaster of Paris" made the difference ) and they led the world scientifically. ( think Lavoisier, Descartes, mdm Curie ).Alas, they got to be a dictatorship and fell by the wayside. After almost inventing the modern democratic nation-state, they were taken over by Napoleon. I think Russia may be repeating their errors, although Russia never reached the heights of the French.

I usually agree with Nev, but I can't when he said that "Australians used to get a good reception in France" My sister nearly died there because an arrogant bank teller could not be made to look properly in his stuff which included money from Australia. This money had come all the way but didn't get past that final froggy teller! And his management didn't help either. Yes, I have read of a village in France which still honours WW1 diggers every day, but it is a step too far for me to agree that Australians used to get a good reception in France.

Here's what I imagine would happen .... in a war, a sub passes over a submerged buoy ( tethered to the bottom with a cable), and it is matched accoustically by a computer sensor thing. If it is an enemy sub, the buoy releases an automatic torpedo at the sub. I would have thousands of these things all around.

I reckon its great! Sure, it will be dismissed as "fake news" but I still reckon its great.

That should have read EMP for electromagnetic pulse. My understanding is that anything electrical can be buggered up by a nuclear bomb. So I would expect a diesel engine to be unaffected, similarly inertial nav hardware.

Here's what I would do, and it would cost very little compared with the subs deal. I. get Jabirus to design and build a thousand drone-type special Jabs. Really long -range drones, but only one-way things. Perhaps with diesel engines, I dunno if a standard ignition system is vulnerable to an EMT hit. 2. get up non-electronic inertial guidance systems and fit them to the Jabiru drones. 3. make up a thousand dirty bombs and put one in each Jab drone. No electronic components anywhere. After having these things, we could get rid of a lot of other expensive military things. Then we start making real nukes from our plentiful uranium supplies. Sent off to say China, and sea-hugging all the way, the few that got through would sure muck up any victory parade. In fact, I reckon we would be as safe as possible from being attacked to begin with. How could any defence be sure to shoot down all those drones?