Bruce Tuncks

Jerry, by what standard do you regard aborigines as being "deprived?" They may well have a poor standard of diet etc, but on the scale of government handouts they are certainly not deprived. And their poor diet, for example, is the result of ignorance and indifference, not the lack of money.

And Onetrack has it right too.... what gets me is that their medical system is union-driven, and yet they think it is in accord with their "freedoms". Just try and start a medical school over there and you will soon find it is the opposite of free.

Yep I agree.... for example. kim jong un is the king by hereditary , just like the kings of old. The far left has become the far right in North Korea.

What I don't understand is why a civilization smart enough to get here would be so shy about what they had done. So without more compelling evidence I don't believe that UFO's are real alien visitors.

And South Australia has at least 2 states ( TAS and VIC) which are obviously more South.

Right yet again Nev. Melbourne is bad enough for a name but Victoria is worse.

I'd live with Bennelong, but I don't care if Kurrajong sounds Korean. Sydney is a bit gay I reckon, but that is what the place is called now and will be in our times I guess.

Instead of Sydney, I like the sound of Kurrajong. Seriously,there are too many foreign maps etc to change such a name as a capital city. And the aborigines were a bunch of warring tribes. Initially, they saw whites as a resource to use in their never-ending tribal wars. They foolishly thought to enlist the whites on their side. I wonder if they have got their acts together these days, I think that one of the problems in Alice Springs is that the politically correct lot have swallowed their own propaganda and as a result they have brought mutually hostile tribes together in the town. There was an uholy alliance between the politically-correct ( They use the term " First nations ") people who thought that the aborigines were all good people and the nasty right-wing lot who realized ( correctly ) that keeping the outstations running was expensive compared to moving the inmates into town. What the right-wing nasties didn't get right is that the whites would be caught up in the resulting chaos.

Lest I be accused of being parochial, I think Queen Adelaide never even visited Australia either. I don't even think she spoke English.

Lord Sydney was a pom, an aristocrat and a bureaucrat.... wow that's 3 strikes in my book. He should be out.

Let's take Sydney as an example.... Named after a rich pom who never even visited Australia. So he fails my test about being deserving, but I do have to say that I would find it uncomfortable for some Aboriginal name to replace Sydney.

Personally, I don't mind the renamed places as long as the original name didn't deserve to be there. I didn't agree with changing lake eyre but I didn't mind changing Ayre's rockto Uluru. Ayre was an Adelaide rich man who helped fund some explorer. Mind you, when I was at Ayre's rock, you spent one day climbing it and one day walking around the base. Are either of these allowed these days?

Apparently a lot of places in Australia are called "F### off whitefeller " because the white mapmaker asked his trusty aboriginal guide " what feller name this place Jacky ?" and then he wrote it down on the map.

Yes, PMC, he was the coach that made the hawks (Hawthorne ) into a good team. Lately, he has become the coach to North Melbourne and yet he is not woke enough for some.

You are right as usual Nev, but I like the crosswords so I buy the herald. Yes, there is a lot of hate, fear, sensation and propaganda. They don't always succeed though, as Dan Andrews can attest. But just why they have a vendetta running against that poor footy coach Clarkson is a mystery to me. Sure, he is not a woke person, but what footy coaches are? I always thought he was a good non-racist bloke, who spoke plainly when required.

Well space, the super-rich own the media and it is the media's job to make us all support the rich. I just wish they would tell us more often that a particular move is only against the top 1% and tell us more details about this 1%. Yes, the media will still complain, but their present campaign to make ordinary people afraid should take a hit.

I couldn't find the wealth of the richest 1%. The richest 20% was as close as I could find and that is "only" 3.2 million There is also the suggestion that the richest 1% made " 150,000 per min for the last ten years" which comes to 800 billion which I find hard to believe. My best guess is that the richest 1% are billionaires , that is, they are worth more than 1000 million each.

OME, I reckon nomadpete is right and it is the rich who will finish up not paying again. Alas, land is the only thing you can't deny owning without risking it being stolen from you. But the land tax idea has not been well received so let's forget it. A flat tax has been described as "regressive" when the super-rich should be paying much more. Personally, I think they are paying less than 10%. One thing to do is to try and find out the tax paid by the top 1%.... I'm going to try but don't hold your breath.

There was a political party which wanted to tax only land. It is the one thing which you can't deny owning, and the rooms-full of tax laws could be replaced with a single A4 sheet. Yes, it would be hard on the farmers. Needless to say, this was not accepted, and I'm sorry to say that any sensible change will not be either.So bad luck Nomad. Frankly, I like the idea of making the rich pay their fair share of tax. I dunno if they would under a transaction tax but they would probably pay more than they do now.

pmc, I agree but it can't last. We ( well me anyway ) only ever got into food trouble if we didn't eat enough to placate the cook. We were the first generation with this problem, previous lots never had enough food. Read Dickens to see how they valued food. There are signs that the era of food being so cheap it was almost free are coming to an end. Not before time, says me with my farmer's hat on. And the price of those discarded breakfasts is such a sign.

A friend of ours returned to Poland where she has some rellies. A big problem for her was that the rellies thought she was really rich, on account of coming from Australia. In reality, she was better off than the Poles at home but not by that much. I personally have the same problem here. Various people, like the RAAus, seem to think I am really rich.

It looks like it would not withstand a javelin

I liked the story about how russian culture admires liars who are convincing. Of course, this makes them impossible to work with which also explains a lot.

By no means rich though.... I like the stories about how it doesn't really help to be rich.

My mother -in -law was a much nicer person when she was poor. As regards the wife, I fought her and won ( she couldn't see any advantage in the great super scheme we could then join ) and she is now well-off but quite ungrateful.