Bruce Tuncks

Space, you got me worried about Vinnies. I looked them up and they appear to be a fairly democratic lot acting under the auspice of the Catholic church. But from their publicity, this catholic connection is hard to find. The authority seems to come from an international "conference".

And I don't think there is much money generated from what they do. There was an op-shop around where I live which closed rather than pay a rental hike.

I'm not Catholic, but Vinnies is what I would have considered a good charity. Please tell me more.

Space, you have a point, which I take to mean that you need to be careful when you give to a charity that your money is actually going to the correct beneficiaries. I recommend that you choose the most direct and grass-roots charities you can find.

We were advised by a funeral director to not give money to the official cancer research lot... " it all goes to millionaires " he said.

But having said that, who can argue against what OME has said?

Increasing taxes will be the only way to pay for the coronavirus costs. Will Morrison bite the bullet and start taxing the wealth of the elderly? For example, increasing the land tax and including the family home?

My advice would be to not even try this without the support of the ALP. If they won't support it, call them irresponsible and have an election.

As long as they don't tax our planes. ( actually at the time I bought the Jabiru kit, planes were tax free but there was a 26% tax on gliders. The Jabiru kit, plus the hangar kit, was less than the sales tax on a Ventus 2 )

If you needed more proof that money influences the law in Australia, I dunno where you could look. Ordinary people only can afford one bite at the legal system, Pell got off on the third.

Personally, I still think he was guilty but the initial sentence was too harsh by far.

And our puritan culture was partly to blame for the guilt feelings of the victims.

I know a guy who was sent to prison for tax evasion. ( Money earned overseas and kept overseas ). His first case resulted in a non-custodial punishment which I thought was a bit harsh, but more appropriate than a prison sentence. Anyway, the crown appealed and the guy had no money left for lawyers ( the tax department and the lawyers had cleaned out his entire wealth including his house ) and he lost the appeal. He spent some time in Bathurst jail without his prescription medicine. I bet this never happened to Pell.

I have nothing but contempt and hatred for all involved in my mate's persecution ever since.

On reading about special measures for homeless during the virus emergency, it occurred to me that the percentage of homeless is good measure of the worth of any society.

I was deeply shocked at the homeless I saw in the US years ago, thinking foolishly that such an awful thing would never be seen here.

Interesting to see how the non-essential industries, like tourism, have been shown to be unnecessary.

We need to dissociate a living income from "work" by making the dole enough to really live on.

The Aborigines have been doing this for years. It is not an expectation that a school-leaving aborigine will do anything except start collecting welfare. And why is this a bad thing? I reckon its quite ok. What else would you have them do?

Apparently there are more stars in the known universe than there are grains of sand in all the beaches and deserts on earth... hard to believe huh.

In the 1950's, I well remember my grandmother providing crayfish every Saturday, and there were generally 2 big ones. She was a pensioner, so they must have been cheap then. In all my adult life, I may have had crayfish 2 or 3 times, and they were real small ones.

This is how overpopulation and resource depletion works, and there is much more to come.

I don't see how you can blame the Chinese when everything in the Big W or Bunnings is made in China.

I read that in time, we are all going to have corona virus in our systems. Precautions will delay this, hopefully till there is a vaccine.

On toilet paper, do our indigenous brothers use the stuff? They never did when I was a kid in the 50's. Indians ( in india ) don't use it either. A guy I knew was on a tour in india and he got to see an english vicar using pantomime to try and buy some from a rural shopkeeper who knew nothing of english or toilet paper. I wonder how he pantomimed it....

I would really like to make my own beer.. but alas the wife says that I would only drink more of the stuff if I did that.

Most home-brew tastes ok to me so I think she is right.

We had a Toyota Corona for years and never caught anything from it.

It was sad. I reckon the driver lacked an engineering education and didn't know enough about subsidence and inertial forces . But he was a good bloke who tried to make up time as they were late.

On the similar fast train to the west, I thought the speed was a bit too high for the smoothness of the track.

An education similar in standard ( but differing in subject matter ) to that of a commercial pilot would have been better.

Don't expect the schools to get it right OME. Tell the kids yourself.

I'm really proud of what my grandfather did in France in WW1. He was part of a group of "undisciplined" Australian soldiers who bashed up 3 pommy MP's, for a very good reason.

At school, I never heard anything true about the wars, beyond the fact that the Americans won WW2.