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I have always considered life insurance a scam. As you say Peter, if you've been paying premiums for 45 years and you've worked out you could still save the amount of the payout in 7 years, imagine how much you would have now if you'd never paid them anything.

Yep. Glad we've got ours. Nice to drive too, although sometimes tries to be a bit smart for its own good.

You have had the benefit of the cover and that's NOT nothing. It would not be reasonable to expect a refund of payments. That's how insurance works. Nev

Having Batteries anywhere helps everyone. Currently it's about $400 to be on the grid. That's about what it costs to have Oxy and acetylene bottles. In the Big scheme of things that is NOT a lot.. I still run a LPG Gas Falcon. It's my cheapest vehicle to run at the Moment. Australia has plenty of GAS. You can easily convert a big diesel engine to run on gas. It IS putting CO 2 into the air though and some NOx. That's not a long term problem out side of big Cities' Nev

What is happening in the ME will give a real Impetus to EV sales. People don't want to be hung out to dry every time someone does silly things with supply.. Nev

We will see. It is going to get harder as the penetration of renewables increase. There will be more machine contrained during the windy and sunny days meaning that prices will go up to pay for these machines. Underutilised plant cost $$$$$. The fact that labour has subsidised batterys has taken customers away from paying for grid infrastructure. People can off set there whole bill meaning other people who cant afford batterys or rent accomodation have to subsidise these peoplesbills as well as the batterys. I think we will end up paying a subscription type cost like we do for phones. (after everyone is sucked in to get batterys)

Weeds are the last to die and the first to burst forth when rain falls. Stop bad things seeding. Cultivate and it will be worse. Pull them out when the soil is wet. Nev

After the rain finally came a month or so ago, the earth burst forth with mallow weed which took over where I would have liked to have had a lawn, save for two years of drought. It had grown to shin-deep in thick patches, and I knew I had to cut it down. Unfortunately, my lawn mower hasn't been used for two years, either. I pulled it out of the shed, and put in some fuel, which had been in the can for two years as well. You knop already that teh mower would not start. So I had been thinking for a while that the mower had probably had it, and I done some looking around at the price of a new one - about $400. As a last resort, I tipped out the old fuel and oput in some freash stuff. I rejoiced when the mower fired up. I set about attacking one section of my yard and will knock over teh rest of it tomorrow. Eight bucks worth of fresh fuel save me a coulple of hundred bucks, abd gave me a bit of satisfaction for finally starting a job that was high on the To Do list.

The fact that Labor have subsidised installing batteries, solar panels heat Pumps would have Made a big a difference , NP costs are out there if you want the Facts. Might work better in a Cold place where People live densely populated situation. Nev

Jerry, I'm not sure how my credit card security works these days. The card was originally branded in my bank's name but was administered by Citibank. They were good; if there was any unusual transactions they would put a hold on it and make contact. My bank eventually gave up on credit cards and it somehow migrated to one run by NAB, which is not my bank. I don't know how good the security is with the new entity. My bank doesn't do much anymore. The only loans they deal in are housing and business loans, no credit cards, most of the physical branches shut down, third world country outsourced customer support.

Vic Labor is destructing faster than the Libs. Two ministers have quit effective immediately, leaving not only the Cabinet, but politics entirely. And the Suburban Rail Loop might be cancelled.

Things keep moving faster and faster. I got a call this afternoon saying the tentative date for my cochlear implant surgery is Sept 19.

There may well be enough there to commit identity theft to get credit in your name. Do they offer to pay for services to prevent this (usually paying the credit reference agencies a fee to validate any applications are authentic).

Manufacturing accounts for around 20% of electricity consumption. It's drop in electricity consumption, according to AI, is due to structural issues and reduction in production outputs; not efficiency gains, so that needs to be addressed - but that is outside the scope of this thread, unless you are somehow asserting the transition to renewables is inhibiting manufacturing output. Of course, one can argue that the cost of the transition has to be borne and this flows into higher input costs for manufacturers, which makes them less competitive. But, that would be an argument more that the longer term planning of our manufacturers and government was deficient as the world's largest manufacturing country, China, is going hell for leather into renewables and surely they would be having similar transition costs. Be that as it may, if we stay with relatively high fossil fuel costs or move to expensive nuclear costs, we will, by the next generation or so, have much higher input energy costs. Not to mention the increasing cost of geopolitical and civil unrest by staying with fossil fuels and further accelerating the earth heating up, drying out, and food and other resources (such as wood) becoming more and more scarce. The one saving grace on resource demand is in the western world, the birth rates are declining and in some cases, dramatically, but the rest of the world will fill that hole. Also, other environmental impacts such as ocean warming, jetstream and gulfstream disruption will have a profound impact and cost far in excess of economic costs. Algal blooms; microrganisms dying which are causing starvation up the food chain are very worrying because of the impact they will have on the ecology and life on earth - ironically which sustains human life. It looks like there will be an "I told you so" moment able to be delivered by Greta. But I digress.. The cost of not doing it is far bigger than the cost of doing it.

At least I've got plenty of company; about 900,000 customers were involved.

My energy retailer Origin has just sent me an update on the recent data hack of their customer information. They confirmed my details were part of it, including name and address, phone number, date of birth, BSB number and last three digits of my bank account, last four digits of the credit card number and customer account details. It's just the nail in the coffin; I was leaving them anyway before this happened due to their sub standard customer support.

Australia currently gets around 36% of its electrical energy from renewables & this is increasing all the time as our reliance on fossil fueled generation reduces with retiring assets and increasing wind & solar with some pumped hydro on the way. Our reliance on diesel for heavy transport has to be addressed more urgently now given global volatility and ever increasing cost.

Thanks mate.

Formatting is not preserves on .csvs.. save it as an Excel .xlsx (or .xls for earlier versions)

I am having a battle with an insurance company who are robbing me blind. About 45 years ago, just after moving from Sydney to Melbourne and buying a house, my sons were about to start school and my daughter was born. My wife suggested that I should get life insurance to protect her and the kids if anything happened to me. There was a company in Gippsland that offered a Private Pilot's Insurance product, as most companies steered away from PPL holders. I took out a policy which covered whole of life, ie, payable only on death. After paying premiums for over 45 years, and my kids over 40, and mortgage paid off, my wife and I decided that it was getting too expensive to keep increasing the policy in line with CPI and froze the payout at the figure at the time. However, despite a fixed payout, the premiums continued to increase. Then my wife passed away in 2022, so the beneficiaries are the kids. But the monthly premium is now 25% of my monthly pension, and I will get nothing back myself. I worked out that if I ceased paying the premiums and banked the amount with no annual increase, I would save the payout amount in 7.25 years, even less with interest. I explained this to the insurance company, saying I have only the pension as income and rely on it to live. They said they had to keep increasing the premium to pay for additional costs due to my aging. I told them that was utter bullshit as they acknowledged that the payout was frozen. They said I could cancel the policy, but I have asked them to confirm this would result in forfeiting any payout and I am waiting on their reply. I told them that while what they are doing may technically be legal, it is morally unacceptable. I said they had worse morals than an online scammer.

I downloaded some transactions from my bank account into Excel CSV's to do my tax return, but when opened in Excel, the date column was too narrow so the dates showed as ######, and the amount column was not formatted. No problem, make the adjustments and save the sheet. Except that when I reopened the sheet, the changes had not saved even though I had selected YES to the question SAVE CHANGES? Any suggestions?

I guess you're not talking about here.

Seems that a passport is no loinger ameans of identification, but a tool to restrict entry into a country.

Remember you are debating only about 9% of Australia's energy consumption. As a share of Australian energy consumption, hydrocarbon fuel declined only marginally, from 91.2 per cent in 2021-22 to 90.7 per cent in 2023-24. This has not been due to the take up of alternative energy sources, but due to the decline of energy consumed by the manufacturing sector. In the first two years of the Albanese government, energy consumption in the manufacturing sector declined by 10.4 per cent, or 5.2 per cent per annum.

I didn't suggest concealing it.. but if people honestly didn't know they are unwittingly a British citizen, it will be a non issue.. Apparently Aussies now need a UK ETA or similar as when I presented my Aus passport at the Melbourne check in, the airline rep asked for my right to travel to the UK and informed me the rules had changed. So, on applying foe the ETA, a refusal would be provided if they knew one was a citizen if the applicant did not. Australia has had this requirement for time immemorial so I don't see the issue. It is a cost of multiple citizenship.