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A little thread drift, but an associate member of the EU hasn't been defined, so knowing the EU it may take a very long time, although the desire to move away from the USA may speed things up a little. But there will be hurdles. There are three freedoms that are preserved across the EU: movement of capital, movement of goods/services, and movement of people. Will these have to be included in an associate membership? If so, then your control of immigration from any EU country goes out the window. So, given Australia's very tight grip on immigration compared to other countries, the preservation of this free movement may well be a problem. The EU will need to think about things very carefully. There sort of is already associate membership - it is the European Economic Area. It allows Iceland, Norway, and Lichtenstein to basically be in the EU without being in the EU, and they are required to comply with most of the obligations of the EU. Yet they don't get to vote on the EU rules they need to comply with. Switzerland has a similar arrangement through a bilateral agreement. And of course, after the messy divorce, there is this country called Britain, which tried it's own bilateral deal, but all was offered was Switzerland's deal. So, the EU has some existing memberships and deals, that if they give special treatment to Canada in this Associate Membership status, might peeve off a couple of these others, and may trigger a whole round of renegotiations of these arrangements. And given the rising anti-EU sentiment within the EU and the rising right, if Canada gets some sort of cushy deal, well, there will be individual countries coming under pressure to leave the EU and join a cushy deal, too. Outside of a free trade agreement or similar type of bilateral arrangement, I can't see this one being negotiated and agreed upon anytime soon. These are not insurmountable problems, but the political risk for the EU is very much there.

Wot? Gee I hope the new ferries have lockable fuel caps.

Greedy Rotten Bastards. . That will SINK Tasmania. Is the NEW Ferry Running yet? Where's the Diesel coming from? Nev

There's a Place called Aukland so just what are Auks? T A Bot called Canada, Canadia. and he is a Rogues Collar.. AKA "the Mad Monk". UK just rejected VAD. . Currently there's no such thing as an "Associate Member" of NATO. A lot of this is a flight of fantasy. Idiot Trump is close to declaring WAR on NATO. Any competition is a threat to The Orange U Tan. He's threatened to cut off ALL trade.. He's capable of anything and needs to be locked up for the Safety of the World. When is ENOUGH enough? He's likely to Put the world into another depression.. Like what happened in 1929. Nev

We should. At the moment they are the last remaining democracies. Plus, "Aukeur" sounds much more refined than "Aukus"

The owners are complaining about the "strict" rules around when they can fire up and use their 200-odd diesel generators. Subtext - although they're describing them as "emergency backup", they want to run them as part of normal operation.

I heard that it has been suggested that Australia and New Zealand also become associate members of the EU. Probably just an idle suggestion floating around in the wake of the offer to Canada.

Not the only cynic:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8vgy3pq5ywyo There are the first steps of Canada and EU becoming very close by Canada becoming an associate member of the EU. What that means, I am not sure, but Chump's reaction was yet another tantrum. Howver' Carney's speech to the EU was priceless as it basically was the most polite sticking up of two fingers I have seen. go to 3:10 of this video: Of course, Chump came out with threats and basically throwing his toys out of the pram. But, the USA doesn't need Canada nor Europe, so he really shouldn't care.

I watched a video of an episode of The Romano Report, It went for an hour and contained lots of profanities, but played lots of clips of a Fox interview by Laura Ingraham with Trump in which, amongst other things, he claims "China has lots of magnets. Nobody knows what a magnet is." Total idiot.

Cynic!

I think the 200 number would be .. including the offshore and big city lawyers\finacial engineers to ensure no laws are followed and no tax is ever paid.

I hear that Tasmania is fast tracking a data centre on the Tamar river. Not sure whether they plan to build a nuclear reactor to power it, or maybe just dam another pristine river for more hydro. We don't have a lot of coal or gas to burn.

We had 6 people for a 140MW windfarm plus an admin. They always seem to exaggerate the amount of people it will employ. Better publicity I suppose

Also, I have seen each new well burns off waste gas until they get gas clean enough to process. This can take up to a month, producing lots of CO2. It's only the final use of the gas that looks good - as long as nobody counts all the methane and CO2 lost before the gas gets to a user.

Two problems with industrial methane. 1. The processing plants periodically vent very large amounts directly to atmosphere. 2. the tens of thousands of gas 'wells' all have continuous leakage around the bore pipes. Called fugitive emissions. Read the Guardian article to get an idea of the amounts.

Good point.. that still provides 66 per shift... which still seems high. Hardware doesn't fail that often and it will have fail over redundancy; and can later be swapped out.. so i was still being generous with 20 hardware and network engineers.. In addition, if there is a catastrophic failure, requests will be handled by other sites. And of course what is the balance of full time v part time. I still think 200 full time employees is on the high side to be directly employed at the site to give the region the boost it claims to. I have been to data centres and there aren't many people around

I read Jerry's "conversion" for pilots to mean converting from, say FAA licence to Australian licence. I don't think he meant type conversion.

Don't forget that these centres run 24/7, so basically you need the number of employees per shift multiplied by three. Then you have to add in for holiday and sick leave and other approved leave. The imgaes that are sometimes posted of one or two people walking through rows of servers probably hide the real numbers on site.

At no stage did I even Mention conversions. Nev

Low humidity, Wind, Dry lightning? Plenty of fuel. It's not just temperature. Nev

I am not sure how that translates to pilots having to undergo more rigorous foreign conversion process than a doctors.. but I may be missing something

Little Brat chucks toys out of Pram. ( For all the world to see. ). You couldn't WRITE this stuff. Egotistic Greedy,Vain and Vengeful. . Nev

I'm NOT interested in Pissing contests..Just FACTS. Pilot's aren't allowed mistakes and they can kill 100s by making just one, or having some gadget throw a fit. Nev