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If you have solar, smart meters are essential as standard meters are unable to deal with feed in tariffs. I am a VPP (virtual power plant) & buy sell electricity on the wholesale market. My monthly average buy price at the moment is 18.3 cents/kWh & my average FIT is 20.3c/kWh. I have a 18.64kWh battery & sell power to the grid usually from 5pm to 7pm when the price is high. This is all managed by my system provider as the spot price is checked every 5 minutes and my system is told what to do. It even curtails my solar production when the battery is full and the spot FIT goes negative so I do not pay for exporting to the grid.

Do you mean a out standing Comedian? I know, No prize for second place....... I'll get my hat.

That is her problem. She is a Trump Yes woman, though everyone who works for him has to be that or they are fired. Getting out before that happens is pretty rare. Anyone with a conscience wouldn't work for the orange man but her salary would have been better than she would ever get anywhere else I imagine, plus of course being in the limelight is something very attractive to some people.

Is he a Stand up Comedian? Nev

Creating a questionnaire in order to get the correct sort of information it aims to get is a very difficult thing. Questions have to be carefully worded so that they cannot be misinterpreted. That is one of the problems of the written word. How many time here amongst ourselves has someone posted what appears to be a very clear comment or statment and it has been taken the wrong way by someone? That is the cause of most of the arguments here, or the missing of jokes.

Takes a grubby type to destroy the only worldly possessions of people with nothing.

It seems to be the elephant in the room when it comes to politics. It's only my opinion, but in our three tiered system of government I consider local government the weak link in the chain. There are good local governments (unfortunately mine has never been in that category), but there are are lot of bad ones. They can be either corrupt, wasteful, inefficient, incompetent, arrogant, bullying or a combination of any or all of those things. My state over time has handed local government too much autonomy in my opinion, and I'd like to see more oversight by the state local government department. I don't have statistics on hand, but I've read in the past that other states have retained more control over local government than ours has. There was always a problem with some councils, but the amalgation several years ago led to super councils and made the whole issue a lot worse. Inconsistencies between councils is another issue. As an example, on the news today the Moreton Bay council announced they are dedicating a local park to rough sleepers and homeless people and letting them use the council toilet and shower facilities there. Their idea is to have the homeless in a more manageable situation regarding facilities and support services. On the other hand, the Gold Coast council is issuing heavy fines to rough sleepers, and confiscating and destroying their gear.

David Clayton-Thomas, the unmistakable voice behind some of the biggest hits from Blood, Sweat & Tears, has died at age 84, marking the end of an era for one of classic rock’s most distinctive frontmen. According to his publicist, the singer died peacefully in a Toronto hospital. No cause of death has been publicly disclosed.

Former Young Talent Time host Johnny Young has died aged 79, his family announced on Friday morning, following a brief battle with pancreatic cancer.

Cannot work . There is no perpetual motion machine possible let alone one with spare power. Nev

She was/is exceptionally good at her job of defending the indefensible and attacking the press. You have to admire her talent and confidence. She's only 28.

Under $1000 a year? I wouldn't be complaining about that. Ours is somewhere around $1500 with no water, sewage or rubbish collection. Not sure what cockatoos have to do with your rates. @willedoo- your council sounds like a pack of useless c**ts. My sympathy.

More and more fact-lacking stuff. We are drowning in it. Nev

OME was being diplomatic.

There's one born every minute.

Wow.. For some totally random reason, a couple of weeks ago, out of nowhere, the thought of young talent time popped into my head. I can't think of the last time I would gave thought about it and I think I watched it once under duress (wasn't the sort of show teenage boys would watch)

Wtf? Sounds like a free energy machine and this absolutely bullshit. Physics doesn't care what peeps believe.

I'd beg to differ on that. The way I see it, the cause of most arguments on this site is people playing the man and not the topic. The inability of some to debate in a civilised and well mannered way without being outright rude to people. I don't think I'd like to sugar coat straight out bad behaviour as misinterpretation. For sure misinterpretation happens but I think the inability to handle opposing viewpoints combined with bad manners is a bigger contributing factor.

I can certainly relate to that. I had a 30% increase last year, not quite so much this year. Main reason is our council has got themselves one billion dollars in debt trying to compete with the Gold Coast. The shire rates income goes almost entirely to paying council staff salaries; they have around 1,800 employees all up, 1,000 of them in office jobs. My rates are currently around $2,200 per year. No services with that, no water, sewerage or wheelie bins. I could opt for wheelie bins but for two bins, a rubbish bin and recycle bin, the fees are several hundred dollars per year so it would bring my rates bill closer to $3,000 per year if I had them. The small amount of rubbish I make, it's way cheaper to do the occasional trip to the dump. They slash the road verge twice a year - usually two weeks before the six monthly rates bills are due, so we always know when we see council slashers about, we'll get a rates bill in the next couple of weeks. I'd be a lot happier with them if they'd just treat the local residents with a bit of respect. On the subject of council land zonings, you would think in a normal world the local council would have the decency to notify residents of an intention to rezone their land, but this council doesn't. I've had my block rezoned twice and never heard anything from council about it. It started off as Rural A, then was rezoned to Rural Residential and now to one called Limited Development - Sustainable Landscape which is a heavily restricted green zone. I'm quite happy with that zoning as I love the environment on my place, and think the more protection, the better, but it's the principle of rezoning without notifying a landowner that I think is wrong. In my mind it's just common manners to do so. With septic tanks being banned, some people opt for a pump-out tank. In days gone by, people could hire a licensed contractor to do the pump out and the charge was quite reasonable and only needed the cost incurred on a by use basis, ie: you were only out of pocket if the tank was near full and needed emptying. Council saw that as another cash cow and banned the use of contractors, allowing only council to do the service. Problem is it's not on an as needed basis. They put a levy on top of the rates bill so you have to pay several hundred dollars per year for the service whether you need it or not. The Mafia has nothing on this mob.

My rates went up 30% this year, out here in the bush would you believe. Nearly a thousand dollars a year and we're still driving on dusty dirt roads in my village. And kangaroos are in plague proportions. Cockatoos gnaw the wooden parts of my house. I'm charged for sewage, but I don't have sewage - go figure. My land is zoned Commercial and Residential at the same time - go figure again.

The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only change from one form to another, or move from a system to its surroundings. This means the total amount of energy in an isolated system always stays the same. The simplest practical example of converting one form of energy to another is solar panels.

Very often they are hamstrung by regulations generated by the two higher levels of government. For example, our housing industry at the moment has to comply with a Standards document of 200 pages in order to have ahouse approved for habitation. The council staff can't ignore all those reulations without placing the Council into a legal liability trap. As for Councils being composed of people with Party alignments, that just gets you into the same stalemates as the upper levels of government. In many cases geting onto the local coucil is a first step in a political career in the higher levels of government. Self interest overrides the idea of helping the community.

I call BS on that. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

I've had a smart meter for a few years. I love it. I can log into my acccount with my supplier at any time, and get data like this.

So far, Victoria is the only state that's achieved almost 100% roll out of smart meters. Here's the state figures for smart meter roll out completion: Victoria 99%, W.A. 90%, Tasmania 78%, N.T. 50%, S.A. 46%, Qld. 42%, ACT 40%, NSW 39%. I think there's a lot of factors in the mix. It's the retailers who are doing it, so depending how many customers they have and where they're located, it's a staged roll out. If the roll out becomes available in your district, it's free for the consumer. If you apply for one before that, I think there's a fee involved.

A lot of truth in that. Smaller rural councils generally are a lot more in touch with the community and there's only a few bad eggs among those councils. A lot of the bigger councils have totally lost the concept of being there to serve the community and a lot think they are our masters rather than our servants. I've never been one for party politics in councils like they have in the city councils, but taking into account the inept rabble we have posing as our local council, it makes me wonder whether party alligned councilors would make it easier to turf the lot out at an election. As it stands, some councillors lose their jobs at election time and some major offenders remain, so things don't get any better. If it was party based, would it make them perform any better. Maybe it would if they thought the whole bunch was at risk or at least a majority of them. Another factor is that it's not only the elected councillors that are the problem. The council bureaucrats have a lot to answer for as well. My advice to anyone who has a good, well performing and honest council is to appreciate what you have because a lot of people don't have that.

Not around here. We don't even have that many smart people, let alone meters.

I dunno. I was happy enough to tick "no religion", I didn't care that they didn't break that down into "agnostic", "never thought about it", "atheist", or "cult survivor atheist".

The concept of Local Government, as I see it, is the means by which communities organise for the provision of facilities and services required by that community. People offer their time to gather and make decisions that it is hoped will solve local problems and/or plan for future improvement which benefit the community. Local Government s we have it is a formalisation of community management that human communities have employed since the time when three or four families decided to pitch their tents together in the same place. In modern times in Australia, each State has created some sort of law to give the various Local Governments the same framework to follow. How each Local Government unit uses that framework depends either on community involvement, or the integrity of those who get elected to form the Council. I would say that the closer the local council is to its community, the better it works. Local Governments in urban areas reflect the lack of 'community' typical of the anonymous nature of the inhabitants. Rural Local Governments are often more in tune with their communities due to the social interactions of those communities.

Getting a bit off topic, but on that subject of outsourcing tech support, a couple of companies I deal with outsource customer and tech support to the Phillipines and their support has always been good. I think one of them uses work from home staff as you can often hear village or urban noises in the background like roosters crowing, babies crying and motorbikes riding past.

Did yiou take any notice of the question in the Census regarding religious affiliation? Did you notice that one was able to indicate which stream of the main Protestant styles one followed, or if one as Catholic. As well one could indicate one of the other Christian styles in the box provided. However, for Moslems there was only that one choice. We all know that there are two main styles of Isalm. Come to think of it, I think a person could only indicate that the followed Judaism, not one of its variants. It's not important enough to go ranting about, but I just felt that it was disciminatory to most people, regardless of their reilgious affiliation.

Do it .The system is designed for it.. I thought just about everybody had. Nev

Today I rang Red Energy and arranged swapping to them after my next Origin bill due in a couple of weeks. It was very refreshing to talk to Australian based customer support. Everything worked well and went great just like it used to with Origin before they outsourced their customer support overseas. Sub standard customer support is the number one reason I'm leaving Origin; the data breach incident is just another contributing factor. At the end of this month it's good riddance Origin. Price wise, they're fairly close. Based on my useage, Red Energy is about $100 per year cheaper than Origin. When I get settled in to Red Energy, the next step is to get a smart meter installed and that will remove the problem of the contract meter readers who don't like going off the bitumen on to rural properties. I could deal with estimated bills if the meter readers were honest about their reasons given for not accessing the property but they're not. It's another case of good service going to the pack when things get contracted out. When Energex (the primary supplier/wholesaler) employed their own people to read the meters they quite happily accessed the property for 30+ years without a problem. I think the roll out date here for smart meters ends in 2030, so sometime in the next couple of years I would be compelled to swap to a smart meter anyway.

France was one is the first to go nuclear and did a good Job of it. That was then. This is NOW. Water is in short supply in most parts of the world.. Anyone who thinks the world climate ISN'T changing is a smaller and smaller minority by the day. Fossil fuels are now unreliable and cause Wars Predictably. Nev

Needs explaining to me.edit OK just took a while.

Well we gotta find some use for all that pesky excess CO2! And nowadays it's easier to find than H2O.