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There was a TV show set in Melbourne with the actors satarised their being Greek. The show was called Acropolis Now. One of the characters was Effie, played by Mary Coustas. The character "Effie", was a stereotypical second-generation Greek Australian prone to malapropisms. A common one of hers was " how embarassment". https://www.facebook.com/nickg1/videos/the-first-time-that-now-iconic-phrase-howembarrassment-was-heard-on-aussie-tv-on/2132406587584055/

The last census showed approx 1 million homes unoccupied on census night. That shows a lack of homes is not the issue but house hoarding. A clear case of a broken and unethical taxation regime.

Father Hartigan was my mum's teacher in Narrandera.

I remember when the wife and I went to England, leaving my son at home to fend for himself. Typical smartarsed teenager, he had put a ringtone on my wife's phone that was the sound of police sirens. We were sitting in a cafe in the village in Yorkshire where they filmed the TV show Heartbeat when he phoned us. The place was filled with the sound of sirens and everyone was looking about for the emergency vehicle. Of course, it was the son. It was mid-morning in England, but getting on for dinner time in Sydney. The stupid bugger rang to ask his Mum how to cook some dish he wanted for dinner.

A person I know has a house or two in town that are unoccupied. Why? Because of the costs of repairing the damage that tenants cause. That is probably one of the reasons for the numbers of vacant houses.

But it’s their three legged system of government that allows a corrupt president to accumulate so much power. It would be very difficult if not impossible for a prime minister of this country to do what Trump is doing.

The only time that will happen is after their next civil war. The senate already has the power to restrict Trump but they have become impotent with Trump quoting Emergencies when there are none and all the government appointees being sycophants. The only hope is republicans losing their house majority after the mid terms.

Rather than rewriting the constitution, if they just follow it...... Founding fathers tried to separate state from all religion. The US really began it's slide when the christian lobby got control - about the same time their (&our) government implemented prayer sessions into government processes. The only thing needed to reclaim some semblance of respect is to get the whole lot to obey the rule of law, ditch religious fundamentalism, and drop the Electoral College.

What else would you expect from an abusive, vicious President who has started fights with every single person on the planet who disagreed with him!

I've got an idea for gun control in the USA! Invoke the spitir of teh Second Amendment which says "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The spirit of that amendment was to provide secutiry for the State. Therfore, make it a condition of gunownership that a person join a militia unit and attend training that leads to the unit being well regulated. If a person does not do that, then no firearm. People would find it too inconvenient to give up their time for that, and so would hand in their firearms.

And every creek a banker ran, And dams filled overtop; "We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan, "If this rain doesn't stop."

Had a shit of a night's sleep last night! Kept getting woken up by the rain pounding on the roof. When I got up this morning water was laying is sheets across the ground. I had to go out and clear twigs and leaves from the drainage channels I dug back when the last big rains came. I measured 50 mm in the rain guage, and it is still raining. The rain event is supposed to last for the next couple of days.

Hey! Wait a mo! That can't be OUR Jerry. There aren't enough keyboard errors. Where's my tinfoil hat?

Yeah - silly idea by the poms, sending their worst people to a better place!

Bots would be able to spell better.

Then there's Mario in The Wog Boy - "They say I know f*ck nothing. But I know f*ck all!"

An old Slav prospector I knew used to say "I'm doubt", whenever he should have said, "I doubt it".

They can be amusing sometimes. I remember an old Croatian bloke telling me once, in all seriousness (although with a few shots of slivovitz on board) - "My wife, ok, I get home a bit late, and my wife, he say to me, 'What in the hell have you been??'"

Like everything these days. Publish a story about a horror renter and it puts the wind up a landlord. Vetting of potential tenants is a pretty terrifying process for a tenant needing a home.

And the ticky-tacky little boxes have come about via property investor greed that has pushed house prices up 700% in 3 decades. That's unsustainable, and is setting the country up for a majpr recession, perhaps even a Depression. House prices go up 3% annually over the long-term, normally. Only in the last 3 decades has this outlandish property pricing occurred - so we need to look at what has driven that - and it's the taxation system generously favouring property investors. So Labor is now trying to address that major imbalance.

Private homes are paid for by already taxed Money and NOTHING deductible. To retrospectively change the rules would not be taxing. it would be Confiscation of an asset by deception as a lot of it's VALUE is because of Inflation, with No deductions for ANYTHING Interest rates, council rates, repairs. insurance along the way. How unfair would that Be? . Over long periods of time the dwelling becomes valueless and only the Land makes it worth anything, Many Houses just get pushed over. An empty lot would be worth More. It costs Money to demolish and tidy up.. When you rent, you know exactly what it will cost you. If the neighbours are from Hell you can Just Move without Paying crazy amounts of Money . If you are the kind of Person that Moves a lot, Owning a House is the One thing you Might consider NOT doing. They can tie you down and absorb all your spare cash.. Most are Now on tiny Blocks where there is Nothing but the House and car garage. You can't fit between the walls of your Place and next door. Ticky Tacky little boxes all in a row.. How depressing. Nev

I say the same thing. However, although the sale pricing of the property has doubled, the value hasn't really changed since the money (if I sold right now) doesn't buy a more grand place. Capital gains are only realised by wealthy speculators who buy multiple properties.

No it doesn't. Take 12 houses for sale, 10 @ $1m, 2 at $600,000. The average (mean) is 10 x $1m + 2 x $600K = $11,200,000/12 = $9,333,333 The median is $1m + $600K =$1.600K / 2 = $800K

Worse than that. It was meant to be a text message.

Wondered where that went. The perils of technology and senility.

If you had that flow all the time Marty you could set up a hydro system. A few years ago I saw a homebuilt one on youtube that a bloke had made from a Hitachi washing machine.

Bit damp down here at the moment, over 140mm in last 3 days. Our little creek which is normally a gentle trickle.

That's just your algorithm working for you.

No. Just review it' - tidy it up by including the OK amendments as Sections. I think that what Trump has been doing is reason to reconsider the role of the Head of State and the House of Representatives in their roles in running the country. Trump has removed the ability to run the country from the Representatives. They could still keep their system for electing a President, but restrict a President's power to act as Trump has been acting.

I think that the only thing that can save the democracy of the USA as it moves into its second 250 years is a review of its Constitution. A review and rewriting would permit amendments which have had to be made to be presented in a more organised way, and some of the recinding amendments removed. I think that a new constitution should make the format of the government similar to ours and most other democracies. That is, the People's House should be the place where the people who run the country do their work. That's where the person responsible for the various ministries report back to the representatives of the People. There could be a House of Review to monitor laws proposed by the representatives. Finally, the Head of State should be as apolitical as possible, and have no power to make the sort of Orders that we have seen Trump do.

Some things are good, like the block on the gear selector by the footbrake. A lot of things that are controlled by modules receiving data from sensors can cause difficult to correct faults. I'd say that alot of gadgets on the dashboard are marketing gimmicks. Remember when all we needed was a couple of warning lights, a speedo and a fuel guage? Cars got us fron A to B with those simple things.

Hmm welcome AI

Rear tyre for your rat bike?

Since Australia is one of the few countries that drives on the left we have to accept that the majority of vehicles built worldwide are for right hand drive. It is annoying if you have grown up with the indicator lever on the right, but eventually you retrain yourself if your vehicle has it on the left. Can you remember the push-button gear selector in, I think, early Valiants?

Will the day come, when 'Robot dog bites robot postman' hits the headlines?

We have got Jerry-AI-tric back. But I won't believe the real Jerry's back until I see his normal keyboard scramble posts.

BTW, Thanks. I was missing your sentient inputs

A windfarm in sa that I had a bit to do with, with small MW turbines has had it life extended to 30 years. I am curious to see how the larger ones go. Huge amounts of forces when you have 162m rotors sitting on 150M towers.

Hmmmm. Yeah I'm sure that will be fair and impartial, given that the FBI, the Justice department and the Supreme Court are all fully owned Trump subsidiaries.

Is He a Convict? . Aren't we all supposed to be descendants of FELONS? Is NOTHING Sacred? Nev

Hopefully, he is enroute to sunny Orstraya at last!

Six white boomers are no longer allowed on the radio. And kangaroos are no longer tied down.

Boomers, or baby boomers, are the generation born between 1946 and 1964, after WWII. Baby boomers are the demographic cohort preceded by the Silent Generation and followed by Generation X.

You have to remember that when we Boomers were growing up, our fathers were still relatively young men who had experinced many horrors and these had been shared with other young men. After the war the bonds formed in military units were stretched as these young men drifrted apart from old mates and tried to make a life for themselves. ANZAC Day was a day on which those bonds could be reformed. In the years 1946 to about 1966 Australia had a different culture than it has now. Excessive drinking was the norm at celebrations. My Dad was heavily involved with his local RSL Sub-branch, organising the Dawn Service amongst other things. Mum, my sister and I would attend the local Dawn Service and bid farewell to Dad, not expecting to see him until late that evening, and showing the effects of a glass or two. In 1958 a play, The One Day of the Year, contested attitudes to Anzac Day. The play was inspired by an article in the University of Sydney newspaper Honi Soit criticising Anzac Day and the author's own observations of how ex-servicemen behaved on that day. You can imagine how controversial it was. Its production was banned by the Adelaide Festival of Arts Board of Governors in 1960. The author and cast received death threats. I read this play in high school. Typically the mass media did not understand the play, and concentrated on the initial aims of the Boomer, Hughie. Hughie and his girlfriend Jan, university students, plan to document Anzac Day for the university newspaper, focusing on the drinking on Anzac Day. For the first time in his life Hughie refuses to attend the dawn service with his Dad, Alf. When he watches the march on television at home with his mother and Wacka, a WWI returned man, living with the family, he is torn between outrage at the display and love for his father. Wacka then explains to Hughie that for the returned, ANZAC Day reunions are for reforming those bonds formed in the horrors of war. Alcohol is the balm that soothes terrifying memories and releases memories of the good times, and the larrikin acts that relieved tension. At the end of the story, Hughie has a more sympathetic view of what ANZAC Day means to his Dad. The mass media and "intellctuals" missed that point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Day_of_the_Year

ok, I googled whether the sale of the last 50% was legislated and it was legislated in 1995 under the Commonwealth Bank Sale Act. Short answer, it was already legally locked in before Howard took over in March 1996.. Blaming Howard for it is a bit of a stretch don't you think. If Howard wanted to save it, it would have been near impossible to draft legislation, pass it through parliament and enact it all in twelve short weeks.

Howard is Pretty Much solely responsible for encouraging Money into houses as the Best Investment. He also sold the People's Bank to the People. "Honest" John Has a Lot to answer for. Nev

Investors buy homes, then keep them empty so they don't have any hassles caused by tenants, nor any decrease in house condition because of tenant wear and tear. There are thousands of empty houses in Australia, all owned by investors who are gloating on the capital increase in value of those homes. Better than money in the bank and all the outgoings are a good old tax deduction. Something has to change, or there will be a revolution - and Labor know it. The other parties think they can keep handing out benefits on a plate to housing investors. And what about the family home being exempt from any taxing at all? Buy a multi-million dollar house, spend more millions making it twice the size (and three times the selling value), stay in it for a year or two, call it your home - sell up and make millions tax-free. There should be a value limit on the family home, and the time living in it needs to be extended. There are dozens of houses around where I live that have all been extended to 7 or 8 bedrooms and 2 stories, and they hold 2-4 people - and the owners are sitting on multi-million dollar capital gains, totally free of virtually any kind of tax. That stinks.

Our current home has doubled in value (at least) since we bought it nine years ago. We are in a very small rural town, you could call it a hamlet, and I can see no reason for that sort of increase. Fortunately, all our five kids are now approaching or past 50 years old and have paid off their hex debts and most of their house costs, but the grandkids are entering a very different world.

Sorry, Red, but you have it wrong. The mean is the mathematical average of all numbers in a data set. The median is the exact middle value of a data set when the numbers are sorted in order. Here is an illustration where the an original set of scores has two more included. In the illustration, the numbers 75.5, 83, and 41 &90 are obtained from the original data. The numbers 73.1, 82 and 42 are what one gets after inculding the two extra scores. We give a stvff because a lot of us here have decided that accuracy in posts is important. That is why we like to see where the support for a comment comes from. In my post here, the diagram comes from a Google search for the difference between 'mean and median', as well as the fact that back in the day I did a course in statistics at Uni, and the topic is usually included in high school Maths.

Mean is the average. Median is halfway down the list between the highest and the lowest.