Yenn

When I became an Australian I never had to renounce my British citizenship and i assume that if I wanted to become a federal polly I would have to do so. There was a possibility that if I had travelled overseas on an English passport, I would not have been allowed back into Australia if I was not an Australian citizen. That was probably to make sure people who lived here were Australians. Now it seems our government is hell bent on getting as many citizens without worrying about what really happens. I have met obvious foreigners who say they are living here to get Aussie citizenship and then going home.

Nomad it sounds as if you took over from Neville Gersch at Boyne. My time remark was based on what a friend of mine who runs pot line 1 told me. I think he said he could revive after 34 hours, but I never asked him how. They have just found a 350kg lump of what they call shrapnell in the roof at Callide. that sounds like a big lump of the casing as I doubt that there would be that much in the turbine except the shaft and I reckon we would have been told if the shaft disappeared.

We don;t have political leaders. Those at the top of the political pile are not leaders. They are professional politicians with only one aim in life and that is to stay in power. The frightening thing is that given their very poor handling of the situation I am afraid that they will still manage to scare enough of the voters to put them back in power when the election comes. Of course they are aided by the oppositions inability to avoid shooting themselves in the foot.

I think you will find that Boyne smelter could go a little more than 4 hours, but 20 would definitely do a lot of damage without power. Cyber attacks are happening and the latest was on a meat processor. There have been several recently and I am wondering if someone or some natiion is just working how much damage they can do. Little test jobs, getting ready for one big one which will be designed to cripple nations.

Red I didn't know you had been to my place.

It doesn't matter how long you stay in hotel quarantine, it depends upon how that quarantine is done. If the workers at the quarantine site go home and into the general population, you are going to get have the virus getting away. I think all of the cases in Australia have been escapes from quarantine, either from just incompetence on the part of the government or on the part of those running the quarantine sites. It seems that the vaccines will not prevent us catching the virus and they will not prevent us spreading it, so all they are really doing is slowing its advance down. It is not going to obliterate the human race but it could well reduce the numbers to a very small proportion of what they are now.

I have had a beard for over fifty years and on the rare occasions that i have shaved it off most people don't recognise me, but a few will not even notice that I have shaved, they are the ones who recognise me by my eyebrows, which were also copied by John Howard.

Those Wolseleys with the lit up badge in the radiator were used by the London metropolitan police, that was before the days of sirens and they had bells mounted on the front. All those old cars could be difficult to work on, but no more so than modern cars, the good thing is that modern cars need little work. The first time I came across a Morris minor was when I did a top overhaul, or decoke for a friend. It was only two years old and when I did a test drive afterwards I was amazed by how much better it handled, compared to my Morris 8 series 2.

Why should Australians vote in Syrian or any other countries elections? Why would Australia have any say in how Syrians vote in Syrian elections, even if the live in Australia? The real question is why are Australians allowed to retain the citizenship of their country of origin? If they come here and become Aussies I cannot see why they should be allowed to retain their original citizenship. When they are allowed to do that they scream for help when they are in their home state and something bad happens. This is apparent when there was a massive explosion in Lebanon and Australia had to evacuate so called Aussies. The same is happening with Indians now. I could be completely wrong but I am guessing that 99% of the Indian descent Aussies in India, wanting to come home are also Indian citizens. If I had been in Britain when the pandemic was at its worse I would not have had the cheek to call for Australia to repatriate me as I have not renounced my British citizenship.

A lot of the land occupied by Israel as not bought from the Arabs but they were terrorised to get off it, so that Jews could take it over. A lot of the problems go back to what was promised by Britain when they wanted both the Arabs and Jews on their side in the war with Gernmany. I think if you go back and look at what was promised, Britain has promised to look after the Arabs at the expense of the Jews and vice versa. Perfidious Albion.

Many years ago I said that the difference between Nazi Germany and Israel was 50 years. It still appears to be the case as we only need to look at what israel is doing to see that their main aim is to get rid of Palestinians. Of course the Arabs do not help as they all hate Israel and are happy to see palestinians launch rockets from Gaza into Israel. That way they can look like supporting their fellow Arabs, but not risk anything themselves. Hamas appears to want to do what the Jews did after WW2, that is become the badlytreated underdog and get world support against the big bully Israel. We never seem to be able to stop these little wars and the UN seems to love to be able to condemn their behaviour, call for peace and spend vast amounts looking after the refugees, while doing nothing to solve the underlying problems.

The major problem with the Callide failure was that one turbine was off for maintenance and when they had the failure the others were shut down because of the fire in the turbine room. This meant that two good turbines were shut down. When you consider how much power is used by Boyne Smelter making aluminium and it can only be off line for a few hours before all the molten aluminium in the pots goes hard, there can be a major problem very quickly. Our government has a one track mind to use more coal and reduce the solar. they are even talking about charging people to input home grown solar into the system. All caused by their stupid system to encourage home solar by paying 44c per kW and selling it at 22c per kW. What they should have encouraged was hoe solar feeding home or local area batteries. As it is at the moment we can feed power into the grid, but most of us cannot use what our rooftop array collects when the grid shuts down. Seems stupid to me.

It's not over till the fat lady sings. and so far it appears that Covid 19 may be the answer to overpopulation. I don't think it is time to write it off yet. Let me know if you hear a fat lady singing and it will probably be the Eurovision thing.

I see that the Australian entry to the Eurovision Song Contest was knocked out in the very early stages of the contest' I heard the entry played on radio here before the contest and thought it was just about par for the music I hear on the ABC. I wonder did anyone really think it was in with a chance and if so is the rest of the world that bad?

A good fruit cake made with fruit steeped in alcohol will keep for years and get better with aging, but I am not sure about six years. My wife has kept one for nearly 3 years and it was great. That was a Christmas cake without iceing. I noticed a couple of years ago that the Lyons Christmas cake was of a much poorer quality. I never tried to keep that type for any long time. My guess is that the Lyons cakes now have artificial flavouring.

I remember when long hair was banned in Singapore in the seventies. my winch driver was regularly chased by the police because his hair was down to his shoulders. Good bloke and an excellent worker. Luckily they never caught him.

Does that really come from 1956 or is it a modern recording made to look old. It certainly sounds like one of the well known TV presenters from that time.

I like mullet, a far tastier fish than it is given credit for.

I badgered my father to let me smoke a cigarette and he said I could, but if I started I would have to finish it. I have never smoked since. I found beer when I was in the army and nearly became an alcoholic, but that was a long time ago and a good woman managed to divert me form drinking. now I enjoy a small wine with dinner and a stubby occasionally. I find much more enjoyment from that occasional stubbie than I could get from consuming several at a time.

A riend of mine is in a de facto relationship and he has discovered one very serious failing in how they are viewed. It is impossible to divorce a de facto partner. His comes back when he hopes she has left for good.

We do have a constitution for what it's worth. It says how the country should be governed, how many pollies etc and how and when they meet. it also states who is responsible for what, which I reckon is completely disregarded by the Federal government, because they made the states responsible for quarantine, when the constitution says it is a federal government responsibility. The Feds only consult the constitution if the think they can get an edge on the opposition, as they did with the foreigners not allowed to be in politics.

The work situation nowadays is nowhere near as arduous as 50 years ago. We used to unload a truck of cement bags by carrying two bags on our shoulder. Nowadays the bags are half the size and only one is to be carried. We used to regularly lift shuttering for concrete work that weighed about 56 lbs, we lifted it 7' 6" and placed it while standing on a platform with about a foot clearance and several hundred feet drop, not one shutter but about 30 and done as fast as possible so that we could finish the pour and knock off. I didn't see a womann construction worker until about 1999 and she was terrific. Could work better than most of the men except for brute strength, but she was canny enough to work around the big loads by making them smaller.

The apprentice system was similar in Australia to Britain and was just a way of getting cheap labour for 4 or so years and slowly teaching a trade. there is nothing stopping someone absorbing all the training from a 4 year apprenticeship in six months, except that it would cost the trainer more and also reduce the labour available to sweep the floor.

We keep hearing about how bad the situation is in India, but the official statistics show that the USA is not far behind in deaths and cases, when you take the differences in population into account. In total the USA has had nearly ten times the deaths per million population than India.

The bureau of statistics is reported to say that casual jobs have decreased and full time jobs have massively increased. I haven't looked for the figures as it seems anything to do with politics is lies, or maybe damn lies.