Yenn

They are learning to kill, but not learning how to behave. Bin Laden was murdered while hiding behind women and he was unarmed, at least that is what I read in the write up by the military who were there. This latest bloke has also been murdered. There should be a trial of these so called terrorists and so far the USA has no intention of letting that happen and as I cannot trust the Yanks, to me it is no different from terrorism.

We don't have respect for anyone in power and it is fairly obvious why. The "Voice" is lauded as the way to go. but it is not clear what it is. I heard the Aboriginal lawyer who stands up for his people, forgot his name, but I do respect him. He seems to think that the Voice will be the same as saying they were here for millenia before the white man. I thought he was educated and intelligent, but I just can't see where he gets that impression. If that is enough to make the Aboriginals and Islanders happy, jolly good, but I don't think it will. I still feel Albo is happy to push his barrow, but doesn't care which way the vote goes, just so long as he can say he gave it a go.

At least if you are naturalized you can say it was your choice to become Australian, and you have experienced a different culture. You are not Australian because you were born here, you are Australian because you think it is the best place to call home. I was English, because that is where my mother was when I was born, that is my story and i am sticking to it. Now I am Aussie.

It seems the police had more firearms training than we had in the army in Britain in the fifties. We used to get about ten round through a .303 in a year, or if in a bren group we may get thirty. I shot every week because I was in the rifle team, but that was eight of us in a camp of 300.

What do you mean by salmon? Are you talking about the salmon caught off the Qld coast, which is a real fish, or that stuff farmed in Tassie and pink in colour, which in my opinion is not real fish? It takes a lot to beat a nice piece of fresh mackerel. I am a t6rue vegetarian, I only eat animals that eat vegetables, which does include pig.

I had rabbit at a restaurant about five years ago and I swear it was anything but rabbit, really tasteless and after eating rabbit for years as a young bloke I reckon I know what it tastes like. When I complained I did at least get my meal knocked off the bill.

You can't expect the correct answers from US intelligence. If you think Bin Laden and this later bloke are guilty OK, but you are relying on the same people who destroyed Iraq because there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Getting a signature witnessed is not as easy as you would expect. When they brought out the ASIC card I got all the paperwork over the internet, filled it in and went to the Gladstone Court House to get my signature witnessed. THe receptionist took the filled in form and some time later an official came and told me he needed to see the explanatory documents, which explained how to fill it all in, Wouldn't just witness my signature, but wanted to quiz me about every little detail. Luckily there is a JP who volounteers at the court house, so I grabbed the papers and went to him. That took him about 2 minutes and the other hour or so was just bureaucratic buggarising about.

Yes the Yanks know how to get rid of their enemies/ Pity they don't bring them to trial and prove their case against them. We only have their word that those people are so bad and look at Guantanamo. They say those people are so bad that they cannot be allowed into USA for a trial. Do you really believe Rob Hicks was the worst of the worst? My opinion is never trust anyone from the USA.

I just got a message that Octave was trying to contact me, but couldn't make the connection work. So if you see this Octave, have your say here.

I cannot understand this working from home. There just isn't enough room to get 40 cows into my living room to milk them and I doubt the boss would pay for the clean up.

Willedoo. You say John Howards thing was well intentioned, but it didn't work. That is what the Voice may be intended to sort out. Our governments have a habit of going off half cocked and maybe an aboriginal voice could point out that it isn't working. I can see that as a reason for a yes vote, but I really want more information, especially about how the government can control who has a say. Looking at past governments they would all skew the voice to make themselves look or even better, make the opposition look bad.

Try stuck back in the fifties, that's when I was referring to.

The way it is going at the moment I feel that the question was thought up to placate the Aboriginal and Torres Straits islanders, rather than do any good for them. They have many beefs about the way they are treated and I have no idea how to make life better for them, but we cannot go along with things such as the incarceration rate being too high. They seem to think that there should be a limit on numbers an jail, but not on their commitment of crimes.

There were no homosexuals in the army in my day. Well that was the official word, but they were there. I joined up at 17.5 years and during trade training I had my first encounter with a homosexual. He was a corporal and tried to take advantage of me and I had no idea about homosexuality. Luckily I had a few Royal Marines doing the course with me and they kept an eye on us young blokes. They put me wise and stopped the problem. I never came up against any others although they were always talked about. Without those older men I could well have been given an introduction to homosexuality. Now we are expected to treat it as if it is not a problem to anyone and I know it was a problem to me. We are expected to embrace it and if we don't we are considered to be religious bigots. I resent that. A bigot I may be but I have no time for religion, which in my opinion has done more harm that homosexuality. I just don't like having to bow down to a way of life that takes advantage of young people who do not understand it. I don't mind if they just shut up about it and stop trying to push it into my face all the time.

I see that the shrine of remembrance has had to cancel a rainbow celebration of homosexual servicemen and women, because of hate messages from homophobes. What is the reasoning for having all this gay pride celebration? Why do we have to bow down to the different part of society and extoll them as being special? What do all those initials stand for? I understand the L as being Lesbian, but G is gay and that is just a modern corruption of the word, even so I understand it as homosexual or maybe queer. B is I am told Bi, which means we screw anything. T transgender can't make up their minds, but what are Q and I? Surely if Q is queer, isn't that now covered by G? and I have no idea what I implies, except that we are all supposed to treat the whole damn lot as religion and bow down before them. Maybe the bowing down is not a good idea.

Albo has come out with the question for his referendum. "Do you support an alteration to the constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres straits Islander voice?" Now what sort of a question is that. Does he really think that there is enough info there to get people to answer that question? Maybe he thinks the average Aussie will say yes, just because so many voices have been shouting about it. I wonder if he really wants it to be a yes vote, but if so it will not get my vote without a lot more explanation. What is really being proposed? How would it work? and if as Albo also suggested the government could say who would comprise that voice, would it really be a voice of the proposed people. Remember the referendum on us becoming a republic. That failed because there was no definition of what sort of republic and even then we did not want an American style republic. This one looks as if it is heading the same way.

But it does less harm than religion, but you are right that is what it seems like in Melbourne. The followers of the game spend half the week describing what a wonderful job their team did last weekend or how they were robbed, then the rest of the week they are boasting about how their team is going to thrash the opposition next weekend. My Grandson is an Essenden supporter and that is what I define as an optimist. His son at 9 months is already being guided into that religion, even though they live in Sydney area.

I reckon the push to make bamboo is just another advertising gimmick. I grow bamboo and it is great if you want a fairly small section and length up to maybe 300mm, but otherwise it is only good for long poles with little or no bending or tension loads. It is basicaly a hollow tube with nodes at regular intervals. It has been used for flooring and as I understand it there is nothing clean and green in its production, as far as bending goes it is quite rigid, but to use in tension needs well thought out joint design. Even if the bamboo is stripped down to fibres I don;t know how well it would spin, because unlike wool it is a smooth fibre. The comments about slow drying socks are real. I seldom use the pair of socks that I have because of that factor.

I still reckon the main cause of accidents is the poor decision making of drivers. How often do you see a car tailgating on a long straight stretch of road, pulling out for a look, then deciding no, then pulling out again and going just as they get to double lines. The driver who insists on driving at the speed limit and is constantly applying and releasing the brakes. At least it is costing him money for fuel and brake wear, but his decision making is useless.

I wouldn't like to be tested on a simulator. I have used X plane and made a copy of the Corby Starlet. I couldn't take off without crashing through fences and landing was only slightly better, even though it flew like the real thing for the rest of the time. I still reckon biannual testing would not get rid of the bad drivers. They would know they were being tested and be on their best behaviour. Photographic evidence of incompetent driving from a following police car could get rid of some menaces.

Whats good about bamboo?

Pale skin and bad hairxuts are nothing. Have you smelt their feet?

In those years they did build some good stuff. I was in the army in the fifties and we had so many different makes of equipment that we couldn't keep it all going because the spares inventory was so great. Just a quick recall and I can think of twelve makes of truck, running on two different fuels. Among those twelve there were several variants of most of them. I reckon the governments idea was to keep all those manufacturers going, but within about five years most of them had closed up shop. Just thought of a few more. Funny though there were only two motorbikes.

Until they stuffed it all up. Which was just before Australia followed suite.