kgwilson

Right. Now lets all leave. We've buggered the place anyway. I wonder who will take 25 million refugees? Hang on who am I going to sell all my stuff to. There seem to be a few minor issues with all this.

If the mainstream parties get rejected and we get a lot of competent independents elected, enough to form a government with a good majority, they could operate like a company board. No party politics just good economic and social sense on every issue. Nah, couldn't happen because they are all POLITICIANS aka Pigs at the trough.

When I lived in SE QLD it was light at 3:30 in the morning and summer BBQs were held in the dark. In a referendum about 80% of SE Qlders voted to have daylight savings & there was talk of splitting the state into different time zones as daylight savings was useless in the North due to the difference between Summer & Winter being not much at all. The government of the day refused to do the split so it never changed.

What about fading curtains? Plenty of idiots were and probably still are serious about that.

There are a lot of Australians who have been badgered by the fear campaign that if Labor gets in the flood gates will open & there will be boats landing everywhere. The LNPs treatment of refugees is criminal at best but there is so much fear spread that we seemingly accept the BS. The LNP especially people like Dutton & the hard right should be prosecuted for the whole Manus Island and Nauru debacle where human rights are zero. As a developed nation we have the worst human rights record on the planet.

Shorten may be the leader and he may well have the credentials but he has a poor public image and there is a lot of suspicion from the voting public about his Union past history. Personally I'd like to see Tania Plibersek as the Labor leader. I don't know her history but she speaks eloquently, looks good and seems able to fend off the bullying from the libnats with some well chosen words. Dutton looks to be history now with a second au pair visa deal done for a police mate.

Soothsayer.

Well a not so united Europe. Brexit is just the beginning, Italy has had more governments than most have had hot dinners, Greece is broke, the refugee issue is dividing all of the members, there is the right wing resurgence all over and Germany is struggling to find the funds to pay for everything.

Whereas our Christian leaders are finally being found out to be the hypocrites they always were, taking vows of celibacy and abusing children in their care. That sounds pretty barbaric to me.

Maybe the 1% of 2.5% should have been 0.0001%. I don't know but I do think it is the fear factor whipped up by the media reporting that is the biggest problem. Yes there is the odd nutter fundamentalist jihadist Muslim who goes crazy and has a go at beheading someone or whatever. It outrages everyone including 99.999% of the Muslim community. But what about the Christian or Jew or Hindu or Buddhist nutter who has a go at a similar thing. The publicity factor is not as newsworthy.

Australia is supposed to be a secular society but we have holidays based on Christian beliefs, the governments give money to religious schools and many politicians have hard core religious beliefs so humanitarian issues such as dying with dignity etc hardly get a look in. There are religious cranks and hard liners within all religions although at every census the number of Australians who define themselves as having no religion increases dramatically. In 2016 30.1% declared no religion and 9.6% declared nothing, some form of Christianity was 52.1% and Muslims 2.6%. The problem is anything that is a bit unsavoury that has Islam or Muslim involved somewhere gets huge press and publicity. If there is 1% of the 2.6% who are Muslims and hard line jihadist types that is 0.026% of the population. Not a huge number to control I would have thought. The sooner religions die out the better, though I am not holding my breath.

Yep the story is told over and over. If the dog hadn't stopped to Sh1t it would have caught the rabbit.

You get people like Anning in the Senate when the system is so stupid it allows someone with only 19 votes to be elevated to a position of such magnitude. Hitler did it with ruthless aggressive power and fear, our system allows it under the guise of democracy. Now with all the media attention he is sure to get all the votes that might have gone to Paulines mob. No wonder she has denounced him.

The best battery is water from pumped hydro as it has almost an infinite life. The ANU identified over 2000 sites on the East Coast of which only 30 odd would be required to provide all of the energy needed and they could be built by 2020. Wind & solar will be used to pump the water up during the day when there's a surplus & the turbines will run when the demand is high. Wind & solar farms are springing up everywhere but other than the ridiculously huge Snowy 2 what is happening with pumped hydro especially the ones that can use sea water?

A judge was interviewing a woman regarding her pending divorce and asked, "What are the grounds for your divorce?" She replied, "About four acres and a nice little home in the middle of the property with a stream running by." "No," he said, "I mean what is the foundation of this case?" "It is made of concrete, brick, and mortar," she responded. "I mean," he continued, "what are your relations like?" "I have an aunt and uncle living here in town, as well as my husband's parents." The judge took a deep breath and asked, "Do you have a real grudge?" "No," she replied, "we have a two-car carport and have never really needed one." "Please," he tried again, "is there any infidelity in your marriage?" "Yes, both my son and daughter have stereo sets. We don't necessarily like the music, but we can't seem to do anything about it." "Ma'am, does your husband ever beat you up?" "Yes," she responded, "he gets up every morning before I do and makes the coffee." The judge asked, "Is your husband a nagger?" Exasperated she replied, "Oh, hell no, he is white just like you and me!" Finally, in frustration, the judge asked, "Lady, why do you want a divorce? " "Oh, I don't want a divorce," she replied. "I've never wanted a divorce, my husband does. He says he can't communicate with me."

IPA, one of my favourite beer styles.

Yes there is nothing like the radiated heat from a real wood fire. Watching the wood burn is better than anything on TV. Convection heating from a reverse cycle air conditioner is an efficient means of transferring the heat but is not an aesthetically pleasing method.

According to the report on Baseload Power Coal is declared a dinosaur. It has had no effect on the government or right wingers wanting new coal fired power stations built. "Technology has moved on from base load, and now you want flexible power. And that's what demand management, batteries and pumped hydro is," says Professor Andrew Blakers, director of the ANU Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems. "If you have an increase in demand, a coal power station will take hours [to meet it], a gas turbine 20 to 30 minutes, batteries about a second, demand management about a second, and pumped hydro will take anywhere between 20 seconds and two minutes." In the past because coal fired stations had to keep running even if there was no demand the power price went negative so they paid customers to take the power. Researchers say a combination of these rapid response, dynamic power sources is the future of power generation. What about when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow? "All this talk about 'you've got to have baseload power stations' is complete nonsense," says Dr Mark Diesendorf. "It's a dinosaur." His team at the University of New South Wales ran "thousands of computer simulations" correlating hourly power-consumption data from the National Electricity Market (NEM) in 2010, with the potential power generation of renewables, based on recorded weather data for the same year. He claims that a combination of existing technologies, including hydro and biofuelled gas turbines, were able to supply the simulated NEM even during "peak demand" — on winter evenings following overcast days. "No single one does all the job... You probably need a mix of hydro, which may include off-river pumped hydro, and possibly open-cycle-gas turbines," he says. "Pumped hydro is 100-year-old technology, completely off the shelf, and importantly you can get these pumped-hydro sites built before 2022," he says. "A recent study that we published shows that there's about 22,000 [potential] pumped-hydro sites on the east coast. We only need 20 or 30 of them." The latest report just released on Monday highlights the governments folly. Its title is How government inaction fuelled Australia's renewable energy boom. Check out the report at the link below How government inaction fuelled the renewables boom

Even up here in the sub tropics 30 deg south we have had some very cold nights (1-2 deg) and light frost. The sea water temperature is still 20 deg but this time of the year the wind is from the west so it is pretty cold on my morning walks on the beach with the dog. The good thing is that with clear sunny days the temp peaks at about 20 to 22 deg & so long as you are out of the wind it is beautiful. Inland though they are getting -5 to -10 temps & that is real brass monkey stuff. People think that because I came from NZ I'd be used to that sort of cold but in reality the minimums there rarely fall below 0 due to proximity to the ocean & mostlly are around 4 to 6deg but the maximums rarely get over 15 deg. The real difference is that Winter in NZ is the wet season so it always feels way colder than it is.

You could also go to Aldi and spend 30% less than at Woolies or Coles. No bags, no rewards & not as much choice but your wallet notices.

The Bangkok shots show how that without traffic lights & heaps of motorbikes everything keeps moving despite vehicles cutting across the flow & sometimes on the wrong side. That would never happen here. We'd have crashes & road rage punch ups galore.

I currently get 11.1c feed in tariff & pay 31.7c peak & 18.2c off peak & $1.31 daily supply charge. In my area that is the best deal I could get. Now Ipart has recommended reducing the feed in tariff to a range of 6.9 to 8.4 c. In NSW the subsidised gross feed in tariff of around 60c expired about 18 months ago. I am amazed that some in Victoria are still getting massive subsidised feed in tariffs.

Bitumen & Asphalt are apparently one and the same thing but I always considered bitumen to be hot tar spread by spraying & gravel then laid on top & rolled in. It is generally fairly noisy to drive on. Also called Tar Macadam or Tarmac. Asphalt I thought was normally premixed and laid hot by a machine & the surface can be very smooth. I think this is sometimes referred to as Asphalt concrete & does not seem to suffer from extreme heat. This is what they put on motorways near built up areas as it is quieter to drive on than concrete. Am I right here?

The only thing I didn't see was how he cut the neat rectangular holes in the bamboo.

The name Leyonhjelm comes to mind here. He appears sub human to me with an IQ approaching 20, can't remember what was actually ever said and still managed to get elected. What a fantastic system we have. It is lucky that there are enough entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who see through all the political BS and fund solar, wind and pumped hydro while not having a bar of anything remotely linked to fossil fuels. But when it is all operational and we can start getting rid of our old fossil fuelled sources of energy, guess who will take the credit.