dutchroll

In other Brexit news, the petition for a second referendum has had thousands of fraudulent signatures removed. 77,000 to be more precise. This leaves it depleted to a mere 3.1 million signatures. The funny irony is that apparently it was started by a "Leave" campaigner in the event that the result wasn't decisive and the "Remain" camp won by a small margin. He didn't quite think that one through, I suspect. Most commentary I'm seeing over here from people with ties to Britain is along the lines of it being the most divided they've ever seen the nation.

Here I am quietly sipping an evening beer at home and you two make me spit into it with froth going everywhere including over my lap.

Already read it many hours ago Phil. Not all of the reasons are sensible ones, nor does the article suggest they are. In fact, most of them are based solely on fear and mistrust, rather than any consideration at all of the potential consequences or sound rational reasoning. This is much the same thing as is happening in the USA at the moment. This is a recurring theme I've been hammering in commentary on it. When you're upset with life, the universe, and everything, sometimes you need to take a very deep breath before making big decisions, or the unintended consequences of your vote for "instant salvation" may bite you in the a*se. I think you are being extremely optimistic if you believe even £100 million, or any at all, of the saved money will be spent on the NHS. We will see in due course.

Correctly spelled, according to the Bogan Dictionary "Stralya"

I read about the "leave" campaign saying that EU funds would be redirected to the NHS and I actually thought "if you truly believe that, you are very gullible". Farage's interview on Good Morning Britain: The 350 million pounds a week we send to the EU, which we will no longer send to the EU, can you guarantee that’s going to go to the NHS?” pressed ITV’s Susanna Reid. “No I can’t, and I never would have made that claim,” he responded. “One of the mistakes that the Leave campaign made…” “That was one of the Leave campaign adverts,” Reid responded. “That that money was going to go to NHS That’s why people — many people — voted.” she said incredulously. “They made a mistake in doing that,” Farage admitted, which has provoked anger across the country. But hang on.....if they wanted to "squeeze the last pennies out of the cash cow" would they not prolong the process and beg the UK to take their time about it, while still paying the requisite contributions? This would be true if it costs the UK to be part of the EU, wouldn't it? On the other hand, if the UK benefits financially from being part of the EU, you would have to question any complaint about cash cows from the UK side. I don't understand that argument at all. To my mind, I can understand the EU wanting the UK out quickly. At the moment they have an entire nation which seems neither "in" nor "out" and while still technically a member, clearly has voted to have no further direct involvement in EU affairs. It'd be like having someone sitting on your Executive Board who had just decided they don't really want to have have anything to do with running your company. I'd want them out of the boardroom too!

If you lodge joint returns that doesn't surprise me. They'll take the tax you both owe as a "total" and probably wouldn't care which of you pay it. If you have paid it twice, ie your wife paid your tax and you paid it too, then they owe you money, no question about it. The accountant most definitely should've sorted all that out! I've overpaid tax before and got it back. An adjustment is done in the following tax year. My wife overpays tax sometimes, because she is billed tax in her quarterly BAS based on "projected" income for the next quarter. If she happens to earn less that quarter, then the difference is reconciled and refunded at annual tax time. The flipside is that if she earns more than projected, she gets a bill! It has always worked so far. The ATO have always refunded what they owe her.

I'd use words not quite as strong Phil. I'm very surprised, certainly. Not stunned, and certainly not disgusted. It was a democratic vote and that's what we're all about. I'm sure no-one wants to use you as a punchbag. Using you as a punchbag would negate the chance of ever extracting a cleansing ale from you at the local pub, and that would be such an enormous waste. I think the decision might have been overly-emotive and a touch hasty on the "leave" side, but that's not an uncommon thing with we humans. As I mentioned on the other thread, emotive decisions can have unintended or regrettable consequences. England will survive and it will still be England, however bearing in the mind the way the dynamics and economics of the world work in these modern times, I do honestly believe the decision will cause more problems than it solves, certainly in the short to medium term. Though I'd be happy to be proven wrong. ps.....I think Mr Schultz is being overly emotive too! He should just get on with it.

I don't think that accurately represents my position on the ATO generally. However in my experience, they only demand money from you when you haven't paid the tax you're supposed to pay in accordance with the taxation laws of Australia. Just as you'll still get fined for speeding by the police despite not seeing the speed sign, they don't accept ignorance as an excuse. That's not to say I agree with our tax laws. Far from it! But they are what they are. Incidentally, when private companies consider that you owe them money, they can get very nasty about it too, totally legally.

"Rating agency Standard & Poor's warned Britain would lose its last remaining triple-A credit rating, saying it was "untenable" in the face of Brexit." Now that will be interesting! I hear on the grapevine that Northern Ireland is joining Scotland in being rather unhappy about the situation. "Great England and Wales" to continue to fly the Union Jack?

Ernie needs to be a bit less vague. The FTSE 100 recovered somewhat and while technically correct, it's a bit "sleight.of hand" to say it's "up". The FTSE 250 is considered a better indicator of the UK economy and it slid 12% to recover to a 7% slide, remaining well.down. £40 billion was wiped off the value of British banks. There's a bigger picture than just the FTSE 100. But it's not really the economic side which has most commentators here concerned in the long term. It's the strategic and security side. It's the worst kept secret in the world that Russian interests were funding campaigning in favour of the Brexit and would like to see the EU break up. You've got Scotland murmuring. You've even got Spain now saying it wants co-sovereignty over Gibraltar because the residents there voted to remain.

Brilliant! AUSTRALIANS overseas are stranded without cash after Commonwealth Bank suspended foreign exchange of the British pound following the Brexit referendum. Commonwealth Bank confirmed on Twitter that they had temporarily suspended the exchange of British pounds and any other exchanges not involving Australian dollars until Monday.

I think Putin will be cracking some seriously good vodka tonight! Especially if, as reported, the Scots decide they want to push another independence vote on the back of this.

Disagree on Deutschebank. Sure they have problems to fix and they've been caught in a bunch of recent scandals and paid very heavy fines which has partly led to their €6 billion loss, but they have €62 billion in equity and over €1.6 trillion in assets. It's pie in the sky to think they're going under any time soon! I always like to take a deep breath before making big decisions while irritated, lest I cut off my nose to spite my face.

Seriously though, the Lisbon Treaty sets the framework for European law overriding national law and it has been around since 1963 and the UK accepted the principle in 1972. Why all the fuss in 2016, 44 years later?

Oh come on Phil.....be realistic. The Kiwis wouldn't even be able to spell "pronouncement", let alone make one!

Not entirely convinced Soros is a man you want to be supporting. He is a master manipulator and currency speculator. He is pretty much able to single-handedly trash a small to medium sized country's currency if he gets the desire. He "bets" billions of dollars at a time on currency moves and has been previously convicted of insider trading. Not the sort of guy I'd socialise with. By the same token I'm not entirely convinced the UK's move out of the EU is a good idea either. It seems to be driven by some fairly base nationalistic instincts. It generally pays in the modern inter-connected world to be pretty chummy with your neighbours when they're a mostly friendly lot, rather than distancing yourself from them.

You obviously got the reverse-lemon.

In my early Air Force officer training days we copped quite a bit of what I would term abuse, but none of it was sexual. Some of the physical and psychological abuse was pretty bad though. One senior culprit in particular was hated by our course. I remember meeting him in later years and I consistently refused to have anything to do with him. Most of my other course mates I think had a pretty similar opinion. He was a sadistic ****, and I don't use that word lightly (I reserve it for the lowest of the low). Sure, a lot of the harsh training was to condition us physically and psychologically for a combat role and I don't think any of us had any permanent effects from it, but he took it a number of steps too far. My wife in her early doctoring years was in the military and based near a certain major military training organisation. Although she refuses to mention any details, I know she experienced many female trainees walking into her consulting room shattered over various forms of abuse, psychological, physical, and sexual. She was and still is bound by medical confidentiality and would be struck off the medical register (i.e., barred from ever practising again) if she were to speak about it without the express permission of those involved. They were never willing to do this even when urged to report it, as they were absolutely scared sh**less of the ramifications, not to mention that it would certainly end their career they'd worked so hard to kick-start before it had even begun. So it was all suffered in silence and I imagine often still is. I have no problem with women in the military. I was around when the first female military pilots were inducted here and knew them reasonably well. The vast majority of the problems (and there were a number) we had with that were directly caused by the attitudes of the guys, not the girls. The girls just wanted to be left alone to do their stuff. I observed some atrocious behaviour and attitudes from some guys which was completely unjustified. Of the many times in both military and commercial aviation I have thought "I seriously hope I don't ever fly with you again, because you are an absolute d**khead", not once has it been with one of the girls. Their skill levels vary as do those of the men, but I have found them equal to the task and very professional, which is totally unsurprising.

I'm I wouldn't really know. My parents never had the money to send me to a private school. Plain old vanilla state co-ed school for me, though it certainly didn't do me any harm!

AFL is "footie" if you come from Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, or the Northern Territory. Rugby league is "footie" if you come from New South Wales or Queensland, except if you come from an expensive private school or Sydney's north shore (which is a bit like living in Kensington in London), in which case rugby union is "footie". If you're of European, Asian or South American heritage, soccer is "footie".

I probably should have said "healthcare companies", of which health insurance companies are a subset as well as pharmaceutical companies etc. The top 5 healthcare companies all earn well over $100 billion each per year in revenue. The largest insurer among those, #3 on the list, is UnitedHealth Group (2014 revenue, $130.5 billion). After-tax profit in 2015, $6 billion. However it's true that some of the smaller companies do not make such profits, though that's to be expected. The ACA has to some extent dented industry profit margins too. The article is interesting and although I totally agree that the US spends much more money than many other modern countries on healthcare and delivers far more scans etc, it also produces far worse results! One of my wife's big bugbears here in Oz is the over-ordering of scans which costs the system a lot of money when they're not appropriate or necessary. Like ordering CT scans for non-specific acute low back pain with no other associated symptoms. It's an endemic problem in the USA, but it's often because patients demand them even though there would be no benefit.

As cynical as I could be, I think politicians on both sides are probably smart enough to realise that privatisation, or even serious "talk" of privatisation of Medicare on any significant scale would cost them Government. Privatisation of Medicare would lead to a system similar to what exists in the USA, and having a sister and a niece who are (living) victims of that system, and a wife who has been both a doctor (MD) and a patient in it and thinks it is the most appalling healthcare system she has ever seen, I wouldn't wish that system on anyone. Having said that, I know the large medical insurance companies would love Medicare to be privatised because then, as in the USA, it becomes a licence to print money so long as you arbitrarily deny a certain percentage of medical claims and treatments.

We have installed an 8kw system, completely off the grid, on our new property which we're moving into at the end of next month. Does that help anyone?

I don't think there are any newspaper columnists I "hate". There are a number whom I think lack the mental capability to apply rational, consistent, workable reasoning to any contentious issues. My own theory is that this is simply because to become a career journalist/columnist actually requires no mental processing or problem solving skills. You just have to be able to write a story which sounds good and appeals to our base instincts (and therefore sells the papers), even if it's all tripe or completely unreasonable. Despite that, the odd smart one who can objectively discuss an issue slips through the net. On the internet there are total fruitloops and nutters everywhere simply because anyone at all can have a computer. I've read some outbursts which convince me that the writer should be confined to a padded cell but alas, that would violate their free-speech rights.