Bruce

I believe you Octave. My circumstances were different on account of buying a farm and using super money as part payment. This would be fine except for the annual compulsory audit. The paddock concerned does nothing much, and the whole thing comes down to daylight robbery by those with a government ticket to rip us off. Of course, this rip-off is " for our own safety ". I've had it up to here with rip-off merchants who say they are "protecting " us somehow. They are no better morally than the Chicago protection Mafia. The protection they sell is to stop their own thugs attacking you.

There's no "better "fund. We have money in our "own" private fund, but we are being robbed blind by compulsory '"audit" fees. These fees take out more than the fund earns. If we stopped paying, I guess we would be visited by men with guns.

Space, I reckon the age pension is ok unless you are paying rent. I can't see how you could pay rent, even outside a city, and survive on the old-age pension or the lesser newstart. Yes I know there is " rent relief " but this is not much I think. How about people were allowed to earn extra without it lowering their pensions ? Of course the employer would need protecting from the legal system.

The bit about needing younger people to pay tax to support older people is intuitive, but quite wrong. What if the younger people were newstart beneficiaries all their lives? There are plenty of them. Also, there would be a correlation between economic success for a country and the ratio of old and young people. There is indeed such a correlation, and it favors slow population growth countries.

You would hope that proponents of immigration would at least address the three issues of climate change, resource depletion and overpopulation. Just think about how wealthy Australians would be if we had kept our population below ten million people.

We had a young Swiss tourist stay with us once. He said that Australia had only 3 things... The Great Barrier Reef, Ayers Rock and Kangaroo Island. ( yes, he said Ayers Rock and not Uluru ) Personally, I don't think KI is enough by itself to attract the Swiss. The Barrier Reef is being wrecked by climate change and pollution. Kangaroo Island is unique in having been uninhabited for 10,000 years , on account of the aborigines who had lived there dying, probably from selenium deficiency. A lack of humans sure makes the vegetation unusual.

Climbing the war memorial would be fine by most people if the track were done properly. Returning to the Rock, it makes me angry that the aborigines can seek to destroy it as an income-earning thing without any financial penalty to themselves. Of course the aborigines have a taboo against anything that would use scarce calories. Football and climbing come to mind, but football has not yet come to their minds. Worse than the ban on climbing is the ban on walking around the base. Yep, you now have to look from quite some distance. If looking is also banned, what will happen I wonder.

There is a bumper sticker " whale oil beef hooked " and I can almost hear a Yorkshireman saying it.

If you read Jared Diamond's book " guns, germs and steel" you will find a scholarly account of life in tribal and chiefdom societies. Nobody has ever accused Diamond of being racist. I have recounted this here before, but I have it ( almost) first hand that aborigines who know count themselves better off after whites took over. Well the old guy at Yuendumu certainly said this to his grand-daughter. Quite an achievement to find this out , I thought . I had wondered this for about 50 years. And why? "because there was all this killing" before. There are good reasons why this was. I sure hope we don't relive that part of our history.

They sure were bad , Old K. There is a picture of about 6 young aboriginal men in chains " about to be marched to the nearest court at Port Augusta" for cattle stealing. I have seen the picture, it was taken at heavitree gap at Alice Springs. The cop was on a horse. I can't find any more details. It haunts me.

Yes, we sure could live like Aboriginals and support about the same population of very thin and hungry people. We may well be on the way to doing just that, what with climate change, resource depletion and overpopulation. Getting back to the pre-european Aborigines.. With no idea about germs etc, they died very young. ( well it was not till the 1950's that antibiotics, in the form of penicillin, were available at all to civilians in Australia ) . They also could not support the elderly, who died when they could no longer keep up with the tribe. They also died frequently from combat, the adjacent tribes were hated far more than the arriving whites. If you came across a male from another tribe, it was kill or be killed. Females were treated so badly that they were much better off with the white men who kidnapped them. They stayed with the rough white men instead of escaping back to their tribe.

I voted for it too. The story about Alan Turing on the new banknote shows that we have come a long way. As far as Aboriginals are concerned, I reckon they ( along with many other categories of welfare recipients ) need more paternal care than they are getting. For example, their welfare money should be paid with a credit card which would not be valid for illegal drugs. This should be done in a non-racist way, unlike Howard's intervention attempt. They need this far more than the ability to wreck tourism at Uluru.

OME, the 19mm is the old 3/4". But on this logic, 50mm is 2". I reckon the 45mm is cheapskated 2" stuff. Yep, a 4 by 2 is 100 by 50mm but as you say it is cut smaller than this. Well at least table saws and thicknessers are cheaper now. I have a $200 table saw and it rips long timbers real good. It also cuts firewood, even though the instructions say not to.

I watched women's football and liked it better than the mens. Well they are better-looking huh. Skimpier outfits would help. But in tennis the women don't have as many awesome shots as the men. Apparently 15 year-old boys can beat the top women in tennis.

Marty, the other side of the equation is where the women attract smaller audiences than the men do. Then they should get less money. But I like OME and Yenn's comments , and that is how you need to establish a level playing field before you can make decisions. Personally, I am wanting to see naked women's wrestling as an olympic sport. I would watch it for sure.

While I don't have a problem with paying females as much as men for sport, I sure do have a problem with the idea that the taxpayer should pick up the difference. In the meantime, I reckon that if the females get as good as the guys, gate takings and TV rights, then they sure deserve equal pay. But the other side of the equation must be considered...

Well I agree with the conservatives about nuclear power. We in Australia should have the cheapest power in the world. Instead we have the most expensive. I blame the "safety" and green lots for this. But you will get no argument from me about the need to protect people like homo's and unionists. I do reckon though that homo's are better protected now than they were 50 years ago. I remember a lecturer called Duncan who was thrown into the Torrens by the Vice squad of the day. Duncan drowned and the vice squad got off. This whole thing would not happen today, thank goodness.

In China, you have to buy the bible at porn shops. Smart people, those Chinese. Now try quoting from other books from the porn shop and see what happens. And, returning to the bible, Folau is very selective about what he quotes. Naughty children have to be stoned according to a bit of the bible he chooses not to quote.

OME, do you know that Australia is the biggest exporter on gas in the world? John Howard sold 50 years supply to China for 5 cents a litre. Great statesman, Howard. He used the money to extend welfare to well-off people.

It's going to be interesting. Personally, I would say that freedom of religion does not include the freedom to attack others who are of a different persuasion. The world sees plenty of that already. One of the worst true horror videos I have ever seen was an Islamic court throwing accused homosexuals off a roof after they were found guilty. I wished I had superpowers and could fly over and throw the judges and guards off the roof.

Get yourself an electric bike or scooter red. Don't buy when they are ripping you off.

I doubt if I could do better guys, but I sure would have fun trying

There were some bad things in the 1950's for sure. Terrible things went on with bullies running institutions, for example. Our revered war-hero governor general was a paedophile. The whole population was kept in the dark over more things than now. But we knew none of this and grew up so free that I look back with wonder. My parents rarely knew where I was. And when we left school, the whole world was full of jobs for us to choose from. My grandkids in comparison are wealthier than I ever thought possible and are having a good childhood, but I wouldn't change times with them even if I could.

I reckon that bureaucracy is strangling Europe, and Britain is well advised to break away from it. China, in about 1000 ad, lead the world in many ways. Alas, they became bureaucratic ( the word Mandarin comes from this time and these days refers to any senior bureaucrat ) with the result that they became poor. The only real product of bureaucracy is poverty. We in Australia are going down that pathway too.

I think neither of us are speaking from actual experience Marty. My excuse for this is that I never got a job offer.