Bruce

golly, what a great job a gigolo would be. Alas, the opportunity never came up. Now I'm too old, bugger.

What's needed is more objective criteria about what the job needs. For example, a fireperson who cannot physically carry an unconscious person out of the fire is to my mind worth less than one who can. But there are some women who are stronger than some men, so the gender test is worthless. Mind you, a test like this would be harder for a woman to pass than a guy. And why is this not reasonable? AND the senior men who become bosses should lose their "active duty pay" when they lose their physical prowess.

Yenn, those buildings in the news, I find it hard to think the design engineers were shonky. the computers design according to the code, and it would be quite a job to cut corners. Not only that, it would leave a paper trail on the plans which could sent you to jail. But maybe during the actual construction, some short-cuts could be done. A bit less steel and then the concrete pour hides everything. What do you think happened?

Wow pm, if the management are so stupid, I wouldn't dob him in either. I knew an airport fireman who slept most days at work and did bartending at a nightclub as his second job, but this was officially permitted. They even had bunks there. Alas it didn't last. After 50 years of no fires, they abandoned the fire station and all the firemen got retrenched.

I wonder if England is more concerned about climate change than we or the US because those English are still quite feudal. Of all the systems of government, feudalism is obviously the one with the longest time horizon. Yes it has downsides, like class hostilities, but if you inherited your wealth from your ancestors, you should have more regard for your descendants than if you were a self made billionaire.

And in Germany, you can have a good career while staying on the tools. Gosh we are terrible following that English idea that to get ahead at work, you need to stop using tools and start being white-collar. I reckon its the English disease and its caused by their aristocracy getting their wealth from owning real estate. They regard workers with scorn, and the workers retaliate by sabotaging things when they can do so safely. An Australian company ( Multiplex ) went broke building Wembley Stadium because they didn't factor in the extra cost of this aspect of English workers. My son-in-law once worked on a building site in England, and one time realized with a start that he was the only person on the site actually working. So to hold onto his job, he started acting more normal.

At uni, in the 1960's , I learned how to work out if a building was strong enough with maths. And how to do surveying with brass theodolites and even more maths. All completely useless stuff these days. There are computer programs to work out building stresses and GPS based stuff to do surveying. All better and faster than in my time. And the programs are so smart that they are not easily fooled by faulty inputs. Even my Jabiru looks old fashioned these days, especially with its mechanical instruments. I wonder what Captain Cook would have thought about a GPS. He was the only sea-captain who could work out his longitude by astronomy, but the GPS would mean anybody could do it faster than him. Good thing they invented retirement huh.

About 30 years ago, when I had a job, it was much harder to get an apprenticeship than get into many uni courses. My son did an apprenticeship and to this day he is financially ahead of schoolmates who did engineering. ( Not medicine or dentistry though , I reckon they make lots of money, but none of his mates got into those degrees). We put on an apprentice at work ( a mechanic ) and had our choice of about 100 applicants, and the top 40 or so were really good , smart, hardworking kids.

Why I Love Italian Food: In Italy, you can be a respected man, as a waiter. This means you can order your food dealing with a smart and educated and proud man.

These days, there are few jobs which are as good as being a police officer. When I was a kid, it was different. But now, a police job is better than the dole or a taxi job for an unemployed civil engineering graduate. So, are you going to say the graduate is less worthy of the job than a dropout?

I agree Yenn, they have lots of satellites.

Yes, a tiny amount of CO2 can indeed cause the sort of change of a few degrees. This is a tiny change as the solar system operates between -260 and plus 5,800 degrees. So a 5 degree change is only significant for certain life-forms which require very constant temperatures. Under the "do nothing" scenario, we are looking at 5 degrees in our children's lifetimes. And we are certainly getting the do nothing outcome, gosh Australia just voted for it.

There was a model magazine where the editor actually implemented Spelling Reform 1, which was to make the "E" sound have consistent spelling, so you would have eaten some bred for example. Needless to say, he failed. Personally, while I agreed with the idea, I didn't like reading it much.

I agree we as a species are too adaptable to die out. We can actually party on cockroaches..It's just what we foolishly call civilization which is in danger. Anyway, does a species which spends most of its money fighting each other deserve to survive? Imagine a star trek story where they visit some multi-generation space ship. On this enormous ship, the inhabitants have divided into warring factions, and when Spock etc tell them to stop fighting each other and do some urgent maintenance work, they react with disbelief. I reckon that's us.

That permafrost report is right in line with that professor who is going around saying how humans will be extinct in ten years.

About declaring war, the practice sure has gone out of fashion. I don't think even Korea was a declared war. I wonder why this is.

The greatest secret of the Iraq war was that those leaders knew the weapons of mass destruction was a lie. If this got out, then they would have been war criminals. Keeping the secret means they were just wrong. And the greatest secret of WW2 was about why Rudolf Hess was so sure that the poms declaration of war on germany was a mistake which could be put right. I reckon it was the king who had told the germans that england would not declare war. Hess was kept incommunicado for many years.

I never saw any protests against the returning Vietnam soldiers. At the time, I regarded them as victims and not perpetrators. But I do remember that the RSL wouldn't let them join. I sure agree that any protests would have been disgusting. And the RSL sure made a big mistake, since rectified but not forgotten.

Any country where the aspirants for office need sponsors to provide the money to campaign has to be flawed. The sponsors need to be paid somehow. Australia certainly has a flawed democracy, but we are better than the US.

I was in Alice Springs, flying a glider in the masters games years ago when the town made the national news for RUNNING OUT OF CONDOMS. Well I can guarantee that it wasn't us gliding lot, but I do suspect some of the netball teams let their hair down after their games... So maybe Alice Springs really deserves that place on the list.

The use of federal police against journalists means that they are not available to counter external threats. So the whole thing detracts, not adds, to national security.

Getting back to the gender pay gap, surely nobody can argue against equal pay for equal work. In some areas where physical strength is required, women and feeble men will miss out on the job, and so they should. Ambulance staff are an example - if you can't cope with an unruly patient, then you shouldn't be there. But not all women would miss out, some of them are really strong.

There was a place in the Daintree area where they made a subdivision all off-grid systems to avoid cutting a swathe of rainforest to run power in. What they proved is that "normal" families can't operate off-grid systems. I can believe that, as the one guy I know who lives off-grid had his woman leave years ago.

No it does not Yenn. If it did, the figure would be 3 times higher. We would be the biggest polluters on the planet, except maybe for the Saudis. But note that the pollution from imported oil is , likewise, NOT attributed to the Saudis but to Australia where it is used.

There is a valid point about size of country and transport cost in terms of CO2. I wonder where Australia would rank if transport CO2 was omitted?