willedoo

I was listening to the ABC radio a couple of days ago and they were interviewing a farmer who had lost both legs and had prosthetic legs. He was talking about how he ran the farm and said he didn't consider himself disabled. But in the next breath he said the NDIS supplied him with a worker on the farm. My first thought was that maybe he only considered himself disabled while filling out the forms to get something for nothing. I've known blokes with legs missing and they just carried on without anyone subsidising them. And that's in physical jobs like building and machinery operating. I just thought it was an odd thing for someone to say they don't consider themselves disabled while getting a worker through the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

I'm living in an area that's been inundated by interstate migrants mainly from Melbourne and Sydney. As a consequence, real estate supply cannot meet demand and there's been a feeding frenzy in the real estate market since Covid. That's caused a big spike in State Government land valuations which are based on the unimproved value of the land. My place is fairly typical and increased in unimproved value by $320,000 which puts me at $210,000 over the threshold for paying Land Tax. The threshold of $600,000 is biased against single people as the tax liability is to the individual. For example, as I'm the sole owner of the property, I'm liable for the tax levied on the total amount of value over the threshold. On the other hand, a married couple with joint ownership each get a $600,000 threshold for their 50% share in the property. The resulting difference is that my next door neighbours with a similar property and similar valuation won't be liable until their unimproved property value exceeds $1,200,000, whereas I'm liable once it's over $600,000. If you are living on the property and it's your primary residence, you can apply for an exemption, but there's a catch. The catch is that their definition of a home is a house council approved and registered as a habitable building. Mine doesn't come into that category. It was registered and approved as a shed 28 years ago and I've lived in it ever since but never gone through the red tape to upgrade it to council approval for living. The problem now is that red tape is 50 times more expensive than 28 years ago. The upgrade cost would be in the tens of thousands which I don't have. Depending on how long I live it might be cheaper just to pay the tax which at present rates is the equivalent of $50 per week. Add to that the council rates windfall due to the valuations might add around another $20 per week, so paying $70 per week extra with an age pension income is a sizeable amount out of an already tight budget. Meanwhile with elections coming up, we are hearing plenty of weasel words from governments about the cost of living crisis. They don't practice what they preach. My tactic at this stage is to not apply for an exemption and stay off the radar. If I get a bill from them then I can make a decision from there. There's been no mention of these issues from state government, most likely as we're in the lead up to an election later in the year and the LNP opposition is running their election platform on cost of living and law and order. Cost of living is a hot potato for the Labor state government which is doing poorly in the polls, so my guess is the land tax assessments won't arrive until after the election. It would make no difference which side won the election, they both know how to put their hand in your pocket.

Does that mean you play the record backwards?

It was me not Clinton.

I just remembered something. Once I was listening to 2WEB at work and the man of many mistakes put a record on. As was fairly common, the record played about halfway then stuck on a crack. The static clackety clack sound of the stuck record kept broadcasting for about 40 minutes. Turns out he went out to lunch so it must have been an LP record. After his long lunch break he came back on air, took the record off, declared that it was stuffed and put Slim on. I think it was fairly common to play an LP album while they had lunch.

2WEB Bourke community radio used to be amusing to listen to. These days it's a lot more professional and has lost a lot of the character it used to have. Back in the 80's there was an old Aboriginal bloke who would do a segment. He was known as 'the man of many mistakes' due to continual stuff-ups. If a record stuck he wouldn't lift the needle and move it forward; he'd ditch it and put Slim Dusty on. He loved Slim; every time something went wrong he'd put Slim on. Another long time legend there was May Watkins who did a country music segment. The station started as a school project broadcasting out of the cleaner's storage room and grew from there. I can remember one schoolkid used to do a show. He was fairly young and didn't have any concept of genres of music. He'd just play them as he found them so you never knew what you'd get on his show. Back in those days it was often the only radio station you could pick up in the SW corner of Queensland and over the border around Moomba and Innamincka.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is Jewish, something I didn't know until the Gaza war brought it into the news.

They'll be happy to get some good production world wide. The Ukrainian tonnage being down due to the war must have some effect on trade.

Wellcamp Airport at Toowoomba recorded a low of -5.7C this morning.

Major Tom for VP.

But then again, I'm no judge of popular tastes. As an example, I can't stand Macca and would rate him as Australia's most boring radio presenter, yet he has a huge almost cult-like following nation wide. This is a typical Macca segment: (radio caller) Jim: "G'day Macca, this is Jim". Macca: "G'day Jim, where are you calling from?" Jim: "I'm out on the Birdsville Track fixing a flat tyre". Macca: "Which tyre is it Jim?". Jim: "The flat one Macca". Macca: "Yes, I had a flat tyre once. Oh well, time to play the magpie recording again until I can think of something more to say".

I find with Roy and HG that their routine has a use by date. Same old stuff year after year.

The worst part about the Olympics is that ABC radio has Roy and HG covering them. Nearly every time you turn the radio on they are there. They were slightly funny 35 years ago.

I think it's photoshop, not the pie shop.

Kamala has been raising a lot of campaign funds which must have the orange one concerned. Her pick of running partner for VP will be interesting. There was speculation today on social media that Pete Buttigieg might be in the mix. Kamala might do ok especially if she does a bit of homework to minimise stuff-ups in policy positions. If she's well briefed before interviews she won't have too much trouble.

If you don't vote you don't have much of a mandate to complain about those elected.

My auntie was one but only because all nurses were commissioned by that stage of the war. When my dad caught up with her on his first leave he said he didn't know whether to kiss her or salute her.

I've got a new phone for the upcoming 3G shutdown. It drives me batty with the spell check thing. I haven't found out how to disable it yet.

I did change tactics slightly. The following year I gave up on the inkwell and just threw them on the floor and squashed them with my foot. That didn't impress her either. I think she was a bit stuck up. There weren't too many to choose from in those small population areas (girls, that is, flies were in abundance)

I don't think it did. I chased that girl until I was 14 to no avail. Maybe the dead flies were a bridge too far.

I like the old one when someone mistakenly calls an NCO Sir and the reply "Don't call me Sir, I work for a living".

Sergeant. The 'a' jumped syllables. Tricky devils they can be.

I did - it turns them into walks. I tried to impress a girl I was keen on at primary school by showing her how I'd filled my inkwell up to the brim with dead flies I'd caught. I don't know why but she wasn't impressed.

It wouldn't link to this site but if you were posting about the renovation on X, the hashtag would be a way other X users could post a link to your X account or the account of anyone else using that hashtag to talk about you and/or the renovation. If the postings on X about the renovations became popular, people would spread that hashtag around and #OmesRenovation would be trending.

The Flinders Ranges are a beautiful part of the country. I spent a fair bit of time working around there in 1984. We were contracting for Santos and spent the better part of a year around there and up around Lake Eyre. The job started at Frome Downs, and being based at Toowoomba, we went down via Noccundra then down the Silver City Highway and cut across one of the Quinambie Station tracks to Frome. It was great working there every day with the Flinders as a backdrop. That was a year of a particularly cold winter. We only had sleet at Frome Downs, but it snowed around Toowoomba which doesn't happen there very often. It was a Turnkey job so we were able to clock up a bit of extra production and take a rare day off, so we drove up to Arkaroola but unfortunately didn't have the time to see Wilpena Pound. After Frome we went up to Lake Callabonna area. From there we worked around Lake Eyre South, up the west side of Lake Eyre on Macumba Station, around the top of Lake Eyre and then north up into the ephemeral lakes region across to the Simpson Desert border. It was a great year for adventure and sightseeing but a lot of work. In those days our standard hitch in the field was six weeks on/two weeks off but the work was there and I was saving money so did ten week hitches for most of the year. It knocks you about a bit when it's seven days per week of fourteen hour days. At one stage in the north above Lake Eyre, the country was difficult to move a camp into so we were traveling to the job four hours each way over the sand dunes. The good part was I got to camp out in the desert in solitude on occasion. It's nice sitting around the fire and knowing there's not another human within 100klm..