old man emu

Sovereign citizens??????

One thing I notice is that the parents of the Baby Boomers are mostly all dead, and the Baby Boomers who inheirited to family farm are retiring and selling off their farms to younger neighbours who are consolidating smaller farms into large acreage units which can be farmed more effectively with modern machinery. The improvement in roads means that a trip to a larger centre for shopping can be done in a shorter time than 50 to 70 years ago. Therefore the independent shopkeepers in small towns do not have to customer base to remain viable. I guess that the most common "small town" businesses in my town are the hairdressers, followed by motels. Motor mechanics are disappearing, mainly due to retirement. There is very little industry, and what there is, is servicing agribusiness in various way. I'm not including the service stations because they are there to service highway traffic.

Twenty-five cents per litre. We have 30 to 40 days' reserve supply of fuel, although reports are that we are getting refills from Asia. The removal of part of the excise won't be much good if there is no fuel to purchase. Regarding public transport: The horse has well and truely bolted since we accepted the idea of suburban sprawl. You need roads to get to public transport hubs and infrastructure to provide parking for vehicles going to thjose hubs. If there is one thing that public transport illustrates it is the concept of Economy of Scale. Because of urban sprawl, there is not the scale in terms of population to make public transport economical. It does work in the older parts of our cities where popultion centres were developed before the expansion of car ownership, but those centres only house a small portion of an urban area's total population.

The next thing to go will be the food deloivery services from take-away places. Thousands of Indians will be out of work! I was asked to do a couple of jobs in Sydney, but I am considering cancelling them due to the uncertainty of fuel supply. I don't want to be stuck in Sydney out of fuel.

The current numbers in both the US House of Representatives and Senate preclude the impeachment of Trump. Even if Trump was impeached, Vanve would take over, and he's a puppet on a string too. Some of us might not like what Kerr did to Whitlam, but at least there was a workable procedure that enabled him to do it.

Need and MRI? You might have to wait. MRI machines need Helium for their functioning. Guess where a lot of Helium comes from. The global helium supply is currently facing a significant, immediate disruption due to geopolitical conflict, with roughly one-third of global production halted after attacks on Qatar's Ras Laffan facility.

At least supermarkets don't charge you to get the money. Banks hit you if you use an ATM (that's not you bank's).

Can you imagine the amount of destruction to infrastructure in both Iran and the other Arab countries that have been caught up in this madness? How long does it take to clear a bombed electricity generating facility of rubble and then build a new on in its place? Years. We bitch and carry on if our electricity is knocked out by Mother Nature for a day or so. Imgine having to go through a MIddle Estern Summer and winter without air conditioning or heating. Don't forget that the Iranians are not tent-dwelling camel drivers. They are the descendants of one of the longest running urban societies in the World. They are smart, sophoisticated people, despite their religion. They aren't even Arabs. They just follow the same religion. After WWII, the USA poured money into restoring Europe and Japan. One reason was so as not to repeat the errors of the Treaty of Versailles which battered Germany and lead to the rise of Hitler. The cause of the war with Japan was, would you beleive it, the USA trying to stiffle Japan's idea of an Asia run by Asians, not Europeans. Now, the USA is just about bankrupting itself waging an unwinnable war. There will be no money from that source to rebuild Arabia.

That's a pretty high ranking.

Melbournian slang?

Just a comment on that. Are the figures quoted in teh form of "incidents per thousands of population'? Quoting the figures using the same "per" values lets you compare figures more sensibly.

Just another consequence: I work in an OP Shop which gets a lot of its income from sales to caravaners. Last year we distributed $40,000 to local organisations. A lot of that money came from caravaners. If the fuel dries up, they won't be coming in to buy, so our ability to support the community will be less.

Yes, today's weapons are much better, but the logic remains. Thrown enough shit at a wall and some will stick. Swarms of cheap drones can overwhelm limited numbers of expensive rockets. What is needed are Australian designed anti-drone weapons. But Trump just insulted us, so why should we sell the US any of them?

All I've got is 10/10 cloud and wind. I wouldn't mind if that cloud gave up its moisture.

What?????