old man emu

Technically, yes. Someone who holds the Office of Constable is an independent entity, answerable only to the Monarch. However, to enable efficient and effective law enforcement, those independent entities are bound together in an organisation. By being bound together in an organisation, there can be standardisation in the many areas such as operational procedures and administration. I am using the term "constable" to include persons holding NCO and Commissioned ranks within the organisation as their powers of arrest are the same as the newly attested constable. When it comes to law enforcement, it is the individual constable who brings an allegation before a Court. In other words, if a constable brings a person before a court using poor supporting evidence and the allegation is dismissed because of a want of good evidence (not on some technicality) then the constable could be made to pay the legal costs of the person accused. Normally if an Order for Costs is granted, the police organisation pays on behalf of the constable. So. The individual constable has the ability to use discretion to deal with a breach of the law as circumstances dictate. That can range from simply a direction to move on, with no further action if the direction is obeyed, to apprehension and initiation of proceedings. However, this ability to apply discretion has been eroded due to the very many independent overseers of police activity, whose raison d'etre seems to be to vilify everything constables do. This has resulted in the development of a culture of "covering your arse", which leads to the abandonment of discretion and automotin-like action. It was the opinion of working police that they did. When I joined the NSW Police, I was trained at the Redfern Police Academy. The curriculum dealing with Law and Police Procedures could be equated to an apprenticeship in which experienced police taught recruits what they needed to know to operate as General Duties police. There was no mention of policing theory. As for ethics, the teaching was simple: "There are three things that will get you into trouble - gash, bash and cash. Avoid them". When the Police Academy moved to Goulburn, training became more academic. Great emphasis was placed on integrity. These recruits were indoctrinated to believe that everyone who had gone through Redfern was corrupt and that it was the duty of Goulburn graduates to record and report any type of action that wasn't on the straight and narrow, no matter how little the deviation. As a result, the use of discretion was looked upon as deviating from the One True Path, so its application withered away, resulting in the black and white law enforcement we see today.

My reason for pointing out to a driver that they had offended, but giving them absolution (Catholic reference there) was that they would have a great story to tell their mates around a bar-b-que, and that the interaction between themself and the Police and also the reason for the interaction, would be remembered, with the hope that a recurrence would occur. But then, I worked a stretch of the Hume Highway where I could "fill a book" in a shift, so, like a recreational fisherman, I could throw the occasional one back. However, one had to be careful that the speeding motorist wasn't a undercover member of the Professional Integrity Unit, aiming to lay some allegation of corruption on you.

Neither the car nor the road caused the car to travel at an unacceptable speed. It was the driver. Punishment does have an effect on reasonable people, but there will always be a few unreasonable ones amongst us. I suggest that the punishment must include re-education, or in fact, education as well as penalties. I also feel strongly that there should be a greater effort made to change the "book him, Danno" approach to law enforcement which is the culture of traffic law enforcement. Perhaps if Australian police adopted the British approach and only prosecuted the outrageous, but were prepared to do more waving of the angry finger at minor infractions, then perhaps overall compliance might be improved. I have to agree with Spacey in that governments rely very heavily on income from traffic fines to meet other Budget requirements. Declining to issue On-the-Spot infringement notices is one of the best tactics police can use as a bargaining chip when trying to negotiate employment awards. A week's worth of income from fines would often meet the extra expenditure of pay rises.

Thanks. That is sufficient answer to my question. I do realise that the number of photons striking the generating surface is dependent on the angle between the Sun and the surface. If I remember my traffic radar training correctly, this difference is due to cosine error, which introduces a numerical factor resulting in a lower actual value than the theoretical value. I would have thought that heat would have a positive effect on solar electricity generation, since heat increases the energy of a substance, making it more likely to shed electrons. Perhaps the opposite is correct and heat lets the substance hold on to its electrons more strongly.

Rather than "could", I would say "should" or more strongly, "must'. Establishing community batteries and maintaining a distribution network would cost money, no matter whose money it was. Who owns the distribution network at the moment? Is it government or private? Would it be acceptable for private companies to install community batteries and maintain them by charging a rent to "store" electricity for those charging the batteries with excess domestic solar generated electricity? The rent could be calculated on the amount delivered to the battery and the amount a household used when a premises' system was not generating. That withdrawal charge could also be applied to non-contributors in the same way that we pay for electricity at the moment.

A seemingly simple question, but one whose answer is incredibly complex. I think that Jerry has hit the nail on the head when he mentions "situational awareness", and consideration for others, which one could label as "courtesy". A practical definition of "speeding" has to include a reference to the environment in which a vehicle is moving. The speed limit in a carpark, or service station forecourt is the same as that applying to the adjacent road. However, 10 - 15 kph in a carpark can be taken to be a dangerous speed (toddlers running away; vehicles reversing out of parking spots). A speed of 118 on a freeway with a speed limit of 110 is much less dangerous to others. I believe that 100 kph is the correct limit for the open road, simply because it allows for good fuel consumption in most vehicles, as well as allowing for estimating arrival times at the next town. In urban areas, the frequent changes in speed limits is very distracting, especially if those changes are only of 10 kph. I'll accept 40 kph around schools and 50 kph in residential areas, then 60 and 80 on feeder and arterials. However I abhor 70 and 90 kph zones. As for a relentless policing of absolute adherence to speed limits, my opinion is that more acceptance of "herd mentality" should be made. What I mean by "herd mentality" is that when a platoon of vehicles is travelling along a road, the majority of drivers will travel at a speed which the consensus decides is "safe". That speed may be five to ten kph above the posted speed limit. It is the driver who tries to pass through the platoon and get further ahead who should be dealt with. The greatest danger to others on our roads currently is intoxication as a result of substance abuse. Drugs, both legal and illegal are present in more people now than in the past. One result of RBT has been reducing the number of persons driving with blood alcohol concentrations above 0.180 grams of alcohol per 100 ml of blood (High Range PCA). There are still people driving drunk, but not as drunk as people were before RBT. I repeat what I said in an earlier post - we need to recognise that operating a motor vehicle on a public road is as much a life skill to be introduced into the high school curriculum as being safe online, or dealing with interpersonal violence. Therefore, I say that driver education should be included as a part of the Physical, Health Education curriculum, even if that education only deals with the theory of motor vehicle operation.

I sin by driving in the right hand land of a stretch of overtaking lane - as long as there are no other vehicles about. Simple reason: the semis, B-Doubles and road trains make ruts in the left hand lane. They don't use the right hand lane, so the road surface is "smoother". I had sort of "sports' suspension, so avoiding rough surfaces gives me a smoother ride.

Do you get annoyed when you are driving Phillips head screw and your screwdriver slips? Leaving aside the effect of the amount of torque you are applying, there's another reason why the screwdriver slips. It's because there are three types of holes in the heads of the screws we typically call Philips head. I came across this video recently, and today I applied the information in it to select the correct driver tip to deal with screws in a tool made in England. After watching the video, can you tell me what type of screw I was dealing with?

A technical question. I looked up how a photovoltaic cell works at the photon level, and found that an electron is released when a photon strikes the molecules that make up the cell. I'm getting right down to the very lowest level of interaction. My question is: Photons are continually coming from the Sun, during the hours of daylight. Apart from things like sunspot activity, the concentration of photons should be constant for any given angle of the Sun above the horizon. Does that mean that the number of photons colliding with photoelectric cell is not diminished if it is a cloudy day compared to a cloudless day? To clarify my example. Suppose it is the moment of a day when the Sun is directly overhead a point on the Earth's surface. If it is a cloudless day, that should mean that the number of photons reaching the surface is a maximum. Now, at the exact same time the next day, it is cloudy. Would there be a difference in the number of photons reaching the surface? I wonder if the thickness of the cloud cover would make a difference.

G'day, mate!

FFS! Do you even comprehend what I write? Do I have to draw diagrams? I said that I wasn't attacking Albo. I was attacking the use of an Americanism in place of an Australianism. Because I have this obviously stupid love of a unique Australian culture, which I don't want bastardised by a foreign country which forces itself into places it is not wanted. I'm happy to see the culture evolve through the influences of those people from various cultures who choose to live here and contribute. I don't want to see that evolution thwarted by a culture which is a laughing stock and whose people don't have the sense to see how different reality is from actuality in their own land.

It was a pity that the author bore the same name as that small time suburban solicitor.

Well, he is the Prime Minister and that makes him the leader of the government. Say what you like about the truth or otherwise of his being the leader, but all I was trying to say that I hate the use of that particular phrase by Australians. If Valdemar used that American phrase, I would react in exactly the same way. Australians used to have a really good selection of appropriate phrases, but we seem to have lost the ability to free ourselves from the yoke of American culture, and are slaves to their terms.

I strongly support the introduction of Driver Education into our High School curriculum, with initial lessons, mainly theory relating to vehicle operation, beginning in Year 7. It's too late to begin this education when the kids are 16 years old.

John Marsden, Australian writer especially known for his young adult novel Tomorrow, When the War Began, which began a series of seven books, passed away this month (December 2024) - date not given. An English teacher at Geelong Grammar School's Timbertop, Marsden made the decision to write for teenagers, following his dissatisfaction with his students' apathy towards reading, or the observation that teenagers simply were not reading anymore. His first book, So Much to Tell You, was published in 1987. In 1993, Marsden published Tomorrow, When the War Began, the first book in the Tomorrow series and his most acclaimed and best-selling work. It was was adapted into a feature film of the same name that was released on 2 September 2010 in Australia and New Zealand. Marsden won every major writing award in Australia for young people's fiction. I well remember my daughter reading Tomorrow, When the War Began. She was n=more bookish during her teens, but I think my less bookish son also managed to finish it. I even think that I watched the movie.