Bruce Tuncks

I reckon that Doubtful sound was the best experience ever. A pristine place, great weather ( the locals were calling it a drought cos it hadn't rained for 3 days) and a great tour.

Bugger, I never thought about that when I last bought a vacuum from Godfreys.... and yes it was about 40 years ago

Here we are getting a real referendum. I wonder if it would cost much to add another q or 2. Here's what I would like to see... 1. " would you approve a sugar tax?" 2. "would you approve of parents being fined for underage kids damage?" My guess is that both of these questions would meet with a definite "yes" vote. Feel free to suggest others.

When I was last in Alice Springs, only indigenous people were allowed to have fires. Opposite us was a continually smoking " comfort" fire, yet we were not allowed to have anything similar. We ( the missus and me ) were fixing up a previously black-tenanted house which had got burned in a fire. It ( the house ) was a tilt-slab place with the only timber used for roof trusses. The black family tenants were good people according to the neighbors, although they certainly had nothing like a garden. So they had no hose to put out the fire and they sat on the fence watching it.

In Alice Springs, it was 50 cents to use the Yeperenye public toilets. Well worth it I thought. ( yes, the place is owned by blackfellows but run by whites.) The public toilets down the street were dreadful places. Shit smeared much higher than a kid could reach etc. I reckon you can rate a place by the standard of public dunnies. In the SE of SA there is the only public dunny I have ever seen where there are paper towels!

BUT I must say that I was impressed by the idea that we could be born earlier when we were not so big... after all, this is how marsupials do it, so why not people? If we move to even bigger brains, however, it will mean changing trends going back millions of years. Apparently our brain has been getting smaller recently! We obviously don't need such a big brain these days..

Apparently there are about a thousand ways that you can get poor eyesight... who knew?

I read that we were actually in an evolutionary dead end, because women's hip size limited our brain size. AND, evolution is happening fast all around us in a negative sort of way. For instance, people often survive now with eyesight problems when they would not have succeeded in the past.

Nitpicking I know, but surely the international inspectors could be helicoptered in? And if the UN is subject to a Russian veto, would they not use it at the risk of exposure?

If the AEC asks for NATO to police the power station in the event that Russia will not allow international inspections, surely that would not trigger ww3? They are not asking for the Russians to give up the area in favor of Ukrain, and in fact if they are correct in their statements that "Ukraine is going to sabotage the place" then they, the Russians, will have won too.

Since when did democracy matter tho?

My vote is for "per-gola. "

With respect to the nuclear power station in Ukraine, I don't understand why the Atomic Energy Commission does not INSIST on inspections etc, and to declare a non-war zone around the station. surely Russia would have to agree,as ukraine is not going to be in charge of the station either. IF it is only the Russians who will not agree to international people running the place, then will they not have exposed themselves to the world?

The CASA uses a definite article nev. A casa would refer to another country's casa lot, but it would be incorrect . It would be more correct to say "aviation regulator" or something like that. Willedoo had it right I reckon. Not that I don't think we would be far better off without any CASA. If we had access to our own money, those of us who want to fly safely could do so easier.

thx OME... yes it was a long time coming but it is a move in the right direction... i wish them well.

We sure have oligarchs too huh

I'd sure start with making gina pay more tax.... that would be very anti-inflationary too.

Well I looked up the figures and got a shock... Australia gets 75, BELOW Hong Kong at 76 and only just above Uraguay at 74. The least corrupt country is Denmark at 88, which I reckon should be easy to beat.

Marty's comments show that you can be quite guilty and get off .That's terrible. How can you refuse to answer questions without the court inferring guilt from this behaviour shows that they ( the courts) are part of the problem. Is this the case in the most non-corrupt country?

Here's a wish... I wish that Australian governments vied to make Australia number 1 in global anti-corruption lists. Whichever party was out of power, I would advise them to promise this and accuse the incumbents of being corrupt themselves.

i'm reminded of the guy who woke up dead with his dog...

So what were the canaries in the coal mines used for?

But old K is correct in that allocating provider numbers to regions would fix the problem easily. Another part of the problem is the lack of gp's . This was done deliberately until the feds figured out that medicare provider numbers were what you had to limit. But by this time, a lot of the damage was done and there is a shortage to this day. With AI, you could easily do an online consultation, but this will take many years to achieve. Keep on complaining old K.

Not when the child is still a student marty. I was surprised too. The father didn't mind paying, but I don't think he actually had a choice.

My understanding of the turnaround was that the support prizhogin was expecting from other oligarchs etc was not forthcoming, so this made the offer from Belarus more enticing.