Bruce Tuncks

I see lots of middle-class people saying how rich they feel. I actually agree with them, but the really rich people are not middle-class at all. (Actually, the richest person I know is a nice guy. He has certainly not got a chip on his shoulder. ) What bothers me is the decimation of the middle-classes in general ( comfortable but not multi-millionaires ) that is going on as we speak. And the growing inequality is really bad, although I, as an individual, don't notice it. I guess that is because I'm middle-class huh. Here's a glossary for those like Nev about what I mean. "rich" means ( to me ) a net worth of over ten million dollars. "middle class" means a net worth of about two million dollars. "working class" means living from payday to payday. If you are lucky, you own your own house and are much better off but still live from pay to pay.

I agree Spacy. My grandfather had no inside water all his life yet he had a stay-at-home wife and 4 kids, 3 of whom got a university education. The university education was wasted on the 2 girls, well if playing Debussey on the piano was a waste that is.... they both married working-class men, but they never worked as far as I knew. The oldest, who was a boy not of grandpas doing, got to be a chartered accountant. Yes, he was way ahead of his time and the more I know, the more I admire him.

I reckon, from the responses, that the rich will win. Firstly, because many identify as rich when they are just comfortable, like me and PMC. I consider any one of us lot who has his own plane to be part of the dwindling middle-class. Rich to me starts at about ten million, and there are lots of those. Second, many will support the rich because they hope to join them someday. So it is not my personal problem, and I will be well gone before it gets so bad that "socialists" will demand that the rich pay some more tax. In the meantime, we will just get poorer. In the olden days, you could support a non-working wife and buy a house and educate your kids, all on a single male income.

The next conflict will have to be against the rich. I wonder who will win... the rich own the media and lots of people will do their bidding too. But at the present rate of change, the middle-class in Australia will be soon gone, and the rich will have all the money there is. They will pay no tax, as their power will be used to stop this taxing business. ( we saw a bit of this on the news tonight ). Yep, capitalism was good while it lasted.

Medvedev is a case in point.... he was too obviously insane for him to have his fingers anywhere the red button. Putin is insane too, but in a much more cautious way.

I agree with the point about those who sent the soldiers being the guilty ones

I wonder if Luther would have done the same if he had known that his actions would cause so many deaths eg in the hundred years war? These wars impoverished europe and helped make Britain the world's superpower. I have read that the armies of those days plundered the land for about 100km each side and the farmers there died of starvation as a result. And, I say again, I just never heard of the stolen generation and I was a kid of the exact age to know. Here's why I'm against giving money to aborigines...

It's a difficult question I know, but surely you are unelectable if you really are mad? Even Trump was not that crazy. I dunno about Putin, but his caution about getting bumped off by one of his own bodyguards is obvious, so surely he will not want to be nuked? I've just read some accounts from students who shared with insane room-mates, and they did really insane things like smash a hole in a wall because they were "trapped". None of them would have been elected or made dictator, in fact they generally dropped out. Gosh I hope to be right here. Funny how the fate of the world is hanging on just how crazy Putin is or is not.

Correct, Nev. Nukes are a deterrent only. Do you think Russia would have attacked Ukraine if they had nukes and he was setting off ww3?

I reckon that Australia is stupid for not having nukes, as I reckon Ukraine was stupid for giving them up.

I also want Assange left alone. I reckon he is a good guy who deserved far better than he got. As for Ben roberts_smith, I dunno but the wars they are sent to are just horrible. Fighting against civilians etc is awful. Apparently most people will shoot to miss if they can see the face of the opposition "soldier". I can sure understand that.

Jerry, what if they were "allowed" to continue with their traditional culture but they didn't want to? I agree with onetrack in this regard. What evidence can you bring to prove that they were "not allowed" to continue their traditional ways?

What are hawkies? If we have lots and the Ukranians want them, what's the problem?

We sure are dysfunctional at times. Our inequalities are the worst aspect I reckon. At least the abos didn't have the old guys own everything.... whoops, I forgot how the old guys in abo society had the power to declare all wanted things, like young lubras, taboo till you got to be an old man. Well we are not much better I am sure. ( try to entice a young woman if you have a millionaire competing and see ) One of the things which made me into a skeptic was why the young lubras, stolen from the tribes by the early squatters, did not run back to their tribes at the first opportunity. I reckon that in Alice Springs in the 1950's, your ideas of how tribal society really worked were not 200 years behind the times at all. When I was in about grade 6, the last tribal family decided to retire to Santa Theresa mission. Sure, they had known about whitefellers for many years, but they found it easy to evade them. They had lived according to their ancient tribal laws until then. The fact was that the whitefeller treated his "captive" better than the tribe did.

The fact that in 40,000 years they didn't invent anything like writing or the wheel speaks volumes. The Tasmanian aborigine were unique in the world for not progressing at all in thousands of years. They actually went backwards and lost the ability to join skins and make stone tools. ( It is thought that at one time their adults died out and didn't pass their skills on.) The Incas were easy pickings for the Spanish because they lacked writing.... there were no instructions on how to deal with those lying cheating Spanish. Anyway, I reckon that the 40,000 years makes them less worthy not more. For most of my life,, I thought that the current abos were actually a second wave who killed off all of the first wave except that Bass straight was now flooded and they couldn't reach them. Alas, more evidence has shown this not to be true... Apparently DNA shows the tasmanian abos were just like the mainland ones. And as for culture, I reckon the abos have the worst culture in the world. The best thing they demonstrate is a great tolerance for bad behaviour, well as long as they have not been drinking. I like their artworks but not the way they bash their women. Unbelievably, certain "woke" ( mainly white) ladies wish to blame us whitefellers for this... what rot.

Talking about dad jokes... Didja hear about how Chester the deputy-sherrif rode naked into town? His boss said "why Chester, you sure look silly... Why you ride naked into town?" Chester said " y'know that new schoolmaam, the mighty purty one? She said lets go for a ride, Chester. So we rode our hosses to the woods and got to a nice grassy clearing. She got off her hoss and said "my its hot here Chester, I think I'll take off my clothes." So she did, and looked at me..." Aint you hot too Chester, how bout you take off your clothes too". Then she looked at me funny and said " what you waiting for Chester, go to town!" So here I am Boss.

You and I think the same on this subject Jerry.

I never expected my kids to want an expensive wedding. I told them that IF they chose one of these, I would spring for a barby in the hangar for the reception. But I would much prefer to pay a bit off their mortgage than help pay for a party. In the event , they have not got married and I have paid for a house deposit and helped buy a farm. ( 2 kids only! )

Good onyer Jerry. Best wishes etc. from the west wimmera. There are plenty of jobs around here, the kid up the road has been overloaded with work and he is still supposed to be at school. He bought a ute ( second-hand) last week and he can only use it legally on a farm. He is not even that cheap, I think the wife pays him $10 an hour for laying gravel and stuff. And yes, we do need financial consulting. I still have not found out how to make more money that growing meat sheep.

Be careful, Jerry. We want you to come back, but be aware that the govt has a history of telling lies about job opportunities for poms out here. There was a case in WA where a pommy boilermaker successfully sued the govt over the fact that there was no shortage of boilermakers as he had been promised.

Octave, the indigenous of NZ are nothing like our aborigines. I reckon the abos are very lucky to have been " discovered" by the poms and not bu the maoris. They would have been ,literally and metaphorically, eaten.

If there was not good money in being "aboriginal", why do people who are at most 25% aboriginal want to identify as such?

And I repeat again, I am against the "voice" being chose on racist grounds. Personally, I never met a kid who was "stolen" and while I think it likely to have occurred say in QLD, I don't think it was widespread at all. All the voice will do is to want more money, and they ( the blacks) already get too much of this for their own good.

I was really interested to read that BLACK south Africans are far worse off now than they were under the Apartheid whites. This is under anything that can be measured, like how many hours of labor are needed to finance food etc.

There is a great book called " The Guns of August" written by a woman for whom they invented a new category of Pulitzer prize. She had access to the official records of course, but after a hundred years, there was a lot more stuff available. Also, she used letters written by big players to their wives at the time. In these letters, their true thoughts were often privately expressed.( I reckon it showed that Germany suffered from the Kaiser being a fool, but not a wicked one). It took a hundred years for these letters to become public. Europe, before WW1, was really run by an extended royal family. The Kaiser had a flat in Buckingham palace and was an honorary colonel in some pommy regiment for example. At the coronation of Edward 7th, they were scandalized by some noble relative turning up with his gorgeous servant woman instead of his wife.