[Cosmo]

The advice in the “if you decide to stay” attachment is very good and worth reading whatever your intentions.

I would not presume to advise anyone whether they should leave early or stay but sometimes the fire can arrive so quickly that you have little choice but to stay. Many cases where people who have stayed and were moderately prepared have saved their homes when neighbours who were absent sadly lost theirs.

I believe it’s worth preparing for both situations because you don’t know what conditions will eventuate. Embers can travel several km and start a localised fire far from the main blaze.

From experience many people don’t have a serviceable hose or a hose tap that works so check and fix in good time. Remember that while you may be near but not be directly hit by a fire, your whole area may be without power for days afterwards. Mobile phones and even water and sewerage systems may be affected and your local super won’t have fresh food without power so at the very least it’s worth being prepared to be be self supportive for at least a few days. The common advice of having a battery radio and torches preferably working from the same battery size is not so commonly followed.

[Cosmo]

Use the fault that allegedly allows mozzies to breed as a method to almost eliminate them in your environment. Leave a number of shallow dishes with water outside but ensure that every 5-7 days the water is thrown onto dry soil. Rinse and refill the dishes. In this way mozzies are attracted to lay eggs in the water but the young ones never make it to maturity. It’s cheap, environmentally friendly using no chemicals and works.

[Cosmo]

Use the fault that allegedly allows mozzies to breed as a method to almost eliminate them in your environment. Leave a number of shallow dishes with water outside but ensure that every 5-7 days the water is thrown onto dry soil. Rinse and refill the dishes. In this way mozzies are attracted to lay eggs in the water but the young ones never make it to maturity. It’s cheap, environmentally friendly using no chemicals and works.

[Cosmo]

Compact nuclear power packages have been around and in service for over fifty years, in submarines. However, I wouldn’t get too concerned or excited about nuclear power. Unless your grandchildren read YLC nobody reading this will see nuclear power plants in Australia. It took 50 years to turn the first sodd on the new Sydney airport; it’s taken since WW2 not to build an East Coast high speed railway; the Millenium motorway from Sydney to Brisbane is still being built and in our massive wide nation we still haven’t found a place to store the small volume of nuclear waste we’ve so far accumulated.
Nuclear power needs massive amounts of reliable cold water for cooling so it won’t be built in anyone’s back yard but it might eventually, one day perhaps be built in a beachside suburb near you!
Due to decisions by our politicians and investors we no longer have the ability or facilities to build even a lawnmower engine in Australia, So where do you think the poltical vision, technical skills and entrepreneurial courage to build and maintain even one nuclear power station will emanate?

[Cosmo]

While I’m ambivalent to the idea of nuclear power, the truth is there are small packaged nuclear power plants available and they have been tested and in service for around fifty years. They are installed in nuclear powered submarines. Companies like Rolls Royce are working on packaging similar systems, small modular reactors (SMRs), for community electricity generation. However these packaged systems are vastly more complicated and extensive than the currently installed gas turbine generators which are basically a jet engine attached to a gas supply and a generator and are air cooled. Critically SMRs are not.
Much is said about the reliability of France’s 56 nuclear reactors but in the winter of 2022 the reliability of their power output dropped from around 70% of consumption to 40% and rationing and restrictions needed to be applied.
One of the big issues with nuclear power is the need for large, reliable volumes of cold water for cooling purposes. So the idea of putting these reactors out in the bush away from your back yard is highly unlikely to be feasible. They are more likely to be at a beach suburb near you!

Remember it took Australia fifty years to decide where to build and turn the first sodd of Sydneys second airport. It’s taken from WW2 until now to discuss and not build a high speed East Coast railway, the Millenium promise of a Sydney to Brisbane motorway is yet to be completed and we still haven’t found anywhere in our vast land where we can store our small amount of depleted uranium. So don’t get too excited about nuclear power because unless your grandchildren read YLC, like Australian operated nuclear powered submarines, the likelihood of any current YLC readers witnessing nuclear power in Australia is about the same as winning the Powerball lottery.

[Cosmo]

Im surprised this is regarded as new. We have had text and email advice from AusPost of deliveries for the past approximately two years. It seems to be an integral part of the tracking system.

[Cosmo]

I notice that this article is laced with a number of “maybes & mights”. I see however, that Northern Territory maangoes are already in Woolies about a month ahead of schedule. It just ‘might’ be that like avocados and strawberries we are in for a glut of mangoes and ‘maybe’ growers just ‘might’ be saying “get in there and buy otherwise we ‘maybe’ in a spot!”
My mangoes will be later than the main crop but our area also experienced record warmth this winter yet I have never seen so many mangoes on my trees. Just saying.

[Cosmo]

This is great news for Australia! Individual cooked food deliveries encompass much of what is going wrong with Australia at the moment. We have a labour shortage so we need to bring in workers from overseas but we have tens of thousands of mainly young people engaging in one of the most inefficient and indulgent jobs imaginable. What are these people going to do for work when they grow up? We have reducing efficiency in Australia and these people are making a large contribution. These deliveries involve thousands of polluting two stroke engined scooters spewing out tons of filthy oil laden fumes in our cities and suburbs and of course we regularly hear about the road accidents they’re involved in. Add this cohort to the non productive gambling and gaming and professional sports people, the massive expenditure on gyms, many of which go bust before their much hyped memberships have expired, indulgent nail bars, beauty salons and botox bars and you have a large part of the answer as to why so many mainly younger people have no money today and besides farming and foreign owned mining we produce next to nothing.

[Cosmo]

Given that it can take around a week for mail to arrive from interstate it hardly makes much difference how often mail is delivered. People have used expressions like ‘watching moss grow’ to describe excruciating delays but following the Aus Post tracking of a registered letter or a package is equally frustrating. Everything AusPost does after announcing reduced volumes is exactly what you’d do to reduce volumes and profitability even further. And the people in charge get paid $millions and gold watches for failure, what would they expect for success?

[Cosmo]

No I wouldn’t downsize from a regional to a central city location but I don’t think that’s the point. Many people especially those who work in the cities would willingly do so and if the concept was extended to all State capitals it could have quite a positive impact on housing supply.
In regional towns entire old style shopping malls are vacant as businesses have moved to larger shopping centres or to peripheral shopping estates.
State governments could do far more in releasing land as new regional hospitals, courthouses, police stations, fire stations and ambulance stations are built and the old sites left vacant. Many railway yards have been vastly reduced in size and overseas this land has been eagerly redeveloped but little has been done here. The opportunities are vast, dwarfing the imagination of governments.

[Cosmo]

Poppy, My issue with the ABC is not that it covers the Voice but the bias with which it covers the matter. If you claim it is not biased tell us one ABC presenter who challenges the Voice because I can name several who publicly support it.

So even though the ABC is funded by every tax payer you don’t think an attempt should be made to cater to the majority of listeners and viewers so long as it caters to you?

[Cosmo]

Another area that the ABC has failed is education. It occupies several TV channels which it seems challenged to put anything worthwhile on. By comparison the BBC pioneered distant education 52 years ago with University of the Air yet during Covid the ABC couldn’t even produce some basic maths, English and science programs to occupy and educate our children.

We have a major education problem in Australia with 40% of kids leaving school functionally illiterate and non-numerate consequently we have numerous adults with the same problems. The ABC could use it’s redundant channels to run education programs on science, engineering, first aid, driving safety, foreign languages and and a whole host of vocational subjects.

[Cosmo]

I have gone from being a very strong supporter of the ABC to being an equally strong critic. The ABC is funded by everyone but it no longer represents everyone. It has two key biases, the Voice referendum and gay issues. The latter is represented by it’s disproportionate number of gay presenters. RN Breakfast has not had a straight presenter for years. The ABC should not allow presenters to use the publicly funded national broadcaster to push their own agendas as has been the case with Fran Kelly, Stan Grant and Patricia Karvelas.

The ABC needs to professionally train it’s interviewers. They are too keen on pushing their own points of view rather than listening to their guests, David Speers is an example of this. They nearly all exhibit the annoying and unprofessional habit of failing to acknowledge who they were interviewing at the end of the discussion. ABC TV seems more interested in giving us some irrelevant often outdated sports result on it’s crawler banner than telling us who is being interviewed.

The ABC is very good and plays an essential role in investigative journalism but increasingly it seems it needs the support of external media to do even that.

Those who claim the ABC is unbiased and of a high standard need to explain why listeners and viewers are turning away from it in droves also identify which ABC presenters present the alternative arguments or at least act as devil’s advocates.

[Cosmo]

Meat quality is low because graziers are getting rid of their old breeding stock but prices are not falling in line with farm prices. Strange there’s always an excuse for prices going up and another for them not coming down! We no longer buy meat from Woolworhs or elsewhere which laminates meat in plastic. Today in Woolworth they had organic beef encrusted in petro-chemical plastic and that’s healthy? The meat isle is now the most deserted part of the supermarket.

[Cosmo]

What a total joke this is. Because we have no public transport, NSW rural and regional seniors have until now been entitled to a $250 p.a. travel card which can be used to buy fuel. This was cancelled by the new NSW Labor government and the United 4c/litre fuel card offered in it’s place. My wife and I would need to buy 12,500 litres of fuel per year and at 6.5l/100km drive 192,307.692km (4.8 times around the world) to equal the travel card benefit. To add to the insult, we already have a United card, anyone can get one and even more, United diesel is currently 5c a litre dearer than Shell where I live.

[Cosmo]

Today’s YLC articles really raise questions about the standard of informative journalism. After reading about a Micky-Mouse 8 week trial involving 35 or so participants “proving” the health benefits of strawberries which didnt even involve actual strawberries I now read an article suggesting it looks at whether traveling in a bigger car makes you safer when it doesnt cover that at all.
Whether as a pedestrian or in another vehicle, I don’t think it has ever been suggested that being hit by a larger vehicle is safer than impact with a small one so it brings us back to this article’s misleading heading.

It must then be assumed that all the vehicles in the Monash study were driven remotely because it talks about the aggressivity of vehicles, nothing about the aggressiveness, capability, age or driving records of the people driving them.

Without the benefit of Monash’s sophisticated research facilities and YLCs analytical capability but just observing road users I would say the aggressive way in which some of the large US ‘trucks’ are driven by their drivers compared to the less aggressive way little old ladies drive their ‘micros’ has much to do with their danger to other road users. I would still prefer to be in a truck rammed by a micro than in another small car rammed by a micro. All of this is so obvious that I’m still left wondering about the point of this heading and article!

[Cosmo]

Sounds like another good reason to give Apple a miss and move to a trusty Android phone if it doesn’t damage your image and ego too much!

[Cosmo]

Des, not so fast, I already had to disclose my own full details, name, address, drivers licence, passport numbers tax file number etc to get to the point of being able to enter the BSB and account number. Are you suggesting scammers would be prepared to reveal these details to do their deeds? Numerous companies reveal their banking details for remittances with no risk. When I give my banking details it’s always of an otherwise redundant, unlinked cheque account with around five dollars in it so what value is that to a scammer?

[Cosmo]

I can imagine Mr Tibbs frustration especially given his tragic medical condition. I must say that having to rely only on a set of BSB and account numbers to transfer large sums of money is a stressful event. However recently when transferring some money through a bank (not one of the big four) I was delighted to see as I entered the BSB number the bank name and it’s address appeared and then the bank account name after I entered the account number. If a smaller bank can do this, why cant all banks do it?
I realise that international transfers may be more difficult but if I can use a debit/credit card overseas, issued by an American company (Visa) through an Australian bank and the numbers on that card identify me and my bank as I move around the world, why should identifying bank account details be so hard!
Banks need to try harder using technology already available to them to prevent honest mistakes, fraud and scams.

[Cosmo]

It’s not a case of the King’s need, it’s the same model that works here: screw the workers and reward the CEO for being so smart for doing it. Qantas is a great local example, Telstra especially under its earlier US CEO, AMP gave one of its earlier CEOs a $2million leaving present for screwing up. Medibank Private gave it’s already well remunerated CEO a $2,000,000 bonus this year after releasing millions of members details to the world. These bonuses have nothing to do with performance and not unlike the King’s arrangement they are usually cozy deals with a few board members.
A $1 million bonus to the CEO is the same cost of giving nearly a thousand workers a $20 a week pay rise but when was the last time you heard either the RBA or an employer’s group warn that CEO pay rises would push up inflation?

[Author]

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