The totally off-topic thread

[whatmeworry]

I was going to buy a new tablet at tax time, but the ATO and Centrelink had better uses for my money.

Yeah our spending on Aged payments is out of control.



Want to address welfare spending? Start with the age pension - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

 

[anat0l]

Apparently ios10 will let you delete those apps.

Why couldn't it have been simple in the first instance to allow one to hide them from the home screen rather than having to pile them into one folder?

I'll be a bit surprised if Apple lets you delete those kinds of apps; the reason why you can't delete them is because they are branded as system apps.

 

[Pushka]

Amazing thunder storm in Adelaide right now. Just lost tv signal. Such heavy rain!

 

[Boca68]

Amazing thunder storm in Adelaide right now. Just lost tv signal. Such heavy rain!

Yep, just looked at the BOM Adelaide radar. Lots of red and orange colours!

 

[love_the_life]

Yep, the BOM radar looks amazing

 

[gaz0303]

Yeah our spending on Aged payments is out of control.

I agree, but politically could you take anything away from the baby boomer generation? They have always been a protected species due their number on the electoral role.

 

[Pushka]

All calm now. TV back and current cough show (aka The Bachelor) is on. Heavens, when the chosen one sees what he has been doing with the other girls its going to bite, big time.

 

[love_the_life]

I agree, but politically could you take anything away from the baby boomer generation? They have always been a protected species due their number on the electoral role.

"scuse? As a BB I have worked long and hard and paid lots of taxes!!
(Note: I am a self funded retiree but I know lots who rely on the pension and they are not the high income people here at all)

 

[Pushka]

I agree, but politically could you take anything away from the baby boomer generation? They have always been a protected species due their number on the electoral role.

And also those whose parents fought in WW2, they had Vietnam and faced conscription. No compulsory super contributions from employers until close to retirement. Record interest rates. Yep. Very protected.

 

[gaz0303]

"scuse? As a BB I have worked long and hard and paid lots of taxes!!
(Note: I am a self funded retiree but I know lots who rely on the pension and they are not the high income people here at all)

Not saying bb's haven't worked hard. But we need to move on from the idea that taxes are paid to fund pensions in the future. I would hope younger demographics don't have this expectation at all.

 

[love_the_life]

And also those whose parents fought in WW2, they had Vietnam and faced conscription. No compulsory super contributions from employers until close to retirement. Record interest rates. Yep. Very protected.

Yep - As a woman in the workforce I think I had been working for over 20 years before I had the ability to put anything into super. As well I had no paid maternity leave for the children and in fact had to return to work after a few weeks. Yes, I was a really protected species :shock:
I don't think those who are in their 30s working have any expectation of an age pension at all, certainly my daughter doesn't.
Come to think of it my parents didn't qualify for the aged pension either - they worked hard and managed to get a bit of money behind them and this was too much for them to be eligible. So I suppose our family has not managed to be a blot on society

 

[Pushka]

Not saying bb's haven't worked hard. But we need to move on from the idea that taxes are paid to fund pensions in the future. I would hope younger demographics don't have this expectation at all.

I think that idea has long gone esp for younger baby boomers like myself. But we must let those who have already retired to feel good about the entitlements available when they did so and not beat them up and blame them.

My concerns currently are the escalating medical costs - the Health system is being eaten alive.

Yes - what is paid maternity leave? Family tax benefits A, B? Oh yeah. That was when you took unpaid leave from work.

 

[gaz0303]

My apologies- I shouldn't have used 'protected'. Perhaps 'dominate the political agenda' would have been a better phrase?
https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/march/1456750800/richard-cooke/boomer-supremacy

 

[love_the_life]

I think part of the problem is moving the goal posts for older BB who worked hard and paid taxes with the expectation that the age pension would be available to them. To suddenly declare that they are costing too much and IMO trying to blame them (even indirectly) the government is perpetuating its attack on those who can least afford it. But then I am not going to enter into a political discussion.

 

[Milboo]

cough to politics in less than a page

 

[love_the_life]

cough to politics in less than a page

Oh how fast this thread moves.
That's why if you leave to get a cup of coffee, you are well behind the discussion and any longer you are really out of the loop and have no idea what's going on

 

[Pushka]

cough to politics in less than a page

I can see the theme here.

I dont see it as politics so much as all governments have tried to grapple with escalating social service benefits - the full spectre.

 

[beefarmer]

Walking down Bourbon St in a jazz parade last year, we went past a woman with a typewrite offering to write cough for you then and there.

I saw her sister on the other side of the street, she being of African American and Mexican breeding, doing something even more ridiculous - she had a typewriter in each hand. My wife said she was type cast.

I am so glad Sammy boy resigned, or rather stepped down from the front bench. It is absolutely hilarious that anyone on all sides of politics can piss their careers up the wall for a few cheap bucks. Once a bottle of grange, now this. And to think that smarty appeared on QandA and was such a smug mongrel giving little Pauline Hanson a bit of a talking too about playing the game in politics.

What a great piece of swings and roundabouts. Maybe chinese walls have a few small clefts, slits, or fissures in the brickwork.

<redacted>

What a duffer Sammy boy is. No damn wonder we are so peeved with the quality of politician we are getting. Too self interested with very little fears. Well, media pressure certainly has cooked this goose.

 

[Hvr]

Saw this article about a parking dispute in WA.

For those struggling to keep up, here is a brief timeline of events:

• Sally had originally parked her car illegally in the William Street car park with her tyres well over the white line. She then went with friends to attend a council meeting.
• At 6.47pm, a parking inspector issued a fine for Sally's car being parked over two spaces, and took a photo as proof.
• Nine minutes later, four men are seen on CCTV lifting the car and moving it into its car space so they can fit their vehicle in the spot beside her.
• Sally then returns to discover she has been fined for parking outside the white lines.
• Confused, as her car is now within the lines thanks to the help of four burly men, she takes a photo of what she thought was her park, and posted it online complaining of the fine.
• The City of Fremantle claims Sally must have moved her car before taking her photo to try and get out of the fine.
• Sally denies this and struggles to understand how the council's ranger could have a photo of her car parked over the lines, different to her photo.
• Sally receives a message from a friend who says he saw "four big guys" lift and move her car on the night in question.
• The council's CCTV confirms this.
• The council acknowledges Sally's actions were not to fabricate evidence as they first thought, but rather just an "unusual series of events."
• Sally is still going to have to pay her fine.

An interesting series of events that created an hilarious article. I'm glad that CCTV was able to clear up the confusion.

 

[RAM]

My concerns currently are the escalating medical costs - the Health system is being eaten alive.

In the US it is illegal for one hospital to tell another hospital how much they are paying for ANY item they purchase from a medical supply or drug company.

In the early 2000s a Wall Street broker lured away a major (really major) hospital's CFO to become a senior analyst and he promptly revealed all.

A similarly huge hospital in the same city as his hospital was paying double or more for the exact same hip prostheses as where he was CFO, the cost of drugs similar.

After doing much digging into the US system, I ruled out investing in any health related or pharma company as they were such a large target for required budget balancing. An even more cynical soul than I declared that I'd finally reached the end of my cynicism - and was completely wrong. As he put it then "donations work, ideals fail, lobbyists prevail."

In Aust some drugs cost the Fed Govt up to 17x what the NZ Govt pays for them - curiously enough political donations to many politicians (and parties) can coincidentally see bad outcomes for the community.

A different example but a wonderful (disheartening) example of the strength of 'lobbyists'.

IN the very late 90s early 2000s McDonalds had been looking into trying to get as close to 100% recycling of their packaging materials. They had come up with a way to recycle a close relative of polystryrene containers for reuse. So they were talking (providing advance warning)with their current packaging suppliers about phasing out the cardboard and paper materials.

Within days three multi-national NGOs (from memory I think they were WWF, FOTE and Greenpeace) began extensive campaigns using scenes from the Exxon Valdez oil spill to campaign against the evil McD threatening the environment with 'oil' based packaging - putting profits before people and the environment.

Within a month after McDs in Europe, the UK and US were being regularly picketed etc - McD announced they would stick with paper and cardboard.

Nine months later a colleague came over to me with two paper companies annual reports - one based in Canada and the other Scandinavia. He had marked a page in each report - right towards the back.

They were the list of top ten donations made that financial year. The donations were between USD750,000 and USD250,000. Each of these particular paper companies were amongst the half dozen suppliers to McD.

Each had made donations of at least USD 250,000 to each of the three NGOs who had launched the campaign against McD's planned switch. Being the pedant - I asked to see the previous two years annual reports. Yes, you guessed it - they had not been in the top 10 for donations previously and in the previous years (for one of those two company's) the 10th largest donation was just under USD50,000.

The worst thing was that from a total environmental life cycle calculation - the 'new' approach cut the environmental impact by nearly 70% vs paper and cardboard even though the bulk of the paper and cardboard came from plantation timber.

"donations work, ideals fail, lobbyists prevail."

You'd think I wouldn't have been so naive when I later came to delving into the medical sector after that?