The problem with global media is that every single outlier event gets hyped to such a degree that it appears to be a common occurrence.

I am currently copping the extra levies out of principle.

I would rather pay the extra tax than be forced to entire the criminally corrupt public system.

The problem is that the runaway inflation (caused by corporate price-gouging) is resulting in increased cost of living.

I have been fortunate enough to receive a pay-rise that reduces the pain caused by the CoL crisis, but it has pushed me into a higher tax bracket.

I was parked outside work, waiting to come inside :).

I will admit that there isn’t much reason for me to have a car, except for the fact that I take my vehicle off-road on weekends, it would be pretty pointless me having a car to myself.

I can carpool with colleagues or family to work and I can purchase groceries locally. I can also catch public transport.

I pay a large chunk of my income for the privilege of owning a car; registration, servicing, fuel and repayments add up quickly; the money would be much better spent on other things.

For the cost of my car, I could buy 4 PowerWalls and some solar panels; another for our house (which would reduce our grid-reliance to zero), a couple for my Sisters house (which would do the same for them) and one for my mother’s house.

My car is not a luxury car but is a luxury expense.

If a car is not being driven, there is no point having a car.

Batteries are heavy, even lithium batteries.

Transferring energy into and out of an EV does result in non-negligible energy loss.

Having a dedicated, stationary battery is a much more space and resource efficient way to provide a grid buffer. Pb-Acid and Iron-air batteries are much better for the environment than Lithium, and much more stable. They are much heavier, but still lighter than a Lithium battery powered EV.

And people had the nerve to name a Swimming Pool after him! /s

This is purely a way to sell more electric cars. It is also completely pointless.

Solar comes in during the day: cars are not parked/connected when the solar is coming in.

People would be better off buying an off-the-shelf home battery or having a professional Solar Installer build a battery array. Even a top-shelf $10,000 Tesla PowerWall is cheaper than the cheapest EV.

Still the best Award acceptance ever by Les Murray when they won their ARIA.

After seeing TISM, MGF, Eskimo Joe, Ben Lee and The Mavis’s last nice, I would have to agree with this list.

“don’t You worry about that…”

It will get messy because they can fall back on “the government told us to do this so ACCC can’t touch us”. Lawyers will win; Government will lose, Telcos will lose and consumers will lose big time!

The ramifications of this is the black-listing of dozens of VoLTE phones following the 3G shutdown. This government slap-on-the-wrist has given Optus, Telstra and Vodafone carte-blanche to tell customers “you didn’t buy the phone from us, so we can’t guarantee you can make calls”.

US self-entitlement.

the land of the free has always had a “more important than every other country” mindset which has infected their citizens with the same selfish mindset.

McCarthyism and subsequent witch-hunts have resulted in such an anti-socialist zeitgeist that it has morphed into an anti-social zeitgeist where any empathy for any other person is seen not only as a weakness, but as also being “Un-murikan”.

I don’t think microplastics are having that effect.

It could just as likely be the decrease in airborne Lead following the removal of Lead Paint and TetraEthyl Lead in Petrol has caused people to be much more aggressive.

They still have the brain damage from growing up breathing in heavy metals, but no longer have the soporific effect of heavy metals.

Bloody Jeff.

Sold all our Publicly owned infrastructure to private companies.

Now we have to deal with electricity resellers screwing us over and the government needing to fork out Corporate Welfare in the form of “Energy Relief” to line their mates pockets.

I really would have thought that a few of the safe seats would have flipped, considering how deranged he is and how many old-school Republicans have come out against him and endorsed Kamala.

It just goes to show that their Democracy has been so corrupted by decades of abuse that their elections no longer function.

We just need to educate our electorate that we can”t “Throw away your vote” by preferencing a special-interest party above a Major party…

It is also how biased the US electoral system is to maintain the Status Quo.

Every time the Republicans get in, the cripple democracy a little bit at a time. When the Democrats get in, they don’t do anything to roll back the damage.

It has finally come to the Endgame for US Democracy.

All we can do is make sure that our elected officials are aware that it is not something that we want in Australia.

As @tinybreak infers, they may be trying to get people to leave so that they don’t have to payout redundancies.

If you take your LSL and AL, you can bypass all the issues. When you come back you will either be invaluable to them and be able to get a payrise, or they would have decided to issue redundancies after all and you can cash-in again. It is a gamble though.

Preferential Voting is only part of the solution. The second and third parts are Compulsory Voting (to ensure that everyone has access to democracy) and Education.

Here in Australia, we have a Preferential Ballot and Compulsory Voting. Election day is on a Saturday and there are readily available options for those who are indisposed on Election Day.

What we don’t have is an educated Voter base. A lot of people still feel that if they vote for a minor party first, they throw away their vote, simply because that is what imported media is inferring.

Our AEC needs to have an advertising campaign extolling the benefits of preferential voting, and the populace needs to understand that there are no downsides, except a few extra seconds of thought to fill out your ballot. Instead, the education comes in the form of “How-To-Vote” cards, published by the major parties, completely missing the point of a preferential ballot.