It’s been a while, sorry. I’m sleeping poorly, so I feel tired most of the time. Restless leg syndrome! Diabetic foot pain! And a rotten mattress doesn’t help. Makers – AH Beard. Crap mattress! I don’t think they know how to make mattresses.

Recently I had a phone call and visit from a woman representing a Home Care type of company. She was pushing motorised bed/mattresses, the kind that elevates your feet above the heart, and so on. And vibrates. All well and good, but they want $6,000 to $7,000! That’s crazy. I said I need to think about it, and she said she’d phone me in a couple of days, but of course she didn’t, and that’s good. In the meantime, I did a bit of shopping around and found you can get them for $2,000 – $4,000. Huh. I’m still not sure I want to spend that much. CHOICE tests mattresses and they recommend one for about $450 which they say ticks all the boxes. Maybe I should try that.

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The referendum is only 21 days away and although I’m a firm YES voter, I fear it’s going to fail.

For my overseas readers, we are holding a referendum to alter the constitution (actually, to insert a new clause), to give the Indigenous (First Nations/Aborigines/Torres Strait Islanders) people a “Voice”.

Unfortunately the government have not explained this Voice very well. What’s a Voice? It’s an abstract term to me. I’ve never had any trouble understanding it, but many, many people don’t get it. Only now, with three weeks to go, are the governemt starting to say it will be a committee, which I think they should have been saying for the past six months.

Unfortunately there is a big No Vote push, with the slogan, “If you don’t know, vote No” and that’s what a lot of people are saying.

As well, there’s a strong racist stream too. This is a very racist country, I’m afraid. There’s an undercurrent of hatred toward Aborigines, and these nasty No people are spreading lies and misinformation. It’s working.

To succeed, the referendum has to be passed by a majority of the population (about 17 million eligible voters, i.e. over 18, out of a total population of 27.5 million), AND a majority of the states. There are six states, so that means four have to vote Yes to make a majority. Three is not enough. That also means that it only takes three states to vote No to kill the referendum.

Queensland, being ultra-conservative and racist, will vote No for sure. Victoria will vote Yes, and probably NSW too. Labor in WA has always advocated a Yes vote, of course. And a few months ago, the WA Liberal Party said they would advocate a Yes vote too. But a couple of months ago, they changed their minds!! Typical bloody Liberals. They’re advocating a No vote now. So does the National Party in WA, the farmers’ party.

Unfortunately, therefore, I think WA will vote No. So that’s it folks. It’s good night from us and bye bye referendum. South Australia is hard to pick. They have nearly always been quite progressive, but it’s a knife edge there. I think Tasmania will vote Yes, but it’s very hard to judge.

All in all, I’m not optimistic. There are too many Indigenous spokesmen and women speaking against the proposal.

I find this very depressing. This country has repeatedly tried to make changes to the constitution, and they nearly always fail. Nearly always! Australian people are very, very hard to be persuaded, no mater how good the arguments. I do not find this to be an admirable trait.

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Australia? None. Zero. No car makers. No innovation. No flair. Pathetic!

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I’m making good progress on the family tree. I have 995 relatives going back to about 1350 so far. I hit a wall about then, which is not surprising. I’m concentrating mostly on the Croft side, less so on the Arnold (Mum’s) side, although that side is very interesting too. I might spend more time on that side.

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Aaahh, sun’s out, warm afternoon. Here we are, six days into spring and we’ve had a lot of rain and wind, too much for me. It’s still only 19degC max. today but I hope it warms up from now on.

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Actually, the white lights, the headlights, are coming towards us on the left of the highway, so it can’t be the USA. I don’t know where it is.

I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube content showing the USA lately and the thing that whacks me in the eye is the density of the houses, highways, freeways, industries. With a population of 350million people, that makes them 13 times our density, and it shows. Although I find a lot to admire about the US (inventing, designing, building aircraft for example), and I like looking, I would never want to live there. Too dangerous. Too violent. Too ready to resort to guns to solve problems. They are the most war-like people on the planet in my opinion.

Yet we need to ally ourselves with them in the face of China’s agression. We have to do it. There’s no way we can deter China alone.

I seriously think there is going to be a war with China within a decade, and it will be enormously destructive and deadly. Possibly millions will die. Thank goodness I can sit on the sidelines.

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I’m listening to the car section on ABC radio at the moment and a listener has asked what electric vehicle she should buy.

But I wouldn’t buy an EV if you paid me to do it. The battery in EVs has a life of about ten years, maybe 15, and when it won’t take a charge any more, it’s far too expensive to replace it. It would cost you about the same as a new car just for the new battery alone. That means your car becomes obsolete, unrepairable.

ICE cars (Internal Combustion Engine) can be almost endlessly repaired, provided parts can be obtained. Notice I don’t say “are available”. Eventually manufactirers’ spares stocks run out, but spares always seem to be obtainable from wreckers, people who don’t want their old car any more, squirrelled away stocks and so on. There are companies that specialise in spares for certain makes.

But I doubt there will be cheap reconditioned EV vehicle batteries. For one thing, thechnology is moving along and it could well be that the batteries will be entirely different in 15-20 years’ time.

So I do not see myself buying an EV in my lifetime. Except…….

I’ve never liked Rolls Royces. Too olde worlde for my liking, too square, too woody, too ridiculously garish looking. No thanks.

But I’ve changed my mind. Rolls Royce La Rose Noire coupe.

This one was built to a client’s specifications, to order. Price? 32. That’s $32. Million! USD. A$50 million!

No, I won’t be forking out this week, but this is the first time I’ve lusted after a Rolls.

The other point is, perfection! I’ve often thought, once you reach a certain point of perfection in cars, appliances, electronic devices, how do you exceed it? To me, Japanese cars like Toyotas, Hondas, Mazdas are so good that it’s hard to imagine anything more perfect. I think this exceeds them, but so it should.

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I think this deserves an award for humour. On the radio a few mornings ago, the announcer was talking about whether Shakespeare should be modernised. As an example, he said, “What about To Be or Not To Be, in Bogan Yeah, Nah?”

L.O.L. !! I laughed out loud. Good one. Gold star to that man.

Yep, that’s my heart. Last Tuesday I had an angiogram at Hollywood Private Hospital. Unfortunately they wanted me there at 7.30am, so I ordered an Uber taxi for 5.30am, knowing that there’s a massive amount of road works on the freeway.

But I realised after ordering the ride that I’d probably allowed too much time. Then the hospital changed the arrival time to 7.45am. I tried to change the Uber time but couldn’t find a way to do it. OK, no problem, it just meant I was very early – we got there at about 6.20am. No problem, I don’t mind waiting.

In the end I wasn’t wheeled into the refrigerated! operating theatre until 10am. All went smoothly and as you can see, he didn’t find anything remarkable, although there is one narrowed bit apparently. I have to see the cardiologist in six weeks, so I’ll find out more then.

But the GP asked me yesterday whether I feel any different, having had the angiogram, and the answer is no. I’m still very tired, wanting to sleep a lot. So what else could it be? I’m worried about a suspected kidney stone, but blood tests don’t show any inflammation, so it doesn’t seem to be an infection.

One bit of good news is that the Ozempic (semaglutide) appetite suppressant drug is working wonders. I’ve lost about 5kg in four months and as a result, not only are my blood sugar readings coming back into the “normal” range of 4-8mmol/ml, my HbA1c is now 6.5. That’s remarkable! That figure of less than 7.0 is regarded as meaning, technically, I’m not diabetic. Amazing. The tests also showed that my liver has improved, i.e. less fat, and my kidneys are fine. It’s all good news.

I also found an article in The Guardian yesterday that says studies are showing that semaglutide is having big benefits on the heart. Like, repairing damage. Fantastic.

The only drawback to using Ozempic is that you feel a bit nauseous, but I can tolerate that. So, shazzam! Good news.

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The Uber taxi cost me $63 each way, by the way, and took 42 mins.

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I am so frustrated by the delays in getting my replacement dishwasher! The insurance company has OK the order, and originally placed it with Betta Electrical in Rockingham, but they couldn’t get stock. I waited more than three months but then persuaded NRMA Insurance ot switch the order to Appliances Online. They promise quick delivery, but also to take the old one away and install the new one.

But week after week goes by with no call. A couple of weeks ago I couldn’t even get AppOnline to even answer their phones. I finally got through last Thursday 17th, and they said I would get a call.

But another whole week has gone by with nothing, no call. This has dragged on for nearly five months now. I’m getting tired of washing dishes by hand.

Ho hum, first world problem, I know.

August, the coldest, most unpleasant month of the year, in my opinion. Thank goodness it’s nearly over. It hasn’t been all that wet, but it’s been too cold for my liking. Of course, compared to northern hemisphere winters, as I’ve remarked before, it’s nothing. I’ve been watching the TV series Alone, plus a few Youtube clips recently about Canadians battling through blizzards and snowbanks. I could not bear it! I don’t understand why people choose to live in such cold. Why? Why?!

Anyway, although my fingers get a bit cold and stiff at times, it’s fine. My house is well insulated and only goes as low as an inside temperature of 16-17degC, at which point I turn on the reverse cycle air conditioning for great wafts of warm air. Lovely.

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I must admit to feeling very poorly in the past few weeks. Weak and tired. I’ve been getting a bit of angina and puffs of breathlessness. I saw the cardiologist last week and he wants to do an angiogram (I call it an angrygram 🙂 ), so that’s going to happen on Tuesday 22nd, Tuesday week. I don’t like these procedures (probe up through an arm vein into the heart!), but last time he did one on 26 January 2021, he found a 90% blocked vein. Lucky! So it needs to be done.

But he wants me at Hollywood Private Hospital at 7.30am! Holy mackerel, it’s an hour’s drive even without any traffic problems and traffic at that time of the day will be awful. I’ve booked an Uber driver for 5.30am. I’m assuming that will be sufficient time. It’s going to cost $73 one way. Ouch.

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I’m reading an article about whether the USA should go to war to defend Taiwan if China decides to invade, and it includes this paragraph:

“The past half-century is littered with conflicts the United States chose to wage without weighing the cost of fighting versus the cost of not engaging. A list of such conflicts includes the Vietnam War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 20-year fiasco in Afghanistan, the 2011 attack on Libya, the 2014 excursion into Syria, the support of Saudi Arabia in its war with Yemen, and a perpetual military engagement on the African continent. 

“None of these conflicts was forced on Washington. All were chosen, and the cost to the United States has been astronomical. Benefits have been paltry, or, as I argue, entirely absent.” (1945)

Exactly. All these wars have been unnecessary and disastrous, and Australia has been involved in the first three (Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan) without any parliamentary debate or popular discussion. All have been initiated by Liberal Party governments and usually by the prime minister alone, without even involving his ministers!! Amazing and egregiously bad.

They have cost hundreds of Australian soldiers’ lives and billions of dollars, for no benefit whatever! They have achieved nothing! My blood boils, as you can tell.

So what if China tries to take Taiwan by force? The big factor is that Taiwan houses TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s biggest semiconductor (integrated circuit) manufacturing plant. They make up to 90% of the world’s “chips” and naturally, this is HUGELY important to the world. If China gained control of this plant, assuming it survived a war intact, they would have us by the throat. They could dictate the supply of semiconductors to the world and throttle our industries.

The USA are working frantically to (re)build their own IC production facilities, which they foolishly allowed to wither and move overseas (to Taiwan, mainly, but also to Korea and China), but it takes years to build an IC fabrication factory. Luckily Holland are the makers of these giant “machines” and obviously they would supply any Western country that could afford the huge cost.

The workings of these are a fascinating story, too much for this blog, but the gist is that they etch lines on the silicon base disc which are as narrow as 4nm – that’s 4 nano metres. That’s far smaller than a human hair and so tiny that the slightest vibration would ruin the etch. It’s done using X-ray lasers which are so precise as to be at the limit of mechanics and physics. They are a triumph of engineering. You’ll pay a couple of $billion for one of these. And wait years for delivery.

Anyway, what should Australia do if China invades Taiwan? In my opinion, this would be one case where we should intervene in any way we can, because our interests are very much at stake. We cannot allow China to (a) use force to subjugate the Taiwanese; and (b) gain complete control of most of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing facilities. The article I read suggests that loss of control would cause a worldwide recession of at least 10%, amounting to a depression, with widespread hardship.

Unfortunately, a war with China would be very, very costly. It would be a fight to the death, literally. I think it would almost certainly involve nuclear weapons very early in any conflict. China would put their prestige on the line. They would take the attitude that they must not lose, so they would use any means to win, including nuclear wepons. This is very, very bad and I am in fear it will happen.

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I’ve been watching a lot of Youtube lately, and one thing in particular. That’s a US company called Copart, which takes cars that have been damaged, either by accidents or water damaged by flooding. They take cars that insurance companies have written off and sell to anyone who’ll buy, so as to recoup some of their cost of paying out the claimants.

The thing is, there are thousands upon thousands of cars in giant yards, all damaged to some degree, often far too much to repair, but some are not too bad. The Youtube guys scour these yards for bargains and when they find cars they think can be resurrected, they put in low bids in an on-line auction. Often, they win.

I’m talking $50,000 – $150,000 cars being sold for $5,000 or even less. Two guys in particular are Porsche fanatics. They’ve got a Porsche Boxster for $2,500 and got it going for the cost of a new oil pan, costing $600. Plus fitting, oil change and cleaning and detailing. Amazing.

I can’t get over the number and range of all these damaged cars in the Copart lots. There are the usual boring small cars, but the number of Ferraris, Porsches, Audis, Bentleys, Rolls Royces, Aston Martins and so on is amazing. If only, if only …….

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It’s dawn and the sun has come up. I awoke about 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I’m at the PC as usual. The birds are chirping. Lovely. Cheers.

I’m working frantically on my Croft History Volume 3 photobook. I have two prepaid vouchers that I bought seven months ago and they expire on the 17th. As usual, I’ve been procrastinating, but I’m more than half way finished. It will only take a few more hours’ work and then I can send them off for printing.

Beeeyoootiful day. Cloudless blue sky, no wind, 22degC, very tolerable.

The title is meant as a riff on “milestones” – another of my high school mates died last week, Bob Farmer. It’s his funeral today. I didn’t know he’d been ill as I haven’t seen him for ten years, but I’m told he was lately having to carry an oxygen cylinder around with him. He was a heavy smoker, so I would guess COPD. I’m so glad I gave up in 1988.

The fact is that I’m feeling unwell too. Not lung problems, but I think I have a developing kidney stone. It’s not the full ‘nuclear explosion’ of pain, just a dull ache on the left side, slowly getting worse, and a general weakness and tiredness. I’ve finally managed to get an appointment with a urologist but, as usual, it’s not for another month, mid September. I may end up in the emergency department before then.

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I had to call an ambulance on Saturday, as well. It wasn’t a severe emergency, but as I was coming through the back door with three bags of groceries plus my general ‘handbag’, I lost my balance as I stepped over the sliding door track and fell forward. Luckily I fell into a pile of cardboard boxes which cushioned my fall.

That was the easy part. The hard part was that I couldn’t get up! My body was twisted aound. I could reach the sliding door handle, but I don’t have the strength to pull myself up.

I tried various things for about 45 mins but no luck. I could reach my phone in my bag, luckily, and I phoned a mate to see if he could come and give me a hand, but he was too far away.

So there was nothing for it but to call an ambulance. I felt bad about it, but when I explained what had happened, they were very understanding and it arrived about 20 mins later. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get their stretcher past my car and through the narrow back door. Nor could they lift me.

I realised that if I slid myself across the tiled floor into the bathroom, and the ambo guy put my thick bathmats down for me to kneel on, I could twist myself around, get my arms up onto the edge of the bath, brace my legs against the cabinets behind and with a mighty push, I got myself up. Bloody ‘ell, I was shaking with the stress and strain, but I was up. Good thing to remember in case it happens again.

Being paramedics, they wanted to do all their tests, so I had an ecg (perfect), blood sugar (4.9, great), blood pressure (155/75 fine), so all good. They wanted to take me in to Joondalup hospital, but I said no, I was fine, so they got me to sign a waiver of liability and they were on their way. It was an easy one for them.

So that was a fun couple of hours, but this is a bit of a worry. I suppose things are a bit unusual in that I’m feeling unwell, weak and wobbly, so a fall like this is out of the ordinary. But it raises the question of whether I can go on living alone. I am worried, but the thought of having to pack everything up and move out of here is too much to comprehend.

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Add to that, having lost a few kilos of weight (Ozempic), I’m finding that my blood sugars are going low more often, meaning I feel myself getting the shakes. If I let it go too low (<4) I can feel myself getting a bit woozy, hazy, slow thinking. That’s what lack of sugar to the brain feels like. I’m well aware of the danger and can counter it by eating sweet stuff – jellybeans for example. It’s another thing I have to be careful of these days. Plus I’m slowly losing my sense of balance, which makes hanging clothes on the line difficult. Mostly the Silver Chain lady does it, but not always.

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And now for something completely different. I’ve been watching a cooking program on Netflix called Five Star Chef, about a group of about eight (at the start) young trainee chefs at The Langham Hotel in London, a six star, cost-is-no-object type of hotel. It has two Michelin stars and these people are given various assignments – menus, table arrangements, small or large groups etc – and told that they must prepare five star, six star meals for either the three supervisors, or real guests. It’s not uncommon for guests to spend £500 on a dinner.

Holey moley! When money is no object, when no expense is to be spared, when perfection is mandatory, it’s amazing. It’s obscene, actually. To think that there are thousands of homeless people in British cities dependent on soup kitchens, sleeping rough, and these ultra-rich people are spending money as if it were water.

However, the program is fascinating. Slowly, the traines are whittled away and from the original eight, we’re down to three at the moment. There are only six episodes, so the next will be the final. Good stuff.

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Great to see the women’s soccer finals being fought out at the moment, and the way the Matildas won 4-0 against Canada last night. I don’t actually watch the whole matches, but I’m interested in the results.

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I’ve been involved in a thing called the ABC Study, the Australian Breakthrough Cancer Study. I don’t have cancer, but it has affected my family so they are trying to find links and clues. It mainly involves on-line questionnaires so far, but today I’ve had to provide fæcal samples to be sent off to Melbourne.

Ugh! UGH! I won’t go into details, but it took two attempts a week apart. I got it done this time, so I’ve got a padded bag that has to be posted off this afternoon. Thank goodness that’s over.

I’m OK now but I’ve been having a fair bit of angina and atrial fibrillation for the past year or so (to go along with all my other pains, but that’s another story).

Last Monday evening (10th) at 8pm I had some sudden strong pain in the middle of my chest. I had no hesitation – I knew I had to call 000. The ambulance was here within about 10-15mins (and I had all my bags packed and ready to go). The guys asked me where I wanted to go, which hospital??? Huh? They said “Don’t go to Joondalup (15 mins away) as it’s blocked up. What about Hollywood Private?” Yes, I said, I used to go there 10 years ago and it feels like home to me. So, off we went, about 45mins drive. The pain had gone by then.

I spent the next 4hrs or so in the ED, bored out of my skull. They hooked me up to an ECG and BP cuff, but it took 1 1/2 hrs before a doctor came to see me. Ugh.

Anyway, they did blood tests but said I wasn’t having a heart attack and there was nothing really wrong. I felt OK by then. They said I didn’t need to stay, but it was 1.30am by then and I thought the next line would be, “We’ll keep you in overnight.” But they said if they admitted me, it would cost me a min of $250, so, what would a taxi home cost? Weigh it up. Answer – a taxi costs $99.80 to my place. So at 2am that’s what I did, getting home at 2.30am. Slept like a log.

So I’ve got a GTN spray (niroglycerine under the tongue) and fluid reduction tablets and all’s well that ends well. Fun. Not.

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But did I mention pain? Bloody hell, I have pain! It’s non-specific nerve pain, in all kinds of places, mainly in my right chest, right arm and hand, legs, anywhere and everywhere. The Norspan patches help a lot but don’t fix it completely. I’m reluctant to use them too much as I don’t want to become habituated in case they lose their effectiveness.

It makes me wonder what the future holds. Is this the way it’s going to be from now on?

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I’ve been put onto Ozempic, the appetite suppressant, and it’s working well, but for the first few days after the weekly injection, it makes me feel a bit tummy upset. That’s kind of what it’s supposed to do. But last Thursday’s was especially noticeable.

The good news is that I’ve lost nearly 5Kg in the past 8 weeks. I can feel the difference. It’s good.

Plus the heart doctor has put me on to a diuretic to reduce fluid in my system. I took that for the first time along with the Ozempic. Whoo hoo, urrrrgggh! I felt sick and dizzy and woozy. I’ve been there before with diuretics – I don’t think I can tolerate it.

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On top of that, I think I’ve got a kidney stone – left side, dull ache, not the full blown kidney stone pain, thank goodness, but it’s making me very nervous. I have a referral to a urologist but with all that’s been going on in the past couple of weeks, I ha’ven’t made the appointment yet. Monday!

So all in all, I am not feeling very well!

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I’m pretty angry about the Verada that my “mate” has returned. It’s not in roadworthy condition.

First, the rear tyres are illegal. Damn, I am angry about this.

Second, the power steering is now so bad as to almost make the car undriveable. It was fairly bad when he borrowed it in February 2022, but if you kept the fluid topped up, it was fine. But now it tries to pull the wheel out of my hands, regardless of the fluid level. Unfortunately, even a second hand steering rack is about $600. Plus fitting.

Grrrr.

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I’m still waiting on the replacement dishwasher that NRMA insurance were going to supply, as well. The old one died on 16 March with the ceiling collapse (I saw my diary the other day) and so I’ve been waiting ever since. I’ve complained to NRMA about using Betta Electrical in Rockingham as the suppliers, who say they can’t get a machine.

So I finally seemed to persuade NRMA to use Appliances On-line, who seem to say they have stock. But the weeks pass and nothing happens. What’s going on? Bit fed up – this is nearly six months waiting now. I’m running out of clean dishes 🙂 !!

Schmertz = pain in German. I’m in pain, chronic pain. It’s not as bad as many people have but I’m tired of it. Nerve pain, with no obvious cause, just random sharp! needle jabs, mainly in my right side torso/chest but occurring anywhere in my upper body. The Norspan patches work very well, thank goodness.

Next, bursitis, pain in my left shoulder. I’ve had an ultrasound examination and an X-ray to confiirm it, resulting in a steroid injection last Monday. It’s helped a lot but it’s not 100% fixed. I find it’s worst when lying down to sleep, strangely, and it doesn’t matter which side I lie on, even though it was a left shoulder problem. Let’s hope the steroid injection has fixed it.

Next, peripheral neuropathy, sharp stabbing pains in my feet, so bad as to have me yelling and arching my back. This is not new, it’s been ongoing for years, but seems to be especially bad these days.

Next, chest pain from heart palpitations or atrial fibrillation. It was so bad at 3am a couple of Sundays ago that I nearly called an ambulance. I got up and took a full 300mg aspirin and a full beta blocker tablet, then sat up at the computer for a couple of hours. It slowly went away. The pain, I mean, not the computer 🙂

Now, at this moment, I’m still getting low level AF with a small amount of breathlessness and dizziness. I have an appointment with the cardiologist but it’s not until 3 August. I’m sick of long waits for specialists.

Next, I reckon I might have a kidney stone – blood in urine and a side ache, left side, not bad. I have an appointment with a urologist in August. Another long wait.

Damn, damn, damn. Sick of this. It’s getting me down.

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I mentioned getting my Verada back. He did quite a good job of cleaning it, except for all the leaves and dirt in the tailgate crevices. It’s still leaking power steering fluid too.

But he didn’t do anything about the rear tyres! That means he’s been driving it for the last 16 months on illegal tyres, on my insurance! If he’d had a prang, I would have been in trouble. Grrrrrrr!

I’ve been thinking hard about which car to sell and I think it has to be the Honda MDX. I love it, but it’s too hard on fuel (15L/100km) and too big and heavy. The Verada would do every carrying job that I need, so I don’t need the Honda. And Vera is such a pleasure to drive. I love it.

I have to do a few fix-it jobs on the Honda first, before I advertise it.

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I mentioned my friend who’s a rusted-on Liberal voter. After all the relentless news of the corruption, the lying, the meanness, the dishonesty, how can anyone support this horrible cabal of nasty bastards? What goes on in your mind, that you can just disregard all the awful news that pours out, week after week, month after month, year after year of the disgusting cesspool that is the Liberal Party of Australia? How can you continue to give these bastards your support????

Does it not occur to you that all the best intellects and greatest minds in Australia are Labor supporters and/or politicians? That all the greatest brains and best innovations have come from Labor people? All the greatest projects in the history of Autralia have come from Labor people.

It just astounds me. My friend is very intelligent and is an electronics engineer, who writes computer code at a high level. Yet he cannot open his eyes to the shit bag that is the Liberal Party. No matter which state, no matter which branch of the party, it’s corruption all the way down.

I know most about WA, of course, and the depths of corruption in the Liberal Party here are as bad as anywhere in the rest of the country. It’s so bad that they were nearly wiped out in the last elections in 2021, having only three members left in the lower house. As a journalist wrote, you could fit the entire lower house party on a two wheeled bicycle.

And now the full truth is coming out about “Robodebt”, that evil, cruel scheme thought up by that lying, incompetent scumbag of a prime minister, Scott Morrison. It wasn’t only him, but he was the main man pushing it in 2016. The public servants were too afraid to tell him the truth about its illegality. The few who did speak up and say it was illegal were ignored.

The result was that at least two people committed suicide when they were being harrassed by Centrelink for debts they didn’t owe.

How can anyone support a party which will do this??!! It’s evil. If you vote for the party, you are supporting this evil scheme and these criminal people. How do you feel about that? How can you justify it? How can you hold your head up high? It’s disgusting and you should be ashamed!

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I’ve just noticed, this WordPress blogging software has a new AI Assistant mode. It lets me change the “tone” of my writing, summarise, expand, change the writing to passionate (I thought the above already fitted that description), serious (ditto), emapthetic, romantic, confident, sceptical and so on. I haven’t worked out how to use it yet.

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I don’t usually think of myself as a sports person, but I must admit I’m a bit wrapped up in the test cricket at the moment. It helps that Australia are winning so well, I suppose.

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I’m way past the stage of buying a villa in Bali, but bloody hell, if I won Lotto I’d be up there with my bank card at the ready for this place!

It’s in Jimbaran, which is on the side of the “Bukit”, the hill on the south side of the airport runway.

It’s a three bedroom, three bathroom villa, two storeys, pool as shown. It’s US$495,000 (AU$742,129) freehold. It’s completely useless me thinking about it, but I can dream, can’t I?

Finally, I’ve got my car back. Sixteen months after a “mate” asked to borrow my Mitsubishi Verada wagon, he returned it this morning. Sixteen months!

It’s been a rainy day today so I haven’t inspected it yet, but I’m dreading what I’ll find. He is not known for being clean and tidy, to put it mildly. He says he’s done a cut and polish of the paintwork, and patched some small areas of rust, so we’ll see. He also says he’s done an oil change and new filter, as I asked him to. But he made a big point that it doesn’t use any water – so he never had to put any water in the radiator. That’s not the point – coolant has to be changed at 12 month intervals whether the level is low or not. Coolant is not just water – that green colour means something, it’s additive which is anti-corrosion. It needs to be renewed.

The other point is that when he borrowed it in February last year, 2022, I told him that the rear tyres are worn and probably not legal, and I said I’d want to replace them. “No, don’t worry about it” he said. So for 16 months he’s been driving it, on my insurance, on illegal tyres. He didn’t say he’s replaced them, so I’ll be interested to see what they’re like now.

Bloody hell! If the situation was reversed, if I’d borrowed his car, I would regard it as of the highest importance to return the car in at least as good condition as when I borrowed it, if not better. At least as good! I would never do as he’s done to me. It’s not as if I haven’t been asking for him to return it – I’ve been asking for it back for the last five months.

The result has been months of stress and anxiety for me. Worry about the insurance situation. It’s only on 3rd Party Fire and Theft, meaning that if he had a prang, the other party’s bills would be covered but not mine. Damage to my car would not have been covered. All depending on blame, of course.

So never again. This is not the first time he’s “borrowed” something from me and “assumed ownership” of it, meaning I’ve had to apply pressure to get it back. Well, this is it. No more!

Sun’s out now, so I guess I’d better go and have a look. I’m nervous about it!

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So what did he do about another car? He bought another one of the car that was written off in his prang in February 2022, a Mazda 2 wagon. That’s his third example of the same car. That means he’s got two dead ones parked in his back yard and now he’s bought another one! It’s taken 16 months for him to make up his mind to buy it.

I didn’t ask what he’s paid for it. I’ve been making it explicit for several months that I wanted him to buy the Verada from me, and if he hadn’t taken so long, I would have given him a good price, a big discount. But not now. He always made excuses why he couldn’t buy it from me, so it’s academic now, but grrrrrrr!

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People don’t return calls. I’m waiting on multiple people to call me back, as they said they would, but they don’t.

• Cardiologist – the receptionist didn’t seem able to sort out the appointments schedule, said she’d call me back. That was 10 days ago. No call back.
• A lawyer’s office, for an appointment. I phoned yesterday morning about 10am and I’ve heard nothing back. How long does it take to make an appointment?
• Some news about a delivery for my replacement dishwasher. It’s been nine days since they said they’d call me to arrange a delivery time last week. No call.
• Two mates who I thought were friends, to meet for brekky and coffee. It’s been more than three months since we last met and despite my repeated attempts to arrange a meet-up, I can’t get any answer back. I’m getting the message that they don’t want my company any more. Bloody hell! I try to be pleasant all the time, but I keep getting snubbed.
• It’s taking weeks to get in to see the GP (doctor). I’m in pain!!!! I tried to have a nap just now but I can’t lie on my left shoulder. Changing to my right shoulder doesn’t help. Taking the pain relief tablets that were prescribed a couple of weeks ago doesn’t help.
• Another long-time friend – two weeks ago I phoned her mobile, no answer, left a message, sent an email. No reply, no answer. Don’t people check their messages? Even if she’s away, surely she would get messages?

Get the message? I’m feeling very neglected.

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Re the dive on the Titanic and the loss of the “submarine”: the feeling I have, although I’m very sorry for the loss of those people, is that they were being nosy tourists and deserved what they got. They were being somewhat arrogant, trying to show how intrepid and brave they were. It’s a pity the vessel failed, but it sounds to me that they took too many risks, cut too many corners. They were warned that the vessel had defects. So, BANG! It failed as predicted. I can’t bring myself to feel too sorry for them.

The only consolation is that, as I read, they wouldn’t have known what hit them. As soon as a crack started, it would have been all over within 20 milliseconds or so, faster than it takes for a nerve ending sensation to reach the brain. They wouldn’t have known it had failed. RIP.

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I was always an anti-Brexiter. I groaned when the Poms passed the referendum to leave the European Union. It was the worst act of self sabotage in the history of the UK, a slow form of national suicide for Great Britain. It was crazy!

Sure enough, I would have predicted, grumblings are swelling in Britain. None of the promised benefits are coming to pass. Food is much more expensive, immigration has not slowed down, trade is grinding to a slow halt, it’s much more difficult to do import/export business, London has lost its status as the European banking capital and Britain’s reputation is sliding down the toilet. These are just a few of the negatives. I don’t think there are any positives.

As predicted, British people are starting to realise this, and the grumbles are welling up. Apparently 55% of Brits now regard leaving the EU as a mistake. No kidding.

As well, people are starting to ask, quietly, if it can be reversed. Ho ho ho! It’s only been seven years, but I don’t think the EU citizens will be too keen to let GB back in. Britain proved what many people thought, that Britain is an arrogant, difficult, selfish country, hard to deal with. Really? How can you think that? Tut tut.

I’m afraid GB is going to have to slide down the pole a long way yet before the EU would even begin to entertain the idea of reversing the Brexit process. And even if they did think about it, I think Britain would have to make some very big concessions. Very big.

What a crazy idea it was. Stupid, stupid.

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I’m very sad. I had a conversation with a long time friend last week about many things, but in particular about two things – (1) the referendum to allow an amendment to the constitution for a voice to parliament for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, and (2) the apology that PM Kevin Rudd made to parliament in 2008 for the Stolen Generations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apology_to_Australia%27s_Indigenous_peoples).

For people who don’t know, number 1 regards a referendum that will be held probably in October this year to insert a change into the Constitution that will allow for the setting up of a committee (a Voice) which will advise the federal parliament on matters affecting Indigenous people.

My friend is adamant that he will be voting No. He does not want this Voice to be heard. I am astounded and saddened. I can not understand how anyone can be so negative, so intransigent. Why? He seems to think this Voice or committee will have too much influence. At least, I think that’s what he thinks. I don’t think he knows what he wants. I don’t think he understands what the referendum means.

He says that he “loves” Aborigines, that he admires them and so on. But he doesn’t want them to be heard except in the way they are now. The problem is, the Aboriginal people are adamant that they are not being heard now.

Life expectancy 20 years below that of white people, many hundreds of deaths in custody (ie at the hands of the police), police brutality, awful rates of preventable diseases, terrible racism …. I can’t see that they are being heard or treated properly.

Yet he doesn’t want them to be heard any more than they are now, which is bugger all. I can’t understand his attitude. To me, it’s racism, pure and simple.

On the second point, the apology for the Stolen Genrations – to explain, up until around 1990, it was common for Aboriginal children to be taken from their parents and farmed out to white (European) families and institutions with the aim of supposedly giving them the chance to grow up as whites, go to white schools and to effectively erase their Aboriginality. Mostly they were prohibited from speaking their own language, forced to speak English only, and to dress and behave as Europeans.

But too often, the environment they grew up in was cruel, with beatings and punishments if they tried to assert their Aboriginality. If they ran away to find their parents or go back to their tribal lands, they would be rounded up, caught and brought back to their white “parents” or ther institutions they were confined to.

Naturally, this caused severe psychological and mental illnesses, distress. Many of these “Stolen” people suffered badly, and still do to this day.

Gradually attudes changed and it was realised the harm this had caused. The previous Liberal-National Party (conservative) governments refused to apologise, mainly with the excuse that they felt it would open the floodgates for law suits for compensation.

But really, this was pure racism. This was white supremacy. This was the attitude that “We only did this with the best of intentions” and we don’t feel we should have to apologise. So the L-NP governments, with that racist prime minister John Howard, took the lead in refusing any apology, despite a massive change in community attitudes in favour of apologising. In the early 2000s thare was a mass march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to show public solidarity in favour of an apology. Yet Racist-in-Chief PM Howard went as far as actually prohibiting any members of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party from joing the march!!

Finally, in 2008 and with Labor back in power, the new Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made an apology on the floor of the House of Representatives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apology_to_Australia%27s_Indigenous_peoples). I thought it was dignified and reverential. I was proud to hear it.

Did the sky fall in? Did law suits start flying out of the lawyers’ chambers? Were there marches down Pitt Street demanding this apology be reversed? OF COURSE NOT!

Yet my friend mocks PM Rudd and doesn’t think this apology was right. Calls PM Rudd Elmer Fudd. Ha ha.

I’m very sad for him. He can dress it up all he likes, make any excuses, but to deny this apology is racism, pure and simple. I’m very saddened. It’s shameful.

There’s no doubt in my mind, Australia is still very much a racist country.

Haematuria. That’s a polite way of saying there’s blood in me piss. A lot. This is the third day. This happened a couple of years ago and the GP seemed unconcerned. Sure enough, it stopped after a couple of days. Could I have a kidney stone and not be aware of it? Time will tell.

Meanwhile, it’s too bloody cold for me. My tiny fingers are frozen. Crumbs, it’s only 17C, a balmy summer day in northern hemisphere climates, but it’s too cold for me.

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I’m not a touch-typist and I need to look at the keyboard as I type. But I do make mistakes and I find I instinctively know it when I do. Something just feels wrong and I know I have to look up and correct it. It’s like editing in my head. In addition, I always read my typing back. It’s obvious to me that most Facebook people don’t bother to read what they’ve typed. The errors are so glaring that they can’t possibly have read it back. So careless, so lazy, so slapdash. It’s typical of lazy Australian people, I think.

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I’m not very proud of us as a nation. We do produce some outstanding people in innovation, sport, science and so on, but the laziness, the “near enough’s good enough” attitudes, the slapdash workmanship, the racism, the crudeness, the lack of manners … I could go on.

I remember years ago that a guy in WA was making small ornaments out of welded railway spikes, with bits of rod and nuts and washers welded together, set on a wooden base. They were crude junk, but they sold. I was friendly with a Japanese lady at the time and I remember feeling embarrassed that she would see them. I didn’t want her to think that it was all we could do.

I compared them to the beautiful craftsmanship of Japanese artisans in their wood carvings, lacquer work, masks, calligraphy, costumes, dolls, swords and knives and so on. A Japanese craftsman would laugh at those rough, crude junky ornaments being produced in WA. Actually, he absolutely would not laugh, Japanese are too polite to do that.

This is a metaphor for much of the work we produce in Australia. Yes, there are shining examples of top level work, but most of the “stuff” we produce is just that – stuff, rubbish.

It’s very noticeable to me that most of the examples of outstanding work here, in whatever field, art, sculpture, architecture and so on, are done by immigrants. People from Britain, Italy, Scandinavia, other parts of Europe. They might live in WA or elsewhere in Australia, but their talent comes from their countries of origin, not from Australia.

I’m also pretty tired of programs about what a great nation of inventors we are, with the old saws about the stump jump plow and the Hills Hoist. I will give credit to a few innovations like the polymer bank notes and the Cochlear implants, but show me something on the scale of the Boeing 747 or the Concord or the F-22 fighter aircraft, or a thousand other British, American or Japanese inventions. We don’t work on the same level.

This will be controversial.

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I notice the next financial debacle is developing, courtesy of Malcolm Turnbull, “The man who trashed Australia’s broadband fibre-optic network”.

This is the man who, as minister for communications and the man who thinks he understands technology, had to change things about the NBN when the Liberals got into power in 2014 just so he had a point of difference from the previous Labor government, the visionary innovators of the scheme.

Yes, it was going to be expensive and it was taking a long time to develop, but Turnbull wanted it done faster and cheaper. So he made major changes that have rendered it to be a sub-standard network, compared to the rest of the world. New Zealand had gigabit (1,000Mb/s) fibre, country wide, years ago. We still don’t have it! Australia ranks something like 37th in the world in internet speed rates.

Anyway, his other big idea was Snowy pumped hydro. Build (dig) tunnels through the Snowy Mountains linking high and lower level existing dams, and pump water up to the top level dams in the day time using solar power, letting it speed down these new tunnels at night to drive the turbines lower down.

In theory, it works. But as usual, the costings and the time scales were way off the mark. I think the initial cost estimate was around $2 billion, with completion around 2026, and five years later the cost has already blown out to around $10bn with completion maybe 2030.

The project is currently stalled, with one of the tunnel boring machines stuck in a tunnel only about 100m in. It seems no-one realised there was a soft sandy deposit above, which collpased on the machine. now they’re trying to dig it out. What an embarrassment.

I’ve also read that the financials just don’t add up. The initial costings didn’t include the cost of the new transmission lines to get the extra power from the Snowy Mountains to Sydney and Melbourne.

As I said, it’s just another debacle to the credit of egomaniac politicians.

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One Aussie thing I will take my hat off to is Utopia, the ABC-TV program at 8pm on Wednesday nights, made by Working Dog Productions and starring Rob Sitch.

What a fabulous program! If you haven’t seen it, it’s a send up (but without a laugh track) of a fictitious government department, the Nation Building Authority (NBA). It’s filled with characters based on observations of the way real government departments operate. Only a few of the characters have any ability – the rest just get by, or their blunders are not noticed. Rob Sitch plays the head of the authority, constantly battling to inject rationality into the crazy ideas of politicians and other wannabe power trippers. It’s brilliant!

Many people who have worked in government comment that it’s like an operations manual, an eye-in-the-sky for the real life in government departments. One or two competent people constantly battling the hangers-on, the egomaniacs, the time servers and wasters. Sigh.

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I’ve just finished watching a Netflix series called The Days. It’s Japanese made with dubbed dialogue, about “the days” after the 2011 Fukushima earthquake and subsequent nuclear power station meltdowns. It’s a true story and it’s still going on. It’s not over, by a long shot.

There are eight 1hr episodes and it’s a drag to watch. It’s very well made, showing the devastation that the earthquake produced in the power plants, but it’s so s-l-o-w. I thought about giving up a few times, but I watched it all.

What it showed is the incompetence of many of the politicians, heads of government departments and engineers. Many of them didn’t know the answers when asked questions and just sat there with their mouths open.

But what made it especially slow was the long silences between speakers. Sometimes the characters took 10, 15, 20 seconds of slack jawed silence in the dialogue. Was this real? Is this the way Japanese speak? It got very tiresome.

The thing is, this is real, this is ongoing even now in 2023. The fuel rods in the reactors really were exposed when the cooling water pumps failed due to loss of electrical power and started to melt through the concrete containment vessels. No kidding. The only way they can keep it cool even now, 12 years later, is to use sea water to cool them. The result is that the sea water becomes contaminated with radioactivity and has to be stored in giant tanks.

The problem now is that they’ve run out of storage. They don’t have room for more tanks, so they are going to have to release huge amounts of this radioactive water into the sea again.

Naturally, this is causing huge controversy, but what choice do they have? There is no other way. They are banking on the dilution of the ocean to solve the problem. It may be OK, but I wouldn’t be buying any fish caught off the NE coast of Japan for the next few decades.

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I’ve just read an item in last weekend’s newspaper that set me back on my heels. Like many people I’ve stopped using cash, coins and notes, in my everyday life. I haven’t used an ATM in several years, I couldn’t pay the lawn mowing man last week because I don’t have any notes/change.

But something I hadn’t thought of is that this is killing busking. You know, street performers who ask for donations ino their “hat” as they make music or dance or whatever on the footpath outside shops. The trouble is, people don’t have coins or cash any more to donate. Wow, I hadn’t thought of that.