coljones

Often, the Emperor, without clothes, is reluctant to admit that he is naked, despite all the evidence.

I live a couple of miles from Macot. There is a regular procession of big planes taking off from Macot heading to Millers Storage,a big orange building, on Parramatta Rd, Petersham before turning left and flying between my house and the house next door at 2500ft. It gets very busy as the stragglers attempt to get out because of the curfew. It doesn't really worry me as I know that it will be me every now and then jetting off the get the healing waters of some holy place or bar outside Sydney. However, what pisses me off is the sanctimonious bleating of those, particularly in the northern suburbs and the Blue Mountains, who drive all the way to Mascot (thanks for clogging up my streets) hopping on to an aeroplane, dumping noise all over my house and having the hide to complain when the odd plane goes over at 10,000 feet. Ah, the pains of living in the inner west - you can hear the gnashing of teeth and rending of hair shirts for hundreds of miles. Put the airport at Goulburn? Just another solution looking for a problem!!

Yes, of course. The full letter in http://recreationalflying.com/threads/jabiru-2016-update.145712/ talks about the good stuff as well and deserves a read

Jabiru was heard to say "The CASA limitations are unfortunately still in place. Information we have received tells us that the on-going airworthiness department of CASA has no further issues with Jabiru. We are unsure of the reasons why the limitations are still in place. It would appear that the matter of lifting these restrictions may be held up by the legal department. We would of course like the limitations to be lifted as soon as possible. We continue to provide correspondence to CASA, Mr Warren Truss MP and our local members of parliament. The more correspondence they receive on the impact the limitations continue to have on owners and operators will assist. Correspondence can be sent to CASA, your local member, Mr Warren Truss MP at [email protected] and the Industry Complaints Commissioner CASA [email protected]"

The way to fix it would be to allow preferences above the line with the votes contained to only those groups selected. Given that even the 50th preference matters we should perhaps require prefs up to,say, a minimum of 42 (twice the number to be elected) below the line or require prefs of up to , say, a minimum of 6 groups above the line. Voters would be free to continue voting beyond the minimum. I like the idea of 2 men and a dog nominating because we end up with some interesting candidates. Sure we end up with some clowns like Harridine but we also end up with some good ones like Xenophon. Voting a party ticket will generally deliver a mass of party hacks and drones.

The balance of power is actually held by either the Government or the opposition. The independants are nothing unless the government or opposition are up to no good. If the Government and opposition stopped adopting a winner take all position then more legislation would get passed by the government and opposition combining to squeeze the independants out. I don't mind a bit of bloody mindedness from pollies. Those from the backbenches in either the government are generally gutless and lazy and it is usually up to the independants to cry foul when the emperors have no clothes. "Unrepresentative swill" - not likely, the Senate far better represents the aspirations of the voters than does the lower house where each seat is won on a winner take all basis. It is entirely possible, but unlikely, that a single party can win ALL seats in the lower house, whereas the Senators are roughly elected to represent the population at large. The 0.05%ers get in because at the end of counting everyone has had a gutful of the offerings by the main parties and the remaining crumbs are thrown to the minors. Ricky Muir had more votes than the Liberal and ALP candidates that he beat. Another prob is that the Liberals and ALP won't get together to fix up the mess they created with complicated, almost secret, voting deals that push preferences to the fringes. The Shooters as a group are appalling as they don't negotiate but will go on strike unless they get their own way. Barrel O'Farrell should have told the Shooters, Fred Nile, Alan Jones and Ray Hadley to collectively shove it because they were trying to wag the dog.

Free of party influence may also indicate that he will have all the answers at his fingertips but be totally unaware of what the questions are. Parliament covers a vast legislative and administrative territory and it helps if there are political advisors and public servants matching up answers to questions. Independants can be suckered by the government and opposition on a wide range of issues.

If the government has a clear majority, then the only people able to effect change are the Prime Minister, Cabinet, lobbyists and a few favoured vested interests. When the government majority is slimmer Cabinet will talk to the independants and if they get cranky may resort to talking to the ALP or Greens. In the current climate, Dick Smith in the Senate might achieve some success, in the lower house he would have to work a lot harder unless there was a hung parliament, as there was under Gillard. The backbenchers are shut out of much of the decision making process and their main role becomes helping constituents solve problems with the public service or as shock troops selling leadership decisions (including captain's calls) to a cynical public.

https://www.comlaw.gov.au/Series/F2015L00974 Has anyone any updates? It is now becoming beyond tedious. Has it become like Iraq's WMD?

Actually there are policies put up by the winners that wouldn't garner support of 50% of their supporters let alone being opposed by the losers. It is all a bit like football - you have supported the team for 50 years, you are unlikely to change, you are not part of the decision making process, you know that 20% of the team are there as stocking stuffers related to the board and coach, you live in vainglorious hope that they will win anyway. Bit of a bugger really. Would anyone consider that Abetz, Conroy, Ferguson, Bernardi or Andrews as representative of a broad cross section of Australians?

In quite a lot of things we accept the will of the minority. Start with politicians salaries and work your way out from there. The ALP gets a minority of votes and gets propped up by the Greens - the Liberal Party gets a minority of votes and gets propped up by the Country Party. It goes on and on. However, the aim of governing for all should be to maximise the benefits to the majority without destroying the rights of the minority and not just pandering to the noisy. If each policy being offered up was on the ballot paper with a tick box alongside it we MIGHT determine what the WILL of the majority was but we don't so we can't and all the crap about an electoral mandate is just crap. The little known policies were usually the result of the leader speaking out loud in the loo or suddenly waking up with a "captain's pick" and then being pushed as a "mandate" on a bemused and gutless party and gullible public usually well after the election. It is always worthwhile considering which, so called "far reaching and nationally important" policies actually make it as legislation. More recently, how did Abbot behave? Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, Andrew Bolt et al may tell you that they speak for the worker, the family or farmers on Struggle Street, everyman but really they are just bully boys pushing some sort of barrow for some sectional minority interest which on the odd occasion might align with what the majority considers fair and reasonable, but not often.

Actually a send up of UK/Europe where meat prices (and rent) are sky high forcing people to ditch meat from their diets. The vegan touch might also reflect on the high cost of any animal protein including cheeses. They turn into latterday Goldwing riders, such is their despair (and have probably descended into Apple users as well. Pity, most are actually nice people.

Robbo, don't believe a bit of it. Was it the truth or did you read it in the Herald -Sun? I tried Kale once and now I am back to Iceberg Lettuce. It would be good if they did incinerate Kale and all those fake lettuces.

Yes the people at CLARC are very helpful. Can't say the same for the idiots behind the Jabiru engine debacle. It has now been over 12 months and CASA has frozen into a death like rigor mortis.

The chiefs and priests worked out that pork was causing sickness so they told the people not to eat it because god commanded it. Saved a lot of lives. In places like Australia Pork Production is very hygienic and disease free but you can't say that about the rest of the world which is why you have to cook pork well OS or adopt Mosaic, Kosher, Halal or non pork diets. One of the best Bunnings sausages in a roll I have ever had was halal from the local muslim girls football team at Greenacre. Probably a good beef sausage, not the usual non-descript, fatty, rancid, indescribable ones usually dished up. Halal - made to a standard not a price.

I spend a lot of time in the sydney basin on 124.55 and I wouldn't say that it is particularly heavily used. The point of using Area Frequency outside a CTAF is that you have to start somewhere. If one were to use a "secret" frequency at a private, secret strip then there is a high degree of likely hood that someone cruising by at 500 feet (as one can do over not over inhabited spaces) will not have a clue that others are there doing whatever one does at unmapped strips and be in and become part of a dangerous encounter with no warning. 124.55 has much less radio congestion than, say, YSBK. On a recent trip to YGLB and Nowra the radio beyond Mittagong was almost silent for over an hour, nowhere near congested and it would have been a relief to hear a bit of chatter to break the silence. Maybe 126.7 below 5000 would work but it is another rule you have to remember and there is potential conflict at the boundary. IMMHO

I have acquired a 2nd hand CD-110s Bluetooth GPS Receiver recently but no books or software. I have been told that it can do some interesting things. A search of the internet turned up a pretty rudimentary propaganda sheet but nothing else. Can anyone give me a copy of a manual or software for this beasty. Thanks Col

https://www.casa.gov.au/sites/g/files/net351/f/_assets/main/lib100191/rr61_medical_fs.pdf you can fly a PPL with a RAMPC - there are limits to what you can do with it though - generally 1 PAX, SE max 1500Kg, DayVFR, under 10,000ft. One thing you can't do is a PPL Flight test without a class 1 or 2 medical. (whoops, another stuffup with Part61). If you have a safety pilot with a class 1 or 2 you can do more.

there were a few revolutions in uk but the main ones were to get rid of the excrable Stewarts culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution.

I don't see that France is running Europe - Germany is the one with money although the Greeks would like it to be anyone other than Germany with the ability to bail the other EU states out.

if they did their day job properly they wouldn't have time to go metadata mining.

Well does Kasper, you have established for yourself the basis of the 1 in 60 rule.

http://io9.com/5977095/why-we-should-switch-to-a-base-12-counting-system

you could always convert to decimal. If the frogs were real mathematicians they would have declared the metre to be 1/2000 of a nautical mile rather than a very poor approximation of the distance from Paris to the north pole (or was it the length of the kings hip). Base 12 is actually very good because it is much easier to package a dozen (4x3, 6x2) than decimal (only 5x2) and 1/8ths are easy to estimate - just keep folding in half - very hard to do for 10ths

VFR by OzRunways seems pretty good although the developer needs to be encouraged to complete the project with a whole stack of extra features. I am sure apple has bribed ozrunways to not fully feature VFR. I also use GPS Test by Chartcross to directly check the GPS performance of my tablet, Android 9. I have tried VFR on a SamSung 5s but, for me, the screen seems a tad small for navigation. I was bidding on a Nexus 7 on EBAy the other day but it went off while I was asleep. it seems that 32GB with WiFi and 4g is the minimum for navs. any views.