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Edition 336 – Thoughts From the Ride-On Mower

Written by Dean Robinson.

This week, some random thoughts and observations.

  1. One of our sons was complaining about the cost of a dental check-up. After his private health insurance refund, it’s still less than the cost of the tattoo he recently acquired. He’s changing dentists, but not tattoo “artists”.
  2. Further to tattoos, when I was growing up, they were borne by merchant seaman, bikies or ex-cons. Call me old fashioned, but I still don’t like them today.
  3. The fine in New South Wales for speeding up to 10 km/h over the limit is one demerit point and $124. The fine for not keeping left on an 80 km/h or greater road is $324 and two demerit points. If they policed the “keep left” rule, they’d raise a lot more money and keep a lot of other drivers happy. It might help traffic flow too!
  4. Half way between our home and Camden is a sewerage treatment plant servicing the suburbs of South Western Sydney. It’s undergoing expansion at the moment. Four times this year, construction has stopped as the site has been partially inundated by flood waters. It makes you wonder who signed off on something that, once fully operational, has the potential to create a major environmental hazard when we have another flood.
  5. Do the people who throw their fast food rubbish out their car window also complain about climate change, the loss of biodiversity in a growing city and the impact on native wildlife of urbanisation? If you care about the environment, isn’t it “all in”?
  6. I still think it’s odd that people are jumping into Electric Cars that are, essentially, powered by coal fired power stations. By doing that, aren’t we using fossil fuels to alleviate the use of fossil fuels?
  7. If you’re an employee and you’re refusing your employer’s request to return to the office and “demanding” to work from home, have you yet figured out that if your job can be performed remotely, the Phillipines, India and Vietnam have sophisticated setups that can perform the same role, at less than half the cost?
  8. Sri Lanka is a country in turmoil and has been hit hard, economically, by COVID – no petrol, the Government running out of money and an insurmountable debt issue. If you keep an eye on the news, did you notice how the turmoil subsided whilst the Australian Cricket team undertook their recent historic tour? Just for a moment, the power of sport took away the worries of the everyday people in the street.
  9. In June this year, Qantas cancelled 8% of their scheduled flights and 44% of their flights were delayed to some degree. Whilst aviation logistics are a worldwide problem right now, at what point does Qantas cease being a premium product and thus create it’s own death spiral?
  10. In New South Wales, our Government is engulfed in a scandal around the appointment of the former Deputy Premier to a plum overseas posting at $500K pa. When the relevant individuals in power were white-boarding this scenario, did they not stop to ask  “does this smell”? We’ve already lost an excellent Premier in the past 12 months to the sniff of corruption. My guess is that this “own-goal” could lead to the loss of what has actually been a very good State Government at next year’s election.

This Week’s Tip

” Have you ever noticed when you crank up the lawn mowers or hop in the car,
power down the windows and power up the music, how random thoughts enter your head?.”