Where’s Doll?
This weekend, rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing and, ah, rehearsing for few upcoming gigs.
First up with some hippy, guitar twanger who’ll be accompanying her for a few shows at the Gladstone Harbour Festival next weekend:
Then with the Dust Devils at the Boyne Valley Music Campout on the 13th April:
Rounding off the month with the Kenny and Dolly Show at The Club on Saturday the 27th April with Joshua Fussell:
So basically, I’m saying this a lot:
Council Count Continues
Just ask Vlad who managed to crack 140% of the vote last week to become Pres, again:
All jokes aside, fortunately here in Oz we have proper electoral scrutiny, and it’s because of this I can safely say it will take a miracle for Jess to get in at this stage.
But, we’re all immensely proud of her for giving it a red hot go at such short notice.
She really rattled a few cages and that was certainly worth the price of admission.
One of her statements really rang true though:
“If I was a 28 year old businessman, everyone would be saying, ‘Good on you for having a go!’ But as a 28 year old woman, I’ve been told I’m too young, or not experienced enough to stand!”
I actually heard one of her competitors more or less say this on stage at a Meet the Candidates session.
I felt like throwing my boot at the old coot!
On the bright side, at least the door isn’t completely closed to her… not like in some places:
AUKUS SUX
The Aukus submarine contract is still making me fume.
It was one of the many Scott Morrison hand grenades he left for the next mob to defuse, while Scotty Boy got a free ticket to a cushy, high-paying corporate gig with, you guessed it, one of the American companies being paid a motza in Australian taxpayer $ to build the subs.
Well, kick my hat into the shrubbery, what were the odds of that?!
So, to recap, in order to fend off the perceived Chinese threat by 2040, we’re going to build eight submarines.
Which, sadly, will leave us just slightly short of the seventy subs China already has and, this may be a wild assumption, but by 2040, they might have a few more nuclear powered tin cans in their fleet.
But, apparently we must press on with this stinker of a project, and it’s going to cost each Australian, well, a lot of coin.
Let’s break it down:
1 billion = 1,000,000,000 or 1000 millions.
To build 8 subs is going to cost $368 billion.
368 billion = 368,000,000,000 or 368,000 millions.
The cost of each sub is $368 billion divided by 8.
A: each sub is going to cost $46 billion each to build.
46 billion = 46,000,000,000 or 4,600 millions.
To work out the cost of each sub for every man woman and child in Oz we take, 4,600 million divided by 26 million:
A: $1,769 per person.
For all 8 subs: $14,000 per person.
Now, while there are 26 million of us, there are are only 9 million households in this country.
So, the cost per household for all the subs is: $41,000.
Could your household do with $41,000? I know mine could.
So, and here me out, why not scrap the subs, give each Australian household a cash bonanza of say, $30,000 each (cost of $270 billion) and keep a canny 98 billion up our federal fiscal sleeve for, I don’t know, a rainy day, some white flags, to build some cheap houses for the growing number of homeless?
Call me crazy, but with 98 billion clams we could whack up nearly a hundred thousand homes around the country… which might just help drop insane rental prices and/or give a home to some of the 124,000 Australians sleeping on our park benches or in newly sprawling tent cities.
Look, at the end of the day, whichever way I total it, every Australian taxpayer must feel like a pelican; no matter which way we turn, there’s a bloody big bill in front of us.
Happy Snaps
Fire on Curtis Island taken care of by Mother Nature:
Not my car. I stopped to help. I WAS NOT scrounging for spare parts!
The reason we couldn’t see the rain coming this week. The rain radar is getting some much needed TLC… or, technically speaking, the little man inside must have been getting wet, so they replaced his roof:
“Do you think we have enough beer to get through the Easter weekend?”
“Nah, better get some more, just in case.”:
Look, I don’t know what people are doing in these hand basins, but it Stops Now!
If it makes you feel slightly better:
This week, Doll and I found a couple of clear shells on the beach… before we stepped on them:
Those are some classic rims:
Finally, wherever I go these days I feel like I’m being watched:
Thanks for dropping by! Let’s do it all again next weekend
Cheers,
Greg