mike carey

No such luck, if I'd been anywhere today it would have been in Brisbane at the cricket where the West Indies narrowly won its first test match against Australia in this country since 1997. But alas, I've watched both the cricket and the tennis on the TV.

@BSR, in the crowd at the final of the AO just now, there was a sign, 'Sinner, Sinner, Carrot Dinner'!

Dr Blackstock has entered into a serious debate about the apparently entrenched attitudes of medical professionals towards people they don't see as being capable of making accurate assessments of their symptoms. It's not a new observation that doctors make that assumption about anyone who is not a middle to upper class straight white male, and that it's not necessarily a conscious bias on their part. The same issues have been raised in this country but mainly in relation to women, race not being as salient issue here as it is in the US. The rev-head wife of a mechanically illiterate man would recognise a similar experience if she were in the workshop or car show-room with him. As she notes it is a two-way issue with people starting to doubt their own ability to understand their bodies, and so their 'permission' to question the doctor. There is also the distrust of the medical profession to contend with, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments that she mentions being one of the more notorious sources of that distrust. There is a parallel type of distrust here among indigenous communities, of government officials from police to child welfare, because of their historical roles in the removals of, especially mixed race children from indigenous families during the stolen generation. Older women, now grandmothers are the among the elders in those communities and many of them were among the children who were removed, so the distrust is visceral. My take from the interview that it is mainly the attitudinal change she and others see as being needed in the medical profession that she is seeking to address, less so the suspicion level of patients. The issues affect the quality of health care that those subjected to them, women, POC and other minority and disadvantaged groups, are likely to receive. I also didn't get the impression that she was looking at casual racism in health care settings. They are likely to be no more or less prevalent there than in any other facets of life, and although they too can affect the quality of care, they are less likely to be systemic, and so less amenable to the systemic change she advocates.

Yes, the government pension (funded from the current government budget not prior individual contributions, and open to everyone but means tested on a sliding scale based on other income and on assets), is poverty level. I don't qualify for that. Mine is one funded by my lifetime pre-tax contributions, and employer contributions over my career. It started out as a military retirement scheme but was rolled into a fund that complied with the mandatory national superannuation scheme when it was implemented in the 90s.

I feel better off now in terms of available cash flow but that's entirely because I had not started to collect my pension at the start of the pandemic and was spending accrued savings. Since my pension was a lump sum in the pension fund (and would yield an incrementally higher fortnightly payment the longer I delayed starting to draw it down) my then-and-now comparison is an illusion. I have other tax-exposed investments and a tax-protected pension fund that I know are there but don't factor in to my day-to-day financial situation. In the last four years I haven't been spending all my pension income, and six months ago paid cash for a new[er] car, and have been travelling, including hotel rates I would have blanched at in the past (I'm looking at you, InnDulge) and paying to sit closer to the front of the aeroplane. Like @Luv2play my pension is CPI indexed, biannually in my case, and my house has increased in value but I'm not planning to sell it so its value is, for now, immaterial. So whether it's real, an illusion or just that I have settled into a new pattern, I feel better off now than I did in 2020.

Brian!!! Welcome back! Great to see you here again.

This piece caught my attention when I visited the museum.

Not your typical 'critter'. Seen at the beach in Glenelg, in Adelaide last week.

I would have used grotty if the situation arose without even considering whether it had successfully crossed the Atlantic (or the Pacific).

On reflection, guilty as charged, so sorry for that. At first I was only familiar with the name of the operation from the film but have read more about it since. As others have said, knowledge of the battles themselves or the film are a snapshot of a certain time now well in the past. Unconsciously I had been answering the question, 'Is the term a bridge too far really about an actual bridge that was too far away to be captured in WW2', rather than what you wanted to know.

And as Occam's Razor would predict, the film, or rather the book about Operation Market Garden, is the origin of the idiom.

It will be morning soon enough, and then you won't be in the dark! You'll be enlightened.

Louis the 40th!

And with appropriate flair, but never consider an unfashionable one!

I was just reading a newspaper article about Qantas allegedly improving its frequent flyer program in coming months and two comments below the article struck me for different reasons. First, one commented that of 15m members, having only 100 complaints made to a recent Senate committee enquiry was no big deal. I disagree, most Australians wouldn't complain, they'd quietly seeth and if annoyed enough go elsewhere. The second was more insightful. It noted that many treat an airline, or its FF program, like their football team. They wish it well, and continue to support it and hope it gets better. I would add that it doesn't mean they'll watch, or go to all its games, or that they don't have a second team or watch other random games. Edited to add, I'm in Adelaide watching the cricket, and flew here on [really quite good] Virgin Australia business class flights, and I'm a Qantas platinum member.

The better ones do. Ben would be able to guess which ones i know best. But further discussions of that should perhaps be in the Travel Desk. Or at a stretch Fetishes. Or maybe you're right, True Travel Stories!

I'd not heard of it, sounds like a hoot!

@WilliamM's thread on her death has been merged with this earlier one.

Different cards may apply interest in different ways, but my understanding of the method that applies in general to cards in Australia is that the due date, which is at the end of the interest-free period, is the decision point. If you do not pay the balance by then, interest is charged on the amount owing from the date that each charge was debited to your account, so that could be up to 55 days' interest on amounts owing. Interest after that date is then charged on the daily outstanding balance, including any new charges incurred, until the debt is paid down.

I'm listening to the Saturday afternoon sports show on ABC Radio and in between the coverage of the tennis being played and that will be played with the AO starting tomorrow, and the imminent pool rounds of the Asian Cup in Qatar, they had a story about the Bills putting out a call for people to show up at the stadium on Saturday night to shovel snow off the pitch.

I recently bought a half-kilo bag of psyllium husk for about $14, at the supermarket. That's about $US9.50.

I don't think he was saying you did anything shady. Rather, he more likely meant that by saying you'd caught up with Apollo you were throwing shade in a different direction. That was how I read it anyway, and thought it was funny!

If he hasn't answered, are you sure you are using a current active phone number? It's not unknown for escorts who retire or make themselves available only to existing clients to disconnect the contact details they used when they were actively seeking clients.

Alternatively, "If you want more salt, add sliced hot dogs."

Australian humour or naïvety?