New Prime Minister

Bexter

Project QL Intern
Mar 13, 2007
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Western Australia
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Well, after 11.5 years Australia now has a new Prime Minister.

For anyone who cares I would like to point out that John Howard was the longest serving and in my opinion the best Prime Minister Australia has ever had. I didn't always agree with what he did or said but always admired his dedication and that he never compromised on the things he truly beleived in. After 11 years Australia has a brilliant economy and the lowest unemployment rate ever (which begs the question... why would you turf out the govt which produced that) As this is one of the few forums I have an involvement in I would like to use it to express my deepest appreciation of the Honorable Mr John Howard, my sincerest best wishes to him and his future and to Kevin Rudd I say.....

.....You have big shoes to fill!!! I hope you're up to it.

For any ALP supporters who are reading (however unlikey) I wish to say, I'm not devestated Kevin Rudd is our new Prime Minister, he's the best the ALP has had to offer since Hawkey. If John Howard had to lose to anyone, I'm glad its him.
 
Nice to know someone in some country finds an interest in the government - if you lived in "good ol' blighty" as no one likes to call it you'd be shocked by the extornianate prices of like everything - including my lifeblood >>> DVD's and Tropicana OJ (you know that stuff costs like 50 cents in the US? Over here its about £1.20 that is a 500% increase, but enough of my ranting...) the public transport system is a joke as well, when I lived in London 4 years ago they introduced the congestion charge in order to - and i'll quote:

"produce a safer and less congested city with public transportation creating an environmentally friendly alternative to automobiles"
What exactly is enviro-friendly about a 30ft bus hurtling past you with the driver going muahahaha at me at the bus stop in the british rain - I blame the mayor. And the economy. Oh and of course Sony.

^^^^Well looking up I seem to have ummm ranted. Again :rolleyes . Anyways here's hoping Australia can keep up the good work for the country!​
 
Enterprise said:
^^^^Well looking up I seem to have ummm ranted. Again :rolleyes . Anyways here's hoping Australia can keep up the good work for the country!
you are most welcome rant as long as you wish, its always good to get things off your chest using whatever means availalbe to you.

There are those who rant about our health system, school system, public transport system etc etc over here. And yes they could all do with improvement. BUT, honestly, compared to almost every other country in the world what we have here is top rate. I have a roof over my head and food on my table and should my children get sick we have one of the best (free) Childrens Hospital in the world less than an hours drive away. What more can you ask for.
 
This post is not on-topic, but something Enterprise said caught my eye:

Tropicana OJ (you know that stuff costs like 50 cents in the US? Over here its about £1.20 that is a 500% increase, but enough of my ranting...)
I did a quick Google search, since I couldn't turn up anything on any websites for the local grocers, and I can't exactly pop by the store right now (it's 2:30am). Here is what I found.

I can't remember when orange juice was 50 cents. Well, not the quarts, anyway.
 
Al The Observer said:
This post is not on-topic, but something Enterprise said caught my eye:


I did a quick Google search, since I couldn't turn up anything on any websites for the local grocers, and I can't exactly pop by the store right now (it's 2:30am). Here is what I found.

I can't remember when orange juice was 50 cents. Well, not the quarts, anyway.

OK so maybe I exaggerated a teensy bit, but because of the strength of the £ against the $ I'm not far off (Luurrrvvly Tropicana costs £1.20 for 0.5l in UK and I'd reckon it's about $2.50 in the US for a litre, sound right? Now you see my point.)

I do love living in the UK though - no matter the problems. We get the NHS and therefore free healthcare, education is well supported and encouraged and crime rates are relatively low. We also have some of the most illustrious and rich history in the western world - makes you proud to be british as if Winston Churchill had stomped into the room with a bulldog under his arm, kicking a football, waving a Union Jack flag and whistling the theme to The Great Escape!
 
Enterprise said:
OK so maybe I exaggerated a teensy bit,

Hey - you should never let the truth get in the way of a good story :lol

Enterprise said:
I do love living in the UK though - no matter the problems. We get the NHS and therefore free healthcare, education is well supported and encouraged and crime rates are relatively low. We also have some of the most illustrious and rich history in the western world - makes you proud to be british as if Winston Churchill had stomped into the room with a bulldog under his arm, kicking a football, waving a Union Jack flag and whistling the theme to The Great Escape!

Same over here too, except for the illustrious and rich history. I guess ours is illustious and rich, just not very long.

Question: :wacko What the hell is a quart? Do you mean a quarter of a pint? Funny how we australians are very british but we are as metric as you can get. I do know a pint is 600ml so I guess 1/4 of a pint is 150ml. Thats a very small drink.:cheers
 
Bexter said:
Question: :wacko What the hell is a quart? Do you mean a quarter of a pint? Funny how we australians are very british but we are as metric as you can get. I do know a pint is 600ml so I guess 1/4 of a pint is 150ml. Thats a very small drink.:cheers

No, a quart is a quarter of a gallon, which is.... not equivalent to anything metric. :) A quart is a little less than a liter. I think 2 pints make a quart.

We started converting to the metric system in the 1970s. Then Ronnie Ray-gun decided we didn't need that fancy metric stuff, and the conversion stopped. This left us in a peculiar situation where some products were converted to metric measurements and some weren't. Thus we buy soda by the liter, but milk and OJ by the quart or half gallon. Go figure.
 
Ok, according to the you-beaut (really good) convertor i just found on google, a US Liquid gallon is equal to approx 3.8 litres so a 1/4 pint is 950mls. As Snish said, a little less than a litre. 2 pints is 1.9 litrs, would be almost 1/2 a gallon. And over here we spell it Litre, not liter. Just like we spell colour like that not color.

So ATO you are right I can't imagine ANYWHERE where you'd get orange juice for .50c for a litre. over here a litre of orange juice is about $2, however I haven't bought organge juice in years so am not really sure.

TOTALLY OFF TOPIC AND PROB OF NO INTEREST TO ANYONE!!!
OH WOW!!! While i was sitting here totally ignoring my son, he used his potty, took it down to the loo and flushed it away all by himself, WITHOUT me standing over him saying "don't forget to use your potty" over and over like a broken record WOW WOW WOW!! Very exciting! He is developmentally delayed and toilet training is not easy and rather demoralizing for his mother (thats me). If he can be toilet trained by January I may be able to get him into a special kindy program that will help him a lot, but they will only take them if they are toilet trained.:hurray: :hurray: :hurray:
 
In the UK it's like pints/SLASH/litres for milk and juice and stuff, and alcohol is pints and quarts. The whole country is supposed to be moving toward a metric full on thingy but due to the british refusal to convert to Euro's (A good thing, I don't want to shop with monopoly money!) we are in a kind of limbo.

In fact the UK has officially been metric since the late 70's, early 80's but some stuff is still imperial measurement - yes I did my research!
(Well asked my parents anywho...) At least we don't measure distances in cubics and stuff - that would be bizarre.
 
Isn't asking your parents the ultimate in researching???

I thought it was anyway! First ask my husband, then if he doesn't know ask my dad and if he doesn't know then ask husband's dad and if he doesn't know, then it probably wasn't really worth knowing in the first place anyway.
 
Bexter said:
TOTALLY OFF TOPIC AND PROB OF NO INTEREST TO ANYONE!!!
OH WOW!!! While i was sitting here totally ignoring my son, he used his potty, took it down to the loo and flushed it away all by himself, WITHOUT me standing over him saying "don't forget to use your potty" over and over like a broken record WOW WOW WOW!! Very exciting! He is developmentally delayed and toilet training is not easy and rather demoralizing for his mother (thats me). If he can be toilet trained by January I may be able to get him into a special kindy program that will help him a lot, but they will only take them if they are toilet trained.:hurray: :hurray: :hurray:

Wow. My day is now complete. #Runs away from crazed mother >>>#:lol

Seriously I feel foolish for even thinking orange juice is 50 cents - I am not up to scratch with US grocery products OK?! Give me some credit at least I didn't refer to the money as shillings. Sheesh.
 
Ha Ha!! Don't feel foolish! As I said exageration is totally acceptable when relating a good story.

Glad I made your day!! It made mine - Yes I know, I don't get out much!!!

But seriously, little acheivements can be very exciting when a child has problems, I know it doesn't mean much to others, but when people look at your child and you can see they are thinking "there is something wrong with that kid" it just makes you feel sick inside. When you start winning a little battle you are fighting it makes you want to shout it out to everybody, hence my post above. Its all ups and downs, the ups are very up and the downs, well lets just not go there.
 
I'm happy for you Bexter. Good luck with your kid in the future m'kay?!

PS: Yeah it's 23:55pm, I have college tommorow and what are you going to do about it? Uhh wait, what's that? #looks up# my god she's airborne!!!!! #Runs like the wind#
 
Bexter said:
TOTALLY OFF TOPIC AND PROB OF NO INTEREST TO ANYONE!!!
OH WOW!!! While i was sitting here totally ignoring my son, he used his potty, took it down to the loo and flushed it away all by himself, WITHOUT me standing over him saying "don't forget to use your potty" over and over like a broken record WOW WOW WOW!! Very exciting!

Congratulations to your little one, Bexter! I'm not a mother, but I can dimly imagine what it would be like to struggle with this kind of thing. So I can dimly imagine how happy this made you. :) (I'm actually a wicked stepmother. You better believe I know all about evil laughter....)
 
Okay, Enterprise. I went to the grocery store just for you. Well actually, I went for bread and milk (is it going to snow?), but I made a special trip to Produce just for you. Tropicana Orange Juice is $3.79 (£1.83) for a half-gallon, and $5.99 (£2.89) for a gallon.

Bexter, that equates to $4.30 (Australian Dollars) for 1.9 Litres, and $6.80 for 3.8 Litres.

Enterprise, don't feel badly for not knowing what things cost over here. I can't even keep up with the exchange rate anymore! :hair

Bexter, congratulations are in order for your son! :hurray:
 
Thanks guys for your kindness regarding Chris, he is doing well. Big problem at moment is his walking, always walking on his toes, am trying to discourage that, he probably needs some occupational therapy so i need to look into that.

I think the price of OJ is pretty on par with here. $4.30 for approx 2 litres is about right but $6.80 for almost 4 is quite cheap.
 
Al The Observer said:
Okay, Enterprise. I went to the grocery store just for you. Well actually, I went for bread and milk (is it going to snow?), but I made a special trip to Produce just for you. Tropicana Orange Juice is $3.79 (£1.83) for a half-gallon, and $5.99 (£2.89) for a gallon.

Bexter, that equates to $4.30 (Australian Dollars) for 1.9 Litres, and $6.80 for 3.8 Litres.

Enterprise, don't feel badly for not knowing what things cost over here. I can't even keep up with the exchange rate anymore! :hair

Bexter, congratulations are in order for your son! :hurray:

No worries mate, you Observe, it's what you do....

MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Now I know the price of Tropicana in the US, I can rule the world!!!! :lol
 
Personally I think John Howard is the WORST prime minister Australia has ever had, and I'm so glad that Australia (finally) got it right, and I think by the absolute landslide Australia must have been in agreeance.

I'm not going to go into the politics, but already Kevin Rudd has proven to be more in touch with the Australian public than Johnny ever was by joining KYOTO and making sure every student in Australia has access to a computer...

But I do agree with you on one thing Bexter... Australia is the BEST country in the world!!!
 
naggindragon said:
I'm not going to go into the politics, but already Kevin Rudd has proven to be more in touch with the Australian public than Johnny ever was by joining KYOTO and making sure every student in Australia has access to a computer...

But I do agree with you on one thing Bexter... Australia is the BEST country in the world!!!

They were talking about that on the radio yesterday and some political commentator was whinging about how with one stroke of his pen, Kevin has cost australia $X billion (can't remember exact figure), something to do with not meeting quota by 2012 he'd have to pay this amount to developing countries blah blah blah....

Sounded all doom and gloom but the radio announcer put it in perspective by pointing out that the amount referred to was actually the same amount it cost to build the Perth/Mandurah leg of the railway and in the big scheme of things it wasn't really that much... Sort of took the wind out of his sails and it was really quite funny.

I do think Johnny was a good Prime Minister in a lot of areas, but not all. Climate Change was one of them where he significantly lacked enthusiasm. As I said, If they had to lose to anyone I'm glad its Kevin Rudd. I have been reading a little more about him this week and there are some things that I didn't know which have made me a little more optimistic about his leadership. Hey I may even vote for him the next time round :D