paulry

Blimey, it's like a morgue in the Australian groups. No-one posted anything for over 15 hours

GarryP

Not so much "Comfortably Numb" as "Bloody Cold".

Thing is, you can't talk politics because of the nonsensical junk you will get back. And the social thing gets anodyne. Even the football is just waiting for teams to get knocked out. I post space things when something interesting happens (to glorious silence) mainly because it's one area where positive things are happening. Finding Australian things worthy of note is difficult.

Maybe we should be talking about reusable bags and the best way to deal with that annoyance?

Amazulu

Anodyne 🤣

Beoz

See. I said you wouldn't have anything worthy to politically talk about.

However, the football is hotting up. The Mex, Swede, German group going down to the wire.

An England upset to Panama tonight to really spice it up.

paulry

You can say that again, it's back to -4 here in Canbrrrra, but this year we can't complain, we got past mid winters day before the temps went sub zero

Re-usable bags? Aren't the elimination of plastic straws the national priority these days? They're going to save the planet apparently. Can't wait to begin using those lovely paper ones again.

GarryP

It's a proven fact that the best thing you can do, environmentally, is to not have kids. So we should be implementing a baby tax rather than baby bonus if we really want to save the planet.

And those plastic bags should have another use ......

paulry

Yep, the elephant in the room: People.

Amazulu

Only a problem in 3rd and 2nd world countries - in the west we need more babies if we want our society as we know it to continue - so baby bonus it is

Amazulu

Plastic bags, plastic straws, coal-fired power stations - virtue-signalling so middle-class western white people can feel like they're 'doing their bit' and get a warm fuzzy feeling

We live in f**ked up times

quoll

spouse of scouse

Howdy Paulry, haven't seen you around here in yonks!

paulry

Wasn't the 21st mid winters day? I know that a bunch of nutters went skinny dipping in Lake Burley Griffin the other day to mark the winter solstice. I reckon there was more danger posed to them by the toxic waters than by the freezing cold!

We've been pretty lucky here in Canberra with the weather so far. Not very cold yet though we had a couple of days of minus 5 late last week. We seem to have had more rain lately too. I don't know how much you've been keeping up with things here lately, but they tested a tram last week. All those majestic trees down Northbourne Avenue have been torn down, Mac House is no more and the rego building at Dickson has been demolished. The place is looking like a huge building site these days. On the bright side the shiny new University of Canberra Hospital opened up a couple of weeks ago.... If you haven't been back for a few years you would be astonished at all the changes. It's still a nice place to live though....

paulry

Hi there B! How's life in Liverpool treating you? Are you talking like a scouser yet?

carcajou

My local supermarket (independent) has already implemented a plastic bag ban, but will sell you one of their reusable ones for $4. I don't mind that in principle but I keep forgetting to bring the bag. So $4, $4, $4, over and over. Have to learn new habits.

paulry

In the ACT the supermarkets can't give away free plastic bags any more but you can buy re-usable ones for 15c each. Everyone seems to have adapted very well to it. I think the a step further would be to do away with plastic bags altogether and sell paper ones and the reusable cloth-like ones. They need to tackle single use plastic packaging next. Milk and fizzy drink bottles, and meat packaging. Milk could be sold in cardboard cartons, and drinks in refundable uniform glass bottles in refundable wooden crates, the only thing to differentiate one drink brand from another being the paper label. Meat can go into cardboard cartons, with if need be have just a little preferably biodegradable plastic "window" to view what is inside.

Interesting (and worrying) thing is they reckon much of the micro-plastic that enters sea comes from clothes fibres when they're washed. With that in mind all washing machines should be sold complete with filters to capture all those fibres.