Driving without a licence

is something you expect young fools and drunken idiots to do. You do not expect people in their eighties who have been told they are unfit to drive to do.

I know someone who recently lost her licence to drive. It was not unexpected and should have come much earlier than it did. She is not willing to accept the decision and is currently attempting to demand the return of it "at least for the local area". She tells me, "I know I can do it. I know I am safe." 

She tells me this although the last "accident" she had was backing out of her own driveway into the car of the neighbour across the street. I have seen her back into a tree. She is not safe on the road.

Yesterday she phoned me ostensibly about something else. I listened, heard the undertone and wondered what she had done.

"Oh and I needed a couple of things from the supermarket so I got the car out and went. I needed to prove I can still do it. It was perfectly safe."

I tried reasoning with her. I pointed out all the potential consequences. She disagreed. She was "safe" and, if anything had happened, "It would not have been my fault. I was being very careful."

To say that I was appalled would be an understatement. To say I am worried would be an understatement too. What really alarms me is that she has a gopher she will not use. It would be the answer to her local appointments. She has reduced taxi fares for those further away appointments. It would all be cheaper. Yes. it is not as convenient but she has nothing else to do with her time. Other people do her cleaning and essential gardening. She spends her days watching television and doing jigsaw puzzles.

There is nothing I can do. I know she is not "my responsibility" but it does worry me when she tells me these things. Why does she do it?

I hope I can be sensible when I get to the "I cannot do this safely" point...but losing your independence is infuriating.   

Selling things on the internet

is not something I do. I am not one of those people who takes photographs, writes glowing descriptions of "almost new", "never been used", "no longer wanted", "only used once" items and places them none too gently on a website where people might find a "bargain".

As such I am more than grateful to my good friend S... who arrived fully equipped with the tools and the knowledge to do this. S...came yesterday afternoon and we began the task of, hopefully, moving the craft materials which have been left with me. Let me explain.

Last year I was left a large quantity of craft materials. The woman who left them with me no longer runs the business she once ran. She is dying and, with her husband, has moved interstate to be closer to their daughter. Rather than simply pass on the remainder of her materials to a local charity shop, places she does not care for, she told me, "I am giving these things to you. You can sell them for your Africans. I know what it is like there. Most people here don't really need it the way they do." 

It was typical of her attitude towards many things. K... told people rather than asked people. Indeed the first load arrived via her husband who asked me, "Do you know about this?" I did not. We looked at what he was delivering and decided not to upset her. I had vague ideas about parting with it all by delivering quietly to the local charity shop but of course she wants to know what I am actually doing with it.  

I put it off for months, went away, came back and let Christmas slide into Easter. S... offered to help as she is very experienced but she was also unwell. It was not until yesterday we started to deal with it. S... amazed me. I am in awe of her skills. She photographed. She wrote descriptions. She priced things. She was even kind enough to ask my opinion as she went ahead. 

After almost three hours we had made a start. S... went away with three boxes of things like metal bookmark findings, hair clip findings, wreath bases and beads. There are still things like unclothed dolls, paper patterns, acrylic blanks and bag making materials to go but we have started. I may once again be able to move safely around my little space. 

I hope people will want to buy these things, especially at those greatly reduced prices. K...will tell me we did not charge enough but people expect a "bargain" and it will simply be good to be rid of some of it at least. 

The best part for me will be seeing some money in the "school" account for the girls. An extra year or two of schooling can make a huge difference there. I am not sure I will ever understand how big the difference is but I will keep trying.  

Writing an essay without using AI

is apparently "difficult". I am not sure how else to put it but the two boys talking about it assured me this was actually true.

I was in the local "cheap" shop - the sort of place which sells the sort of things you can buy from companies like Temu or Shein but are there for you to actually see and feel before you buy. For me it is a useful source of things like glue and rubber bands and refills for the stapler. 

It is also full of "keen young people" who need part-time employment. This has been more so recently as the place changed hands. Currently it is a good deal tidier and, in some ways, useful than it was. As I was looking for what I needed I overheard the two boys stacking the shelf in the next aisle and talking. It was clear they were students.

"You know I could just have put some terms in and come up with an answer..."

"Same here..."

"And I reckon some of the others did. They all came up with the same sort of arguments."

"Same in my group..."

"Did you try asking..."

And so the conversation went on. I stopped trying to pretend I was not listening because these two boys really are very nice lads indeed. One of them told me to stay where I was and fetched me a trolley the other day. The other asked if I would like him to reach something from the top shelf. 

They saw me and guessed I had been listening. Then they told me they had both been in groups which had been set the same question. They had written answers without consulting AI and then by consulting AI. The differences were obvious. It is clear both boys are very intelligent and one of them in particular had tried testing AI to see how far he or it could go. 

"It looks like it's thinking but it isn't thinking. It sounded a bit weird ...if you know what I mean? one of them told me.

I think I do know what he means. I had to come up with a way of putting a counter-argument last week. In order to do it I had written notes and put them into a Venn like diagram. Then I wrote what needed to be written. It worked for me. Out of curiosity I then tried to see if I could get a similar result by putting the same terms into AI.  It might have been convincing if I had not known what I was doing but it did not come across in the same way.  As the boy put it, "it sounded a bit weird". It sounded artificial. It was artificial.

The problem is going to be training us to recognise the difference between the real and the artificial...and how we deal with it.  

"I  

The "Micawber rule " for financial

happiness or financial misery is one the current Prime Minister and Treasurer seem never to have come across.

For the few among you who did not study David Copperfield at school and have not come across the often quoted words here they are, 

 "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."

Or perhaps they have come across the rule and refuse to believe it. They believe, again Micawber style, "something will turn up". I am not sure what that "something" could possibly be but perhaps they believe it.

I doubt anyone else believes either man is the little eccentric but kindly man that Micawber is portrayed as being. Both men are politicians and power is important to them. They want to stay in power. They both have a lot to lose. 

The way the Labor Party works it is now difficult to dislodge a Prime Minister they have chosen. It would not be impossible but it would be difficult. That he needs to be removed must be becoming increasingly obvious. We are not due to have an election before May 2028 but another interest rate rise has not helped the slump in popularity. If, although this now seems less likely, there was another rate rise before Christmas it would cause even more problems. Add in a long hot summer with high power and fuel prices and the problems for the government could get even more serious. The popularity of a certain fire brand red head would not help.

It was therefore interesting to see that the other minor and more far left party has just chosen someone who appears to be more moderate when facing the media. His manner is less controversial and less emotional than that of two colleagues who put their hands up in hope of taking on the role. Clearly there is a belief this might work in their favour. The party is saying the "right" things about "climate change" and "global warming". It is all some people want to hear. At very least it means they are likely to retain their voter base. 

Daylight saving starts this Sunday. Parliament will not be sitting over summer. If there is another rise in conflict or a natural disaster somewhere else in the world and blame for that sixpence extra in expenditure can be placed on that the government may yet get another term. We will get more financial misery.  

I neither liked or disliked him or

considered him to be a "friend". He was simply someone I knew. I also knew he was lonely so I would listen when he spoke to me.

I had not seen J... around for several weeks. The thought passed through my mind that he had, despite the football season still going, headed off to spend some time in the country community where he and his partner had a house. I was not too concerned. The owners of the cafe where he would eat a sort of brunch did not mention him. They are used to people like J...  

People like J... are generally male. They have lost their partners. The shopping centre is where they eat if they are not comfortable eating in the pub. At least three places will give them a meal for about the same price as the pub. It saves them having to put something in the microwave at "home". One small cafe is particularly good. Without being told or being intrusive the owners somehow know there are people who need support. The should be paid them for it. They are performing a social service.

That is how it was with J... If he saw me he would comment about something which was going on. He would read the state newspaper and ask what I thought about something written there. He would spend four or five hours a day in the shopping centre. Brunch at the cafe would be followed by time sitting on a seat nearby or another coffee at the cafe at the other end of the building.

He was a football fanatic and a cricket tragic. When his partner was alive he would sometimes stay behind in the tiny unit they owned in the city just so as to attend matches. He would tell me, "You really don't understand that do you Cat? It's important."

Yes, it was important to him. Although he had been a teacher reading, apart from the paper, was not important to him.  His partner had been a school librarian for many years. She had been on the Senior Cat's staff at one time and he had always spoken highly of her. The Senior Cat shared my views about J... and, like me, would let J... talk. It was all we could do.

I suppose the death notice in this morning's paper should not have come as a shock but it was...shall I say a surprise. Here is another person I will not see in that sort of "casual but important" way. I will not have another conversation with him, the sort of conversation which is important. 

Too many of us can go through the local shopping centre and forget there are people who seek company there. Too often I have been guilty of hoping I can rush in and out without seeing someone I know, someone who needs to chat for just a few minutes. I am thankful I did stop for a few minutes on that last occasion - but did I do it often enough?   

No, the war is not to blame for

inflation or the underlying anxiety many people are feeling. 

The biggest driver of inflation is government spending. Those of us who know anything about basic economics are concerned by that. There are also concerns about the attempts to introduce increasing controls over what we can hear, see, say and do.

You cannot spend your way out of debt. We added to the debt mountain when Covid hit. That was debt it would have been difficult to avoid. We were not the only country to spend more than would have otherwise been spent in an attempt to keep the economy going. Yes, we probably did spend more than we should have spent then. That is not the problem.

Since Covid we have spent far too much, far too much on keeping a government with a massive majority in power. Some of that money has been spent wisely but more of it has been wasted. When I think of the money wasted on a referendum for the "Voice" I feel angry. All that referendum did was divide us. It would not have given the government any power to change anything. That would have required another referendum to change the Constitution. More than one constitutional lawyer of my acquaintance doubts a second referendum to try and do that would fail.

It cost over $400m just to hold the actual referendum. A great deal more was spent in the lead up to it. The "Yes" side spent almost three times as much as the "No" side - and "No" still won. The government was advised before the campaign started of the likely outcome but it went ahead anyway. They deliberately wasted a great deal of money for what they hoped would be their political benefit.

The same government has agreed to give our nearest northern neighbour a $600m grant over ten years for a rugby team. I firmly believe that the best form of defence for any country is the foreign aid they give other countries but funding a rugby team is not foreign aid. It is an indulgence. No matter how you dress it up this was not something that was "needed". The money could have been spent on programs designed to produce income here or there.

The cost of the NDIS has expanded...and expanded. It needs to be reined in but doing so will mean some people will lose "benefits", things they now believe they are "entitled" to. That is politically unpopular of course, unpopular among those most likely to vote for the present government. At the same time there are still people not getting benefits they actually need.

These are big items, the sort of items that appear in the news from time to time. There are other perennial issues like housing, transport and more. A government which wants to remain in power will design housing to fit the dream, not the reality. It will provide roads rather than rail because roads allow people to own cars and the transport industry to flourish.  The billions spent on indigenous issues are reported in a fragmented way. The money being used on the futile attempt to move to "net zero" using solar and wind power may be mentioned but the real cost is far higher.

Now we apparently need to be protected from reality. The government is attempting to bring in laws which will prevent us from knowing all sorts of things, including how much they are spending to prevent us from knowing.  The reason we are so deep in debt is, according to the Treasurer, nothing to do with this at all. It is because of the war in the Middle East. That has increased the price of our fuel. Really? I wish it was that simple. 

  

"He now owes more on the house than

the house is worth," is something I overheard recently. This morning's paper confirms that was almost certainly true.

The 5% deposit scheme dreamed up by the present government is not working. It was never likely to work, especially if house prices were associated with such schemes. 

No, I do not pretend to understand the economics. It just seems to me if you introduce a scheme which allows people to borrow money to buy a home with only 5% of the deposit then you will get more people involved than if you ask for a 10% deposit.

I went to see Youngest Nephew yesterday. He has recently moved back to this state and is now living not too far away. He is buying the place he is living in. His father, my BIL, has insisted his two sons need to own their own homes. Neither place is palatial or even particularly convenient but they are likely good investments for their long term security. They are not intended to be anything else. The repayments are undoubtedly a worry but they can manage them. 

Neither place is a single unit three bedroom dwelling on a block of land surrounded by a landscaped garden. They do not need it. They might like to have something like that but they do not need it. Middle Cat is concerned that one place has stairs but she is looking long into the future. I suspect it will not be a problem. Youngest Nephew will move out to a more accessible dwelling at some point. For now he is prepared to have what he can afford.

Is that part of the problem? A Dutch migrant friend recently said, "In Holland a bedroom has the bed and not much else. The room is much smaller." 

Yes, the bedroom there has what it needs - the bed. Here the bed will be surrounded by space. Space costs money when it is associated with housing. Unless you are using a wheelchair do you really need a wide walkway around the bed? 

The place I now live in is a generous size for one person and I still have more belongings than I actually need. That said I do not live in a three or more bedrooms house with a garden right around me. Would it be nice? Of course it would be good to have the space but I do not need it. It would be a costly responsibility in terms of both time and money. 

It is things like this which make me wonder if the "housing crisis" might be of much less concern if people were allowed to need less, especially less to begin their housing journey.  Not everyone wants a three bedroom house on a quarter acre block but are they being told this is what they need? Is that contributing to the problem?