Evidence of how politicians lie. From the BBC comes a report exposing just how politicians have lied to their constituents — including Australians — about what is happening in Afghanistan. Expect Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and Stephen Smith to deny this when asked:
Nato has invested hundreds of billions of dollars over the past 10 years trying to raise a modern army for Afghanistan and to rebuild the country’s infrastructure. But if a leaked classified report prepared by the alliance is to believed, all this will go to waste soon after foreign combat forces withdraw in 2014.
The latest in a series of leaks suggests that Nato is much more worried about the course of the war than it lets on in public. The harsh reality is that an increasing number of Afghans are turning to the Taliban, having grown mistrustful of Nato and Afghan forces.
In remote parts of the country where the government rules only on paper, the Taliban are often preferred….
Believe the denials if you want to but I won’t be..
Why should we pay for cricketers to become richer? Surely Communications Minister Stephen Conroy will not listen to the sporting bodies wanting the law to be changed to give them the right to fleece the public so sports men and women can become richer and executives of sporting bodies pretend that they deserve million dollar salaries.
The relevance of use by dates. I’ve often wondered how much unnecessary waste is caused by forcing manufacturers to put use by dates on products. Do the savings from improved health and safety really outweigh the cost of perfectly good products being discarded well before they really are a danger to anyone?
From Germany comes the story of a pensioner who received a tin of American lard 64 years ago in an aid package and has only just tasted it, after discovering that it is still edible.
A prisoner’s revenge. The state of Vermont proudly features a cow on its coat of arms and a decal with the coat of arms proudly adorns the doors of the state’s highway patrol cars. And inside the St Albans state prison there is a workshop where prisoners can proudly develop new skills making such decals, license plates and the like. And sometimes dream of revenge on those police who put them there.
From that journal of record The Burlington Free Press comes the story “Pigs on Police Cars” revealing how one of the spots on the cow in the state crest has been changed to the shape of a pig.
I’m living and working in Antarctica on one of Australia’s stations. We only ever look at the expiry date on products to have a laugh.
With food spending three months on the wharf, a month on the ship and twelve months before the next resupply… it would be impossible to have food in date.
We take extra care with some products like eggs, and oysters don’t taste very nice after fifteen months in the freezer. But proper storage means that there aren’t any problems.
My favourite was a mars bar that expired over ten years ago. It was stored in a location that repeatedly cycled from freezing to room temperature and tasted as if it was made yesterday.
Re: use by dates
I’m confused as to what alternative is seriously being suggested?
Food does go off, and different foods have different shelf lives.
If you only put, eg, a packing date on food, does that mean the public has to know how long each particular food stuff is likely to last, and then do the mental math?
Should the public have any protection from shops selling spoiled goods?
I know various people have suggested watering down the language a bit (like “Best Before” etc), but I don’t think there’s any option but to put some sort of use by date on products – customers can choose how seriously to treat the suggested date, but it’s got to be there.
Afghanistan = Vietnam. The coalition for killing Afghans will finally see it as an un-winable war and run away claiming a victory of sorts, the current Afghan government will fall. The Afghans unfortunate enough to have worked with the Coalition for killing Afghans will be hunted down and given a hard time. There will be a new wave of refugees. Just like the closure of the Vietnam war we see it happening all over again. Motherf*cker Soldiers pissing on dead Afghans is the best advertisement for recruiting Afghans to support their own.