What is happening to my country, are we mad?

The Mad Hatter: There is a place. Like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter.
[picks up his hat]
The Mad Hatter: Which luckily I am.


The Mad Hatter: Have I gone mad?
[Alice checks Hatter's temperature]
Alice: I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.

Alice: But I don't want to go among mad people.
The Cat: Oh, you can't help that. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.
Alice: How do you know I'm mad?
The Cat: You must be. Or you wouldn't have come here.

Cute quotes from a wonderful fairy tale, but that's all it was, a fairy tale.

I think we have all gone mad, I don't know about the rest of the world, but I am sure they have too. So why do I think we have gone mad?

Human beings basically need two things, everything else boils down to those two things.

Food and shelter, somewhere to live and something to eat. Now if we live away from our food (work) we need transport. If we don't want to go stark raving mad we need entertainment, if we get sick we need medicine, if we want to do this right we need education.

These are the basic necessities of life, well a good life.

I will start with shelter. We have developed this ridiculous idea that our shelter is an investment, we want to profit from our shelter, i.e. get food from our shelter.

What this has done as we have seen, is to push housing prices into the ridiculous. I am writting this (at 2:00am) in my home town (pop. 16676) at my father's home. On the way into town I saw rolling hills, not cultivated, what we call "dry country", that is the feed that grows is what is watered by nature.

On the outskirts of town I noticed off to the side that an area of grassland had been cleared. The council had rezoned it rural to residential, and what do you know. Land that was worth about $500 a hectare is now worth about $400000. Why, because a bureaucrat re-drew the boundaries.

It will not be long and we will not be able to afford a home. As it is we need to have both working usually to pay off a 30 year mortgage or something like that.

30 years ago I bought a home in Sydney for $45000, today it is worth $400000.
based on that, the home by the time my grandson is 35 will be worth about 3 million ... if it is money won't be worth anything.

Also, while we are investing so much in our homes, we are not investing in Australian businesses. Haven't you noticed that since we have been investing in property we have sold Australia out. We spent so much on our shelter that we had to sell things like, Arnotts, Vegemite (now there is treason if ever I saw it) etc etc etc

Food. Once we had a market garden, what's that I hear you say, well once upon a time every town and village in Australia had farms around it that grew the vegetables for the town. The vegies were fresh, wholesome and cheap. Today, what is left that we grow ourselves is grown on giant farms with gallons of herbisides, pesticides, artificially ripened, sickeningly perfect.

It is the transported by heavy transport, thousands of kilometres to a major city and stored in cool rooms, from where it is re-packed, transported by heavy transport out to a supermarket to sit amongst the United Nations of Vebetables.

Most butchers would by their meat on the hoof and have it slaughtered for them. Today, pre-packaged meat of dubious quality, sits staring at us from beneath its plastic film, chemically treated to make it look edible and to prolong it's shelf life.

We live on an island surrounded by oceans brimming with fantastic fish. Too good for us Aussies it is shipped off to countries like Japan, while we import fish from a range of countries.

Canned tomatoes, beans, peas, corn, asparagus, mushrooms all imported.

But of all the things we buy, food is the most home grown. Clothes etc, it is nearly impossible to buy anything Aussie made unless you go for very cheap, or very expensive.

But to me the killer is all the cheap garbage we import just to throw into our garbage and on into landfill.

I can go to Woolies and buy a toaster for $8, it costs that much to buy two loaves of bread to go in it. How can they make a toaster in china and sell it in Australia and everyone along the way make a profit out of an $8 toaster.

I can go on and on and on but this is my concern.

Our food, clothes, cars, appliances, military equipment, our machinery just about everything is made overseas.

Now if you want to be hard, from a defence point of view we are screwed, if problems arise one of the first things affected is shipping.

Not to mention jobs and health issues.

I will leave the rest for later and let you all add your two cents worth.

 

When did we sell out on Vegemite? It's been Kraft since the beginning I'm pretty sure.

 

I hate to burst your bubble, but KRAFT are not Australian, never were.
Like just about everything these days, Vegemite comes under the umbrella
of giant multi-national corporations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraft_Foods

We aren't mad DominorVobis, we've simply been usurped and brainwashed into thinking it's "normal".

It's not normal of course, it's most unnatural. That is the madness.

We are sentient animals in the Garden of Eden. We are the caretakers of our world.
To say we are on the right track by supporting the current power structure is either true insanity
or utter delusion.

 

So what? Vegemite I'm pretty sure has always been American owned.

 

Vegemite was first made in 1922, sold the recipe to Kraft in 1929, but that's cool.

You guys may like this thread too
http://www.politicalforum.com/science-technology/212892-where-would-you-without-aussies.html

 

I'm pretty sure the only time that hasn't been true was during WW2 when we had to build so much of it ourselves as those who usually supplied us needed everything that they had.


Pretty much nothing on the list is a recent thing.

 

Haha !

Great fact sheet, but we already knew about you

 

We are losing the ability and people to do just about anything ourselves.

If the goverment talked with the right people we could build our own tanks, armoured vehicals, 4 WDs, etc. They could also make cars and trucks during peace time but be able to tool up quickly if needed. Planes too, at least we are making our own destroyers and if we are, why not armour and 4WDs.

Food too, we are loosing our farms and farmers, if the sheet hits the fan it will be worse because of it.

We are not dumb here as this thread shows

http://www.politicalforum.com/science-technology/212892-where-would-you-without-aussies.html

 

We're making our own frigates, silly.

 

At lease we`re smart enough to put wheels on em, because we know they won`t float.

 

Of course we need a number F100 I think

http://www.projectconnect.com.au/Project_Details.asp?PID=340

I may be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time...

 

I thought you meant the Anzac ones, the ones that we actually have.

 

No these are more exciting If they don't go over budget it will be good
3 billion for three, good price, I may get on, how much for one?

 

Screw them, when we getting our LHDs?

 

2014 isn't it?

 

The F100s will do me.

 

Your post reminds me of a museum i visited once. The Lithgow small arms museum. I looked it up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithgow_Small_Arms_Factory

 

Fantastic place. I think it's the largest small arms collection in the world or something. You'd be hard up to find a weapon that's not there.

Brilliant exhibition, I am not sure if he is still alive, but my first wife's uncle was the curator there, her family being Lithgowites from way back.

Have you seen it Panzerkampfwagen?

 

I have an old WW2 303 that was made there.

 

OK Australia's largest collection
http://www.lithgow-tourism.com/samuseum/index.html

 

Oh and panza is that any old Milky Way, or The Milky Way, wouldn't want to get your address wrong

 

Thats the problem with city dwelling folk. Out here my family grows at least 75% of our food. We raise and slaughter our own meat. My oldest daughter at 4 years old looks after the chickens and rabbits and helps to pluck / skin them if we choose to eat one.
You say the country has gone mad but really its just city folk with no idea on the real world runs that have gone mad.

 

This is my last day here and this is my last thread
http://www.politicalforum.com/humor-satire/213005-do-you-know-how-hard-aussie.html#post4606143

 

It's almost impossible to go to a supermarket and find something that was actually made here, with Australian ingredients. Most products might be made here, but the label says 'made from local and imported ingredients'.

I bought some bacon the other day, and found that it too, was made from local and imported ingredients. I thought to myself that it was just bloody bacon, from a god danged pig, and did that pig happen to hold duel citizenship in Australia and some other country? I don't get it.

 

The explanation for it is that the consumer will NOT PAY FOR AUSSIE GOODS.

I will take your bacon as an example Mak.
In some places of the world the consumer wants too much for their $.. Your bacon was CHEAP, just the way people want it. To get it to that price the farmer needs to run the farm more like a production floor and cram as many pigs as he can into tiny pens. He needs to grow them fast and feed them lots of hormones ect just to get enough product to make a living. If you want great bacon go to a farmers MARKET and pay the higher price for AUSSIE free range pork products. They taste better and come from animals that have had a good life BUT you have to pay a little more for it.