BE A SAVVY BUYER

MORON IN A HURRY - Would an unthinking person expect to believe that what they saw was what should have been seen.

Seek the best deal around – Oh how many times have I bought something off the cuff to find the same product 20% cheaper at the next store. Now I go for three quotes/prices every time. Don't be swayed by rewards as nothing these days is free and certainly avoid entering spurious competitions on shop counters.

DECREPIT ANNUATE - Would a person of advanced age and weakened mental capacity be able to differentiate one from the other. As a decrepit myself sometimes you have to look for the finer details on labels (yr/model/etc) instead of just believing both products look the same.

DEVELOPING INFANT - Would a child of tender years understand the image or the process.

Is it simple even for a child to recognise what is happening in easy to understand terms, in other words avoid legal documents that seem not to be in everyday language.

REASONABLE PERSON - Would a normal citizen expect to receive what was promised.

The Extended Warranty is not worth paying for. 12 Months is standard but even after a few years should a product, like a brick, break down in five years you may still have legal rights to compensation in cash or kind. 'That the product did not live up to realistic expectations'.

Naturally if you Nuke every meal in the house of 12 months you might expect the microwave to break down from exhaustion but if its is 1-2 times a week you should expect it to last past 5 years.

ALTERNATIVES – I buy my microwaves at physical auctions for about $20 a go and run them into the ground. It's a far cheaper option and you have a chance to see it before you buy. Having said that avoid on-line auctions unless you check them out. Some, maybe even eBay, might keep telling you that you've been outbid until you reach almost the retail price – then add postage, Sucker !!!

AVOID PHONE SALES – I always request what they are selling by email as confirmation of who they are and what they are selling before I proceed. If they can't provide you with what is really a 'Letter of Authenticity' with which you might be able to take legal action against them tell them to piss off until they do.

FINALLY – If you are ever in doubt contact ASIC or your State Consumer Affairs or even better CHOICE Magazine.

THE CLEVER EMIGRANT

I suppose that it doesn’t come as a surprise, even though our Dear Leader would surely know what the word avarice means, that Australia is now the most expensive nation in which to get an education and still they whinge and whine about how universities and colleges of advanced education are costing too much money to operate.

Keep in mind when you read this story that most of those wanting to raise university fees received a free University education under demi-God Gough Whitlam.

Much of this problem can be laid at the feet of John Howard, not for supporting fees but from driving up the cost of running universities. In a bid to one-up the States he moaned and groaned about the quality of education and the way in which the sates were delivering it. At a when all states were Labor and the federation was Liberal.

He decided to enter the Technical field by adding them to Universities. This is why people who want to act, write, create or destroy attend a University. It sound really high falutin but really just brings down the higher ideals of the lofty arts and pouts them in the hands of potential barristers who serve coffee and not the law.

Universities like Sydney and Melbourne were once held in high esteem. A certificate from one of these great kudos and a belief you were dealing with the best in the country. Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers and Economists. Universities like Wollongong, Ballarat and Bond had lower expectations of their students and the honour of their degrees Arts, Music, Counselling and Chiropractice.

Colleges were better known for Associate Degrees in animation, cooking, knitting and chicken raising or Certificates in welding, computing, electronics and French polishing.

The civil service has a habit of self-perpetuation and even rapid growth as, like a virus, they multiply voraciously all with the intent of ruling the masses. So the cost of running these places of higher leaning rise more rapidly than the number of students or the fees.

It’s a very military type of structure where every box has to be ticked and every senior office saluted. Every 9 actual teachers had to have a team leader (+assistant), every six teams a supervisor (+ 2 assistants) every three supervisors had to have a manager (+2 assistants and a secretary) every Manager had to have a Head of Department (+3 assistants, 2 clerks and a receptionist) and so on all the way up the chain of command to the Minister for Education. It is believed that for 100 students in the system there are 32 just to operate the system.

As an example of priorities. When I did my prestigious Welding Degree at Ballarat (see also Federation University or School of Mines) one of the Tutors, those who demonstrated how not to set fire to ourselves, instructed us about O.H & S and to ensure that machines were safely secured with a lock when being left un-attended. But because they had just bought a $48,000 Virtual Welding Machine (a foolproof way not to be able to destroy anything) they could not afford enough locks to secure the machines. He then showed us how to do it with a bit of wire twisting where the lock should have gone.

This is just one example of the bureaaucratic madness which can ensue in government departments which drive up costs which then have to be recovered. So to cut a short story long the federal department of education, which doesn’t actually run anything with its 7,000 staff) John Howard gave all the states a great excuse to wind back and abolish much of the states institutes for technical training.

What really is the point of this story? The high cost of an Australian education makes it very attractive for our brightest, cleverist and financially secure young people to go overseas for a cheaper, and superior education, at places like Caltech, Harvard and M.I.T (Massachusetts not Melbourne). Once there they can graduate, apply for a Green Card and earn two to three times as much income in US research establishments and Mulit-national Corporations. How else would it be that Australians once headed the World Bank and Ford. On TV one constantly runs across experts in America with clear Australian accents.

Two young Australians are now leading the field in Drone delivery technology in Nevada, interrupting the work of Google, Amazon and their like. This could never happen in Australia we do not have the imagination, the foresight or the adventurous investors to develop high technology on this island. The government has made it so and the public service, devoid of any guts, has willed it so.

If they are forced to stay in Australia for their Degree, they face huge H.E.C.S loans (an attempt at commercial interest rates failed) which, if they then fly the coop to England, Europe or the U.S to work do not have to repay the loan as their salary is not paid in Australia and our Tax Department is none the wiser.

So our advice to aspiring Biochemists, Aerospace Engineers, Marine Scientists and Technology wizards is, why single and financial go overseas for your schooling and only return here to get married and raise the bar on the quality of our intellectuals.

The moral of the story. ‘If it can be fucked up by governments then Australia is the place to do it’.

CERTIFIED PROFESSIONALS

Ever wondered what that meant?

Professional means they do it for a job and had special training to do it. Anything from Brain Surgery to Carpet Cleaning can be classified as Professional. There have even been examples of Whingers being Professional but you'll find many of these just migrated from England unqualified.

The term Certified adds extra weight to your business card. It indicates that you have been accepted by other people who do the same job. It's like being invited to join the Progress Association. Some refer to this act as being eligible to be 'Certified'. Even some of the journalists for the Astonisher have been 'Certified'. They are professional at what they do and other people who journalise just as goodly invite them to join their gang.

Who exemplify the term 'Certified Professionals'? Irishman Andrew Joyce the CEO of Qantas, had an Irish relative named James Joyce (Author of 'Ulysses') who not only knew about screwing people but wrote all about it as well. There is a difference however. James only screwed people in bed while Andrew managed to f........ people all around the world.

Professional – does it really mean anything? Even Real Estate Agents call themselves Professional, and Second-hand Car Dealers, Insurance Salesmen and Politicians.

Certified – does it add anything to being professional? Maybe it just means that people who have no ethics agree that their latest recruit has no ethics either.

Way back in the days when I wasted time at the Health Faculty of Sydney University it was constantly on my mind as to who checks the sanity of the people who check our sanity. Some of the Psychiatrists I ran across were demonstrably certifiable but nobody was game to put themselves in charge and do anything about it but just stood by and watched these ‘nutters’ progress on to jobs in the government sector pretending they know all about Skinners Pigeons and interpreting Myer-Briggs.

There is an old 'truism' that advises one about any goods or services you are about to purchase.

Whether they are a Certified Professional or Professionally Certified…... 'LET THE BUYER BEWARE'

NOW WE EVEN HAVE AN OBESE UNIVERSE

We live in an ever-changing and fascinating world. It was recently announced that not only is our Universe expanding as a result of the theoretical BIG BANG it is also expanding because of GLOBAL WARMING.

As they heat up things expand and so it is with our atoms. Called STRING THEORY after the question ‘How long is a piece of string’ it was recently worked out by some of our top scientists that everything is expanding and it can’t all be blamed on shit food even though it is making up 0.00000008% of carbon dioxide through humans un-necessary farting. In lay terms our boffins have discovered that there must be nothing between the atoms otherwise being ball-shaped they would clang together so loudly we would not be able to hear ourselves think. It is these nothings that they believe are expanding.

Ten years ago the star ‘Dromeda Ursa Null Nomad Y’ was measured as one million light years from Earth. Last year when the tape measure finally rewound back into itself it was 1 million and 1 light years to D.U.N.N.Y. When First Name interviewed Professor Lomarx at Questicon in Canberra he remarked that they couldn’t explain exactly what was going on due to humanities inability to live for a million light years and thus go there to prove the theory. What the universe was expanding into was also being studied. If nothing can expand then what can it expand into? He went on to explain that some in the science community believe that it is possible that someone opened a window over the other side of the Universe. Things like Black Holes could be these windows. First Name asked Iva Lomarx about the existence of Black Holes.

‘Oh! Sure’ he said ‘we have some of them here in Canberra. For example there is a huge one over at the Taxation Department and several small ones are said to be between the ears of a few Ministers in the Lower House.’

Reporter Surname will continue his investigations into the investigations about the existence of nothing for future astonishing issues.

Note: If nothing can expand then there is still hope for the Astonisher.

 INTRODUCING OUR ASTONISHING NEW CONTRIBUTOR

Meet FIRST NAME-SURNAME who has joined us from the prestigious Academy of Science in Lilliput, Nova Scotia. He will be writing for us a series of articles about space, time and the T.A.R.D.I.S