Dagget, I too heard Ms Yule's Radio National article, but unlike you, I did not particularly find favour with her view in this instance.

However I agree with her entirely on this point. We have allowed fear of our own waste products to over-ride common sense. Of course what comes out of the earth should be put back. It is a resource we no longer can afford to dispose of in the ways we have. With the world no longer able to produce its own needs and the resources (fertilisers) no longer able to assist in their production, our own waste, once the main source of fertiliser, must be revisited and looked at in a more constructive, less fearful way. Now, I wonder how we can get this on to the national agenda?

arcticdog,

I am glad that there are a few of us who immediately grasp the necessity of what Valerie is arguing for.

I guess the way to approach the revulsion we feel towards our own waste is to contemplate what lengths we would go to in order to avoid starvation should we fail to recycle it in order to grow the food we all need.

As an example, I find cockroaches with their distinctively yellow coloured innards so unpleasant, I normally can't bring myself to kill them because of the mess it would cause (apart from the fact I don't particularly like destroying any form of life except mosquitoes, perhaps).

However, from time to time I contemplate myself, driven to extreme hunger with supermarket shelves bare and zucchini plants and tomato bushes in my backyard garden struggling to sprout leaves, catching and eating them, or the possums and scrub turkeys I now feed or eating tree roots and bark.

To waste any resource, particularly in a resource-scarce overpopulated world is folly.

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In regard to Val's suggestion that we simplify spelling, I was at first skeptical, but am now convinced. There is an article "Revolutionary change in education" at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7010&page=0 and discussion at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7010&page=0

Other resources can be found at http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/spelling.htm http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/sp7princ.htm http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/writsys.htm

As discussion on that forum is closed, other forum users and the moderators possibly may not object too loudly if you were to put your objections to Val's proposal's here. (If they do, then it should be possible to stare a separate forum at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/index-general.asp)