Foxy,
I just looked up nicer in the dictionary & thesaurus & it means more agreeable, better, more pleasurable etc. very much along the lines I meant. Not at all like our society is at this stage.

I would love it to be like the one I grew up in.

Where I could drive my car into the Sydney CBD, park in the street, & go to the movies.

One where we supplied raw materials to 7 companies, in Sydney alone, who manufactured TV sets, 5 who made refrigerators, 8 who made hair driers, & dozens who actually manufactured things.

One where the blokes working in those factories could keep a wife, a couple of kids, & pay off their house, on the one income.

One where the houses may have been smaller, but the blocks were larger.

One where the shops were shut, & people enjoyed their weekends.

Hell, I always wondered at people slinging off at Howard, as being a man of the 50s. Well, I don;t know all that much of the 50s, but I'd love to have the 60s back.

It would be great if my grand kids could have it as good as I did back then, but I very much doubt it will be as good again.

Dear Foxy,

I'd like to see a return to smaller communities - country and city. I'd like to see the resurgence of local communities in the form of neighbourhood shops and facilities run by locals instead of centralized shopping precincts where there is little chance for personal relationships to develop. I'd like to see people cooperating with each other to provide support in these communities. Perhaps with the looming depletion of oil reserves we can all step out of our capsules and once again move bodily through our environment interacting with our neighbours as we go.

FOXY.. ever the intrepid optimist :)

"It (australia) will develop new technologies and will forge ahead."

Of course it will.. by inventing good stuff and having it made economically in China... and the inventor and his key executives will probably do quite well out of it.

As for creating Aussie jobs ? most unlikely. I do this myself.
I GAVE a quote for a small manufactured value added item a while back.. at the best prices and insufferably low labor rates (mine) I came up with a BEST price of $3.20 per unit for 1000 'things' which I can make.

Of course.. after doing the development for the customer where I charged a much higher rate.. (just 10 pieces) I did not in the slightest expect my quote to actually translate into 'work'..why ? :)

aaah..the harsh world of realekonomik.... I just rang a Sydney company which sources things from China and for the same item he quoted $1.83 now.. I ask you.. if my customer can make the same phone call (and he does quite often) would he not be brain damaged to spend $3200 with me when he can spend $1830 with someone else getting it from China.

Like I said.. the real answer to your question is probably not the one you want to hear.

I sense you don't have much to do with manufacturing eh ? :)

POIROT says:

"I'd like to see a return to smaller communities - country and city."

Well said old son.

While we foxy will never know you highlight a symptom of our life that will change.
Media is privately owned and it is fighting for survival, its market is us on the way to or from work we grab the papers.
In time papers will look less like comic books.
increasingly news is made not reported we are in a feeding frenzy right now,, truth not needed as much as headlines.
While we once heard that every thing that can be invented has been it still is not true.
Future if this country is as great a place to live as it is now it will be great.
Nuclear power is coming, better fuels have no fear war or no war the world is a better place than it was and change should be grabbed with both hands.

I'd go for the community and easier access dreams myself- and these COULD be achieved if the government would make a few new cities with PROPER facilities, entertainment, infrastructure and rent levels, emptying out the capitals somewhat.

In the capitals, if enough people who lived near major roads sold and left, the state could demolish the unused houses and treat the different 'suburbs' as different 'cities' again, with more breathing space and connected by interstate freeways instead of slightly wider suburban streets.
(not to mention less buyers might hopefully bring down property prices to levels people short of millionaires might actually be able to afford.
Heck, hopefully there will be enough room so that we could stop the outward sprawl and possibly get some of our old prime farmland back.

Sadly for much of Sydney (and I imagine many other capitals) it will be massively downhill for next generations, and less breathing space.