*Do you want ,truly, an end to weekends?
Socializing, family time, sport need weekends.
Do not blindly blame unions for your highlighted problems.*

Come on Belly, union barons now run Canbbera, face it.
What you are now saying is that some union baron thinks
he knows what is best for the punters out there, so
he should enforce it.

Has it ever occured to you that we are all different?
Some people value weekends, others don't. Some people
want to play sport others don't. I am not that arrogant
as to claim to tell people how they should live and try to
enforce it by law.

I met a guy recently, his employer pays him 50$ an hour.
He works 2 days a week by choice. The rest of his time,
he likes to play golf. He has no mortgage, thats more then
enough for what he needs. I met his employer and he told
me his life story. I asked him why he was paying his worker
such a good rate. The guy was clear. He was a great worker
who knew his job, it was worth it to him to pay him extra
and keep him for the days that he chose to work.

My point is Belly, the world is changing. I was around when
the AWU tried to enforce narrow combs in the shearing industry
and they were ridiculed by their own members, many who left.
They could shear more sheep, for the same pay per head with wide gear,
yet your union stuck its head in the sand. Sorry, but you
won't stop a changing world.

The thing is, we need a balance of the powers, not a return to
union skulldudgery, or everyone in Australia will lose.

Right now, they have just cost some women who needed the money,
their weekend work. Hardly intelligent.

*Pel we spent less than last year because the banks tightened credit, I don't know of any pleb who has decided, "this year I will save money*

In this case Sonofgloin, Pelican is actually quite correct and you
are wrong. If you bother to buy a 29th December 2010 copy of the
AFR, right there on page 21, is an article about how due to the
GFC and people becoming nervous, the savings rate has increased to
10%, from 2% in 2005

You might not know any pleb who saves money, but I know plenty.

Tell me something Sonofgloin, you once bitterly complained about your
huge power bill. Do you use a clothes dryer for instance?
Have you ever considered using the sun and wind instead? Do you
too own a large plasma tv screen?

Be honest now.

Yes yabby no defense wide combs stuffed the AWU for a while.
Stupid and childish ,but you go back in history to find it.
Our life is centered around weekends.
If union barons exist in Canberra, they are as useless as those on a bull.
Gillard, once left then right, useless as the above has not delivered fairness.
One day a BRILLIANT UNIONIST Bill Shorten will win even you over.
Now hasbeen, you are right, in part yabby too, some willingly work weekends.
Not however most, what does the world do here, anyone know?
I can report I worked extra normal time, to gain two 3 day weekends off a month, loved it.
Some work 10 hours 4 day weeks some 3 12 hour shifts.
Those smelters brick yards and more have to be kept going.
Can any one see us having our football finals on Monday, think of the sickies.
However, with assurances it will not kill weekends[see the last weekend campaign against workchoices] we can get around this.
It however will hurt a lot off shonky bosses who do hire social security folk at low wages.
Shift loading is not a lot, an extra weeks holiday pay is paid to most as a reward.
Bosses who use a lot of over time should be able to come up with a fair agreement.
Arbitration by the way no longer exists in the true way it once did.

I am still expecting innovation from my government.
Tax cuts for low income earners none for high earners is a start.
A lessor tax rate for overtime in tourism and hospitality and women on low wages in return for a fixed wage rate could help in an area full of potential.

Yabby:>> If you bother to buy a 29th December 2010 copy of the
AFR, right there on page 21, is an article about how due to the
GFC and people becoming nervous, the savings rate has increased to
10%, from 2% in 2005<<

Yabby I keep quoting you the ABS figures and you quote me newspaper clippings. Once more for your edification:
In 1975 Australian household savings totaled 18% of GDP.
In 2009 it totaled 2% of GDP.
*Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australian National Accounts, cat. no. 5206.0*

So this 10% figure you come up with relates to what? Or did we take 30 years to spend the 18% we had, but grew it to 10% in just a year. You spin and that is all.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australian National Accounts, cat. no. 5206.0,

Yabby if it gives you a boogie man you keep blaming the unions and keep regurgitate stories from the old wool sheds. Your reason is evident, basically you think you would be richer if you could rule your employees like a southern cotton plantation master.

At present union members are 25% of the workforce, membership of the Australian trade union movement is now at its lowest level since its official recording began. Your whipping boy is fading away because of non unionised slave labour in Asia, and soon to be replayed in Africa by the way the Chinese are buying it up.

Yabby:>> Tell me something Sonofgloin, you once bitterly complained about your huge power bill. Do you use a clothes dryer for instance?
Have you ever considered using the sun and wind instead? Do you
too own a large plasma tv screen?<<

Yes I have heaps of modern technology, and why should I not, progress brings reward. My kids did not go down coal mines at 12 and I am heir apparent to the evolving technology our forebears. Regarding the power bill, if it rains you use the dryer or you go nude. I had all the same appliances last year, lived the same lifestyle as last year and my bill almost doubled.

Yabby have you got one of those wind turbines that are input neutral to the grid when you consider whole of life costs? I am stuck with drawing from a grid that has exploded costs to the point where people live like cavemen, no light, no heat, welcome to modern prosperous Australia. As I said no Xmas lights in the plebs houses this year, nor next year with the hikes to come including the carbon crap.