Njoh, you have been here for years...you know OUG’s communication style has not changed...so the affliction you brand him with seems to be a constant. Constant non conformist views and “atypical” writing and graphics styles are more likely character traits and manias, we all have them, but most are too conformist to execute them...bet OUG was exactly the same as a kid. ...no change...no debilitating psychotic illness...

Probably best that we leave the diagnosis to the clinicians...but we all make value judgements, I reckon SM are and 759 are mania’d......but not crazy

sonofgloin, In reply to your last post, just go back to page 14 and you will see that OUG has a very normal post for the first half, then reverts to something like his/her norm for the rest.

My tip is that OUG is in fact two deferent people using the same name.

Mr Abbott hopes a Free Trade Agreement being negotiated with China will facilitate greater Chinese investment, with Australia prepared to grant special exemptions from SCRUTINY for state-owned investors

The Gillard/Greens government wasted millions on plain packaging to divert attention away from the messes they had made elsewhere. Gillard and Co, ever presumptuous and loving the world stage, even lectured other countries on what they should do.

Gillard has her $2million bungalow, the golden handshake and a huge income forever courtesy of the long-suffering Aussie taxpayer and nothing more is heard on 'Big Tobacco' from her replacement L'il Willie and the 'Progressives'.

Meanwhile, smoking is as rife in aboriginal communities as ever and almost every pregnant aboriginal woman smokes. Outside of the awful self-inflicted harm including violence from alcohol abuse, smoking has to be one of the few contributors to their poor health. No doubt the Left who are at their happiest when they are making rules for others will immediately offer the excuses that 'indigenous' smoke because they are 'dispossessed' or were introduced to smoking by 'whites'. Others are not allowed an excuse.

Be that as it may, the real issue is that continued smoking among aboriginals proves that at least in their case the Gillard/Greens crew were only playing politics and grubbing headlines with their plain packaging. It was all spin and all show - cakes and circuses. Wasted millions that could have been used to better effect elsewhere.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that is to be gained from keeping the special bureaucrats who spruik anti-smoking on the government payroll. The is already plenty of free anti-smoking publicity about. If anything extra is needed let the existing federal departments do it.

It is because government fritters away millions of taxpayers' $$ on a plethora of qangos and NGOs devoted to feel-good, but non-productive populism that government cannot afford to pay for essential services that it (government) was originally created to provide. Politicians pretend that they are actually doing something productive and useful passing more and more laws to control the very people they should be serving.

The arrogant, ineffectual Gillard/Greens crew boasted of passing 2000 additional laws to control the Aussie public. How do some people manage to suspend their critical faculties and fall for that?

Sono, Aspergers Syndrome is NOT a "psychotic illness".

There have been quite a few National Tobacco Campaigns
done by our governments
in Australia over the years.
Surveys have also been done to see whether these
campaigns were cost saving and effective.
This information is available on the web and all one has
to do is Google it.

Some interesting figures that were given were -
that in its first six months of operation one National
Tobacco Campaign achieved a reduction of 1.4 percent
in the smoking prevalence, avoided 32,000 cases of
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 11,000 cases of
acute myocardial infarction, 10,000 cases of lung cancer,
and 2,500 cases of stroke. In addition we're told that
it is estimated that the National Tobacco Campaign
prevented about 55,000 deaths and achieved gains of
323,000 life-years and 40700 Quality Adjusted Life Years
(QALYs) with potential healthcare savings of $740.6 million.

Therefore the National Tobacco Campaigns were both cost saving
and effective.

As for our Indigenous people and smoking?

There was the famoous "Quitnow-Indigenous-Anti-Smoking-Campaign-
Break-The Chain," that had great results and attracted so
much attention:

http://www.quitnow.gov.au/internet/quitnow/publishing.nsf/Content/btc-indsurvey-execsumm

Interesting reading.