Adventure Ausrama Blog

Western countries are heading for a crisis. Young people are not being taught skills that are of use in the workforce. Australia under Prime Minister Tony Abbott is moving back to the three "Rs" - reading, writing and arithmetic in schools. However, it will take at least a decade for this to take effect. It looks unlikely that future Australian governments will keep this change going. More and more irrelevant subjects are being introduced into an already crowded curriculum. Students are studying different things. There is no uniformity in education. Will we reach a stage where machines run the world and there are no technicians with the skills to repair them? This is a strong possibility. It is just a short step back to primitivism, back to the stone age. Students are not applying to enter the scientific field. Scientists are an aging bunch. Much research funding is channelled to them because they have proven themselves. Bodies with funds do not have any faith i

Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey are misguided in believing they can hide the jobless. Taking all income away from unemployed youth will only increase poverty and crime. Taking careers' income away and forcing them onto the dole queue will only ruin their lives and the lives of people they care for. The elderly who need full-time care will only head for "old peoples' homes", particularly if they do not own a house that the government can hock to pay the fees. To say they are not hitting those who cannot hit back is definitely not true. These elderly sick people are defenceless. Australian youth are in fact losing jobs. The proportion with work has fallen to its lowest rate for twenty years. Cutting penalty rates and wages generally will only drive the young into poverty. Having enough to buy food and nothing left for accommodation is a recipe for social disaster. Do you think for one moment that they will not take what they don't have. Watch the numbe

It is a pipe dream to raise the pension eligibility age and expect the elderly to go back to work. With thousands of young able bodied young people unemployed what kind of work are older people going to do? Employers will not have older workers unless there is some sort of financial benefit. It makes no sense to give this with all the youngsters looking for work. Furthermore, making the unemployed wait six months to get any money at all is absolutely irrational. How are they going to get food to eat? The crime rate will rapidly increase. We will be back to the days of being imprisoned for stealing an apple. Many of the young would like to see the accumulated assets of the elderly confiscated and given to them in benefits. Little goodwill is left in society. The old, worked 12 hour days, seven days a week in hard physical labor to gain their assets. The young today will only lift things under a certain weight. They use lifting machines to move heavy things around.

It is not work in general that is causing a decline in women giving birth at a young age. It is specifically temporary jobs that are responsible. In Australia part-time and casual employment has boomed over the last decade as employers see it as a way to keep costs down. Many work extra hours for no money at all, afraid of losing their jobs. Women working full time can afford to pay for child care, or at least for critical periods when they are working. Such career women are having children before they reach the age of 35 years. There is a myth out there that it is these career women who are starting families at an older age. Oddly the effects of not working full time changes the behavior of women in the high socieconomic group as well. They may be able to afford childcare from a financial "nest egg", but it is the state of mind about not working enough and not having sufficient income for a family. Financial security in regard to income is essential for women

There is a problem with the call for improvement in productivity. Those calling for it will not be the ones working harder. The experiment was tried in the 1970s when many UK factories moved in the time and motion guys and started timing machinists. Unions and workers saw them coming, however. Before they even got going unions tied management down with a new contract that guaranteed workers would not be put on a lower rate if the business ran out of orders. They would be paid at the previous month's average rate when walking around doing very little.  This was done to make sure employees would not lose income due to them working harder. Furthermore, when foremen, leading hands and motion "experts" started milling around a machine workers knew what was about to happen. An older naturally slower machinists was soon moved in and lathe speeds were reduced.  Considering the motion timers had never seen capstan lathes before this was an easy trick. It took severa

Despite the boom times in Australia which has finally peaked, a significant proportion of working Australians do not have permanent full-time positions. This is because both sides of politics have freed-up the hiring contract between employers and employees. The claim that bank holiday and annual leave pay is included in the casual rate is rubbish. People are hired for a per hour fee. No moneys are set aside for rest day payment.  Part-time employees can be called in to work at any time of the day or night. Even in management the market is distorted. Tests to find the "ideal" personality to do the job have never been tested in the real world. They have been written by university people who teach and must write a certain number of papers for "respected" journals. Governments are reducing employment in the public sector. When they have to get the work done in future by the private sector the real cost will become apparent.  While contractors offering specific

For many years it has been said that Australia lacks maths and science graduates. Maths teachers are in short supply we are told. Professor Ian Chubb, a chief scientist, certainly pushes this case. Unfortunately, data does not support this premise. Like qualified information technology people, maths and science graduates find the job market difficult. It seems there is real demand only in geological science. A little more than half of graduates say their qualifications are relevant to their work. They hold down jobs only in distantly related fields. One would think that with science and technology moving forward at a rapid pace such qualified people would be sorely needed. Employment in agricultural science is falling because young people are leaving rural towns and refuse to learn about farming. It is seen as glorified laboring. Getting a post-graduate qualification does not help to find work. Employers see higher degrees as narrowing educational scope. Government is cont

The Internet is putting more people out of work and this is only the beginning. As more advanced algorithms are being developed established jobs are under threat. It will not only be lawyers and professional photographers employed by newspapers who get the chop. Unless you are in work that involves human problem solving like plumbers, mechanics and vehicle body repairers your job will face "extinction". Most of the burden will fall on older workers. Retail, for example, only wants teenagers who can be paid a pittance while "training". Open discrimination occurs against people over 45. They are simply not wanted. This barrier age has fallen in recent years. Computerized job selection processes cuts them off at the beginning. Their resumes are not even looked at. If they go personally to apply for a position they face insulting comments and bad jokes. Employers are no longer afraid of telling them directly that they are too old. Many have simply given up

With workplace participation by those with disabilities being a prime goal touted by government there is no solid progress. Words are cheap and politicians know it. Funding is just not there. Businesses must make a profit to survive in a competitive world and they will not take the disabled on without subsidies. This is a fact. Those with disabilities are even shunned by the public at large. They face discrimination every day. They feel that government ignores them as must as businesses. Ninety four per cent of disabled people said this in a recent survey. Besides having a job, they want support in basic social contact. Many do not have a circle of friends. When they are with a carer, bank staff, for example, talk to the carer without speaking to the person cared for. The disabled are ignored as being "non-people". Wheelchair access has not been improved for years. Public transport is out of the question for many. Parts of the city are never visited by the disa

Have you heard of the person who got part of a needle stuck in his hand and it came out 10 years later through his foot? Strange things like this do happen. It is the body's way of safely ridding the body of potentially dangerous objects. Work on Australian frogs show they deal with such things in a different way. Tiny bead-like radio transmitters were implanted into frogs. They were put into body cavities of frogs and even toads. Oddly, the small devices disappeared. The beads moved along the body into the bladder where they were, in due course, fully expelled from the body. This may sound like something quite obvious and unremarkable until one is informed that the beads were two centimeters long and some of the frogs were only eight centimeters long. It is no mean feat for such a small animal. It was discovered that tissue from the bladder grows out and envelopes the foreign object. The object is then drawn into the bladder. Apparently, frogs have evolved this to rid their

There is little sympathy for sole mothers from others in society or government. Social security payments have been tightened up by the federal Government. If sole mothers do not work they must go back to school, probably learning something that is useless for their future. Not many full-time workers have brought up children as well without paying someone else to care for their babies and toddlers. Older children are consistently being left alone as mothers do some sort of part-time work. This is reality. Part-time jobs do not pay well enough to provide money for carers. When Single mothers come home they not only look after their children, they must do all the household chores as well as do repair work to the home. The government's new harsher policy comes into force next January. Welfare payments will fall. Even those working part-time will lose some of the part-payment they get from social security. Children will be the real losers as food and heating/cooling are reduce

It would be expected that people of middle age had problems with life. They are still working, see young people taking over their jobs and worry whether they have accumulated enough superannuation. Perhaps elderly people have a tough time. Many completed their working lives when superannuation was not compulsory and rely on an inadequate state pension. If they have not purchase a home during their time working they have to pay rent out of the little bit the state gives them, then have to live on what is left. If you thought these two groups were the greatest worriers you would be wrong. Young people aged between 18-25 are most stressed according to an online survey involving 1500 subjects. The young are not really taking jobs from the elderly. Under 25s have a hard time finding a job in the first place even if they have a university degrees. With the way they are brought up - having anything they wanted from parents who were afraid to discipline them, they find staying at work for

Despite discrimination by some employers, older Australians are determined to keep on working past the retirement age. They believe that they haven't got enough saved to retire on. A large survey discovered that 2.6 million Australians over 45 are working full-time and 653,000 said they would never give up work. Another 399,300 said they could see no time when they would be able to retire. A significant 1.6 million were in part-time employment. Even though superannuation has been compulsory in Australia since 1986 a quarter of the 3.9 million in the study said they would rely fully on the state for a pension. Only half would have sufficient superannuation to live on. Compulsory superannuation will reduce the present number of 66 per cent of elderly people on the aged pension. But people being what they are, many superannuants intend to go on world tours or travel around Australia to quickly get rid of their capital so they become eligible for the old age pension. http://www.ad

It would be ideal if obesity could be treated by taking something, instead of drastic dieting. A possible solution has been found in molasses. This sweet substance is rich in polyphenols, antioxidants that seem to change the consequences of a high-fat diet. For 12 weeks mice were given a high-fat diet supplemented with up to 4 per cent molasses extract. The mice lost weight. This was believed to be caused by the molasses reducing caloric absorption. Fat cells make the hormone leptin. This hormone was reduced in the blood. Next year work will be done on humans to see if results are the same. Molasses are inexpensive and capsules could easily be produced. It would be a great leap forward if a simple "cure" like this is effective. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/AdventureAustralia http://www.technorati.com/blogs/ http://adventure--australia.blogspot.com . . . . . . . . . . . .

"The chores are never done." http://vistacomputersolutions.blogspot.com/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Funny Animal Photos

There is not much doubt that work is bad for you. Yes, it gets you up in the morning and you have to go through all the rituals of getting to work, but that is about it. You would probably feel better and be healthier if you could take a pleasant walk along the beach, then sit down for a cool drink. However, one must make a living. What good is money to you? Well, it gives you the power to make others work for you! Manual work is doubly hard on any person. You have the worry of receiving a low wage and the body must suffer continuing hardship. Even having a "comfy" job in an office, sitting down lazing in a chair most of the time, the stress can be immeasurable. With a physical job one has the problems of getting a permanent bad back, for example, and office employment has the dangers of obesity and heart disease. Work is a fact of life. It makes the world go round. As the saying goes: Egypt made the pyramids, but the pyramids made Egypt. http://www.adventure--australia.blogs

New research shows what many have known for years, that woman want to marry a rich man and stay at home. Going shopping everyday with a pleasant trip to the coffee shop makes the ideal life for most women. In regard to sex many don't even need it. Perhaps the lower libido of an elderly man suites them. Times of campaigning for equality are over. Look around and you see most women marry, get pregnant within a year or so, and live off their husband's income, totally. Many never intend to work after getting married. A staggering 69 per cent of those surveyed said they wanted to stay home with their children. Ask a man who is heading toward the age of 30 what he wants out of life. He will breath in deeply, heave out a sigh, then say "I am sick of work!" No one wants to toil away all those valuable hours in the day when you could be relaxing, fishing, messing about with the car, or tinkering with something in the garden shed. Women feel the same, though they would rather d