My son's cochlear implant

My son Dale was born hearing impaired because his mother, a midwife, picked up a German Measles infection while she was pregnant.

The prevailing medical wisdom in the mid-70s was that if you have already had the measles, you wouldn't get them again. Either my wife was misdiagnosed when she had a measles infection during her teen years, or the prevailing wisdom was incorrect.

Whatever the case, at 9 months of age, Dale was fitted with two hearing aids and despite a profound hearing impairment, managed to learn to read and write and communicate reasonably well with the help of many wonderful people.

During the last decade, one ear, the one with the implant, lost all of its hearing. Even his hearing aid didn't make the situation any better.

We heard about cochlear implants and with his sister's encouragement, convinced Dale to get an implant to see if any improvement could be made.

Recently Dale, me and my wife drove from Alice Springs (Central Australia) to Darwin to get the implant surgery. The photo herein shows Dale with the implant.

Inside his head a surgeon implanted the internal component with 22 electrodes that go into his cochlear. The external fitment has a magnet that attaches to the internal component.

It's several weeks since Dale had his implant and now he can hear noises he hasn't heard for decades: birds singing, the whirr of his DVD in his DVD reader, his feet making a noise on gravel. Soon, once his brain becomes accustomed to language sounds again, he may be able to use a phone for the first time in years.

By all measures, the implant has been a remarkable success and will be life-changing for Dale.

We are so fortunate to live in a country with an excellent medical system and numerous dedicated surgeons, nurses, and audiologists.

The Great Covid-19 Lockdown

When you're self-isolating or under health department orders to isolate, it's important to retain your sense of humour and perhaps catch up on some of the things you've been putting off.

Someone spent a bit of time producing this valuable sign to remind us to social distance.

At this end, I've advertised on Gumtree a couple of items I no longer want. One attracted an attempt at fraud, which is reasonably common on Gumtree and elsewhere.

This scammer wanted me to send money to a transport company (via wire to the Philippines no less) that she would include in the price she was going to pay for the goods. The idea being that she works on a vessel off the coast of New Zealand and didn't have access to her credit cards etc.

After 12 years of police service, I'm not naturally a trusting person. I decided to go along with the charade long enough to get all her emails which I have used in an article about scammers with actual examples. Obviously I never sent any money anywhere.

One fellow who lives nearby lost $4,000 in the same type of scam when buying a motorcycle apparently stored in another state. How one could be so gullible is anyone's guess.

While researching for the article I'm writing, I found from Scamwatch Australia that Australians were screwed out of $28.6 million on relationship scams alone. People under 25 years lost a staggering $5 mllion.

The message for all of us is to use due diligence when someone asks for money. 

Global heating same as 5 Hiroshima atom bombs per second

How can you possibly take the UN and its International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seriously when it's most senior members make such ludicrous claims?

We have 20 or 30 years of doom and gloom scenarios that have never eventuated from global warming fanatics.

Anyone who has done some serious research knows that the whole global warming deception has an agenda that has nothing to do with saving our beautiful planet.

The real agenda is dismantling the Western World, transferring billions in funding to failed states like the many in Africa, and eventually installing a One World Government run by - you guessed it - the UN.

While this all seems wonderful, the style of government being totalitarian socialist/communist, would mean giving up our freedoms, no democracy and doing what our masters dictated when, where and how.

There have been plenty of communist governments in the past and all have a penchant for killing off people who disapprove of their methods eg, Cambodia under PolPot. More recently, the Turkish Government under Erdogan imprisons journalists and dissenters and of course the United Soviet Socialist Republic of old was infamous for its gulags (concentration camps) and killing off millions of its non-compliant citizens. China is a modern-day example having placed thousands of its moslem citizens in detention camps for "reeducation". I'm no fan of moslems or Islam, but if it's moslems this week, next week it could be catholics, or whites, or anyone else who is deemed unsuitable.

Any government that imprisons people for free speech and kills off its citizens isn't a government I want to live under. Do you?

It's not only their alternative agenda, which you can read about here and here, but there are also other agreements such as the Lima Declaration. The latter is intended to kill off our industries to help other countries become wealthy.

Believe it or not, our politicians have bound Australia to both Agenda 2030 and the Lima Declaration. Neither is in our interest nor were we asked if we wanted to sign up for the destruction of our country.

On a different matter and getting back to the moron whose photo is above, here is Dr Roy Spencer's teams February, 2020 update of the gradual warming that has occurred since 1979.

It's gone UP 0.76 degrees C in that time and will probably drop with the current solar minimum 25 which is cooling our planet.

Don't take my word for any of this, get off your arse, stop searching Tinder and do your own research.

Why I get Pissed Off!

I'm a reasonably laid-back, happy person and few things ruffle my feathers.

But this one thing really pisses me off. It's the double whammy of taxes on insurance policies of which I have:

1. Motor vehicle insurance (not third-party compulsory)
2. House and contents insurance
3. House and landlord's insurance

When the Goods and Services Tax was introduced in Australia, I totally agreed with the concept as it is a user-pays tax. I'm all for user pays - don't buy it, you don't get taxed.

The Howard Government that introduced it guaranteed us that a range of other state and federal taxes would be abolished. Many were.

But state and territory stamp duty wasn't abolished on insurance policies while GST was added. Immediately, all insurance policies cost 10% more. 

If it wasn't bad enough to be paying stamp duty for governments to squander money, now we have to pay stamp duty AND GST.

In the clip above you can see that my premium is: $539.54

I choose to use a Broker so I pay: $98.26 in fees and commission (insurance underwriters get a trailing commission!) I could save $48.26 (plus the GST component) by dealing direct with the underwriters. Next year.

Taxes

Stamp Duty is $53.41 that goes to the Queensland Government

GST is $63.79 that goes to the Australian Government

The GST charged INCLUDES the stamp duty and all brokerage and commission costs. That means we pay GST on stamp duty - that's what pisses me off.

I'm not against paying tax, but I think this is grossly unfair.

What do you think?