BigBlog

One of the ways of avoiding a recession is to stimulate the economy to keep people in jobs.  There are ways to do that - you can give a multinational corporation a few billion dollars to keep people making cars - their wages being used to buy stuff that other people make. Another way is to give pensioners and low-income families a large sum of money - they go out and buy stuff that other people make. The target is to keep people in work and to keep the economy productive. One of the things that disturbs me are the reports that pensioners and the poor are not willing to do the needed spending. If they don't spend, then no doubt economic decision-makers will not try this form of economic stimulating again. So while it flies in the face of all we believe - the fact is that it is incredibly important that the recent stimulation package does what it was supposed to do. STIMULATE THE ECONOMY.

It worries me that the mechanics of these incentive packages are not being clearly explained - how many times have you heard the baby bonus being talked about in terms of flat screen TVs? How many times are we going to hear of irresponsible spending of the current scheme? The fact is that most of it will probably go exactly where it is needed - in buying things from businesses - and thus, keeping people employed in them. Parents are likely to spend the money on feeding, clothing, entertaining and schooling their kids. Pensioners are likely to feed, clothe and house themselves. But let's brace ourselves for the sneering critics of the scheme honing in on the trivia.

So far the clean-up cost has been $600 to my insurance company and $1,500 to me and my largest uprooted tree is to be cut by the council. Our street looks really ugly as all houses have mountains of debris on the kerbs awaiting pickup. This morning I woke to the noise of a huge limb falling from a gum in one of the horse paddocks.It came from high in the tree and brought two others with it. I shudder to think that I mowed under that tree on the weekend. I hope that we can tow the limbs out to the debris piles. Let's hope that we can get it out there before the council pickup.

 I suppose we have to expect shysters to emerge when there is a natural disaster. A 'handiman' quoted $1,030 to repair a fence. We did it ourselves and all we need to do is buy a new tensioner to make it nice and tight. I will forward his quote to the insurance assessor - they might have a 'warning-list' that this operator's name should be on.

Christmas - is it just me? - I am so over it. I wish we could dispense with the competitive gift giving and imported 'traditions' and go back to a more simple celebration. I'm not brave enough to run that one past my lot so I'll have to get thinking about where to get the turkey and the ham and get worrying about the 'presents'. I was thinking of giving books this year but I know that some are not readers and would be disappointed. I was thinking also of giving those charity gifts - where you donate on the recipient's behalf - but I reckon that would be viewed as one step worse than a book gift.

In the new year I buy one of those large money tins and throughout the year I put all of my change, any tattslotto checques (usually about $6) and the occasional note into it - so the the cost of Christmas is covered.It is surprising how much is in the tin - usually around the $500 mark. Some years it has amounted to around $800. I haven't opened this year's yet.

I notice that there is going to be a review of the legislation regarding trees. How quick and easy it was to accept the idea that tree clearing was bad and needed to be regulated. Well with the millions (billions yet?) of dollars spent on cleaning up the damaged caused by the trees that fell in recent storms, there is going to be a reconsideration involving some reference to tree types. Our service-station owner reckons that gum trees should be no closer than 100m to a house - I love trees, but on this I think he is right.

My insurance assessor has been quick off the mark and we have authority to get the debris-clearing work under way. The lopper will be here for 3 days starting tomorrow. When it is over, I will still have about 25 trees that ought to be removed but I could not possibly afford to have done. There will also be trees withbroken branches hanging in them that I will just have to wait to fall.

We have until the 1st December to put storm damage debris on our nature strips for council collection - but it is still raining and yesterday we had heavy winds so the timing is tight.  

When I retired establishing vegetable gardens was a priority. I wanted a measure of self-sufficiency in respect to some of my food. The storm damage has just about put an end to that activity - it is so disheartening to watch the season's work wiped out in a few minutes. I have lost interest. Perhaps I'll get back to it once the place is cleaned up again.

Another storm last night - it was nowhere near as ferocious as the one on Sunday but we got just over an inch of rain in half an hour. Lost electricity but were prepared for that.  Council engineer rang yesterday and said they will remove the big tree from the easement - they 'might' take it away. That will happen in December. The assessor tells me they will pay forthe fences & gate and cutting the trees where they hit the fences. The quote from the tree loppers for the other major damage that I have to pay for is $900. A bit of a hit but when you consider the damage that others are coping with it is insignificant. At least I will have an enormous pile of mulch when they're finished and a few less trees to worry about.

On the question of trees - I reckon that the laws against tree clearing are resulting in property owners (like myself) being reluctant to remove trees that should go. I know I have young trees on my property that should go (not to mention some very old ones that are questionable) but we now have to go through filing applications etc.  I know that at least one of my neighbours has taken the storm as an opportunity to clear a hell of a lot of his trees - he's got heavy equipment (excavators and a grader) to remove dozens of trees. His property will still be well-treed and is a sensible improvement. I have too many trees on my property - I wish they had a provision for small acreage properties "a minimum of 'x' number of trees for each hectare to remain'. Not that I could afford to do the work that my neighbour has done. But what I am doing is treating every sapling as a weed. I love trees but you can have too many.

They're reporting that there is another severe storm expected for Saturday.

I haven't decided what to do with the vegetable gardens - I may just clear them andstart again. I have started sowing seeds.