Wow , have you noticed fuel costs less than some bottled water !

Thanks Silver Chrome , I also confident they'll get us in the end

here is Broken Hill prices have changed little much to the dismay of the RAA and other motoring body's

the argument here is they do not make enough on fuel sales so they have to sell other items and keep prices high

water is cheap and chips in woolies at present

Yep I certainly also noted that while its cheap it should be a lot cheaper.

In around 2008 I based my assessment of trends on some interesting articles about shale oil etc , but I never thought the USA would actually get self sufficent quite so early , the technology solutions appeal to engineers like me - but I suspect this might be a last Hurrah - still if it carries us through to serious alternative fuel choices then I guess petrol will have done its job.

Peak oil had nothing at all to do with greenies but if it spawned the search for alternative energies we can all be thankful for that. Here's a pretty decent summary of the situation for anyone interested:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-t-klare/peak-oil-is-dead_b_4567978.html

The peak oil thing has everything to do with greenies.....they rabbit on about it at infinitum....they did not come up with the idea but they picked it up and ran with it big time.........AND they vigorously oppose any exploration that would uncover new reserves.

They continue about peak oil to justify things like wind farms and solar.
As if there are no other sources of fossil fuel energy.
When in fact it has been known that there are still massive reserves of gas and coal world wide.

But they don't want that burned either.......they would rather burn ethanol produced from food crops and subsidise solar panels..while ignoring the oil and minerals that go into producing both.
Truth to tell it takes more oil to produce ethanol from grain that the energy it yeilds, and burning coal is actually more economical and less environmentally damaging that making solar panels.

Yeh the greeies have very selective truth......They don't want to burn rubbis for energy and we hear nothing about producing ethanol from waste.


cheers

Actually thats a worthwhile read Bazooka.

Bantam I also noted how small the old standard holdens look against our RAV4 and as you say they weigh less.

My first ever car , a volkswagon beetle , used less fuel than any car I have had in the following 40 years - so much for enviromental progress !

Coming from someone who is selective with facts almost to a fault that's a laugh Bantam. Your ability to distill complex issues into simplistic anecdotes speaks for itself, so please don't try and speak for "greenies", what they do or don't believe or want, as well. Seems you're unaware of the fact but most intelligent people are "greenies" to varying extents. It's just that like in every walk of life there are different shades of green, different views, and different approaches on how to achieve certain outcomes.

Still, as much as I scoff at your ludicrous generalisations I'm always open to new information so I'm hanging out to read your evidence for these : "Truth to tell it takes more oil to produce ethanol from grain that the energy it yeilds, and burning coal is actually more economical and less environmentally damaging that making solar panels."

I have yet to find one single "greenie" that I would consider intelegent and able to follow a reasoned argument.
Most opf them do not even work off facts that have confirmed for themselves...they believe what they have been told or what they want to believe.

Almost without exception "greenies" approach other people as if they are idiots who intentonally want to vandalise the planet and push One single line with religeous furver.

Even the Name "Greenie" which they all wear with pride shows nothing more than a romantic view of nature.
Truth is nature is more brown than green.....reality is more mundane and unpalatable that the simplistic religeous rubbish that most greenies believe.

I don't need to speak for greenies......they speak far more than enough for their persentage of the population.

Fortunately the generaly public are comming to the realisation that the whole greenie outlook is fundamentally flawed and not bassed on actual reality.

We need to adopt a more realistic "brown" view of nature, but that is far less apealing than a lush green view the mostly urban or trendy tree changie dwelling greenies want to think about.

cheers

Gees Bantam,

Dr David Suzuki comes to mind straight away and I think he maybe a tad brighter than yourself. He also wouldn't resort to calling others that disagree with him idiots.

Bantam..I thought you were a little bit more intelligent than the garbage you have just posted...reminds me of the old saying about empty vessels making the most noise.

Yeh well there was a time that I thaught that David Suzuki was a pretty clever fellow......Yeh I've seen some of the things he has been saying in more recent times and yeh....they come from the standard greenie hymn book...themes of certain disaster and pressing thories as if they are proven facts.
He no longer impresses me......he may be very educated in his field....zoology & genetics......

These days he is a media personality and is clearly identified as an "activist"......with a pro climate change view.

I don't know him sufficiently to know wheather he is smarter than me or not....I know I would handily spank him in My chosen field...but that is a pointless exercise.

One thing I know.......he is very much pro climate change and not particularly moderate.

There are some very smart people out there than can not follow a reasoned argument......particularly when it disagrees with their established view....particularly when they have been braught up in a social and acedemic context where that vew predominates.


An interesting subject for discussion was was Dr karl Kruszelnicki's TV programme where he interviewed both pro climate change and anti climate change scientists with moderate views.

As far as the provable facts and expectations.....they disagreed about little.....but their conclusions where very different......and their moderate views where very very different to the polar opposite views generally aired in the media.

When it comes to environment, it is very very difficult to find real hard proven facts, it is even harder to find people without preconceptions or fundamental bias.


As far as the "garbage I have just posted"....well that goes back to simply calling people names when you cant articulate a reasonable argument.

cheers

While I am at it here is the unpalatable truth.

It is not fossil fuels are greenhouse gasses that we need to save the planet from.....it is waste and gratuitous consumption...these two things that are at the root of so many world wide issues.

We can not continue by any means continually increasing wealth and living standards for all and producing ever increasing economic growth in a world with limited resources.
We particularly can not contunue providing ever increasing profits for the large companies and the rich.



If we kept those cars oldrer cars in good order for as long as was practical.....even thought there where not as "green" as the current models they would produce less total environmental impact than building a new car....but OH NO....the interests big business and the consuming dersire dictates that we have to scrap cars and replace them with new ones...even if they are prefectly servicable.

That old 6 cylinder station waggon...if it was well tuned and maintained used to produce 25mpg on the highway....yeh that modern light SUV ( like a RAV ) don't do much better.

cheers

Bantam,
I think you should do a 1000 page thesis on the difference between the price of a bottle of water and the price of fuel.

That might then fit within the parameters of this post. That or you could go into politics and be the next Tony Abbott.

Its very simple.....bottled water is typical of the waste and gratuitous consumption that dominates modern civilisation.

For the vast majority who consume it, it is completly unnecessary.

It is a product that multinational companies make a rediculous profit from.

And is wastefull in every way at every point of the product cycle.

Fuel and energy is a product that is manipulated at every opportunity to maximise profit to multinational companies and taxes to governments.

Fuel and energy (of all types) are used to bleed every normal citizen to feed multinational companies and governments.

Neither are sold to the public at a price that has anything to do with the cost of production or the quantity of the product available.

cheers

Lol, we've seen it so many times on here it's getting tedious. It has to be said, so here goes. With classics such like: "When it comes to environment, it is very very difficult to find real hard proven facts, it is even harder to find people without preconceptions or fundamental bias." Let me re-write that for you: "when it comes to the environment, it is very very difficult to find things which fit my narrow and blinkered views. Scientists are mostly biased with their greenie ways and socialist agendas."

Someone, regularly you, thinks they know more than the combined knowledge and wisdom of the scientific, economic, and social world communities. Problem is you trip over your own tongue and ignore the wealth of scientific data and opinion available far too often to be taken seriously. The latest - we don't know how much oil there is left, peak oil is a greenie conspiracy. Subtext - there's oil galore (at least enough for "my" lifetime), in fact there's so much of the stuff that only "greenies" don't want us burning it, so why should we be concerned about looking for and using alternative, renewable energies. Conversely, "continually increasing wealth and living standards for all and producing ever increasing economic growth in a world with limited resources" is apparently a major problem. Indeed it is which is why "greenies", businessmen and women and politicians all over the world are looking ahead while you're mired in the depths of anecdote and simplistic commentary.

Complex issues, including consumption ought to be treated with far more respect. Consumption and economic growth have numerous positive characteristics along with the obvious negatives. For example, money is poured into scientific and medical research leading to refinement of products, systems and processes which can help mitigate many existing and future problems. Necessity may have been the mother of invention but arguably economic progress has been its primary facilitator in the last 50 years. And while I'm not one who subscribes to the complacent ideology of "man will always find a way to overcome the limitations of resorces" (aka "no need for concern, there's always something else over the hill to save us/the environment will repair itself without our help") there is a lot of truth in the fact that science/technology and economics/wealth will provide soultions to many of our "gratitous consumption" problems - IF the political will and push from the people continues to drive it.

While you're searching for answers to the previous questions I posed can you see if there's also something about the lifecycle energy "costs" for one barrell of oil please. THAT would be interesting when you factor in the myriad economic and environmental costs of decades of research, exploration, development, marketing, storage, refinement, transport, management, retailing etc.

It's obvious but everything we do, eat, make and use has economic and environmental costs and benefits - getting the balance right is the difficulty and "greenies" of every shade make a positive contribution to that battle whether you or I like it or not.

Bantam,
The problem with you labelling people greenies and all the media connotations that come with this is the denigration of some very very good people that care what happens to our surroundings. On the flip side of the coin are the rednecks that will destroy anything in their path to get what they want. Then again there are developers that will try and cause minimal damage and loggers that will selectively log and cause as least damage to the forest as possible.

Cleared a property many years ago the gentleman who's property was cleared was made a Sir. We shook our heads when he said
"I want the whole area cleared" to which the question came "even the iron bark ridges and the sides of the creeks". Answer "yes all of it". We just shook our heads and couldn't believe it. We had cleared one property that many cockies were envious of because if it was going to rain it always received it. After the pulling it the rain stopped favouring that property.

Cane farmers have changed the way they farm from reduction in burn (Burdekin is about the only place that still burns because of the leaf mass due to an abundance of water) zero till has been introduced, bunding has taken place to reduce the amount of run off, soil moisture and fertiliser presence are monitored to reduce waste and run off.

All this has come about due to the pressure of the so called greenies to the actual benefit of us all, including the farmer.

Town sewage plants have been upgraded to reduce the amount of harmful products into the oceans. In 80 years we have managed to turn the Murray into a sewer. Brisbane River where you live has been cleaned up a lot when they realised the damage being done by run off.


Maybe we need a lot more of these idiot greenies to sustain a balanced environment because there are those that will always destroy, rape and pillage.

Go to New Guinea or Bougainville and see the damage that was done by the respectable mining companies to the Jaba and Fly rivers.

Then again I admire people like Ian Kiernan who just got out there and did it. Maybe that puts me in the category of idiot.

Oh here we go with the old failthfull...nothing would happen without the greenies.

It completly ignores the fact there there is a moderate majority that are concerned with the environment and what is reasonable.....AND they existed long before the idea of a greenie.

There are and there always where farmers out there with very progressive outlooks and relying for their productivity on the health of their land.

A lot of the more efficient and environmantally advantageous farming methods are not driven by greenie bleating.....they are driven by cost and practicality .
No sensible farmer wants to piss furtiliser or pesticide down the drain.



truth to tell the whole green lobby have done far less of significance than they would like to believe about anything.



It has been the moderates who have consistently achieved real tangable and lasting results.



As far as the Cleaning up the Brisbane river.....OH don't start me on that one.......The brisbane river ( like most large civilised rivers) has been progressivly better regulated over about 180 years of white settlement.....we have come a long way from meat processing works at kangaroo point discharging all their waste direct into the river with impunity, to a fairly stringently regulated waterway...and that regulation has been progressive over that time.
AND in fact with relativly little input from greenies.

The discharge of meat waste into the river in early times was regulated not because of greenies ( which certianly did not exist) but because it was recognised as a clear problem, the smell and the shark problem was obvious to anybody with a moderate view.

A great many moderate people at that time would have recognised this sort of polution was a very bad idea and should never have been allowed without a greenie to tell them so......and things did change.

The single major inprovement in water quality in the brisbane river was to stopping of regular dredging in the city reaches up as far as centanary......there where many reasons that was stopped.... large among those reasons was there was no longer a need to do so for navigation and the rich residents of the prestige suburbs fronting the river complaining about the noise.
There where also practical and economic factors too, like cost and salt in gravel.
A lot of this coencided with the end of coral mining in the bay by QCL for cement.


Tommy Burns, ( definitely not a greenie) did an awfull lot of consequence for water, fishing and the bay.
But he would not have supported the rediculous and totally pointless green zones and the whole concept of a marine park in moreton bay.
Trust me DO NOT start me on this one

The two single biggest events improvining water quality in the brisbane river where the 74 floods and the more recent floods.....those who fish the river will tell you this for sure.

Yeh the Greenies will have you believe that with out them we'd be living an a cesspit.

Sorry moderate sensible people have done far more to improve the environment than the radical minority greenies.

cheers

I agree with you on one thing Bantam. We certainly don't want to hear more of your anecdotal nonsense on marine parks, or your plucked from the air opinions that no "Australian" shark species is under threat. We have well-qualified people to do that for us fortunately, or we did have until federal and state conservative govts got rid of quite a few of them. Who needs the inconvenient truth of science when we have religion to guide us?

It's pretty obvious that you have no idea about "greenies", green movements, or green politics which exist across the world, in cities and rural areas, focused on bringing about real change and endeavouring to get at least some balance into discussion, development and public policy. Your idea of a greenie is outdated and tainted by your own biases. Where you see unwashed, long-haired hippie extremists others see moderate businessmen and women, farmers, politicians and a groundswell of people simply interested in ensuring rampant development and profit for a small minority aren't allowed to ride roughshod over environmental considerations, animal welfare and longer term considerations.

Just a thought but if your straw-man "greenies" are so irrelevant and ineffectual and are such a tiny minority why are you and others so obsessed with "them"? I have my theory but I'll leave it for another day, perhaps when you get back to us with the evidence of your claims regarding the relative environmental costs of burning coal and making solar panels. Suffice to say there are far bigger threats to our current and future welfare than your largely imagined scary green monster - ignorance and complacency being just two obvious ones.

WE chum.......speak for yourself......typical......greenies often talk about "WE"........so who is that "WE".


Yess I do agree that the greenie that uses their minority vote, balance of power to press nonsencical Green measures into legeslation bassed on nothing but their own blinkered views. is more and more irrelivent.

Like
ethanol that takes more fossil fuel to make than it replaces

Domestic, solar power that takes more resources to build than it will ever replace and is far more expensive that burning coal.

Household insulation programmes that where both ill concieved and costly...and killed...AND of questionable environmental significance

Compact fluros, that are possibly one of THE worst products every foist on society.....in general they do not last as long as a less efficient filament lamp, produce more waste and are harder, if not nearly impossible to properly recycle....and require a lot more and more environmentally costly materials to make.

But someone is making a lot of money out of the above "green" initiatives for little or no benifit to people or the environment.

Marine parks..oh my.
Marine parks bassed on NO science with boundries decideed arbitarily only on the basis that it would be a good idea.
AND there is documented proof and personal admsssions, that is how the boundries and the basis for the moreton bay marine park where decided.
It was a moreton bay marine park with certain percentages or no preference deal with the greens.
A certain labour power broker admitted that they decided what they where going to do, then went looking for science to support it....after delaying and procrastinating this so called science was revealed.....it was all either irrelivent or discredited
I was up to my armpits in that campaign.

I confronted one marine scientist in a public CONsultation....."I asked "Mate has any body been and looked"...the answer was NO...the whole premiss was a statistically flawed survey bassed on a sample of less than 100th of a precent of the fishing population.


Large international lobby groups like the Pew Environmental Trust who see fit to meddle in other countries polotics to a greater extent than the CIA where ever suposed to have......
It is the AMERICAN PEW environmental trust that is pushing for very large parcels of the austraian cost line and the coral seal to be locked up in marine parks.....it is PEW who paid for the Barry Rass adds and funds many environmental groups.

Then there is the very large influence that the vegatarian looby have over the green side of polotics.
Their whole outlook is not bassed on scinece but being too squeamish to eat cute furry animals.

You can talk about anecdotal statements.......pots and kettles mate.

90% of the whole envoronmental debate is anecdotal......or so called science even if it exists bassed on very small sample statistics and biased outlooks.

Talk about environment science......HELL....if you don't tow the line as a student in certain faculties, you don't get good marks......without a good pass and a favorable outlook you WILL not get a job in that field...to work in that field you have to do research ( there is no other work).....the vast majority of reserach in that field is funded by those expecting a certain outcome.......it is those who work in that field who set the polocies and lecture in the faculties and the circle completes its self.....A breath taking level of scientific dishonesty....and the pier review is by those with the same outlook.


The general population is beginning to realise exactly how irrelivent Greenies are and how poorly thaught out most of their ideas and polocies are.

Fortunatly this is being reflected in the green vote.

cheers

FWIW...I think a reduction in the "Green Vote" is linked to the direction the Green's Party has taken in more recent times, not because people are not interested in the environment...

Baz - The Landy

Yes most "greenies" are vegetarians, they all wear hair shirts and live in low impact solar houses with candles for light and sustainable heat sources to cook with. Your stereotyping is fairly indicative of your thought processes, but your argument still contains reems of unsubstantiable garbage, er opinion. I'll deal with just a few because we've covered your fishing claims in previous threads and this one is fast becoming a soap opera itself.

Anyone who wants to know about the ethanol push worldwide can do their own research. Enough to say that in this country it was the Howard govt pushed by his National Party cohorts who made the running. The fact that one of Howard's biggest supporters also owned the major ethanol producer was probably purely coincidental. Here's one of many comments you'll find if you care to look:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/howard-pushes-ethanol-fuel-plan/2005/09/22/1126982179068.html The whole bio-fuels debate (particularly ethanol made from food sources) is far too complex to discuss here but blaming "greenies" for its issues is just simplistic nonsense.

Compact fluoros? Like many ideas they were at best a stopgap with their own environmental issues but I don't recall any greenies calling around to my house offering to replace my incandescent globes. No that would have been an energy company. Can't recall any greenie companies being invoved in their production either but no doubt you'll have evidence to back up your rather vague assertion. In any case no-one claims that mistakes of all kinds won't be made by greenies or anyone else concerned with life on this planet.

Household insulation? You can't seriously be questioning its value - well perhaps you can. The administration of that program (which had more to do with the GFC and economic stimulation than it did to environmental concerns) left quite a bit to be desired (any business not training its staff/contractors and not having their safety as an uppermost concern deserves total condemnation) but how that somehow lessens the value of insulation is a mystery to me at least. Perhaps you can enlighten me because all the figures I've seen (none of which come from greenies anywhere) suggest that insulation and environmental design are very significant energy savers.

Here's a very interesting story about the quite sorry saga of ethanol in the USA and a few pars to whet your appetite.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/secret-dirty-cost-obamas-green-power-push-1

President Obama's team at the EPA was sour on the ethanol mandate from the start.

As a way to reduce global warming, they knew corn ethanol was a dubious proposition. Corn demands fertilizer, which is made using natural gas. What's worse, ethanol factories typically burn coal or gas, both of which release carbon dioxide.

Then there was the land conversion, the most controversial and difficult-to-predict outcome.

Digging up grassland releases greenhouse gases, so environmentalists are skeptical of any program that encourages planting more corn.

"I don't remember anybody having great passion for this," said Bob Sussman, who served on Obama's transition team and recently retired as EPA's senior policy counsel. "I don't have a lot of personal enthusiasm for the program."

At the White House and the Department of Agriculture, though, there was plenty of enthusiasm.

Duck, cause Bantam is on a roll toward a 1000 page lecture.

The way you wrote a reply and quote. "I have yet to find one single "greenie" that I would consider intelegent and able to follow a reasoned argument" followed by "Almost without exception "greenies" approach other people as if they are idiots who intentonally want to vandalise the planet and push One single line with religious furver"

Then you go on later to say there are moderate environmentalists. Now you have come from greenies to moderate greenies. Is that the left of right moderate or the left, left moderate or is it the person you deem as a moderate and will be excepted by yourself as a moderate greenie.

I can tell you many cane farmers predicted the end of the industry when no burning came in and they also did the same when certain poisons were removed. This all faded when they found the world didn't stop and all this was accomplished by environmentalists and those horrible left wing csiro scientists. The farmers over the last few years have now acknowledged the benefits of environmental farming.

Ethanol, I wonder how our local ethanol plant is using all that fossil fuel, considering they produce their power by burning bagasse.

Yes farmers did over fertilise and were very wayward to say the least with the way and amount of pesticide and herbicide they used. Many are paying the penalty now with their health.

Much of the change that has come about has been by the people who care about where they live and people who call them names are very short sighted.

You see Bantam you have a habit of twisting words, statements like "Oh here we go with the old failthfull...nothing would happen without the greenies. No one said anything of the sort, your statement just gave you carry on with your ideology.

I reckon the best thing you could do with Moron bay is. Allow all the netters back, get rid of bag limits, Allow the 1970's gulf prawn fleet into the bay for a month. That will clean it out. Bloody greenies.

Yeh again typical greenie behaviour...miss quoting and exagerating the statements of others.

There is no delying the vegetarian influence in green polotics...there is some very big money and high profile vegetarian support flowing toward the green movement.
Vegetarians who by the way don't grasp that they are completly dependent on intensive agriculture and induatrial food processing to eat.

appart from those who stand to make money from them, who else is there to blame for supporting alternative fuels, and what other possible premiss is there for mandating the introduction of ethanol fuel but a greenie argument that revolves arround global warming and fossil fuels.
no matter which way you slice it its a greenie push.

YEH compact fluros...stop gap.....yeh a measure that is worse than the existing alternatives.....yep typical greenie one step forward and two steps back.....who would be behind mandating such a thing....who else would want to force us to reduce greenhouse gasses...ya cant wriggle out of that one either.
If they just waited another 5 yeasr LED technology would have been cheap, mature and probably would require no mandating.

As for the insulation thing......come on it was run by one of the most prominent greenies in the country.
It would not have cost a single cent of tax payers money to mandate insulation in new and renovated buildings.
I had to pay for my own insulation, why should I have to pay for someone elses.....someone who probably has more money to spare than me
This was clearly a greenie mandated initiative and like so many greenie things later was no good..it had to be done in a hurry.

There is no wriggling out of this one either......insulation is a good idea........but YOUR man Garret was in charge and the whole thing was a fiasco.....if it was not for greenie pressure we might have got some decent roads, a port developments or a new dam or two instead.

Think of the amount of bushland remediation that insulation programe could have paid for.
Hell you could have had 10 000 low income workers out there wacking cane toads with a stick for that money.

cheers

Here's another ethanol story from 2006 which details the political gameship from corporate America. Unsurprisingly there's no "greenie" to be seen in any of these stories.

http://grist.org/article/adm1/

Hotlinked.

http://grist.org/article/adm1/

BTW......do you see the words"moderate environmentalist" anywhere in any of my posts....I don't believe there is such a thing.
Isn't an environmemtalist a greenie with a haircut and a shave that got his own web site.


AND ...last time I looked we where not living in the US.

cheers

You appear to have trouble following your own arguments let alone answering mine so providing a sound basis for your broad brush anti-greenie finger waving is clearly out of the question.

Insulation is both of "questionable environmental significance" but also apparently "a good idea". Misquoting? Wriggling? I think not, it's all there for everyone to see, just as a little bit of research by anyone interested in a balanced view will give the lie to most of your comments. At least try to be consistent with your arguments, even if they are simplistic in the extreme. I concur though - you're up to your armpits in it and you desperately need a paddle.

Phew...

I'll get to the harder stuff later, but I'm still trying to work out how I might recognise a "greenie" if I passed one in the street.

I'm a bit slow, but confident I'll catch up eventually.

But for now I've got to take a bex and a lie down after reading this...

Seriously, for a while I thought I was in a travel/four-wheel drive forum.

Baz - The Landy

HA, HA, HA, I am getting a good laugh out of this.

Now vegetarians are greenies. Awesome.

Thank god Bundy uses ethanol from sugar to make rum and not power vehicles.

No, we are not living in the USA and actually use sugar to make ethanol and the power that produces it is from non fossil fuel.

Pat Garret, was he the lawman in the old western movies or are you talking about another Garret. I can't think of any friends I have named Garret.

Me thinks it tis time to go. Bye now. I will go and have a Bundy as it is made by Greenies, for Greenies and enjoyed by Greenies.

Before I go and drink my green rum here is a little light reading about radical greenies.

Bloody short sighted Greenies

FFS, if you want to talk politics do it on a political forum and spare the rest of us here in EO.

On a lighter note.

Why did the greenie cross the road?

He had to go back to his 4wd a get a sign for the anti-global warming protest.



cheers

I think that gives us an insight into the mind of man John.

And my 3 x 6500 gallon tanks are just about full to overflowing, even though we're well below the average rainfall for the month (and have had , in the past 12 months, only April and last November with above average rainfall) and I can fill my metal bottles from the tap at zero cost apart from the power to run the pump. The tanks and the roof they are filled from have been amortised well and truly!

True Robyn.

That should be "Robin", bloody iPad auto correct has a mind if its own!

You guys are missing the point.
People are paying for a service not the product. They choose to buy a bottle of water at the retail store to drink over a bottle of soft drink as that is what THEY want to consume. The shopkeeper still has the same on costs to have that bottle of 'whatever' on the shelf and need to charge accordingly.Branding then comes into it in the same way as buy Coca Cola brand V a 'no name' version of the same thing.

You could have a similar argument about buying a 1kg packet of birdseed as opposed to the price you can buy grain by the tonne, same goes for potting mix, sand, mulch, bottled gas etc etc.

Just the same I rarely buy bottled water myself for the same reasons as you have stated LOL

when we first moved to Broken Hill 12 yrs ago

we had red water coming out of the tap local water board paid people we payed damages in the way of a small fortune to people who had tried to wash clothing and the items were coming out of the washing machine dirtier than they went in

even now most locals buy water as it is not too good some days are better than others and they are working on making better quality drinking water , but the drought is not helping

I think a lot of remote town s will be in the same boat

The fact is...most people who buy bottled water do not live in remote towns with poor water supplies.
They live in large cities with excelent drinking water.

Those who do live in places where the drinking water is poor AND buy bottled water, buy cheap bottled water and often in large containers.

The realy smart ones either have a rainwater supply of have their own water filtration.

Buying and running an RO every day would be cheaper than buying some bottled water.

cheers

Ok Pop , I'll make the most of it while it lasts.

I'm sure the fuel will last but not the low price.
I wonder about the federal governments recent move to re-index fuel taxes while at a fuel price low point. It does appear to have at least partially backfired here in Vic where the government was just kicked out last night.

I just find the contrast between what many believed years ago and the reality now fascinating and very instructive as to the projections we each may make for the years ahead.

LOL

who says rainwater is any good?

our only source of drinking water used to be rainwater tanks - none of the towns on that part of the eyre Penninuslar had potable scheme water
bottled water hadnt been invented (well at least like it is now)

rainwater tanks were full of mozzie larvae and when the mouse plaugues swept through tanks would have a layer of decomposed mouse sludge on the surface up to a foot deep.
I credit those days for me being immune to any type of food poisoning these days.
the first rule of drinking rainwater is never look into the tank
the second rule of drinking rainwater is never look into the tank
Ill let you guess what the third rule is .....

Stephen,

let's hope that it get's cheaper.

The water or the Diesel?

Cheers
Mike.

Hi Mike

I hope the Diesel gets cheaper....lol



Cheers


Stephen

Stephen, coming home today from Brissy, I went through Yunta and diesel at $1.409.
Back in Adelaide a few hours later, it's all around $1.479.

Saw it in several tiny country towns through NSW and SA for around the $1.40 mark, and still paid $1.469 in Brissy when I tanked up 2 tanks with 150lt odd before leaving.

In Sydney the week before found it for $1.369 / lt.

Hate fuel company games with diesel, but suppose all fuel types get their turn at being the (higher) profit centre.

I guess there will be both winners and losers Ron.
I still design some stuff for trains and one reason we still make trains in this country is because its just two expense to import them - but as cost of shipping transport goes down so it becomes harder to be competitive even in these 100+ tonne items

Oil is a GDP and economic growth story, if growth picks up, and eventually it will, the price of oil, and refined fuels will push higher.

Cheer's Baz - The Landy

Don't wnt to stir you Trouper but it does seem that the future will be one of more and more technology chasing harder to get oil and if it ever does run out then CNG may be on the cards but that will be years away.

474 buses out of the Perth bus fleet of 1100 buses runs on CNG. However, it does have it problems.
The Perth PTA has lost 14 CNG buses to fires in the last 5 yrs.
The PTA were set to sue Daimler-Benz, but they came to an agreement instead - and Mercedes have agreed to modify the gas buses, to an improved level of safety engineering, that includes a whole lot of redesigns organised by the PTA engineers.

Perth's entire CNG bus fleet off the road for gas leaks fix

For everyday use for everyone else, the problem is simply a lack of CNG infrastructure.
The oil companies have it all over every other fuel type with their massive number of service stations and fuel outlets.
Until someone pours the tens of billions required into CNG infrastructure Australia-wide, then CNG will always stay a "boutique" fuel.

Boobook, I recall someone talking about how a bottle of "pure" water generally costs more than a bottle of Coke - and bottled water has no processing, and no added ingredients!!

There is a mob in Melb attempting a new bottled water marketing paradigm - the bottled water is FREE but each bottle has advertising plastered over it. Not sure what's in that for retailers so I doubt it will fly but my main complaint was environmental (yes there is a place for bottled water). They claim to use semi-biodegradable plastic but their water is extracted from our precious groundwater so I'm not impressed, and told them so. If you have to have a business selling bottled water why not use the existing water infrastructure and leave our precious gwater alone.

Mining also pays far less than it should for our gwater. Then again they pay far less for our resources in general than they should imo.

Taking the rediculous to the even more rediculous.

My wife baught home a bottle of water from a conference.....the bottle has a battery, a coloured LED and a switch in the base......so the bottle can look pretty in the fridge.

More rediculous waste for no benifit whatsoever.

AND this makes the bottle virtually unrecyclable, because nobody will have the time or equipment to remove the electronics from the bottle.

cheers

Unfortunately, the oversupply issue has been accompanied in Australia by a big fall in the value of our dollar. As we buy our fuel from overseas, the overall effect has been to keep prices about steady. And of course, the cost price of the imported fuel is only a part of the costs we pay at the pump. The current Federal government has also raised its tax on fuel (well I think they have, not sure whether or not this was one of the measures they got through, or weren't able to get through, the Senate.

Hi Mfewster , in this case they have taken value of dollar into the equation , so no excuse.

Hi Robin, I am certainly no defender of the oil companies and I am more than willing to believe they are gouging us. Why do we think the movement in dollar has already been factored in? There is also a gap (no idea how long) between the delivery of oil to the pump and the actual purchase of that particular bulk shipment and so I'd expect a gap of some weeks at least between any downwards movement at the pump and the daily international price. I know the fed government tried recently to put up the fuel tax however I have no idea what their actual take at the moment is or whether it has varied.
What I find especially interesting is the variation in South Australia. At Tintinara on the Dukes Highway between Adelaide and Melbourne, diesel is about 10 c a litre cheaper than in Adelaide or Melbourne. I do that run regularly and try to gauge my timing so I always have a near empty tank at Tintinara. How come country fuel costs less than the city after paying delivery costs? I would accept some sort of amortization of fuel prices between bush and city to cut the costs for our outback folk but I don't think that is what is going on here.

I haven't checked the currency-adjusted oil prices on the graphs lately (the currency talk itself assumes oil companies don't use hedging devices to protect themselves from major currency fluctuations) but I heard an industry commentator a few weeks ago suggesting that if Singapore parity was being followed the average price per litre should have fallen more than 20c. In many major metrop areas that seems to have occurred give or take but it certainly is not the case elsewhere where prices have dropped by about 7 or 8 cpl. I did read yesterday that delivery on the eastern seaboard should make no more than 3 or 4 cpl difference (on "average") so there is little if any doubt many of us are being gouged at the pump by the two biggest players in many areas - Coles-Shell and Woolworths-Caltex. Competition is the only answer because state and federal govts have no will to regulate.

The Abbott govt's budget tax increase is insignificant (~0.5c) in terms of the current price.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/treasury/fuel-tax-to-rise-as-mathias-cormann-announces-indexation-adjustment/story-fn59nsif-1227104519189?nk=0de11703cc0d797fbc9bb9951751d146

Competition is the answer......That's why I only buy from UNITED or other independents (never had a fuel issue either) and cheaper even with Coles/Woolies lousy 4cents discount

Prices are holding up because the refining margin, which moves constantly, is higher than normal presently. It can reflect a number of reasons, refineries down for maintenance, or it could be a simple fact that price tension isn't sufficient currently to warrant it to narrow.

And I'm referring to global refining, not Australia...

Mind you, I should add, I have a strong view that the Australian dollar will be closer to 0.8000 cents, than 0.9000 cents sooner rather than later, and if correct, will serve to keep prices up.

And I'm paid to get a currency view right...!

Cheers...

Doesn't explain the country area price differential (aka gouging) though Baz.

I'll leave that to those selling it to answer...

Cheers, Baz

To all of those that think bottled water is a ripoff, what do you think a fair price should be?