It is proof of how Australia is lagging behind in the rest of the world when it is considering selling and privatising our poles and wires or electricity grid. Poles and wires is old hat technology that is doomed in the not too far future. If you read about the subject it doesn’t take long to learn that enormous leaps are being made in alternative energy generation. A growing number of people are now relying on own energy generation and cutting supply from the grid. You can imagine not having to pay electricity bills anymore.

Solar panels are dropping in price and getting better. Battery technology is rapidly making advances and so are conversion methods, but above all storage of surplus solar energy in columns of salt in the form of heat. This heat gets transformed into electricity during times when there is no sun or during the night.

“Currently, solar panels in Australia produce energy at a cost of A10c per kilowatt hour or less, and it is likely that by 2020 this will fall to A6-7c per kilowatt hour or less. This puts solar power into a very competitive spot within the next five years. Read more from Asian Scientist Magazine at: http://www.asianscientist.com/2015/02/features/sunny-future-rooftop-solar-power/

Of course this Government, if that’s what one could call this coterie of uninspiring limpid cowardly foreign queen genuflecting lovers, bending down (or backwards) grovelling bicycle seat sniffers, it is in it’s dismal lack of wisdom, now actually discouraging uptake of alternative energy generation. If ever there was proof this Government is against economic common sense, surely their stance on alternative energy is in this sloppy pudding.

People that have been savvy enough to have solar panels installed are now deliberately being punished by getting a much lower rate being paid from feeding solar generated electricity back into the grid ( export) than what they use from the same grid (import). To put is simply, electricity used from the grid might get charged at $0.30c a kilowatt, yet solar energy fed into the grid might just get $0.10 a Kilowatt. This is a deliberate attempt to discourage people from going solar in order to protect the big boys of the Billion dollar Energy Companies. (Poles and wires)

Of course, this might well work in reverse. As solar panels become cheaper and the science in storage gallops ahead, many will simply cut off from the grid and be free from poles and wires. This is already happening in many countries and of course in Australia many farmers and rural communities have done without coal generated electricity for decades, relying on generators, batteries and recently solar energy. The more the price of coal generated (power and poles) electricity goes up, the more attractive and cheaper will be the option for people and communities to free themselves form the tyranny of the Energy companies.

I can’t imagine that if the decision to sell the ‘power and poles’ by this NSW Government, it will be met with much enthusiasm from the public or the large Super Funds. It might be a hard sell.

I hope so.

Map of Tasmania

It is always good to know that in writing you just have to know the first word. The rest usually follows from then on. I decided my first word for the day to be ‘apple’. It is round in shape and when spoken out loud, sounds evenly balanced between vowels and consonants. Of course, the logical word to follow after ‘apple’ could well be ‘Granny Smith’ or even ‘Lady Pink’. I thought to try and associate ‘Eve” to the apple.

You sometimes wonder how a modern version of Adam and Eve would turn out. The eager acceptance by Adam of Eve’s apple was the beginning of the end really. I mean, the apple was just a decoy for a many folded love secret kept well hidden by a cunning Eve. She knew it would be irresistible to Adam, transfixed as he was from then on her litheness while sliding from the tree in that garden of Eden. It worked its charm but with devastating results. It became complicated. I mean, who would have thought it would result in the painting of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling by Michael Angelo?

Was Eve all that innocent and still virginal with that offer of an apple, or was that apple loaded with venom, spite and revenge? A trick to get more little Adams and Eves roaming that lush park of flowing creeks, some sparse shrubs and sharp thistles. To lure him within her, sate him, empty to oblivion and so much nothingness?

On the other hand, did Adam not see the serpent with glistening eyes also slithering from that same tree. He could have given the apple to the snake instead of grabbing it himself. He had a choice!

It is all now so complicated and so much water under the bridge. I have also yielded to temptation and gone over to white bread. The birdseed wholemeal version has lost out. Forgive me daddy, I am nothing but a failure! I also broke a promise to take on smoking again at sixty five having given it up some decades earlier. It was the only thing that I could think of as a reward for giving it up. I failed a few times but none so badly as not having kept my promise to take it up again when I turned sixty five.

It is too late now. No going back or suffering regrets. Je ne regrette rien.

Going back to lithesome Eve. I would have cut the apple and offered her half. Furthermore,I would look Eve in the eye and, after a few communal bites, while sauntering around the garden, offering a few words of my own ask her then kindly,… your place or mine…?

Salami

Todays word that came to mind on wakening was ‘salami’.

With my conversion back to white bread from whole-meal, it brought back memories from way back. My mother making sandwiches for my three brothers and one sister going to school in Australia. It was part of the ‘New Country’ that schoolkids did not come home for lunch as schoolkids did and still do back in Holland. Instead they would stay at school and have a lunch made by mothers. Sometimes, but rarely by fathers. My dad never made a single sandwich but did excel in pancakes with golden syrup.

Of course in the heat of summers and in mid flight, the opening of hundreds of lunch boxes simultaneously, created a stench that over the years impregnated the class rooms, the walls and indeed, the whole building. I can walk-by any school today and get an instant re-call of banana sandwiches, spaghetti sandwiches and the essence of any lunch box; Devon with tomato sauce. It is now thought that the Devon sandwich with tomato sauce started school bullying. In England the Devon was called luncheon meat or Spam.

My mother was at her wit’s end trying to find interesting filling for my brothers’ and sister’s sandwiches. Australia was very sunny and very spacious but as far as sandwich fillings, back in the fifties and sixties, it was a dark unforgiving place. I mean, I can still taste the tinned spaghetti with Tom. sauce sandwich. Is it of any wonder that failure followed so many that went to school?

Till the late eighties and at social adult gatherings, it was the pickled gherkin surrounded by Devon or in some rare cases ham, pierced by a toothpick’ that would brake the ice and get things rocketing and moving. Men with beer around the barbeque and the girls in the kitchen. If a man dared to move to the kitchen he was suspected of being a bit of a poofter.

It was left to the genius of Barry Humphries of the Edna Average fame to make this famous quote of someone quietly farting on entering the lift on the ground floor filling up with lawyers of Madigan and Madigan Ltd (solicitors and family lawyers) suffering all the way up to the 26th floor;… “Who opened their lunch box?”

It was some years after that Italian salami, prosciutto and non plastic cheese came to the shelves at David Jones delicatessen, soon followed by olives, real coffee and anchovies. I remember the advertisements on TV ’43 beans of coffee in every Nescafe instant coffee. In the late seventies coffee lounges opened up in Kings Cross and garlic made its entrance. It was a true revolution.

Look at me now.