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Unemployment Benefit vs Wages

Are you up to date with the unemployment benefit? If you have no idea how it’s been, read this. Age 21+, from 1985, per week, subject to indexation of 3% average per year: Nov 1985        $91.45              ALP April 1990        $130.00            ALP March 1995      $150.75            ALP March 2000      $165.80            LNP March 2005      $199.65            LNP March 2010      $231.40            ALP March 2015      $259.60            LNP March 2020      $282.85            LNP https://guides.dss.gov.au/guide-social-security-law/5/2/1/20 I have heard and read comments by too many people who know nothing about UEB. They only understand wages, probably because they are on a wage. Wages growth is very different to Unemployment Benefit, 3.25% average per year but higher incomes (incl. salaries) have increased a lot more than that. 2002-2007        annual average 3.8% increase (19% over 5 years) 2007-2012        annual average 3.65% increase (18.25% ov

To be (angry) or not to be (angry)

I wrote this originally on 30 December 2012, as a part of my It’s Okay to be Angry blog about violation. I’ve re-posted it on Reibus. Please read...it probably relates to you, too. Anger can be a debilitating emotion.  It can also be a very motivating and inspiring emotion.  The challenge is to know whether your anger is de structive or con structive. Most anger management instruction I have read tells me to "forgive".  Well I can't forgive the action that made me angry.  It was a violation of the very essence of my identity.   I've had to live with it my entire adult life.  Why shouldn't I be angry?  Why should I forgive? I read that "repressed memory" was a load of crap, but I know different - I suppressed memories of what happened to me for 19 years before they flooded back to haunt me.  Now I can't get rid of them, no matter how I try.  I often wondered why there were so many books and articles written by women who had been violated in

These days...

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Rhythm

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Crossroads

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Book review: Pitcairn - Paradise Lost

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Title:              Pitcairn - Paradise Lost: Uncovering the dark secrets of a South Pacific fantasy island Author:           Kathy Marks Pages:            383 Publisher:       Fourth Estate, Harper Collins, Australia Date:               2008 I bought this book before my stroke – in fact, before my ex walked out more than a year before that – so I had nothing happening which could encourage me to read it. I finally read it during the lockdown for COVID-19. I wonder if I should have. Kathy Marks wrote a long true tale, but it told of paedophilia, incest, violence, youth, older men, women who would never believe their young girls, and just so many more stories leading up to the court case of rape and sexual assault. Pitcairn was a very small vacant island 230 years ago in 1790, when the sailor Fletcher Christian and the other 8 mutineers from the Bounty arrived there with 6 Tahitian men, 11 Tahitian women and a baby girl, and that’s where they stayed. Most of th