Mountaineer

I'm a big fan of both raising the payment floor and the cutoff ceiling.
People claiming benefits shouldn't be going hungry if they can't find work AND we want to not discourage people who are currently claiming benefits from getting work.
Whether that be through simply raising the ceiling at which point the benefits are reduced, or perhaps having some sort of "earnings bank" where earning too much in a single fortnight doesn't effect your payments until it happens several fortnights in a row, or some other clever mechanism.

Because burning it (mostly methane) creates/releases greenhouse emissions such as CO2 and N2O.

This is a very specific and nasty example of a trend I've witnessed becoming common on a whole bunch of issues: climate, health, economy, pedophilia, etc etc.

Useful idiots online are spreading "I'm just asking questions" garbage about "pizza gate" and the "covid hoax" and the "climate hoax" etc etc, and anyone who has to deal with this just gets beaten down and withdraws their participation.

I don't even know who the hell could possibly benefit from damaging the BOM/CSIRO, without some multi-party and honestly contradictory conspiracy of china + russia + resource companies.

Question for locals: do you need gas connections?

Opinions on this are going to differ a lot.
I really like cooking on gas, but acknowledge it wastes a useful resource, is environmentally bad and potentially harmful to my families health.

Side question: do you have fireplaces, gas or otherwise?

It's becoming less common.
My last house, we had an internal combustion (wood) heater as the primary form of heating.
I know several people who have gas powered whole house ducted heating.
Both of these things are becoming prohibitively expensive to run compared to decent reverse cycle (heat pump) split systems.

Like everything, there's more layers than an onion to this.
Older houses had decent insulation as heating and cooling were hard.
Houses built from the 70s on have shit insulation, as running a heater or cooler year round were cheap and easy.

Back in the 00s, the federal government tried to kill 2 bids with one stone here - stimulate the economy whilst improving the insulation of most houses through what became known as the "Pink Bats" program
This itself become massively controversial as the program was rorted to hell, and even some deaths, leading to a royal commision.

The whole "ban new installs of gas" is a bit of a Green initiative, but it's becoming more common across the country, starting with Australian Capital Territory, which banned it in June.

KMart Australia has no relation to KMart USA anymore, it's completely separate.
Target is worse, it was never affiliated at all.

Falsely claiming that what I said was ad hominem is itself ad hominem.

You keep doing you mate, I'm sure chucking sickies is the least annoying thing you do at work.

I've already explained above why a legit sick day is important, it stops your staff having to choose between being paid and doing the right thing - not spreading the illness.

Unscrupulous business owners demanded too much of their staff, including working whilst sick - so the law was changed so that those staff would be protected.
Unscrupulous employees abused this, so a limit was put in place - you get ten days a year.
But somehow, you've decided that a staff protection is actually extra days off, that are being stolen from you if you don't get sick!
"in your own head" as you put it.

I'm not currently managing a team, but when I did, I never asked for a sick note from the doctor, what a waste of time and money.
People with your sense of entitlement cause nonsense like that.

No one is entitled to your work for free.
You aren't entitled to payment for nothing.
There's a balance here, ever changing, with sloppy vague laws applied post facto in an effort to maintain it.
I'm not against changing it, but taking your sick days as unplanned leave is against the spirit in which those sick days were bargained.

So the system should be changed so that you can take the days with notice. 🤷

The problem is people taking days off without notice, regularly.

As currently implemented, you feel ripped off.
If you just don't turn up on a day leaving me short staffed, you're letting me down (my targets won't be met), you're letting your co-workers down (they end up picking up your slack or getting called in on their day off at the last minute).

FFS, let me know ahead of time (psst, I'm going to take a "sick" day on Friday) and maybe I won't be grumpy.

I don’t know if Leo cares about that anymore. He’s been saying he’s done with Twitter for a few weeks at least.

At least a year.

But in a recent TWIT (2 weeks ago maybe), all of the guest panelists admitted that they were all still maintaining their followings on Twitter and hopeful that they could move to Threads.

It's all just whores being whores, which is what Elon is relying on.

To extend on this, which is accurate, there's a few extra things that are worth mentioning.
Unless you've signed a contract that specifically changes these (and which you would need to be compensated for to make the contract legal):
Full time employees get long service leave, which only kicks in for full time employees after several years.
Certain industries in South Australia such as Electricians, Plumbers etc have transferrable long service leave (it carries across employers in what is effectively a gig job).
Full time employees are paid for public holidays, which they are not obliged to work.
A full time employee basically cannot be fired without cause - only made redundant.
If you are made redundant, you will be paid a settlement.
This is why it's easier to get loans etc by the way, the bank has reason to believe you'll continue your employment.

As an aside, the paid sick leave is pretty important.
If I get sick, I don't go to work and therefore don't spread that illness to my coworkers, and I can still pay my rent and buy food.
A casual employee has to decide if they are sick enough to forgo income for one or more days.

Unscrupulous individuals taking "mental health days", where they're not sick, has been a big part in the movement to casualising the workforce (in my opinion).

I'd sign up to Titter.

As @Treevan said, i think the headline was using Fears in the context of Concerns.

It is indeed awesome that we can edit titles though.