ewe2 posted:

Today I got a foot in the vocational teaching door with a part-time gig in a community house teaching basic IT to older adults. Well, that is, if we can get 6-8 people interested. It's not much but I get to design the teaching and it's likely to be freeform since interested learners will probably dictate what they want, there's no actual structure to lean on. But I'm stoked to be doing something positive anyway and getting experience! And hopefully I can use that to sell myself to other community orgs!

BCR posted:

Credit Union Australia has a simple enough online system and their customer service is fantastic. CUA has fees if you withdraw more than 4 times a month if you have less than $5000 with them. They've got 3% interest on their savings account. You can withdraw free from rediatms and NABs network.

Zenithe posted:

ING are quite good, provided you don't need to make cash deposits or bank a cheque. They have no fees, usually higher than average interest and have some handy things right now (2% back when you use paywave)

Contra Duck posted:

What exactly do you need from the online banking? Credit unions are good for a lot of things but the online/mobile banking, while functional, won't be as fancy as the ones the big 4 have.

Cleretic posted:

Can I ask how exactly you're being screwed over by Westpac? I'm with Westpac, and the worst I can actually articulate about them is that I don't like their online banking, it feels kind of borked and non-user-friendly.

Bifauxnen posted:

I've been with CUA a long time now, and their online banking is really straightforward and works fine. I've never found myself thinking "oh man I wish I could do X." Since I've never used any of the Big 4 (apart from a brief trial of ANZ that went horribly wrong, so I closed the account), I don't even actually know what sort of features the big banks would have that CUA doesn't.

quote:

"“CUA does not directly finance the coal and gas sector and we do not lend directly to companies within those sectors. As Australia’s largest credit union, CUA’s business is the provision of personal banking products and services and our business banking customers are typically within the SME sector.”

Contra Duck posted:

you may also want to check if there's a specific credit union for your industry or region as well because sometimes they can be better.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Tim Wilson is a former spokeswanker

Haters Objector posted:

I'm with bankMECU and they would win hands-down any "most ethical bank" contest. They also apparently just won an award for having the best internet banking experience in the credit union/member owned bank category.

http://www.bankmecu.com.au/why-bank-with-us/sustainability-and-community.html

Their twitter account is pretty openly activist about leftish things

Contra Duck posted:

Sometimes they will have lower fees or better interest rates on some products. It depends on your situation though. As an example, Teacher's Mutual Bank are about even with CUA on most things but their low rate credit card deal is excellent, no annual fees and 11.5% interest. If credit cards mattered to you then it might be a good idea to go with them instead but otherwise it doesn't matter. You can check out the credit unions that apply to you to see if they can do anything that is way better.

e: hadn't heard of bankmecu before that but they look pretty drat good.

Splode posted:

Your soundtrack for another Amethyst meltdown, where all arguments are met with personal attacks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFasFq4GJYM

ewe2 posted:

Oh by the way I've cracked the code:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-0TEJMJOhk

Haters Objector posted:

Since we're all offering financial advice:

Now that the First Home Saver Accounts are dead, my partner and I are looking for somewhere to put some money to save for a house deposit, where we don't get scrub-tier savings account interest rates.

Should I just set up a managed fund with regular contributions from Australian Ethical? Is there a better place that I could be putting my money so that it isn't going to fund coal mining and has a realistic likelihood of returns greater than the ~3.5% we can get from a savings account or a term deposit?

Gough Suppressant posted:

Sarah Ferguson is leaving 7:30 to work on Uhlmanns rudd/gillard doco.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

Edit: apparently because Leigh sales is back from maternity leave

Mattjpwns posted:

wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wub metadata wubwubwub wubaddress

https://soundcloud.com/something-wonky/george-brandis-dubstep

KennyTheFish posted:

I am going to go ahead and disagree with you here. The search for MH370 is important. Air travel is immensly safe because we make sure we try and figure out exactly why every crash happens. Putting a ship in the inidan ocean and map the floor from one side to the other for the next 10 years is a worthwhile effort. The side effect of better geology is a bonus. The new reaserch vesel they are only funding for 180 days at sea a year could spend the other 120 on MH370 search.

Small Keating posted:

Small Keating posted:

Good poast. I believe (TOML, plz correct if I am wrong) the Greens also make use of Nation Builder (http://nationbuilder.com/), which was a big US Democrats staple.

Ragingsheep posted:

Anyone go to Swineburne?

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=pcb.941604209200687&type=1

Ian Winthorpe III posted:

if you're the kind of person to whom such critical thinking comes naturally when presented with the rhetoric of a Christian, why on earth would you take something like 'Islam is a religion of peace' at face value?

This inconsistency from progressives between their critical vigilance of Christianity and a studied silence (if not apologia) toward Islam is untenable, and the Pavlovian resort to the peace platitude is it's most glaring absurdity.

quote:

The most detailed opinion survey of British Muslims was carried out by Gallup, who correctly predicted the result of the last general election. In their extensive polling, they found literally no British Muslims who would say homosexuality is “morally acceptable.” Every one of the Muslims they polled objected to it. Even more worryingly, younger Muslims had more stridently anti-gay views than older Muslims. These attitudes have consequences – and they are worst of all for gay Muslims, who have to live a sham half-life of lies, or be shunned by their families.

No, Muslims are not the only homophobes among us. But the gap between them and the rest is startling. It’s zero percent of British Muslims vs. 58 percent of other Brits who say we are “acceptable.”

...

Yes, it is “Muslim culture” today to be bigoted against gay people. It was British culture to be anti-gay thirty years ago. Cultures change. They change all the time. They are not sacred and fixed. They are constantly in motion. But they only change if we admit there is a problem publicly and openly and search for solutions. We should not “respect” the bigotry of Muslims, any more than we would respect the bigotry of Christians or Jews or the Ku Klux Klan. The only consistent and reasonable position is to oppose bigotry against Muslims, and oppose bigotry by Muslims.

BlitzkriegOfColour posted:

I'd say this is probably less damning of Moslems and more damning of England. The Moslems I know from Australia don't really have any problems with gay people. Don't ignore the intersectionality at play here either - for the longest time, African Americans weren't too pleasant towards gays compared to their white counterparts either.

quote:

No, Muslims are not the only homophobes among us. But the gap between them and the rest is startling. It’s zero percent of British Muslims vs. 58 percent of other Brits who say we are “acceptable.”

BlitzkriegOfColour posted:

I would ask "What happened to the Liberals to make them this way? What forces of otherisation are preventing them from integrating?"

BlitzkriegOfColour posted:

Wow, so many racist, imperialist reactionaries in this thread, not like the embassy of old. At the end of the day, you don't have any right to say how people in other countries should live, and you support the racist, misogynist scum in our military more than a rag-tag bunch of people in another country fighting for their freedom against the slavery we would impose upon them. People who, because they share a name with a previous regime, must hold the exact same values (despite not having any real connection to that regime other than a shared name) because those brown savages.

edit: Azmet: not trolling. As an Arab-Australian who is culturally completely Australian I live my life in this lovely country every day being taunted by white Australians, screamed at and belittled, sometimes with attempts made to harm me, seeing discrimination crop up in some form or another in every workplace I've ever been in. I recently stopped being an organ donor in case a white Australian lives because of my donation. Death to whites who would withhold sovereignty from the true owners of this land, but especially death to reactionary whites who make this place unbearable for me to live in, and are forcing me to emigrate as soon as I have the money saved.

BlitzkriegOfColour posted:

Is TOML suggesting that gays are more persecuted than Moslems? I'd disagree, and the general life-outcomes for each group should show why.

BlitzkriegOfColour posted:

I would ask "What happened to the Liberals to make them this way? What forces of otherisation are preventing them from integrating?"

quote:

It is true that British Muslims are themselves frequently the victims of bigotry — just as in the US and across most of the Western world, especially since 9/11. They are often harassed by the police, denied jobs, and abused in the street, and they are forced to watch as our government senselessly incinerates many Muslims abroad. (I have written many articles detailing and deploring these ugly facts.) So gay people are naturally reluctant to pile in onto minority who are being oppressed. We are rightly sympathetic. We know what it is like to be treated like this. We instinctively respond with solidarity, not suspicion.

But this can easily morph into excuse-making. When there was a wave of vicious gay-bashings in Amsterdam by Morroccan immigrants — ending the city’s easy, hand-holding culture — the gay spokesman for Human Rights Watch, Scott Long, said: “There’s still an extraordinary degree of racism in Dutch society. Gays often becomes victims of this when immigrants retaliate for the inequities they have had to suffer.” What? How is it a “retaliation” to beat up a gay couple? What have they done to Muslims? What other human rights abuse would Human Rights Watch make excuses for? Would they say the Burmese junta beats dissidents in order to “retaliate for the inequities they have had to suffer”?

When gay people were cruelly oppressed, we didn’t form gangs to beat up other minorities. We organized democratically and appealed to our fellow citizens’ sense of decency. It’s patronizing — and authentically racist — to treat Muslims as if they are children, or animals, who can only react to their oppression by jeering at or attacking people who have done them no harm, and who they object to because of a book written in the sixth century. Muslims are human beings who can choose not to do this. The vast majority, of course, do not attack anyone. But they should go further. They should choose instead to see us as equal human beings, who live and love just like them, and do not deserve scorn and prejudice.

open24hours posted:

Of all the people to take a hardline stance against Islam I never expected it to be TOML.

Soag posted:

which is kind of his point, muslim's shouldnt be beyond reproach but often are in lefty discourses

Soag posted:

why would you try and "reform" a religion why not just fucken quit religion we live in the 21 st century and mobile phones and space ships not pagan times

you dont need to belive in the big floating YHWH up in the sky these days

BlitzkriegOfColour posted:

Yilmaz is horribly racist. Hth

Splode posted:

Uhm I'd prefer it if you used the term face of colour, TIA

You Am I posted:

Who the gently caress is this Yilmaz person?

froglet posted:

Hey guys I'm at my new job and the things I have heard help

"I agree with Lang Hancock's aboriginal solution"
"This program hangs like a friend of the family from a tree"
"You're one of the good lefties froglet coz you don't expect the government to do everything for you"

SadisTech posted:

Requesting Advice

Completely off-topic but I'm hoping someone who's done this before might be able to help out.

Since my mum passed away I've had to pay rent on her caravan and annex while waiting to find out if I have permission to sell it. It's in a long-term residential park that was previously administered by the Public Trustee, but has just been sold to a company that does retirement homes and the like. With the sale I have also been given permission to sell, which is good because otherwise it'd have to be torn down and carted away at my own expense.

I really need to sell it ASAP because it's costing me a bomb just having it sit there. I've had a lot of interested people but no-one willing to close the deal - until just now. However the guy who wants to buy it can't come up with the funds all in one hit and wants to pay a lump sum of about half and then sign a contract for $1000 per month until it's paid off.

The sale is all being handled privately and there aren't any fees or the like because it's not a property sale per se. So, my question is has anyone been in this situation? What should I know about creating a contract to ensure that it's legally binding if it should come to it? The guy seems generally trustworthy, but I'm loath to go into an arrangement like this with no legal protection if it should come down to it.

Any advice would be incredibly welcome as I can't find a lot of good resources particular to Australian law online.

J Bjelke-Postersen posted:

I used to play a lot of BF3 with goons. Our ace pilot would take a shitload of xanax and drink half a bottle of whisky over the course of a few games then enter a 25 minute zen state in which we could not be touched and flew like God's own angels (then the helo would go inverted and you knew he'd passed out and it was time to bail).

Mad Katter posted:

loving hell I hate this country sometimes.

Anidav posted:

Quickly, how do you deal with a person who says the "inflated welfare state" will destroy first world nations and lead them down a path of "government reliance and degeneracy"?