Veronika Wild

  Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay Image by MrGajowy3 from Pixabay Hi there! I’m just going to wish you a Happy Easter today. There are a lot of things happening here at the moment and right in the middle of everything three of my appliances and my dongle (internet connection) have decided to toss their mortal coil. Most likely it’s because we had two power outages in quick succession, but I can’t help thinking it’s because I wrote about the importance of being able to repair things last week. Of course there are no parts available for any of them and the appliances are built in, so I can’t lug them along to the next repair café, but that’s life. If Easter is not your thing but you live in the Northern Hemisphere I hope you have a lovely Spring and if like me, you live on the other end of the planet, we'll look forward to a bit of autumn colour before we hit the downhill run into winter. One quarter of the year gone already! Keep well and look after each other. Or...

  Carole and Deb make sure the coffee machine is working well On Saturday I had a great afternoon at our local Repair Café.   The weather was perfect, the surroundings were lovely, there was real coffee in the coffee machine and there were plenty of knowledgeable people on hand to help with all kinds of problems. Many of the volunteers are now retired and happy to pass on useful skills. In quiet moments - we are early, Aaron, the convenor, strums a tune on an acoustic guitar.You could say it was as much about repairing souls as about repairing objects.     Pride in workmanship -Ian proudly displays the ceramic fish he has just FINished if you'll pardon the pun   There are now 45 such Cafes operating in in Australia and around 2000 worldwide.   Apart from the social aspect and possibly being able to save money by not having to buy new items, they are a great boon to the environment.   Repairing not only diverts material from landfill but uses far ...

  Got quite depressed last week reading about all the things going on in our Parliament and with Mental Health leave being all the rage, I thought I’d take a short mental health break myself. It was “Goldilocks Weather” according to the Weather Bureau meaning that it was neither too hot, not too cold. That’s a nice change from the weather you usually encounter in these parts, though it isn’t actually all that far. My GPS says it’s two hours and 17 minutes from Hobart (253 Km), but that doesn’t allow for all the bends, hills, a spot of sightseeing here and there,   or a few roadworks or bad weather, so I   gave myself at least five hours for a leisurely drive down.   I was hoping to find a couple of fungi as people had started posting some interesting ones and I’d found some excellent specimens out this way last year, before the weather put a stop to it. Unfortunately that wasn’t to be. It was quite a lot drier than last time and fires had been through some of...

  Image by OpenIcons from Pixabay Bear with me folks. I have been struggling for a week now trying to find effective ways to tackle corruption. Unfortunately, great examples have been few and far between. Many middle level democracies such as Australia appear to be having the same problem. Our governments may have ratified the UN Convention Against Corruption and have even put in place some mechanisms to achieve them such as Freedom Of Information laws and transparency and accountability requirements, yet in practice, corruption flourishes unchecked, especially those which involve the government itself.  In Australia’s case there have been 800 + recorded instances of corruption over the last seven years ranging from biased grants, ‘fast tracking” of contracts for generous donors without due regard for the environment, using the public purse for their own purposes, agency capture, state capture , undue influence, 'revolving doors' unfair allocation of government contra...