In the past five (5) years, the following price increases have occurred:

*   average loaf of bread up by 12%;

*   price of movie tickets up by 25%;

*   price of petrol up by 34%;

*   council rates have increased by 39%; &

*   electricity prices have increased by an obscene 163%

The overall cost of living has increased by 22%, whilst average weekly earnings have increased by only 14%, which effectively means that average real disposable incomes have fallen by more than 35% in the same period.

The Australian economy is going gangbusters, according to the latest figures.

Annual growth is 4.3%. Inflation is low. Interest rates continue to fall. Unemployment is at 4.9%.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/20125309437931677.html

A vastly bigger network of mobile speed and red light cameras will soon gaze down on NSW drivers in a safety crackdown that the opposition calls a 'cash grab' by the state.

Signs warning motorists of the cameras will also increase - in size, as well as in number - to ward off complaints about the 'entrapment' of unsuspecting drivers.

Tony Abbott and the opposition must be careful their wrecking-ball approach doesn't rebound and hurt them.

nuclear power station (le Monde)

When 16-year-old Colleen Walker went missing from Bowraville, a country town in northern New South Wales, police told her family she had probably "gone walkabout". They said the same when Colleen's cousin, four-year-old Evelyn Greenup, disappeared three weeks later. Then a third Aboriginal child, Clinton Speedy, 16, vanished - and a fortnight later the bodies began turning up in bushland.