As readers probably know, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals think so and lodged a complaint with the RSPCA when a shearer on Boorungie Station out the back of Broken Hill supposedly turned the air blue in front of several big merinos.

 And president of Lawyers for Animals Nicolah Donovan also says sheep understand bad language and swearing constitutes an act of violence against them.

Graziers say that handling sheep during shearing, for example, necessarily requires a degree of intimidation while Boorungie  owner Ken Turner says he has no plans to mind his own language in front of sheep.

But what do the sheep think about it all?

Stop Press was lucky enough to overhear two big merinos waiting to be shorn in a shed in Icely Rd, just out of Orange.

 “Shearers can &#%!@ swear all they like,” says one. “We’re being @#?% shorn and then put out in the freezing Orange weather without a coat. That’s more worrying for us.”

 “Baaa,” says the other merino. “What about the meat industry promoting people to throw a sheep on the barbie. That’s a concern.”

 “Yeah, and in the summer we’ve had to stand in the *%#@ heat in dry paddocks without any @#?% shade.”

 “Yeah. Baaa. That’s right.”

 “And this is the Chinese year of the sheep. We represent people who are tender, polite, clever and kind-hearted. Baaa that’s a @#?% joke.”

 “Why are you swearing?”

“I learnt it from the *%#@ shearers.”

 “Baaa. I think we should just flock off.”

 “Good @#?% idea.”

Talking about swearing, Channel 7s Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay mightn't shock shearers but certainly would leave them blinking.

 Tuesday night’s episode was liberally punctuated with the infamous Anglo-Saxon eff word a whopping 92 times.

Strike me flamin’ pink.

It’s quite obvious nobody in Orange drives at the 50km/h speed limit.

Drivers who stick to the law are few and far between although it’s difficult to get around at 50km/h in a modern car on our long drags like Woodward Street, Forbes Road, Burrendong Way, McLachlan Street, Matthews Avenue, Ploughmans Lane and Dalton Street, just to name a few.

You can drive through Bathurst, Dubbo and Lithgow at 60km/h and 70km/h which is more realistic.

How did that come about while we’re stuck with 50km/h?

Council amalgamations will happen sometime because there’s just too many and too much duplication.

People in Cabonne are particularly vocal about not wanting to join with Orange and in the past deputy mayor Lachie MacSmith has been particularly cheeky with his comments: “Northern distributor a mess, Wade Park a mess, the pool a mess.” And “Most Orange councillors have not got a clue about the pipeline ... ”

So if you think our facilities are a mess, to which you can add the library and civic theatre, not to mention our five-star hospital and medical and professional people, sporting fields and shopping centre, you shouldn’t bother using them.

Cabonne people should count themselves lucky to live next to the best country city in the state and be able to use all our facilities and services without contributing one cent. Zilch, nowt.

Is that fair?

Those of us who have a piggy bank in the cupboard will probably have noticed fewer five cent pieces turning up in change.

Many people regard them as a nuisance and millions of these coins drop out of circulation each year.

So it seems highly likely the Feds will soon give the OK to wave goodbye to our smallest piece of shrapnel in the same way the one and tow cent coins were ditched in the early 1990s.

There’s been lots of talk that because we’ve moved to electronic transactions and eventually will become a cashless society, the five cent piece will become redundant.

If it’s ditched there’s no doubt prices will be rounded up to the nearest 10 cents so we’ll be paying more for our groceries, although it looks like that’s happening now with most prices finishing in .99c rather than .95c.

 And earlier this year the mint told a Senate inquiry it cost six cents to produce five cent coins, more than their face value, so it looks like our smallest coin is destined for the scrap heap.

Will it worry anyone?

On June 30 at exactly 11:59.59pm we’ll all get one extra second in our day when international timekeepers adjust the world’s atomic clocks so the earth's rotational spin can catch up.

How wonderful is that?

Just think what we can do with one more second.

But if you take a second to think about it, you've already blown it so you've got to be prepared and decide how you’re going to spend the extra time.

What about a one-second sleep in?

Or you could lift the lid on your red garbage bin to check how much garbage is in there.

You could yell at a Brown’s cow wandering across the Anson Street pedestrian crossing, play a game of rock, paper, scissors or clap your hands.

Wink at someone or listen to yourself crunching a potato chip.

The possibilities are endless.

The attendant at the Summer Street Top Wash is chatting to a waiting customer.

“I bet you’re Irish,” he says.

“How do you know that?” says the customer.

“Well,” says the attendant. “We don’t get too many people coming through here on motorbikes.”