The plan is also expected to bump up the price if all the 904 stations that don’t have E10 now have to put in new pumps and underground tanks or scrap unleaded and use the tanks already there, leaving only the expensive 98. 

No doubt Dick Honan’s Manildra Group, Australia's biggest ethanol producer, will be cheering while there’ll be no benefits for motorists because of a reduction of around five per cent in fuel economy with E10 if they use it.

Government whip Peter Phelps wasn’t having a bar of the government trying to force motorists into buying something they didn’t want so he resigned and good on him.

Research has shown pre-1986 cars, and some newer ones, modern motorcycles, scooters, boat engines and garden equipment such as mowers and trimmers won’t run safely on ethanol, made mostly from wheat and sugar cane.

It can loosen old sludge and dirt from the inside of the fuel tank  grey-loader and once these are let loose in the fuel, it will clog fuel lines and filters as well as blocking carburettor jets or fuel injectors.

Another big problem is deterioration or swelling and hardening of rubber components like carburettor seals and gaskets and fuel pump seals.

So, the best place for wheat is in bread and biscuits and not petrol.

ORANGE should be back on Channel 9’s national weather map.

Dubbo is there along with Bathurst and Mudgee, Wagga and Griffith, but Orange has been washed away by heavy rain or something.

Just being on a weather map and popping up every night is great tourism publicity and someone here should ask Channel 9 to put us back to keep our name in the national spotlight.

Most towns throughout the country would give anything to get on the national TV station weather maps because it’s a free wide-ranging promotion that’s seen by more than a million viewers every day.

We need to be there so let’s go, Orange.

YOU must wonder sometimes where they find contestants for the national TV quiz show Millionaire Hot Seat.

The other night a legal assistant who was just finishing a law degree was asked: “The title of the 2000 Australian film The Dish refers to a what?”

The four possible answers given were a rare plate, radio telescope, restaurant or attractive person.

She said she hadn’t seen the film so she passed.

Quizmaster Eddie Maguire asked her brother in the TV audience whether he knew. His answer: “I have no idea.”

The next contestant was a student who was also studying law and psychology and who had won a Duke of Edinburgh gold award.

Her answer: A restaurant.

Wrong, of course, and people at Parkes, home of The Dish, wouldn’t be happy a national TV quiz contestant thought their famous radio telescope was a restaurant.

THOSE of us who have a piggy bank in the cupboard will probably have noticed fewer 5c pieces turning up in change.

Many people regard them as a nuisance and millions of these coins drop out of circulation each year so there’s been lots of talk that because we’ve moved to electronic transactions and eventually will become a cashless society, the 5 cent piece will become redundant.

 But rather than the feds giving the OK to wave goodbye to our smallest piece of shrapnel in the same way the 1c and 2c coins were ditched in the early 1990s, the Canberra Mint is turning out a million 25c pieces, dubbed a quarter in the US.

A Mint spokesman says the 5c will be around for a few years yet and that will make those people happy who thought prices would be rounded up to the nearest 10c if it was ditched resulting in us paying more for our groceries.

But it looks like that’s happening now with most prices finishing in .99c rather than .95c.

And earlier this year a mint spokesperson told a Senate inquiry it cost 6c to produce 5c coins, more than their face value, so our smallest coin is destined for the scrap heap sometime soon.

SO New Zillanders hev voted to keep their national fleg.

The referendum was held after a 17-month lead-up because they thought their present fleg looked the seme as ours and they wanted to be duffrunt.

But thet was OK because hef of New Zilland luvs in Australia now, enywey.

The option was a bleck fleg with a silver fern, semilar to the benner used by New Zilland teams like the All Blacks but described as looking like a towel.

 It was nearly as boring as the awful designs our change-the-flag mob put up that include kangaroos, stripes, suns, wattle, boomerangs and the old eureka flag and modified versions of it in green, blue and gold.

And then, of course, to be a change-the-flag supporter you’ll have to wear a red rag around the head.

A BLOKE goes into Domino’s Pizza and orders a Hawaiian.

The assistant asks if he’d like it cut into four pieces or six.

He thinks for a minute and says: “Just cut it into four pieces. I don't think I'm hungry enough to eat six.”