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With Christmas rapidly approaching and Covid-19 closing in on us again, we thought about not doing  a full podcast this week.A quick intro and replay of Jimmy’s most recent stint on the James Valentine’s afternoons on ABC Radio 702, and that ws going to be it.But once we got chatting, all sorts of topic came up, such as, what is this obsession with toilet roll every time there’s a hint of trouble on the horizon?Why do some people “need” to have 10 times as much as they could possibly use outside of a combination of the apocalypse and a seriously bad curry.Listen HereAnd why does that outweigh other people’s reasonable hope that they'll find a couple of rolls still for sale on the shelf when they pop into the supermarket?Are we turning into Trumpians, with their "me first, stuff you!" attitudes?And talking about those who lack a highly developed sense of community, we hop into the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers who use their belief in conspiracy theories about microchips in the vaccine and how only old people get Covid-19, to justify not wearing masks on trains and buses in the midst of a pandemic surge.As Jimmy writes in an upcoming column in the Financial Review, there’s no vaccine to prevent or cure stupidity.But, the worrying thing is, the theories might be stupid but some of the people who believe them clearly aren't.We discuss a friend of Sue’s who is an intelligent and articulate woman but who says she probably won’t take the vaccine when it gets here because of fears that it contains a chip created by Bill Gates that will be able to track and monitor us wherever we go.Jimmy likes the idea of this chip and says it could be used the same way as with missing pets, to check who you are and where you belong if you ever go missing (like after a Christmas  or New Year’s Eve Party).All this is in the podcast and the transcript. What’s not in the transcript is the session on the James Valentine show but that’s worth a listen, if only for the question about whether or not visiting dogs now have to be allowed in apartment blocks now that by-laws banning pets are defunct?If you haven’t listened before, just turn up your speakers, connect your earpods or plug in your headphones, and click on play near the top of this story.  It’s the most fun you’ll have in strata without breaching any by-laws.The transcriptJimmy 00:00It's kind of hard to stay positive at the moment, isn't it?Sue  00:03Yeah, I think COVID has come back and kind of depressed us all.Jimmy  00:07With a vengeance, and a lot of our friends who were planning to go away for Christmas and New Year are stuck at home.Sue  00:14Yep.Jimmy  00:15We'll just have to entertain them.Sue  00:17Yeah, and I think there's a lot of that going on; the ‘new orphans’ are being entertained by friends who've actually bought food and have food, whereas they’ve got empty cupboards.Jimmy  00:26But I was in the supermarket the other day, and, empty toilet roll shelves! They were filling them up again, so obviously, they're ready for it this time, but what is this strange obsession with…Sue  00:39It's good news for my local newsagent. I don't know if you've seen it, but it’s packed with toilet rolls, and hand sanitizer because I think

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Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.