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You're absolutely right, GON. Sadly, we don't properly tax those that extract our wealth, especially the multinationals. Add to that the fixed price gas contracts that the Howard government wrote, so we have to end up importing gas at market prices when we sell ours for a song, and we are just dumb lucky to be able to afford anything. But, we shouldn't put us down. Australia punches above its weight with innovation. Sadly, some, like Thales Australia, is foreign owned and developed; Some is sadly sold off to foreign buyers. What we have not been great at is manufacturing - we used to be good at it. It is something our federal and state governments could really invest in to kick start it (not at the bottom end - we'll never compete with low-cost economies), but they are still tepid at doing it.. all talk, little action.

Was that an XT Falcon? Although I come fro a "Holden" family, I had one of those and they were quite alright for their day.

Mine were on a 68'Falcon ute I had in my younger days. I was short of a quid but needed tyres so looked at retreads and checked how well the edges of the treads were bonded to the case. I found some with good bonding and gave them a go, half the price of new tyres, wide and sexy looking on the chrome wheels. The bonding was so good, it was hard to tell them from new tyres, and if I remember correctly, they were still on the ute when I sold it a couple of years later. I was quite impressed, and at least they didn't throw a tread like my brand new Toyo tyre did. I must have struck it lucky with a good retreader. who ever they were. Quality bonding I reckon was the secret to good retreads.

Even I'm laughing at that, (Bi-plane jet), it's quite funny. But when allies get the latest jets, they still must be able to afford to put them into the air. We can't, our budget is skint, and so is the RAAF's, I haven't seen many planes flying over my place lately, the RAAF flight path. Just a Hercules or two, nothing else. What ever the planes look like, we must still be able to afford to send then up, otherwise we may as well not have them. An economy based on mined dirt and how many Asian take-aways are sold each year is not the most reliable foundation for buying very expensive military equipment, and enough of it to protect our Southern Pacific patch. We need a lot more investment, Aussie investment, to make Australia greater than a chicken chow min take-away.

The HK I had was a drum braked van. The brakes faded to nil after a single (fast ) stop. It also frequently was stopped in summer - from vapor lock due to hot path fuel lines. The sedans had terrible visibility out the back quarter when reverse parking. The HQ waggon (poor coil spring back end) had terrible wallowing on corners but the van much was better. Except that when cornered hard on a RH turn, the engine starved halfway around the corner resulting in total loss of power, making a dramatic change of line. (202 c.i. motor). What about the shiny vinyl bench seat that had you clinging to the steering wheel to stop the driver sliding across when cornering? Or the hand brake that curiously didn't work when going backwards, but would go over centre and jamb on, allowing no forward motion until the NRMA arrived? Thankfully, silly stuff like the above is unheard of now. No, do not yearn for those cars.

Those new ' low profile ' tyres have little in strength in the wall area . The neighbours nice new Tesla has had a tyre replaced , due to wall chaffing the gutters edge . Now he's done it again & pulled a fifty-cent size peice of rubber off the sidewall . So another new tyre needed. ( to replace a new tyre ) . 20inch hight 35 profile. A 265. 65.15 tyre has the rim above the kerb hight . spacesailor

He's a throwback to an archaic imperialist world view. He, Putin and Xi Jinping are all on the same page and understand each other perfectly well. I suspect that many leaders of countries that have been long-time allies of the US also recognise who he is and what he's up to but don't want to publicly say what they really think until the reality can't be denied any longer. They also don't want to get him off-side because he will attack at the drop of a hat. In my opinion he's a thoroughly nasty, impulsive and vindictive character with no redeeming features or moral values. In his first administration there were enough people able to throw sand in the gears to stop his worst instincts. Not so now. He has draped himself in the Royal Purple Robes with the connivance of the Supreme Court, dared anyone to stop him, and surrounded himself with enablers and sycophants. His Achilles heel is his basic ignorance and incompetence combined with his arrogance and highly inflated opinion of himself. That may yet see him come to grief before long. We can only hope.

Gee, that's a bit severe on the old Holdens, Pete! The brother and I bought Dad a new HK Holden Premier wagon in 1968 - and I drove it often, and I can honestly say it was one of the best cars I'd driven, up to that time. I loved driving that Premier, it was only a 186 and 2-speed Powerglide, but it went like the clappers, stopped beautifully (disc brakes) and it was a very comfortable and smart car to drive. I have very fond memories of that car, and I'd love to drive a new one of them again - which is impossible, of course. We traded the HK Premier on a new HQ Premier wagon in 1974 (202 and Trimatic) - and the HQ was a slug, with wallowy handling, and gutless to boot. However, it did last quite well under his ownership until he died in 1988, and I sold it in 1990. But the vehicle I do miss the most, was my yellow-with-black-stripes, HJ Sandman ute, that I bought new in July 1975. I used it for work and wore it out and it ended up being dumped on the local country tip when we sold our farm in 1995. Unsurprisingly, it vanished from the tip within hours, someone knew what a collectible was! The VIN plates would probably be worth $10,000 today, and it wasn't until about 20 years ago, that I found out, that GMH only made 380 Sandman utes, in total!

That stretch of road between Huonville and Geeveston is lovely for a bike. Even better (on a fine day) is continuing on to Dover. As long as there's no caravans in front of you.

Anyway, back to positives.... Beaut mild sunny day..... rode down to the next town, a bit closer to the south pole. Geeveston is still nice and warm. Had to take the leather coat off to sit and enjoy a burger. Lots of sweeping curves all the way. Few crazy car drivers. Love the autumn weather. The trees are starting to turn their colours. If world leaders spent a few days like this, there would be less wars.......

Well it is old enough to go onto 'special interest ' rego. Which is cheaper. And if those turkeys can get 'classic rego' on old HK, or older Holdens.... what can I say, they were dogs to drive when they were new! Classic what? Classic crap?

Hollow vessels float the best!

I don't know, 1100 Virago is pretty classic too!

Yeah but yours is a classic!

Steep slippery grassy ground. Then half a K of sreeo gravel driveway. Road tyres are like on ice. Great fun while it stays upright.

It's seriously scary what he's doing to the US democracy. Several people here have described his behaviour as "Mafia-like" and it's not a bad description, although, also as previously mentioned, even the Mafia have their own twisted code of honour where he has none at all. I don't think that the leaders of countries like ours truly understand what's going on here. I think Trump has plans for there to be 3 spheres of influence in the future - USA, Russia and China. Europe isn't part of his calculation and neither are middle countries like ours. He wants to basically carve up the world like the old time empires (think England, Portugal and Spain) did. Some countries to be taken over directly by this trio - he's already made quite clear he wants Greenland and Canada, for a start - Russia would like not only Ukraine but then the other ex-soviet countries, and then, who knows - parts of Western Europe? And China of course will start with Taiwan and then maybe proceed southward in the Pacific. Any countries not directly taken over will be treated as lesser partners, always on the worse end of any trade deal and subject to any whim of Emperor Trump. We cannot treat the USA as a "special ally" any more. We are not under their protection, if someone invaded us they are under no obligation whatsoever to protect us and wouldn't unless it suited their interests. And watching what he's doing with Ukraine, he'd probably want all our uranium or rare earth minerals in return for "stopping" the war by giving the aggressor whatever they wanted.

There is no doubt going to be a knock on impact particualr to higher profile companies. But if you invested in a lot of these companies a year ago, you would be still up on your investment. Tesla is an example: A year ago it was around 180 and now it is 248 - about a 35% fain in that period. It ballooned on the election and retracted by the same amount, so it is trading where it was pre-election ans pre protest dumping of the stock. So, at the moment* the market thinks it is at its core value. However, the price/earnings ratio is huge at 122. Compare this to Meta which is traditionally high at around 24, unless Tesla's fortunes change in terms of revenue (remember, cars is only one part of its business) that translates into profit, it probably has a way to go down yet as markets wake up and realise it is a manufacturing company and not a technology company in the traditional sense. This has everything to do with its positioning in the market and its outlook as opposed to purely protest. But, the protest plays well into Trumps hands as he can blame the loony and now violent left. The fact the cybertruck has had 8 recalls, two major and for every one of them, and are costly to fix, and it hasn't had the market penetration Musk and his investors were betting on, has nothing to do with it in Trumps (and probably Musk's) mind. Here is the share price of the other companies Outside the election bump, they are all doing well. X (x-twitter) was recently valued at $44bn... this is after a bunch of users left the platform in protest.. that seem to have gravitated back: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/19/value-elon-musk-x-rebounds-purchase-price

"... because some day, maybe they're not our allies..." Apart from the grammatical error, he should reflect - America's allies were very loyal - yes it was a two way street, but maybe he should have said "maybe some day we may cut them off as our allies..."

Modern tyre construction designations in the image below. The "plies" are made up of "cords", which are usually made from Rayon or Nylon. New tyre manufacturing is extremely tightly controlled, and is actually a highly complex process. Retreading should be under the same conditions as manufacturing new tyres. Good tyre retreaders inspect used tyre carcasses with great care, and reject any that show even the slightest signs of damage, rubber hardening, previous repairs, or overloading. Anything even slightly suspect would be rejected, there are tens of thousands of used tyre carcasses to choose from for retreading purposes. https://karyapolymer.com/what-are-radial-tires/#:~:text=Each ply is made up,fabric or steel and rubber.

Next year will be your grandson's year... Great to hear you caught up with your cousin...

The problem with having tyres retreaded is not so much the replaced tread material, but the state of the sidewalls and rim bead. These are made from "strings" of various materials and impacts with bumps and kerbs, or simply the flexing that they are deigned to do can fracture those "strings". The minor fractures cannot be detected visually, so a tyre with damage in those areas could pass for retreading. Also the material from which the tyre is made will suffer damage from UV light and heat changes. Some one has said here that, despite their initial "highish" cost, the outlay for them is a good insurance purchase. NB: I used the word" strings" because I could not think of either the correct term, not a simple way to describe how a tyre is made.

My positive is that I went to Sydney ostensibly to watch my grandson play in a baseball grand final, but I left early and on Friday I met a cousin I had lost track of over sixty years ago. We had a wonderful day just talking about our lives and families. It was so trouble free, as though I had just seen him a month before. By the way, the grandson's team didn't succeed.

Hopefully my recon-ed oil pump arrived last Friday while I was away. Nomad's effort might enthuse me to do the replacement job. Unlike his bike, mine has remained registered while it has been in storage, but I need to get it running by June so I can take it into town for its pinks slip.