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Just to let you know there is no AI on the site, there is only NI

Thanks Peter. Will try to drop in from time to time to make sure you're all behaving yourselves. I've tried to cut down on screen time but it's easier said than done. Have been co-administering an inyourfacebook group so that's taken a bit of effort and tended to drag oneself back online. So all good, still breathing in and breathing out and wearing my trousers the right way round.

My good friend Chatty gave me the following answer: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance argues that the deepest satisfaction in life comes from caring engagement with what we do, rather than from chasing abstract goals or rigid ideologies: by reconciling the “classical” mindset (logic, analysis, technology) with the “romantic” mindset (intuition, aesthetics, immediate experience), Robert Pirsig proposes that Quality—an unnameable but real sense of what is good—arises when we pay attentive, responsible care to both our inner lives and the practical tasks before us, whether maintaining a motorcycle or living thoughtfully in the modern world.

Make sure the oil hasn't spread onto the flywheel and coil. Take the engine cowling off and clean the outside surface of the flywheel and magnet and the section of the coil that sits close to the flywheel. Use some emery cloth to clean up the flywheel outer surface and check the coil to flywheel gap. Install a new spark plug (90% of starting problems). Use some "Carburettor & Throttle Body Cleaner" (spray can) to clean out the carburettor passageways. No sorry, all that above is made-up BS. What actually happened is, you killed the little hamster inside the engine that makes it go, when you tipped it over and left it. You need a new engine hamster.

Two men walk into a pet shop in Dingle, they walk over to the bird section and Gerry says to Joe, 'Dat's dem.' The owner comes over and asks if he can help them. 'Yeah, we'll take four of dem dere little budgies in dat cage up dere,' says Gerry. The owner puts the budgies in a cardboard box. Joe and Gerry pay for the birds, leave the shop and get into Gerry's truck to drive to the top of the Connor Pass. At the Connor Pass , Gerry looks down at the 1000 foot drop and says, 'Dis looks like a grand place.' He takes two birds out of the box, puts one on each shoulder and jumps off the cliff. Joe watches as the budgies fly off and Gerry falls all the way to the bottom, killing himself stone dead! Looking down at the remains of his best pal, Joe shakes his head and says, 'Fook dat. Dis budgie jumping is too fook'n dangerous for me!'

it's BS really. The" Majority" wants a review as things have changed since the Last Howard "thing" He's only echoing LITTLE to Be PROUD of's Line. I don't think Albanese would get away with just tightening the existing rules. Nev

I learned a bit about the changes to the Firearms Act that NSW Premier Minns is trying to make. If introduced then the administrative burden on Police will be terrible. 1. Licence period reduced from 5 years to 2. The number of staff at the Fireams Registry was already overloaded trying to deal with paperwork before Bondi. I have recently experienced dealing with these Public Servants, and they are hardworking, helpful people. But by reducing the time between renewal if licneces and permits, their workload will markedly increase. Will the Government employ more staff? If it does, how long before the new employees gain the knowledge and experience in dealing with a very complicated set of rules? 2. Maximum ownership of 4 firearms. OK, there is going to be a buy-back. During the 1996 buy-back the amount of extra work thrust onto police working at the front counteer of police station impacted the availability of police to be assigned the normal day-to-day police functions. Firearms were not simply hand over the counter and tossed into collection bins. Receipts had to be issued, and at the time these were handwritten. Maybe some sort of database could be developed to create digital records. There's the cost of developing the database that the government must meet. As well, other police were attached to warehousing duties where they were involved in picking up surrendered firearms from police stations across the State. 3. Valuation of surrendered firearms. A big joke about the 1996 buyback was the profits made by gun owners when they surrenderd a firearm. Crappy .22 single shots were bringing big bucks. Once that became known, a lot of gun owners handed in crap and then spent the money received on upgrading their firearms. Where did the money come from? Taxpayers of course. 4. Additional work for oveworked General Duties police. One of the firearms regulations is that gun owners must enable police to inspect firearms storage. I remember being assigned a list of firearm owners addresses and being told to go out and inspect their firearms and storage. This wasn't to be my sole assignment for the shift. I still had to attend to the normal calls for police service such as domestics, break-ins, shpolifters, drive-offs. Needless to say that I rarely got time to do a firearms inspection. It's all well and good to tighten the control of firearms. However, policing those controls has to be possible for the existing police staff to do within the number of personhours in a day while providing the a level of attention to the things that the Public expects police to attend to. It's easy for politicians to make grand statements and make rules, but a rule that cannot be policed with resources available both in staffing and finances is not worth putting on the books. You will note that I have not spoken about the rule limiting the number of firearms owned to 4. That is a whole different can of worms. The political backlash could effect many local Members regardless of Party since the rule changes seem to be getting bipartisan support.

You may have noticed that over the last 7 days, I have added 27 aircraft profiles in the AP site. I had a few problems with the last one, screwing up the photos and having to do a number of edits to the basic profile. Wherever possible, I include 5 photos on each profile, header and gallery. That may require searching through up to 100 thumbnail images for each aircraft, selecting the best ones to illustrate the aircraft. I try to select different angles and illustrations of features such as cabin access, folding wings, etc. I expand the thumbnail to the full size uploaded to get the best quality image and download that into a folder, one folder for each category - 3 axis, GA single engine, etc. With 1968 profiles completed, and a few more in preparation, that means about 10,000 images. However, a lot of these are far from acceptable. Most are too large, and a few are too small. I standardise all photos to an aspect ratio of 16:9, and a width of 750 pixels. ie., 750x422 pixels in size. This requires resizing and cropping. I am amazed at how badly exposed some photos are, very dark, detail in places like under wing indistinguishable, and if taking off in front of bushes or hedges, the background is a sold block of black. There are often odd items which distract from the image, such as tiedown ropes dropped on the ground, ropes and balustrades around the aircraft which I clone out of the photo. The original image is saved to an Originals subfolder attached to each category folder on my external hard drive. Therefore at least 20,000 images, just for the AP site. Here are a few examples from the last lot. They have been further reduced to 400 pixels wide, originals first, edited second.

Getting back to the oriinal idea of this thread - the governmental knee-jerk to firearm possession, it is becoming obvious that governments have been resting on the laurels of the original gun buy-back and the laws made in the late 1990s. That was thirty years ago. Are you still using the mobile brick phone you had back then? Are you still using dial-up ADSL? BY the same token, firearms have developed a lot in that time, but the classification of them for licensing purposes has not. I was watching a video about the point of the failure of firearms classification to keep pace with firearm development. As with all laws and regulations, the devil is in the definition. Let's look at teh shotguns used at Bondi. How was it that they, in particular, are legal under the classification system? The types of firearms permitted in Category A, the most commonly held licence, are: Air rifles; Rimfire rifles (other than self-loading); Shotguns (other than pump action, lever action or self-loading), and Shotgun/rimfire combinations. The type of interest from Bondi is the Shotguns (other than pump action, lever action or self-loading. One thinks of the break action shotgun, single or double barrel. We see pump action shotguns in movies and news videos from the USA, so we are aware of how they are operated. Lever action shotguns operate in a similar way to what we see as rifles in cowboy movies. Self-loading means that a fresh round is loaded by using the recoil from the round fired before the round to be loaded. However, firearm manufacturers developed another means of rapid reloading from a magazine using a loading lever similar to the idea of a bolt action rifle. This is the type of shotgun used at Bondi. As of that date, bolt action shotguns were Category A and legal to own. I believe that these have a 6-round magazine + 1 in the spout. To see what I'm talking about, watch this video from the 17:00 to 20:00 time marks. The problem with any knee-jerk response and regulations made on the fly will have consequences that firstly will financially affect firearms owners and later affect lawful activities such as feral animal control. Feral animals such as pigs, foxes, deer etc are becoming a greater problem because landowners are denying permission to recreational hunters to shoot on their properties. And yes I know all about tthe horror stories of idiot shooters. While it is good to hear politicians on both sides joining together to attack the problem, one must encourage them to keep at it, but not make flash in the pan decisions.

The first ones that should be investigated and jailed or deported are the Imams and other clerics at the mosques, sprouting and advocating this vile propaganda.

But, there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world and 10% are radical, thats 180 million who want all the bad stuff, beheadings, sharia, wolrd domination, so are we wrong to want to stamp out these cowards and scum, the Israelis have it right starting at the head exterminate the head of the cowardly terrorists,and all western countries should deport ALL muslim s preaching thier foul hate and spew

I don't expect the employer (taxpayers) to pay for family airfares, etc. When I spent 20yrs travelling for work, my wage was somewhat higher than city based equivalents. Sometimes I delayed my return at the end of a project. I paid my wife's airfare to join me for the weekend. I paid the extra couple of days at the hotel. I was a mere technician but I did this to maintain some work/life balance, to make up a bit for my absence from home. I didn't think it fair to expect my employer to pay for that. Many jobs put stress on home life. Politician or bureaucrat is just one such job.

There was no co-ordination between the States licencing authorities for decades, due to parochial interests, and "jurisdictional claims and interests". Then, in late January 2006, a rapist/double murderer, who raped and murdered two sisters, one after the other in Melbourne, stole one of the womens cars and took off to the North of Australia. The murderer was intercepted on a lonely section of the NW Coastal Hwy, many kms from Karratha, about 3 days after the murders, by a lone police officer, Sgt Gray, who was looking for him, for driving off without paying for fuel. The murderer (a giant of a man) jumped out of the stolen car and launched a massive king hit attack on the policeman, breaking 13 bones in his face in the one hit. The policeman went down, but came back up again, and the murderer came at him again. The policeman drew his firearm and killed the murderer on the spot, with one accurate shot (he just happened to be a firearms trainer in the W.A. Police). But for over 6 hrs, no-one knew who the murderer was, who the car belonged to, and what the murderer had done. This was all due to a lack of a national database of vehicle registrations and a lack of information-sharing between State Police forces. Within a very short time after this disturbing event, a national database of vehicle registrations was initiated, accessible to any police officer anywhere in Australia, and other important information-sharing on fleeing felons and violent crimes was established. If it took just one murderous attack on a lone police officer in the Outback to galvanise the States into action to produce real-time violent crime information-sharing, and a vehicle registration database to be set up - then I'm sure Australia's worst terrorist attack on our soil, should ensure that everything that is needed, to standardise firearms laws and requirements across Australia, and to set up a national database of firearm owners, and those on terrorism watch, is rapidly carried out.

Spoken by a person who has not the slightest knowledge of policing. 1. the guy seems he did your jobs for you Prior to Sunday, all the local police command would have known about the event at Bondi Beach was that it would be occuring, and there would be a crowd, as well as the usual numbers enjoying the beach. No doubt extra police were engaged for general crowd control as would be normal for any large gathering. Refer to the gathering of people to march across the Harbour Bridge for political purpose earlier this year. Given the anonimity of the shooters, who could have known beforehand whart the shooters were planning? In rostering police for duty on that day, the first requirement of the commander would be to have staff to meet those day-to-day calls for service. I would imaging that a lot of the police at Bondi Beach were supernumerary. In other words, they were police who otherwise would have been on regular days off and were offered a bit of overtime. It takes time for the situation to be identified and this information relayed through radio communication channels to commanders for orders to be created, delivered and acted upon. Even if specialist SWAT police were on standby, it would have taken some time for them to reach the scene. 2. seems he did your jobs for you During the shooting the police present would have been occupied with locating the shooters. It is a big area with many high rise buildings surrounding it. Do yu tnk that you could positivley locate a shooter's position in the shock and awe of an unexpected attack. Just consider what would be going through your mind if you were witness to a motor vehicle collision. What would be your first positive action? 3. wth then don't they send marksmen out with rifles, The police rostered for duty at the event would have been all on foot, moving about amongst the crowd to deal with minor incidents. A police command is not supplied with unlimited motor vehicles. Vehicles attached to the local command would normally be kept availale for the normal general police duties, like domestics, shoplifters, motor vehicle collsions etc. The press reports show lots of police vehicles ate teh scene, but thos pictures would have been taken in the aftermath of teh actual shootings. 4. wth don't the cops have rifles in their car You watch too many American TV shows and movies. Policing in Australia is not approached on a Wild West basis. That's because the public does not have a gun culture. How many people do you kow who do not have a firearm? Many, many more than those who do. There is no need for police performing typical day-to-day duties to have access to rifles. In my career, I only discharged my hand gun three times - once to euthanise a kangaroo at the request of a distressed lady who had hit it with her car; another time to euthanise at the request of the owner a horse which had disemboweled itself in a steel fence post, and a third time I took a pot shot at a fox. 5. be trained with them as well as useless pee shooters I have doubts that you have ever received firearms training, because a statement like that indicates that you have no experience in either simulated firearms training nor actual combat firarms training. One day per year to do a refresher course on the use of a pistol does not make a person a Dead-eye Dick. Likewise, the effectiv use of a rifle is far more complicated. Perhaps GON can tell us how long it took a Nasho to qualify to use a rifle. 6. And still it goes on. Remember the Lindt Cafe seige? The investigation and Coroner's Inquest into that took a very long time. How would you cope with the mental stress of being involved in something like that? Don't forget that the police at Bondi at the time of the shootings would have been junior police with not many years' experience. How would you cope with a traumatic situation of being in a field of fire without knowing where the firing was coming from, and seeing the dead and wounded laying bleeding around you? All I can say is, do not make statements such as you have until you have walked a mile in the shoes of someone who has.

I think he took the gun when the shooter had emptied the magazine, so he wouldn't have been able to. Pity he didn't smack him in the head with the butt though. Still, damn good job and I hope Mr El-Ahmed is given our highest medal.

I agree with most of what you have said except this. At the Palestinian protests, at campuses, in Sydney, Melbourne, etc, people were openly chanting kill the jews and gas the jews. This was not protesting for Palestine, but protesting against Jews.. anywhere.. and calling for their murder. The response from the governments? Tepid. Did anyone get charged with incitement or racial vilifcation? Crickets. In the UK it was nuch the same, except apparently you can be charged with a hate offence calling a horse gay or something. Surprise, surprise, the same thing happened, although more weren't killed because of logistics and it was a long gunman as I recall. Just imagine the response had it been Jews protesting to kill and behead the Muslims...

Far more useful than the real thing

Bought this for a lark today, I'm never going to Oshkosh at this rate ever now so it can't get any worse. I think is meant to be Donald Dump.

Black lines scream "incriminating". Call me a conspiracy theorist. I reckon there is more to hide, than a sex scandal. Everyone already knew that old mate Gropenfuhrer seems proud to be a sex offender.

Oh, I thought A.I. stood for 'Average Idiot'. (My level) Darn these acronyms!

I don't own any firearms. I don't want to own any firearms. But I can see that in the wake of Bondi there are cries for stricter firearm controls. The controls that have been mentioned often sound like knee-jerk reaction of people with little knowledge of firearm ownership in Australia. Let me say that I see ideas like restricting the total number of fireams held by an individual as being dificult to manage. Don't forget that the authroities only know about the registered firearms held by the community. We know that there are very many unregistered firearms in the community. Once again, any restriction on total number of firearms owned will only impinge on owners who are following current laws. How many is too many? A person might reasonably own several different types of firearms. Maybe one shotgun for hunting and another for target shooting. Maybe a centrefire rifle for kangaroos and another for pigs. And don't forget the .22 for rabbits and foxes. The first step that I fully agree with is the unification of records kept by States and Territories relating to licensed persons and registered guns. In this digital age unifying those records might only require the transfer of existing records from one database to another. It might need a bit of program development, but for years fingerprint records have been linked across States and Territories. Firearms licences only for Australian citizens???? Look at the ages of young Middle Eastern men using firearms in the drug and illicit tobacco wars. They are no doubt Australian citizens, having been born here. Here's the criteria: a child born in Australia gains citizenship if at least one parent is an Australian citizen or permanent resident at the time of birth; otherwise, they aren't automatically a citizen, but can acquire it on their 10th birthday if they've lived in Australia for their first 10 years. Protecting society from the misuse of firearms is an impossibility through laws, be they equitable or restrictive. Before slamming down on firearm ownership, careful consideration must be made of the consequences of any regulations proposed.

Hooray! The Epstein files are being released! And look what we learned....

True, but in those areas, firearms are "tools of trade". Criminals possess them for the purpose of carrying out their trade. Their preferred firearm is a pistol. Also they have more important things to do than get involved in racial politics. Also you are concentrating on "illegal" firearms. Actually it is the possession of firearms in contravention of the Regulations that makes most firearma illegal, although there are firearms that are intrinsically illegal by definition within the Regulations. Onetrack, widen your scope. You have honed in on people from the Middle East. Have you forgotten about White Supremists? Remember the mass shooting in New Zealand that was carried out by an Australian White Supremist?

Make your concerns known to Minns an Albo. Rules are useless if they can't be enforced.

No one should be able to act BEYOND the LAW "Including" some bosses. Check out the countries where Unions are Not allowed. You wouldn't want to Live there. Collective representation is a RIGHT Under UN declaration. Left unchecked Wages would be driven down by the Wealthy to increase Profits . Also corners get cut and safety standards Lowered. Nev

The shooters and fishers have had too much influence in NSW Politics Permitting. Shooting in National Parks is not something I Like. Responsible Gun Owners would agree some Limits must Be imposed and enforced. The Permit holder can't LEND guns or it's Meaningless. Accidents with Guns have always killed people AND they Must be safely stored. That's not easy. Being like America is not the Answer. It's INSANE over there. Nev

I grew up in the shadow of the Barrier Industrial Council. School bullies became union officials. It was oppressive, but now it all seems so tame compared with the deep corruption and underworld ties of some of our unions nationally and here in Victoria.

He had a mental and physical breakdown which he describes in the book.

Ah, 14hp means 14 Hamster Power? Thanks gents!

Its "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance". Riding is incidental.

Shortly after Gerry met his demise, Paddy also turned up at the cliff with a cardboard box. He walked to the edge of the cliff, opened the box and took out a hen, He grabbed hold of the hen's legs, and leapt off the cliff. Unfortunately, he suffered the same outcome as Gerry. Joe looked down, shook his head, and said, "Oi ain't goin' fook'n hen-glidin' neither."

Brass cases, so I'd say solids. They're a 2.5" case so they'd hold a fair bit of powder to push the slug a reasonable distance. I haven't seen all the footage so I don't know if they had a 12G as well, but the bolt action gun the young bloke was firing was a .410 ejecting brass cases

These people know they will be away from their family's before they take the jobs, just as ever FIFO miners does. It's a decision/ compromise they have to make.

What Hamas did is no worse than what the Japanese army did in Manchuria and Borneo, or what the Nazis did to the Jews. But once done, you can't fight a war against a segment of society. There were good Germans and good Japanese, but the bombs rained down on them all. There is no other way to fight against evil in wartime. And war is the only way to sanitise the evil. Each society, worldwide, is responsible for the actions of the groups within it.

America has never acted out of the goodness of its heart, towards anyone. It has always acted in the best interests of America, American corporations, and American people. Americans believe all other nations and cultures are inferior to them. Even as far as Australia is concerned, the Americans never acted out of the goodness of their heart to save Australia and Australians, they used Australia as a convenient base, from which they needed to stop the Japanese attacks on America and its commercial interests, and to wrest control of the Pacific region from the Japanese. The ugliest part of the Americans behaviour in WW2 was using 60,000 Australian troops and all our best military forces, to carry out the unnecessary and costly Borneo invasion campaign in May 1945 - Operation Oboe. We lost nearly 600 good men in three operations to take out the remaining Japanese soldiers on Borneo, who were all basically stuffed, anyway, with no logistics left - but the Japanese fought to the death, and often carried out suicide missions. Operation Oboe was an operation designed to cater to MacArthurs overweening arrogance and self-aggrandisement, and to promote American strength. https://www.awmlondon.gov.au/battles/borneo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borneo_campaign

Welcome back Willie, we missed you, mate.

A cuppa? I made a thermos and it still wasn’t enough!

Ahmed el-Ahmed showed incredible self control in not firing on the gunman when he had the gun, at least in the legs to prevent him from running away.

Deserves the highest honour. To disarm a gunman with no weapon yourself, plus have the presence of mind to put the weapon down afterwards so the cops don't shoot you.

In the arm, I believe. With Luck He will get a Bravery award. Nev

It must be time for another chuckle, the current news is all bad. I guess it's also a bad time to tell any jokes involving Jews and Palestinians, but here's a good religious chuckle. A Biblical Story: And on the third day, there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee. And it came to pass that all the wine was drunk. And the mother of the bride came to Jesus and said unto the Lord, they have no more wine. And Jesus said unto the servants: "Fill six waterpots with water." And they did so. And when the steward of the feast did taste from the water of the pots, it had become wine. And they knew not whence it had come. But the servants did know, so they applauded loudly in the kitchen. And they said unto the Lord: "How the hell did you do that?" And inquired of him: "Do you do children's parties? And the Lord said: "No." But the servants did press him, saying; "Go on, give us another one!" And so he brought forth a carrot, and said: "Behold this, for it is a carrot." And all about him knew that it was so. For it was orange, with a green top. And he did place a large red cloth over the carrot, and then removed it, and lo, he held in his hand a white rabbit. And all were amazed, and said: "This guy is really good! He should turn professional." And they brought him on a stretcher, a man who was sick of the palsy. And they cried unto him: "Maestro, this man is sick of the palsy." And the Lord said: "If I had to spend my whole life on a stretcher, I'd be pretty sick of the palsy, too!" And they were filled with joy, and cried out: "Lord, thy one-liners are as good as thy tricks. Thou art indeed an all-round family entertainer." And there came unto him a woman called Mary, who had seen the Lord and believed, and Jesus said unto her: "Put on a tutu, and lie down in this box." And then took he forth a saw, and cleft her in twain. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. But Jesus said: "Oh ye of little faith!" And he threw open the box and lo, Mary was whole. And the crowd went absolutely bananas. And Jesus and Mary took a big bow. And he said unto her: "From now on you shall be known as Trixie, for that is a good name for an assistant." And the people said unto him: "We've never seen anything like this. You shouldn't be wasting your time in a one camel town like Cana. You should be playing in the big arenas in Jerusalem!" And Jesus did harken to their words. And he did go on to Jerusalem, and he did his full act before the scribes, the Jews, and the Romans. But alas, it did not please them in their hearts. In fact, they crucified him. Here endeth the lesson. Amen. By Rowan Atkinson

NSW Police Commissioner's public announcement: The gunmen were a 50yo father and his 24yo son. The father had 6 guns licenced to him, and the police say they recovered 6 guns from the scene. The father was killed and the son is in critical but stable condition in hospital. The father had held gun licences for 10 years. The brave citizen who attacked the gunman and saved countless lives was a suburban fruiterer and father of two.

I wish their porky arsehole would quietly expire and definitely not be exported.

If you had told me yesterday Ida come over and sorted it forya.

You were trained to kill People but didn't have to actually do it, So Was I. A Vickers Machine gun stuffed my hearing at 21 at Singleton Army Camp. The Money I got helped Pay for my flying. Nev