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In my prime.... Zero debt. Low body fat percentage. Fluid balance perfect. Nutrition excellent. Cholestorol low. Mental health balanced. Zero alcohol, excellent hydration. This was my peak. I was eight years old.

Pocock is (or appears to be) on the correct side of most issues. The trouble is, for every Pocock there's a Bob Katter, a Clive Palmer, a Barmy Joyce or a Pauline Hanson. Well that puts them in front of PHON then, who have thought bubbles instead of policies and can't even agree amongst themselves as to what they are. Look I know the Greens sometimes seem nutty. My point is that if you want to park your vote with a protest party, at least give it to the nutters who have the best interests of the planet at heart, instead of the nutters who want to destroy it.

I kind of agree but only where the holder of such views influences others with them. If it's just your average idiot on a forum, no. If it's an influencer with 10,000 followers, yes.

You've got to be kidding! Why waste a good rant by reading provided refrences beforehand?

Going back to that assessment and prediction from Tony Barry of Redbridge Group, here's a quote of his opinion (based on polling) on reasons behind One Nation support: “For about 15 per cent of One Nation voters, they self-report immigration as their key consideration. But for most, they’re looking for an anti-establishment party. It’s a rejection of the two-party system,”

Righto... All those profiting by stopping action on climate policy and fossil fuels including bankers please make a orderly queue to the right.. Just close your eyes and go through the door to your reward.. Those on the left can enjoy the view of the cliff diving.

The major parties have had 125 years to get it right. In all that time you'd think they would have learned that democracy means more than just having an election every three years and then treating the electorate with contempt. They're simply not the kind of people we want governing us anymore, they've had their day, their psyches are no longer fit for purpose.

I think you'll find they get their information from their bank account and what is left in them after the bills are paid.. or their crumbling health services, etc. Murdich makes it easy ti fund someone to blame and someone to use to punish the incumbents. Look over here.. a PM who finally gets it and with really tiny tweaks, the protest party, Reform and his mates are imploding in the polls

But back to topic - yes I think Jerry has it but it's damn depressing. The fact that people are angry at the status quo I get. The fact that they don't care that things can get a lot worse for them, that's the sad bit. Looks like the lessons we should be learning from the USA are not being learned. Dark times ahead.

My son just turned up this morning to show off a Royal Enfield Himalayan with just over 1,000k on the clock that he got for a great price from a guy who had to sell it for health reasons. Kitted out with panniers and other extras so he's very happy. I don't know much about bikes, but it looks great.

Jerry, if I read the first post correctly, you said you paid 1500 for this bike. Given the ongoing electrical problems, if you can get 1200 for it, that would seem to be an excellent option.

This image isn't mine but it is taken from a better angle. Also, when a motorcyle is cornering, the rider holds the front wheel a bit away from the direction of the turn. That is counter intuitive, but the artist seems to have captured that.

One winter's evening we found an straggly cat at our door. 
She was a sorry sight indeed. 
Starving and dirty, she smelled terribly and all her fur all matted in lumps. 
We felt so sorry for her so we put her in a carrier and took 
her to the vet. 
 We didn't know what to call her so we named her 'Pussycat.'

 The vet decided to keep her for a day or so. 
He said he would let us know 
when we could come and get her.

 My husband (the complainer) said, 
'OK, but don't forget to wash her, she stinks.' 
He reminded the vet that it was his WIFE (me) that wanted the dirty cat, not him.

 My husband and my Vet have never seen eye to eye. The vet calls my husband 
'El-Cheap-O', and my husband calls the vet 'El-Charge-O'.
 
They love to hate each other and constantly 'snipe' at one another, with my 
husband getting in the last word on this particular occasion.
 
 The next day my husband had an appointment with his doctor, 
who is located in the same building, next door to the vet.

 The MD's waiting room and office was full of people waiting to see the 
doctor. 
A side door opened and the vet leaned in - he had obviously
seen my husband arrive.

 He looked straight at my husband and in a loud voice said,

'Your wife's pussy doesn't stink any more. We washed and shaved it, and
now she smells like a rose. Oh, and, by the way, I think she's pregnant.
 God only knows who the father is!' Then he closed the door.


Weell. Not that anyone would ever do this.... but hypothetically if they did.... If I was powerful and wanted to tank the dollar and get rich off it, here is exactly what I would do.I would hire a Treasury Secretary who already made $3.5 billion crashing another country's currency. I would put my guy in charge of the agency that approves bank charters. I would install a crypto czar with $200M in crypto holdings and give him an ethics waiver so nobody could challenge it.Then I would sign an executive order banning the government from ever creating a digital dollar so there was no competition.Then I would have my family launch their own private digital dollar. My family takes 75% of net profits. I would grow it to $4.6 billion in circulation and route a $2 billion Abu Dhabi sovereign fund deal through it to prove it works.Then I would get Congress to pass a law requiring every stablecoin in the country to hold short-term Treasury bills. Now every dollar of my digital currency is a forced buyer of government debt. Brookings projects $2.3 trillion in captive demand by 2030.Then I would have my OCC guy grant my family's company a federal bank charter. Now I can issue my digital dollar with federal authority.Then I would have my Treasury Secretary weaken the actual dollar. Bond buybacks that suppress yields but tank the currency. Build a $950 billion war chest for more. Let the debt hit $40 trillion. Dollar index drops to 99. Gold goes to highest point ever.Then I would kill the Corporate Transparency Act and delete the FinCEN beneficial ownership database. That was the one law that required every shell company in America to report who actually owns it. Without it, nobody can trace who is buying my stablecoin, who is routing money through it, or where the profits land.Then I would let the loop run. Weaker dollar drives demand for "stable" digital alternatives. The law I passed forces those alternatives to buy T-bills. That funds the government's debt. My family takes profit on every transaction. Foreign central banks walking away from Treasuries get replaced by legally mandated stablecoin reserves my family controls.Then I would use sanctions to start cutting countries off from the dollar system entirely. And when those countries need a new way to transact in dollars, the only federally chartered private digital dollar in existence is mine. They can buy it through shell companies nobody can trace because I deleted the ownership database.I just built a toll booth on the global financial system. I take a cut every time someone uses the dollar. And I made it so nobody can see who is paying.And every single step I just described has already happened.So what does that mean for you and I?The reason the United States can borrow at low rates and keep your mortgage and your car payment and your import prices stable is because foreign central banks hold trillions in dollar reserves. That system has always been public. The benefit went to everyone. Lower borrowing costs, cheaper goods , and the single biggest economic advantage any country has ever had.What I just described is the privatization of that function. The entity buying the debt is no longer a central bank acting in the public interest. It is a private company taking 75% of net profits for one family. The reserve function used to generate a public benefit. Now it generates a private fee.Your purchasing power shrinks every time the dollar weakens. Your 401k buys less in real terms. Everything you import costs more. And every time the dollar drops, demand for the private digital alternative goes up. The one the president's family owns. The one that by law must buy government debt.You absorb the cost of a weakening dollar. His family collects the profit. That is the trade.The enforcement mechanism to stop a sitting president from doing this? There isn't one. Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter says it would be a violation for literally any other federal employee, but not the president.Nobody voted for this. No one was asked. There was no debate. There is no enforcement mechanism. There is no one investigating it. The Senate tried and it was blocked.This is the largest conflict of interest in American history happening in broad daylight while everyone argues about something else.So what do you do? Share this. Make it impossible to ignore. Send it to your representative, your senator, every journalist you follow. We make them answer for it. Because the only thing protecting this scheme right now is the fact that not enough people understand it yet. But that would never happen, would it?

An amazing statue dedicated to Australian motorcyclist Kenny Blake. Located in Strathalbyn, South Australia. "Surely it is one of the most amazing and continuous tributes to a mate ever known. They come from afar to cheer this bloke, a motorcycling legend who won 11 Australian motorcycling titles. Some say he would have been at least the equal to Australia’s more recent champions Wayne Gardner, Mick Doohan and Casey Stoner had he not been forced to race on a shoe-string budget."

Did they think you just had a happy end to your car trip? Lucky you!

Seems the Globemaster was accompanied by a C130 - probably carring the catering truck. Just in case.

Maybe wrong thread for this, but.... Russia has been creeping up and reenforcing positions near Polish and Finnish borders Neither China or Russia nor America can be trusted and have been the enemy of peace since the end of the last World War when they all began their land grabs.

And the recycled pollies PHON have at the trough are different in what way, exactly? Jerry, they've done something else before politics. They've had real jobs and careers. It's not hard to research. Pauline fried fish, Barnaby was a bean counter, David Farley started out as a jackeroo and ended up CEO of Australia's largest agricultural company, NSW leader Mike Newman is a former investment banker and NSW trade commissioner to Japan, Luke Herdegen who just won the WA byelection is a small busnessman who owns gyms, Tyron Whitten the WA senator is a former concretor and business owner, Rod Caddies the WA leader has worked in child protection, construction, mining and as an ADF reservist, and that's just some of them. Even Malcolm has had real jobs but I reckon he's too nutty to talk about.

OMG, they allow wimmin to do anything these days! Anyway. Just you wait until you get your wind farm. Especially in summer. Every wind farn I visit has got a nice cool breeze comming off them big fans!

Sorry to be dissecting your post, but I am trying to get down to a useful conclusion about why not the Greens?... Although I have heard the above sentiment from others, and sometimes said similar myself, most really can't list all these BAD policies for me. Well that's what we all agree that's what gets votes for ON + Clive. But not working for Greens? But also don't like the major party's politics, either. Well, we all see a lot of nutty politicians in ALL parties. Disagree there. Greens have been bumping along the bottom for ever. Not likely to peak. Totally true. But we are accustomed to major partys doing that fairly often, too. After I started typing, others have touched on similar. I am puzzling how we can break out of this BTBD cycle before we follow the USA path. (BTBD = Burn The B Down and start afresh)

Actually - I don't buy it. The biggest reason things go downhill for blue collar workers is inequality. More of the pie goes to the massively rich and trickle down economics is the same joke it's always been. Even if they blame the major parties, they're voting for the fringe party that's bought and paid for by the same rich fucks that are already ruining their lives. If they truly wanted to change things for the better, they'd vote Green or progressive independents like Pocock.

It doesn't matter.. The fact we are heading downhill slower than the others doesn't make it good nor excusable People are wanting things to turn around, not to be told it will turn around and then the same path continue. After at least two generations of things getting worse, people are saying how do we change this. They only have one really big lever. The problem is, there is no one to step up with the real fixes so the only alternative is to, as @willedoo put it - burn the house down and start again. A lot of people don't see Chump's actions as anything but that... Even one of his MAGA supporters said it is the bitter medicine America needs to heal and get better (I am not sure I subscribe to that way of thinking, but the reality is there are far too many being pushed to the margins and they are getting angry).

Good job it was an Offenhauser and not an Oppenheimer. That would have been a bomb.

How often do we hear of any good work that our Local Member does for the electorate? As Mark Anthony was want to say, "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones." If those good works were publicised, then a Local Member would be assured of continued support.

I suspect one root cause of the malaise, is that politics has become a business dominated by professional politicians. Their greatest motivation is a desire to keep their job and rise through the ranks. They act as though it's a game of 'say whatever it takes, to get the votes'. The electorate no longer believes anything any of them says (even the honest ones). To restore trust they will have to get the punters to start saying 'Hey, thank goodness, xxxx did this for us! '

You are having a bad day. Don't feel bad, it could be worse. Imagine running into a wall with a boner, and breaking your nose first.

Australian music legend Gary “Angry” Anderson has suffered a cardiac arrest and is in hospital under the watch of doctors.

You can thank privatisation for that. User pays. A base station isn't cheap. If it doesn't make a profit over and above the install cost there, it doesn't get installed. A handful of customers will never be profitable. If you want capital city services, move to a capital city.

Count Binface, a satirical candidate in the Clacton by-election included in his policies requiring anyone who denies human-caused climate change to return to school. Quite frankly, I would have voted for him if he was in my electorate on that alone. The Australian death toll from the Nepal disaster alone - which is hard not to ague was the result of climate change - was 46. Stuff will get worse.. My favourite saying is facts don't give a ship about what people think.

On the subject of voters no longer listening, it has a two part effect. On the one hand, they no longer trust or believe the incumbents and stop listening to the sales pitch. The other factor is that the only way the majors can dismantle the One Nation juggernaut is to point out the faults and weaknesses of ON. That's where the second part comes in; people stop listenening to that as well and basiclly couldn't care less about the party's faults if it means getting rid of the status quo.

Jerry gets it. What is happening with the swing to One Nation is a movement to burn down the house and start again. The problem for the incumbents is that at some point, people are so fed up that they just stop listening. The federal Labor government has long ago realised that this could hurt them, and not just the Coalition as they initially thought. The government is and will be trying to turn it around, but once people develop a deaf ear to them, the government is done. Maybe it's reached that point now, but if not, it's not far away.

I can't get a code anymore for my online banking changes. The bank will only send a code via mobile phone now, not landline, the way I used to receive it. I don't have a mobile, and even if I did have one, there is no reception here. I'm up the creek without a paddle. In this respect, online banking doesn't exist for me any longer, I'll have to drive all the way to town, at their whim, and do my banking at the counter. The only other way is to buy a mobile phone, travel 10ks or more to higher ground, download the code, rush back home, enter it, hoping I haven't been automatically logged out due to inactivity. Everyone around here will be similarly affected.

40 Nev

If you look at the process of governing in a critical way, you'll soon see that a government elected by the people is only means of appeasement to the couner teh complaints of the people about the way they are controlled by faceless men. Just look at teh way multi-national corporations control your life. That's not something new. The American Revolution would not have happened if Britain's biggest corporation, the East India Company had not made the British Parliament mess about with the tax on tea and on the goods coming into the Colonies. No matter where on the political spectrum your politics lie, no Party can solve your problems.

Well, I watched about 10 minutes but the bum in the jeans was nowhere to be seen. False advertising! 😄

Yep, Lots of great bargains for the canny and slowish rider. Some add a high compression big bore kit, cam etc with nice pipes, ecu change. It's a common mod that makes a big change in power. One such kitted would be great second hand.

There's a lot of good low mileage second hand Royal Enfields on the market for very cheap prices. The fact that the new price is relatively low has some bearing on their used prices. They usually don't have much on the clock for a couple of reasons. First one is that a lot of people that own them are only occasional riders, and a lot of old blokes get too old for riding and sell them, still with low k's. With second hand 650 Interceptors, it's often the case that someone has bought one and not far down the track realised they're not a speed machine, so they sell to upgrade to something a bit racier. You can pick up Interceptors with 4,000 k's on the clock for half the price of a new one.

that i something I would believe.. though I am not sure they can produce it at the intensity of the players - though I am guessing there would be some relative to body size that would bring it closer than we (or I) think. I recall in year 8, Jack Leahy - my then English teacher - was telling us about an experiment where a bunch of toddlers/early walkers were put in a room behind one-way mirrored glass with a bunch of toys (those plastic type cars, balls, etc), and a bunch of relatively fit adults on the other side of the glass with the same sort of toys (obviously where necessary increased in size for the stature of the adults) and the adults had to mimic/copy everything their assigned toddler did throughout the day.. By the end of the day, apparently the toddlers were still more or less going strong, but the adults were completely stuffed. Of course, when the toddlers slept, the adults could only rest - but apparently some did fall asleep during those breaks, too. I have no idea if it is true or not, but he was one of the best teachers I had, so I have no reason to doubt him.

Unfortunately, Nev, what the rest of the world thinks, doesn't matter at all. Neither does what the people of his country think, either. Meantime, what he (and all those under him) DOES, is affecting a lot of people the world over. There is no win-win outcome. For every win, someone, somewhere, is losing. And that, my friend, IS 'The Art of The Deal'. P.S. yes, that is Capitalism as practiced in USofA.

Definitely 10.

Nice old Studebaker. I like the current culture where unrestored or minimally restored cars are as popular as full restorations. It makes it a lot more financially accessable for more people. For too long the main goal was to restore back to as new condition, and that was a very labour intensive and expensive process. It's horses for courses and the full resto people get great satisfaction doing their thing, but it's also nice not to see the history rubbed off or painted away on a lot of these old vehicles. I like the lived in look.

A man walks into a bar with a newt on his shoulder. "Cute pet," says the barman, "What's his name?" The man replies, "Tiny." "Why did you name him that?" asked the barman. "Because he's my newt." replied the man.

And yet, the accuracy of the art captured the whole racing motorcycle and rider.

This video is incredible. I didn't know where to put it. It is brilliant. So accurate. I hope you can view it. https://www.facebook.com/reel/1366620815311013

I look forward to suffering such delightful political boredom.

Now that's art I can appreciate.

I call my wife’s chai latte “Squirrel nut juice” bloody stuff is terrible. she does not like that name. Her cousins looked at me strange when I got to their place and explained the mess on my shirt as nut juice. Her over full cup had splattered all over me in the car whilst holding it.

Good thing they don't have almond cream then...