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I particularly liked her role in 'To the Manor born". She and Peter Bowles were absolutely hilarious together.

Did you know.... If you spell Absolutely Nothing backwards, you get.... "Gnighton Yletulosba", which means....... Absolutely Nothing!

My wife once told me, "Sex is more fun on holidays". It wasn't the best postcard I've ever received

I loved Penelope Keith.

Just catching up on this thread. Apart from some misstated knowledge of the First Nations' which I will deal with later, there are three main threads of negative impact immigration. The first is the impact on the housing market and how it pushes up prices. The recent developments of tax changes have already seemed to knock that one on the head, but it is too early to determine if that is the case, and I will explain why in a second. But, as a rough and ready set of numbers, I got Google to give me the following in a table: So, what does it compare (all sourced from ABS data): Each year from 2000 to 2025 EOFY. The net migration into Australia The natural increase in the population (non-immigrants) Net dwelling additions to Australia - that means number of new dwellings built minus the number of those demolished. The average number of people per immigrant household The average number of people per non-immigrant household The new immigrant homes needed based on the number of immigrants divided by the average household size The new homes needed for non immigrant families The surplus or deficit of new dwellings built minus the sum of immigrant and non-immigrant houses required. This is rough and ready by any measure. For example, we don't take into account the number of bedrooms per new dwelling. But on this measure, only 6 of the 26 years there was a deficity in the number of new dwellings constructed versus the estimated new homes required across both the immigrant and non immgrant dwellings required. The biggest deficit was 77k homes in 2022-23, immediately after Covid. Pre-Covid, the biggest deficit was 7.5K. The biggest surplus was 142,500 dwellings in a year! With the exception of 2024-25, which ad a small surplus of 2,700 most years of surplus were well into the 10s of thousands. This is especially important because of the compounding effect. Every year, immigrants come, and then the next year some/many will have a baby or 2. That baby further increases the population. That is reflected in the domestic and not immigrant size and skews the figures at is is deemed one domestic person in the household of domestic population.. and increases the number of dwellings required according to the stats. These are two examples of statistical error, but the numbers of surpluses involved for the amount of years would indicate that the issue of immigration on housing in de minimis; or marginal at best. There goes that claim that immigration has a big impact on the housing costs. The second, on crime, it is hard to get stats. The reason why is because an immigrant is considered someone who is born overseas, and with young kids committing crimes, many may well be born in Australia and considered part of the domestic population. In addition, the ABS does not publish statistics by ethnic origin. So the best I could come up with is this from AI: It's not much, but it points to a debunking of the myths. My anecdotal observations in the UK is that crime, with the exception of hate crime, is linked more to socio-economic issues than specific ethinic backgrounds. But like Australia, the UK statistics Office doesn't publish such information, at least according to Google. The third is the dilution of Aussie culture ("traditional Australian"). This is a little too subjective for me; the behaviour of Aussies differs on socio-economic and location. Just look at Melbourne Football club members, for example. And if you think Aussies are laid back, well, they weren't compared to their UK cousins, at least pre Covid, that is for sure. But, that was my impression. And, they certainly don't or didn't swear anywhere near that of the Brit, nor did they drink anywhere near as much, either (NT excepted, I guess).. Again, that was my observation, which may be different to yours. But I get the feeling Aussies have this view of themselves as somehow unique.. My travels have busted that myth to me. However, I do get that people who have a vastly different culture and physical appearance can come across as not integrating with the local culture. There is a difference between people coming here and doing well, and people coming here, doing well, and integrating. But that does not mean they have to not wear what they want (Australia is about freedom of choice, right). Nor does it mean they need to fit into everything a "traditional Aussie" would do.. Many years ago, if you didn't smoke, you weren't Australian.. Despite the tobacco wars, there has been a big shift in attitudes to smoking, drinking, and I think those with massive muscly cars are considered either bogans or correcting for other deficiencies. I doubt much of this is the result of immigration., yet our cultural values have changed. Even marital rape is now illegal all over Australia since 1996 (though it was progressively made illegal from 1976). Think about it.. Marital rape was acceptable in modern Australia. Sometimes, it is good to have a cultural change.

"English is what happens when Vikings learn Latin and use it to shout at Germans, and then the French shout back!"

Ah... The smoke must have escaped the system. Just go to the dark side and buy a BMW. Here is my little beast K1200R 21 years old and 121,000 km and feels like new.

All I can say is 'Yep, He did this'..... Tomahawk cruise missile. The United States burned through over 1,000 Tomahawks in Iran — ten years’ worth of production. Each one’s fin actuators run on samarium-cobalt magnets. China mines and refines 99% of the world’s samarium and placed it under export licensing on April 4, 2025. To rebuild the inventory, Raytheon must turn to Beijing for samarium. Patriot PAC-3 interceptor. The seeker uses samarium-cobalt (SmCo) to slew its guidance head; the radar’s traveling-wave tubes use SmCo to focus the microwave beam; yttrium-iron-garnet phase shifters tune the array. Replenishing the 1,200-plus interceptors expended in Iran requires roughly 1.2 to 2.4 tons of high-temperature SmCo, plus yttrium oxide. Between 2020 and 2023, China supplied 93% of U.S. yttrium imports. JASSM-ER stealth cruise missile. The fin servos and seeker run on neodymium-iron-boron magnets (NdFB) doped with dysprosium and terbium for thermal stability. Strip out the heavy rare earths, and the magnet demagnetizes in flight. Roughly 1,100 missiles expended translates to between 1.5 and 3 tons of NdFeB feedstock. China refines the vast majority of the world’s dysprosium and terbium. F-35 Lightning II. For a decade, the Department of Defense itself has repeated that each F-35 contains 920 pounds of rare earths. The strategically critical content is the high-temperature SmCo and dysprosium-doped NdFeB in the engine actuators, electric drives, and radar. These are materials Beijing has placed under license. So US used up most of their ammo in Iran and now need China's permission to reload.

How can we have a half decent argument if you say stuff like this?

Our discussion around climate change has centred on power generation and ICE cars v EVs. But, it is a muilt-pronged approach required. As the rest of the world clears its heat sink, China is building its up: https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/plants/trees-in-chinas-great-green-wall-appear-to-grow-faster-than-natural-forests-study-finds Where fossil or nuclear makes sense, it should be used. The reality with today's technology, there are fewer and fewer places it makes sense. And should the political shift to drive a shift to local storage and distribution, the use of rapidly outdating technologies will make even less sense. We talk about the economics of doing it, but we rarely talk about the economics of not doing it. And economics is man made, anyway... the real cost (ie. outcomes) of not doing will lead to socio-economic costs far beyond the pure economic cost of doing it.

I always fact check everything anyone writes and I hope people will fact check what I post. Your figures are correct but with some caveats. In the following, I have omitted the calculations that validate your figres because as I say, they are correct. I am happy to provide links. What is potentially misleading? The statistics themselves are not wrong, but they can be misleading if they're presented without context. 1. China is much larger than it was in 1980 Since 1980: GDP has grown by roughly 50–60× (in current US dollars). Industrial output has exploded. Electricity demand has increased enormously. Hundreds of millions of people have moved into cities. An eight-fold increase in coal use is partly a reflection of China's enormous economic expansion. 2. Coal is growing, but so are renewables One of the unusual features of China's energy system is that both statements are true: China consumes more coal than ever. China is also installing renewable energy faster than the rest of the world combined. In 2024 alone China added approximately: 277 GW of solar 79 GW of wind bringing total new wind and solar additions to 356 GW in a single year. Non-fossil sources accounted for 56% of installed generating capacity, although fossil fuels still produced about 63% of electricity generation because coal plants are used more consistently. 3. Coal consumption isn't the same as coal-fired electricity Coal in China is used for: electricity generation steel production cement chemicals industrial heat Someone using these figures to argue that "China is building huge numbers of coal power stations" is oversimplifying. The statistics refer to total coal consumption, not just coal burned for electricity. 4. Coal's share of China's energy is slowly falling Even though the absolute amount of coal keeps increasing, coal is gradually making up a smaller share of China's total energy mix because renewables, nuclear, and natural gas are growing even faster. Overall assessment I'd rate the statement as: ✅ The numerical data are accurate (assuming the EIA dataset is the source). ✅ The 4% increase is correct. ✅ The eight-fold increase since 1980 is correct. ⚠️ It omits important context, namely that China is simultaneously undergoing the world's largest expansion of renewable energy while still increasing coal use to meet rapidly growing electricity and industrial demand.

That is a bold claim to make without evidence. The short answer is no. There is no credible estimate that connecting Snowy Hydro 2.0 to consumers requires $1 trillion in grid upgrades. Here's where the claim appears to come from. What Snowy Hydro 2.0 actually costs The project has experienced enormous cost overruns: Original estimate (2017): $2 billion Revised estimate (2023): $12 billion Snowy Hydro now acknowledges the final cost will be higher than $12 billion. Some independent analysts (Bruce Mountain and Ted Woodley) estimate the total economic cost could reach around $42 billion, but this includes: construction, financing (interest), and Snowy 2.0's share of major transmission projects such as HumeLink and VNI West. Even critics of the project are talking about tens of billions, not hundreds of billions. Where does the "$1 trillion" come from? There are a couple of possibilities. 1. Confusing Snowy 2.0 with the entire energy transition Some opinion pieces have argued that Australia's entire electricity transition—generation, transmission, storage, distribution upgrades and financing over decades—could approach very large figures. For example, one recent opinion article claimed: about $450 billion for transition infrastructure plus around $600 billion in financing costs and rounded this to roughly $1 trillion. It was not referring solely to connecting Snowy Hydro 2.0 to consumers. That estimate is controversial and is not an official government, AEMO or CSIRO estimate. 2. Simple exaggeration Sometimes numbers grow in online debates. Someone may have taken: "$42 billion for Snowy" plus "Australia's grid will need hundreds of billions of investment" and turned it into "Snowy needs a trillion dollars of transmission." There is no evidence for that statement. What do official bodies estimate for transmission? Australia does need significant transmission investment regardless of Snowy 2.0. AEMO's Integrated System Plan includes projects like: HumeLink VNI West Marinus Link EnergyConnect These collectively amount to tens of billions of dollars, not hundreds of billions for Snowy alone. The purpose is to connect new renewable generation across the National Electricity Market, not just Snowy Hydro. Is Snowy 2.0 competitive? That's a separate question. There are legitimate criticisms: huge cost blowouts years behind schedule uncertainty over final cost batteries have become much cheaper since Snowy 2.0 was conceived Many energy economists now question whether Snowy 2.0 would be approved if starting from scratch today. Others argue its enormous storage capacity and expected operating life (many decades) still make it valuable for grid reliability. The "$1 trillion to connect Snowy 2.0" claim isn't supported by any credible estimate. Even critics of the project put Snowy 2.0's total cost at around $40–42 billion, including construction, financing and associated transmission. The "$1 trillion" figure comes from some opinion pieces estimating the possible cost of Australia's entire long-term energy transition—not the cost of connecting Snowy Hydro 2.0 to consumers. They're two completely different claims. So I'd rate the original statement as: "Connecting Snowy Hydro 2.0 costs $1 trillion" → False "Snowy Hydro 2.0 has become extremely expensive" → True "Australia will need major transmission investment during the energy transition" → True "Those transmission costs are all because of Snowy Hydro 2.0" → False

Let me see if I have got this straight.. your position is that fossils/nuclear provide energy security over renewables (and its related tech)? If that is so, then the above post sort of throws that out the window faster than a Putin dissident. Scotland are paying power stations to mot produce power because of a failure to plan execution of upgrading to renewables. They asked to have all this extra capacity in the form of renewables added to the grid that cannot handle it. That is a policy or politics failure. Not a renewables can't meet "baseload" failure. It is akin to building a new suburb with only bicycle lanes but to be extra green, adding driveways with electric car chargers and declaring it an ice car free green suburb - and they crying EV cars aren't practical transport for a suburban life. That is called overpaying or underinvesting in energy security... the payments they make to compensate the owners for the governments cock up probably would have gone a decent way to grid upgrades. On the other hand, Raring power station was availing itself of a government guarantee because, even presumably fully amortised, wasn't predicted to be economically viable (ie produce power at a price that others could and make money).. in the supposed economically most effective way being a privatised market. Isn't that the government being tapped by the fossil fuel industry for energy security? BTW, Origin don't currently opt into the scheme as they are predicting, again fully amortised, it will not lose money We can find individual cases with all forms of generation that have not gone to plan or need a bail out. And all forms receive some form of government subsidy. That is policy because of energy security

Into the above arguments, we could factor in the rapid adoption of home batteries. According to one report there are about 400,000 home batteries installed in the first half of 2026. This alone must noticably reduce peak load on the NEM. Consequently, lowering peaking generation and therefore driving down overall retail electricity prices even for non solar householders. Even small home batteries are designed to reduce peak load on the grid. Sure, it isn't a complete transition to 'intermittents'. But the trend is gathering momentum in the right direction.

As I was creeping into bed, she asked, "You are drunk again, aren't you!". "What makes you think that?", I asked defensively. "You live nest door."

A 4:1 win is great result for Belgium. They must have been fired up for the match. Maybe Trump did them a favour in hindsight.

Well, it's positive for them, but negative for you.

Well, Belgium won.. So, the USA is out. I feel sorry for the team, because normally I - and I bet many millions more - are very happy with the result, rather than either ambivalent or even sorry they went out. No one I have spoken to, including two yanks over here, wanted the USA to win.

That is your opinion.. can you present stats from reliable sources to back that up... Otherwise that is the big flaw in democracy - people with only an opinion who can't be arsed to find out the reality get to determine who runs the country. So, what evidence do you have the books are cooked.. Just because it doesn't fit your narrative - your belief system - doesn't mean it is wrong or the books are cooked. Back to the "oh the left.. whatever" argument.. no basis apart from an attempt to disparage. Well, if being left is finding the facts, I am proudly left... You're just tired of being presented facts that don't correlate to your beliefs. Sorry for you, but facts don't give a stuff what you think. Or maybe your typo is a Freudian slip - you are tied up by the fact? I am not sure what the first sentence means.. It was an illustration of how a culture can change over time. And sometimes, the "traditional Aussie" in what I am guessing is GON's stereotype isn't nice, but is becoming nicer. But, also you shouldn't believe everything you read in the press, either. The number of women homicides are slightly down ion 2024-25 over the prevuous year - both in the absolute and intimate partner (domestic violence) categories, but the longer term trend has been downwards: And I doubt this is altogether to do with migration as well, but a shift in culture - to be honest, although it would be great to see it at zero, it is an, in general positive shift over time. Another plus for a shifting cultural values, although recent spikes are cause for concern, they have settled down.

GON could it be that you have not mixed with people from other cultures very much? I have, for most of my working life, worked with people from many countries. These people were highly educated and great people. I certainly have been helped by strangers from another country. My in-laws, who are now in their 90s and pretty frail, have some wonderful neighbours from Pakistan. These people are and have always been the kindest and most generous people you could ever meet. When we visit my in-laws (they live interstate) and go for lunch, their neighbours will often cook some food and send it over. When the woman comes over she will give my father in law a bug hug and ask "how are you Baba"? Baba means father, grandfather or respected older man. My in-laws house is getting pretty run down and their neighbour often comes in and fixes things. Here is a post from my father- in- laws FB page The thing is in any culture are nationality there is a range of characteristics. My doctor is Malaysian but this is the least notable thing about him. My son's partner is: Kind Extremely humourous Scarily intelligent Succesfull The fact that she is Chinese is interesting but mostly irrelevant to us. Is it wrong to assess people from my dealings with them rather than resorting to dumb stereotypes?

Trump has done a wonderful thing for ethical behaviour. Corruption used to be something hidden behind closed doors. Trump has thrown those doors wide open and brought it out into the open.

FIFA management has been corrupt for years bowing to the almighty $. They inserted a drinks break supposedly because of the heat but mandated it for all games whether it is hot or cold, effectively splitting the game in to 4 quarters. This not only disrupts the flow of the game & gives players a bit of a breather but and most importantly provides and additional period to rake in $billions from advertisers.

The thread is devoted to 'God Elp Amerika' but no evidence suggests god is helping at all. Unless god thinks the world might be better off without the US part of america

Microsoft are doing very well, aren't they?

Well, positives are things are slowly moving forward. Currently preparing for Wednesday's flight to Melbourne. I realise it has been 8 years since I have been to Aus. Ship! Time flies. Not going to tell you which day in case you alert immigration 🤣 Although I could be out for as much as a month, I will be travelling light - hoping to get away with carry on only. I don't think I will, so it will probably be a small backpack. Also, on the reno front, things are picking up. I am not sure if I mentioned the need to rewire a floor of the house. Not a terribly big job, but more cost. That was found when they pulled a fuse board out to replace with one up to current regs. The spaghetti behind it, including a circuit that bypassed it altogether made some of my early coding deliverables took well written. We have found a tradie who is working through stuff. He has done these doors we had to put in for building regs; but the building inspector allowed us to not procure fireproof doors or even install them to be a barrier against fire spreading as the listed (heritage) building officer would be dead set against them even being installed. And that is the regulatory environment we are up against. Now, the downstairs loo and bootroom, that I made major progress on until work really heated up are done, and the formal living room is under way. If this fella keeps it up, I think we will be done by mid August and ti will be on the market. And he is doing a good job, too. And on the work front, an opportunity to climb the greasy corporate ladder opened up. I was invited to apply, but because of my plans, declined. I was supporting the application of a colleague, but it looks like he won;t get it either, and it will be an outsider. Which is fantastic, because that person will be both of our manager. Things are transforming at work where it will slim down in the not too distant future. I have already been implementing a succession plan where today, apart from being the doyen of our delivery function, my reports are coming right up the curve and even a contractor has been earmarked to be a sucessor. So, a new person in that almost exec role will want to stamp his or her authority and make changes - and as I don't feel I owe that person anything, the conversation will be something like "don't let anyone go on my account." Employment laws will mean they will have to make me redundant - and that will mean enough to accelerate this reno and put it on the market and take a little while to sell. Even if the latter (which I have been trying to engineer for about 12 months now) doesn't work, I am hoping by the end of the year, it will be all done and dusted.

I agree Peter - part of a previous job was system testing changes to a large organisation's primary database before they were deployed. For five weeks at a time we'd try to break it by doing the stupidest things humans could do to it. After deployment, when the programmers had applied fixes to any weaknesses we'd found, inevitably some moron still managed to break it.

So many threads this could go in. I chose Silly Pics because 'tis silly to allow vested interests to control political narrative..... Oh dear. The forum prohibited me posting a meme that said something like: 'twitter allows exposure of Nancy Pelosi's trades, but not Donold's trades' Have I been found out by the Deep State?

It's not just EVs that have LED and similar tablet type displays in front of them.. most new cars to these days. That really is not the issue. A speedo cable can snap on an analogue system and you have the same issue - I have had it happen on a Saturday arvo and no speedo until Monday morning. I would hope there are no controls on that screen. Sticking yuor hand between the spokes of the steering wheel is not a good thing. On the controls, using touch screen doesn't give you a sense of magnitude of change (e.g. temperature, etc) without looking. Well, at least for some time, anyway. Also, early model Teslas were infamous for the depth of menu setting one had to go through to get to whatever function was required. Muscle memory will only go some way.. as it does on analogue or tactile type inputs. How many times (in an old 4 or 5 on the floor, or even a 3 or 54 on the column) have we crunched the gears or almost stalled the car going into the wrong gear. However, the physical/tactile approach allows us to correct without reverting to looking at the gears (unless we really stuff it up and have lost spatial awareness of where the gear is). So, the Atrick household vehicle mix is chaning. Daughter just wants an old banger (UK speak)/bomb (Aus speak) of a car as she will be in a house in the next academic year, won't have a driveway, and will not want the hassle of a nice car getting road rash from an inner urban environment. Good on her. So it will be a petrol Ford Fiesta (most likely); manual, a/c, power steering and otherwise minimal. Mrs Atrick is in for a little shock... She is getting an EV - Probably an MG4 to replace her mini. She doesn't know it yet.

While the data regarding Japan's recent gas-to-coal switch is accurate, drawing the conclusion that this signals the end of the renewable energy transition is a major logical leap. It’s a fossil-for-fossil swap, not a renewable rollback: Japan didn't replace solar or wind with coal. They temporarily replaced expensive, supply-choked Middle Eastern LNG with coal to keep the lights on during an active maritime crisis. Their statutory 2030 and 2040 renewable targets remain legally binding. Fossil fuel volatility is the problem, not the solution: This exact crisis highlights why countries are desperate to exit fossil fuels. Relying on imported gas and coal leaves economies completely exposed to geopolitical price shocks. Asia is building both, not choosing one: While countries like China and India use coal for immediate baseline power, they are also leading the world in clean energy. China alone is currently installing more renewable capacity than the rest of the world combined. The 'Climate Stupidity' claim ignores capital markets: Despite the rhetoric from contrarians like Dr. Curry, global capital isn't abandoning green energy. Global investment in renewable energy infrastructure hit a record $2.1 trillion in 2025, consistently outpacing fossil fuel investment because wind and solar are now structurally cheaper to build and operate. An emergency pivot to secure baseline power during a war isn't an ideological victory against green energy—it's a short-term fire fighting measure."

My wallet is like an onion. Every time I open it, it makes me cry.

I asked AI this: how much would a new coal-fired power station cost, and what impact would it have on electricity bills? The short answer is: A new coal-fired power station in Australia would likely cost A$8–15 billion, depending on its size and technology. It would probably increase, not decrease, average electricity bills compared with building new wind, solar, and battery capacity today. However, it could reduce exposure to gas price spikes if it displaced expensive gas generation. Here's why. Construction cost A modern high-efficiency, low-emissions (HELE) coal plant of around 1,000 MW would likely cost: Item Estimate (A$) Construction $8–15 billion Construction period 7–10 years Expected operating life 40–50 years The wide range reflects uncertainty because no large coal-fired power station has been built in Australia for decades, so there is no recent local benchmark. For comparison: The cancelled expansion of Medupi Power Station ultimately exceeded A$25 billion after delays and cost overruns. Recent coal projects in Europe and North America have also experienced substantial overruns. Why is it so expensive? Coal plants require much more than the boiler itself: enormous steam turbines pollution control equipment cooling systems ash handling facilities coal storage and conveyors high-voltage grid connection extensive environmental approvals. Modern emissions standards also require equipment that older Australian coal stations never had. What would electricity cost? This is where it gets interesting. The cost of electricity from a new plant is usually measured by the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE). Approximate ranges today are: Technology Cost (A$/MWh) Existing depreciated coal 40–80 New coal 120–180+ Gas peaking 150–300 (depends on gas price) Wind + firming 70–120 Solar + batteries 60–110 These figures vary between studies, but most recent analyses conclude that new coal is more expensive than new renewable generation with storage, largely because of its high upfront capital cost and ongoing fuel and maintenance expenses. Why are old coal stations cheap but new ones aren't? This often causes confusion. Australia's existing coal stations: were built 30–50 years ago, have largely been paid off, operate under older environmental standards. That means today's consumers mostly pay for: coal, maintenance, staff, repairs. A new station has to recover billions of dollars of construction costs over its lifetime. What impact would it have on household bills? For a typical Australian household spending around A$2,000 per year on electricity: Scenario 1: Coal replaces expensive gas Bills might fall slightly during periods when gas prices are very high because coal fuel has historically been cheaper than gas. Scenario 2: Coal competes with new renewables Bills would likely be higher than under a system dominated by new wind, solar, and batteries because the new coal plant's capital costs would need to be recovered from electricity consumers (or taxpayers). Scenario 3: Government subsidises construction If taxpayers funded part of the construction cost, electricity prices could appear lower, but the cost would be shifted from electricity bills to government budgets funded by taxation. Other considerations A coal plant also faces economic challenges because it operates best at a relatively constant output. Australia's electricity demand now has a deep midday dip caused by rooftop solar, making it harder for coal stations to run continuously at high utilisation. If a new coal plant generated fewer megawatt-hours than planned, its fixed costs would be spread over less electricity, increasing the cost per unit produced. Could private companies build one? In theory, yes. In practice, no major electricity company has announced plans to finance a new conventional coal-fired power station in Australia. The main reasons cited are: the very large upfront capital cost, long construction times, uncertainty over future electricity market conditions, competition from lower-cost renewable generation and storage. My assessment If Australia's objective were simply to build the lowest-cost new electricity generation, the evidence available today suggests that a new coal-fired power station is unlikely to be the cheapest option. Existing coal stations remain relatively inexpensive because their construction costs were paid off decades ago, but replicating that infrastructure today would require a very large new investment. Unless there were substantial government support or a major change in technology or fuel costs, that investment would probably place upward pressure on electricity costs compared with building a mix of renewable generation, transmission, and storage.

I just read that the 400000 figure for home batteries is just since the rebate, and if you include home battery installations before the rebate, the total is somewhere around the 600000 mark. BYD have announced their new generation of sodium batteries, expected to cost $40 US a KWh and be good for 10000 cycles or approximately 27 years. The point is that whilst we are debating this, battery storage gets cheaper and better, solar panels get cheaper and more efficient, as do wind turbines, not to mention other coming technologies. This argument is often predicated on the notion that renewables cost money and must be paid for, whilst ignoring the fact that new coal is incredibly expensive and requires constant fuel, the cost of which would be borne by the consumer. This, according to CSIRO and AEMO would cost more than our present strategies.

According to google... "Australia has surpassed 400,000 home battery storage installations with 11.2GWh of cumulative capacity installed in less than a year "

A guy got pulled over by the police. The cop walked up to his window and asked, "Do you know why I pulled you over?" The guy said, "To check how tall I am?" The cop looked definitely unimpressed and said, "Step out of the car please." The guy said, "So I was right then?"

Actress and presenter Dame Penelope Keith has passed away. Notes online simply say died c. June 2026.

was on another forum I used to use, just a general place for musings etc... Today I had a new "thats doing well in life" moment, sending parts to a customer, got his address.... XXXX valley suburb state postcode asked for the street number.... oh no there isn't one, that's the property. admittedly it was a cattle property. but still imagine having a enough land that you get your own address

By the way, China's emissions have flat-lined for the last 21 months and may actually be falling slightly, although it is a bit early to celebrate. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-21-months/

WHO misleads public with cherrypicked climate data Sorry about the length of this, but the original is behind a paywall. At the start of the FIFA World Cup in North America, sensationalist headlines suggested climate change could make the games “the most dangerous ever” because of the heat. Of course the claim is absurd given that the previous tournament was played in much hotter conditions in Qatar, but it is an excellent example of the activist-driven climate alarm stories we see every summer. Riding this wave, the World Health Organisation is again blurring the line between evidence-based public health and climate advocacy. A WHO commission made up of politicians and green advocates has urged the organisation to declare climate change a “public health emergency of international concern”. This is a flashback to the 2010s when WHO’s director-general named climate change the most important health issue of the 21st century. Not long after, Covid arrived – and WHO’s preparedness and early response were found deeply wanting. The lesson clearly was not learned. The WHO commission’s headline claim is that climate change poses a “catastrophic threat to human health”. Its key evidence comes from a Lancet study showing heat deaths in Europe are rising rapidly, reaching 63,000 a year. Even setting aside the peculiarity of a global health emergency built primarily on European data, the argument collapses under scrutiny. European heat death risk has risen 82 per cent since 1990. But heat mortality risk rises sharply with age and Europe has aged dramatically. Since 1990, the share of the European population over 70 has increased by 78 per cent. Ageing alone explains virtually all of the observed increase in heat deaths. The study and the commission simply ignore this. Any honest analysis of mortality would use age-standardised death rates that make figures comparable over time. The WHO report makes no such adjustment. The Global Burden of Disease, the leading mortality database, does. It shows that Europe’s age-standardised heat death risk has changed only marginally since 1990. Adjusted to reflect today’s population size and age distribution, the increase amounts to fewer than 850 additional heat deaths. The WHO commission’s figures exaggerate the problem more than 50-fold. The deeper dishonesty lies in what the report omits. As temperatures rise, heat deaths increase but cold deaths fall. Cold deaths far outnumber heat deaths on every continent. Using the age-standardised methodology that reveals minimal heat death increases, cold death rates in Europe have nearly halved since 1990. At today’s population levels, that translates to about 210,000 fewer cold deaths each year. The WHO commission conceals the fact cold deaths have declined by about 250 times as much as heat deaths have risen. The report’s second big claim is that climate change in Europe has made more Europeans food insecure. This strains credulity. Real food insecurity lies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The claim also ignores UN projections showing the world on track for record cereal production. If the WHO commission were genuinely concerned about the world’s hungry, it would lead with those facts. There is a cruel irony in the commission’s prescription. Climate policies have already made electricity three to four times costlier for consumers in Europe than in the US and China, and more than a third of all Europeans now say they can’t afford airconditioning. Making even more aggressive emissions cuts would raise energy costs further, making heatwaves even deadlier for those who cannot afford airconditioning and prolonged cold deadlier for those who cannot afford heating. Higher energy prices also raise the cost of fertiliser and mechanised farming, pushing more people in developing countries into hunger. The prescribed cure is worse than the disease. The WHO director who convened the commission writes that “our citizens expect urgency from us” as though he were an elected politician rather than a health official. What global citizens expect from doctors is honest, evidence-based counsel. They do not expect clinical authority to be borrowed for political purposes or public alarm to be manufactured by omitting data that would defuse it. WHO exists to prevent disease and protect human health. Declaring a climate emergency on the basis of cherrypicked, misleading statistics will not protect the most vulnerable. It will erode the organisation’s credibility further, divert attention and resources from real threats and lend political cover to costly policies that harm the people WHO claims to champion. Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and author of False Alarm and Best Things First.

Men's Shed Tomorrow. I got my old Au Fairmont aircond to work, so I will take it. I Thought the A/Cond Module was Cactus but it wasn't. Got a new alternator and Multi Vee belt tensioner and an electric window fixed. surprised I can still get the Parts. 1998 year build.. Nev

Wonder how they'd go fried in batter.

I have just been catching up on here. There is still some disbelief in the science.. And there is the argument for nuclear, which hasn't really changed for a while. @pmccarthy - from October, I believe you will, like it or not, be the beneficiary of the economics of renewables. As I understand, all of Victoria will be able to receive free electricity between the hours of 11am - 2pm every day if they have a smart meter or opt in through their energy retailer. Of course, you don't have to, but it is there.. because of solar - a renewable. Not because of fossil fuels, etc. For working couples/families/households, this is not going to give much - the fridge I guess plus any alarms and compute they may have on.. But, if one has an electric car and takes the train or other means to work, set it to charge in this time.. better still with a fast charger.. Suddenly you are now getting a chink of your vehicle fuel for free, too. Can't do that with fossils... You can thank renewables for that.. @Siso - I get that France, with a well developed pwoer generation network exports a lot of electricity especially to the UK and Germany. This is not because of nuclear. They would be doing this if they had all fossil plants, too. This is because the governments of the UK and Germany (Merkel, in this case) are crap at energy planning. Pre Fukishima, Germany was producing enough of its own power without needing top ups from France.. one of two blunders of Merkel's reign, and in this case, as she is a physicist by training is harder to fathom, she knee-jerked the closure of the county's nuclear generation plants without allowing a transition to other generation. Germany is playing catch up. There was talk of recommissioning one of the plants, but the decom process had progressed sufficiently to make it uneconomic. I am not completely across of Germany's capacity increasing plans, but the irony of this is that they are importing electricity generated by the same means that they shut it down, and some of it on their own front door. I honestly believe Merkel was losing her marbles towards the end of her reign. At first, I agreed with the development of new nuclear in the UK - we already have a nuclear industry - of which I was part of and still have the occasional dip of my toes in it; and renewables in the form of efficient electricity generation is not really viable, right? Well, as it turns out, that is... wrong. A couple of days ago, I was in a discussion at work, where, amongst other things, we provide project finance for electricity generation.. and one of the originators said the UK today has the generation capacity to power the country from its offshore wind farms alone. I scoffed at it (I don;t know why; part of an originators' job is to know the industry they are trying to sell finance to inside out). I did my research and yes - offshore wind farms alone have enough capacity to power the country, at least mathematically, but would need investment in infrastructure (storage, cabling, and grid connectivity). Accoirding to Gemini AI, this would be about 30% more than the cost of nuclear - but nuclear already has infra in place... However, a full lifecycle cost of nuclear v renewables, by Gemini has renewables has renewables between a little over 1/3 and 2/3 of the cost of nuclear. Of course, there has to be a transition; you can't day 1 replace on a like for like basis, so the cost comparison has to be refined. But suddenly, nuclear as a long term strategy is not looking as compelling as it did.

Yeah, but the Maori language is still a living language. I don't think that any of the indigenous languages of the Greater Sydney Area are still spoken.

GON, the U.S. Military forces leave Australia after a 6 month deployment. There are approximately 2000 Marines based in the Territory from March to October, then they go home. There are no U.S. Military force bases in Australia with permanently-based personnel, unlike Japan, Sth Korea, Germany, Italy, etc. The Australian military facilities used by the Americans are used on a Joint Rotational basis, or are Joint Defence Facilities with some American personnel based here permanently. Marine Rotational Force: - Darwin: Approximately 2,000 U.S. Marines and sailors deploy to northern Australia every year. They arrive in March to conduct several joint drills, such as Exercise Pitch Black and Southern Jackaroo, before returning to the U.S. in October. Aircraft and Bomber Rotations: The U.S. routinely sends aircraft (like B-52 bombers stationed temporarily at RAAF Base Tindal) for operations, and stores aerial troop carriers in the country, but the personnel are continually cycled in and out. Joint Defence Facilities: Bases like the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap operate as cooperatively managed Australian and U.S. intelligence sites with permanently stationed administrative and intelligence personnel. A number of the overseas American military bases are treated as "Sovereign territory" by the Americans. I cannot see that being allowed here. In the U.K., the bases are leased to the Americans, the British Govt retains sovereignty over the land. In Spain, the U.S. bases are jointly owned by the Spanish and the Americans.

I did.. but this house is taking a bloody long time and draining more funds than we imagined. , so every so often we have to pause to let them build up. Unf, this year, I made a bit of a blue of a decision because I was too busy at work to think things through and that cost be £25K as well.. So that has to be made up, too. But this week, things are back on, and it is some rewiring and all the decorative work.. If I don't sell the lot, I will subdivide, where I can sell the cottage to pay off the mortgage and then rent out the main house.

Isn't that where your wife writes it for you?

I think that the only thing that can save the democracy of the USA as it moves into its second 250 years is a review of its Constitution. A review and rewriting would permit amendments which have had to be made to be presented in a more organised way, and some of the recinding amendments removed. I think that a new constitution should make the format of the government similar to ours and most other democracies. That is, the People's House should be the place where the people who run the country do their work. That's where the person responsible for the various ministries report back to the representatives of the People. There could be a House of Review to monitor laws proposed by the representatives. Finally, the Head of State should be as apolitical as possible, and have no power to make the sort of Orders that we have seen Trump do.

People pay big money to go for long train rides, and the aura and advertising associated with the "Great Train Journeys of the World" is very prominent. Both the Ghan and the Indian Pacific make money from passenger traffic. These trips are advertised as "premium" tourism events, and the passengers pay high prices for premium accommodation, premium food and dining experiences, and associated events in towns that the lines pass through. A company named Journey Beyond runs these train trips and the whole operation is quite highly profitable.

Can you name a country where building new coal or nuclear power plants recently has kept retail electricity prices flat or below inflation? You’re asking renewables to reduce total electricity bills while we’re simultaneously replacing an entire ageing system and building new infrastructure.