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He's back! I especially liked the last one. It's what's in the mind of many young blokes (and women) in the nightclub...

A law means nothing to Trump even if he knew about it, which is unlikely. His performance at the G7 was pathetic. He's so transparently out of his depth, inarticulate and now floundering to defend his bad Iran deal, that it's hard to believe this is an American president. I don't hate Trump, but I don't understand how anyone could have any respect or admiration for him.

Trump continues to dig even deeper holes for himself. His pathological lying used to just raise eyebrows among world leaders. Now they are giving him back some of his own medicine. He is still insisting Meloni begged him for a photo but she has shot him to pieces with her latest comments. Mary Trump apparently said that his father told him to never accept defeat ever. He still insists he won the 2020 election & just last week walked out of an interview when a Journo stated the evidence was there & he insisted he had evidence to the contrary but has never ever produced anything (because he can't). The US has always exploited its position in every place it has set up a base or even just an embassy. The Yanks were widely despised during WW2 here, the UK & in NZ. Remember the catch phrase " over paid over sexed and over here". There were riots in Brisbane & in Wellington all due to the attitudes of US servicemen & their pompous boss MacArthur. They have rewritten history so many times. For example there were 75,000 British & Canadian troops that landed on D-Day & 57,000 Americans, all the navy ships & most of the landing craft were British & the Yanks stuffed up their landings, refused to use most of Hobarts inventions, took out half the bolts of the mulberry floating harbours so they got destroyed in a storm & had huge casualties & in the battle of the Bulge, Montgomery's 30 Corps stopped the Germans getting to Antwerp after they had over-run the yanks & Patton was too far away . The list goes on. The USA is an empire in decline and it has been for some time. The only thing Trump has been good at is hastening that decline. The sooner the leaders of rest of the World act in a positive way like Meloni & The US leaves or gets kicked out of countries it has bases in the better.

It will be more than just a price rise in prices of premium chips. The world cannot afford to give up Taiwan. At Davos, the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said: "I would say that the single biggest threat to the world economy, the single biggest point of single failure, is that 97 percent of the high-end chips are made in Taiwan," Bessent told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He described a potential blockade or destruction of the island's manufacturing capacity as an "economic apocalypse," emphasizing Washington's efforts to relocate semiconductor production to American soil." A blockade of these chips would send the world into the tech dark ages and we would certainly lose the AI arms race against China. As I understand it, it would take decades to build the ecosystem required to produce these high end chips.

I agree, but the thing is that to some people not automatically believing he is innocent equates to "not supporting the troops" My point is that BRS is not the only soldier in this story. Those who beleive BRS is innocent surely must believe that the 20 soldiers who brought this to light must be lying. It will be tested in court.

Who did you go to war with? Trump: “IRAN” And how did it end? Trump: “ I RAN”.

Trump ripped up Obama's nuclear treaty with Iran, then started a pointless war that cost thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, half of the US missiles and tens of aircraft, disrupted shipping to most of the world and caused fuel crises in many countries. Now he's desperate to end the war before the midterms, so is doing a "deal" that leaves the Iranian regime better off than before the war. Tell me again how he's "righting the ship"?

I was watching a video of a bloke touring the Simpson Desert, and he came across a similar sign advising the earliest drill hole in the Simpson, Beachcomber #1. Someone had a sense of humour. The sign had no name on it, so one has to presume the name on the Willowie No 1 sign, is the welders name. The welded letters accuracy and eveness is something to be proud of, and to put your name to, because I've never been able to weld letters and numbers that straight!

I was giving DT some slack to see what outcomes he achieved, but I have to concede that he is completely deranged.

Asia is eye-opening when it comes to vehicle misuse. As Army engineers working on road construction in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, we were constantly amazed at what the Vietnamese considered a normal load for any vehicle or motorcycle. The Lambro 3 wheelers ("Tuk-tuks", or "xe lam" as the Vietnamese called them) were universal transport, and they were used to regularly transport workers to and from the rice paddies. As we often had construction road works they would have to traverse, they would often have to unload passengers to get through the road works. One day, a Lambro full of rice paddy workers (all girls and women, I might add), unloaded its passengers so it could get past us at the road works. We counted THIRTY SEVEN women and girls getting out of that Lambro! Admittedly, the Vietnamese women and girls are only tiny, but even at that, thirty seven people in a Lambro would have to be some kind of record.

I have a yard full of "collectibles". Most others view my "collectibles" as "junk". I just have to convince the ATO when I make a killing selling one of my "collectibles", that it's not taxable! 😄

Just announced on the news - Starmer has announced he is stepping down and planning the handover.

Except for Hegseth.

Trump is supported by utterly incompetent imbeciles such as J.D. Vance, who the Iranians have played like a fiddle at the peace talks in Switzerland. The Americans arrived early, and went in first to the negotiating room, giving the Iranians the pyschological edge. As seasoned negotiation veterans have said, the losing party is the first to enter the room, the victors enter last. Then the negotiations have stalled at every turn, with the Iranians knowing full well they're playing with a handful of aces. When asked if the U.S. was demanding a full and total end to Iran's nuclear programme, Vance only said, "Oh yes, we'll be negotiating an end to their nuclear programme" - like it was now of secondary importance. If the U.S. really were the winners here, they'd demand the end to Iran's nuclear programme as a primary and non-negotiable demand. Vance is a totally incompetent f****** loser, he couldn't negotiate his way out of a paper bag.

The saga of the green reflecting pool is classic trumpfook. First he personally gave the repair contract to a buddy. Then he insisted it painted a darker colour in spite of the known fact that dark = warmer = faster algae growth. Then within 10 days the water turned warm & green and they tipped insufficient Hydrogen Peroxide in. Then the blue Epoxy paint started to peel off & float about in the green water. Then we hear about another contract to fix all this.... the National Park Service contracted not only the coating and painting of the pool under a no-bid contract, but also an additional $1.7 million contract for a water purification system. That no-bid contract went to a firm whose ultimate owner is the J.J. Cafaro Investment Trust, led by Trump donor John J. Cafaro, whose wife chaired the 2017 International Red Cross Ball at Mar-a-Lago and who lives near Mar-a-Lago at a mansion that is listed as the water treatment company’s address in Florida corporate records. The name of the firm is Greenwater Services. What? He hired Greenwater Services?.... If only he'd thought to hire "Bluewater Services"......

One thing I love about my place is when showers sweep in from the ocean side at night. If they're slow moving and you are out on the verandah, you can hear the noise as they move in across the valley raining down on the canefields. Sometimes you can hear it coming for a full five minutes before it hits the tin roof.

On that subject of Beach Petroleum, this photo is their geothermal / hot rocks project on the eastern side of the Flinders Range. It was taken in 2011, and a bit better quality than than previous instamatic photo. This one was taken with my little Panasonic Lumix compact. Myself and a mate went down there for about five days to do a small job. Just to the left of the well head, you can see the Beverley uranium mine at the foothill of the Flinders, which is where we were accommodated. It's a pity the project fizzled out.

When I was doing my two years conscription, a corporal fired his sub-machine gun in front of us while we were lined up out in the training field getting a lecture about being aggressive towards the enemy. He swung the weapon around in an arc firing as he went trying to get us to pay attention to what war can be like. The bullets hit the ground of course, but an officer standing beside him said nothing. I'm sure this was an illegal act as a basic training method. Many of the training corporal were just back from Vietnam and they were crazed, their minds shot and heading for PTS, if they didn't already suffer from it. What we learned from the lecture was that we didn't want to end up crazy either, and that Vietnam has the potential to make you that way.

It doesn't matter what WE believe. There is also a Presumption of innocence Unless Proven Guilty in our system. He is required to appear before a Court where the Matter will be dealt with according to the Laws of this Country.. You can comment on things like the Manner of his arrest . Very Publicly and when he was with his Kids I can't see why that was necessary at all. Nev

I don't support the one nor the twenty. The evidence should be gathered, heard and tested in the appropriate court, with any appeals to the higher court, after which I would accept judgement. I am generally against the court of public opinion in these types of matters

When the Americans built the US Naval Communication Station, North West Cape, at Exmouth, W.A. between 1963 and 1967, everything to build the base, was shipped in from the U.S. When I say everything, I mean everything. The Americans shipped in their own prefab housing, their own power generation, and they even built their own baseball fields and a bowling alley, so the troops would feel right at home, and not in a hostile and foreign environment, like Australia. 😄 Even every fitting in the buildings, right down to hinges and fasteners, was imported from the U.S. In addition, even though LHD cars were banned on Australian roads, the Americans were allowed to import as many LHD vehicles as they wanted, so they wouldn't feel like they were in a foreign land, where the natives drove on the wrong side of the road. Unfortunately, the Americans couldn't change the local road rules, or the side of the road they drove on, so they had to put up with driving their LHD vehicles on the wrong side of the road, at all times. Fortunately, Australia insisted the town had to be on 240V AC power, which must have caused a lot of angst amongst the Americans used to 110V AC power. When the land for the base was leased to the Americans by a Liberal right-wing Govt ("all the way with LBJ!"), it was for peppercorn rental. Only when a Labor Govt was elected in Australia in 1972, was the base operation and rental costs put under scrutiny. Slowly but surely, Australian Naval personnel were allowed to operate in conjunction with the Americans at Exmouth. But all the Australian Navy personnel, including their leaders, were banned from access to the U.S. Naval Communications Cipher Room for many years. Ever so slowly, the Americans gradually relented and handed more and more operational power over to the Australian military, for the base operations. It was eventually turned into an Australian Naval Communication station by 1999, with an Australian Naval Commander initially taking control of the base in 1991. The Americans finally withdrew in 1993, and they sold off the base housing - fairly cheaply, it seemed to many keen buyers. Then those house buyers found that the American houses built there, couldn't be repaired using standard Australian building materials. Doorways were a U.S. standard, 3' 0" wide, to accommodate big Americans (as compared to the Australian standard of 2' 8" or 815mm). Fittings and plumbing all had to be changed if repairs were needed. Those houses ended up not being such a bargain after all. Numbers of the LHD cars from the base stayed here after the local authorities relented, and allowed LHD vehicles to be imported and driven on Australian roads. I would guess the Americans got good money for their used Yank Tanks, due to high local demand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Communication_Station_Harold_E._Holt

Have a good trip Pete, a good time of year to be heading out there. It's been over 14 years since I retired from working in the back country and haven't been there since. If I got my vehicle up to scratch I'd like to do another trip out there as I've never been there on a tourist basis, always working. From the east coast of S.E. Queensland it's bitumen all the way to Innamincka now. Last time I was out there the bitumen had extended from Jackson to past Ballera, but fell short of the border. It had been a good season with a good body of Mitchell grass as far as the eye could see. In that same batch of photos, I fund this one of an abandoned well name plate at that field where we worked for a short time. Top line is Willowie No.1, the well name - ie: first well in the Willowie field. Second line, the well owner, Innamincka Petroleum. Third line the drilling contractor - Oil Drilling and Exploration Rig 30. Fourth line, the date drilling commenced. Spud is short for spudded, the term for when the bit first bites into the ground. Fifth line, the date it was plugged and abandoned. Last line, the total depth reached.

Hookers will have to find new clients 😉 In the same vain, Chump has probably cost the US arms manufacturers and other military suppliers many more billions. Most of the big spending ex property leases will be on US companies.. Even construction of their bases, etc, will likely be US suppliers vetted by the military (I am guessing). I know someone who worked at RAF Lakenheath, and and I think it was RAAF Tindal (can't remember). He worked for an American company, ironically at the time, supplying the ADF and MoD, and not the USDF. At Lakenheath, there is a permanent USAF facility separated and at I think it was Tindal, there was a temporary command centre set up of the USAF. On both occasions, as a friendly American he went to introduce himself to the yanks at each base (probably trying to sell them something) and he was met with a very terse response equivalent to eff off. When he spoke to the UK/Aus personnel, on both occasions he was told they operate entirely separately and barely a word is spoken between them; a lot lived on the base and they had US supplies of their favourite home treats shipped in. Certainly, his antics will have his allies relying less on US manufacturers and after sales provisions as a result. For example, Spain and Portugal have cancelled or stop going ahead with procurement of the F35s, Europe is looking at shifting much of their military supply from US to their own suppliers; the UK is accelerating its Tempest fighter development; I don't think anyone in Europe is even looking at US drone manufacturers at the moment. If Chump unilaterally withdraws troops because of his childish antics, you can bet the long term damage to the US will be much more than a few landlords, supermarkets, and hookers. Yeah, there would be stuff that won't make sense to buy anything other than locally - normal food, civvie clothes, etc. And yeah, the sudden withdrawal of a large number of troops from the country will make a dent, but they rarely have a vast number at a single location, so the loss is probably minimal in the grand scheme of things, except where business are set up solely or mainly to service a local posting.

A funny story... Whilst in the RAAF in the 70's, I did an interview for TAA and one of the questions was, "was I related to Arthur Lovell?" Very naively and innocently I answered, No! Wrong. I should have answered "Uncle Arthur, how the hell is he?" I never met him but aware of his fame for bringing Ansett's first B727 to Oz.

She wouldn't be happy about his spat with the Pope either. I don't think she ever mistook Trump for who he was, but she was willing to play the game. Not any more, it seems.

When I worked in Timor, I saw a family of 5 on a stepthru. No tank for junior, and mum sitting modestly riding sidesaddle on the rack at the back. They show us how underutilised our road transport is.

Thanks Wille. Not the sort of view that Tourism Australia would caption "Where the bloody ell are ya?" But it representative of a bloody lot of our wide brown land. When I first travelled the outback in my teens, all I saw was endless monotony. But the country grew on me. Now, I miss it too. We are heading to that country today.

I miss working in this sort of country. It's the type of scenery where you almost expect Clint Eastwood to roll up with his poncho and mule. This was the last job I worked on out there. It was a small prospect for Innamincka Petroleum around the field they had north of Innamincka. The camera was a little Panasonic Lumix compact. It took reasonable photos and was around that time period when digital cameras were starting to produce reasonable quality images. I've still got the camera but rarely use it. If I want to take a non phone photo these days I use the old Canon 700D.

I've never understood sidecars. To me it destroys the whole purpose of a motorbike, which is to have fun leaning through corners.

A malignant narcissist, 6 time bankrupt, insecure, compulsive liar & con man. Absolutely nothing to like there.

To balance my whinge about hospitals, I must add that in spite of frequent past experiences of looong wait times, our health system is generally good. I attribute this to the exceptional diligence of nursing staff, and doctors. The admin, financing, etc..... well that needs work.

The only recent time I've walked into emergency entailed a five hour wait before being triaged, but I wasn't a critical case. It was more a formality; the stroke clinic phoned me and wanted me to do it. As I know now, that's what I should have done in the first place instead of going through the GP and then getting a referral to the hospital. A couple of years ago when I was stretchered in after running low on the red stuff, it wasn't too long to wait. Maybe ten minutes ramped in the ambulance, then another ten in the hallway. The paramedics stayed with me and kept an eye on blood pressure so it was all good. Our local public hospitals are good in my opinion. Not the case everywhere from what you hear.

Don't take it so badly. Soon HE will drop out of the picture and a new face can earn that title. There is quite a queue of similar types waiting in the wings.

Their triage is usually good. Head injury or chest pain, straight in. Something that's not going to kill you, you'll be waiting.

A lot of people Have died who needn't have. Lives don't matter where the Privileged Money is at stake and Egos drive events more than Facts and logic. Nev

To paraphrase an old saying, He who lives by the Law, dies by the Law. There is a law in the USA which says that if a terrorist organisation attacks US interests with drones, that organisation cannot be removed from the list of terrorist organisations for four years. In April 2026, the US Administration informed the Congress that an Iranian organisation ws hitting US interests with drones. The nett result is that the US cannot lift sanctions against Iran as promised in the current peace agreement. This video explains it.

Two television celebrities put themselves up as candidates in elections to find a leader for their countries. One did it as a joke, and became a respected leader. The other did it to become the leader, and became a joke.

A capital gain on a personal use asset is subject to CGT if it cost you more than $10,000 to acquire the asset. Capital losses on personal use assets are ignored. This means you can't use a capital loss on a personal use asset to reduce capital gains on other assets (including other personal use assets). Personal use assets are CGT assets that you keep for your personal use or enjoyment. They include: boats furniture electrical goods household items an option or right to acquire a personal use asset a debt resulting from a CGT event involving a CGT asset kept for your personal use making a private loan to a family member or friend. The following are not classed as personal use assets: collectables – these may be subject to CGT your main residence, which is generally exempt from CGT cars, which are exempt from CGT. If you dispose of personal use assets individually that would usually be sold as a set, you get the exemption only if you acquired the set for $10,000 or less.

Trump beat Kamala Harris by only 1.5% of the popular vote. The electoral college system is the reason he got in easily with 312 votes compared to Harris's 226. Only a few thousand votes in a couple of swing states could have seen Harris the winner. Their system is corrupt and skewed by vested political interests. The US was considered a flawed democracy before the 2024 election & sits at No 34 on the World democracy index well below the threshold to be considered a full democracy. Now it is almost an autocracy under Trump. The average American seems to accept this as OK but the real test will be the Mid term elections later this year.

It must be a case of the squeaky wheel getting the oil. My energy retailer has been giving me a run around for a week or more regarding an estimated bill. They've gone the way of a lot of companies with team leaders, working groups and all sorts of titles and jargon. The end result is that to fit all this stuff into their operation, something had to go, and that something is common sense. Emails have been bouncing back and forth for a while now, thanking me for my patience and promising that the working group will look into it. I emailed them last night and told them that patience was running out and I would start looking at changing retailers if their billing department couldn't resolve the issue. This morning I received a revised bill of $0, so they've waived the bill by crediting my account with the bill amount.

The only CGT I have first-hand experience of was on the sale of my house on 44 acres. As has been discussed on this forum in the past, there is a rule that you are liable for CGT on everything over 5 acres (2 Hectares). Unlike CGT on collectables, you are legally allowed to do the valuation yourself (but you may need to show your workings out). The exempt 5 acres need not be one parcel of land, so you choose all the most valuable bits to exempt. In my case, the house and infrastructure (water tanks, septic tanks, etc. and a strip of river frontage. I then was able to deduct the cost of ownership (rates etc maitanance of fences and other things). I was able to aggressively (but legally - I think) whittle the CGT bill down to $1500. I did half expect a please explain letter; however, it never came, and 9 years later, it is too late for them, unless they detect out-and-out fraud. I did plenty of research, and I actually found in an obscure place a tax department internal document that listed the conditions that trigger an audit with regard to land sales, so I felt on safe ground. The thing is, compared to some people selling land, my case was pretty trivial. It does not really make sense for ATO to spend vast sums of money detecting the sale 1 watch or piece of jewellery in a private sale. This is not tax advice!

In practice, for the ordinary person, I suspect it will be difficult to enforce. A CGT already exists; it is just the method of calculation and valuation that has changed (as far as I can see). If Onetrack sells me some of his lovely junk, how would the ATO even know? Since I have been downsizing, I have sold many possessions, mostly they have lost value, but some musical instruments have gained in value and are probably subject to CGT. Pretty hard to detect, though.

The proposed capital gains tax changes on collectibles will affect many ordinary people. Most of us have something collectible, and if it is over $500 we will be caught. This year I donated a collection to a museum. I paid around $1000 for it forty years ago and I think it is now worth around $20,000. I thought I could get it valued for a tax deduction and approached two valuers. They both told me that their fees would be higher than the deduction. A collection would need to be worth $50,000 to make it worthwhile. I should have sold it, but I had already donated it.the museum was very happy to get it. That is an unusual story, but the government will drag household jewellery, watches and so on into needing a start valuation on 30 June next year.

I think Meloni (who is not a particularly nice person herself) has made the political calculation that in most of the world, including Italy, it's more palatable with the voters to stand up to Trump rather than lick his arse. This is good, because if even right wing politicians realise this, then centrists and left leaning ones should definitely realise it. I think the clown is going to find out that he's not going to get a lot of respect or time from other world leaders any more.

The Iran peace talks in Switzerland aren’t going too well because Trump keeps posting threats about blowing Iran up if the negotiators don’t comply with what he wants. The Iranians are correctly pointing out that the threats violate the first item on Trump’s own agreement and are threatening to walk away, and Vance can’t do much to negotiate because his boss keeps pulling the rug out from under him.

Peter, I don't know him. I'd have to check to see who's name goes on those abandoment markers. I'm fairly sure the information on them is a legal requirement by the various state's petroleum regulations. It could be a simple tradition of the welder adding his name to it, or more likely it's the name of an authorised person attesting to the closure of the well. That possibly could be someone from the drilling company OD&E which was based in Toowoomba, or someone from Innamincka Petroleum, or if they used a contractor to seal the well, someone from that company. Schlumberger and Halliburton were the main well services contractors out there.

Marty, this was my favourite for leaning into corners back in the day, but it probably wouldn't hold up against the modern bikes these days. A bloke I knew back then had a Dominator SS and he let me take it for a ride one day. As far as handling goes, it ran rings around the Commando. The only issue with the SS was the annoying vibration coming through the seat right around the 60mph mark. The owner of it went on to own the world's fastest Velocette. He tried for 200 mph for a few years but the final record he set was just a bit short at 193 mph.

$42 M in Australia today does not buy you a radio announcer or a union delegate, let alone a munitions storage.

Farq.. I agree with PM.. it will bring a lot of ordinary people into the net. $500 is not a lot these days and unless you can prove what you have bought is used on a frequent basis, it will be classed as a collectible and if you sell it as yiu don't use it anymore and you make a profit, you pay. But if you make a loss, you can only offset that loss against other gains on collectibles you sell within the tax year.. not even other CGT payable assets let alone your total assemble tax. This is what I call pernicious tax... And Google tells me thar the official rate of inflation isn't taken into account, but some formula applied by the ATO, which is usually lower than the inflation rate. This is what I call a pernicious tax or a money grab. There is a carve out for personal use, but you have to prove it and it cant be occasional; it has to be frequent.. In theory, that jewellery necklace bought for wearing on the wedding day and only dragged out for special occasions will he caught.. so yeah, it will affect a lot of ordinary people.