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In most of Australia people drive on the left. In Victoria they drive on what's left.

You'd hate it worse if you were the bloke nearest Hopoate in the scrum.

The naming difference between the two forms of football came from what might be classed as social class sources. The Rugby Football Union was established in London in 1871, uniting 21 clubs and officially standardizing the laws of the sport. So it was a joining together of a group of clubs, no doubt to enable a competition to be run. In 1895, the sport split into two separate codes—rugby union and rugby league—over a dispute regarding "broken-time payments" (compensating working-class players for missing work to play). There's your social class factor. Very much a similar thing happened with cricket, with the non-paid players called The Gentlemen, and the professionals.

Has Trump realised she is not blonde nor white? Granted she is dumb, so thats a start.

I must say that I don't find Bush Barbie's style of comedy comes anywhere near the standard our earlier comics (non-gender term used deliberately). From the videos I've seen of her, she uses her physical appearance to attract ateention, which it sure does. However, having grown up enjoying the witty use of language and irony, both in the English and Australian styles, I think she just doesn't come up to standard.

Rugby is not a sport, it's a brawl with goal posts. A quote from Midsomer Murders.

I recall crawling under the house with a car jack, and slipping a bigger bit of brick under a bearer to get rid of a dip in the floor. When the place was sold, the building inspector didn't look under the house. Building and pest inspections are a big rort. I once paid for a pest inspection that didn't notice big holes in the panelling where the cockroached had eaten through the plasterboard under the kitchen sink. I put it down to inexperience (because I hadn't looked there either). But learnt to do my own thorough inspecting.

The fire stopped just short of a big tract of plantation pine. Couple of k the other side of Ranelagh.There were more (paid) Forestry Firefighters on the fireground than Tas Fire Service. We would usually spend a week walking the ground to black out the remnants but much of this ground is inacessible. There will be stumps smouldering for days or weeks that rain can't extinguish. Which means there is a risk that a strong wind might restart the fire. Safe for now though

Get ready for an interesting fortnight for Trump. His best mate in the Middle East could be out on his ear. We'll know prety well by Wednesday. Serbians also look like ditching their authoriterian leader. We'll know if the Ynaks have come to their senses by 4th November.

Help!!!! I'm drenched. Clouds passed over and deposited 8mm of water on me.

When I was in Melb in July, I was initially thinking "what potholes?" My first week was between Cantebury and Healesville both almost straight up Cantebury road, or when my brother drove, through some toll road built after I left that seemed a bit of a labyrinth way to go and didn't seem to save much time. I did a bit of driving around the old traps - mainly SE suburbs, down to Moorabbin airport and back via Clayton et al.. No real potholes to mention.. I don't even think I saw one. But when I drove up the Hume highway - OMG.. the potholes on the main route between Melbourne and Sydney and the Gateway to the central north of the state was littered with them.. and not small ones by any means. Thankfully the traffic was light and you could see them to avoid them, but all that was doing was putting pressure on the surface around them. The Goulburn Valley Highway (I think they are called something else these days) was not too bad comparatively, but when nearing Shepparton, it really got bad. I must have looked away at some sight for a second and thwack.. left front wheel into one and it was deep and long. I pulled over at the nearest safe place to inspect the damage. Thankfully nothing to note. I shudder to think what would have happened if I was on a bike - and it was only time before one was killed, which was near Ballarat, if I recall. Over here, we had a pothole crisis as well. However, there is a problem for the government in this case. If a pothole is reported and is beyond certain dimensions, they have a reasonable time to fix it or they are liable for damage to person or property. So, even though the model is similar (i.e. private road maintenance/construction companies), it got done. There was a cry out here, but that was because it al developed very quickly over prolong rain and storms. I did hit a new pothole with the bike coming home last week, but thankfully it was small enough for the suspension to stop a back compression injury. There are apps that will use the accelerometer to detect a bump, use the GPS to determine where and automatically file a pothole report. The other think I noticed about Vic roads from the potholes is the substrate looked quite sandy. Here the potholes seemed to have a more resilient substrate of hardcore. I image the sand is to provide flex and drainage. I am no engineer, but with hard core, you would get drainage but not so much flex. I have no idea, but the layers of the road just didn't quite look as robust as they could be.

Here is a summary of a number of polls taken over the last month or so, pollsters named. Click to enlarge.

If you define success by batting away consequences of being quite active in the Epstein files, it was quite successful

I contest number 1. "Cunth" rhymes perfectly with "month". It's what you call a couple of thugs that have just knocked your teeth out.

Nev, you are as welded on as Maggots are to Trump.

I haven't watched the Albo/Bush Barbie episode right through. I don't see how anybody could unless you were a rusted on Albo lover, but I scrolled through it to see what all the fuss was about. It wasn't just the couple of controversial questions and answers that were cringeworthy, the whole twenty minute episode is one of the most cringeworthy things you'll ever watch if you're masochistic enough to watch it in full. It wasn't only Albo; the Bush Barbie character who describes herself as a comedian is about as funny as a broken arm. Add to that, twenty minutes of Albo desperately trying to be witty and funny, and pretending to be a knock-about ordinary Aussie bogan. No coincidence that's the demographic Labor is losing in the polls, so I can see what he was aiming at by appearing on her awful show. He delivered the whole twenty minute debacle with that same tightly clenched teeth way of speaking he uses when he's either lying or trying to pretend he's something he's not (or both). He's well known for his lack of political judgement on a personal level but volunteering to rush headlong into that mess is right up there with his stumbles. And no, he wasn't set up. The comedian had been trying to book him for an interview for a long time and got nowhere through proper channels. Then she noticed Albo was a follower on her social media so she DM'd him direct and got an immedate response agreeing and saying it sounds like a lot of fun. From there he invited her to the Lodge and the rest is history. That thing with the Japanese Prime Minister's melons was terrible. Not just the clumsy mammary inferences, the whole thing was disrespectful to the Japanese PM. He was asked 'what's the worst present you've ever been given?' and without batting an eyelid he said not the worst, but the oddest present was the melons and then it just went downhill from there. A visiting PM in good faith gave him a gift which has deep cultural significance in Japan and the fool made a mockery of it just to try to score some brownie points with voters. Whataboutism and the argument the other side is worse just doesn't cut the mustard to excuse what is essentially an embarrassing fool of a prime minister.

Well, I call the recent war in Iran a success. The news has stopped talking about the unreleased Epstein Files. And still no 'lawfare' is happening to any of the accused (in USA anyway)

There's the clue Peter. Union has 15 players each side, league has 13. If it was League the quote would be 26 men constantly crashing into each other.

It's an English show, so I'm guessing Union. The preceding sentence to the quote was "30 men constantly crashing into each other." It was said while the police were investigating the death of a player. Personally, I don't know much about either, and I don't really enjoy watching it.

I have heard a builder utter the words "Standard Building Practice" when confronted by such facts. But that was a long time ago. Nowadays we have even more standards to choose from.

New Zealand beat France 92-0. There have been some incredibly high scores. England beat Wales 70-6 and Samoa beat Wales, too, for 76-0. It looks like the three top teams are Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. Jerry, the clue is in the name of the competition: Women's Rugby League World Cup

Storm clouds on the Darling Downs on Thursday.

It's not aimed at Indonesia. I haven't looked at Peter's link, but I've seen news articles about poor people in Indonesia and other countries who have learned to turn a dollar by posting AI generated shit, usually aimed at the more gullible right wingers. The more outrage and reposting it gets, the more they earn, so they pick divisive figures like Pauline. They don't give a shit about Australia's internal politics, it's just a way to make a living.

ome, I wish I could split mine down the middle with you. Over 18 inches in the last week, things are a bit damp here. Where I live up on top of a hill, I know it's real wet when I can hear outboard motors down below.

A low resolution photo of Allan Millyard's Pratt & Whitney V-twin, probably taken before he put it in the Flying Millyard.

A credit to Epstein. He got a lot of people reading.