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The British Press British Press.mp4

Back to the original thread subject - here's my "positive" report for this week. (SWMBO says I've been too grumbly and short-tempered this week. Might be, because I'm fighting to finish several projects). Thursday night, we went to the W.A. Gravity Discovery Centre, located about an hour N of Perth in the Yeal Nature Reserve, which is halfway between the coastal City of Yanchep, and the rural inland town of Gingin. The night Observatory tour we went on, is called the Adults Only Stargazing Date Night. The tour included dinner, and about 2.5 hrs of stellar and sky discussion and learning. We got there at 6:30PM for a supposedly 7:00PM dinner time, but we were told some people were running a little late, so the dinner start was put back to 7:15PM. We spent 45 minutes checking out some of the site attractions, such as the informative galleries. The whole setup is owned by the University of W.A. and comprises several display galleries as well as a "leaning tower", and the GDC Observatory - which is a retractable roof building housing several large telescopes - which we all got to peer through, to view some of the planets, and some of the more prominent and well-known stars. There were only 5 couples in the tour, and we got a nice meal from the little cafe, with the (pre-ordered) choice of chicken or steak, followed by cheescake dessert. Then we headed off into the darkness (aided by the tour speakers small red light, to ensure our night vision was preserved), to view stars and planets from the Observatory. He had a big green laser pointer which he used sparingly to point out the various celestial bodies of interest, and he waxed on comically for about a couple of hours, talking about star formations and collapses, the various features of planets, the research on Gravity Waves, and a host of other celestial and physics of the Universe that left our heads spinning. He reckoned he'd been doing this for 30 years, so he knew astronomy inside-out! Someone asked a question about satellites and how they affected sky-viewing. He got quite animated about this subject, and especially about Musks Starlink satellites (and he constantly referred to Musk as "Mush"! 😄 ) He talked about how he'd set up cameras to take dozens and even hundreds of shots of the night sky - only to find in the morning, that his sky shots were criss-crossed with satellite trails! - which left criss-cross lines all over his great photos! He said, "about then, you start having homicidal thoughts (about Musk)". 😞 I was staggered to find out, that there's now around NINETY THOUSAND satellites in low Earth orbit! - as against perhaps only a couple of hundred, say 30 years ago. We had an absolutely PERFECT night - a perfectly clear sky, cool to the point of being chilly, no moon (moonrise was around 10:00PM as we finished up), and as dark as we could get, allowing for the fact we were just 70kms out of Perth. Naturally, the City lights glow was still pretty visible on the Southern horizon. All in all, we had a very enjoyable evening, doing something a little different. The Adults Only Stargazing Date Night is currently unavailable, we got the last booking date for the event, for the time being. I'm not sure when there will be another repeat of this event, they might be struggling to get staff to run it, as it appears they rely a lot on volunteers. https://gravitycentre.com.au/

COMMENT by AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD. SMH, 20 March 2025. Donald Trump has inflicted enormous long-term damage on America’s defence export industry, a lucrative earner worth $US320 billion ($500 billion) a year in all its forms. Foreign defence sales are 10 times greater than US exports of liquefied natural gas. First in line for collective repudiation is Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet. Mark Carney ordered a review of Canada’s order for 72 of these advanced aircraft within hours of becoming prime minister. It will determine whether ‘‘other options could better meet Canada’s needs’’. Nuno Melo, Portugal’s conservative defence minister, says the F-35 is no longer considered a safe choice to replace his country’s ageing F-16s. ‘‘We have to know that an ally will be on our side whatever the circumstances,’’ he told Publico. ‘‘The world has changed. This ally of ours, so predictable over the decades, could limit the use, maintenance, components, and everything needed to ensure that the aircraft are operational in all scenarios,’’ he said. Portugal is looking at a European alternative. Germany may be next. ‘‘Nobody needs to buy an F-35,’’ said Tom Enders, ex-Airbus chief and now head of the German Council on Foreign Relations. He said Germany’s contract for these fighters was a misguided attempt by Angela Merkel to ‘‘appease’’ Trump during his first term. It should be cancelled forthwith. Europe does not strictly need the US Patriot missile defence system either. The upgraded Franco-Italian SAMP/T rival is more or less ‘‘equivalent’’. ‘‘It is absolutely imperative that we free ourselves of dependence on US systems as far and as quickly as possible. We can’t simply close our eyes to the fact that this American government has become an adversary,’’ Enders said in an explosive interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine. He said Trump was likely to blackmail and coerce Europe in much the same way as he has coerced Ukraine. ‘‘No one believes any more that he will stand by Article 5 if Putin invades the Suwa›ki Gap,’’ he said. One should be cautious of reading too much into share price movements. But it is striking that Lockheed Martin’s stock has dropped 23 per cent since late October, while Dassault Aviation has almost doubled in dollar terms on talk of more orders for the Rafale fighter aircraft. French missile maker Thales is up 90 per cent. The European defence sector has seen an explosive rise over the last month, pushed even higher by Germany’s coalition deal for €1 trillion ($1.7 trillion) of rearmament and infrastructure – to be ratified this week by a constitutional amendment to the debt brake. Enders, a no-nonsense parachute officer and former head of European defence group EADS said the US has access to the operating system of F-35s. ‘‘We know the Americans can shut the thing down whenever they want. We are totally dependent,’’ he said. Experts disagree over what the Pentagon can or cannot do remotely to paralyse an F-35. ‘‘There is no explicit kill switch. It’s not something that can be turned off on any given day,’’ said Justin Bronk, an aviation specialist at the Royal United Services Institute. But the fact that this discussion is even going on in the highest circles of European defence and foreign policy exposes the complete collapse of confidence in the US military alliance. In my view, it is irreversible. Enders has just launched Germany’s ‘‘Sparta’’ project, drafted by leading figures calling for immediate and massive German rearmament. It clearly has the backing of incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz. Rather than trying to catch up with Russia in tanks and aircraft, Germany and Europe should together seek ‘‘asymmetric superiority’’ by building a drone wall on NATO’s eastern flank, according to Enders. This could be done very quickly and at a fraction of the cost. ‘‘We need tens of thousands of smart robots on the battlefield,’’ he said. A few dozen people can make 1000 combat drones for less than it costs to make a Leopard 2 tank shell. ‘‘These drones can knock out enemy systems that cost several million with great precision,’’ he said. Europe should also move fast to escape the clutches of Elon Musk’s Starlink. Enders said Eutelsat’s OneWeb could do much of the job if buttressed by the medium-orbit satellites of SES. The focus should be on the ‘‘sharp end’’ of defence. Some of the weapons should be in the field in six to 12 months, but none beyond five years. ‘‘We’re not interested in a new arms system that takes 20 years,’’ he said. Sparta includes a dash for ‘‘cloud-combat’’ hypersonic weapons, a European missile shield, as well as a joint nuclear deterrent in co-ordination with France and the UK that span the escalation ladder from tactical nukes to strategic missiles. There have always been restrictions on how US weapon exports can be deployed, but the rules were clear. Trump has turned every form of vulnerability into a means of extortion. He has shown that he will not hesitate to cut rough with military kit to get his way – in Ukraine’s case to force capitulation on Kremlin terms – or ‘‘dividing up certain assets’’ as he put it. Those terms will probably be close to the Istanbul Protocol: neutrality, a skeleton military like Germany in the 1920s, Russian control over four annexed (but unconquered) oblasts, cultural re-Russification of Ukraine, plus a Vidkun Quisling-like figure to replace Volodymyr Zelensky. Europe faces serious dangers trying to extricate itself from US dependency. ‘‘If European politicians provoke Trump, we could get into an even more precarious position, setting off a vicious cycle,’’ said one expert from a NATO state helping the Ukrainian military. But it cannot go on as before either. ‘‘The US has complete lockdown and ownership of our security architecture. Long-range fires and potentially the Patriot missiles and some intelligence systems could stop working if somebody in Florida or Washington presses ‘‘no’’ on a computer. You couldn’t keep the show on the road,’’ he said. The Stockholm Institute says the US cornered 43 per cent of global weapons exports over the past five years. This cannot last. Japan, India, Latin America, and the Middle East will all be wary of locking into complex defence systems that could be used as leverage by the White House at any time and for any purpose. It is no protection if suppliers are private companies: Trump compels corporate leaders to kiss the ring and execute his agenda. He is proactively imposing his ideology on capitalist America. Even the Washington Post has bowed to pressure, refusing to publish views that flout MAGA nostrums. Two of the irresistible selling points of US arms exporters have long been that a) the dependency would not be abused and b) countries were implicitly coming under the US security umbrella by aligning their fortunes with America. Neither has currency in Trump’s Hobbesian world. The Telegraph, London

How do we treat the US? From my understanding: We allow them t have their bases here. We historically have a large trade deficit with them (in other words, they have a large trade surplus). That has only changed this year because their ultra wealthy see the writing ont he wall with Chump's policies and are going to a safe asset - gold - and are importing it from all over the world like crazy. We sell them aliminium that they did ot impose tariffs on previously.. but it was not dumped - it was sold at wither prevailing spot price or in accordance with futures or forward contracts (Vance lied when he said we sold subsidised goods); Unti Abbot clamped down on the car industry, we allowed the US car mnanufacturers to claim the 150% R&D tax deduction through transfer pricing R&D and not carrying out anywhere near as much as they claimed they did. Oracle, a large software company still claim their R&D centre in Aus, yet they don't do that much development there. AUKUS. Australia has signed up to $380Bn purchase of something like 8 subs, but have committed soemthing like 8bn just to prop up their ship building industry and we can't get anything back even if the US decide they don't want to supply us.. Most of our defence procurement is spent on the US We have sent troops to fight US wars that have no impact on Australia, and little in local geopolitics We have far more people move to the US for work - called the brain drain - we pay to educate them and the US gets the benefit of that education. And with all of this, we have lost our self-sufficiency in many ways. What does Australia get out of it? A promise (and increasingly unlikely to be honoured) promise that should Australia be invaded, the US may come to our rescue... So, tell me what else do we get from the US and what else do we do to treat the US so badly? So, I would argue we treat them very, very well.. using Chump's vernacular, we treat the US beautifully.. don't we? And they stick it up our arse.

Stroke care has definitely improved in recent decades. We are much quicker to recognise symptoms and get treatment. Modern care includes placing the body on cooled blood in a temp controlled environment to greatly reduced the damage as they give drugs to remove the clots. Many have recovered from previously deadly or greatly incapacitating strokes. I have had two major clots that should have been fatal but weirdly blocked my kidney. That is rather unique, the apparent impossible happened to each kidney 10 years apart. Hence I have two half kidneys. I apparently am the only one in the country this rare condition has happened too and it's been twice. The professor said better odds winning lotto twice without buying a ticket. I did not feel lucky at all. I have been on bloody Warfarin- rat poison since 37 and will till I cark it. All kidney donations will be appreciated- please include a GA flight medical clearance. I can supply the scalpel and ice bath.

He's a throwback to an archaic imperialist world view. He, Putin and Xi Jinping are all on the same page and understand each other perfectly well. I suspect that many leaders of countries that have been long-time allies of the US also recognise who he is and what he's up to but don't want to publicly say what they really think until the reality can't be denied any longer. They also don't want to get him off-side because he will attack at the drop of a hat. In my opinion he's a thoroughly nasty, impulsive and vindictive character with no redeeming features or moral values. In his first administration there were enough people able to throw sand in the gears to stop his worst instincts. Not so now. He has draped himself in the Royal Purple Robes with the connivance of the Supreme Court, dared anyone to stop him, and surrounded himself with enablers and sycophants. His Achilles heel is his basic ignorance and incompetence combined with his arrogance and highly inflated opinion of himself. That may yet see him come to grief before long. We can only hope.

My positive of the week..... I have been reluctant to confess to the forum (you lot might be critical). My motorcycle has been trapped in the shed for 4 or 5 years due to unfinished heavy stuff awaiting major repair. Note that my dearest never mentioned its inactivity - she probably hoped I'd forget all about it. (Sensible girl, that one. But oh, so wrong). Anyway I recently had old mates visit and we got those big jobs fixed. Of course I hadn't forgotten the bike. Cleaned it up, serviced it, new battery.... and got it going. Then dread.... am I too old to ride? Have I lost the awareness needed on 2 wheels? Well after a few tentative brief laps of the paddock, I gave it a go. Absolute heaven! Now I have been out for a cruise into town every day this week! The awareness of surroundings - the scents, the wind, sights are all sharpened. Absolute delight! PS: I do know I'm no longer the same bulletproof rider I once was. But you can't wipe the silly grin off my dial.

Beautiful day in the passage, my mate Michele went sailing with tourists and on cue the dolphins arrived, they think she has a secret button 😄. The pods rarely leave the port. This afternoon I swapped the 3.3 hp for the 9.9hp 👍. Runs super smooth but does need a proper tune and a few little bits to tidy up. Very pleased, starts real easy but a few minor adjustments to make- not opening throttle fully. Also the idle and low speed mix for trolling Will sort it properly, but all looks positive. So far 10 knts but should get at least 15knts, the Tintanic is a very heavy build with four floatation cell seats and runabout steering. Not normal for 12 ft 6", sometimes I want a smaller, lighter boat. But it's a solid vintage Savage from 90's like the motor. Great having reverse again. Discovered it has a lighting/ electrical output, that's cool as can charge a battery and run lights. Most motors this size do not have this and often a $500 option. I may need to add a regulator as some pump AC instead of DC. A simple eBay will be fine. It's a two stroke but very smooth and fairly quiet. I will eventually add sound shield matting under the cover to make it even quieter. Will also add a water/fuel separator/ filter unit for guaranteed clean fuel. The carb has no drain plug so this is essential. 112 psi both cylinders, pretty good for 35 years of regular use. 120psi would be ideal but that's new. No crabs in the pot but the beers cold.

Off topic just for a moment. My Dad's prototype soldering iron, and put to use to do his radio repair work. It was rescued after he passed in the Ninties, along with other stuff. Not long before he died, he showed me the patent certificate. In the early fifties, Sherline in South Australia asked him, by letter, if they could manufacture it. He never replied, I'm not sure why, but knowing Dad, he just got lazy. Sherline waited the sixteen years and claimed the right to make the soldering iron. Other interesting facts about my Dad is he had one of the very rare VW Kombi Microbuses with split front seats. And he made an electronic ignition in the mid Sixties before they became common. It was a hobby project, but he fitted it to a customer's/friend's truck and that truck went many miles before Dad removed it and reinstalled the old contact distributor points. In other words, his electronic ignition worked a beauty.

Re the U.S. Subs - we urgently need to re-assess this dreadful purchase. It's a mind-boggling cost, with no guarantee they'll be delivered - ever - and trying to equip submarines with crews is a costly and difficult task. But we have the modern answer to subs - and it blows U.S. Nuclear subs out of the water, so to speak. And the answer is an Australian invention! - the Ghost Shark autonomous submarine! This thing has a massive depth ability increase over regular subs, and no need to risk any crew lives to operate it! Regular subs will become obsolete in the near future, exactly as tanks have become obsolete, due to the massive advances in drones and guided munitions. https://www.eurasiantimes.com/australias-silent-predator-ghost-shark-xl-uuv-a-game-changer/

Injected were good but twin solex model was better. Early ones were not cross flow heads so limited in power. This has a full cage, race seats, four points harness and full rally Terra trip etc. 6 matching special rally wheels and dual tanks. The rust is very small spots but easy to fix. The roo bar is poorly made and will be replaced- note front and rear tow Bars for recovery. It cost $3500. Try buying any similar Holden for the same job and it would be 20-30k and not as good.

The OVEN has to be at 120 degrees? Thats Obtuse. nev

You're absolutely right, GON. Sadly, we don't properly tax those that extract our wealth, especially the multinationals. Add to that the fixed price gas contracts that the Howard government wrote, so we have to end up importing gas at market prices when we sell ours for a song, and we are just dumb lucky to be able to afford anything. But, we shouldn't put us down. Australia punches above its weight with innovation. Sadly, some, like Thales Australia, is foreign owned and developed; Some is sadly sold off to foreign buyers. What we have not been great at is manufacturing - we used to be good at it. It is something our federal and state governments could really invest in to kick start it (not at the bottom end - we'll never compete with low-cost economies), but they are still tepid at doing it.. all talk, little action.

Anyway, back to positives.... Beaut mild sunny day..... rode down to the next town, a bit closer to the south pole. Geeveston is still nice and warm. Had to take the leather coat off to sit and enjoy a burger. Lots of sweeping curves all the way. Few crazy car drivers. Love the autumn weather. The trees are starting to turn their colours. If world leaders spent a few days like this, there would be less wars.......

It's seriously scary what he's doing to the US democracy. Several people here have described his behaviour as "Mafia-like" and it's not a bad description, although, also as previously mentioned, even the Mafia have their own twisted code of honour where he has none at all. I don't think that the leaders of countries like ours truly understand what's going on here. I think Trump has plans for there to be 3 spheres of influence in the future - USA, Russia and China. Europe isn't part of his calculation and neither are middle countries like ours. He wants to basically carve up the world like the old time empires (think England, Portugal and Spain) did. Some countries to be taken over directly by this trio - he's already made quite clear he wants Greenland and Canada, for a start - Russia would like not only Ukraine but then the other ex-soviet countries, and then, who knows - parts of Western Europe? And China of course will start with Taiwan and then maybe proceed southward in the Pacific. Any countries not directly taken over will be treated as lesser partners, always on the worse end of any trade deal and subject to any whim of Emperor Trump. We cannot treat the USA as a "special ally" any more. We are not under their protection, if someone invaded us they are under no obligation whatsoever to protect us and wouldn't unless it suited their interests. And watching what he's doing with Ukraine, he'd probably want all our uranium or rare earth minerals in return for "stopping" the war by giving the aggressor whatever they wanted.

My positive is that I went to Sydney ostensibly to watch my grandson play in a baseball grand final, but I left early and on Friday I met a cousin I had lost track of over sixty years ago. We had a wonderful day just talking about our lives and families. It was so trouble free, as though I had just seen him a month before. By the way, the grandson's team didn't succeed.

Be bold and keep it. Rego classic for pittance and ride to suit the vintage rider. Bikes are the fountain of youth if you can ride the beast.

What a "godsend" are these large language model (LLM) AIs. I now use Le Chat (https://chat.mistral.ai/chat) which is a French version of Chat GPT. It is a little more abrupt and less personal than Chat GPT, but just as effective, and I guess better because you definitely know you're interacting with a machine and not a person. Well, I was writing some code and trying something funky, which resulted in a run-time error (i.e. it compiled OK, but the error occurred under certain scenarios when the program was running. It was a stack overflow error, which is running out of memory on a part of the execution map called the stack. To be quite honest, they are a pain the posterior to debug and usually involves injecting code to keep track of memory usage, setting break points in the code (which stops execution in flight so you can see what is happening), and as this is multi-processing and multi-threading, means it could fail at completely different points of the code, in different processes and different threads within those processes... Even if you have no idea what I am talking about, you can get the idea that it is a bloody complicated thing to find and fix - a bit like a needle in a haystack. So, I literally asked Le Chat to diagnose the issue and gave it the very basis symptoms, and it was a lot faster processing than Chat GPT and pinpointed it.. must have taken it about 1/2 a second. I made the change and that bit of code works a treat. At the same time, it recommended some minor tweaks to improve performance. For may things, a lot less people are going to be required to produce the same output.

OK.. Have half of the walls sanded - all that I could reach. I was generating so much dust, and I forgot to kick back a blanket over the bottom of the door, that dust seeped into the hall way and set off the smoke detectors. I didn't hear it if course, with the sander blasting away. Anyway, as promised, some pics. The before with these really cheap shleves, where the photos make them look 10 times better than they are: And, so far (yes, there's a lot of crap on the floor including stripped wallpaper) Those patches of bare well in the middle photo are of where I hand stripped vinyl paint that came loose from the steamer.. looks like they didn't PVA or prime the walls - just threw paint on them. Plan is to finish sanding, wash down, clean up, fill obvious stuff (and there is a bit) and PVA today. If I can get that done, then base coat tomorrow and see what else neeeds filling. I don't want the walls to be perfect, but there are a lot of holes and areas where the skim has come off. And, we had a nice distraction today.. a hot air balloon flew over the village and landed in a fields adjacent to our place, where we walk the dog. It is being rested, so no crops on it.

Good Karma finally comes for a late Christmas. December was a bit rough last year. Firstly some bastard decided they wanted my tinny and motor, I tied up on dock at the passage at 6 pm, returned at 9pm to discover it disappeared. 3 days later Maritime called to say they found it 3kms away dumped in mangroves. Completely stripped, I lost the motor 8hp Johnson in perfect condition, two tanks, tools, oars and even the fuckin bailing bucket. The boat was left as it's well known and has rego/him plated. Naturally I was pissed off. Then on the 23rd, my 56 year old brother died of long COVID, sudden and tragic. December really sucked. Alas Karma shines eventually.. Last Monday I was chatting to a salty sailor working on his tinny motor and been frustrated, he needs 100% reliability, he has a lovely 48ft catamaran and is going North. He will use his off shore. He was prepared to dump it and buy new. A quick negotiation and bingo. He bought a new Tohatsu 9.9hp four-stroke that's injected and I got his 9.9hp Johnson two-stroke. Its a old school Aussie made machine and he is the original owner since new in 1990. Came with heaps of spares, a new spare prop, spare carby, tank, oil and 30 litres new fuel. A bonus is a 100-1 oil mix so not smokey and half the oil cost. Even has the original manual. A absolute bargain at cost of two shitty VB cases of beer. I love the old Johnson's, solid not plastic and easy to keep reliable. I find they are the best old motor you can get. I have suffered cheap Chinese crap Parsun machines and the are almost disposable quality wise. An added bonus is converting to 15hp is just a bigger carb. Most require new electrics and the carb so very happy. Parts are easy to get, even new stock and plenty of old motors to salvage. This is important as the bloody Parsun distributor doesn't carry spares. Even a broken starter is pot luck to replace, assuming the box doesn't break beforehand. No more shit motors for me. You can bet no Parsun will be going 35 years later like a Johnson. I had been using oars and then a little 3.5hp single, it will be great having grunt again. Amazingly the little 3.5hp uses more fuel than the 8hp did, I expect the same from the 10hp. The single is just full throttle most of the time. I am about to throw in some crab pots to catch some blue swimmers or muddies. I will eat them and drink to my brother, he loved 🎣. This time I will hide a locator tag in the motor to track the thieves if needed. I have a spear gun- they are warned..

I would think the Greens would have that policy. Meanwhile Canada has leapfrogged the USA and ordered our world best radar system for $5 billion- the Jindalee over horizon radar system (JORN). America wants one on its west coast - tell they can pay now and have it in 2045 if we can be bothered.

BOTH MY orbital sanders Karked it.. Good news is My 1962 Ford Dexta tractor sprang into life after sitting idle for over 2 years. One shot of "start Ya Bastard" and it turned over 1/2 a turn and fired up running perfectly. It will get a bit of TLC and back to work. That will surprise the Neighbours.. Nev

Blimey - when I saw the thread title, I tought it was about MAS - Middle Aged Spread....

I had flashbacks to that scene in "There's something about Mary".

America has the same problem as all drmocracies...... The electorate vote for the shark, but they have the memory of a goldfish.

Unless Chump was in the chat group, it sounds reasonable he had no knowledge of it, but who knows except Chump and anyone who may have told him? The fallout from this will be in US terms, marginal. The Republican leaning press (remember Bezos now owns what used to be a more critical thinking paper, the Washington Post) will go easy on him and the right will dismiss any journalism from the other side as whining rabble rouses, especially if no damage has been done. As usual, it will be the rest of the world gasping in horror. In terms of the Peter Hartcher's column, it is pretty spot on as far as I can tell. Chump's undermining of the three pillars of state and move towards them supporting his regime; and his discrimination and now pursuit of journalists and news organisations sort of calls out lurching towards autocracy, and heading the way of Xi. China is not communist - no. And I doubt it ever really was; in the same way I doubt Russia and many others that claim to be communist or socialist ever really were. Autocracy does not equal either of the two and while democracy is not perfect, it is at least a guard against autocracy. The US is moving away from democracy and look what is filling its void. China's standard of living has improved at a better rate than most countries - yes. It was starting at a very low base. But has it improved in proportion to the economic growth it has delivered? That depends on how you measure it. By pure material lifestyle, it is OK, but there are massive imbalances between the cities and rural economies, with the latter still lagging the rest of the world by a way, although the gap is decreasing. And that is natural as the Chinese government move from a manufacturing to consumer led economy - and it's own internal market will provide the powerhouse to keep its economy growing. In other words, for the central government to cement power, it must ensure its domestic market is capable of driving the economy, which means putting more wealth in the domestic market. However, if your standard of living includes basic human rights, freedoms of speech without fear of going missing in the night (it does still happen), freedom of choice, freedom of beliefs, and many other freedoms, well, I guess China hasn't really come that far.. has it? I know @bexrbetter had many good things to say about China, but ex pats have a lot more intrinsic freedoms than the indigenous population (isn't there a $200k bounty on the head of a HK lawyer living in Melbourne as he is an activist against the government of China?). The US is lurching that way. In reality, for many US citizens it is of no consequence. In fact, for many, such an autocracy is a major advantage

Not voting at all doesn't send any signal. And these days any winning party claims a mandate. They don't care that you disengage from the process, as long as you don't vote for their opposition. Voting for minor parties or independents definitely gets their attention, because then they have to negotiate with the cross bench to get anything done.

As usual, the media sensationalises things. They never say what proportion of of an "ethnic" group is involved in crime. Has journalist ever sat down with, say a young man of Sudanese origin, and listened to the story of his life? The first thing you would find is that the young man has had no formal education, so how could he get a job that is more than menial? Lack of education is the root of all evil.

It's pretty simple. Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, you just start from the back, giving the last vote to the person/party you find most objectionable, working upwards til you give your first choice to the person or party you find least objectionable. Even if you can't find anyone who aligns fully with your views, if you vote that way you're ensuring those you like least are put last.

Don't tell GON.

Jerry, I think you mean it was built on a Wednesday if it was real good. Normally Monday was getting back in the swing of building after the heavy weekend drinking. Friday cars tended to be slap dash as everyone was tired and wanted out as fast as possible. Also much more likely to have run out of stock of good parts and the rejects or old parts got used. I agree the HR looked better than the HD. The later HT looked very bland. The EH premier I liked, but not the clapped out one my brother had. I did like the HZ GTS? Wagon V8 my cousin had, loved the electric window tailgate. My grandmother had a EK from new and only 35k miles in 2003 when she died, only driven to Hay bowls, shops and Maude Weir. Grandad had a GPack Torana in green with stripes. Dad had various Kingswood. I have probably driven every model Holden made locally except at FX. I remember out on the Hay plains, flat chat in a HT ute going to Maude Weir. As a kid 130 was fast, esp with the Roos nearby. Then it was fun fishing for carp with explosives. Not the sort of thing done these days. But even as a young kid, I knew the world was full of more fun and speed. My oldest brothers highly modded Cooper S 1380 Mini was the antidote needed. The David Vizard book on Mini engine building and racing mods was my Bible at 8 years old. Then I got a ride in a Alfa Romeo which completely cured me of the family Holden disease. I am the only one in my big family to have never owned a Holden.

Litespeed, I owned a business and employed a number of people (up to 103 at one time, much later in my business career), and a lot of the utes were "work" utes. But they were all registered in my name and I drove them all at various times, some a lot more than others. Sometimes I'd drive them a lot myself (mainly when new), then they'd be utilised by employees. We used to rack up some miles, often working 75 and 80 miles from home base. Over that distance, we'd camp out in caravans, motels, or whatever other form of accommodation was available. A lot of work was remote, so not too many facilities. I was in business from age 16, and I've never worked for anyone else in my whole working life - apart from 2 years National Service.

That's my gripe of the day. I don't think we ever had a government that hasn't spruiked the greatness of 'foreign investment'. In my opinion, every foreign investment is just exploiting an opportunity to siphon wealth out of our country. The foreign investors seldom give back in proportion to their profits. And usually minimise their tax contribution.

New Zealanders are basically Australians. Deporting them is kind of like sending a Victorian back home from Tassie.

Well, the USofA has been labelled as a dysfunctional democracy, for many years. So the recent events have just been a logical progression.... or should I call it a logical regression, soon to be followed by a logical 'depression that we had to have'. (Apologies to P. Keating)

I have cars and bikes that do very few Km. I change the tyres every 10-15 years just to be safe.

On a Video by Meidastouch on you tube last night the orange clown was showing a news reporter around the Whitehouse for the purpose of being candidly interviewed. He bragged he has the Declaration of Independence on the wall in the office, behind curtains because it’s such a precious document. His comment was that Joe would never have thought of that. He told her it was the original. The media’s touch guy said he’s to stupid and arrogant to even know where the real one is stored. the reporter seemed quite shocked at some of his other blatantly wrong comments and answers to questions. i know it is a heavily democratic supporting channel to watch, he does try to present the facts with mainstream news video to back up his claims.

My humble attempt attempt at political commentary (Paint is not my forte)

My wife and I use Astroglide

Liberty is dead. Or if not, she's been grabbed on the pussy.

All recycling requires huge energy inputs to produce the end product, which makes the recycling largely uneconomic. However, a recent development utilising a molybdenum catalyst may reduce that energy input requirement. The system under study still requires heat input however, which is still a major cost. Perhaps solar-sourced heat will be the answer. https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/new-technology-uses-air-moisture-to-quickly-recycle-plastics-with-94-efficiency/

A video i found on you tube last year showed that there are metals to be recycled out of road dust from exhaust and catalytic emissions. The guy doing it swept up a couple of 10kg buckets (like our trusty bunnings pail). processed it with chemicals in his lab and ended up extracting a ball of platinum ( i think) and a few others. It was small, but on a scale up, made his "paydirt" richer than the natural deposits when mined. I assume the costs of a plant to process this is high when scaled up. Processing everything at our waste facility's would have a higher yield if we did it properly. There is no reason, copper, aluminium and steel and other common metals should just end up in the ground. A decent automated waste centre like some in Europe where the waste is on a conveyer, ground up, separated by a few processes, then the final waste product is burnt for fuel to run the plant. Not cheap to set up, but with the amount of stuff we throw out it would make a huge dent in land fill and recycling. we already ship rubbish between local government areas, Coffs pays for theirs to go to Tamworth etc. in the right places they would work.

That's why locking into a decades long, hugely expensive contract apparently based on the assumption that there won't be any significant changes in undersea warfare technology or geopolitical alliances is so shortsighted. If we want manned replacements for the Collins Class submarines there are more cost-effective options that could be delivered sooner.

https://www.horiba.com/int/scientific/resources/science-in-action/where-do-microplastics-come-from/

Further proof of how he rides roughshod over everything, disregarding all laws. How did he get around this, the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Extract from Wikipedia. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act is a United States federal law passed by the 47th United States Congress and signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur on January 16, 1883. The act mandates that most positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political patronage. To read the full Wiki article, click here. PS. Having now read this article to the end, it looks like plenty of Presidents have had a hand in altering it. After this current experience, it looks like it needs further fine tuning.

Oh, I think you can.. after all, he admits he is a dick, but the problem is he can't remember it was him acting like a dick: