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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.

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.

It's also bad for the US team. If they lose, they're out and if they win, it will seem that they cheated. The best thing by far would be for player himself to refuse to play on the grounds that the rules are the rules. Then even if they lost he and the team would be heroes, Trump and FIFA would get a poke in the eye, and the world would applaud.

Only the high density lines are profitable on a rail operating basis; most Japanese railway companies have diversified their income stream by investing in real estate and retail businesses. There are very few commuter and mass transit rail services that operate on a stand alone profit basis. The UK under Maggie tried it and it can be considered a failure with re-nationalisation starting now (although that is also a mixed bag at the moment). The reality is there is not a lot better as a mass transit system than rail. Between the big cities and bigger regional areas it makes sense. If stopping the Melbourne - Brisbane rail line is to recalibrate the project, that is a good thing. The sad thing about it is it i only intended for freight. A decent speed passenger service linking the two cities would be excellent and, assuming it wasn't extortionate to use, you could put me down for it. My bro and his wife did the Ghan in the lower of the premium service - was still about $5K each from memory.. They loved it. One of the good things I would guess over a car would be that when you pass through the vast expanses of nothingness, there is plenty you can do to while away the hours.. not much in a car. Of course, my real preference would be in a 150kt aircraft at the helm, but the cost would probably be a bit more.. and the in flight service is pretty crap.

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/motoring/motoring-news/peugeot-suspends-australian-car-sales-amid-pressure-from-cheaper-chinese-rivals/news-story/194491500cf89f20e2a560fe73013f08

Just when you make it foolproof........ along come smarter fools. Oh, wait.... did that happen to USof A last year?

You Missed Incredibly VAIN to the Point of it being his Main weakness. (and he HAS PLENTY). Of ALL the Possible People for the POTUS role we get the Don. Ther's something very Wrong that Produces that result TWICE. Nev

Heart attacks and cancer take out 1.2M Americans every year, they are America's biggest killers. A lot of that can be put down to their rubbishy, ultra-processed food, full of toxic additives. If you pick up a factory processed food and the ingredients label reads like a biblical text, or an extract from a science article, put it back. The food processing additives are nearly all industrial by-products, or based on petroleum-orgin chemicals. The worst part is buying food that says it has no additives. Not in their factory, anyway. Then you find out they are importing food ingredients from other countries, that have had illegal, un-approved or dodgy additives added, in that other country. Orange juice is an example. You buy Australian-packaged orange juice, it says, "no additives, just 100% orange juice". Then you find out they're importing orange juice CONCENTRATE from Brazil, where additives not approved here, have been added to the concentrate. So you're getting un-approved additives in your juice, yet the manufacturers here, tell you you aren't. Our food labelling system is as dodgy as a 3 dollar note. Another interesting angle is seed oils. RFK Junior, despite his crazyiness, does have some relevant points with his crusade against seed oils. Here's an example. Cottonseed oil is the most common frying/cooking oil used. It's used in every commercial kitchen, cafe and restuarant. Why? Because it's cheap, and no food business will pay a lot more, for better quality oils. The rub with cottonseed oil is - cotton is not recognised as a food crop. Food crops have all sorts of laws banning certain pesticides and weedicides from being used on them. Not so with cotton. Cotton is attacked by hordes of bugs, they love the stuff. So the cotton growers use millions of litres of highly toxic pesticides, and weedicides to assist in cotton growth - and half of them are not allowed in food production. But the cotton seeds are then processed to yield lots of cheap oil, which is then sold as cooking and frying oil. It is idiocy. I read an article the other day, where a cooking guru was lamenting the cooking show chefs, and their lack of attention to good, healthy cooking oils. The writer talked about how the celebrity chefs went to great pains to select premium foods and indulge in celebrated food preparation processes - then they reached for cheap, shitty cottonseed oil, to cook it all in!!

SKEW gears are a bad way to do things There's one in a Merlin that causes engine double Mag outs and is the reason most Countries won't have Merlin engines on the civil register. The Howard Vee Motor is as rough as guts. The 600 cc Jap Motor is a Much better proposition. and they also made a Vertical twin.. I sold MY very nice Howard 2 years ago. Never left out in the Open, but still couldn't get Much for it. . Some KR racing Harley 750's have coned cams as the valves are inclined to make the Combustion chamber more compact and achieve a Higher compression ratio and better gas flow. It Puts a lot of end thrust on the camshafts. From a machining Point of view it's not difficult on a Cincinnati tool and cutter grinder. The cam profile itself is harder to do. You need a Master cam Nev

I have enough trouble trying to get my new Samsung phone to work properly with a screen swipe. It often fails to respond to a finger swipe. It's the most dubious activation of any operation you can devise - as compared to the accuracy and positivity of a switch. As regards voice commands - they are also on a par with screen swipes. I never use them, because I have poor hearing, and verbal communication is always a hassle for me. I don't use sat nav because I can't hear the womans instruction. I have great difficulty in understanding women speaking, due to the pitch of womens voices, which pitch is where I have greatest hearing loss. In addition, I do not trust any global corporation taking a record of my voice, and doing all sorts of things with it, in that they refuse to tell me what they are doing with it. Then there's the problem of several people talking, while you're trying to talk to a voice-activated screen, and the screen microphone picks up activation commands that weren't directed at it. I often hear SWMBO talking to our smart TV, trying to get it to carry out some action, and then she resorts to the remote control. AFAIC, touchscreens in cars are anathema to what driving is all about. It means distraction from the road, and other vehicles around you, and safety authorities have long treated screens inside vehicles as a major road safety problem.

In your example, Octave, the driver still has to focus on the screen popup temp. Certainly not something that a non BYD driver could accomplish easily. Unlike conventional controls, there is no tactile feedback to confirm the desired action has occurred.

Nev, my take is that LCD/LED screens are the manufacturers taking the cheap way out, as a screen and software would only be a fraction of the cost of the buttons and switches. Add in the fact that these screens have a vastly increased failure level and increased susceptibility to damage, as compared to switches and buttons, and I know what I'm going to buy in any future vehicle purchase. No, I haven't driven any EV yet and I'm not rushing into doing so. I consider current EV technology is still in the "further development required" category, and I'll wait a while yet before I try out the technology. I'm conservative by nature, and have always abided by a policy of never being an early purchaser of new technology or new models, until the bugs are sorted out.

I've got an idea for gun control in the USA! Invoke the spitir of teh Second Amendment which says "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The spirit of that amendment was to provide secutiry for the State. Therfore, make it a condition of gunownership that a person join a militia unit and attend training that leads to the unit being well regulated. If a person does not do that, then no firearm. People would find it too inconvenient to give up their time for that, and so would hand in their firearms.

Well, we're taking the jump. My wife and I test drove 3 EVs today - MG 4, MG 4 Urban and MG 5. Kate had already put down a deposit on the MG 4, but after driving all 3 we're tossing up between the Urban and the MG 5. In all 3 cars the acceleration is brilliant. Handling is great. We found the Urban and MG 5 more comfortable because we're both tall (and possibly a bit wider than we should be). Over the weekend we'll decide which way to go and switch the deposit on Monday.

sad. We need the infrastructure.

O.K. We stop immigration, who is going to do all the crap dirty jobs you expect to get done? We haven't got enough labour as it is. All the old tradies are retiring and dying off and no young "White Australians" want to take these jobs on - especially where those kids come from wealthy white families where oodles of money is freely available to them, without working for it. You send all the Asians, Indians and Islanders home, who's going to drive your taxis and delivery trucks? Who's going to do your office and house cleaning? Who's going to build your new house? We can't get enough truck drivers of any kind because wealthy white kids don't want to drive trucks for long hours and long distances, putting up with crap food and being away from family. We can't get enough tradies to repair anything, such as house repairs, and mechanical repairs - because rich White Australians only want managerial jobs, and only like to play with electronic stuff. I'm currently giving the fencing bloke across the road from my block in a little country town, a hand to do limestone block retaining walls, on a new caravan park the Shire is building. He can't get any kind of labour to help him, so he comes to the old bloke across the road, to help him out. It's gut-busting work, out in the open, in all kinds of weather - while the young rich kids in town tear up the local reserves on their expensive trail motorbikes - because they don't have to work for anything, the Bank of Mum and Dad give them any toys they want, and they don't need to work! SWMBO and I rebuilt our bathroom just over 2 years ago. The only tradies we could find to do it, were two Iranian blokes. They were good conscientous workers, careful with the tiling and accuracy in alignment, and their work was a credit to them. These blokes had fled from a murderous regime, same as lot of immigrants, and they still had family there. They didn't "hate Australia", they see Australia as a chance to live peacefully and make some money and progress in life. I'd be pretty sure they suffer from "divided loyalties" and probably don't understand what the Anzac tradition is all about - same as if I went to live in a foreign country, and couldn't understand what they celebrated. But I marched in an Anzac March yesterday, and saw about 25,000 people waving Aussie flags, cheering and clapping all the soldiers, sailors, airmen and airwomen, and emergency services people - and the number of "White Australians" I saw in the crowd was pretty low, probably less than a quarter. There were Asians galore, Indians galore, and all the colours of the rainbow in the crowd. And they all obviously loved Australia, and what we are as a nation - otherwise they wouldn't have been there. I'll also wager there was a huge number of "White Australians" who never bothered attending any Anzac celebration - because they don't give a rats rectum about the Anzacs or Australian traditions, they're only interested in themselves, and their rich hedonistic pursuits - such as flying. A lot of these people would have been whinging that nearly all the shops were shut, and they couldn't buy something they wanted. Albo and his mob are struggling to do the best they can with the cards they've been handed by all the previous Govts - and that includes a lot of Liberal/NP decision-making that only ever benefited rich people and giant global corporations. If previous Liberal and NP Govts had done the right thing as regards Govt decision-making for the countrys long term benefit, we wouldn't be facing the problems we have today - and the Liberal Party and National Party wouldn't have disappeared up their fundamental orifices, to the point where they have virtually ceased to exist as parties and as a useful Opposition - simply because they failed to look after the people who originally voted for them. One Nation is an erratic flash in the pan with a track record of achieving very little, except pulling stunts that are designed to be divisive and make people feel unwanted - because they aren't Anglo-Saxon, white skinned, blue-eyed, and jingoistic. I've got some news for the jingoistic types. Australia became a multi-cultural country many decades ago, and Anglo-Saxons and White Europeans only make up a very small percentage of the worlds population (around 9%, according to the figures I get handed) - and that percentage continues to decrease as this largely rich cohort continue to reduce their reproduction rate. In the future, the majority of your doctors, scientists, engineers, tradespeople, and many of your leaders will be from some country you consider has an inferior culture. You'd better get used to it. Voting for One Nation will do nothing to reverse this trend and the Fish and Chip Shop Lady has no answers to the "immigration problem" either - except creating a vastly more divided and hateful Australia.

The general opinion of the immigration problem seems to be that immigrants lower the standards many Anglo-Europeans set in earlier days - as regards cleanliness, levels of service, and general behaviour standards. The previous laws relating to immigrants appear to have been seriously watered down. Originally, immigrants had to produce a clean criminal history, be sponsored by an Australian citizen and have a job to go to, and they were on "probation" for a couple of years after arrival. Any criminal offence soon after arrival would see them deported quickly. But now we have "African Crime Gangs", "Middle Eastern Crime Gangs", and Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs taken over by immigrant thugs. There has been a major upsurge in drug dealing, money laundering, car theft, car rebirthing, financial scams (especially involving NDIS and child care payment scams), and a major upsurge in the use of bladed weapons in serious assaults and home invasions. A lot of this crime upsurge is directly related to immigrants with criminal histories and tendencies who were let in, apparently unchecked. This is not the way to improve a country.

Here's Mars with camera movement. I used a 14MP compact digital camera at full 3x zoom. This was when Mars was orbiting closest to Earth in Aug 2018. I've expanded the image for better viewing. I was just fooling about on the night and tried to hold the camera as still as possible for the 1sec exposure. Click on it.