Yenn

Putin is still winning. He is demolishing cities, murdering civilians and we in the West are sitting on our hands, doing very little. It is rather like WW1 and WW2, where the Yanks didn't join in at the start but waited until the warring sides had tired so that they could come in and win the war for them. I can't see the Yanks putting so much high tech gear into Ukraine and then if Ukraine cannot prevail letting the Russians get their hands on it. Britain in 1939 told Hitler that if he attacked Poland, then they would be at war. Biden told Putin that if he attacked Ukraine then the USA would not send troops. We rely on the USA for our safety if we are attacked, I wonder what would happen?

I have the same problem with unsliced bread. The loaves are too short, or are they too long?

Why would the locals welcome the Russians, when the Russians are destroying their homeland?

Well that proves me wrong. The Nationals have dumped a succesful leader. Pity the LNP didn't try that a year ago.

What vegans don't seem to understand is thet there would be no cattle, pigs or poultry if they had there way. I admit it is not good to be slaughtered as cattle are, but generally they have a good life. If we go the vegan way I can see a large part of Australia turning to a weed overrun countryside. Already we see in National Parks where the weed problem is out of hand because they have removed the cattle. Where I live we have had several dry years and there are not enough stock numbers to keep the grass down. In a few months we will have out of control grass fires, because the greenies have made it difficult to burn off and the firies have no idea of how to control the fires. Gracemere will be evacuated again and governments will be applauded for saving the people, especially if they can get a water bomber to run from the RAAF base at Windsor to drop water on a fire in Central Qld.

I still reckon Biden has done nothing about the problem. Several previous presidents have spoken out in just the same way and done nothing. I will agree that Biden does something when something positive happens. Just wringing your hands and saying it should not happen is as much use as pissing against a tornado.

The son of friends of mine is involved with AI. He studied it at Uni and is now lecturing there among other things. He was off to London I think to attend a get together of experts, to discuss ways to ensure that AI cannot make decisions harmful to people. That to me shows that even the experts have their doubts about the safety of AI.

I just watched a documentary by Griff Rhys Jones, about Canada. Really well done and interesting. It seems the best way to get a good documentary is to get a comedian to do it.

We have seen a lot about police brutality in the USA. An Australian woman was murdered by police, who appeared to be afraid of her. Black people are regularly killed there. Now we have the police waiting around, while a gunman murders children in school. The US ex president is quoted as saying that to prevent school shootings, teachers should be armed. The rifle association wants us all to believe that guns are good and it is the people who own them who are bad and the answer to the massacre problem is for trained response teams to fix the problem. I thought the people to fix the problem were the police. We are always told not to take the law into our own hands, but to wait for police. At the latest shooting the police were there for an hour. what was the good of waiting. The US president wrings his hands and does nothing. Would Trump have done nothing if he was of the belief that killing was bad? No he would have signed a Presidential decree to fix the problem. Are our police to follow the lead of USA as everyone else seems to do?

When the Libs finally admit that they should have ditched Scumbag a year ago, they may be on the road to recovery. Meanwhile we have seen the same thing happen in USA, where the Republicans still cannot see what is staring them in the face. Look at Britain who are going the same way. Boris is refusing to stand down and some of his own party are wanting him gone. they seem to forget that they have the power to remove him, just as the Republicans should have done with Trump and the Libs with Scumbag.

Gardening Australia is usually good and I half watch it. I used to like comedy, but in the last few years it has degenerated into US style rubbish. What is missing is shows like Dads Army. The Two Ronnies, To The Manor Born, and The Irish Comedian with his drink, his name eludes me at the moment. Not that I want to see these shows now, but something up to date and of the same quality would be good, or even The Bill and Minder.

News on SBS and ABC, then look at what is on offer and usually read a book. I don't turn on until after 6pm and it is usually off by 7.30pm.

When the energy market opened up it didn't happen in central Qld, so we have only one provider, Ergon, which I believe is Qld government owned. Funny thing is that our prices per kW/h have decreased in the past couple of years, but there is a basic charge which I suppose is for the infrastructure, that wasn't there when I signed my contract over 40 years ago. Same thing with mains water, a lot of money for infrastructure, plus a cost per Kl. With my using only a small volume of water it works out very expensive on a kl basis.

Not only electricity, but also gas prices are rising. I saw in todays paper that gas was $44 per whatever. A year or so ago Gladstone was exporting it to China and wherever at $8 per whatever ( giga joule maybe) Businesses in Australia have been hit so hard that some are considering closing down, while no doubt China is still getting it cheap.

Putin is not really aiming to win this war, what he is trying to achieve is the destruction of Ukraine as a state, so that he can take it over into Russia again. He doesn't have to consider the troop losses as serious, at least if past Russian history is anything to go on. The troops are just cannon fodder and probably poorly educates as well as brain washed. The material losses may just be enough to slow him down and Ukraine having a surfeit of scrap steel may be of little use if Putin succeeds in destroying Ukraine's steel industry.

What I ask is the reason for the LNP to have lost the election? When we know the answer to that question, it may throw some light on what the LNP needs to do for the next time round. Did they lose because too little was done about climate change? I think that contributed to their defeat. Was Scumbag's dislike the reason? Now that i think is more likely. All the rorts from way back and also the poor handling of the Covid finances contributed, but the blatant lieing was in my opinion a real cause. Coupled with his attacking China quite un-necessarily about Covid and causing reprisals financially from China. He appeared to be copying Trump and that didn't go down well. During the election he didn't have anything much to put forward except that Labor was bad, and he was wonderfull. Both leaders seemed to want to spend a lot of times with children, but at least Albo didn't risk causing them serious harm by falling over on them. Most people I have talked to were of the opinion that Scumbag could not be trusted and they were not going to vote for him. Again I think we have seen a party disregarding all the signs and continuing on into oblivion, by backing a man who is not wanted. In 2007 it was John Howard, who lost his seat to an ex ABC reporter, This time another ex ABC reporter has dislodged a LNP blue ribbon seat holder. Pity that Zoe Daniel didn't run against Scumbag.

Living there I would rather be drunk than sober.

It all depends upon what you use to recognise someone. I have shaved off my beard and some people have no idea who I am, while others don't notice that the beard is gone. They recognise me by my eyebrows, which are the ones John Howard copied.

It is going to upset our new member, who is LNP, having beaten the Labor candidate. The electorate includes Biloela and it seems that the Tamil family will at last be going home there. I think that is our members home town. We have heard nothing about the toxic working environment at parliament. Surely Brittney Higgins will now get her day in court. I hope so. All the talk is now about how the LNP can recover from this defeat. Nobody seems to worry about how the LNP can look after Australia. That is what the problem with our politics is. Keep or get power, never think about looking after Australia. The Labor party didn't win this election, they got it handed to them because there were independents, who would not vote for Scumbags lot. Now we will have a referendum about the Uluru statement, to see if it goes into the constitution. I cannot see how they can put in statements about the Aboriginal original inhabitants, unless they completely change the constitution, which is just the legal framework which controls how the country is run. Unless of course they will treat the constitution with the same disregard as the LNP has done.

If it was first past the post the result would have been different, but then again the voters would have voted accordingly. I am against compulsory voting and would prefer first past the post, but in this case it has worked well. Way back before the election was called I predicted that the only way the LNP could win was if they dumped Scumbag. They didn't, for the same reason that they didn't dump John Howard in 2007. That is also what happened to the Republicans in USA. Blind Freddy could see that Trump was a liability, but he had been a big winner, so he had to stay. I suppose the LNP will go for Dutton as leader for the same reason, he has been a big name in the past and they will not see his legacy as being an encumbrance. That is what happens with politicians, they cannot use common sense. If Labor fall short of a majority I can see better government. It was only the fact that LNP could bully their way with legislation that kept them in power, so maybe now we will get some control of the corruption that has been common, plus some sense on the global warming and coal problems. We should also expect to see manufacturing in Australia boosted as we have experienced what a mess depending on overseas is. We should be using our primary products to bolster our economy, rather than giving them away as the LNP has been doing for too long.

Time for Labor to get a good jingle going. How about. Believe in Scott. Lose the lot,

Now Scum Bag is going to bring in permission to take up to fifty grand out of your super for a first home buy. We have had years if minimal interest rates and all that has happened is that there is a housing shortage and buyers felt able to pay more, hence prices went up. Scumbag wants his mates in the financial industry to be able to foreclose on buyers who cannot pay the higher rates and then put the houses back on the market. Scumbag also wants us oldies to downsize to make homes available to first home buyers. I have been considering downsizing for some time, but if I do so it will not put an extra house on the market, as I shall be buying somewhere to live. Of course he is giving me two years instead of one to find a new home, could he be hoping that if I don't buy immediately there will not be a home available, or is it just to increase the going rate when I really need that home. Of course I could go into aged care, run by the federal government. That would be good for the aged care owners who will be paid more and more from the government, while crying poor, so they cannot afford to pay a decent wage to their employees. The other concern is climate change. This government has denied climate change and more or less said that the opposition and the greens will cause all the miners to lose their jobs. They fail to comprehend that for the duration of this government and even before, we did away with our productive industries, so we have to buy from China or somewhere else and the only way to afford that is to sell coal and iron ore overseas. We also had a fairly lucrative education industry where overseas students attended our overblown universities. Scumbag certainly made friends of them when Covid hit. Speaking of Covid, we did fare fairly well, even though we are at the moment number 17 in the world for covid cases, but this was not brought about by Scumbag, it was in spite of him that the State Premiers prevailed and we waited until there was a jab available, even though Scumbag let us down again by not getting the jabs in time. I am surprised by a lot of people who think Covid was a scam, because we didn't have millions die and i know how they will be voting. As I said before the Aussie voter is a moron, but hopefully enough will wake up to get rid of this corrupt government, including the treasurer who said it was OK if businesses got money they were no entitled to to get through the Covid. I wonder if Harvey of Harvey Norman did return that money.

The old bren gun carriers certainly did need a strong arm. The first 90 degrees of steering wheel rotation moved a cross arm, which moved the road wheel in the centre one way or the other. That put a bend in the track and gave you a big radius turn. The drive train was a 4 speed box and a flat head V8 Ford. Driving them in my opinion was great fun. The C class British tanks, that is Comet, Centurian Conqueres etc had a very complex gear box with two inputs from the engine. One ran through the gears in the normal way and the other powered an epicyclic steering system. I used to be able to explain how it worked, but that was nearly sixty years ago. Neutral gear gave you one track going forward and one in reverse when you pulled the steering lever. First gave you a fairly sharp radius turn and from memory fifth gear gave 110' radius turn. To really stuff you up though reverse gear reversed the steering. In the few write ups in motoring magazine by journos who have drive a Centurian, none of them mentioned this fact. After time in the army working on tanks among other things, I can think of nothing worse than having to go to war in one.

When is Labor going to drop the dirt on Scumbag and his LNP? We have heard nothing about all the rorts that the LNP got up to, nor the lies by scumbag, nor the mishandling of the Submarines contract and the covid innoculants. The LNP have had a disastrous effect on Australia but the LNP are too scared to tell the truth to the voters. Now is the time for them to point out the LNP failings, but as usual they are trying to snatch defeat at the last moment. As far as I can see there is only one politician amongst the whole lot of them who appears to know what is going on and she isn't putting up her hand to be PM. Could it be that the job of PM is just toxic?

Why should we respect religious beliefs? I can see no reason to respect stupidity, except that it has always been that way. Is it not time to change and get rid of the monkey on our backs? Parts of religion are good, such as the looking after of others and comradeship, but the God thing spoils it all.