Yenn

The Aston Martin is definitely a car to aspire to. When I was in the army our barracks backed on to the Aston Martin factory. We used to see them running around their small test track. Then a Roller would drive in. The big boss had arrived. Aston Martin took over Lagonda which was another good pommie car. Back in the fifties I reckon you could drive a different make of British car every week for a year. Who owns Morgan now? The last british car I drove there was a hire car, a Vauxhall and it was so bad that I tell the hire companies nowadays that i will not accept a Vauxhall, but one of the best was a Skoda I hired and everyone used to like to rubbish Skoda.

I heard Scott Morrisons speech to Australia this morning and he has changed the National Anthem wording, so now we are one and three or 12 cents in real money. Jokes aside I missed the garbled words at the end of the speech, which should have been "Authorised by Scott Morrison Australian Liberal Party. Canberra" Purely at political speech in which he applauds Australians for doing the right thing about the Covid virus. That is after he had spent a lot of time berating the premiers for not doing what he wanted. We can be thankful that the premiers ignored him, because if they hadn't we would have been following in the footsteps of Donald Trump. The one suss premier is Dan from Vic and we cannot blame him for making the wrong decisions, because neither he nor us know who did make the decisions

Looking at the above photo. Why would they be unloading wool at Bourke?

ew did cut the cedars and use them. that has now been stopped by the greenies and the cedars are useless. They have not been selectively culled so there are a lot of skinny little poles rather than a few good timber trees. Those river boats had a much more fickle environment. Sometimes they would be stranded in a small pool of water, so they cut down local timber and using their engine power, again powered by local timber they produced sawn timber for buildings. I never heard of the Missisippi boats doing that.

Have you looked at government sites. They seem to be designed to not work.

Are cars really travelling faster nowadays? I know I am not, it is too expensive to travel fast, but what I found was that travelling slower resulted in more fatigue. I really noticed this many years ago when I took a couple from Gladstone to Brisbane, s trip that was easily done in 5 hours, but I was not allowed to exceed the speed limit and I felt tired out when I arrived. Nowadays I do not have a car capable of the speeds I used to do, so I am never as alert and often find that I am missing something that I would never have missed in my fast days. Cars are certainly better in crash protection than they used to be and more predictable. I have had a few tyre blowouts at high speed (over 80mph) and one in a big american Pontiac with power steering was scary, whilst the others were just interesting.

Nomadpete. How do you install Linux on a desktop which has Windows 10 and seems to stuff everything up?

I look forward to Phils sense of humour and give thanks that he is OK.

I was implying that somehow ABC has been coerced into not playing Carols, but it would appear that other stations on the ABC do play them. I don't know who makes up our local stations playlist, but it does not include any of the above mentioned music types. I can't remember when I last heard swing, or country. Michael Buble and Bing Crosby would be unknown as would Slim Dusty and John Williamson and the bloke who wrote "I get a little further North each year." Being centred in Rockhampton which calls itself the Beef Capital of Australia. I find the best music on ABC comes from Ian McNamara on Australia Allover.

DUKW an interesting vehicle. You could inflate and deflate the tyres while running along. Not a vehicle I would recommend for city traffic.

I am using Libre office and used it years ago on another computer. No problems except sometimes the formatting goes wrong, but I think this is a computer problem, not Libre office as it happens with other programs. I find Libre office easier to come to grips with than Office. I have also tried Libre Cad but what I downloaded onto my computer is nothing like the Help of Libre Cad. I find it next to useless.

I don't know what tier 4 lockdown means, but the news from my sister in Sussex is not great. She has several friends who have the virus and everyone seems to be afraid of getting it. not surprising when you see the death rate in the UK. It would be good to hear some good news of Phil.

You may be pleasantly surprised at how she turns out eventually.

Now that must be a Pommie crossing the lake.

Isn't it rude for people to think any type of music is a bit Naff? I am mythtified as to why people think the ABC play Christmas music, they certainly don't between 6 and 9 am on radio Capricornia, nor during the daytime any time I have tuned in. Nor do they play oldies, beatles type, rock and roll or jazz.

Better to be in the first Covid free places. Macao, Marshall Islands, Samoa and Vanuatu. Those places have no cases of covid.

The Northern hemisphere Christmas marks the start of a couple of months of cold wet misery, at least in England. I have noticed over the last few years that the ABC seldom plays Christmas carols. I was happy about that for a year or so as non stop carols from November on used to piss me off, but I wonder why now. I have heard three tiny snippets of Christmas carols this year, not even a full verse, but just a line and a bit. I have heard a few Christmas songs and they piss me off as much as Carols. I just wonder who made the decision to ban Christmas Carols and also why? Could it be someone does not want to upset the Muslim minority?

I share the disquiet about microsoft, but what is the alternative? I use an iPad, but that has its problems.

Whenever we get good rain I syphon the bottom of my tanks out. It provides feed for the adjacent lawn and garden and makes the bottom look so much better, but the taste is still the same. I have heard of a rat dieing in the gutter and causing health problems, but over 40 plus years I have never had any problem. I think I would have had worse problems if I drank the town water. My first visit to Gladstone was memorable for the residents were putting out plastic dustbins on the road side and Queensland Alumina were filling them up with de mineralised water, in the meantime the water out of the mains was so coloured that my friends little daughter screamed when she was put in the bath. Settled down quickly when she realsed the red colour wasn't harming her. There used to be a story that the Town Council would fly a flag when the town water was fit to drink. i never saw the flag.

Add Order of Australia to the same category as Nobel peace award.

What I find ridiculous is the amount of plastic wrapping with everything. I have bought a drill that came in a plastic case like a tool box, very cleverly designed so that when the handle and other pieces were attached to the drill that the case was of no use. Rubbish rather than what it appeared to be as a carrying case. Nowadays if I buy tools or electrical goods I unpack them in the store and leave all the packaging for the store to get rid of. if enough of us did that the stores might start to get some sense in packaging.

I have found that wherever you go in the world, you will meet really nice people, but their politicians make their countries look far worse. Not only politicians, but anyone with a bit of power. In the case of Australia anyone visiting would probably go away with fond memories of meeting friendly, helpful people and go back home to read about Aussie politicians, bad mouthing their country and making co existence difficult.

You didn't mention China which has far fewer cases per head of population than even Australia and New Zealand. It is funny that Taiwan Viet Nam Laos and Cambodia all have low numbers per head and they are all Asian. Another couple are Fiji and Tanzania. No matter what I think the stand out state is China. They had the first cases and therefore no prior guidance. The real stand out is USA led by Trump to ignore any reasoned advice, not even thinking that God would provide. For a so called intelligent first world country they have shown themselves to be complete and utter idiots. You could liken them to Germany in the thirties, they have their leader and follow him blindly, without any thought as to the sanity of their decisions. Do they realise that they have made themselves the laughing stock of the whole world. There is no doubt that Trump will go down in history as Fake leader., unless of course the history is written off aas fake news to keep the lunatics running the asylum looking sane.

What is so sad is that so many have stood by and allowed it to all happen. A real case to prove the old saying correct. All that is necessary for evil to prevail, is for good men to do nothing. What is worrying is that it is happening more and more.

I read the story of a Pommie squaddie who got the VC. He was from the caribbean and joined the army, ended up driving an armoured vehicle and was injured while rescuing some of his crew. He didn't know why he was left until last at the presentation ceremony and didn't know what he was getting. Was genuinely surprised when he got the VC and reckoned all he was doing was what anyone would have done. I think his name was Johnson Beharry. Anothe pommie VC recipient was an officer who got his because he shot some squaddies in WW1 who were not going to advance. One of the awards for the battle of Long Tan was not even anywhere near the fight and didn't contribute in any way to its success, apart from being in command but not doing any active commanding. Officers and politicians get all the kudos. I think Barak Obama was bemused when he got the Nobel prize. Scott Morrison is looking for his.