pmccarthy

I watch a lot of Youtube but not the AI stuff. Currently watching Engel's coach shop, the Armour museum in Cairns, and the BBC Trump report. I have found that they all get stale after a while. I have given up on the flying ones except for Blancolirio on accidents and Trecanair Flying for Fun, which is about maintaining and flying old homebuilts in Cornwall.

pray come to play wait for the springtime

Our current home has doubled in value (at least) since we bought it nine years ago. We are in a very small rural town, you could call it a hamlet, and I can see no reason for that sort of increase. Fortunately, all our five kids are now approaching or past 50 years old and have paid off their hex debts and most of their house costs, but the grandkids are entering a very different world.

Does anyone remember Claude Eustace Teale, the dopey policeman who Simon Templar was always outsmarting?

Mean is the average. Median is halfway down the list between the highest and the lowest.

Oh baby, baby it's a wild world

In October 2024 Anthony Albanese bought a $4.3 million clifftop property at Copacabana on the NSW Central Coast. The main access road to the area is Avoca Drive. Back in January 2023 Albanese had personally announced 70 million dollars in federal funding for upgrades to Avoca Drive on top of the 30 million Labor had already promised during the 2022 election campaign. The federal contribution totalled 100 million dollars with NSW adding another 30 million on top of that. Senator Gerard Rennick moved Senate motions demanding the business case and the correspondence behind the decision. The government confirmed the Commonwealth had produced no federal business case of its own and had relied entirely on NSW assessments. When the Senate asked for the correspondence between the federal and NSW governments Infrastructure Minister Catherine King refused to release it citing Commonwealth state relations concerns. One hundred million dollars for a road on the Central Coast with no federal business case and the paperwork hidden from the Senate. But no money to finish the freight backbone of the country.

This is the worst period of government I can remember in my lifetime. Perhaps except the Whitlam years. The ideology is to take from us all and redistribute to those who the Government sees as deserving. For which, read labor voters.

Bugs bunny

I like this quote. It is from Victorian member of the legislative assembly WC Smith MLA in an 1874 speech. Talk about prejudice! In such cases, where through the poverty of the ground mines could not be profitably worked with European labour, the European population had no objection to Chinese exercising their proper function-namely, that of gold-field Scavengers. But all this time the Chinese were being educated underground by European miners. They were rapidly acquiring knowledge as to underground work. Chinese carpenters could now put timber together almost like cabinetwork. They did not work so rapidly as Europeans, but they worked for a price at which Europeans must give up competition with them. The Chinese had taken the outposts. They were at Haddon, Creswick, and Scottsdale, and were gradually extending their operations, and unless some reasonable arrangement was arrived at, they would gradually oust the Europeans altogether. They had no responsibilities in the form of wives and children, and all they looked for was rice, with a stolen fowl occasionally to flavour it, and some opium; and the amount they contributed to the general or local revenue was insignificant. As soon as they had mastered the underground work, which, as he had said, was being taught to them by Europeans, it would be impossible for the latter to compete successfully with them. They were allowed to work in poor mines, and he did not see how they were to be prevented by-and-bye from being introduced into mines paying dividends. That would be the inevitable conclusion, and this difficulty must be fairly looked in the face by Ballarat and every other gold-field. There were 350,000,000 of Chinese in China, and that fact alone demanded serious consideration.

We are hoping for rain on Sunday. All is very dry, still watering the garden.

Instead of support for ex-defence personnel, the Budget provides an additional $44.3 M to Office of Special Investigator to investigate and prosecute alleged Afghanistan war crimes.

I don't mind their views on the environment; it's a free world. I despise their politics on race and gender, particularly the antisemitisim.

Though I despise the greens, I agree.

Yep. Unions to the Labor governments. Huge sums involved.