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My brother in law is a retired cray fisherman. He used to fish out of King Island and around Tas. His deckie went overboard once. Couldn’t swim and was going down but the brother in law just managed to grab him and haul him back on board. Lucky guy.

Lots of professional fishermen can’t swim.

Wasn't the French sub a nuclear design that we asked them to change to DE at great expense? I can see the sense in having long range nuclear subs but spending all that money on the AUKUS deal with all the risks of non-delivery and unpredictable future warfare needs seems like a bad risk. We should just go back cap in hand and buy the French nuclear subs. We would probably be up and running much faster.

Don't bother with part two on my account. I've seen enough already.

... especially when you have to admit you were wrong.

No he isn't. Where did you hear that nonsense? He's simply said that a ceasefire sounds like a good idea, but it would only be on his terms.

Far from making America great again, Trump is doing the exact opposite through his lawless mismanagement and sheer stupidity. He has said that tariff wars are good and easy to win but his erratic approach has created financial anxiety in the US and around the workd. The US stock market is already down 10% and will probably drop further. The cost of living will soon go up. He is trashing the justice system and going after his many enemies. He has upended the country’s security agencies and made the US more vulnerable. He has sided with Russia against Ukraine and Europe. Government employees are losing their jobs all across the country, which will have significant knock-on effects in their communities. His approval ratings are dropping steadily and most of the country thinks it’s heading in the wrong direction. He is the most ignorant US president in history when it comes to his general knowledge. Trump watches the markets and his approval ratings very closely so he won’t like the current trend. On the other hand he can never admit that he was wrong about tariffs or any of his other decisions, so he’s going to paint himself into a corner very quickly. His MAGA base may finally realise that he isn’t the genius he said he was. Who knows how he’ll react then. The US will become the country Trump said it has been for years.

No, Trump is a malevolent, but incompetent narcissist, with a great need to maintain maximum fealty from his fellow Americans. There you are, GON. I've corrected your typos.

A political science academic in the US said recently about Trump’s attitude to former allies that, “Trump is so obsessed with the problem of free riders that he forgets that it was in America’s interest to drive the bus”. Sums the current tariff and slash and burn debacle up pretty well.

$14m per trip to the golf course apparently.

I agree with all that, Nev including with repeating myself.

What he said was relevant and accurate but not very smart given how easily Trump takes offence. It will simply make him more determined to apply his tariffs to us. As an ex-PM, what Turnbull says gets noticed. Public comments like that are not very helpful when the government of the day has to negotiate with a vindictive narcissist to get the best trade terms for the country.

I’m not disagreeing with what Turnbull said. He’s quite right. But as an ex-PM he shouldn’t be making himself a kind of de facto spokesman for Australia knowing that the government has to deal with Trump and his tariff threats. All he’s doing is making negotiating with Trump harder. It’s shortsighted on his part, notwithstanding that what he’s saying is right.

Yes but Turnbull is no longer the leader and he should be more aware of the likely consequences of what he says.

Turnbull hasn’t made it any easier for Albo by laying into Trump. That wasn’t a very smart thing to do.

Yes it was weird. I thought the link might have been hijacked unless something is going on. Phone seems to be OK. It’s behaving normally.

Red I clicked on that link and got a message saying my phone was infected with two viruses and was directed to a website to remove it. I didn’t, thinking it could be a scam.

Trump's latest comments about the war: “I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. And they don’t have the cards,” Trump said. “In terms of getting a final settlement, it may be easier dealing with Russia.” Asked whether the Russian leader was taking advantage of the pause in US intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine, Trump replied: “I actually think he is doing what anybody else would do.” Trump knows he is facilitating Russia's latest missile and drone attacks by stopping the munitions and turning off Ukraine's electronic warfare support, and then blandly agrees that Putin is taking advantage of the situation to bomb the country even more `like anyone else would'. He is supposed to be in NATO but is literally helping Putin to attack Ukraine. He knows Ukraine is in a weak position `because they don't have the cards'. He then has the gall to say he wants the killing to stop. The depravity of this guy is appalling.

… of those who bothered to vote, so more like only 30% of the eligible voters.

I agree that the returning vets at that time were generally treated pretty shamefully after having serving their country, whether they were volunteers or called up. However, are you blaming all that your two years in the army? It sounds as though you expected the army to find you a paying job and a place to live. Did your mates feel the same way? What did they do when they got out? What job did you have and where did you live before you went in?

Same as Nev

Trump's negotiating skills, or lack of are becoming clearer. First he imposed arbitrary 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico's auto industries, among other trade items, allegedly because of drugs crossing the border. Then he delayed them by a month while Canada and Mexico took significant steps to reduce the drug imports, most of which are brought into America by US citizens anyway. The last few weeks have shown that the additional drug prevention measures have been pretty effective so Canada and Mexico expected that they would be in the clear because they had done what was asked. However Trump imposed the tariffs anyway because he said the measures weren't good enough and had also decided he now also wanted the auto industries to move all their production to the USA. Because the goalposts had suddenly moved, the CEO's of the three major auto manufacturers phoned him and pointed out the problems his tariffs would cause in their industry - like major cost increases to the price of vehicles. So now he has suddenly back flipped and postponed the tariffs for another month to supposedly give the industry time to shift their production to the US. They can't do that in a month of course, so no doubt he will impose the tariffs again. Or maybe not. Who knows? Trump's supporters think he's a master strategist, but in reality he's the same opportunistic, arrogant, unethical and ignorant bully he's always been. Between the global tariffs, his fight with NATO and Ukraine, his cozying up to Putin, the decimation of Government institutions and the disruption to services that will bring, his failure to reduce the cost of living, and his chaotic management style, his popularity will head downhill pretty quickly in the next weeks and months. His ratings in the opinion polls and the stock market are already dropping, and those are the two things he cares about most. He is going to fail the job of running country just like he failed in his business ventures. Hopefully his successor can undo some of the damage in time, but it is already too late to salvage America's place in the world order. He has already trashed that and turned the clock back at least eight decades. He is the complete disaster he accuses others of being.

I wonder how many others weren’t so lucky. I was in China in 2010 and witnessed an accident where the bike rider didn’t get up again.

Whatever you do, don't tell Trump.

It's pretty clear you think the Ukrainians should just let Putin take over their country and that way nobody would get killed. The problem is the Ukrainians would then lose their independence, their resources and their country, and Putin would simply move onto the next target in his efforts to rebuild the Soviet Union - and Trump is only too keen to help him do it. It's pretty sad that Trump is only interested in defending Ukraine if he can Zelenskyy to apologise for telling the truth and get a deal for his rare earth minerals off the ground (he actually calls them `raw earth minerals' - can't even get that right). Ukraine only has value to him if his financial investment may be threatened. The idea that he might defend a weaker country against a power hungry dictator as a matter of principle and for the safety of his allies is not a concept that he can get his head around. The sooner the US dumps him, the better.