willedoo

What a scumb*g. Trump's Crooked Joe Biden tag was right after all. After previous promises not to pardon his son Hunter who is awaiting sentencing on tax evasion, he's gone and done it. To make matters worse, he's taken a leaf out of Trump's book and has called the charges against his son politically motivated. Good riddance Joe Biden, your time is up.

Depending on the viewpoint, I've been acquiring either more junk or more material for projects from my new house flipper acquaintances. I brought home a load yesterday and today and in money value at least $1,000 or more so it was worth getting soaked through to the skin on both days. This is today's load, around 40 metres of 100x35 LVL RedEdge concrete boxing timber and about the same amount of 90x35 H2 pine studs and some 70mm pieces. Plus an almost full roll of vapour barrier and some fibro offcuts. The RedEdge formwork timber is very similar to the Red Alert LVL structural beams which come in a 100x45mm size for use as joists. The structural LVL is almost twice the price of the concrete edging timber but would no doubt have a much higher engineered strength. The old ute was a bit top heavy so it was steady as she goes coming home in the rain on a wet road with 45 psi in the rear tyres. I was only gone two hours and the rain gauge had 57mm in it when I got back. It must have rained fairly hard going by the debris around the place. The house the flippers are renovating is almost finished so there'll only be one more load of odds and ends when the job is finished. They live in the houses they renovate and don't own a property, so it's cheaper to dump the renovation recycled materials and the new, unused over-ordered gear and offcuts rather than to own and maintain a place to store for later jobs.

It might have been that or he might have deleted himself after hoovering up enough deposits from people.

I think I've mentioned this in the past on the forum. My dad did his initial recruit training at Cowra and one time he had leave to go by train into Sydney and on the return trip was in the same carriage as a whole bunch of Italian prisoners on their way back to the prison camp. They were trustees with no guards and he said they were a happy bunch. One of them had a guitar and they were all singing along. Best guess is they had been out somewhere fruit picking or some other labour job. The 2/9th. was our local S.E. Queensland AIF battalion along with the 9th. militia battalion; the current 9th. Battalion is based at Enoggera in Brisbane. My father due to his age didn't join the army until 1944 so by the time he was posted to the 2/9th. as a reinforcement, he was only with them for a bit under a year. They were at Balikpapan when the war finished and were still there at the end of the year when the battalion was disbanded. The older blokes who had served the most time were repatriated home and my dad and the younger blokes were absorbed into the 2/14th., a Victorian battalion, along with their younger blokes. Some of the older 2/9th. blokes who went home had been with the battalion since the start of the war when they went to England. I can remember reading in the book of the history of the 2/9th. that they spent more time outside the salient than any other battalion at Tobruk. The 18th. Brigade gained a bit of a reputation during those early African and Middle east campaigns which dobbed them in for a few hard jobs later on. They were at Mine Bay, Buna and Shaggy Ridge as well as Balikpapan later in the war. Buna was particularly hard on them where they sustained about 2/3 killed and wounded.

Here's an article with some speculation about how social media companies will identify users. There's a section in the bill that social media companies can't insist on ID as the only means of age assurance. The article discusses the possibility of using facial recognition. One point I'm not sure about is whether existing users will have their accounts suspended if they are under 16. Initial reports said they would be exempt but I've read since that they'll be banned as well. If so, that means the social media companies might make all of us hand over either ID or facial recognition data to them to verify and keep our accounts. If facial recognition, would it be a one off verification process. I can't see it being practical to have our cameras on for facial recognition every time we log on if that was to be used as a means of stopping under 16's using an older persons account . https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-30/social-media-ban-australia-id-facial-data/104567566

It's only early days but there's encouraging signs for Ukraine coming from the Trump team. First there was Senator Lindsay Graham's comments about backing Ukraine in return for business investment and now Trump's appointed special envoy to Ukraine has returned from a trip there with some positive comments. Lt. General (Ret.) Keith Kellogg is of the view neither side will negotiate and that the end game he sees is the US giving Ukraine the kit to kick the Russians out of all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and the Donbass. He said the defeat would be the end of putin which would change Europe for a generation to come. General Kellogg served in Trump's first administration. All positive thoughts but the challenge will be to get Trump fully on board. With Trump being so transactional, any loyalty to putin would last only as long as putin is useful to him. If Trump thinks there's more to gain by going with Ukraine it would shake things up. As it stands, US investment in Russia is not a viable thing and there's a lot of potential in Ukraine in that department. The other side is the political gain. If Trump could back Ukraine to defeat putin's forces it would be a sharp contrast to the failings of Biden over the last almost three years of drip fed defence against Russia. Biden's legacy on Ukraine will be one of failure whereas Trump knows he's only got four years to leave a positive legacy. Trump's main challenge will be to keep mad Donald suppressed which might not be so easy.

Another angle I hadn't given any thought to before is the 2025 election is the first one where Gen Z and Millennials outnumber Baby Boomers at the ballot box. The boomers have lost their spot as the dominant demographic.

It must be Murdoch posing as the ABC. All jokes aside, the ABC has been increasingly frank in their treatment of the government lately. The rose tinted glasses have come off.

Then there's this media quote: "The end of a parliamentary year is usually a mess. But 2024's finale was beyond bad. A prime minister who likes to claim he runs an orderly government found himself presiding over a shambles, in which process was thrown to the winds and quick fixes and expedient capitulations became the order of the day." If you're thinking Murdoch, no cigar, it's the ABC.

Questioning what the government do and keeping them accountable is a basic part of a democracy. Blindly accepting every thing they do and passing off any opposition to it as the fault of Murdoch and gullible readers is a simplistic cop out.

A lot of the flash places in my street are over the two million mark. It's not so much the land but you can see it in the build. The cost of building these days is staggering.

For that price you can buy this place on one acre in my street and have a couple of hundred thousand left over.

who does?

How is frantically trying to push through near 40 bills in a day good government? I think it just tells us Albo is panicking and will call an early election with no resumption of parliament after this week. Trying to whack through that much legislation all of a sudden is just making them look like dickheads. Albo just can't seem to get a grip on the politicking part of his job.

Interesting comments from Lagarde; it sounds like she's got a sensible attitude to the situation and is looking for ways to make the best of it. This bit was noteworthy: [For Europe, the incoming Trump administration’s stance on trade and transatlantic co-operation were an “accelerator of a reset that we need”, Lagarde said.].

I found this one today, one of those random photos hoovered off the web that float around distant corners of the hard drive. I'm fairly sure it's a Kazakhstan Air Force Su-30SM.

I remember quite a few years ago when I had my MQ Patrol ute, I was heading home from town when a bloke going like a bat out of hell towards me lost it on a corner. His first slide was the obvious one and he corrected it but was sliding slightly the other way straight toward me. Once he realised he was heading for a head on he took the smarter option and wheeled his car straight over the bank on my side, just missing me by a few metres. He ended up in the sugar cane but avoided a bad accident. If he had not done that at the last moment he most likely would have died and I would have been fairly messed up. He was an idiot for driving that fast to get himself in that situation, but I had to admire (and be very thankful of) his driving skill to get out of it without a major impact. It all happened in seconds, but I can still remember his hands on that steering wheel working like a rally driver. It took me at least an hour for the heart rate to settle down when I got home.

They do accept that. Kids learn to drive on farms and when they are old enough to get a license they learn to drive on the road, simple as that. Some skills are transferable. Correcting a slide in dirt and correcting a slide on a bitumen road are not quite the same but involve some similar principles. A kid who's grown up learning to correct slides on dirt has that experience in the background if it's ever needed. Just one example of how a kid growing up driving has a slight advantage over a city kid who has to start from scratch. It doesn't mean they are better or worse drivers once they've both been publicly driving for some time, but it's certainly easier when the time comes to get a license.

ome I think you misunderstood my post or didn't interpret it properly. And bear in mind in the country public roads can often mean dirt or gravel roads. Basic driving skills, not bitumen road driving skills.. The point is they already know how to drive and are faced with the challenge of adapting and learning to drive on the road. City kids are starting right from scratch.

So do I. I was referring to the basic driving skills not basic road driving skills.

I can remember at primary school the education department ran a road rules awareness programme for us kids. I think is was all about pushbike safety rather than early learning for vehicle driving. They painted white lines all over the asphalt parade ground to simulate streets and intersections. Then they had us wandering around these marked laneways giving way to each other and stuff like that.

Kids on farms learn easily because they have the vehicles and the off road environment to do it but they also have purpose. The main reason for learning to drive a ute on the farm is not so much preparation for a later life as a licensed driver on the road, but more about being able to deliver a toolbox down the paddock so the old man can get the harvester going or something like that. They learn driving skills on dirt surfaces which comes in handy later on. When the time comes to get L plates there's a lot of adaptation to road rules and bitumen driving, but most farm kids have already developed the basic driving skills with a few years farm driving experience under the belt. For most kids on farms the deciding factor is height. If the feet can safely reach the pedals and the head can see over the dashboard it's all systems go. There's disadvantages to growing up on a farm regarding social isolation, but there's a lot of advantages as well, like being able to drive a truck and be a proficient welder at 12 yo..

It counts the pimples.

Here's an idea that could settle or create a few arguments. Come 20th. January, what say we start a Trump ledger thread to note over the next four years of his presidency the good achievements against the bad. And then count them up in 2028. By bad I don't mean if he's p*ssed someone off or said something stupid (otherwise the site could run out of bandwidth and there's other threads for that anyway) but just policy introduced, law changes, presidential decrees and vetos etc.. In 2028 he'll either be in the black or in the red.

I'm sure there's advanced biometrics that can distingush a kid who is 15 years and 11 months from one that's 16. 😀