willedoo

I've found since retiring that no job's as urgent as it once was when you had to get it finished on the weekend because you had to be at work on Monday. Now life is just one big weekend.

It should be, but doesn't apply to politicians apparently. Joe's word doesn't seem to mean much otherwise he would have stuck to what he's said on several occasions and not pardoned his son.

The act of pardoning his son shouldn't have to be comparable. It can be viewed on it's own from the point of view of Biden's own integrity. His son was charged with firearm offences and tax evasion. He pleaded guilty and was convicted. Biden repeatedly said he wouldn't pardon him. Biden has now pardoned him. That's the issue. He's put his son above the law after saying he wouldn't. Forget about what Trump's done or someone did to Clinton for a minute. This is what Biden's done. We have to remember they are politicians. Biden might have been genuine at the time he said he wouldn't pardon his son for ethical reasons. Or he might have held that position as he intended running for another term and thought it would be politically damaging to pardon him. Only he and his advisors would know the answer to that. Now that he's retiring he's got nothing to lose, so it looks like he's swapping reputation for his son's benefit. That's understandable but still doesn't make it right.

With the roundabouts with traffic lights, the lights are only in use at peak traffic times. The rest of the time the roundabout functions as normal.

Where I live the traffic is getting to the stage where they're putting traffic lights at roundabouts or getting rid of them and installing normal traffic light intersections. It's only happening on the really bad roundabouts, there's thousands of small ones that still work ok.

What's Clinton got to do with Hunter Biden's guilt or innocence. I'm presuming guilt as he pleaded guilty. If he was innocent and pleaded guilty, that would be a bit unusual.

If that's case it's the U.S. Department of Justice that are the crooks. If it was all BS to get at Biden, why did Hunter plead guilty? https://www.justice.gov/sco-weiss/pr/robert-hunter-biden-convicted-three-felony-tax-offenses-and-six-misdemeanor-tax-offenses

I don't know whether it's just me but those things seem to take a lot longer the older I get. And not just the physical part, but the planning and figuring as well.

There will probably be a bit of whataboutism involved, but the coping mechanism of 'but Trump's worse' doesn't excuse Biden for ethically appalling behavior. I agree it puts him on a par with Trump on credibility. His legacy will be of a weak president who trashed what's left of his reputation in the last weeks of office. In years to come, this will be what people remember about him, not any good he might have done.

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.