onetrack

Well, for a start, I wouldn't stop sending out the begging letters. You never know when the $50M might run out. 😄

Early figures are showing Labor in S.A. enjoying a comfortable win, for a second term of Govt - while Pauline Hansons party appears to be sucking up all the disaffected Liberal voters. Ashton Hurn, the Liberal leader in S.A. who promised great things, is polling around 10% lower on her primary vote. Not a good sign for her continued reign in her job. The Liberals in S.A. will be holding a wake over the decomposed remains of the Liberal Party in the State, by the look of things. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-21/sa-election-day-live-updates/106476924

It's 1980 all over again. The Iranians shafted us then, told us we'd have to pay a lot more for oil after the Revolution that overthrew the Shah. Then Iraq invaded Iran and total oil production dropped about 10%. The price of oil went from $19 a barrel to $39 a barrel by the end of 1980. Then the word was, you wouldn't be able to get fuel, so people started hoarding. Long lines formed at U.S. gas stations and the Americans panicked, and this drove them to buy lots of economical Japanese cars. I can remember lot of my farmer clients buying huge fuel storage tanks - 20,000 - 50,000 litre tanks. Our diesel fuel costs went from 10c a litre to 40c a litre in less than 18mths - a fourfold increase. It was a dreadful time to be a big fuel user. Then the inflation started, and companies started collapsing everywhere due to cost increases they struggled to recover in increased prices. Then interest rates went ballistic as govts struggled to rein in inflation. A double whammy for all businesses. So, all that ended up as a major global recession from 1981 to 1983. Even Caterpillar, the worlds most profitable manufacturer, lost huge amounts of money in 1982 - the first year they'd lost money since 1932, the depths of the Great Depression. This conflict is going to result in another worldwide recession, vastly increased interest rates, and a large number of bankruptcies. Be prepared for it all. I'm glad I'm no longer in business, I'm glad I no longer owe any money to any financial institution, and I'm glad I've got a steady income that is insulated from dropping. But there's a lot of people looking at losing their jobs as unemployment soars, and a lot of people looking at losing a lot of asset values, as things go South. A lot of people will not be able to meet their financial commitments in 12 mths time.

I know a couple of blokes who are 105, and they probably reckon 86 yr olds are still wet behind the ears!! 😄

Gina and her old man are/were just greed merchants of the highest order. Lang Hancock was a money-grubbing grub who used smart lawyer/accountants to initially write up an iron ore royalty agreement whereby he got 2.5% of all monies earned from a number of iron ore leases that he'd pegged - in perpetuity. The second thing he did was set up a major trust to avoid paying any tax on that massive amount of money. So Rio Tinto pays this family multiple tens of millions each year for no effort whatsoever on their part, and they pay zero tax on it - until the Hancock Trust is dismantled. That's why Gina spent hundreds of millions on lawyers and court cases to stop her children from dismantling the Handcock Trust. She succeeded. She paid her children a few tens of millions to keep them from grabbing more of the billions in the Trust. Gina married an American tax evasion expert, one Frank Rinehart, who narrowly avoided going to jail for tax fraud. He wound up with a suspended jail sentence. He was a crook who taught Gina all about tax evasion and how to manipulate laws to keep winning unfair gains. Frank Rinehart was a total fraud, he lived a double life with another woman while he was married to Gina. Gina believes she's the only one entitled to W.A.'s iron ore wealth, as her family pegged the first iron ore leases - and that everyone in Australia should genuflect to the Hancock dynasty and thank them eternally for the huge efforts the Hancocks have made to build up Australia. The truth is, they're nothing more than 20th and 21st century robber barons. https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-man-who-came-between-gina-and-her-father-20120622-20tll.html

SWMBO and I were sitting having lunch in a favourite local Japanese restaurant a few days ago, and there was a table of four people sitting alongside us and we caught snippets of overheard conversation from them. It appears one couple had two sons who were at college in the U.S. The talk got around to Trump and American political activity. The wife of the other couple was overheard to say, "I wake up every morning hoping to hear on the TV news, that that awful man is dead!" The other couple mentioned that conscription had been bandied around in the U.S. for more military actions. This couple went to speak about their two boys, saying, if conscription was introduced in the U.S., their sons would be on the first plane out of the country. Not much love for Trump in that group.

That's what you get for marrying a stunning blonde trophy wife, who's 24 yrs younger than you. You die young, from trying to keep her satisfied. 😄 https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/celebrity-deaths/chuck-norris-dead-at-86-after-medical-emergency-in-hawaii/news-story/2939ddc62a0390b311e5227150473130

Well, what a bummer that is! I never count on any ticket checking until it's done at the Lotto counter by the agent or the scanner. I've had multiple tickets that I'd checked, where I thought I'd won nothing - then when I scanned the ticket, there was a prize line I'd missed, and I had a winner! We had an 80 yr old war veteran here a few days ago, who thought he,d won a few hundred dollars - then when he checked, he'd won the jackpot, a million dollars! He said he knew he had 6 numbers and thought he needed a supplementary number as well, to win the jackpot. But you only need 6 numbers on one line, and that's it, you take home the first division prize.

Americans are just starting to wake up to the fact that Trumps erratic war planning has major implications for their ability to wage war. A West Point analyst has just written an article that points out the Straits of Hormuz blockage now reduces sulphur supplies to the U.S. by at least 20%. But no military planner or strategist in the current U.S. administration has even considered the part that sulphur plays in a major industrialised economy. Despite being a simple "waste" byproduct of oil refining, sulphur is a critical mineral required in substantial amounts for mineral and ores processing. Sulphuric acid is required for hundreds of industrial processes. Those industrial processes produce all the metals and chemicals - and even electronics - needed to produce military equipment. A shortage of sulphur means America cannot ramp up military weapons and equipment production, as Trump has ordered. That brings about a serious crunch in Americas ability to continue its military destruction in Iran - and elsewhere. In effect, they're burning up armaments and equipment 10 times faster than they can produce them - and that disruption in sulphur supply is not something they're going to be able to overcome quickly. https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-chokepoint-we-missed-sulfur-hormuz-and-the-threats-to-military-readiness/

Ahh! - so it takes pride of place in the loungeroom? 😄

The Chinese are notorious for zero backup, zero levels of spares/replacements, and zero "customer care". You buy Chinese products, you're largely on your own. Many an ignorant buyer found out to their chagrin, that cheap Chinese diggers, loaders, and other machinery, has zero manufacturer backup, zero spares availability, and poor resale, along with the former problems. I see recently where the ACCC is starting to hammer car manufacturers who practice these methods, with an insistence that if that manufacturer sells vehicles here, they must provide a proper level of support and spares. Even the dealers want it, too. One of the areas the ACCC is concentrating on is the car warranty as related to servicing. Some of the Chinese brands are refusing to honour warranty claims if the car hasn't been serviced from new by the Chinese dealer. One of the problems with the Chinese brands is the dealers are quite often spread out, making servicing a problem for some owners, with a long drive to get the vehicle serviced.

The weather chart shows you're in for a wet weekend, OME. It sure is nice to see a decent fall of rain after a long dry spell. Everything seems to freshen up.

I find most of the scratchies pretty tedious, and greatly time-consuming, though - and I like fast results, so I can get back to productive work!

You don't even have to go to all the trouble of scratching and matching dozens of letters and symbols on a "scratchie" to find if you've won anything or not. The barcode along the bottom of the scratchie can just be scratched and scanned without scratching anything else, and the barcode scanner will tell you straight away whether you've won anything.