onetrack

GON - There's a classic old phrase, "a Pyrrhic victory". The saying comes from King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who defeated the Romans at Asculum in 279AD. But it was at horrendous cost to Pyrrhus and his powerful tribe, and the King was quoted as saying after the battle - "If we have another victory like this, we'll be ruined". The Americans, led by Trump, have just expended vast amounts of their high-tech war arsenal, had nearly all their Middle Eastern defence sites destroyed or damaged to the tune of multiple billions, lost billions in military aircraft losses, in Trumps attacks against Iran - and he has achieved very little, except to create an even more bitter and hardline enemy than he had before. This is simply due to Trumps lack of leadership ability, his lack of war strategy, his failure to consult his allies - who has constantly abused and denigrated since he came to office - and his failure to topple any of the hardline Islamic leadership in the country. This Islamic power bloc has 150,000 Revolutionary Guard troops, who are still largely intact as a resisting power force. Australia doesn't need an ally such as the America led by Trump, because he fails to treat any ally with respect, he fails to consult allies when he takes warlike action, and fails to produce a cohesive strategy for actually winning a war against Islamic hardliners. He always wants to go it alone as a King-like leader, but he fails to understand even the basics of military strategies, and the fact remains that America now always loses every war it ventures into, because it has no plan to deal with the aftermath of any warlike action. The full cost of this warlike action against Iran is yet to be felt by Americans and the American economy - but when it does, it's going to become another nail in the American coffin.

Boiled crawdads?? FFS, how would anyone get the answer to a question like that, unless they were Stalekracker the Crawfish Plug, doing the Cajun Two Step Festival? 😄

The house directly across the road from me, is rented at $1500 a week. It's rented by a couple in their 30's/40's with 2 kids, and I have no idea what they do for a living, but they both appear to work at good-paying jobs. She drives an Audi SUV and he has a Subaru WRX Sportswagon. They moved in last September. I haven't spoken to either of them, they tend to lead a busy life, and don't take much notice of us oldies opposite them. The house was built in 2009 by a Police Detective, replacing an early 1950's house that obviously didn't fit their lifestyle. This couple divorced in 2010 and the house was sold for $948,000 to a bloke who did Mining OH&S, he worked as an OH&S manager for one of the big miners and would have been on about $300,000 a year. He was married to a black Kenyan lady who was a social worker, and they had one young teenage girl who was "on the spectrum". He moved to Canada last year and rented the house out, while they decide if they will stay in Canada permanently. Apparently, they had been there before, and loved the place. The house is now reported as being worth around $2,000,000. The mining bloke put in the pool, it cost him $55,000, and they were quite proud of it. It appears the mining bloke was worth millions, his deceased father owned a farm that was sold for something like $6,000,000, and the mining bloke got a sizeable share of that as an inheritance. https://www.domain.com.au/property-profile/140-wood-street-inglewood-wa-6052

I've never seen anyone lose traction, chuck a burnout or do a wheelie in an EV, so I'm at a loss to explain how the higher powered EV's are dangerous. I have seen a Tesla zip away from the lights very rapidly, though - much faster than even I could keep up in a 2.5L Camry Atara, which has reasonably fast acceleration when you floor it. The Camry weighs 1465kgs and has 135Kw of power (180HP in the old money), so it's not underpowered. But that Tesla went like a cut cat let out of a bag. And my bottom line is - I went from Perth to Albany and back (over 800kms total) in early March, and got 6.1 litres/100km with two people and their luggage aboard, averaging around 105kmh, so it could be quite a while before I can warrant lashing out on an EV.

I have never ever developed a "big spare tyre" around my gut, and I really don't understand how people can let it happen, and do little about it. If I gain even a couple of kgs during a period of slacking, I feel a lot more restricted in my physical movements, so I make sure I lose it, with some energy expending work.

You obviously haven't studied what is happening in W.A. The W.A. State Govt has thrown multiple hundreds of millions (possibly billions by now), trying to keep W.A.'s coal-powered power generation going. W.A.'s coal powered electricity comes from two coal power stations at Collie. Muja (owned by the W.A. Govt) provides 85% of W.A.'s coal power, and Bluewaters, a privately-owned power station, provides the other 15% of W.A. coal power. First, about 10 or 12 years ago, it was $380M of W.A. taxpayers money sent down the drain trying to refurbish a rotted out Muja power station, under a State Liberal Govt. Like trying to restore a rotted-out vintage car, the more they repaired, the more corrosion they found. They gave up and called it a day before a billion or two went down the drain trying to fix the wreck of a power station. Enter Griffin Coal and Premier Coal. Griffin Coal is one of W.A.'s major coal producers. It has lost $1.3B since 2011. It is owned by an Indian corporation, it has been in receivership for several years, and it's almost certainly facing bankruptcy. But the W.A. Govt keeps pouring endless amounts of money into Griffin, to ensure it has adequate coal to keep the W.A.-Govt owned Muja coal-fired power station going. Over $300M at last count. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-21/roger-cook-extends-griffin-coal-financial-lifeline/106250998 Then we have Premier Coal. Premier (privately owned - by the Chinese) has too much coal, and can't sell what it produces, so the W.A. Govt pours money into Premier Coal to ensure hundreds of Collie workers don't end up unemployed. Despite all that subsidising, Premier have just announced around 70 to 100 jobs are to go at the company as they "readjust production" to suit the declining coal market. All this State Govt money going into coal-powered electricity production in W.A. means power prices aren't rocketing, and the power cost rises are being kept to an acceptable level. But the subsidies are a major burden on all W.A. taxpayers, and a hidden cost to W.A.'s coal-fired electricity production. So much for the "cost burden" of going over to renewable energy. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-22/collie-job-cuts-coal-mine-merger-push/106591996

One for the fishermen amongst us.....

Causing an uproar.

As I said, there's currently no requirement for real estate agents, solicitors or conveyancers in the real estate business to meet the reporting requirements under AUSTRAC money laundering laws. However, typical of Govts shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted - all of the above people will be obliged to fall into line with everyone else under the cash money reporting requirements, starting 1st July 2026. QUOTE: "Tranche 2 reporting entities are businesses in "gatekeeper" professions - specifically real estate professionals, lawyers, accountants, conveyancers, and trust/company service providers - that will be required to comply with Australia's Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) Act. These new obligations take effect from 1 July 2026, requiring them to register, conduct due diligence, and report suspicious activities to AUSTRAC."

The construction of a wind turbine blade is extremely complex, and no doubt very costly. They don't lend themselves to re-usability very readily. Fibreglass is their major constituent. It seem to be the height of stupidity to just bury them.

Stopping immigration completely will not make the housing problem go away. Stopping huge investments in our housing by overseas investors such as the Chinese will go some way to help the housing problem. There are serious numbers of houses owned by Chinese investors that are purposely kept empty, because of the Chinese attitude towards property investing. This has to stop. Plus, all investors must be made to produce proof of the origins of their money in line with AUSTRAC reporting. As it is, real estate agents, solicitors and others in the real estate industry are not obliged to report people purchasing properties with suitcases full of cash money. It is legend here on the West Coast that Chinese buyers turn up to real estate agencies with suitcases full of cash, to prove they have the money and don't need to finance the property. This is a glaring hole in our control of legal money origins.

The oxygen locked into hematite is just as useful as the iron, because it is needed to facilitate the steel-making process. Oxygen is critical to many chemical processes which produce the products we need in our industrialised world. I agree, there's a large cost component in shipping iron ore many thousands of kilometres to furnaces in far-off countries. But those countries are prepared to pay that cost, and they often own the ore bulk carriers, as well as the iron and steel-making facilities. The simple fact remains that iron and steel-making is a business that just cannot be started from scratch without a monstrous financial investment, running into possibly multiple tens of billions of dollars, the need to find stable markets for that iron and steel, that are consistent purchasers of the product - and the end product goes into a world full of iron and steel products that are often sold cheaply. There are many "anti-dumping" legal actions against iron and steel manufacturers around the world, as the Chinese in particular, often dump iron and steel products at low prices during sales slumps, to keep their furnaces operational. They often over-produce iron and steel products. If we go into iron and steel making on a large scale, we are competing with huge global iron and steel producers in a vicious market. BHP and Rio Tinto are possibly the only corporations who could garner the huge investment backing required to indulge in large-scale iron and steel production. All businesses need to borrow money to finance big projects and you need to be able to convince lenders you can repay the borrowed money. Financiers would be reluctant to lend money to huge iron and steel manufacturing projects, as they are seen as low return. However, there is great interest in finding cheaper ways of making iron and steel, and especially "green" steel, where pollution levels from the manufacturing process are low. Iron and steel manufacturing is one of the worlds most polluting industrial production processes. To that end, there are three companies in W.A. currently either manufacturing or investing in "green" steel production on a modest scale. It appears the S.A. Govt is also intent on supporting "green" steel manufacturing in that State. https://international.austrade.gov.au/en/news-and-analysis/news/australia-forges-a-future-made-from-green-steel

So, how come Labor is totally corrupt, and the Liberals and Nationals and One Nation are pure and honest? Sounds like you're just carrying out repeating all the slanted, Labor-hating, Sky News reporting. And if you're going to accuse people in power of corruption, you'd better be able to back it up with proof, or you could become involved in defamation lawsuits.

Clearing for suburban developments and clearing for minesites and minesite access roads and facilities also takes up a substantial majority of the level of native vegetation clearing going on. Farmland in W.A. has been subject to highly restrictive clearing bans since 1985. In the 1960's, the catchwords of W.A.'s conservative politicians were, "we're aiming at clearing a million acres a year!". We've gone from one extreme to the other as regards farm clearing, but there's only minimal restrictions on clearing for roads and subdivisions.

Agree, we need to be harsher on these Middle Eastern criminals, and impose longer sentences on them, when they display criminality.