onetrack

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.

A criminal behaviour record is the primary reason for rejection in an application for admittance to Australia - and always has been - the same as most countries. But unfortunately, many refugees make sure their criminal behaviour records are erased, lost, or otherwise made unavailable. This is how the criminal Lebanese arrived in Australia as "refugees" in the mid-to-late 1970's. They claimed they were refugees from the civil war in Lebanon - but the truth was, they were largely jailbirds with a long history of criminal behaviour, and the Syrian Army purposely destroyed all their criminal records, so nothing showed up in a search by immigration authorities. As a result, they fell into limbo in the Immigration Dept applications - and Malcolm Fraser overrode the Immigration Dept heads who wanted to send them back - because Fraser was a "softie" who claimed that sending them back meant certain death for them. As we've seen with all the recent "Middle-Eastern Crime Gangs" murderous activities in mostly SW Sydney, they are still criminals, and still indulging in massive amounts of high-level criminal behaviour. If you watch "Border Security - Australias Front Line", you will see many arrivals by air producing fake reasons, fake documentation, and outright lies to gain entry to Australia for various nefarious reasons. Many just want to disappear once they get into the country. They're interviewed and checked out at length, by BS officers - and sent straight back to where they came from, if their stories and information don't stack up. All immigrant applications should be treated the same, regardless of whether they are claiming to be refugees under threat of death if they return to their country of origin, or not. The problem is, a lot of these people are sent here, or come here, simply because they're troublemakers where they came from, and the locals want shot of them. And of course, numbers of them are either drug mules, full-time scam operators, and "footmen" for major crime gang operations. They arrive with ill intent.

I really think the AUKUS deal and the Yank submarine deal needs to be cancelled - from our end. The last thing we need is to deal with, is a tantrum-throwing toddler when he's supposed to be leading the worlds only remaining superpower, and setting statesmanship-like behaviour and standards. On top of that, the subs are vastly overpriced, and will be delivered 30 years too late, and be obsolete when they are delivered.

I reckon a lot of people are looking for about 450-500km range in an EV before they're comfortable with the technology. "Range anxiety" is still a real psychological killer for EV's.

I don't know how much more moronic behaviour this clown can indulge in, before he backs himself into a corner. He's already trashed the support of a lot of rusted-on MAGA adherents. I'm just waiting for the major Iranian attack on American soil or a military base that results in hundreds of American casualties and deaths. That will really bring home to everyday Americans, what this idiot has led them into. Israel is being spread thinly as well, what with a major incursion into Lebanon. The Iranians will still have plenty of nasty surprises up their sleeve.

Young motorcyclists are greatly over-represented in the injury and deaths road toll, and the premiums reflect that cost. They love wrapping the throttle on away from the lights, with no thought to the consequences - because they're young, male, and invincible! I can recall a young woman in court locally, sobbing her heart out, as she faced a manslaughter charge for killing a motorcyclist. The charge should never have been brought. She pulled out of a sidestreet in her little car, onto a major arterial road. She stopped and looked both ways and saw a motorcyclist to her right, a substantial distance away - so she pulled out. The problem was - that young male motorcyclist had just wrapped the throttle on, in a 60kmh zone, until he was doing over 120kmh. She didn't have the driving experience to judge that he was coming at double the normal, expected speed. The young motorcyclist couldn't stop, and he buried his bike in her car, right behind her seat and B-pillar, spinning her car around, as he did so. He died almost immediately, and the relatively uninjured young woman faced the trauma of seeing the carnage inside her car. It would stay with her for life, and no-one deserves to see that. On the manslaugher charge, she was found not guilty, and rightfully so. The judge was pretty scathing of aggressive motorcyclists who don't believe road rules apply to them.

Giving her a beer mug?

I couldn't see Gina fitting into the back of a 172!!

They got outfoxed.

The amount of electrical power generated by house rooftops in Australia is more than all the public and private power stations combined. All that's needed is electrical storage, and most States are addressing that angle as we speak. Here in W.A., the State Govt is installing massive batteries at Collie and at other locations, to stabilise the grid and to make use of the power generated by house rooftops during the day. A large percentage of people aren't home during the day, so the power being generated just needs to be stored. https://www.synergy.net.au/Our-energy/SynergyRED/Large-Scale-Battery-Energy-Storage-Systems/Collie-Battery-Energy-Storage-System

When global corporations and local huge companies can afford to employ teams of double degree account/lawyers, who can drive Mack trucks through legislative loopholes in tax laws, ensuring those corporations and companies pay only lip-service levels of tax, it's time to resort to a flat tax on transactions and get rid of the current company tax system. Nissan Australia paid a grand total of $476 tax in Australia over the 3 years between 2015-2018, despite earning $7 billion in vehicle sales. That's just wrong by anyones measure.

W.A.'s Kwinana oil refinery, just S of Perth, was Australia's newest and biggest oil refinery. But it was built in 1954, by the "Anglo-Iranian Oil Co", which became British Petroleum. However, it was shut for good in 2021, as BP stated they couldn't compete with the oil refinery running costs of the S.E. Asian refineries - which all had huge capacity and cheap labour. The bottom line is, we are dependent on overseas oil, regardless of whether it's refined here or not. As Jerry says, EV's are the way to go, with many EV's having 400kms range today (or battery options to increase to "long range" ability) - and with many people having solar systems on their house, it's free energy from the sun, right where you are - and no amount of warring or global upsets can beat that.

The part that gets up your nose is that over 80% of our petrol and diesel comes ready-refined from huge refineries in Singapore, South Korea, Japan and China. These refineries source their crude from probably 20 or 30 different crude oil sources - then blend it to make it suitable for their particular refinery feedstock. It's not like a slowdown in Straits of Hormuz oil shipping is going to affect our fuel supplies or prices to the levels we're currently seeing. Maybe 15% - 20% at most, not the 70% - 90% increases we are currently seeing. We're being reamed senseless with a large pineapple with no lube, when it comes to fuel. Only 25% of the worlds oil moves through the Straits of Hormuz, so that means 75% of oil supplies are unaffected.

Chip shortages still plague most car manufacturers, bu the Chinese seem to have gotten around it by using less chips, and cheaper varieties - and by ramping up their local chip production. They're satisfying themselves with older-style chips, and by eliminating high-tech options that require cutting-edge chip technology.

Just watch out if that red-headed woman gets the ball! Once that happens, she'll claim she owns the game!