onetrack

But are all these items that inflation is hitting, and the shortages, providing all that excitement you were looking forward to?

When GST was introduced, the Govt made a huge windfall tax gain from finished goods already in stock, used machinery and parts, used vehicles, and a myriad of other items, that were previously untaxed, when these items were purchased by people who couldn't claim the GST back. That was every consumer. Businesses paid nothing, because they got the GST back, but everyday consumers got shafted again.

It is - https://7news.com.au/sunrise/pauline-hanson-up-for-100k-pay-boost-after-barnaby-joyce-move-pushes-one-nation-into-minor-party-status-c-22042872

OME, I normally look for, and give way to pedestrians and pushbikes on footpaths. Here in W.A., it is legal to ride a pushbike, or an e-scooter on a footpath or shared walkway - provided speed limits are adhered to. Those speed limits are 10kmh on footpaths and 15kmh on shared walkways. If I had sighted a pedestrian or a cyclist on the footpath, I would've stopped. As I said, I was proceeding slowly and cautiously out of the servo. I could've easily stopped and given way to anyone on the footpath abiding by the rules and regulations. As it was, this bloke was certainly guilty of "riding furiously". He wasn't just riding furiously, he was indulging in dangerous or reckless riding, on a par with using a motor vehicle in that manner. He was not "driving defensively", which is where you drive to the conditions and allow room to stop if another driver does something wrong. He was in the wrong - although I know today, that each driver or rider is allocated a share of responsibilty, in the event of a crash. https://www.transport.wa.gov.au/active-transport/riding-walking-wheeling/safety-guidelines-faqs/rules

Most them have aged pretty well, considering they were nearly all into excessive amounts of drugs, sex and rock-n-roll - and many weird working hours.

You first need to get rid of the tens of millions of idiots who support him, and who post on FB pages that Trump has done nothing wrong, and he's the greatest leader America has ever had! Americans deserve all the shitty living conditions they're going to get, simply because they voted this moron in.

Trump knows what he's doing, just ask Nettinyahoo. Trumps scheme is to utterly bamboozle the Iranians by changing the direction of the war every day. He's simply stopping at present because someone told him at the rate they were burning up armaments and military equipment, they'd have to stop fighting next week. The 10 U.S. radar setups scattered around the U.S.-friendly Middle Eastern nations, destroyed by the Iranians in the last couple of weeks, have a total replacement value of nearly US$3B. And those radars were crucial to determine the what and where of the incoming Iranian missiles, rockets and drones. If you think it's been a costly couple of weeks for the Iranians, I can tell you it's been just as costly for the Americans. And those radar setups can't be replaced overnight - unlike Iranian Shahed drones. Another massive equipment loss was the KC-135 tanker, about US$80M, plus about 120,000 litres of jet fuel. In addition, several other KC-135's have been damaged by shrapnel and drone attacks, taking more aerial refuelling ability out of the equation. These U.S. losses are the reason the Yanks requested our Wedgetail AEW&C surveillance aircraft. Let's hope we don't lose it to some dumbf**k, trigger-happy Americans, or their Kuwaiti allies.

There's an actress that I haven't heard of in a long time. She was a stunner when she was young - when she got older, age and disease obviously weren't kind to her.

E-bikes and e-scooters are out of control, Australia-wide. Half the problem is the unlimited accessibility and ease of purchase of these things, the other half is no age restrictions and no training. And it's not just juveniles, either. The number of young males in their 20's riding these things at high speed with no registration, onto footpaths, then onto roads, then cutting through traffic, then back onto footpaths, is large. SWMBO and I were in Albany on the weekend. We filled up at an unattended (card only) servo, on the main road, Albany Hwy. We climbed back into the car and went to drive out the exit onto the highway - and a young bloke about 20 on an e-scooter, doing about 60kmh along the footpath, screamed past the front of the car, missing us by less than a metre. I was only going slow and looking back up the highway to my right for approaching traffic (there was none), and I didn't even see this bloke on my right, he was going so fast, he had no hi-vis or lighting - and the last thing I expected was a vehicle doing 60kmh on the footpath. Plus, there was signage, posts and other obstructions in front of the servo, that helped conceal the e-scooter rider. It's time laws were brought in restricting the sale of these things, a requirement for training and licencing (both bike and rider), and rigid enforcement of the rules. We've had idiots here just kill themselves, simply by falling off them at speed.

Do they provide armed security for the winner, to his car?

I'd really like to see what this great Australian Plan is, that One Nation has for ALL Australians in ALL States. I suspect there's no plan, except to blame immigrants for every problem that arises. Pauline Hanson is a Female Donald Trump. Says what people want to hear, but has no long-term plans, indulges in "stunts" to keep her name in the media, and picks people for her party members who have zero leadership skills, they only need to support a radical right wing agenda that focuses solely on, "too many immigrants from s***hole countries". I like going through the long list of deadbeat One Nation picks for representatives, who have turned out to be criminals, total rabbits, incompetent, geriatric, or who changed sides as soon as they were elected. And none of them, were immigrants from "s***hole countries".

You can be as gracious and articulate as the best of them - but if you continue to back a party that is no longer relevant to most people, and dead in the water politically, you will forever remain an "also-ran".

I'm sure it'll get much more exciting for you, when you can't afford to buy fuel to go to town, and you start to find all your groceries have gone up by 30% to 50% in price within a few weeks.

Property prices did pull back some, but there wasn't the property bubble that there is now. Sooner or later there will be a big property price correction. It might take a few more years or even a couple of decades, but it will come.

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? 😄