Jerry_Atrick

The joke in the kitchen is where I stopped watching, but it was funny (in my childish mind, anyway):

To be fair, most Americans I have met are really nice and quite resourceful.

I am a paid subscriber to the Financial Times, though I recently cancelled it, so some time in February, my access to the articles will run out. It is owned by Nikkei Inc, a Japansese media company. It has been for some time. Why am I leaving? Because is has become a paper reporting more on politics than finance. Also, at over £300/year, they restrict the articles I can see. Effing ridiculous. They do have a good reputaion though. However, it is still, in my opinion, embellisdhed. Twice I have read articles about subject matter I am directly involved in, in a professional capacity. And twice, they were not terribly accurate. One was during the implementation of the EU financial directive and regulation, together referred to as MiFID II. It doesn't matter what it is about, however, the story they wrote was for a particular part of the regulation I was working on was that the regulation was nebulous, that the industry working groups had no idea what to do, and it was effectively unworkable. That article was read by the managing director of one of the businesses (effectively a CEO), who sent me a sharp email referring to the article and a please explain given the progress updates I provided to him did not highlight this dire situation. My response was that there were some minor questions on the meaning of a couple of paragrpahs in the regulation, that the regulator had porovided clarification, and not only was it well understood by ourselves, but the industry groups had also understood it.. and that our bank as well as three others I was in contact with had implemented the systems to meet the rule - 18 months before they had to! They also reported that the total number of paragrpahs for the regulation and all of the supporting officlal clarifications, technical standards, implementation standards (EU law is bloody verbose), came to over 9 milliion. Well, I haven't read all of the EU member states extensions, but I had read all of the EU and FCA regulations, clarigications, explanatory notes, technical standards, and implementing standards, and bugger me, it was no where near that. You pay for BS with any media - they want you get read it for eyeballs sell advertising. The more hysteria they can raise, the more people will look, the more advertising they will sell. (p.s. in Aus, I may have kept the subscription as I could probably write it off against my taxable income; over here, they are tight-arses..)

70! WTF! I am getting old! 😉 I bought my first midnight oil CD in Czeske Budejovice (pronounced Cheskey Boodeyovitza) in the Czech Republic (Czechia is actually made up by Google, I was told by a Czech who works for me). That was in 1998, while I was working at one of their nuclear power stations. Fond memories of both the place and oddly associating Midnight Oil with the place. Also, my first non-French European landing was at Czeske Budejovice. True story - the sister of one of my then Czech work colleagues, now firend, was the singer in a cover band (she still is an absolute cutey; her brother didn't quite fare so well). I was taken to a restaurant where they played, and on learning I was there, the band riffed AC/DC and Midnight Oil songs virtually all night. The restaurant owner sat with us for a while and asked if I could broker live sheep exports to the Czech Republic from Australia. "Sure", I said, imbibed with local beer. Never happened, though. Sad Rob Hurst passed relatively young.

Chumpo has earned the last one, to be fair.

Not so fast

Why? The word escort with respect to people is not the preserve of sex workers. Escort is a general term and can mean someone/people accompanying other/s in any context. The correct term you are referring to is prostitutes if you want to be specific. Apparently, prostitures are also referred to as models (according to Google), so would we stop calling models models because prostitutes are also referred to as models? In this context there is no derogatory or slang calling a security escort and escort in the same was a a flight attendant a galley slave, trolley dolly or other term.. Sorry to be pedantic.

As is usual, there is more than one casually hears in a passing conversation: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/us/politics/trump-iran-israel-us.html

I have no idea of US family, succession, nor immigration law, but my guess would be if she finds out she is in fact a product of his loins, she will want soem form of compensation for geneitically polluting her bloodlines. Maybe she would be recognised as her daughter, and a bona-fide claim on his estate as well as citizenship to the USA, without ICE. That would mean a) some dilution of hs corruptly acquired gains since office at least, and someone who could stare down ICE and tell them to eff off as she is the offsping of the president - just before they shoot her. Not only that, but aghast be those evangelical types at their lord and saviour violating yet another sacrosanct rule of theirs. But, hey, he sells them glittery bibles, so all will be forgiven. This post is as crazy as the world has become.

TACO Chump has gone all quiet on Iran.. First he encourages Iranians to demonstrate and that Americ has their back.. and after the Iranian government kills anywhere between a couple of thousand and, by CNN estimates 12,000 of its own civilians, he says, well, y'know, they told me there would be no more beheadings or hangings, so I guess it's OK. Hang on, can't blame el Chumpo.. the Republicans do have a history of that. I recall double-yer Bush encouraging the Kurds and others to uprise against Sadam's forces and he would have their backs, too. Yep. bullets straight into them. Also, not to worry, the world seems to have gone more or less silent on the murderous regime killing its people. Not too many human rights people calling for much.. No complaints in general. Amnest, Not even a mention of it on the front page of the UN Human Rights Office web page: At least Amnesty International calls fo people to sign a petition to call on the international community to end the massacre of protestors in Iran..

Sadly, I can't edit my post now. I try not to visualise Pauline or Gina, I guess. But yes, either would be more appropriate.

Imagine being genuinely excited about receiving an award that's not yours? Wow. Seen it all. I guess Susan Ley will be sifting through the spare room to find that u/13 most improved netball player to bestow on el Chumpo in return for some platitude of some sort. [edit] that's a bit harsh on Ley, I admit.

Hopefully, in a general sense, the majority - and the majoirity of Australians. I get people are aghast at some of the brutality at the moment, but why do you not ask many Aussie Palestinians are ardent supporters of what Hamas does? After all, it is Hamas who targeted civilians well demarcated from the military and then went on hiding behind their own when they knew they would be attacked. Take a look at the videos that are readily available as to their acts, and think about what must have happened to withhold other videos from all but the darker corners of the internet. And they would have no problem doing it again, and will do it again and agian until all the Jews are killed. I haven't heard nor seen the Israeli government constantly bombarding Gaza before October 7 and afterwards there has been infractions, but not on a scale to sipe out an entire population. Has it stopped, yet? Lots of anti-semetism since then through how many centuries, and is still about because of this belief. I can't speak to the Moors as I don't know about them.. but that is someething else I will have research. Of course not. As to the amount radicalised? Who knows? But how many sympathise, which is thhe gist of the subequent questions you ask? I would guess quite a lot.

There goes my next flight to Apollo Bay airfield (one needed to be approved to fly into there).

I agree that with Nev and Onetrack - We criticise the condemn the right-wing nut jobs - no excuses - and rightly so. The problem is there doesn't seem to be the no excuses approach when Muslims/Islamists do it. Oh, they are only in a minority of Muslims/Islamists, etc etc. I am not saying we don’t condemn nor criticise - that is not my point, but there always seems to be some downplaying of it. Or that's how it comes across. For the record, radicals are radicals no matter what ideology or race or religion they come from. They equally have no logic, are usually consumed with control, and no tolerance of others. I am not saying Islamists are better, worse, or different than the right wing nutjobs; the only difference is that of ideology and the superior race (let's face it, if you kill infidels and apostasies just for being them, you are sort of saying your race, religion, ideology is the supreme one). And my point - as I have made in other posts - is this apparent toning down and accommodating for Islamist extremism is fanning the flames of right wing shite supremacy hate. They see it as they are getting a raw deal, I guess. I will give you an example in the UK. The Rotheram grooming gangs were gangs of Pakistani Muslims that groomed infidel mainly white and mainly teenage girls for sex - both under and over the legal age. When news broke about this, it turned out the police knew about it and did nothing - not even investigate the claims. They denied it initially, but finally indirectly admitted it was because of the fear of being seen as racist - by investigating a crime that was alleged to have been committed by Pakistani Muslim gangs. Guess who stepped in to fill the void? Tommy Robinson. Look him up, but a leader, if not founder of one of the right wing nutjob anti-Islamist groups, but his relentless pursuit of this has put him in the spotlight as a defender of the rights of British - and of course Farage has bought into it as well. The last right wing anti-islam immigration protest in the UK attracted well over 150,000 people. The problem is, it has moved the more pernicious elements of racism into the norm - normal people who probably wouldn't care too much are now behind him.. and you only have to see the rise of Reform UK to see the effects. And, of course, the right-wing media have picked up on it and run with it, too. Adding more fuel to the fire is the government has also accepted the whole thing warrants a parliamentary inquiry - sort of a judicial review - and they still can't settle on a Chair for it.. when they are appointed, they almost immediately resign citing threats and political pressure. And the vicious circle continues. I certainly don't oppose immigration, from any country or religion. But the issue is that there is a perception that immigrants from certain countries or religions refuse to integrate and want to impose their culture on the host country. And the above is an illustration of why we can have problems if there is a perception on group is being unfairly given a pass. Let's not forget - it is likely most of the population don't want immigration from non-western/non-white countries anyway, if at all.

True, but I can't ever recall it ever resulting in cars being washed out to sea before..

Although I agree with OME, the issue with Chump is what Nev says. Chump has shown disdain to anyone that is not a sycophant to him. And even when one does, nothing is guaranteed.

Making light of things is how humans deal with things. I wouldn't begrudge anyone for making light of a discussion or as long as it's not done maliciously.

Average weekly earnings... Ok back to chump.. or TACO Chump Was encouraging Iranians to protest and stating he would come to their assistance. This comes out: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-15/from-inside-iran-protester-asks-donald-trump-to-help/106228502?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other Yet roughly at the same time Chump says the violence has stopped because Iran told him so: Donald Trump says he has received assurances ‘killing in Iran is stopping’ - https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/01ea28e0-f36c-40e3-9c8a-7d91b520b3d2 Though admittedly, he has not ruled out military action

The Otways have gone from being on fire to intense flooding all within a week: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/car-swept-out-to-sea-in-wye-river-flash-flooding-20260115-p5nucc.html

I thought I pointed to that buy asking how many people earn the AWE in my original post

I got Chat GPT to compare the same, but also added percentage of men in the workforce. This is what it returned, which had ranges, but was reasonably consistent with the above: So, some things to note: For the EU, the figires seem to tbe the lowest and highest rates for individual countries in the EU Women in the workforce is way off the image above I added percent of men in the workforce, as I think the percentage women in the workforce is meaningless without the corresponding percentage of men in the workforce, and even then, there are various factors that impact it which does not scream discrimination. Australia does better in a lot oft he categories.. Good stuff. As expected, the homocide (note, that is not murder/manslaughter per se) rate is much higher in the US. It's a vitual war zone. You cannot, using these stats, blame them on Chump. We would need to see the change in rates since he came to power, and even then, one has to allow for economic lag, etc. Give it another year, and we will see what the stats say thennn Here is the unemployment rate comparison: Eek.. EU not looking so good. Here is the average income pe week in USD (note, the cost of living differs between each region, but a rough and ready and the US is probably one of the lower excluding the old Eastern bloc countries in the EU). USA doesn't do too badly - of course, how many people earn the average weekly earnings...

Bridge at the end of its useful life? Now I have heard everything. Over here we have had bridges stand for many centuries. As they are of histortical importance (heritage listed for Aus), they are refurbished. Yes it is more expensive, but what is the point of heritage listing if you don't preserve it? Anyway, Minns says he doesn't want it to be a ghoulish reminder of the massacre. Fair enough, but I say preserve it as a monument to those who died and acted out of bravery. Maybe add a plaue to it as a reminder.

None taken; I forgot the laughing emoji to your post, which I have corrected...

I did ponder its weight when I purchased it. But I figured if I lost 50% strength from my peak, I was leg pressing slightly over 420kgs as a young adult - which was pretty good for a 5'7" frame and someone who didn't habitually go to the gym - then I should still OK. The seat heignt is not bad, and around that of my son's 125CC bike - which is road bike, not a trail/adventure bike. But, yes, on and off the honda is a more appropro title 😉