Jerry_Atrick

At first I agreed, but on reflection, that's not entirely true. They are under constant public scrutiny by the media, and, should they lose support of the chamber, that chamber can expel them. If enough political pressure is brought to bear, as in the case of Gladys Berijiklian, they will eventually resign from parliament. Generallky, the higher the profile, the more chance of either.

I don't agree with that.. because it sends a false signal to the politicians that you approve of their policies and if they win enough, they don't unreasonably claim a mandate, which is not the intention of voting for the lest objectionable candidate, and nor shoudl the message be conveyed that they have a mandate. I would love for one day, when there is only less objectionable rather than preferred candidates, that the vast majority of ballots returned are blank, and that gives the pollies pause for thought that they are not listening.

This assumes people don't vote are apathetic. And I am sure for some, it is the case. But for others, it may be the case that they don't see an alternative that they want to vote for. It is for me. I have voted, but only when there is someone I would entrust my vote to. Even in Australia, I have cast blank ballots when there has been neither candidate nor party that I agreed with enough to vote. And one of the problems with an electorate based vote is you only get to choose amongst the candidates that stand in your seat. And sometimes, neither them not their parties were, IMHO, worthy of an endorsement. There is nothing wrong with this, and it is an equal expression of democracy as voting for someone. This approach also assume democracy begins and ends with the ballot box. How many politicians have gone to the polls with policy and promises and failed to come close to living up to or implementing them. Democracy is continual participation - and just because one doesn't vote doesn't mean they can't complain.. because a politician or party may do something repugnant to what they stood for to attract that vote. Of course, if you voted for someone who did what they said they were going to do and it was bad, well, you can't really complain -that I get. Thirdly, does apathy let bad things happen? Let's assume the, c. 40% who don't vote did actually vote.. Do you think there is any valid reason why that part of the electorate would vote materially differently to the way the rest of the voting public did? I would contend,. unless the demographics were materially different, that it would not be much different. And, as we have seen in the US elections were poor and depraved populations voted for Trump - why would you feel those that are apathetic would vote in different proportions to the rest of the population. In other words, it is probably likely Trump would have got in iv everyone were forced to freely vote. And bad things would still happen.

But it's an interesting question. We have used architects twice - once for our home extension and once for this place for the refurb plan (this house is Grade 2 listed). And both times, they were a waste of money. The first time, the builders took a look at the plans and scoffed, suggested minor changes that made the world of difference. Thankfully, it wasn't too expensive and was just needed to get the plans approved at council. The second one was hideously expensive but couldn't account for an itemised invoice. Before we spent too much on him, we let him go as he wasn't listening at all, and was just charging for stuff we couldn't see. As my partner is artistically talented with a good dose of know how from the practical point of view, she downloaded the approved plans of a similar refurb friends did to another Old Rectory. She put them all together and did the research for the heritage statement that has to accompany such plans to ensure the are in character of the building. It is how we learned that General Monty's unlce was the rector here and Monty stayed here quie a lot as a teenager. We also learned that the 2 br converted coach house was also used as a small school for Australian theology scholars at the turn of the 19th century. Anyway, we decided to get the architect in to review the plans and statement for a few hundred pounds. And he was hyper critical and said the council wouldn't even entertain it... But it was no different in terms of notations, scale, etc as the approved plans downloaded. We learned that there was a retired architect in the village, so asked him to take a look. His response was, "there's not a planning officer in the country that would have the courage to deny those plans and statement." We submitted and it was knocked back within the hour. The reason - we drew the boundary around our property as we should, but for some reason, the council think the 2br cottage is on a different title. I suggested we redraw the boundary around the cottage rather than argue with the council.. We did and it was approved after the consultation period ended. My partner saved us £10k

My father must have had one made on a Friday arvo or Monday morning.He had it for years, and it took us from Melbourne to Brisbane and back at least 10 times without a hitch. I can't remember him ever complaining about it. IMHO, it was the best looking Holden of that era, too. It did eventually rust out, though, but not before it got us safely across a flooded bridge that the police had closed off due to Land Rovers not being able to get across. That car is indelibly etched into my mind - I even remember the rego. Yep, cars of that era had now power steering or air conditioning (generally). But those bid solid steering wheels provided leverage so it wasn't as hard to turn wheels a with the small sporty steering wheels today, and those vent windows directed a flow of air which was remarkably efficient. Of course, it was cooler back then, too.

You do live in an alternate reality. We still have aircraft manufacturers. notably GippsAero, Brumby, Jabiru, Australian Light Wing, and the list goes on. There have been a couple of failed recent ventures, including Whitby (?) aviation, which made a great little two seat C152 competing trainer - unfortunately when the non US aviation world were calling out for the slicker European trainers. What we have in Australia is a lack of secondary industry risk taking. Super funds and life insurance companies are awash with cash, but fiduciary rules means most of them invest in established financial securities with comparatively low risk. Same in the UK, but now the government has put out a pension policy that funds should invest 10% of their value directly in UK businesses - off share market - i.e. they use part of their funds to help develop local industry. Of course, it is not a splash of cash, and prudential assessments have to be made to determine the risk and appropriate reward. Where Australia really flounders is that its governments don't support Australian companies first. This is in two ways.. First the ACCC and FIRB are too slack on stopping takeovers. In addition, they don't fight hard enough to maintain intellectual properly. Ugg is a big US company that basically appropriated the Aussie name for moccasins, Ugg boots and the like. Secondly, government procurement has been, if anything, almost anti-Australian. Their rules make it hard for smaller Aussie companies to get up and compete. In addition, they are often about a race tot he bottom in price, where multi-nationals can get in on the act as they have economies of scale. They hide behind gettign the best value for the taxpayer, but what they don't realise is that spending a few extra $ to keep the employment and profits in the country is usually far better overall value. This is the current Buy Australia web page: https://www.finance.gov.au/business/buyaustralianplan A bit of waffle but not much detail. Then there is Aussie consumers.. For many, they have little choice but to go for the cheapest. But for many of us, we should be prioritising buying Australian first.. Over here, for me, with the exception of wine, it is British first, then Aussie, the European, then rest of the world. Wine is Aus, NZ, then European...

You're absolutely right, GON. Sadly, we don't properly tax those that extract our wealth, especially the multinationals. Add to that the fixed price gas contracts that the Howard government wrote, so we have to end up importing gas at market prices when we sell ours for a song, and we are just dumb lucky to be able to afford anything. But, we shouldn't put us down. Australia punches above its weight with innovation. Sadly, some, like Thales Australia, is foreign owned and developed; Some is sadly sold off to foreign buyers. What we have not been great at is manufacturing - we used to be good at it. It is something our federal and state governments could really invest in to kick start it (not at the bottom end - we'll never compete with low-cost economies), but they are still tepid at doing it.. all talk, little action.

Was that an XT Falcon? Although I come fro a "Holden" family, I had one of those and they were quite alright for their day.

There is no doubt going to be a knock on impact particualr to higher profile companies. But if you invested in a lot of these companies a year ago, you would be still up on your investment. Tesla is an example: A year ago it was around 180 and now it is 248 - about a 35% fain in that period. It ballooned on the election and retracted by the same amount, so it is trading where it was pre-election ans pre protest dumping of the stock. So, at the moment* the market thinks it is at its core value. However, the price/earnings ratio is huge at 122. Compare this to Meta which is traditionally high at around 24, unless Tesla's fortunes change in terms of revenue (remember, cars is only one part of its business) that translates into profit, it probably has a way to go down yet as markets wake up and realise it is a manufacturing company and not a technology company in the traditional sense. This has everything to do with its positioning in the market and its outlook as opposed to purely protest. But, the protest plays well into Trumps hands as he can blame the loony and now violent left. The fact the cybertruck has had 8 recalls, two major and for every one of them, and are costly to fix, and it hasn't had the market penetration Musk and his investors were betting on, has nothing to do with it in Trumps (and probably Musk's) mind. Here is the share price of the other companies Outside the election bump, they are all doing well. X (x-twitter) was recently valued at $44bn... this is after a bunch of users left the platform in protest.. that seem to have gravitated back: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/19/value-elon-musk-x-rebounds-purchase-price

"... because some day, maybe they're not our allies..." Apart from the grammatical error, he should reflect - America's allies were very loyal - yes it was a two way street, but maybe he should have said "maybe some day we may cut them off as our allies..."

Next year will be your grandson's year... Great to hear you caught up with your cousin...

There are similar voters all over the world

You just proved my point.. no idea what you're talking about. But use your ignorance to vote against your own interests.. but don't complain when you get what you voted for

Yes.. the original illegal immigrants...

You either misread what the voice was about or was duped.. but nothing anyone can say will change your mind.,, so it may well be prejudice.. But go ahead and vote against your own interest based on a hollow culture war

Maybe Australia should think about aligning its defence procurement for fighters somewhere else:

That was the point of the vid... Funny how most people don't look beyond a headline, and in a time with MSM as echo chambered as social meeja, and with the ability to find the trueth with a few more clicks, but they don't.. well.. they get what they deserve.. Sadly they take us with them.

What a "godsend" are these large language model (LLM) AIs. I now use Le Chat (https://chat.mistral.ai/chat) which is a French version of Chat GPT. It is a little more abrupt and less personal than Chat GPT, but just as effective, and I guess better because you definitely know you're interacting with a machine and not a person. Well, I was writing some code and trying something funky, which resulted in a run-time error (i.e. it compiled OK, but the error occurred under certain scenarios when the program was running. It was a stack overflow error, which is running out of memory on a part of the execution map called the stack. To be quite honest, they are a pain the posterior to debug and usually involves injecting code to keep track of memory usage, setting break points in the code (which stops execution in flight so you can see what is happening), and as this is multi-processing and multi-threading, means it could fail at completely different points of the code, in different processes and different threads within those processes... Even if you have no idea what I am talking about, you can get the idea that it is a bloody complicated thing to find and fix - a bit like a needle in a haystack. So, I literally asked Le Chat to diagnose the issue and gave it the very basis symptoms, and it was a lot faster processing than Chat GPT and pinpointed it.. must have taken it about 1/2 a second. I made the change and that bit of code works a treat. At the same time, it recommended some minor tweaks to improve performance. For may things, a lot less people are going to be required to produce the same output.

When I had my motorbike and commuted on it, I could not believe how quickly the tyres were eaten up.. Rarely did they get more than 10,000 miles; usually 6 - 7 thousand miles.

When financial needs must, I have had retreads and for my driving they weren't too bad.. But, as a year 8 teacher drummed into us, when driving, there are only 4 bits of rubber between one and eternity, so have always gone for the best I could afford.. And even then. sometimes they weren't right for the car. Years ago, I had a MQ Patrol LWB and went to Bob Jane T-Mart to change the tyres. They recommended some Bridgestones that weren't cheap but on the Patrol, they were useless - especially on tram tracks - they's slip and slide on them even in the dry. So back to the shop the ague about it and the agreed to change them and giving e a heavy discount on the new ones (I think Dunlops of some sort).

I wear a respirator and goggles.. though with glasses it is a but tough..

Well. best laid plans o' mice and men... Have finished the sanding, which was quite a challenge in the end. This is my random orbital: And it went through 80 grit sheets like no tomorrow. Some of the plaster, albeit standing up tot he steamer, was damaged and fell off. The smoke detectors started up and it was mayhem for a day. All done, and today, patched the holes with bog plaster and skimmed some flaked holes with multi-purpose plaster after PVA-ing the holes - will take photos tomorrow as the lights are not working in that room. So much of having the base coat on yesterday.. There is dust and poop everywhere.. In the morning, will dust down the walls, and fill the minor blemishes and then PVA and then basecoat. We don't want it perfect as we like the imperfections (will try and get a close up of what I mean)... And, hopefully, top coats on Sunday.

A lot of the old houses in the South East and South West of England as well as the home counties are in very good condition... There are some 'burbs and areas of course that are dour, but that is the same everywhere.. North West Victoria isn't know for its housing in pristine condition, from memory. When I was in the Czech Republic 20 years ago, most of their older abodes were also on good nic, which is saying something given the average incomes they were on at the time (no idea what it is today, but a friend I keep in touch with has a darned nice car.. some top of the line Audi). Romania was pretty shoddy and some a lot of areas on the outskirts of Paris, that were reasonably well heeled looked dilapidated.. I imagine the pollution those buildings are exposed is a lot more in those dense areas than most places in Aus. But I remember when I was looking to buy a house in Melbourne - south east - there were lots of Californian bungalows with rotted stumps, leaning floors, saggy ceilings and the like.

Yeah - I think I must have, though the name doesn't ring a bell. It was a name of Greek extraction, though.