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Trump addressed the General Assembly of the UN. I've only seen snippets of his speech, but the overall impression I got was that he was very successful in bolstering the impression held by the rest of the World's leaders that he is an absolute buffoon and has succeded in making the USA a laughing stock.

Or the Brethren nut jobs insisting they can't vote but campaigning for the LNP

Question: If Sovereign Citizens do not accept the system of government and laws created by those governments, how can they use the legal system based on those laws to seek redress for alleged wrongs?

On our morning walk, we had a close look at the Young Endeavour. We had a long chat with the Captain. The people in the rigging were doing an exercise where they practised rescuing someone injured in the rigging. The Captain told us all about the "Young Endeavour" program, where they take 24 young people between 16 and 24, and teach them all the skills required to sail this ship. We found this chat to be quite uplifting. Under the scheme, 24 to 30 "youth crew" (aged between 16 and 23) join a voyage to supplement the 9-10 naval personnel from the Mine Warfare, Hydrographic and Patrol Boat Force, which Young Endeavour is attached to.[2][3][6][7] Over 500 youth crew per year participate in the scheme, and are selected for the voyages by a biannual ballot.[6] Each voyage typically lasts ten to eleven days, during which the youth crew rotate through most roles aboard the ship, stand watches, and help with Young Endeavour's operation.[6] Near the end of the voyage, the crew undergoes "command day": a 24-hour period in which the ship is entirely under control of the youth crew.[5] As part of most voyages, the combined crew takes a group of special needs youth on a half-day sail.[6] Between the scheme's inception in 1988 and mid-2018, over 13,500 youth have participated in voyages, while another 11,500 special needs youth have been involved in half-day sails.[6] The vessel is at sea for approximately 240 days per year.[7]

I don’t think there is a terrorism gene, but there is a lot of hatred and belief in martyrdom amount some groups of people. I saw a reporter one time interviewing kids in Palestine, asking them during a street soccer game would they play with kids from the other side. Their answers were unanimous that no they would kill them violently given the chance. What hope for peace is there when this shit keeps going on. Racism in our own country is a bit like this (without the extreme violence part), I come across a lot of older people who hate black fellas for no other reason than they were taught to. Younger people seem to be a bit more accepting of different people and cultures. If all the shite in other countries that people escape from was left there and we all just treated each other with a bit of respect as a society it would be a good outcome.

Trump claims to have stopped wars in Thailand/Cambodia (bit of a border dispute & still going on), Kosovo/Serbia (no war, no deaths no shots fired), Congo/Rwanda (they've been fighting for decades & no change so far), Pakistan/India (4 days of arguments over Kashmir & a couple of aircraft lost & artillery shells fired. Been going on since 1947 & no change), Israel/Iran (12 days. Trump helped start it & then illegally bombed Iran so he participated in the war), Egypt/Ethiopia ( long standing dispute over a dam, no shots fired, no fighting, no war to begin with) Armenia/Azerbaijan (been going on for decades. Trump got them to sign a peace deal but neither side ratified it so no change) What a f^%@*in tosser. https://zeteo.com/p/mehdi-hasan-debunks-trump-claim-ended-7-wars

The Martians have landed on Earth, and in meeting the world leaders, they have an audience with the Pope. The Pope looks at them and asks, "Do you know Jesus?" The Martian replies, "Oh, Jesus? Yeah! - What a great bloke! He comes and visits our planet, twice every year!" The Pope is astonished! "It's been close to 2000 years since he was here, and we're still waiting on his Second Coming." The Martian thinks for a moment and says, "Maybe he doesn't like your chocolate." The Pope looks at him and says, "Chocolate?" "Sure! Every year, we gather up all the chocolate from the best manufacturers, and give it to him as a gift, because he's such a great guy! What did you do to him when he first showed up?"

An example of publicise the losses and privatise the profits on a grand scale. Power should be a government service with only open transparent contracting to install the the actual power source if government invests to encourage competition. No Macquarie bank style schemes. The running and ownership should be in government hands for the entire grid power system. The grid would be maintained by the government by permanent staff. Yes, that means a large public service but it would employ and have the level of ability to replace the current system of private contracting. A gov grid would also maintain long term knowledge and expertise in house, no consultants or other profit gougers. It would also mean there is always a place of responsibility for the quality and price of the service. It would be far cheaper than all the for profit large and small contractors with the gravy train of inefficiency that means. You could privately own a system/micro grid and feed the gov grid, but you directly sell the power to the government grid. No multi layer ownerships and profit gouging/rent seeking capitalism. Then you can buy direct from the grid or through a retail seller who buys it from the grid at a small discount. The discount should be fixed irrespective of scale to encourage small and competitive retailers. No massive discounts for very large retailers and buyers. By having the gov grid as a default retail seller the market would be hugely competitive with tight margins and no incentive for big capital markets to game the system. Currently a far larger part of power prices are the baked in profit centres in the system of getting it to your door. The generation price can often be less the 40% of a bill. And those generators owners make a profit. No bullshit energy price market that skyrockets prices,if a generator fails it allows gaming of the system. The current game means a big operator with multiple power stations can actually profit by putting a station out of action by intent or neglect. The price rockets as do the profits with no incentive to get it back on line quickly. We have a clear case of market failure. We most certainly should not provide large consumers like aluminium smelters a heavy price subsidy. The local smelter at Tomago uses a huge 8,300 GWhr a year with a constant 950MW load, that's 10% of the states power at a minimum. Nor should we give big handouts to them to invest in their own systems. The vast majority of that is by burning coal. They must pull their own weight for renewable power. The big consumers can invest in their own power generation either alone or as cooperative groups. As could local communities of housing, new estates, councils. With solar on roofs and home batteries with electric cars combined, a local area community can be a collective grid. A large local battery and public solar shades in carparks, public seating etc can mean a local micro grid that provides its own needs at a fraction of todays current market system price. It could still be connected to the overall grid and provide stability both ways. Local businesses would bloom with minimal daytime energy costs as they use up all the excess solar when the micro grid storage is full. Any excess gets fed into the government grid and paid into the community account at a fair rate. Most grid consumers would rarely pay a bill and often get paid to make power. Electric car owners would have local charging at the carpark and home. A micro grid community would be a cooperative that owns it's power grid and only interacts with the government grid. The public grid should only charge sufficient to maintain and invest. It should not be a dividend provider of government. Currently our energy economy is fundamentally flawed and needs a clean sheet design as a fundamental service by government. I need a 🍺

Never trust a phone number a bird gives you. I did once and got through to the City Morgue.

Angus is a bigger dill than she is.

I missed this one - but Sergei I. Sikorsky, son of the famous Igor Sikorsky, died on Sept 18th, aged 100. What a great life! He decided he would design aviation machines at age 8, when he took a ride with his father in one of Igors seaplane designs. Sergei spent nearly all his life in the employ of Sikorsky aircraft, apart from WW2 and a few post-war years. He joined the U.S. Coast Guard in 1942, as a helicopter mechanic. His father was already producing helicopters for the U.S. Navy by this time. The U.S. Coast Guard was transferred to the USN in Dec 1941, and the USN allocated Sergei to the Helicopter Development Program. He joined United Technologies (owner of Sikorsky Aircraft) in 1951 as a marketing specialist. United Technologies was previously named United Aircraft and Transport Corporation, and it had purchased the Sikorsky Aviation Corp in 1929. He retired from the company in 1992. Amazingly, there is no Wikipedia information page for Sergei Sikorsky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Y6czS1hOA

I have started this topic becauseit it has been taking over the Trump topiv. BREAKING: MAGA world flies into panic mode as the grandmother of Charlie Kirk's suspected assassin Tyler Robinson reveals that his entire family is hardcore MAGA. The Republican narrative has collapsed in record time... “My son, his dad, is a Republican for Trump. Most of my family members are Republican. I don’t know any single one who’s a Democrat," the suspect's grandmother Debbie Robinson told The Daily Mail. “I’m just so confused. [Tyler] is the shyest person. He has never, ever spoke politics to me at all," she added. The Daily Beast reported that both of Robinson's parents are registered Republicans who hold hunting licenses. They appear to be run-of-the-mill conservative gun nuts. In the immediate aftermath of Kirk's assassination, Republicans rushed to blame Democrats. Donald Trump pointed a finger at the "radical left" and MAGA influencers, including Donald Trump Jr., gleefully embraced the false narrative that the shooter was transgender. We now know that the alleged shooter was a 22-year-old white Mormon man from Utah. It seems increasingly likely that he was a far-right supporter of the white nationalist Nick Fuentes. The engravings on the bullets found appear to be references to memes popular within Fuentes's "groyper" movement. Groypers despised Charlie Kirk because he wasn't right-wing enough for their taste and they believe that he sold out the "America First" movement. One bullet was engraved with the phrase “Hey fascist! Catch!" but it does not appear to be a left-wing "antifa" message as Republicans originally claimed. Instead, it seems to be a reference to a satirical slogan in the popular video game Helldivers 2. Video games are a crucial cornerstone of the bizarre groyper worldview, along with misogyny and racism. In the coming days we will no doubt learn more about this twisted shooter and his hateful beliefs but we cannot allow Republicans to slink away without taking responsibility for their lies. Yesterday, they were promising now civil war. Now that it appears the shooter was one of their own, they want to move on. We must hold them accountable. The shooter is not transgender, is not a Democrat, and is not an immigrant. He's an unstable homegrown white man with access to firearms. America's gun violence problem is a Republican problem.

Relevant to the USA, who is doing the shaking.

Good thing I don't believe in heaven. Must be terrible for christians, knowing it'll be full of Trump supporters.

Well, for a start he probably didn't do it at all. The story is from a work of fiction. If he did, he didn't do it from 200m, and he couldn't have killed multiple people in a short time with no one knowing where the stones were coming from. Australia's last mass shooting - Port Arthur, 1996. That's almost 30 years ago. Wonder what changed? Wasn't the intent of crazy people.

Absolute, total, Right-Wing Christian Fundamentalist BS - the same as this Instagram post, below. These people are NRA diehards, they worship guns as the ruling God. Modern firearms are excellent for killing human beings at long range, accurately, with guaranteed results, and can kill multiple numbers of humans in seconds. The safest societies are the ones with strict firearm controls. As an additional benefit, suicides are markedly reduced with major firearm restrictions. After the Port Arthur gun buyback and the major reduction in firearm numbers, the suicide rate in Australia went down by 60% - because most suicides are by firearm and they present to depressed people as an easy quick death. All that's needed here now, is to jail murderous criminals who trade in, and carry illegal firearms, for much longer periods. You carry a concealed firearm, you're planning the death of someone. That's planning a premeditated murder, and should have a minimum jail term of 10 years, actually served, not reduced because of good behaviour. At present, they get a slap on the wrist for being found with an illegal firearm, and it's taken off them. So they promptly acquire another one rapidly. Dealers in illegal firearms should get 25 years. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOo_or-ibD2/

Moved from another thread: Great Aussie insult - He's so narrow minded he could look through a keyhole with both eyes.

Hey y'all, you gotta understand, this here killin' of Charlie Kirk was a perfect example of how the God-Given 'Merrican Constitution works just fine, to protect the freedoms and liberty of every 'Merrican man and woman!! You see, that Robinson guy was truly fearful of a tyrannical gubbmint coming to get him, threatening his hard-won freedoms, and taking away his hard-won liberty and human rights!! He was truly fearful of a vengeful Kirk and his Big Buddy Donald Trump coming to take his gay and transgender rights offa him, and probably even looking at not being able to get a job, all because of that Tyrannical Gubbmint!! So he did exactly what any gun-loving, red-blooded 'Merican Patriot would do! He killed that TYRANT!! - and exercised his fabulous, God-Given Second Amendment RIGHT, to fight back against a TYRANNICAL Govt, that was a-coming to get him!! This guy is a hero! - not a murderous killer!! I hope some good ol' Second Amendment-loving lawyer explains all this in fine detail to that TYRANNICAL prosecutor!! - and that Robinson guy is set free, lauded as a terrific PATRIOT, as he should be!! Hallelujah and Amen, Brothers in Christ! God works in mysterious ways to ensure that the Land of the Brave and the Free, stays that way!!

He had one job...

Copied from Facebook: BREAKING: Donald Trump's niece Mary Trump enrages MAGA world by sharing the cold hard truth that her uncle is responsible for the "political violence" that he is desperately trying to blame on Democrats. We won't allow these fascists to gaslight us... "Political violence and the rhetoric that drives it are almost entirely on the side of the Republican Party, and no person is more responsible for it than Donald Trump,” Mary wrote on her Substack. "Facing that truth does not mean rejoicing in what happened to Charlie Kirk. Quite the opposite: It means coming to terms with what is driving the political violence in America today," she wrote. President Trump exploited the assassination of right-wing demagogue Charlie Kirk earlier this week by calling him a "martyr" and blaming the "radical left" even though the identity of the shooter wasn't known at the time. Even now, it's the killer's motive and political beliefs are unknown. Trump doesn't care. He saw an opportunity to sow division and he seized it. Mary pointed out that Democratic lawmakers rushed to condemn Kirk's shooting while Republicans have sought to turn it to their political advantage by blaming Democrats and journalists. Comparatively, when Paul Pelosi was attacked in his home, conservatives celebrated and mocked the horrifying incident, with Donald Trump himself even joining in. Republicans demand an endless supply of empathy from liberals but provide none themselves. "Donald has almost single-handedly created the conditions in which his grievance, his vengeance, and his cruelty extend to anybody that supports him," Mary Trump continued. "Anybody who opposes him or stands up to him or simply doesn’t support him is his enemy and is therefore not worthy of protection. Worse, they are considered legitimate targets of abuse or revenge, cruelty or violence." "He has incited violence against his perceived political enemies as well as against his own government and then pardoned those who committed it on his behalf," she went on. "This is not a 'both sides issue.' This is not a moment when we put aside our differences to come to some agreed upon notion about how to move beyond this. With Donald Trump and those who support, enable, and capitulate to him in power that would be impossible." "We have arrived here in large part because this country has been purposefully and maliciously divided against itself because of the rhetoric coming from Donald Trump and the Republican Party," she added. She went on to quote Kirk's own now-viral words. The MAGA demagogue said that the price of an "armed citizenry" is a certain number of guns deaths. "But I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights," said Kirk. "That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe.” Mary Trump empathetically but forcefully addressed his words— "Well, unfortunately, the universe we live in is a universe created by people who actually think that guns in our society are more important than the lives of the people living in it," she wrote. "Unfortunately, we live in a universe in which violence, political or otherwise, has been normalized by one party and one party only. The Democrats should condemn what happened today. Any decent right-thinking person should condemn what happened today." "But we are missing the point, we are, indeed, missing an opportunity if we do not take the tragedy that unfolded today as permission to start a broader conversation about how we got here, who's responsible, and quite frankly what the hell we are going to do about it," she concluded.

I wonder if he'd included himself in those "necessary" gun deaths? What a prize dickhead. The fundamentalist Christian BS is overpowering. They're not "God-given rights", they're rules made up by old men from 234 years ago, when a firearm took two minutes to set up and fire, and the firer was as much at risk from getting killed by the firearm, as the target was. And these morons treat these rules as something that came down from Mt Sinai with Moses. Jesus wept. They're prepared to keep sacrificing their children on the Altar of the Gun, on a par with worshipping Baal.

That is not how insurance works. I assume you are talking about 3rd party injury insurance? The premiums paid for insurance are enough to pay out for those injured, plus operating costs, plus a profit for the insurance company. The money you pay in premiums is at least partially expended on those who are injured on the road. If you are injured, you will benefit. If you accidentally injure someone on the road, the insurance should pay, instead of you being sued into oblivion for disabling another motorist or pedestrian. I have never had a car accident and injured someone, but being a rational person, I understand that the possibility exists, no matter how careful I am. I can't fathom what insurance has to do with voting. You really do seem to have a persecution complex. Ummm wouldn't remaining in the system entail being politically engaged? Which politicians? The politicians who conscripted you are long gone. I doubt you would find many politicians who are pro-conscription at this point. There may well be the odd right-wing politician who, every few years, bangs on about bringing back conscription, but I suspect society would not be up for it. Conscription ended 53 years ago. Perhaps it is time to somewhat let go of the past and concentrate on living a happy life. I know of a few people on this forum who were also conscripted, but they don't appear to let it define them or link everything bad in their lives to it.

I wonder how many of them are on social service and rely on Medicare and the public health, education and transport systems.

I'm surprised Hegseth didn't make it compulsory to become a Born-Again Christian before you can don a U.S. Military uniform. This pair are fixated on returning to a "real mans Army", but unfortunately, even their "real mans Army" hasn't won any wars since WW2 - and that WW2 effort was successful because they had the backing of the entire output of American industry - which was being operated by a very large proportion of women employees. To say they "won" the Iraq war is on a par with all of the wars Trump claims he's won or stopped. Iraq is still a tribal, totally corrupt mess, without a functioning democratic Govt.

Charging infrastructure is only an issue if you are going somewhere in the middle of nowhere. 90% or more of EV owners charge at home like me. Many have solar power & and EV plans with their energy retailer that provides them with cheap & some free power like me. I get free energy every day between 12:00 & 14:00 which is good as I am retired. For those who drive to work most get cheap energy from midnight till 4 am at around 5 cents a kWh. The average Australian who drives to work travels less than 30km a day. This is probably fairly similar to UK drivers. That is because 73% of us live in major cities, 25% live in regional cities & towns & only 1.9% live in remote areas. I live in the country near Maclean & Yamba NSW, population 2800 & 7400 respectively. There are 2 Supercharger sites (350kW) 1 Fast Charger (75kW) within 15km & a number of slower & destination chargers. Charging infrastructure is improving all the time. I get emails from a number of charging companies every month telling me of new sites that have been added. Most people who work travel distances only 2 to 4 times a year like Christmas, Easter & school holidays. This is when you need to plan your charging stops as you will find them pretty busy. Accommodation has to be booked months and sometimes more than 12 months in advance. Petrol stations can run out of fuel at these times as well though it is not common. I talk to other EV owners all the time & the only people who seem to have concerns about the charging infrastructure are those who don't own EVs.

Four Cannibals apply for a job in a big corporation… "Well", says the CEO, "This is a long shot, but if I hire you guys, you have to promise to not eat any of our staff." The Cannibals promise that they will not eat anyone, so they get hired. Everything is going well for a while, and one day the CEO calls them into his office. “You’re working well and all, but we’re missing an office cleaner. Do you blokes have something to do with that?” The Cannibals swear that they are innocent. The boss believes them, they all leave the CEO's office, and once out of earshot, the Cannibals leader turns to the other Cannibals. "You idiots!", he screams. "Who ate the cleaner?" One of the Cannibals sheepishly raises his hand. "You fool!", shouts the leader. "For weeks we've been feasting on Directors, Team Leaders, Supervisors, and Human Resources Managers - and then you go and eat someone they'll actually miss!"

It's important for the PM to be on the world stage as well as at home. In my opinion he's doing bloody well. He's stood up at the UN and announced an emissions target, and recognized a Palestinian state, two things that the USA are going exactly the wrong way on. Plus he still managed to keep the orange buffoon on side and organized a face to face with him, the lack of which the LNP has been bitching about non-stop. At the moment Australia is looking like a sensible, mature and trustworthy country, unlike several others.

That is completely nuts. Most ASX listed companies (and most large companies period) pay out between 30% and 50% of net profit as dividend. This is to allow profits to be reinvested into the business for growthand a buffer against bad times.. But you know, that investment in the case of Ausgrid would be to modernise it to, amongst other things, oh I dunno, handle electrcitity generated from other sources such as, oh, I dunno, wind and solar; or modernise distribution models for batteries, etc.. you know, stuff that allows investors a decent return, but smooths the transistion rather than the big cost that everyone is claiming it will be. At leeast only 17% of the profits is going overseas with the NSW government the main beneficiary of 40-off percent ownership. The loss of jobs is a furphy.. to maintain a renewable system will require as many if not more jobs, and hthe benefit is it will spread it more evenly across the regions as by definition, renwble generation will have to be more distributed, and it has to be maintained. I have spent quite some time in the nuclear generation industry and the amount of people needed to run a nuclear plant isn't what it used to be. Bring in SMRs - and the maintenance is a whole lot less. No one is going in every day and touchign the reactor.. it is the usual stuff like turbines, pumps, etc that are being maintained. That is the same for a coal or nuclear plant. Control systems are far better when they were, and telemetry is deployed a lot more than it was. A lot of the extrra people requied to run a nuclear plant over a coal plant are the helath and safety personnel and much higher levels of security (there is a separate nuclear power police force or something like that in the UK, and they are virtually anti-terrorist units). Yes, they are the same - EPRs. Sizewell was already running late before the first pour of concrete. Hinkley point is years and billions behind (check out the vid I posted in proud parents - daughter was in it for putting the dome pn reactor 2). Bith are subssidised and guaranteed by the govnermnet - socilaise the losses and guarantee the profits. In addition, there are minimum price guarantees per mw/h. Hinkley point was guaranteed at £92 per mw/h indexed from 2012. AI tells me the average spot for wholesale electricity was about £50 per mw/hr.. That is a f$cking big difference - so much for cheap power. Sizewell has similar guarantees.. So, the government has entered a huge contract for difference.. with the exception it fdoesn't pay out for the government. So much for efficient electricity. BTW, all this meddling is not exactly free market and in other coutries, we woudl call it communism. If you want to get jobs going in Aus, supoort a new indiustry manufacturing reneables technology and sell it (or at least use it locally),. Individually renewables is internmittent, but we are not just placing it in one spot in all of Australia, are we?

They usually turn the mic off if a speaker goes over their 15 minutes. I don't know why they let this idiot ramble for almost an hour.

You're asking for logic from Apple? They have rusted on supporters. If they released a turd embossed with the Apple logo there'd be a line around the block the night before release.

Battery storage is recognised as the answer, but it will be a slow grind to a successful transition away from coal and gas, and personally I don't believe Net Zero is achievable in the tight time frame set. However, I don't think there's anything wrong with setting a time frame, it just needs to be flexible. I believe more money should be invested in pumped hydro. I see a lot of huge open-pit abandoned mines throughout W.A., that have high piles of overburden (waste dumps) placed alongside them. Most of those open pits are half full of water. With the major height difference the holes and the tops of the waste dumps, it seems a no-brainer to me to set up pumped hydro on these otherwise worthless holes and dumps. In addition, they're in rural and remote areas, and there are generally power transmission lines nearby, so the existing transmission lines can be utilised to send power back to the high population coastal areas - where no-one wants "ugly" wind turbines or solar farms.

There's so many things wrong with that saying I don't know where to start. Maybe the saying should be "only a fool thinks that coal generated electricity powering his a/c and the petrol powering his F-350, is the same as his neighbour's solar generated electricity powering both their a/c and EV"

Here's a funny thing. My daughter rang this evening. She is staying in a B&B that is a converted church, and was sitting beside a stained glass window donated by our family name. I told her it was donated by my grandparents, that was the church we attended when I was young, but I had forgotten where it was.

The only thing that would make the US healthy is an overwhelming Democrat majority with the balls to take on the NRA and the vision to fix their health care system.

I think the poms did well. Charles gave a speech. Professionally as expected. Anyone who looked closely would have seen the King cringe when Trumpet was stumbling to read his crazy speech. And many in the world (including USA) were laughing at his rambling, halting efforts. And Chump asserted that he was the first US pres to get invited to visit? Ha! Anyway, all that is not about the Kirk story. I think all the brooha and martydom about Kirk highlights the shameful absence of outrage over previous assassination of politicians and spouses who happened to be Democrats.

It's disgusting. Every company is running scared of him. In WW2 the US stood up to fascists, who were attempting to kill all the Jews. Now the US is becoming fascist and Israel is committing genocide. Total reversal.

You clearly like to keep abreast of things.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-07-16/chinas-renewable-energy-boom-breaks-records/104086640

At some Time you are going to Have to GET OVER THIS GON, Or you will be no good to anyone, Including yourself. There's plenty out there who will have had a harder Row to Hoe than you have. It's UP to YOU. Nev

It depends on what state you're in, to be honest. Generally speaking, in the midwest, yes; in the north east and south west, not so much and the laws of self defence are more like those of England and other more moderate commonwealth founded countries. As an example, although they are scrotes, does someone entering your front yard to nick your fountain while you are upstairs and that person is posing no threat to you deserve to be shot and possibly killed? You may think so, and that is fair enough - we have our values and there is nothing to say my values are superior to yours.. But what if that person had an hionest and reasonable belief that the fountain was nicked from their front yard and all they thought they were doing was, rightly or wrongly, claiming back what was theirs? Yeah, what they were doing was still wrong, but what if it was theirs and you had nicked it? If you are under direct threat, the laws in at least NSW and England (and I presume every state in Australia) determine if the level of self defence was excessive based on what you, not the average person, perceived the threat to be. Once the threat was (or ought to have been) perceived by you as passed, you have very little defence. And the action you take to defend yourself that is allowed is very liberal - it has to be manifestly disproportionate to the threat, and even then it remains a partial defence. This, to me is manifestly reasonable and the US system that allows you to kill anyone entering your land that you perceive may be doing something bad leaves a gaping hole in the law that allows you to kill, say a letter dropper who is chasing a couple of leaflets that escaped thanks to the wind onto your front lawn

These Christian Fundamentalists are worse than the Taliban, with their BS religious beliefs and biblical interpretations. They're not Christians, they worship Guns and Money over God. They're continually in the grip of the Gun Lobby, and they continually rave on about the "freedom" of the Second Amendment. Their BS line is the Second Amendment protects them from a "tyrannical" Govt. What a crock of sh**. Armed civilians have no hope of overthrowing a Govt that possesses all of the most sophisticated military equipment that they need to win wars against similarly-equipped enemy nations. It is propaganda on a level that would make Goebbels envious. They are fully prepared to keep worshipping the Gun God and sacrificing their children, friends, family members, and leaders, endlessly in mass shootings - because any crackhead can acquire a hundred firearms of their choice under their f*****-up Constitution, that they refuse to modify, because they insist it came from God on stone tablets. One can only wish that all the sensible people leave America to move to countries where common sense reigns, and Christian Fundamentalist BS has no sway. Moloch the Gun God - https://www.abc.net.au/religion/the-price-of-freedom-child-sacrifice-and-the-american-gun-cult/10095320

Daughter moves into University today - studyign what the world needs more of: law. Over here, it is virtually mandatory that first years move into on campus university accomodation and then from second year on, find their own way. It is also common that the students move to the university of their choice across the country. Thankfully, daughter had Exeter as her first choice, then York, then St. Andrews. Exeter University is 35 miles away. York is 270 miles away, and St. Andrews is 483 miles away. The car is packed with all the accroutments she needs, and I am glad it is only a 35 miles away. We are both excited and sad because of the hole her moving out will leave at home. But it is wonderfult o see her thrive, and I am confident she will do well. Although there is a lot of the world she has to learn, she is mature and has a level head; something that I have yet to attain. Life changes, and we are always better mving with the change than trying to stop it; we can learn and continue to develop every day - and the positive for me is that her moving to the next chapter of her life brings my great joy, but also reminds me that we have to continue to learn and develop. She has reminded me that also I should be retired this year and the body has slowed a bit. the mind thankfully hasn't (not that I would notice, of course), and there is still so much to do.

The question is, what comes next? He has become a martyr to the Republican cause and we could well see more violent incidents. Trump is stoking the flames as usual.