kgwilson

I note that the Chinese have risen from the bottom to almost the top just behind Japan as the worlds largest car exporter and as far as manufacturing goes they are by far the largest. Only 3 or 4 years ago Great Wall and MG were pretty crappy. Now they are joined by a myriad of other Chinese brands & the MG4 electric vehicle has been hailed as the best medium EV in the world by many motoring writers. They still make some shocking crap with stupid claims and heaps of fake stuff especially mobile phones & electronic stuff but pay a reasonable price and you get very good quality. China is now the undisputed world factory for consumer goods. Their efforts to get into the very top echelon of semi conductor production has so far not been able to match silicon valley & US designed chips are produced in Taiwan & South Korea, but they are not far behind and may catch up & surpass the US before we know it. It is all pretty scary but there is one big issue & that is they rely on their income from the West. If the US & Europe stopped buying Chinese made stuff and started making everything again that they now get made in China, the Chinese economy would collapse totally. That of course will never happen but with the now realisation of what is happening with the rise of Chinas political and military might, the mad scramble to reduce the reliance on China is beginning in earnest.

The paid parental leave bit threw me so I checked. In both NZ & Australia you can get paid parental leave shared between partners. It is for 18 weeks in Australia & up to 52 weeks in NZ. It is means tested in Australia but not in NZ & there it starts at week 36 of pregnancy. If you have money you can get the very best education in the world in the US, but then that is how everything works in the US. There are some safety nets but often they are hard to find and many fall through the gaps. Australia seemed keen to emulate the US system while the Lib/Nats were in the box seat and the original social welfare process has been eroded steadily for quite a number of years. Things may begin the level out again but cost and demands for so many things that were not issues many years ago will ensure little change.

Ordinary Russians especially older people have seen worse times under Soviet rule but they are continually fed lies about the West and only see what State propaganda allows them to on TV which is based on being attacked by the West and defence of the motherland. Putins support is very high amongst these people and they believe they are being attacked by Nazis and now by LGBTQI+ Nazis. They also have something in common with the US poor. Most are devoutly religious and believe their god will provide. Yeah right. The educated, intelligent and informed Russians have mostly fled the country if they don't have major family ties keeping them there. Authoritarian regimes have almost all got where they are by eliminating intellectuals, academics, political challengers and top religious leaders. The Russians are masters of this from centuries of practice. Stalin got rid of 20 million.

The 60c a kWh nearly sent the NSW Government broke back in 2010 as the uptake has massive and thousands of Solar installations of only about 1.5 kW were getting cheques in the mail instead of a bill. It was stopped immediately but those who had contracts for I think 5 years kept getting the credits for that time. I installed my system in 2014 & while it is only 2kW I still export half of what I produce but now the feed in tariff is only 5.5 cents a kWh.

Classic pincer movement to encircle troops, cut off supplies and exit routes. Used very successfully in WW2 by both the Germans & Soviets & also to destroy the German counter attack in Normandy which led to the liberation of France.

Don't forget that the US & the UK are members of NATO as well. The UK has somewhat been relegated to a lesser power since WW2 but they still have a very professional Army, Navy and Air Force and produce some very formidable weaponry as well as being an independent Nuclear power. BAE Systems is the worlds 3rd largest armaments producer and their latest Dreadnought class nuclear submarines are supposed to be better than anything else with Rolls Royce producing some of the best safest hi tech mini nuclear reactors. At present there are some 10,000 Ukrainians in the UK being trained with some of the trainers supplied by the Australian Defence force. These are practical support processes. The US has some of the best equipment and armaments and they seem content to keep throwing money at the war (while absolutely needed) rather than any real practical assistance other than some "How to use training".

The US & Western Europe make up well over half of Chinas trading so sanctions against them by China will hurt China as much as them, probably more. With Chinas rapid rise to become the worlds factory so has the cost of manufacture there with the increase in labour costs so manufacturing is shifting to places like Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and of course India. While Western businesses get masses of things made in China, it is to a specification they have supplied and they still have the capability to manufacture it at home though most of the manufacturing infrastructure is gone and would need to be re-established or outsourced to other countries. China does make good stuff but makes masses of cheap rubbish over specified copies. Xi Jinping is not stupid & while he wants to keep in Putins good books, any direct involvement by supplying Putin with weapons is very risky and I don't think he will go that far.

Just like the pre-D-Day inflatable stuff in 1944 that helped fool the Germans into thinking the invasion was going to be at Calais. This time though the Russians know that some are fake. The problem for them is to know which ones will bite.

There were several unsuccessful attempts on Hitlers life during WW2 and the entire Western World & the USSR was at war with Germany. The attempts were all internal. No-one could get near the arsehole. Putler is the same. He is totally paranoid about his security. If it happens it will have to be an inside job by a suicide jockey. Putin just organises for anyone who he thinks is becoming a threat to fall down stairs or out a window. Hitler wasn't that subtle. They were summarily shot.

2ks over. How do they account for speedo error? I know all speedos are supposed to read over the limit but some are pretty accurate. Accuracy changes with tyre wear as well. I don't know about Victoria but a speedo check is not part of the annual inspection in NSW.

If you have ever been to Jackson Bay, the furthest South you can go by motor vehicle (4WD minimum) on the West Coast of the South Island of NZ you will know what a sandfly bite is like. The buggers are huge. They put their bum up & head down and suck blood out by the litre & there are about 10,000 per cubic metre of air. I met a helicopter pilot there who was recovering deer shot in the mountains for the venison export market back in the 1980s. He told me he was refuelling and put 20 litres of fuel into his chopper before he realised it was actually a Jackson Bay sandfly. The stories are as tall as the mountains down there.

True. They all have lethal proboscis, but nothing bites with its bum.

The Chinese are not entirely stupid even though they have the same authoritarian style of regime but their economy depends upon trade with Europe and the US. If they start supplying Putin they risk losing a massive amount of this and with it their income and influence. Putlers only other real mate is Lukashenko & he is only there because Putler has propped him up. He would have been gone after the last election if Putin had not stepped in to save his skin when the pro democracy movement got the whole country protesting. He has recently had a whinge about Ukrainian military exercises near the Belarus border. Western intelligence suggests that if he sent the Belarus army in to Ukraine it is most likely that there would be a mass mutiny & they military would turn back on Lukashenko. There is already a Ukrainian regiment made up of Belarusian volunteers for them to join. One day to go before the 1st anniversary of the invasion. The long awaited Russian offensive is likely to be a fizzer given the antics of the last few weeks. Ukraine is doing what it should by telling no-one about what they have planned. They seem to be doing what Montgomery did at El Alamein in 1942. Build up men armaments and supplies until you have superiority in all fields. The waiting back then frustrated a lot of his Generals but he refused to budge. When he made the move, even with a number of mistakes he had the reserves to guarantee victory & the 8th army chased the Germans out of Egypt through Libya to surrender at Tunis. Hopefully this will happen again. The only Elephant in the room is Putlers nukes.

Never heard of him. The only one I remember was Donald Campbell and Bluebird back in the 60s or 70s

Wasps and Bees Sting. As far as I know none of them bite but sandflies and mosquitos do.

I made the mistake of allowing a pair of Welcome Swallows to nest in my Garage some 20 years ago. They built an elaborate mud nest high up the wall & I used to leave the roller door open about 100mm from the floor so they had access. They would fly in with the most amazing accuracy at very high speed. Once the 3 or 4 young fledged and left I removed the nest and cleaned the wall. The problem was that next Spring there were more than a dozen of them wanting to build nests. I had to keep the door locked but they kept on trying for weeks.

So true. The poor female Cop shot by the conspiracist nutters in Qld looked like a Teenager. Even her hat was too big for her.

Putin wouldn't even go for a run without a surrounding army of minders. Shirtless on a horse is about all he has ever been able to muster. Then he might have to confront Tony shirtfronting him.😁

Cops in NZ still don't carry guns either, even after the Christchurch massacre. They have what they call the Armed Offenders Squad, highly trained and more or less Commando/SAS types which now has a lot more units than when I lived there. Normal cops have ready access to firearms these days & I am told they always have firearms in patrol cars, they just don't carry them on their hip.

Tonights 4 corners on the ABC was a BBC doco with a Journo who spent a week or so with Ukrainian soldiers on the front line using drones, artillery & mortars & everyday Ukrainians who had joined the fight. It was just before the planned assault to retake Kherson. Well worth watching on iView if you missed it.

There are thousands of people posting these short Tiktok style videos these days all for their 15 seconds of fame, in this case 4 seconds and nothing is off the table including 100% CGI. Setup or fabrication, take your pick. Real? not likely.

And do you think Putin cares? He has got 140 million to choose from & none of them matter to him. He'll celebrate with a few vodkas & white wine for the 100 yards & not give the slightest thought to the 2000 dead soldiers or their grieving families.

Ursula Andress was a swiss actor and starred in the first Bond Film Dr No. She became a sex symbol after that and earned the new surname given by the press with the roles she played. She is now 85 & lives in Rome.

They're American. Of course they can be that stupid even without being blond. There are still 40 million who thing the election was stolen from Trump. It is an absolute setup though. The bloke could have said straight away this is an electric car so doesn't use petrol (gas) but he farted around checking other things and not making a simple statement.

This was all recorded by Ukrainian drones last Saturday and published by several Telegram and Utube channels. See my post from last Sunday. Because of the footage and publicity they were not able to deny it. It will have been banned from publication in Russia though but now with news getting through from satellite internet access to tech savvy Ruskies there must be more and more doubt of the official line creeping in to Russian society.