kgwilson

Electric vehicles are the future of personal transport and also for public commuting. I don't think that is in doubt. Hydrogen power is still a way off but that will become more viable as it is sourced from massive wind and solar generating farms currently in the pipeline. The 50000 hectare site in WA will produce more energy than the entire country uses currently from all sources (excluding transport). The development of battery technology in the past year has been staggering. BYD in China produce a new blade battery that has improved energy density dramatically, is guaranteed for 500,000 km and should last for up to 2 million km. When its output degrades after the car is worn out at say 500,000 km it can be used as energy storage for your home charged via your rooftop solar. A number of BYD, NIO, XPENG & other Chinese EVs now have a 1000 km range. CATL is the worlds largest battery manufacturer and now supplies TESLA with batteries for its EVs. CATL is also Chinese. There are 300 Chinese EV manufacturers producing more than 700 different models from basic boxes to ultra luxurious top of the range limousines. The argument about EVs using more fossil fuel to produce only make sense to those who look backward. Obviously everything being produced now uses materials made with the assistance from fossil fuels and existing steel making technology. This is also changing. Green steel has already been produced in Germany using no coal at all. Plastics are almost all recyclable so the argument is largely from human dinosaurs. China is now the worlds factory. Politics aside their technology is mind boggling and their infrastructure projects over the last 20 years are just astonishing. The projects happening in Australia are also mind blowing. Just check https://reneweconomy.com.au/ A Melburnian, Sam Evans has a youtube channel called The Electric Viking. He puts out several videos a week covering electric car developments around the world. There are hundreds of Videos on all things Electric Cars. Have a look. The development in just the past year is incredible. The cheapest Electric car in China is $US4,000.00. The BYD Dolphin a Corolla sized hatchback is to be released in Australia this year. The price in China is around $US20,000.00. It looks good, very high tech, has the new blade battery with a 1/2 million km battery warranty.

Like the US Chief said when they left heaps of equipment in Afghanistan. It doesn't matter if the Taliban get their hands on it. It is all so unreliable that it will all brek down in a short time & they will have no spares to fix it.

Perottet has at least distanced himself and disagreed with Gladys who found Pork barrelling an acceptable process in government. But now he is showing his true fundamentalist catholic sentiments. He has a mother with terminal cancer who is in accute pain & would like to die but No as far as he is concerned compassion is all he should give. Assisted dying is not an option al all so he is prepared to sit there wringing his hands while she dies a slow and agonising death. Complete religious nutter IMO.

Religious nut jobs make good politicians because they believe in something that they cannot prove and have no evidence that it even exists so they create rules around fantasies and call them laws.

I always understood a trust had to be registered so therefore it must have a trustee so why can't they find out who it is?

It amazes me that the US left so many aircraft including helicopters there even though they disabled them. It is only 125 NM to Peshawar in Pakistan easily within range of anything. Maybe they tried but Pakistan refused. The Taliban now have billions worth of US hardware & even though much of it needs a lot of maintenance I'll bet they will work out ways of keeping it going.

Medal tallies don't mean much until the games are over. China is going to do well as it is right next door as well as having a lot of people with disabilities in a nation of 1.4 billion people to choose from. Based on gold medals only at this stage Australia has 7 Gold and China 36 & on a per capita basis with Australia having 7, China should have about 390. This is of course absurd. There probably aren't that many awarded in the entire games.

It's a 2 stroke as well. Imagine if it could be turbocharged to get say 150rpm. The ship ,might get up to 40 knots 😁

I still live in hope that he'll be in jail by 2024.

I don't really know why Morrison got the title "Scotty from marketing" because he wasn't any good at that at all. In 1998 he became the director of the newly formed New Zealand Office of Tourism & Sport. He left under a cloud (well he was basically fired) in 2000 a year before his contract was up. At the time he claimed to be the creator of the highly successful 100% Pure NZ campaign but in fact had nothing to do with it. Then he was appointed Managing Director of Tourism Australia in 2004 overseeing the totally disastrous "Where the Bloody Hell are you" campaign & he was fired in 2006. Politics is the only thing he has been any good at because he is a consummate greaseball, liar, ruthless operator & religious nut job happy clapper. Crikey he can't even get anyone to willingly shake his hand. The problem is we don't have anyone who can take his place. Half of his Minsters have involvement in various scandals & his main internal rival is close to being a neo nazi. Labors Albo has the charisma of a dead duck but he has no-one challenging him. Personally I wish that Penny Wong or Tania Plibeseck would put their hand up. They at least appear have some decent morals

This is some of what the US gave the Taliban. Between 2002 & 2017 the US gave the ANA $US28 billion worth of weaponry most of which is now in Taliban hands. 2000 armoured vehicles including many $300k Humvees 40 aircraft including blackhawks & drones. Originally they gave 208 aircraft but many were used by ANA pilots to escape, others were in maintenance or inoperative. 600,000 military weapons including M16 assault rifles 162,000 pieces of communications equipment 16,000 night vision goggles https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/planes-guns-night-vision-goggles-talibans-new-us-made-war-chest-2021-08-19/ "Ironically, the fact that our equipment breaks down so often is a life-saver here," said one US official So as time goes by a lot of the stuff especially aircraft will be discarded as they have no means to keep it operative. I guess that is one benefit of making unreliable stuff.

Why not?

If the Taliban have changed as a number of media reports indicate they want to be recognised as a legitimate government with other nations and have promised not to begin a murderous round of reprisals & protect the rights of certain individuals and women as well. They still will have some pretty strict Sharia laws but they have learned something in the last 40 years of conflict. The problem is, can their political side keep their terrorist side at bay. The old regime was excessively brutal with numerous public executions and torture. They need to make an example of some of their murderous lot by bringing them to account for their actions now that they have declared peace if they go on the rampage again. If they can do this, then the change will be good for Afghanistan. It will have some pretty draconian and strict laws but the level of killing should disappear. Upwards of 200,000 Ahghanis have died since the Americans invaded compared to 2,500 Americans and 1000 from other nations. At the moment there is just chaos and fear. The rapid takeover is an indication that there is a resigned acceptance of the Taliban. The people are tired of 40 years of war but above all tired of foreign influence. Only time will tell if this change is for the better..

The yanks may well have secured the airport but it is surrounded by Taliban with plenty of rockets to fire at arriving or departing aircraft. I notice they mostly have US HumVees and US armaments other than their ubiquitous AK47s. The US needs to set up a dialogue with the Taliban political arm to try and ensure they can get people out without the rank and file mob armed to the teeth going crazy.

Apparently we have sent a C17 & refuelling tanker to get people out, NZ is sending a Herc, the Brits are already there along with Italians & Germans & the yanks have secured the Airport (according to them anyway). We certainly have a duty to support those who helped us even though we should not have been there in the first place. It will be interesting to see how long they have to wait in detention or whatever before being granted visas or some form of residency given our pathetic record on such issues, eg the Tamil family from Biloela. Given that 90% of the ANA trained by the US walked away or were Taliban sympathisers, I wonder how many had infiltrated the ranks of Western helpers?

The US secretary of State has said "This is manifestly not Saigon". Well with Kabul in Taliban hands, the President and government Ministers fleeing the country, US helicopters landing in the embassy grounds evacuating staff, civilians and Afghans who worked for them, and US officials frantically burning documents, it looks exactly like Saigon in April 1975 to me with one exception. That is they have bases close by to evacuate to rather than ships offshore.

The fact that the Taliban is the organisation that is taking over is irrelevant. They are Afghanis and everyone else who has been there for the past 20 years is not. The Yanks have spent a Trillion dollars and trained Afghanis who had no commitment to anything they stood for. When I was there in the 1970s they were a proud people and very friendly and had no animosity to anyone. I was welcomed everywhere I went, even up into the mountains and the poppy fields. Most Afghanis just want their country back. The Taliban may be headed by a few religious nutters who want to turn time back 400 years but many of them are ordinary Muslim Aghanis. Sure they will have some repressive conservative fundamentalist laws but it is their country & we can not impose our so called democracy on them even after 20 years and a trillion dollars. The latest news is that the Taliban have entered Kabul and a spokesman has told Al Jazera news that they are setting up a meeting with the existing government for a peaceful transfer of power. All the while US helicopters are ferrying people out. Shades of Saigon 1975 absolutely. They got rid of the British, the Russians and now finally the Yanks and their lackeys which includes us. Since 2001 there have been about 3500 coalition deaths but there have been about 64,100 deaths of the Afghan military and 111,000 civilian deaths. To Afghanis the Taliban is not the enemy WE are.

I got my 2nd AZ shot yesterday & have had no effects at all. Nothing, didn't even feel the needle. First shot 12 weeks ago I had a mild headache & woke up in the night with the chills but that was it. The effectiveness reports are confusing as each new one seems to be different. The latest effectiveness reports against hospitalisation put AZ at 92% & Pfizer at 96% after 2 shots. Now a study in Europe of 1.3 million people has shown there is virtually no difference between Pfizer and AstraZeneca in developing blood clots. It now seems the new MRNA (messenger ribo nucleic acid) vaccines lose their effectiveness over 4 - 6 months & the Israeli study shows the Pfizer vaccine only 39% effective against the Delta strain. So who and what do you believe. Media hype, sensationalist and variable health reporting, political bullshit, anti vax crap and Sky News is enough to confuse anyone left who is still sane. My wife & I were out in the front garden & a couple in their 80s who live up the road came by. They are unvaccinated and aren't getting vaccinated. Why I asked. Answer because we don't know what's in it. I asked if they'd had a Flu shot. Answer Yes. Question do you know what's in that. No answer. Then we changed the subject. There will be lots of people with these sorts of completely irrational views because of what seems to them to be coronavirus white noise. They have tuned out & don't want to know. Well Delta reached Armidale today after Newcastle yesterday. It is on the march & is now probably unstoppable.

When I bought my new house with a heat pump hot water system I wasn't impressed with the fact that the hot water was never very hot. Then I discovered the regulator that limited the hot water to 60 deg or less by mixing cold with the hot. I simply removed that and now I have really hot water when I want it & since I put a timer on that circuit to only operate in daylight hours most of the power needed to run the heat pump comes from the solar panels on the roof. If I sell the house I'll reinstall the regulator before the pre sale inspection mob get a chance to whinge about it.

Often I'll ask for a cash price when buying in a shop but mostly it makes no difference these days but if you are buying from a business that includes a service cash talks loudly. Some of that cash never gets declared as income. I am always popping in to Bunnings for things and if I don't keep a receipt (you can get these emailed to you now) I can't remember what I purchased by the time the statement is ready (also on line) half the time.

I do pretty much the same though I have a fee free card so there are no rewards. I used to keep all receipts & reconcile these against the statement monthly. The account is always paid off fully each month. Now I only keep receipts for large items that have a warranty or multiple items on them because if I pay by phone (googlepay) a record of the transaction is kept on the phone and I also get an instant notification from my bank every time my card is debited with any amount. Without receipts though I sometimes struggle to work out what I spent the money on a month later when reconciling the statement. For me cash is almost history.

I got $100.00 from an ATM about 6 months ago & it is still in my wallet. It is kind of an emergency fund when I may be somewhere that does not have eftpos or credit facilities. I pay by credit card for everything, even a cup of coffee & on line generally via Paypal as it offers the best protection and money back guarantee. The only times I have been into banks in the past 4 or 5 years is to deposit landing fees and cash paid for soft drinks at the aero club. I keep one $2.00 coin in the car to put in the shopping trolley at Aldi. We now have an honesty tab at the Aero club & every couple of months I email members with the total they owe & they do a direct credit. There is still plenty of cash out there though, especially with older people. I see them pull out wads of $50.00 notes to pay for their groceries. The same goes for some tradies who I suspect do a few cash jobs here & there.

The argument that the climate is continually changing and has done for millennia is true but how do those who believe this is the case now reconcile the fact that the change since the industrial revolution (230 years ago) is far more dramatic than any other change in recorded history and that those other changes happened over thousands of years. Releasing carbon always occurred from all sorts of causes like forest fires, volcanic eruptions etc but we have dug up billions of tons of coal and oil that took billions of years to accumulate and released it in just 300 years. The maths and as Greta said the science is crystal clear.

Reagan was a B grade actor, an ultra conservative and a warmonger. He got a nickname "Ronald Rayguns". And the US still wonders why nobody likes them.

I believe that there are still a few Americans there. They better have enough choppers to get them out. I think their problem is going to be that the Taliban are better armed than the Viet Cong were.