willedoo

I'm not joking, just asking a serious question. What is average if voting can flip either way on small margins? Does a 52/48 win represent what the average voter thinks, or would a figure of 70/30 better represent what the average voter thinks.

If they come to a peace deal where the regime is still in power, the Straits are open and oil prices back to normal, that's a big loss for the U.S. no matter how they dress it up. Iran lost a lot of military assets and a few top people, but any promises they make are not worth much, so I'd agree, a war comprehensively lost.

octave, I'm not sure what average means when applied to voting. I'm not good at mathematics, so hopefully someone can explain it to me. Most elections, even what they term landslide elections, have very little in vote percentage between the winners and losers. If the Democrats have a 52% vs 48% win, does that mean that 52% are average voters and 48% are not average voters.

ome, you only need to feel sorry for the approximate half of them that voted Democrat. For the rest that voted Republican, some might have some regrets but the majority are glad to be rid of Democrat government. I've had some personal experience with it as I have friends who are American, and my stepfather's two sons by his first marriage live in the U.S. and are married to Americans. Their views all vary a bit. A mate who was out here last year just before he passed away had been a Republican voter until he lost the right to vote, so he didn't vote in the Trump election. He broadly supported the Republicans and was fairly neutral on Trump. On the other hand, his older brother is a Republican and absolutely hates Trump but will still vote Republican over Democrat.

The M-63 Ural frame is off the ute, oiled up and living in the shed. I'll park it up until I decide what to do with it. Some would probably suggest using it as a boat anchor. As I mentioned previously, the bloke I bought it from had only just bought it, so knew nothing of it's past history. He kept the single 500 Yamaha motor that was in it and sold the rest. Whoever installed the Yamaha motor had to butcher the frame to fit it in vertically. I'll most likely de-modify the frame back to original as the motot I'd put in it is a much lower height than the Yamaha 500 engine. In the attached photo the red dotted line is where the top brace was cut out. The red arrows point to where the down tubes have been cut and extended with sleeve inserts. That wont be too hard to fix; I'll just jig it, cut the top welds and pull the two sections back to the original position leaving the sleeves inside. Then it's just a matter of grinding a V and welding, then grinding flush. For strength and appearance, there's the option of welding a chevron over each of them, and possibly incorporate a cross brace in that area. The swing arm is also upside down but it fits both ways. The older Ural swing arm setup looks a bit like a plunger rear end from a distance and has that bobber look with the rake of the frame. It's got some really solid sidecar mounts. The top mounts are substantial size 10mm plate. The second attached photo is a model Ural offered only a few years ago and is now discontinued; I forget the name of it. It was a retro look model that offered the old style telescopic forks and similar rear end to the M-63.

I had a closer look at the old headlight that was bolted to that Ural frame. A small trademark on the lens identified it as an Everwing brand which was the brand of headlights supplied to Datsun. Googling Datsun photos pins the age down to anywhere between the early thirties and early fifties, either from a Datsun car or Datsun light truck. It's a nice old headlight and quite big, about 200mm wide across the front and around 180mm centre of lens to the rear.

Yes, John Howard found that out the hard way. He finally got a majority in the Senate allowing them to pass legislation at will, brought in work choices and got walloped for it. At least that's the way I remember it if someone can correct me.

It seems like most of the political journos are writing and saying that the rise of One Nation has meant the end of the two party system as we've known it. It might come to that, where we have three main parties for a period of time. Or One Nation could flame out, the coalition eventually rebuilds, and we're back to the old two party system. I don't follow European politics much, but some of those countries seem to have multi parties and they try to cobble together a coalition of parties after the election to get a governing majority. It makes me wonder if that's the direction we're heading here in Australia.

The amalgamation of councils by the then state government made it a lot worse here. Small, well run councils thet were in the black and cashed up were swallowed up by the larger councils that were heavily in debt. The supercouncils it created was like handing kids the keys to the lolly shop. Higher rates, more potholes for most places. It increased the bureaucracy a lot; our council now has 1,800 staff and 1,000 of them work in the office behind a desk. Things worked a lot better under the old system of smaller, leaner councils. In our three tier system of government, local government is far and away the weak link in my opinion. They are the most wasteful of the three and the worst for caring about the people that voted them in. There would be good councils around the country and anyone who lives in those council districts is very fortunate indeed as it's not the norm.

The Urals like that M-63 frame I posted above, were made by IMZ-Ural who had a plant in the Ural Mountains. They moved there from Moscow during the war when a lot of manufacturing moved east. Their sister bike was the Dnepr brand made in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR. A lot of the frames and engines were identical and in the early days IMZ supplied engines to them. I think after that they were probably license built engines.

The new ones are a handy thing but certainly a bit expensive. For the last two or three years the ones imported here with left hand sidecars have the gear up option, which is 2WD on demand with the sidecar wheel driving for dirt road/off road use. It's a straight drive, non differential. Before that it was only the Russian/European/U.S. models with the right hand sidecar that had the 2WD option due to the drive shaft being on the right hand side. The new ones drive a lot better with a sidecar compared to the old ones that had telescopic fork front ends. The newer leading link setup pushes the front wheel as far forward as legal and makes them behave a lot better. They're headquarted in the U.S. now and have moved production from Russia to Kazakhstan to get around the war sanctions.

The ABC radio has just issued a traffic warning of a rooster on the loose in the vicinity of the big pineapple. They're on to it. It's usually something like a ladder on the road or an escaped cow or horse, but this is the first rooster warning I've heard.

On that rate topic, I also heard the Gold Coast mayor on the radio saying they're keeping the rate increase this year to a 4% average. I'm not looking forward to my next bill after our council recently announced they're a billion dollars in the red on their budget.

I might have to stop complaining about my 30% council rate increase last year. I was listening to a grazier speaking on the ABC radio country hour talking about his latest rate bill from the Cassowary Coast Regional Council. He's had a 60% increase this time around. Combined with big increases preceding that, he's now handing over a third of his income to council in rates. Or as he put it another way, for every three cows he sells, one goes to paying rates.

onetrack, the last quote is not a totally over the top response, but I wouldn't put it in the respectful and courteous discussion category. When it comes to inappropriate speech on this forum, I'll be the first to put my hand up and admit to it. I've never pretended I don't. But I don't do it to other members because I don't like or agree with the content of their posts. The only time I ark up on someone is as a response to someone making unfounded and ludicrous attacks on me personally. And then I have to slap myself and remember the old Chinese saying that if you argue with a fool, there's two fools arguing. I'm not having a go at anyone here for their personal viewpoints, just calling out the blatant double standards that seem to be the norm on this forum lately. I think everyone on both sides needs to take a chill pill.