willedoo

I miss my old 6 cylinder 4 litre Fairlane; it ran on the smell of an oily rag and rivalled a lot of 4 cylinder cars for economy. Only because it was low reving. It used to do 1850 rpm at 100 k/hr, and 2150 at 110 k/hr. My little Rodeo with the turbo 4 cylinder diesel does 3000 rpm at 100 k/hr. The Fairlane was only economical if you drove it like an old bloke. A young bloke with a heavy foot could make it drink a bit.

I know of a big kid who has mar-a-lay-go

I haven't had fritters for years but I don't ever remember any potato in them. The ones we had were corn beef fritters, just shredded corn beef in a type of batter fried.

Maybe accent is not the correct word and the word pronunciation would be more correct. In all other ways the bloke in the video speaks very much like the bloke from Warrnabool I used to work with, but that one word belt had quite a strong difference. Maybe he had a Scottish grandfather and it was just a family trait. Regarding small differences in Australian accents, it probably depends on where you are from regarding how noticeable some are from one's own pronunciations. For a Queenslander, South Australians are easy to pick but probably stand out to a lot of others as well. We can pick Victorians probably about 70% of the time but that depends on their age groups and sometimes where they live in Victoria. Sometimes the way they pronounce slang words is a giveaway. As far as NSW goes, a Queenslander generally can't pick them. We usually can't pick Tasmanians either. Probably one of the biggest accent differences is a demographic one where you get into the so-called outback areas . We always used to jokingly call the language 'ringer' as it's most predominate among station people and dilutes the closer toward the coastline you travel excepting places like the Kimberleys and the Territory. It comes from white people absorbing a lot of aboriginal accent into the speaking of English. You almost need an interpreter to understand some of the white people.

I thought I'd post this question here for want of a better place. I was watching a youtube video today of a bloke on a farm fixing a ride on mower, and a few small things about his accent made me think he was a Victorian. He had a very similar accent to a bloke from Warrnabool I used to work with in S.A.. One thing in the video stood out though, and that was the way he was pronouncing the word belt as balt. Not as in bolt, but more of a dipthong like baelt with the e part very brief. His profile said he was in southern Victoria, so the question is whether that is just some localised pronounciation or something more wide spread in the state.

The local council here has a bad habit of rezoning properties without telling the owner. It's happened twice to me and both times I've found out a couple of years later when doing a property search. It was originally a dual zoned block, rural A and rural B due to a boundary realignment. A few years later council changed it to rural residential without telling me, and the same deal a few years later when they changed it to one called limited development (landscape residential). It's basically a green zoning where you can clear up to 600 sq/metres for a residence but not allowed to touch the rest of it.

Dogs are smart. My dad used to keep the car keys on a wall hook and if he walked into the kitchen and picked them up when he was wearing work clothes, the little dog would jump up and follow him outside to get a ride up the paddock with him. If he was wearing good clothes, the dog knew he was going to town (no ride for the dog) and wouldn't stir.

You've kept those slides in good condition by the look of it. I had heaps of old slides and didn't store them right in the humid climate and they're nearly all stuffed now.

That's one thing the accountant told me which is a good concession. The two hectares doesn't have to be contiguous, so you can squeeze all the high value infrastructure in to the exempted area. I'm not up to date on whether you can still self value. I went through it with the accountant in 2021.

All Elon would have to do is saddle him up, pull the plug and the hot air would propel them all the way.

One of the few times you and I would agree Nev. The Courier Mail is a shocker. Go back 40 or 50 years ago and it was a fairly normal paper, but these days it's more like a trashy tabloid. One thing I'm not happy about is that almost all regional and local papers in Queensland are owned by Murdoch. That means you can't read them online without a subscription. In the google news feed for example, you might see a news headline from a different region and when you click on it, it's paywalled. I know media businesses have to make money, but getting a monopoly on local news can be a bit manipulative in my opinion.

I wonder how those countries with really low flat tax systems get their revenue. Hungary and Bulgaria have 10% flat tax. Maybe they have high resource earnings, and they might not spend as much on the population as we do. We get more annual revenue from excise on beer than we do from the petroleum resource rent tax, 2.7 billion to 1.5 billion. That sounds like a lot of beer, or a lot of tax on it.

Thanks Pete, I know well the two hectare ruling and have been through it all with accountants back when I was thinking of selling a few years ago. I was referring to the idea of taxing those under two hectares as well, which would make every suburban house up for CGT. That idea was floated recently by someone at the ANU but I haven't found any reference to Labor looking at the option. All I couldd find was some older stuff about the unrealised capital gain issue that was newsworthy a while back. With the CGT ruling on blocks over two hectares, I'd be happy if they bought in an exemption if you've lived there for more than twenty years, hadn't run a business on the property and used it as your primary residence. That should be proof enough that you're not an investor and speculator. They have that twenty year exemption for pension eligibility. No tax system is ever equal. If I sold here, I would be up for between 50 to 300 thousand in tax depending on some details. A mate just recently sold his farm for six million and didn't pay a cent of CGT because he owned it before the CGT introduction date.

Litespeed, just a suggestion, maybe tone down on the insults to posters you don't agree with and try posting on your position without playing the man. It's a bit disrespectful, and I've really noticed this forum getting quite toxic lately. Forumites can be polite and still disagree.

They're not rants, just long posts putting forward a lot of points that can't be squeezed into a one-liner like a lot of replies on the forum are. I've seen rants on this forum in the past but none with Jerry's signature. And to clear one thing up, I'm not defending Jerry because I'm pro Israel, I'm not. I'm not pro either side and personally couldn't give two hoots if both sides battled it out to the end, as long as they don't bring their hatred here to our country.

Well, I hope to stay here full term Marty. Getting rated off the place would be the only thing stopping me, but at the moment it's affordable. And it suits me not living like a king. I've got a lifestyle here kings could only dream about.

Can you provide some links to the articles? I haven't seen anything apart from that ANU bloke dreaming about it.

Specifically to get a bite from you Nev.

I haven't read a lot of news on the government plans, but haven't seen any reference to anybody thinking of introducing tax on the family home. The only reference I've seen to it is the daydreams of an ANU twit in this article: https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/4m-pensioners-how-australia-s-tax-system-subsidises-wealth-over-work-20260227-p5o666 I could originally read that article yesterday, but opening it now has the subscribers only block on it and turning javascript off doesn't unlock it. Maybe it only allows a free reading by one IP address once.

I doubt even each way Albo and co would be silly enough to levy CGT on the suburban home block. It would be political suicide. Most of the country would vote for whichever party vowed to reverse it. It would be like banning beer and television (some would say that would be a good thing).

People like myself get caught up in the CGT trap if we sell. I've owned my place for 38 years, principal place of residence only, no business ever run on the property. I'm just an age pensioner with the arse out of my pants but I would still be up for a minimum of $50,000 tax, possibly quite a lot more if I sold. When people talk about scrapping the 50% discount if you've owned the property more than 12 months, they think it's all rich investors involved. They are largely ignorant of the fact a lot of non rich ordinary people get caught in the net as well. People in glass houses are good at throwing stones but they'd squeal if they were no longer eligible for the CGT exemption on their suburban block. My big tax crime is that my block is bigger than two hectares and I bought it after 20th. September 1985. If you have more than two hectares, with the pension, you can get an asset test exemption if you've lived continuously on the property as principle residence for twenty years. They knocked me back on the first application due to me giving up work to look after my sick, elderly father for a while. I stayed at his place with him and gave centrelink that address for correspondence regarding the carer's pension I received. Because of that period, they used the angle that I didn't live at my place for twenty continuous years. I ended up putting in a stat dec saying I still considered my place principle residence during that period and gave evidence such as power and phone still connected, mail still delivered there and stuff like that. They ended up granting me a full pension, so fingers crossed they don't change their mind in the future.

The only similar experience I've had was not with the Greens, but with our local environment council which is an independent organisation. Back before the tree clearing laws came in, a landowner near me with a 20 acre block on the side of a hill got a dozer and cleared the lot, then got an excavator to terrace the whole block like rice paddies. It looked awful, like a giant rock quarry and could be seen for miles. Probably the worst eyesore I've ever seen in the district. I decided to let the environment council know without naming names, just to inform them of the type of thing the shire council was approving. I thought it might be in their interest. They were barely interested, and all they seemed interested in was shoving brochures and membership application forms in my face. I walked out of there fairly disgusted that all they seemed to want was membership money. I think it was probably individual staff on the day to blame rather than the whole organisation.

When the war finished they had a lot of Japanese held in pow type camps awaiting repatriation back to Japan. In a lot of them they didn't have allied soldiers guarding them, they were doing it themselves. One night my dad and his mate were returning back to camp from a local watering hole and walked past one of the camps. All hell broke loose, the sentry called the alarm and the camp commandant roused the whole camp of Japanese out of bed to form up on the parade ground. He got my dad and his mate who were full as a boot to inspect the troops. The old man said it was one of the craziest experiences he had over there, two private ranked Australians with the wobbly boot on walking up and down the Japanese ranks inspecting them. He told me they hammed it up a bit and did a fairly dodgy officer impersonation to give the commandant a bit of face.

Over time there seemed to be a lot of fairly solid evidence against him.

Getting off topic a bit here, but this photo of my dad and his platoon making their way up through Balikpapan was taken on the first day of the landings. The same day, another platoon in their company got strafed by a trigger happy American plane. Lucky nobody was killed but some were wounded. They were right out in the open as well, in clearly visible land just off the beach.