willedoo

It amazes me some of the places that don't have mobile phone coverage. Ten years ago I went for a visit to Tasmania and visited people in the Upper Esk Valley. They had no coverage and had to drive to town to get a signal. As far as I know it's still like that. I would have thought with the number of people it would service, it would be a fairly simple matter to put a tower on one of the hills there.

For anyone still pondering why so many people are turning to One Nation, the easiest way to find out is just go down to the pub and talk to some concretors or brickies or truckies. People from a variety of walks of life are making the shift, but the biggest demographic is the working class blue collar workers. They'll tell you all about it.

On the subject of voters no longer listening, it has a two part effect. On the one hand, they no longer trust or believe the incumbents and stop listening to the sales pitch. The other factor is that the only way the majors can dismantle the One Nation juggernaut is to point out the faults and weaknesses of ON. That's where the second part comes in; people stop listenening to that as well and basiclly couldn't care less about the party's faults if it means getting rid of the status quo.

Jerry gets it. What is happening with the swing to One Nation is a movement to burn down the house and start again. The problem for the incumbents is that at some point, people are so fed up that they just stop listening. The federal Labor government has long ago realised that this could hurt them, and not just the Coalition as they initially thought. The government is and will be trying to turn it around, but once people develop a deaf ear to them, the government is done. Maybe it's reached that point now, but if not, it's not far away.

Yes, it could be. I think some of those in denial are hoping the string of One Nation wins are just the result of a few isolated bogan electorates that didn't know what they were doing. They're hoping it will just all go away but I think it might keep repeating all over the country. The test of it will be the Victorian election. That's the state where One Nation would traditionally have the least success, so if they take a swag of seats there, you would think a few heads would finally pull out of the sand.

Among that parade of cars I saw a fairly ordinary old station wagon drive by with a few passengers and a heap of gear in the back. Still not sure whether they were meant to be part of it or just someone like the Griswolds who had taken a wrong turn and got caught up in it all.

I guess with the low initial cost of the bike, it would be an economical thing to mod one like that.

There's a lot of good low mileage second hand Royal Enfields on the market for very cheap prices. The fact that the new price is relatively low has some bearing on their used prices. They usually don't have much on the clock for a couple of reasons. First one is that a lot of people that own them are only occasional riders, and a lot of old blokes get too old for riding and sell them, still with low k's. With second hand 650 Interceptors, it's often the case that someone has bought one and not far down the track realised they're not a speed machine, so they sell to upgrade to something a bit racier. You can pick up Interceptors with 4,000 k's on the clock for half the price of a new one.

I came across this video of a bunch of rat rods at the Beatersville Rod and Custom show in Kentucky. It shows a big variety of contraptions, even some Volkswagens.

All the attention will be on Victoria now. Just under three months to go for that one.

Premier Roger Cook would be glad there's another three years to go before the state election. His neighbouring electorate is a similar demographic, so the way I see his margin, even though it's 12% higher than what Labor had in Secret Harbour, if the same thing happened ie: losing half the vote to ON and ON also picking up a third of the Liberal vote, Cook would be rolled as well. Three years is a good buffer.

I haven't seen any updated figures, but the count as of this morning was 57-42 after preferences with 74.5% of the vote counted. Compared to the last election in 2025, One Nation increased their vote share by around 8,000 votes. 6,000 of those were taken from Labor and 2,000 from the Liberals. Labor's vote roughly halved compared to their last result. It's shown that One Nation can take very safe traditional Labor heartland seats. If you go back to Secret Harbour's former entities of Warnbro and Peel, it's been very safe Labor territoty since 1989.

It's a big call for a party to claim victory when the vote count is still below 50%. What they're basing their confidence on is the fairly large pre-poll booth that's yet to be counted fully. Exit polling at the pre-poll booth showed ON getting a better result than what they received today, so they're assuming the booth will go their way.

One Nation has claimed the seat, finished all the speeches and started the victory party, but Labor hasn't conceded defeat yet, saying it's too close to call. If confirmed, it will be the first seat ON has taken from Labor since the Queensland election in 1998.

A big swing to One Nation in the WA Secret Harbour by-election. ON is on around 35% primary vote, Labour has a 22% swing away from them to give 25% primary vote. It will come down to preferences, currently TPP giving ON 53%, Labor 47%. It will be a bit hard to predict with WA having optional preferential voting.

It's the big brother of the FJ ute we had when I was a kid learning to drive. I've never forgotton the squeaky steering wheel those FJ's had.

Nice old Studebaker. I like the current culture where unrestored or minimally restored cars are as popular as full restorations. It makes it a lot more financially accessable for more people. For too long the main goal was to restore back to as new condition, and that was a very labour intensive and expensive process. It's horses for courses and the full resto people get great satisfaction doing their thing, but it's also nice not to see the history rubbed off or painted away on a lot of these old vehicles. I like the lived in look.

The same bloke has this '51 Chev ute for sale. As would be expected for a Chev ute, it's about four times the price of the Plymouth posted above.

Spotted this old '51 Plymouth P-22 Concord on Marketplace. A bit of a rare bird in that all the chrome trim, metalwork and badges are all there, plus the body is good. It's a western vehicle out at Chinchilla so not a rust bucket, just sun-baked surface rust. The interior trim is cactus and the motor is a total rebuild or replacement job. It would make a good semi-ratrod and would be a shame to lose that beautiful patina to a full restoration and paintjob. It's good buying at $3,400 for someone living close enough to keep the transport costs down.

Thanks Grumpy, I was wondering what they were. Didn't look close enough.

That's truly amazing. The more you look at it the more you see.

I went onto their website and looked at the product and there was no mention of it being anything other than normal low fat Greek yoghurt. I normally get the Chobani low fat Greek yoghurt and it has the texture of normal yoghurt, unlike the Tamar Valley stuff I bought which has the consistency of a thick milkshake. I messaged them out of curiosity to see if it was normal or just a small batch that had gone wrong. Apart from the semi-liquid state of it, the taste is quite normal. You never know what response you will receive when you contact companies with a product enquiry. Some are relly good and practical; some others seem to think it's a defensive game where you run customers around n circles until they go away. I remember contacting one of the Italian anchovy manufacturers when I found shards of sharp white plastic in their product. I wasn't complaining, just bringing it to their attention and they were really appreciative of it. Funny thing is, I bought a jar in recent times and encountered the bits of sharp plastic again, a couple of years after the last time. Probably related to something like a plastic bush that wears and eventually breaks during processing.

I've found AI is not too bad with simple questions that are not likely to have a hugely incorrect answer. One thing to watch with things like Google AI at the top of their search page is the reference links they give. Often they link to just something some bloke has said in Facebook or on Youtube. Far dodgier than some of the Wiki references.

Maybe someone in the factory got the containers mixed up.

It certainly is that. Problem is there's no markings on the container to distinguish it from normal yoghurt. You would think they would have at least something on the container like "Warning - contains runny, dribbly slop" just so you don't expect normal yoghurt.