willedoo

It must be scary for the Libs polling 14% primary vote a month out from the election. One Nation is polling 10% more than the Libs.

A couple of months ago. I only ever do it in the context of meeting up with someone for lunch. These days it's the only reason to go to a pub ( 7 years on the wagon now).

It wil be interesting to sit back and watch what happens from here to the election regarding One Nation's polling figures. We've long had the two major party dominance with Labor and the Coalition taking turns. Below them is the fringe parties with the Greens and One Nation being the biggest two of them. All the others like Family First, Shooters and Fishers and the others will probably stay where they are. Whether or not the Greens have peaked is anyone's guess but I think they have a limited ceiling unless Labor gets on the nose enough to lose significant numbers to them. The Greens seem to have low but steady support, whereas One Nation has potential for some big fluctuations in their support base. They could keep rising or even drop back down to single figures again; only time will tell.

Everybody knows they'll never govern. The only real issue from an election point of view is how far they will go. The current polling figures would be hard to sustain through to election, but who knows until the time comes. The peak they could probably ever achieve would be a deciding vote in the Senate. The amount of lower seats they could get would probably not matter here or there. I seem to remember reading somewhere that they will be concentrating on trying to pick up seats in state elections. Maybe the thinking there is to get a good solid state base that might help in a federal election. It could be bad news for the coalition as One Nation picks up more preferences from the coalition than the other way around.

I doubt Pauline has much input into their policies they present to the public. I could be wrong, but I get the feeling she has overall viewpoints that are incorporated into policy developed by Malcolm and their advisors.

Getting the multinationals to pay their fair share of tax is one that would pass the pub test but doesn't cut the mustard in the real world. The two majors don't want to go there as they know a lot of much needed foreign investment would dry up. There's plenty of other countries willing to give them a cheap run for their money.

Some of their policies have some detail, but some others might just be one paragraph, single issue. An example is their health policy which is basically to encourage better health access for regional and rural areas through the introduction of three year contracts for graduating health professionals in return for their hecs bill being wiped. With some of the obvious issues like energy, climate change etc., they have more to say. It seems to me like they only put up policies where they want change. I'd assume the lack of a defence policy would mean they have nothing to change from the status quo. A lot of their policies are populist policies, like getting multinationals to pay their fair share of tax for example. https://www.onenation.org.au/issues

I should explain that I'm not one of those fanatical lantern collectors. I probably have around a dozen or so, most working, and some that need fixing. That's not counting some junky Chinese ones in a box in the shed somewhere that are better left there. I don't think I would get any more unless something good like a Dietz Monach in good condition showed up. Some of the lantern collectors are quite obsessive about it. I've seen facebook groups that feature collectors who have rooms and garages full of them. They collect them like stamps.

The kero lanterns are like a lot of gear in that you can see the reducing quality of manufacturing over the yeas. These days a lot of them manufacture to a price for mximum profit. Most older lanterns have very thick glass globes with embossed lettering and good thickness of metal. As time went by, the metal got thinner, the glass got thinner and the embossed lettering gave way to etching. Twenty five years ago, the lanterns you could buy in camping stores were generally made in Hong Kong or China, and the quality was reasonable. These days, the Chinese made lanterns are really low quality. I've got one which is a large lantern, a copy of the Dietz No.80 design, and it amazes me how they can make glass that thin and make anything out of metal so thin. It's also got a design fault in the burner which makes the flame flare a bit with any vibration like opening or closing a door. These two lanterns I have are Dietz lanterns. Dietz is a very old American brand of lantern. I think it was in the 1950's they moved manufacturing to Hong Kong but they maintained a standard of quality. These two were bought in the mid 90's and are good quality lanterns. The one on the left is a No.80 (80 hours burn time at a low setting) and the one on the right is a Dietz Junior No.20. Even though the hot blast lanterns were an earlier design than these cold blast lanterns, some manufacturers like Dietz still offered both types for quite a long time; I know Dietz still made hot blast lanterns in the 1970's. There was probably still a good market for them. Some people (like me) prefer them for the softer, more yellowish or amber type of light they give off due to their combustion design.

There's one around here that rides a Harley with drag pipes and I must admit, he's not too bright. If he has an audience he will crank the throttle extra hard for maximum racket. I guess he thinks everyone is thinking "Wow!", whereas in reality they're all thinking "Dickhead!".

A dry grass straw that is; you'll have a lot of trouble trying to get a soft green one up there.

When you stick a grass straw up a March Fly's bum and let it go, they fly off in a straight line and can't turn.

The straight-through drag pipes seem to appearing everywhere these days. Not so bad with a quiet steady rider, but I think a lot of others like to crank that throttle on just to make a racket. A mate of mine is putting Verex drag pipes on his new Bonneville, about $1,400 for the pair I think it is. He was a bit concerned about getting pulled up with them, but he's an old bloke and rides steady so should be ok. The standard pipes on his Speedmaster sound like a sewing machine. He checked up on putting the drag pipes on it and seems to think the warranty will be ok.

Bunya nut season is almost over and so far I've survived with all fingers intact. Just a small head wound to show for it (forgot the hard hat), but it's all healed now. A very bad cockatoo high up in a tree dislodged a branch and I wore part of it. At least you can survive a pine branch fall; a bunya nut pod on the head is guaranteed to be terminal from that height. It's been the biggest season in many years, bunya nuts everywhere, millions of them.

I was looking up some youtube videos last night on fans and some interesting stuff there. One mob were doing a lot of comparisons of temperatures before and after adding fans in different situations. They seemed to do the job ok. They found the highest rear cylinder temperature without fans was out on the highway with the engine working hard. Even though they were going fast, the rear cylinder wan't getting much cooling air.

Nev, did you notice any difference in sound after fitting the Thunderhead conversion?

Thanks Nev, I thought the Ironheads might be getting a bit sought after.

Nev, I was wondering if you have an opinion on the 883 Sportster engines, whether ironhead or the newer evolution version. Some of them seem cheap enough compared to some other types, and they're not a bad looking engine.

I spent 3 months in the U.K. in 1985, mainly in London. I was there July, August and September and it was beautiful warm sunny weather. I left the first week of November and the last three or four days there had cooled down to the point of wearing a coat. But before that it was three months of T shirt weather. The locals called it an Indian summer and said it would happen only about every 20 years, so I've been there but never experienced the cold rainy weather they often get.

This image gives an idea of the airflow direction. Not visible from the outside is the plenium, described here as the air gap, which is an empty compartment above the fuel tank, and receives the air circulating down through the side tubes. The air from the tubes via the plenium to the burner is force fed air, very critical to how they burn. Without that system they'd just be a glorified candle like the wall mount type lamps that are called a dead flame lantern as they don't have any forced air, just drawing it in from the grate at the base of the burner.

Some nice soaking rain here the last couple of days, 60mm so far. A mate further north at Hervey Bay has had around 175mm. January was dry, only 17 mm for the month. Usually in January here you expect 6 to 10 inches but it varies a lot. One of the wettest Januarys was 2011 with 644mm, driest was 2001 with zero rain. Usually here if the first three months are dry (they should be our wettest), it will be followed up by a wet autumn and possibly into winter.

I think that will be a big factor, the campaign. A lot of their candidates don't do well under pressure. I don't have the figures at hand, but the numbers of ON seat winners (all states and senate) that have completed a term is very small compared to the total numbers won. In Queensland in 1998 there were 11 seats won and almost none left at the end of the term.

The way I described those numbers doesn't add up. Labor down 5, Coalition down 10 and others down 10, not 5 as I wrote above. That's a combined loss of 25% and ON is up 20% so that leaves 5% missing somewhere.

Polls are just polls. I'll never forget that election Bill Shorten lost. The polling had Labor a dead certainty, and I saw the footage at the Labor election base where people were celebrating and popping the champagne half an hour before close of polls. An hour later they were walking around in a state of shock and dispair.

A couple of questions are: is One Nation's rise in the polls sustainable through to the next election, and if so, will it actually translate to any notable gain in seats considering we have a preferential voting system and not first past the post.