onetrack

The Chinese are notorious for zero backup, zero levels of spares/replacements, and zero "customer care". You buy Chinese products, you're largely on your own. Many an ignorant buyer found out to their chagrin, that cheap Chinese diggers, loaders, and other machinery, has zero manufacturer backup, zero spares availability, and poor resale, along with the former problems. I see recently where the ACCC is starting to hammer car manufacturers who practice these methods, with an insistence that if that manufacturer sells vehicles here, they must provide a proper level of support and spares. Even the dealers want it, too. One of the areas the ACCC is concentrating on is the car warranty as related to servicing. Some of the Chinese brands are refusing to honour warranty claims if the car hasn't been serviced from new by the Chinese dealer. One of the problems with the Chinese brands is the dealers are quite often spread out, making servicing a problem for some owners, with a long drive to get the vehicle serviced.

The weather chart shows you're in for a wet weekend, OME. It sure is nice to see a decent fall of rain after a long dry spell. Everything seems to freshen up.

I find most of the scratchies pretty tedious, and greatly time-consuming, though - and I like fast results, so I can get back to productive work!

You don't even have to go to all the trouble of scratching and matching dozens of letters and symbols on a "scratchie" to find if you've won anything or not. The barcode along the bottom of the scratchie can just be scratched and scanned without scratching anything else, and the barcode scanner will tell you straight away whether you've won anything.

A criminal behaviour record is the primary reason for rejection in an application for admittance to Australia - and always has been - the same as most countries. But unfortunately, many refugees make sure their criminal behaviour records are erased, lost, or otherwise made unavailable. This is how the criminal Lebanese arrived in Australia as "refugees" in the mid-to-late 1970's. They claimed they were refugees from the civil war in Lebanon - but the truth was, they were largely jailbirds with a long history of criminal behaviour, and the Syrian Army purposely destroyed all their criminal records, so nothing showed up in a search by immigration authorities. As a result, they fell into limbo in the Immigration Dept applications - and Malcolm Fraser overrode the Immigration Dept heads who wanted to send them back - because Fraser was a "softie" who claimed that sending them back meant certain death for them. As we've seen with all the recent "Middle-Eastern Crime Gangs" murderous activities in mostly SW Sydney, they are still criminals, and still indulging in massive amounts of high-level criminal behaviour. If you watch "Border Security - Australias Front Line", you will see many arrivals by air producing fake reasons, fake documentation, and outright lies to gain entry to Australia for various nefarious reasons. Many just want to disappear once they get into the country. They're interviewed and checked out at length, by BS officers - and sent straight back to where they came from, if their stories and information don't stack up. All immigrant applications should be treated the same, regardless of whether they are claiming to be refugees under threat of death if they return to their country of origin, or not. The problem is, a lot of these people are sent here, or come here, simply because they're troublemakers where they came from, and the locals want shot of them. And of course, numbers of them are either drug mules, full-time scam operators, and "footmen" for major crime gang operations. They arrive with ill intent.

I really think the AUKUS deal and the Yank submarine deal needs to be cancelled - from our end. The last thing we need is to deal with, is a tantrum-throwing toddler when he's supposed to be leading the worlds only remaining superpower, and setting statesmanship-like behaviour and standards. On top of that, the subs are vastly overpriced, and will be delivered 30 years too late, and be obsolete when they are delivered.

I reckon a lot of people are looking for about 450-500km range in an EV before they're comfortable with the technology. "Range anxiety" is still a real psychological killer for EV's.

I don't know how much more moronic behaviour this clown can indulge in, before he backs himself into a corner. He's already trashed the support of a lot of rusted-on MAGA adherents. I'm just waiting for the major Iranian attack on American soil or a military base that results in hundreds of American casualties and deaths. That will really bring home to everyday Americans, what this idiot has led them into. Israel is being spread thinly as well, what with a major incursion into Lebanon. The Iranians will still have plenty of nasty surprises up their sleeve.

Young motorcyclists are greatly over-represented in the injury and deaths road toll, and the premiums reflect that cost. They love wrapping the throttle on away from the lights, with no thought to the consequences - because they're young, male, and invincible! I can recall a young woman in court locally, sobbing her heart out, as she faced a manslaughter charge for killing a motorcyclist. The charge should never have been brought. She pulled out of a sidestreet in her little car, onto a major arterial road. She stopped and looked both ways and saw a motorcyclist to her right, a substantial distance away - so she pulled out. The problem was - that young male motorcyclist had just wrapped the throttle on, in a 60kmh zone, until he was doing over 120kmh. She didn't have the driving experience to judge that he was coming at double the normal, expected speed. The young motorcyclist couldn't stop, and he buried his bike in her car, right behind her seat and B-pillar, spinning her car around, as he did so. He died almost immediately, and the relatively uninjured young woman faced the trauma of seeing the carnage inside her car. It would stay with her for life, and no-one deserves to see that. On the manslaugher charge, she was found not guilty, and rightfully so. The judge was pretty scathing of aggressive motorcyclists who don't believe road rules apply to them.

Giving her a beer mug?

I couldn't see Gina fitting into the back of a 172!!

They got outfoxed.

The amount of electrical power generated by house rooftops in Australia is more than all the public and private power stations combined. All that's needed is electrical storage, and most States are addressing that angle as we speak. Here in W.A., the State Govt is installing massive batteries at Collie and at other locations, to stabilise the grid and to make use of the power generated by house rooftops during the day. A large percentage of people aren't home during the day, so the power being generated just needs to be stored. https://www.synergy.net.au/Our-energy/SynergyRED/Large-Scale-Battery-Energy-Storage-Systems/Collie-Battery-Energy-Storage-System

When global corporations and local huge companies can afford to employ teams of double degree account/lawyers, who can drive Mack trucks through legislative loopholes in tax laws, ensuring those corporations and companies pay only lip-service levels of tax, it's time to resort to a flat tax on transactions and get rid of the current company tax system. Nissan Australia paid a grand total of $476 tax in Australia over the 3 years between 2015-2018, despite earning $7 billion in vehicle sales. That's just wrong by anyones measure.

W.A.'s Kwinana oil refinery, just S of Perth, was Australia's newest and biggest oil refinery. But it was built in 1954, by the "Anglo-Iranian Oil Co", which became British Petroleum. However, it was shut for good in 2021, as BP stated they couldn't compete with the oil refinery running costs of the S.E. Asian refineries - which all had huge capacity and cheap labour. The bottom line is, we are dependent on overseas oil, regardless of whether it's refined here or not. As Jerry says, EV's are the way to go, with many EV's having 400kms range today (or battery options to increase to "long range" ability) - and with many people having solar systems on their house, it's free energy from the sun, right where you are - and no amount of warring or global upsets can beat that.

The part that gets up your nose is that over 80% of our petrol and diesel comes ready-refined from huge refineries in Singapore, South Korea, Japan and China. These refineries source their crude from probably 20 or 30 different crude oil sources - then blend it to make it suitable for their particular refinery feedstock. It's not like a slowdown in Straits of Hormuz oil shipping is going to affect our fuel supplies or prices to the levels we're currently seeing. Maybe 15% - 20% at most, not the 70% - 90% increases we are currently seeing. We're being reamed senseless with a large pineapple with no lube, when it comes to fuel. Only 25% of the worlds oil moves through the Straits of Hormuz, so that means 75% of oil supplies are unaffected.

Chip shortages still plague most car manufacturers, bu the Chinese seem to have gotten around it by using less chips, and cheaper varieties - and by ramping up their local chip production. They're satisfying themselves with older-style chips, and by eliminating high-tech options that require cutting-edge chip technology.

Just watch out if that red-headed woman gets the ball! Once that happens, she'll claim she owns the game!

Yes, you are covered for personal injury, loss of earnings, and death in a motorcycle crash with your rego, because there's an MAIB (Motor Accidents Insurance Board) insurance premium included in the rego cost. I think W.A. was the last State to go with the personal injury and death insurance scheme included in vehicle registration cost. It was introduced in W.A. in 2016, following other States adoption of the arrangement much earlier. It's no-fault insurance, so you get paid out, regardless of who or what caused the crash. In W.A., it added about $100 to the annual average vehicle rego costs. In W.A., rego is still called "licencing", not "registration".

They got outvoted.

EV sales will rocket now, as the combination of high fuel prices, a large supply of cheaper Chinese EV's, and ever-improving batteries and range make them a no-brainer. If you want an IC-engine Toyota, Toyota have "major supply constraints", and you're usually on a wait-list for a new one. But the Chinese keep shipping in cars by the shipload, and you have instant availability of any model, colour or options. There are holding yards full of Chinese EV's.

What a tiny boner? 😄

Terrorists specifically hold people as hostages to gain the ultimate power in decisions being made. They also kill people on a random basis to instill terrifying fear into the remainder of the family, group, nation, or power bloc. The Nazis used refined terrorism via the Gestapo. The Gestapo would kill dozens and even hundreds of unarmed civilians simply as a warning against trying to oppose the Nazis. On that basis, neither America nor Israel are currently terrorists, with their actions designed to destroy Islamic terrorism promoters. They are reacting with long-held hatred from previous terrorism attacks against them by Islamic terrorists, to destroy those Islamics they see as promoting terrorism against the West, and against the State of Israel. But both America and Israel have utilised terrorism in the past. The State of Israel was founded on terrorism of the British (and the Palestinians), and specifically by acts of terrorism by the Zionist Stern and Irgun gangs. American terrorism acts were were funded and encouraged by the CIA, often employing locals they'd trained. In places such as the Middle East, South American countries and Asian countries, where unstable Govts or dictators who were seen to be rabidly anti-American, the CIA set out to create disruption, cause regime collapse, and even carried out political killings. The assassination of President Ngô Đình Diệm in South Vietnam in 1963, by a group of Diệms army officers, was actively encouraged, funded, and supported by the CIA. Further back, the Americans killed a lot of Native Americans in what was essentially acts of terrorism, designed to acquire their lands and resources. The Wounded Knee Massacre is possibly the worst example of Americans killing unarmed or disarmed Native Americans.

Lots of shortcomings in Claudes answers, and "he" constantly probes for more information from Margaret, to add to his knowledge bank. Give it 20 years, and we may struggle to determine if we're speaking to an AI robot or a real human being.

Ahead of the curve.