I am sad that I’ll miss my lot at Christmas, though it will be good to catch up with Hairy’s…
Open Thread – Weekend 30 April 2022
- Open Thread – Mon 25 Nov 2024
- The more you gets the less you eats
- Open Thread – Weekend 23 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 21 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Mon 18 Nov 2024
I watched a doco about how US freight companies operate a while back. They deliver anywhere in the US within…
Huh. Biden will chalk this up to his incumbency !
Rebel News HQ: Ezra Levant warns Charlie Kirk about freedom of the press in Canada after shocking arrest
Oh, I’m sorry you think that about what I think is a profound statement re our being. A greeting card!!!…
I don’t have a reference, but didn’t one of their tanks have a turret, the design of which made the loader’s job rather difficult – the Russkies solved the problem by using left handed loaders?
Others have covered the why, but I’ve also heard Probuild are cooked, as are a large number of the small and medium players who don’t have anywhere near the reserves or the institutional muscle for negotiation.
Bruce O’Newk:
Presented on the facts of his behaviour, one can only say Pence was at least a RINO or at most a Democrat plant.
My suspicion is on the latter.
Money talks.
I know of a couple of builders who have tried to pay cash incentives to clients to rescind fixed price construction contracts.
I am going to go out on a limb here and am open to reasons to the contrary.
Why does a country with intermittent snow seasons on the southernmost high peaks give a crap about the winter Olympics? Sorry never understood it after seeing the prices to even visit snowfields. Winter sports in Australia are not of the plebs, please don’t misunderstand me I don’t envy them just question the public money being spent on their Olympic pursuits.
That said I also disagree with the largesse allocated to summer pursuits but see more justification there.
how the hell in a building and price boom do builders go underwater?
1. Onsite safety is run by Safety Reps.
if these guys refuse to sign off the proposed work on site for the coming day,
the Site Managers bear responsibility for anything that might happen on site.
The CFMMEU [construction division] has a monopoly on the training of these Safety Reps.
So basically the Safety Rep runs the site even though he’s not a builder.
2. Got too big or not big enough.
Every site has a Safety Rep, so multiply your problems by the number of sites.
The Industry will crash if Labor gets up on May 21.
I just saw it now, so thanks for pointing it out. I have zero view on that. I made the comment that Rosie had some decent points and I judge on merits not on ideological alignment.
rick,
I spoke to a bloke yesterday who works at the refinery.
90% workforce laid off
not covid but turning what used to be a refinery into a terminal
the guy is a sparky and they had 30-ish but now down to a handful
sparkies … instro guys … engineers … you know what I mean … all the electro-mongs
Bush
You ad hom that I’m aligned with Rosie, yet you’re pretending to be a neutral party and “non-aligned”? Let me get this right, you’re India?
Can you counter Rosie’s point then please.
Rex A
* (I’ve poked around in an M1A1, and it is surprisingly small inside for such a big vehicle. The roomiest position is the loader’s, and for obvious reasons).
The Soviets developed an auto-loader for one of their tanks. Unfortunately, if the turret crew were a bit careless, it tended to rip someone’s bloody arm off.
Dunno, but KV-1 gunners were probably all deaf. This is one of my favourite Russian tank photos. Note the three warheads still stuck in the armour plating on the LHS. The Germans would’ve loved javelins.
T-54 and T-62 families had Crew Commander on left of turret, and gunner below that. Generally very cramped environment in the turret, not helped by the automated ejector apparatus in the T-62.
The movie The Beast was filmed using Israeli-captured ex-Syrian T-55s (Called Tiran 4s), and give a reasonable idea of the vehicle and its internal environment.
News.com.au have a report from Sam Maiden saying that Katherine Deves was escorted from a Liberal rally while journalists shouted “Are you transphobic?” and “Are you ashamed of your comments?”
This is becoming harassment. Who are the journalists that asked these incisive questions? Were they asked by Ms Maiden herself?
This is not reporting. It is a nasty vendetta. Maiden of all people should not delve too deep into people’s past.
I’ve also heard Probuild are cooked
Probuild are in the hands of administrators. Their SA owners had enough but apparently from the legal wrangling’s following the collapse had a judges quipping the SA owners evidence was very self serving.
The part of the Bruce Hwy between Gumlu and Proserpine I blew up about a few weeks back is a by-product of said collapse. As far as I have seen no questions are being asked of why a failing company with records of financial issues in the public record prior was ever awarded said contract?
Yep. T-72. 🙂
Ammo carousel located around the 3rd and 4th road wheels.
Most contracts have wet weather clauses.
You have to have an open, established site.
Yes, at the time. At the time we had nothing else.
But why use that data now?
If we really know how transmissible and deadly it was in the first variants. (Normally we only know this retrospectively after a significant time.)
And we know on average how transmissibility and deadliness vary through time and variants with other coronaviruses. (From retrospectively collected data).
Wouldn’t this provide a solid basis for understanding within a reasonable confidence limit the future transmissibility and deadlines of all COVID-19 variants?
Top Ender:
Didn’t we recently get through a worldwide financial crisis triggered by this virtue signalling stupidity?
I worked with an Brit who did time in the military as a “tanker”. He told me of s horrible story about a crew member whose entire upper body (including his head was turned into a flat pancake). He wasn’t seated properly, the tank took nasty bump and he flew into the turret gap and that was that. I can’t recall, but I think he said they needed to be strapped in and the guy wasn’t.
This Sam Maiden.
On 6 April 2016, Maiden pleaded guilty to a drink driving charge and two “fail to obey police” charges in Goulburn Local Court, having recorded a blood alcohol reading of 0.136 on 20 March 2016. On 18 May 2016, Maiden was given a 12-month good behaviour bond, disqualified from driving for seven months, and fined $1000.
0.136 is pass out time for a woman, yet Deves is considered dangerous.
Not necessarily with a cruise liner. We may end up with some decent information but there are limits for the reason that the bulk of humanity doesn’t live in a cruise liner.
FFS, we don’t know, but suspect certain things. We actually know very very little about virus transmission. We don’t even fucking know why the flu is more virulent in the winter than than summer months.
Farmer Gezsays:
May 1, 2022 at 9:25 pm
Yep Gez, imagine if it was one of us plebs, wouldn’t be the slap on the wrist she got. I’ll stop there as I despise these people.
rick,
I spoke to a bloke yesterday who works at the refinery.
90% workforce laid off
not covid but turning what used to be a refinery into a terminal
Yep, just a terminal now. Last Jet transfer from them to the airport came through in 3Q last year.
Ask him what the hell happened to the Dean Smith and Grace lathes in the workshop?!!!
I had some of the Mongs I know try and keep an eye out but they don’t even know what a lathe is!!
Rollovers can also be quite nasty for unbuttoned (i.e. hatches open, head out the top) turret crew as well.
The Turret Throwing Olympics is the result. An armour penetrating missile can detonate the ammunition on the auto-loader, which is just below the gunner. That causes a catastrophic explosion which blows the tank turret right off of the tank, with very fatal results to the crew.
How the ‘jack-in-the-box’ flaw dooms some Russian tanks (WaPo, 1 May)
This has led to one of the most epic front page covers for The Economist in all of that magazine’s history. Here it is. Yes, if you haven’t already seen it, it’s the turret of a T-72 that has attempted to fly like a bird.
Maiden has form in delving into people’s past so as to score cheap political points. She was involved in the Porter allegations. Maiden is a grub.
FFS, we don’t know, but suspect certain things. We actually know very very little about virus transmission. We don’t even fucking know why the flu is more virulent in the winter than than summer months.
So if they don’t know much about anything, maybe they should just fuck off and leave us alone?
Rex, what’s the internal part of the big gun in a tank called ? As he explained, it was the rear part of the gun that moves north south as a balancing motion when the tank in taking a bump.. He was caught in between that part (rear of the gun) and the plate thingi underneath.
Any turret head type Cats got any opinion on the latest brainfarts that Australia shouldn’t be buying tanks, because the war in the Ukraine has proved tanks are obsolete?
I despise these people.
I had a few dealings with MSM years ago.
Approach them like you’re reaching into a sack to grab a snake by the head.
Custard:
They will have multiple unspecified problems.
If that happens, then we will have to admit the system has failed in Australia.
frog-shit
Yes, after the promise of the 4 week “rest” to flatten the curve, it should’ve been it. However, that’s not what we’re discussing. We’re talking about transmission and although we don’t understand the holly grail we know that it does and does so through air born particles.
I recall that at the time of the cruise ship, there was speculation that you could get it by touching something and there was suspecion that transmission also occurred by touching stuff. This later proved to be largely untrue.
Matrix,
Like this! Might have even been one of them, the workshop looks familiar.
https://www.machines4u.com.au/view/advert/Dean-Smith-Grace-21-x-96-570-mm-swing-x-2450-mm/479531/
Rex, what’s the internal part of the big gun in a tank called ? As he explained, it was the rear part of the gun that moves north south as a balancing motion when the tank in taking a bump.. He was caught in between that part (rear of the gun) and the plate thingi underneath.
Squashed between the breech block and the rear side of the turret ring…
Okay thanks.
Old Ozzie:
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare can go root his boot for all I’m concerned.
And when the shit hits the fan, we can point a finger at him and tell the Solomon Islanders “He sold your country out to the Chinese for cash, and you did jack shit about it.”
Sorry to hear about your fishing grounds and minerals which will be stripped bare by the Chinese, just like they’ve done or are doing to every other country they have ties of Friendship and Cooperation with.
Its more than that … we dont even know where influenza (as opposed to other respiratory viruses) goes in Summer – its not just less virulent, it vanishes completely. Edgar Hope Simpson theorised that the best fit model was that influenza had a ‘2 stage’ life cycle (aka Lysogeny), in summer it just builds the instructions for the virus, in winter it builds the whole virus – he postulated that this explained how ships at sea and even icebound expeditions could have outbreaks after long periods out of contact.
Tanks have their place depending on the type of war you’re fighting. The Americans and most likely the Western sphere would know how to use tanks and not get then blown up the way the Russians have experienced.
There was an interesting piece I read several weeks about how Americans use tanks. It’s in complete coordination between tanks and grunts. There’s something new, like a new gadget blowing up tanks in the current war, but attacking tanks is almost as old as tanks themselves. What I think is new is coming to the realization that the Russian military is inept.
I can see a brilliant career in the diplomatic corps, Winston.
It is a very definite risk, as the carousel itself sits at the bottom of the turret basket. The tank’s 125mm gun (just like the preceding T-64 and its own replacement, the T-80) uses a 2 part ammunition system that sequentially loads the projectile and then the propellant charge. And it is the propellant charge that really does not like plasma jets from HEAT warheads or white-hot kinetic penetrators (sabots) burning through armour plate, spraying around inside the vehicle and igniting them.
The Brits get around this problem in the Challenger 2, by using bag charges stored in the turret bustle (behind the crew, with a blast door to protect them) and warheads in the turret basket, and the Abrams uses a combustible unitary cartridge that also lives in a blowout-protected compartment in the turret bustle.
The Leopard 2, beloved of tank fanboys because German (yet curiously lacking in AFV vs AFV combat record), has a small ready rack of 15 or so brass cartridges in a blowout-protected turret compartment. But most of its ammo storage is also below the turret ring.
In a sustained fight, the Abrams and Chally 2 present a better sustained rate of fire as all of their 70 rounds of main gun ammo is available for the loader to grab. Albeit the Chally’s rate of fire will be somewhat slower because 2 pieces have to be shoved into the breech to the Abrams’ 1. The Leopard 2 must disengage just long enough to replenish the turret ready rack, which risks exposing the thinner turret cheeks to enemy fire while the loader is doing his thing.
Duk
Where is the flu virus .. like physically.. in the summer. If it’s not attacking where is it and how does it infect the patient zero. Do we know or even suspect?
My 2c worth Winston. Now that the US are involved I wager that Sogavare is on borrowed time but he doesn’t realise it yet. The swamp obviously see this as extensional threat from China.
Poor bastard. 🙁
There’s absolutely nowhere to go when that happens.
JC,
Rosie is basically throwing metaphorical chaff in the air and it’s partially obscuring what the Diamond Princess showed us.
That ship was the worst of worst case scenarios wrt spreading this particular bug and in a population heavily skewed to the older and infirm end of the spectrum.
In the article she linked above it’s stated that the experts say the disease was widespread aboard the ship well before the first case (an 80yr old) was off loaded.
The point being only 20% of people in a population, so concentrated, actually
caught the bloody thing. And of those nearly half didn’t show symptoms. This would be analogous to a season of infection for, say, the flu.
In October 2020 the WHO were saying this
10% infected worldwide in one season.
And I don’t think you really believe the death stats either.
Yes there has been an uptick in all cause mortality for some countries but lets see how things play out with those figures in the next couple of years. A lot of “dry tinder” has unfortunately been burnt.
One thing this has shown and that is how unbelievably unfit the western world has become.
rickw
Squashed between the breech block and the rear side of the turret ring…
I read that in some of the US WW II battleship main gun turrets, there was a sailor whose task was to insert the primer after the gun was loaded. His position was on a metal stretcher directly under the barrel. When he had inserted the primer, he would lie very flat on the stretcher, and the gun barrel would recoil over him.
Bad for the hearing, and very nerve wracking!
Naaa, you think?
I’ve read the same thing. Norman Friedman, from memory.
Don’t worry, Sharma, Morrison and Frydenburg are the best economic managers ever!
Proper tactics and they are still the masters of the battlefield. I’ve seen several vids of ambushed Russian armour columns and their doctrine really sucks. There’s zero infantry screening to contact and zero infantry support – the BMP guys dismount then piss off in the opposite direction. How that can be I can’t understand but that’s what I’ve seen a few times now. It suggests training is skin deep at best.
Air superiority is obviously essential. So far neither side has it, although in the east the Russians are close to it. A Ukrainian tank in the east is probably a very dangerous place to be inside of.
There’s more than a bit of Killary’s ‘landing under sniper fire in Bosnia’ with this (the NT News):
The most important bit:
And:
Earlier, Ukrainian Maya Pidhorodetska posted another video of the star on Facebook.
This is horseshit. The whole thing is horseshit. Are these people at war or not? Why are people demanding billions in aid and arms for Ukrainains when less than 500km from ‘the front’ those exact Ukrainians are wandering around waving at visiting celebrities and drinking coffee in the street?
Makes you wonder what the average BMI of Americans “dying with” COVID was.
Dude!
It’s a special military operation.
You don’t consider forcing an untested drug on entire populations a crime against humanity?
Dude, they’re Europeans. You maybe close to the front, but you need a coffee break especially in the morning and early afternoon.
JC, all modern tanks are fitted with hydraulic stabilisers to keep the gun barrel relatively level when moving cross country. Amd unless the barrel is locked and clamped for road moves, it can shift about of its own volition.
The breech block is the single biggest protrusion inside the turret, and can come back a mighty long way under recoil.
As you watch these M1A2 turret firing drills, see how much effort is put into staying clear of the damn thing.
And these ergonomics are vastly improved over WW2 equipment…
Also, here is an example of how cramped the T-72 turret’s fighting compartment is. And as a bonus extra, how.its autoloader works. 🙂
Would you apply that rule to new unapproved drugs being tested on cancer patients?
0.136 is pass out time for a woman, yet Deves is considered dangerous.
Were there 2 DUIs over a couple of years or just the one?
To be precise, inadequately tested.
Yet, there is no Covaxin available yet.
Also, Novavax could have been approved much earlier.
Yep, transpose the worlds BMI and general level of fitness post WW2 to today and I’m betting this would not have shown up.
Waiting on Bette Midler to show up to entertain the troops in Kiev.
Cancer patients get a choice.
Trust me on this.
Watching rosie and JC try to reason about it shows the nature of the problem. They can’t use the information in a sensible manner, and so why should politicians or bureaucrats?
Dot:
It’s starting to look very much like a war fought via TikTok and Instagram, and with the cheapest extras they can find thrown in as human props. That’s what it looks like.
JC:
They can get fucked is what they can do. If they want any interest whatsoever from me they can take the invasion and attempted occupation of their country seriously, instead of poncing about duckfacing everyone in sight.
This is not an endorsement of Putin, either. It’s a shitshow, which started badly with the Ghost of Kiev and tailed off from there.
They say that every other fokking week, man. 🙁
The TL;DR version is what both JC and Bruce have said. Use them smartly and support them and have them work closely dismounted infantry and with other arms, no problems.
A longer analysis that also zeroes in on the alleged and proclaimed vs actual lethality of the modern ATGM vs the modern MBT, as well as what the tank still continues to bring to the modern battlefield in the days of the loitering munition and readily available top-attack ATGM, we turn to The Chieftain on Youtube:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lI7T650RTT8
and that, folks is the Equivocation Fallacy in action
To bed.
Nope, its a complete enigma, Google ‘Hope Simpson’ for more. One thing is clear, our simple ‘person to person’ model does NOT explain the natural history of influenza.
That’s my understanding, and I go back to the Yom Kippur War of 1973 – the chair-borne commando’s then said that the tank was obsolete, in the face of ATWG missiles, and infantry weapons such as the RPG 7.
In the mid/late 1970’s there was a firepower display, featuring the ATWG missiles the Australian Army was using at the time. ENTAC???? All three missiles fired, malfunctioned. Next up was a Carl Gustav crew, who blew the target to Hell and gone with the first round…
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday said she had met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv to send the message that the United States stands firmly with Ukraine as it battles “Putin’s diabolic invasion.”
Buryats! Tough guys. News is some Chechens and Buryats had a bit of biff in Kherson yesterday. Supposedly on the same side but a number bought the farm. I don’t think they like each other.
Well that was Sam Hyde’s fault, but at least he stopped getting away with it.
Pelosi wouldn’t know if she met Yao Ming or Lt Cmdr Mick Brumby.
Neither would Biden or Harris.
Why can’t tanks be outfitted with tech that jams drone visual. Also, why can’t tanks be stealthy?
Lastly, why can’t there be killer drone drones?
This isn’t a new thing. The Russians are well aware of it and using it in Donbass.
Wait till you see the battery-powered ones.
That would make them very visible in the EM spectrum.
Every RUS MBT since T-72 is an autoloader with 3 crew (driver, gunner, commander).
The ebike story.
Why do I get the thinking that this will end with a valued contributor leaving the site because they get sick of the abuse?
Does anyone remember Boy On A Bike?
United Kingdom: Dozens more children with sudden onset hepatitis identified
Fusion power tanks are the ultimate. With tribarrels for air defense. Hammer’s Slammers!
(Classic and very grungy military SF if you haven’t heard of it.)
Nothing attracts attention like a moving foxhole.
The counter argument, put to me by a former tankie, is that an autoloader may be a very fine piece of technology, but it can’t change track pads, do it’s turn on sentry, or make a brew…
Another night on the cat-
another tangential SF classic that I’ve never heard of which I realize that I cannot live without.
Thanks Bruce…
I don’t know the relative strengths and weaknesses, but the US Abrams went through Iraq’s T-72s like they weren’t there. The loss rate was about 100:1 and half of the tank losses the Americans had were due to friendly fire accidents. Admittedly with total air superiority and Apaches. Most one sided tank battle in history.
What is different in this engagement is that both sides have the same equipment, more or less. Ukraine has a lot of T-64s, but they have been upgraded to about T-80 level.
It can also drive a machine gun, act as an extra set of eyes on the march and answer the radio when the crew commander is busy.
A well-trained and experienced loader can also still outperform an autoloader’s rate of fire.
ZK2A:
I’m sure it was the autoloader on the T54/55 variants. It would occasionally feed the loaders arm into the breech along with the shell.
With equipment parity, crew competence, experience and morale become decisive. As do external factors like the capability of their supporting arms, communications and electronic warfare, air superiority and logistics.
Ukraine war: Women and children evacuated from Mariupol plant
Wali, there’s about 7 novels worth in the series.
Anyway, night all. The Memsahib starts six weeks of radiation treatment and chemotherapy tomorrow, so I’ve dropped the portcullis and pulled up the drawbridge and we just get through it.
Does anyone remember Boy On A Bike?
He had a great blog (when people had blogs). I may be mixing him up with someone else, but I seem to remember him pantsing Toowoomba Bob nicely on a couple of occasions.
Zulu – best wishes to you and Mrs Zulu.
@ Winston-
You’re thinking of the T-64A. The early version of this autoloader in the tank had a tendency to try and feed stray hands and the gunner’s right arm into the breech. By the time of the T-64B and subsequent variants, this issue had apparently been fixed. Note that compared to the T-72’s autoloader from upthread, the 2-part ammo gets combined and rammed in at once, instead of the slower process of pushing the projectile and then powder charge in separatelty
The T54/55 and T-62 were both manually loaded and had 4 man crews. It was during the latter type’s combat debut with the Syrians during Yom Kippur in 1973 that the Israelis initially thought it had an autoloader, after Israeli Centurion crews on the Golan Heights watched the T-62’s automatic ejector spitting empty shell cases out the back of the turret far faster than a human loader might extract one.
Rex,
Fair enough – I did think it was an earlier version. (The T54/55)
Good Hunting to both of you.
Best of luck to the beloved ZK2A.
I’ve just finished 27, 12 to go.
No chemo but hormone injections every 3 months.
Tits are growing while the nuts are shrinking.
Plenty worse off than me though.
prayers for youse
Yeah Winston, I goofed on that first one a little.
I remembered that the T-72’s carousel system could eat stray hands, but it was the early production T-64s that really developed the nasty reputation.
I can remember slicing myself up and cutting thumb webs and catching bits of finger in smaller stuff like .50cals, Minimis and Carl Gustav 84mm recoilless rifles and making inadvertent blood offerings to the gun gods. That was bad and risky enough without adding in a hydraulically-powered apparatus like an autoloader… 🙁
in a week or two you’ll be Prime Minister material for sure
I will identify as a woman (undefined ).
But there won’t be a gash.
This is v interesting. A 2018 randomish survey- swabbing people from NY tourist attractions- and finding prevalence of adenoviruses, influenza viruses, rhinoviruses, and… cue string stab… coronaviruses.
Next time some berk tries to tell you that novel coronavirus COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2 / ommercron strain / sub-variant BS.2 is definitely the one which is going to have peeps falling down dead in the street…
Zulu, Toad and others fighting the fight for health of oneself or a loved one: my best hopes to you for success in the long and difficult process of getting well again, or well enough. When the chips are down, people here are your support in such times of trial. I found that previously and as Toad says, plenty are worse off. Sometimes there is not much left but hope, but there is always hope and after that, there is always love.
ZK2A:
The very same people who are saying that are the same ones who protested about the Salisbury Plains exercises before the last big blue.
A tank is a means of getting rapid overpowering fire suppression to a point on the battlefield while providing protection to the crew members. That’s it. (There’s a term for it, others may know but my Old Timers Disease is catching up with me.)
Move and countermove. The explosive blocks were a reaction to the rounds that were successful in WW2. The tandem missile/RPG warheads were a reaction to that. Then along came explosive deform projectiles that attacked top down. Then the topdown warheads superseded them, then overhead steel plate and cages had a short trial.
The Israeli Merkava 4 has the Rafael Trophy Active Protection system.
The pendulum swings back and forth but the tank will continue to evolve to meet threats.
A chap who is undoubtedly a stirrer put up a ‘Fuck Xi Jinping’ sign in Eastwood. Unsurprisingly some of the local Chinois took exception and attacked him in a pretty ineffective fashion.
He makes the excellent point that if the sign suggested Morrison should undertake a spot of fornication no one would bother him.
Another success story from multicultural Australia.
Kind words Lizzie.
Thank you.
JC:
Combined arms warfare was the basis of the Blitzkreig success.
The Russians are paying the price in equipment and lives for not funding enough training. The US trains their people more than any other nation. It’s a very big reason their defence bill is so high. But it means their Air/Naval/Army people are so damned effective. Or as effective as they are allowed to be.
Not if they were completely upfront about the risks and gave potential participants a clear choice. Obviously people in that situation are more willing to try something new which might be able to cure/alleviate what is already a fatal illness. That is hardly analogous to healthy people being forced – by their own governments – to choose between making a living and becoming guinea pigs for big pharma.
The mental sickness here is pronounced and obvious.
The mental gymnastics of the insane Notaclue tonight whilr JC clutches at straws, both completely illogical and incoherent, many others throwing themselves into a skirmish in Eastern Europe as a way of ignoring what they have done to themselves and their countrymen.
What a fuck up.
War is hell.
(Without espresso).
How many people in the Death Camps, St Ruth?
Today I am writing to you about gardens. English spring gardens.
The daffodils, crocus and snowdrops are gone, but the small English bluebells are out in profusion, hiding shy in the shadows of the shrubs and trees as the tiny yellow-hearted white daisies cavort across the lawns of fine English grass. We are walking briskly in the cold (yes it is chilly still) in Richmond Park nearby to Hairy’s brother’s house and we take a turn into an enclosed acreage named Isabella Plantation, an area of the park originally designated as a forestry plantation and since the 20’s transformed into a blaze of spring colours, for everywhere in the 40 acres of undulations and amongst great forest trees of oak, chestnut, myrtle and ash (sadly, no longer any elm) are heaped azalias and rhododendrons in their fullest and finest cold-climate flowerings; and not just one sort of each, but many varieties of them in colours hard to replicate outside of nature. Such blossoms, banked in old bushes tumbling down one upon another from the heights of up to ten or even fifteen feet, have an almost iridescent translucence, the newest and freshest of a maiden’s party clothes in every single bloom of the thousands in each composition. And then there are the other plants, water plants in the brook running through the plantation, and so many others with common names (‘jack o’th hedge’, for instance) or complex ones known only to nature aficionados like Hairy’s brother, who helpfully compered our show as we walked through it. Calli would be in her absolute element here.
So far we have had two days of cold drab weather with an east wind in from the Steppes, and two days of bright blue skies bringing a little more warmth to the air. The walled garden in his brother’s house is small (no-one has big gardens in Richmond) but has a terrace to sit on to overlook it as I type . The ole Hairy has gone to meet a friend for a walk on Hampstead Heath followed by a pint in a pub, so I am free to be captivated by a bright yellow bush dominating the background of the garage wall. It has grown so much in the three years since our last visit. Curling creepers on wooden trellises along each side fence and up an old brick wall close to the house enclose everything perfectly, while in pots poppies and pansies compete for your mind’s eye in a clamour of colour.
The rosemary is overgrowing and the wisteria is just finishing.
Like youth, spring has it moments and it doth not endure.
Catch it while you can.
I never said there ARE death camps….as you know Sancho of the slip lane..I said there are camps…..and the way things are going and looking at history I wouldn’t be surprised they end up being just that.
Again I stand by my word.
But unlike you, I’m not a self confessed liar.
Got that right. We should listen to ‘experts’. Like this one (AEI):
Yup. ‘Experts’. Every time.
Spare me the good Nazi stories, Lizzie.
You really aren’t that great as a writer anyway.
It’s pure dribble.
Give it a rest.
We just humoured you before.
The Michael Jackson moonwalk.
I wouldn’t be having a crack at anyone else’s literary skills, Captain Wordwall.
And try a full stop every now and then, FFS.
Hey, you might think I’m no one to talk, with which you’d have a point, but I’m not trying to be one of the Bronte’ sisters.
You mind you business , fuckstick.
Haha.
That is not what you said, and this is mayonnaise all over that shit pie you were slinging while calling everyone who questioned your stupid statements – which are are now attempting to walk back – criminals and traitors.
What does Madam Zeeeee of Zeeee Media say about the (death) camps?
A failed totalitarian, and aspiring dictator. A would-be Mussolini* cloaked in righteousness.
*Deliberate. Because wog.
You’re shitting yourself KD.
That’s obvious.
How fucking funny is that!
Physician, heal thyself.
DoverBeach:
Which means it’s a major job to fix track/roadwheel damage. Some jobs just require four or 5 men.
While I was searching for relevant videos, I came across this one of WW2 Field Repair and recovery units.
and this one of MkIV field repairs.
As you can see, more than three crew would necessitate a repair team from workshops.
I stand by what I said, cock smoker KD, not the words you put in my mouth.
If you lift the balls up hanging in front of your eyes, you’d be able to read better.
Haven’t you got some Darwin Gin Jockying to be doing?
Course I am. All over the place. My blood is turning to raspberry sludge as we speak.
You’ve turned into rsrsrrs, without her grace and manners.
Isn’t there a bar maid….oh no sorry, you’ve been bragging about conquering bride’s maids.
You’ve got some real issues there.
Respect is earned fuck stick.
You deserve none.
You’re terrible at this Alinsky stuff.
Stop emoting all over the joint by a 14 year old goth schoolgirl, and tell the Indian roadhouse turd story again. That’s a belter, and not made up one little bit.
I had some issues in Mackay in 1992. I had to carb up for days after that.
Thanks for reading though.
Another expert prediction:
You want to go with this ‘expert’ too, St. Ruth? Or are you sticking with the ‘experts’ you let through the filter?
Maybe if you hadn’t pissed your pants huddled in the trenches at the very start of this, and defied tyranny, did not submit….would not be told to stay away from your cenotaph by commos, you wouldn’t have had to take the jab.
Oh dear……..what goes around comes around, you piece of filth.
Look at you shitting yourselves.
Pathetic, and yet totally appropriate.
Bruce O’Newk:
What will tip the scales in an overall context is the level of training, communication between friendlies and morale.
And of course, supply.
Oh shit. I was wrong all this time. From Scouts Victoria:
Wait, wait, wait. Stop.
Wrong sort of camp.
Again with the military analogies. Cloaked in khaki, handing out white feathers again.
In 11 to 41 months, apparently.
Barking Toad:
Pictures or piss off.
🙂
Having a go at Lizzy is just uncalled-for.
Don’t like her writing scroll, FFS.
You really lost the plot, or just drunk tonight.
Both.
The Ben Ean mixed with Dark ‘N’ Stormy just brings it out more.
Harlequin Decline:
I think that pretty well establishes whose side the local Chinese will be on if it gets serious.
We’ve got the internment camps up and running – wasn’t that the original intent?
The claim:
The tape:
Barking Toad:
I was joking!
Oh.
Not you?
Ukraine now admits it was all bullshit, even the recent story naming a pilot with 40 ‘kills’. Sorry to see some youtube channels uncritically accept these stories.
Anyone surprised at this happening?
BLM well and truly in the shit.
Pennsylvania High School Teacher Suspended For Hosting Drag Show without Parental Consent.
This is just another “In your Face” slap to the parents.
Jeez, you’d think they would be a little more circumspect in a state where there are minimum restrictions on self defence.
Rep. Chip Roy Blasts DHS Secretary Mayorkas Over Border Crisis In EPIC Rant (VIDEO)
“Mr. Secretary, do you know what this is?” began Roy as he held up a picture of a truck. “This is a mobile morgue, a body trailer needed by counties in south Texas overwhelmed by dead migrants.”
“That particular trailer is filled with these bodies,” continued Roy, showing a picture of stacked bodies in the back of the truck. “Twenty-seven bodies that were stored in this mobile morgue in south Texas with dead bodies of migrants. Dead bodies like this one found on a ranch just three weeks ago in south Texas, a dead migrant. Somehow that’s compassion.”
Harlequin Decline says: May 1, 2022 at 11:27 pm
Harlequin D, that stirrer is Drew Pavlou.
You may recall him from a couple of years ago.
Student at Qld Uni. Supported the Hong Kong protests of (about) 2 yrs ago.
Qld Uni was ordered by China to crack down on him, so suspended him for two years.
He made quite a fuss, which really got up the nose of the Chinese consulate in Brisbane, & the Confucius Institute, etc.
‘The Secret Garden.’
This was a movie that I saw, somewhat in desperation as the choice on Emirates was horrible, on the last leg of the flight, from Dubai to Heathrow. I had spent the first 14 hours from Sydney to Dubai being cossetted with fine food and wines, resorting in that time space to re-watching Gone With the Wind, from the classic movies selection. The only other movie I might have watched was the excellent ‘Belfast’, which we’d recently seen, so revisiting Scarlet and Rhett seemed like a choice, increasingly making me maudlin in its second half assisted by my various ‘nightcaps’ of fine wine ‘to help me sleep’, which btw it did very well. But back now to ‘The Secret Garden’.
This movie is based on the much-loved book of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which tells the story of a spoiled brat of a 12 year old girl Mary Lennox, made an orphan by cholera in India and being thus sent to live with her mother’s wealthy brother in a great country house in the Yorkshire moorlands, a House where all is not well. The housekeeper is spooky, the uncle is a withdrawn British Lord mourning his lost wife and things are aganging bump in the night. Little Mary investigates, and finds a lonely boy cousin confined to bed on his father’s orders, for his over-protective father fears he will die like his dearly loved wife, the boy’s mother. The children are saved by the ‘wisdom’ of a secret garden they discover, which heals them both. Written in 1911 it is set in the Edwardian era.
This movie though does damage to the conceptual base. It is ‘a reimagining of this story for the contemporary generation’, hence why should we be surprised to find that it is a totally woke piece of nonsense that loses all of the charm, archaism and characterisation of the book. For a start, they set it in the post-World War Two period, which makes the story far less believable regarding illness and treatments. Secondly, the magic of the garden in the original is brought to the children by Martha, an older woman who does occasional housework in the Great House, but who is a Yorkshire-bred wise woman, who brings the cottage-wisdom of ages into the lives of the children by her gentle, acceptance of nature’s ways in gardens and in human life, who little homilies delivered in the broadest of antique Yorkshire accenting. We do not expect Martha to be black and youthful, but she is both, with not much of the broad Yorkshire about her really, and her important part reduced to that of a bit player. Black too is the key figure of the narrative, Martha’s son Dickon, who helps Mary initially discover and explore this walled up place. He’s hardly the implied son of the soil and moorlands we find in the book (although this actor tries hard and does well, poor lad). They find the key to the rusty locked door and together Dickon and Mary begin to take the ‘sick’ boy Colin into the garden to watch things grow in this mystical place, neglected and overgrown. In the book it mirrors the neglect of these two youngsters, who are shown to develop and thrive under the tutelage of Martha and Dickon. But the change in era and the move to magical restoration via an intensely British longue duree by ‘people of colour’ rather than denizens of deepest Yorkshire just doesn’t ring true to the magical spirit of the English garden as a place of regeneration, which is the whole motif being played in Hodgson Burnett’s work. Nor does the garden itself satisfy: it is filmed like something out of Tarzan, acres of wild tropical foliage and swinging branches and vines, with occasional spots of clearing and a pool. It is not the overgrown garden of a civilised world, indeed it is far too much like something out of ‘The Lord of the Flies’ for my tastes. My tastes run to another sort of garden, the one evoked so well in the book, full of spring crocus and bluebells, birdsong and blossoms, bursting out with life, as in the book.
At primary school in England for a year in the early 1950’s our teacher would read us a much-anticipated chapter from this book at the end of each week, on Friday, and we would head out for the weekend with our heads full of thing anciently British, old understandings and folkways gathered by generations of observers, tales of birds, their flight over walled gardens, the cycle of nature, and regeneration. Not the take-out that today’s children will get from this anachronous piece overdone with special effects and with all of its magical and unique aura lost. Don’t bother.
Harlequin D (& others): Drew Pavlou has a wikipedia page, which does a reasonable job of giving the sanitised officially palatable version of how he was treated.
If reading the page, please keep in mind the page content is based upon what is tolerable to Qld Uni.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/biden-economy-dow-sp-500-record-worst-month-april-since-1970/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=the-gateway-pundit&utm_campaign=dailypm&utm_content=2022-04-30
Woman Stabs 16-Year-Old Jimmy John’s Employee Over Sandwich Order
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/woman-stabs-16-year-old-jimmy-johns-employee-sandwich-order/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=the-gateway-pundit&utm_campaign=dailyam&utm_content=2022-04-30
According to police, Holeman was on a ‘do not serve’ list at Jimmy John’s because of past behavior but she entered the store on Tuesday and became violent.
Apologies for typos. It is arvo tea time here and I am called to it. So didn’t proof read.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/dept-defense-study-shows-pregnant-female-soldiers-experiencing-absolutely-catastrophic-rate-abnormalities-fetal-problems-dr-naomi-wolf-drops-bomb-war-room-video/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=the-gateway-pundit&utm_campaign=dailyam&utm_content=2022-04-30
It has also suddenly got rather cold, the heating has just been turned up.
Poor ole Hairy out on Hampstead Heath with his friend, revisiting sites of his yoof, for they both used to live very nearby and played there often as children.
I expect he has spent very little time on the Heath and lots in the pub.
Luckily he is coming back by train.
Without looking I’ve guessed the …er… demographic… of the woman.
It’ll be the same as those who are throwing things all over the place & going berserk at check-in staff in airport rage videos.
London to a brick I’m not wrong.
Caught up.
Thank God.
Good on you, Winston. I’m not even in the race for that.
What is said above is said and I have no time to catch up with any of it.
Timewise, it is very upside down around here. 🙂
Where is Bons? Still in this neck of the globe?
Hope his Covid has not been too severe. We are getting reports here of a more severe Omicron that we had in Australia. Or maybe that’s just the Brits still going on about it.
We went to the Stonehenge Exhibition (very good) at the British Museum yesterday. Very crowded even though you had to book a timeslot yet no social distancing, and very few masks. However, elsewhere there still seems to be a bit of masking and Covid panic. The frighteners have been so firmly applied in the UK that it is going to take some time before some people feel the winds of freedom that are available here for those who want no masking and no Covid rooles.
As for climate change – the whole culture is totally imbued with it. It’s in every ad, in every bit of TV and media in general, in all choices that people make in life, in menus and recipes (all vegetarian) and in just about everything you want to do. ‘The Message’ is totally pervasive. And now they are trying to make an internet ‘watchdog’ against ‘misinformation’ apply to all forms of media, not just, as it does now, to mass media. The Culture of Compliance is so strong in the middle class environment we are in just now. We will make judgements later when we get away from it more about how much it applies elsewhere in the UK.
Good luck Zulu and Mrs Zulu.
Re: Any turret head type Cats got any opinion on the latest brainfarts that Australia shouldn’t be buying tanks, because the war in the Ukraine has proved tanks are obsolete?
People saying things like that have little understanding of battlefields. Any place that needs infantry needs at least the option of armour. In many battlefields if you can’t have armour then no infantry – so how can they take and hold ground essential to victory?
Johannes Leak.
Mark Knight.
Mark Knight #2.
Warren Brown.
Peter Broelman.
David Rowe.
Michael Ramirez.
A.F. Branco.
Lisa Benson.
Patrick Cross.
So the Pelosi cadaver’s been shipped over to the Ukraine for a visit. Foul old woman. Think of all the fossil fuels wasted to transport that disgusting, criminal, dirty waste of space. What a grotesque joke the US has become.
Who need’s enemies when you have America for a ‘friend’ with its critical race theory and sex changes for minors.
I object to comments referring to a review of the actual transmission route through passengers on the Diamond Princess being dismissed as ‘throwing chaff in the air’.
There are other articles reflecting similar opinions, at least one of which linked through the one I posted.
The general findings where that most spread was aerosol, either at large gatherings early in the cruise, by table sharing at meal times, and in shared cabins.
Once the passengers were isolated in their cabins, passengers generally stopped getting covid unless someone else in their cabin already had it but not surprisingly it continued to spread through the crew who didn’t isolate.
My take away is that the virus is spread person to person (obviously!) and as not everyone commingled with everyone else in exactly the same way for exactly the same length of time not everyone was exposed because the virus spread through the on board passenger population was interrupted by confined to cabin quarantine and other measures like ppe.
The way people talk about Diamond Princess as the base line for infection rates seems to assume everyone had exactly the same level of exposure at the same time. They didn’t.
Day One of the high lochs ride is in the bag and we are sitting in a travel show luxury standard trampers’ inn scoffing smoked beast and fish and incredibly stinky cheese.
I’d kill for a beer but there is only whisky which I don’t drink, to the utter amazement of my companions.
I did well today given that I am still fragile from the coof and it has been a longish while out of the saddle.
It was very cold. I was saved from climbing into every scrap of my clothes by the hosts giving me quilted overalls and a quilted helmet. Even with my wind stopper socks and gortex gloves, the exposed parts of the ride were a trial.
The horses are tucked away in their rather luxurious stable. I’d forgotten the joys of the end of day rub down, feeding and blanket ritual. My companions fortified themselves with drams. I imagine it will be quite an exercise to convince the nags to leave their snug in the morning.
No fish today but they guarantee barbied trout for lunch tomorrow – great.
Tomorrow’s target is a restored croft. How any family could have survived on this bleak moonscape is impossible to imagine. No wonder so many opted for the relative safety of the Army.
This exercise is costing the value of a small inheritance. Probably ten times the cost of a trail ride in Oz. But so far it has been memorable.
Amusingly, our gear is being dragged around in a hippy era Kombi driven by a girl in Indian cotton and big felt hat. The team say that it has never been out of second gear. Possibly the same applies to the hippy chick who is a total space cadet.
To bed to dream about beer.
The basic reproduction rate was initially 4 times higher on-board compared to the R0 in the epicentre in Wuhan, but the countermeasures lowered it substantially. Based on the modeled initial R0 of 14.8, we estimated that without any interventions within the time period of 21 January to 19 February, 2920 out of the 3700 (79%) would have been infected
Safe.
Reliable.
Good for the environment.
Seconded
And to Toad.
We estimated…
We additionally estimated…
Compared scenarios…
This is basically climate “science”.
Jimmy Dore posting a library of truth bombs overnight.
https://www.youtube.com/c/thejimmydoreshow/videos
Mask studies, heart issues post vax studies & exposes a COVID social media influencer.
The Ministry of Truth viral variant has spread to Australia.
Via Jo Nova:
The Conversation is banning climate scepticism.
Over the weekend, a research note was put out but Zoltan Pozsar (a big brain strategist from Credit Suisse).
He’s one of the guys that when he speaks/writes anything, Warren Buffett drops everything & listens/reads.
Howard Marks is another one.
Pozsar is saying the world is underestimating the impact of Ukraine’s production of everything being disrupted.
Judging by prices on offer the grain traders aren’t.
You have to wonder why Ukraine is so poor if it controls critical pieces of the value add supply chain.
We’re not talking wheat or other commodities.
You have to hand it to Tim Cook who’s on-shoring & brought in-house Apple’s chip production as fast as he can.
No where near fast enough Tim.
paywalled
China meets banks to discuss protecting assets from US sanctions
1. KD was conquered and not treated well by his captors
2. My population forecasts as an economist were better than most demographers.
3. War is about spoilt upper class women getting young men to kill each other. An interesting post from the cray cray laydee pages:
https://medium.com/@_lommol_/feminism-is-an-anti-working-class-movement-24f165fe9d8b
Buffett has been buying into oil companies lately.
Warren Buffett tells shareholders about spending $51 billion (30 Apr)
That’s interesting in light of the Democrats’ hostility towards oil and gas. Buffett famously owns all those railways transporting crude oil from Canada and Nth Dakota southwards in absence of the Keystone XL pipeline.
It’s also interesting in light of the share market angst with quite large moves lately, especially in tech stocks, and especially with the jitters about inflation, interest rates and a possible recession. I wonder what he knows that we don’t?
Based upon all the evidence I’ve seen, that danger hair
isn’t affected by serious people.
Something someone should’ve thought of, considering the hard on they’ve got
for smart, evidence-based policies.
Claire excepted.
Probably.
China Insights
The CCP has imposed a whole city lockdown on Shanghai for more than a month since April 1st to prevent and control the COVID-19 outbreak. This entire city with a population of 26 million has been turned into a cold and cruel prison.
The CCP’s practice is to continue to eliminate and muzzle so-called negative voices, but this time in Shanghai, it has triggered an unexpected backlash.
Shanghai’s “elites” are changing their minds about the Chinese Communist government. Some have left, some are buying tickets, and some may wait until the epidemic is over.
Since April, searches for the phrase “investment immigration” have skyrocketed in mainland China. Both Google and China’s Baidu search trends show a spike in the number of Chinese and Shanghai residents searching for ” immigration.”
Mr Integrity is the most successful insider trader of all time.
Cheers Dot. 6:52
Safety Reps are a result of Industrial Manslaughter Laws.
The SR signs off on the day’s activities, and he can’t be held liable.
Go ahead anyway without his sign off and you’ll be getting a snap visit from the Division of WH&S to fine tooth comb the site plus it’s a black mark if a serious accident happens.
Not only does it put a handbrake on construction, but it’s demoralising for the workforce.
Expect many more large builders to fall over.
Hey, here’s an idea:
Let’s spend 9 hours talking about tank turrets.
Wow, that is some fire fountain. The poor bus driver behind him may have PTSD after that. I doubt he’ll be driving those buses again after what he just saw.
Best idea you have ever had and also tactically relevant to the most important event in human history at the moment.
You can’t even troll competently.
Just fade into obscurity you bitter old flog.
Again, you can’t be this stupid, HSRs existed well before specific industrial manslaughter statute law in Australia.
Hope so. Looks like he was attempting to drive past it.
Foolish!
Without looking I’ve guessed the …er… demographic… of the woman.
Are you hinting that she’s … a Jogger?
HSRs existed well before specific industrial manslaughter statute law in Australia.
Again, you can’t be this stupid unintentionally.
The Industrial Manslaughter Laws weaponised Safety Reps.
Do you know the difference between a Safety Rep and a Safety Officer?
Of course you don’t.
So why are you commenting on my posts except to Troll and derail the conversation?
132andBush says:
May 2, 2022 at 6:24 am
Top Ender says:
May 2, 2022 at 2:17 am
Good luck Zulu and Mrs Zulu.
Seconded
And to Toad.
Yes
All the best for good results and many more years for those involved.
Okey-dokey.
Cast tank turrets have a better war winning record
than fabricated plate turrets.
Trump about to speak at Greenwood, Nebraska 6pm EST
RSBN Rumble
The war in Ukraine is just one little part of the most important event in human history at the moment.
But it’s the one the government wants you focussed on at the moment, and you’re all doing exactly as they want.
I stand by my criticism of Lizzie last night.
My disgust at good Nazis has been expressed toward the shitful behaviour of Notafan and her green tick holiday of Europe. When Lizzie does the same thing, it would be hypocritical of me and biased not to respond in the same manner.
To then shove it down our throats in her usual attempts at kidding herself into believing she’s some sort of writer is then up for ridicule.
How’s sowing going, Gez?