Open Thread – Weekend 30 Sept 2023
986 responses to “Open Thread – Weekend 30 Sept 2023”
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Because I know you want it,
https://youtu.be/IQUjlOjpeLw
Chainsaws and idiots. -
Current shareprice of AUD 5.18, (which should be AUD0.00) not enough compensation for you?
The share price is irrelevant, but no. It wasn’t enough compensation because the firm was still forced to absorb hefty charges through the lockdown, causing the firm to announce losses.It also had to dilute existing shareholders because of a capital raise due to a forced lockdown.
You have it in reverse in terms of the fascism angle. If the government told the firm and others to shut down operations and there wouldn’t be any compensation, then that would indeed veer towards fascism.
The business operates lawfully as a going concern. If the freaking government wants to shut it down, it owes the firm/ shareholders compensation.
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Knuckle Dragger
Oct 1, 2023 5:43 PMIt must have been an appalling scene for emergency services.
A triple road train is about110 tonnes. A 7 seat Mitsu Pajero with 6 on board would be about 2.5 tonnes. Closing speed of, say, 220km/h. What a mess.
If this is a murder/suicide, I hope there is a particularly nasty place in Hell for the person responsible (presume driver).
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Siltstone
Oct 1, 2023 6:26 PM
Joyce sold $17 million worth of Qantas shares when he knew the ACCC investigation was underway into selling tickets on non-existent flights. The Board let him.That’s why I think the whole board should be sacked, not just the chairman. They knew what was coming and still let him monetise his shares and it’s even worse if they didn’t know what was coming. Of course, the fate of the board is in the shareholders’ hands and not mine as I don’t own any Qantas shares.
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Bashing QANTAS mindlessly isn’t helpful.
I’m very critical of the old and new CEOs.
The new gal has been at QANTAS for 20 years and an executive for a long time. She was the CFO. She never talked to a pilot until recently. Hmmm. The bawling emails are infuriating. No, I don’t like QANTAS. You wanna make feel nice, give me a partial refund.
Old Leprechaun (Ole’ Leppy, Lep to his friends) engaged in running bogus flights that got cancelled the lost time to customers if incurred on a business like QANTAS would be crippling. Flights were then reorganised for efficiency. The other thing which is dodgy is using bogus flights to help hog all of the terminal space. Given the possible collusion with the ALP through King with regards to Qatar Air, the prior possible sham bookings might be an abuse of market power and deceptive & misleading conduct as the Qatar scandal impugns the character of QANTAS.
As for profits, the fleet is horrible now and seems second rate. This will impact dividend growth in coming years.
The golden parachute was too easy for him. Perhaps You get 50% of bonuses in quitting then 10% a year for five years, half of which relies on maintaining dividends based off the projected dividends in annual reports and financial statements attached which you sign off on. Of course the policy ought to be up to the company.
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“This is happening across the country, and may just be the death blow to the Trudeau Government,” Bexte added. “The election may be a ways away, but he’s done.”
No castro’s boy is not done. Trump is. The anti-left still think the West can be rectified. It can’t. The only thing saving Trump is his security detail. Keep an eye on that not the Fiddler on the Roof court-room antics which only function to sedate and confuse the sheeple.
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“This is happening across the country, and may just be the death blow to the Trudeau Government,” Bexte added. “The election may be a ways away, but he’s done.”
No Castro’s boy is not done. Trump is. The anti-left still think the West can be rectified. It can’t. The only thing saving Trump is his security detail. Keep an eye on that not the Fiddler on the Roof court-room antics which only function to sedate and confuse the sheeple. When the security detail disappears so does Trump.
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Bashing QANTAS mindlessly isn’t helpful.
I prefer bashing them intelligently. The Qatar thing was clearly our qwerty champions vs them horrible muslim bigots. Amusing that King is twisting like an expert Twister player atm. Hopefully the Leprechaun will be required to give evidence under oath in an inquiry or some such. I wonder how much Qantas has donated?
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I love Flynn for dazzlement. Rusty for gritty. Elwes for this.
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The only thing saving Trump is his security detail. Keep an eye on that not the Fiddler on the Roof court-room antics which only function to sedate and confuse the sheeple. When the security detail disappears so does Trump.
I don’t think Trump trusts his Secret Service detail, he has his own security. I think I read somewhere that one of his SS guards informed against him to the DOJ investigators in the documents matter. After what they did in Venezuela when accompanying Obama there with drinking and prostrates I wouldn’t trust them either. Perhaps RFKJ is better off without an SS assigned detail.
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Dot
Qantas can generally run older planes because the distances are much longer than for other carriers, which means there’s much fewer takeoffs and landings, which is what causes stress and ages planes quicker. It’s like comparing a car that does mostly city driving to driving long, regular distances in the country. The city car wears out faster.
Also, give them a break about cancellations, etc. They were just starting back up after two years of forced closure. Read Terry McCrann’s comments in a piece he wrote. He said the money not returned was nowhere near the hysterics; it was about 10 mio.
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Qantas Chairman’s Lounge membership comes at a price
DAVID PENBERTHY
Follow @penboEvery person has their price. Mine was a Neil Perry club sandwich. For a few sensational years I was a member of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge. It was an absurd benefit bestowed by dint of marriage. As the husband of a then federal politician, my associate membership turned up unexpectedly in the post some time in 2016. A sexy matt black card, set in a swanky presentation envelope with a personal welcome note from Alan Joyce himself. I umm-ed and ah-ed about the ethics of accepting it but figured no taxpayers were being harmed in the process, and I never reported on aviation so, what the hey, it’s club sandwich time. The sandwiches, I should add, were excellent. As indeed was everything.
In 2019, Dad and I spent a week in New Orleans. We had done New Orleans right, meaning we had done a number on ourselves. We saw about 20 bands in seven days, ate turtle soup, oysters Rockefeller and table-flambéed steak Diane at Brennans, Commanders Palace, Galatoires and Cochon, drank our body weight in bloody Marys, sazeracs and hurricanes. On one action-packed day my medically trained father saved a meth addict from swallowing his tongue while having an epileptic fit, Dad drily saying “Good thing your mother isn’t here”, while I rang 911 and gave the ambos the poor chap’s location.
We needed to return home and re-enter civil society.
Our American Airlines flight from Louis Armstrong International to Dallas Forth Worth was cancelled when lightning hit our plane while preparing for takeoff. We were stuck in New Orleans for another day and missed our Qantas flight from Dallas to Sydney. We were completely stuffed as the flights weren’t connected, so when we made it to Dallas the following day, Qantas figured we were just no-shows. We wound up stuck in a giant, motionless queue with hundreds of people in the same situation, nervously watching the clock as the economy check-in staff moved at glacial pace towards resolving our concerns. We were going to miss our flight home again.
I told Dad I had an idea. “Maybe we should give the Chairman’s card a whirl and see if it helps?”
We approached the first-class desk. I was dressed like a dag in jeans, sneakers and a New Orleans Saints NFL T-shirt. The guy at the counter said tersely: “No cutting the queue, this area is for first-class passengers only.”
“Yes, I know, I was just wondering if, as Qantas Chairman’s Lounge members, we are in the right spot?”
His demeanour changed in an instant. “Oh sir, I’m sorry, you shouldn’t be here at all! See that escalator? Just go up there to those double doors and they will look after you.”
The doors opened. Dad and I were bathed in golden light. We were in the American Airlines First Class lounge. I explained our situation to the concierge, a stunning 40-something Texan woman with sculpted American hair.
“Now Dave, I’m a Cowboys girl and normally wouldn’t help a Saints fan, but in your case I’m going to make an exception. Y’all get yourselves a drink. Leave your passports with me and I’ll have this sorted in a flash.”
Three minutes later we were sitting in deep leather chairs eating jumbo shrimp and veal tournedos with asparagus and bearnaise sauce and sharing a bottle of Hugel riesling. The concierge sashayed over just before the cheese plate arrived and handed us our passports and boarding passes.
I mention this story for two reasons: one, it was one of the more entertaining experiences of my life, and two, nothing exposes the yawning gulf in the travelling experience than the two worlds we inhabited at DFW that night.
By simply flashing that little black card, we exited a miserable place where frazzled travellers were crying and shouting, recharging dead phone batteries on powerpoints in the wall, waiting for toilet cubicles to become free, sleeping on the ground, paying through the nose for food and drinks … to another where a woman who looked like Raquel Welch would sort out your flight dramas while you ate giant prawns someone had already peeled for you and then had a hot shower with exotic unguents and poultices before floating on to the plane.
Herein lies the problem with the Chairman’s Lounge. As I said, the cost of running something as extravagant as the Chairman’s Lounge is borne entirely by Qantas. But there is no quid without a pro quo. For Qantas, the Chairman’s Lounge is akin to what’s known in international relations as soft diplomacy. Whatever its actual costs are to the national carrier, the unquantifiable benefits to the airline are threefold: it makes Chairman’s Lounge members think more highly of Qantas, it makes them feel less inclined or wholly uninclined towards being critical of Qantas, and it gives them absolutely no capacity to relate to the lived experience of economy-class passengers.
Who are the people who find themselves in this happy situation? Only every senior decision-maker, policy-framer and opinion-shaper in the land, every federal MP, premier and opposition leader, many if not most state ministers, every senior judge, chief executives, senior members of the media, and all of their families, the happy hangers-on like my old man and I, living the maxim allez les bon temps rouler on Alan’s expense en route from The Big Easy.
I didn’t use the Chairman’s Lounge that often in Australia, mainly because I don’t travel much, but whenever I did I would bump into Labor, Liberal and Greens MPs who I knew through my work. In light of the scandals that have beset Qantas over the largesse afforded to Joyce, its treatment of its staff and customers and its reputational collapse versus historically less well-regarded airlines, you can’t help but wonder whether every one of them has been a bit co-opted by the chumminess of it all.
The motivation of Qantas in what is superficially an innocent act of corporate generosity was plainly illustrated by what happened when my wife quit politics. We received a letter from Qantas soon after explaining that regretfully her and my membership would be expiring.
I can’t stress enough, that is not a complaint. I should thank Qantas for all the fun I had. But it does say something about the transactional nature of the arrangement, where the intention quite clearly on the airline’s part is to make people in positions of policy influence feel indebted and co-opted, and to send them politely on their way when they return to being just another average punter.
A question for me here. Would I have written this piece or others bagging Qantas if I were still a Chairman’s Lounge member? You would hope the answer to that is yes. Without fear or favour, to employ a journalistic cliche. But you know, those club sandwiches …
For what it’s worth, my theory is that the avalanche of media criticism this past few months has been like a dam wall bursting. Historically, the press had pulled its punches with the national carrier, in part because of the relationships outlined above. As Joyce and the airline were left exposed, as per the emperor’s clothes, fighting fires on so many fronts ranging from reliability to cost to remuneration to the uproar over Qatar’s expansion plans, the media has entered all-bets-are-off mode. About time too, frankly. It was all a bit cute, and suss, and as Groucho Marx said, I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.
DAVID PENBERTHY COLUMNIST
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But really, sitting in an albeit very comfortable lounge would induce corruption?
Oh, I can imagine the inducement.
Even humble me. On a ten hour connection.
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Okay. Best Robin Hood?
Fairbanks
Flynn
Connery
Costner
Elwes
RustyAll vying for second place after the masterly Richard Greene.
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Robert Sewell
Oct 1, 2023 5:56 PMand bricks which had been 2 pounds per thousand could not be got under 8 pounds.
P, that’s very light for a thousand bricks.
Further to your question (I was cooking dinner at the time):
A Scotch Kiln was the type of kiln used by brickmakers in Australia in the 1850s.
A rectangular hole was dug in the ground and the bricks were stacked in the hole with alternative layers of timber, the kiln was covered with clay leaving a few holes for escape of smoke, the timber was lit and the burning timber fired the bricks.
The advantages of a Scotch Kiln was its ease of construction and lack of chimney.
They were used throughout Australia by generations of brickmakers who travelled with their brickmould and tools wherever they found suitable clay. Here they would dig the clay, building a scotch kiln, burn the bricks and move on, leaving nothing but a hole in the ground as evidence of their trade.A constant supply of fresh water and suitable clay were the first requirements for brickmaking at that time and the method was such:
An empty bottomless mould, lubricated with sand, is placed on a stock board which often has a raised frog on it.
(The term “frog”in brickmaking refers to the depression made in the larger side of the brick to form a key for the mortar at the joints.)
The Clay is placed into the mould, scraped level with the mould, and then the mould and the stock board are placed upside down and the brick slides out of the mould.The sand which is put around the mould helps to free the clay from the mould, and the stock is the board with frog marks on it – hence Sand Stock Bricks.
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Has anyone ever actually made a club sandwich at home?
Bear – I’ve never had a club sandwich, they look pretty decent.
Lunch at the Cafe today was a half club sandwich…chicken, lettuce, mayonnaise. I do have some bacon and tomato in the fridge. But I’m out of chicken, so I can’t try the real thing until I get to Coles for resupply.
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Look, Qantas has taken the eye off the customer ball even more than usual, driven by hubris from the CEO down to the baggage handlers. One could argue their political activism has also been a mistake, but I don’t rate that anywhere near the commercial damage done by their shabby treatment of customers (and it’s not just flight credits).
But, weally Wodney Woddenhead?
Swallowing the ABC line on this?
Since Q got into trouble the ABC have been sticking the boots in, but not from the customer service angle. It’s all about getting the Union band back together and running it like Ansett circa 1995.
So their go-to guys are the ex LAME union head (Purvinas), pilots union and AWU. Why do you reckon the “investment guy” was on their speed-dial Wodney?
Wouldn’t be up to his ears in QAN short positions by any chance, would he? -
Snake wars.
OK, I’m not keeping a red bellied black as a pet, right.
But, on a scale of 1 to 10 (taking into account toxicity of venom and aggression), I am rating them a 2 against tigers, taipans, browns (all 8+) or even copperheads (5).
(There is a formula for this, but I won’t bore you with it).
Here’s the clincher.
Red bellied blacks are highly territorial when it comes to other snakes. If you have one in your yard, it is highly unlikely you will tread on a tiger snake or anything else equally dangerous. -
He said the money not returned was nowhere near the hysterics; it was about 10 mio.
It’s not entirely about the money, it’s how they could have used the bogus flights to hog terminal space.
Still, $10 mn of ill gotten gains is still $10 mn.
As for the planes both planes in my return trip has problems before taking off and the passenger amenities seemed tacky.
They can let standards slide without competitive pressure.
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Qantas can generally run older planes because the distances are much longer than for other carriers, which means there’s much fewer takeoffs and landings, which is what causes stress and ages planes quicker.
I believe Aloha Airlines found this out the hard way.
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JC
Oct 1, 2023 7:56 PM
Sanchez
Ultimately, the proof will be in the pudding because all these negative feelings people have against Q will have to translate into loss of market share, both international, but more so domestically. We’ll see next quarterly.
Which is where this should be decided.
In the market.
Wodney’s ABC-sourced solution to forcibly turn it into some sort of aviation version of Bwitish Lleyland isn’t going to cut it.
If, as you say, the flight credit thing was so minor, why didn’t they just fix it?
I mean, I’ve worked with CEO’s and Chairmen who would say, “$10 million? Really? That all? Just fkn fix it. Let me know when it is done. Any time before Friday lunchtime will be fine.” -
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Mark from Melbourne
Oct 1, 2023 7:14 PM
Okay. Best Robin Hood?Fairbanks
Flynn
Connery
Costner
Elwes
RustyAll vying for second place after the masterly Richard Greene.
There’s only one Errol Flynn !
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Rockdoctor
Oct 1, 2023 8:33 PM
Qantas can generally run older planes because the distances are much longer than for other carriers, which means there’s much fewer takeoffs and landings, which is what causes stress and ages planes quicker.
I believe Aloha Airlines found this out the hard way.
Yes.
As did JAL when the rear bulkhead blew off a 747 and killed over 500 people. Admittedly the JAL incident was exacerbated by a previous tailstrike and a poorly executed repair, but the high number of pressurisation cycles was a contributor.
There is a formula for airframe fatigue contributed to by cycles and raw hours flown, but I won’t bore you with it. -
Qantas can generally run older planes because the distances are much longer than for other carriers, which means there’s much fewer takeoffs and landings, which is what causes stress and ages planes quicker.
Crikey. A takeoff, climb, hull pressurisation, descent & landing are called a “cycle”.
Each aircraft has a rated number of takeoff/landing cycles. Generally the larger (i.e. longhaul) the aircraft, the lower the number of cycles.
747 have about half the number of flights before the hull has to be retired than say a 777. An airbus A380 has (from memory) about half the cycles of a 747.Performing one cycle per day for a 747 wouldn’t make it last much longer than a 737 doing 3 flights per day, as the 737 is rated at almost 3x the number of cycles of a 747
Hope this helps.
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Apart from my post a few minutes ago I have been unable to post/comment these last few days (on a number of posts) as I keep on getting Internal Server Error.
Tried different browsers and devices, cleared caches etc but it’s pretty much all the same.
It’s getting to the point where I’m pretty close on giving up on this site.
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Some of the airfares paid by people for their Euro getaways at the moment are eye watering.
I may need to fly to Melbourne in November for pers business. Domestic fares are not much removed, the direct flight with Alliance is worse than the connections thru BNE. Otherwise it is Nostar with a red eye run and no Skybus at the other end.
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Interesting thing about pressurisation in an aircraft.
You are not pressurised to sea level.
I checked my Brietling Biggles watch whilst travelling at 39,000 feet on the trip to Japan.
The very expensive watch told me I was at 7,000 feet.
I trust the little altimeter system in the watch was accurate. -
Watching the chat replay, this dog is popular across the planet. So many people from so many countries.
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woof bark growl:
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Cali its funny. When I was a child dad drove us everywhere, Brisbane/Sydney/Melbourne. Usually overnight and in 1 hit. Was cheaper than flying, only 1 time I flew as a youngster and that was on a B727 from BNE-SYD that I would have been about 4yo. I remember the 3 engines mounted rear on fuselage/tail and walking up a stairwell into the back. Mum informs me it cost dad over a fortnights pay and that he only forked it out because my brother was 2 months old and they didn’t want him screaming the 12 plus hour drive down the Pacific Hwy.
I’ve noticed lately doing sums we are getting back to that, especially if you are a family.
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Manufacturer says “this many cycles”
End of formula.Which changed significantly after the Aloha 737 did a passable impression of a sardine can.
The science of pressurisation cycles in 2023 is largely settled.
But it was a yuuuge learning curve from the 50’s to the 80’s, starting with purely catastrophic failures of under-specced airframes (Comet), the effect of high cycles in a corrosive environment (Aloha) and the impact of high cycles after poorly executed repairs to crunched airframe (JAL).
Whilst not a cycle problem per se, the United 747 which lost a forward cargo door (and 9 passengers) over the Pacific, was a fatigue problem partially caused by constant cycling.
Boeing never openly admitted it, but suddenly field program to beef up “Section 41” was embarked upon.
As an engineer explained it at a conference I attended on fatigue:-“You build something like this (pointing to the funny ovoid shape which was the cross-section of the 747 forward section). You then pump it up a few thousand times. Every time you do that to this shape it wants to be round. Which weakens it here (pointing to the junction between the two shapes).”
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A thousand bucks for SYD to Coolangatta? On the Pogo Stick. Yikes.
One of my greater regrets was not getting the phone number of the stewardess on a NCL-BNE Qantaslink flight. Newcastle-Kempsey-Coffs Harbour-Coolangatta-Brisbane.
Guy in front of me threw up as we were coming into Coolie, I helped her clean up the mess. Easier on QL flights since the seats were vinyl. She said thanks “Bruce” as I left at BNE, having taken the trouble to work who I was. It was nice!
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Sanchez
A friend did materials science at MIT and graduated with a PhD in corrosion (yeah seriously). He can be very oddly funny. He reckons he always checks the state of the rivets around door that you see when entering the cabin. He’s only refused to get on a plane on some joy-flight in Queersland. Look out for the rivets.
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JC
Oct 1, 2023 9:08 PM
Interesting thing about pressurisation in an aircraft.
You are not pressurised to sea level.That and the lack of humidity in older planes makes you feel like a dried log
The big thing about the Dreamliner was that it was pressurised to 6,000 feet, rather than 8,000 feet.
They improved the aircon too, but that is way above my pay-grade.
We’d need a God Oracle to explain that. -
When I was a child dad drove us everywhere,”
Yes, growing up, Dad drove us everywhere, when we still lived in Sydney, we’d drive to Canberra (regularly), Newcastle, Brisbane and so on. When we moved to Perth, we drove from Perth to Sydney, via Adelaide, in order to see family here in Sydney. Airfares back in the 1970s and early 1980s were exorbitant, it was simply unaffordable for whole families to fly. So, most people got in their cars and drove everywhere In 1978, when we drove Perth to Sydney, we squeezed into the family Renault, travelled with our two dogs in the car, and Mum and Dad both smoked at the time.
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JC at 9:21.
Yes.
A passenger or flight attendant on Aloha noticed something funny around the door before boarding the sardine can flight.
Your pal is right.
Even in non-pressurised aircraft you look for tell-tale signs of incipient structural failure … wrinkled skin, rivets working loose, paint showing signs of flaking or crazing where it shouldn’t.
And, like your house, when doors don’t shut properly, it’s a bad sign. -
Rooty Hill RSL
Was out near there little over a week ago. 2 Garbage trucks with Blacktown City Council markings were there everyday as we went past at around midday parked outside, host & I were wondering either avid punters or whether maybe long lunches were still a thing in western Sydney…Probably, just some council wukkas borrowed them to go to lunch .. Blacktown CC garbage/main transport depot is just outside Rooty Hill railway station .. about 3 to 5 minutes drive from the RSL ………
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Whacky world of islam: continual slaughter of Christians:
‘Whenever They Want to Kill, They Kill’: The Persecution of Christians, August 2023.
Christians are like conservatives; they don’t fight back.
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Piers Akerman:
In a desperate attempt to claw back waverers, media supporters of the Voice to Parliament campaign are highlighting those who have switched their prospective vote from No to Yes. But would anyone really follow Melbourne activist Tarneen Onus Browne on his journey to Yes remembering Browne has also told an Invasion Day rally of hopes Australia would “burn to the ground”?Perhaps vacuous virtue-signallers such as teal MP Allegra Spender might explain how they can rationalise being in the same camp as Browne or foul-mouthed independent Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe, even Noel Pearson, in backing a near-permanent change to the Constitution. Another twig Yes supporters are clutching at is the fact the Uluru statement was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for 2021-22.
Professor Dr Megan Davis, one of the authors who acknowledged it is not just a single document (though she recanted once the damning background documents with their demands for reparations were revealed) has brandished the prize as though it was some great honour.
One of the taxpayer-funded ABC’s many activists, Radio National presenter Patricia Karvelas, is another who has trumpeted the award as proof of something or other when it has been overwhelmingly given to those who support the Left-wing other.
Past Sydney Peace Prize winners have included the #MeToo movement, which so severely rebounded on women, many companies expressed reluctance to employ attractive women and have been found more likely to exclude them from social interactions because of an increased fear of accusations of sexual discrimination.
Then there is the Black Lives Matter organisation, whose Marxist goals included the abolition of the family, queer-affirming and trans-affirming, and whose own financial report claimed it raised $93m in 2020 though there is just $60m in its bank account while its founders have gone into hiding. Oh, and BLM also wants to abolish the prison system and the courts. Expatriate Leftist polemicist John Pilger, for whom the conservative wit Auberon Waugh, coined the word “pilgerism” to describe the writer’s reliably Left-wing stance on everything, has been another winner.
Elitist inner-urban Yes proponents offer nothing but the vibe and the vague promise any concerns raised by the prospect of a huge change to the Constitution separating Australians into two classes – those who claim to have an Aboriginal ancestor no matter how distant, and the rest – will be dealt with in the future.
The No campaign is on firmer ground with its view that all Australians should be treated equally under the Constitution and that race should be irrelevant in our multicultural society. That was the hope of the greatest leaders of genuine peace movements of the past century – Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. I’m cautiously optimistic the No vote will prevail on October 14.
When the dust settles, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney should actually listen to the voices of courageous Indigenous leaders such as Northern Territory senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and her constituents.
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…and, speaking of snake hazards…
Mutt of the Weekend.
Staffy – Jack Russell! What could go right? -
It’s getting to the point where I’m pretty close on giving up on this site.
8.30pm last Thursday night .. everything running AOK until I typed a comment & pressed enter .. 6 time-outs and 3 site unavailable msgs .. before calling it quitz for the night around 8.50pm ..
Friday morning back to normal & no probs since ……….. lotza things crossed ..! -
GreyRanga
Oct 1, 2023 9:23 PM
Thancho, one of my rellies was a designer on the Comet and Trident.
Crikey!
They were leaping into the unknown a bit.
From memory it was a variation on the “wants to be round” 747 problem. The windows were square-ish with rounded corners, which is were the cracking started. The sudden catastrophic failure wasn’t something they had contemplated. I think they thought any failures would be slow and detected in regular inspections.
Didn’t the Comet (or derivative) have a life as a RAF aircraft? -
GreyRanga
Oct 1, 2023 9:46 PM
Mate of mine built a hang glider. Didn’t deburr the inside of the rivet holes. Rivets didn’t grip properly and the guy using it died in the crash.
Way back when I remember meeting a guy from Pilatus who supplied the PC9 to the RAAF. Certain bits were constructed in Australia and he was going nuts about the number of eccentric holes drilled in the wing spars here. Every one of them knocked time off the service life of the spar (and buckets of dollars off their bottom line).
It’s the little things. -
Do Roy and HG still do Festival of the Boot? I haven’t listened to the ABC for the longest time, but their efforts on Grand Final weekend were always worthy.
No more “Boot” but they do a 2 hour show on Saturdays (available on podcast) that is as good as anything they have done. Usually focussed on League but mention other sports as well. Being only 90 minutes (removing music) they seem more focussed. The planned trip to Vegas has been a rich mine for material with promotional ideas ( mainly around pig shooting and poker machines).
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Daily Mail.
Oregon middle school refuses to say if hulking bully filmed pulverizing much smaller girl to floor on hallway is transgender, after sickening clip triggered bomb threat
Student at Hazelbrook Middle School in Tualatin was seen dragging another pupil by her backpack in the hallway before pulling her hair and hitting her
Police arrested the alleged attacker who is now facing assault charges and the case has been referred to the Washington County Juvenile Department
The school was forced to evacuate everyone on Friday after threats of bombs and a school shooting were made following uproar over the attack -
Update on Professor Spitty: It turns out shortly after Professor Spitty expectorated on the No voter, that one of the ALP blokes who was there went & King Hit the same No voter bloke.
This was captured on video.
From Cossack, via Rukshan.
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WA to end commercial logging of native forests
By Kathryn Magann
October 1, 2023 — 2.53pmListen to this article
2 minWestern Australia has joined Victoria in banning commercial logging of native forests from next year.
The WA Forestry Minister Jackie Jarvis says timber will only be removed from the state’s native forests in the future to maintain forest health and for approved mine site operations.
“This move by the Cook government will safeguard our ionic forests for generations to come,” she said on Sunday.
The government will spend $350 million investing in the state’s softwood pine plantations to provide building material and protect existing jobs, as well as provide another 140 new positions.
The investment would help ease the state’s housing crisis as well as prevent climate change by boosting pine forest populations, Jarvis said.
“The record investment in WA’s plantation estate will ensure we can continue to build houses in WA, supporting both the local construction industry and the South West forestry industry,” she said.
The government had already spent $80 million on the Native Forest Transition Plan that included significant industry restructure payments.
WA Environment Minister Reece Whitby said nearly two million hectares of native karri, jarrah and wandoo forests will be protected for future generations.
“This decision reflects the changing attitudes of the community towards our native forests, building on the legacy of the Gallop Labor Government ending old-growth logging,” he said.
The move follows the recent announcement by the Victorian government that native timber harvesting in state forests will be gone by the end of the year
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Been scratching around the web and I think I have found the source of Phabulous Phil Coorey’s 17 pussent undecided number.
It is from his very own AFR on Friday.But the polls suggest the Voice is on track for defeat. This week’s AFR/Freshwater Strategy poll showed support for the Voice was at 33 per cent, while the No vote had reached 50 per cent. Some 17 per cent said they remain undecided, but if they were excluded, the No vote was 60 per cent and the Yes vote 40 per cent.
Hmmm.
They need to swing the whole 17% to Yes, and in all the right states.
I hope Noel isn’t hanging his Trilby on that.
The big cause for hope is that “28% say they might change their minds”.
Well, der!
A lot of people say that because to say otherwise suggests you are close-minded.
But guess what?
They rarely do change their minds. -
WA Environment Minister Reece Whitby said nearly two million hectares of native karri, jarrah and wandoo forests will be protected for future generations.
For future generations… to do what with them? Watch them burn, all that renewable material go up in smoke, or down to the whiteants?
Forgoing the use of Jarrah and wandoo is WA’s Xhosa cattle cull moment. Bugger me, it’s what made the state great. -
Apart from my post a few minutes ago I have been unable to post/comment these last few days (on a number of posts) as I keep on getting Internal Server Error.
Tried different browsers and devices, cleared caches etc but it’s pretty much all the same.
It’s getting to the point where I’m pretty close on giving up on this site.
Sorry, WolfmanOz and others, I’ve been busy elsewhere the last few days and since Friday evenings problem haven’t had problems posting. Will be working on it tomorrow however.
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FWIW, I kind of liked the look of the Comet, with the engines buried into the wing root.
Walked through a Comet 4B at the Imperial War Museum at Duxford in the UK. Handsome old jet. Comet 1s were obviously deadly but once they learned about the problems, it was developed into a great aircraft. By then Boeing had grabbed the initiative and ran with it.
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Indolent
Oct 1, 2023 11:08 PM
WEF Demands Criminalization of ‘Climate Inaction,’ Punishable Up to Death
BTW, the phrase “punishable up to death” encompasses anything from a good behaviour bond or $50 fine up to execution by firing squad.
If you must link to loon sites, please try to find some with a grasp of basic grammar.
Thanking you in advance. -
Nice to see Gusmao thanking Australia for creating his nation for him by selling out to our deadly enemy.
Perhaps his fellow stroppy Portugese fascist Gutierrez told him to do so (or perhaps international statesman of note Andrews).
Indonesia no doubt is having a quite little “we told you” chuckle. -
The Comet is a fascinating history. Heroic step into modern aero eng with effectively no supporting data other than from the partially pressurised B29 and a few high flyer recon machines.
DH pretty much got the pressurisation right. To be brought unstuck by something as basic as square portholes does seem bizarre for an organisation with their vast aero eng experience.
An interesting indicator of their grappeling with the mechanics of pressurisation is the tiny enterance ports. I found it to be uncomfortably claustrophobia inducing to have curl up to get through the tiny door. -
I know a few on this blog quite like the red bellies. To me – they are predatory snakes with a nasty weapon.
Vicki, my main experience of red-bellies has been in the Royal National Park in NSW, and specifically (but not only) around Burning Palms.
There were heaps of them around, and as long as you didn’t step on them, they were off as soon as they realised you were there.
It may well be that they behave differently in different environments.
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