The Sa Wasteland

[Damo_R34]

interesting article Kevin Rudd should withdraw Stimlus package II

[craig R33]

wtf? damo

dan pm sent

[Dohmar]

wtf? damo

dan pm sent

HAHAHAHA Rick Rolled....

nice one damo

You bastard

-D

[Damo_R34]

isnt Rice from China?

please dont ban me

[SLED]

In 50 years time, America probably wont be a power worth comparing with China. And if the Chinese start respecting democracy and human rights, then everyone in the world would be aligning themselves with them.

lol, don't think this planet will last that long

After WW2 people admired the Americans, not because they had turned the tide of the war, but because they were morally right.

that's cause they blew up the Japs & now you & I can eat our rice with a knife & fork.........could've been a totally different story

[Dohmar]

lol, don't think this planet will last that long

Now thats just cynical baby boomer nonsense pete ;P Too bad all the hippies became merchant bankers. Think positive! Breathe! Push! Push harder! I can almost see the head! Breathe!

that's cause they blew up the Japs & now you & I can eat our rice with a knife & fork.........could've been a totally different story

That is a valid point - and yeah, its a significant thing to be greatful for, but that isnt going to be pursuasive to people as time goes by. If a great nation turns into an "bad" regime then people are going to put more creedence in recent events rather than historical events.

50 years down the track, that generation will have their own history to use as a reference - the history that we're a part of. its not like america ever gives thanks to france for their assistance during the American-Canadian wars and the War of Independance lol....

And then theres the point of, if you have a favourable experience 9 times and one bad one, you'll always have a tendency to remember the bad over the good. its human instinct - one of self preservation.

-D

Funny thing did just occur to me - America thanks France for the statue of liberty more than the men they sent to die in the wars. Thats consumerism right there folks haha

Edited February 4, 2009 by Dohmar

[kidafa]

So,

Ever since the first stag cruise here in SA ive had a small stone chip on the windscreen (where we pulled of onto gravel between strath and victor as we drove of car in front of me flicked up a rock).

Driving home from work yesterday hurd an ad about how obrien do a windscreen repair for these chips to prevent cracks in future and it getting worse due to heat ect..... though to my self yeah should get it done.

Well today after work jump in car (boiling hot here today 40+deg) crank the A/C... takes a while to get cold as you know and then i feel the refreshing cool on my face and tink tink tink.... your not f**king serious! yeah away it cracked.

Cry cry cry

[Dohmar]

So,

Ever since the first stag cruise here in SA ive had a small stone chip on the windscreen (where we pulled of onto gravel between strath and victor as we drove of car in front of me flicked up a rock).

Driving home from work yesterday hurd an ad about how obrien do a windscreen repair for these chips to prevent cracks in future and it getting worse due to heat ect..... though to my self yeah should get it done.

Well today after work jump in car (boiling hot here today 40+deg) crank the A/C... takes a while to get cold as you know and then i feel the refreshing cool on my face and tink tink tink.... your not f**king serious! yeah away it cracked.

Cry cry cry

If ur a member of RAA Plus u get 1 free windscreen per year

-D

[Luke_ENR34]

thats true Chad

[DSTROY]

If ur a member of RAA Plus u get 1 free windscreen per year

-D

I think you get one if your with Shannons as well

[Madaz]

^^ prolly not for imports but only domestic cars

[Matty 31]

probably going to open a can of worms here, and apologies for a long post

Yeah backing up your allies = very bad form - NOT. One day we might actually need America to help us out, and imagine if we had told them to go jump when they needed help.

i wasnt questioning the backing up of our allies, my point was more the fact that a majority of the population could see that the said wars werent entered into on their original intent. does anyone recall the original intent on the war in afghanistan? wasnt it meant to be something along the lines of outing the taliban and capturing osama bin laden. then it got changed to be chasing these elusive "weapons of mass destruction". im not denying the fact that the guys over there at the moment (and in the last 2 or 3 tours over there) havent done a half bang up job of decreasing the size of taliban forces. where did this war go on a tangent to - iraq. when was the last time the us went into iraq? gulf war. who was in power then? george bush senior. to me it reeks a bit of "finishing the war daddy couldnt". and what did it achieve? yes, saddam is gone, but look at the effects it had on their economy and way of life too..........

The reason we are headed toward a recession is mainly due to the absolute greed of American and European based funders, lenders and credit analysts who screwed the whole system by re-badging bad debt and on-selling it to idiots who should have known better. There are solid economic moves that can be made here to lessen their effect and isolate our job and export markets from some of the turmoil. I am yet to see KRudd do one single thing of this nature. Giving drug and pokie addicts $$$ to blow on their weapon of choice does not qualify as any sort of savior of course. they are putting us dangerously in debt though - something previous Labor governments have also had great skill doing. How are we going to pay for all this debt?

Agreed on the way the US and Europe have dealt with their economic downturn. they could see it coming but must have covered their eyes in the hope that "if they cant see it, its not happening". However, the way our economy relies on the US and Europe, to put it as bluntly as my old man did earlier in the week "if the US or European economy gets a cold, we nearly die from it". The money handout idea is good IMO, but it could be better planned with the way its handed out in some regards, Hey, no denying i could do with that cash, as it would help cover a few tight spots im in, but i could survive without it

.

As SLED very rightly pointed out, without small business there would be no jobs. Labor is doing its absolute best to screw up small business, and when that cycle is complete we will see a very different Australian economy - and it will be next year. 9% unemployment was predicated within months of Labor being elected to power - and no it wasn't world events that caused this - it is their utter mismanagement of labour relations and business in general. The economy flourished under Howard, and will crumble under these incompetent idiots.

Agreeing on the fact about small business, ive worked with a small business too remember (and still do on a part time basis). Tell me how labor is doing its best to screw them over? by getting rid of workchoices? what a joke THAT was..........being a union member as well, we still partly suffer under the system that got implemented (it took us 6 months longer to negotiate an EBA than ETSA did to negotiate theirs because of bullshit paperwork and a heap of stuff the union wasnt allowed to negotiate on). i know some people are here nor there when it comes to unions, you either like them or you dont. They're a voice for the worker when they're getting screwed to the wall, and ive used them on MANY occasions when being screwed by upper management (as an apprentice, when the main government body wasnt interested in helping me out). If i hadnt been a union member id probably be flipping burgers at maccas today. But this isnt an argument, thought id just bring up something good that labor has done, going back a step and using the IDEA of workchoices to IMPROVE the system that was in place (that was getting a bit out of date)

Also everyone seems to think that the car industry is going to hold up here too, Im not trying to cast a negative light, but this "4 cylinder car" they want to pump out of the elizabeth plant is going to be a make or break for the company. Sorta like the 380 was for mitsubishi. Got a mate who does work in a heap of manufacturing plants, and he was telling me that morale at elizabeth plant is as low as it was at mitsubishi about 18 months before they shut their doors. for their xmas shutdown, theres usually 90 techs on, doing preventative and reactive maintenance. the recent xmas break they had 24 techs for the whole plant, only doing reactive maintenance

Hmmm 10 years of unbridled growth and prosperity we have just come off of .... yeah Liberals really suck.

Matt, you are probably not old enough Matty to really remember the 1990's under Hawke/Keating, but I studied the 1990's economy at length at Uni, and let me guarantee they ran Australia into the ground. Go do some reading about how Labor handles economics and it paints a very bleak picture - there are lots of resources on the topic on the interweb.

I grew up in the 90s andrew, so i do remember a fair bit of it. i grew up in a household where both parents had financial backgrounds (mum had worked in the commonwealth before i was born, and dad worked for savings bank / state bank / bank sa for 28 and things like this was often discussed so i had some understanding about it. a lot of it baffled me at the time, but over the years ive gotten a better understanding. i still leave it for people who know their stuff, but its still handy to understand a bit of it. We did many a study at school on the issues that were at hand at the time too. I see what you're saying, but both sides have their follies too. Theres positives and negatives with everything. It goes in ups and downs, its just coincidentally unlucky that labor is in power when it goes DOWN

I have this debate every time i go to army. The defence budget is always discussed. To put it simply

Under a coalition government (notice i say that as the liberal party cant rule in their own right when they ARE in power) we get to go on a lot of overseas trips (ie, theres been operations in afghanistan, iraq, timor, etc) but you tend to do it with substandard equipment (as all the budget was spent on the trips)

Under a labor government, we may not get to go away as much, but the budget is well spent on better / new / updated kit. I am within the corps or Engineers. In the C-Vehicle fleet (heavy machinery), there is being a substantial amount spent (okay, not that our reserve unit will ever see any of the gear as its given to operational units, but its an example) BTW, none of this information is classified, its all public knowledge as the tenders for these have been done thru the Defence Department

Purchases:

19 Komatsu PC50-MR light excavators (with rock breakers, compactor, auger, ripper and 300, 600 and 1200mm buckets)

28 Caterpillar 434E Backhoes (with attachments)

8 Self elevating Scrapers

24 Self propelled Rollers

plus the replacement of the fleet of Cat D3C light bulldozers

As a rough figure, there would be about $1m in equipment in our reserve unit yard (just in machinery), plus trucks etc as support. Most of the equipment is aging BADLY (our old Cat 130G grader was replaced with a new JD 672D 2 years ago, the Cat was 26 years old!) mainly because of lack of use, but the problem workshops are finding is repair costs for old machines skyrockets due to parts being unavailable.

So seeing it from my perspective, we requested new machinery 5 years ago (ie the stuff mentioned above). All we got in the interim was 20 John Deere 672D Graders and 20 John Deere 650J bulldozers. And they gave one to us! Needless to say, we've worked them hard so that we can keep them and make sure they dont get taken from us. Yet in the next 12 months theres talk of taking ALL our equipment away and hiring instead. You could argue im about to contradict myself, but they would rather spend MORE money "dry hiring" machines than BUYING and having sitting around. Its a good idea, as you have constantly maintained, up do date machinery that when you arent using it is getting used elsewhere, not sitting in the elements for 11 months of the year looking good.

I think id rather trade in (a green version of) this

http://www.equipmentready.com/upload/produ...THUMB_51018.jpg

to be in one of these

http://www.heavyequipmentforums.com/Forum/...mp;d=1149814753

[Dohmar]

^^ well said.

-D

[SLED]

Matty, you make a few valid points there buddy..........hmmmm, you sure Daddy's not hitting those key strokes for you..........I've never heard such eloquence from you before

[PREISS]

+2

Alot of people are also saying 'they will just shoot up the handout money and blow it on the pokies'

Sure this is true, for a very few. put your hand up if your going to shoot it up your arm >?

Handouts will pump money into small businesses. people will purchase. One of the reasons the handouts were introduced.

[skwiz]

lol..now thats a big reply matty

[skwiz]

lol and oh..ill be spending that $950 slotted brakes...my brakes kinda warped from the BSM cruise...

and with whats left over..maybe find a nice girl and take her for a night out on the town!

[DSTROY]

Tyre fitment FTW!!! none of this stretched tyre nonsence, 245/40/18 and no guard rubbing thanks to my little friend a hammer

[benny_blanco]

In 50 years time, America probably wont be a power worth comparing with China.

I agree totally, After I have a job again and buy a house, I was planning to investing my left over money in china. But I'm fortunate enough my girlfriend is Chinese and her family are successful business people in china, So I'm less likely to be ripped of for being western

[Stagstock]

Wooohooo I am now the proud owner of a track only 260kw gtst.... and all it cost me is 2 working saturdays a month for 12months

Can't wait to tow it up to mallala.