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ROY'S DRIVEL


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grockle said:

Penelope Keith being the other female character actress playing the very upper class snob. I must be going senile in my old age.Ian

Yes Ian I think Penelope Keith is well known for the two snobs that she's played, "Margo Leadbetter" in the "Good Life" and "Audrey Fforbes Hamilton" in "To the Manor Born". She has done many other roles but those two seemed to have been remembered by people.

Oddly enough the actress Angela Thorne who played the "down to earth" upper class "Lady Truscott" in the "Good Life" also played the commoner "Marjorie Frobisher" in "To the Manor Born" and was at Audrey's "beck and call". The butler in that sitcom "Brabinger" was played by John Rudling who also played the man from the Ministry who oversaw the test of the train on the branch line in the movie "The Titfield Thunderbolt".

Roy.

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On Saturday I went to an old workmates place as he invited me down for a BBQ. I used to work with him on the railways. He was an electrician. He was telling me about the blokes we both new and where they are now. The loco depot is now closed. One bloke we new was Russian,( Australia is a multicultural society) and this bloke gave three others including my mate a lift one day. He failed to stop at a stop sign and went straight across 4 lanes of traffic. My mate said he and the other three all had their hearts in their mouths. He said to this day he has know idea how they made it across without taking someone out. If I was ever inclined to visit Russia I think I'd invest in a T72 tank as I know I'd be safe in that.

Roy.

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Crazy. Russia is one of the most dangerous places on the planet.

Watching the video, there are some instances where things like falling trees can't be helped, but a lot of it looks like a case of too much potato juice. :lol:

The other night we were discussing guns in the US at dinner. I went to wikipedia to find some stats.

Deaths per 100,000 individuals yearly.

GB: 1.2

Those crazy yanks: 4.2

The bat shit crazy Russians: 10.2

As a comparison a place where there is a war Sudan is at: 24.2

Russia is like a war zone. My uncle worked there for a year or so and he said it was a mad house.

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yes I agree about the trees but if a car crashes into a substantial tree it doesn't usually bring it down. They seem to have weak trees over there. But most of their drivers are traveling too fast, have no car or throttle control, many don't wear seat belts and a lot of them are probably totally drunk. The one where the semi loses the load of timber I thought the driver may have been on a website and just as he turned left he decided to LOG OFF!!!!!. :lol: The one with the motorbike and sidecar reminds me of the sitcom Keeping up Appearances and Hyacinth saying to Richard "Oh get out of the way Richard, oh Richard you always in the way!!!. :lol:

Roy.

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Yes your right there Griff with car,truck and tractor wheels coming off anytime. I must admit to being in stitches of laughter at the way they drive. One young boy gets hit and ends up on the windscreen and just stands up and walks away. Another bloke has an accident at an intersection grabs his shoulder bag and walks away just leaving his old Russian car standing in the middle of the intersection. Perhaps it was a troublesome car not worth much and when it got hit it was worth nothing at all. None of the vehicles seem to have snow chains fitted for the winter weather so if they loose traction they've had it. I suppose they drive the way they do because in the old communist days if you wanted a car you had to present a business plan as to the reason that you needed one and if the old system agreed you got one most likely an old rusted out banger, but you got one.

Roy.

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Yesterday it was very hot. Sydney got to 42.5 degrees and it was 41.8 at my place. That was at 4pm. Even at midnight it was still 32 degrees and a cool change blew in from the south at about 3.30am dropping the temperature to around 25 degrees. In conjunction with the heat all national parks were closed and there was and still is a total fire ban state wide. Tourists were forceably moved out of the national parks by the police if they didn't leave when asked to. The trouble being that in the event of a wild fire a blaze moves so rapidly it's impossible to out run it even in a 4x4 due to the dense smoke making people disorientated. Yesterday afternoon it came through on the news that three youths were caught in western Sydney lighting a fire in the bush behind some houses. The fire they lit quickly took hold and it took a large number of fire fighters and water bombing helicopters to extinguish it. For adults caught lighting fires on total fire ban days the penalty is $10,000 fine and a 25 year prison sentence. If property is damaged or destroyed the fine increases to $110,000 plus the 25 year prison sentence. Still arsonists will never learn.

The fines may seem draconian but if Australia had Singapore's laws the punishment would be lethal as they take their law very seriously in Singapore, as an Australian drug trafficker found out. He was sentenced to death and after numerous appeals failed the authorities in Singapore killed him by lethal injection. The media over here went into nanny mode and asked people who live in Singapore didn't they think it was wrong to take a persons life. They replied that they suffer the same fate if they import drugs into the country so why should Australians be exempt. An American teenager graffitied some cars in Singapore during the Bill Clinton presidency and although the American president had the punishment reduced the teenager did not escape and was bent over a table and had his backside caned with a thin piano type wire cane. I bet he couldn't sit down for a month.

Roy.

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Roy,

Been following what has been happening in your neck of the woods via our television news reports. Sounds very serious in some places and idiots starting even more fires deserve everything that the authorities can throw at them.

As far as other countries go and their laws. People should repsect that countries law and if caught doing wrong, don't complain, take your punishment and carry on.

Corporal punishment was a great deterant once, but like any and everything else, nanny keeps raising its ugly head. Bring corporal punishment back, as it didn't do any real harm having a good slap across the backside for minor issues.

Ian

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I hate to pick on russians, but there seems to be a bit of more shenanigans from their part of the world. Here we have a fun outing. It started something like this, "hey I have an idea!"

It's this thing started in New Zealand called zorbing. Roll down a hill in a big ball. Sounds fun, until you do it on a little hill that happens to be next to a 1 km deep chasm. Although the video doesn't look too intense, one of the guys in the ball died in this moment of brilliance.

Grockle, I used to think like that about punishment, but here in the states we have too many cases of innocent people being executed. Generally because the authorities wanted to look like they had things under control, and also it's a good way to get rid of some poor sod.

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I believe in capital punishment and wish we still had it. It was only used for the worsed of the worse. An unpaid parking fine wouldn't result in capital punishment. There was a massacre in Tasmania at the tourist site of Port Arthur, which used to be an old convict hell hole but was also renown for it's beautiful sandstone buildings. Martin Bryant used a machine gun to kill many innocent people but not himself. He's currently serving life imprisonment "never to be released" at a cost of $150,000 per year to the Tasmanian taxpayers and it slowly increases every year. Some family members of those who were killed said it would be wrong to execute him as you can't take another persons life. Martin Bryant didn't seem to agree with that statement when he opened fire on unarmed strangers. It was this killing that got Australia it's gun laws.

Also our government has repeatedly told Australians who travel overseas if you get into trouble in a foreign country you will have to deal with that countries laws and court system. Our government has repeatedly said that Australians cannot be helped by our government once they're sentenced. Some people here think that our government should be able to pressure foreign governments to release Australians from foreign police custody or prisons. The old adage "if you can't do the time don't do the crime", or "if you can't be honest you have to be clever and if you can't be clever you have to be honest". Perhaps the News of the World should have remembered that one.

The temperature is set to soar again this weekend as once again the hot dry air in central Australia heads for the coast. Sydney is set to reach 40 degrees or over on Saturday. Tomorrow there is a total fire ban again and if the authorities have any sense they'll shut the national parks again. The shutting of the parks on Tuesday and the forced evacuation of tourists by the police made sure that nobody was able to light a camp fire and then have it start an inferno. Due to the nature of the trees in our parks which are mostly eucalyptus and are full of eucalyptus oil they explode in a monstrous ball of flame and with hot dry winds and near zero humidity there are flying red hot embers that blow 10 to 20km ahead of the main fire front. All that can happen from one camp fire. The temperature in the heart of the fire is around 2,000 to 3,000 degrees which is hot enough for anyone.

Roy.

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Well we had an absolute scorcher here today. Sydney reached 46.8 degrees and the west of Sydney reached 45 degrees. That's unusual as the west is usually a few degrees hotter due to Sydney being on the coast and getting a sea breeze, which didn't happen today. My air conditioning has been on since 12.30pm and is still on as the cool change is yet to arrive. I had a look under the covers at the railway and all is ok which of course was the main reason I built those covers.

Fires continue to burn out of control in the north west, central coast, and southern NSW. Fires are also out of control in Victoria. They estimate some will take another two weeks to bring under control as some of the fires are burning in remote and inaccessible areas. The big one in the north west was started by dry lightning strikes, that is thunderstorms with no rain. Already 50 homes have been destroyed but no human deaths but plenty of native animals have died unfortunately. It's terrible watching the news on telly especially night footage which clearly shows the firestorm in progress and the huge flames and sprays of flying embers. In the U.S they have tornadoes and in the firestorms here we have tornadoes of flames. Very nasty.

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Are you getting lots of smoke? A few years back we had a huge fire in the hills and during the day here it was all orange and was like breathing campfire smoke.

I've heard of fire tornados before. If you find any pics on your news, I'd love to see them.

I know what you mean about the night footage. During the day shots the fires just look like smoldering stuff, but at night they really glow.

I hope things burn out soon.

--------------

I searched for fire tornado. WOW!

http://www.google.com/search?q=fire+tornado&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&tbo=d&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=V5_5UOVmg8zYBZ7vgKAB&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAA&biw=1458&bih=966

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well we have gone from one extreme to the other. Scorching hot weather (45.8 degrees) with no rain to 17-24 degrees and lots of rain. Today is a public holiday, Australia Day which was on Saturday but is celebrated today.

I've just rung a mate of mine on the sunshine coast of Queensland as he lives only a few hundred yards from the sea. He's been getting loads of rain and told me he's been having to mow his lawns once a week due the humid weather making them grow. This is the bloke I used to work with on the railways who still has a thick Yorkshire accent. When I saw him in October last year he said lets go fishing when you come up. I said I'm not interested in fishing but I'll do a deal with you, we'll go fishing in the morning and train watching in the afternoon. His answer, "Like f**** we will". As we hadn't seen each other for ten years we chattered away like a couple of "old woman". So I doubt we would have got much fishing done anyway.

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  • 1 month later...

Been a bit quiet here of late. On the telly here is a skit show called Mad as Hell. They said we have had the hottest summer and it's broken all records with record high temperatures. Yet the police still managed to find $450,000,000 in Ice (the drug) They were also commenting on the resignation of the pope and said Italy has no government or pope. If it wasn't for the Mafia they'd have no power structure at all. The smoke from the chimney will be provided by the burning of documents into Vatican fraud, corruption and elicit sex.

There is a multi millionaire called Clive Palmer over here who wants to build a replica of the Titanic. It will be real 1920's travel with no computers, mobiles or casinos. He said that people have offered to pay $750,000 to $1,000,000for a cruise. 16 people have signed up for first class suites so at least everyone will get a life boat this time. It's supposed to be made in China but people won't know unless they get to see the 'Made in China' stamp on the bottom of the ship. He has a unique advertising slogan, 'Anything will sink if you put a hole in it'.

Roy.

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