The main reason we struggle is most of the other countries prioritize the short format games and put their resources into where they can make the most money. The players all cross pollinate into the different high paying leagues and it's test cricket now which is the novelty game for a lot of nations. How many players can play test cricket compared to the number playing in short format teams. Italy won their first WC game, two brothers from Sydney Australia with Italian heritage led the way...
@Shawny, you are very anti-labour, which is your right. However, do you think liberals are all squeeky clean with no skeletons in the closet?
Everyone is corrupt
The Andrews Government which Jacinta Allan now leads is the most corrupt I have seen in my years, the Liberals are hopeless and incompetent but have a way to go to match what Labor have done to the State of Victoria. Federally Albanese isnt far off what Andrews achieved and the Liberals under Taylor wont be any different to what Ley or Dutton delivered which was a useless opposition. Its why Pauline and One Nation have gained traction which probably tells you how bad the country is travelling.
Victoria now has its smallest full-time police force in close to seven years despite soaring crime and government promises to boost frontline officers...think I read in the HS we are 1700 officers down on where we need to be. A family member was a Detective but has gone back to being in Uniform for the massive overtime that is being offered...
For what its worth, my ladder is: 1 Gold Coast 2 Brisbane 3 GWS 4 Western Bulldogs 5 Sydney 6 Hawthorn 7 Adelaide 8 Collingwood 9 St Kilda 10 Geelong 11 Fremantle 12 Carlton 13 Port Adelaide 14 Essendon 15 Melbourne 16 North Melbourne 17 Richmond 18 West Coast
Id have Fremantle and Geelong in the eight with Collingwood and the WB's just missing...Pies are doing a midfield and forward line rebuild plus have a injury prone backline and the Dogs while having a talented list suffer with Beveridge trying to be over inventive. 12th will see us a with a new coach and rebuild too imho..
If the List was improved as was/is the support staff surely then the results have to improve ie win/loss ratio?....the new mickey mouse( nearly everyone plays finals format) doesnt count for me as I said it all about wins/losses and genuine improvement. No one is expecting premierships or top 4 but the bar cant be 10 or 11, its got to be top 8 after a serious rebuild. There has to be a level of accountability after 5 years in the job and your second stint as an AFL senior coach imo where you should have the experience to deliver more than what we have seen so far.
For me top 8 would be slightly above expectations. It would be hard to not renew Voss at that level (unless we lost our wild-card game)
I would view a top 8 finish as renewal consideration for two years and I would be expecting 10-12 wins which is a reasonable target imho given we won nine games last season. Im not expecting miracles just a level of improvement, of course as we all know in these situations there may only be a 12 game period for Voss to be judged as clubs start looking and talking to prospective replacements as early as mid season to secure their first choices so its imperative for Voss that the players start the season well and he has a positive win/loss ratio leading into the mid season break as its often too late even with back end of the season wins to save your job.
Voss hasnt changed since his Brisbane days, same game plan, same player exodus issues and Daniel Bradshaw was reincarnated as Matt Kennedy before he received his holy marching orders and was excommunicated from the flock . Its Dejavu so far with only the ending to come, will it be any different than 2013? I have noticed that a few of the Voss and List spruikers are now lowering the bar and happy to accept missing finals in 2026, what happened to the new improved list, new football manager and new director of coaching? Surely there are no more excuses? I have spent the last few months reading on the forum how TDK, Charlie and Jacks leaving was a blessing and they were holding back the club and how the new players have made us a much better team but that all seems to be changing since we are getting closer to the first round and those ultra positive supporters caught up in the hype are now in full retreat...
I think you've misread some of the positivity. I don't think too many were suggesting flags or even top 4. It was more a case of around the same mark...11th or a couple of spots better. Now even one spot higher (10th) and we're playing finals in 2026.
What people were saying is we don't need to drop dramatically as some of the doomsayers were predicting.
If the List was improved as was/is the support staff surely then the results have to improve ie win/loss ratio?....the new mickey mouse( nearly everyone plays finals format) doesnt count for me as I said it all about wins/losses and genuine improvement. No one is expecting premierships or top 4 but the bar cant be 10 or 11, its got to be top 8 after a serious rebuild. There has to be a level of accountability after 5 years in the job and your second stint as an AFL senior coach imo where you should have the experience to deliver more than what we have seen so far.
Voss hasnt changed since his Brisbane days, same game plan, same player exodus issues and Daniel Bradshaw was reincarnated as Matt Kennedy before he received his holy marching orders and was excommunicated from the flock . Its Dejavu so far with only the ending to come, will it be any different than 2013? I have noticed that a few of the Voss and List spruikers are now lowering the bar and happy to accept missing finals in 2026, what happened to the new improved list, new football manager and new director of coaching? Surely there are no more excuses? I have spent the last few months reading on the forum how TDK, Charlie and Jacks leaving was a blessing and they were holding back the club and how the new players have made us a much better team but that all seems to be changing since we are getting closer to the first round and those ultra positive supporters caught up in the hype are now in full retreat...
10-12 Finish in 2026 Voss not recontracted. Simpson the new coach, who then leads us to the bottom four and another rebuild from the ground up before he is sacked after two years and gets another McDonalds franchise with the payout.
Economists don't seem too impressed with Taco Accounts.
Despite its limited life - children born in the next three years - the US economy simply doesn't have the capacity to fund the direct fiscal cost of over $3 billion per year and the money will most likely have to be borrowed. While these payments are a direct cost to the US government, they are a benefit to the lenders through interest. In other words, the payments and receipts cancel each other out.
However, the $1,000 grant is just a redistribution from taxpayers and lenders to newborns, and is neutral in terms of efficiency. The opportunity costs are not neutral though; when the US government borrows, it issues bonds. The investors who buy those bonds aren't investing that money in other, more critical areas of the economy like infrastructure, health, education, housing, energy, etc.
The affordability crisis means that the vast majority of American families won't be able to make contributions. Most beneficiaries will receive $1,000 plus 18 years of compound interest and the administration reckons that will be worth $15,000. The administration calculates that children from families that can afford to invest the maximum will have $742,000. In other words, "It will make wealth inequality significantly worse, because it favors those who have resources to begin with,” according to David Radcliffe, from The New School’s Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy.
William Darity, an economist at Duke University, says "Allowing those who are richer to put more in than those who are poor runs counter to any notion that there's any kind of redistributive justice taking place.” And this is an economy where the bottom 50% of American households hold just 2.5% of the wealth.
I cant see wealthy families investing money for their kids in a scheme that invests in ETF's that track the index etc and produces modest returns inline with what the S&P500 returns each year...
I think any program that encourages saving and gives a basic understanding/education in financial matters is worth whatever amount ends up in the bank account.
"access to the money may be linked to financial literacy requirements..."
What's that mean?
Id suggest completing a certain standard of financial education which I presume will now become compulsory in high schools. An interesting development is the big banks JPMorgan and Bank of America have announced they'll match the $1,000 government contribution for kids of their employees. Its been mandated to start July 4th of this year and Id be guessing there would be qualifying technicalities with regards residency etc.
While Australia is bucking the trend of falling interest rates in major nations and raising rates Donald Trump has launched "Trump Accounts". What is it and how does it work?..glad you asked...
Every newborn in the USA will receive US$1,000 from the government, deposited into an investment account, with parents acting as custodians until age 18 (all children under 18 can still establish accounts) The money is mandated to be invested in US equity ETFs or index funds. Families, employers and charities can contribute up to US$5,000 per year Accounts are locked until age 18, at which point funds can be used to buy a home, pay for education, or continue saving for retirement. Access to the money may be linked to financial literacy requirements.
Now Im not normally a fan of anything Trump says or does but this isnt a bad idea imo. Taking into account inflation and to make the amount of money significant it will require extra contributions every year but it does have merit in encouraging saving and learning about investments and might get a proportion of the population interested enough to participate in a meaningful manner.
The world media is doing it's best to scare the shizen out of mum and dad investors, claiming Gold and Silver prices are in free fall, they report the drop in $ terms because the $ number is big, For gold reporting a drop of 10% / ounce isn't as dramatic as reporting a fall of $500/ounce.
As a percentage it's nothing unusual, the problem is dressed up by the media because of the record price per ounce, they'll report a record drop in $ units for sure, but as a percetnage it's nothing unusual and has happened before. Of course panic selling takes place from small investors, the price drops, and the same coorporate Clark Kents who cried wolf are the ones buying on the cheap.
Also, an ounce isn't an ounce. Put the figures into standarised units, use $/gram or $/kilogram, because metric units are the same in every market. An ounce might be a Troy Ounce or some other Ounce, and the media is known for cherry-picking the units to maginfy the effect.
Small investors dont really move the market with Gold its Central Banks buying it in times of uncertainty as a hedge and thats why Donald Trump is good for the gold price as he creates uncertainty with his decision making.
I'm not sure what was wrong with the old one. Seemed pretty reliable and easy to understand.
I think the main problem with the old site was the growing cost to maintain it, the problem with all this technology is the minute you let it age it becomes expensive to keep functioning and secure. It's like a boat with a hull full of holes, keep patching and eventually you have no hull left and you're floating on a raft of patches. It's not dissimilar to our own website's problems.
The problem with the new site isn't really the design, once you get your head around the Favourite Locations concept it works pretty well. It could be a bit easier for new users to navigate, they needed a better onboarding experience. To me the main problem was that the high cost of the replacement basically gave people political ammunition to rally against change.
I have to work with arrange of age groups across the technology sector, my older segment is anchored in the desktop experience, we think of web experiences in terms of a keyboard and monitor first. Pretty much everybody under 40 thinks about phone first, some of them have no interest in the desktop and will sit at a workstation reading from their phone. To the oldies it looks like the youngies are bludging, the youngies think the oldies are Luddites.
I'm a Windows desktop oldie, just prefer the larger screen and keyboard.
