I am viewing the Canadian response to the Trump tariffs and I am pretty surprised, the normally overly polite Canadians are responding forcefully. I am liking what the Canadians are doing here, they are really responding to what can only be described as threatening and coercive, Trump’s tactics are not obtaining their intended impact.

What US President Donald Trump has done is built a sense of belief in Canadians, there is now a deep nationalism in Canada. The Canadian response to the Trump tariffs has been nothing short of spectacular. Whilst Trump announced nations were cosying up to Trump kissing his arse, as explained in his own words. “Please Mr President, let’s do a deal” Trump bragged on camera, the Canadians are instead boycotting US goods and seeking alternative markets for their goods and services.

What nations are seeing is the Canadians led by the impressive Mark Carney are seeking trade deals with like minded nations who believe in fair trade. The leaders of Western nations are seeing a trade impasse with Trump that does not damage their economy, whilst the US is still the largest economy in the world, there are many options that do not require a nation to engage in a poor trade deal with the United States. Whilst sharing a common border, the obvious choice is to engage in trade with the largest market, there are more options for the Canadians to explore.

I am watching with interest the beginning of the second term of the Trump presidency. Trump began with pardons of the January 6 rioters, hard to believe. Trump will never be able to sell a law and order narrative now, he is compromised here. On the same token, Biden granted a whole bunch of late presidential pardons including family members. I can see the reason why, US politics is toxic on both sides and Joe was concerned they would go after his family. Then the whole notion of presidential pardons circumnavigating an independent justice system beggars belief.

Trump is moving the military down to the Mexican border, in fairness to Trump, that was a major policy and his government is acting. I have no issues with countries protecting their borders, we live in a world with sovereign countries and borders. Likewise, I am critical of the Biden Administration halting work on the southern border wall, that was just stupid politics.

Kamala Harris as Vice President was tasked with the southern border issue and failed spectacularly. Everyone knew Trump would run for office again, the best way to neutralise the Trump groundswell would have been to finish the wall and take away his policy. But no, the Biden Administration instead offered Trump a huge soapbox to stand on – that was stupid politics.

Whilst some are saying Trump is keeping his promises, he said he would end the Russian invasion of Ukraine in one day, talk about spectacular failures, that deadline has been and gone. Trump thought he could deal with Putin on a personal level and has been openly critical of Zelensky. Trump is a tall man in charge of a strong country, Putin is a short man in charge of an imperialist country believing they can rebuild the former Soviet empire. Russia is not a strong country, the invasion of Ukraine has been a strategic and tactical failure.

Donald Trump is egotistical, he will not want to be played by the weakened short man and made to look like a fool on the international stage. Donald Trump will only have credibility if he assists Zelensky in negotiating a favourable outcome for Ukraine against a weakened and exposed Putin. If Trump gets played by Putin he will be the laughing stock of the world. The strategy is to play on Trump’s ego and ensure a positive outcome for Ukraine and allow Russia to exit with a degree of face saving.

There was another White House ambush, this time it was South African President Cyril Ramaphosa meeting Donald Trump. President Ramaphosa was seeking a reset between South Africa and the United States, he was clearly mistaken.

What played out in the White House was absolutely a diplomatic faux pas this is not how diplomatic negotiations take place between nations. President Trump then began playing a video for President Ramaphosa in front of the cameras. What is interesting is that President Ramaphosa did not recognise the location of the video. As it turns out, the video was from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the DRC does not even border South Africa, this is a central African country.

The best diplomatic comeback came from President Ramaphosa who said “I’m sorry, I do not have a plane to give to you” with the comment going straight past President Trump. The humour came from Trump not even picking up the sledge, this was a world class burn, whilst I do not agree with South African government policy, this was a brilliant comeback from President Ramaphosa.

There is a Work Health and Safety Act in force in Western Australia, this Act of Parliament is required as unscrupulous employers expose workers to unnecessary risk. The WHS Act 2020 is supported by Regulations 2022 providing greater detail for business enterprises. The regulator, that is Worksafe in Western Australia provides further information in the form of Codes of Practice, Guidance Notes, and Information Sheets to assist in interpretation.

Older buildings in Australia were constructed with asbestos materials, whilst no new buildings [or products] should contain asbestos, we must always consider possible contamination. Therefore, all facilities, especially older facilities, must have an asbestos register and an asbestos plan. There is also a duty for employers, known as the Person Conducting a Business Undertaking [PCBU]; plus there are officers acting on behalf of the PCBU. An officer is a person with decision making capabilities, basically management, but definitely not leadership.

So in 2025, it would be unthinkable that workers [and others] would be exposed to asbestos in a state government organisation. When harsh penalties are imposed at the PCBU and officers, one would expect they take their responsibility seriously, or so you would think. So you could imagine my utter disbelief when management who were aware of the asbestos threat directed workers without an asbestos management plan, personal protective equipment including coveralls and a respirator to clean out an identified asbestos area to be more than concerned, I was mortified.

The special military operation was supposed to be over in a matter of weeks, how did that work out for Russia? A lightning raid that failed with the battle of Hostomel Airport decisively won by Ukraine, that was the real failure of the war in February 2022.

Then there was the convoy to Kiev failure, beginning on the 24th of February 2022, the convoy from Belarus headed south towards Kiev. Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko had stated publicly that Ukraine would be taken in two to four days. As a Putin fanboy, his predictions are looking pretty silly now, the Kiev convoy was defeated at Hostomel. As Russia had assembled a large force in Belarus, Lukashenko had sought personal gain, he had better think himself lucky Joe Biden had prevented the Ukrainians from any counter offensives in Belarus to drive the Russians out.

Now Finland has joined NATO and expanded the border northwards, another strategic failure for Putin who had claimed the war was to eradicate NAZIs and stop the expansion of NATO. What has happened is NATO has expanded its border with Russia and Finland, Sweden and Norway feel threatened. Whilst Poland was always NATO, this country has taken the threats seriously and built its military might to more than purely defensive, Russia might think about trying to take Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania but they would not get any further.

Now Ukraine has counter-attacked and taken territory internally in Russia. Now NATO has increased military budgets, the fear of the Russian military has diminished with Russia being the second best military in the world to the second best military in Ukraine and Putin had better be concerned that they do not become the second best military in Russia.What Ukraine has done is demolish the Russian military threat, they do have aspirations for further military conquest but first need to rebuild their forces. If Europe has any foresight, they have seen what has happened over the past three years and will increase military expenditures and capability.

July in Perth sees the temperatures drop, we are in the middle of winter and when we do not have rain, there are clear skies that lead to horribly cold mornings but fantastic days of sunshine. Some days you can get around in short sleeves, you always make sure you have a jacket close just in case the wind whips up.

June and July are the months we get the most rain, over the period of 1876 to 2016 we see around 170 mm of rain in those months. From 1994 to 2016 the rainfall dropped on average from 130 mm in June to 145 mm in July. So what we know is June and July are cold and wet, August is still wet with around 130 mm of rain before September drops off significantly. All I know is July is early sunsets and late sunrises, cold and rainy conditions that I force myself through before life becomes great again.

Hopefully The Wall Street Journal and News Corp defend this legal action and do not settle as other media corporations have previously done. Trump has a history of suing media outlets that write any negative press about him and they should defend their first amendment rights as news outlets. News media has a role in keeping the public informed and a government accountable, a free and independent press in a democratic society maintains transparency allowing an informed public scrutiny.

Trump dismisses any negative story or article about him as fake news and seeks to have his administration exert pressure on news media to submit to his will. Trump’s attack on the first amendment seeks to establish his government the sole source of information in the US to increase his authority and bypass media scrutiny. With Trump utilising the power of the government to punish adversaries, this is a genuine misuse and abuse of power.

A complainant has to establish that the defendant knowingly published a false statement or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Trump has been fairly prolific in seeking defamation and has had a number dismissed at early stages. Similarly, Trump has had a couple of successes with Walt Disney’s ABC News agreeing to settle for $15 million [plus costs] along with Paramount Global, owner of CBS agreeing to similar costs for the Kamala Harris 60 Minutes interview. I hope The Wall Street Journal fights this defamation action, Trump is under enormous pressure with his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and MAGA voters are finally beginning to see through him.

You just cannot make this stuff up, the very manager who blocked every safety initiative I attempted to implement including the safe removal of asbestos materials from the workplace. When I began writing this post he was off on long-term sick leave from mesothelioma. He has subsequently died. He ended up dying from the very disease I was trying to prevent in our workplace.

We had a highly fractured relationship, he hated me. He tried everything within his given managerial powers to undermine me. Interestingly, I was indifferent to him, I did not hate him just because he hated me. This becomes a challenge, if you want to hate me, let’s see how deep that hatred can run. The fact that he was mostly incompetent was not lost on me, you use this to your advantage. He surrounded himself with people at his competence level, this was also to my advantage. Watching these people fumbling around and mucking up, this was the fun part of watching failure up close.

Fortunately for me, he wasn’t a very clever operator so it was a pretty simple process to circumnavigate him. Whilst it was easy to make him look incompetent in front of the people he answered to, this was really not the objective I was seeking though, I was seeking actions. I attended one meeting with the General Manager, Executive Director and himself. I took a scribe with me as a witness as they have a tendency to deny discussions took place otherwise, they blatantly deny a complete discussion.

Ok, so what was I seeking? Well, actually it is pretty simple, I am seeking a safe working environment of the people whom we are responsible for, and the safety and wellbeing of our staff. This was my primary objective, I was very open about this. When I say wellbeing, I mean protection against prosecution for our staff. My role is to build quality outcomes through robust and through processes and controls.

So, where were we going wrong then? Well, we have a management structure running a protection racket, what they do is select people to be promoted into roles beyond their abilities. They want people who beholden to them, these people owe their roles to them, there is no disdain in the team, no one questions the manager’s decision, this is groupthink – this is a group of yes men.

As the ninety day pause on US President Donald Trump’s tariffs set to expire, the relative stability on world stock markets and bond markets looks to be over. For myself, I did sink some of my hard earned cash three months ago in the Trump slump. So, now we will see what TACO will do this time, will Trump blink again and chicken out?

The world stock markets dropped, Trump was not too concerned as we all lost wealth. But when the bond market began to tank, Trump got yippy and backed down. The term TACO Trade was coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong in May of this year. Trump is no master negotiator, he is pretty much reactive, and we all know his instincts are not very good. What we do know is Trump will high ball a negotiation, progressively back down then claim a successful negotiation outcome.

We are now a year on from his assassination attempt, Trump really believes he was spared to save America. I have trickled money into the stock market; however, I have cash aside for further share price declines based on Donald’s tariff regime. I certainly do not believe Trump was spared to save America, I have to make sure that I make proper decisions based on Trump’s behaviour. Market timing is somewhat based on behavioural factors along with technical characteristics such as inflation, interest rates, GDP, economic growth, unemployment and of course government policy.

So we have seen another chaotic Trump Administration blunder, this time it was Pete Hegseth failing to notify the White House that he had authorised the halting of weapons shipments to Ukraine. This comes at a time when Ukraine is under increased pressure from Russian targeting of cities and infrastructure.

So the Trump Administration had to explain to Congress and Ukraine why weapons shipments had been halted without notice. Here are more examples of the haphazard nature of the Trump Administration towards Ukraine. Finally, President Trump is slowly starting to work out that whilst Russian President Vladimir Putin says one thing to Trump, his actions say otherwise.

Prior to his inauguration, Trump was touting his great relationship with Putin, Trump really thought he controlled Putin and Vladimir would do what Trump ordered. Now, Trump is not only coming across as a weak leader, he is coming across as a simplistic leader who is easily manipulated when his ego is massaged.

Pete Hegseth has not come across as a great Secretary of Defense, he has shown that when he is not leaking secrets on group chats, he is struggling to grasp the role. Even more embarrassing, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Retired General Keith Kellogg as the special envoy to Ukraine and President Trump learned about this from press reports, this was not fake news after all.