Horse 3511 - Behold Your President, He Is Above The Law

There is currently a half-hearted discussion going on in the United States about whether or not, an ongoing military operation in Venezuela, or even the authority to attack Venezuela, would require a war powers resolution.

See here... but don't bother:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/chapter-33

Now whilst it is true that the War Powers Act of 1973, is intended as a check on the power of the President of the United States, to begin and administer armed conflicts without the consent of the U.S. Congress, it is worth remembering that irrespective of what any law says, including the US Constitution, the Supreme Court of the United States has functionally declared that the President is above the law in all circumstances:

See below:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

Taking into account these competing considerations, the Court concludes that the separation of powers principles explicated in the Court’s precedent necessitate at least a presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for a President’s acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility. Such an immunity is required to safeguard the independence and effective functioning of the Executive Branch, and to enable the President to carry out his constitutional duties without undue caution. At a minimum, the President must be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.”

...

(1) When the President acts pursuant to “constitutional and statutory authority,” he takes official action to perform the functions of his office. Fitzgerald, 456 U. S., at 757. Determining whether an action is covered by immunity thus begins with assessing the President’s authority to take that action.

...

In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives. Such a “highly intrusive” inquiry would risk exposing even the most obvious instances of official conduct to judicial examination on the mere allegation of improper purpose. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 756. Nor may courts deem an action unofficial merely because it allegedly violates a generally applicable law. Otherwise, Presidents would be subject to trial on “every allegation that an action was unlawful,” depriving immunity of its intended effect. 

- SCOTUS: Trump v United States, 1st Jul 2024.

If there is a "presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for a President’s acts" and "he takes official action to perform the functions of his office" and the Supreme Court has decided that courts "courts may not inquire into the President’s motives" and "Nor may courts deem an action unofficial”, then functionally there are no avenues whatsoever to declare anything that the President does as illegal.

Even if he were to actually make good on the quip that he made at a Christian college in 2016, and actually shoot someone:

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?”

- Donald Trump,  Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa, 23rd Jan 2016.

Then the "presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for a President’s acts" would immediately kick in because all he would need to do is claim that as the Commander-In-Chief and as first officer of the US Military, then he would either be defending the first officer of the United States or making a preemptive strike. Although having said that, he was probably quite correct that his supporters would stay loyal even if he happened to commit a capital offense, including on live television.

What I find astonishing is that even though a President cannot enact law to regulate something as banal as carbon emissions or something as immediately pressing as forgiving student loans (because those things do not fall within the core functions of the Executive Branch, a President would not face any consequences for politically motivated killings or mass murder, provided those things are done in the name of defence. 

Functionally this means that a President is free to commit crimes to protect his craven self-interest, and it has to be said that if you are immune from the consequences, and if you can not be prosecuted, then you are above the law. 

Furthermore, if as Mr Trump suggests that he wants to acquire Greenland, which would include use of the military force and without a corresponding Authorization for Use of Military Force from the Congress, then we have actually reached the point where the leader of the United States is a broken arrow. We have already seen that SCOTUS refuses to do anything and unless Congress restrains him, with jail time, then you have someone actually in possession of nuclear weapons and unlimited and unfettered power. And that's worrying.

Horse 3510 - YOU Can Be Charged With Offences In the United States; Including If You Have Never Been There; Including If You Have Not Committed A Crime

If you woke up this morning, you will have heard the news that President Donald Trump has personally take credit for not only bombing the Venezuelan capital Caracas, but also  personally take credit for an operation which kidnapped and President Nicolás Maduro after it launched strikes on Venezuela.

The right-wing trashmedia in my country, immediately went into glorification mode, as they try and turn Mr Trump into their precious golden calf and failure to worship this man who is probably a rapist, will be met with scorn. 

Granted that Venezuela is probably corrupt to the eyeballs and probably is responsible for illegal drugs entering the United States, but the actions and comments made by Mr Trump should send very very serious and chilling signals to the world that he simply doesn't give a cuss about setting up Venezuela for a democratic or just future; but merely to plunder its oil and give the proceeds to Chevron Corporation. 

President Trump himself says the US is going to "run" Venezuela "until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition"; though given that Mr Trump generally has no idea about any time line beyond what he is going to have for dinner, there likely isn't any coherent plan here either. 

What should be immediately scary to literally anyone on the planet, is the language used in the trumped up charges which were invented in a star chamber and only released this morning:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1422326/dl

COUNT ONE - Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy

para 22

in an offense begun and committed out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States

COUNT TWO - Cocaine Importation Conspiracy

para 26

in an offense begun and committed out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States

COUNT THREE - Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices

para 32

in an offense begun and committed out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States

COUNT FOUR - Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices

para 34

in an offense begun and committed out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States

(Title 18, United States Code, Section 924; Title 21, United States Code, Sections 853 and 970; and Title 28, United States Code, Section 2461.) 

- UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v NICOLAS MADURO MOROS et alia (2026)

If the District Court Of New York upholds this and charges and sentences President Maduro to literally any of these charges, then we run into some absolutely diabolical and evil consequences.

1a - It is worth remembering that non-citizens in America do not have an equal suite of Constitutional rights or Civil rights protected by US law. It is also worth remembering that the US Constitution does not apply outside the United States; which means that any extra judicial kidnapping is in fact perfectly fine as the law stands, and it does not matter if it is done without the permission of or without using the official legal system.

1b - This includes any Due Process claims; because while SCOTUS recognises that due process considerations may constrain the Federal Government’s exercise of some of its powers, there is uncertainty regarding the extent to which these constraints apply with regard to aliens within the United States.

1c - This also means that Maduro, as indeed literally anyone else on the face of the planet whom the United States Government wants to extra judicially kidnap, is NOT entitled to due process, or a fair trial.

2a - That phrase which is repeated in all four charges "in an offense begun and committed out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States" means that even though the alleged offence happened outside of the jurisdiction of any of the United States, they still assert that they have the right to charge someone.

2b - The United States not only asserts that it can and will charge people offences who aren't even in the United States, it can and has done so on the past. Perhaps famously in an Australian context, was that David Hicks, an Australian citizen, who was captured in Afghanistan, faced charges of conspiracy and aiding the enemy, even though the charges were invented while he had been taken to Guantánamo Bay and tortured.

3a - The increasing belligerence of the United States and the absolute blood thirsty bastardry of its government, has been perfectly expressed by the United States Attorney General, Pamela Bondi.

https://x.com/AGPamBondi/status/2007428087143686611

Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted in the Southern District of New York.  Nicolas Maduro has been charged with Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States. They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts. 

- Attorney General, Pamela Bondi, via X, 3rd Jan 2026

When she writes that "They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts." she does not need to worry about the outcome. This is means that United States v Maduro (2026), is effectively nothing more than a show trial where we all know that the guilt of the defendant has already been determined.

3b - More broadly, this is not actually about brining Maduro to justice. When Mr Trump openly states that Washington isn't afraid of putting boots on the ground and then offers literally no details at all on who exactly would be in charge, then we can take it as given that the actual purpose of holding this show trial is to present both accusation and verdict to the public; which is meant to serve as an example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors; irrespective of where they are.

3c - We should take it as given that Trump has decided to cross the line into full-on "gunboat diplomacy" and that he has has decided to take a giant dump on his promises to be a peacemaker. 

Over the past year, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he is more than willing to use military force around the globe. Even just this last week, he personally ordered air strikes on Syria and Nigeria. During his self-congratulatory speech this morning, he took credit for bombing alleged nuclear facilities in Iran, "suspected" drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean, "rebel forces in Yemen", and "armed groups in the many... Somalia and Islamic militants in Iraq"

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In a twist of dramatic irony, the Leader of the Opposition, Sussan Ley made an announcement

https://www.facebook.com/SussanLeyMP

The Coalition welcomes the announcement that Nicolás Maduro has been taken into custody to face legal proceedings in the United States of America. 

- Sussan Ley, via Facebook, 4th Jan 2026

What is curious is the last line from this post:

https://www.facebook.com/SussanLeyMP

We should live in a world where dictators and despots face justice for their crimes.

- Sussan Ley, via Facebook, 4th Jan 2026

Yes, we should. But SCOTUS has decided that Mr Trump is above the law, and even if he is a rapist, and engaged in election fraud and what used to be the unauthorised use of military force, that's fine. We are the United States' ally. We have no opinion other than praise, irrespective of how many people die in the process.

Horse 3509 - No, You Can't Come To The 2026 FIFA World Cup

As this is 2026, this means that this is the year that the 23rd FIFA World Cup will be contested. While the tournament is being shared across the three nations of Canada, Mexico and the United States, the lion's share of matches are being held in the United States with 78 of 104 matches.

This poses a problem.

The current Trump Administration in its campaign of rampant belligerency, imposed via Executive Order 14161, Proclamation 10949, an expanded travel ban which as far as I can tell now includes 39 countries:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/12/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-further-restricts-and-limits-the-entry-of-foreign-nationals-to-protect-the-security-of-the-united-states/

Under normal circumstances, travel bans to countries sounds like business as normal but with the World Cup happening, the effect of this is that several nations fans' will not be able to go to the World Cup at all.

The travel ban likely does not affect the Players who would arrive on P1 Athelete Visas, or their trainers and support staff who would arrive on AG Official Visas; which is similar to how the Olympic Games will operate in 2028 in Los Angeles. However, the normal route of fans who would arrive on B2 Tourist Visas, has now been removed entirely for the nations subject to the travel ban.

This means that for the countries of Haiti, Iran, Cote d’Ivoire, and Senegal, they will have exactly zero fans arrive from those nations. For the possible countries of The Congo, Bolivia, Iraq, and Suriname, they also will have exactly zero fans arrive from those nations.

In addition to this, as part of the ongoing Visa Waiver Program and the B1 and B2 Tourist Visa programs, that same Executive Order 14161 demands the following:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/10/2025-22461/agency-information-collection-activities-revision-arrival-and-departure-record-form-i-94-and

The Department of Homeland Security now requires ESTA applicants to provide their social media from the last 5 years, telephone numbers both personal and business, email addresses, the names of family members, and perhaps even DNA collection. 

Of course the United States as a sovereign nation has the right and the responsibility of maintaining its border entry points and the regulation of who is and isn't allowed to enter the country. However, the list of demands that it has imposed, especially in the light that the Trump administration is now engaging in social media surveillance and openly denies tourists' entry or revoking visas over making political posts, is chilling.

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C18-8-7-2/ALDE_00001262/#:~:text=The%20Court%20reasoned%20that%20aliens,the%20Fifth%20and%20Fourteenth%20Amendments.

"Thus, while the Court has recognized that due process considerations may constrain the Federal Government’s exercise of its immigration power, there is some uncertainty regarding the extent to which these constraints apply with regard to aliens within the United States."

- Notes on Article I, Section 8, Clause 18, "Aliens in the United States", from the US Congress (at 3rd Jan 2026)

It should be noted that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), has repeatedly recognized that Congress retains very very broad powers with respect to aliens entering the United States. Furthermore, Executive Order 14161 seems to appear as though the Office of the President has taken an almost plenary position of unfettered power over immigration. Congress at the moment simply refuses to stand in the way and SCOTUS is absent.

If we want proof that the Trump Administration knows that it can literally get away with anything because the law simply does not apply to the President, then all we need to do is look to the ruling in 23-939 Trump v United States (2024) which ruled that President Trump has absolute immunity for official acts and core constitutional duties.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

As immigration is explicitly defined as a core constitutional duty per Article I, Section 8, then the President's plenary position over immigration is completely fine within the corpus of the law as it stands. I note that even the most authoritarian states in the world do not have such an official policy, with regards issues such as this.

Mind you, given that both former FIFA presidents Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini were involved in corruption cases, that the World Cup was awarded to Russia in 2018 despite its belligerence to Ukraine, and then Qatar in 2022 with an amazing amount of bribery and the country technically being unfit to host the World Cup under FIFA's own rules, the 2026 World Cup with travel bans and an actively increased surveillance and security state, might actually look tame in comparison.

As long as Trump gets the glory like the scared gold calf, it's all worth it?

Horse 3508 - 2026 Doesn't Really Exist: Business Continues As Before

2025 was a year which personally was one of considerable change, some deeply awkward circumstance, and one as demonstrated by the fewest number of posts that I have written in 15 years, demonstrates that many things demanded my time and brain power. I have found this particular period of the Christmas break, singularly helpful as not much has been demanded from me.

One thing that 2025 was particularly noteworthy was, was the rise of what used to be considered far-right; by people who found it convenient to weaponise the apparatus of Christianity. The most totemic event in this respect was the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who has now become a golden calf on the platform formerly known as Twitter and where insufficient fealty and loyalty is now met with filthy insult. 

Across the Atlantic, the carcass of Christianity was worn as a skin and paraded around like a trophy, especially in events like the organized by far-right activist Tommy Robinson. It featured Elon Musk, who hasn't fallen very far from the tree of his childhood apartheid dreams in South Africa, and issues like immigration, free speech, and national identity, have also been paraded through the public consciousness. 

So-called "Christian Nationalism" is often touted as the cover story for this, but scratch the surface even just a little bit and we find that none of these people know anything even basic about the Bible, certainly nothing about anything that it teaches, and point blank display nothing of the virtues which should follow as a result of being transformed from the inside. 

While we do get some sense of Civic Love, it is not expressed as philos but superbia and hubris. The other qualities which should be on display if "Christian Nationalism" was actually genuine should be a sense of agape, joy, a striving for peace and forbearance, demonstrations of kindness and goodness or faithfulness, maybe even gentleness and self-control. Admittedly, against such things there is no law, but in the current political atmosphere, there is also no display or practice of these things.

Believe me, when as a Christian, I say that I am just not convinced that there actually is any kind of Christian revival going on. What there appears to be are charlatans, one of whom is embodied as the President of the United States, who have found Christians and Christianity as a soft target to fleece while pulling the wool over Christians' eyes. 

If anything 2025 was one of those years where people, after having being fed a diet of indigestible right-wing formula, simply have no stomach for solid teaching any more. What we are currently seeing is lies an junk-food-opinions tickling people's fancies. Truth is simply not acceptable to people who are trying to chase mirages.

I write this first post of 2026, with more than a hint of skepticism. Fear not though because amidst this current age of mercantilism, there is always hope. There has to be. If not, then the parading and preening by those people who have no other gods other than profit and power, will have won.

Horse 3507 - Survey Says: Poorer People Don't Deserve Anything Nice Ever

 I came across this survey, which was being touted in a newspaper (I won't say which one because I'd rather that that particular whole media group goes bankrupt; they don't need the advertising revenue); trying to say how generous people are: 

https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/45956-what-should-living-standards-look-people-benefits-

- 76% of Britons believe that everyone should be able to afford their utility bills

- 74% think everyone should have the means to eat a balanced diet

- 60% think seasonal celebrations should be attainable for everyone 

- 55% think that everyone should be able to afford a television

- 27% think that those on any income should have the chance to go out socialising

This particular media group was patting itself on the back; trying to suggest that only through voluntary means, should anything get done, and that we should look at how generous people are.

All of that sounds good and proper until you realise what the other side of those equations are.

A quarter of people think that poor people don't deserve electricity or clean water. A third of people think that people don't deserve holidays. A staggering three-quarters of people surveyed think that poor people don't deserve to see their friends, or possibly even have any friends at all.

I won't say that I am surprised at this. There has definitely been a cultural shift over about the last fifteen years, where you have a very brutal and cruel rich and powerful, dictating to people how to think. This looks very much like Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theory of the rise of The Stupid, being weaponised for fun and profit. People are easily convinced to hate people who look different from themselves because at the centre of the human heart, is the beating out of a selfish rhythm.

This current gilded age is slightly different to the previous gilded age of the 1890s to 1914 because this gilded age comes with the leftovers of the post-war welfare state. Things like mass literacy, sewerage systems, telephony, gas, and electricity, were mostly constructed around the world with monies raised by governments because the people had actually fought in two world wars and won the moral justification and ability to make a claim at law, to things that they aught to have.

Curiously, the winner of the post-war peace, which was unashamedly the United States, never actually paid the price for modern civilization in anything like the same degree as European nations did. Consequently, it has spent the past 80 years marinating its brain in the myth that it constructed for itself, that it was rampant individualism which caused its greatness, and not the destruction of 100 million souls across Europe and Asia, and untold quadrillions of PoundMarkFrankRoubleYens in the destruction of physical capital everywhere else.

If you choose to marinate an entire population in the myth that individuals built the nation, instead of the obvious and easily proven realty that this is nothing more than a cussing lie (quite literally the Eisenhower Interstate System was the biggest and most expensive piece of socialist infrastructure in the history of the world), then what you get is a very small and powerful group of evilly cruel cussjacks who benefit, and an awful lot of people who actually aren't that marginally better off than their forebears were a century before.

The United States' rampant individualism and the propaganda which radiates out like the smell from a maggot infested corpse, has poisoned the media networks of other nations; because there is good profit motivation for doing so. I live in Australia, so that means that American media groups now control one of the free-to-air television networks as 70% of all the print media, and quite a sizable pay-TV outlet.

So it really doesn't surprise me, that Britain and especially the kinds of people who are likely to take part in a survey such as this, have swung further to the crueller authoritarian right. If they were to ask people slightly more pointed questions and ask if they think that poorer people are in fact human, then history has also given us the term "unnützer Esser" or "useless eaters" to describe people with disabilities and others deemed "life unworthy of life.

By labelling some people as a burden on society, it's not a far lap to justify their persecution and euthanasia. Remember, it isn't murder if we don't consider them as worthy of life in the first place. 

Over here on the other side of the world, we like to imagine ourselves as being different than our anglophone cousins on the other side of the world but really, the same kinds of people who run media and marketing companies up there, are not only the same people but actually the same media and marketing companies.

Worse, if you actually do bother to look at an empirical measurement at how generous people are, we find that total charitable giving amounts to no more than 1.9% of GDP and if you include donations to religious organisations like churches and mosques, this is only bumped up to 2.7%.

The actual truth is that people are not generous and that the number of people who think that poor people don't deserve even the basic things in life to make it tolerable, is and was and always will be the case. What's worse is that this is only going to get worse in the future.

33% of people rent, and a full 16% of GDP is  on rent. That rent is paid out of post taxed income, to the very same scumbags who think that poorer people shouldn't have anything nice ever.

It's hardly surprising. 

Horse 3506 - JEFF VADER V COMMISIONER OF TAXATION [2025] - Judgement

 JEFF VADER V COMMISIONER OF TAXATION [2025] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

H3506/1

This week we received the following correspondence from a Mr Jeff Vader, who appears to be in command of some kind of galactic delivery company or some such. He has given us the following taxation question: 

Dear Fake Internet Court of Australia,

I am the Operations Manager for a very large off-world firm which is resident in Australia for taxation purposes. I wish to claim depreciation for my Defence Sphere Mk 1 (DS-1) and am wondering what the appropriate rate for a Defence Sphere is. 

The construction costs were just over One Trillion Galactic Credits and it became operational on August 1st.

Thank you, 

Lord Jeff Vader of Cheem, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet and Military Executor, ATM, KFC, BBQ.

This is an interesting case as The Fake Internet Court of Australia is not often asked to make interlocutory orders or non-binding arbitration rulings, however we are still prepared to make a preliminary hearing as an  obiter dicta in lieu of further passage to a court with proper jurisdiction. 

These are the facts as this court sees them:

The "Defence Sphere 1" as described by Jeff Vader in his correspondence, appears to be some very large machine which is capable of mass destruction on a planetary scale. Colloquially within the documentation it is referred to as a "Death Star", though it is not a star, however it seems to be quite capable of doing death to people and things.

There is not explicit provision for spacecraft, though Communications Satellites and Satellite Earth Station Electronic Assets generally have an effective life of 15 or 10 years depending on the use case. 

We consider an orbital defence sphere to be a habitable spacecraft and on the face of it, it looks more like the example of Aeroplanes (general use); in which case the Defence Sphere 1 likely has an  effective life of 20 years, which is similar to fixed wing aircraft and helicopters. 

We suspect that for a highly specialised asset such as this, that the Australian Taxation Office is going to want to make a Private Ruling based on like technical data and industry experience; from an appointed expert witness.

Final Judgement:

We determine that the Defence Sphere 1 is analogous to an Aircraft (general use) and as such that it has a comparable effective life of 20 years.

As such we determine that:

A - it has a Straight Line depreciation rate of 5%

B - it has a Diminishing Value depreciation rate of 10%

Whilst we can not explicitly determine the actual conversion rate between Universal Galactic Credits (UGC) and Australian Dollars (AUD), the use case seems to be that the ratio should read something in the order of 1 UCG : 6 AUD.

If it follows that the initial capital costs were One Trillion Galactic Credits, then the take up rate should be about $6,000,000,000,000. 

The actual amount of Depreciation Expense will need to be decided upon by the client, and the method retained for the life of the asset. 

This court hereby advises that the takeup rates as stated above be used, and further advises that an amount of Depreciation being claimed in a Tax Return as a business expense of $300bn which by itself is more than 16% of the GDP of Australia, is likely to cause at least a few raised eyebrows at the Australian Taxation Office. We hope that the ATO does not bring hateration and holleration to proceedings.

We trust that our mutual friends at the Australian Taxation Office will adhere to the advice given in this judgement, because we have seen what happens in the Catering Department if you are not happy with the moisture and condensation on food trays.

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H3506/1 - Ed)

Horse 3505 - THE PEOPLE V THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [2025] - Judgement

THE PEOPLE V THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [2025] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

H3505/1

We have learned of a crime against all that is decent and good; which has arisen and which rattled through the internuts until it finally made its way to this court until it found this fake internet court's attention:

https://nomoreteabags.com/

Usually this Fake Internet Court is asked to make decisions about trivial matters that do not affect all that much in society but this is a crime so heinous that it warrants immediate judgement.

These are the facts as this court sees them:

"No More Tea Bags" appears to be a highly compressed and liquidised version of tea, much in the same way that Condensed Milk is supposed to mimic milk for those occasions. Unlike Condensed Milk which has applications other than just making milk (such as in making cakes), No More Tea Bags prima facie is only for making tea.

The method for making tea with No More Tea Bags is to pour out some of the liquid tea concentrate into a cup, then add boiling water and wait five minutes for the tea to steep. This sounds like a remarkably similar process to making tea either in a pot with loose tea leaves or with tea bags; which is what No More Tea Bags is probably trying to solve.

The United States has a semi-foundational story with tea. When the British Government imposed a tax of about 3% on the value of tea imported into the United States (actually as a coercive Act to get them to abandon slavery), the 13 Colonies were not happy. When the British East India Company was given a specific exemption in 1775, things kind of kicked off and people decided to make the world's largest cup of tea in Boston Harbour by dumping all the tea into the sea in protest. The United States has had a strange relationship with tea ever since.

The United States since 1775 has famously become a nation of coffee drinkers, which curiously doesn't know how to make a cup of coffee either. American drip coffee is quite frankly an affront to Italian espresso, or French café, or Turkish coffee. This suggests in principle that the United States sees coffee as having utilitarian purposes only; this might explain why it seemingly is also so terrible at making tea, that No More Tea Bags exists at all.

No More Tea Bags is trying to solve a problem, for which there were not only adequate solutions but lovely ones. If No More Tea Bags isn't trying to solve the problem of Morning Tea, or Afternoon Tea, or the lovely cup of tea in the evening, or the position of Work Juice which is what Coffee and Strong Builder's Tea is already doing, then what the jinkies is it trying to do? I just don't know.

Final Judgement:

Whilst this Fake Internet Court is prepared to accept that the useful invention of arts and science for the purpose of business and profit, this doesn't mean that all things need to be invented in the first place. Especially not when already adequate and lovely solutions exist. Inventing something which is actively worse, hurts society at large because it pushes open the cultural Johari Window further into the unknown and into places that did not need to be known. By inventing worse things, people begin to accept worse stuff. In relation to a lovely cup of tea, this may as well be a crime against humanity and decency.

America, you are guilty of both conspiracy and deception. You have brought hateration and holleration into this fake internet court and as you have no sensible business by ruining tea like this. 

As this is not the first time that you have been brought before this Fake Internet Court, America, the penalties need to be severe. 

This court hereby orders all of you in the United States to sit down with a lovely cup of tea, made with either a tea bag or in a pot and take a good hard look at yourself. We would order you to watch a day's play of cricket with Afternoon Tea already built into it but we realise that you aren't ready to become a real nation yet.

Get out; lest you make a mockery of my courtroom. We are already perfectly capable of making a mockery of this fake internet courtroom as it is. You are malevolent and have now ensnared others in your villainy. Can you not see what trouble thou hast wrought? 

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H3505/1 - Ed)

Horse 3504 - The Day That The ATCC Dam Wall Of Legitimacy Broke

 This is the moment that the 2025 Supercars Championship was decided. It was not a piece of brilliant racing. It was not some hideous turn of fate which came about due to mechanical failure. It was not even some display of dominance which showed all and sundry that a new champion had arrived. Nope. It was an act of barbarism, aimed from the teammate of the eventual champion; directly and squarely at their rival. This was sheer cussed bloody mindedness and nothing else.

Fair play to Chaz Mostert who after waiting so very very long, finally has the second biggest prize in Australian Motorsport: the Australian Touring Car Championship. Literally everyone in Australia who cares a jot about motor racing knows that Bathurst is the only thing that truly writes your name into immortality, and that the ATCC title merely allows you to write a number 1 on the door.

Supercars Management, in an effort to market the sport have come up against the very real problem that when you take the sport off of free-to-air television, the number of eyeballs watching, falls off of a cliff. There has simply never been the same viewership numbers since 2013; since Lachlan Murdoch vampired Channel 10 and stripped all of the assets from it. Formula One also disappeared from free-to-air television at the same time.

With viewership numbers down to roughly a third of what they once were, advertising revenues have also fallen dramatically and the whole finals series is little more than a spork and cut and paste job from NASCAR in America. The problem is that after hiding the Supercars Championship safely behind a pay wall, not even a gimmick like this is enough to draw back the fans, much less attract new ones who they deliberately choose not to court, 12 years ago. Effectively there is almost a generation of missing fans. 

For me this is a classic tale of "Hate The Game And Not The Player". I can not hate Chaz Mostert as the champion. I can not really find fault with Ryan Wood who deliberately punted Broc Feeney off the road, because while that's despicable that is the job that he was given and he did it to the best of his ability.

This is unlike Senna deliberately taking out Prost in 1989 through a moment of opportunity, or Senna deliberately taking out Prost in 1999 through an act of unabashed bastardry. This is closer in spirit to Matt Kenseth intentionally wrecking Joey Logano at Martinsville in 2015; where the sport had long since decided that pugilism was not only acceptable but actively encouraged. Nobody particularly hates Matt Kenseth for obvious and deliberate knavery, but as NASCAR has only added gimmick after gimmick, it did kind of herald the end of the NASCAR Cup Championship being worth anything. The fans hate it, the drivers only like it if they win, and the dam of legitimacy has long since given way.

It didn't help that Broc Feeney won 14 races in the year to Chaz Mostert's 4. It didn't help that Chaz Mostert famously had his car fail on Conrod Straight during the Bathurst 1000 and he went to get a beer with the fans during the race. It didn't help that parity problems meant that the Mustangs only started being semi useful after the mid-season tinkering. Had this been any other season since 1960, Broc Feeney would have been Champion with two races to spare and everyone would have been happy. Instead on the first outing, we get borky broken gamified result, and a championship which is tarnished.

Mind you, the Australian Touring Car Championship was always second fiddle to Bathurst. Even Peter Brock only won it three times; so it's not like there's a whole lot lost. For Broc Feeney to have lost the championship, not because he was beaten by a better driver but because the operation of the rules erased literally all the work that he had done previously, is purely a result of policy decisions made by Supercars' management. Play stupid games - win stupid prizes. This prize is truly stupid.

Horse 3503 - You Can (Not) Go Your Own Way

 One of the imagined appeals of owning a Brodozer MonstroCity FX4 SUV or Truck, is the idea that if you wanted you could drive off into the bush and go camping, and engage in hand to hand combat with kangaroos or something. As I am a 47 year old man who likes watching motor racing, then the algorithms assume that I would also want to fork out an entire year's salary on one of these things. 

As a result, the adverts that I get include adverts for the Isuzu D-Max, Ford Ranger, Mitsubishi Triton, Nissan Navara, et cetera et cetera et cetera. What these advertising companies fail to realise, is that I do not have 120kg children and do not need a Brodozer MonstroCity FX4 to do the school run. What I actually want would be a Gemini, Fiesta, Lancer, or Pulsar. The ironic thing is that my Mazda 2 is actually a more capable off-road vehicle than the D-Max, Ranger, Triton, Navara, et cetera et cetera et cetera, and it all comes down to the black art of tyres.

My Mazda 2 sits on 185/65 R15 tyres. Quite frankly I think that 15 inch tyres on a car this small is absurd, and that the 165/65 R13 on the Ford Ka that I used to have, were entirely adequate.

However, as I walk to the bus stop in the morning, I pass a Brodozer MonstroCity FX4 truck which sits on 255/25 R21 "all terrain" tyres, and the really really dumb thing is that I know that there is no way in Hades, Sheol, or Abaddon, that this monstrosity would ever leave the black top, let alone drive on whatever surface "all terrain" imagines. This is for the simple reason that it would be deeply unpleasant.

A motor vehicle is suspended upon tyres, springs and shock absorbers. Spring and shock absorber return and damper rates are determined by woo-woo, goblins, numbers, and imagination. However, the tyres and the wheels themselves are pretty easy to understand. 

In a tyre specification:

XXX/YY R ZZ

XXX is the width of the tyre in millimetres.

YY is the aspect ratio; that is the height of the sidewalls expressed as a percentage, relative to the width.

ZZ is the size of the wheel, expressed as a 'wheel size' which just happens to correlate 1:1 to inches (what a coincidence). 

The important number here when it comes to the ability of a tyre to drive across rough surfaces, is the aspect ratio YY. The bigger the number, the more space that there is for the tyre to flex and deform in the vertical dimension; which is what you want when the car is suspended above. If we set aside the tyre pressure for a bit (because higher tyre pressures will give you a rougher ride), then the aspect ratio actually becomes the most critical measure when it comes to the ability of a tyre to go over rough surfaces nicely. This is why buses and trucks and actual proper Four Wheel Drive vehicles have nice lovely chunky sidewalls. 

Back in the days that we call 'the past', when Auto makers weren't in a race to create the biggest and chunkiest vehicle possible, cars (do you remember those?) used to have tyres with accept ratios of 65, 70, and 75. You could and might think about driving a Falcon to Cameron Corner. A car/truck/SUV thing which sits on 25 aspect ratio tyres, would likely miss Cameron Corner by about 400km which is where the black top runs out.

The Brodozer MonstroCity FX4 truck thing that I walk past, sits on 255/25 R21 tyres; which means that instead of the tyres being asked to do the work of suspending the vehicle, the springs and shock absorbers are instead. The fun thing about tyres is that as they are filled with air, they are a lot squishier that the gas inside shock absorbers, or the compressibility rates of the metal in a spring. Whereas my Mazda 2 can, has done, and will continue to drive over rough surfaces for fun, this Brodozer MonstroCity FX4 truck thing is highly likely to give you an absolute bone shaker of a ride.

If you like turning your latte into a milkshake through the simple act of driving down Parramatta Road, then 25 aspect ratio tyres are for you. However, don't pretend that this thing or these tyres are "all terrain" because I suspect that even driving over a grassy field is likely to be an unpleasant experience.

What makes this all the more ironic is that Isuzu in selling their D-Max and MU-X uses the tag line from the Fleetwood Mac song "Go Your Own Way". Selling their D-Max and MU-X on 25 aspect ratio tyres, disqualifies their own tag line. You can not go your own way if you can not leave the pavement.

Horse 3502 - It's A Damn Cold Night, Trying To Figure Out This Ad

There is currently an advert on Australian television for the German Insurance company and DAX component, Allianz.

https://youtu.be/WRwlzHfXpcQ?si=qLKZ74-48viGke4i

Now presumably the ad agency which made this and Allianz themselves, wanted to go for some kind of Gen X/Y nostalgia thing because the song "I'm With You" by Avril Lavigne was released 23 years ago; which means that this is peak retro.

However, yet again we have both an advert which didn't think things through and a song  which doesn't mean what the advertisers think it does. 

The verse which immediately precedes the chorus and which is not contained within the advert, has the following lyrics:

"I'm standing on a bridge

I'm waitin' in the dark

I thought that you'd be here by now

There's nothing but the rain

No footsteps on the ground

I'm listening but there's no sound"

Admittedly this is pretty open to interpretation, which is what you would expect from a pop punk song. The explanation from the author herself, doesn't really add very much either.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220529151536/https://www.mtv.com/news/1458414/avril-wants-to-go-somewhere-new-with-third-single/

the song's chorus, sounding like a girl looking to escape the everyday any way she can.

"It's a song I wrote at the piano when I was kind of having a depressing day," she said. "Kind of like, where's my guy? One of those days."

- MTV, 29th Oct 2002

So what are we to make of the use of this song in this advert? Of the two characters in the advertisement, one is a small robin-type bird who is in danger of losing her egg; while the other is the white German eagle which is the embodiment of the Allianz logo in use since 1890.

If the song is being put into the mouth of the robin, then the line "I don't know who you are but I'm, I'm with you", can be interpreted that any insurance company is as good as any other when you are in trouble; thus undoing the whole point of the advertisement.

On the other hand, the song doesn't actually fit into the mouth of the eagle, since the eagle is the one doing the saving here. 

What's worse is that the White-tailed Eagle which the national bird of Germany is a highly efficient bird of prey.

Fish are the primary food source for the White-tailed Eagle but it has to be said that as opportunistic killing machines, they wiy eat whatever is available in their environment.

Remember, to the eagle, a robin is a smaller, more vulnerable prey item that can be caught by an eagle's dive and talons. Eagles can and do eat robins, other birds, small mammals, and fish.

This is a case of very unfortunate story telling going awry. If this was a real life situation, then that eagle would absolutely eat the robin's egg as a tasty snack; maybe before turning it's attention to scoffing the robin itself.

Is this an unfortunate allegory for Allianz itself? A quick look at the Allianz website reveals...

https://www.allianz.com/en/about-us/company/history.html

Oh.

Oh?

Oh no.

There's quite a bit of unpleasantness between 1933 and 1945, which a company represented by a predatory bird which eats smaller birds, is kind of obligated to admit. Admittedly that has nothing to do with a one minute TV advertisement 80 years later but I still wish that companies would think about what kind of storytelling is inadvertently told when they spork popular music for corporate propaganda purposes.

Aside:

I am again reminded of IGA Supermarkets' campaign with Anh Do:

https://youtu.be/UU8CMRdyPTg?si=t19-dw_SUoI57v9Z

My head is a box filled with nothing,

and that's the way I like it.

My garden's a secret compartment,

and that's the way I like it.

...

So please,

Baby please,

Open your heart;

Catch my disease.

You want that song if you're trying to sell fresh food? Okay...

Horse 3501 - Killing Me Softly With His Plot

 Imagine that you are reading Book With Story™, or TV Show™, or even Moving Picture Show™ at one of these new fangled moving picture theatres, and the main character who you have invested emotional energy into, either dies, or worse is killed and dies. Owing to the fact that you are a human who is a pattern seeking machine, who more than likely expects satisfying outcomes to your selected storytelling, unless the death of those characters seems like a reasonable payoff, then the piece of media which you have just been witnessing, will be rated D - for disappointment.

This is a problem for writers of storytelling media. The meatbag pattern seeking machines which read, watch, or listen, live in a kosmos where unless you get taken away on a chariot of fire coming for to carry you home, or at one instance are and then are not, then Hades, Sheol, Abaddon, and their agents Grimaldi Mietro and The Destroying Angel, will always come to collect. The old adage that those who die with the most toys win, is very much tempered with the grave corollary that even if you die with the most toys you still die.

Alexander, Catherine, Alfred, were all 'great' but now they're all dead. Likewise, histories greatest monsters of Genghis Khan, Caligula, Napoleon, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Jimmy Carter, are also all dead. The grave visits all and sundry without fear or favour.

So how this relates to Book With Story™, or TV Show™, or even Moving Picture Show™ is that unless the piece of media wants to abandon the common experience of all (which might be useful for narrative purposes), then killing off a character means that they do not come back.

There is a caveat to this in that they might have developed some kind of plot armor, or because narrative sometimes relies on flashbacks (arguably all of the discipline of History as an academic subject is nothing more than a flashback), then you might be able to tell a story in the past relative to the now in the narrative.

So how do you get around this? Either you kill off your main characters with sufficiently enough of a heroic/sacrificial/redemptive ending to make the payoff worth it, or you make their deaths so tragic that it spawns a revenge plot.

As a writer, this is a classic problem. Arthur Conan Doyle hated Sherlock Holmes so much that he tried to have him killed off and then because of the outcry, the immediate retcon to bring him back (in a classic "he wasn't really dead plot"), the subsequent story and explanation is actually kind of a bit naff.

There are many cases of deaths in TV which echoed onwards. When Lt. Colonel Henry Blake died in M*A*S*H* this was the result of a deliberate narrative decision made to create a, realistic portrayal of loss.. Likewise the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth which has the entire lead cast die at the end, is one of the most poignant moments which nicely serves the idea of the entire futility of war. 

Of particular note was when Mr Hooper died in Sesame Street. This was a TV Show death which was necessitated by an existence failure of the actor Will Lee. The episode which explained Mr Hooper's death, eventually was put on air eleven months after Will Lee had died.

Of course all of this comes back full circle. Real life deaths are always rated D unless the person who died is so universally reviled and hated by all, that it is seen as just. A fictional character though, however loved they might be by the author or the audience, is still only a puppet or a simulacrum; which means that in theory, they should be easier to kill off. The complication comes because of the weight of narrative. A successful narrative makes the author and the audience care about puppets who aren't even real people. Of all the things that matter in the world, it is the things that don't matter at all that ironically matter the most.

That's also why nobody cares if a Red Shirt, or a Storm Trooper, or the Villain/Monster Of The Week dies, but if the protagonist dies without a satisfying outcome, then the D rating is never far away.

Horse 3500 - Rover 3500: The Perfect Car (5 Stars)

 Of course Post 3500 was always going to be about this. How could it not be?

Delightful and Doomed. Brilliant and Bad.

***** - oh? It turns out that they're not actually stars but things wrong with it.

The car originally conceived and coded RT1 (Rover Triumph) which was recoded SD1 (Specialist Division), is everything that just about every single modern car wants to be but fails at. 

It is a hatchback. It has a nice rumbly V8 up front. It is a grocery getter. It can be a track burner. At 110" x 70" it is about the same size as a Falcon; so it can carry the family. It looks as cool as all get out.

Functionally this is doing the same job ad the current Honda Civic FL1, Holden Commodore ZB, or Kia K4. Basically it takes everything that all of the boring Brodozer ObeCity SUVs and ESTs¹ do, and wraps it up in the perfect package for actual humans.

But because SD1 was made in Heath's, Wilson's, Callaghan's, and Thatcher's Britain, it took what should have been automotive perfection and cheapened it out with the flavour of rapidly crumbling empire. Hmm... delicious.

Italian cars were known for having excellent engines but put them in bodies which would rust and crumble at even the nearest hint of rain. French cars were known for having excellent suspension but were held together with hopes and wishes rather than nuts and bolts and would fall apart in minor zephyrs. German cars were known for excellent engineering which was so advanced that they would work excellently until the point when they didn't. And British cars were none of these things, but came with random faults as standard.

Every British car made since 1966, has been made on a Friday afternoon² and comes with random faults as standard. If there are eleven cars coming down the production line, then all eleven will have a different random fault. The twelfth and thirteenth cars will also have different random faults but they will be more different than before.

The SD1, which had various names among which is the Rover 3500, is the pinnacle of combining cheapened out every single production process with random faults. The Rover 3500 and particularly Vanden Plas trim levels, set the car a cut below performance cars like the Jaguar XJ-S, which also gave you the added benefits of being so thirsty for oil that you could start an oil can guitar factory using the discarded oil cans, as a side business.

Up front the Buick/Oldsmobile/Pontiac 215, which was a 90° V8, was bashed and rebashed every which way until Friday, before squishing it into this very tasty looking machine. Morgan, Triumph, MG, Land Rover, TVR et al, all took this engine and made of it what they would. Sir Jack Brabham even managed to persuade Australian parts seller Repco to mangle this engine into a Grand Prix winner. 

Rover wasn't done with it. They took the beating heart of a V8 and wrapped it up in pure British know-how.

They took the Italian propensity to rust, and applied it to floor pans, wheel arches, sills, door bottoms.

They took the French knack for having things fall apart, and gave the car Lucas electrics. I heard the word "Lucas" used so much in anger as a kid, that I thought that "Lucas" was a swear word. It wasn't just plug leads and the front console which randomly went dead - I have heard reports of electric windows not windowing, wipers not wiping and drivers who were given the choice of operating either the radio or the lights only.

They avoided the German ability of having excellent engineering just randomly break, by having cheap and bodgey engineering last forever. Forget disc brakes - let there be drums. 

Nevertheless, despite all the trappings of being British car, the Rover 3500 was still excellent. In final Vitesse trim, the Rover 3500 put out 190 ponies, which although is not earth shattering, it was comparable with other contemporary executive sedans. 

It managed to come close but fail to win the European Touring Car Championship in 1986 with Win Percy at the wheel, and the car was just hindered by the rules set. Being over 3 litres, it just never had the brute force of something like the Holden Commodore, and by the time that turbocharging came and ate everything with the Volvo 240T Terror Taxi, the Ford Sierra Cosworth RS500 and Nissan's GTR, it was over for the Rover. 

In relation to today and being a car which ended production almost 40 years ago, it might be strange for me to compare it with anything on the road today but the truth is that every SUV secretly wants to be the Rover 3500. Cars seem to revert to being about 150-200 horsepower, about 110" by 70", and useful enough with a big door at the back, either a hatch or wagon door. All SUVs without exception are driven by people who either think that a car is an appliance, or by people who don't care about driving, or by sad old gits who have given up on life³. 

Had it been Japanese it would have been better built but soulless. Had it been French or German or Italian, it would have had a soul but found other ways to break down. The Rover 3500 did the job perfectly but was let down by being built in Britain.

¹Emotional Support Truck 

²England 4 - Germany 2: We're No.1 so why try ever again?

³ Don't want to be judged? Get a proper fun car.

Horse 3499 - Numbers And Letters

 The English language as it is currently written, has 26 glyphs and maybe 27 if we are prepared to accept that & is a glyph. This leads us to one of the most idiotic sequences that I have ever seen. 

Numbers have names. Names are made of letters. The order in which the letters appear in the names of numbers is bonkers strawberry mental. 

0 - zero - is the smallest possible number and gives us four letters.

1 - one - only gives us N as a new letter. Since we have already seen the others, we do not need to count them again.

2 - two - we get two new letters, T and W

3 - three - we only get R here 

4 - four - F and U are new

5 - five - yields I and V

6 - six - again we're getting S and X

7 - seven - nothing is new. This is in fact the default for the vast majority of rational numbers. A maximum of 27 out of all of the possible numbers is statistically so insignificant as to be practically nil. 

8 - eight - G makes an appearance 

9 - nine - this is where the story gets a bit sad. 

Because we have already seen all of the possible glyphs that we need to make all of the rational numbers, and because numbers represent place value, what we will be doing for most of the time, is just repeating names. It is not until...

20 - twenty - that we see a new letter with Y

From here on out, the journey will get very big very quickly.

100 - one hundred - because we have already named all of the components of placeholders, the only thing left to do is name orders of magnitude. D shows up here.

101 - one hundred and one - as the word "and" isn't really a number, I am not going to include the first letter of the alphabet here... However this is where if you want to include & as a letter because it absolutely is used in writing, then here is your extra bonus.

1000 - one thousand - this is where A finally shows up, and from here, this is where the madness truly begins.

1,000,000 - one million - the suffix "illion" comes from the Italian word millione, which is a 'great thousand'. This is where L arrives, and M shows up because from here on out, we are just adding prefixes to get ever larger numbers.

1,000,000,000 - one billion - because Bi- is the prefix for "two". This is when B shows up.

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - one quadrillion - because Quad- is the prefix for "four". Q and D have arrived at the party.

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - one pentillion - because Pent- is the prefix for "five"; which means that P is here.

Last but not least (because that's literally how ordinal numbers work. 

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - one octillion - as Oct- is the prefix for "eight", C is the last one to arrive.

A - 1000

B - 1,000,000,000

C - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

D - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

E - 0

F - 4

G - 8

H - 3

I - 5

L - 1,000,000

M - 1,000,000

N - 7

O - 0

P - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Q - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

R - 4

S - 6

T - 2

U - 4

V - 5

W - 2

X - 6

Y - 20

Z - 0

& - 100

Notably absent are J and K, because unless you are prepared to accept words like Kajillion which is an impossibly big number; just like a Kaiju like Godzilla (a Godzillion is also an impossibly big number) then because we just keep on adding suffixes and prefixed to the end of absurdity - ab surdum, ab infinitum, ad nauseum; amen.

If you want to write out your new ordinal alphabet, then it looks like this:

ZERONTWRFUIVSXGHWYD&AMLBQPC JK

If you want to keep a small child entertained for all of about ten minutes while they start counting and then realise that the task is impossible, then this is a fun exercise. Even the most determined child will be able to count to one octillion before the heat death of the universe or the return of Christ, who also quite frankly has better things to do than count until the appearance of C.

Horse 3498 - The Hidden (Not Hidden) Player In The Dismissal

 Today marks the 50th anniversary of The Dismissal of Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister and the installation of Malcolm Fraser. Yes this was all put in place by a series of fortunate events for his political enemies, including the means to permanently block supply in the Senate (which is why this was enabled), and while the role of the Palace was eventually brought to light because of the work and ins insistence of historian Professor Jenny Hocking, they ultimately don't reveal an active hand from London.

Probably the most instrumental person (apart from Kerr himself) in this whole process, was Rupert Murdoch. As the inheritor of his father's political party, turning his hand to political manipulation was something that he realised that he actually could do with relative ease.

While the actions of Sir John Kerr as Governor General are somewhat easy to establish in an official capacity because the paperwork exists, trying to work out who he saw and when, from the other side of the fog of fifty years, is more difficult. Kerr is dead. The people who he spoke to are also likely dead. Mr Murdoch on the other hand, although not dead, would have always seen this as politically expedient because he got the job done.

The trigger for all of this was the 1974 Budget. In the 1974 budget, the Whitlam Government introduced free tertiary education, and publicly funded childcare, and publicly funded women’s services, and while he couldn't actually establish publicly funded healthcare which was still the domain of the states he did establish Medibank as a publicly owned and operated health insurance agency. I can not stress enough, how much this absolutely enraged the All Ordinaries companies and especially the funders and donors to the Liberal Party.

Something had to be done. The rich and powerful will only tolerate so much democracy before they want to smash it to pieces.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11/murdochs-role-in-the-dismissal-and-my-job-in-japan/

Murdoch often held soirees at Cavan with editors and managers at his rural retreat outside Canberra. On one of those soirees, 12 months before the dismissal, he invited Kerr. It was late in the afternoon and Kerr, as was his custom, had had a few drinks by the time he got to Cavan.

Ian Fitchett, the doyen of the press gallery and the chief correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald, was present at that Cavan meeting in late 1974. Fitchett told me that Murdoch had asked Kerr to speculate on the possibilities if the Opposition refused Supply. This was then a topical issue as the Coalition had contemplated refusing supply in late 1974. But it backed off.

- John Menadue, 8th Nov 2025

This obviously had a longer time to slowly boil than I thought that it did. Although we almost certainly can not confirm recollections of what amounts to hearsay, I have come across enough of these kinds of stories which all point at the same kinds of thing. 

Kerr and Murdoch were on good enough terms that Kerr went to Cavan (Rupert Murdoch's estate) on what appears to be multiple occasions between the Budget of 1974 and November 1975. There appears to be no visits after that date; presumably because as Rupert had got what he wanted, there wasn't no need for Kerr anymore.

The last of the visits made by Kerr to Cavan happened on the weekend of 4th and 5th of October 1975; I think that they likely gamed out the course of events which would follow. I don't know what exactly Murdoch had over Kerr but I suspect that it would have been ruinous to Kerr's life. As it was, Kerr was a professional drunkard and his only other notable event from this point onwards, was being to three sheets to the wind at the 1977 Melbourne Cup.

Herein lies the problem. The Palace Letters are fine but ultimately don't reveal much. The most important meetings happened without any public scrutiny and were essentially the actions of business running roughshod over democracy.

Fraser's Government which followed managed to do the impossible of double digit inflation and double digit unemployment. Real wages peaked in Q3 1977 if you compared AWOTE with CPI, and the economy has been redesigned since, so that capital is well and truly winning. Whitlam had to go because he upset capital. 

In addition to meeting with Kerr, Rupert Murdoch met with Malcolm Fraser on numerous occasions, in the run up to the dismissal of the Whitlam government. Fraser leaked like a sieve and all kinds of official secrets and intelligence information found their way into Murdoch's various media publications. 

Even after Whitlam was removed and Fraser installed, it was discovered in the files of the Attorney General's Office that there were records of a slew of recording exchanges of information between Mr Murdoch and the Fraser government.

The thing to remember about this whole thing is that the Constitution always laid out the powers of the Governor General to appoint and dismiss Ministers of the Crown, and that even in the face of what was otherwise weaponised corruption, this was all nice and legal; because of that, there were/are no grounds for any consequences whatsoever.

Horse 3497 - All Playoffs In All Sports Are Stupid

 One of the better analyses of the subject of the NASCAR Playoffs that I have read in over the last few weeks, is this piece by Elizabeth Blackstock (ex Jalopnik, Donut Media &c)

https://deadlypassionsterriblejoys.substack.com/p/nascar-doesnt-have-a-playoff-problem

NASCAR doesn't have a Playoff problem; it has a storytelling problem

It feels like everyone gave up on the NASCAR Playoffs this year — but why?

- Elizabeth Blackstock, 3rd Nov 2025

The argument in the article (go and read it) makes an excellent case as to why nobody cares who the NASCAR Cup Champion is, and why the Xfinity Series has the wrong champion, but I think that the diagnosis is wrong because of the simple underlying problem.

I do not think that the root cause is one of narrative; although that is a compelling argument. No, I think that the lack of a compelling narrative is itself a symptom of the root cause and the root cause is:

ALL playoffs in all sports are stupid.

Now I should preface this by saying that I live in Australia. We are probably at fault when it comes to the invention of finals series and playoffs and the reason is deeply pragmatic.

All the way back in 1897, the Victorian Football Association ran the inaugural senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. Eight clubs (Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong, Melbourne, South Melbourne and St Kilda) played each other in a round robin series, and then the top four played each other in a second round robin series. What this meant is that there was a 14 round home-and-away season, followed by three weeks of finals. The thing that annoyed fans and journalists at the time, was that the Premiership Cup could have been awarded to either Essendon or Geelong on the last day, and they were playing several miles apart. As it was, the Premiership was awarded to Essendon, who beat Collingwood in match that The Argus described in less than glowing terms:

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/9770101

However you slice it, Essendon 1.8.14 def. Collingwood 0.8.8 is an abysmal performance. Yes it might have been the 1890s which implies a lower level of professionalism, and yes it might have been blowing an absolute gale across Port Phillip and Lake Oval, but it still doesn't change the fact that people saw a horrible game of football in which for three quarters no goals were scored. 

In the minds of the powers that be something had to be done. The logic which followed said that this was something; therefore we must do this. So what we have ended up with since 1898 is a dirty method of awarding a cup. 

The other side of this is that the Football Association Challenge Cup, otherwise known as the FA Cup, was first awarded in 1872 in England and would by the nature of being a pure knockout competition, means that there would always be one final and the cup can be awarded to the winners on the Cup Final day.

Herein lies the great temptation which promoters invariably give in to. Because there is the drama of a cup competition where going home is the prize for losing, they think that they then can then apply that to crowning the champion of a league.

The Victorian Football Association created a finals series as a solution to a problem which only existed because they'd already invented a stupid system for awarding a premiership. Had they already determined that point difference would have decided the league championship, then that would have used the already existing set of statistics; which would have meant that the premier actually did do better over the course of the season. 

American Sports love this everywhere with the NBA, NFL, MLB, MLS all falling into this. More broadly the European Champions League, the Europa League, the FIFA World Cup, the NRL, and the AFL which is guilty of starting off this whole nonsense, all want to award a cup trophy on Cup Final Day and in doing so, completely render the actual value of winning the league/conference/division/group which preceded it, as practically worthless.

America further compounds the problem by deliberately choosing to render the group stages of its various leagues/conferences/divisions/groups worthless, by organising teams into those things in the first place. Again, if we look to Australia which is massive, then the West Coast Eagles who might travel to Brisbane, Sydney, or Melbourne, already travel further than American teams because they play their home games in Perth. Multi billion dollar sports organisations which already factor in the costs of travel, don't really need to organise competitions by geography.

Furthermore, as the Football Association itself proves, running promotion and relegation between league divisions, literally twenty leagues deep on the football pyramid, provides its own jeopardy in a way that a team who finishes 11th in the AFC West Division will never face.

Quite frankly, a league where everyone plays everyone else home and away is the best format to decide who is best in the league because the ontology of the thing in the first place says that you have to be consistently the best against all comers. A cup arrives at the same point by eliminating those who were not the best all the time. Having said all of that, a knockout cup in motor sports where you have 40 runners at once, is an idiotic concept. 

NASCAR in two seasons has now demonstrated both sides of the horky borky brokenness of having a league with a finals series.

On one hand, Joey Logano came 17th in the league and then kind of lucked/backed into being the NASCAR Cup champion in 2024. In 2025 Connor Zillisch in the Xfinity Series, put on a masterclass in the league and then some other bozo became champion because he just happened to have won the lottery on the last day. On one hand we have a chancer who should not have been champion but is, and on the other we have a phenomenon which should have been champion but is not.

I will also go on to say that any system which allows you to discount bad performances (which is what the current NASCAR system does in spades) is also deliberately stupid. I am reminded of the 1988 Formula One Championship which was won by Ayrton Senna, where only the best 11 races of 16 were counted. As a pure championship based on the number of points accumulated, Alain Prost won that 105-94 but because the system allowed Senna to throw away five bad results including a disqualification and an accident which he cause, Senna won the championship 90-87. Again, why a championship is awarded to someone because they were worse, is insane to me. NASCAR not only decides that this is acceptable but resets and completely ignores the bad results, including if a driver were to actively cause an accident.

And before we get ahead of ourselves and try to suggest that this is because of ball and stick sports, I would like to remind you that I've jus.t said that all finals series including in ball and stick sports are stupid. When the North Queensland Cowboys won the NRL Premiership in 2017, they did so after finishing 8th in the minor premiership. That's ridiculous. If you honestly think that a team who finished 8th against all comers deserved to be the champion, then you might be a fool or easily fooled.

In short, unless you are running a knockout cup or a knockout match racing series, then all playoffs are bad; without exception. This is way deeper than just a narrative problem. It's the entire ontology of the thing. 

Horse 3496 - Give Me Rocket Bunnies

It should be obvious to all and sundry by now that the Australian Touring Car Championship, which is contested by the Supercars series, is very quickly choosing to become a failure; almost by design.

This is because of a number of reasons.

Firstly, the Australian motor industry is now non-existent and that means that there are no local cars to race in it any more, the replacement cars are the Camaro which is not only discontinued and no longer on sale, the Mustang which although you can buy is not available in this configuration, and the third make which will be joining them in 2026 is the Supra which just like the Camaro is discontinued and no longer on sale. 

Secondly, in an effort to protect the existing teams, the management has decided to make the series a closed shop. The only way to get a drive in the Supercars series is to be a driver for an existing chartered team. Unless a charter comes up for sale, there is no way in.

Thirdly, because of falling revenues and falling attendances, Supercars' management has decided to make the series even harder to watch by placing even more races behind the paywall.

This has actually resulted in a talent drain with drivers heading overseas; the most noticeable being Shane Van Gisbergen who made the rational decision to drive in NASCAR.

I have a solution. 

It mightn't be the best solution but it is the funnest; and fun is the cousin of good.

ROCKET BUNNIES

With the Bathurst 12 Hours being a GT3 race for high performance sports cars, and the Bathurst 1000 being a GT3 Minus race for a group of closed shop cars, this only leaves the Bathurst 6 Hours as the place where normal cars have a chance to compete. 

Even then, the Bathurst 6 Hours has almost by default become the domain of BMW 2ers and 3ers in lieu of literally everyone else only wanting to produce Brodozer ObeCity FX4 trucks and SUVs, which the latter openly defy the first two letters of their three letter acronym.

Given this, Kia who along with Mazda are about the only sensible small cars left, have the opportunity to do the most hilarious thing ever - run their Picanto GT Rocket Bunny in the 6 hours.

One of the points of motor racing like this is to Race On Sunday And Sell On Monday. What we have witnessed over the last few years as everyone is only in the race sell carriers for increasingly obese children, is that they too have abandoned this principle. You are never going to see a Rav-4 on the racetrack, or an Everest, or a Tiggo, and to be fair, apart from Hilux and Ranger still driving car sales, the entire motor industry has successfully managed to get the general public so disinterested in cars that even Sell On Monday isn't really working.

The fun thing about running the Picanto GT in the Bathurst 6 Hours is that all of the engineering has already been done as evidenced by the Portuguese Picanto GT Cup car above. To turn one of these into what amounts to a GT4 Adjacent car which is what the regulations for the Bathurst 6 Hours runs under, literally requires zero effort. This is a simple matter of taking a car and just putting it on the racetrack. Maybe if Kia Australia wanted to, they could take some Right Hand Drive examples and fit the bits on them, but essentially what we have is a turnkey solution which is already in existence.

The then obvious question is as always: Why? Why would a car maker like Kia want to run their smallest car in a race like this and not their biggest and/or halo car like a Stinger? Because motor racing is about writing a story. Ford and Holden told us the story about family sedans in combat for fifty years and now they have vacated the stage. Subaru and Mitsubishi told us the story about their cars tearing through the forests and snow at ridiculous speeds but they too have abandoned the stage. Both the Bathurst 12 Hours and the Bathurst 1000 are currently filled with cars that the general public can not buy and will never likely drive; so the story is just not relevant. If Kia were to run the Picanto GT in the 6 Hours, then it comes with the inbuilt story of the little guy taking on the world and if they should win, then we'd have all the drama of a David/Goliath story. Kia actually have a strange opportunity to own all of the stage in the public imagination because literally nobody else wants to stand in the limelight.

If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else then I'd shake down the CEO of Kia Australia to consider running their wee ickle fun machine in competition. I'd paint the cars red with white roofs to at least hint at the Austin and Morris Mini Coopers that ran around the same mountain 60 years ago. 

Because the story of wee ickle rocket bunnies is a lot more fun than the sad old git boxes that all y'all are driving around in.

Horse 3495 - The US Government Shutdown Is Just "The Matthew Effect" Being Played Out Again

 For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.

- Matthew 25:29

In context this comes out of a parable which Jesus told, and as recorded in Matthew's Gospel, which is a lesson about being a good steward of the resources (such as money, abilities, time, et cetera) that have been entrusted to you. In economics though, this verse describes two things, one relatively benign and one insidious.

The benign thing is that the rewards due to capital, will in the long run, outweigh any and all rewards due to labour. The reason for this is that anyone stupid enough to actually work to earn a living, will generally waste their money on stupid things like rent, food, clothing, utilities and what not. The actual economically sensible thing to do, is to choose to be homeless and never eat, thus avoiding all expenses and maximising that portion of one's income which is saved.

This is intolerable to most people though, who selfishly like to live inside and eat food occasionally.

The insidious thing, which is the darker and evil twin which always accompanies the first, is that the people who are in charge of capital and power, will enact policies to further entrench their cumulative advantage; by means of deliberately enacting policy in areas such as taxation, education, social dynamics including classist treatment, et cetera. The rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer is not just a description of what is, but what must be, and what will be by policy.

The current brouhaha which has led to this year's almost annual US Government Shutdown, is almost entirely predicated upon the Republican Party's policy of saying vaguely Christian things while actively refusing to do anything that Christ actually said to do, and the Democratic Party's refusal to accept that Christianity is a thing while at the same time refusing to pass the budget unless it looks after the poor and the vulnerable and the widows and aliens.

This is also set against the general climate of wanting to blame immigrants for taking all the jobs, despite and in spite of large firms either making things overseas and/or importing cheap labour who are to insecure to complain about getting absolutely taken advantage of in terms of wages and conditions.

One of the most popular acts in this carnival of cruelty happens to revolve around a program called SNAP or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. This is what used to be called in the olden days as "Food Stamps". The piece of theatre is that rich people have convinced people who work and are racist/cruel, that poor people are in fact the problem and that it is morally better if people starve. This is where fun maths comes in handy:

If the US economy is $1, then only 42 cents are paid as wages, and the bottom quintile of about 66 million people are all fighting over 1 cent. The 42 million people who actually do qualify for Food Stamps are collectively so poor that they are all fighting over half a cent.

But as the United States is a nation based upon the premise that some people are created more equal than others and that some people are morally worth less than 3/5ths of a person, then this is all the moral justification to yell at poor people all the more because it's their fault. 

If we assume that the Democratic Party just surrenders and caves in to the Republican Party's demands, how long will it be before they cut all assistance payments and all health insurance payments for the poor?

We must assume that given that this was posted by Mr Trump on his Truth Social network, that that is the end plan:

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115398251623299921

That is currently enacted policy as being played out. And to those 'Christians' who voted for Trump not once, not twice, but thrice - behold your god.

While the US Government is currently shut down, and President Trump has torn down the East Wing of the White House to build his own palatial ballroom, are to assume that he actually enjoys dreaming of pouring feces on demonstrators opposed to him?

If this weren't enough, he has the unfettered gall to demand that the American taxpayers give him $230 million for his personal grievances against the Justice Department because it investigated his crimes.

But do go on blaming poorer people because they are poor for whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them..

Horse 3494 - A Cat's Work Is Never Done (Well It Is But The Tax Office Thinks Otherwise)

 One of the features of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 is that as life is complex and can not possibly be contained within the words of the act, it allows you to run like for like substitutions for things in the act. In theory...

Stoves for instance can be gas, electric, charcoal, or wood fired, et cetera. A sofa, a couch, a bench, a lounge, are all roughly the same kinds of furniture. A grader, tractor, plough, digger, and what not, are various pieces of farm implements which are all depreciated at the same rate. When you think about it, of course it makes sense that the legislation is going to treat things which are roughly the same, as being roughly the same for taxation purposes.

So then, what happens when as the title of this blog post suggests, a cat becomes a vital piece of kit?

Again, if we apply the principle of like for like then we find very quickly that...

A cat is a dog.

The ATO on the other hand, does not agree. The ATO does not think that a cat is a dog. In fact as far as the ATO is concerned, they think that the work that cats do, is valueless.

Now the idea that you have a working dog, is hardly a new idea. Dogs have been used for thousands of years as herders, as security guards, as sled pullers, as sniffers, as substitute vision, and probably myriad more occupations. Cats on the other hand, are not likely to be used in very many capacities at all. Really all that they are good for in any real business sense, is for catching mice.

This means that a Working Cat is an edge case and not particularly noteworthy enough to have special legislation written for them. A Working Cat as far as the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 is concerned, should be identical to a Working Dog but for the ATO, they have no idea.

Working, dogs, falcons, kites, pigeons, pigs, sheep, racehorses, goats, et al small animals, have a working life of 8 years, which is either 12.5% pa straight line, or 25% diminished value. Unless of course your working animal costs less than $300 (and let's be honest here, the Cat Distribution System generally distributes cats on the value of $0), in which case you can write off the entire amount.

As an aside, beasts of burden (horses, oxen, bullocks, donkeys and whatnot) all have a working life of 15 years. This also includes animals for stud.

This also means that the ongoing costs of a Working Cat, such as food, vet bills, uniform, et cetera, should by right just be the normal running expenses of a Working Cat as an asset. There is nothing particularly out of the ordinary here.

I make mention of this because a client of ours who runs a Bakery/Café had two accounts in their Xero setup for Mr Chengse. Mr Chengse was not included in Wages and Salaries and did not have any superannuation payments set aside. 

As I found out, Mr Chengse is a valued employee and functionally the first in command at the business because whatever Mr Chengse wants, he gets. Mind you, he doesn't really want very much beyond the other staff opening and closing doors for him, and not to be disturbed in the morning when the Morning Sleep in the sunshine MUST happen. 

The service that Mr Chengse provides is keeping the bakery and café free from vermin as well as providing advertising for the business while sleeping in the shop window.

The ATO on the other hand, disses Mr Chengse's vital service and at present doesn't allow a tax deduction for the provision of work that he provides, even though he does a better and more efficient job at a cheaper price than other pest control measures.

It might change though:

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/6/800

Farmers preferred having cats on the farm than using poison baits as they viewed the cats as safer, cheaper and more efficient and perceived them to have less impact on wildlife. Additionally, farmers strongly supported the care of working cats being tax deductible, stating that it would reduce financial pressure on farmers and improve cat welfare. It is recommended that the role of working cats on dairy farms be further explored. However, our findings suggest dairy farmers value having working cats on their farm and that the Australian Tax Office permitting their care to be tax deductible may benefit the wellbeing of dairy farmers and cats whilst protecting wildlife from exposure to poisons, toxoplasmosis and excess farm cats.

- "Feline Farmhands: The Value of Working Cats to Australian Dairy Farmers—A Case for Tax Deductibility" - Caitlin Crawford ,Jacquie Rand, Olivia Forge, Vanessa Rohlf, Pauleen Bennett, Rebekah Scotney, 12th Mar 2025

I would expand Crawford, Rand, Forge, Rohlf, Bennett, and Scotney's enquiry to look into Working Cats in more venues that just farms. Surely all venues of employment where cats are providing valuable services such as pest control, companionship, or decorative arts such as Mr Chengse's sleeping in the window, are not only worthy of a tax deduction but perfectly in keeping with the other parts of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997.

The general principle of deductibility when you have an expense that relates to income is very obviously on display here. Mice and rats getting into flour stores is not only inconvenient and messy but a public health hazard. Very clearly Mr Chengse's vital services of pest control, companionship, and the decorative arts are directly related to the production of income; which means that if for no other reason than there is a link between the expense and the income, then Mr Chengse's services should be deductible under Section 8 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. The Australian Taxation Office though, just knocks all of them off the shelf because the fat cats don't understand what it's like out here for a cat.

Horse 3493 - The Long Dark Nightride Of The Soul; or (You Can't Get There From Here)

 I have just had a very lovely time seeing people who I met in highschool, as the years of our collective youth have trickled away and the ceaseless noiseless steps of time carry us all inevitably and inexorably towards the grave. Hmm, yummy - Death is hungry - feeding time is all the time.

Stepping out into the night and into the relatively affluent suburb of Bella Vista, I am immediately impressed by the absurd dependency that we have chosen to build for ourselves around the motor car. 

Can we just talk for a minute about the transport desert that is Western Sydney? In theory I am at a Metro station which would normally have services running six times an hour but when you add those mythical magic words "Replacement Bus Service" then who honestly knows? 

The unlimited abject horror of a "Replacement Bus Service", is that there is no timetable. There is no indication of when a bus will arrive or indeed, if. There is also no Nightride service to speak of. I can stare into the abyss and expect... nothing. 

Not only is it impossible to predict when or if any kind of bus is coming along, it is also pointless in trying to make any kind of plans with the 131500 website. The 131500 website assumes that there will be a normal operation of timetabled services; when this is simply impossible. Oh the irony.

Standing at the bus stop with no-one else around means that I have the option to scrape away at the silence by putting in a pair of earphones and blasting it away with music, or the radio, or perhaps a podcast. However, as I am stranded in the silence with my own internal monologue briskly nattering away with all the force of a thunderstorm, then music or the radio just doesn't seem right. Left with my own thoughts yelling loudly into the silence, I also attempt to turn them off but to no avail. Instead I turn my thoughts to what I can observe.

I like the very faint smell of some unknown flower in the air, the atmosphere just barely on the edge of damp, the occasional but faint russell of leaves, and the distant low rumble of traffic. The cacophony of the silence is far more pleasant than a room full of live music which I don't know the words. How many times do we get to just sit with silence in a world that wants to do violence to it?

Meanwhile at this time of night, the advice which comes from the repository of all knowledge that is Uncle Google, is to go to Tallawong and then walk the 2.2km to Schofields before making the connection to the trains. This sounds silly. Nevermind that that walk is 51 minutes long and by the time that you get to Tallawong, the last train will have already left. 

My choice to get home from Bella Vista Station with no trains running, is to take the Replacement Bus Service to Rouse Hill Station and then roll the dice of fate to see what we get. All possibilities on an unknown number of dice with an unknown number of sides are in play. 

When the 11M bus (the Metro Replacement Bus Service) did finally arrive, it was packed to the gills with a very very sad subset of humanity. These are people who would have normally expected a six car Metro service every few minutes but instead have been crammed into a bus. These people who will have had their fun, are now their most irritable selves, and carry expressions of gloom. While the 11M bus isn't quite as tipped on the edge of anarchy as an N70 Nightride service from the City to Penrith will be, it is still not a happy place. At least it does not smell of spew.

Making the connection at Rouse Hill Station is where the fun begins. On a regular weekday, I would have the choice of the 730, 731, 732 to Blacktown, or the 752 via Quakers Hill, but as there is no real time information and this is a weekend, actually knowing when and if buses will arrive, is like staring into the abyss. So I wait around a bit; knowing that whatever the first bus out of here to Blacktown is, is the correct choice.

Waiting for a bus in Western Sydney is a different experience to waiting in the middle of the City. There just isn't the number of drunken people staggering around at all. At this time of night, there is mostly a small army of tired looking people, some of whom are still dressed in the uniforms of the gig economy and the national colours of doing real work: orange, fluoro pink and yellow; with reflective stripes. The corporate logos of the gig economy and the art of making poor people fetch your food because you are lazy are all here - Hamburger Taxi, Hungry Armadillo, and Lazy Panda are all represented. 

When the 752 bus did finally show up, I flagged it down and apart from one lady who was dressed in purple scrubs (likely a nurse from a private hospital in the Hills), I was the only other passenger on board. She got off at a stop out the front of St Cyanide's School for the Criminally Catholic. The very big video billboard out front is showing a slideshow of Mary; with the gesture as though she is trying to order two loaves of bread. After our tired nursing practitioner friend has left the bus, I am alone as we wend our way through streets which seem directionless. I am reminded of the word "Omnibus" which means 'for, by, and with, everyone' and the irony therein. Perhaps 'everyone' has been replaced with 'everywhere' in this case. 

Now it's time for some massive pieces of statistical irony:

The distance from my house to where we went, is 8.5km. That means that to drive that same distance would have taken 13 minutes. To walk that distance would have taken 1hr 48mins. To take public transport has taken 1hr 49mins by the time I have reached my destination. It is madness that public transport is marginally slower than walking the same distance.

None of this part of the evening would have happened had the state government connected the Metro to Schofields. The 11M world have gone right through and I would have taken a T1 Richmond Line train home.

- 11:19pm