Horse 3023 - Yes But, Is It Comedy?

It has to be said that I am about as close to the coalface of pop culture as New Caledonia is to Paris. New Caledonia is part of France but to suggest that the people of New Caledonia are at all worried about the goings on of Line 4 on the Paris Metro is silly. Sure, they might hear about it on Le Journal on Canal Deux but it doesn't really affect them.

So it is with a lot of things on Netflix, Stan, and Foxtel. I am aware that streaming services exist but as I am not a subscriber, I can't say that I have seen or care about what is on these streaming services. 

I was asked in conversation recently of what I thought about Ricky Gervais' new comedy special on Netflix. I had to explain that I don't have Netflix and that even if I did, I probably wouldn't watch Ricky Gervais' comedy special on the basis that he is a one trick pony, that I have already seen that one trick, and I find him as dull as dishwater. 

Apparently in this comedy special on Netflix, Ricky Gervais makes jokes about transsexual people and I think that this is supposed to induce either glee or outrage depending on whether or not you are part of the choir that he is preaching to, or if you are part of the woke left, whatever that is supposed to be. To be perfectly honest, in principle this sounds identical to Paul Murray, Rita Panahi, Rowan Dean, Peta Credlin, and the other unfunny comedians on Sky News Australia. Admittedly they're not advertised as comedians but they also don't fulfil any useful role one a news channel either.

The purpose of comedy is to provide entertainment to the audience by the generation of mirth, whimsy, and humour. The scope of this post isn't going to discuss whether or not the comedian in question is working blue or not but in general, I personally think that there is far more skill in crafting comedy that is 'clean'. 

Comedy has its wellspring from four main sources; being: sarcasm, surrealism, surprise and superbia. Ricky Gervais in The Office, made a name for himself by playing an awkward and intolerable character. In Extras he plays more or less the same character. To be fair, I was bored by both of these.

By playing a knavish person, Gervais plays from the two wellsprings of sarcasm and superbia. Comedy that flows from sarcasm relies on the withering put down, to show the absurdity in the thing at hand. Vanity flows from a similar wellspring, but the subject is turned inwards and comedy is generated with the person who is prone to suburbia, being broken down and shown for the absurdity at hand.

Gervais' stand up routines, generally draw from the wellspring of sarcasm and mainly aim at the targets that the right is currently fighting in a culture war. That inevitably means punching downwards and because a person on stage flies solo, there is never any avenue for a right of reply. 

This is the generic problem that the authoritarian right has with doing comedy. The authoritarian right thinks that it is funny. As a straight white male, I am never the target of this kind of comedy; so I do not really have to feel or suffer the effects of this. However, as someone who is in possession of a brain which is able to analyse and pull apart ideas, I find this style of comedy immensely boring.

At this point the usual retort from the authoritarian right is that comedy is supposed to be challenging and confronting and that if you are offended or triggered, that you have somehow lost. I personally do not know what the win conditions are for comedy but I do know that I like comedy that is funny.

Comedy which is drawn from the wellspring of surprise involves the usual elements of generating plot coupons ansd then cashing them in for the punchline. Slapstick, puns, and indeed any other version of joke telling which falls into some kind of question and answer format, obviously has a payoff where all of the plot coupons are cashed in.

Comedy which is drawn from the wellspring of the surreal is usually the hardest to generate because the entire internal warped logic of the little world inside the joke has to be built from scratch.

Gervais generally doesn't build worlds. Gervais generally doesn't craft or build plot coupons which are then cashed in for some kind of payoff. In his stand up shows, he also doesn't generally make himself the target. Rather, he is a lazy comedy writer who plays to the prejudices of the crowds that he is playing to; I find that both boring and unfunny.

If you were to say that you don't like the comedy of the authoritarian right because if is boring and unfunny, you will generally get the same sort of response that you would if you explained that you find it offensive:

"If you don't like it, don't watch it."

Okay.

I am not sure how voting with my time, money, or attention to buy something else, is supposed to be any kind of withering put down. If you choose not to buy something because it is boring and unfunny, then just like the response is identical to not buying something because it is offensive, because you haven't bought it then you can double your money by folding it in half and putting it back in your pocket. In the marketplace of ideas, saying that you find something boring, seems to spark as much outrage from the people who like that sort of thing as the offence was supposed to have caused in the first place.

So no, I have not seen Ricky Gervais' new comedy special on Netflix. I do not intend to see Ricky Gervais' new comedy special on Netflix. Unless he has done something interesting which he hasn't done in the past (and he has not done anything interesting in the past), then I do not not know what I would gain from it. If I want to watch an unfunny comedy special, then I'll watch Sky News Australia. 

Horse 3022 - The Justification For The Second Amendment

With the carnage in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York in May 2022, calls have begun again for Congress to enact gun control. This marks the 22nd school shooting in the United States in 2022 alone and even after the massacre of 20 primary school children and at Sandy Hook Elementary School a decade ago, any and all legislation introduced in response to mass killings has failed to pass the Senate. 

The central plank of legislation that continues to allow children to be slaughtered in addition to more than 10,000 people per year every year being killed, is the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution. 

It states:

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-2/#:~:text=A%20well%20regulated%20Militia%2C%20being,Arms%2C%20shall%20not%20be%20infringed.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

- 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified 15th Dec 1791.

It replaced the existing right to bear arms which was contained in the English Bill of Rights Act 1688 which stated:

http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/act/consol_act/bor16881wams2c2306/s7.html

That the subjects which are protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.

- Section 7, Bill of Rights Act 1688

Already there is a material difference between the 2nd Amendment and the Bill of Rights Act which it replaced; being that the Bill of Rights Act placed limits upon the right being "suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law". I think that limits to liberty where the exercise of that liberty places the lives and property of other people is both just a reasonable. However, as someone who is 10,000km and not a citizen of the deliberately stupid country across the waves, my opinion ain't worth a hill of beans.

In that spirit, I shall now explain why despite all prevailing stupidity, the reason why 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution should stay and endure.

Here we go...

A drunkard may be bound under quite reasonable grounds, if that drunkard causes harm or has the potential to cause harm to other people or property. I think that everyone would agree that being intoxicated in the street and being disorderly is sufficient reason for that drunkard to spend a night in custody.

However, a drunkard who is found dancing in the streets and having a lovely time but who poses of threat of harm to other people or property, may be reasonably allowed to go free. One may argue that the spill over of drunkards on Bondi Beach, or slumped over in parks surrounding Sydney Harbour on New Year's Day after reveling and celebrating the arrival of a new year, although they may be unsightly and ugly, is in fact a reasonable consequence of freedom allowed. 

A drunkard who by virtue of being filled with rage and anger as a result of being intoxicated, can and might cause damage to both people and property. In the case of damage to people, this results in the tort of assault and/or battery. In the case of damage to property, this results in the tort of vandalism or some other like crime.

Not only do we place reasonable grounds upon someone who exhibits fury as the result of the consumption of and subsequent intoxication due to the effects of alcohol, we also place limits on who is permitted to supply, sell and produce alcohol. Where I live in the state of New South Wales, it is illegal for private persons to be in possession of a still. Although home brewing kits exist for the home production of beer, it is illegal for someone who possesses a home brewing kit to sell their ware to the public. As for the possession of a still, it is illegal for someone to have one; much less to sell the ware of the product of that product unless they be the holder of a liquor production licence.

Likewise when it comes to the sale of alcohol, not only is there a liquor licence which must be held by the proprietor of a shop that sells liquor but there is also a different licence which must be held by the landlord for the consumption of alcohol on the premises. Thus, there are off-licence premises which includes bottle shop where proprietors may sell alcohol that is not consumed upon the premises and there are also premises which allow for the public to bring their own alcohol to be consumed upon the premises but which does allow the proprietors to sell alcohol on the premises.

On top of this, in order to serve alcohol to the public at a licenced premises, the person who is at the bar must be the holder of another licence which is called the Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA). This also places responsibility upon the server, to assess whether or not the person they are serving alcohol, if under suspicion of reasonable grounds, is someone who has the potential to cause harm to other people or property. Is it reasonable that a product such as alcohol, which can and does present a societal problem of harm and damage of both people's bodies and property, be subject to rules and regulations? Overwhelmingly and evidently, yes. To suggest otherwise is deliberate stupidity.

At this point we run back into the the domain of the harm principle; made famous by John Stuart Mill in his 1859 work "On Liberty". I note that this was written 68 years after the ratification of the US Constitution; which means that by then, there was the equivalent of almost five generations' of people's thought which may have been distilled into this work.

And even (it will be added) if the consequences of misconduct could be confined to the vicious or thoughtless individual, ought society to abandon to their own guidance those who are manifestly unfit for it? If protection against themselves is confessedly due to children and persons under age, is not society equally bound to afford it to persons of mature years who are equally incapable of self-government? If gambling, or drunkenness, or incontinence, or idleness, or uncleanliness, are as injurious to happiness, and as great a hindrance to improvement, as many or most of the acts prohibited by law, why (it may be asked) should not law, so far as is consistent with practicability and social convenience, endeavor to repress these also? And as a supplement to the unavoidable imperfections of law, ought not opinion at least to organize a powerful police against these vices, and visit rigidly with social penalties those who are known to practise them? 

- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

The question then arises of whether or not it is reasonable to place a prohibition upon the sale of alcohol entirely. Enough people though that it was sufficiently reasonable enough to curb the consumption of alcohol, that this resulted in the Temperance Movement in the United States gaining a large enough influence on American politics and American society to do precisely that with the passage and ratification of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution. The next question which follows is, was the prohibition on the sale of alcohol reasonable? Actually; surprisingly, yes.

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibition-was-a-success.html

The amendment prohibited the commercial manufacture and distribution of alcoholic beverages; it did not prohibit use, nor production for one's own consumption. Moreover, the provisions did not take effect until a year after passage -plenty of time for people to stockpile supplies.

Second, alcohol consumption declined dramatically during Prohibition. Cirrhosis death rates for men were 29.5 per 100,000 in 1911 and 10.7 in 1929. Admissions to state mental hospitals for alcoholic psychosis declined from 10.1 per 100,000 in 1919 to 4.7 in 1928.

Arrests for public drunkennness and disorderly conduct declined 50 percent between 1916 and 1922. For the population as a whole, the best estimates are that consumption of alcohol declined by 30 percent to 50 percent.

- New York Times, 16th Oct 1989

However, in 1933 the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution was passed during the Great Depression as both a method of raising taxation revenue in a hurry as well as to salve the sadness caused by the depressing fact that millions of Americans were out of work and unemployed. Given that prohibition actually worked despite the mythology which surrounds it and is unsupported by fact, the single biggest reason of why the 18th Amendment was repealed and with it prohibition, amounts nothing more than this: people like to drink alcohol. 

What does any of this have to do with the 2nd Amendment?

The United States of America in essence, likes to kill people. The side of politics which defends the Second Amendment because of a spurious reason of 'self-defence' is saying nothing more than they want the right to kill people coming onto their premises. Therein lies the whole reason in its entirety why the 2nd Amendment actually stays on the books. Furthermore, since they don't bear the consequences or the expense of the right, the amount of consideration that they exhibit for the people who have borne and who do consequences for the expense of the right is equally and exactly commensurate. It is nil.

People like guns. People like guns so much, that they don't want to give them up. It's okay America, you don't have to lie. The truth is that you like guns more than you think that other people have a right to life. Let's not pretend that in spite of modern weaponry being vastly unsuitable to the conditions of an urban environment, that the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution continues to exist for any other reason.

Aside:

I think it's an evil reason and that everyone who defends the right, is either stupid or evil or both.

Horse 3021 - The Reason Why The Redemption Arc Is So Popular

One of the enduring tropes that keeps on coming up in stories, is the idea of the redemption arc. This is because one of the things that we expect of stories, is a contained narrative that has some kind of central conflict which resolves itself and we can go away happy. A protagonist (and sometimes a villain) will go through some kind of narrative progression and learn something about themselves or other people, which changes them; presumably for the better. They will learn something about the power of teamwork or friendship, maybe discover some kind of inner strength or perhaps learn about the very thing which made them so horrible. The idea of the redemption arc is a nice story structure because it speaks to our somewhat blind and stupid hope that people are generally nice; despite and perhaps in spite of the evidence that the kosmos presents.

So ingrained is the idea of the redemption arc, that we apply narrative structure to the real world and expect that the world will conform to our presupposed and designed idea; when that clearly is not the case in so many instances.

When Will Smith punched Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars, he instantly became in the eyes of the public, an identity of notoriety or an otherwise bad person. His use of violence and his employment of angry and bad language, more than overcame the almost forgotten fact that Chris Rock had been deliberately offensive in the name of getting cheap laughs. I am not by any means condoning the actions of Will Smith but I suspect that there will be a passage of time, where an announcement is made that he is undergoing anger management training, and then at some point will be restored into the Hollywood firmament as a slightly different but still brightly shining star.

Will Smith is deemed as the kind of person who can go through a redemption arc because the presumption before this was that he is generally a nice person. Thus, he will disappear for a while in the same way that Russell Crowe did after the telephone throwing incident and then probably appear in another Hollywood film, after having being embraced by the movie community by about 2025. This is different to Mel Gibson who is still deemed to be irredeemable, after making anti-Semitic remarks.

In 2020 during the opening of the COVID-19 pandemic, sport around the world had been shut down and about the only sports which could try and present something which resembled a normal sporting broadcast was motorsports who jumped on the virtual/esports bandwagon. Various drivers from series all over the world, migrated to simulator rigs at home and this is what got one driver in trouble.

NASCAR driver Kyle Larson who was participating in a series which wasn't even broadcast, used the n-word online and news of this leaked out into the real world. The ramifications of this were almost immediate. His sponsors left him. He was fired from his employment as a race car drive at Chip Ganassi Racing and was without a job at the worst possible time. Nevertheless, when motor racing did start up again, he drove in lesser series and went on to win loads of races. 

The window of circumstance opened and Kyle Larson found himself with an opening at Hendrick Motorsport; following the departure of a seven-time NASCAR Champion. Kyle Larson made good on the faith placed in him and we went on to win a lot of races in 2021 and became the 2021 Champion. Thus, redemption arc worked out and completed itself.

The Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, did a pretty good job of covering up an affair that he was having with a staff member inside the parliament building and so good was that cover up job, that the revelation of anything going on, only came into the light when it was announced that she was having a baby.

Extramarital business has probably been going on on places of power since the invention of any form of government; so we aren't really that surprised when it does happen. The media went through its usual washing of hands, the government announced a "Bonk Ban" and Barnaby Joyce was stood down as both the Deputy Prime Minister and the leader of the National Party.

Nevertheless, after a period of time for the general public to have immediately forgotten and therefore immediately withdrawn scathing judgement, Barnaby Joyce was voted back into the position of the leader of the National Party and with it, the Deputy Premiership.

Time and time again, with sufficient passage of time and incident of immediate outrage will fade from the public consciousness until having put sufficiently far back enough in the past, it then ceases to matter of import in the present. Of course there are some actions which are so heinous which should never be forgiven of forgotten but in general, because we all have to admit that every single one of us are flawed, imperfect, stupid, obnoxious, daft, and do stupid and horrible things, we are prepared to forgive that in other people and provided it doesn't affect the present, we're fine with it.

What's also interesting is that depending on the context of the incident, something which may have been seen as really bad by one group of people, might very easily be forgiven by the general public at large. 

This is why I have the question in principle about a former marketing manager and public speaker for a record label, who may have had an extra-marital affair with someone, and my question is one of how long it would take for that person to disappear from the public eye and then return in some kind of redemption arc. This thing is perhaps too close in the memory that it will happen in 2022 but if the parliament goes full-term, then we will be next back to the polls in 2025. From here that seems like an eternity away and so that's perfect if we are talking about a redemption arc. Is three years a sufficient amount of time for the public to conclude that they have served their time in the wilderness and that the people of the area might consider him to be their elected representative in parliament?

The problem with the redemption arc being applied to the real world is that life often doesn't resolve itself that neatly. Events and circumstances which led to someone being sent into the wilderness for a period are often changing for not only the person in question but changing of the world which is immediately around them. Sometimes the consequences of someone's actions are so horrendous that a redemption arc is simply not sensible. 

The other problem the redemption arc being applied to the real world is that is that statements made by the person who have gone into the wilderness for a period might be untrue. The person might protest that they have changed and learnt something but if that is patently untrue, then restoring a person who has not changed their ways might inadvertently cause future damage. Character is a very deep thing which is formed over decades and unless an event is shattering to the person who has been sent into exile, then they will mostly be the same person and perhaps galvanised after the event.

Having said all of this, I think that moral imperatives to forgive people stem from the unavoidable fact that without exception, everyone is terrible. By extending forgiveness to someone who has done an awful thing, we in part build character and decency in ourselves because in doing so, it demonstrates that terrible people are at least semi-capable of being our better selves.

That possibility that we actually can be better selves, is probably the thing which fuels and powers our blind and stupid hope that people are generally nice; despite evidence to the contrary. I suppose that our blind and stupid hope that the world will conform to our presupposed and designed idea of the redemption arc, probably also contains the corollary that if we ourselves were to do something horrible and awful enough that we would be banished to exile in the wilderness, that we too would go through a redemption arc but that is contingent on the kosmos, or rather the people in the kosmos, who are also terrible people, extending forgiveness to us. That might be one of the hardest paradoxes in the kosmos to unravel.

Horse 3020 - What On Earth Was John Bradfield Thinking?

As possibly the only person among 5 million of us in our fair city, my commute is from Marayong to Mosman. This means that my passage is from the west, through the city and out the other side. It also means that my commute is a slightly asymmetric journey because I take a train to Town Hall Station and then change for a bus to Mosman; whereas in the evening I take a bus to Wynyard and then change for the train home. As such, I have had hours and hours to ponder the weirdness of Wynyard Station; with two levels of platforms that are offset relative to each other.

If you knew nothing of the history of Sydney's semi-underground portion of the suburban rail network, then Wynyard Station would look like a mystery to you. The configuration of the platforms is bonkers, the numbering of the platforms is mad, and yet the vast majority of Sydneysiders probably pass through there without giving any of it a second thought. When you want to be out of a place as quickly as possible in the morning because you want to get to work, or you want to be out of a place as quickly as possible in the morning because you want to go home, then the incentive to ponder these things is way way down the list of priorities. Nevertheless, Wynyard is madder than Mad Jack McMad.

A very big cutaway diagram of Wynyard Station looks like this:

Wynyard has four platforms. Platforms 3 & 4 are upstairs which serve through traffic to Central up line and through traffic across the Harbour Bridge down line. Platforms 5 & 6 are offset and downstairs  which serve through traffic to Central up line and through traffic to Circular Quay and the City Circle down line. The usual number pattern of platforms across the Sydney Trains networks is that Platform 1 at most stations is the one which serves up line trains to Central. Central is always deemed to be the top of the imaginary hill; with all services heading towards it being designated as 'up' and all services heading towards it being designated as 'down'.

Trains on the City Circle, assume that trains on the inner anti-clockwise line are heading up and trains on the outer clockwise line are heading downline. Thus, trains to central from Town Hall, Wynyard, Circular Quay, St James and Museum on the outer clockwise line are unique in that they are heading downline to Central.

That begs the question of where platforms 1 & 2 are. They used to exist. Platforms 1 & 2 used to be the tram platforms which weren't even part of the railway network. The tunnels which head towards Town Hall in one direction and towards the Harbour Bridge in the other, are now being used as car park space; which has to be yet another insult to the good and fair people of New South Wales.

Platform 5 & 6 being offset, are not underneath platforms 1 & 2. Once upon a time when Platforms 1 & 2 existed, the stairs aligned roughly with platforms 3 & 4. The stairs for platforms 5 & 6 were off to the side and just like the booking hall at Town Hall, it used to be possible to walk between the sets of stairs and through, without entering through the ticket barriers.

Town Hall Station when it was opened, had 6 platforms but used to only use 4. Platform 1 was for the City Circle inner line. Platform 6 was for the City Circle outer line. Platform 2 was for the Harbour Bridge up line traffic to Central. Platform 3 was for the Harbour Bridge down line traffic to Milsons Point. That meant that on opening, platforms 4 & 5 were unused and would remain unused from 1926 until 1979.

St James has a similar problem in that Platform 1 was for the City Circle inner line. Platform 2 was for the City Circle outer line. However, St James is a super wide platform which has two infilled platforms which were saved in case the Eastern Suburbs Railway Line was going to be connected there. Tunnels head north from St James and downwards into an underground lake thing and probably would have been called platforms 2 & 3 had they ever been used. 

The only possible way to explain any of this is to look at the original 1915 plan as envisaged by the then Director of Works, John Bradfield. 

Probably Bradfield had originally thought that trains from Wynyard would pass underground through Circular Quay and then to the inner circle platforms at St James. They would have been on the western island platform which would have been numbered as 1 & 2. Town Hall was originally built to serve a different conceived Eastern Suburbs Railway and the configuration of platforms was built for this but not realised for decades. Assuming St James was part of the Eastern Suburbs Railway, then then line would have passed through the eastern island platform which would have been numbered as 3 & 4.

I have no idea where or how the proposed Pitt St or O'Connell St Stations are supposed to have fit into the network because every which way you draw pretend maps over the city, you're going to end up with a curve that is tighter than the single track switchback at Lidcombe. That wee section of track is only rated for 15km/h.

If we use St James as the template then it seems to me that there should be enough space underneath platforms 1 & 2 (not-used) and underneath platforms 3 & 4 to place another set of platforms, as many as four of them, which would give Wynyard 8 platforms and it the tram platforms are reclaimed, as many as 10. This very much begs the question of what Bradfield was thinking in the first place.

Maybe he had intended for Wynyard to serve as some grand underground terminal; with platforms 7 & 8 and 9 & 10, serving lines for the inner west through Rozelle, Balmain, Five Dock etc. and still had capacity for other dreams. When Wynyard was opened, the tram platforms 1 & 2 were unique in that they were the only underground tram termini in the world. The tunnels which head north towards the Sydney Harbour Bridge and south towards Town Hall, can fit full size suburban rail stock through them and I can only imagine that Bradfield's plan to head north from Milsons Point to the Northern Beaches, would have cost many many billions of pounds.

As I go across the bridge in the morning, I can not help but wonder if Bradfield's plan to build the Northern Beaches line, which would have used Platforms 1 & 2 at Wynyard, lanes 7 & 8 on the Harbour Bridge, what used to the tram station at Milsons Point, then bored into the hill where the Warringah Expressway is and then turned right, for Neutral Bay, Cremorne, Mosman, Balgowlah, Manly, and as far north we Newport, would have taken 2000 cars an hour every hour off the road. 

The whole culture of the Northern Beaches, who do not want to share public transport with each other or anyone else, had probably shaped and been shaped by the lack of any meaningful public transport infrastructure. I guess that they have gotten what they have repeatedly chosen?

I also do not know what kind of rolling stock that Bradfield imagined would be in his underground network of tunnels. When the commuter train network proper opened in 1926, Sydney was using full size main line trains over the commuter network. That complete lack of forethought accidentally allowed the space for the double deck sets to be introduced in the 1960s. 107 years after Bradfield scribbled his imaginary lines on the map of Sydney, I scoot to and from work in massive bespoke double deck T, A and B sets. In principle, the idea of running full size main line trains over the commuter network is mad; which is fitting given how mad Wynyard Station is.

Horse 3019 - What Do We Make Of The 2022 Election Results?

The 2022 Federal Election which has seen an Albanese Labor Government installed, was both entirely predictable and very much needed salve for a long-suffering electorate which has endured possibly the worst government in the nation's history. During the last three years we had a Prime Minister who ran away to Hawaii while the biggest bushfire in the history of the world raged and then did literally nothing about the recovery effort, he refused to act on repeated demands for an anti-corruption commission, excused rape both inside the parliament building and historical cases by the members of his own party, in addition to running so many barrels of pork that they ran out of barrels. 

Quite simply, the Morrison Government had to go. This long period of Liberal Government which started with Tony Abbott, who was then knifed by Malcolm Turnbull, who was then in turn knifed by Peter Dutton but who couldn't make the landing stick, finally settled upon Scott Morrison as a triage Prime Minister who wasn't so much asleep at the wheel as never behind the wheel in the first place.

Before I look at what the election result actually means, the biggest take-home from the election is that preferential voting is one of the most vital and important inventions in Australian electoral history. An article in Monday's Australian by one of their spokesborgs (and which I shall not link to because I do not want News Corp to get the ad revenue) states that the Labor Party has no mandate to govern because they only got 31% of 1st preference votes. This quietly and dishonestly hides the fact that the political football team that they cheer for, only got 34% of 1st preference votes and even less when you consider that the Liberal Party never rules in its own right but is in coalition with the National Party, the Queensland LNP (which is actually the remnant of the old Queensland National Party) and the Country Liberals in the Northern Territory. Using their own logic, that would mean that 64% of the electorate also thinks that the coalition has no mandate to govern.

What preferential voting does is excellent for two very very important reasons:

1 - Preferential Voting signals to both the parties and the public at large, what kind of government that the electorate wants. Preferential Voting allows a voter in the ballot box to vote for the raft of policies and people that they would like to make the laws which will be in place. In a democracy, and indeed in any situation, knowing what people want is important. 

2 - Preferential Voting allows the mechanism for people to say what they will consent to. The issue of consent, was one the Morrison Government did its level best to supress. It makes sense that a government which was very much devoid of conscience and which proved to be repeatedly morally bankrupt,  would finally be removed when the electorate no longer gave its consent to being trated like that.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.

- US Declaration of Independence, 4th July 1776

The consent of the governed is a different concept to the will of the people. The will of the people is what the people want or do not want. The concept of the consent of the governed contains the idea that all of the offices of government are ultimately owned by the people in commonwealth and that the right to operate the machinery and assets of government, is owned by and should in fact be held by the people in commonwealth. The person of The Crown is corporation sole, where the shareholders who own a share by virtue of being citizens of the commonwealth also hold voting rights in a general meeting. The CEO, the board, and the executive officers are only servants of the people in commonwealth and should justly be recalled and/or expelled from the offices that they hold when consent is withdrawn.

The only way that you arrive at asking the electorate at large as to who they will consent to governing them, is by asking everyone. For this reason, compulsory voting as one of only a few duties that the citizens of the nation have towards each other, is an essential component of this. How do you get the consent of the governed unless you ask everyone? 

Also, the House of Representatives is a representative parliament. Every single member who is elected to the House of Representatives gets there because they have the consent (maybe begrudgingly) of at least 50% + 1 of the voters in their electorate. 

Work through the logic of this in both directions.

If I can not have have Alice, then I will have Bob. If I can not have have Bob, then I will have Chloe. If I can not have have Chloe, then my preferences are expressed until we arrive at some Norman.

I absolutely hate Zack but I will accept Yvonne slightly more. I still hate Yvonne but I will accept Xavier slightly more. I still hate Xavier but my preferences are expressed until we arrive at some Norman.

Preferential Voting can be counted in both directions; from the top down to see who the public likes the most and from the bottom up to find out who will be begrudgingly acceptable. 

None of this information is available to anyone with a first past the post system. If we have the Division of West Banana where first preferences are thus:

24 - BURN ALL THE ANIMALS

23 - We Love Kitties

22 - We Love Puppies

21 - We Love Bunnies

10 - We like Hamsters

With a first past the post system, we have elected a policy of BURNING all the animals despite it being unacceptable to more than 75% of the people of West Banana. This is not remotely sensible.

Given that preferential voting is more vital as an instrument of consent than it would first appear, what do the results of the election actually tell us? Labor having a possible majority of seats, tells us that the electorate consents to a Labor Government. As the 151 electorates are as equal in size as is feasibly possible, with not a lot of variation of over and under egging the pudding, then that level of consent has been achieved on a nationwide basis.

However within that first preference count, a highly complex story emerges upon closer inspection.

The rise of the teal independents and the greens in the inner cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, tells us that there is a level of income and assets which people reach where they can no longer be swayed, merely by their own selfish interests. At some point, it is hard to satisfy people's material wants if they already have everything that they could want and need.

This says that the election of the teal independents is an expression by mostly richest people in society is on the basis of some other desire. Whether that's a rejection of the cruelty exacted by the government over the last nine years, or progressive people who now feel that they have the luxury and permission to be heard, or maybe an expression that the Liberal Party which has been following the directives of the enmeshed media has driven itself too far to the economic right and the authoritarian north and they don't like it.

The Liberal Party aught to listen to the people that have told it, in very strong terms, that something needs to change. As this result is unlike anything that I have seen in my lifetime, then that also says that the status quo can hold no longer. The electorate has changed since the Liberal Party decided that it wanted to mould itself into the party of Howard. This result is as monumental and as stark as in 1972 when the electorate told the Liberal Party that it had changed since it started as party of Menzies.

The fact that the Labor Party has now achieved its lowest 1st Preference vote since the invention of preferential voting in 1921, aught to tell the Labor Party that the electorate has changed. Admittedly the labour movement has been knobbled over the last 20 years and a cynical Royal Commission into the unions found nothing of import but the question has to be asked of what kind of relevance that unions have.

Both of the majors should be on notice that not only has the electorate changed but that half of the electorate are women. This should have been reasonably apparent for at least a century but I am convinced that this is not the case. One of the unexpected moral victors of this election was former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. When she was elected as Prime Minister in 2010, the share of first preference votes by the major parties was 81%. Today in 2022 it is only 68% and it has been on the slide for four election cycles. Again, women in particular feel perhaps for the first time that they have the luxury and permission to be heard.

It is telling that the United Australia Party despite running candidates in every electorate and spending more than $100m, did no better than the Legalise Cannabis Party. That says that the people of Australia aren't as easily hoodwinked as maybe once thought. Even despite a very very vocal minority of upside-down flag wavers, Australians appear to understand that temporary freedom of movement curtailed, was worth it to keep the most vulnerable people alive. Yelling "Freedom, Freedom, Freedom" makes about as much sense as yelling "Flavour, Flavour, Flavour. Maggi. Maggi. Maggi!"

The UAP and One Nation, did no better than 5% of first preference votes each. Together they make up about 10% of the electorate; which says that craziness and wingnuttery although vocal, are not large enough to make that much of an impact on policy. In contrast, the Greens who also scored about 10% of first preferences, will perhaps send as many as 4 MPs to the House of Reps and maybe be part of a significant wedge in the Senate which holds the balance of power.

On that note it should be said that the balance of power can only exist in the light of the rest of the parliament. The notion that there even is a balance of power is a consequence of political parties forming to try and win power but there is zero mention of political parties in the Constitution, nor is there any mention of the Prime Minister for that matter.

This election should tell the parties is that the people of Australia can and will elect members which reflect what they look like. This will be the most diverse parliament in terms of family background and culture and Anthony Albanese will in fact be the first Prime Minister who does not have an Anglo-Celtic name. There will be people from a massive number of backgrounds; including first peoples in both the House and Senate. The incoming Albanese Labor Government should itself reflect on the fact that even a former Premier of NSW can not be merely parachuted into a seat, if the people of that electorate will not consent to that. Dai Le as a independent for the seat of Fowler, has excellently reminded us that all politics are national and that all politics are also local. If you walk around Fairfield, you will find a different looking community to the people of Mosman.

The other thing that the people have told the parliament, is that the people of Australia want to address the existential issues of climate change and what the response to that looks like, the issue relating to finally addressing justice for and with first peoples and what kind of constitutional response that might demand, as well as the more nebulous question of what a fairer society looks like. That last note is a broad demographic issue; which is being made acute in the aftermath of nearly three decades of deliberate policy to reengineer where the rewards of society flow.

I am glad that this election cycle is over. I am glad that the Morrison Government is over. My grand wish would be that the Liberal Party never achieves government again until 2122 but even then that will be too soon. It is going to take several generations to flush out this amount of poison.

Horse 3018 - Vote 1 Micah: Micah Explains Elections

Hewaw.

My name is Micah and I am wonderful.

I have learned that da peoples of da country are going to do elections on Saturday and say who day think will be da best at doing yellings and making da rules. I no can do elections. I can do yellings though. I am good at doing yellings. I am good at doing yellings at dark-time when my peoples are asleep and they should no be asleep any more and need to give me breakfast. I am good at doing yellings in da backyard when other cats visit. I am good at doing yellings for no reason at all, when I walk into a room and it is not filled with my yellings. I like da sound of my yellings. My yellings are good yellings.

When da people who make da rules do their yellings on da tebevisions, they look silly. I no can tell and I no care which group of peoples are on what team of yelling. I know that there are two teams of yellings, with one team yelling this way and the other team yelling that way. I no have any idea how da rules are made but it all looks very silly and very fun. I think that da people like yellings as much as I do. The yellings in rooms where da rules are made are different to da yellings in da big backyards on da tebevisions when da peoples kick a ball around.

There are two rooms of yellings on da tebevisions. There is a loud room of yelling where lots of peoples yell all da time and there is a quiet room where only a bit of yellings happens.

In da loud room of yellings da people who sits on the big chair up front yells "Order" a lot and then da people in da room do more yellings to decide what they'd like to order. I think they like cheeseburgers and ham and bacon. They very very much like pork. They like pork so much that they like to yell about barrels of pork. I have no seen a pork barrel. I have only seen cans of tuna and cans of meats. Da people in da yelling room need a whole barrel of pork because there is lots of them and they all need breakfast because they are so angry and cranky all da time.

In da quiet room of yellings da people do a lot of "hmm" and "aaah" and I have seen some of da peoples have a nap in this room. Da quiet room of yellings must be where da people who have been in da loud room of yellings go when it is nap time. This is how da rules are made. Do yellings in one room, then do more yellings in another room and have a nap. It is very important to have a nap so that you are not angry and cranky all da time. My sister Nana is angry and cranky all da time because she is full of old and when you are full of old, you need more naps.

In the rooms full of yellings, da peoples do yellings about different things. Sometimes they do yellings about getting more sticks and keeping everyone away. When you want to keep other peoples away, then you build a big thing made of sticks and metals and you call it "Da Fence". Sometimes they do yellings about da small peoples and about doing book learnings. Small peoples need to know how to do book learnings, or do mad skillz, so that when they is big they can bring home nums and hams and chikkin. Sometimes they do yellings about helf. Helf has something to do with da hospitals. My daddy peoples went to da hospitals and came back with a broken leg and smelled of chemicals. It was no fun. Sometimes da peoples do yellings about houses. We live in a house. We're good. Da thing that da peoples in da rooms do da most yellings about is money. I do not know what money is but it must be very bad if it makes da peoples angry and grumpy all the time. 

When you go to do elections and choose which peoples that you want to do your yellings for you, you have to decide what kind of yellings that you want and what is going to help you. My man people often asks me "Are you helping?" and I say "Nay, nay, nay. I am not helping." Cats never help. Helping is silly. Helping is not getting what you want now. Not getting what you want now is bad. You should do da elections to get your peoples who will make da rules to give you what you want. If everyone gets what they want then everyone will be happy and can have a nap.

But no no no.

Some peoples want chikkins. Some peoples want hams. Some peoples want no chikkins or hams but want plants. Some peoples want houses so that they no have to live outside in da cold. Some peoples want more gardenuing. Some peoples big gardenuing with cows and hams and chikkins. All da peoples wanting different things all the time is angry and cranky making. You should do your elections for da group of peoples who can do your yellings for you. When peoples get what they want, they have a party.

If you like doing works, then do you elections for da Labors Party. If you like doing da business and think that peoples should mind their own business, then then do you elections for da Liberals Party. If you like plants, then do you elections for da Greens (they do not have de word "party" after their name because they are grumpy). If you like doing da gardenings and da farms, you would think that you would do your elections for the Farmers Party but because they live in da country, they used to be called da Country Party but now because there are peoples in da city too, they are da National Party. If you like doing yellings of "Freedom Freedom Freedom" or "Flavour Flavour Flavour", then do you elections for da United Australia Party. All of these peoples no like each other but like to do yellings. 

If I was a peoples, then I would very much like to be in da room with the loud yellings. I am good at doing yellings. I would do yellings for good reasons and for no reason at all. To get a seat in the room of yellings, first you need lots of peoples to do their elections and write 1 next to your name, which says that you are da best. I am the best. I am so much da best that I would not need to join a party. I am a party. I am da Surprise Party. My peoples can be minding their own business and I will enter the room and do my yellings and then they have to mind my business. Surprise! I would put up posters on poles which say Vote 1 Micah because I am the best at yellings, ever. If I get what I want then everyone will be happy and can have a nap. Except that I would forget to do da paperwork to get on da elections. I would already be taking a nap. There will no be a poster with Vote 1 Micah but there should be. 

Horse 3017 - Only Attack Teal

If you have been reading the pages of News Corp newspapers over the past month or so, you would probably get the impression that Australia is under siege from evil forces who are seeking to undermine the country. The really strange thing about this kind of reportage is that if we accept this narrative as 100% reliable then we find that even according to News Corp newspapers, these evil forces are playing an unfair game by speaking louder than anyone else with their strange and disruptive propaganda. "It's just not fair," says the private corporation with the largest voice in terms of readership in the country. 

How is a multi-national and multi-billion dollar corporation like News Corp, with its network of 70% off all the newspapers sold in the country and a national television news network like Sky News Australia, possibly expected to compete against people who operate out of single Post Office Boxes, maybe single offices, have a staff of single digits, and a shoestring budget? It's an outrage!

This election like never before, the played out assumption by News Corp's newspapers and Sky News Australia is that the people of Australia are so unbelievably stupid that they have no idea of what happened yesterday, much less what happened over the past three years. I'd like to say that thus is a new phenomenon but sadly it is not.

http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/1945/1945-labour-manifesto.shtml

In the years that followed, the "hard-faced men" and their political friends kept control of the Government. They controlled the banks, the mines, the big industries, largely the press and the cinema. They controlled the means by which the people got their living. They controlled the ways by which most of the people learned about the world outside. This happened in all the big industrialised countries.

...

Similar forces are at work today. 

- 1945 British Labour Party Manifesto

Admittedly this is from the 1945 British Labour Party Manifesto; which was written for another country in another time but the problem is that this could have been written yesterday and in Sydney. The written word very often outlives those people who wrote it and owing to the fact that human nature never changes, what was true 70 years ago, 700 years ago or 7000 years ago, is also very likely to have been true 7 days ago.

I would like to say that in the 76 years which followed the Second World War that we've somehow escaped the mentality which was responsible for the destruction of a hundred million people in two world wars, or the apathy which caused billions of people to die in the 1918-20 flu pandemic, or wipe out trillions of dollars and millions of jobs in the Great Depression but sadly, we have not. 

The people who control the banks, the press, the mines, the means by which the people get their living and the ways by which most of people learn about the world outside, look absolutely identical. In a lot of cases, they are the same families. 

The plan therefore, is to kick back against anyone who even as much as speaks out against what is done. Even when we have actual cases of rape and sexual harassment going on within the parliament building itself (which shouldn't even need to be stated and restated as crimes against the person), this is painted as nothing more than hysteria that would have been at home in the 1820s. Do you see the problem yet?

It is telling that the only candidates which News Corp has chosen to attack in this manner have all been women. Now I don't know if this is a deliberate policy of misogyny by News Corp but given their history of attacking people on the basis of race, gender and religion in the past, I can only assume that it is. This all the more strange when you consider that the  political editor for News Corp Australia is Samantha Maiden. I do not know what kind of political control she has over News Corp and their newspapers but if you know what institutional misogyny looks like in modern Australia, then you only need to read a News Corp paper. The attacks have been relentless. One time might be ignorable. Twice is suspicious. Day after day for months, looks like editorial policy. 

I also wonder what kind of journalism and basic research training is going on at News Corp. If you look at the "How To Vote" cards for Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo), Dr Sophie Scamps (Mackellar), Helen Haines (Indi), Kylea Tink (North Sydney),  Allegra Spender (Wentworth), Zoe Daniel (Goldstein), Zali Steggall (Warringah), and Dr Monique Ryan (Kooyong), then in all eight cases the candidate asks you to put a 1 in the box next to their name and then asks the voter to number the rest of the boxes according to their own preference. If I can do that simple level of research, then how come none of the interns at News Corp have been able to? If they have been able to, then why hasn't the newspaper group ever published this?

Asking the voters to fill in their own preferences? What a truly revolutionary idea. Who would have thought of daring asking the voters for their opinions? That's dangerous; we can't have that! If we asked the voters what they thought and then made decisions and enacted policy on what the voters wanted, then we face the very real prospect of democracy breaking out. That's unheard of.

I suspect that in the eyes of News Corp, then giving women both an education and the vote was a mistake. The problem with giving people an education is that sooner or later they'll understand what is being done to them and won't stand for it any longer. The problem with giving people the vote is that they have some means, however limited, of changing the law so that it doesn't happen any more. 

The unwritten truth that News Corp is afraid of (and which they dare not print because even uttering it is poison), is that an Independent candidate, can not in principle say who they would form government because that means having to game out a scenario which doesn't even yet exist.

If the Independents wanted to truly reflect the opinion of their constituents in the even of a hung parliament, then the best thing to do would be to wait until after the election to find out how the preferences flowed. If the voters happened to vote for someone else, then those votes reflect who they want to govern the country. That information doesn't become available until after the election has happened and the votes counted.

By nominating who the Independents would form government with now, undermines any bargaining power they they might have with both sides in the event of a hung parliament. If I was an independent candidate, I would challenge the journalists from the baying media pack and ask them what they would offer in support for my endorsement of their government and then I'd accuse them dictating policy to the parties who are obviously their puppets.

If there is one thing that is more obvious in this election than in any other that we do not have an independent media any more and that News Corp has just decided that they will determine what people think. 

The only reason that political parties even exist because the franchise was extended to normal people. 200 years ago, when only a few select landowners had the vote, formal political parties didn't need to exist. There have always been factions all jostling for popularity and power since the beginning of time.

What is relatively new is that the machinery which is needed to convince people to vote for what those factions want, including when this means that people vote against their own interests. A formal system for delivering the relevant propaganda, only needed to exist after normal people pushed their way into and fought for the right to be heard.

In some parts of Australia, women have had the vote for 127 years. We didn't get a woman as a Minister until after the Second World War and a woman didn't occupy the position of Prime Minister until just 12 years ago. I am not in any way saying that women are a giant uniform voting bloc, rather that their existence is being treated as one by News Corp. News Corp would like to control the ways by which most of the people learn about the world outside and as far as they are concern, Australia is under siege from evil forces who are seeking to undermine the country. 

The "hard-faced men" and their political friends want to retain control of the Government. This is not 1895, 1915, or 1945. Similar forces are at work today. 

Aside:

The term 'hung parliament' refers to an undecided parliament in the same way that a 'hung jury' refers to one which has not made its final decision. That it no way means that the parliament nor the electorate has failed but rather that there isn't an obvious majority on the floor of the House of Representatives who can control confidence and supply.

If we game this out and are left with two sides of 72, then Bob Katter will side with the Liberal/National Coalition and this leaves the balance of power in the hands of 6 Independents. 

If such a scenario were to occur, the News Corp newspapers who have all the tact of a sledgehammer hitting an egg, will likely try to infantilise the women who would be Independents. There will absolutely be a "good girl" narrative played out in the News Corp newspapers and across Sky News Australia. A 'good girl" will be seen as someone who joins the Liberal/National Coalition on matters of confidence and supply and any demands that they might have, including asking for the postion of a Cabinet Minister will be laughed off. I find it sickening.

Colt 3017.1: Yellow And Not Teal

In all honesty, I understand the rhetoric that the United Australia Party is running because they are hoping to pick up the disaffected members of the electorate who have been dropped off by the hard-economic right of the Liberal Party but are still to xenophobic and racist to vote for the Labor Party. These are the people who would have been picked up by a Trump in Australia had we had one and who ultimately would have also been disappointed when he turned out also to ignore them. News Corp's scrutiny of the United Australia Party doesn't exist for the simple reason that they are unlikely to pick up even a single seat in the House of Representatives and therefore, aren't actually a political obstacle. The answer is that these people will probably vote Liberal 2 or 3 and be counted on preferences if it ever goes that far.

If you look through the list of preferences per the How To Vote cards of the other parties, then the UAP is the most common No.2 pick. We can basically assume that Liberal/National Party preferences will never be distributed as they will get their first choice pick of a Liberal or National Party member. If the UAP gets down ballot preferences from One Nation, Informed Medical, and Lib Dem Voters, then there might be a UAP Senator elected but if there is not, then UAP How To Vote cards send preferences towards parties which may have already had exhausted ballots. As much as 5% of this wildly differing authoritarian to libertarian rightist collection of minor party votes, is likely to end nowhere and inadvertently open up seats for candidates on the progressive and libertarian left. I do not think there are any authoritarian leftist political parties in Australia.

Horse 3016 - 2022 Election Sociogram and My 75th Preference

On May 21 the good and fair people of the Commonwealth of Australia are going to the polls to decide the make up of the next government. The current Liberal/National Morrison Government is likely to lose government and the Albanese led Labor Party is likely to form government with anywhere between 77 and 87 seats. 

Owing to the fact the Senate is barred from originating money bills as per the rules of the Constitution, this means that the ability to secure confidence and supply, is the exclusive domain of the House of Representatives. If another party has control of the Senate, then it is of zero consequence as to who forms government. The only thing which determines who is control of government in a Westminster Parliament, is who can control the most votes on the floor of the lower house and thus control the budget.

Nobody votes for the government, ever. People vote for who they want to be sent to the parliament in Canberra, who will then form the government. Unless you actually live in the electorate of Cook in Sydney's south east, then the name Scott Morrison will never appear on a ballot paper which you will get at the ballot box. 

The House of Representatives uses Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) to determine who the members are for the local divisions. IRV  means that the system is in effect a series of run-off elections held simultaneously. The recent French election for the President had a two round run-off, where candidates who got knocked out in the first round didn't get another go, and the final election was between only a select few. IRV gives the voter the chance to indicate their preferences, and several rounds are counted until the required number of votes is achieved.

For a House of Representatives election, the required number of votes is 50% of all votes plus 1. That means that every member of the House of Representatives has been elected on the basis of a majority of voters in their electorate who have given their consent at some point in the run-off process.

There is this notion in political science called Durverger's Law (which is not actually a law), which states that a single member district system tends towards two-party politics. This is reasonably obvious when you consider that the only two possible conditions are WIN and NOT WIN. A very big proportion of the machinery of political parties is devoted to trying to win seats for their political party and since in a single-member district system there are only two outcomes, broadly speaking, there will be two blocs vying for power.

In the Senate, as the election is a multi-member election where a number of Senate seats will be filled (in this election it will be 6 seats per State), then the required number of votes will likely be about 833,000 of 5 million. As a multi-member preferential system, the Senate ballot paper uses Preferential Proportional Voting to determine who gets the multiple seats per state.

Multi-member district voting systems tend towards many more voices in parliament than just two because the win conditions work out to be far lower. As the Senate is a multi-member district voting system, then we should expect to see a plurality of voices all vying for a seats and in fact we do. So much so that in 2022, in the state of New South Wales, there are 75 candidates, in 23 grouped categories (mostly according to party), running for 6 seats.

On the face of it, looking at this many things is mind-numbing. Fortunately, behavioural science has lent us a handy tool to work out how all of these disparate groups fit together. This tool is the sociogram.

A sociogram is basically a relationship web. If you have a classroom of kids and you want it to be quiet, then all you need to do is ask the kids who they'd like most to sit with. If you give them three choices, then you can work out who the popular kids are, who the loners are, what kind of cliques exist, and work out who a ring of troublemakers is likely to be. The quietest classroom turns out to be the one where kids sit next to nobody in their preferred lists because they will then have a lesser tendency to act out. 

In Australia because we have preferential voting for both the House of Representatives and Senate, then the machinery of the political parties actually provides the data for whoim they'd most like to work with in the form of a "How To Vote Card". The parties will actively tell you how they'd like you the voter, to distribute your preferences. Every political party would like you to put then 1st and this is so obvious as to be uninteresting when it comes to producing any meaningful relationships from the data. However, when it comes to the 2nd and 3rd preferences, a web of relationships begins to emerge and this can be mapped via the sociogram.

For the 2022 Senate Election in NSW, which I'm going to assume is broadly the same for all states and territories in Australia, the grand sociogram of the political parties all vying for power, looks like this:

I have only chosen to show the first 3 preferences (1 being the parties themselves) but you can see that the Liberal/National Party, likes the Lib Dems and the UAP but nobody likes them in return. The UAP turns out to be the most favourite 2nd preference party in Australia, with the LNP, Shooters & Fishers, One Nation, and the Informed Medical (Anti-Vax) Party asking voters to direct preferences there.

Labor, The Greens, Animal Justice, and Reason, all form a peloton, as do One Nation, the UAP and Lib Dems. 

There are some instances such as the Indigenous Party asks the voter to direct their own preferences and so has no arrows coming outwards. There are also instances such as the Federal ICAC Now, Group F, and the New Liberals that have also asked the voter to direct their own preferences and have not been preferenced by anyone else. In a classroom, these are the lonely kids but in a political web, this might indicate that they are very highly independent.

It is always the way that single issue parties tend to be on the fringes of these sociograms, such as the Australian Values Party, Legalise Cannabis Party, and the Sustainable Australia Party, and at first glance you'd wonder why they'd even bother, considering that they are unlikely to get a seat. The fact is that all of the data from after the election is collected and used by the major parties in order to secure more votes at the next election; so what this means that even if a party never gets a seat, if they get enough votes, the big parties might adopt their policies anyway.

<><><><><>

The question which you've been waiting to know the answer to, as to who is going to get my 75th Preference, it is none other than: Marise Payne.

As a Cabiner Minster of a government which has defended rape within the walls of the parliament building, refused to disclose where $1m came from to fund the legal case of another Cabinet Minister in connection to another historical rape case, paid off the mistresses of other MPs, locked up refugees and children on tropical gulags, made the victims of domestic violence draw down their own superannuation during a global pandemic, proposed a policy to make widows eat their own houses through the mechanism of superannuation, removed more than 900 things from the Medical Benefits System, been willfully neglectful during times of fire, flood, and pandemic, and having degraded the ABC, sold Medibank Private, destroyed the domestic car industry, and which has thrown around more than $59.9bn in the form of rorts and pork barelling, then she just happens to be the most senior member on the ballot paper of the Liberal/National Party who is up for election.

I have nothing personal against Ms Payne but in the last 9 years and especially the last 3, the LNP has fallen further in my estimation to the point where they will probably get the last preferences on every ballot paper in every election for the remainder of my life.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

- James 1:27

Why would I vote for a party which is the antithesis of this? Why would I vote for a party which by repeated demonstration hates kindness, goodness, and peace, if those things get in the way of spinning a shilling?

Furthermore, by looking at who the various friends are within the sociogram, I can chart my way upwards towards my No.1 preference. 

Horse 3015 - Customers Don't Use The Train

Metaphorically, I don't just live in a house on Pedant Corner, I am the landlord and run The Red Kangaroo pub on the corner. We have a front bar, a bistro, and a covered patio out the back. There are also rooms to let, for both an overnight stay and on a more permanent basis. You can check in any time you like but you... ...must check out before 10am, so that we can clean the premises for the next guest. We are nothing like the Hotel California that The Eagles sung about. The Red Kangaroo is in the rather unglamorous suburb of West Banana; which contains the abandoned Widget factory, the abandoned Gadget factory, the abandoned Gidget factory (which churns out 1960s surf films), and the University Of The Obvious from which I have a Dr (Zhivago) and honours in KFC.

I wouldn't go to the effort of building an imaginary pub in an imaginary suburb and especially not on Pedant Corner unless I had a very good reason. One of the things that spins my gyro and grinds my gears, is when people use the wrong term for the wrong thing. I think that I am driven by a sense of logos and telos and that if things don't do what they are supposed to or a described in terms that are sensible, then the shutters go up and it is closing time at The Red Kangaroo.

Out in the real world (which is much much smaller than the space inside the fortress of my mind), as someone who commutes to and from work on the train, I am subjected to many announcements over the tannoy which begin "Customers:" and every single time I hear that, I die a little bit inside.

So, as a guest of The Red Kangaroo, pull up a stool and have half a pint of mild. It's on the house... (although not actually on the house).

Customers:

Customers are people who buy real goods that can be carried away from the premises. There might be something to be said about the transitory nature of life and the fact that in the grand story of history, we are all here today and gone tomorrow; which begs the question of whether any of us can truly own anything but that can be short-circuited. Yes, you buy things. Yes, you take them away. That's where the transaction ends; so once you leave the premises, you're no longer out concern.

I would argue that a customer is someone who buys a real thing, irrespective of size; from a single peppercorn, to a Mars bar, to a truckload of timber, to a motor car, to a hundred thousand tons of iron ore, and beyond. I am also inclined to think that in the 21st century where a thing can be bought which is digital, such as music, video and movies, and computer programs, then those things although beyond microscopic, are still in fact real. We live very late in time; where the border line between tangible and intangible is very very hard to find because of the Forest of Nonsense.

Clients:

Clients are people who buy services; which can not be carried. There are different kinds of clients and sometimes with specific descriptors but if the actual product can not be picked up and taken away, then the buyer is most likely a client.

Plumbers, Lawyers, Accountants, Banks, Architects, Administrators, Managers... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera... are not in the business of selling things. What we buy from these people is expertise, skill, and that a job will be performed, rather than a thing which can be bought and carried away.

This is why I am so annoyed whenever I hear the announcement "Customers:" on the tannoy of the train. I am not a customer of Sydney Trains. Sydney Trains does not actually sell me a train ticket. What Sydney Trains actually sells me, is permission to use their service; which is the performance of transporting passengers from one place to another. 

The reason why I make this distinction (and indeed why this post was prompted in the first place) is that there is a difference between a customer who arrives, takes away a thing, and leaves, and a client who has a service performed for them. A customer is less likely to be obligated to return their custom, whereas a client is more likely to engage in an ongoing relationship where a service is performed on a regular basis.

It really riled me when I was working for the Commonwealth Bank and a manager several levels up told me that I shouldn't have been so kind to a "customer". Internally, the position that I was employed as was called a "Customer Service Officer", which is a nonsense as the bank sells practically nothing except for a few knick-knacks which can be taken away. Banks have clients, whom through inertia are likely to remain as clients for decades at a time. As someone who is even closer to the front line of business (having been working for the same firm for a long time), I would rather prefer to have clients than customers. Customers who buy a thing, including very big things such as motor cars, are subject to the winds of whimsy and fashion, and while there is such a thing as brand loyalty, clients are people with whom you want to develop acquaintance and even business friendship, so that they will keep on coming back.

Members, Patrons and Guests:

These are the people who either stay directly on your premises, or with whom you have a direct connection via subscription or ownership.

Members are people who own the firm. Patrons are people who via up-front subscription, pay for services to be performs. Guests are people who arrive and enjoy your premises, the performance of the service, mostly on a single-time basis. 

In theory, the membership of a club owns part or all of the club in common and their membership fees pay for the ongoing performance of tyhe club for the year to follow. Members need not have a monetary stake in the ownership of the club, which is often the case of a church. 

I suspect that a lot of businesses which choose to call themselves clubs, aren't really. A football team which sells season tickets, might very well have patrons who pay for the performance of the service up front but with no voting rights, a season ticket holder is not really a member, despite the nomenclature used.

Guests are people who arrive at a premises on a temporary basis. A guest is not a temporary member despite what some clubs (particularly RSL Clubs) like to say as signing on at the front desk, confers no voting or ownership rights at all. Temporary use of a facility, is more like a rental arrangement than a collective ownership arrangement which is what membership is.

The Point:

Do I have one? Not really. People are going to use and abuse the language any old which way and in all circumstances. Trying to hold back what people say is like trying to stand on the edge of the ocean with a pitchfork and then command the waves to stop coming. Nevertheless, The Red Kangaroo is my imaginary pub on Pedant Corner and while I am the landlord, I can and will exercise my right to eject guests. 

The other announcement which they like to put over the tannoy on a regular basis, tells us to mind The Doors. I mean that's find I suppose but Jim Morrison died before I was born.

Horse 3014 - The Election That Mattered: The 1995 SRC Election

Australia is in the middle of one of the most cynical election campaign cycles that I have ever witnessed. The quality of the tone from both of the major parties has been mostly negative; with neither side really giving us a grand vision of the future.

In the electorate of Warringah and the suburb of Mosman where I work, one of the real ironies is that I have seen more campaign posters for the election of a high school's next Captain than I have for one of the candidates of a major political party. I think that is because the party in question has made the assumption that they are going to win the seat by divine right rather than putting up a good candidate.

By looking at the various promises and statements on this high school's election for its next Captain, I have seen the usual glib promises as well as one boy's poster which has "Vote 1" and his name across the top and a photo of him giving two thumbs up to the camera and with the caption "Heeeey!" at the bottom. Even though I know nothing about this person, I do know that on the poster at least, he is not making promises that he can not keep. 

If I blow away the dust from the card file of my mind and open one of the drawers, I will find an entry for the election campaign that I ran oh so many years ago, back in 1995, when I was in Year 11. I can not believe that in all of the years that I have kept this blog (which is also not quite 25 years), that I have not relayed the following story. It is not only a tale of mirth and woe but of truly epic shenanigans. Okay... it is a tale of some non-zero quanta of shenanigans.

This is the tale of SRC Election '95.

In High Schools in Australia, usually later in the year, the students of Year 11 will vote for who they want to be the next School Captain. Probably in other countries this will be given the name of School President or something else and whoever this is becomes the de facto public face of the school for any formal dignitary events.

Depending on the system in the high school itself, there will also be an election for the Vice-Captain and the Prefects, though this is likely a spillover of the regular election. The Captain, Vice-Captain, the Prefects, and the Class Captains, collectively make up a group known as the Student Representative Council or SRC; which in the world of media such as novels and TV shows is imagined as an absurdly powerful group but in reality has little to no power at all. 

The election of the School Captain is interesting because it invariably will be hijacked by teachers who want to give their students a practical exercise in civil democracy; where the students become their own campaign teams and the election itself is mechanically not that much different to other elections but on a much smaller scale. 

The problem with the election of the School Captain, is that it very quickly devolves into a popularity contest (which almost by definition, it is). When you hold an actual popularity contest among a bunch of 16 and 17 year olds, every single one of the worst traits of teenagers immediately rises to the top. High School is already a swirling miasma of hormones and bullying and nastiness, which is not helped by the pressure cooker environment which comes about because these same bunch of 16 and 17 year olds are there every single day and in some cases for their fifth year in a row. 

Way back in 1995 when I was in Year 11, I was sitting in an English class when someone whom I didn't exactly get along with but who was neither unfriendly to me, asked how many votes it would take to become a Prefect because he quite rightly assumed I was a maths nerd. As we had 120 students in Year 11 and there were 9 positions including School Captain that were up for election, then then assuming that everyone voted, then the number of votes that someone would need would be 14. 

This person (who I shall call Nick), wanted to become a Prefect; not because he was a budding politician or because he wanted the spotlight but because he wanted to sit in SRC meetings and eat free biscuits and drink tea. Nick's election campaign for 1995 SRC was the most honest platform of any candidate that I have ever seen. Nick ran on just one election promise which was if elected he would 'Do Nothing'. 

Running on an election campaign of Do Nothing is not exactly a good way to win votes though. It is nigh on impossible to get a bunch of 16 and 17 year olds to agree on anything, much less to get 14 of them to vote for you when presumably they already don't like you and your entire election platform is literally to do nothing.

I want you to imagine a 16 year old version of me. That version was shy, quiet, quite a bit sad, small, but still very very playful. I had no aspirations of running for School Captain and so I was never going to run. That didn't mean that the 16 year old version of me didn't like playing the game of democracy. I had already calculated it would take 14 votes to be elected to the SRC but as voting was voluntary, then all we needed to do was to reduce the turnout so that the number of votes needed was less. Basically if you know that you can not win, then your next best option is to change the state of play so that the win conditions are different.

I still have this trait. If I am playing a game of Football, Risk, Diplomacy, 500, Bridge, Hearts, whatever, and I know that I have no chance of winning, then because I know that it is a game and I know that winning is no longer an option, I will adopt the role of kingmaker, or an agent of chaos. 

And so began not one but two election campaigns. Nick put up posters with his face on them; with the only words "Vote 1. Nick.". I worked out that with a roll of wide sticky tape and using the guillotine, that you could get four A6 posters out of a single A4 photocopy. At 1 cent per copy, for a mere 20 cents that was 80 small posters that could be put up. The question would then be to use them.

Remember, as someone who wasn't running for the office of School Captain and who was playing the election game for someone else who didn't want the office of School Captain, the set of win conditions was not how do you make people for someone but how to you get them to not vote at all. If you could increase voter apathy and convince them that the whole process was really dumb (which isn't hard), then they'd simply not bother to vote at all. So began the counter-campaign of the 1995 SRC Election: "Don't Vote".

With 80 A6 posters, the initial phase of the campaign simply meant putting them up next to any candidate's poster. The beauty of this was that because I wasn't running, nobody suspected that I was putting them up. High School politics is already riddled with cliques and groups, so I can only assume that everyone suspected everyone because within the week, there was already mass vandalism of people's posters.

The Monday morning assembly saw the Principal tell the whole school off for the shenanigans and no more campaign posters went up, except for the remaining "Don't Vote" posters which we (me and three friends) surreptitiously put up when we were sure that nobody was watching. By the end of the three week election campaign, the only election posters that were on the walls, were a few tattered A6 "Don't Vote" posters. 

When the election finally happened, the total turnout of voters was abysmal. For the 9 positions, there were 19 votes; which meant that in a lot of cases, if you voted 1 in your own box, you were elected. Nick was elected to the SRC on his platform of doing nothing and eating biscuits and the job was done.

As I think about this story now, for the life of me I have no idea who our School Captain was, or who anyone else on the SRC was either. All that I am left with, is the story of a highly effective election campaign and as far as I know, the story of the only person who I know who fulfilled all of their election promises. I can only imagine that doing nothing and eating biscuits was not amenable to the aims of the SRC but when you have an elected body which in reality has little to no power at all, I don't suppose that it ever mattered.

Given that this story is now 27 years old, I am quite sure that most of the details when forensically examined will probably be wrong. Nevertheless, I can still remember roughly where a lot of posters were; including at the top of a flight of stairs next to Lab 4, the outside window ledge which was facing a walkway next to H2, and halfway up a staircase which doubled as the de facto pulpit from where addresses would be given on school assemblies in the mornings.

I also remember being told by Mr Menkes the History teacher, after the campaign that he quite liked the guerilla erosion of people's faith in democracy and that he'd worked out who pulled it off after seeing two of my friends in separate incidents, putting up a "Don't Vote" sign. I had played 500 with him on a school camp previously, and he'd worked out that when winning is no longer an option (or in this case never was an option), I will adopt the role of kingmaker. 

Horse 3013 - Jimmy's Commencement Speech

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Class of '22, while you might think that you have recently gone through strange times, let me assure you that in the grand story of humanity this is normal. The incidence of wars, famines, pestilences, plagues, droughts, floods, ice ages, crop failures and years and years of rolling drudgery has been common to people since before recorded history.

The century which immediately preceded this one, brought forth technological advancements and wonders, also visited humanity with the destruction of several hundreds of millions of people in unpleasantness which included people from all over the world and the realisation that the bringer of nuclear fire was none other than ourselves. Yet even the destruction which was exacted by humanity upon humanity, pales in the light of the destruction caused by agents of chaos in the form of viruses who care not for national borders. In fact the Covid pandemic of 2019-2022 looks very similar in both cause and response. The ugliness of humanity which includes xenophobia, racism, and blame shifting, looks identical to the response to the pandemic of one hundred years ago; as I suspect that it will also do for a very easily imaginable pandemic of 2119-2122. 

We as people in the broadest sense, do not change.

The problem is that life is far too complex a thing for any of us, who are limited within space and time, to fully comprehend. We can try to eke out some kind of reasonable amount of order in the time and space immediately around us but the truth is that kosmos itself can not be controlled, held, or properly described by any one of us. You should probably then, consider it a gift that life is going to chuck at you all kinds of tests and challenges come at you from all sides.

You are allowed to be sad and while sadness and grief are legitimate responses to what the world will throw at you, emotion generally isn't a good enough long-term response to be useful. Under pressure though, someone's character which has been built over a very long time, is suddenly pushed out into the open. People's character is either work hardened under stress or it breaks; which means that the work of the situation will happen in the quiet spaces and far away from the public's prying eyes.

Stress and hardship; which might include the drudgery of slowly walking through the treacle of boredom, pain, loneliness, is worth enduring. The work of being under pressure, is important and produces character which is  mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.

Ask people for help. One of the great unspoken lies of the world is that any of us have a clue in what we're doing. Some people look super confident but scratch the surface and underneath the papier-mache, is a delicate balloon which is just as liable to burst as anyone else is. I know for a fact that the only real difference between myself at age 43 and age 13 is that I have gotten taller. I am still that same scared and stupid little person who only wants other people to be nice to me and in that respect, I have even less of an idea of what I am doing.

If you are a scared little person and you don’t know what you’re doing, ask for help. Any decent person should be willing to give their help without condescending to you when you ask for it. Ask boldly and believingly, without a second thought because people who merely throw their worries into the world are like wind-whipped waves being tossed on an endless ocean. They're never going to get anything by remaining all adrift at sea, keeping their options open.

When those people who have had everything that life can possibly hurl at them, finally get a break, cheer! When those people who have made their living by riding on the backs of other people, or worse, walking on the heads of other people, are finally brought down to size, cheer!

Prosperity like poverty, is very much a matter of luck. Nobody gets to choose the circumstances into which they are born and while people's occupation is important and praiseworthy, the temporary current state of relative comfort of someone is really only fleeting. Do not ever count on it.

Remember the Morning Glory that clings to the fence which runs alongside the railway line. They bloom, they last about four days, then the sun beats down its scorching heat and what was once a lovely purple flower is now brown. The flower withers. The petals wilt. What used to be a glorious splash of purple a week ago, is now nothing more than a barren brown stem. That there is a good analogue for what the world thinks is a good and prosperous life. At the very moment that everyone is heaping praise upon someone, their glory has already begun to wilt, their glory has already begun to rot, and ultimately to fade away to nothing. Run the clock out far enough after someone has died and eventually there will come a time when there will be nobody left who can actually remember them at all.

Those people who have walked through treacle, who have met stress and hardship and who have come out the other side having built character and been work hardened by the circumstance are very fortunate indeed. If the worst that life can throw at them has already happened to them, then what is left is life, life and more life.

Don't be tempted to play the blame game when you yourself were the one who did it to yourself. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! 'Sin' is an unpopular word which is sneered at by the same world which doesn't want to be held to account but is equally offended when someone has been unkind and unjust to them. Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer. One only needs to read through the first ten pages of a newspaper or watch the opening seven minutes of a news bulletin to notice the homicides, theft, and corruption in the world. It takes a deliberate act of lying to one's self, to think that the same drivers which cause these things do not lurk underneath the surface of your own mind.

I think that our heads are themselves a useful object lesson. We've been given two ears, one tongue, and one bum. Those are probably useful ratios to remember. Listen about twice as much as you speak and be careful about what kind of emissions that you release, lest you create such a stink that you clear out the room. Lead with your ears, follow with your tongue, and let anger stay behind. 

The fundamental problem with anger is that it is a reactive emotion. Of itself it doesn't produce any useful work of character at all. The moral products of goodness, kindness, justice et al., are built in the quiet spaces. Having a mind aware of what is noble, just, good, kind, simply doesn't grow from the expression of anger. Expressing anger to defend what is noble, just, good, kind, and people who are vulnerable, is the proper deployment.

In principle this suggests that virtue if it is displayed, is temporary like the Morning Glory and when spoiled, should be thrown into the rubbish bin. If we've been given two ears and one tongue and the act of listening is a fundamental activity which is done in the quiet spaces, then that infers that above all of the moral products, the product and the activity of simple humility is the most useful tool in doing any landscaping of one's mind.

Don't for a second think that mere listening is going to cut it either. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are listening when in fact, you are not. How many people say one thing and do another? What's the point of hearing good counsel, if it goes in one ear and then spills out of the other? Act on what you hear! 

People who hear important things and good advice and then don't act on that advice, are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like. If you look in the mirror and have a giant booger hanging off the end of your nose, you'd hope that a normal person would wipe it off.

Anyone who catches a glimpse of what it's like to live a life of good character, and then actually makes the effort to live that out, is no distracted scatterbrain but someone of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action. The world will probably hate them for it as well. Most of the world would quite frankly, like to be left alone; especially if they have worked out some private advantage, some secret vice, or a perk that they can get others to pay for. 

Be very suspicious of anyone who claims to be a religious person or claims to have secret answers to questions. It is very easy to talk up a good game but to actually do the hard work of what belief in something entails, is quite another. If people have faith in something or claim to believe in something, even if you do not have a formal idea what what they say they believe, check out what they do. Religion that walks out the door of a church on Sunday and immediately starts spinning a song for a shilling on Monday, is very likely to be nothing more than hot air.

Real religion, the kind that passes muster is the kind that reaches out to the homeless and loveless in their plight. It says the hard things that need to be said (which are sometimes unpopular) and it gives away of itself. The world is already full of shysters and hucksters all trying to spin spinning a song for a shilling; so watch and see just how far a so-called religious person steps away from corruption.

In a display of pure hypocrisy, I can not live up to the ideals contained within these paragraphs; neither can you. Nevertheless, to give in and to assume the role of someone who will not fight, is pathetic. Life is a marathon which none of us signed up for but which it is impossible to back out of. There are no prizes for being a boofhead and while you might win money, fame, and power, in a while, nobody cares. Keep at it. Run faster, run longer, run harder. Run as though there was a prize. Do better. Be better people.

Horse 3012 - I Like The Alt Key

In October 2021 I purchased the laptop which I am currently tapping away on. This ASUS E410M (the model is largely irrelevant) has survived being hit by a car and apart from cosmetic damage to the case, has performed admirably. There was one thing that found particularly annoying and that was the removal of the use of the Alt key.

I am glad to report that Alt is back.

In what surely has to be the first-worldy of first-world problems, complaining about the minor operation of how Windows 11 works is the zenith. There are an infinite amount of more important things in the world and yet, this most minor of ailments is the one which has stuck in my craw. Probably because it is so minor, I found it more annoying than the pain of being hit by a car. Being hit by a car is the result of an accident which nobody ever plans for and so even though the consequences are far worse; so I can accept that. Someone deliberately mucking up Windows and who has taken active steps to change how a thing works, which affects millions of people, is a very different thing.

I bet that you're sitting there on your phone or tablet and thinking that I am a loon for thinking about such a petty and small thing but as someone who works in the land of information, or numbers, of generating words, and manipulating documents, I think that I am more likely to directly notice this kind of change, than someone who I will admit does real work in the real world and moves around real things.

There are only so many commands that can be directly picked with Ctrl and a key.

Ctrl-X = Cut

Ctrl-C = Copy

Ctrl-V = Paste

Ctrl-A = Select All

Ctrl-Z = Undo

Ctrl-Y = Redo

Ctrl-P = Print

Ctrl-N = New

Ctrl-O = Open

Ctrl-S = Save

When you start getting into programs with many layers of dropdown menus, then you really don't want to have to find and click the relevant thing. There is one program that I use which had (and I say had because it no longer does in Windows 11) the sequence of keys of Alt-K-P-O to pick something off of a third-level menu. When Windows 11 took away the use of the Alt key, that meant using the mouse to pick through three menus to get what I wanted. Now that it is back, I am once again a very happy bunny.

One of the fundamental conflicts of an operating system/GUI like Windows is that it has to be all things to all people. 'All People' is a very very broad category and can be split into two very very large tribes. The first tribe are those people who want/need to use a mouse or a pointing device for a myriad of reasons. The second are those people who want/need to manipulate what largely amounts to boring blocks of text and/or numbers. I am definitely a member of the second tribe; being someone who works in an accounting office and who writes an extraordinary amount of text. It is the artists, the gamers, and the people who only need to input a small amount of text into small spaces who benefit the most from having pointing devices. 

I am old enough to remember a time when computers didn't normally have mouses. In those days (which seems like an eternity ago), the Alt and Ctrl keys were the prime method of navigating around programs and the working spaces therein. Now it can be very argued that the invention of the mouse and then the more intuitive interface of using your finger to point at a thing is a vast improvement on using the Alt and Ctrl keys but just like playing a harpsichord, it is far quicker to press a key to play a definite note than it is to draw a bow across a string to produce a note which might not be as accurate. Manipulating glyphs which are all discrete units of information with width of one, is far quicker if that is done with a series of key strikes as opposed to using a pointing device. The use of the Alt key in picking off menu items, is exactly picking off a discrete unit of information (in this case the headline of a menu item) with width of one. 

When Windows 11 arrived on my new lap top, there were (and still are) lots of things which used to be menu items on a list that have now been consigned to being an icon. Windows 11 which was likely designed with tablets as the prime end used market, tried to better integrate the user experience of pointing at things to get what you want. I suspect that this is because the boffins at Microsoft still remember the abject disaster that was Windows 8 and were so traumatised that Windows 9 had to be abandoned before it was even started; which meant that Windows 7 became the starting point to develop Windows 10. Windows 11 is still mostly the same as Windows 10 (I still use the 'classic' interface) but I am continually reminded as a desktop and laptop user, that we have been relegated to the steerage rooms below deck. Taking away the Alt key meant that we had to bail our own bilge.

This was the situation until some time last week. For reasons that are unknown to me, the boffins at Microsoft decided to notice us users of desktops and laptops and heard our tortured cries from below decks. In giving us back the Alt key, they have finally acknowledged and realised that looking pretty is only a secondary want; behind having a machine that does what you want.

Yet again I am reminded of IBM's slogan from the 1960s: "Machines should work. People should think." Some time after 1966 this was later reduced to just the single word "Think" but the longer form of the slogan was far more clever. If you have a machine that works properly, then you do not need to think about it. The best journeys on a train or a bus, are the ones where nothing of import happens at all. Boring is beautiful. When machines don't work at all, or work in ways that aren't idea, then that forces the user to have to think. It seems almost paradoxical but when you have to think about what you are doing, it is less efficient than just doing something and this is because the machines were working in the first place.

Taking away the Alt key meant that as an end user, we had to do more thinking and more searching and hunting to find what we wanted. When I use the Alt keys, I don't have to find anything because I am already telling the machine that this is the thing that I want. Furthermore, I am so quick at doing this that I can enter Alt commands at a rate which is faster than the machine can display them in. Frequently I find myself after having entered a string of Alt and Ctrl commands, standing at the printer and waiting while my machine cycles through the commands that I've already inputted.

I am glad that the Alt key came back. Rather, I am glad that the people at Microsoft eventually thought enough of use to give us back the Alt key. I don't have to Alt-E-F what I am looking for and can Ctrl-F things far quicker than before. Microsoft Crtl-Z a bad thing and Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V from Windows 7. Ctrl-S, Alt-F4.

Addenda:

Almost immediately after posting this, I got a question with regards to the Alt-Right. I personally would like to press the Delete key on the Alt-Right as a political ideology but having just written a piece about the Alt key, it seemed tangentially connected.

Alt-Right as a command only works if there is a highlighted group of text/cells which have been selected. Alt-Left will take to to the extreme left of the string and Alt-Right will take you to the extreme right of the string. They work similarly to Ctrl-Home and Ctrl-End if you want to go to the top or tail of a document.