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

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

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

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

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

A cat is a dog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It might change though:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- 11:19pm 

Horse 3492 - Totally Real Imaginary Stations

 For a very very long time I have suspected that there are secret extra bonus railway stations which exist somewhere between other stations. Now bear in mind that these are different to places like Hilldale, Mindaribba, Martins Creek, or Wondabyne where platforms definitely do exist albeit rather short ones, or places like Lysaghts which are almost exclusively employee only stations. These are not even phantom stations like Woolahra or Clyburn which either did or could have existed. No, these secret extra bonus stations are another thing entirely.

Strathbush

I almost understand the existence of Strathbush Station. This station which totally does doesn't does exist, lies somewhere in between Strathfield and Homebush.

Homebush at one time, was the terminus of the electric train system. Essentially, Homebush is a 6 platform switching yard, with an attached Y-link from the Western to the Northern Line.

Strathbush Station exists as a holding place, to keep scheduled T1 Western Line trains, held still, while specials like the Indian-Pacific, or goods trains, pass through.

However, Strathbush also exists to hold trains standing around for absolutely no good reason at all, while goodness knows what happens.

Wavercraft

Now I completely understand the need to either have trains skip stations on the run towards the City to make timetables work, or perhaps deliberately backing them up so that there is a whole arsenal of them waiting for the evening peak, however having trains stop at Wavercraft in the mornings, just defies all earthly logic. 

Ever since the Northwest Metro stole away two tracks that would have been used at Chatswood, the entire North Shore line from Wynyard all the way to Gordon is functionally just two tracks; being the Up and Down line. Wavercraft means stopping trains on the Down line heading away from the City for reasons that make no sense to me.

Is it because there is a degree of fudge built into the timetable; so this means that stations like Chatswood and Gordon then become the points at which on time or early/late running trains are measured? Is this because of bus connections heading away from the City? Who knows? 

What makes this all the more mind numbingly bonkers is that during the middle of the day, places like Waverton, Wollstonecraft, and Artarmon, get perfectly good trains that pass through and don't stop at stations, only to have them stop at Wavercraft which isn't even real. 

Barangaroo North

The third and final of this imaginary trio deserves a photograph:

Barangaroo North is more bonkers than either Strathbush or Wavercraft because unlike the first which holds up suburban trains for untimetabled specials, or the second which might hold up trains for statistical purposes, Barangaroo North isn't even on a timetabled service. Trains on the Northwest Metro are driverless and because they don't need to interact with any other line, only need to be switched at the two termini at either end.

What possible reason is there for stopping at Barangaroo North? You can't get off. There isn't any need to change the drivers which don't exist. There's not even a reason to do with the timetable.

The trains on the Northwest Metro are driverless which means that they are in principle, not a lot different to very fancy elevators. It's just that they are longer and go sideways. When you also consider that block systems and dead-man switches have been around since the first half of the twentieth century and driverless trains in operations since 1998, then the idea that trains need to stop here in particular is quite frankly, weird. 

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By my reckoning there are 10 suburban lines in Sydney; which also share interurban lines, and there may be about 400 sets of trains. By any kind of reckoning, that's a lot of moving parts that all have to be timetabled and orchestrated. So I completely understand that there will be stops and pauses.

The fact that there are consistently inconsistent consistent stops and pauses, suggests to me that if these aren't explicitly the results of a designed system, that they are the defaults of automatic/mechanical/AI/human systems that regularly arrive at the same conclusions because that's sensible.

It could also be that as an electro-mechanical meatbag human with a pattern seeking set of biases, that I have found my patterns. Well done, me. I am still confused by Barangaroo North though. 

Horse 3491 - Friends Of 10

 Part of a conversation that I had at the weekend with a friend of mine who is a Maths Teacher was on the subject of kids today not being able to do basic arithmetic.

I work as an accountant; so my entire job is nothing more than applied arithmetic and from an historical perspective, the first and most common use of mathematics in the first place. Arithmetic is the basis for knowing how much stuff there is, how much things cost, how much money you need, and how much tax you need to pay.

But to be honest, arithmetic is really nothing more than applied token moving, where the tokens are mathematical symbols which stand in for small values. Other than the fact that we have 10 digits, there is no inherent reason why we use base 10, when many other bases like 12, 20, or 60 would have been more useful.

One of the useful tools in the arithmetic toolkit is the "Friends of 10". That is, those pairs of numbers which when added together give you 10; such as 1 and 9, 2 and 8, 3 and 7, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

Card players of games like King Tut will notice a similar thing when we look for pairs that add together to give you 13; such as, A and Q, 2 and J, 3 and 10, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

Remember, as an accountant who does nothing other than play with arithmetic and fitting numbers into the most boring Sudoku puzzles (otherwise known as Tax Returns), I have a lot of time where I am putting in hundreds of journal entries but where my mind is off playing with concepts that I can not leave well enough alone. The Friends of 10 is one of them.

IF (big 'if') there are Friends of 10, then there must be Friends of 100, Friends of 1000, Friends of 10000, et cetera et cetera et cetera. If there is a single use case in mathematics, then invariably it follows that there is a general rule and one that applies in all bases.

Armed with the fact that flip digits in sets of accounts give you an off balance which is a multiple of 9, then I reasoned that the general case must be all of the complementary pairs that add together to give 9, plus 1, because that extra 1 is needed to trip the place register and give you a new number with place value.

Consider:

ABCDEF +

abcdef

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

Quite literally, pick any number you like.

507,589 will do. Its friend must be:

492,410 + 1.

5 and 4, 0 and 9, 7 and 2, 5 and 4, 8 and 1, 9 and 0. Plus 1 to trip the register.

A plus a, B plus b, C plus c, et cetera et cetera et cetera ad nauseum, will always add to 9, for numbers of any magnitude.

Of course, this is related to the old accounting trick of Casting Out Of 9s, where the Digital Root of natural number in is the single digit value obtained by an iterative process of summing digits, on each iteration using the result from the previous iteration to compute a digit sum. You can then do other fun things in the various operations to check that your result is at least sensible.

As there is nothing inherently special about the number 10, then it follows that for all bases X, that everything above should also work for X-1. Remember, 9 is just the X-1 of 10.

Again, Friends of 10 isn't particularly special. 7 plus 3 does equal 10, but the underlying general case suggests that 7 plus 2 is 9 and plus 1 trips the register.

If I can think about this during the idle monotony of entering hundreds of journal entries, then it isn't necessarily because I have a brilliant mathematical mind but rather that the rules of arithmetic are in fact simple enough to discover. Being good "at Maths" at least when it comes to simple operations, is literally just the applied application of those simple rules. What this suggests to me is that primary schools likely need to do a better job at drilling boring maths problems.

Not being able to do basic arithmetic is likely not a function of being good or bad at maths, but as a result of not doing enough boring problems. These are the 'put with', 'take away', 'rows and columns', and 'groups of', tasks which are really nothing more than applied token moving. Make kids play with beads, or little people, or coins, or tokens. Make them play more in the real world, so that they can play in the abstract. That's what I did and I'm nothing special. I am an accountant.

Horse 3490 - I Actually Do Want To Go My Own Way, Isuzu

 Uncle Google and his untold myriad of virtual assistants, would like to sell me things more than anything else. Uncle Google after all, has a business to run and he derives his income from placing advertisements in front of people's eyeballs. An advertisement though, relies upon triggering our internal covetous desires and enticing us. An advertisement in principle hopes to create the "I want" song within our hearts, which then comes to a conclusion with the acquisition of the things in question.

All of this assumes that the advertiser knows what we want. Uncle Google hopes to collect hundreds and thousands of data points to build a picture of who we are and hopefully what we want. The problem is that unless you are chronically online, Uncle Google's perfunctory data set, is a rather dull hammer.

Because I am a 47 year old man, Uncle Google obviously thinks that I have sufficiently enough money to have food delivered to me. Of late, the amount of times that I have seen the Uber ad with Cher in it, is enough to permanently make me never use the service. 

The other favourite adverts that Uncle Google's minions want to throw my way are for big trucky truck trucks because presumably as I like watching Formula One, Supercars, Super GT, BTCC, and NASCAR, that I must be someone who has many tens of thousands of dollarpounds to throw around on new cars constantly.

This advert is typical:

https://youtu.be/SC4QxByqMzQ?si=M8VaKwx8l_isS4I7

Uncle Google thinks that all middle aged men are a monolith, which on the face of it is not a bad assumption as the SUVification of the motor industry rages on on and ever on, but just like not wanting to pay Hamburger Taxi for the affront of taking away my chance to drive somewhere, I do not want to buy an SUV or an SUV pretending to be a truck.

The gold star and pinnacle of what a work truck should be for the vast majority of tradies was the N170 Hilux, or the Falcon and Commodore Utes with fold down sides. The truth is that tradies either want vans because of the space that they can use a movable office, or a ute with a big tray so that they can cart around stuff. The Isuzu D-Max in these adverts is neither of those things 

At any rate, I am not a tradie. The ute that I do want, is a V6 VE Commodore Ute because... it's fun.

Uncle Google unfortunately, although having directly determined that I am a 47 year old man who likes watching motor racing, has made the critical error in determining why. Motor racing is playing by proxy, as indeed is the rest of sport. I do not have hundreds of millions of dollarpounds but Horrible Tasting Energy Drink, Imaginary Internet Coin, and Bet Bet Betting Company do. Of those, I am still highly unlikely to buy what they're selling but at least they're having fun and paying for my entertainment.

The problem is that all of these firms make what is profitable rather than what I want to buy. Presumably someone is buying an Isuzu D-Max, but that someone is not me. The inherent paradox of advertising is that it is insanely hard to sell a want that people don't want, but you can leave reminders so that when people need to buy something, they will think of you.

So what is it that I actually want that Isuzu could in theory make? This:

Way back in the 1970s when General Motors realised that they couldn't very well sell cars with 6L engines to Europe or Asia, they developed the T-car. I took a survey of all the names that the T-car was sold under and came to a grand total of 37. Isuzu, still being aligned with the General Motors family of manufactures, sold T-car as the Isuzu Bellet in Japan and to Australia as the Holden Gemini.

Isuzu do not currently make anything even remotely similar to what I want to buy. Yes they make proper lorries and SUVs but I am neither a tradie, nor a pretend tradie who might like the D-Max. You can't even argue that people's needs and desires have changed because I'll even take a brand new 1975 Gemini if you are prepared to sell me one.

I am sorry Isuzu, but for me to 'go my own way', I'll need a wee ickle fun machine. You can also give up Uber, because I want to drive that wee ickle fun machine a hundred miles to buy that Pie/Hamburger/Donut. And as for you Uncle Google, I do know that you are trying but unless firms are prepared to sell something that we want to buy, then no transaction happens at all.

Horse 3489 - Magna Carta - The BIG Delusion IX

 35

No county court is to be held save from month to month, and where the greater term used to be held, so will it be in future, nor will any sheriff or his bailiff make his tourn through the hundred save for twice a year and only in the place that is due and customary, namely once after Easter and again after Michaelmas, and the view of frankpledge is to be taken at the Michaelmas term without exception, in such a way that every man is to have his liberties which he had or used to have in the time of King H[enry II] my grandfather or which he has acquired since. The view of frankpledge is to be taken so that our peace be held and so that the tithing is to be held entire as it used to be, and so that the sheriff does not seek exceptions but remains content with that which the sheriff used to have in taking the view in the time of King H[enry] our grandfather.

-

The strange thing here is that Clause 35 not only looks like it is trying to prevent justice from being served because it inhibits the holding of county courts, but it does so by operation. Why you would want to prevent justice from being served is a matter of who the barons and earls who made this list of demands, want it prevented from being done to.

If it wasn't already obvious, the earldom and barony of England, saw the imposition of what they saw was a Norman/French court ruling from the other side of the English Channel, as being arbitrary and burdensome. The earls and barons, do not want courts from making decisions that they disagree with; by limiting the power of the courts to rule from the outside, they hope to maintain their power in England. 

Also note here that the system of frankpledge and tithing, has nothing at all to do with the church or the clergy. Frankpledge was a system of mutual surety whereby small collections of ten to fifteen men (always men, remember women have no legal standing - see previous) were in theory, responsible for the policing of the rest of the group as a small collective. That's all good and fine in theory but in practice where you have one or two people who have the personality to self-appoint themselves as leader/bully, then they end up ruling the group by default.

Obviously the earls and barons of England would not like to be bound and tied by frankpledge to a Norman/French aristocracy; and so Clause 35 is the demand that things return to "held entire as it used to be" where the local sheriff was the one in charge of policing the hundred. Naturally this reveals an existing motive, that the sheriff who polices the hundred is appointed by the Earl, Baron or Knight; so as far as being a peasant, or villein, or free man, or slave is concerned, the dressing of who is above you near enough makes no difference at all.

36

Nor is it permitted to anyone to give his land to a religious house in such a way that he receives it back from such a house to hold, nor is it permitted to any religious house to accept the land of anyone in such way that the land is restored to the person from whom it was received to hold. If anyone henceforth gives his land in such a way to any religious house and is convicted of the same, the gift is to be entirely quashed and such land is to revert to the lord of that fee.

-

The church in England in 1215 is still catholic in the small-c sense in that it still part of the one universal church, and still Catholic in the large-c sense in that it still in communion with the church at Rome. This means that functionally it is part of the greater church at large but factionally it is a Franco-Ibero-Italian church. 

Internally in England there are three factional groups going on. The Monarchy and loyalists are aligned with the Franco/Norman part of what is now Northern France. The church is in tension with them but still nominally part of the same kind of cohort. The Barons and Dukes who penned Magna Carta and who made this list of demands, are nativist English who resent rule from outside; which includes both the church and the monarchy. 

This clause is in a weird tension point in that it forbids land holders from lending lands to the church with the intent of getting that land back, and at the same time it forbids the church from lending lands to individuals with the intent of getting that land back. In both instances, if the Barons and Earls find out about it, they state here that the land will revert to the lord of that fee.

37

Scutage furthermore is to be taken as it used to be in the time of King H[enry] our grandfather, and all liberties and free customs shall be preserved to archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, Templars, Hospitallers, earls, barons and all others, both ecclesiastical and secular persons, just as they formerly had.

-

The word "Scutage" is related to the modern Italian word "Scudetto" which is a small shield. The winners of Serie A earn the right to wear the Scudetto on their kit for the next season. It should not surprise you then, that Scutage is essential "Shield Money" in payment for the defence of the lands,

Scutage is the practice of a knight paying their lord (either a baron or a duke) monies in exchange for getting out of having to do military service. They might also by way of scutage, send peasants or free men in their place, to serve in the military force in their stead.

Now I suppose that it could be argued that in the days of a professional standing army like we have today, that we all in fact already pay scutage but given that this was a specific call upon the knights, I do not think that this maps exactly one to one. 

The Undersigned:

All these aforesaid customs and liberties which we have granted to be held in our realm in so far as pertains to us are to be observed by all of our realm, both clergy and laity, in so far as pertains to them in respect to their own men. For this gift and grant of these liberties and of others contained in our charter over the liberties of the forest, the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, knights, fee holders and all of our realm have given us a fifteenth part of all their movable goods. Moreover we grant to them for us and our heirs that neither we nor our heirs will seek anything by which the liberties contained in this charter might be infringed or damaged, and should anything be obtained from anyone against this it is to count for nothing and to be held as nothing. With these witnesses: the lord S[tephen] archbishop of Canterbury, E[ustace] bishop of London, S. [recte Jocelin] bishop of Bath, P[eter] bishop of Winchester, H[ugh] bishop of Lincoln, R[ichard] bishop of Salisbury, W. [recte Benedict] bishop of Rochester, W[illiam] bishop of Worcester, J[ohn] bishop of Ely, H[ugh] bishop of Hereford, R[anulf] bishop of Chichester, W[illiam] bishop of Exeter, the abbot of [Bury] St Edmunds, the abbot of St Albans, the abbot of Battle, the abbot of St Augustine’s Canterbury, the abbot of Evesham, the abbot of Westminster, the abbot of Peterborough, the abbot of Reading, the abbot of Abingdon, the abbot of Malmesbury, the abbot of Winchcombe, the abbot of Hyde [Winchester], the abbot of Chertsey, the abbot of Sherborne, the abbot of Cerne, the abbot of Abbotsbury, the abbot of Milton [Abbas], the abbot of Selby, the abbot of Cirencester, H[ubert] de Burgh our justiciar, H. [recte Ranulf] earl of Chester and Lincoln, W[illiam] earl of Salisbury, W[illiam] earl Warenne, G[ilbert] de Clare earl of Gloucester and Hertford, W[illiam] de Ferrers earl of Derby, W[illiam] de Mandeville earl of Essex, H[ugh] Bigod earl of Norfolk, W[illiam] earl Aumale, H[umphrey] earl of Hereford, J[ohn] constable of Chester, R[obert] de Ros, R[obert] fitz Walter, R[obert] de Vieuxpont, W[illiam] Brewer, R[ichard] de Montfiquet, P[eter] fitz Herbert, W[illiam] de Aubigné, F. [recte Robert] Gresley, F. [recte Reginald] de Braose, J[ohn] of Monmouth, J[ohn] fitz Alan, H[ugh] de Mortemer, W[illiam] de Beauchamp, W[illiam] de St John, P[eter] de Maulay, Brian de Lisle, Th[omas] of Moulton, R[ichard] de Argentan, G[eoffrey] de Neville, W[illiam] Mauduit, J[ohn] de Baalon and others. Given at Westminster on the eleventh day of February in the ninth year of our reign.

- 

I live in Australia; so this means that an audience of the people who want to claim Magna Carta in my country, are probably unaware of the implication of the list of people here. There is literally no-one from "The North". About the furthest north that anyone gets here, is the Earl of Derby.

The other thing that is immediately obvious here, is that the list of people making the demands includes Abbots, Bishops, a constable, and a few Earls. Literally none of these people are elected to their office, and most of these people would have been sent by the Earl or Baron of their county/hundred, either in lieu of them going themselves, or possibly because they feared getting killed by the royal forces in case all of this went badly. Had John's army killed the clergy, then this would have been the pretense for kicking off another civil war in England; which over the next few hundred years, would happen all too frequently. 

The Confirmation:

We, holding these aforesaid gifts and grants to be right and welcome, concede and confirm them for ourselves and our heirs and by the terms of the present [letters] renew them, wishing and granting for ourselves and our heirs that the aforesaid charter is to be firmly and inviably observed in all and each of its articles in perpetuity, including any articles contained in the same charter which by chance have not to date been observed. In testimony of which we have had made these our letters patent. Witnessed by Edward our son, at Westminster on the twelfth day of October in the twenty-fifth year of our reign. [Chancery warranty by Hugh of] Yarmouth.

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12th October 1297 is not the 15th of June 1215. This version, adopted by Edward I and inspected by his son (who would become Edward II) is the Inspeximus Issue. Already we can see that if Edward I and Edward II have not only agreed to but adopted both Magna Carta and another charter called the Charter Of The Forest into the corpus of English law, that the monarchy of England has very much diverged from the Franco/Norman roots established by William in 1066.

The final running tally of Clauses in Magna Carta which might apply to someone in court in Australia today is:

1/37.

As Magna Carta relates to Australian law at all, most of it is either irrelevant, or repealed, or impossible to apply. In fact the only sentence which has any possible application at all in Australia is that one sentence from Clause 29:

To no-one will we sell or deny or delay right or justice.

The ironic thing is that the cookers who appear in court and try to rely on Magna Carta as some kind of woo-woo magic weapon, very much do not want to submit to the court which they appear in front of, don't even want this clause to apply to them either. If you have fallen foul of the law, and do not want to submit to the law, then you certainly do not want to admit that the proper consequences of the law should apply to you. 

On that note, I am willing to scrub that tally of 1 and arrive at the final total which the cookers who appear in court and try to rely on Magna Carta actually reply upon...

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

And that's possibly the saddest thing of all.