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

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

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

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

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

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

In a tyre specification:

XXX/YY R ZZ

XXX is the width of the tyre in millimetres.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm standing on a bridge

I'm waitin' in the dark

I thought that you'd be here by now

There's nothing but the rain

No footsteps on the ground

I'm listening but there's no sound"

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

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

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

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

- MTV, 29th Oct 2002

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh.

Oh?

Oh no.

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

Aside:

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

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

My head is a box filled with nothing,

and that's the way I like it.

My garden's a secret compartment,

and that's the way I like it.

...

So please,

Baby please,

Open your heart;

Catch my disease.

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

Horse 3501 - Killing Me Softly With His Plot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Delightful and Doomed. Brilliant and Bad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

¹Emotional Support Truck 

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

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

Horse 3499 - Numbers And Letters

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

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

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

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

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

3 - three - we only get R here 

4 - four - F and U are new

5 - five - yields I and V

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

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

8 - eight - G makes an appearance 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A - 1000

B - 1,000,000,000

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

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

E - 0

F - 4

G - 8

H - 3

I - 5

L - 1,000,000

M - 1,000,000

N - 7

O - 0

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

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

R - 4

S - 6

T - 2

U - 4

V - 5

W - 2

X - 6

Y - 20

Z - 0

& - 100

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

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

ZERONTWRFUIVSXGHWYD&AMLBQPC JK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- John Menadue, 8th Nov 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Horse 3497 - All Playoffs In All Sports Are Stupid

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

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

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

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

- Elizabeth Blackstock, 3rd Nov 2025

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

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

ALL playoffs in all sports are stupid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Horse 3496 - Give Me Rocket Bunnies

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

This is because of a number of reasons.

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

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

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

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

I have a solution. 

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

ROCKET BUNNIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Matthew 25:29

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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