Horse 1162 - Julian Assange's Really Dumb #qanda Question

The founder of Wikileaks Julian Assange appeared on ABC1's Q and A program on Monday Night (14th April 2011) via a video question, to the Prime Minister Julia Gillard. The question and link is provided below:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3157403.htm?show=transcript

JULIAN ASSANGE: Prime Minister, you just got back from Washington but what Australian citizens want to know is which country do you represent? Do you represent Australians and will you fight for Australian interests because it's not the first time that you or a member of your cabinet has been into a US government building and exchanged information. In fact, we have intelligence that your government has been exchanging information with foreign powers about Australian citizens working for Wikileaks. So Prime Minister, my question to you is this: when will you come clean about precisely what information you have supplied the foreign powers about Australian citizens working or affiliated with Wikileaks and if you cannot give a full and frank answer to that question, should perhaps the Australian people consider charging you with treason?

Firstly Mr Assange, not being a lawyer I perfectly understand if you don't happen to know about the legal definitions of words like "treason", however what you have done is inadvertantly publicly admitted that you and your organisation have broken the law and that you personally have no idea about legal responsibility.

Let's just break down all of your little mistakes and idiocies shall we?

"it's not the first time that you or a member of your cabinet has been into a US government building and exchanged information"

Well duh!

One of the most basic things that any law student goes through in Australia is the source of law and the Constitution of Australia. Section 51 of the Constitution deals with the specific powers which the Parliament has. It stands to reason that if the Parliament is charged with certain powers, then it also has the responsibitlity to exercise those powers.

I will now list two specific powers below:

http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/general/constitution/par5cha1.htm

51.The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:

(vi.) The naval and military defence of the Commonwealth and of the several States, and the control of the forces to execute and maintain the laws of the Commonwealth.

(xxix.) External Affairs:

Now obviously if a Minister of the Crown is going into a "US government building" and has "exchanged information", they are doing so because they have been charged with the power and responsibility that the Parliament has given them. A business person who goes to the offices of another business does so because they are acting as an agent on behalf of the firm which sent them. Why should the affairs of a Minister of the Crown be any different at all? How difficult is this to grasp Mr Assange?
Australia is tied to the US through various treaties and agreements, ANZUS, APEC, the Australia – United States Free Trade Agreement etc. What else do you want? Are you seriously suggesting that a Minister of the Crown wouldn't have some business with a US Government Department at some stage?

The next part seriously bothers me:

"In fact, we have intelligence that your government has been exchanging information with foreign powers about Australian citizens working for Wikileaks.

So Prime Minister, my question to you is this: when will you come clean about precisely what information you have supplied the foreign powers about Australian citizens working or affiliated with Wikileaks"

Technically speaking and because of the provisions of the Statute of Westminster 1931, statute law passed in Britain up until 1931 has legal standing in Australia up until such time as it is replaced by Australia law. This includes the The Official Secrets Acts of 1911 and 1920.

Admittedly unlike the United Kindgom, Australia does not have specific legislation dealing with things which the government wants to keep secret. However it does have specific provisions in the Crimes Act 1914 which deal with Official Secrets:

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca191482/s79.html

CRIMES ACT 1914 - SECT 79

Official secrets

(2) If a person with the intention of prejudicing the security or defence of the Commonwealth or a part of the Queen's dominions:

(a) communicates a prescribed sketch, plan, photograph, model, cipher, note, document or article, or prescribed information, to a person, other than:

(i) a person to whom he or she is authorized to communicate it; or

(ii) a person to whom it is, in the interest of the Commonwealth or a part of the Queen's dominions, his or her duty to communicate it; or permits a person, other than a person referred to in subparagraph (i) or (ii), to have access to it;

(b) retains a prescribed sketch, plan, photograph, model, cipher, note, document or article in his or her possession or control when he or she has no right to retain it or when it is contrary to his or her duty to retain it; or

(c) fails to comply with a direction given by lawful authority with respect to the retention or disposal of a prescribed sketch, plan, photograph, model, cipher, note, document or article;

he or she shall be guilty of an indictable offence.

Penalty: Imprisonment for 7 years.

In other words, if you Mr Assange or your organisation is in possession of, communicates and/or doesn't destroy the information which you have obtained from the Commonwealth without permission, you are guilty of an indictable offence and may be imprisoned for 7 years.

Mr Assange himself is of course, no stranger to court proceedings. As far back as 1991 he was in court charged with 31 counts of computer hacking. The Australian Federal Police had his phone tapped and although he was brought to trial, he was released on a "good conduct" bond with a fine of $2100.

The judge's obiter dicta contained the remarks that "there is just no evidence that there was anything other than sort of intelligent inquisitiveness and the pleasure of being able to—what's the expression—surf through these various computers" and that he could have handed down a sentence of up to 10 years for the crimes.

Wikileaks in principle publishes documents from government which would otherwise go totally unnoticed. If however the government or a government agency deemed that a particular document be classified or given secret status because it is of a sensitive nature, then permission for Wikileaks to have such a thing is not there and a breach of the Crimes Act exists.

As for the quite frankly pointless comment "if you cannot give a full and frank answer to that question, should perhaps the Australian people consider charging you with treason?", it really does show a total lack of understanding of what treason actually is.

Treason broadly, is a tort which is a betrayal of the state, nation or sovereign. Again the Crimes Act 1914 doesn't explicitly use the word "treason", but it does use a nominally interchangable word "treachery":

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca191482/s24aa.html

CRIMES ACT 1914 - SECT 24AA

Treachery

(1) A person shall not:

(a) do any act or thing with intent:

(i) to overthrow the Constitution of the Commonwealth by revolution or sabotage; or

(ii) to overthrow by force or violence the established government of the Commonwealth, of a State or of a proclaimed country; or

Prime Minister Gillard isn't very likely to try to overthrow the government which gave her the office which she currently holds is she? How does that make any logical sense at all?
I don't think that Ms Gillard is doing a bad job as as the Prime Minister and I certainly don't think that she's done anything which would constitute an act of treason or treachery against either the Parliament or the Commonwealth either.

If anyone is in breach of the law, it is more likely to be Julian Assange because of the nature of his organisation rather than Julia Gillard who would be acting on behalf of the Parliament and Commonwealth. Unless she suddenly decided to order the RAAF to start launching AGM-123 Skippers down the Bourke Street Mall or something, the chances of charging the PM with treason are Buckley's and None.

Mr Assange's question to the Prime Minister when examined properly, falls down at every hurdle and may even accidentally incriminate him as well. Then again, Ms Gillard herself probably sums this up quite well:

"Well, his motivation, as stated, is a sort of anarchic here it all is, just have it and I don't have a great deal of respect for that. Now, I understand people will take different views on it but that's the view that motivated me to make those comments."

I will take precisely the same view as Ms Gillard because I don't have a great deal of respect for that sort of thing either.

Horse 1161 - Australia and the Nuclear Boogieman

With the earthquakes and subsequent tsunami in Japan causing widespread damage, and specifically damage to nuclear power plants, the world not surprisingly is re-thinking its stance on nuclear power and its safety. Only this morning the German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested a non-extension to Germany's nuclear program and France is very seriously looking at its power plants, considering that 70% of French electricity comes from nuclear.
So what of Australia?

I think a very strong case can be made for Australia embracing nuclear power for precisely the same reason that Japan is considering abandoning it.

As far as plate tectonics go, the entire Australian continent sits on a very solid bit of dirt. No fault lines pass anywhere through the continent, and although there have been earthquakes in Australia; they have been the result of the underside of the Australian plate scraping against the Moho or Upper Mantle.
The point being that unlike say New Zealand, Japan or even California, earthquakes in Australia are not directly caused by plates banging into each other, sliding past each other or pulling away. Even someone with a rudimentary knowledge in Australian geography will tell you that the big mountain ranges in Australia are not volcanic, but sedimentary.

What is the point of all this? Put simply, Australia currently relies on lots of coal for its electricity which is terrible for greenhouse gas emission, at the same time it is the world's biggest exporter of uranium with 23% of the world's uranium ore reserves but somehow never finds the political will to make use of it.

It's the same story for a lot of Australian industry, we dig up stuff, sell it overseas and wonder why the country is on the express train to oblivion and can't afford the diesel to get there.

The truth should bet staring us in the face. Australia suffers an earthquake actually on the continent as opposed to offshore roughly every 13 years and at an average of only 5.8333 on the Richter Scale. In contrast Japan in the past week has had more earthquakes of 6 and above than the entire of the records in Australia by nearly a factor of 90.
When it comes to earthquakes, Australia is ludicrously stable. I bet that you actually have more chance of being killed by a falling toilet, than ever feeling an earthquake in your life in Australia let alone actually being killed from it.
If that then is the main reason why we don't use nuclear power in Australia, it's a pretty pathetic one.

I suggest that if the nuclear boogieman is the only reason why nuclear power isn't used, then that too is pretty pathetic. Admittedly the worst case scenario is a disaster like Chernobyl of almost 25 years ago but that wasn't exactly helped by an economic system which was on the brink of total collapse and a workforce which was paid a pittance. Would such a thing occur for the same reasons in a supposedly first-world industrialised nation like Australia? I think not. Then again, if people like Premier Keneally can sell our power companies to private interests looking to cut costs, then the same motives which caused the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 will be in operation, so who knows?

If we're that worried we could always build out nuclear power stations in places like Olympic Dam which is already in the middle of nowhere and on top of the world's biggest uranium deposit. Even if a fallout cloud the size of the like that was seen as a result of the Chernobyl disaster were to occur, three quarters of bugger-all would be affected, or better yet bung it out at Ngaanyatjarra-Giles in WA. You could launch either moon of Mars into the nuclear power plant out there and no-one would know save for the fact that their lights would go out.

The fact that we're quite willing to sell Uranium to the rest of the world but don't use it ourselves smacks of hypocrisy. Wollongong City Council proudly proclaims itself to be a "Nuclear Free Zone" on massive billboards as you head down the F6. Do they not realise that the University of Wollongong happens to be Australia's leading exponent of Nuclear Medicine and Clinical Oncology? Do they also not realise that just to the north happens to be the ANSTO Open Pool Australian Lightwater reactor at Lucas Heights?

Australia could cut its greenhouse emissions by 35% if it went to all-nuclear electricity generation. I'm not suggesting that it's a magic bullet, but leaving it off the agenda entirely and as part of a total plan for dealing with a far bigger issue, I think is quite quite quite stupid.

Please Give Me MORE Internets

GIVE ME MORE INTERNETS!!!

OM NOM NOM.

Horse 1160 - NSW Election 2011 - The Safest Seat In The House

On the streets of Mosman today, I met Jillian Skinner the incumbent Liberal member for the NSW seat of the North Shore. Surely she has to have the easiest gig in the world.

The electorate of North Shore has the lowest lowest proportion of low income households in the country; the highest proportion of voters working in Finance, insurance, property and business; the lowest proportion of tradesmen and labourers and 62% of all children attend private schools.
To put it simply you can not even get a more obvious seat which would vote for the Liberal Party.

In fact for the 2011 NSW State Election on March 26, only three candidates have been put forward and those are Ms Skinner from the Liberal Party, a Greens candidate and a Christian Democratic Party candidate. Labor haven't even bothered in this election to field a candidate at all.

I wonder on the swing calculators what happens in such a situation. On a two-party preferred basis, does that mean that the ALP scores 0%? If so, what is the point of Jillian Skinner actually being on the streets in the first place? If she wanted to, she could probably spend the whole campaign in Saint-Tropez sipping Pernod and listening to Didier Lockwood whilst reading Le Monde...

...at least that's what I'd do if I was in such a safe and virtually uncontested seat. Where do I sign up for the gig?

Horse 1159 - A-League 2020

The basic problem as I see it is that there are far too many football codes in Australia all competing for limited fan funds. Quite often you'll hear talk of expansion clubs moving into other codes "territory" as though they were placing new armies on the Risk board.

Collectively the various armies of the football tribes are spread too thinly. If there was basically one competition, then things like TV rights would all be consolidated. My proposal would solve a lot of these problems in a way which I find highly entertaining but you might not.


Allow me to dream for just a second. Some people are going to be offended by this post, and I say pooh to them. Rugby League is a stupid game and should be wiped off the face of the earth like the pondscum it is*. Australian Rules football although being invented in Australia, is really akin to the NFL in the United States. It draws large crowds but is a bit myopic for my liking.

In my ideal world, the NRL would be shut down yesterday if not sooner and although the AFL is very very good, it still sadly also needs to be shut down to make my proposal viable.


This proposal looks at an A-League of the future; hopefully to be fully operative by 2020, because Football truly is the beautiful game, Rugby League is a stupid game and Australian Rules is an irrelevant game.


The 10 existing A-League teams will stay:

1. Sydney FC - Sydney Football Stadium
2. Central Coast Mariners - Grahame Park
3. Newcastle Jets - Newcastle Stadium
4. Queensland Roar - Lang Park
5. Gold Coast United - Robina Stadium
6. Melbourne Victory - Docklands
7. Melbourne Heart - Melbourne Rectangular
8. Adelaide United - Hindmarsh Stadium
9. Perth Glory - Perth Oval
10. Wellington Phoenix - Wellington Stadium


To compensate for the loss of the NRL and AFL, the following clubs will be reformed as football clubs.


11. Brisbane City (ex-Broncos - the Broncos is a stupid name) - Lang Park
12. The Valley FC (ex-Lions) - Queen Elizabeth II
13. Parramatta FC (ex-Eels) - Parramatta Stadium
14. Penrith FC (ex-Panthers) - Penrith Stadium
15. Canberra United (will assume ownership of the Raiders) - Bruce Stadium
16. Geelong FC (ex-Cats) - Kardinia Park
17. Adelaide FC (ex-Crows) - Football Park
18. Port Adelaide FC (ex-Power) - Football Park
19. Fremantle FC (ex-Dockers) - Subiaco Oval
20. St George FC (ex-Dragons/Steelers) - Olympic Park, Sydney
21. Collingwood FC (ex-Magpies) - MCG
22. Richmond FC (ex-Tigers) - Melbourne Rectangular
23. Essendon FC (ex-Bombers) - MCG
24. Carlton FC (ex-Blues) - Princes Park
25. St Kilda FC (ex-Saints) - Olympic Park, Melbourne
26. Sydney City FC (ex-Swans, Roosters) - Sydney Cricket Ground
27. South Sydney FC (ex-Souths) - Sydney Football Stadium
28. Canterbury-Bankstown Utd (ex-Bulldogs) -
29. Footscray FC (ex-Bulldogs) - Olympic Park, Sydney

These clubs will be added, taking into account the clubs which already exist:

30. Wollongong Utd - Wollongong Showground
31. Pride of the North FC (Northern Territory) - Darwin and Alice Springs
32. Tasmania Utd - Launceston and Hobart

Of course I do realise that some existing clubs like the Wests-Tigers, North Melbourne, Hawthorn, Melbourne Storm, Gold Coast Titans etc will be wiped from the face of the earth but I don't think that anyone is likely to miss them. I mean they barely car about them now do they?

The new league would be organised into 2 divisions with 16 teams each, and the clubs would be promoted and relegated between the leagues on a three-up three-down basis with the 3rd placed team in A-League 2 playing the 14th placed side in A-League 1 for the third spot.

The bottom three clubs would be relegated back into the respective state leagues with the top clubs from the states which the relegated clubs came from replacing them.


The Australian FA Cup would be played on the basis that the 32 A-League teams would arrive in the round of 64 which would be the first round proper. The remaining 32 spots would be initially awarded on a one for one basis as per the A-League as follows:

NSW - 10, VIC - 9, QLD - 4, SA - 3, WA - 2, TAS - 1, ACT - 1, NZ - 1, NT - 1


I think that this should pretty well satisfy most existing pundits of most clubs and if not, too bad.


The number of league and cup fixtures aught to be enough to have everyone playing home and away quite comfortably, and with a bit of fiddling then you only need at very maximum two clubs playing at the same venue.


And for those of you who doubt whether or not this is at all possible, the old NSL was demolished and replaced as was the BRL when it was replaced with the Queensland Cup; SANZAR managed to install a competition across three entire countries.

Perhaps David Gallop and Andrew Demetriou may need to be sent into an oubliette until they agree and if they don't we could always have a People's Revolt in Federation Square and Martin Place until they agree. If they still don't then we could always resort to having a revolution and using the guilotine... for the good of the game.



*The Challenge is on. If you actually like Rugby League and want to defend it, let's start a blog war. I will be happy to engage in robust debate on the subject and make you look foolish.

Horse 1158 - Silence Is Golden - Liverpool 3 - Man Utd 1

Liverpool 3 - Man Utd 1

Kuyt 34'

Kuyt 34'

Kuyt 34'

Hernandes 90'

Highlights Video from TV3, NZ:
http://www.3news.co.nz/VIDEO-Dirk-Kuyt-hat-trick-in-Liverpools-3-1-win-over-Man-U/tabid/317/articleID/201112/Default.aspx

Usually when Man Utd lose, you hear Sir Alex go on the telly and tell how the referee was crap, or the linesman was crap, or something was horrid but never that his side were outplayed and lost to opponents who played better and did well on the day.
Sir Alex's response to the BBC and even MUTV was... silence.

Dirt Kuyt became the first player since Beardsley in 1990, when Liverpool last won the league, to score a hat-trick in the Liverpool-Man Utd fixture. All of his goals met their strike from within the six yars box which says more than anything else that Man United have a leaky defence problem which needs to be plugged.

Javier Hernandes did manage to score a consolation goal in the 90th minute off a Ryan Giggs cross  but it barely even got a register from the home fans. What was fun was the turnaround of Liverpool fans of Man United's chant "We're Man United and we'll do what we want" to "You're Man United and you'll do what you're told."

Indeed there appears to be a total media blackout from Man United players and staff. The only comment which has been found by anyone comes courtesy of Twitter and Rio Ferdinand:


"Bad result today no excuses."
 - http://twitter.com/rioferdy5

Perhaps Sir Alex knows that there is nothing and no-one to blame up himself and his players and the old adage that if you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything might be true because Sir Alex hasn't said anything nice for so long that he's actually incapable of it these days.

All I know is, that the silence is golden.

Horse 1157 - Daewoo Axed, Holden Next?

Back on the 19th of January I predicted the beginning of the end of Holden with GM's plans to introduce Opel as a competing brand and sell better quality cars to rubbish the Holden brand.
http://rollo75.blogspot.com/2011/01/horse-1138-exit-holden-stage-left-enter.html
Guess what? GM has done something else which could see the demise of the Holden brand. They've axed Daewoo in Korea.

If you go to the ex Daewoo website at http://www.gmdaewoo.co.kr you're faced with a giant Chevrolet bow-tie. If you then follow the links provided and go to http://www.chevrolet.co.kr you notice that GM has rebranded all Daewoos in Korea with their American Chevrolet names.

What are those names? Spark, Aveo, Cruze, Captiva etc. Apart from the Aveo which is rebadged as a Barina in Australia due to some sort of legacy reasons, all four of those cars are sold in Australia as Holdens. Heck, when PM Gillard went to see the Holden factory last week, what were the majority of the cars which she saw coming off the production line? Chevrolet Cruzes destined for export.

If GM is prepared to put the knife through the Daewoo brand in its native Korea, then what chance does Holden have in Australia? It's all good and proper for the Holden brand to be trading of its past kudos, but at what point will it be decided that it's not worth the effort any more? Holden as a brand only trades in Australia and New Zealand, and possibly in other Pacific Island nations, but when the total market population is less than even some cities around the world, would GM in its big tower in Detroit think it really worth keeping the brand?
Remember, the Holden R8 Clubsport is already exported under the Chevrolet badge as a Chevrolet Lumina in some countries. How long will it be before the HRT itself is given the flick and rebranded as the Chevrolet racing team?... and don't say it can't happen because I have a picture.

Holden - mene mene tekel upharsin... the writing is on the wall.

Horse 1156 - "Likes" Per Minute

And I was like talking to Mesha and she was like crying and stuff and Mr Wilson was like in our faces and like "Stop talking when I'm talking to the class" and like "You need to be quiet". I didn't say anything like but Mesha was still crying like and I like didn't say anything, like, just be cool, like and we like left the room by like the back door and stuff...

I completely understand that English is an evolving language and I am also fully aware that especially in the last 20 or so years, the word "like" has increasingly been used as not just a comparative or a verb but as a hedge, a quotative and a particle of discourse. Whilst I can't necessarily do anything about these uses except metaphorically bang my head on the coffee table, it does provide in my opinion a useful guide to the relative inanity and or stupidity of the conversation.

My somewhat informal research has involved me eavesdropping on conversations which I otherwise would not and taken part in and not wished to do so either but have been more or less forced to overhead because some people in public spaces are quite boisterous. Due to the proximity and loudness of these conversations either on the train or the bus, I have devised what I think is an appropriate speed limit for stupidity; measured in "likes per minute" of ten.

At 10lpm it appears to me that the person speaking actually begins to lose the meaning of what they are trying to say. A 10lpm conversation is annoying and is just bordering on the edge of stupidity.

At 15lpm, conversation has more or less broken into Valspeak and makes the speaker sound like a total dolt. The Bard himself said through the voice of Emilia in Othello: "O gull! O dolt! As ignorant as dirt!" This I think sums up a 15lpm conversation most eloquently.
At speeds above 15lpm, my personal level of irritation is quite high and I have a latent desire to punish the offender with a decent thud to the back of the head with a some great tome. I would suggest a hard cover copy of Ulysees by James Joyce.

If you do find yourself speaking at a rate of more than 10lpm, do yourself and everyone else a favour and either desist or preferably stop talking altogether. If you really can not express yourself without resulting to such verbal dross, then perhaps a decent education is in order. Huzzah!

Horse 1155 - Get A Wagon - or Four Wheel Drives Kill Small Children

I've long hated Four Wheel Drives and have argued that they don't belong in cities because they're incompatible with other traffic and road furniture and that they're ironically more unsafe than other vehicles on the road.

This report which I was emailed, produced by the Queensland Injury Surveillance Unit paints a dark picture indeed:
http://www.qisu.org.au/MODCORE/PREVIOUSBULLITEN/BACKEND/UPLOAD_FILE/ISSUE076.PDF

In Australia pedestrian crashes are responsible for half of all transport related deaths of children aged under five years. Of these fatalities half are the result of a low speed driveway run-over.

A recent study examining driveway run-over deaths of young children in Australia found that most fatalities involved toddlers being reversed over by a large

4WD vehicle in the driveway of their own home by a member of their immediate family.

Nearly 80% of the cases were described as occurring at home with 60% taking place in the driveway or garage/carport. Forty per cent of runovers occurred on a Saturday or Sunday while 40% took place between 3pm and 6pm in the afternoon and 32% between 8am and 12pm in the morning.

The argument usually given by people who buy 4WDs is that they've bought the vehicle because of their concern for the safety of their children. Admittedly 4WDs have on the whole become a lot safer in the past 5 years. In 2005 the average NCAP safety rating for Small Off-Road vehicles was 3.2 stars, and for Large Off-Road vehicles 2.9 stars. This in recent years has risen to an average for both classes of above 3.8 stars.
It is all very well for a car to perform better in a crash, but that describes a vehicle suffering a heavy impact and usually at speed. It is quite a different story in the land of car vs small child.

Let's be honest here, a Four Wheel Drive or the hideously stupid name of SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle) is in reality little more than a jacked up station wagon in most circumstance. Most Four Wheel Drives have never left the tarmac and would be totally unsuited to driving on an unsealed road let alone proper off-road work; because they are jacked up station wagons their line of sight is higher than an equivalent car.

I seriously wonder about the logic behind having a car in which the window lines are significantly higher than that of a small child. If you can't see something or more importantly someone darting behind your car, then how pray tell can you insist that it's safer to own the stupid car in the first place.
In Mosman last year, a Year 1 student was killed when she came out from between some parked cars on the street and was run over by a Range Rover. The Range Rover's bonnet line was higher than the poor girl, and the driver of the vehicle never actually saw the girl.
It therefore doesn't surprise me that statistics such as those produced by Queensland Injury Surveillance Unit point to the fact that large Four Wheel Drives kill small children.

Of course I am prejudiced; I admit that, but I have never even seen a single rational reason why people in the cities actually need a Four Wheel Drive. If it's to do with space, get a wagon!

Gratuitous Cross Promotion

http://thisisdouglas.blogspot.com

Horse 1154 - A Simple Theory

I have a really weird theory. I bet that if a big enough picture was drawn amongst the general populace, we could determine someone's age just but their response to one simple question. More than likely I've already thought of your response, but if not, send them in.

I'm going to give you one word, and you need to complete the next line of the song. So here goes:

Stop...

scroll down

keep going

... in the name of love, before you break my heart.
- "Stop! In the Name of Love", The Supremes, 1965.

... children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.
- "For What It's Worth", Buffalo Springfield, 1967.

... before, you tear me all apart. Stop before you go and break my heart.
- "Stop!", Sam Brown, 1988

... Stand there where you are. Before you go too far, Before you make a fool out of love.
- "Stop", Erasure, 1988.

... collaborate and listen. Ice is back with my brand new invention.
- "Ice Ice Baby", Vanilla Ice, 1990.

... Hammer time!
- "U Can't Touch This", MC Hammer, 1990.

... right now. Thank you very much. I need somebody with a human touch.
- "Stop", Spice Girls, 1997.

... the rock. Stop the rock. Can't stop the rock
- "Can't Stop The Rock", Apollo 440, 1999.

... before, you tear me all apart. Stop before you go and break my heart.
- "Stop!",Jamelia (cover of Sam Brown), 2004.

I bet that if we compile the a long enough list and compare it to people's responses, then there will general correlation to the line of the song that they thought of, and the year they were born.

If you have any more responses then this list will become more accurate over time.

Horse 1153 - We Need to Re-Think Scrooge

Bob Cratchit is the name of Ebenezer Scrooge's supposedly "underpaid" clerk in his now famous story A Christmas Carol. However a small look at the facts reveals that Cratchit himself is a toady little whinger.

Bob Cratchit is paid the "misery" sum of "fifteen bob a week". Whilst that sounds to be not very much and also incidentally is the current price of the Sydney Morning Herald (yes it's $1.50), there is the small matter of inflation to attend to.

Fifteen Bob a week works out to be $78 per year, but that was back in 1834. Even if you adopt a poor measure of inflation at only 4%, that produces a multiple of 1034.9063. If you multiply that by $78, then you get $80,722 which is a pretty good sort of wage to be on. If you take the average rate of inflation at 5% then Mr Cratchit is paid a staggering $439,137 per year.

In short we don't need to feel sorry for Bob Cratchit. In fact we should be feeling sorry for Ebenezer Scrooge who not only has to pay an exorbitant wage to this guttersnipe but he also shoulders all of the business risk as well since his business partner Marley died.

To put this in perspective Friedrich Engels who would later with Karl Marx write the Communist Manifesto wrote in his 1844 book "The Condition of the Working-Class in England" that the average wage in 1844 was only 10/6 a week which is still 4/6 a week less than Bob Cratchit was paid ten years earlier.

Admittedly until at least the late 19th century, Cratchit's home of Camden Town was considered an "unfashionable" locality but even then its close proximity to the then biggest trading centre in the world was incredibly useful. Even today the average price for a 1 bedroom flat within its NW1 postcode is well above the £300,000 mark.

And we're expected to feel sorry for him?.. not likely.

Horse 1152 - I Just Want a Phone That Works

This is going to sound dumb, but in the almost 30 years that mobile phones have existed, how come no-one can make a better mobile phone?

Telephone quality from fixed land-lines, works out to be about a sampling rate of 11kHz at 8-bit and in mono. For all intents and purposes this created a warm sound in the earpiece, had a good range across the audio spectrum and could be easily understood by most people at the other end provided you spoke properly.

I guess this is the fault of hardware manufacturers, Messers Nokia, iPhone, Sagem etc and not the fault of the carriers. Whilst they're trying to jam cameras, MP3 capability, internets, texty and wordy things and apps into their phones, I think that they've lost sight of the first purpose of a mobile phone... TO BE A PHONE.

Companies like Telstra, Optus, Vodafone etc. are doing their level best to open up ever increasing bandwidth and data abilities across 3G, 4G, 85G with a bernaise sauce for all I care but the truth is that they're still being held back by the crud that passes off for handsets*. Why is it that on a landline I can speak to someone very easily, but on a mobile, they sound like they're in a nightclub made entirely of tinfoil, filled up with sludge and on Saturn?

Even if I get a second hand 1983 Toyota Corolla with a bad case of rust, and no radio because some evil little munchkin has flogged it, it isn't a problem because I know full well that I can drive it at 110 down the motorway and get where I'm going easily. I have a Westinghouse Microwave oven at home which dates from 1986. I know that I can put food into it and a few minutes later I'm going to have a yummy curry (even one which came from a tin!).
But if I shell out 700 bucks, why is it that I can't get a mobile phone which at least sounds halfway decent? Isn't that the point of mobile? To aid communication? Not to hear "graaaaa ch ch ch zeeet apple sauce and milk".

So you're on report Messers Nokia, iPhone and Sagem. Please try to do a better job next time.

*I remember the days when Telecom made their own handsets in house, they were/are brilliant. I hope that Telstra makes mobile phones in their own right. I'm sure they'd be 10000% better than the ones made by Messers Nokia, iPhone and Sagem.

Horse 1151 - NSW Election 2011 - Another Turn on the Swings

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/state-election-2011/keneally-plunges-to-record-low-20110215-1av7d.html

THE Keneally government is heading for a defeat of ''historic proportions'' at next month's election, according to the first poll of the election campaign, which shows Labor could be reduced to as few as 13 seats in the new Parliament.

- Sydney Morning Herald. 16th Feb 2011.

In Horse 1149, I'd made some assumptions based on an expected swing against the Labor Party of 12% in keeping with similar results in other elections. If however, the Sydney Morning Herald is to be believed then this changes everything.

For the Labor Party to be left with a quite frankly pathetic baker's dozen of seats, would require a swing against them of 20.5%. Assuming a uniform swing of 18.8% against Labor and towards the coalition with the remainder produces the following results:

Liberal 58

Nationals 17

(making a coalition of 75)

Labour 13

Greens 2

Indies 3

Kristina Keneally would retain her own seat of Heffon on that assumption but even then, the backlash might be against her personally.

Interestingly it produces a rather odd situation. The Liberals could in theory form government in their own right without the need to form a coalition. This in itself changes the dynamic of the house and the position and role of the National Party in NSW.
The Nationals could take several positions. They could reject forming a coalition government which is the equivalent of political suicide, or they might even occupy a very special position in Australian politics.

If the Nationals were to form coalition government with the Liberals, they might adopt a position as they have done in WA following the 2008 state election:

"We are not prepared to go into a traditional coalition so we'll be accepting ministries based on being independent ministers, that reserve the right to exempt ourselves from Cabinet and vote against an issue on the floor of the Parliament if it's against the wishes of the people we represent."

- WA Nationals leader, Brendon Grylls. 14 Sep 2008 (from the ABC)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/14/2364004.htm

If this was the case, then potentially the Nationals could sit on either side of the floor as their whims dictated. They would have 17 seats versus Labor's 13, which means that they could occupy the position of "opposition in residence" and Labour would be the "opposition in exile".
They could in practice cross the floor against legislation that they didn't like, and put up a louder voice than the Labor Party. Of course it would still pass because the Liberals would have the ability to ferry anything through the lower house by virtue of numbers but at least a different sort of voice would be heard.

This general position has been occupied before. In 1983 when Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen started his sixth consecutive term as Premier of Queensland, the then Liberal leader Terry White (yes, that Terry White who would later start a chemist's chain of shops) and in 1986 William Knox, both regularly led the Liberal Party to cross the floor because someone quite rightly stood against Sir Joh's memorable catch phrase and instruction: "Don't you worry about that".

This time if the numbers fall out, then the Nationals can worry and should "worry about that" because they'll be the most credible opposition on the floor of the house in NSW.

Horse 1150 - NSW Election 2011 - My Electorate

I've already predicted a smack-down for Labor in the 2011 NSW State Election, so I'll now turn my attention closer to home look at my own electorate of Toongabbie.

Toongabbie is only a new electorate having been created in 2007; as such its only member has been Nathan Rees. The area traditionally sits in Labor heartland and should in theory be a very very safe Labor seat. The difference in this election being that a "safe" Labor seat is something a bit like a fairy tale, and should not be believed.

In this election, there are only three listed candidates at this stage. There is a Green who in the 2007 election posted a result even smaller than that of the Christian Democrats, and the two majors.

The Liberal candidate is Kirsty Lloyd a social worker, cafe owner and a fundraiser for the Royal Society for Deaf and Blind Children. Whilst this sounds like a set of excellent credentials on paper this perhaps is a little diversion. Her husband is Scott Lloyd who is a councilor for Parramatta City Council; given the Liberal Party's reputation for fiddling with pre-selection, it makes you wonder if the only reason she's been put up as a candidate is because the Liberal's think that people will remember the name. It doesn't quite help that most of the electorate happens to lie in Holroyd and Blacktown councils though.

The Labor candidate is the sitting member Nathan Rees who himself had a pre-selection battle against Susai Benjamin who is a solicitor and works as a NSW Treasury review officer.
Rees however has one major advantage that virtually every Labor candidate doesn't have in NSW... sympathy. Rees will be remembered as the former Premier who was removed from office by the forces which installed Kristina Keneally. Perhaps ironically an anti-Keneally campaign by the Liberal Party actually strengthens Rees' bid for reelection, and with the lack of minor parties to split the vote dramatically, you'd imagine that Rees would again win the seat simple on the strength of first preferences.

Nathan Rees will probably be returned to the NSW State Parliament I suspect as the "safest" Labor seat in the state, and the real irony is that it will because of a backlash against his own party.

Horse 1149 - NSW Election 2011 - A Turn on the Swings

The 2011 NSW State Election will be an interesting one, though one that's perhaps mind-numbingly easy to predict.

Given that:
- the 2009 Queensland Election saw a 4.6% swing away from Labor,
- the 2010 Tasmianian Election saw a 12.3% swing away from Labor,
- the 2010 Victorian Election saw a 6.8% swing away from Labor,
- the 2010 South Australian Election saw a 7.8% swing away from Labor,
- the 2010 Federal Election saw a 5.4% swing away from Labor,
it's pretty obvious right now that "brand Labor" has a whiff of "off cabbage" to the electorate.

In NSW in particular where the Liberal Party is now totally unknown to the majority of the electorate and the Labor Party is really on the nose, then it's not much of a jump to suggest that a swing against Labor of 12% or worse is highly likely.

What's really intriguing though is the fact that if it wasn't for the by-election in Penrith, the preference for the local candidate is almost entirely determined by geography.
Provided you lived south of the Parramatta River and to the West in Sydney, you got a Labor member. If you lived on the North Shore and Sutherland, you got a Liberal member. If you lived in the two steel towns of Wollongong and Newcastle, you were likely to get a Labour member. And if you lived in the country, you'd usually get a National member except where a Liberal was running alone, or in places like Bathurst, the Blue Mountains or the Snowy.

If we assume a roughly uniform swing of 12% against Labor in NSW (which is probably likely given the results in Tasmania and the general loathing in NSW), then it's likely that the results will be as follows:

Liberal 44

National 14

(making a coalition of 58, 11 seats more than the 47 required for government)

Labor 26

Greens 2

Independents 7

Interestingly the seat of Kiama which is currently sitting on that 12% line and is currently considered to be a safe seat, might come down to a matter of tens of votes. The actual result would be irrelevant considering that 11 other seats would flip before it, but it produces an interesting statistic.

Also of note is the seat of Port Stephens. What I find utterly mind-blowing is that the 2007 result was eventually decided on 5th preferences and still managed to come down to just 66 votes in 2007. Yet for some reason that still totally mystifies me, there are only two candidates running in the 2011 election. You'd think that even if an independent stuck their name on the ballot paper, they be able to blow the whole seat open. But then again if this seat was a barometer for the whole election, it would swing 12% in favour of the Liberal candidate.

Still, come 27th March, Barry O'Farrell is likely to be the next Premier of NSW and I bet that within a week the "decent and respectable people of New South Wales" will wake up with a post-election hangover and realise that the water companies, schools, and the railways will all be on eBay.

Horse 1148 - NSW: Making Promises We Know We'll Never Keep

I think that it's pretty obvious to all that Kristina Keneally and the never ending sideshow that the is the Labor Party will not be returned to Government following the NSW State Election. In the light of this, perhaps she should just ditch any pretense of trying to pitch for office and simply play the whole thing for laughs. At very least it would make for a few very entertaining weeks of political campaigning instead of the usual dross we have to put up with. To this end I have a few suggestions for Labor Party promises (that they know they will never have to keep).

Transport - Build a Flying Fox to Perth:
Not only would a trans-national Flying Fox would reduce transport costs by godzillions* of dollars but it would have the added benefits of being insanely fun, and being run largely by gravity would reduce greenhouse gases.
There is the small problem of generating enough steel to actually build giant towers more than a couple of hundred kilometers tall but considering this is a promise that we know will never be kept, we don't even need a contingency plan.

Crime - Get Tough on Crime:
Since virtually every state government election campaign in my lifetime has included the words "get tough on crime" then I'd propose to "get really tough on crime". People with experience about getting tough on crime include the KGB, FSB, NKVD etc. People under the new proposed crime policy wouldn't go to gaol, they'd simply become unpersons and never be seen of again.
Perhaps we could put maternity wards in gaols on the basis that since every child is going to grow up and become a criminal anyway, why not just short circuit the process and take them from out of mum and into the gaol cell.
Of course this policy seems ridiculous, but considering this is a promise that we know will never be kept we don't even need to justify it.

Health - Reduce the Number of Sick People:
The problem with our hospitals is that people keep on getting sick and having to go there. Obviously the problem isn't with the hospital system but the amount of sick people. Apart from killing people which would reduce the total number of sick people and is obviously a bad idea (though given that this is a series of promises that we know will never be kept, I don't know if that matters), the most obvious way to reduce the number of sick people living in an area is to change the size of the area.
This proposal is to force Queensland to annexe great slabs of northern NSW, Victoria can have massive chunks to the south, we'll expand the ACT to the size of France and Jervis Bay Territory can have the rest, except for the confines of the NSW Parliament building which will remain the only territory belonging to NSW.
Sure it's probably churlish to just give away chunks of NSW to other states so that they can have the problems of all those sick people, but they same could be said when Ms Keneally gave away the state's power companies for a cheese and ham sandwich with lettuce (good lettuce).

Wages and the Cost of Living:
NSW is uncompetitive because it simply costs too much to live here. This is largely to do with the cost of housing being exorbitant and this causes a pull on the demand for wages, thus repeating the cycle. The solution? Hyper-inflation.
By simply printing off godzillions* of dollars, people's wages would become worthless. If people start becoming desperate enough then they'll reduce their expectations and be willing for a lower real wage. Hyper-inflation worked perfectly well in Russia in the early 90s when people's life savings were simply wiped off the board, and by lowering the cost of real wages to the point where people will be willing to work for a turnip a day, then we'd be able to compete with China and India. Of course it's a terrible idea and no-one would actually want to carry it out but considering this is a promise that we know will never be kept we don't even need to worry about the consequences.

Schools:
As from this year 11E7, NSW will move from Base Ten to Base Twelve as per Horse 785. That way we'll get a whole generation of children being able to deal with a more sensible number system.
Schools will be equipped with lots of exercise bikes connected to electric generators. This way we'll solve two problems at once: both the problem of electrical generation and the problem of obesity in children. To that end all schools will be fitted with narrower doors so that fat kiddies can't get out and will have to cycle more.
The NSW State Parliament will be shut down permanently and all decisions will be given to Year 2 students. It might result in something like massive subsidies for ice cream but the results wouldn't be any more childish than what currently comes out of Macquarie St.

*A godzillion is very big number which is even bigger than a brazillion.

Horse 1147 - Consider The Ant

In our house at the moment we have a surfeit of ants. This made me think of two rather interesting things:

1. I don't know of anyone else other than me who would knowingly use the word surfeit.
and
2. This - Proverbs 6:6: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.

The first major scientific study of ants was made by a Mr Auguste Forel who was a Swiss biologist who wrote a treatise on ants called Les fourmis de la Suisse (The Ants of Switzerland) in 1874, but it wasn't until 1910 that an American entomologist called William Morton Wheeler first wrote in the peer-reviewed academic journal Science of his theory that ants were mostly female. Testing of ant hormones and tests under the microscope confirmed this, much to the great delight of an increasing field of Myrmecologists.

Proverbs 6:6 and the surrounding verses pose an interesting problem. Namely that the phrasing of Hebrew words in Proverbs 6:6-8 is entirely female. The word drki·e means "her ways" rather than his ways.

How could the writer possibly know given the fact that it took both chemical testing and a microscope to determine that most ants are female*? Did the ancients have some sort of mystical thing that we don't know about? Or is it just possible that the Bible actually has been inspired by God?

*Moreover, why does the NIV in an effort to be "gender neutral" make the change from "her" to "its" when the writers never intended this to be? Is the NIV being "white-anted"?

Horse 1146 - The Greenhouse Effect Exists... duh.

The Earth is roughly 93 million miles away from the sun and at that distance a theoretical blackbody (one that absorbs 100% of all electromagnetic radiation); therefore the Earth should in theory have an average surface temperature of about 5.3°C... but it doesn't...
The Earth is covered in oceans and atmosphere and as such reflects about 30% of of all electromagnetic radiation; therefore the Earth should in theory have an average surface temperature of about -18.6°C... but it doesn't...
The Earth's atmosphere absorbs radiation, and along with the thermal re-emission of heat due to both the land and the heat being trapped by the atmosphere itself, the Earth actually has an average surface temperature of 14.4°C... and rising.

A French fellow called Joseph Fourier was looking into describing the laws of heat conduction as early as 1824. Fourier's Law (also known as the Law of Heat Conduction) had predicted that the Earth should be much cooler than it actually was. He assumed that either there must be something in interstellar space or that the Earth's own atmosphere was causing the heat to be trapped. His proposal of a "Greenhouse Effect" was made in 1827.

In the 1860s John Tyndall was the first to quantitatively prove that various gases had differing abilities to absorb radiant heat. He was also able to prove using a thermopile, that not only did people breathe out CO2 but that the biggest single factor in the Greenhouse Effect was in fact water vapour.

In 1896 Svante Arrhenius came up with the theory that by altering CO2 levels, the planet would heat up and therefore become more productive.

"If the quantity of carbonic acid in the air should sink to one-half its present percentage, the temperature would fall by about 4°; a diminution to one-quarter would reduce the temperature by 8°. On the other hand, any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth's surface by 4°C; and if the carbon dioxide were increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8°C."

"We often hear lamentations that the coal stored up in the earth is wasted by the present generation without any thought of the future, and we are terrified by the awful destruction of life and property which has followed the volcanic eruptions of our days. We may find a kind of consolation in the consideration that here, as in every other case, there is good mixed with the evil. By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind."

So given that the idea of The Greenhouse Effect has been around now and more or less provable for about 120 years, why then do people think that it's other trendy name "Global Warming" doesn't exist?

The most obvious example which should have served as a warning of the effects of CO2 is that of Venus. Venus is a planet which is about 90% the size Earth but which has a highly relective atmosphere which reflects rough 80% of all electromagnetic radiation; therefore Venus should in theory have an average surface temperature of about -29.5°C... but it doesn't...

Venus has not only has a very dense atmosphere but one which is rich in CO2. The atmosphere of Venus is roughly 96% CO2 and at the surface the temperatures are something like 500°C. The poor Soviet Venera 4 probe lasted 93 minutes before being crushed to death by the atmosphere.

The four gases which contribute most to the Greenhouse Effect on Earth are Water Vapour, Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Ozone.
Admittedly we can't do much about water vapour, but if the planet heats up then the volume of water which exists will expand, which might have nasty consequences. Ozone and Methane together count for about 3% of the atmosphere but CO2 is something which we're actually adding to.

It has been said that in the time of Shakespeare a squirrel could leap from treetop to treetop and cover the very length and breadth of England. Whether or not this was true or merely poetic (ie a fib) is moot, but the point is that England which once had great stands of Oak trees, is now a broadly pastoral or urban country. The once mighty Oaks now lie rotting at the bottom of the ocean, having been cut down, turned into ships and sunk during the times of Elizabeth I to Charles II.
Even in my lifetime, the Amazon rainforest has shrunk by 20% and it is expected that by 2030 more than half of the Amazon will be gone. Interestingly the soils left behind after the rainforest have been cut down are good for farming for about 10 years, and then they take on a character resembling that of sub-Saharan African soils.

The point being that with 200 years of solid industrialisation with no signs of abaiting, and with forests being cleared, I find it really difficult to believe that CO2 emissions increases are purely the result of natural factors. To suggest that humans have little control over the weather and environment is mind-numbingly stupid.

Now think what you will about all of this, but if there was an event which you were warned about which might or might not happen, wouldn't it make sense to prepare for that event occuring even if it didn't take place? Some people might even call that taking out an insurance policy.
Insurance by definition is a form of risk management which is used as a hedge against an uncertain loss. If we're being told about an uncertain loss of life as we know it due to Global Warming or the Greenhouse Effect, isn't it prudent to take out insurance against it?

As yet, no-one to my mind has come up with a satisfying answer as to why exactly that isn't the case, other than the immediate economic disadvantage. Except that just like in Queensland with the floods recently, if you don't think about adequate insurance, you're likely to lose everything.

Horse 1145 - I Want My Jet-Pack Fiesta

"Oh wow. Hoo-bloody-ray" you might say, "Rollo's linking us to yet some other car website that we don't really care about". Well guess what, this time you really should care about it because in all likelyhood this idea could change the world.

http://www.jaguar.com/au/en/#/about_jaguar/c_x75/

The Jaguar C-X75 (C for coupe, X for eXperimental and 75 for Jaguar being 75 years old), is powered by two "gas micro-turbines" or what we would normally call "jets".

The two jet engines are each about the size of a 2 litre Coke bottle and spinning at 80,000rpm they produce 140kW (184bhp). This however isn't the exciting bit, the two jet engines charge batteries which in turn drive four electric traction motors which at the wheels each provide peak power outputs of 580kW (760bhp).

The idea is similar in principle to diesel-electric locomotives which are commonly used on railway locomotives. By continuously charging the batteries even when the power isn't directly being used, the power generator (the jet) can be run more efficiently. Jets in particular run at their most efficient when being run at constant revs.
The other really amazing thing about jet engines is that they are ludicrously simple in operation. Basically most turbofan jet engines on passenger aircraft consist of the main fan, a series of compressors, a combustion chamber and a series of turbines used to extract auxilliary power. On a car it would be a little different. Instead of the thrust of the engine being used to drive the car forwards, it is the power generated from the turbines which would then be used to generate electricity.
Jet engines can be run on all sorts of fuels; provided the designers get their thinking caps on, we may be able to run them on something renewable like canola oil.

If you'll allow me to dream for a while, I can conceive the day when jet-electric cars are not just the subject of concept hypercars but everyday motoring. I don't think that it's impossible in say 15 years time for a car the size of a Yaris to be fitted with a jet engine the size of a Coke can. If it were to produce 80kW (105bhp), then this aught to be enough for some quite spirited driving. Toyota I imagine would be in a better place than anyone else to modify their existing technologies considering that their hybrid system is already a petrol-electric of sorts.

A very small jet (hence the name gas micro-turbine) would take up even less space than a conventional petrol or diesel engine. The whole problem of what to do with hot exhaust gases could probably be very easily solved given that extra space.

I hope that in the 2043 when I am 65 years old that the sort of car I will be driving will be cool. I hope that the '39 Ford Comet Jet-Electric (running on Canola Oil) will come out in RS form and produce 220bhp at the wheels. If the future turns out to be less cool than I imagine then heads will roll... you hear me?!

Let's Go Bananas!

Horse 1144 - Mr Abbott's Oppostion to a "Great Big New Tax"

Liberal Party supporters were sent a letter this week, yet again opposing what Mr Abbott has to say about the "great big new tax" which is designed to help QLD Flood victims. Which he (and I assume his party) is opposed to...

From the SMH:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/abbott-deflects-attack-on-levy-letter-20110203-1afjn.htm

It repeats Mr Abbott's reasons for opposing the levy and reasserts his allegation that the government was exploiting a tragedy to gouge taxpayers.

"Only a Prime Minister who is out of her depth would seek to exploit people's generosity to flood victims to try to win acceptance for yet another new tax," it says.

Somehow I don't know Mr Abbott, can I refer you to the famous racial discrimination case of Kettle Vs Pot?

Mr Abbott of all people has no right to complain about the Federal Government either spending money to help people in need, nor the right to complain about raising "special" taxes. The truth he that he's guilty or something far bigger than that.

http://www.health.gov.au/internet/ministers/publishing.nsf/Content/health-mediarel-yr2005-ta-abb004.htm?OpenDocument&yr=2005&mth=01

The Commonwealth Government today praised the state and territory governments for the co-operation in responding to the health crisis resulting from the recent Indian Ocean Tsunami.

"The coordinated efforts of all governments demonstrate our ability to use health resources effectively and efficiently in a crisis," Tony Abbott said.

Within 24 hours of the tsunami...

Just to hammer the point home, the press release was repeated verbatim on Mr Abbott's personal website.


http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/News/tabid/94/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/3739/AUSTRALIAS-TSUNAMI-HEALTH-RESPONSE-A-NATIONAL-EFFORT.aspx

“In addition to this there are also many doctors, nurses and medical professionals volunteering their skills and time to help the many thousands of victims in need of medical attention. This is the latest demonstration of the ideals of duty and service which characterize Australia’s health professionals,” Tony Abbott said.

So let me get this straight, when Mr Abbott was Federal Minister for Health he had no problem in sending almost a billion dollars in helping the people of Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Bangaldesh etc, but when it comes to the people of his own country, he has a different line?
Also as the Federal Minister for Health he was a member of a government which not only spent billions of dollars blowing the heck out of Iraqis, but he did so on the premise of an entire sting of lies? The obvious conclusion is that because the floods and following effects of Cyclone Yasi on the people of Queensland are actually real, that perhaps we shouldn't help them? Am I to assume that if we invented some pretend flooding that he'd be alright with that?

Was it somehow unreasonable to the Prime Minister to respond to a national crisis? The then opposition leader Malcolm Fraser criticised the then Federal Government's handling of the effects of Cyclone Tracy in 1974 when it set up the Darwin Reconstruction Commission, and subsequently extended the scope and reach of the Commission, and even when as far as to give self-government to the Territory in 1978 which means that over the next few years, aid to the Territory was completely hidden under the guise of the normal Northern Territory budget procedures.

Does anyone remember a certain piece of legislation entitled A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) 1999? In effect the GST is a regressive tax, which has a more pronounced effect on lower income earners, meaning that the tax consumes a higher proportion of their income, compared to those earning large incomes. Maybe that's what Mr Abbott is objecting to? Maybe he opposes the fact that richer people would be forced to pay a tax designed to raise $1.3bn as opposed to poorer people paying a tax which has raised circa $374bn in the 11 years of its operation.

Whilst Mr Abbott might oppose a "great big new tax" he had no problems with installing a "great big monstrous new tax system" did he? Something which costs the taxpayer a third of one percent of his own foul and incidious tax must be stopped before it's started, because that would mean that the Federal Government would have to take reponsibility for something, and he mighty very well be PM in the future. How dare the Gillard Government fulfil its duties under section 51 of the Constitution to "make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth". That's just reprehensible isn't it?

Horse 1143 - Fiat 500 - Fiat Lux

Because I am such a cheeky person, from time to time I will ask someone if I can have a go in their car. This morning a client of ours happened to mention that they'd just bought a new Fiat 500, and of course considering that the Ford Ka Mk2 is based off of this, I had to have a go.

This is that story...

When you step inside the 500, you are visually assaulted by a faux-retro dashboard. It is supposed to be "inspired" by the original, but somehow instead of the very austere interior of the original, the new 500 has a very plush dashboard that has more in common stylistically with a then "futurist" 1950s Kelvinator refridgerator. It's like a reimagining of what the past was when it was looking into the future... it truly makes your head spin.
Whatever the case, the car I drove was cream coloured, and it was nice to see that the interior was also highlighted in cool touch cream as opposed to the seas of indistinct grey plastics that seems to haunt so many car's interiors these days.
I liked the little details like the switches for various things. They were finished in a sort of chrome which added to the overall effect of the car.

It's all fine until you actually have to drive it though. I couldn't get over the fact of how quiet the engine was. I was expecting at very least some sort of happy little burble from under the bonnet, but it didn't even really do that.

To actually drive it is an almost unengaging experience. Perhaps Fiat has realised that the vast bulk of this car's time will be spent in peak hour traffic and as such, they've tried to completely make the car feel totally anonymous to drive.

Admittedly I didn't much of a chance to push the 500 hard (because it wasn't my car) but it just didn't have the same sort of sharp steering that either my Ka had, or that the current Mazda 2 has.
I suspect that like a lot of modern cars, it's had subtle understeer dialled into it in the interests of safety; this in consequence kills the fun. Perhaps something more direct would have been nicer.

It didn't feel as grounded as the new Mini, and it didn't feel as well built as either VW's Golf or Polo. A lot of those things can be changed with different spring and shock settings but if you've just bought a new car, then you're not likely to immediately fix something which isn't broken.

My verdict is that the Fiat 500 is all about the packaging but underneath is as fun to drive as a Yaris. Depending on build quality which has been a problem for Fiat in the past, that also might be an issue.
It seems to me that if you really want the Fiat 500, then it's purely because of aesthetics. If not then you're probably better off getting a Ford Fiesta, Mazda 2, Mini or VW Golf or Polo. All of those cars do different things better than the Fiat 500 does.

This is the best view of a Fiat 500 in my not very well paid opinion:

... the sight of someone else driving one... heh heh heh... poor deluded soul.

Horse 1142 - So called "Castle Doctrine" is based on lies.

During the last fortnight or so, debate raged in America about the effectiveness of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution following the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford and five other people including federal judge John Roll and a nine year old girl.


One of the justifications for (what I think is dangerously stupid) the justification of the Second Amendment, namely the "right to bear arms" is apparently something called "Castle Doctrine".

Castle Doctrine it seems gives someone the right to use deadly force to stop intruders coming into their home, because "a man's home is his castle" right? Legally it provides an excuse for murder, though under jurisdictions that have Castle Doctrine it is fobbed off as "justifiable homicide".

Supposedly Castle Doctrine arises from English Common Law, however I can not find any evidence that such a thing ever existed in English Common Law at all.

Enter Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Doctrine
The font of all knowledge Wikipedia (which is about as reliable as asking blokes down the pub), states that "Castle Doctrine (also known as a Castle Law or a Defense of Habitation Law) is an American legal doctrine arising from English Common Law" and then cites The New Jersey Self Defense Law, 2008. I have a problem with this.
Why is a citation for something which is grounded in "English Common Law" quoting something from the State of New Jersey? The text itself reads:

"The “Castle Doctrine” is a long-standing American legal concept arising from English Common Law that provides that one's abode is a special area in which one enjoys certain protections and immunities, that one is not obligated to retreat before defending oneself against attack, and that one may do so without fear of prosecution."

http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2008/Bills/A0500/159_I1.PDF
Again there's the pesky phrase "arising from English Common Law" but no actual evidence or citations to prove this.

So I then did a search through Google to find where Castle Doctrine came from and found this from the Connecticut General Assembly entitled "CASTLE DOCTRINE AND SELF-DEFENSE":
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2007/rpt/2007-r-0052.htm

"You asked about the “castle doctrine,” how it acquired its name, how many states have adopted bills on it, and any information about its effect in states that have adopted it."

It then says later:

"It is defined differently in different states. The name appears to have its origin in the English common law rules protecting a person's home and the phrase 'one's home is one's castle'."

Yet again this states that it has "its origin in the English common law rules" and again doesn't state where in English Common Law it comes from.

I then went to the State Library of NSW in search of this increasingly frustratingly difficult to find source from English Common Law and found four very heavy books:
- Jowitt's Dictionary of English Law, 3rd Edition (Thomson Reuters)
- Turning Points of the Common Law, Volumes 1 and 2 by The Right Hon The Lord Cooke of Thorndon KBE (he sounds dead posh, innit like?)
- Baker and Milsom Sources of English Legal History: Private Law to 1750 by John Baker

You'd think that specialist subject books on the sources of English Common Law would at least have a single example of Castle Doctrine actually in English Common Law cases, but I found NOTHING. Zero, zip, zilch, nada, diddly-squat!

Common Law is also known as Case Law and arises from precedent. Judges hand down their decisions through the various courts and tribunals, and if a similar case arises in future, then the principles which guided the first judge will be Common to those which guide the next one; hence the description.

The problem is that I can't find even a single example of Castle Doctrine ever existing in any English Common Law Cases; this lead me to think that it is a complete fabrication, a fib, a lie, an untruth, a pile of pants and a load of horse manure. Have I made myself clear yet?

Castle Doctrine is based on NOTHING!

... unless proven otherwise.

Horse 1141 - Did Not Do The Work

The rewards for labour are wages and salaries. Labour being one of the basic four factors of production, is like any other commodity subject to the forces of supply and demand. Therefore the price of labour is determined not by a person's actual worth of input, but by the market price that that input is valued at.

I think that there a disconnect between actual worth and market value. Many people and especially theoretical economists would disagree with me, but I shall attempt to explain myself.

Suppose that you have a firm making widgets. There are people on the factory floor who operate the widget making machines, and elsewhere you have management, accounting, and ancilliary staff like cleaners and maintenance workers. All of which are important to the effective running of the company, and without them not only the factory but the firm would come to a halt. Their wages however I think do not actually reflect "worth" but market value.

I think that there is a great deal of difference between what workers are actually worth and what they are paid. People who are paid less often return multiples of their wage in value to their firms, whereas at the other extreme, plenty of managers, opera singers and people like premiership footballers are overpaid for what they actually do.
I'm not suggesting that management, opera singers and footballers don't work hard or long for their money. But at some point I think that there is a line where people are paid rewards for the effective work that someone else has produced.

The most obvious example of this is shareholders. Quite rightly shareholders as contributors of capital are paid the due reward for their capital as dividends, but the shareholders themselves contribute no work to the firm whatsoever and without them, there would unlikely be a firm at all.

Personally I suspect that there is a smudgy line which can be drawn; above which point the people who are paid those wages do not actually work for them.

The minimum weekly wage in Australia as at 1 Oct 2009 was $543.78 per week. I assume that this was for a 37.5 hour week giving us $14.50. Assuming that there is a real increase depending on actual skill involved if you double this you end up with $29.00 per hour. Also assuming that instead of working a 37.5 hour week, someone worked an 70 hour week, we end up with $2030 per week or roughly $106,000 a year.

I will go out on a limb and suggest that everyone earning more than $106,000 didn't actually work for their money, but at some point is profiting from the work of other people. I'm not suggesting that this is the result of economic graft, but I am suggesting that it is practically impossible to actually do the work required to earn that money.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/axa-boss-bows-out-with-17m-swansong-20110117-19u48.html

The combined payout, which includes benefits and options built over his time with AXA, would give Mr (Andrew) Penn a higher pay than the $16 million received by the Commonwealth Bank CEO, Ralph Norris, last year.

As a shareholder of the Commonwealth Bank I ask the question if Ralph Norris is really worth $16m a year? Did he work for that money or was he paid the because of the forces of supply and demand? I know that I could fulfil that job maybe not as well, but at even 1% of that salary I'm pretty confident that I still would not be able to actually work for it.

Horse 1140 - Pay TV 6 - Australia 0

Australia winning the Asian Cup Semi-Final on Australia Day, in a crushing defeat of Uzbekistan 6-0. This is the stuff that legends are built on; this is the sort of thing that writes the story of football in this country and inspires the next generation to follow on the glory trail.

Except...

If you didn't happen to have cable television you would have seen NOTHING (except highlights on the news later).

On October 12 2005 (which is a night forever etched into my memory), Australia beat Uruguay 1-0 on home soil to force extra-time and a subsequent penalty shoot-out which they won 4-2. This mean that for the first time since 1974, Australia qualified for a World Cup.

Fast forward 5 and half years, and Australia has made it into the Asian Football Cup Final, but unlike 2005, the events of 2011 will not be seen by the majority of people.
It is utterly disgraceful amidst calls of wanting to "grow the game" in this country that even when the national side makes it into a final, the match isn't shown on free-to-air television.

Of course marketing people will say that it costs money to show live sport and that putting it on pay television puts it into an audience which is prepared to pay for it. But therein lies a conundrum. How do you expand interest to people who wouldn't ordinarily watch the game whilst at the same time those people can't watch the game?

How is it that the people of Uzbekistan saw the Australia-Uzbekistan game LIVE on MRTK1 but the majority of Australians didn't? I bet that more people in Tashkentsaw the match than the whole of Australia on Australia Day. How's that for a sense of national pride?

I think I might move to a third-world country so that I can watch Australia play.

Horse 1139 - Government Surpluses and Deficits

Quite aside from whereabouts on the political spectrum you sit, is the discussion of how the economy works. Personally I rather like the "five sector circular flow of income model" because in broad terms it is very inclusive of pretty well much everything.
The Five Sectors in the model are as follows: Households, Companies, Government, Financial Institutions, and Overseas. All of them have different effects and parts to play in the economy.

The basic equation for total income in the economy can be described with a relatively simple equation:

Income = (C+I+G+X) - (S+T+M)

Income = (Consumer Spending + Investment Spending + Government Spending + Receipts on Exports) minus (Savings + Taxation + Payments for Imports)

The reasoning behind this is surprisingly sound. Basic economic theory states that the level of income in the economy is dictated by "all inputs less all outputs". Inputs and Outputs into the economy are otherwise known as leakages and injections, and perhaps it goes without saying that an excess of leakages will shrink the economy and an excess of injections will grow the economy.

The question from my little corner of the Twittersphere has to do with the effects of Government Spending on the economy.

The Government sector in broad terms has both an in box and an out box of money, Taxation and Government Spending. Taxation is a leakage, and Government Spending is an injection.
A Government Surplus occurs when the Government takes more in Taxation receipts than it spends in Spending. Obviously if Taxation is a leakage and Government Spending is an injection and the overall effect is an excess of Taxation, then the net effect is a leakage from the economy and the economy shrinks.
Likewise an excess in the amount of Government Spending, increases the amount of money being pushed back into economy and therefore is an overall injection into the economy and the economy grows.

If I was Grand Poobah and Lord High Everything Else, then I would seriously advocate Surpluses as the economy moved into periods of boom to slow down economic growth and likewise move to Deficits as the economy moved into periods of bust to speed up economic growth.

Of course I realise that Countercyclical Policy sounds exactly like something out of Keynesian economics, but given the results that the Second World War effectively ended the Great Depression, the Stimulus Package in Australia in 2009 meant that Australia was the only country except China in the industrialised world to avoid a recession, and the ongoing policy since 1945 of the USA, I think that it's a sound idea in principle and practice.

Actually when it comes to the overall effect that Government has on the economy it perhaps isn't all that large. Using GDP as a measure, then Government Debt in Australia is only about 8% of GDP and Government Spending accounts for only $71bn which is only 7% of GDP. I don't think people can complain much about that.

Horse 1136 addenda - Scary

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/criminals-may-be-microchipped-one-day-mal-hyde-tells-forum/story-e6frea83-1225993685510

SERIOUS criminals might one day be microchipped as a crime prevention measure, SA Police Commissioner Mal Hyde has told a forum in Adelaide.

Mr Hyde said though the remark was "flippant", rapid developments in electronic crime detection would lead to changes not considered today.

"I'd like to microchip a lot of different people, just to be a little bit flippant about it, but I don't think that's going to happen," said Mr Hyde, a key-note speaker at the Asian Pacific Crime Prevention forum.

"I say it sort of flippantly, but who knows, because attitudes change so much?"

Who knows indeed, because attitudes change so much? Criminals tomorrow? Everyone else the day after that?

Horse 1138 - Exit Holden, Stage Left - Enter Opel, Stage Right.

http://www.themotorreport.com.au/51261/2011-barina-makes-us-market-debut-as-chevrolet-sonic

Chevrolet's new Sonic hatch and sedan models have at last made their US market debut this week, bringing its one step closer to its Australian launch as the new 2012 Holden Barina.

Known in the US market until recently as the Chevrolet Aveo, the new Barina is expected to go on sale in Australia, replacing the current fifth-generation Barina - at which time it will be nearly six years old.

http://www.themotorreport.com.au/51268/opel-to-launch-in-australia-in-2012-official

Following reports last year that a local launch was on the table, General Motors has today announced that its premium European brand Opel will hit the Australian market in 2012.

Among the models confirmed for Australia will be the Insignia (winner of the European Car of the Year award in 2009) along with the new Astra (sold in earlier guises locally as the Holden Astra) and the recently upgraded Corsa (also sold in earlier incarnations as the Holden Barina).

I think that I spot a trend here.
General Motors are deliberately trying to rubbish the Holden brand in Australia, so that people will vote with their wallets and go out and buy Opels. Then once the Australian division falls over entirely, they'll cease production of the Commodore and thus not have to worry about Australia at all.

When you think about it, Holden basically shot themselves in the foot more than 2 years ago. When the Vectra was replaced with the 2009 European Car of the Year, the Opel Insignia, Holden instead of making the logical switch foisted upon Australians the Daewoo Tosca under the nameplate Holden Epica.
Do you know anyone who has or would ever knowingly choose to buy one of these?

Likewise they replaced the Opel Astra with the Daewoo Lacetti otherwise known as the Cruze, and their small car the Opel Corsa which was sold as the Barina was replaced with the Daewoo Gentra which retained the Barina name.
The Barina XC (Corsa) had a four-star ANCAP safety rating and the Barina TK (Gentra) when it was released had a two-star ANCAP safety rating. Even to this day a 2005 model Barina still has a higher resale value than a 2011 Barina according to what I've seen out in the car yards.

Over at Ford they've given us the Focus, the Fiesta and the Mondeo, all of which have either won or have been within 2 points of carrying off the coveted European Car of the Year title at some point, and its starting to show in the sales figures.

I'm wondering what's going to happen when Opel start giving us some of those lovely Opel Performace Centre (OPC) offerings. The Corsa OPC outperforms the Mini Cooper S Turbo in every department and at least in Germany, comes in at 25% cheaper.
Personally I think that it looks a whole heap cooler than the Barina, but not quite as cool as the Mini.

Basically I think that the long term strategy from GM Head Office is thus:
1. Bring in Opel to compete with Holden by selling higher quality cars.
2. When Holden isn't able to justify it's existance through flagging profit margins cull the brand.
3. End production of the Commodore because of Holden's demise.

The current VE had A$1bn spent on developing the platform (Zeta) which became the basis for the Chevrolet Camaro, but when the model cycle ends in 2015, I don't think it will be renewed.

Holden tried to sell the Monaro (as the Pontiac GTO) to the US, and the Commodore as the (as the Pontiac G8), when GM pulled the plug on Pontiac, Holden found that its biggest export market died. Maybe the ploy in Oz is to attack the trunk so that the tree falls over.

Either way, if Holden do continue to sell Crap Dressed up as Cheesecake under their badge, I'm going to buy Chocolate Bavarian built in Bavaria by Bavarians... or is that Black Forest Cake made in der Black Forest by der kleine elfs?

Horse 1137 - Southern Sudan - Puönmït

Amidst the news of flooding in Queensland and the shooting of a US Congresslady, there is a spark of hope in the news this week. The people of Southern Sudan have gone to the polls to vote on their independence, and although there have been a few minor scuffles in provinces which border the North, it has been relatively peaceful.

Sudan is Africa's largest country by area, and is administered both from Khartoum in the north and Juba in the south, following two civil wars and other conflicts.

The people of Southern Sudan have gone to the polls for a referendum on their independence and runs from 9th to 15th January 2011. The province of Abyei will hold a separate referendum as will South Kurdufan and Blue Nile which will hold a "popular plebecite".

The BBC World Service has reported that in Southern Sudan a carnival atmosphere has broken out around some polling places, and when they interview people from the country, they seem not to talk of their "independence" but rather of their "freedom" from the North.

Northern Sudan for want of a better word is a nominally Arabic speaking and Muslim country and the South would become a nominally Christian and Animistic country which speaks English a pidgin form of Arabic known as Juba Arabic and several African languages including Dinka.

This of course presents several challenges for not just the fledgling nation should it acheive independence, but poses serious questions for the other nations in Africa. Some commentators are talking about the "Balkanisation" of Africa, with implications for Nigeria and the Congo. Indeed it asks the most fundamental questions as to what does and/or possibly should constitute nationhood.

If Southern Sudan does acheive its independence, then almost certainly it would change its name to reflect the new nation. One of the names which was suggested is Puönmït. Puönmït is a Dinka word which means "Happiness". Surely that would be one of the greatest names for a country that has ever been put forward. I personally do hope the greatest amount of puönmït for Southern Sudan (or Puönmït).

Horse 1136 - Tap N Pay

http://www.paypass.com/

MasterCard PayPass is a new “contactless” way to pay. It is like having exact change wherever you go. A simple tap of your card, key fob, or mobile phone is all it takes to pay at checkout.
It’s ideal when speed is esential, like at participating quick-service restaurants, gas stations, pharmacies, movie theaters, and more.

What a top idea.

We live in increasingly impatient times. Supermarket queues are annoying, and because the chances of being robbed and the incidence of violent crime are also on the increase, carrying cash becomes ever more precarious.

As the PayPass blurb says, it is a “contactless” way to pay for things. All it requires to operate is a simple wave of your MasterCard or the equivalent Visa payWave card near the reader and the exact amount of money instantly transfers between accounts. It couldn't be simpler.

Security however does appear to be an issue though. If someone else were to get hold of your card either through accident or because they stole your wallet or something, then they could just as easily use it to buy things on your account. I believe however that I have an adequate solution to this problem though:


http://www.blacktown.nsw.gov.au/residents/animal-services/animal-registrations.cfm

When an animal is microchipped its identification details are entered onto the NSW Companion Animals Register. A certificate is issued to the owner receipting the entry of their animal's details.

Microchips are about the same size as a large grain of rice. They are very safe. Your pet will feel little pain as the chip is inserted quickly and safely under the skin between the shoulders.

You'd never need worry about losing your wallet or your credit cards again. If we could institute a system where people could be microchipped then just as easily as operating the PayPass system, thye could simply swipe their hand near the checkout. A microchip about the size of a large grain of rice wouldn't hurt to have implanted and if we employed very low voltage lithium battery technology, then it could run quite effortlessly for years.

Mind you, it could be said that someone did have this idea long before I did:

All people were forced to put a mark on their right hand or forehead. Whether they were powerful or weak, rich or poor, free people or slaves, they all had to have this mark, or else they could not buy or sell anything.

- Revelation 13:16-17

I don't think that people would be coersively forced to have a chip installed but with the slow phasing out of cash, it might become increasingly difficult for people to buy or sell anything without it.

Of course you might dismiss me as being totally paranoid about "the mark of the beast" and the end of the world but as with any new technology I bet that some people would be willing of their own accord to be implated. In fact some already have been fitted with something similar:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3697940.stm

The idea of having my very own microchip implanted in my body appealed. I have always been an early adopter, so why not. Last week I headed for the bright lights of the Catalan city of Barcelona to enter the exclusive VIP Baja Beach Club.

The night club offers its VIP clients the opportunity to have a syringe-injected microchip implanted in their upper arms that not only gives them special access to VIP lounges, but also acts as a debit account from which they can pay for drinks.

This sort of thing is handy for a beach club where bikinis and board shorts are the uniform and carrying a wallet or purse is really not practical.

Take a note of the date here: 29 September, 2004. This was six years ago.

I could of course be talking complete rubbish this point, but the company which supplies the RFID tages for MasterCard PayPass, Visa payWave and microchips for animals are also touting thr benefits of tracking criminals in gaol, and even babies:

http://www.secureidnews.com/2005/04/01/verichip-acquires-exi-wireless

HALO is the leading system for infant hospital security, helping healthcare facilities prevent infant abductions, accidental baby switching, and medical equipment theft and loss while providing a safe work environment for facility staff.

Still, you have to admit that MasterCard PayPass and Visa payWave is a pretty cool way to pay for things. I on the other hand, walked out of Bunnings the other day with a spark plug and air filter for the lawnmower using a trusted method that has been in use since c.750BC... cash.

Horse 1135 - Having A Barry

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/27/3102222.htm

"If we don't make a start to projects like the northwest rail link, I don't intend to contest the election after," Mr O'Farrell said.

"I am determined to deliver the infrastructure, to get on with starting those projects that this city and this state needs. I want to be seen as the infrastructure premier, because that's certainly what we need in this state after 16 years of Labor."

- Barry O'Farrell, 27th Dec 2010

I don't understand Barry. It was you who 12 months previous called for the scrapping of the northwest rail link, and yet here we are asking for it to be built again? Perhaps you need a reminder of what you said...

"She needs to scrap the metro that no one wants. It's simply incredible, even within her first day, the former planning minister doesn't seem to have a view as to whether this metro is to proceed or not. It raises real concerns about who's making the decisions."

- Barry O'Farrell, 4th Dec 2009 (from ABC Radio).

Considering that the railway line to Castle Hill promised by the Dibbs government in 1891 still hasn’t been built, don’t hold your breath waiting for Mr O'Farrell to start "those projects that this city and this state needs". Also considering previous NSW Liberal's track record (pun intended) in selling off the State Bank of New South Wales, GIO and NSW Grain Corporation, how long would it be after building the northwest rail link, it would be sold off as well?

Well Mr O'Farrell, what say ye now?