Horse 3433 - Not Because Of Obligation But Because We Love Big Brother.

One week after the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States as only the second President to serve non-consecutive terms, apart from pardoning everyone involved in the January 6th riots at the Capitol which included the murder of some and the permanent brain damage of other police officers (which kind of negates any and all rhetoric that he will ever say about supporting the police), and starting a series of trade wars, the one promise that Trump made which absolutely has not been kept was to end the war in Ukraine on Day One. 

That is probably a good thing.

Because given Trump's own hints to buy/invade Greenland, to vow to take back the Panama Canal, his statement that "anything could happen" in relation to starting a war with Iran, I can only assume that the statement that he wants to to end the war in Ukraine is to surrender it to Russia. Trump has for several years made statements that the United States should pull out of NATO because NATO nations don't pay their won way apparently, and his actual executive order which has pulled the United States out of the World Health Organisation, means that we should assume that as Commander-In-Chief that he personally sees the US Military as his possession and that he will use it if he feels that other nations do not show him personal fealty. This was last demonstrated in 2017 when he ordered cruise missiles to be sent into Syria; without really having a military objective for doing so.

So given all of this, a conversation which was held in a press gaggle on board Air Force One aught to leave the world at large slightly worried and Australia in particular very worried indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8CfuMh87gA

Reporter: Can you tell us about your call with the King of Jordan today?

President Trump: It is a very good call; he's a friend of mine; I know him very well; I've gotten along for the over the years very well and he's done a wonderful job. He really houses, you know, millions of Palestinians and he does it in a very humane way, and uh, I compliment him on that but he really... Jordan's done an amazing job of housing largely pal-Palestinians and he's done it in a very successful...

Reporter: What was the subject of discussion was it (interrupted)

President Trump: Pretty much that. I said to him "I'd love you to take on more." 'Cause I'm looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it's a mess. it's a real mess. see You'd like Jordan

Reporter: See? You'd like Jordan to House people from (interrupted)

President Trump: I'd like him to take people. Uh.. I'd like Egypt to take people and meeting with talking to, uh, General el-Sisi tomorrow. Sometime I'm L(?) and uh I'd like Egypt to take people and I'd like Jordan to take people.

I could I mean  you're talking about probably a million and a half people and we just clean out that whole thing. It's you know, it's over the centuries that's had many many conflicts that site, and I don't know it's something has to happen but uh it's it's literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything's demolished and people are dying there so I'd rather get involved with some of the Arab Nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace. 

Reporter: for change temporar or... (garbled - interrupted)

President Trump: Could be either it could be temporarily, could be long term.

- via Forbes, 25th Jan 2025

Under the previous Trump Administration, Donald Trump personally via executive order, changed the official stance of the United States and officially recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital. In no way did that ease tensions in the region and if anything emboldened Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to look for any excuse for Israel to 'defend itself' against Palestine. Netanyahu found that excuse on October 7th 2023, when Hamas led an attack on Israel by firing more that 4300 rocket; which killed 1139 people. Israel responded by repaying evil for evil and instead of an eye for an eye, has killed at least 53000 civilians and so that works out to be an an eye for two whole classrooms of now blinded children.

Now it should be pointed out that Hamas and Hezbollah are evil. This doesn't change the fact that Likud and the IDF as directed by Benjamin Netanyahu are also evil. I can not say how much I wish that Hamas, Hezbollah, Likud, and the IDF should all be exiled to a place in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Backing one evil side in a conflict against another evil side does not make either side less evil. The only thing that makes sense here is that the various parties find some sort of weird gratification in seeing innocent people pulped into chunky marinara. 

Mr Trump who is a deeply narcissistic fool, in saying that "we just clean out that whole thing" should be taken to mean that if "anything could happen" in relation to starting a war with Iran, then committing American troops to fight a war in Israel to clear Gaza is not off the table either. As Mr Trump's moral compass is such that the ends are bent in such a way that no matter which way it points, the points always point back to him, would have no moral qualms in turning ever more people into chunky marinara.

What does this mean for Australia though? We can rest assured and know that if the United States does decide to fight a war in Israel to clear Gaza, that not only will Australia be complicit in evil but active in sending troops to commit evil.

The United States Department of State, has this to say about Australia's role in being an obedient little lap dog with no back bone:

https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-australia/

Bilateral defense ties and cooperation are exceptionally close.  U.S. and Australian forces have fought side-by-side for more than one hundred years, in every major conflict since World War I, beginning with the Battle of Hamel in 1918.  In 2022, the United States and Australia marked the 80th anniversary of several key World War II battles, including the Battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal.  Moreover, 2021 marked the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Australia, New Zealand, and United States (ANZUS) treaty, Australia’s pre-eminent alliance, which enjoys broad bipartisan support.  Australia invoked ANZUS for the first time in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 

- Bilateral Relations Fact Sheet, US Department of State, 23rd Jul 2024

Ever since January 26th 1788, Australia has basically never had any kind of foreign policy, with regards anything. Australians fought in the Crimean War, and the Boer War, and both the First and Second World War; because the various State Governments and then the Commonwealth Government rolled over and immediately became an obedient little lap dog with no back bone for big brother John Bull. The Pacific Conflict from 7th December 1941 changed our perspective a bit and after World War Two, Australians have fought in Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iraq again, because the Commonwealth Government rolled over and immediately became an obedient little lap dog with no back bone for big brother Uncle Sam.

The signing of the AUKUS Treaty as far as I can tell, provides less than zero benefit to Australia; with the 'purchase' of imaginary submarines to the value of $368bn. That is a call on the Federal Budget of $350m per week, every week, for 20 years. If the rightist side of politics wants to complain about the cost of the ABC, then they need to repeatedly punch themselves in the head until they bleed because the yearly budget of the ABC is less than three weeks of the loyalty and fealty payments that we have committed to in tribute, for literally nothing at all. Australia is never ever ever going to see even a single submarine; and if you think that we are then not only do I have a bridge to sell you but you might also like to repeatedly punch yourself in the head until you bleed because that's the only way that any kind of sense will be beaten into you.

The question therefore is not whether or not Australia would send troops to fight a war to clear out Gaza until every last building has been levelled and to turn whomever is left into chunky marinara (because we absolutely would without question), but the consolation question of whether or not Australia is obligated to send troops.

The AUKUS Treaty between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, mentions literally nothing about either what happens in the even that any of them are attacked or if they choose to be the belligerent. The ANZUS Treaty of 1952, despite the fact that New Zealand unilaterally pulled out, is still in operation in perpetuity until the point that either Australia or the United States pulls out. Now I would assume that in the event that Australia was attacked by China or some other future great power, that the United States would drop us like a plate of cold vomit and pull out immediately. However, Australia as the obedient little lap dog with no back bone, would rush to the aid of the United States.

Article II of the ANZUS Treaty states that:

https://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/wopapub/house/committee/jfadt/usrelations/report/appendixb_pdf.ashx

Article II

In order more effectively to achieve the objective of this Treaty the Parties separately and jointly by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack. 

- Article II, ANZUS Treaty, 29 Apr 1952

Now as previously mentioned, Australia invoked ANZUS for the first time in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; which was seen as a direct attack on United States' soil. So good, so far. However, the United States sending in troops to fight a war to clear out Gaza, is not of itself an "armed attack" which needs resistance. I can absolutely see Australians being sent in to murder unarmed Palestinians, on the basis that everything that moves will be assumed to be the enemy (this is the current stance of the IDF in practice), but the one consolation that we have before we do decide to get blood on our hands and lick it up and politely ask for more, is that it will not be because of legal obligation, but it is all right, everything is all right, the struggle is finished. We love Big Brother.

Horse 3432 - NSW Proclamation Day

Happy Not Australia Day.

If you think that this is Australia Day, you are a sad strange little person.

26th January is not the date that Australia became a nation. Nope. That date was 1st January 1901; when after a series of Constitutional Conventions, a series of Referenda, the colonies of Fiji and New Zealand both choosing to withdraw from the process of Federation, the legislation that created the new Crown as a separate legal person called the Commonwealth Of Australia cam into effect after being passed by the British Parliament in 1900.

26th January is not the date that Australia was first settled by the British. Nope. That date was 7th February 1788; when after leaving merry old England in May 1787, the eleven ships which comprised the First Fleet, vomited out their cargo of convicts, criminals, ne'er-do-wells, and chancer sailors who wanted titles, upon the lands at Gadigal and the Eora people. The 11 Ships had originally planned to dump their prisoners at Botany Bay on 20th January 1788 but in a remarkable act of British optimism, Captain Arthur Phillip saw that the bay was far to shallow to be sensible and sent scouts up the cost wherein they found the very deep river/port of Port Jackson.

26th January is actually the day that Captain Arthur Phillip decided to stick his flag in the dirt and claim it in the name of King George! Hurrah! On 7th February 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip decided to make his claim permanent, retroactively from the date that he stuck a flag in the dirt; so 26th of January is actually New South Wales Proclamation Day.

And in fact, Proclamation Day is the name of the day that is used right through official documents in the early days of the colony; including when Governor Bligh in an heroic act of hiding under the bed when the New South Wales Corps decided to arrest him and then throw the colony under direct military rule in 1808. Proclamation Day is the name of the day that was used during the half-hearted Golden Jubilee of the colony and in the celebration of the Centenary in 1888.

The name 'Australia Day' doesn't really appear until during the First World War, when various charitable appeals were made to fund things like medical supplies and other comfort goods, to make the lives of volunteers who had left to go and fight in a mess in which they found the horrors of mechanised and chemical conflict first hand. Australia Day was on different dates and was on 30th July 1915, 28th July 1916, 27th July 1917, and 26th July 1918. 

The 26th of January sort of fell into relative obscurity until 1938 when suddenly a wave of patriotism fell over the nation as the gathering storm clouds of war loomed over Europe for a second time. The 150th Anniversary of British Settlement was flogged for all it was worth, likely to garner support for PM Lyons' expected eventual unconditional decree to send more Australian bodies into the meat grinder of a European conflict. Lyons helpfully died in office, which meant that the UAP was thrown into confusion and Earle Page became PM for a bit; then Menzies took exactly the same actions that Lyons would have done.

The 26th of January 1938 was also declared as an unofficial Aboriginal Day Of Mourning, because the injustices of having land taken without consent, being killed for a bounty of ninepence per head, having no legal rights at all in some states until Federation, and then having even basic rights surrounding citizenship denied, had never been addressed. To this day, we still have no treaty, and no formal process for trying to reconcile the tensions and the knavery of refusing to deal with unceded sovereignty. The next presumed Prime Minister is openly unrepentant and unapologetic for these injustices.

It wasn't until 1988 that full-on flag-waving patriotism was foisted upon Australia for the Bicentenary and it wasn't until 1994 that the date actually became a national holiday. It had been a holiday previously in different states.

The thing that the flag-waving hooray henrys haven't been able to tell us ever, is why anyone outside of New South Wales has an interest in Proclamation Day; especially New South Wales Proclamation Day. What makes these people think that anyone living in Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, or Western Australia, would want to celebrate the official founding of New South Wales? 

The number plates in the different states used to have slogans like "South Australia - The Festival State", "Queensland - The Sunshine State", "Victoria - The Garden State", but in here we had "New South Wales - The Premier State". It used to be that every time our yellow and black number plates travelled to these often hostile and unfriendly backwaters, they'd proclaim the New South Wales is The Premier State, the Best State; and they knew it. It is no coincidence that it was only after state slogans appeared on number plates that the other states decided that they had to cower in the glory of New South Wales and try to claim our Proclamation Day as Australia Day.

Moreover, why should the decent and good and fair people of New South Wales want to share this holiday with them? They're all a bunch of splitters. As far as the fair people of New South Wales are concerned, we are the best. The rottenest bit of this island of ours, is held in the hands of five unfriendly powers.

"It would therefore seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling, is a bad and harmful feeling, and as a doctrine is a stupid doctrine. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all dwell in a gross and harmful delusion."

- Patriotism And Government, Leo Tolstoy (1900)

It used to be that the only time that anyone in this country cared about patriotism, it was to wrap ourselves in green and gold because of sport. We should rightly view any overt display of patriotism as unAustralian because it is deeply suspicious and suspect. Just who do those people think they are anyway? Do they want to be Seppos? Imported patriotism from Seppoland is also deeply suspicious and suspect.

Yeah, nah bro. Australia Day is unAustralian. Especially because it is actually NSW Proclamation Day.

Horse 3431 - Trump Tries To Extinguish 14A, Section 1

On President Trump's first day back in office, once again as predicted, he signed a heap of executive orders which have immediately culturally jolted the United States further to the right. If Elon Musk's Nazi Salute at the inauguration (which he did twice in case you didn't get the message the first time) wasn't enough, then executive orders which are policy in action, should have made the point loud and clear.

The President on Day One, withdrew the United States from the World Health Organisation, pardoned more than 1500 people for their part in the January 6th Insurrection (which kind of proves that it was absolutely an insurrection), and signed an executive order which at more than 700 words long, removes the birthright of children who have been born in the United States, to citizenship.

Now obviously this was always going to be controversial because citizenship has been part of the increasingly white nativist agenda now for more than 10 years. Trump came to power in the first place, because he questioned Barack Obama's citizenship despite the fact that Obama was born in Hawaii. That sparked off a bunch of dog-whistling and now the whistling has become so much of din, that any opposing voices are legally drowned out. Let's not pretend that this is about anything other than fragile white people who have been emboldened to become explicitly racist. 

The mechanics of birthright citizenship are such that a child born in the United States, is automatically a US Citizen; regardless of the status of their parents. The other weird mechanics of this are that if a child is born anywhere in the incorporated territory of the United States then the child is automatically a US Citizen, but if a if a child is born in an unincorporated territory of the United States then the child is automatically a US Citizen; thanks to the insular cases from SCOTUS which were passed before 1930. To take this to its extreme, a child born in Puerto Rico might not be a US Citizen even though Puerto Rico even has an Observer Member in the House of Representatives, but a child born on Palmyra Atoll which currently has a population of nil but is administered by the Department of the Interior, would be.

- Sad Coconut is a US Citizen by birthright

Naturally, this set of mechanics is known and openly abused. People wishing to gain entry to the United States know that if they do what comes naturally and have a baby, and then have that baby on United States' incorporated territory, that that baby is automatically a US Citizen; regardless of the status of their parents. Then is US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrive and try to deport someone who might have arrived illegally or overstayed their visa, they are in a pickle because that means having to deport a US Citizen by virtue of them having gained that citizenship through no other process than simply having been born.

Yes, the law is stupid; but has Horse has been at pains to point out in many posts about the US Constitution, the US Constitution is frequently stupid. So how did we get here? Yet again the apple of racism hasn't fallen very far from the tree at all; and in this case the nation conceived 'in liberty' as a tax dodge which was trying to keep and retain slavery, is the ultimate reason why US birthright citizenship exists.

The words to Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution read:

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/

SECTION 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

- Section 1, 14th Amendment to the US Constitution

All of this sounds good and reasonable and proper, except looking through the lens of 156 years of hindsight. If "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" and the first clause has already stated that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside" then it US birthright citizenship looks pretty watertight. So why is it here?

The two important dates which accompany 14A tell the story excellently. 14A was passed by Congress on June 13, 1866, and then ratified on July 9, 1868. This means that we are squarely in the era of reconstruction which followed the Southern War Of Aggression To Further Keep And Retain Slavery, after seven southern states seized Federal assets and Forts, following the election of Abraham Lincoln as President, who did not want any more slave states as the United States expanded to the west. Four years of unpleasantness followed and the United States between the two warring factions of "Yay Slavery!" and "Boo Slavery!" decided to turn hundreds of thousands of its own citizens into chunky marinara to prove the point. After the disagreement, there was the problem of what to do with all the people left over.

Before 1868, there was no directive whatsoever about who was a United States' Citizen and as the States themselves kind of had plenary and very punitive powers within their own borders, by the time of the Southern War To Keep People As Chattel Goods, no fewer than thirteen states had already decided that not only were slaves not citizens and not entitled to due process of law, but in some cases they were also not people at law. This caused something of a problem when trying to refashion two parts of a broken nation back into one.

So for a short period of time, an amazing amount of reconciliation work at law was done; part of that work included 14A; which was intended to give former slaves and people who were considered to be chattel, citizenship and some kind of recognition and protection at law. 

So here's the central quandary. Legal problems often have long tails. In this case, that long tail and expansive wording has created a set of conditions 150 years' later; which the framers of this piece of legislation neither thought of, nor bothered to care about. 

President Trump's executive order is blatantly unconstitutional. There is no other way to say this. The other side of the coin is that he simply does not care. In just one day he proved that his oath to "faithfully uphold and execute the constitution", was a lie and is worthless. With a toady sycophantic Congress and an equally permanent toady sycophantic 6-3 SCOTUS, this is likely to remain unchallenged.

However none of this, questions the fitness of law for purpose. S1.14A is clearly bad law. If that is true, could there be better law? Yes; very yes.

The mechanics of the Citizenship Act 1949 in Australia are such that children who are born here do not automatically have birthright citizenship. For the vast majority of children born here, where one or both of their parents are citizens, they too are citizens. The big material question is whether or not their parents have been citizens for ten years or more. Even a child born in Australia to migrant parents, where neither of their parents are citizens, is entitled to citizenship upon their tenth birthday. The United States, in attaching citizenship to the Constitution and with a set of hard blanket clauses, is stuck with this.

The other weird thing about this is that the nexus of bastardry is such that the same people who howl that S1.14A is out of date, will then turn around and defend 2A despite the fact that it is 76 years older and by action gives rise to nearly 40,000 deaths per year.

Horse 3430 - The Inauguration... Of The King.

"Did you watch the inauguration?"

Me:

"No. I watched the arrival of the king."

When it comes to championships in motorsport, seven seems to be an almost impenetrable ceiling. In NASCAR there have been three 7x Champions: Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt, and Jimmie Johnson. In Supercars, only Jamie Whincup stands alone with 7x. In Formula One, there are but two; being Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton. In fact, the only person who seems to have broken through is Giacomo Agostini; who won eight 500cc Motorbike World Championships.

Probably the reason why seven is the normal upper limit, is that not only is everyone always trying to win the championship and so it is already a very hard thing to do but to consistently stand at the very zenith requires someone to not only be in the right place at the right time but for them to be so dominant for so long, that all others appear to fade at the same time. Even if you have a championship with rate of one every two years, that's a thirteen year minimum timeframe. Of course a 7x Champion is only ever going to be a once in a generation thing because they themselves, singularly define that generation.

Okay, the rest of the world might have been looking at Washington and the passing parade of the President of the United States, I and many people like me were watching the formal arrival and announcement of Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari. 

However much the people the SpA want to imagine themselves as a business that sells cars, Ferrari is not a car company. Ferrari does not exist to sell motor cars. Scuderia Ferrari exists for the same reason that Manchester United, the New York Yacht Club, or any Tuesday Night Indoor Cricket Team exists - to win trophies. Mercedes-Benz, Renault, Red Bull, Alfa Romeo et. others, exist to sell cars or sugary drinks. They are businesses whose aim is to spin a profit. Scuderia Ferrari in principle, doesn't care about profit. It only exists to make and be champions.

And to that end, the Scuderia is in a bad way. Not since 2007 when Kimi Raikkonen won the championship have Ferrari been on that very top step. In that time they have had Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso, and Kimi Raikkonen all try and fail for them. For 18 years, no new champion has been crowned in a scarlet machine.

We have been here before. From 1979 until 2000, Ferrari went through another period of sadness. Jody Scheckter won the title in 1979 and then for 21 years, in which time they hired Alain Prost and Nigel Mansell, the cabinet remained empty. When Michael Schumacher arrived in 1996, who was at that time a 2x World Champion, the immediate period looked like it was going to be even more false dawns until 2000 when he went on a five year tear.

In 1996, Ferrari knew that Schumacher was good but not even they could have know how good the combination of Schumacher and Ferrari would be. For four seasons Schumacher came close but not close enough. Only one can stand at the very top of the mountain.

This is why the signing of Lewis Hamilton for Ferrari is so massive. Since I was born, five former World Champions have arrived in Modena to drive the scarlet machines with Enzo's prancing horse on them, and not even they could turn around the fortunes of the team which not only knows its reason for existence and its purpose but feels it. Ferrari has been around for so long and sings so sweetly in the symphony of motorsport that many are drawn to it; and like the song of the sirens of Greek mythology, Ferrari has drawn in many and caused the deaths of people's careers. Lewis Hamilton though, might be different.

It could very easily be that Lewis is merely filling out his coffee club card and collecting stamps; however, it could be that the period of Red Bull dominance with Max Verstappen has been enough for Lewis and Ferrari to snap out of the malaise and propel the Scuderia to the top. I do not know if Lewis Hamilton is as good or better than Michael Schumacher, for when they competed head to head Schumacher was well into the twilight of his career and ironically helping to build the organisation which would give Hamilton the Silver Arrows that he needed to claim six championships. If Hamilton is better than Schumacher then at least in 2025, he will prove it by knocking Verstappen off the top.

On that note, Hamilton would prove that he is better than Schumacher by virtue of finally breaking through that imaginary ceiling of seven championships. I hope so. I would not normally be a Hamilton fan and I would not normally be a Ferrari fan, and while from the outside this might look like I am jumping on a bandwagon, this is different. Hamilton's arrival at Ferrari holds the potential to finally correct the mistake that the FIA made in 2021 and if that happens at Ferrari, then not only will the loyal tifosi be singing all of Italy will be dancing. 

Horse 3429 - Change The Change

It is 2025. This means that another calendar year has rolled about and we are all one step closer to the day when Grimaldi Mietitore as agent for The Eternal One, knocks at your front door and arrives to collect. As he walks at only a leisurely 1mph, then provided that you can outwalk him, you are safe. Be warned though, he will collect eventually.

After having lived through a century with our very own plague, as the people of the twentieth century did, them perhaps it is a good idea to address the maelstrom in out pockets. Admittedly, in a world of Electronic Funds Transfer and where people do not want to carry coins or notes any more (including the banks whose job it is to do banking), the demand for new coins is decreasing; however, I think that this is as good as any time to address the fact that the planchets of the coins that we use, were designed more than 200 years ago and are not really fit for purpose any more.

The last time that Australia had any significant kind of currency reform was 57 years ago in 1966, when we switched from a hybrid dozenal/vingtinal system of currency, to a decimal (cential?) one. One Dollar with 100 cents and 1000 mils (never issued) replaced the old Pound Australian of 20 shillings and 12 pennies. Opponents thought the old system daft. Starting on the 14th of February 1966, new coins and banknotes passed into the hands of shopkeepers and the general public.

This time around though, what I propose is not a total currency reform. I do not propose getting rid of any of the banknotes; merely replacing all of the little coins, with one single new one.

Here's why.

One 1966 Dollar had the same buying power as $15.59 in 2024. One 1966 Dollar was a brown banknote with a picture of the Queen's head upon it. One 1966 cent, that is the hundredth part of a dollar, would now have the same amount of buying power as 15.59 cents in 2024. Already we have two coins which now fall underneath that value; so by rights we could easily just get rid of them. Nobody would miss their departure.

But "oh, no no!" I don't hear you cry because this is the medium of text and you might be very very far away, getting rid of coins is chaos incarnate, is not? Well, no. The truth is that we have been here before any nobody really gave much of anything beyond a resigned sigh.

In 1992, Australia demonetised the 1c and 2c coins and as we proved, apart from hysterical people who claimed that charities would suffer (they didn't) getting rid of those coins and replacing with nothing at all, went by without a hitch. Everyone got pretty used to Swedish Rounding really quick; so any and all hoo-haa that was imagined, never happened. Likewise, when New Zealand went one step further and demonetised their 5c coins, that also went by without a hitch and minimal hoo-haa.

So my solution is to simply replace all of the cupro-nickel coins with this:

The 25c coin, which was tested and released into circulation, proved to be as boring as any other coin. The 25 coin is about as big as a Penny; which is fine. I got mine in change somewhere, spent a few, and kept one. There was a little bit of a look but beyond the initial interest, there was also minimal hoo-haa. 

We could easily eliminate the 5c, 10c, 20c and 50c (the 50c is still a little bit useful), and replace them all with  just quarters. Keep $1 and $2 coins and maybe bring in a $5 coin if we're that way inclined but as we've proven again and again, people get used to things pretty quickly and the break points for rounding up and down would be: 12, 37, 62, 87. 

Just eliminating all of the coins of less than a Dollar value while being a perfectly sensible idea, at this stage is just too far of a step to jump across. One Dollar often doesn't buy things of itself but by the same token, it is a massive leap if the amount that someone has to pay for small items is $1.25 and either the shop or the customer has to lose a quarter of the value of the transaction. As it is, restaurants often already do not quote cents in their pricing but when the price of a burger is more than $20 at a fancy place (which seems like highway robbery perpetrated by the Hamburglar, to me), then the loss of 25 cents in 20 dollars is less than the price of the transaction fee which a shop might have to pay if this was done electronically.

Anyone who has ever played Monopoly knows that eliminating the black One Pound note happens voluntarily; round about when players start to buy houses. People are less likely to want to have to deal with the little black annoyance; so will accept fivers and tenners instead. At that is in a tiny ickle wee economy with only Fifteen Thousand Pounds in cash, in it. Old Kent Road's £2 ground rent is almost instantly an insult and an annoyance from the get go.

I know that a currency reform this late in time might look like rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic as it hits the iceberg and slowly sinks into the sea of the cashless society but part of the reason why banks especially do not want to carry cash is the expense of carrying different coins. If a coin fails at doing the only job for which it was intended, which is to facilitate the exchange of goods and services for fiduciary tokens, then it is easy to see why fewer and fewer people want them in the first place.

I like cash. I like coins. I like knowing that the amount of money that I have on hand, is what I can actually use to pay for stuff. I like the false barrier to purchase that cash imposes because if you do not have the cash on hand you are less likely to buy stupid stuff. Like most people I huff and puff about having to do my own grocery checkout because I hate the idea that we've replaced someone's job with a machine that works not for dollars per hour but cents per month, but it really gets my hackles, feckles, and schmeckles up, that even supermarkets are baulking at the prospect of wanting to take cash. Chucking a bunch of coins into a machine aught not to be that difficult. Coin vending machines can even be operated on a purely mechanical basis.

Eliminate all the silver coins. Replace the lot with the quarter. Put a picture of a bumblebee on it. You'd get four bees to a Dollar. The important thing to remember is that I had an onion tied to my belt; which was the style at the time.

Horse 3428 - To The RTBU and ETU: Is this the way to Amarillo? Really?

After ample warning, the Rail, Tram, and Bus Union (RTBU), made good on their warning and went ahead with protected industrial action.

The cover story (which if you accuse someone of lying they will likely sue you for libel, so it's simply better to say I do not believe) was a series of checks were deliberately not carried out; which meant that the running speed over points and various interlockers was reduced to yard speeds, which is not more than 8 km/h. The story could very well be true, and if it is true then that means that the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has also taken protected industrial action and also withdrawn their labour.

The story about points not operating, or signals not working, or a multitude of other reasons given, is conveniently convenient because it means that the blame is spread so thinly that repercussions can not fall back on a single person. I however simply do not believe the story in the first place, because the RTBU and ETU in warning that they were going to proceed with protected industrial action and then actually doing said industrial action, still doesn't change the fact that the whole thing stinks. Tell me any story you like, if it makes you feel better, but the truth remains that you've already caused me massive irritation; and I still think you are a knave. On day two of this malarkey, I don't even believe the announcements that rail staff apologise for anything; because if they actually were sorry, they wouldn't have done it twice.

If there is a pile of assorted chicken manure, horse manure, cow manure, cat poo, dog poo, mouse poo, elephant poo, et cetera, then I do not care a jot as to what kind of poo is actually causing the stink. I especially find it unpleasant when the RTBU and ETU expect us the general public to have a poo sandwich for breakfast; when you consider that we didn't cause the reason for their dispute in the first place.

Long time readers of this blog will probably come to realise by now that I generally do not wave the blue flag of conservatism, nor the yellow flag of libertarianism, or the green flag of environmentalism. My default flag is the red flag, under which cowards flinch and traitors sneer, while singing the song of angry men. I would have very much belonged to the British Labour caucus of 1948; which looked to the future and wanted to build that future for everyone. So when the RTBU and ETU take protected industrial action, I am simultaneously sympathetic to their cause and deeply angry at them.

What the jinkies do you think you're doing, people? 

Do you really think that the government, which is currently a Labor Government and who should in theory be broadly sympathetic to your demands, are going to be able to wave a magic tonfa around and beat the parliament into acquiescing to your demand? Do you really think that you're going to make the government care? Do you really think that you're going to achieve anything by giving the general public the irrits? Do you honestly think that this is going to cause anything other than even more ire in the general public?

Where once there may have been goodwill, this is the surefire way to burn any support that you may have had with the general public. Where once there may have been people sympathetic to your cause, when people like nurses and doctors can not actually go to their place of work as a direct result of your actions, I can guarantee that as sure as God made little apples, that the only fruit which will be produces as a result of this action, is a desire that not only do you lose but that you all get fired and replaced with robot trains.

I leave the house at 0640 of a morning, to be on the 0651 train from Marayong to the City, or to take a bus to Blacktown and chance my luck with whatever comes from the mountains. Yesterday, there was no train to the City; so I put on my Rocket Pants and ran like a mad thing to get the 752 bus to Blacktown; wherein I did get a train. From 0659 it took until 1003 to get to Wynyard and I finally reached my destination at 1028. That's 3 hours, 48 minutes. 

Today, I left the house at 0640, found that there was no trains on the Richmond Line at all, took the the 752 bus to Blacktown and a train which was already sitting there for goodness knows how long, eventually left in its own sweet time. I got to Wynyard at 0922 which is a 41 minute improvement, and I finally reached my destination at 0941. That's 3 hours, 1minute; so it is an improvment.

My question to the RTBU and the ETU, is why do you think that me as a representative of the general public, wouldn't want to do anything other than cause civil violence to you? Surely this is not the way to get people like me on your side.

How have you helped your cause? You have not. Not an iota. So why do it? As a display of the power that you have over people who you are trying to turn against you? That smacks of the heraldic lion of Finland which is trying drive a sword into its own skull. Is this the way to Amarillo? I do not know. I have never Amarilloed. 

Horse 3427 - Samurai Pizza Cats: Imagining The Reboot

For the purposes of this post, I shall be using the English names for characters and places.

I have recently come to the end of an 87 episode podcast run, called the 'Samurai Pizza Cast', which as the name suggests is a deep dive and dissection into anime's most dubious dub of a 1989/90 series called 'Samurai Pizza Cats', or in Japanese 'Kyatto Ninden Teyandee' (Cat Ninja Legend Teyandee).

It can be found here:  https://pizzacast.libsyn.com

The series which was created by Tatsunoko Productions and ported into English by Saban, ends with a classic "everybody dies - or did they?" trope, in which the city of Little Tokyo is first threatened to be destroyed by a meteor and then actually destroyed by a nuclear missile which is deployed from Lucille's head because she is so happy that Speedy and Bad Bird were not killed by the meteor (or rather that's what should happen as the English version has tried to edit its way out of the plot problem of having Tokyo destroyed by a nuclear missile).

Suffice to say, the fact that we are here in 2025 and the series is slowly fading into obscurity, no second season was ever commissioned; even though this whole fully realised world with its departures into the surreal, constant fourth-wall breaking, and straight up madness, practically demands for a new set of writers to play in it. The other way of looking at this is that the series is already perfect because it wears its faults and foilbles like a macrophage that has displayed its conquests like trophies and medals all over itself.

The hosts of the 'Samurai Pizza Cast' in episode 87, made an attempt at trying to run through a kind of pilot for an imaginary reboot and while their concept is fun, I think that they have leaned far too heavily into the meta-narrative. Part of the problem with attempting to write meta-narrative is that you still need a proper overt narrative to make a story work. You can only burn the oil of meta-narrative so far because very quickly you run out of substance. So then, without writing a pilot episode, I will attempt to write a series arc overview of how I would reboot Samurai Pizza Cats.

Samurai Pizza Cats is essentially a farcical comedy of manners. The series has at its core: Emperor Fred who is clearly incompetent and not in control of his government, his daughter Princess Vi who is also incompetent and who might actually run the country but she is deeply selfish and irrational, Prime Minister "The Big Cheese" (Seymour Cheese) who knows all of this and is trying to overthrow the Emperor, Al Dente who is part of the Imperial Retinue and who covertly hires the Pizza Cats as a vigilante force to thwart The Big Cheese; and the Pizza Cats themselves whose series of adventures mostly amount to defeating The Big Cheese' plans, via a robot/monster of the week (which the Big Cheese is clearly paying for out of the Imperial Budget).

Most of the characters in Samurai Pizza Cats are defined by central character flaws: Big Cheese - Vanity, Fred - Incompetence, Vi - Impulsiveness, Speedy - Headstrong Recklessness, Guido - Lust, Polly - Rage, Francine - Greed, Lucille - complete obliviousness to reality, et cetera. This is why the series and the world seem so very very big. So in trying to attempt to reboot the series, it is the prime motivations and flaws, which should drive both the plot and the complications.

So then...

------

The Reboot:

------

Season 2, Episode 1 precise:

The year is 20XX. XX years have passed since the events of episode 54 and E2.S01 is the re-establishing episode.

Emperor Fred is dead. Fred died after staring intently at a particularly beautiful Onigiri. 

The Government Council has an emergency meeting and has decided that Prime Minister Big Cheese after being given an unconditional pardon by the late Emperor and having been restored to the Prime Ministership (the council is completely oblivious to everything which happened in Series 1), should succeed Fred in an Emergency Government.

Cut to a series of spinning newspapers and a montage of various events, which show Big Cheese being inaugurated, sitting behind a desk signing things, opening train stations and hospitals, and Little Tokyo being rebuilt into an even better techno-future-past-metropolis than it was before. Accompanied with this is the old imperial mon being replaced with Cheese' own black and gold fox mon. Opinion polls show that Big Cheese has an approval rating of 83% and people generally believe that he is good and competent. 

------

Princess Vi who has been going to university overseas (studying politics, law, economics, protocol, macramé, and knife-fighting) for six years, arrives back home in Little Tokyo (on a Big Cheese branded plane) and discovers that she can not  simply walk into the Imperial Palace any more. 

As Princess Vi wanders the streets aimlessly, she happens to walk through that part of the city where Francine is again running the Pizza Cats shop. Princess Vi who recognises the place, walks in to find Francine behind the counter, with Bad Bird wiping tables and Carla sitting at a table reading the newspaper.

Bad Bird who is clearly afraid of Vi, hides behind Carla before he is met with "I don't love you any more" and Vi returns to speak with Francine (whom she has apparently never met before). Francine explains that after Fred died and Vi went away, Big Cheese was installed as "Lord Protector" (not Emperor), and that Little Tokyo and by extension Japan is now a republic. 

Vi who is clearly unhappy about this, demands that the monarchy be restored and that she should rightfully assume her place on the throne as the new Empress. Perhaps to her surprise, Francine not only agrees with her that there should be a plan to restore the Empire, but also agrees to take on Vi as an employee and to give her somewhere to stay.

------

Al Dente who has been demoted from the Palace Household to merely being head of security detail on the Palace Walls, now lives in a small house in the corner of the Palace complex. It is clearly a doghouse. He receives a phone call on the Bone Phone; which is covered in cobwebs and has not been used for a considerable amount of time.

Francine explains that Princess Vi has returned and that this means that their long forgotten plan to restore the monarchy should be put in place. Al Dente calls for a meeting of the Pizza Cats to plan out how they should go about this but Francine further explains that all of the Pizza Cats have gone their separate ways.

------

Cut to a series of short vignettes showing where the seven Pizza Cats have gone.

Spritz is in Hawaii; running a surfing class.

Batcat is in Paris; working as a window cleaner.

General Catton is in New York; on a building construction site.

Meowsma is in London; as a train driver on the London Underground.

Polly and Guido, now apparently married, are now in Hokkaido; running a local tax accounting firm.

Simultaneously, all five of their emergency telephones ring; and they are informed that the Samurai Pizza Cats are getting back together.

Bad Bird notices that Speedy did not answer the phone. Francine explains that nobody knows where he is, and that the only person who might know is Guru Lou.

------

Bad Bird arrives at Guru Lou's house in the mountains. Lou is scared of Bad Bird and immediately brandishes a sword and pins Bad Bird to the ground. Bad Bird hurriedly explains that he is looking for Speedy and Lou relents. Lou who is off-grid, has no idea that the Emperor has died, has no idea that the Big Cheese has taken over as Lord Protector, and also has no idea where Speedy is.

Inside Guru Lou's house, amidst the detritus of old newspapers, dusty science equipment, piles of books and scrolls, an old photograph of Guru Lou and Speedy flashing a peace sign, sits on a mantlepiece.

------

Oblivious to everything, Speedy is working as a Sushi Chef in Seoul. Working behind a sushi train, he uses sword skills to slice fish and other ingredients very dramatically; to the applause of the customers.

The last shot of the episode is the jingling of his little bell and a closeup of Speedy's face as he realises that for the first time in years, he has been called into action.

------

Roll credits.

------

Augie Doggie (who is now older) and Doggie Mommy (who is going grey), are at Lucille's teahouse. Doggie Mommy complains directly to the camera that she wasn't in this episode. End with charcoal freeze frame; fade to black.  

------

End.

------

The entire premise of a reboot series in my not very well paid opinion, should be a 26 episode arc which is a restoration comedy. Instead of being on the outside, Big Cheese is now Lord Protector and runs a surprisingly competent government. 

The monster of the week element can remain, as Big Cheese' motivations to send out big robots and monsters are no longer to seize the reins of power but to scare the populace into thinking that they are in danger and it is only through his good and competent leadership that these monsters are thwarted. 

In the the long run of the series and while restoring the monarchy, the Pizza Cats' internal conflict is that they know that while restoring Princess Vi to her rightful place on the throne is the proper and correct thing to do, she is horrible. In achieving the proper end, they will be bringing about a worse outcome for everyone... and they know it.

There still needs to be outdated pop culture references as though the writers live 50 years ago. There still needs to be absurd fourth wall breaks. There still needs to be absurd plots and devices that are unhinged from reality. Princess Vi needs to fall in love with another incompetent Panda like her mum did. Francine still needs to be hyper-competent and running the Pizza palace as a front company but still realising that running the Pizza palace as a front company is more profitable than the actual business of covert ninja action.

I don't think in rebooting the series, it makes good sense to stray too far from the bumbling idiocy of the original or imagining the world inside as vastly different. None of the characters should ever learn anything at all because the world is big; it just needs to be played inside of.

Horse 3426 - Shall We Play A Game?

Picture this.

It is January 5th.

Joe Biden resigns.

This would mean that Kamala Harris is the 47th President.

Already, all of the MAGA 47 merchandise is wrong.

Already, all of the programs that have been printed, will be wrong. 

This would mean that all of the things which have been prepared for the incoming Trump presidency, will likely end up in Goodwill and other thrift stores and reject shops.

However, something else comes into play:

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt25-1/ALDE_00013871/

Section 1:

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

- Section 1, 25th Amendment to the US Constitution. 

Okay, if Kamala Harris is the 47th President, according to the rules of the Constitution, not only would she be entitled to the normal Secret Service Detail as per the other former Presidents, something else immediately has to happen.

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt25-1/ALDE_00013871/

Section 2:

Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

- Section 2, 25th Amendment to the US Constitution. 

Why would someone want to do this?

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-2/section-1/clause-3/

The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President.

- Article 2, Section 1, Clause 3, US Constitution

John Adams famously decried the office of Vice President as "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived" as the only three duties of the Vice President are:

1 - to be the replacement to the President upon their failure to exist as President any more

2 - to be the deadlock breaker in exactly tied votes in the Senate

3 - to act as President Of The Senate.

That third duty, is the duty that actually certifies the opening and the counting for the next term of the  Presidency. It is either very boring, or a bit sad. Very rarely is it the job of a Vice President to certify the electoral college results for the person against whom they lost the election to. Probably Richard Nixon is the only person to have been made to suffer this, and I am very likely to be wrong in my guess.

Nevertheless, if Biden resigns, and Kamala is the 47th President, someone would have to become to the new VP. If I was acting out of pure spite, then I would Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be the next VP.

The Congress would HAVE to confirm AOC, because without a sitting Vice President, there is nobody legally to confirm the electoral votes on January 6th. If there is no VP, then we have a problem. Of course in this scenario, AOC would dutifully do the job of VP as President of the Senate and then declare Donald Trump as the next President... unless.

Harris resigns on January 7th.

Then what?

The 25th Amendment says that upon resignation, the Vice President shall become President. See above.

Of course Congress with two houses of Republican majority would then never confirm President Ocasio-Cortez' pick for VP but who cares? She's basically got two weeks to fire all kinds of crazy executive orders 

Yeah, none of this is going to happen.

Still, the American people, after seeing what happened on January 6th four years ago, decided that they want a 34x convicted felon and a confirmed rapist in the White House. To be perfectly honest, my playing games of nonsense, is somehow more plausible than the real world.

Horse 3425 - The Car Of The Year Is... Unicorse!

Once upon a time in the land of long ago, the Wheels Car Of The Year used to be a prestigious title. However, the 2024 edition of this award, leaves me with a complete sense that it has now been rendered pointless. Why? Because each and every single thing on the list is pointless. Why bother to a award a something of the year if the entire list in uninspiring?

Of the shortlist of contenders for the win, there is the Ford Mustang Dark Horse, a stack of SUV things, and some variant of the Toyota Camry. At $111,000, the Mustang Dark Horse is only accessible to boring old people who are sitting on a stack of cash in the bank, and everything else is just meh. I can not even accuse this list of being vanilla, as vanilla is a delicious bean extract which people have fought over. This list is like drinking Colgate Total Control Diamond mouthwash and them permanently living with one of a stated side effects - a complete inability to taste anything at all. The list for the 2024 Wheels Car Of The Year is as delicious as sand.

Here's the fun thing, there are practically no fun cars on the road any more; and none that are reasonably accessible to young people. If you look at what used to be the market leaders and who filled out all top ten slots on monthly sales, then what used to be the big four is a sad sad sorry state.

Toyota does not sell a base model of any hatchback. The Yaris and the Corolla are only sold as GR Variants now and neither of them sell for less than $50k.

Ford does not sell any hatchback. Ford does not sell any sedan. 

Mitsubishi does not sell any hatchback. Mitsubishi does not sell any sedan. 

Holden does not sell any hatchback. Holden does not sell any sedan. Holden does not sell any cars.

If you look at the VFACTS data for November of 2024, then you see that all top ten slots of monthly sales are taken by meh SUV things and pickup trucks. I am glad that Mazda still sells the 2 because it is a brilliant little machine and if they drop it and the 3, then they tool will join the ranks of meh.

An an attempt to discern what went wrong, it is necessary to look at the state of the market as it currently exists. To that end, can there be a better symbol of what went wrong than the follow pictures?

This photo represents the modern Australian motoring market so very very well. On the right is a Holden VE Commodore SS Ute, which my August 2016 edition of Wheels magazine, tells me retailed for $39,990 (well, the VF did). On the left is a Chevrolet Silverado ZL1, which starts at $135,400. The Silverado if you allow for inflation, merely costs more than twice as much for a worse engineered, worse built, less competent, worse handling, physically bigger and somehow still manages to have a shorter tray bed, but comes with an even fatter pile of steaming ego enhancement.

In yet another case of proving what's good for General Motors is good for the USA, the General thought it a great idea after the then Treasurer Joe Hockey merely threatened to remove the subsidy, to completely abandon manufacturing in Australia. I have no doubt that the people at the Liberal Party thought that this a lovely turn of events in their continued quest to sell everything and everyone to their criminal friends for next to nothing; so having dumped car manufacturing subsidies off of the expense budget, they now get to yell at governments for lost revenue due to taxation write offs.

I should temper this with the statement that people like what they like and are allowed to like what they like. The gentleman who owns the Silverado (because there is no way in Hades, Sheol, Valhalla, or Vaucluse, is a lady) obviously liked the idea of a Silverado so much that he was willing to spend more than a hundred thousand dollarpounds on his brodozer. He was also willing to make the taxpayer wear roughly one third of that in foregone taxation, because there is also no way in Hades, Sheol, Valhalla, or Vaucluse that the owner of this thing actually bought this brodozer in his own name. This will have been ploughed through a business and claimed as a business expense; even though this has never ever seen anything remotely like a day's work.

Tucked under the bonnet of this Yankee Brodozer 9001 is the same LS3 6.3L V8 that did appear in the VF Commodore. As was repeatedly pointed out by publications like Road & Track, and the Kelley Blue Book (before magazine publishing also faceplanted), the VF Commodore despite the whinging of right-wing-nut-job Australians, was excellent. Actually to that point, no iteration of the Ford Taurus, no Five-Hundred, and no Mark IV Mondeo/Fusion, and no iteration of any W-Body GM Car, no Monte Carlo, no Lumina, and no Imapala from Gen-7 onwards, needed to exist. In all cases, the Australian equivalents of American cars, were always better built and better tested and better engineered. This came into exceedingly sharp focus when Ford floated the Taurus alongside the Falcon for a while and the 3.0L V6 Taurus managed to be more expensive and have sub-par build quality when compared to the 4.0L inline-6 Falcon.

However this post isn't merely about throwing hate at the big stupid truck which is incapable of actually being used for a day's work, but the fact that it never will be. The kind of person who owns this, is likely to pretend that they had dreams of owning a boat or going caravanning, in spite of the fact that even if they did own a boat or a caravan, they will almost never use them. Most cars spend about 90% of their lives idle anyway, and of that 10% of the time that it is used, likely 90% of that time is likely to be ever used for towing things.

Tradies use proper work trucks. People who want to tow things like a boat, get a diesel thing like a Landcruiser. This kind of thing is mostly bought by boors. And boorish they will be. The most common place that I am likely to see a Silverado is way east of the Red Rooster Line, where the absolute peanut of a driver which this thing is likely to be owned by, is using it to menace other road users. What I do not understand, is why this kind of brodozer became aspirational; and the thing of thing which Isuzu D-Max and Ford Ranger Raptor drivers want to upgrade to.

Maybe the person who owns this thing thinks it's fun? Maybe? This is never going to be used on a track day, or be a fun thing to burn down a B-Road in. Of the cars which were fun to used on a track days, fun things to burn a B-Road in, we return back to the beginning where either the base models of all of those cars have been withdrawn, or they've been withdrawn entirely to be replaced by a meh SUV thing.

Where is the next fun small hatchback? It doesn't exist; the old ones have to hang on. Where is the next fun sedan? It doesn't exist; they've all been deleted and discontinued and won't be replaced. Where is the next fun coupe? Unless you have six figures to throw away on a car, which normal people definitely do not, forget it.

Market forces have decreed that for the forseeable future, all there are are meh SUVs, a few pickup trucks, and the odd thing that hangs on like the Mazda MX-5 or the Toyota 86. Beyond that, I simply can not get excited enough about anything which made the short list of this year's Wheels Car Of The Year to care. To that end, I think that the winner of the Wheels Car Of The Year should be Unicorse.

Horse 3424 - Kyle & Jackie O To Go?

I can not tell you how I found this out because I want to keep the identity of the source a secret, but it seems that Kyle and Jackie O might have been quietly given their marching orders.

Their radio show which once claimed a market share of 15.5% in Sydney, has been progressively on the slide as audiences have decided that sexual innuendo, repeated derogatory broadcasting relating to sex, religion, appearance, et cetera, are not particularly interesting. This was further confirmed on the last day of radio ratings for 2024 when they no longer held the top spot.

Advertisers increasingly found the show troubling; with companies such as Flight Centre, Australian Super, AMP, and Bendigo Bank, either throttling back their advertising on the KIIS network or withdrawing it altogether. Parent company ARN Media must have been looking at this as well as the abysmal tilt at the Melbourne radio market, which never netted more than 5% of market share.

If this is to be believed then "The Kyle and Jackie O Hour of Power" will not be returning in 2025; with some other lineup taking over the breakfast radio slot.

To be fair the program was already on the skids back in August when the executive producer Pedro Cuccovillo Vitola announced that he had resigned¹. Perhaps things got even worse for ARN Media management, when a Senate estimates hearing did what Australian Communications and Media Authority could not do, and put on public record what the show had said. 

ACMA has repeatedly made ruling over the years, which have detailed sexism, racism, misogyny, and time and time again, radio and television presenters always avoid punishment from ACMA, because no matter how many breaches of the commercial radio codes of practice that someone makes,  ACMA is not a toothless tiger which can not bite but a toothless tree which can not even jump. The problem is that even thought ACMA has received more than 60 complaints about the show since the beginning of the financial year, as there is a co-regulatory system in place, complaints are not dealt with by ACMA but the radio licence holder. ARN Media and its predecessors have been fine with whatever scandals the show might have had, as evidence by their total lack of action.

What makes this interesting is that as I work in Mosman, that this rumour of The Kyle And Jackie O Show being cancelled is not coming from within the talent inside the industry but the people who move money around. The rumour is made all the more compelling when you consider that this appears to be a commercial decision rather than anything coming from the regulatory authority who can actually do nothing.

Probably an announcement will be made in early January, because that's generally how the cycle of these things work but keen observers should watch the entrances to Coca-Cola Place at  Mount St in North Sydney, because that's where the money is moved. If people who look like comedians, or other radio type people arrive, then it will be because the decision has been made. 

¹https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/radio/real-reason-kyle-and-jackie-os-executive-producer-quit/news-story/03d6e3415cd08330f32396fb0c37aa53

Horse 3423 - The Fentanyl/Opioid Crisis Is Rational

I have been asked by someone to comment on what I think of the Fentanyl/Opioid crisis in the United States. They wish to remain anonymous.

Before we get any further, we need to ask ourselves: What is Fentanyl?

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid drug which is used as an analgesic and an anaesthetic. It is between 30x and 50x more powerful than Heroin and about 100x more powerful than Morphine. For everyone of us out here in the cheap seats, an analgesic is a pain killer; it is for this reason that people want it.

Humans as electro-biomechanical meatbags with a squishy computer and a soul/spirit/undefinable consciousness (insert as appropriate to you belief set), like to imagine that they are rational decision making beings with rational agency. A lot of the time, they are not. A lot of the time, humans are irrational decision making beings but with rational agency which is driven by that most basic of drives: selfishness. Even when humans can acquiesce to what is good and good for them, if there is something which feels nice, then they will stump for that thing. When mapped through the drive of selfishness, so much of human decision making processes can be mapped through two sets of if/then gates.

IF: yummy, yummy, yummy THEN: DO.

IF: not yummy THEN: DO NOT WANT.

IF: not yummy THEN: AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

IF: not yummy THEN: ELIMINATE AT ALL COSTS.

Those statements of "all costs" include when the solution is actively bad or dangerous or harmful in the long run but yummy in the short run. One of the consequences of living in the here and now, and occupying a singular point in space and a singular moment in time, is that an irrational decision making beings with rational agency will make the choice to get rid of the "not yummy" at "all costs". Those costs may include death. However, as death is not now, then due to hyperbolic discounting, even the decision to do a thing which causes death, is acceptable if it means eliminating the "not yummy".

Fentanyl as an analgesic which is more powerful and effective than Heroin and Morphine, is a yummy solution to removing and eliminating the not yummy problem of pain. Humans hate pain. Pain is unpleasant. Pain is a thing which when mapped through the drive of selfishness is a thing to be eliminated at all costs. If Fentanyl as an analgesic is yummy, then DO.

So the fact that there is a Fentanyl crisis in the United States, seems perfectly rational and understandable to me. The Fentanyl crisis is a rational response to the not yummy problem of pain; which is only actually a crisis because the consequences are large and many. If a bad thing happens once, it is a tragedy; if it happens thousands of times, it is a crisis. I will even suggest that the reason that this is a national crisis is because as Fentanyl accounts for 75,000 deaths per year, it is a greater cause of death than the United States' other really big yummy thing which causes death: guns. America does not think that Gun Deaths are a national crisis because when passed through that same yummy/not yummy decision making process, shooting guns is yummy.

I understand why you would want to eliminate pain. Pain is unpleasant. I also understand pain. Pain is a thing which I live with constantly, maybe? After being hit by a car in 2022 and having a rod inserted into my leg and a plate and screws inserted into my shoulder, in doing the surgery, the surgeon although excellent and skilled, has given me a scar and a line of pain. It is like being stabbed with a pin, in a continuous line, for about four inches across my left shoulder. The best way that I can describe this is if it had a voice, it would be yelling constantly, 24-hours a day and 7-days a week, without cease, always forever. As one of those irrational decision making beings with rational agency, then I should be a perfect candidate for the use of Fentanyl to eliminate the not yummy.

But before this looks like self-praise, I have to clarify that the reason why I do not take anything for the pain, is that the unpleasantness of painkillers is in my mind, worse than the pain itself. Pain in unpleasant yes, but the nauseousness of painkillers is worse. The reason why I am able to live with pain is because after having run the two not yummys through my mind, the not yummy of pain is preferable to the not yummy of nauseousness. This is not some assertion of moral superiority but rather an acknowledgement that had any number of variables been different, then the outcome would have also have been different. 

I am nothing more than a bruised apprentice of a teacher, who is forced to go through this involuntarily; so if I have learned anything it is not through choice, nor is it because of any moral goodness that I have. Like anyone else, thanks to my selfishness, pain is a thing to be eliminated at all costs but thanks to circumstance, I am not allowed to do so.

Here's the kicker, the United States in choosing to run a private for-profit health care system, has by default let the market decide what the outcome is. The Fentanyl/Opioid crisis in the United States exists purely because the United States has decided that the existence of a universal payer/owner/operator of health care is a not yummy, and that most steps towards it are also not yummy. The decision making process as a nation is such that taxation which is seen as a not yummy, is worse, than the costs which can be hyperbolically discounted; which includes death.

The lack of a universal payer/owner/operator of health care or even any systemic steps towards it (the Affordable Care Act was a band-aid over a cancer), means that instead of going to a General Practitioner to undertake primary care, many problems for many people are allowed to become chronic because of market forces. Instead of basic maintenance, the United States health care system in many orders of magnitude, thinks that chronic problems are preferable because the "customer" will eventually be unable to avoid having to pay the costs and pay them for profit.

Of course a private for-profit health care system has a vested interest in not actually treating the underlying causes of sickness and disease, because by doing so it will eliminate the need for its core business. A private for-profit health care system no interest whatsoever in the existence of healthy people who have no need of their for-profit services.

This is why Fentanyl and other Opioid drugs exist in the numbers that they do. This is also why marijuana which is also not medicine exists in the numbers that it does. This is also why illicit drugs which are also not medicine exist in the numbers that they do. Pain medication, recreational drugs, and illicit drugs, are to a very large degree, the market solution to the problem of eliminating pain, in lieu of actual medicine and actual treatment of the sickness and disease, because people who can not afford basic health care eventually decide that they can not stand the not yummy any more.

Granted that the opportunity cost of proper health care and intervention is best measured by looking at health benefits, or years of life that aren't destroyed, or quality of life adjusted years, which could have been achieved with other programmes but that needs to be a collective decision by a nation of people who consistently report that the not yummy of taxation is worse. Fentanyl and other Opioid drugs quite frankly, are the rational choice in the face of a health care system which fundamentally doesn't care an iota about the first three words of the US Constitution.

Horse 3422 - The Jaguar Rebrand Is Wildly Successful

The motoring world absolutely flipped their wigs last week when Jaguar launched a series of adverts featuring their new rebrand; which effectively threw 76 years of heritage into the bin. Everything which happened before, which included winning at Le Mans, the elegance of the E-Type in the 1960s, the unexpected brawling nature of the XJS, the second time that they had a go and won at Le Mans again, and then briefly saw their name in Formula One, was all thrown away; in favour of a saccharine eye-diabetes hippy-dippy/woke/DEI/insert rightist-badthink here campaign, purely designed to really really really cause people to pee their pants. This is a rebranding as pure provocation; designed explicitly to get a rise out of people. It worked excellently.

Jaguar Cars Ltd. which itself is a subsidiary/brand of Jaguar Land Rover, very successfully to rebranded itself. This is going to sound controversial but I absolutely understand why they did it. I hate it with every fibre of my being, but as the chances of me ever buying a Jaguar remain at a constant level of nil, then my opinion here moves a corresponding value of nil dollars. If I hate it and you hate it too, then their rebranding has worked perfectly.

Tata Motors couldn't give a flip what squawking blather-bots like Rita Panahi think, but the fact that she gave them free advertising is probably quite hilarious to the marketing execs. If the rise of Elon Musk and Tesla Motors is anything to go by, or the election of his friend Donald Trump to the office of the United States Presidency for a second time is instructive, then yelling anything purely for the outrage, no matter how outlandish or mind-bendingly stupid it is, is excellent at getting you free publicity. Polarise the people. Controversy is the game. It doesn't matter if they hate you, when they all say your name. And say their name we have done. 

I think that the Jaguar rebranding is brilliant precisely because people like me and people older than me whose sensibilities are being offended, will all be dead soon. Dead people tend not to buy very many motor cars. Jaguar's rebranding excellently tells people like me that we aren't welcome, that fuddy-duddies even older than me who would have bought them, are allowed to keep their memories and they aren't welcome too. Jaguar's rebranding is very squarely aimed at people who are gaudy and awful but who more importantly, have loadsamoney.

I think that people have forgotten the late 1980s, when immediately before the stock market crash of 1987, neon colours and pastels were all the rage; precisely because the marketing people were all on cocaine and speed. This was the days of high finances where a credit card was equally use to rack up lines, as it was to charge exorbitant amounts of money on corporate expenses; knowing full well that they would never be checked because the other corporate people in accounts, were also all on cocaine and speed. Since 1987, the wealth of the world has condensated and consolidated even faster than it had during the first gilded age; to the point now where more than half of GDP across all OCED nations, is being given to people who do not actually work. The rewards of the economy of rents, dividends, and interest, collectively exceed that of wages.

What does this mean for Jaguar? Quite a lot. All the way back in 2003, Citibank in New York published a series of papers which described the idea of the emerging plutonomy. This is a parallel economy which operates inside the regular economy but one which is deliberately blind of 90% of people. Why bother trying to sell goods and services to anyone other than the richest of people, when they are the ones with all the money. Whatever the old rules of the game were, they are gone. When you add in the hollowing out of what used to be the managerial class and entire wipe-out of front facing service industries like banking, then the market to sell to that insanely rich 10% and 5%, is only getting richer and richer at a faster rate.

Jaguar Cars Ltd. are in the business of doing business. The fact that they sell cars is actually somewhat irrelevant here. What used to be all incarnations of Jaguar are also irrelevant. Jaguar Land Rover itself is a subsidiary of Tata Motors; which as an Indian Company, likely saw dwindling sales across Europe and America following the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and then the Pandemic of 2020, and simply decided to abandon bothering to sell cars to those markets. If Formula One is the canary in the coal mine which tells you where the money in the world is, then the money in the world is not longer in places like France or Germany, but in places like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Singapore and the United States; all of which very much run dual economies.

Those place like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Singapore, as far as what they show us in Formula One broadcasts, are as gaudy and as tacky as all get out. In this respect, a gaudy and tacky rebrand to sell to these markets, is completely within context. Then when you add in the newer plutonomies like China and India, where branding also doesn't have to mean anything, then what does it matter. If Chinese car companies can basically sell things with practically no established brand at all, then for Tata Motors to trash any and all goodwill that they may have built up, purely to chase new money, then that's an acceptable business expense.

This is the context in which you need to understand the Jaguar Cars rebranding. Tata Motors which sits at the top of the group, honestly couldn't care a jot about what kind of nonsensical culture wars are being fought across the anglosphere, or what kind of permissiveness is allowed in Europe. Tata Motors simply doesn't care. The main business of doing business, is doing business. If that business entails selling motor cars, the Tata Motors is merely playing exactly the same game as Toyota or General Motors are in Australia. Poorer people can not buy as many cars as they want to sell; so Toyota doesn't even bother to sell a sub-$30K hatchback any more, and General Motors doesn't even bother to sell any family car any more. 

The Jaguar rebranding is objectively tasteless but the thing to remember is that it isn't actually for you. It isn't actually for anyone with any kind of Western sensibilities. It isn't for the people who may have associated the brand with a sporting history, and years of elegance. All of the people for whom those things matter, either do not buy Jaguars at all, do not buy enough of them, or will be dead soon. As far as Tata Motors is concerned, trashing the brand is fine because quite frankly, the name is all that matters.

Horse 3421 - Raygun - The Story Continues

Australia, nay the world, is in mourning this morning after comedian Steph Broadbridge has cancelled ‘Raygun The Musical’ after legal threats from Rachel Gunn. 

Rachel Gunn, also known as "Raygun" came to prominence and notoriety after performing a now infamous kangaroo breakdance at the 2024 Paris Olympics. She received a score of zero in the competition against her three competitors and suffice to say, did not pass beyond the first round of the competition. 

If you knew nothing about the 'sport' then her progress to the Olympics would have seemed dull and boring. Raygun had previously represented Australia at the World Breaking Championships three times previously; then won the No.1 world ranking in breakdancing after the Oceania Continental Championships. On the face of it, if this was any other sport, then this would have been a fait accompli. However, whatever the heck that thing was at the Olympics is baffling to all and sundry.

How she was ever allowed to represent Australia at all, seems to be a matter of unchecked hubris. As a lecturer at Macquarie University's Faculty of Arts, her thesis entitled "Deterritorializing Gender in Sydney's Breakdancing Scene: A B-Girl's Experience of B-Boying" seems to me to be the kind of academic 'research' that a university would let someone do, in exchange for many thousands of dollars, in the hope that they would go away afterwards. One of the vastly underspoken reasons of why there are so many utterly useless theses in academia, is that they exist almost entirely as make work projects in exchange for the university collecting fees (which they are kind of forced into). Daft PhDs exist because of daft causes.

Raygun is obviously back by old money, as evidenced by the fact that she went to private school, then university, and has now lawyered up to protect what is claimed as intellectual property. The legal claim from Raygun's lawyers which is being threatened, is that they wanted to make sure that Raygun's "brand is properly represented, and protected in all future endeavours." As I work in an accounting firm, which has seen many cases in both Family Law and with Taxation Law, the claim from Raygun's lawyers looks prima facie like it will attain its method of victory by legal exhaustion. That is, take someone to court and have them spend so much money that you can bully them into submission. This is a spite case.

When it comes to the now infamous kangaroo dance, the legal claim will be a one of whether or not the intellectual property can be owned. It is worth remembering that in Australia, there is no formal system of registration for copyright protection. Usually all that is enough to prove that someone was the originator of a thing that can be owned, is that the work be attached to a date stamp somehow; this already exists for Raygun, in that her 'work' was already performed in a public place that was recorded.

When it comes to Raygun's right to claim ownership of the work, it doesn't even require her to own the footage. The fact that this happened at the Olympics, means that the copyright over the footage is owned by the International Olympic Committee and it must be said that they are fierce when it comes to protecting their footage. 

Raygun's legal claim, if it ever gets to court, will almost certainly rest upon Section 31 of the Copyright Act 1968:

https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s31.html

Nature of copyright in original works

(1)  For the purposes of this Act, unless the contrary intention appears, copyright, in relation to a work, is the exclusive right:

(a)  in the case of a literary, dramatic or musical work, to do all or any of the following acts:

(i)  to reproduce the work in a material form;

(ii)  to publish the work;

(iii)  to perform the work in public;

(iv)  to communicate the work to the public;

(vi)  to make an adaptation of the work;

-  Section 31, Copyright Act 1968

Performing a dance, is a dramatic work. This means that Raygun has the exclusive right to to perform the work in public and to to make an adaptation of the work. As there doesn't need to be a copyright notice on it to be covered by the Act, copyright protection is free and automatic. As works which are under copyright are also protected in Australia, then the fact that this was performed in France, is irrelevant. This also satisfies the simple tests of this 'original work' being and recorded in 'material form'. 

However, the defence in this case is actually also contained within the Copyright Act 1968. There are many fair dealing provisions and of course one of them is for the purpose of parody or satire.

https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s41.html

Fair dealing for purpose of parody or satire

A fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, or with an adaptation of a literary, dramatic or musical work, does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the work if it is for the purpose of parody or satire.

-  Section 41A, Copyright Act 1968

I would expect that Steph Broadbridge, who is a comedian, would claim that ‘Raygun The Musical’ is obviously a parody or satire of what was a really really daft thing in the first place. For this claim to be successful, the respondent (Steph Broadbridge) in this case would need to prove that the proposed performance was sufficiently transformed enough to satisfy the court that this was actually parody or satire. They might have a problem with the name ‘Raygun The Musical’ as this might imply that Raygun, which sounds like it could be a trademarked name, might imply the endorsement of Raygun.

If Raygun had gone to the Olympics as a work of satire in the first place, then she would have been a national hero. Breakdancing at the Olympics is something which deserves to be made fun of. However, someone who has lived a life of privilege, and who went to the Olympics and did what she did, who then decides to sue a small time comedian who might make her look foolish, only serves to prove the reason of why there should have been parody or satire of what was a really really daft thing in the first place, to be right.

The proper course of action should have been to buy tickets to the show, seen it on opening night, taken the parody or satire as part of self-deprecation, and then let the whole thing die a quiet and natural death. ‘Raygun The Musical’ would have just fallen away because in principle, this is a passing fad. Ironically, Raygun herself has gained infamy twice; firstly for being bad at the Olympics and secondly for being unfun.

Horse 3420 - Supercars Intends To Chuck Mortars At Its Own Dam of Legitimacy

On the V8 Sleuth Podcast this week, the following question was asked by David Zitterbart:

"Where did the incentive come from to Americanise the Championship structure? It seems weird considering we had a compelling championship this year and the American fan base doesn't like the structure and are demanding change."

- David Zitterbart, to the V8 Sleuth Podcast - Episode 487.

https://www.v8sleuth.com.au/podcasts/

What I found particularly disheartening about the way that this question was answered, is that it didn't actually answer the question. Admittedly, it is rather impossible to look inwards at a somewhat opaque organisation like V8 Supercars Holdings Pty Ltd; especially when it is majority owned by overseas investors.

The actual answer as to why Supercars' management decided to change to a Finals Series, is purely commercial. This is about selling advertising space and generating ad dollars. As it must be. Motor Racing is an expensive business; so from a business perspective, business always does what business does.

However the way that this question was answered, apart from not actually answering the question, seemed very dismissive of the underlying worry, that the Finals Series in NASCAR is hated by the fans because it is unbelievably stupid. From the outside and as a member of the peanut gallery, this looks like a case of people who have a vested interest inside the business, telling us the customer, that our opinions about the product that they want to sell, are irrelevant. Never mind the fact that it is us who buy the tickets to races, buy subscriptions for pay-TV like Kayo, and ultimately it is us the race fans who decide where out dollars go. Alienate the fans too much, and what you get is what NASCAR is suffering from which is a long tail of declining ticket sales, and ad revenues. Smash the race fans in the teeth with a cricket bat enough, and they will eventually get the idea that they are not wanted and that their dollars aren't good enough; so they will take them elsewhere.

But to address the elephant in the room: the reason why NASCAR fans have been complaining loudly and longly about the confected NASCAR Finals Serieses (the Chase, the Playoffs etc), is because the NASCAR Finals Series are irredeemably stupid. Now going on for 20 years of complaints and decisions which have actively delegitimised the championship in the name of 'entertainment' which just isn't very entertaining, have rendered the crowning of a NASCAR Champion ever more and more ridiculous. When Joey Logano was crowned champion with an average finish of 17.1; which wouldn't have even put him into the points of a Formula One race, the irredeemable stupidity of the NASCAR Finals Series was only yelled into the kosmos ever more loudly. Somehow, Supercars management, in a series of acts which look like they also want an irredeemably stupid championship, have decided that they want that in Australia.

However, Finals Series in Australian sports have existed for more than 120 years. We have come to expect them but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are good or even fit for purpose. Initially, the decision to have Finals Series was quite pragmatic. The reason why Australia has finals systems at all, stems from the fact that the initial seasons of top-flight football across various codes would have otherwise been too short. There were only 9 teams in the very first NSW Rugby League season in 1908, and the 1897 Victorian Football League season only had 8 teams. Likewise the current incarnation of the A-League also only started with 8 teams. At most, a full home and away season with 9 teams, is only 16 weeks; which is only just longer than one yearly/temperate season. 16 weeks before the last week in September, is only Jun 10; which is bang in winter. It is just not sensible to have a sporting season that short.

However, if you want a practical demonstration of just how unbelievably stupid a Finals Series is in principle, look no further than this year's Australian Rules football season. Part way through the 2024 AFL Season, the Sydney Swans went on a tear and established themselves clear at the top of the ladder by 12 points. You know what? Had there just been a simple league format, where the team with the most points at the end of the season wins, then nobody would have questioned that the Swans deserved a Premiership. 

And no, the existence of Finals Series in other sports, like Australian Rules, Rugby League, and Football, does not prove that in principle that a Finals Series is in any way good. If anything, the Australian Rules Grand Final also serves to prove that Finals Series in principle are irredeemably stupid. The fact that you have an imperfect round robin system, where everyone does not play everyone else twice, does not of itself justify the goodness of a Finals System.

In fact, the pre-season competition and the Finals Series could and should both be dumped; with those weeks reclaimed for regular matches. Assuming that we get to a 20-team competition, then a home/away series of matches would result in a 38 Round competition. If that sounds too gruelling for the players, then ditch reserve grade and play the squads with deeper rotation. The argument that someone coming tenth, who has no chance of winning the title in a league competition, should magically be able to win one, is based upon... pub quiz rules where the points don't matter and anyone can win? I just don't know.

But the unspoken thing here is that the fundamental difference between motorsport and other sports is that instead of having two teams go head to head, you have many teams going head to head, in every race. A motor race is a thing where the win condition is that in order to win, you have to beat everyone else; all the time. Over the course of a season, a champion should emerge; which is of course the point of holding a championship series. In any league system, where a champion is crowned as the result of being the best team over the course of a season, more or less proves inherently the fitness of purpose of a league. Perhaps the best example of this is the 1970 Formula One Season where Jochen Rindt had been so dominant, that even after he was killed during qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, had already earned enough championship points that no other driver managed to overtake his total. In a Finals Series, the best driver that season, would not have won the championship.

The excuse that the rules are the same for everyone, is unfortunately not good enough. That kind of reasoning, actually justifies the incident in 1981 when the Australian cricket captain Greg Chappell instructed his brother Trevor to bowl the last ball of a one-day match against New Zealand underarm. Yes, the rules are the same for everyone but if the rules are stupid, you get stupid results.

In fact, had a simple league system where a champion is crowned as the result of being the best over the course of a season, then there would have been 12 different champions in NASCAR, to what we have now. That's 12 times out of 21, or a 57% failure rate. Has it made championships more exciting? Not really. If anything NASCAR proves that if you start chucking mortars at the Dam of Legitimacy, eventually the dam bursts.

It is unbelievably stupid that Supercars want that for Australia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NofX3DXtAU