Horse 2855 - Sky News Australia Warns Us That Euro 2020 Is A Marxist Plot

I am convinced that the local branch of the bank where I go to deposit the few remaining cheques that we get, lurches between hyper capitalism and ultra communism in its staff's political opinions, depending on who is at the teller's windows on any given day.

On the same set of telescreens I have seen Peppa Pig, Bluey, Dora the Explorer, Paw Patrol, Sharri Markson, Chris Kenny and this afternoon Rita Panahi. Between ABC3, ABC News 24, and Sky News Australia, you would come to the conclusion that the world is either wonderful or awful in a multiplicity of different ways.

On Friday, Peta Credlin was banging on about how Euro 2020 was all a Marxist plot and that the Black Lives Matter campaign and various players across Europe kneeling before a football game was also part of this Marxist plot. I couldn't help but feel that if the tournament was on Fox Sports, instead of Optus, then they'd be singing from an entirely different hymn book.

Speaking as one of the great uninformed and unintelligent masses whom Sky News seems to think needs to be corralled into thinking like they do, I am glad that I have been informed of the Marxist plot which has been bubbling away below the surface because otherwise I would have never have known.

That's where I've been going wrong all these years. I would have never have guessed that Gareth Southgate missing that penalty against Germany at Euro '96 was actually because he was trying to encourage the toiling masses to overthrow the ruling order in favour of a communal system of production; instead of just being a colossal git.

I would have never have guessed that David Beckham actually wanted for everyone to be paid exactly the same, irrespective of where they are in the hierarchy; because the creation of the Premier League and the escalation of wages to many millions of dollarpounds is actually all just a front. Who would have thought that that the television companies were actually massive supporters of Lenin and that there is no bigger supporter of Marxism and Communism than Fox Sports. I would have never have thought that Lord Sugar and Rupert Murdoch were actually bolshie red leftists but there you go.

What's more, Peta Credlin is talking nothing but spun gold truth when she says that if you kneel in support of Black Lives Matter, you are supporting all and every violent event that has ever happened at a Black Lives Matter protest, anywhere in the world.

Because fair's fair then it follows that if you support the Australian Flag then you are also supporting every occasion that it's been flown; including war crimes in Iraq and the locking up of refugees on tropical gulags, especially if they require medical treatment and/or they've been born in Australia. Presumably that also means that Scott Morrison is also a follower of the teachings of Ivan Milat or Martin Bryant, or perhaps the True Blue Crew and Reclaim Australia.

It's a good thing that Sky News Australia warned us that Euro 2020 is a Marxist plot because I would have never have thought that playing a flat back four instead of a stopper and a sweeper and playing Marcus Rashford up front as a lone striker in a 4-5-1 formation was in reality an attempt to set up a farming collective which is communally owned by the peasantry.

I also wouldn't have guessed that Nike, Reebok, Umbro and Adidas weren't sports and leisurewear companies but actually fronts for the Bolshevik Menshevik People's Revolutionary Workers Party.

Here I was thinking that Black Lives Matter had something to do with institutional racism, which results in the incarceration and murder of black people by the police in disproportionate numbers.

Apparently I have had it wrong when I thought that the Black Lives Matter movement in Australia is particularly concerned with the outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who are also incarcerated and ill-treated by police in disproportionate numbers. Apparently I am also wrong in thinking that there is an historical element to this, as I live in the local government area called Blacktown which was named after an internment camp/school for indigenous peoples before their lands were confiscated and their populations exterminated in what is unofficially called the 'frontier wars' because we refuse to admit that they happened; so what do I know?

When a global movement emerges committed to combatting racism following repeated murders in one country and it then inspires other countries to look seriously at their own pasts, then according to Sky News Australia, it's not actually real.

To be honest I am kind of surprised at how Sky News has taken what should be a pretty obvious statement and turned it into a designated acceptable point of hatred. There's nothing Orwellian in that at all. 

The more rational explanation is that Sky News Australia is more likely to be a right wing media outlet, which stirs up really stupid outrages, while their supporters push the government even further to the right. Sky News Australia loves to rail against glib slogans because it is politically expedient.

The problem that Sky News Australia has is that 'Black Lives Matter' is a pretty simple and somewhat obvious slogan, so they have to invent reasons to oppose it. In the case of Euro 2020 and players kneeling, Sky News Australia has to declare Black Lives Matter as a Marxist plot because  they would otherwise have to openly admit that as part of the media group which has been found guilty of violating the Racial Discrimination Act, they are institutionally racist.

Of course in daring to suggest such a thing and publishing ungoodthink, how do I know that I am not part of this Marxist plot? 

Horse 2854 - THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE v THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [2021] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE v THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [2021] - Judgement

H2854/1

"We really have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language."

- Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost, (1882)

It has come to this fake internet court's attention (again) that the American usage of the word 'check' is very very silly. The American usage of the English language is not quite as silly as the Roman usage of the Latin language; which it must be said is pretty lively for a supposedly dead language. Oscan was the most widely spoken Italic language before the spread of Latin; which marched through the Empire, while hanging off the skirt tails of the Roman Army's Tunica. Latin has a nominative, a vocative, accusative, a genitive, a dative and ablative. It is amazing that the Romans got anything done at all with such a silly language.

Judgement Praecido:

Latin, you are dead. Go back to your grave.

Back to the case at hand:

We had a client who visited us recently to have their income tax returns done. Everything went cordially and efficiently but at the end of the meeting they asked the rather odd question:

"Could you send me the check (?) when it is all done?"

My boss looked decidedly confused but I answered that we would include the invoice along with the tax returns and the meeting concluded with the usual flurry of pleasantries and salutations. 

This is where linguists, sociologists, and other people from the humanities department of a university start speaking about intersectionality as though it was some ultra-über hip and happening concept. Yeah, I'm home with the downies; I'm a real hep cat. Speaking as someone who lives in a land of numbers and from my apartment on Pedant Corner, the only thing that I hear whenever I hear the word 'intersectionality' is the ensuing honking of horns from the traffic jam of nonsense which is about to follow.

If we interrogate what this person said, we run into the problem which George Orwell hints at in the appendix to '1984'; which is that when an idea can not be expressed in words, at least so far as thought is dependent on words, then it  should be literally unthinkable and makes all other modes of thought, impossible. Can an idea actually exist if it can not be thought? We have the dual problem of the word 'check' trying to act in places where it really shouldn't and this wouldn't be improved with the written word either because American English makes no distinction between a 'check' and a 'cheque'. Clearly this is an issue which needs to be resolved.

This is different and distinct from this court's opinion on that blackguard and scoundrel Webster Noah whose crimes against the English itself are wanton and deliberate. His deliberate attempts to produce a new language for a new nation represent not an act of negligence but of abject culpability against the flower of English.

This case and dispute is not about mere spelling, or whether or not a dictionary should be prescriptive about how to use spelling or descriptive of how it is actually used but rather it is about the very meanings of words themselves; as distinct units of conveyances of thoughts and concepts.

That great sage Pauline Hanson ('sage' in the sense of that herb) once had her words twisted to say "My language has been murdered; my language has been murdered; my shopping trolley murdered; my groceries just gone." I could make a pretty convincing case that the twisting of those words produced more sense  than the entirety of Ms Hanson's political career but I want to focus on the central message and implications of those words. When we murder language it leads to unfortunate consequences; such as the loss of groceries in this case.

These are the facts as this court sees them:

There are three things which need separate and distinct words because they are separate and distinct things. The prime purpose of language is the presentation of information which is then understood by others. While it is fun to live in the land of ambiguity, it is like living in a permanent fog and is quite unproductive. For clarity, these perfectly cromulent words will embiggen people's understanding.

Bill - in the sense that is relevant here, a bill is a list of demands. Bills of Rights are the official list of demands of rights, that a people group and/or citizenry is claiming. A Bill of Sale, which is what is handed to someone in a restaurant, is a demand for payment which is based upon an itemised list of things provided (which is usually the various components of a succulent meal).

Cheque - a cheque is an instruction to pay. A cheque is usually drawn upon a bank and is an instruction for that bank to pay some other person or their nominated bank account. It is named after the chequered cloth upon which the Chancellor of the Exchequer would sit; who then pays out the coin/money of the realm from atop a bank of monies.

Note - a note is a statement that a thing exists. Technically a bank note is a promissory note which states that the issuing bank (usually the central bank of the nation) promises to pay a sum specified. A Twenty Dollar Note states that the bank promises to pay the bearer on demand, the sum of twenty dollars. In the past this may have been twenty gold or silver dollars but since the age of fiduciary currency, this promise is merely for the abstract concept of whatever a dollar happens to be at the time.

--

When you go to a restaurant, they hand you a Bill which is a demand that you pay them; based upon a list of things provided. You will then either hand over some Notes which are promises from the central bank that the amount of money stated is good for payment, or you will hand over an instruction for your bank to pay theirs; which is called a cheque.You do not ask for a cheque. You do not hand over a bill; in fact, the bits of paper/plastic that you hand over as payment, will actually state that it is 'note'. 

Judgement:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871)

The problem with this line of thinking and abuse of language is that if language is mangled so that anything can mean everything, then nothing means anything at all. The purpose of language is the conveyance of meaning and while dictionaries are best at being descriptive of how language is used, as opposed to being prescriptive for how it should be used, the underlying language shouldn't be murdered or otherwise everyone's groceries will be just gone.

This court hereby orders that the words 'Bill', 'Cheque', and 'Note' be used properly, and that existing usage of 'check' when you mean 'bill', 'check' when you mean 'cheque' and 'bill' when you mean 'note' be stopped immediately. 

The United States Of America, you are guilty of both conspiracy and deception. You have brought hateration and holleration into this fake internet court and as you have no business mucking with a language that doesn't even bear your name, we order you to cease, desist and stop this egregious pretense. If we ever see you back before this court, the penalities will be severe. Get out; lest you make a mockery of my courtroom. We are already perfectly capable of making a mockery of this fake internet courtroom as it is. You are malevolent and have now ensnared others in your villainy. Can you not see what trouble thou hast wrought? 

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H2854/1 - Ed)

Horse 2853 - Defund, Degrade, Destroy, Privatise. (The Future Story Of Sydney Buses)

This week I had the strange experience of filling out a survey on board a route 100 bus from Taronga Zoo to City QVB; getting on at Spit Junction and getting off at Wynyard. We were told on board the bus that this was to help improve the service, I think that this is actually just ruse before the whole region is privatised. 

Late last year the cotracts for the Sydney Bus Regions 7, 8 and 9, that this the northwestern suburbs, northern beaches, and eastern suburbs, were all marked for privatisation and handing over to private operators between November 2020 and the end of the year. That hasn't happened presumably of because the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic but given the Liberal Party's proven track record to hand over government services to their criminal friends for a peppercorn (which is why Sydney Ferries is a subsidiary of Transdev Australasia) it looks like it will happen at some point in the future.

I can already blame the then Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian for her abject refusal to connect the North West Metro to the Richmond Line, for her part in the process which gave Hillsong Head Office its own Metro Station while being practically inaccessible to the suburb of Norwest which it is named after; so this just looks like more of the same. The current Transport Minister Andrew Constance used to work as a lobbyist for industry bodies and was parachuted into a safe seat with which he had no connection on the basis that he was the former President of the Young Liberals. I suspect that he has been employed to deliver infrastructure projects to Liberal voting areas before flogging them off to his mates. Both he and Gladys will probably both go the way of former Premier Mike Baird who jumped ship to join the NAB.

I have been told by some of the drivers (yes I speak to bus drivers) that they were allowed to look at a document which had the suspicious looking stamp of "sensitive" on the outside and it said that everyone who wasn't directly employed as a driver, which includes all admin, finance, and scheduling staff, everyone who maintains the fleet, all of the cleaners, would not be guaranteed to retain their job when there was a new private operator.

I suspect that I am a victim of blind A/B testing; where the bus services are being deliberately made worse, to test the bottom limits of people will accept. The 100 bus operates as an "all day" service with no real time table, the B1 bus also runs on this basis and they have decided to run fewer buses. Running fewer buses is fine from an operational point of view because it reduces costs but if you are waiting for a bus on the second to last pick-up stop on the route, then seeing buses with "Sorry Bus Full" signs on them are not helpful. One day last week, I had to wait 36 minutes for a bus to arrive which wasn't full. I have a big black scary coat and so I am fine when it is 8°C and windy but when it is 5°C and raining, it is unpleasant.

Normally if you had to wait 36 minutes for a bus, then I would either think that you were waiting for a long distance service, or a service in a suburban/semi-rural area. Buses from Sydney to Melbourne might run once or twice a day. Buses in suburban/semi-rural areas are more likely to run on a half hour service; so a bus being 6 minutes late might not be a problem. I live in a suburban area and so waiting for a bus for half an hour is not an unusual thing, however this is a photograph of what in theory is just seven kilometers away from Wynyard Station. 

There has existed a thing in tory politics for so long that it makes me wonder if it is a guiding principle. Obviously the people who fund tory politics and the political machines therein want to act as if they have no responsibility to the nation or society whatsoever but politics is the art of the enactment of policy; in this case denying and abrogating any responsibility that you might have to the nation and its people, then metastasises into actively destroying the assets which are held in common. In Australia at least, the perpetual slogan of the Liberal Party (which has now abandoned the pretense of being in favour of liberal democracy) should be "Defund, Degrade, Destroy, Privatise." Of course if there is a collective action problem which comes along, then the same people who demand that kind of policy are all only too happy to then demand a public bail out when it all turns to nonsense.

I suspect that Andrew Constance will say that privately-run buses will be better able to stick to the timetable or other such nonsense. Andrew Constance as MP for Bega and who almost certainly doesn't actually live there, seems to deny reality itself because no buses, either public or private, can outrun the swirling conurbation that is traffic within the five million souls of the metropolis of Sydney. Timetables aren't set by Sydney Buses but by the State Government and the Ministry for Transport and Roads itself. Private operators as private business always have the prime incentive to cut costs and reduce service standards in order to extract profits from the public. Transport choices tend to be rather inelastic in demand because even when the price changes, even when the level of service is deliberately degraded, we still need to get to and from work. If only there was a responsible Transport Minister.

Horse 2852 - Is It Okay For Helio Castroneves To Try And Go For A Fifth Indy 500 Victory?

There has been a discussion on an Indianapolis 500 Facebook group page which I am a member of, about whether or not it is right for Helio Castroneves to try and go for a fifth Indy 500 victory. In winning his fourth Indy 500 this year, he joins a club which only has AJ Foyt, Rick Mears, Al Unser Sr., and now himself. 

 - Helio Castroneves, the pink and black #06 car

As this is a matter of not much consequence beyond the myth and story of the race itself, I think that it serves as a very good reminder of the power of stories. I personally think that all records are there to be broken and that anyone who competes and plays at games, aught to try and win within the established rules of the game or be inventive enough to force someone to have to invent rules. 

Long before I was born, Juan Manuel Fangio was a five time Formula One Champion. He won Formula One Championships for different teams; in part necessitated by the tragedy of the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hour Race, when 82 people were killed and Mercedes-Benz withdrew from all official competition for decades. Fangio moved from Mercedes-Benz to Maserati and still won championships. Five Formula One championships was for the longest time, a seemingly impossible record to equal. Jack Brabham, Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Nelson Piquet and Aryton Senna all got to three, Alain Prost won four but five was still out of reach. Then Michael Schumacher came along and not only won five but six and seven Formula One Championships. I was happy when Schumacher won his fifth and then equally as happy when he won his sixth and seventh.  Likewise, now that Lewis Hamilton has made it to seven, I absolutely want to see him win an eighth.

I think that records are meant be broken. Peter Brock went on to win 9 Bathurst 1000 races, after equaling and smashing the previous record of 4. Mark Taylor retired on 334 not out and didn't want to pass the then Australian Test Cricket record of Sir Donald Bradman's; only to have it smashed by Matthew Hayden who would score 380. 

If you do have the ability to go out and win a thing a record number of times, if you have the ability to go out and be the fastest, or the strongest, then you absolutely should. 

Former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once said that:

"Somebody said that football's a matter of life and death to you, I said 'listen, it's more important than that'."

Shankly's quote is often taken with no context but put back into the proper context, in an interview which happened after his career 

"Well everything I've got I owe to football, and the dedication I put into the game. You only get out of the game what you put into it, Shelley. And I put everything into it I could, and still do. For the people I was playing for and the people that I was manager for. I didn't cheat them out of anything. So I put all my heart and soul into it, to the extent that my family suffered."

"Do you regret that at all?" (Shelley Rohde)

"Yeah I regret it very much."

Shankly who was a fierce socialist, put everything into the game of football because he knew that people out here in the real world often have scummy jobs and difficult life circumstances, and that football in particular and sport generally matters so very much because it is intrinsically pointless. Shankly believed that everybody should work for each other and his job was to make people happy by building a team that worked together. Having said that, sports and games are always only ever played for the benefit of the participants and everyone watching who are in effect playing by proxy. Sport matters because it doesn't matter. 

Everyone watching sport and playing games wants to see something fun. We want to see who wins, we want to see records smashed, we want to see people try and fail at the attempt and we want to see people try and succeed. Precisely because sports and games are intrinsically pointless, the only thing that is created after the thing has ended is the story and the legend. People will hang on waiting for years and decades for a story to be written and they want to see the seemingly unattainable thing be realised. Once that thing is finally attained, it then becomes the new thing.

If it isn't about whether you win or lose but how you play the game, then that last qualifier demands that you ask the question of 'how' you play a game. If you aren't playing to achieve some kind of objective, then what's the point? If you are in a field of many and you have no realistic chances or expectations of actually winning, then you should still compete as though you were going to. If you are 5-0 down in a game of football, then you should still play to win; even if that's impossible. Sometimes if you are playing a game and you can't win, then assuming the role of a spoiler and kingmaker is still a role in which you can win at. 

If you are one of those kinds of people who isn't competitive, then you should play games where the objective is to be creative and/or collaborative because there is still an objective and a point. Playing games to create mirth and fun, is still playing to win. 

As for the question of whether or not it is right for someone to reach, attain, and then pass a record, that's always on the table if it is within someone's power to do so.

Aside:

Helio Castroneves' win in 2021 was the first time that a car won with a 0 at the beginning. Meyer Shank Racing racing has almost always run the number 60; so 06 is just those numbers reversed. 

Horse 2851 - Thirroul Wants To Yell "Get Off My Lawn!"

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-03/road-toll-proposal-grand-pacific-drive/100188294

Does the solution to the northern Illawarra's growing weekend and public holiday traffic woes lie in the dirtiest of words for motoring enthusiasts: a road toll?

During a discussion of new plans to alleviate the growing tendency for the entire length of the main road through Thirroul to look like a car park on weekends, Viv texted in to ABC Illawarra with the toll suggestion.

"Regarding Thirroul and adjacent suburbs with traffic. How about a toll to take the tourist drive?" he messaged.

- ABC Illawarra, 4th Jun 2021

What a top idea!

Installing a punitive, pecuniary penalty, in an effort to reduce traffic will absolutely work. Installing taxes upon things that we want to discourage is a good method of discouraging behaviour. As just about everything is subject to the forces of supply and demand, then deliberately increasing the price without changing the supply will generally move a market to a new equilibrium position where lower amounts of the goods and services will be demanded. Sometimes tolls and excise will have practically no effects on the amount demanded; so these kinds of taxes are a good way for governments to find new sources of revenue without much effort.

Toll roads as they are used in NSW do two things.

Firstly they act as a source of private revenue for private people, by charging motorists for using a road which as a taxpayer they've already helped to bankroll. It doesn't take much of a leap to come to the conclusion that this is yet another example of privatising profits and socialising losses; which is to be expected considering that we have an entire rentier class of people in NSW who actually contribute nothing of value but because they sit on massive amounts of capital, act as though they are entitled to the rewards of the economy.

Secondly, for people like myself who refuse to use toll roads on the basis that I think that it is morally outrageous to pay for roads which my taxation in both registration fees, taxes on motor insurance, as well as multiple 3x3 levies which everyone seems to have forgotten about; as well as people who simply can't afford to use toll roads, we run rat races on other roads because we will not use toll roads. I find the whole idea that Epping Rd through Willougby and Lane Cove is only one lane, completely morally bankrupt.

Toll roads as they are used in NSW are completely in line with tory philosophy. Remember, the word 'tory' comes from the Irish language 'toraidhe'; meaning, 'Outlaw, Robber, Brigand.' I think that it is a neat coincidence that the words predatory and obligatory also use -tory as a suffix. If you want to install a toll on a road which steals directly from people's purses, then people will go elsewhere where their purses are not being stolen from.

As for the grand question of whether or not a road toll would ease congestion on the Illawarra's Grand Pacific Drive, then of course it will. If you are a tourist and want to go down the coastal road through Waterfall, Otford, Stanwell Tops, Clifton, Austimere, Thirroul etc. and there's a toll on the road, then you are discouraged to some degree from going there. This is exactly the same argument why councils right up and down the coast in Sydney want to put parking charges for parking next to the beaches. The excuse given is that they want to reduce congestion but really, it's both a revenue raising exercise and an attempt to keep out the people from the western suburbs, the wrong people, from using their stuff.

I will personally take it as a slight and suggest that if I am not good enough to use a road, then you are not worthy enough to receive my tourist dollars. If Wollongong City Council has decided that it wants to punish me for passing through an area, then I will respond by not passing through the area. That's perfectly fine if all you want to do is reduce congestion but I do wonder what all of those businesses that get money from the passing tourist trade are going to do when people like me no longer pass by. If the locals in Bulli and Thirroul in particular are fed up with congestion and they want to sent people like me elsewhere, they are of course quite welcome to. You only have to look at towns like Jugiong and Tarcutta to know that if you remove the passing traffic, that passing tourist trade dries up to practically zero.

Heat is work, and work's a curse, 

And all the heat in the universe,

Is gonna cool down,

'Cause it can't increase.

Then there'll be no more work,

And there'll be perfect peace.

Yeah, that's entropy, man!

Horse 2850 - Christian Porter's Defamation Action Ends

 "The ABC had been forced by my taking this action to say that they regret the article. I never thought that they would concede that the accusations that were put in the article could never be proven, could not be proven to the criminal/civil standard."

- Christian Porter, 31st May 2021

This week, former Attorney-General Christian Porter dropped his defamation case against the ABC and Louise Milligan but still tried to claim victory despite failing to secure an apology or retraction from the public broadcaster.

His statement indicates that he is trying to claim some kind of moral victory by stating that ABC could not prove guilt to a criminal or civil standard. The problem with this is that because the subject of the article was the allegation of raping a 16-year-old girl in Sydney in 1988 by "a man who was now a member of Cabinet" and that that woman took her own life in June 2020, then proving guilt to a criminal or civil standard was always impossible. Not only could the ABC not prove guilt to a criminal or civil standard, it never sought to do so. 

Furthermore, his actions inside the court case itself, in trying to push the ABC off of claiming the truth as defence, appears to have backfired. In forcing the ABC’s defence to be publicly redacted, whatever incriminating evidence that the ABC may have had against Porter, will like be forever hidden from public view. Thus, not only will the public never actually know what the ABC had in its defence that made Porter back down, but the public will also never actually know if Christian Porter is a fit and proper person to be a Cabinet Minister. In that respect, he has won most elegantly because in putting more spin on the case than Nathan Lyon can put onto a cricket ball, his tenure as MP for the Division of Pearce is secure.

Speaking as a member of the general public with no actual ability to look inside the case, then the most likely story which fits the available facts is that Porter's legal team probably hit the wall of lack of evidence, in trying to prosecute the case. As he was the one who got out in front of the media and announced on 3 March 2021 that he was the person named in the allegations, then trying to make the claim that he had been defamed when the original allegation did not name him, that he was "readily identifiable" and that the article was intended to harm him, might have been impossible. As he was the plaintiff who initiated the civil lawsuit against the ABC, then the burden of proof rested upon the him in respect of every element or essential fact that made up the case. Not only does that burden of proof never shifts to the defendant,  there is also no obligation whatsoever on the defendant to prove any fact or issue that is in dispute.

I think that likely story is that the whole thing is what is colloquially known as a SLAPP suit. SLAPP is a backronym which stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation; which is where plaintiff doesn't actually expect to win the lawsuit but intends to burden and intimidate the defendant with sufficient costs of mounting a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition. This is especially effective against poorer people because they do not have much money and so it is relatively easy to bankrupt them but much harder against an organisation like ABC. Warfare by exhaustion works if the enemy is small; not when it is big. Porter probably had no intention of prosecuting it to an actual trial, it was just an attempt to bully and intimidate the ABC. Unironically, this is a normal course of events where you have knavish plaintiffs in sensitive cases relating to domestic violence and rape.

If his plan was to force the ABC to defend itself on the burden of truth which would have been spun as finding him innocent, then I think he has failed. If his plan was to scare the ABC into a monetary settlement, then I think he has failed. If his plan was to push the ABC in seeing what kind of information that the ABC holds, then he migh have won. If his plan was to wave his magic legal wand and have all obstacles magically disappear from his path, then I would like Mr Porter to explain why he he is not implicated in Kate’s rape, just as as he promised at his press conference, oh so many moons ago.

The one case that Mr Porter will not be able to control is what the South Australian Coroner's Court decides. Given that NSW police detectives met with Kate in Sydney in February 2020 and had contact with her on at least five occasions until June; on June 23 she indicated in an email to NSW Police she did not wish to proceed with the complaint; then on June 25 SA police advised NSW Police that she had died to to suicide, that may yet warrant an inquest. If the SA Coroner does decide to hold an inquest into the circumstances that contributed to the alleged victim's suicide and if Mr Porter is called up, then he must provide evidence, even in circumstances when it may incriminate him or lead to a civil penalty. If the Coroner's Court calls for information, then it won't be asking for Mr Porter to prove guilt or innocence to a criminal or civil standard, it will be asking for the truth.

Also see:

Horse 2818 - https://rollo75.blogspot.com/2021/03/horse-2818-christian-porters-defamation.html

Horse 2849 - Gemini, Year Of The Metal Ox: Laughter Is The Very Best Medicine. Remember That When Your Appendix Bursts Next Week.

 Last week before the eclipse of the moon, we had a client who we did a tax return for and she was quite excited for this upcoming event.

She then wanted to pursue a line of questioning by asking when my boss' date of birth was, and then asked what mine was; so that she could do an astrological reading. That would involve charting the positions of the stars and planets on the day that someone was born; before applying a set of rules, to invent some kind of narrative; with the air of semi-legitimacy. My boss wouldn't tell her his birthday but I was asked what my birthday is.

"33rd of Undecimber. I was born in the year of the Cat." was my reply

Immediately she knew that she wasn't going to get an answer because if you know anything about the legend of the Chinese Zodiac, the Rat tricked the Cat into thinking that they the animals were supposed to present themselves to the Jade Emperor on a different day. The Rat who rode on top of the Ox, is at the front of the list but the Cat who was having a nap, slept for the whole day. When the Cat did show up, it was the wrong day. Consequently, there is no year of the Cat. 33rd of Undecimber exists in some accounting packages as the 13th period in which to make adjustments in. The accounting package that we use at work, has 40 days available in every month and 20 months in the calendar year. 40/20/2021 is a legitimate date in our accounting system.

Forty days hath September,

April, June, and November.

All the rest have forty as well.

Which makes this rhyme, a pointless spell.

I absolutely think that astrology did provide a useful service to science back in the day. In order to come up with their charts, astrologers needed maps of the heavens. I do not think that astrology provides a useful service today, given that the planets are probably dead pieces of rock and gas, which are subordinate to the laws of physics.

That isn't to say that science hasn't also thought of its own kind of self-referential circular naval gazing logic. While I can see some value in categorising personality types and developing policy based on observable and repeatable experiment, the way in which some personality exams are administered is no more useful than horoscopes. The Meyer-Briggs Personality Test which generates 16 types based upon a series of yes/no if/then logic gates, pens people into 16 types which look all the world like the various Zodiac signs of both western and eastern mythology.

The problem with the Meyer-Briggs Personality Test is that under the cover of pseudo credibility, it basically pulls the same broad tricks as most horoscope readings. By using a series of established rules, a definitive outcome is achieved; which is then useful for generating what amounts to a confidence trick.

Because the centre of the observable universe is roughly 19mm behind someone's corneas, not only is everyone's experience of the universe unique but they are justified in believing that are the centre of the universe, for it is literally impossible to view anything from any other perspective. When you attach by means of electro-biomechanical hardware and software, a fully functioning ego, superego, and id, to that unique perspective, then the only possible consequence is that everyone thus becomes the hero of the narrative which that series of systems must invent. Specificity is the soul of narrative; narrative is a story constructed from aggregate points of specificity. You can not get more specific than the singular point of observations which are uniquely available to any given individual.

When you apply a given set of rules to points of data in order to derive some cohesive narrative, then people can very easily make the leap to apply that narrative to themselves. The western horoscope sets out 12 little pots into which simple colours can be poured. The eastern horoscope sets out a different set of 12 little pots into which colours are poured and then adds five textures. The Meyer-Briggs Personality Test contains a list of ingredients on the side of the bottle which sound more credible but really it's just 16: little pots of colour.

Humans love to paint the world in the colours provided, and horoscopes and personality tests if used recreationally, are no more useful at creating a picture than a child's finger painting set. Yet because humans are pattern seeking machines which are driven by a single point of perspective, we are very good at making those pictures, however terrible that they might be, about ourselves. 

We are keen to apply labels to ourselves because that's useful in defining our identity and whereas horoscopes were an appeal to authority in order to justify a hokey story, personality tests like the Meyer-Briggs Personality Test is also an appeal to authority but happens to be an appeal to a more scientific authority. The story is still hokey. 

Horoscopes and the Meyer-Briggs Personality Test have so much traction, not because they are necessarily true but because self-interested, self-seeking, self-important individuals who are the heroes of their own story. There is probably a correlation with people who like these sorts of things and whether or not someone believes that they have an internal or external locus of control in life. If people think that external factors or forces beyond their influence have a greater bearing on what happens to them, as opposed to peoplewho think that they are controllers and directors of their own narrative, then I suspect that people are more likely to pay attention to astrology. It seems to be a defence against uncertainty, in a very uncertain and chaotic kosmos.

For the record, my Meyer-Briggs Personality is an Undecided Seeking Systematic Repairer (USSR); which means that my superpower is sending rockets into space. Then again, as someone who was born in the year of the Cat and whose zodiac sign is Ferrero Rocher, you should have already known that. See? I can invent hokey stories as well.

Horse 2848 - What? That.

When? Then

Whose? Those.

Where? There.

I had my mind taken to a delightful new place last week when someone on the radio made mention of the "Wh? Th." question and answer formation.

The rational explanation is that 'who' and 'what' derive from Old English hwa and hwæt, respectively, and in turn are simply the descendants of the masculine and neuter forms of Proto-Indo-European 'kwos' and 'kwod'. The direct Latin equivalents are 'quis' and 'quod'. 'wh' and 'qu' are similar and at some point 'w' merged with 'ū' and that makes sense as they are both velar approximant excpet that /w/ is a voiced labialized-velar approximant.

Why? Thy.

How? Thou.

(I bet that 'how' used to be spelt 'whow').

These questions and answers do in fact work but they're nowhere near as elegant. These answers also attach ownership of the answer to the person directly in front of the one asking the question.

However (just like when you hear the word 'but' you can ignore everything that came before, when you hear the word 'however' you'd better strap yourself in because it's going to be a bumpy ride), I kind of feel as though I've found a word which doesn't exist but absolutely, totally, definitely, indubitably, should. 

Whese? These.

It feels to me that 'whese' should exist as a word because it follows the same construction of this kind of particle but I don't honestly see any practical purposes for it. 'Whese' if it is to exist as a word, needs so much of an explanation as to be unwieldy and ridiculous. 'Whose are these?' 'Which ones are these?' Those concepts are far more complex than the usual questioning words.

Who? Tho.

Which? Thich. 

'Who? Thou.' might be a reminder that the ancient rule which existed, worked in this case after all. What has changed in the meantime is both the great vowel shift and English flirting with the idea and then rejecting the concept that objects have gender.

Whing? Thing.

White? Thite.

Whee? Thee.

The thing that makes the English language the best language in the world is that it is so very brilliant at allowing things that could be built; which fits into the existing rules. The only real hard and fast rule in grammar is that every sentence contains a verb and that verb can either be stated or implied. English is so versatile that you can verb a noun and noun a verb. You can also build words that make sense, from the intuitive rules which exist.

Whither? Thither.

Wherefore? Therefore.

Use of 'th' in place of what would have been a yogh explains neatly why words like 'thee', 'thou', and 'thine' exist in print. Typesetters in looking through their new fangled box of bits, while minding their ps and qs found that they were missing thorns, eths, and yoghs. There might be as many as ten letters that English lost as a result of the arrival of the printing press and this also explains why the Scots name which might be pronounced as Men-ghi-s, came out as Menzies. This also explains why 'The Old Shop' comes out as 'Ye Olde Shoppe'.

Whyfor? Thyfor.

Whyroid? Thyroid.

Whis? This. 

The problem when I start tumbling down the rabbit hole is that I feel as though there is some underlying rule which existed in a proto-English that got baked into the final product but I don't know how you even go about researching this. I imagine that linguists have come across this before and that maybe someone somewhere has written a paper on it but again, I don't know how to find it.

I am left with a lot of 'wh' questions but not many 'th' answers. Oh English, ye weird wayward child of Saxon, Viking, Anglish and French. Do you know what trouble thou hast wrought?

What? That.

Horse 2847 - PORT ADELAIDE FOOTBALL CLUB v COLLINGWOOD FOOTBALL CLUB [2021] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

PORT ADELAIDE FOOTBALL CLUB v COLLINGWOOD FOOTBALL CLUB [2021] - Judgement

H2847/1

It has come to this fake internet court's attention that Collingwood Football Club somehow coerced and twisted the arm of the Australian Football league (AFL), into refusing Port Adelaide's request to play in their traditional black-and-white striped 'prison bars' guernsey against the Adelaide Crows, last month.

https://www.afl.com.au/news/603616/statement-port-adelaide-request-to-wear-black-and-white-striped-guernsey

The AFL confirms it has not approved the request for Port Adelaide to wear a black and white striped 'prison bars' guernsey for the Round 8 match vs Adelaide Crows next week.

After reviewing the request from the Port Adelaide Football Club, the AFL determined the existing signed agreements between the Port Adelaide Football Club, Collingwood and the AFL on the use of the "prison bar" guernsey would remain in place. 

In 2019, the AFL, Port Adelaide and Collingwood came to an agreement that allowed one-off approval for the 'prison bar' guernsey to be worn in Port Adelaide's home match against the Adelaide Crows to celebrate the Club's 150th anniversary.

That agreement, signed by all parties, stipulated the guernsey was specifically approved for Port Adelaide's use only for that single match in 2020 and Collingwood's approval did not bind it with respect to any other future proposals by the Port Adelaide Football Club in respect of the guernsey.

- The AFL, 29th Apr 2021

If that wasn't enough, Collingwood then had the audacity and sheer cheek to fly this banner before their match against Port Adelaide last weekend.

The issue that this court must decide is whether or not Collingwood has a right to protect what it sees as its intellectual property or whether or not it is unreasonable for them to do so.

These are the facts as this court sees them:

Collingwood began as a club in 1892 and was part of the initial core of clubs which founded the Victorian Football League in 1897. From the outset they have played in black and white stripes.

Port Adelaide Football Club began in 1870 as a joint football and cricket club and would play in the inaugural season of the South Australian National Football League in 1877. It has played in blue, pink, and magenta but only acquired its 'Prison Bar' uniform in 1902. Upon entry to the AFL in 1997, Port Adelaide was required to incorporate teal and remove stripes by the AFL to appease Collingwood. It was also required not to call itself the magpies.

Port Adelaide would like to play in its 'Prison Bar' uniform occasionally. Collingwood however, would like this never to be the case. The two clubs (Port Adelaide and Collingwood) have been engaged in this fiasco for a very long time, as Collingwood perpetually claims that Port Adelaide's 'Prison Bar' jumper is too similar to their black-and-white, striped guernsey.

It is the opinion of this court, that when Collingwood play North Melbourne that the two kits are practically identical. Navy Blue and Black are indistinguishable from each other from far away and Collingwood hasn't had a problem with North Melbourne in the more than a century that they have been in the same league.

Furthermore the experience of just about every single kind of sporting code in the world says that if you have two clubs that are in kits that would clash with each other (like Liverpool and Manchester United who would normally both play in read) that when they meet, one of them changes to some other colour. The idea of the away kit is a long established concept.

Collingwood however are not arguing that Port Adelaide shouldn't play in their black and white stripes when the two clubs meet. Collingwood are arguing that Port Adelaide shouldn't be allowed play in their black and white stripes ever; including when the two clubs do not meet.

Final Judgement:

It is the opinion of this fake internet court that Collingwood Football Club, all of their supporters, and especially Eddie Maguire, all need to put up and shut up. Good old Collingwood forever? This kind of carry on and stuff of nonsense is the stuff of two year old children. They know how to play the game? Clearly not, for they neither understand decency nor common sense. 

Port Adelaide Football Club should be allowed to play in whatever they like when they aren't playing you and that includes black and white stripes. It is already a universally acknowledged fact that magpies are knaves and it follows that you Collingwood Football Club, who want to call yourselves "the Magpies", are also knaves. You have proven that you can not work well and play nicely with others.

Collingwood Football Club, you are guilty of both knavery and deliberate stupidity. You have brought hateration and holleration into this fake internet court and as you have no business deciding what other football teams wear when they aren't even playing you, we order you to cease, desist and stop this egregious pretense.

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H2847/1 - Ed)

Horse 2846 - There Are Cheap Cars. There Are Cool Cars. There Are Almost No Cheap And Cool Cars.

If I may be so bold as to make a declarative statement about the state of the automotive world today, it is that I find the number of SUVs and CUVs on the road today, both depressing and sad. SUVs (of which CUVs are included for statistical purposes) now account for 53% of total sales.

Now admittedly this stems from my interests in watching motor racing and in particular the problem that the V8 Supercars has, that there are basically no donor cars for the category any more but that then maps to the real world and the kinds of cars which are out on the streets. 

With General Motors being non existent here, Ford having no Falcon and now announcing this week that the Mondeo will be terminated by the end of 2021, with Mazda announcing that the Mazda 6 is to be cancelled and with the general malaise of what is out there, it makes me ask - where'd all the cool cars go?

No story is told in a vacuum; so the answer of why there are so few cool cars on the road in 2021 fits into a much broader story of the opening of the twenty first century.

The base problem across the Anglosphere and Europe is that real wages peaked some time between 1975 and 1980. There has been a long term trend since then of capital reasserting itself and if the very long game of history returns to normal (which this pandemic has only accelerated), then wages growth should revert to close to zero forever and the rate of return on capital to 2%.

In theory it is possible that taxation policy could correct this but concerted efforts by those with money and power repeatedly try to unpick any gains that labour power might have made during the twentieth century. Money speaks for money and the devil for his own; nobody comes to speak for the skin and the bone. As such, the Matthew Principle that to those who have much more will be given and to those who have not, even what little they have will be taken away, becomes the core thrust of governmental wages, labour, and industrial relations legislation.

What does any of this have to do with whether or not there are cool cars? Cars are very big capital purchases. As such, people tend to make choices which are far more defined by function, rather than form. Cool cars, tend to be more discretionary spending items; which traditionally are bought by people with more money than they care to care about and younger people who do not have other needs that are addressed by function (needing to carry around children, cargo, equipment, tools etc.).

This being said, it follows that if the motor manufacturers are at their heart nothing more than very big businesses and the prime function of any business is to return benefits, profits, and capital growth to their shareholders and stakeholders, then they will sell only that which helps to return said profits. If over the past 40 years, the amount of discretionary spending which can be done by the general public is falling due to falling real wages, then it should follow that the general public is going to spend less on discretionary spending items, which includes cool cars. 

The most famous historical example of a car which was specially designed, developed, and produced to be a cool car which everyone could buy was the 1964 Ford Mustang. Granted that there were cool cars before then but the '64 'Stang was built just as the first of the Baby Boomers were turning 18. This was a car built purely as a cool discretionary item, for the sole purpose of capturing the discretionary spending of mostly irresponsible kids. It worked brilliantly. The 1964 Mustang is to the best of my knowledge, still the only car in history to sell more than a million units within a calendar year.

If that formula worked then, then where is the modern equivalent? The short answer is that there isn't one. The market for Mustangs simply no longer exists. Parents in their 50s and 60s aren't likely to hand over cars to their older teenage children any more and kids in their late teens and twenties, have never been paid enough in wages to be able to make such a purchase. This also is running in parallel with the fact that as the rewards of the economy now going to wages now go to capital at higher rates than at any point since 1920, that money is now being parked in real estate; which in turn drives up the price of housing, which means that mortgages and rent now has a greater call on people's incomes. When old people tell you that they had it harder in their day, it is simply untrue. 40 years ago a house could be bought on a single average income and that is impossible today. Kids today might have mobile phones and tablets but that has merely replaced records and going out to restaurants.

If you look at the kinds of things that the kids actually are spending their money on, it's mostly housing rather than cool cars. The motor manufacturers know this and rather than build cool cars which they can not sell (because the kids don't have the money like they did 50 years ago), they build SUVs, CUVs, and pickup trucks. I refuse to say "utes" because the actual number of coupé utilities on sale in Australia today is zero.

The SUVification of everything is a perfectly rational response to the market. It is also a perfectly horrible concession that the car makers themselves both follow and pull the marketplace. As far as consumers are concerned, SUVs and CUVs are sensible purchases. However, they are not cool. SUVs and CUVs are the new brown. 

The broad categories of what determines whether or not a car is cool, have remained unchanged. Hot Hatchbacks are generally cool. Coupes are generally cool. Brash brawny cars are generally cool. Rich people have always had the ability to use money to get out of any problem that they desire; the same goes for buying cool cars. The absolute amount of high powered GT cars hasn't changed that much; so this part of the calculus also hasn't changed. What has fallen off of a cliff, are the amount of cheap cool cars. A cheap coupe is now practically non existent.

As little as 20 years ago, there was a Mitsubishi Lancer, Honda Civic, Holden Astra, Peugeot 206, 307, Renault Megane, Subaru WRX etc. which were all smallish coupes and convertibles. There were loads of hot hatches and a few brawny V8 sedans. Practically none of those exist in those forms any more and as far as genuinely cheap cool cars go, there's really only the Kia Picanto GT and the Rio GT and that's practically it. The Toyota 86 was never cheap and cheerful, the Ford Mustang in 2.3 turbo guise was never cheap and what could have been a 3.6L V6 Holden Cruze, never eventuated as General Motors imploded. If I was tasked with going out and finding a cool car tomorrow, I would find that that whole cool car market is pretty light on. 

The 1965 Mustang in Australia retailed for £1200. Adjusted for inflation that would cost $33,703. If you want to find a cool car which is under that price, these are your options from the top ten brands: Toyota Yaris ZR ($33,761), Toyota 86 ($32,180), Mazda 2 GT ($28,295), Kia Picanto GT ($19,990). That's it. There are only four. The other seven manufacturers of the top ten volume sellers, have given up on the idea of a cheap cool car. None of Ford, Mitsubishi, Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru, Volkswagen, or MG are willing to sell you anything cool for under that mark of $33,703. I even had to include the Yaris ZR from Toyota which is $58 over that mark, simply to pad out this list.

Part of the problem lies in the broad categories which the big families of car makers find themselves in. Those families are both defined by function as well as cultural expectation of what a car is supposed to do. American cars are built in the spirit of turning a profit. European cars are built in the spirit of making a high quality good. Japanese cars are built in the spirit of making a well functioning good. African cars are built to be rugged and to last. Now all of this sounds like a hideous set of stereotypes and hopelessly inadequate at describing nuances but if you're going to paint a picture, then you need to start with the underlying formwork before you start filling in finer details. 

America went down the road of making things cheap; which means the SUVification of everything in the name of profit. The European makers went down the road of quality but still have to sell volume in order to make a profit. Japanese makers went down the road of building a better product but that still means building roughly the same things as everyone else because that's where the profit lies. African car makers have to build things which work properly when roads are sometimes a suggestion rather than a strip of black top  In all cases, profit is the master and it is a very boring and unimaginative one. Profit never cares about being cool because it neither understands it, nor is able to capture coolness on a Profit and Loss statement.

Horse 2845 - It’s Not The Constitution, It’s Not Law, It’s Not The Vibe

When the Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for a passport system which would close the internal borders this week, the inevitable Greek chorus of howling monkeys and wingnuttery reverted to a familiar hymn from the same old hymn book.

The hymn is familiar. It is most commonly sung to the great god Dollar and usually invokes vague notions of freedom or some other abstract concept. 

In this case the abstract concept of freedom found an unlikely ally in the Constitution itself; with a certain newspaper (not saying which one) invoking section 92 as though it was a message from the great god Dollar on high:

http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s92.html

Trade within the Commonwealth to be free

On the imposition of uniform duties of customs, trade, commerce, and intercourse among the States, whether by means of internal carriage or ocean navigation, shall be absolutely free.

But notwithstanding anything in this Constitution, goods imported before the imposition of uniform duties of customs into any State, or into any Colony which, whilst the goods remain therein, becomes a State, shall, on thence passing into another State within two years after the imposition of such duties, be liable to any duty chargeable on the importation of such goods into the Commonwealth, less any duty paid in respect of the goods on their importation.

- Section 92, Constitution of Australia (1900).

There is a problem. Just because the Constitution says a thing somewhere doesn't necessarily make it so. Just because the newspaper has found one clause in the Constitution, does not a rule of law make. Also, even a straightforward reading of this tells you that this is about trade of goods within the Commonwealth. I fear that the person writing the newspaper article was lying to us. Unfortunately, the law doesn't actually hold the press to tell the truth if it is dressed up as opinion.

The thing about law generally is that it is like a many twigged game of kerplunk. There isn't usually one law that defines everything and where there are inconsistencies between various laws, between jurisdictions which have power over the same broad area of law, and even within a single law itself, then the interpretation of the laws together including what is equitable and dare I say sensible, falls to professional law interpreters in wigs who we call judges. While not directly applicable here, the most critical case in US Case Law is Madison v Marbury 1803 in which the US Supreme Court took for itself the right to say what the law is¹. Just like the game of kerplunk, many individual laws hold up bigger concepts and in the case of Madison v Marbury, the judge made case law holds up itself.

In Australia, that role falls to the High Court of Australia, who can on occasion have a judging panel of many people sitting behind an extended bench in wigs, all saying what the law is.

When I heard talkback radio hold court on this same subject, which is held in the uninformed and unthinking Court Of Public Opinion, I couldn't help but question both the source and the truth of the opinion that a passport system which would close the internal borders was unconstitutional. It is almost as if, living in a world where pandemics have happened before and where I assume that in such a world, that the law will have already made a decision with regards to same.

The Constitution of Australia is not some sacred piece of stone handed down by God himself, to some prophet with a weird beard; no matter how much we want to ascribe greatness to Henry Parkes. The Constitution Of Australia was hammered out in the heat of several summers, in sweaty rooms full of lots of weird beardy men. The process for knocking it out took so long that both Fiji and New Zealand opted out of the whole box and dice. 

After the better part of a decade, all that the Constitution has to say directly on the subject is found in Section 51 where the Commonwealth Parliament has the powers to...

http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s51.html

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

(ix)  quarantine;

(xxiiiA)  the provision of maternity allowances, widows' pensions, child endowment, unemployment, pharmaceutical, sickness and hospital benefits, medical and dental services (but not so as to authorize any form of civil conscription), benefits to students and family allowances;

(xxxix)  matters incidental to the execution of any power vested by this Constitution in the Parliament or in either House thereof, or in the Government of the Commonwealth, or in the Federal Judicature, or in any department or officer of the Commonwealth.

- Section 51 (parts of), Constitution of Australia (1900).

In invoking the help of abstract concepts to fight a war of words and ideas, the Constitution is both by operation and in fact a notoriously feeble weapon. The functions of the Commonwealth and the States in a federated system which looks less like the republican forms of government in the United States and more like a strange coagulated union like Canada or Switzerland, frequently overlap and on many occasions, including health care policy, Federal oversight has to negotiate with State Governments. 

In this case, Section 92 which contains clauses about interstate commerce and Section 51 which contains the general provisions that the Commonwealth can pass laws to do with quarantine and health care, are imagined to be in conflict with each other. 

The power and responsibility to say what the law is, falls to people sitting behind an extended bench in wigs, that is, the High Court of Australia.

The High Court had this to say:

"a law which imposes an incidental burden or restriction on interstate intercourse in the course of regulating a subject-matter other than interstate intercourse would not fail if the burden or restriction was reasonably necessary for the purpose of preserving an ordered society under a system of representative government and democracy and the burden or restriction was not disproportionate to that end."

- Cunliffe v Commonwealth (1994) HCA

That's pretty well much the end of the story bar the shouting. If the first responsibility of government is the perpetuation of the entity which it governs, then of course it follows that the general welfare of the general public is generally a good thing to be generally protected. 

All of this brings me back to the initial problem of the chorus of howling monkeys and wingnuttery, trying to invoke vague notions of freedom. The problem of trying to invoke some abstract concept of freedom is that it is fine for individuals but individuals who are selfish and who apparently do not want to care about concepts which are bigger than they are (like general welfare, the Commonwealth, nationhood etc.) but ultimately terrible for the nation. I might personally think that the current Morrison Government is bad but at very least it has acquiesced to the idea that it has some amount of responsibility to the people living in the Commonwealth that it governs.

Individual freedom is an utterly pointless concept in the face of a pandemic anyway. A fire gives no thought about the individual freedoms of the trees that make up a forest; likewise, the virus doesn't care about the individual freedoms of the people of the Commonwealth. This is not a virus that cares about anything (as if there was one); it doesn't care about Section 92 arguments either.

Aside:

Talkback radio does an effective job at amplifying untrue ideas if it thinks that it can find a profit. As newspapers generally come out before people wake up, something in print gets to set the tone of the morning's radio and television programs; who often regurgitate the same bolus of indigestible pica type substances without anyone having chewed it over. 

Horse 2844 - Fragments XIV: Of Badness, Beasts, Burglary, Boundaries, and Bob

SF14 - Spanish Flu

I am going to suggest that the chances of most people getting Covid-19 in their lifetimes is going to approach very close to 1. Granted that there are vaccines currently being deployed but even if you account for that, the likelihood of rolling out a vaccine which is going to have the same take-up rates as the smallpox vaccine or the polio vaccine, in my lifetime is not great. It took the destruction of more than a hundred million people in two world wars to produce a work of community sufficiently large enough in societies, such that they saw very big collective action problems as requiring very big action answers and solutions. I do not think that societies have that same spirit of community and forced altruism today.

If what I have said is true (and I do not know if it is or not) then Covid-19 will follow the same kind of timeline as H1N1 which is more famously and incorrectly called the Spanish Flu.

The only reason that it was called the Spanish Flu was that because Spain wasn't embroiled in the First World War, the Spanish media was actually prepared to report the news in the newspapers.

One of the better theories that I have read was that it started in the United States and came to the Western Front when America threw its hat into the ring. Of course nobody who is fighting a war wants to admit that troops are dying left, right, and centre, due to a flu because that would look poxy and weak in the face of the enemy. So whereas France, Britain, Italy, Germany etc. wouldn't report the truth due to trying to keep morale up, Spain had no such reason. 

In 2020 we saw an equally weird propaganda war where instead of this an epidemic and then a pandemic, which should have absolutely been prepared for and expected in the long run, Covid-19 became this thing which was started in a laboratory. This is in spite of all available evidence that engineering anything like this is as far as we know, orders of magnitude more complex than anything that we are currently able to do, and ascribes imagined power to a designated enemy which they simply do not have.

Moreover, if this was genuinely considered to be the act of a skilled state actor in an act of war, then the United States' response to refuse to enact universal health care in the face of this, suggests to me that the administration is by design incompetent on both sides for the purpose of extracting profits from the general public.

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SM7 - Scott Morrison

Is Scott Morrison hanging on to the Premiership purely because he likes the office or is it because the government is otherwise so internally divided that nobody wants the job? I genuinely do not think that it is reasons for ideology or agenda because this government repeatedly demonstrates that it has no obvious ideology or agenda driving it except for letting business abrogate any obligations that they might have to the economy and people of the Commonwealth of Australia.

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AS12 - Aryton Senna Is Not The GOAT

If you win a competition by being worse than your opponent and by fluke of the rules, then almost by default, you aren't eligible for greatness.

In 1988 Senna dropped many zero points paying positions (in some cases where he'd either crashed or blew up the engine), whereas Prost was forced to drop second place positions. Prost finished in more races because he was both kinder on the equipment and because he made fewer mistakes. By operation of the rules though, Prost was penalised for being better and that is stupid.

In reviewing 1989, the very charismatic accident which took out Senna and Prost going into the final chicane at Suzuka could probably be attributed as a 50:50 incident. However, taken in context of the season where Senna had already taken out Mansell in Portugal, and the fact that James Hunt predicted in the commentary that the accident was going to happen before it did, then what looks like a 50:50 incident, begins to look like a 55:45 incident.

That would be fine except that this doesn't exist in isolation and a year later, there is no doubt whatsoever that Senna deliberately rammed Prost off the road in the first corner at Suzuka. He should have been banned for life but instead he was rewarded with the 1990 championship. As far as I'm concerned, if you deliberately use a car as a weapon, in an action which would normally result in criminal prosecution and a prison term, then I am simply not going to admit as evidence anything which happened after the event.

I strikethrough Senna's 1988 championship because he was worse than Prost. I strikethrough Senna's 1990 and 1991 championships because he was a knave. 

Someone on 0 championships is not the GOAT.

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BU23 - Burglary

Robbery is the act of stealing property. Robbery can occur directly from a person or from a premises. 

Burglary on the other hand, is the act of stealing property from a closed premises. The assumption of a closed premises means that the owner/proprietor/occupier is not present at the time that the stealing took place.

My guess is that the word 'burglary' relates to the concept of the burg and burghers. These are principally city dwellers as opposed to people out in the country and my further guess is that stealing from a premises in a small city, is more daring, more audacious, and more rude, because it happens within the supposed presence of others in the city. I can not say for sure but I think that the act of burglary which happens in close proximity to a great number of people is deemed to be more offensive because it could have happened to anyone. It's weird because stealing things from a farm with wide open spaces seems somehow easier and ruder to me because you could kill someone out in the middle of a field and nobody would be any the wiser. 

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BD4 - Cricket Without Boundaries

"We want to see a bigger future for cricket after this pandemic is over. We want to imagine a better world and cricket without boundaries."

- NatWest spokesborg on BBC World Service

I completely understand Faustian bargain that sport has to make with advertising because essentially sport is an otherwise inherently useless endeavour, where the only actual products are temporary entertainment and narrative building. Sport in that respect is no different than crime dramas, talent competitions, and game shows, where the advertising space pays for the performers and the media companies broadcasting the show.

As someone who follows motor racing, the link with advertising couldn't be more obvious as since the 1960s, the entire liveries of race cars have been coloured by the advertisers as mobile billboards. The most famous articles of clothing in bicycle racing are also the direct result of advertising; with the Pink Jersey in the Giro D'Italia being coloured for the colour of the newsprint of La Gazetto Della Sport and the Yellow Jersey being coloured for the colour of the newsprint of L'Auto respectively.

I very much do not need to be reminded of why sport has to dance like a monkey with cymbals in order to chase the corporate and general public's coin. However, a quote like this is a reminder that people who live in corporate land are often gormless and humourless, and very often do not bother to do basic research about the things that they are being corporate partners to.

For one of the things that both defines the field of play and the scoring of the game of cricket, is the boundary and "cricket without boundaries" defies both the logic and the laws of cricket itself. How exactly does one score a Boundary 4 or a Boundary 6 if you are playing in a game of cricket where there is "cricket without boundaries"?

Unless of course this corporate spokesborg is trying to make a weak pun; in which case I appreciate that and will give it an appropriate "hurrrrrr" for being so horky borky. Does NatWest want to tell Dad jokes?

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GN21 - Guinea

Especially through the era of hammered coinage, British currency is notoriously complex. The Sovereign for instance, at the time of Elizabeth I, was a big flat gold jobby which was tariffed at 30 shillings and not at 20 as it later came to be.

The Guinea which was named after the source of gold in Africa where it came from, was initially tariffed at 20 shillings but as it was purer than other gold coins, it came to be as high as 30 shillings at various points.

The so-called "spade guinea" of the 1790s, seems to be a response to The City of London's request for a trade coin for use within the guilds. At some point in the 1780s, there is a Guilds Act of Parliament which affixes the charge out rates of guilds to firms getting a pound and clerks getting a shilling. The value of the spade guinea at 21 shillings or £1/1/- appears to reflect this in physical form.

I have previously alluded to the fact that Bob Cratchitt in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is very handsomely paid at the rate of 15 shillings a week which is akin to about $130,000 a year now. The firm of Marley and Scrooge as private money lenders, is likely taking in at least 15 guineas a week, if they are legally covered by the Guilds Act (which I suspect that they are). At bare minimum, we can assume from the text that both Marley and Scrooge are taking home £7/10/- if Bob Cratchitt is on 15 shillings a week. If this is true then they are taking home £390 a year; which is an astonishingly astronomical amount of money. If we calculate this further, at the long rate of interest as alluded to by Honoré de Balzac in "Old Man Goriot" then Marley and Scrooge probably have a lending book of at least £20,000 under management. No wonder heaps of people hate them. 

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KN18 - I Know Nothing

We know so very little about the world, it's laughable. I have almost no idea how my own body works, much less how my soul managed to operate this electro mechanical meatbag device.

I have no what most people in the world are thinking (literally everyone in the world minus one) and on top of that, I have no idea how a thought works or even where it lives. If I imagine an apple for example, we (and I mean boffins who know just a little more than I) don't know where in the brain that thought is, nor do we know why some people can not imagine an apple in their mind's eye. 

Having said all of that, when we have a thought that we know that we think a thing and it turns out not to be true, the general reaction in people tends to be one of deep confusion and even spills into anger.

This explains why when after Pluto was declared not to be a planet any more, lots of people got angry. I use this example because it is the biggest reaction to the most trivial thing that I can think of. The actual influence that Pluto has on any of our lives is actually nil. Yet the reason for people's visceral reaction to Pluto not being a planet any more, is that people had put some amount of work into getting a handle on this one thing and that someone can take that away, is outrageous.

Imagine then what happens if that kind of reaction spills into things which actually do matter. People invent narratives about how the world works, even if those narratives run counter to fact. People have gone all kinds of crazy when presented with the fact that people who look different to them might have inherent worth, value and dignity.

I find it maddening that people have to invent wild parts of cruel narratives, just so they can shoehorn in reasons to kill people.

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FC5 - My Five Cents

Why do we still have 5 cent coins?

I feel that the act of picking them up is more rubbish collection than actual picking them up to collect value. Evidently most other people also consider this to be true or else they wouldn't be left lying around with such alarming regularity.

There has to be some point when the utility of their existence is so small as to be minus. At that point they fall in their only function, which is to be part of the universal token system for the facilitation of the exchange of goods and services. That point has not yet arrived, it seems.

To highlight the decidedly bonkers nature of its current almost non existent utility, I shall now enumerate just how many you need to do some basic transactions.

It takes 13 of then to buy a can of baked beans. It takes 20 of them to buy a cup of coffee from 7-Eleven. It takes 40 of them to buy a loaf of bread and maybe another 19 to put something on that bread if you want to make a sandwich.

This presumes that you're only going to use 5 cent coins in these transactions. However, if you do choose to use other coins then by practical demonstration, you've already proven the current almost non existent utility of the little things.

You're better off using them for something else. Drill holes in them to make washers. Use them as tokens for card games. Put a whole bunch of them in a blunderbuss and use them as buckshot; or rather 1/20th of a buck... shot.

My current favourite use for then is as a plectrum for a guitar, which was made famous by Brian May. It certainly isn't for using in a transaction; including when transaction is helped by a robot.

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VS8 - Supercars' Closed Premises

The Bathurst 1000 is five months away but because we are currently in a time of weirdness with sport running limited and cut back schedules, it means that with less going on, various teams are making longer term announcements.

Already we've had full driver lineups for the 1000 announced; as well as announcements for so-called wildcard entries where the bigger teams in particular have planned to run a third car. Already there have been two such wildcards announced.

While that's all good and fun, it still only brings the total number of cars in the field up to 26; which is poxy compared with the fields of 55 which used to occur when I was a lad.

The excuse given is that there's simply not enough space for everyone but as I confirmed in person at the track in April, there are in fact 36 double garages with space in between them, which means that it is probably possible to pit 108 cars and certainly possible to pit 72 cars.

What this means is that not only is there enough space to house the entire field multiple times over but given that the number of cars entered in Super 2 and Super 3 is less than the remaining 46 available spaces, they could all have their individual garages. In fact at last year's Bathurst 1000, that is precisely what happened. Super 2 and Super 3 got their own garages for the weekend but still didn't compete in the main race. They competed in their own race which counted for their own championship.

The problem is that Supercars as it stands is a closed shop. The teams which exist have decided that the number of teams allowed to play is more or less fixed by instruments called Racing Entitlement Contracts; the kinds of cars allowed are specifically mandated in Vehicle Specification Documents. With both of these being closely held by the existing teams, it means that the number of new competitors allowed to play, is tiny. The pandemic allowed the existing teams the ability to close the number of entries to 24 and although they are playing with the idea of expanding that to 26, once you add the possibility of 'wildcards' which they deign to admit, then that means that for the foreseeable future, three will be a maximum of 30 cars at most.

There is exactly zero opportunity for a new team to join unless someone else either sells up or they hope for new REC to be released. This is a very far cry from the days when privateers could show up and play.

There will of course be people who actually like this new era of increased professionalism but I do not think that it is good for motor racing in this country and the proof is that the Bathurst 12 Hour has become the race where the rest of the world comes to play, and the Bathurst 6 Hour is set to become the place where the same kinds of people who would have been privateers in the past come to play. The 1000 apart from being the race meeting for a category which rudderless and which doesn't really know what it wants to be, is no longer the place where dreams are made. 

Horse 2843 - Victory to Nobody

There are several things all going on at once which I need to lay out before I can even hope to build an answer. Part of the problem in imaging the world complexly is that you actually have to take the time and effort to look at the various complex pieces, so that you can imagine the world complexly.

The modern state of Israel is in no way shape or form congruous to the ancient theocratic judgedom/kingdom. The modern state of Israel exists as the result of a kind of a modern political crusade which began in the 19th century and came about through the instruments of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the aftermath and consequences of World War I, the total collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the mandatory carvery of what used to be Ottoman Palestine by the great powers of Europe, the results of World War II, the apathy of those great powers of Europe, a series of conflicts which should properly be called a civil war between 1945 and 1948, and finally the declaration of the United Nations.

This presents a bunch of internal logical inconsistencies and disputes. Any argument which disputes the right of the state of Israel to exist, must also dispute the right of the states of Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine to exist. The genesis and creation of one, is the same modern genesis and creation of all of them. 

This means to that that people who hate the existence of Israel on political grounds, I think must also hate the existence of the other modern nation states and if they do not, then I will default to the only reason that any of them exist and that is the collapse and subsequent vanquishment of the Ottoman Empire. The proper custodian of all the land is Great Britain by means of conquest and that is an utterly stupid and evil starting point.

Of course I say that deliberately as a stupid position because if someone else is going to take hating the existence of Israel as a thing and not the rest, then we can only throw acid into a bucket of acid. If however we are prepared to concede that Israel has an historical right to exist along with the rest, then we open the nuance window and look into a complex landscape.

Israel was conceived as a secular state and a homeland for the Jewish people. Unfortunately what it almost immediately became was a two state ethnocracy, with both sides unified in mutual hatred of each other, while also being bound with their own internal sectarian tensions and turmoil. The modern secular state of Israel started with the displacement of around 700,000 Arabic people who were then forcibly herded into what would become the nominal state of Palestine. Palestine which should appear as a victim here by virtue of actually being the result of displacement, then promptly turned around and sought revenge.

Palestine has over the years funded terrorist organisations and even elected them to secular poorer in the forms of Hamas and Fatah; while Israel achieves state terrorism against their neighbours through the instruments of the state armed forces. I think that both are quite quite evil and that your position whatever it is, is completely undermined if you use violence against civilians who have no part in the conflict, except through unfortunate historical accident of being born into stupid nation states. There might be a place to fight against injustice and unjust governments but in this case, there simply is no just government on either side of the conflict.

Most people just want to be left alone. They want a reasonable level of government services and a reasonable level of government protection and order, so that they can live boring lives. There is a lot of good in a boring life because if you have the ability to live a boring life in safety and quiet happiness, you are then free to pursue other more rewarding things. People want a roof over their heads, nice dinner on the table, a family and community that shows practical love, and a rewarding job. That's not too much to ask for.

But, when you have governments in charge who are hell bent on raining destruction on innocent people who have done nothing except live on the other side of a border, then those governments can take a long walk off a short pier. Do not say that you hate anything unless you want it to die. I want both the governments of Israel and Palestine to die and be replaced with kind ones that actually do the job of governing kindly.

There are five million displaced people and refugees in Palestine. That's awful. If Israel is supposed to be some kind of moral virtue keeper here, then I do not understand why foreign governments send it something in the order of about $5bn a year in military aid to Israel; which is then is used to demolish Palestinian homes, imprison Palestinian children and displace Palestinian families. Our government should not fund state violence in any form, anywhere. Yet we tolerate it.

I do not think that it is antisemitism to speak up against the actions of an evil government which started a war purely for internal political reasons. I do not think that it is anti-Palestinian to speak up against the actions of an evil government which started a war purely for internal political reasons. At the moment there is a far-right Israeli government emboldened by a need to appear strong in the face of all manner of political pressure; it has had 4 elections in 24 months because it can't even resolve the factionalism within its own borders.

Having said that, Palestine is also engaged in its own stupid internal political struggle with terrorist groups at the helm of both halves. If you were to quite rightly speak out for Palestine, it is also a deep mistake to suggest that Hamas is firing rockets "due to Israeli actions." Here to the bottom line is that they are also firing high explosive ordinance at Israeli civilian's because their stated founding purpose is the annihilation of world Jewry, starting with Israel.

Almost from the outset the lion's share of the reason of existence for the movement for Palestine Liberation, is that it is built upon on the notion that in order to be pro-Palestine you have to be anti-Israel which turns a nuanced situation into a binary for no other reason than it makes it simple for people with no connection to take a side. 

I like the idea of Political Zionism; which suggests that there should be a homeland for the Jewish people and that made political sense in the 1890s when the whole land was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire now has its remnants in the modern state of Turkey; which is neither Israeli nor Palestinian. However, just because I like the idea of Political Zionism, does not mean that I am anti Palestine. 

I’m scared because when tensions are high in Israel and Palestine there is a carry over into the diaspora. Anti-Semitic incidents increase because people conflate Jews and Israel. Anti Arabic and anti Islamic incidents increase because people conflate Palestine and the Arabic and Muslim worlds. 

I guess that what I am trying to say here and incredibly badly is that not only that two wrongs don’t make a right buy many wrongs just makes everyone even wronger. As I write this, both the Palestinian and Israeli Governments have refused to agree to a ceasefire. As far as I am concerned Hamas, Likud, Fatah, Yesh Atid are basically four terrorist organisations. If you want to present any argument in favour of either the current Palestinian and Israeli Governments, then you are also wrong.

When I see something like this, I hate the Governments which caused this. This girl has seen more pain and destruction than I ever will. I'm not even going to tell you which side of the political divide she is on, because she isn't. 99% of people caught up in this have no part in this, they did not make the decision, but they suffer.

This is Abraham's children fighting each other for no good reason whatsoever. There is literally zero virtue about any of this.

Horse 2842 - Christian Porter's Defamation Action (again)

This week, the Attorney General Christian Porter, as part of his ongoing attempt to sue the ABC for defamation, applied for suppression orders so that the ABC wouldn't be allowed to publish what their defence is.

Porter's case which follows from reportage which the ABC did months ago, alleges that he has been defamed by the ABC when they reported that a cabinet minister was the subject of an historical rape case. What makes this odd is that not only did the ABC not publish the name of the then unknown cabinet minister but contemporary social media posts of the day prove that the general public had no idea who it was. The only reason why anyone knew who it was was because in a strange turn on events, a Liberal Party MP had a fit of conscience and then outed himself in a press conference. This anomaly was quickly resolved and he returned to the usual pattern of graft and knavery and launched the defamation case.

I suspected at the time that the ABC's strategy for defending the case would have been that at the time, Billy Brown from Sydney Town going home on the Bankstown train would have been unlikely to make the connection because until recently, nobody knew or cared who Christian Porter is. It is exceptionally difficult to be defamed if you have virtually no fame in the first place. I would have argued that the only reason why Christian Porter is remotely famous now is because he is that knave who is suing the ABC.

Moreover, given that the original article published by the ABC did not name the plaintiff, then not only must the precise words said to have been written or spoken must also be pleaded but the plaintiff must also plead "those extrinsic facts said to give rise to the defamatory imputation, and set out how persons knowing these would have understood the publication to refer to the plaintiff": Collins v Jones [1955] 1 QB 564.

The problem with applying for suppression orders is that not only does this highlight the case even further but given the seriousness of the origin reportage of the ABC, it now makes me think that something even more serious had been going on.

We already know for instance that Britney Higgins who was a former staffer within the parliament was raped within the walls of Parliament House in Canberra and the perpetrator has been mysteriously protected. We also know of at least another rape case within the building; also involving other Liberal Party staff members.

In Porter's case it has been brought to light that the victim has subsequently died and that at the time the NSW Police did not investigate it. Actually bringing a criminal case to court on those matters is materially impossible now. That is of itself serious.

What Christian Porter applying for suppression orders does in this defamation case is effectively turn the proceedings into a de facto star chamber; which is apt given the Prime Minister Scott Morrison's refusal to hold an inquiry, which means that the defamation case is itself a de facto inquiry.

I personally think that these suppression orders fail the suggested tests which the court would apply in granting them. Porter asking for suppression orders is after the fact and not part of the material of the case. I think that it fails even basic questioning.

Are the suppression orders in the interest of national security?

No. At least not unless Christian Porter has matters of an even more critical international outrage which is currently undiscovered.

Are the suppression orders needed to protect the safety of witnesses?

No. At least not unless Christian Porter genuinely fears an angry mob.

Are the suppression orders needed to guarantee a fair trial?

No.

I do not know if it is beneficial or not for the public broadcaster to make public their defence or not but I do know that a Minister of the Crown applying for suppression orders, looks very much like an attempt to destroy justice for personal gain. This neither passes the pub test nor the sniff rest. This is the equivalent of leaving a maggoty piece of meat on the counter of the pub and telling the patrons to eat it. It's not sane or sanitary.

My suspicion is that the ABC has something material in its possession, which is irrefutable, and which if it came out would actually damage the reputation of Christian Porter. Again we come back to the "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe where one's own Mens Rea is the thing that convicts. I personally think that it is in the public interest to see the ABC’s defence because if the defence is suppressed then in all honesty, then this is inconsistent with Porter's 13 pages of allegation of conduct re the ABC and Louise Milligan.

I also have questions about who exactly is funding Christian Porter's legal fees which are said to be something in the order of $20,000 per day. Firstly there is the question about why the Attorney General is using the courts to run personal vendetta against an organisation to which he is personally ideologically opposed to.

Second there is the more serious issue of a Minister of the Crown taking undeclared benefits from an unnamed donor. Quite apart from the actual points of order within either the historical rape case which is never going to be investigated, or the vexatious defamation case which he is running, how is taking undisclosed benefits not of interest to the people of the Commonwealth? I am not saying that Christian Porter dies not have the right to defend his name and reputation but we the people of the Commonwealth who are his employer have a public interest to know whether or not our paid representatives are on the take or not.

Also see: Horse 2818 - https://rollo75.blogspot.com/2021/03/horse-2818-christian-porters-defamation.html

Addenda:

"Because of this action and the potential conflicts that could arise, my client had to step aside as Attorney-General. This is of the most urgent nature." 

- Sue Chrysanthou SC, acting for Christian Porter, 7th May 2021.

Problems:

1. Christian Porter never stood aside. In fact, he refused to stand aside and was removed from the portfolio by the Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

2. Christian Porter was the one who chose to launch defamation proceedings. Those are his actions and he stated that he knew that that there was a potential conflict of interest when he did it. That is on record and is materially the matter of fact which caused his removal from the portfolio and the Cabinet reshuffle by the Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

3. This is the problem with the Offence of perjury in the Crimes Act.

http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ca190082/s327.html

327 Offence of perjury

(1) Any person who in or in connection with any judicial proceeding makes any false statement on oath concerning any matter which is material to the proceeding, knowing the statement to be false or not believing it to be true, is guilty of perjury and liable to imprisonment for 10 years.

- Section 327, Crimes Act 1900 (NSW).

Perjury only applies to people under oath; which does not apply to counsel. Silks are actually allowed to tell lies in court... these are two... in one sentence.