There's a man with a plan, in the house down in Canberra,
To rip up the tax code, and tear it asunder.
To remove all the burdens, the small and the great,
To dismantle the workings, of the old welfare state.
The lady who sits, by the man who is yelling,
Would wish for his job, though she ain't really telling.
He struts and he frets, with his graces and airs,
And she sorts the mess out, of Foreign Affairs.
There's a man in the house, who is thinking up lines,
To protect all the workers, down the pits and the mines.
And he's trying so hard, with the message he's sent,
Not to look like a fool, or incompetent.
Now the man from North Queensland, who likes having a chat,
You can tell where he's going, in his oversized hat.
He doesn't like fracking, he thinks they're all moles,
And he doesn't like stores, neither Woolworths or Coles.
There's a man from the north, with his own brand of party,
With a voice that is loud and booming and hearty
And his ideas arranged from the great to the manic,
Like building a dinosaur, or rebuilding Titanic.
There's a weird little man, who looks kind of bony,
Who has a weird little smile, either creepy or phony,
Who's really impressed with his own information,
And charging a fortune for a good education.
A lady with hair like the tail of a beaver,
Who loved helicopters, and used to be Speaker,
She used to kick out, all the louts and the wenches,
But now she's resigned to the party's backbenches.
There's a lady upstairs who sounds really calm,
Who in estimate hearings has suffered great harm.
For the grown-ups as children within the four walls,
Are childish and churlish and give her cat calls.
There's a weird little man, of whom it must be said,
Has schoolteacher glasses and a round baldy head.
He has thousands of books, from the thick to the fibry,
And he places them all in his subsidised library.
The man from the east, an accomplished law reader,
Is the one that we want to be installed as the leader,
He's biding his time, he's aware of his station,
As he plays with the nation's telecommunication.
There's a man up the back who has done it before,
With the nation's accounts and the writing of law.
When all over the world, when the banks were all failing,
Kept our economy on course, with smooth steady sailing.
The lady across from her opposite number,
Says the government's dumb, and it's still getting dumber.
The ideas of her own, are of logic bereft,
And if everyone's right, then she's to the left.
There's a man in the cabinet, who likes a good dance,
Who chats with the Treasurer, on matters of Finance,
He blusters and rants and raves when he can,
When he speaks of economy, and the odd girlie-man.
When the House is alive, with the sounds of the funkys,
And the shouting and hollering and raving of monkeys,
There's a man in the middle, with his one wagging finger,
And they call him the leader, the Member for Warringah.
September 12, 2015
September 11, 2015
Horse 1979 - Dear Dr Uppington, The One Who Reaps Where He Did Not Sow
Dear Dr Uppington,
I make reference our conversation on Wednesday just past; where you will recall that I thought that your opinion on a certain subject was and is bunk. Please note that I curbed this opinion and brought it to heel because what I actually thought, if aired, would fill the atmosphere with so many four letter expletives (deleted) that there would be so thick with the fug, that one could slice it clean with a bread knife and then place the cubes into discrete wrapped packets.
I think that your opinion is morally bankrupt and equally reprehensible. I shall not give your words the honour of repeating them here, other than to say that because they have not been recorded, the world shall remember them not and they have already dissipated and dissolved into nothingness.
As promised, I shall present the reasons for my outrage in the blog post below.
In the kosmos (that is, the world system in which we live), we have a coupon system for the allocation of good and services. This coupon system has various names upon this planet depending on the country in which those coupons are used but collectively they are together called "money". In our country we call our particular coupons Dollars because of a series of historical accidents and etymological corruptions; derived from a now insignificant village in the Czech Republic.
All money in the kosmos which has ever been generated, is the result of the production of goods and services and all money in the kosmos serves as a store of the wealth therein. It has at various stages in history been represented by tokens made precious metals, or written promises on paper and linen, that are made that a store of these precious metals exists somewhere in the kosmos but ultimately all money is fiduciary in nature and is current and future acceptance is based upon that fiduciary nature and the hope that it can be exchanged for goods and services. The store of precious metals is now largely irrelevant but the fiduciary nature of money still exists and is now based upon the promise that everyone else thinks that it has value.
Furthermore, all goods and services are generated at some point by people's work. Whether this work is performed by machinery, physical toil or is the result of brain power; this truth is inescapable.
People's income is derived from their ability to control the rewards which flow from the production of goods and services but because the coupon system is the same across the kosmos, people tend to forget that the money which flows to them is generated by someone's work at some point. This is our first point of contention.
All money in the hands of an individual is either spent or saved. If it is spent, it is done so to acquire some goods and/or services. If it is saved, unless it is buried in the ground or placed into a shoebox under one's bed, it is placed on deposit either with a financial institution or as direct investment in the capital of a firm. In either case, those saved monies derive benefits in the form of income which is derived from some other person's work. This might sound like a trifling point but this is quite important.
Consider an individual who does not already own their place of accommodation; then consider yourself who by your own admission inherited the impressively fine house in which you live.
A person who does not own their dwelling house must pay someone else for the privilege of keeping a roof over their head. If we think of the case of someone who lives in a mean dwelling and pays $385 per week for that privilege, in a year they will have expended $20,000. Usually someone who has to rent the place in which they live, also has to pay those monies which are derived from their work. Those monies by definition which have been spent, can not be saved and therefore can not go on to derive the benefits which flow as a result thereof. Someone who does not have to pay these monies for their dwelling place, can put those monies on deposit to derive the benefits which flow as a result thereof.
In the course of ten years (if we negate inflation) then the person who has spent those monies has saved precisely nil. The person who has not had to spend those monies, if they put those monies on deposit at a paltry 2% per year, will not only have saved ten lots of $20,000 but they will have derived an additional $23,347.30. The first person who had to generate their monies through real work has somewhere to live but the person who has done zero work, they may have spent the whole ten years watching television for all I know, has effectively picked up an extra year's worth of work for nothing.
I could have used any example where the income gained from invested capital is different to that gained from real world work really but the point is still instructive. Savings reaches a point where it is automatic and the people who derive the benefits thereof, do so without any work of their own. Assuming work itself is virtuous, then those benefits flow not to the virtuous but the invirtuous. If you multiply this across the kosmos and all sectors of the economy, then your theory that poorer people should work harder because that will generate money and that richer people obviously do work harder as evidenced by their incomes, instantly falls to pieces.
If a poorer person wishes to save, then they shall have to scrimp from other areas of their life. Their savings will need to either be derived from working even harder, or from diminishing some other aspect of their quality of life. Whereas the richer person who doesn't even need to work to derive the benefits which flow from other people's work, does not need to work even an iota harder; yet they will still win out in the long run.
I find your disdain of those who need to work harder (and indeed at all) irksome. I don't know if this is because your friends are Lord Puppington, Dame Juppington and Professor Huppington, and therefore you never come into contact with people who do real work but I reject your proposal outright that poorer people are poor precisely because they do not work hard enough. Such a belief assumes from out outset that all people are born into equal circumstances, when clearly this is not the case. Where one stands depends upon where one sits, and if one sits in the languid lap of luxury, one is not going to feel as though they are in a common country or kosmos as one who stands sweating in the service of simoners and so-and-sos.
I reject your fantasy and substitute it with reality. The real world is often grittier and uglier than a dream; please consider how the other half lives within the kosmos.
Yours begrudgingly,
Rollo.
PS:
If you entertain me a while, please allow me to entertain you as well. Some of my best work is done while the cruise control is set to a hundred miles an hour of crazy ranting. If you are driving the rant-bus down the highway of insanity, you don't even need to steer.
Can I just say this? If you are working in the financial sector, you aren't making or selling financial "products". A "product" is a thing that you can hold in your hands or something intangible that you have used skill to create. People working in factories making widgets, gadgets and doodads, sometimes in horrible conditions in developing nations, they're making "products". People in garment factories who sew clothes together are making "products". I'll even go so far as to say that people making incorporeal goods like music, radio programs, podcasts, television shows, videos on YouTube and the like are making "products". But you financial people, people working in banks, investment houses, finance corporations etc. are like me; we provide "services". The difference between most people who make products and provide services and you, oh financial sector, is that you don't even provide a service which generates anything of proper value.
When a bank lends out money, other people in the real world do actual work and repay the original money plus extra that was generated with extra work. You, financial sector, don't do that. You shift the giant pile of money from one place to another while other people do real work and extra work to make the pile bigger and all you do is cream the top off of the pile.
Don't talk to me about how hard you're working because you're not. Other people do the real work and you know it. You have no right to look down on the people who work as front line staff, or the people making widgets, gadgets and doodads, or the cleaners, or the people fixing the machinery of industry, or the people with their hands down in drains all day long because they're cleaning out the gunk and effluent from everybody else, because all of those people are making products and providing services which are more real than your entire sector.
A widget maker can at the end of the day, hold aloft their widget and say "I made this". A shop assistant can at the end of the day, say that they sold 15 of Product X, 3 of Product Y and 22 of Product Z. Even I can look back at the end of the day and say that I've generated a set of accounts, or someone's Income Tax Return. But you, financial sector, can only look at the portion of the pile money that you've shifted and say that you're income came from moving it about a bit.
That's not a widget, gadget or doodad and it's not really a service which produces incorporeal property either. Even the law firm of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe name provides navigation through the shoals of legislation.
The artist, the scientist, the labourer, the tradesperson, the manager, the entrepreneur, the factory worker etc. all expend human effort and human costs in the generation of goods and services. The landowner and the rentier expend no human effort when they rent out their property and you oh financial sector don't even lend out your own property or capital but other people's. You reap where you do not sow.
Oh financial sector, thou vast wen upon the economy, what dost thou do?
I make reference our conversation on Wednesday just past; where you will recall that I thought that your opinion on a certain subject was and is bunk. Please note that I curbed this opinion and brought it to heel because what I actually thought, if aired, would fill the atmosphere with so many four letter expletives (deleted) that there would be so thick with the fug, that one could slice it clean with a bread knife and then place the cubes into discrete wrapped packets.
I think that your opinion is morally bankrupt and equally reprehensible. I shall not give your words the honour of repeating them here, other than to say that because they have not been recorded, the world shall remember them not and they have already dissipated and dissolved into nothingness.
As promised, I shall present the reasons for my outrage in the blog post below.
In the kosmos (that is, the world system in which we live), we have a coupon system for the allocation of good and services. This coupon system has various names upon this planet depending on the country in which those coupons are used but collectively they are together called "money". In our country we call our particular coupons Dollars because of a series of historical accidents and etymological corruptions; derived from a now insignificant village in the Czech Republic.
All money in the kosmos which has ever been generated, is the result of the production of goods and services and all money in the kosmos serves as a store of the wealth therein. It has at various stages in history been represented by tokens made precious metals, or written promises on paper and linen, that are made that a store of these precious metals exists somewhere in the kosmos but ultimately all money is fiduciary in nature and is current and future acceptance is based upon that fiduciary nature and the hope that it can be exchanged for goods and services. The store of precious metals is now largely irrelevant but the fiduciary nature of money still exists and is now based upon the promise that everyone else thinks that it has value.
Furthermore, all goods and services are generated at some point by people's work. Whether this work is performed by machinery, physical toil or is the result of brain power; this truth is inescapable.
People's income is derived from their ability to control the rewards which flow from the production of goods and services but because the coupon system is the same across the kosmos, people tend to forget that the money which flows to them is generated by someone's work at some point. This is our first point of contention.
All money in the hands of an individual is either spent or saved. If it is spent, it is done so to acquire some goods and/or services. If it is saved, unless it is buried in the ground or placed into a shoebox under one's bed, it is placed on deposit either with a financial institution or as direct investment in the capital of a firm. In either case, those saved monies derive benefits in the form of income which is derived from some other person's work. This might sound like a trifling point but this is quite important.
Consider an individual who does not already own their place of accommodation; then consider yourself who by your own admission inherited the impressively fine house in which you live.
A person who does not own their dwelling house must pay someone else for the privilege of keeping a roof over their head. If we think of the case of someone who lives in a mean dwelling and pays $385 per week for that privilege, in a year they will have expended $20,000. Usually someone who has to rent the place in which they live, also has to pay those monies which are derived from their work. Those monies by definition which have been spent, can not be saved and therefore can not go on to derive the benefits which flow as a result thereof. Someone who does not have to pay these monies for their dwelling place, can put those monies on deposit to derive the benefits which flow as a result thereof.
In the course of ten years (if we negate inflation) then the person who has spent those monies has saved precisely nil. The person who has not had to spend those monies, if they put those monies on deposit at a paltry 2% per year, will not only have saved ten lots of $20,000 but they will have derived an additional $23,347.30. The first person who had to generate their monies through real work has somewhere to live but the person who has done zero work, they may have spent the whole ten years watching television for all I know, has effectively picked up an extra year's worth of work for nothing.
I could have used any example where the income gained from invested capital is different to that gained from real world work really but the point is still instructive. Savings reaches a point where it is automatic and the people who derive the benefits thereof, do so without any work of their own. Assuming work itself is virtuous, then those benefits flow not to the virtuous but the invirtuous. If you multiply this across the kosmos and all sectors of the economy, then your theory that poorer people should work harder because that will generate money and that richer people obviously do work harder as evidenced by their incomes, instantly falls to pieces.
If a poorer person wishes to save, then they shall have to scrimp from other areas of their life. Their savings will need to either be derived from working even harder, or from diminishing some other aspect of their quality of life. Whereas the richer person who doesn't even need to work to derive the benefits which flow from other people's work, does not need to work even an iota harder; yet they will still win out in the long run.
I find your disdain of those who need to work harder (and indeed at all) irksome. I don't know if this is because your friends are Lord Puppington, Dame Juppington and Professor Huppington, and therefore you never come into contact with people who do real work but I reject your proposal outright that poorer people are poor precisely because they do not work hard enough. Such a belief assumes from out outset that all people are born into equal circumstances, when clearly this is not the case. Where one stands depends upon where one sits, and if one sits in the languid lap of luxury, one is not going to feel as though they are in a common country or kosmos as one who stands sweating in the service of simoners and so-and-sos.
I reject your fantasy and substitute it with reality. The real world is often grittier and uglier than a dream; please consider how the other half lives within the kosmos.
Yours begrudgingly,
Rollo.
PS:
If you entertain me a while, please allow me to entertain you as well. Some of my best work is done while the cruise control is set to a hundred miles an hour of crazy ranting. If you are driving the rant-bus down the highway of insanity, you don't even need to steer.
Can I just say this? If you are working in the financial sector, you aren't making or selling financial "products". A "product" is a thing that you can hold in your hands or something intangible that you have used skill to create. People working in factories making widgets, gadgets and doodads, sometimes in horrible conditions in developing nations, they're making "products". People in garment factories who sew clothes together are making "products". I'll even go so far as to say that people making incorporeal goods like music, radio programs, podcasts, television shows, videos on YouTube and the like are making "products". But you financial people, people working in banks, investment houses, finance corporations etc. are like me; we provide "services". The difference between most people who make products and provide services and you, oh financial sector, is that you don't even provide a service which generates anything of proper value.
When a bank lends out money, other people in the real world do actual work and repay the original money plus extra that was generated with extra work. You, financial sector, don't do that. You shift the giant pile of money from one place to another while other people do real work and extra work to make the pile bigger and all you do is cream the top off of the pile.
Don't talk to me about how hard you're working because you're not. Other people do the real work and you know it. You have no right to look down on the people who work as front line staff, or the people making widgets, gadgets and doodads, or the cleaners, or the people fixing the machinery of industry, or the people with their hands down in drains all day long because they're cleaning out the gunk and effluent from everybody else, because all of those people are making products and providing services which are more real than your entire sector.
A widget maker can at the end of the day, hold aloft their widget and say "I made this". A shop assistant can at the end of the day, say that they sold 15 of Product X, 3 of Product Y and 22 of Product Z. Even I can look back at the end of the day and say that I've generated a set of accounts, or someone's Income Tax Return. But you, financial sector, can only look at the portion of the pile money that you've shifted and say that you're income came from moving it about a bit.
That's not a widget, gadget or doodad and it's not really a service which produces incorporeal property either. Even the law firm of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe name provides navigation through the shoals of legislation.
The artist, the scientist, the labourer, the tradesperson, the manager, the entrepreneur, the factory worker etc. all expend human effort and human costs in the generation of goods and services. The landowner and the rentier expend no human effort when they rent out their property and you oh financial sector don't even lend out your own property or capital but other people's. You reap where you do not sow.
Oh financial sector, thou vast wen upon the economy, what dost thou do?
September 10, 2015
Horse 1978 - Canning By-Election: Hyper Hype
Many commentators in the media who purport to know about these things have said that the Canning by-election is something of a litmus test for the Abbott Government. I've heard opinions which have said that the result could force a leadership challenge but I fail to see how that would happen. Politics is a far simpler game than a lot of people will admit and this by-election is no different.
The seat of Canning in Western Australia became vacant after sitting member Don Randall was found dead in his car after suffering from a suspected heart attack. Randall who was a member of the Liberal Party had held the seat since 2001 and going into the by-election, a swing of 11.8% is needed for the Liberal Party to lose the seat.
Some have said that the Labor Party has been running a zombie campaign with no real intent for their candidate, Matt Keogh, to be elected but even a quick glance of the facts renders this false. Keogh who was a prominent lawyer, resigned his position as the President of the Western Australian Law Society; that just doesn't seem like the actions of someone whose intent wasn't genuine. Sure, he might just very well walk back into his old job again but the sheer cut and thrust of politics is such that to even make it to be an endorsed candidate and fight through the preselection process means that there must have been more than just a passing fancy in getting the job as an MP. This is serious and to think otherwise is bunk.
On the other side of the great divide, the Liberal Party has put forward a candidate which they think is of blue ribbon quality. As an ex-Army officer, Andrew Hastie is already the sort of candidate which the Liberal Party thinks will be written about in glowing terms. Thee has been a smear campaign which has been run by Fairfax but this hasn't done very much and not could it do so. You just can't fling mud and hope to hit a target if you're aiming at the wrong target.
Since this by-election is more than likely going to be a two horse race (I don't honestly think that the Palmer United Party is going to poll at any more than about 10% of first preferences) then Canning will either be retained by the Liberals or be won over by Labor.
If Hastie of the Liberal Party wins, then the numbers in the parliament remain unchanged. The government still holds a comfortable majority and we can go back to sleep. I don't think that the internal support within the factions of the Liberal Party (and certainly not their National coalition partners) is going to alter by even a single member. Abbott was installed as leader of the party in 2009 and almost won the 2010 election and did win the 2013 election. In the six years which have followed, thee hasn't even been a leadership spill within the Liberal caucus. Why the election of one MP who initially is unaligned within the party would swing the whole caucus of the Liberal Party is totally beyond me. Maybe we would hear the cries of 'spill' and 'havoc' but that would imply that there was someone who was considering challenging Abbott for the leadership of the party and with it the top spot but there hasn't been any indication of who that would be.
If the Labor candidate Keogh, wins the by-election then although this reduces the majority of the government by one, it doesn't alter the current numbers within the factions of the Liberal Party. Again we're faced with the exact same set of circumstances if the government retained the seat.
I'm not convinced that this by-election is an indicator of the result of the next Federal election either. Oppositions almost never win elections in Australia: governments lose them. By-elections almost always contain an element of grumbling by the electorate against whoever is in power; no matter what political colour they happen to be. The default position of a lot of politics is for the electorate to boo politicians generally and I don't see this by-election as any different.
What would be remarkable would be if the Palmer United Party or some other third party candidate won the election. That would very much send a message of rejection of the status quo to Canberra but I think that that's as likely as there being a leadership spill.
Probably Hastie will win and the Liberals retain the seat. More than likely there will be no leadership challenge at all. Most likely is that on Sunday 20th of September, News Corp newspapers will incandescently praise Abbott and rail against Shorten, Fairfax newspapers will grumble against Abbott and weakly make happy faces about Shorten, and the West-Australian which is actually in Western Australia unlike News Corp or Fairfax will devote its front page of the Sunday paper to the gloriousness of the Freo Dockers and the West Coast Eagles. The east coast Twitterati think that the simple game of politics is the only game in town but I bet that even the people of Canning aren't that bothered.
The seat of Canning in Western Australia became vacant after sitting member Don Randall was found dead in his car after suffering from a suspected heart attack. Randall who was a member of the Liberal Party had held the seat since 2001 and going into the by-election, a swing of 11.8% is needed for the Liberal Party to lose the seat.
Some have said that the Labor Party has been running a zombie campaign with no real intent for their candidate, Matt Keogh, to be elected but even a quick glance of the facts renders this false. Keogh who was a prominent lawyer, resigned his position as the President of the Western Australian Law Society; that just doesn't seem like the actions of someone whose intent wasn't genuine. Sure, he might just very well walk back into his old job again but the sheer cut and thrust of politics is such that to even make it to be an endorsed candidate and fight through the preselection process means that there must have been more than just a passing fancy in getting the job as an MP. This is serious and to think otherwise is bunk.
On the other side of the great divide, the Liberal Party has put forward a candidate which they think is of blue ribbon quality. As an ex-Army officer, Andrew Hastie is already the sort of candidate which the Liberal Party thinks will be written about in glowing terms. Thee has been a smear campaign which has been run by Fairfax but this hasn't done very much and not could it do so. You just can't fling mud and hope to hit a target if you're aiming at the wrong target.
Since this by-election is more than likely going to be a two horse race (I don't honestly think that the Palmer United Party is going to poll at any more than about 10% of first preferences) then Canning will either be retained by the Liberals or be won over by Labor.
If Hastie of the Liberal Party wins, then the numbers in the parliament remain unchanged. The government still holds a comfortable majority and we can go back to sleep. I don't think that the internal support within the factions of the Liberal Party (and certainly not their National coalition partners) is going to alter by even a single member. Abbott was installed as leader of the party in 2009 and almost won the 2010 election and did win the 2013 election. In the six years which have followed, thee hasn't even been a leadership spill within the Liberal caucus. Why the election of one MP who initially is unaligned within the party would swing the whole caucus of the Liberal Party is totally beyond me. Maybe we would hear the cries of 'spill' and 'havoc' but that would imply that there was someone who was considering challenging Abbott for the leadership of the party and with it the top spot but there hasn't been any indication of who that would be.
If the Labor candidate Keogh, wins the by-election then although this reduces the majority of the government by one, it doesn't alter the current numbers within the factions of the Liberal Party. Again we're faced with the exact same set of circumstances if the government retained the seat.
I'm not convinced that this by-election is an indicator of the result of the next Federal election either. Oppositions almost never win elections in Australia: governments lose them. By-elections almost always contain an element of grumbling by the electorate against whoever is in power; no matter what political colour they happen to be. The default position of a lot of politics is for the electorate to boo politicians generally and I don't see this by-election as any different.
What would be remarkable would be if the Palmer United Party or some other third party candidate won the election. That would very much send a message of rejection of the status quo to Canberra but I think that that's as likely as there being a leadership spill.
Probably Hastie will win and the Liberals retain the seat. More than likely there will be no leadership challenge at all. Most likely is that on Sunday 20th of September, News Corp newspapers will incandescently praise Abbott and rail against Shorten, Fairfax newspapers will grumble against Abbott and weakly make happy faces about Shorten, and the West-Australian which is actually in Western Australia unlike News Corp or Fairfax will devote its front page of the Sunday paper to the gloriousness of the Freo Dockers and the West Coast Eagles. The east coast Twitterati think that the simple game of politics is the only game in town but I bet that even the people of Canning aren't that bothered.
September 09, 2015
Horse 1977 - 2 Is A Good Number
Not quite a month ago our Peugeot 206 decided to throw a timing belt and spear several valves through the top of the cylinder head (see Horse 1961). Such a thing as you might expect is quite expensive and the cost of repairs to the vehicle ended up being worth more than the vehicle itself; at that point the economic decision was reached to dispose of the Peugeot. Au revoir, tu frai des ennuis. Au revoir, oh sourse de la douleur!
The replacement then was going to be either a Toyota Yaris, Mazda 2 or Ford Fiesta. As the race tightened, it was obvious that the Yaris and the Fiesta were going to lose because of their interiors; so we bought a Mazda 2.
The fourth generation Mazda 2 DJ was launched at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show and is the the first 2 to be produced after the Ford-Mazda divorce. To be honest, it doesn't share the same chuckability or absolute positive handling of the Fiesta (which is still in my opinion the best supermini currently on sale) but it has very pleasant handling anyway.
The steering is direct, though I would prefer more resistance through the wheel and there is less pitch than I would have expected. The wheels are jammed right into the corners and so in every circumstance that we've tried so far, which includes some very windy roads with changes in elevation, the car corners pretty well much flat; even at speeds of more than 100km/h.
Where does one take a new car? For anyone living within three hours of the place, the choice is obvious. On the other side of the Blue Mountains from Sydney and in the Central Tablelands, lies a city of about 33,000 people and which is the oldest inland settlement in Australia. In the 1850s the first discovery of payable gold in Australia was made in the area but today it is more reknown for being the location of the most famous mountain in Australia: Mount Panorama.
The motor racing circuit at Mount Panorama is arguably the most revered 6.2km of tarmac in the nation and so should have been the perfect choice to take a photograph of a new chariot, if it wasn't for the fact that Bathurst City Council have rangers patrolling every square inch of the place and there are signs every 40 yards telling you not to stop on the grass verges.
This photograph is on the mountain itself; looking over Bald Hills and off in the distance is the delightfully daftly named Hen & Chicken Rd and the Mid Western Highway which will take you on to Cowra, Young and Wagga Wagga (so good they named it twice).
The plucky little hobgoblin from Hōfu puts out 113 horsies from its 1.5L SkyActiv engine and although I had to bite my tongue and we got the six speed automatic, it comes with a tiptronic option which what I use most of the time. Those 113 horsies are so well behaved and so quiet, that I've already found myself on the wrong side of 120km/h without even really trying or even noticing until the speed warning started beeping at me.
I think that it looks reasonably attractive, though I don't quite like the C-pillar and the narrowish rear windows. The car does tend to present some problematic blind spots but that unfortunate is common across a lot of cars these days. Gone are the likes of the Ford Laser KC with its massive theatre of a rear window.
Driving this car is perhaps not as fun as it could have been but it is incredibly smooth. I like a car which does its level best to shake all of bones from their sockets but Mrs Rollo doesn't; this car feels more like wearing a pair of fur lined slippers than a pair or football boots. It is very comfortable to drive and I fully expect that after 12 hours at the wheel, you'd still be quite happy and fresh. It's happy enough that it invites you to play but it isn't so plush that it feels dead like a Yaris.
Inside it comes with more electronic toys than I've ever seen in a car which makes me a little bit scared but everything comes to hand quite nicely. Details such as the vents and a trim line which runs across the car, reminds me of the sort of thing that you might find in cars from the late 1950s, though I'm sure that if the little 2 was on the roads at the same time as Chuck Berry was on the radio, the people of the time would have thought that a spaceship had landed on earth. The car also has keyless start/stop which I've already been caught out with once; having tried to lock the car with the engine still running.
This is the car which I'll most like have well into the next decade and I think I'm quite happy with it. Sure, it isn't a Fiesta (and sadly isn't a Ford Ka either) but it does everything properly and more than everything I've asked of it. It even comes as advertised with a bit of "zoom-zoom" under the bonnet; so 2 in this case is a good number.
The replacement then was going to be either a Toyota Yaris, Mazda 2 or Ford Fiesta. As the race tightened, it was obvious that the Yaris and the Fiesta were going to lose because of their interiors; so we bought a Mazda 2.
The fourth generation Mazda 2 DJ was launched at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show and is the the first 2 to be produced after the Ford-Mazda divorce. To be honest, it doesn't share the same chuckability or absolute positive handling of the Fiesta (which is still in my opinion the best supermini currently on sale) but it has very pleasant handling anyway.
The steering is direct, though I would prefer more resistance through the wheel and there is less pitch than I would have expected. The wheels are jammed right into the corners and so in every circumstance that we've tried so far, which includes some very windy roads with changes in elevation, the car corners pretty well much flat; even at speeds of more than 100km/h.
Where does one take a new car? For anyone living within three hours of the place, the choice is obvious. On the other side of the Blue Mountains from Sydney and in the Central Tablelands, lies a city of about 33,000 people and which is the oldest inland settlement in Australia. In the 1850s the first discovery of payable gold in Australia was made in the area but today it is more reknown for being the location of the most famous mountain in Australia: Mount Panorama.
The motor racing circuit at Mount Panorama is arguably the most revered 6.2km of tarmac in the nation and so should have been the perfect choice to take a photograph of a new chariot, if it wasn't for the fact that Bathurst City Council have rangers patrolling every square inch of the place and there are signs every 40 yards telling you not to stop on the grass verges.
This photograph is on the mountain itself; looking over Bald Hills and off in the distance is the delightfully daftly named Hen & Chicken Rd and the Mid Western Highway which will take you on to Cowra, Young and Wagga Wagga (so good they named it twice).
The plucky little hobgoblin from Hōfu puts out 113 horsies from its 1.5L SkyActiv engine and although I had to bite my tongue and we got the six speed automatic, it comes with a tiptronic option which what I use most of the time. Those 113 horsies are so well behaved and so quiet, that I've already found myself on the wrong side of 120km/h without even really trying or even noticing until the speed warning started beeping at me.
I think that it looks reasonably attractive, though I don't quite like the C-pillar and the narrowish rear windows. The car does tend to present some problematic blind spots but that unfortunate is common across a lot of cars these days. Gone are the likes of the Ford Laser KC with its massive theatre of a rear window.
Driving this car is perhaps not as fun as it could have been but it is incredibly smooth. I like a car which does its level best to shake all of bones from their sockets but Mrs Rollo doesn't; this car feels more like wearing a pair of fur lined slippers than a pair or football boots. It is very comfortable to drive and I fully expect that after 12 hours at the wheel, you'd still be quite happy and fresh. It's happy enough that it invites you to play but it isn't so plush that it feels dead like a Yaris.
Inside it comes with more electronic toys than I've ever seen in a car which makes me a little bit scared but everything comes to hand quite nicely. Details such as the vents and a trim line which runs across the car, reminds me of the sort of thing that you might find in cars from the late 1950s, though I'm sure that if the little 2 was on the roads at the same time as Chuck Berry was on the radio, the people of the time would have thought that a spaceship had landed on earth. The car also has keyless start/stop which I've already been caught out with once; having tried to lock the car with the engine still running.
This is the car which I'll most like have well into the next decade and I think I'm quite happy with it. Sure, it isn't a Fiesta (and sadly isn't a Ford Ka either) but it does everything properly and more than everything I've asked of it. It even comes as advertised with a bit of "zoom-zoom" under the bonnet; so 2 in this case is a good number.
September 08, 2015
Horse 1976 - What Is Australia's Response?
In 2011 the population of Syria was 21.9 million people. In 2015, 4 million have fled to other countries, 7.6 million people have been displaced internally and another quarter of a million people have been killed in the fighting. This means to say that over the last four years, not quite 12 million people have either been killed, have died or have been displaced as a result of the combination of the Assad régime, ISIS and various liberation and other organisations who all hate each other to varying degrees. To say that this is a humanitarian crisis which demands urgent action is to understate the case to many magnitudes or order.
In the light of this, what has Australia's response been?
Australia's default response since the Abbott Government came to power is one of abject cruelty. This has either meant sending asylum seekers to island nations in the Pacific who are I'll equipped to deal with the issue or in some cases it has meant turning boats around and or paying people smugglers to take people back out of Australian territorial waters.
In an international relations sense, it was revealed that the Australian Government asked the US Government to ask Australia if they would like to help bomb ISIS and Syria. The general tone appears to be that of the rhetoric immediately before a state election in that we want to get tough on Syria and we want to get tough on the people fleeing Syria.
It is perhaps fitting that if you were to read through Hansard, you would find that the last time that Tony Abbott used the words "asylum seekers" on the floor of the parliament in any other sense other than to offer condolences, was all the way back in November of 2012. Since then, most speeches that Mr Abbott has made have referred to "illegal immigrants". This is despite the fact that seeking asylum isn't illegal and under the terms of the UN Refugee Convention 1951, there is no prescribed method of entry.
Germany and Austria's response over this last week has been remarkable. German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised that Germany would accept 800,000 refugees from Syria and across Germany and Austria, crowds cheered as asylum seekers and refugees emerged from trains and into communities. In contrast, the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, has practically pleaded for Australia to increase its intake of refugees from the crisis from 2,200 to 10,000; which is 1.25% that of Germany's. In an act of just bizarreness, PM Tony Abbott declared at the weekend that ISIS was "worse than the Nazis" because the Nazis showed a degree of shame in what they we doing and tried to hide it
In 2013 in a speech to the IPA, Tony Abbott said¹:
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is the foundation of our justice. “Love your neighbour as you love yourself” is the foundation of our mercy. Faith has weakened but not, I’m pleased to say, this high mindedness which faith helped to spawn..." but how is that policy being put into practice?
That last quote "Love your neighbour as you love yourself" which comes from Luke 10 comes out of the parable of the 'Good Samaritan'² when an expert in the law asks the question "And who is my neighbor?". The Samaritans were hated by the Jews and so this parable is very much a provocative story; making use of people's racism at the time. The parallel with today is obvious. Just like the parable, our policy as a nation and as enacted by the current government is the same as the priest and the Levite. We would rather pass by on the other side of the road and do nothing if we can get away with it. It's even better if we can exercise our continuing racist and Islamophobic agenda as a nation because if we can cast asylum seekers and refugees as less than human, we can justify our total apathy towards them. Quite frankly, it's pathetic and if this is how "Team Australia" operates then I don't want to be part of it.
PM Abbott of all people, who was once a youth pastor in a Catholic church should be familiar with the story of Jesus and remember that Joseph, Mary and Jesus also fled their homeland for Egypt because of a barbarous régime intent on the destruction of its own people. If Egypt had closed its borders in the first century, then this story might read rather differently.
Admittedly Section 116 of the Australian Constitution³ expressly forbids the state from enacting laws in respect of religion but I think that as a nation we should be exhibiting love, joy, peace and kindness, to people, irrespective of where they come from and what they believe because against such things there is no law. It seems to me that the only religion operating in Australia with any real force of law behind it is the idiotic worship of the great god Dollar.
It is un-Australian to know the second verse of the national anthem and I used to think that it was because we were collectively apathetic when it came to national pride but now I know better:
Beneath our radiant Southern Cross
We'll toil with hearts and hands;
To make this Commonwealth of ours
Renowned of all the lands;
For those who've come across the seas
We've boundless plains to share;
The truth is that we don't have "boundless plains to share" and if you dare show up at our borders, we'll turn your boats around or send you off to a detention centre on Manus Island.
If we do nothing we will "make this Commonwealth of ours, renowned of all the lands"; indeed we might already be doing that:
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has overseen a ruthlessly effective effort to stop boats packed with migrants, many of them refugees, from reaching Australia’s shores. His policies have been inhumane, of dubious legality and strikingly at odds with the country’s tradition of welcoming people fleeing persecution and war.
- New York Times, 3rd Sep 2015.⁴
In the light of this, what has Australia's response been?
Australia's default response since the Abbott Government came to power is one of abject cruelty. This has either meant sending asylum seekers to island nations in the Pacific who are I'll equipped to deal with the issue or in some cases it has meant turning boats around and or paying people smugglers to take people back out of Australian territorial waters.
In an international relations sense, it was revealed that the Australian Government asked the US Government to ask Australia if they would like to help bomb ISIS and Syria. The general tone appears to be that of the rhetoric immediately before a state election in that we want to get tough on Syria and we want to get tough on the people fleeing Syria.
It is perhaps fitting that if you were to read through Hansard, you would find that the last time that Tony Abbott used the words "asylum seekers" on the floor of the parliament in any other sense other than to offer condolences, was all the way back in November of 2012. Since then, most speeches that Mr Abbott has made have referred to "illegal immigrants". This is despite the fact that seeking asylum isn't illegal and under the terms of the UN Refugee Convention 1951, there is no prescribed method of entry.
Germany and Austria's response over this last week has been remarkable. German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised that Germany would accept 800,000 refugees from Syria and across Germany and Austria, crowds cheered as asylum seekers and refugees emerged from trains and into communities. In contrast, the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, has practically pleaded for Australia to increase its intake of refugees from the crisis from 2,200 to 10,000; which is 1.25% that of Germany's. In an act of just bizarreness, PM Tony Abbott declared at the weekend that ISIS was "worse than the Nazis" because the Nazis showed a degree of shame in what they we doing and tried to hide it
In 2013 in a speech to the IPA, Tony Abbott said¹:
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is the foundation of our justice. “Love your neighbour as you love yourself” is the foundation of our mercy. Faith has weakened but not, I’m pleased to say, this high mindedness which faith helped to spawn..." but how is that policy being put into practice?
That last quote "Love your neighbour as you love yourself" which comes from Luke 10 comes out of the parable of the 'Good Samaritan'² when an expert in the law asks the question "And who is my neighbor?". The Samaritans were hated by the Jews and so this parable is very much a provocative story; making use of people's racism at the time. The parallel with today is obvious. Just like the parable, our policy as a nation and as enacted by the current government is the same as the priest and the Levite. We would rather pass by on the other side of the road and do nothing if we can get away with it. It's even better if we can exercise our continuing racist and Islamophobic agenda as a nation because if we can cast asylum seekers and refugees as less than human, we can justify our total apathy towards them. Quite frankly, it's pathetic and if this is how "Team Australia" operates then I don't want to be part of it.
PM Abbott of all people, who was once a youth pastor in a Catholic church should be familiar with the story of Jesus and remember that Joseph, Mary and Jesus also fled their homeland for Egypt because of a barbarous régime intent on the destruction of its own people. If Egypt had closed its borders in the first century, then this story might read rather differently.
Admittedly Section 116 of the Australian Constitution³ expressly forbids the state from enacting laws in respect of religion but I think that as a nation we should be exhibiting love, joy, peace and kindness, to people, irrespective of where they come from and what they believe because against such things there is no law. It seems to me that the only religion operating in Australia with any real force of law behind it is the idiotic worship of the great god Dollar.
It is un-Australian to know the second verse of the national anthem and I used to think that it was because we were collectively apathetic when it came to national pride but now I know better:
Beneath our radiant Southern Cross
We'll toil with hearts and hands;
To make this Commonwealth of ours
Renowned of all the lands;
For those who've come across the seas
We've boundless plains to share;
The truth is that we don't have "boundless plains to share" and if you dare show up at our borders, we'll turn your boats around or send you off to a detention centre on Manus Island.
If we do nothing we will "make this Commonwealth of ours, renowned of all the lands"; indeed we might already be doing that:
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has overseen a ruthlessly effective effort to stop boats packed with migrants, many of them refugees, from reaching Australia’s shores. His policies have been inhumane, of dubious legality and strikingly at odds with the country’s tradition of welcoming people fleeing persecution and war.
- New York Times, 3rd Sep 2015.⁴
What will Australia's response be in the future?
September 07, 2015
Horse 1975 - Looking Round Australia Square
Before I proceed any further with this, I have to say that the photographs in this post are possibly illegal. The fugacious little man with the moustache who told me to leave the building lobby, informed me that we do not have "freedom of panorama" in Australia and that I needed permission from the building's owners if I wanted to take any photographs. Even when I produced a signed authority to do so, this was still above his pay grade and because I didn't want to make a scene, I left the premises.
This eighteen sided cylinder of a building is in my opinion, the most singular building in all of Sydney. Granted that they had to invent building and construction methods as they went along to erect the opera house, Australia Square has both a simultaneously more and less interesting story than the iconic building at Benelong Point.
The first thing of note is the shape of the building. Australia Square is obviously not named that because of the building but of the land upon which it sits. The plot of land is indeed a square and this was the name of the project before a sod of earth was even turned.
The reason for this octadecagonal building has nothing to do with architectural fashion but rather, everything to do with answering a very different question. The concrete from which the building is built is made from cement which comes all from a single quarry; second to that, its also some of the least dense concrete ever used to construct a building. The building is as strong as other buildings but it is far far lighter. The builders, who only had enough cement to make enough concrete coming out of that one quarry, had to make the most efficient use of that concrete. The shape of the building naturally, was decided as a quantity surveying answer to the question of how you get the most building from the available materials. A cylinder is the most efficient shape and therefore, that's the shape they picked.
Australia Square was designed by Harry Seidler (who was also responsible for Blues Point Tower and the MLC Centre) and it was at the time of its construction, Australia's only true skyscraper. By default it was also the tallest building in Australia for 9 years until in 1976, the south building of the AMP Centre stole its crown.
Like a lot of buildings, Australia Square is built around a central chamber that houses the lift shafts, the fire escapes and the water and electrical services. There are 24 lifts, arranged in four sets of six which service four groups of twelve floors. The lifts themselves have a sort of wedge shape and once you step out onto any given floor in the building, it can be really disconcerting because there are no straight lines to speak of inside the building. For instance, you kind of work out that Mrs Banana down on the nineteenth floor is roughly 120° around the building from the direction that you're currently facing but this never really sinks in. A lot of time for office workers in transit around the building is spent walking in what you think is some sector of a pie.
The building was opened by Prince Phillip in 1968 but not before it has already won the Sir John Sulman Medal for architecture as well as a civic award from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. So much of this building from the fonts on all the lift fixtures, to the strange off form concrete textures in the walls and the ceilings, ties this building to that time before Armstrong kicked the moon.
Australia Square was originally occupied by various government departments including the Commonwealth Department of Housing and Construction and the Department of Defence, which just somehow seems appropriate for this building. I can just imagine rooms of civil servants in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in brown suits and super wide ties; with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths and fag ends in overflowing ashtrays.
In the 1960s when this building was under construction, Australia went from a Menzies Government that had lasted for longer than some people's memories; from a pre-decimal currency, to a Gorton Government but only after having had a Prime Minister accidentally go missing and introducing decimal currency.
The building was designed, erected, finished and open for business and it did so before the Opera House had been finished. From the outset it was as interesting as the Opera House but unlike the great white monstrosity on the harbour front, Australia Square has always been fit for purpose. It works as an office building and almost 50 years after it opened it still looks more modern than many of the buildings which have come and gone in the streets surrounding it.
This eighteen sided cylinder of a building is in my opinion, the most singular building in all of Sydney. Granted that they had to invent building and construction methods as they went along to erect the opera house, Australia Square has both a simultaneously more and less interesting story than the iconic building at Benelong Point.
The first thing of note is the shape of the building. Australia Square is obviously not named that because of the building but of the land upon which it sits. The plot of land is indeed a square and this was the name of the project before a sod of earth was even turned.
The reason for this octadecagonal building has nothing to do with architectural fashion but rather, everything to do with answering a very different question. The concrete from which the building is built is made from cement which comes all from a single quarry; second to that, its also some of the least dense concrete ever used to construct a building. The building is as strong as other buildings but it is far far lighter. The builders, who only had enough cement to make enough concrete coming out of that one quarry, had to make the most efficient use of that concrete. The shape of the building naturally, was decided as a quantity surveying answer to the question of how you get the most building from the available materials. A cylinder is the most efficient shape and therefore, that's the shape they picked.
Australia Square was designed by Harry Seidler (who was also responsible for Blues Point Tower and the MLC Centre) and it was at the time of its construction, Australia's only true skyscraper. By default it was also the tallest building in Australia for 9 years until in 1976, the south building of the AMP Centre stole its crown.
Like a lot of buildings, Australia Square is built around a central chamber that houses the lift shafts, the fire escapes and the water and electrical services. There are 24 lifts, arranged in four sets of six which service four groups of twelve floors. The lifts themselves have a sort of wedge shape and once you step out onto any given floor in the building, it can be really disconcerting because there are no straight lines to speak of inside the building. For instance, you kind of work out that Mrs Banana down on the nineteenth floor is roughly 120° around the building from the direction that you're currently facing but this never really sinks in. A lot of time for office workers in transit around the building is spent walking in what you think is some sector of a pie.
The building was opened by Prince Phillip in 1968 but not before it has already won the Sir John Sulman Medal for architecture as well as a civic award from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. So much of this building from the fonts on all the lift fixtures, to the strange off form concrete textures in the walls and the ceilings, ties this building to that time before Armstrong kicked the moon.
Australia Square was originally occupied by various government departments including the Commonwealth Department of Housing and Construction and the Department of Defence, which just somehow seems appropriate for this building. I can just imagine rooms of civil servants in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in brown suits and super wide ties; with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths and fag ends in overflowing ashtrays.
In the 1960s when this building was under construction, Australia went from a Menzies Government that had lasted for longer than some people's memories; from a pre-decimal currency, to a Gorton Government but only after having had a Prime Minister accidentally go missing and introducing decimal currency.
The building was designed, erected, finished and open for business and it did so before the Opera House had been finished. From the outset it was as interesting as the Opera House but unlike the great white monstrosity on the harbour front, Australia Square has always been fit for purpose. It works as an office building and almost 50 years after it opened it still looks more modern than many of the buildings which have come and gone in the streets surrounding it.
September 05, 2015
Horse 1974 - Tales From Mosman: The Loveliest Vehicle In The World
I work in the insular and very homogeneously white suburb of Mosman. This is a place which I'm sure is unique in Australia in that the local government area (in this case Mosman Municipal Council) contains only one suburb, where there are no chain fast food outlets within its borders, and where the stereotypical image of ladies walking around with yappy dogs inside their handbags actually exists. There are buses and ferries but no trains and the sight of Mercedes-Benz, BMWs and Audis on the streets is so commonplace that you need something like a Ferrari or a McLaren if you want to turn heads. Things just work differently here.
Mosman is a parochial kingdom all to itself. It wouldn't surprise me if you could be charged with vagrancy for taking a nap in a public park because you couldn't produce the necessary documentation, of at least a gold American Express card and several hundred dollars in cash.
It is 1:30pm on a Friday afternoon and I am standing at a bus stop outside of Mosman High School; waiting for a bus to take me back to the office. Being Friday afternoon, many kids are getting off of school for the week and many are just sort of milling around the bus stop. There is a section of road out the front of the school which has been marked off with traffic cones, which I initially assume is for some dignitary like the Governor or perhaps the local MP who just happens to be the Prime Minister, but I am mistaken.
A group of kids walk out through the front gate and because 80s retro fashion is in right now (kids of Mosman High School do not have a school uniform), they kind of look as though they have been in an explosion at the fluorescent paint factory. Coloured pants in unalluring shades of eye bleed hideousness appear to be in vogue right now and because I am more than double the age of these students and very quickly approaching my curmudgeonly years, I start to wish that the bus comes so that I can get out of there as soon as possible.
Except I don't.
A tired looking man in a tweed jacket and a lady who is also clad in a jacket are holding a sign which reads "Happy 18th Eleanor" (not her real name) and one of these students dressed like a leftover from the 1980s starts to jump up and down and much joy is exhibited. Someone makes a phone call and this is where the fun really begins.
From around the corner a grey BMW 4-Series convertible pulls up and Mr Hyphen-Name (I can only assume that all of these sorts of people have hyphenated names) starts to dangle a set of keys; meanwhile Eleanor starts to throw a tantrum.
"I wanted a white one. I told you to get me a white one. You're so stupid. I hate you."
Please note that this statement is not verbatim, as they actual statement contained at least half a dozen expletives - such a delightful little girl.
As you can imagine, in broad daylight and where the air itself has had blue streaks burned into it, there are many people who are simply staring in stunned silence. The 257 bus to Chatswood arrives and I like about a dozen other people, try to get on as quickly as possible so that we can exit stage left before Eleanor Hyphen-Name starts to drop any more choice bombs.
Suffice it to say, I don't know what it's like to have a $80,000 plus motor car just being given to me as a present. I'm reasonably sure that when I was 18 that if I was given a brown 1974 Datsun 200B wagon as a present, with only one working window and no radio, that I still would have been ecstatic. I'm pretty sure that if I was given a brown 1974 Datsun 200B wagon now, I'd still be ecstatic. I really don't understand the mindset which causes that much rage to build up in someone because the colour, of a convertible that they were given, was wrong. As I said, things just work differently in Mosman.
Human beings have a tremendous capacity to normalise their circumstances. At one end of the spectrum, that includes really horrible conditions such as living through extreme poverty but when you move people into new circumstances the new normal becomes normal. At the very top end of the socioeconomic scale, that normalisation obviously includes a set of expectations which a lot of people would find utterly fantastic. If you were to put Eleanor Hyphen-Name into my house for a week, would she cope? Probably, but I'd doubt she'd be happy about it. I bet that if I were to live in the Hyphen-Name's house for a week, I think it would be like living in a palace.
I have no doubt that when Eleanor finally gets over her tantrum, gets will probably have a really wonderful time. It's not hard to imagine her and her luridly dressed friends driving around on a Friday night with equally obnoxious music blaring from the car stereo, before having the inevitable fight and drama that people like that tend to do.
In that moment though, I just wanted to jam forks through my brain and get as far away as possible and as quickly as possible. I didn’t care how lovely the BMW 4-Series convertible might have been, the best looking vehicle in the world at that point was the 257 bus.
Mosman is a parochial kingdom all to itself. It wouldn't surprise me if you could be charged with vagrancy for taking a nap in a public park because you couldn't produce the necessary documentation, of at least a gold American Express card and several hundred dollars in cash.
It is 1:30pm on a Friday afternoon and I am standing at a bus stop outside of Mosman High School; waiting for a bus to take me back to the office. Being Friday afternoon, many kids are getting off of school for the week and many are just sort of milling around the bus stop. There is a section of road out the front of the school which has been marked off with traffic cones, which I initially assume is for some dignitary like the Governor or perhaps the local MP who just happens to be the Prime Minister, but I am mistaken.
A group of kids walk out through the front gate and because 80s retro fashion is in right now (kids of Mosman High School do not have a school uniform), they kind of look as though they have been in an explosion at the fluorescent paint factory. Coloured pants in unalluring shades of eye bleed hideousness appear to be in vogue right now and because I am more than double the age of these students and very quickly approaching my curmudgeonly years, I start to wish that the bus comes so that I can get out of there as soon as possible.
Except I don't.
A tired looking man in a tweed jacket and a lady who is also clad in a jacket are holding a sign which reads "Happy 18th Eleanor" (not her real name) and one of these students dressed like a leftover from the 1980s starts to jump up and down and much joy is exhibited. Someone makes a phone call and this is where the fun really begins.
From around the corner a grey BMW 4-Series convertible pulls up and Mr Hyphen-Name (I can only assume that all of these sorts of people have hyphenated names) starts to dangle a set of keys; meanwhile Eleanor starts to throw a tantrum.
"I wanted a white one. I told you to get me a white one. You're so stupid. I hate you."
Please note that this statement is not verbatim, as they actual statement contained at least half a dozen expletives - such a delightful little girl.
As you can imagine, in broad daylight and where the air itself has had blue streaks burned into it, there are many people who are simply staring in stunned silence. The 257 bus to Chatswood arrives and I like about a dozen other people, try to get on as quickly as possible so that we can exit stage left before Eleanor Hyphen-Name starts to drop any more choice bombs.
Suffice it to say, I don't know what it's like to have a $80,000 plus motor car just being given to me as a present. I'm reasonably sure that when I was 18 that if I was given a brown 1974 Datsun 200B wagon as a present, with only one working window and no radio, that I still would have been ecstatic. I'm pretty sure that if I was given a brown 1974 Datsun 200B wagon now, I'd still be ecstatic. I really don't understand the mindset which causes that much rage to build up in someone because the colour, of a convertible that they were given, was wrong. As I said, things just work differently in Mosman.
Human beings have a tremendous capacity to normalise their circumstances. At one end of the spectrum, that includes really horrible conditions such as living through extreme poverty but when you move people into new circumstances the new normal becomes normal. At the very top end of the socioeconomic scale, that normalisation obviously includes a set of expectations which a lot of people would find utterly fantastic. If you were to put Eleanor Hyphen-Name into my house for a week, would she cope? Probably, but I'd doubt she'd be happy about it. I bet that if I were to live in the Hyphen-Name's house for a week, I think it would be like living in a palace.
I have no doubt that when Eleanor finally gets over her tantrum, gets will probably have a really wonderful time. It's not hard to imagine her and her luridly dressed friends driving around on a Friday night with equally obnoxious music blaring from the car stereo, before having the inevitable fight and drama that people like that tend to do.
In that moment though, I just wanted to jam forks through my brain and get as far away as possible and as quickly as possible. I didn’t care how lovely the BMW 4-Series convertible might have been, the best looking vehicle in the world at that point was the 257 bus.
September 04, 2015
Horse 1973 - Puerto Rican "Immigrants"
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/sesame-streets-maria-picks-favorite-muppet/
How do you choose a favorite muppet? Actor Sonia Manzano, who has played Maria on Sesame Street for more than 40 years, has some thoughts. Manzano, who recently announced she would not appear on the show’s next season, sat down with PBS NewsHour’s chief arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown to talk about her path to Sesame Street.
In her new memoir, “Becoming Maria,” Manzano talks about growing up in the South Bronx as the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants.
- PBS News Hour, 26th Aug 2015.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/08/05/cost-olympic-dream.html
My Olympic dream began when I was a kid growing up in the Bronx. It was already a struggle – my parents were Puerto Rican immigrants with little money trying to get by supporting five children.
- John Orozco, Fox News, 5th Aug 2015.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougschoen/2015/06/24/kimberly-guilfoyle-shows-us-how-to-make-the-case-for-ourselves/
The advice in "Making the Case" is consistent: value your voice and advocate for yourself. Make the case for your career, your relationships, your health, and crucially, for those who are not able to advocate for themselves.
Kimberly practices what she preaches: a child of Irish and Puerto Rican immigrants, she has risen from working at a deli counter in high school, to law school, to deputy district attorney in Los Angeles, to juggling legal analyst positions on three major networks at four times slots each day.
- Forbes, 24th Jun 2015.
When I see the phrase "Puerto Rican immigrants" in American media, it makes me wonder just how ignorant the writer is. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is an unincorporated U.S. territory and all of its citizens are natural-born citizens of the United States just like anyone born in any of the 50 U.S. states¹. Just like any other are natural-born citizen of the United States Puerto Ricans can vote and run for office in any U.S. jurisdiction in which they are residents; provided they leave Puerto Rico.
As Puerto Rico is not a U.S. state it doesn't have a Senator but it does send a member to the U.S. House of Representatives, it's just that they don't have any voting rights on the floor of the chamber.
Puerto Rico is one of those strange things at U.S. law where the constitution only partially applies inasmuch as the courts have ruled that it does apply. In matters of taxation for instance, residents of Puerto Rico are subject to some U.S. Federal Taxes and pay into things like Social Security but Income Tax is levied by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico rather than the United States.
The really weird thing is that even though almost three years ago, the people of Puerto Rico voted in favour of U.S. Statehood because the Congress is Republican-dominated, nothing has been done with their wishes; probably due to Puerto Rico's mainly Democratic leanings. If Puerto Rico were to become the 51st state, with its 3.7 million people it would have 29th biggest population in the union and probably be entitled to 5 Representatives as well as its 2 Senators. Republicans would hate that.
Puerto Rico's status as a United States' possession was established in 1898; so it's not like Congress has only just recently had this thing to think about.
Just to muddy the waters, Puerto Rico competes at the Olympic Games but the IOC also allows weird things like the British Virgin Islands and Guam to compete and they aren't nations either.
Puerto Rico is about 1000km away from mainland Florida and in the middle of a long chain of Caribbean islands which are part of "Not America" but Hawaii is more than 3800km from the mainland, has 2.3 million less people than Puerto Rico and yet Hawaii was given statehood in 1959 and one of its native born citizens is currently President of the United States. No-one from Hawaii is considered as an "immigrant" if they move to the mainland.
I can't even begin to describe how insanely weird I think that this is. The nearest equivalent that I can think of would be like saying that someone from Norfolk Island (which also doesn't send Senators to the Australian parliament) would be an immigrant to Australia if they moved to the mainland. Norfolk Island has also achieved self government and individuals also don't pay income tax to the federal government but Norfolk Islanders are Australian citizens and to think otherwise is ludicrous.
How you can call someone who is a full citizen of a country an "immigrant" when they move from one part to another, irrespective of the preposterous legal status of that territory, is beyond me. Surely such a thing is more properly termed considered internal migration, not immigration. Naturally this brings me to the rather obvious question of "why call them 'Puerto Rican immigrants' when they're not actually immigrants?" To that end, I don't have any logical answer.
Is this some sort ignorance on the part of news agencies who simply haven't bothered to do the research? I mean it's not like the people of Puerto Rico being given U.S. Citizenship is a new phenomenon. They've had 98 years to have been informed of this. Not even the slowest postal service in the world takes that long.
Is this a case of the news agencies deliberately misreporting truth because they think that their audiences are too stupid to know the difference? Fox News which trades upon the prejudices of its audience might be able to get away with that but can PBS which is supposed to be more neutral?
Is this some hitherto unknown convention that I don't know about because I'm an Australian? Given America's projection of itself in world media, I don't understand why it would want to give the impression to the world that it's just plain dumb.
The phrase "Puerto Rican immigrants" is both incorrect and dare I say it downright insulting to people who are full U.S Citizens and have been for almost a century. I can only think that the media companies feign ignorance here but for what purpose, I do not know.
¹Puerto Rican citizens have been full United States' citizens since 1917 under Section 5 of the Puerto Rican Federal Relations Act of 1917. http://www.legisworks.org/congress/64/publaw-368.pdf
How do you choose a favorite muppet? Actor Sonia Manzano, who has played Maria on Sesame Street for more than 40 years, has some thoughts. Manzano, who recently announced she would not appear on the show’s next season, sat down with PBS NewsHour’s chief arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown to talk about her path to Sesame Street.
In her new memoir, “Becoming Maria,” Manzano talks about growing up in the South Bronx as the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants.
- PBS News Hour, 26th Aug 2015.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/08/05/cost-olympic-dream.html
My Olympic dream began when I was a kid growing up in the Bronx. It was already a struggle – my parents were Puerto Rican immigrants with little money trying to get by supporting five children.
- John Orozco, Fox News, 5th Aug 2015.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougschoen/2015/06/24/kimberly-guilfoyle-shows-us-how-to-make-the-case-for-ourselves/
The advice in "Making the Case" is consistent: value your voice and advocate for yourself. Make the case for your career, your relationships, your health, and crucially, for those who are not able to advocate for themselves.
Kimberly practices what she preaches: a child of Irish and Puerto Rican immigrants, she has risen from working at a deli counter in high school, to law school, to deputy district attorney in Los Angeles, to juggling legal analyst positions on three major networks at four times slots each day.
- Forbes, 24th Jun 2015.
When I see the phrase "Puerto Rican immigrants" in American media, it makes me wonder just how ignorant the writer is. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is an unincorporated U.S. territory and all of its citizens are natural-born citizens of the United States just like anyone born in any of the 50 U.S. states¹. Just like any other are natural-born citizen of the United States Puerto Ricans can vote and run for office in any U.S. jurisdiction in which they are residents; provided they leave Puerto Rico.
As Puerto Rico is not a U.S. state it doesn't have a Senator but it does send a member to the U.S. House of Representatives, it's just that they don't have any voting rights on the floor of the chamber.
Puerto Rico is one of those strange things at U.S. law where the constitution only partially applies inasmuch as the courts have ruled that it does apply. In matters of taxation for instance, residents of Puerto Rico are subject to some U.S. Federal Taxes and pay into things like Social Security but Income Tax is levied by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico rather than the United States.
The really weird thing is that even though almost three years ago, the people of Puerto Rico voted in favour of U.S. Statehood because the Congress is Republican-dominated, nothing has been done with their wishes; probably due to Puerto Rico's mainly Democratic leanings. If Puerto Rico were to become the 51st state, with its 3.7 million people it would have 29th biggest population in the union and probably be entitled to 5 Representatives as well as its 2 Senators. Republicans would hate that.
Puerto Rico's status as a United States' possession was established in 1898; so it's not like Congress has only just recently had this thing to think about.
Just to muddy the waters, Puerto Rico competes at the Olympic Games but the IOC also allows weird things like the British Virgin Islands and Guam to compete and they aren't nations either.
Puerto Rico is about 1000km away from mainland Florida and in the middle of a long chain of Caribbean islands which are part of "Not America" but Hawaii is more than 3800km from the mainland, has 2.3 million less people than Puerto Rico and yet Hawaii was given statehood in 1959 and one of its native born citizens is currently President of the United States. No-one from Hawaii is considered as an "immigrant" if they move to the mainland.
How you can call someone who is a full citizen of a country an "immigrant" when they move from one part to another, irrespective of the preposterous legal status of that territory, is beyond me. Surely such a thing is more properly termed considered internal migration, not immigration. Naturally this brings me to the rather obvious question of "why call them 'Puerto Rican immigrants' when they're not actually immigrants?" To that end, I don't have any logical answer.
Is this some sort ignorance on the part of news agencies who simply haven't bothered to do the research? I mean it's not like the people of Puerto Rico being given U.S. Citizenship is a new phenomenon. They've had 98 years to have been informed of this. Not even the slowest postal service in the world takes that long.
Is this a case of the news agencies deliberately misreporting truth because they think that their audiences are too stupid to know the difference? Fox News which trades upon the prejudices of its audience might be able to get away with that but can PBS which is supposed to be more neutral?
Is this some hitherto unknown convention that I don't know about because I'm an Australian? Given America's projection of itself in world media, I don't understand why it would want to give the impression to the world that it's just plain dumb.
The phrase "Puerto Rican immigrants" is both incorrect and dare I say it downright insulting to people who are full U.S Citizens and have been for almost a century. I can only think that the media companies feign ignorance here but for what purpose, I do not know.
¹Puerto Rican citizens have been full United States' citizens since 1917 under Section 5 of the Puerto Rican Federal Relations Act of 1917. http://www.legisworks.org/congress/64/publaw-368.pdf
September 03, 2015
Horse 1972 - Vegemite: The Ludicrous Condiment
Apart from the fact that I'm convinced that I was born in the wrong country by historical accident and will support England in every possible sporting endeavour, there are some things where my unwanted Australianess still shines through. Among these are my irrational love of Tim Tams, pie floaters and my defence of the ute as the greatest form of motor car yet devised. Also included though, is my liking of Vegemite, which by all accounts should be inedible.
Vegemite is made from ground up bits of ISIS, crude oil, mashed up and strained penguins, treacle, hatred, tar, charcoal, liquefied rubber and spent brewer's yeast. It has roughly the same consistency and viscosity as Silastic and a taste similar to salted bile. Vegemite is nasty nasty stuff, which unless fed to children before the age of 8, remains as unpalatable and inedible as a plate of cold sick (not that warm sick is edible either for that matter).
I was sat sitting in a coffee shop with a client of ours who wanted to take me out of the office and into a warm, upholstered place, when two bits of toast came out that were super thick and cut into 'soldiers'. I have to say that that thin layer of Vegemite which was scraped over the toast like children's chalk on the pavement, was thirteen kinds of deliciousness, when it had no right to be. On one hand I had a cup of coffee which was made by some Italian company and supposed to be the height of sophistication and on the other, I had a piece of toast which was covered in a substance which can be found (or should be found) in every pantry in the country. Vegemite is no respecter of class or income. Some would call that egalitarianism but the truth is closer to ubiquitousness.
This is an enigma wrapped in a riddle; wrapped in a conundrum; wrapped in a puzzle; wrapped in baked goods. There is no logical reason why this black sludge, the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel of the fermented drippings of Hades should taste so wonderful and yet it does. The fact that Vegemite doesn't really have an expiry date should come as no surprise to anyone. I bet that after we've all wiped ourselves out in a nuclear war and we've twisted the dragon's tail to the point where nuclear fire has rained down upon everything and destroyed all life on this planet as we know it, that all the jars of Vegemite in the world will still pass food safety standards and be fit for consumption by a race of people who no longer exists. Forget the cockroaches, it will be Vegemite which goes on to outlive us all. If we wanted to leave a record of ourselves in the universe, we should have just put a jar of Vegemite on Voyager 2; that way in 10,000 years when it meets up with some alien race, they'll conclude that we were all hard as nails.
I can understand a British obsession with toast an marmalade because there isn't very much which isn't improved by citrus and the French practice of adding herbs and garlic and olive oil to a lovely piece of crusty baguette is obviously something which has been honed over years of collective experience but Vegemite? Nope. That's just irrational. Even Vegemite's British cousin Marmite has had in its advert campaigns that you either love it or loathe it; at the point you're admitting to the public that great swathes of the population are going to be annoyed by your product, you know you're dealing with weapons grade insanity. Yet here I am extolling the virtues of a product which most of the world, quite rightly, thinks is both weird and strange.
Something as sweet as honey would be sensible this early in the morning and there is something to be said for the utility of peanut butter. Nutella can be put on toast but there isn't anyone alive who has the ability to show adequate restraint when it comes to Nutella. Nutella is best eaten directly out of the jar and the correct amount of Nutella to eat is "more". Vegemite isn't like that.
The famous advert says "We're happy little Vegemites; as bright as bright can be. We all enjoy our Vegemite for breakfast lunch and tea." Clearly this was written by a moron. Unless you happened to be some extreme fan of toast, I can't even begin to think of what context, or even how such a thing would even be possible. Maybe you could use Vegemite as some sort of additive for stocks and soups but otherwise the song is just spouting gibberish. No sane person would think about eating a tablespoonful of the stuff in one go; not even our onion eating Prime Minister would think about that. Vegemite is its own moderator of temperance and I can think of very few things in the world like that. People who don't like Vegemite are usually those unsuspecting souls who have eaten vast globs of the stuff in one go because they weren't told in advance of the nature of the beast; even Mrs Rollo has been converted by its salty wiles, which either indicates that her Americanism is fading with time or that Vegemite is so Australian that it swamps all common sense.
Therein lies the riddle that is Vegemite. It has every right to be horrible and it isn't. It should by logic be disgusting and it isn't. The product of an American corporation like Kraft Foods is one of the most Australian things that anyone can think of and its very existence is so baffling that not even common sense can be applied to it. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Vegemite is made from ground up bits of ISIS, crude oil, mashed up and strained penguins, treacle, hatred, tar, charcoal, liquefied rubber and spent brewer's yeast. It has roughly the same consistency and viscosity as Silastic and a taste similar to salted bile. Vegemite is nasty nasty stuff, which unless fed to children before the age of 8, remains as unpalatable and inedible as a plate of cold sick (not that warm sick is edible either for that matter).
I was sat sitting in a coffee shop with a client of ours who wanted to take me out of the office and into a warm, upholstered place, when two bits of toast came out that were super thick and cut into 'soldiers'. I have to say that that thin layer of Vegemite which was scraped over the toast like children's chalk on the pavement, was thirteen kinds of deliciousness, when it had no right to be. On one hand I had a cup of coffee which was made by some Italian company and supposed to be the height of sophistication and on the other, I had a piece of toast which was covered in a substance which can be found (or should be found) in every pantry in the country. Vegemite is no respecter of class or income. Some would call that egalitarianism but the truth is closer to ubiquitousness.
This is an enigma wrapped in a riddle; wrapped in a conundrum; wrapped in a puzzle; wrapped in baked goods. There is no logical reason why this black sludge, the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel of the fermented drippings of Hades should taste so wonderful and yet it does. The fact that Vegemite doesn't really have an expiry date should come as no surprise to anyone. I bet that after we've all wiped ourselves out in a nuclear war and we've twisted the dragon's tail to the point where nuclear fire has rained down upon everything and destroyed all life on this planet as we know it, that all the jars of Vegemite in the world will still pass food safety standards and be fit for consumption by a race of people who no longer exists. Forget the cockroaches, it will be Vegemite which goes on to outlive us all. If we wanted to leave a record of ourselves in the universe, we should have just put a jar of Vegemite on Voyager 2; that way in 10,000 years when it meets up with some alien race, they'll conclude that we were all hard as nails.
I can understand a British obsession with toast an marmalade because there isn't very much which isn't improved by citrus and the French practice of adding herbs and garlic and olive oil to a lovely piece of crusty baguette is obviously something which has been honed over years of collective experience but Vegemite? Nope. That's just irrational. Even Vegemite's British cousin Marmite has had in its advert campaigns that you either love it or loathe it; at the point you're admitting to the public that great swathes of the population are going to be annoyed by your product, you know you're dealing with weapons grade insanity. Yet here I am extolling the virtues of a product which most of the world, quite rightly, thinks is both weird and strange.
Something as sweet as honey would be sensible this early in the morning and there is something to be said for the utility of peanut butter. Nutella can be put on toast but there isn't anyone alive who has the ability to show adequate restraint when it comes to Nutella. Nutella is best eaten directly out of the jar and the correct amount of Nutella to eat is "more". Vegemite isn't like that.
The famous advert says "We're happy little Vegemites; as bright as bright can be. We all enjoy our Vegemite for breakfast lunch and tea." Clearly this was written by a moron. Unless you happened to be some extreme fan of toast, I can't even begin to think of what context, or even how such a thing would even be possible. Maybe you could use Vegemite as some sort of additive for stocks and soups but otherwise the song is just spouting gibberish. No sane person would think about eating a tablespoonful of the stuff in one go; not even our onion eating Prime Minister would think about that. Vegemite is its own moderator of temperance and I can think of very few things in the world like that. People who don't like Vegemite are usually those unsuspecting souls who have eaten vast globs of the stuff in one go because they weren't told in advance of the nature of the beast; even Mrs Rollo has been converted by its salty wiles, which either indicates that her Americanism is fading with time or that Vegemite is so Australian that it swamps all common sense.
Therein lies the riddle that is Vegemite. It has every right to be horrible and it isn't. It should by logic be disgusting and it isn't. The product of an American corporation like Kraft Foods is one of the most Australian things that anyone can think of and its very existence is so baffling that not even common sense can be applied to it. I wouldn't have it any other way.
September 02, 2015
Horse 1971 - There Will Not Be Blood
Passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood.
- The Onion's "Lorem Ipsum" Text.
Commentators in the media have suggested that the upcoming by-election for the Western Australian seat of Canning is going to act as some sort of bellwether for the next Federal election when that is finally announced. I have even heard the theory that if the Liberal Party wee to lose the seat, then this might be the trigger for some sort of leadership spill or a cabinet reshuffle. Everyone from the Prime Minister to the Treasurer, to the Foreign Minister and even the Minister for Immigration have had hints hurled about in the media that their jibs are on the line, when no such indication has come out of the Liberal Party at all. There has been so much speculation in the media that we'd be well advised to collect a mop and bucket to clean up the mess on the floor. Somehow I just don't think so. You can leave your mop and bucket in the cupboard because no blood will land on the floor and there won't be a leadership spill either.
The so called "broad church" of the Liberal Party isn't as obviously split left-right as the Labor Party (and that's even before you talk about their coalition partners, the Nationals). There are members who deviate to the north and south on the Authoritarian/Libertarian scale as well as those who deviate to the left and right economically. Under someone like Robert Menzies or John Howard who had a sufficiently large enough personality to lead all the factions from central position that just isn't a problem but as Dr Brendan Nelson and even Malcolm Turnbull found out, once the party coagulates then trying to split the factions is mostly impossible.
During the last major leadership challenge (which was as long ago as 2009) which ousted Turnbull and installed Abbott, Joe Hockey found out that he had a reasonable amount of support at the time. He also learned that the forcefulness of Abbott's personality was too much though and he had to fall in line behind.
This is what the public almost schizophreniacally denies. By most measures, Abbott is usually less popular than most other potential leaders of the Liberal Party, yet because under a Westminster parliamentary system of democracy it is the party or groups of parties which come together to form government, their opinion matters nought. Under a Westminster system, the Sensible Party could win government and still appoint Dr Filthy McNasty as Prime Minister and thee wouldn't be a single thing that the electorate could do about it.
Sitting governments in Australia tend to be far more stable than oppositions. The average tenure for a Prime Minister in Australia is up around 49 months but the Leader of the Opposition can expect to spend only 31 in that job. The reason for this is obvious. Parties in government are by definition larger than those in opposition; so the factions which exist are also larger and the margins also tend to be larger. Parties in opposition are by definition smaller and the margins which determine who becomes leader are also smaller. The only real task of an opposition apart from the usual rough and tumble within a parliament is to win back government. To that end, changing the leader if it means that the party is more saleable to the public is highly advisable.
Also, in the period immediately following a general election there is a tendency for leaders to spontaneously resign. Either a former Prime Minister will resign because they have proven that the public doesn't like them or Opposition Leaders who have taken the party to electoral failure will feel a sense of disappointment. Prime Ministers do not suffer from this because they have obviously won. The only time that you're likely to get a sitting Prime Minister removed from the top job is either after a long period of government or during a period of massive internal instability. The Liberal Party as it stands, has neither of these. This is still the first term of the Abbott Government and the party shows no obvious signs of instability either. Hockey's position as Treasurer is also quite safe as well because unless he intends to launch a leadership challenge, which he has shown no indication of doing so, then unless there's some other major hitherto unknown reason why there should be any change at the top, then I expect that the entire cabinet will look exactly the same going into the next federal election as it does not.
- The Onion's "Lorem Ipsum" Text.
Commentators in the media have suggested that the upcoming by-election for the Western Australian seat of Canning is going to act as some sort of bellwether for the next Federal election when that is finally announced. I have even heard the theory that if the Liberal Party wee to lose the seat, then this might be the trigger for some sort of leadership spill or a cabinet reshuffle. Everyone from the Prime Minister to the Treasurer, to the Foreign Minister and even the Minister for Immigration have had hints hurled about in the media that their jibs are on the line, when no such indication has come out of the Liberal Party at all. There has been so much speculation in the media that we'd be well advised to collect a mop and bucket to clean up the mess on the floor. Somehow I just don't think so. You can leave your mop and bucket in the cupboard because no blood will land on the floor and there won't be a leadership spill either.
The so called "broad church" of the Liberal Party isn't as obviously split left-right as the Labor Party (and that's even before you talk about their coalition partners, the Nationals). There are members who deviate to the north and south on the Authoritarian/Libertarian scale as well as those who deviate to the left and right economically. Under someone like Robert Menzies or John Howard who had a sufficiently large enough personality to lead all the factions from central position that just isn't a problem but as Dr Brendan Nelson and even Malcolm Turnbull found out, once the party coagulates then trying to split the factions is mostly impossible.
During the last major leadership challenge (which was as long ago as 2009) which ousted Turnbull and installed Abbott, Joe Hockey found out that he had a reasonable amount of support at the time. He also learned that the forcefulness of Abbott's personality was too much though and he had to fall in line behind.
This is what the public almost schizophreniacally denies. By most measures, Abbott is usually less popular than most other potential leaders of the Liberal Party, yet because under a Westminster parliamentary system of democracy it is the party or groups of parties which come together to form government, their opinion matters nought. Under a Westminster system, the Sensible Party could win government and still appoint Dr Filthy McNasty as Prime Minister and thee wouldn't be a single thing that the electorate could do about it.
Sitting governments in Australia tend to be far more stable than oppositions. The average tenure for a Prime Minister in Australia is up around 49 months but the Leader of the Opposition can expect to spend only 31 in that job. The reason for this is obvious. Parties in government are by definition larger than those in opposition; so the factions which exist are also larger and the margins also tend to be larger. Parties in opposition are by definition smaller and the margins which determine who becomes leader are also smaller. The only real task of an opposition apart from the usual rough and tumble within a parliament is to win back government. To that end, changing the leader if it means that the party is more saleable to the public is highly advisable.
Also, in the period immediately following a general election there is a tendency for leaders to spontaneously resign. Either a former Prime Minister will resign because they have proven that the public doesn't like them or Opposition Leaders who have taken the party to electoral failure will feel a sense of disappointment. Prime Ministers do not suffer from this because they have obviously won. The only time that you're likely to get a sitting Prime Minister removed from the top job is either after a long period of government or during a period of massive internal instability. The Liberal Party as it stands, has neither of these. This is still the first term of the Abbott Government and the party shows no obvious signs of instability either. Hockey's position as Treasurer is also quite safe as well because unless he intends to launch a leadership challenge, which he has shown no indication of doing so, then unless there's some other major hitherto unknown reason why there should be any change at the top, then I expect that the entire cabinet will look exactly the same going into the next federal election as it does not.
September 01, 2015
Horse 1970 - Operation Forty-Toad
If you are in charge of a government that wants to do something either hideously unpopular or which is seen as cruel by a great deal of the population, what do you do if you intend to do it anyway? If you are going to do something which is going to cause pain, like remove someone's kidney without their permission, then maybe you can hit their thumb with a hammer. That way, while they're worried about their thumb, they might not notice that their kidney is gone.
Within the same week that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was announcing that Germany would take up to 800,000 refugees, the Abbott Government in Australia was in damage control after the Australian Border Force had announced that under Operation Fortitude, it would stop people on the streets of Melbourne and demand to see their visa papers and or passports. The announcement was made early in the morning and by mid-afternoon, there were so many protestors at Melbourne's Flinders Street railway station that the operation was cancelled. Never before have we seen an agency backpedal so furiously that they'd burnt out the tyres on their bicycle in less than one day. Of course the Immigration Minister Peter Dutton was nowhere to be found as he was mysteriously 'sick' and the Prime Minister Tony Abbott tried to lay out the excuse that it was just a badly worded press release even though the intent was absolutely obvious.
How did we get here?
The problem that the Abbott Government has at the moment is that they are at least six months away at the earliest from an election and that at the bare minimum they will have to do some governing in the interim. Usually that wouldn't be an issue but they've come to the point in the election cycle where governments start to get judged for their actions and they've realised that the electorate has memories.
The first six months for a government are usually the best because they can do the big ticket items and sound the fanfare of how wonderful they are. Every new government will also get a chance to crow about fixing the mistakes of the previous government and then there are those symbolic gestures which cost practically nothing but look as if they are fulfilling promises.
In 2013 the Abbott Government was elected on a visible platform of 'not being Labor' and of Tony Abbott 'not being Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard', as well as the three word slogan to 'stop the boats'. Unfortunately in 'not being Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard', Tony Abbott has been Tony Abbott, which is fine if you happen to be the Leader of the Opposition but isn't exactly the most positive of policies if you are the Prime Minister. The policy of stopping the boats whilst it has worked, has come at the price of looking extremely cruel. When you start shipping refugees off to nations with populations which are smaller than a concert hall, or when there are reports of refugees sewing their lips together in protest of being stuck somewhere for years with no obvious plan to be moved, or when you start towing boats back into open seas, it all just comes across as being a bit extreme. Then if the same government department which is in control of enacting those policies, suddenly announces a domestic policy which resembles that of a police state, the population then starts to get very worried.
Governments generally turn to a 'get tough on crime' policy footing before an election because it usually involves the loudest and most visible set of announcements for the least amount of effort. Border Force was one such announcement because it took an existing set of workers, clad them in shiny new uniforms and then employed them to do roughly the same thing. Now I would argue that having a paramilitary presence on the streets of the CBD of a major city is all kinds of crazy bonkers but I'm not entirely sure if it was sinister of itself. This smacks to me of a government which has thought to itself 'we need to be seen to be doing something; this is a thing; therefore we need to be seen doing this'. Yes it is crazy bonkers but arguably it has done its job because it is visible and for the least amount of effort.
If you look at a lot of policy which was supposedly been tossed about in the last week such as starting a debate about the republic, they were ostensibly about making noise without doing anything. Even talk about Joe Hockey supposedly being cautious about his job as Treasurer, I think was mainly about making a noise to distract from the previous noise generated by the Border Force farce; for the least amount of effort. Leadership speculation can generate lots of column inches in newspapers and mindless chatter on radio and television, without having to do anything of real value.
When it comes to serious policy such as altering the GST and Income Tax rates, by making as much noise as they possibly could, the Abbott Government has created a very nice diversion. For a couple of days the Australian electorate was too busy watching the shiny thing to notice anything else; I wonder what sort of deals were made in the background.
Within the same week that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was announcing that Germany would take up to 800,000 refugees, the Abbott Government in Australia was in damage control after the Australian Border Force had announced that under Operation Fortitude, it would stop people on the streets of Melbourne and demand to see their visa papers and or passports. The announcement was made early in the morning and by mid-afternoon, there were so many protestors at Melbourne's Flinders Street railway station that the operation was cancelled. Never before have we seen an agency backpedal so furiously that they'd burnt out the tyres on their bicycle in less than one day. Of course the Immigration Minister Peter Dutton was nowhere to be found as he was mysteriously 'sick' and the Prime Minister Tony Abbott tried to lay out the excuse that it was just a badly worded press release even though the intent was absolutely obvious.
How did we get here?
The problem that the Abbott Government has at the moment is that they are at least six months away at the earliest from an election and that at the bare minimum they will have to do some governing in the interim. Usually that wouldn't be an issue but they've come to the point in the election cycle where governments start to get judged for their actions and they've realised that the electorate has memories.
The first six months for a government are usually the best because they can do the big ticket items and sound the fanfare of how wonderful they are. Every new government will also get a chance to crow about fixing the mistakes of the previous government and then there are those symbolic gestures which cost practically nothing but look as if they are fulfilling promises.
In 2013 the Abbott Government was elected on a visible platform of 'not being Labor' and of Tony Abbott 'not being Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard', as well as the three word slogan to 'stop the boats'. Unfortunately in 'not being Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard', Tony Abbott has been Tony Abbott, which is fine if you happen to be the Leader of the Opposition but isn't exactly the most positive of policies if you are the Prime Minister. The policy of stopping the boats whilst it has worked, has come at the price of looking extremely cruel. When you start shipping refugees off to nations with populations which are smaller than a concert hall, or when there are reports of refugees sewing their lips together in protest of being stuck somewhere for years with no obvious plan to be moved, or when you start towing boats back into open seas, it all just comes across as being a bit extreme. Then if the same government department which is in control of enacting those policies, suddenly announces a domestic policy which resembles that of a police state, the population then starts to get very worried.
Governments generally turn to a 'get tough on crime' policy footing before an election because it usually involves the loudest and most visible set of announcements for the least amount of effort. Border Force was one such announcement because it took an existing set of workers, clad them in shiny new uniforms and then employed them to do roughly the same thing. Now I would argue that having a paramilitary presence on the streets of the CBD of a major city is all kinds of crazy bonkers but I'm not entirely sure if it was sinister of itself. This smacks to me of a government which has thought to itself 'we need to be seen to be doing something; this is a thing; therefore we need to be seen doing this'. Yes it is crazy bonkers but arguably it has done its job because it is visible and for the least amount of effort.
If you look at a lot of policy which was supposedly been tossed about in the last week such as starting a debate about the republic, they were ostensibly about making noise without doing anything. Even talk about Joe Hockey supposedly being cautious about his job as Treasurer, I think was mainly about making a noise to distract from the previous noise generated by the Border Force farce; for the least amount of effort. Leadership speculation can generate lots of column inches in newspapers and mindless chatter on radio and television, without having to do anything of real value.
When it comes to serious policy such as altering the GST and Income Tax rates, by making as much noise as they possibly could, the Abbott Government has created a very nice diversion. For a couple of days the Australian electorate was too busy watching the shiny thing to notice anything else; I wonder what sort of deals were made in the background.
August 28, 2015
Horse 1969 - The Commonwealth Of Apathy (Why Switching To A Republic Isn't All That Great)
Roughly about once every five years, either as a smokescreen to cover over a more serious issue or because someone has had a dip in the popularity polls, the idea of an Australian Republic bubbles to the top of the collective consciousness and floats around for a while, before sinking back beneath the surface again. I'm not a staunch monarchist; I don't have any special affection for the Royal Family but by the same token I am definitely not in favour of changing to a republic either because I think that the downsides outweigh whatever imagined benefits might exist.
Republicans will argue that an independent nation should have an independent head of state and whilst there is a fair amount of truth in that, it is impossible to argue that Australia hasn't already been an independent nation in every legal sense since the Statue of Westminster Adoption Act of 1942. Australia makes laws on behalf of Australia and no other countries' laws that are passed affect Australia. There is a provision in section 58 of the Constitution for the Governor-General to hold bills aside for the monarch to sign but in practice this almost never happens because the Governor-General normally signs off on laws themselves. The Governor-General remains for all intents and purposes the last pair of hands that a bill must go through in order to become law.
Yet as the head of the armed forces and as the one who holds the power to appoint Prime Ministers and dissolve parliaments, the Governor-General is not just a bit player in a figurehead position. In the 1975 Constitutional Crisis for instance, when Sir John Kerr sacked the Whitlam Government, he did so with good reason. The government was unable to pass a budget and the deadlock was broken with the best possible solution - the dismissing of a Prime Minister, the passing of the budget that day and the calling of a Federal election.
I completely understand the desire to alter the symbolism so that it no longer includes a reminder that the British Empire simply just tuned up, stole an entire continent through the cunning use of flags and displaced many people groups; destroying culture and connection to the land in the process but none of the republican debate that I've ever heard has even so much as once talk about reconciliation and recognition of first peoples through constitutional means. Usually becoming a republic or a new nation is about deliberately severing ties with the past, but in running away from the past, what sort of future are we running towards? If Australia's involvement over the past 70 years with that other great republic, the United States of America, is anything to go by, then the future that we are symbolically running towards is another 70 years of national spinelessness and military subservience to that great power across the waves. By remaining in the monarchy, we embrace the fact that the empire has crumbled and we're fine with that.
I rather like the fact that no-one is entirely sure of what the Governor-General is supposed to do. In theory they wield all sorts of power but in practice, they almost never use it. The 1999 referendum showed that if we were to move to a republic, then people want the ability to vote for the head of state. The problem with that is that once you've voted for someone, you then expect them to do something. The rather impotent role of the current Governor-General would be altered through the process of voting and I don't know if anyone is prepared to see the consequences of that. What would happen for instance if the Governor-General and the Parliament came to an impass? In the United States it results in gridlock; in France it results in gridlock but in Ireland and Germany, that situation doesn't arise because the President remains impartial.
From what I've seen in the Australian Parliament with its ultra adversarial politics, I do not believe that an elected Governor-General either would or could remain impartial. In fact, if an elected Governor-General ran that position in the same spirit as Bronwyn Bishop did with the role of Speaker of the House of Representatives, then that's surely the best possible advert against ever becoming a republic. Electing the Governor-General must surely lead to partisan politics and that's something which I do not want to see; especially considering that the current system works so well that most people don't even know who the Governor-General even is.
The truth is that although I understand why some people might think that Australia becoming is a good idea, it just isn't compelling enough for me. We've had 115 years of remarkably stable government and even had a change of government in the middle of a world war and that didn't cause chaos. The system is demonstrably fine by operation and I don't see and conceivable reason why switching to a republic is going to make anything better at all. I can see how it might make things worse and if change for change's sake is going to make things worse, then that's even more of a reason to do nothing and keep what we already have.
Republicans will argue that an independent nation should have an independent head of state and whilst there is a fair amount of truth in that, it is impossible to argue that Australia hasn't already been an independent nation in every legal sense since the Statue of Westminster Adoption Act of 1942. Australia makes laws on behalf of Australia and no other countries' laws that are passed affect Australia. There is a provision in section 58 of the Constitution for the Governor-General to hold bills aside for the monarch to sign but in practice this almost never happens because the Governor-General normally signs off on laws themselves. The Governor-General remains for all intents and purposes the last pair of hands that a bill must go through in order to become law.
Yet as the head of the armed forces and as the one who holds the power to appoint Prime Ministers and dissolve parliaments, the Governor-General is not just a bit player in a figurehead position. In the 1975 Constitutional Crisis for instance, when Sir John Kerr sacked the Whitlam Government, he did so with good reason. The government was unable to pass a budget and the deadlock was broken with the best possible solution - the dismissing of a Prime Minister, the passing of the budget that day and the calling of a Federal election.
I completely understand the desire to alter the symbolism so that it no longer includes a reminder that the British Empire simply just tuned up, stole an entire continent through the cunning use of flags and displaced many people groups; destroying culture and connection to the land in the process but none of the republican debate that I've ever heard has even so much as once talk about reconciliation and recognition of first peoples through constitutional means. Usually becoming a republic or a new nation is about deliberately severing ties with the past, but in running away from the past, what sort of future are we running towards? If Australia's involvement over the past 70 years with that other great republic, the United States of America, is anything to go by, then the future that we are symbolically running towards is another 70 years of national spinelessness and military subservience to that great power across the waves. By remaining in the monarchy, we embrace the fact that the empire has crumbled and we're fine with that.
I rather like the fact that no-one is entirely sure of what the Governor-General is supposed to do. In theory they wield all sorts of power but in practice, they almost never use it. The 1999 referendum showed that if we were to move to a republic, then people want the ability to vote for the head of state. The problem with that is that once you've voted for someone, you then expect them to do something. The rather impotent role of the current Governor-General would be altered through the process of voting and I don't know if anyone is prepared to see the consequences of that. What would happen for instance if the Governor-General and the Parliament came to an impass? In the United States it results in gridlock; in France it results in gridlock but in Ireland and Germany, that situation doesn't arise because the President remains impartial.
From what I've seen in the Australian Parliament with its ultra adversarial politics, I do not believe that an elected Governor-General either would or could remain impartial. In fact, if an elected Governor-General ran that position in the same spirit as Bronwyn Bishop did with the role of Speaker of the House of Representatives, then that's surely the best possible advert against ever becoming a republic. Electing the Governor-General must surely lead to partisan politics and that's something which I do not want to see; especially considering that the current system works so well that most people don't even know who the Governor-General even is.
The truth is that although I understand why some people might think that Australia becoming is a good idea, it just isn't compelling enough for me. We've had 115 years of remarkably stable government and even had a change of government in the middle of a world war and that didn't cause chaos. The system is demonstrably fine by operation and I don't see and conceivable reason why switching to a republic is going to make anything better at all. I can see how it might make things worse and if change for change's sake is going to make things worse, then that's even more of a reason to do nothing and keep what we already have.
August 26, 2015
Horse 1968 - Australia's Prime Ministers - No 22 - Malcolm Fraser
XXII - Malcolm Fraser
Depending on how you want to read events, Malcolm Fraser's first term of government lasted for something in the order of two and a quarter hours on that fateful afternoon of 11th November 1975.
Whitlam was offficially decommissioned as Prime Minister by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr, during their 1pm meeting. The Senate had still not been informed officially and it would have appeared really strange when at 2:24pm, the appropriation bills which formed the 1975 Budget bills passed the Senate.
At 02:34pm Fraser stood in the House of Representatives and announced that he had been appointed as the new Prime Minister by Kerr and immediately the House passed resolution after resolution defeating the "new" government, which included passing a no confidence motion in Fraser.
With supply secured, Fraser then advised Kerr that there were no fewer that 21 bills which counted as election triggers under section 57 of the Constitution and so approval was given to dissolve the parliament and an election was called for 13th December 1975.
To Whitlam's surprise, 30 seats changed hands and Fraser's Liberal/National coalition was installed as the government with 91 seats to 36. The Liberal Party by themselves won 68 seats which meant that they could have held government in their own right but they chose to remain in coalition with their partners the National Country Party who had changed their name from the Country Party.
Fraser's government sought to cut back many of the Whitlam Government's program and this meant a vast reduction in overall government expenditure. The new universal health insurance system Medibank was vastly altered, the ABC saw a series of deep cuts which would last from 1976 to 1985 and the public service began to shed jobs.
In the meantime Fraser's Government would establish the Commonwealth Ombudsman, the Human Rights Commission, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) as well as passing the first piece of aboriginal land law with the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976.
Under the Fraser government, Australia took in more than 200,000 Asian migrants with about a quarter of those being Vietnamese refugees. In order to help people resettle and start a new life, the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs was also established.
At the 1977 election Fraser's Government retained government but lost 5 seats in the process. Whitlam who was still Opposition leader going into the election resigned not long after. Three years later, the government lost a further 12 seats in the 1980 election but was still awarded a third term in government.
Under pressure from Fraser, the Treasurer Phillip Lynch resigned and John Howard was promoted to the position but facing a period of double digit inflation and double digit unemployment known as "stagflation" the task was never going to be easy. Fraser wanted to pass an expansionary budget in the face of a looming recession and he and Howard frequently disagreed on what that should look like. By 1983 there was significant increases in spending on national highways and aviation infrastructure, as well as increases in welfare and transfer payments. At the same time construction of the new Parliament House began and this was expected to be completed in time for the bicentenary of British settlement in 1988.
In 1982, a Federal Enquiry was launched into the Australian banking system and foreign banks were allowed to open for the first time.
Following a by-election in the seat of Flinders in January 1983, Fraser called for an election for the 5th of March. On the morning of 3rd February as Fraser was visiting the Governor-General, the Opposition Leader Bill Hayden resigned his post and Bob Hawke replaced him as Labor leader.
Ultimately the Fraser Government would lose the 1983 election, 24 seats in the process and suffer the worst defeat by any non-Labour government ever. Fraser would not go on to lead the Liberal Party in Opposition and did not stay in Parliament too long afterwards either, resigning two months later.
August 25, 2015
Horse 1967 - Feeling Foul, Fever & Fahrenheit
Romeo loved Juliet, Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said, "Julie baby you're my flame"
Thou giveth fever...
- "Fever" Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell (1956)
Dear Romeo,
Either Juliet is a perpetual carrier of some virus, bacteria or other pathogen which your body is reacting badly to or Juliet is the name of a very hot object like an oil heater or blast furnace. Juliet might even be the name of a radioactive source like a piece of fissile material or at worst, an exposed nuclear reactor core.
My suggestion is that you evacuate yourself immediately and find a nice warm bed in a darkened room until this fever passes. I don't care how much you love this "Juliet", she is obviously hazardous to your health and should be avoided post haste.
Yours deliriously,
Rollo.
Owing to the fact that I am a metric man every inch of the way, our thermometer reads off in degrees Fahrenheit. The fever that I'm currently experiencing, peaked at 105°F at the weekend and Mrs Rollo politely reminded me that extended periods of hyperthemia can cause brain damage and so I ought to take some paracetamol to diffuse it. I duly obeyed and took myself off to that darkened room, wherein I was driven to anger by the continuous hammer drop of the ticking clock on the wall but was unable to do anything about it as reason, language, logic and desire all got on a plane and flew away, leaving me with cyclical chills and a pair of hands that felt as though they had been resting in the caldera of Eyjafjallajökull.
I say all of this by way of introduction as an illustration of the only acceptable and sensible use of the Fahrenheit scale of temperature. Measuring fever is, in my self aggrandised opinion, a perfect use of the scale but it serves no real other purpose.
The German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit who developed his eponymous scale, took the rather strange approach of setting the limits of his scale at points that make not much sense. 0°F was taken to be the point at which brine froze. He then set 96°F at so called "blood heat"; which ended up being wrong anyway.
From the outset, Fahrenheit set up his scale from one point which was based on an ill defined standard, to another point which was incorrect. I suppose that if there literally is no other scale or standard to set measurements against then it would have to do but just like barracking for Collingwood or making Duck A L'Orange for dinner, better things have come along and it should be abandoned immediately. It isn't wrong but we just shouldn't use it.
In contrast, Anders Celsius' scale was reasonably well thought out, the conditions can be reproduced and it has proper real world applications.
0°C is the point at which water freezes in an atmosphere of 1000mB and 100°C is the point at which water boils in an atmosphere of 1000mB. Water is a chemical which has useful relevance to people's lives and by setting the standard based off of it, this means that the conditions are readily reproducible. Furthermore, because 0°C is based on the freezing point of water; that's readily observable as well. If I step out and I can see frost and ice all over the place, then I know that there must have been some micro 0°C conditions outside. Minus degrees Celsius suggests that it is cold outside because it is. 29°F which is below the freezing point of water doesn't really suggest much of anything. Likewise, 100°C is observable every time one makes a cup of tea; which is proper and noble and delightful. 212°F which is the same temperature sounds hot but its a vague sort of number.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling for the absolute elimination of the Fahrenheit scale, it's just that it has a singular and limited use. A lot of the old Imperial units for instance, were based on useful and practical things. A pint is a good amount but not too much to have, of milk or beer. A pound is a good amount but not too much to have, of cheese, beef, rice, potatoes or leeks. People should be measured in feet and inches because that's sensible; new born babies should be measured in pounds and ounces because that's also sensible.
Fahrenheit should be used to measure fever because 99°F is alright but 100°F is the beginning of a fever. 101°F is worse, 102°F is a little bit of a worry, 105°F is time to be worried. Fahrenheit although it is used to quote temperatures on weather forecasts in some countries, is really ill suited to the job. The continued use of Fahrenheit for these purposes makes my blood boil (which is an extreme sort of fever and one which should be investigated by a triage officer or emergency ward immediately).
When he put his arms around her
He said, "Julie baby you're my flame"
Thou giveth fever...
- "Fever" Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell (1956)
Dear Romeo,
Either Juliet is a perpetual carrier of some virus, bacteria or other pathogen which your body is reacting badly to or Juliet is the name of a very hot object like an oil heater or blast furnace. Juliet might even be the name of a radioactive source like a piece of fissile material or at worst, an exposed nuclear reactor core.
My suggestion is that you evacuate yourself immediately and find a nice warm bed in a darkened room until this fever passes. I don't care how much you love this "Juliet", she is obviously hazardous to your health and should be avoided post haste.
Yours deliriously,
Rollo.
Owing to the fact that I am a metric man every inch of the way, our thermometer reads off in degrees Fahrenheit. The fever that I'm currently experiencing, peaked at 105°F at the weekend and Mrs Rollo politely reminded me that extended periods of hyperthemia can cause brain damage and so I ought to take some paracetamol to diffuse it. I duly obeyed and took myself off to that darkened room, wherein I was driven to anger by the continuous hammer drop of the ticking clock on the wall but was unable to do anything about it as reason, language, logic and desire all got on a plane and flew away, leaving me with cyclical chills and a pair of hands that felt as though they had been resting in the caldera of Eyjafjallajökull.
I say all of this by way of introduction as an illustration of the only acceptable and sensible use of the Fahrenheit scale of temperature. Measuring fever is, in my self aggrandised opinion, a perfect use of the scale but it serves no real other purpose.
The German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit who developed his eponymous scale, took the rather strange approach of setting the limits of his scale at points that make not much sense. 0°F was taken to be the point at which brine froze. He then set 96°F at so called "blood heat"; which ended up being wrong anyway.
From the outset, Fahrenheit set up his scale from one point which was based on an ill defined standard, to another point which was incorrect. I suppose that if there literally is no other scale or standard to set measurements against then it would have to do but just like barracking for Collingwood or making Duck A L'Orange for dinner, better things have come along and it should be abandoned immediately. It isn't wrong but we just shouldn't use it.
In contrast, Anders Celsius' scale was reasonably well thought out, the conditions can be reproduced and it has proper real world applications.
0°C is the point at which water freezes in an atmosphere of 1000mB and 100°C is the point at which water boils in an atmosphere of 1000mB. Water is a chemical which has useful relevance to people's lives and by setting the standard based off of it, this means that the conditions are readily reproducible. Furthermore, because 0°C is based on the freezing point of water; that's readily observable as well. If I step out and I can see frost and ice all over the place, then I know that there must have been some micro 0°C conditions outside. Minus degrees Celsius suggests that it is cold outside because it is. 29°F which is below the freezing point of water doesn't really suggest much of anything. Likewise, 100°C is observable every time one makes a cup of tea; which is proper and noble and delightful. 212°F which is the same temperature sounds hot but its a vague sort of number.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling for the absolute elimination of the Fahrenheit scale, it's just that it has a singular and limited use. A lot of the old Imperial units for instance, were based on useful and practical things. A pint is a good amount but not too much to have, of milk or beer. A pound is a good amount but not too much to have, of cheese, beef, rice, potatoes or leeks. People should be measured in feet and inches because that's sensible; new born babies should be measured in pounds and ounces because that's also sensible.
Fahrenheit should be used to measure fever because 99°F is alright but 100°F is the beginning of a fever. 101°F is worse, 102°F is a little bit of a worry, 105°F is time to be worried. Fahrenheit although it is used to quote temperatures on weather forecasts in some countries, is really ill suited to the job. The continued use of Fahrenheit for these purposes makes my blood boil (which is an extreme sort of fever and one which should be investigated by a triage officer or emergency ward immediately).
August 24, 2015
Horse 1966 - F1: Mercedes Is Still Firing Silver Bullets (Round 5)
Perhaps the most laughable story of the Belgian Grand Prix happened before a wheel had even turned. McLaren changed so many arts to their Honda powerplants that they effectively got new engines and in consequence, Fernando Alonso was given a 55 grid place penalty and Jensen Button was penalised 50 grid places. Not that this made much of a difference as they qualified 17th & 18th and the penalties put them into 19th and 20th.
Sergio Perez in the Force India made a blistering start, forcing his way around the outside of both Grosjean and Rosberg towards La Source and took the lead for a brief period. Nico Rosberg who bogged down on the start, fell back to fifth; falling in behind Bottas’ Williams, and Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull.
Very quickly though, Lewis Hamilton asserted his authority on the race and on the run up through Eau Rouge and Raidillon on the first lap, easily overtook Perez. He would never be headed again except for a brief period when he made a pit stop and Vettel would officially lead lap 14.
Rosberg would pass Bottas by the end of the first lap and after the first round of pitstops on laps 12-14, he again found himself in second.
Pastor Maldonado’s Lotus mysteriously came to a stop on lap 3 as the Mercedes refused to supply any more power.
Most of the race was fairly processional from about lap 3 onwards except for Max Verstappen who bravely passed Felipe Nasr around the outside at Blanchimont on lap 11 and Grosjean passing Ricciardo on lap 18 for third.
Daniel Ricciardo's race would not last much beyond that though, when his Red Bull expired on lap 21 and came to a stop on the start-finish straight which meant that the race was brought under virtual safety car conditions whilst it was cleared. After the race was restarted, Hamilton broke free to establish a six second gap over Rosberg and for the rest of the race, the gap never really wavered.
In a comedy of errors, Williams fitted three soft compound tyres (marked with a yellow band) and one medium compound tyre (marked with a white band) to Valtteri Bottas’s car. Mixing compounds is not allowed and so Bottas had to come back into the pits to correct the mistake and in addition to that he was given a drive-through penalty. What should have been a podium, became ninth place.
I understand that Formula One is a pressure cooker environment but not getting colours right is a childish error. Maybe Williams should consider hiring a technical advisor for this sort of thing. I suggest Elmo from Sesame Street.
Two laps from home the rear right hand tyre on Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari exploded and he was furious. Ferrari had been told by Pirelli that the tyres were good for 40 laps and so they decided upon a one stop strategy. The tyres on the Ferrari had only done 28 laps when the right rear let go and there was no indication beforehand that it would fail. As the tyre failed at Raidillon and at just over 180mph, had it happened just a few hundred metres before, the consequences could have been serious.
A similar sort of failure occurred in Friday free practice on Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes; with Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso expressing concerns during the driver’s briefing meeting. Pirelli launched an investigation but found no issue with the structural integrity of that tyre but two similar failures in a weekend suggests something which warrants further investigation.
The unexpected benefactor of Vettel’s tyre failure was Romain Grosjean who had had a fairly quiet race in the Lotus up to that point. In fourth place was Danill Kyvat who in the closing laps passed Raikkonen, Massa and Perez in quick succession.
Race Results:
1. Hamilton - Mercedes
2. Rosberg- Mercedes
3. Grosjean - Lotus-Mercedes
4. Kyvat – Red Bull-Renault
5. Perez - Force India-Mercedes
6. Massa - Williams-Mercedes
"The John Logie Baird Television Was Better in 1984 Memorial Cup" at the end of Round 5 looks like this:
37 Hamilton
34 Rosberg
15 Vettel
8 Massa
7 Raikkonen
6 Kyvat
5 Riccardo
5 Bottas
4 Grosjean
2 Perez
2 Nasr
1 Hulkenburg
The Constructor's Championship is thus:
71 Mercedes
22 Ferrari
13 Williams
10 Red Bull
4 Lotus
3 Force India
2 Sauber
Sergio Perez in the Force India made a blistering start, forcing his way around the outside of both Grosjean and Rosberg towards La Source and took the lead for a brief period. Nico Rosberg who bogged down on the start, fell back to fifth; falling in behind Bottas’ Williams, and Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull.
Very quickly though, Lewis Hamilton asserted his authority on the race and on the run up through Eau Rouge and Raidillon on the first lap, easily overtook Perez. He would never be headed again except for a brief period when he made a pit stop and Vettel would officially lead lap 14.
Rosberg would pass Bottas by the end of the first lap and after the first round of pitstops on laps 12-14, he again found himself in second.
Pastor Maldonado’s Lotus mysteriously came to a stop on lap 3 as the Mercedes refused to supply any more power.
Most of the race was fairly processional from about lap 3 onwards except for Max Verstappen who bravely passed Felipe Nasr around the outside at Blanchimont on lap 11 and Grosjean passing Ricciardo on lap 18 for third.
Daniel Ricciardo's race would not last much beyond that though, when his Red Bull expired on lap 21 and came to a stop on the start-finish straight which meant that the race was brought under virtual safety car conditions whilst it was cleared. After the race was restarted, Hamilton broke free to establish a six second gap over Rosberg and for the rest of the race, the gap never really wavered.
In a comedy of errors, Williams fitted three soft compound tyres (marked with a yellow band) and one medium compound tyre (marked with a white band) to Valtteri Bottas’s car. Mixing compounds is not allowed and so Bottas had to come back into the pits to correct the mistake and in addition to that he was given a drive-through penalty. What should have been a podium, became ninth place.
I understand that Formula One is a pressure cooker environment but not getting colours right is a childish error. Maybe Williams should consider hiring a technical advisor for this sort of thing. I suggest Elmo from Sesame Street.
Two laps from home the rear right hand tyre on Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari exploded and he was furious. Ferrari had been told by Pirelli that the tyres were good for 40 laps and so they decided upon a one stop strategy. The tyres on the Ferrari had only done 28 laps when the right rear let go and there was no indication beforehand that it would fail. As the tyre failed at Raidillon and at just over 180mph, had it happened just a few hundred metres before, the consequences could have been serious.
A similar sort of failure occurred in Friday free practice on Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes; with Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso expressing concerns during the driver’s briefing meeting. Pirelli launched an investigation but found no issue with the structural integrity of that tyre but two similar failures in a weekend suggests something which warrants further investigation.
The unexpected benefactor of Vettel’s tyre failure was Romain Grosjean who had had a fairly quiet race in the Lotus up to that point. In fourth place was Danill Kyvat who in the closing laps passed Raikkonen, Massa and Perez in quick succession.
Race Results:
1. Hamilton - Mercedes
2. Rosberg- Mercedes
3. Grosjean - Lotus-Mercedes
4. Kyvat – Red Bull-Renault
5. Perez - Force India-Mercedes
6. Massa - Williams-Mercedes
"The John Logie Baird Television Was Better in 1984 Memorial Cup" at the end of Round 5 looks like this:
37 Hamilton
34 Rosberg
15 Vettel
8 Massa
7 Raikkonen
6 Kyvat
5 Riccardo
5 Bottas
4 Grosjean
2 Perez
2 Nasr
1 Hulkenburg
The Constructor's Championship is thus:
71 Mercedes
22 Ferrari
13 Williams
10 Red Bull
4 Lotus
3 Force India
2 Sauber
August 21, 2015
Horse 1965 - Deceptive Philosophy
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.
- Colossians 2:8
In broad terms the two parts of the Bible, that is the Old and New Testaments are built in the same fashion (at least in the order that they usually appear in western Bibles). The Old Testament is comprised of several books of history, a song book, three books of philosophical discourse and the rest is made up of prophecy. The New Testament is made up of five books of history, the letters themselves whilst they are pastoral and doctrinal in nature are still pieces of philosophical discourse and finally there is one book of prophecy.
I think that it is a mistake to suggest that the Bible is opposed to philosophy when so much of it is either blatantly made up of it or contains pointers to it. The word philosophy itself is made up of two Greek parts; being “Philos” which means “love of” and “Sophia” which means “wisdom”. Taken together philosophy means "a lover of wisdom" or “a friend of wisdom” and indeed any functional definition of philosophy must include an enquiry into the nature of knowledge itself. Philosophy as a pursuit, asks questions about the nature of being and how and if things can be known.
Nor do I think that asking questions of the why and how your set of knowledge is, is a bad things either. In the book of Acts, Luke writes that the people of Berea "were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true". Going away and checking new information against what you already know or against a standard is surely a sound approach and the ability to question "why is it so?" must surely lie at the heart of any enquiry.
This is where I think that the scientist, the theist, the atheist and the philosopher all agree in principle. They might disagree with each other about the makeup of their worldview but I think that it's probably true for everyone that knowledge and wisdom is built up through the assessment and evaluation of all new pieces of information. Everyone suffers from confirmation bias to a degree and some pieces of information when thrown against an existing knowledge set, either bounce off and are rejected entirely, shift existing pieces of information about or shatter old pieces of information. The scientist, the theist, the atheist and the philosopher all engage in this process whether they're actively aware of it or not and I hold the view that the possessor of a human mind is perfectly entitled to hold any knowledge set they like because it is impossible not to acquire one.
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.
- Psalm 14:1
There will be some pieces of information within a knowledge set which are very very tightly bound in place; so much so that there will inevitably be a clash of opinion when possessors of two human minds with opposing sets of knowledge start throwing pieces of information at each other. It is reasonable to expect that for an atheist that the inverse "The fool says in his heart, ‘There is a God.’” will be their opinion stemming from their worldview. It is important to remember on both sides that the other person is entitled to their opinion, since a possessor of a human mind can occupy no other space.
The Bible itself starts with the assumption that there is a God. In English translations this is started in the first four words "In the beginning God..." and in the Hebrew this is even more economically rendered as just three. The assumption of whether there is or isn’t a god, stems from at least some a priori position. Even these two positions still require as least some presupposition; it depends what is deemed as acceptable evidence. The area of study that looks at what is and isn’t knowable is epistemology and it asks the question of how it’s possible that we really can know anything at all.
Paul’s discourse has to be taken in context. This comes within a passage talking about the Deity of Christ and the implications thereof. This would have been set against a prevailing climate of Greek thought in in particular the school of philosophy known as Stoicism.
The Stoics held that the goodness of an individual lies within the state of their soul itself; in the attaining and exercise of wisdom and self-control. Christians hold that there are no fundamentally “good” people; that people are inherently selfish and have rejected God and face punishment as a consequence. The biggest clashes of opinion would have been in whether or not a person could be “good” enough and the setting of Stoicism within a pantheistic worldview as opposed to the Christian’s triune God.
Both the Stoics and Christians would agree though that the possessor of a human mind holds an inner freedom against the world and that the world is fundamentally flawed and sinful.
Paul writes about philosophy with the qualifier “apaté” which means to make a false impression, to deceive or cheat. The qualifier is a specific instruction to check for motives and to make an enquiry into the nature of knowledge itself. It isn’t a blanket instruction to throw out all of philosophy as worthless; nor should it be. Philosophy in asking questions about ethics, logic, evidence, materialism, aesthetics, virtuousness is not only useful but we should be asking those sorts of questions anyway.
- Colossians 2:8
In broad terms the two parts of the Bible, that is the Old and New Testaments are built in the same fashion (at least in the order that they usually appear in western Bibles). The Old Testament is comprised of several books of history, a song book, three books of philosophical discourse and the rest is made up of prophecy. The New Testament is made up of five books of history, the letters themselves whilst they are pastoral and doctrinal in nature are still pieces of philosophical discourse and finally there is one book of prophecy.
I think that it is a mistake to suggest that the Bible is opposed to philosophy when so much of it is either blatantly made up of it or contains pointers to it. The word philosophy itself is made up of two Greek parts; being “Philos” which means “love of” and “Sophia” which means “wisdom”. Taken together philosophy means "a lover of wisdom" or “a friend of wisdom” and indeed any functional definition of philosophy must include an enquiry into the nature of knowledge itself. Philosophy as a pursuit, asks questions about the nature of being and how and if things can be known.
Nor do I think that asking questions of the why and how your set of knowledge is, is a bad things either. In the book of Acts, Luke writes that the people of Berea "were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true". Going away and checking new information against what you already know or against a standard is surely a sound approach and the ability to question "why is it so?" must surely lie at the heart of any enquiry.
This is where I think that the scientist, the theist, the atheist and the philosopher all agree in principle. They might disagree with each other about the makeup of their worldview but I think that it's probably true for everyone that knowledge and wisdom is built up through the assessment and evaluation of all new pieces of information. Everyone suffers from confirmation bias to a degree and some pieces of information when thrown against an existing knowledge set, either bounce off and are rejected entirely, shift existing pieces of information about or shatter old pieces of information. The scientist, the theist, the atheist and the philosopher all engage in this process whether they're actively aware of it or not and I hold the view that the possessor of a human mind is perfectly entitled to hold any knowledge set they like because it is impossible not to acquire one.
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.
- Psalm 14:1
There will be some pieces of information within a knowledge set which are very very tightly bound in place; so much so that there will inevitably be a clash of opinion when possessors of two human minds with opposing sets of knowledge start throwing pieces of information at each other. It is reasonable to expect that for an atheist that the inverse "The fool says in his heart, ‘There is a God.’” will be their opinion stemming from their worldview. It is important to remember on both sides that the other person is entitled to their opinion, since a possessor of a human mind can occupy no other space.
The Bible itself starts with the assumption that there is a God. In English translations this is started in the first four words "In the beginning God..." and in the Hebrew this is even more economically rendered as just three. The assumption of whether there is or isn’t a god, stems from at least some a priori position. Even these two positions still require as least some presupposition; it depends what is deemed as acceptable evidence. The area of study that looks at what is and isn’t knowable is epistemology and it asks the question of how it’s possible that we really can know anything at all.
Paul’s discourse has to be taken in context. This comes within a passage talking about the Deity of Christ and the implications thereof. This would have been set against a prevailing climate of Greek thought in in particular the school of philosophy known as Stoicism.
The Stoics held that the goodness of an individual lies within the state of their soul itself; in the attaining and exercise of wisdom and self-control. Christians hold that there are no fundamentally “good” people; that people are inherently selfish and have rejected God and face punishment as a consequence. The biggest clashes of opinion would have been in whether or not a person could be “good” enough and the setting of Stoicism within a pantheistic worldview as opposed to the Christian’s triune God.
Both the Stoics and Christians would agree though that the possessor of a human mind holds an inner freedom against the world and that the world is fundamentally flawed and sinful.
Paul writes about philosophy with the qualifier “apaté” which means to make a false impression, to deceive or cheat. The qualifier is a specific instruction to check for motives and to make an enquiry into the nature of knowledge itself. It isn’t a blanket instruction to throw out all of philosophy as worthless; nor should it be. Philosophy in asking questions about ethics, logic, evidence, materialism, aesthetics, virtuousness is not only useful but we should be asking those sorts of questions anyway.
August 20, 2015
Horse 1964 - It's Mean To Talk About An Average, Joe
http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/bracket-creep-will-cost-taxpayers-45-billion-through-higher-income-taxes-pwc-20150714-gic2bt.html
"Bracket creep will mean that the average full time wage – currently around $77,000 – will soon sit in the second top income tax bracket of 37 cents in the dollar," Mr Hockey said.
"This is just not good enough."
- Joe Hockey, as quoted by Nassim Khadem, Sydney Morning Herald, 15th Jul 2015
I heard the Treasurer Joe Hockey on the television tonight again talking about bracket creep as though it were the Nothing from the 1984 movie "The NeverEnding Story" but unlike The NeverEnding Story which had an end, Mr Hockey's story has no end and is being told from the Ivory Tower rather than about it.
I thought about the use of the term "average" and how whilst it might seem to be perfectly reasonable, as the average includes every value in a distribution, it is very much influenced by outliers and skewed distributions. In the case of incomes, there is a case to be made of heavy skewing and there are some utterly obscenely outlying outliers. Together, they made the use of an average as applied to incomes, as useful as useful as a wooden frying pan.
Part of the problem is a deliberate obfuscation of the measures of central tendency. That is, those figures which better help to describe how a set of statistics is put together. An average is a figure derived by adding together all the statistics and then dividing by the number of items. A much better indication of what might be something approaching what more "normal" people earn is the figure known as the "median". Like the median strip which runs down the centre of a highway and cleaves it in twain, the median is the figure which slices a set of statistics into two halves - exactly half the statistics in the set are below it and exactly half are above it.
Consider the following country of Rollovik. It is a very small nation consisting of ten citizens and whose chief export is widgets. The Taxation Department publishes a list of everyone's incomes and they are as follows:
10K, 15k, 20k, 20K, 50K, 50K, 50k, 50k, 75K, 410K.
The average of all of these wages is 75K but the median wage is 50K. 50K is the number which splits the nation in twain. It is safe to say in this case that 50K is a number which more accurately reflects the spread of incomes.
If the top two tax brackets started at 80K and 200K and the Treasurer started complaining that the average wage was going to pass into the second top tax bracket in a couple of years, you'd probably be quite justified in thinking that whilst that might be technically correct, you'd wonder what all the crowing was about.
Yet this is precisely the case in Australia. We have Treasurer Joe Hockey running around crying blue murder and that the sky is falling, by saying that by the end of the decade that the average wage is going to move into the top tax bracket. Oh how sad. My heart bleeds.
Finding statistics on things like median wages is a little bit more difficult than average wage because of the lag in reporting. Even so, the most up to date statistics that I have are from August 2013 and they paint a very different picture than the one we're being fed in the headlines. In Aug 2013, the average wage was $73,886 per year but the median wage (that is the one which divides the population in two) was $49,400 per year. That means to say that half the population had a wage of $49,400 or less². Also of note is that this publication has been discontinued. By keeping the population ignorant, they don't know how much they're being done over by.
If inflation is running at 5% (which is isn't and would probably be seen as disastrous) then the average wage would find itself in the second top tax bracket in 2015. The median wage though, wouldn't reach that point until 2025. At 5% inflation, the second top tax bracket wouldn't even be reached for a whole decade; longer if inflation is more gentle.
"We must address bracket creep because it is better to leave money in the pocket of the taxpayer and resist the temptation for the government, using taxpayers' money, to provide financial support to individuals and families."
- Joe Hockey, as quoted by Nassim Khadem, Sydney Morning Herald, 15th Jul 2015
This talk about changing the tax rates because they "hurt" people's wages might have sounded reasonable to most people because it is the figure of Average Weekly Ordinary Time Earnings (AWOTE) which is published every six months but the figure for AWOTE as in the case of the invented country of Rollovik, isn't the best measure of central tendency if the overall distribution of wages is skewed. Furthermore, to parrot this as the basis of policy when talking about taxation, when the intent is to reduce Income Taxation which is progressive and replace it to a degree with an increase in the GST which is regressive is nothing short of deceptive and detestable.
It is impossible to say exactly what proportion of the population earns less than "average" wage but it certainly is not 50% as you might expect. The only thing we can know for certain is that half the population earns less than 83% of the average wage.
The other thing which we don't know about is what percentage of the population deliberately modified their incomes through the use of companies and trusts to change their income.
If you'd just been shy of the top tax bracket at $180,000 in 2015, on $180,000 you'd be assessed for $58,147 in tax. Provided you can find either a spouse who earns nothing or a willing partner, you could in theory divert $90,000 to them; you'd both be assessed for $23,047 which adds up to $46,094 and you'd have saved $12,053 for doing practically nothing. This sort of thing like all tax avoidance strategies is not illegal but getting more than 12 grand for just shifting money around starts to sound shrill when half the population doesn't even have that sort of cash to rub together.
This might be something to consider. Of the 3 million people who work Part-time, their median wage for the year 2013 was $23,296. In comparison, my annual rent for the year 2013 was $18,720. If you had a single person working under such circumstances, they'd have $4576 a year left over or $88 a week from which everything would have to come. Maybe that's achievable but it would be a pretty miserable existence.
Is it really better "to leave money in the pocket of the taxpayer" than to "provide financial support to individuals and families"? If tax reform ends up about addressing bracket creep by replacing it with the GST, then this shifts the actual tax burden away from the utterly obscenely outlying outliers to those who earn less than the "average" and that's just mean.
¹https://eac.csc.gov.au/your-toolkit/current-awote-rates/#.VdRpaPmqqko
²http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/subscriber.nsf/log?openagent&63100_august%202013.pdf&6310.0&Publication&FB46BB699848054DCA257CEC001E1B97&&August%202013&04.06.2014&Latest
"Bracket creep will mean that the average full time wage – currently around $77,000 – will soon sit in the second top income tax bracket of 37 cents in the dollar," Mr Hockey said.
"This is just not good enough."
- Joe Hockey, as quoted by Nassim Khadem, Sydney Morning Herald, 15th Jul 2015
I heard the Treasurer Joe Hockey on the television tonight again talking about bracket creep as though it were the Nothing from the 1984 movie "The NeverEnding Story" but unlike The NeverEnding Story which had an end, Mr Hockey's story has no end and is being told from the Ivory Tower rather than about it.
I thought about the use of the term "average" and how whilst it might seem to be perfectly reasonable, as the average includes every value in a distribution, it is very much influenced by outliers and skewed distributions. In the case of incomes, there is a case to be made of heavy skewing and there are some utterly obscenely outlying outliers. Together, they made the use of an average as applied to incomes, as useful as useful as a wooden frying pan.
Part of the problem is a deliberate obfuscation of the measures of central tendency. That is, those figures which better help to describe how a set of statistics is put together. An average is a figure derived by adding together all the statistics and then dividing by the number of items. A much better indication of what might be something approaching what more "normal" people earn is the figure known as the "median". Like the median strip which runs down the centre of a highway and cleaves it in twain, the median is the figure which slices a set of statistics into two halves - exactly half the statistics in the set are below it and exactly half are above it.
Consider the following country of Rollovik. It is a very small nation consisting of ten citizens and whose chief export is widgets. The Taxation Department publishes a list of everyone's incomes and they are as follows:
10K, 15k, 20k, 20K, 50K, 50K, 50k, 50k, 75K, 410K.
The average of all of these wages is 75K but the median wage is 50K. 50K is the number which splits the nation in twain. It is safe to say in this case that 50K is a number which more accurately reflects the spread of incomes.
If the top two tax brackets started at 80K and 200K and the Treasurer started complaining that the average wage was going to pass into the second top tax bracket in a couple of years, you'd probably be quite justified in thinking that whilst that might be technically correct, you'd wonder what all the crowing was about.
Yet this is precisely the case in Australia. We have Treasurer Joe Hockey running around crying blue murder and that the sky is falling, by saying that by the end of the decade that the average wage is going to move into the top tax bracket. Oh how sad. My heart bleeds.
Finding statistics on things like median wages is a little bit more difficult than average wage because of the lag in reporting. Even so, the most up to date statistics that I have are from August 2013 and they paint a very different picture than the one we're being fed in the headlines. In Aug 2013, the average wage was $73,886 per year but the median wage (that is the one which divides the population in two) was $49,400 per year. That means to say that half the population had a wage of $49,400 or less². Also of note is that this publication has been discontinued. By keeping the population ignorant, they don't know how much they're being done over by.
If inflation is running at 5% (which is isn't and would probably be seen as disastrous) then the average wage would find itself in the second top tax bracket in 2015. The median wage though, wouldn't reach that point until 2025. At 5% inflation, the second top tax bracket wouldn't even be reached for a whole decade; longer if inflation is more gentle.
"We must address bracket creep because it is better to leave money in the pocket of the taxpayer and resist the temptation for the government, using taxpayers' money, to provide financial support to individuals and families."
- Joe Hockey, as quoted by Nassim Khadem, Sydney Morning Herald, 15th Jul 2015
This talk about changing the tax rates because they "hurt" people's wages might have sounded reasonable to most people because it is the figure of Average Weekly Ordinary Time Earnings (AWOTE) which is published every six months but the figure for AWOTE as in the case of the invented country of Rollovik, isn't the best measure of central tendency if the overall distribution of wages is skewed. Furthermore, to parrot this as the basis of policy when talking about taxation, when the intent is to reduce Income Taxation which is progressive and replace it to a degree with an increase in the GST which is regressive is nothing short of deceptive and detestable.
It is impossible to say exactly what proportion of the population earns less than "average" wage but it certainly is not 50% as you might expect. The only thing we can know for certain is that half the population earns less than 83% of the average wage.
The other thing which we don't know about is what percentage of the population deliberately modified their incomes through the use of companies and trusts to change their income.
If you'd just been shy of the top tax bracket at $180,000 in 2015, on $180,000 you'd be assessed for $58,147 in tax. Provided you can find either a spouse who earns nothing or a willing partner, you could in theory divert $90,000 to them; you'd both be assessed for $23,047 which adds up to $46,094 and you'd have saved $12,053 for doing practically nothing. This sort of thing like all tax avoidance strategies is not illegal but getting more than 12 grand for just shifting money around starts to sound shrill when half the population doesn't even have that sort of cash to rub together.
This might be something to consider. Of the 3 million people who work Part-time, their median wage for the year 2013 was $23,296. In comparison, my annual rent for the year 2013 was $18,720. If you had a single person working under such circumstances, they'd have $4576 a year left over or $88 a week from which everything would have to come. Maybe that's achievable but it would be a pretty miserable existence.
Is it really better "to leave money in the pocket of the taxpayer" than to "provide financial support to individuals and families"? If tax reform ends up about addressing bracket creep by replacing it with the GST, then this shifts the actual tax burden away from the utterly obscenely outlying outliers to those who earn less than the "average" and that's just mean.
¹https://eac.csc.gov.au/your-toolkit/current-awote-rates/#.VdRpaPmqqko
²http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/subscriber.nsf/log?openagent&63100_august%202013.pdf&6310.0&Publication&FB46BB699848054DCA257CEC001E1B97&&August%202013&04.06.2014&Latest
August 19, 2015
Horse 1963 - We Need Anti-Suicide Pits
I have heard of this thing called "L’appel du vide" which is quite literally "the call of the void" where temptation rears its ugly head and induces a 'what if' moment when people are standing next to some great canyon that beckons them to jump into the wide blue yonder, or that thought which might race through the mind of someone standing on a railway station platform which might persuade them to jump in front of a train and end it all. In such cases, either because of internal conflict, depression, intoxication by various kinds of drugs, mental illness, maybe even spiritual attack, a mind which has reached the point where it wishes its own destruction clearly isn't functioning normally. There will always be those people determined to extinguish their own existence but surely there must be some portion of the population who reaches an immediate point of regret and wishes to correct their moment of insanity.
On the many many occasions that I've stood on the platforms at Wynyard, Town Hall, North Sydney, Martin Place and even St James' stations it always struck me as odd that the space between the rails of underground platforms is flat and to be honest, I do not understand the rationale behind it. Why is this so?
If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, I'd seriously think about improving this state of affairs with a minor change in infrastructure: the anti-suicide pit.
I've seen these things in the London Underground, the Tokyo Metro and even the Moscow Metro and I see no just or sane cause why we should not have similar sorts of things in Sydney. I can think of several occasions where the whole Sydney Trains network has been brought to a standstill because someone decided to jump in front of a train and I wonder if anti-suicide pits would have helped or not.
Sydney's Trains draw their power from an overhead set of wires which is extremely helpful. This is different to say, the London Underground, which uses a third rail system to deliver power to the trains; consequently the space is compromised and yet it's still a design feature. Sydney's railway network doesn't suffer from this limitation and so this means that virtual all the space between the 4'8" between the rails could very easily be hollowed out and a long pit could be carved between the rails. That way, if someone did happen to go between the rails, they could duck underneath a passing train instead of being collected by the train's low slung mechanicals. Having a train pass over the top of you in a few terrifying moments must surely be preferable to being smeared over the floor of a railway tunnel for several hundred yards.
Such pits needn't be terribly deep either. A person lying down doesn't occupy a space which is that tall. I don't know for certain but I think that two feet deep aught to be more than sufficient. Anti-suicide pits also would be useful if someone were to accidentally fall between the railway tracks or if a particularly nefarious and malicious person were to push someone off the platform. Such people do exist in the world.
It's simplicity itself. It's a system which doesn't cost all that much to install, costs practically nothing to maintain, is cheaper than installing platform length barriers and door opening systems and more importantly would act as a visual deterrent to stop people from jumping on the tracks in the first place.
The railways corporation already provides little hidey holes in the walls of tunnels and there's already a sophisticated system which turns all the yellow lights off down the side of the tunnel in a block, 30 seconds before a train enters the block. One such lamp exists almost half a mile from the station that I get on in the morning and one chap was amazed that I knew that a train was coming with alarming reliability until I pointed that out. If safety for their employees of the railways, then safety of its customers has got to be a concern doesn't it? If nothing else, the railways owe a duty of care to the people who plough money through the tills.
I suspect that the reason that no anti-suicide pits exist currently isn't because of a case of neglect but because no one's ever thought of it before. There is an old saw which says that you should never attribute to maliciousness that which can be explained by stupidity but this isn't even a case of stupidity either but of simple blindness.
I guess that I've been thinking about this because the announcements on every train I've been on lately have changed from advising unwell passengers to seek help at the next station, to telling passengers to remain behind the yellow line and to tell children to do likewise.
Sydney Trains' rail safety messages have got me to think about rail safety - who'd've thunk it?
On the many many occasions that I've stood on the platforms at Wynyard, Town Hall, North Sydney, Martin Place and even St James' stations it always struck me as odd that the space between the rails of underground platforms is flat and to be honest, I do not understand the rationale behind it. Why is this so?
If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, I'd seriously think about improving this state of affairs with a minor change in infrastructure: the anti-suicide pit.
I've seen these things in the London Underground, the Tokyo Metro and even the Moscow Metro and I see no just or sane cause why we should not have similar sorts of things in Sydney. I can think of several occasions where the whole Sydney Trains network has been brought to a standstill because someone decided to jump in front of a train and I wonder if anti-suicide pits would have helped or not.
Sydney's Trains draw their power from an overhead set of wires which is extremely helpful. This is different to say, the London Underground, which uses a third rail system to deliver power to the trains; consequently the space is compromised and yet it's still a design feature. Sydney's railway network doesn't suffer from this limitation and so this means that virtual all the space between the 4'8" between the rails could very easily be hollowed out and a long pit could be carved between the rails. That way, if someone did happen to go between the rails, they could duck underneath a passing train instead of being collected by the train's low slung mechanicals. Having a train pass over the top of you in a few terrifying moments must surely be preferable to being smeared over the floor of a railway tunnel for several hundred yards.
Such pits needn't be terribly deep either. A person lying down doesn't occupy a space which is that tall. I don't know for certain but I think that two feet deep aught to be more than sufficient. Anti-suicide pits also would be useful if someone were to accidentally fall between the railway tracks or if a particularly nefarious and malicious person were to push someone off the platform. Such people do exist in the world.
It's simplicity itself. It's a system which doesn't cost all that much to install, costs practically nothing to maintain, is cheaper than installing platform length barriers and door opening systems and more importantly would act as a visual deterrent to stop people from jumping on the tracks in the first place.
The railways corporation already provides little hidey holes in the walls of tunnels and there's already a sophisticated system which turns all the yellow lights off down the side of the tunnel in a block, 30 seconds before a train enters the block. One such lamp exists almost half a mile from the station that I get on in the morning and one chap was amazed that I knew that a train was coming with alarming reliability until I pointed that out. If safety for their employees of the railways, then safety of its customers has got to be a concern doesn't it? If nothing else, the railways owe a duty of care to the people who plough money through the tills.
I suspect that the reason that no anti-suicide pits exist currently isn't because of a case of neglect but because no one's ever thought of it before. There is an old saw which says that you should never attribute to maliciousness that which can be explained by stupidity but this isn't even a case of stupidity either but of simple blindness.
I guess that I've been thinking about this because the announcements on every train I've been on lately have changed from advising unwell passengers to seek help at the next station, to telling passengers to remain behind the yellow line and to tell children to do likewise.
Sydney Trains' rail safety messages have got me to think about rail safety - who'd've thunk it?
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