Horse 3429 - Change The Change

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

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

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

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

Here's why.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Horse 3427 - Samurai Pizza Cats: Imagining The Reboot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So then...

------

The Reboot:

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Season 2, Episode 1 precise:

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

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

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

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

------

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

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

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

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

------

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

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

------

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

Spritz is in Hawaii; running a surfing class.

Batcat is in Paris; working as a window cleaner.

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

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

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

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

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

------

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

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

------

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

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

------

Roll credits.

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

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End.

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

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

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

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

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

Horse 3426 - Shall We Play A Game?

Picture this.

It is January 5th.

Joe Biden resigns.

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

Already, all of the MAGA 47 merchandise is wrong.

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

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

However, something else comes into play:

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

Section 1:

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

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

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

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

Section 2:

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

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

Why would someone want to do this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

3 - to act as President Of The Senate.

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

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

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

Harris resigns on January 7th.

Then what?

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

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

Yeah, none of this is going to happen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Horse 3424 - Kyle & Jackie O To Go?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Horse 3423 - The Fentanyl/Opioid Crisis Is Rational

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

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

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

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

IF: yummy, yummy, yummy THEN: DO.

IF: not yummy THEN: DO NOT WANT.

IF: not yummy THEN: AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

IF: not yummy THEN: ELIMINATE AT ALL COSTS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Horse 3422 - The Jaguar Rebrand Is Wildly Successful

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Horse 3421 - Raygun - The Story Continues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nature of copyright in original works

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

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

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

(ii)  to publish the work;

(iii)  to perform the work in public;

(iv)  to communicate the work to the public;

(vi)  to make an adaptation of the work;

-  Section 31, Copyright Act 1968

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

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

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

Fair dealing for purpose of parody or satire

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

-  Section 41A, Copyright Act 1968

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is unbelievably stupid that Supercars want that for Australia.

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

Horse 3419 - Black Companies Make Me Livid

I need to be very careful about out I write this post; because things that I mention here, might form part of a class-action and maybe a series of prosecutions. Provided that I remain vague about the circumstances and do not mention actual companies by name, I think that I should be at liberty to write this post.

Particularly over the last decade, since Tony Abbott became Prime Minister, Australia has been progressively culturally morphing closer and closer to being like the United States. As such, we should expect to see magic words like 'abortion' and 'woke' being waved about, to make people vote for things which actively attack their own interests. Beginning with Abbott especially, the employment of the three-word slogan and the deliberate tactic of making people not think, has been the gameplan of right-wing trashmedia and the consolidation of media assets and the white-anting of the ABC, has only made things worse. It was worked excellently.

One favourite strategies of right-wing trashmedia in this country has yet again been that demonising immigrants is fair game. Australia as an invader settler colony, not long after federation, explicitly passed racist legislation to keep out anyone other than white people. A suspicion of brown people was kept more or less intact until the late 1960s, and then when actual humanitarian crises started to happen as a result of the wars which we were only too happy to fight (after having switched foreign policy providers from Britain to the United States) it was only then that people who looked markedly different from the generic white people that were here, started to arrive.

The propaganda from the right-wing trashmedia likes to blame immigration for rising rents and lower home ownership rates, in spite of the fact that real wages have been falling since 1978, and that tax policy was changed specifically to benefit what is fast becoming a new landed gentry. We have amazingly generous provision in taxation legislation, designed to reward the accumulation of capital; particularly when in the matters of the 50% GST Discounting Rate and other helpful tactics like Negative Gearing, Trust Tax provisions, and Franking Credits. Yet the right-wing trashmedia, which doesn't need to rely on facts or the long story to convince its consumers of what they want to tell them, has no problem in blaming people who might have arrived yesterday, for 40 years of tax policy. At the same time, the right-wing trashmedia likes to accuse unions for keeping wages too high; even though wages have been sliding in real terms for more than 40 years.

In response to wages which companies think is still too high, when they would prefer to pay people literally nothing, we have seen the emergence of ghost colleges who hold out worthless qualifications in return for fees, and what we are beginning to see with so-called "black companies".

Perhaps you may have heard of a "dark supermarket" or a "dark store". These places generally have an online shopfront, and then a large warehouse which exists to fulfill orders, without needing to have any kind of physical customer interaction. After an order has been filled, the order is then put on a small truck and delivered directly to the customer's door. While there is a small need to hire staff to pick and fill the orders, the land, labour, and capital, needed to operate a physical store out in 'the real world', no longer exists. Some customers actively like the idea of having their things delivered to them as it means that they do not have to interact with staff or leave the house.

A black company is one step even better. A black company might operate a dark supermarket, or a dark store, or a call centre, or a data entry company, or other such business which also does not need to have any kind of physical customer interaction but then maximises profits even further, because without public scrutiny, it can find even more profits by underpaying wages, stealing wages; all without any kind of watching eye from the public, and because the people who work there are often hired under the guise of studying at a ghost college, or other kind of immigration/visa scheme, teh consumers of right-wing trashmedia are already on the side of the companies who employ these people and best of all, actively hate them.

Without any oversight, a black company is perfectly at liberty to hire a large number of young employees and then force them to work large amounts of overtime without overtime pay. A black company is also perfectly at liberty to scrimp on things like air-conditioning and ventilation because not only is there no oversight but recent immigrants are highly unlikely to be members of a union either.

In addition to conditions which would be unacceptable out in 'the real world', I have now seen reports of bullying and harassment, both physical and sexual in nations, of workers by their superiors. In addition to this, there have also been reports of superiors threatening young employees with disrepute and refusal to write or provide any kind of reference if they indicate they might quit. As these young employees' visa and immigration is contingent on them having a job in many cases, the threat of being fired and/or not having a reference, or a loss of reputation even though that is in all likelihood materially untrue, is very very scary.

One particular company which operates a dark supermarket, currently has the issue that its warehouse workers have found out that they have been underpaid, and as they are not union members, they feel that the have very little power to actually do anything about it. This has resulted in strikes; which the company is quite prepared to wear because even $50 million in lost sales is apparently an acceptable price to pay while it starves out its striking warehouse workers. They are ultimately replaceable and as none of them are ever likely to take up any kind of formal industrial action through the courts, then the wages that this company doesn't have to pay while they are on strike, is kind of a wash in comparison to the lost sales. This is quite apart from the fact that the surveillance and conditions these workers endure is completely beyond the pale.

Meanwhile prices have risen in real terms and well beyond the rate of inflation; thanks to a combination of sneaky predatory practices and possible collusion within the market and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott's political party, rather than blaming the company for their action, has taken to blaming the federal government for a rise in grocery prices. The right-wing trashmedia love this, because they get yet another reason to continue demonising immigrants. Out of sight does not equal out of mind but it does mean that you can dehumanise someone for fun and profit; particularly if you a corporate psychopathic cussjack.

The sad thing is that as the economy moves to being more online and less about having shopfronts in the real world, big corporations under cover of dark stores can operate black companies with even less scrutiny than they used to in the past. A business which operates a store front has to cover things like rent, electricity and post wages but a black company which can consolidate its floorspace, can pay less and actively skimp on workers' conditions in complete impunity. Black companies even more than faceless corporations act as if they have no responsibility to either the nation or the people therein because it turns out that both democracy and decency die in darkness.

Horse 3418 - The Case For Continuing To Collect Income Tax On Social Security From Seniors

Matt Whitman of both the Ten Minute Bible Hour¹ and No Dumb Questions² fame (links below) tweeted a twoosh on the Elmo X Machine on Wednesday:

https://x.com/MattWhitmanTMBH/status/1864178422492135589

I'm hearing there's talk of getting rid of taxes on social security, which seems obviously good to me.

What's the case for continuing to collect income tax on social security from seniors?

- Matt Whitman, via X, 4th Dec 2024

This is a classically excellent put question of the form, "Given P Why Q?" where we are asked to find the reasonable case to arrive at Q from P. There is a stated reasonable opinion and the question which follows is also reasonable. 

Firstly, I live in Australia; which means that I am most familiar with how the taxation system works here, and being an accountant who takes worked on both sides of the fence (both out here in private practice and inside the dark box of the Australian Taxation Office with the mice on treadmills in cages) I have at least a passing idea of the basics of how taxation works and more importantly, civic telos in operation.

Secondly, I need to clear away the discussion about the right of the state to collect taxation. Even going back to the ancient world, soldiers were paid in coin, which they could use as a universal token system to buy goods and services. The state always owned the coin. That means that they always had the right in principle to lay a claim on the coin that they issued in the first place. Any statement that "taxation is theft" is from the outset a lie, because even if you worked for it, the dollars, pounds, lira, euro, dinar, shekels, and wurniks that you have in your possession, were always actually the stuff of the state who always had a claim to take it back. The word "taxation" itself is derived from Latin which means "I pay"; where the person paying tax is always merely paying back the state for the provision of services (usually defence and law) which it has already provided.

So then, having established that the state always had the right to lay claim to taxation, Mr Whitman's question is grounded in the secondary moral domain of fairness. This is again an excellent position to be asking a question from; because one of the features of a good law, of which taxation law is a part, always has to do about the fairness of that law.

In addressing that issue, I refer to Section 6.5 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. 

https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/itaa1997240/s6.5.html

Income according to ordinary concepts ( ordinary income )

(1)  Your assessable income includes income according to ordinary concepts, which is called ordinary income .

Note:  Some of the provisions about assessable income listed in section   10 - 5 may affect the treatment of ordinary income.

(2)  If you are an Australian resident, your assessable income includes the * ordinary income you * derived directly or indirectly from all sources, whether in or out of Australia, during the income year.

- Section 6.5, Income Tax Assessment Act 1997

Part of what makes a law a good law, are the components of simplicity, predictability, and fairness.

A good law should in principle be as simple as possible and stated as simply as possible. The law even though it might have perfectly good reasons why it exists, doesn't need to state why it does. The most basic road law of driving on the left (or right) is of itself arbitrary and it obviously exists for people's safety but the law has no need to entertain the reasons of 'because'. 

A good law should in principle be as predictable as possible. As a law is a general statement of behaviour, conduct, operation, method et cetera, and as law exists for the regulation, standardisation and protection of society, then the law should be written in such a way that someone should be able to follow it and know what the general case is for the thing which the law covers.

A good law should in principle be as fair as possible. Since the law is itself an imposition upon the absolute freedom of people to do whatever they want, then the law should simultaneously exist to maximise people's happiness or utility in their reasonable and fair conduct as well as to fall on all people equally. The law should also take into account that what is fair for someone might not necessarily be fair for someone else due to circumstance. This is the underlying principle of equity, which is also an excellent foundation for law.

So then, if we consider that the law should be fair simple, predictable, and fair, then what is the case for collecting income tax on social security from seniors?

The Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 makes literally no distinction about what kind of income is income and assumes that all income derived from all sources is ordinary income. Income from all sources, is a pretty simple statement. Income from all sources, is a predictable statement. And since the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 applies to everyone equally, then the law is fair in the sense that there are no exceptions as to whom the law falls upon.

Social Security, Old Age Pensions, Welfare Payments Superannuation Payments, et cetera, are in principle no different to Wages, Rents, and Dividends. As a Dollar is one of the very few things which is perfectly fungible, that is that one dollar is absolutely identical and interchangeable which any other dollar, then there is no reason whatsoever why the taxation system should care a jot about what kind of ordinary income it is.

Nor should the taxation system should care a jot about the age of the taxpayer. Since the state provides services equally, (defence, law, roads, schools, hospitals) without distinction of the age of taxpayers, then there should not be a distinction made. The law should not care a jot if the taxpayer is 2 or 102.

The question of fairness, should be properly addressed within the substance of the subject of the law itself. In this case, since Social Security are ordinary income, then the question of fairness is not about age of taxpayers, but rather the amount of income since dollars are perfectly fungible. 

Someone who has a very limited income, is very much going to miss one dollar being taken from them, whereas a millionaire is not. Ten Dollars might be the difference between whether or not a homeless person eats today, whereas Lord Phillip Fortherington-Smythe who is the head of a multi-national multi-trillon dollar corporation and who looks at balance sheets and profit and loss statements where 000's are stated, can't even see the existence of Ten Dollars. 

One of the interesting things about money is that the marginal utility of that last dollar, actually decreases the more of it that someone has. In the end it decreases so much that the actual marginal utility of that last dollar, is such that very rich people don't even know about individual dollars. I live way down at the bottom; where I can tell you that a loaf of bread has 20 slices in it and costs $2.39 at Aldi, whereas someone in the board room of a major corporation who has servants, might not even do their own shopping.

So for this reason, the best taxation law with respect to income, imposes progressive rates of income as it makes logical sense, to charge the people who actually derive the most benefit from the regulation, standardisation and protection of society, as measured in the dollars that they derive in ordinary income, the highest marginal rates on that last dollar.

If we assume that our theoretical senior, has no other income apart from their social security payments, then in my country they are on $1144,40 per fortnight which is $29,754 per year. Once you also factor in tax offsets for deriving such a low income, then the amount of taxation which is assessable on $29,754 per year is $0. Yes this is a matter of semantics but the social security payments have been assessed as ordinary income; and $0 of income tax to be paid is still an amount. I think that that would probably satisfy Mr Whitman. More importantly, it does so because the law was simple, predictable, and fair in the first place.

Is the law in his country that well designed? If not, that's a problem with the law and not the principle. 

¹ https://www.thetmbh.com

² https://www.nodumbquestions.fm

Horse 3417 - THE PEOPLE v PAUL McCARTNEY [2024] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

THE PEOPLE v PAUL McCARTNEY [2024] - Judgement

H3417/1

It has come to this fake internet court's attention (and definitely not for the first time) that the decisions of a certain Paul McCartney of Liverpool, have resulted in untold suffering and dismay for roughly one twelfth of the year; starting on or about the last Friday in November (owing to the existence of the United States' Public Holiday of Thanksgiving). Starting in late November, across radios and shop tannoys all over the world, this terrible horrorshow beings with the simple noise of:

wob wob wob wob wob wob wob wob

wob wob wob wob wob wob wob wob

wob wob wob wob wob wob wob wob

wob wob wob wob wob wob wob wob

Oh no. It has begun.

These are the facts as this court sees them:

The terrible horror which is unleashed on the world every year, as shop decorations change from orange and black, to brown, to red and green, is one dastardly component of the soundtrack of the season. That terrible horror which has been unchained and allowed to roam the world like an unthinking beast, every year since 1979, is "Wonderful Christmastime".

It might have started out as an innocent song, as Paul McCartney having rocked the world in The Beatles, then quietly put it to sleep again with Wings, then decided to branch out on his own and release a solo career and music therein into the world.  

Sure, the song of itself isn't a bad thing, but it isn't particularly a great thing either. Unlike playing Whamageddon in which one tries to avoid listening to Wham's "Last Christmas", or the yearly defrosting of Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You", "Wonderful Christmastime" arrives on radios and tannoys for three and a bit minutes of mind-bending, soul-sucking, spirit-crushing nonsense before going away again. "Last Christmas" is like trying to eat a kumquat. "All I Want For Christmas Is You" is a yearly does of ear diabetes. "Wonderful Christmastime" is the equivalent of eating mashed suede.

The mood is right.

The spirit's up.

We're here tonight,

And that's enough.

This is first verse; which is lyrically as impressive as an average first grader's story in a creative writing class. You might be impressed if this was a child in kindergarten, but if a first grader submitted this, you would seriously consider whether even they had put in the effort. 

The second verse is worse than the first and is such a curse that I want to burst:

The party's on.

The feeling's here,

That only comes,

This time of year.

Four lines of rhyming verse like this, if it appeared in a greeting card, would rightly be seen as drivel and dross. I will even go so far as to say that this kind of drivel is more offensive than outright offense or abuse as it insults both the intelligence of the sender and the recipient of the greeting card. This however, is not in a greeting card but a song; which gets wheeled out every single year. We know that Mr McCartney is better at producing songs than this.  We know that Mr McCartney is better at writing better lyrics than this. Maybe if this was a Roud folk song we might deign to forgive it but the fact that this was a song which was put out for commercial consumption, just pounds my mental hazelnuts into paste and then folds through Castrol TTS two-stoke additive. The result is unpalatable. 

This is same chap who brought you such things as "Love Me Do", "I Saw Her Standing There", "Blackbird" and "Yesterday" with the Beatles. Granted that I think that the useful catalogue of Beatles songs nominally ends with the end of the Revolver album, that still doesn't change the fact that Mr McCartney was talented way beyond compare. Then with Wings and when the first one said to the second one there "I hope you're having fun", we should have realised that his career and body of work had peaked and was kind of dribbling out. That's fine. There is no shame in being one half of the writing duo from arguably the most successful band of all-time. However, likely due to his name and the supposition that it alone would sell records, "Wonderful Christmastime" was not only approved and pressed and sold.

Judgement:

In considering what kind of judgement is to be handed down, one must first consider what kind of crime has been committed. The punishment should be commensurate to the crime perpetrated. This fake internet court, although being fake, still believes in the principle of equity. 

This court had to consider the possibility that in exchange for being part of the most successful band of all-time, that Paul McCartney must have sold his soul to the Devil. The Devil apparently thinks himself something of a fine musician but keeps on losing in head-to-head contests. Even when the Devil went down to Georgia and demanded to challenge some Johnny to a fiddle contest, or for two chaps to play the best song in the world, his failure was eminent. However, when one considers the absolute dross that Mr McCartney has released in addition to some of the funnest pop songs of all, we have to admit that this is not the work of the Devil, and to be perfectly honest, "Wonderful Christmastime" is not so nefarious that it is diabolical. It is just bad.

Normally this court would make orders of instruction but in this case, it is likely impossible to undo the psychic damage which has been allowed to take place. Unless one is able to tightly control terms of copyright like George Lucas has done, once the bird has been released it is practically impossible to recapture it again. This fake internet court is unable to make any meaningful judgement.

But this does not change the fact that you Paul McCartney, are guilty of both psychic negligence and culpable moral hazard. You have brought hateration and holleration into this fake internet court and as the nature of this malfeasance is such that we can not act, then all we can do is point the pointing finger of shame at you and hope that you think about what you have done .

If we ever see you back before this court, the penalties will be severe. Get out; lest you make a mockery of my courtroom. We are already perfectly capable of making a mockery of this fake internet courtroom as it is. You are malevolent and have now ensnared others in your villainy. Can you not see what trouble thou hast wrought? 

- ROLLO75 J 

(this case will be reported in FLIR as H3417/1

Horse 3416 - From Korean Drinking Game To The Premier League

"How" in this case is the form following the function of "what", and "what" this is, is a story which involves several links in the chain. So then, we shall start at the end and work our way backwards.

Liverpool 2 - Manchester City 0

Gakpo - 21'

Salah - 78' (pen)

2-0 is a fairly routine scoreline in a football match. 2-0 is a scoreline which seems comfortable and normal for a side which is in the ascendancy and which is at the top of its game. But when Mo Salah slotted (pun intended) away the penalty in the 78th minute against Manchester City on Sunday which is the side who by rights should be kicking all and sundry to the kerb, 2-0 suddenly looks dangerous. This 2-0 scoreline gave Liverpool 3 points and sent them 9 points clear at the top of the table. This 2-0 scoreline is immediate cause for abject fear in everyone else in the chasing pack.

However when the crowd erupted after Mo Salah's penalty and started singing, the radio commentary team at BBC Radio Merseyside were obviously confused as they couldn't understand what was being sung. I however instantly recognised the tune as I have heard it on the bus, on either 2Day FM or MIX FM. If a song has found its way from the hit parade into the songbook of football fans, then this has the potential to be something which lasts way longer than just a passing fad. Just occasionally, something from the passing parade of pop songs, has the potential to last as long as "Go West" by the Village People, or maybe even "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" by John Kellette.

The lyrics as sing by the Kop at Anfield are:

Mo Salah, Mo Salah,

Mo Salah, Mo Salah,

Mo Salah, Mo Salah,

Uh uh-huh, uh-huh.

Which in principle tells you nothing about the song in question. The original song in question is "APT" by Rose and Bruno Mars; which makes it unclear about whether or not this song should be classified as a K-Pop song or not. A glance at the lyric video for the song, tells you instantly what Rose and Bruno Mars were singing about in the first place.

The chant in the original song, and the reason why it is so transferrable (a bit like "Oh Mickey, you're so fine") is as equally earwormy and also why it shot to the top of the charts in Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

Apateu, Apateu,

Apateu, Apateu,

Apateu, Apateu,

Uh uh-huh, uh-huh.

"Apateu" is a the loanword in Korean for "Apartment" and finds equivalents in Japanese and some dialects of Chinese. However even then, we are still no closer to working out why anyone would be singing this.

"Apateu" is actually a drinking game. The rules are simple. Several people in an apartment (presumably) put their hands into a big pile-up in the centre of the group. Someone calls out a number; then people take their hand from the bottom of the pile and place it on the top. When the nth hand has been placed on the top of the pile, that person wins/loses and must drink from whatever the thing in question is (apply other rules as necessary).

And that's it really. No really, the story is that simple. It still doesn't explain why the crowd of an English Premier League club, is stealing the tune from a K-Pop song for remanufacture with its own words though.

Football crowds have been stealing songs from everywhere, nominally since the 1950s. Legend has it that the first song ever sung by a football crowd, spontaneously by the crowd rather than just as a formal thing like a national anthem or "Abide With Me" which has been sung at every FA Cup Final since 1927 (Arsenal and Cardiff City; originally at the behest of King George V), was "Yes, We Have No Bananas" by a Liverpool crown in 1959, while they were trying to get rid of a brass band playing at half time, by drowning it out. 

Liverpool famously has "You'll Never Walk Alone" across both the Shankly Gates and the top of its full crest; which was take from Gerry And The Pacemakers' version of the song from 1963; which itself is taken from the 1945 Rogers And Hammerstein musical "Carousel" and is sung to a widow after her husband committed suicide following a botched robbery.

The fact that a Liverpool crowd should steal a song from K-Pop, is in the grand scheme of more than six decades of football songs, entirely expected. The fact that BBC Radio Merseyside has no idea what the song was or where it came from, is also entirely expected though perhaps if they'd listened to Radio 1, they would have been informed. The fact that I knew the song, and am questioning about whether I knew about this song because I was once a spry 20-something, has me wondering about the nature of reality. 

Is this central chant which has now escaped into football crowds something new, or did this actually exist 20 years ago or more? Did Rose actually write this, or was this already old? Is this new and have I therefore gaslight myself into thinking that this always existed? Why can I not get this out of my head now? Am I doomed to forever have this rattle around in my head like the song "Bananaphone" by Raffi? Or does APT just die a natural death on the terraces and get consigned to the dustbin of history? Who knows?

What we do know is that this weekend, it got real weird real quick. Anfield went K-Pop.