Horse 3058 - Where Was The V8 Camry?

The chap who lives a couple of doors down from me, whose mates all seem to drive late 90s Honda Civics, Volkswagen Golfs, and Nissan Silvias, has decided to take the glorious rebellious route and rather than go for something small, has gone for V8 power. 

The Toyota Majesta, with its 4.0 L 1UZ-FE V8 is a lovely piece of elegance, coupled with some good old fashioned boganity. I myself have been down this road before, having previously had a Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 as more power is excellent and there ain't no substitute for cubic inches. Unlike the Civics, Golfs and Silvias that this chap's mates drive, the Majesta doesn't write cheques that it can not honour. It makes happy growly noises and dumps cash on the table. When new it made a handy 290 horsies and while some of those may have escaped. there's probably many that still remain.

However the existence of this car while making me very very happy, makes me question Toyota's sanity. Okay, they were never going to sell many V8s in the home market of Japan but in places like Germany where speeds are open, and in places like America and Australia where spaces are wide and petrol is cheap enough to warrant car that produce enough power to start their own oil crisis, is makes no sense to leave those markets to other companies. Why was there no V8 Camry?

The whole existence of the Lexus badge makes zero sense to me. The existence of this car in particular, further makes me question what the utility of brands like Lexus actually is. Presumably everyone who buys a Lexus knows that it is a Toyota motor car and also presumably they know that the badge on the front adds exactly zero horsepower and zero actual difference to the car itself. Especially when you consider that Toyota has also in the past made a Toyota Century V12, which in terms of reputation and sheer amount of luxo-box cache is worth far more than any Lexus. 

I live in Australia and so my cultural needle points in a slightly different direction. A company like General Motors had no problem having a car like the Corsa (sold as a Barina) and the Caprice in the same showroom. Likewise, Ford also saw no problem in having a Fiesta and an LTD in the same showroom. Had the Caprice and LTD been sold in America, then they might have been differentiated as a Cadillac and Lincoln/Mercury. By having  unified brands here, both the General and Henry built massively loyal followings, which they have both recently poured down the drain. Honda in the United States feels the need to sell cars underneath the Acura badge which is nonsensical to me, as Honda itself has already proven its name by being the engine supplier for some of the most famous Formula One teams on the planet; in addition to this a car like the Acura Integra seems like a waste of a label when the Honda Integra was already legendary and won touring car championships as a Honda.

The V8 in the Toyota Majesta proves to me that Toyota if they wanted to, could have very well put that engine into a Camry. There have been Camrys sitting in the street in front of it and it is pretty obvious that the packaging problem of putting a V8 into a Camry is not an engineering impossibility (rather, that if should have been a fait accompli).

A V6 engine tends to be wider than it is long. The reason why they work well in an east-west configuration in a front wheel drive car is that the extra space which is not used by the length of the engine, can then be used for the gearbox/transaxle. With a V8 which is north-south, the gearbox and differential housing tend to be separated. Sure, you could in theory run a shaft with a universal joint in it, to a housing with a single piece transaxle but that's almost never heard of. The usual arrangement would be a Borg-Warner/Tremec 5 or 6 speed box, with a differential out the back. 

The necessary bending of steel required to house the drivetrain to throw power to the rear wheels, actually adds to the rigidity of the chassis. What I don't understand if when inventing the Camry in the first place, why they wouldn't think of that from the outset, considering that they'd have to solve the problem for Lexii and the Majesta.

What I find baffling is that for many years in NASCAR in the United States, the car of choice which is used as the marketing device, has been the Camry since 2006. The engine for the NASCAR edition of the Camry is almost certainly a derivative of a reverse-engineered Cleveland V8, which has been shifted from 351cid to 358cid. I have no idea therefore, why Toyota chose to pour water on their own fire when they could have thrown the engine from the Majesta into the Camry.

Can you imagine a V8 Camry or a perhaps a V8 Solara? Instead of the Supra being pitched for far more money and shifting far less units, a V8 Camry or V8 Solara would have gone after the Camaro and the Mustang. I don't know what the crossover section of the market would have been given that Toyota drivers are usually painted as being duller than dishwater but surely there'd have to be a non-zero amount of them that would have stumped up the cash. 

If you actually drill down into the kinds of problems that Toyota have, they aren't all that much different to any other brand of motor car, yet because Toyota is chasing the kind of customer who would rather drift along in the left lane completely oblivious to the existence of the world outside, then the myth of the reliability of Toyotas is self-perpetuating; spurred on by the fact that Toyota drivers treat their cars like appliances and will change over before any problems show up, far more frequently than any other brand.

What percentage of rednecks would have bought a V8 Camry? If it is anything like the section of Australian bogans who bought V8 Falcons and V8 Commodores then it would have been a lot. By not giving the Camry a V8, they chose to be the default choice of the perpetually disinterested.

Horse 3057 - Constitutional Survey - V(iii)

57. Disagreement between the Houses

If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, and if after an interval of three months the House of Representatives, in the same or the next session, again passes the proposed law with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor-General may dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously. But such dissolution shall not take place within six months before the date of the expiry of the House of Representatives by effluxion of time.

If after such dissolution the House of Representatives again passes the proposed law, with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor-General may convene a joint sitting of the members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives.

The members present at the joint sitting may deliberate and shall vote together upon the proposed law as last proposed by the House of Representatives, and upon amendments, if any, which have been made therein by one House and not agreed to by the other, and any such amendments which are affirmed by an absolute majority of the total number of the members of the Senate and House of Representatives shall be taken to have been carried, and if the proposed law, with the amendments, if any, so carried is affirmed by an absolute majority of the total number of the members of the Senate and House of Representatives, it shall be taken to have been duly passed by both Houses of the Parliament, and shall be presented to the Governor-General for the Queen's assent.

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Those words "the Senate rejects or fails to pass it" sparked one of the most horrible constitutional crises that this country has ever seen. Or rather, it did not.

The Australian Constitution was passed some 11 years before the giant fight between the House of Lords and the House of Commons in Britain; before they eventually decided on the Parliament Act 1911 which limited the House of Lords from blocking Appropriation Bills. Admittedly, this would eventually meet a similar kind of fate in 1975, with the events which preceded the 11th Nov 1975 Constitutional Crisis but it it worth remembering that that was a political failure; not a Constitutional failure. The Senate always had the power to block legislation, including money bills, and 1975 was actually more about the Appropriation Bills for 1975 never being heard and not passing, rather than directly being rejected and not passing.

In the normal course of events, the House or Senate introduce legislation, it gets read and argued about three times, then handed to the other house and read and argued about another three times, before being handed to the Governor-General who in theory reads it and then decides to sign it into law or withhold assent for it to become law. I can think of no occasion really, with the Governor-General has withheld assent for a bill to be made into law because ever since that head-chopping incident when the Puritans indicted Charles I for tyranny, the monarch/representative has been extremely reluctant to overstep the authority of the elected executive government. Arguably the Governor-General probably should have at least showed some quanta of resistance to the former Prime Minister Scott Morrison when he demanded to be made the Minister for a bunch of Departments but this can be saved for another time.

In the event that one faction of MPs either in formal or informal blocs, decides that it does not want to allow passage of legislation, then a bill from either house, may be introduced and then never ever leave the process. 

However, the normal operation of the government and government services, requires the appropriation of monies drawn upon the treasury of the Commonwealth. That is, the most basic function of the parliament is to pass the Budget bills. That is, the parliament needs to pass the Budget bills so that the government as a whole can continue to pay its monetary bills. I've got bills, I've got to pay; so I'm going to work, work, work, every day... and  so should parliament.

In the event of parliament not working, then Section 57 is the mechanism by which the dispute is resolved.

If the Senate fails to pass legislation, then the government of the day will then hold what is colloquially named an "double dissolution trigger". As Section 57 says, if the House can not get legislation passed by the Senate, someone from the House can ask the Governor-General to dissolve the parliament so than an election can be held and a joint sitting of both houses held; with a majority of all of the members together being taken as approval of the whole parliament.

This is what makes the timeline of events on the 11th of November 1975 so interesting. Many books have been written about this and so I shall not cover the actual timeline of the day but the reason why any of that mess happened at all was that the Senate would not pass the Appropriation Bills for 1975.

This saga contains Saudi business people in the "Loans Affair", probably the CIA, MI6, KFC, IPA, a Liberal Party Senator from Queensland being appointed after the previous Senator was a member of the Labor Party, a weekend in October in which with the Governor-General John Kerr stayed on Rupert Murdoch's estate; so the whole thing looks very very nasty.

The thing at the core of the events on the 11th of November 1975 is that the Federal Budget had been handed down on 19th August 1975 and so the provisions of Section 57 that:

- If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it,

- if after an interval of three months the House of Representatives, in the same or the next session, again passes the proposed law with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it

- the Governor-General may dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously.

Section 57 basically says that from the presentation of a Bill, the House has 3 months to pass a piece of legislation. What that should have meant was that the Appropriation Bills for 1975/6 still had about a fortnight before it actually triggered this.

What happened in the background was that Rupert Murdoch met with the Governor-General John Kerr and did some wrangling, then Kerr made annoucements for dissolving the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously, sacked the Prime Minister and replaced him with someone else (see Section 64) and calling for a new election.

The really curious thing is the set of tactics that the Senate took in failing to pass the Appropriation Bills for 1975. Rather that just straight up rejecting the Bills, they would frequently stall for time, dither when it came to Senate business, and simply just not show up to the floor of the chamber and thus fail to form a quorum. Hansard for the Senate for 1975 is a glorious riot of political knavery, wrapped in legal frivolity. 

The other thing of note about how Westminster parliaments work generally, is that new Acts of Parliament replace old ones; so in theory, it might have been possible that the Appropriation Bills for 1974 may have just stood in a kind of perpetuity until presumably the normal 1977 election would have happened. The regular stupidities of the United States Congress which keeps on resulting in government shutdowns, simply does not happen here for that reason.

Double Dissolution Elections which happen as the result of operation of Section 57 are generally uncommon but not so uncommon as to be unheard of. In 2016, the Turnbull Government probably deliberately tried to pass legislation which would set up the Australian Building and Construction Commission. The bill which in that form was little more than about trying to smash union power, was naturally going to be blocked by the Labor Party in the Senate. That bill wass blocked three times; handing Mr Turnbull a double dissolution trigger and we then went to the 2016 election, where all 226 seats in both houses were up for grabs.

Parties in Opposition generally do not like handing Governments election triggers. Politics is the game which overlays the mechanisms of parliament and the Constitution. The Constitution was written before the solidification of national political parties and so in principle, does not care for their existence one way for the other. There is also no office of the Prime Minister stated within the Constitution, or even if there needs to be one. 

Section 57 is then, the written set of instructions as to what happens when the two houses are in so much deadlock that nothing gets done, under normal circumstances.

Horse 3056 - Tipping In America Is Awful And Really Aught To Be Smashed To Bits

On a recent episode of the No Dumb Questions podcast¹, there is a very long discussion on the concept of tipping for service in the United States, which eventually gets on to the subject of how to marginally improve the system in the light if the fact that it isn't going away.

If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then the whole concept of tipping for service as it exists in the United States, would be eliminated off of the face of the earth. What isn't immediately obvious to those of us in those parts of the world which actually have proper labour laws, is that tipping exists and appears to be a culturally acceptable method, whereby employers can pay people working in the front of house, as little as possible. Tipping exists therefore, not for the purposes of gratitude but almost expressly for the purposes of making the public pay the wages of front line staff because employers are too scabby to do so. It should be one of those things which is obvious but if you expect someone to make a living by doing something for you, then you should pay them to do so. It should be self-evident that workers deserve their wages. 

As someone who lives in "Not America", where the minimum wage is sensible, I find it absolutely horrifying that tipping is not only a thing in the United States but that it has been retained in spite and maybe in celebration of its very very racist origins. I suppose that I should not be surprised that tipping came to exist in the form that it does, in a nation which was founded on the basis of a tax dodge and to uphold the right to retain slavery at Common Law. It would then snap in half over that same issue of whether people should own other people as chattel goods.

I have no idea when tipping started as a thing but in the aftermath of the United States' Civil War which was fought because the Confederate States demanded the right to keep slavery as a thing (this was never a states' rights issue - go read the Confederate Constitution²), many formerly enslaved people after being emancipated, were only able to find employment in servile jobs such as food service, domestic help, or in carting jobs such as railway station porters. 

The normalisation of tipping grew up in a still very racist culture, where employers still wanted to hire formerly enslaved people, on a very low wage or as close to zero wage as possible. Tipping appears to become popular in the 1870s and then really takes off over the next two decades as the gilded age returns rewards to a small select privileged few (who were almost exclusively white).

Economics has a habit of never solving any problems ever but rather, transforming the problems into new and different versions of the same problem. In undoing slavery, what was also undone was the direct ownership of people as chattel goods but that did not undo the power that people with money had. 

For about the next half century, efforts were made to also get legislatures in America to ban tipping as well and eventually there were six states which outlawed the practice. All six of the bans were ruled unconstitutional in 1926. The real irony is that tipping bans were mainly enforced in southern states, who still wanted to impoverish black people even further.

Tipping again raised its head when as part of The New Deal when the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) made the concession that the federally mandated minimum wage could be earned through either through wages or through tips. Employers liked this because it meant that they might not be on the hook at all for somebody's wage, if they happened to have made more than the minimum standards. 

The current "tip credit" provisions mean that the current minimum wage for tipped employees, as opposed to wage employees, is an utterly evil and shameful $2.13 and has not been changed since 1966.

There is also the implicit unfairness of tipping as a method of paying people. I would like to imagine that all consumers are fair people but we all know that that simply isn't true. By means of a experiment it can be demonstrated time and time again that the size of the tips that the customers give, correlates with the pulchritude of the employees (mostly female).

The most radical idea that I have ever heard when it comes to tipping, is that the amount being paid should equal 110% of the stated amount on the invoice. Then because the total amount of the bill is legally allowed to be negotiated, deductions should be made to the bill; so that the service person is still paid properly but the business is hurt. The problem is that it is really hard to send negative feedback signals to a system and to employers when increasingly people aren't carrying cash.

I know that this might be that this might the result of an entirely different cultural upbringing but I find the idea of not stating the final end price of a thing annoying and the idea that I might then have to pay someone a tip, evil. If tipping is a cultural expectation, then that says to me that the culture has normalised and accepted that workers in principle are not worth their wages.

It says to me as the person who buys things, that the person who is standing in front of me, is thought so little of by their employer, that their employer can't even be bothered to pay them a decent wage. Now I have no idea what the contract between an employee and an employer actually is but by putting the responsibility of paying workers for their service on the customers, I will naturally assume that the proprietor of the business is a total knave. It also sends the signal to me as a consumer of goods and services, that the employment conditions are so precarious that this person can be terminated at an instant. That's awful.

¹https://www.nodumbquestions.fm/listen/2022/8/19/139-is-tipping-getting-weird - 139 - Is Tipping Getting Weird?

²https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp

Art IV, Sec. 2. (I)

"The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired."

No really:

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

- Alexander H. Stephens, 21st Mar 1861

Horse 3055 - The Power Of A Million Monkeys Typing On A Million Typewriters

There is a famous thought experiment/cliché that says that if you have a million monkeys, typing on a million typewriters, for a million years, then through the power of sheer randomness, they will at some point type out the complete works of Shakespeare.

The reason that this is supposed to work is either to demonstrate that in a very very large data set, pockets of order spontaneously arises from out of the chaos. The other reason that this is supposed to work is because of the Law of Large Numbers, which says that if you perform an experiment often enough, you will get the answer that you are looking for. Basically this a corollary of the premise that if the probability of an event not happening is P-x, then P-x ^ infinity tends towards zero. If the probability of an event not happening on an infinite time scale tends towards zero, then the probability that same event happening at all, must also tend towards one.

Apart from the problem that 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (pentillion) monkey hours is hard to arrange, that all of the monkeys will have eventually died, that all of the typewriters will have eventually ceased to work and rusted away, we have already invented a device to do this and performed the experiment. It is called "The Internet". 

Let me run you through this prime piece of monkey thinking in the howl-house we call the internet (from Twitter):

What's the strangest question you've been asked in a job interview?

- Tess, 21st Monkeber 20XX

In response to this came:

How many windows are there in London?

Why are manhole covers round?

- Mokujin, 21st Monkeber 20XX

Oh dear. What a thing to have uncovered. This very much reminds me of the name of one of Andy Zaltzman's comedy shows which was called: "Andy Zaltzman Opens The Door, Is Horrified By What Lurks Behind, And Closes The Door Again." I fear that I have stumbled across a manhole shaped door, opened it, and have been horrified by what is lurking behind it, waiting to come out.

And thus, our million monkey typewriter device was primed with its input and set off on its dastardly jaunt all over the world; ignoring Logic Town and instead stopping at West Banana, Nonsense Central, taking the Diversion Loop to Barking Mad, before rejoining the main line and stopping at Opinion, Theory, Assertion, Lies, and all stations to Great Irrelevance. I love these rides on the million monkey typewriter device.

Why are manhole covers round?

It’s the only shape that can fall into itself, so the cover can’t fall into the hole even if angled differently.

The logic behind this 49 reply monster is that if a manhole has radius r, then a round manhole will have the longest chord of 2r. The manhole cover itself, which needs to be 2r+n (where n is some amount which is marginally bigger than the width of the hole) can never fall into the hole because 2r+n - 2r = n. 

Our old friend Pythagoras will tell you that the longest chord length of a square manhole, will be 2√2r. There are orientations of where a square manhole cover can fall into a square manhole since 2√2r+n - 2r+n = some value at about 80% of r which is absurd.

This is where the million monkey typewriter device truly shines. Example, counter example, theory, counter theory, anguish, outrage, snark, and all stations to Great Irrelevance.

The thing that I love about this is that the whole discussion in 49 replies, seems to have conveniently forgotten that out here in the real world, the vast majority of manholes are in fact either square or oblong.

The general truth about covers/doors/caps out here in the real world, is that covers/doors/caps are are generally are the same shape as the hole that they are covering. Admittedly there are edge cases here where the doors exist, purely for legal reasons such as old-timey saloon doors. 

At this point, also cue stories about hotels in the Wild West, about doors in front of kitchens, about car doors, jokes about Irish people in the desert, stories of the London Undergrounds doors that curve into the ceiling, passimiter gates, and a tale about someone's cat called "Manhole" who is cat shaped.

We even had a lovely philosophical discussion about the telos of the question itself where someone quite rightly (I think) suggested that the questions were asked because the HR Department doesn't really care about the answer and just wanted to see prospective candidates' ability to think and work out problems logically under pressure. That could very well be true however another answer posited was that really all this was was a chance for the person in the HR Department to engage in top bants and decide whether or not they liked the prospective candidate. I think that the truth lies somewhere in here.

This leads me to answering the other question which was mostly ignored and forgotten by out million monkey typewriter device.

How many windows are there in London?

Well...

I read the news today; oh-boy. 

4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire.

And though the holes were rather small,

They had to count them all.

Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.

I have no idea how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall but "they" do.

What I do know is that London is bigger than Blackburn; ergo, it must follow that there are more holes in London than Blackburn. Since some of those holes are going to be windows, filled in by panes of glass, then I think that it is fair to say that there are more than 4000 windows in London.

And yet again, I have contributed to the output of the million monkey typewriter device. To be perfectly pedantic (and yes, my whole professional life has been working out of offices on Pedant Corner), we already have typed out the complete works of Shakespeare. The chances of a thing having happened, which has already happened, is one; by virtue of it already having happened.

Go monkeys!

Horse 3054 - Constitutional Survey - V(ii)

As previously hinted at, the Australian Constitution was argued over and invented with the experience of Westminster Parliaments and the lessons learned from the United States, Switzerland and Canada, to inform the news course of Federalism. Particularly the bad example of the United States' Constitution, helped to inform the following four Sections.

The United States' Constitution does not have any provisions which relate to the tacking on of monetary appropriations to other pieces of legislation; so this means that this is abused to the point where the US Treasury needs to hire extra coopers just to keep up with all of the pork barrels that need to be made.

As before, I will be referring to this:

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution/chapter1/Part_V_-_Powers_of_the_Parliament

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53. Powers of the Houses in respect of legislation

Proposed laws appropriating revenue or moneys, or imposing taxation, shall not originate in the Senate. But a proposed law shall not be taken to appropriate revenue or moneys, or to impose taxation, by reason only of its containing provisions for the imposition or appropriation of fines or other pecuniary penalties, or for the demand or payment or appropriation of fees for licences, or fees for services under the proposed law.

The Senate may not amend proposed laws imposing taxation, or proposed laws appropriating revenue or moneys for the ordinary annual services of the Government.

The Senate may not amend any proposed law so as to increase any proposed charge or burden on the people.

The Senate may at any stage return to the House of Representatives any proposed law which the Senate may not amend, requesting, by message, the omission or amendment of any items or provisions therein. And the House of Representatives may, if it thinks fit, make any of such omissions or amendments, with or without modifications.

Except as provided in this section, the Senate shall have equal power with the House of Representatives in respect of all proposed laws.

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53a - Section 53 is the section which basically confines the Treasurer and the handing down of the Budget (that is, the Appropriation Bills) to the House of Representatives.

At bare minimum, for any given calendar year of legislation, the Parliament should at least try and pass Appropriation Bill No.1 for the financial year of 1 July - 30 June. Usually this is handed down in May to enable the passage of the Appropriation Bills before 1 July.

Sections 51 and 52 stipulate what the Federal Parliament has the power to make laws with for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to a bunch of things. Section 53 says what the Federal Parliament intends to buy as far as the collective purchasing arrangement we call the Commonwealth goes and how the Federal Parliament intends to pay for it all.

At this point I expect to hear great howls of argument from the Keynesians, the Hayekians, the Friedmanians, the Pikettirati and the MMT Crowd about what they all think the definition of taxation is and what it does. 

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53b and 53c - The Senate can argue all it likes about the Appropriation Bills but it is not allowed to amend those pieces of legislation. 

The United States Senate does have the ability to amend the Twelve Appropriations Subcommittees Bills which make up the US Budget but as Australia had states which were (still are) deeply distrustful of each other, the framers of the Australian Constitution sought to cut this ability to the stump while they could.

The received thought of the day as taken from the United Kingdom's House of Lords was that the Lords should not amend money bills because it was the House of Commons who owned the right to decide what monetary funds that the Monarch could draw upon. 

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53d - Just like the conventions which existed in New South Wales and Victoria, and which were inherited from eth House of Lords, the prevailing custom of the day was that although upper houses did not assume the right to  amend money bills, they had the right to reject the out of hand and/or send the back to the lower houses.

This particular clause will become important in later posts in this series; so be warned.

The United Kingdom which has an unwritten constitution, had to deal with this problem after the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia. The Parliament Act (1911) is the end result of the House of Lords' rejection of the so-called "People's Budget" of 1909 which was handed down by PM David Lloyd George. The Commons accused the Lords of a "a breach of the constitution and a usurpation of the rights of the Commons" and when you add in the complications of the Irish Question and the ongoing Conservative/Liberal bunfight which was still raging, this very quickly got out of hand.

The Parliament Act (1911) basically denied the right of the House of Lords to veto money bills, and hamstrung its right to veto other public bills by handing them a poxy ability to stall for time for a maximum of two years. 

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53e - In November 1992, the then Prime Minister Paul Keating described the Senate as "unrepresentative swill". It probably goes without saying that had the Senate been more amenable to his wished, that he would have never have made this comment because practically nobody objects to something they benefit from.

As the house of review, which was from the outset designed to dilute the power of population by tempering it with the premise that all of the states were at the outset equal, I like that the Senate is in the eyes of some, absurdly powerful even if if has given us racists, nitwits, nutbags, rotter, ne-er-do-wells, charlatans and knaves. That actually is truly representative of who we are as a nation.

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54. Appropriation Bills

The proposed law which appropriates revenue or moneys for the ordinary annual services of the Government shall deal only with such appropriation.

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Here it is. This is the anti-pork barrel piece of the Australian Constitution which attempts to stop coupons being attached to other pieces of legislation. Appropriations can only dealt with in Appropriation Bills. An MP can not attach spending to another bill to buy the votes of some other MP. Horse Trading if it is going to happen, at least where monies are concerned, has to be done within the scope of money bills. 

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55. Tax Bill

Laws imposing taxation shall deal only with the imposition of taxation, and any provision therein dealing with any other matter shall be of no effect.

Laws imposing taxation, except laws imposing duties of customs or of excise, shall deal with one subject of taxation only; but laws imposing duties of customs shall deal with duties of customs only, and laws imposing duties of excise shall deal with duties of excise only.

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Likewise, a government which is short of monies can not sneakily attach hidden taxation into other pieces of legislation. Perhaps the most significant pieces of legislation in my lifetime (being the Income Tax Assessment Act (1997) and the A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act (1999)) had very intense debate in both chambers; which were different to the regular kind of argument which usually accompanies the Budget bills. 

We had a fantastic bunfight when it came to the GST, where the Senate openly stated that they would refuse to pass certain sections of the Goods and Services Tax Bill unless the House made amendments (because the Senate could not). We had arguments over whether or not the GST should apply to food, to cooked food, whether or not coleslaw was a cooked food or not and what happens if uncooked food was exempt from GST. It was going to be a nightmare on Cooked Chicken Street.

"If you exclude food from GST, you are going to have tax inspectors running around trying to see whether the chocolate on a gingerbread man is bigger than the eyes, trying to determine whether it is food or a snack. You are going to have tax inspectors putting thermometers into pies to see whether they are fresh or takeaway. The government is supported by the economists, international experience, the Commissioner of Taxation and, of course, the Australian people, as expressed in their votes at the last federal election."

- Treasurer Peter Costello, 30th Mar 1999, House of Representatives (Hansard, p 4656)

I quite like the idea of being a tax inspector who gets to put thermometers into pies to see whether they are fresh or takeaway. 

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56. Recommendation of money votes

A vote, resolution, or proposed law for the appropriation of revenue or moneys shall not be passed unless the purpose of the appropriation has in the same session been recommended by message of the Governor-General to the House in which the proposal originated.

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I assume that this is supposed to reinforce the idea that it is the government of the day who gets to initiate appropriations in the House.

These "messages" that the appropriation bills are to be passed, is almost always Gazetted long before Budget Night and exists mostly as a legal formality. This is Executive Government actively displaying its authority at law, of not only control of the House of Representatives but of the Appropriation Bills themselves.

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Horse 3053 - THE PEOPLE v OCTOTHORPE ABUSERS (HASHTAGS) CLASS ACTION [2022] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

THE PEOPLE v OCTOTHORPE ABUSERS (HASHTAGS) CLASS ACTION [2022] - Judgement

H3053/1

It has come to the attention of this fake internet court that there are too many of you out there in the land, who abuse the octothorpe as though it was like leaves. Granted that the tree of ideas has many branches and you are free to clamber about the tree however you feel like, however there comes a point where running around in the jungle and pulling octothorpes from every single branch is not only impractical but it makes you look like a gorilla with a hoarding problem. You do not need that many leaves. You also do not need to strip the tree of ideas of all the octothorpes you can find.

What is an octothorpe? An octothorpe is this: #

I have heard it incorrectly called the "pound sign". I know of zero instances where # is used to denote pounds. Pounds Sterling are marked with the symbol £, which is derived ultimately from the word 'esterling' which has to do with silver. Nominally one pound of money in the days well before ye olde days, was backed by one pound of silver; hence the reason why the currency is named. Likewise the symbol lb. is drawn from the Latin 'libre' which also has to do with scales and the weight of things. # has nothing to do with pounds sterling or pounds of weight; so if you are tempted to call # the 'pound symbol' then please aske yourself why.

The other common name for # is "hash". The reason for this is that it does indeed look like a wee ickle set of hashes. I have no problem with calling this a hash. If a pineapple can be called that because it is an apple (all fruits were once called 'apples' in English) that happens to look like a pinecone, then calling # a hash because it looks like one, is sensible.

On most social media networks, # is called hash and is is uses to flag various items as being connected to a broad platform wide idea. The # tags these social media posts and hence why we have an equally sensible name of a hashtag. #hashtag

Consider the following post:

(photo not included)

Me and Muzz doing our thang.

#cats #pets #cute #dad #dadlife #blessed #grace #winning #catdad #catboss #Thursday

- Twitter Handle Withheld.

Muzz was indeed a fine cat. Actually, the ratio of fine cats to not fine cats is about 999,999:1. There is a non-zero number of not fine cats but they are edge cases.

The problem with blurting out hashtags is that it is pretty obvious that this person has simply used them for cross exposure. This court very much is appreciative of the fact that English is a dynamic and quickly changing language and long may it be so but this is not a question of the use of language but of the use of etiquette. This court also realises that etiquette and manners have very much been the weapons of exclusion in the past and so making a ruling about manners simple on the grounds of preference is improper. Rather, this ruling needs to be made upon the grounds of logic, uncommon sense and utility.

The general principle is that for every hashtag you use, the degree of connectedness to the topic at hand (if there ever was one) will become less and less. That is, there is a marginal utility of connectedness to the topic at hand and this marginal utility decreases with every new hashtag. Unlike the marginal utility of money or honey, the marginal utility of a hashtag can decrease to a point which is below zero. When that happens, they become less than useless and actually begin to hinder their only purpose; which is to facilitate communication.

Logically 1 hashtag will tell people that that thing at hand is the central topic. 2 hashtags says that they are connected and/or opposing each other. 3 hashtags is acceptable if there are two competing hashtags and the third one is connected to the two as though they are one. 4 hashtags starts to get silly. 5 hashtags beings the process of the connection becoming ever more tenuous. If you are using any more than 9, then I can guarantee that the 10th and 11th will be off in the land of irrelevance; dancing about like cows in a field. Does anyone care about the 10th hashtag? Do you care about the 10th hash tag? If it can not justify itself, why is it even there?

The 11th hashtag which was posted with this man and his cat Muzz, was #Thursday. I like Thursdays. Thursdays are the traditional night for late night shopping because this was the day that Pensions, Government Payments, and Wages were paid out from the week before. Thursdays are also the traditional night of the week for European Cup Winners Cup, UEFA Cup or whatever it is they call them now. 

Now I have no idea exactly why this man and Muzz especially needed to tell the world that this was Thursday (although maybe there is important Thursday cat business) but my suspicion is that #Thursday is irrelevant and unnecessary. Why it is it even there? Does Muzz car about it? Probably not.

Also, #blessed #grace #winning ? What now? Granted that thankfulness and gratitude are virtues that should be signaled and practiced on a regular basis but exactly how they are connected to a picture of a man and his cat, has evaded my logic. What did they win which warranted #winning? 

I think that possibly, the number of sensible things that an idea can be reasonably connected to, for a thing to make sense, is three. I say this as someone who is self-aware and throws about commas in places like they were grapeshot and so I realise my own hypocrisy here but I usually end up asking if sentences can be broken up and proper full stops used. I will use short sentences for effect. I will also use very long meandering ones with many dependent clauses, sometimes side thoughts and diversions, as a stylistic choice. A hashtag is not a question of style or grammar but one of filing.

In the above example, the most number of hashtags needed is two. In order #catboss and then #catdad. The central idea is that Muzz is a fine cat. Maybe Muzz was #winning but a point of fact always remains that cats are always the boss. #catdad is a subordinate hashtag to #catboss in the same way as this man is a subordinate to Muzz.

Final Judgement:

Having looked at the principle and the evidence, it is the opinion and ruling of this court that the number of hashtags allowed in any social media post is three. For example, in official settings such as #SWEvNEF #SWENEF #GoSweetness (where the forces of Sweetness and Light are playing Nefarious FC (Sweetness and Light won 1-0 thanks to an 87th minute strike from Lovely)) where you have two competing hashtags and a generic marker, this is perfectly sufficient. 

Yet again we find ourselves dealing with a similar principle in The Holy Hand Grenade Of Antioch v Counting [1975] in which Maynard J said:

"Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out."

- The Holy Hand Grenade Of Antioch v Counting [1975] 

In this case, something less that three is allowable and indeed preferrable but three is the upper bound. 

Anyone caught using a fourth hashtag will be forced to withstand tutting, a very hard stare, and very possibly a wagging finger of shame. This court realises it impotence in actually having any authority whatsoever to hand down punishments for violating this ruling but you know who you are. It isn't wrong but we just don't do it. Don't do it. It's dangerous. Stay safe.

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H3053/1 - Ed)

Horse 3052 - The Greatest Stairs In The World

One of the things about the world of a hundred years ago that is very different to the world of now, is that almost to deliberately spite the geopolitical nastiness that would see 100 million people destroyed for no good reason at all, some people who were given the job of making and remaking the world had a perspective which outlived themselves. It very much helped that technologies just happened to come along within decades of each other and so people went from living in muck filled houses with cholera to living in houses with proper plumbing and electric light.

By the 1920s, people had lights and some electric appliances, and trains and trams that all moved because of electric power. For people who had previously lived in a world of coal fired muck, it must have been like an Electric Eden.

For the harbour city, watching the bridge rise up from nothing must have been amazing. Also watching as the city was scarred and then filled in in preparation for the bright electric underground, must have also been amazing. Immediately to the north of the Sydney Harbour Bridge is Milsons Point Railway Station; which either by design or by accident, has one of the most mundane amazing things in the world - the stairs which lead up to the platforms.

Yes, the Sydney Harbour Bridge is a piece of charismatic mega-infrastructure which along with the hideous looking Opera House, forms one of the most iconic panoramas in the world. Nothing needs to be said about that. However, the the stairs which lead up to the platforms at Milsons Point Railway Station are one of those 1% pieces of brilliance which help supercharge the world to 103%.

Before you get there though:

The first thing that you notice when you enter Milsons Point station is that this looks like it is a cousin of St James. That's a bit strange when you consider that there are no direct connections between the two stations. St James Station forms part of the City Circle; which means that trains on the outer circle head from Wynyard and turn right and trains on the inner circle turn left to head south and into Wynyard. 

As previously discussed, the platforms at Wynyard were numbered 1 & 2 for the tram platforms and 3 & 4 for the train platforms on the upper level. I do not know if upon the opening of Milsons Point station, whether or not the numbering pattern was the same or not. If it was not, then it is strange that there would have been two Number 1 and 2 platforms. If it was the same, then the train platforms have been renumbered. 

The booking hall and ticket offices, sit underneath the roadway and railway lines and can be accessed from both sides. This is common where you have either an elevated railway line or one that is effectively elevated as compared with its surrounds because it sits on top of its own earthworks.

In the booking hall the original Ticket Offices are still here, albeit permanently closed. I imagine that in 1932 that they would have been similarly appointed to the Ticket Offices at Central, with brasswork. The need for the Ticket Offices no longer exists, what with automatic ticket machines and Opal which is used at gates with passimiters and of buses and ferries. 

I imagine that in 1932 that one would have been able to buy tickets for both the train and the tram from these windows. What I do not know though, is if tickets were intermodal. Before the days of Opal cards, except for Travelpass tickets which allowed people to buy a week's worth of travel at once, intermodal travel was definitely not a thing with electric passimiters. I do not know if a meatbag human would have had the authority to accept intermodal travel but I have no doubt that even the most mediocre of humans is a million times smarter than a machine.

I have no idea if these stairs were brilliantly made by design or by accident but whatever the case, these stairs are the greatest sets of stairs in the world. If you think that me waxing lyrical about a set of stairs of all things is daft, then you'd be right. Then again, as someone who lives in a built environment, I find the ease of use of the infrastructure in that built environment pleasing.

A set of stairs basically only as two characteristics - rise and run. The rise of the stairs is the height between each individual step and the run is the length of the flat bit that your foot falls upon. If stairs have a rise which is too much, then each step is a lot of work. If stairs have a run which is too short, then you have to be careful about where you put your feet. This is why a significantly bigger than zero number of stairwells in Victorian-era houses are the site of servants (mainly women) being scalded because of carrying great pans of boiling water up stairs which were too steep and where the run was too short.

This is why these stairs are the greatest stairs in the world. These stairs have a rise which is very obviously not zero but the rise is both gentle and steep enough to still be functional. They also have a run which is big enough to accommodate a size 14 boot very pleasantly. Together, the rise and run of these stairs means that you can almost sprint up the them if you are late for a train. What's more amazing is that you can also almost sprint down these stairs, which is mostly unheard of.

What I also find intriguing about these stairs, is that they are dressed in the same tile design and broad tilework attire as Museum, St James, the hidden portions of Wynyard and the remaining bits of Town Hall. Central suffers from its 1988 refit at the Devonshire Street rail tunnel, Wynyard and Town Hall retain memories of what once was. St James and Museum look probably pretty close to how they did on opening day in 1926. Milsons Point station was opened along with the Harbour Bridge in 1932 and the fitting out and dressing of the station started from 1929 onwards. This leads me to believe that on opening day, it probably had roundels similar to St James, Museum, Town Hall and Wynyard, and the tilework would indicate to me that they were likely in red or brown.

Once you have run up the stairs, then you emerge at platform level which is the equivalent of the fifth story of buildings further on down the road. The Sydney Harbour Bridge is truly majestic because it is massively massive. I am used to travelling across the Bridge; so that means that on many occasions I do not notice it at all. The best journey that one can take is the most boring because when things just work, we do not have to.

Again, the Bridge is its own party piece and so I do not need to write very much about it here. However, I suspect that whatever invention was placed between Milsons Point and Dawes Point, that Milsons Point Railway Station would have still been excellent. This brings me back to my central point.

The greatest stairs in the world whether by accident or by design, only exist because someone had the forethought to build not only them in that way, but build the whole project. I really like the ramps at Strathfield Station because you can absolutely pelt up and down those like a mad thing. I really like the quiet serenity at Museum Station because even in the middle of a boisterous and bustling metropolis, one can still find quiet enjoyment in the melancholy and sadness of the calm. I really like the escalators, the neon barrel tile work, and the garishness of Kings Cross Station because those things work well with the chaos above. Some time soon, we shall see the opening of Central Walk and the Sydney Metro extension.

All of these things prove that we can build things that are lovely and grand, and that these things are best built in commonwealth as there is no way in nine circles of hell that private enterprise either has the capacity or care to do so.

Even so, these are the greatest stairs in the world and the millions of people who pass through here every year, do not really care because they have no need to. When things work excellently, we do not have to worry.

Horse 3051 - Scott Morrison and the Grubby Little Secrets

The only conclusion that I could draw from Scott Morrison's press conference yesterday, in which he attempted to answer criticism for asking the Governor-General to make him Minister for Everything, is that according to the former Health Minister, Resources Minister, Industry & Science Minister, Treasurer, and Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) he 'needed' to have those powers because he was 'responsible'.

Having lived through the period of Australian Politics during the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic, I would suggest that the only person who would suggest that Scott Morrison actually was 'responsible' for anything, is Scott Morrison. This is a man who personally managed to annoy both the French Government and the Eurozone, failed to procure vaccines until really late in the piece, and who for most of the pandemic proceeded to deflect as much blame as he possibly could for any inadequate responses to the state governments. Right through the pandemic and before the general election, Mr Morrison repeatedly attempted to gaslight the good and fair people of Australia, and now he is trying to turn the gas up and down at the meter box so that we all go mad, and wants to subsidise AGL billions for the gas (which he may have had the power to do, had he still be Resources Minister).

We have now seen copies of the written instruments by which the then Prime Minister, the "Honorable" Scott Morrison MP, was appointed to the several cabinet positions other than the Ministry without portfolio which is the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, during 2020 and 2021.

https://www.pmc.gov.au/news-centre/government/instruments-scott-morrison-2020-21

All of these written instruments look perfectly normal because they are. There is also nothing abnormal about a person taking on multiple cabinet roles. As I suggested in Horse 3050, this are in fact perfectly normal instruments in which the Governor-General has exercised perfectly normal powers under Sections 64 and 65 of the Constitution.

Admittedly, there is nothing illegal about the course of action which has taken place and this appears to be Mr Morrison's defence; namely that because he did nothing illegal, there is nothing wrong. Clearly this is a man who has successfully managed to bound and gag that still small voice of his own conscience and has achieved the same ethical standpoint as a cat; namely although he has Mens Conscia Recti (a mind aware of what is right), just like a cat, he simply doesn't care. This is a case of the difference between what is legal and what is right, being different from each other.

When Mr Morrison was asked if the Governor-General ever raised any questions about his taking on portfolios, his simple reply was: "I don't go into private discussions with the Governor-General". This is yet another thing which the former Prime Minister does not do; which includes holding a hose, comment on things inside the Canberra bubble, comment on things outside the Canberra bubble that are a matter for the states, comment about on-water issues, and comment on things which are matters for his ministers (which is again ironic given that he took on so many portfolios). Again under normal circumstances, this wouldn't have raised any eyebrows however, when this involves a Prime Minister successfully launching a legal and silent coup, we have strayed very far away from what is normal. 

If it is possible for a metaphor to be strained and undergo a process of spaghettification, then Mr Morrison decided to take his press conference beyond the gaslight event horizon, from which not even gaslight can escape, by arguing that the fact that he didn’t tell anyone, actually proves that no-one needed to know needed to know what he was doing, or why. I do not know what the Governor-General David Hurley thought about this but he appears to be as spineless as a chocolate mousse or a moose made of chocolate mousse.

Mr Morrison's argument almost entirely amounts to the sum total of that because the Covid-19 Pandemic and the immediate emergency was unprecedented, the Australian public expected him to take action. By operation of history, he never did take action, short of making himself Minister for Everything. He argued that because he was held responsible for everything, that meant that he needed to have these powers.

The implication with this though is that he thought that he needed to have the powers to override his own ministers (presumably if they acted and made decisions which he happened to disagreed with), in the same way as he did with Pitt. If as Mr Morrison claimed in his press conference, he could make decisions as Prime Minister, then the immediate question is why he though he needed extra powers. The only example which he put forward though, was the Pep 11 project, which doesn't even have anything to do with the Covid-19 Pandemic but with the environment.

As far as I am concerned, all of the Former Ministers Scott Morrison (who we have to assume is now using they, them, those, collective pronouns) have done little more than try to run what has been politely called the "KFC Defence". When faced with a barrage of questions, Mr Morrison may as well have said: "Did somebody say 'KFC'?". Well quite frankly "I don't care" and no, I don't love it.

Aside:

As for the baying media pack and especially the rotters at News Corporation, whom we can now reasonably suspect knew about this because at least the Political Editor of The Australia X knew about it, you have no right to be shocked. To every single so-called 'journalist' who stood with stupid stunned and faux-horrified faces who today stood rapidly scribbling down the multi-ministerial Morrison news, you need to get in the bin. Practically all of the press pack spent the entire first week of the election campaign, reporting on a gaffe made by Anthony Albanese; yet we now now that at least part of you actively neglected to report on a soft coup in the highest political offices of the land. I do not know if Mr Murdoch knew about this like he did in October of 1975 but it would not surprise me. All of you, get in the bin.

Horse 3050 - Scott Morrison and the Deathly Silence

One of the unspoken rules of Australian politics is that most of the rules are unspoken. A chap should know who the chaps trust because in order to be a chap, one needs to be someone whom the chaps trust. Likewise, a lady should carry herself like a lady because in order to be a lady, one needs to be someone whom the ladies trust. All of this has gone out of the window, now that we have decided that truth, justice, trust, and the gentle art of being noble, are all worthless. Now what we have, is the naked manipulation of power for power's sake; sprinkled with what ever words of religion and/or values sound good enough to get past the general public, whom we assume are idiots. It certainly hasn't helped that great swathes of the general public are actually idiots and will accept what ever words of religion and/or values are thrown at them.

The great Australian public, gradually awoke from its stupor this morning to learn that the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, ordered an investigation into his immediate predecessor Scott Morrison. News Corporation toed the line that it is running in the United States and suggested that this was a politically motivated witch hunt until about 11am when we found out the reason why.

It seems that as Prime Minister, Scott Morrison was secretly sworn in as the joint minister for three cabinet portfolios, during the time when many of us were in lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has come to light that Prime Minister, Scott Morrison was secretly by the appointed by Governor-General David Hurley as a 'joint minister' for the Departments of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. This was roughly about eleven months before as Prime Minister, he personally made the call against an offshore gas project, about six weeks out before the General Election.

As I understand it, the current Prime Minster, Anthony Albanese, was only alerted to this state of affairs because he'd read about it in Saturday's edition of The Australian. From what I can gather, Morrison was also appointed to the role of joint Health Minister; to which Greg Hunt agreed as kind of a backstop in case he contracted Coronavirus and was unable to do the job. Also from what I can gather Morrison was also appointed to the role of joint Finance Minister; though in that case the then-finance minister Matthias Cormann was not told at all.

The question being thrown about tonight (being Monday the 15th when all of this is coming to light), is "is this legal?" and perhaps more seriously "is this a coup against the Crown". I can answer both of those questions.

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution/chapter2#chapter-02_64

Ministers of State

The Governor-General may appoint officers to administer such departments of State of the Commonwealth as the Governor-General in Council may establish.

Such officers shall hold office during the pleasure of the Governor-General. They shall be members of the Federal Executive Council, and shall be the Queen's Ministers of State for the Commonwealth.

Ministers to sit in Parliament

After the first general election no Minister of State shall hold office for a longer period than three months unless he is or becomes a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.

- Section 64 of the Constitution Act (1900)

Assuming that everything that we have heard about this so far is true, then the Governor-General David Hurley, has pretty much full discretion to appoint literally anyone he likes in the world, to the position of cabinet minister. Section 64 makes no mention of the qualification of who those ministers are, or of the nature of the posts.

Is it legal that the Governor-General appoint Scott Morrison to multiple cabinet posts? Yes. Is this normal? Not really. The law does not care for what is normal. "Normal" is whatever the current convention is for "normal" until such time as it changes.

Believe it or not, there is precedent for a Prime Minster holding multiple cabinet positions. From the 5th of December 1972 for about six weeks, Gough Whitlam and Lance Barnard were the entire cabinet in a duumvirate; with Whitlam being 'Minister for Everything' and Barnard being 'Minister for Everything Else'. The big difference between that and this current set of circumstances is that Whitlam and Barnard were very public about the arrangement; with wall to wall coverage across print, radio and television. Morrison's grubby little scheme has been known about by practically nobody outside of the immediate circles of government.

Is this a coup against the Crown? No. If the Governor-General David Hurley has made the appointment of Scott Morrison to those several cabinet posts, then he is not only acting in his capacity as the Governor-General but as an officer of the Crown.

While this is not a coup against the Crown, it very much is a subversion of democracy. One of the unspoken rules of Australian politics is that we the people of Australia should have the right to know what our government is doing and at very least, know who is in charge of executive cabinet. The chaps and ladies of the land should be able to trust the chaps at the very top because in order to be a chap, one needs to be someone whom the chaps trust. We can safely say that today, we should absolutely not trust the Governor General.

The reason that we should absolutely not trust the Governor General is because we now know that he is not a chap. The Governor General should be a chap whom we know nothing about whatsoever. In Australia, the only time that anyone has known anything about the Governor General is when something so cataclysmically stupid has happened that it leaves scars on the fabric of democracy itself.

I think that this is a similar abuse of the role of the Governor General to Kerr’s disgraceful sacking of the Whitlam Labor government. If that wasn't bad enough Hurley also lobbied the Morrisons government on various matters (which is a second abuse of the role) and the same Prime Minister promised $18 million to a fly-by-night pop-up "charity" supported by the Governor General; which had no real street address, no searchable history and no published plan for what to do with the monies. Although having said that, given the awful history of the Liberal Party and the fact that he was a Liberal Party appointee, it might be more shocking if he was actually ethical.

Morrison is gone from the role of Prime Minister but being a knave and a crook is not sufficiently good enough reason to remove him from the seat of Cook. However, for the Governor General to secretly swear-in a Prime Minister to the posts of various joint cabinet ministries and then not tell the general public, is all kinds of knavery.

As the Governor General is not a chap whom the ladies and chaps can trust, the Governor General is not a chap. As such, the Governor General must resign today, if not sooner.

Horse 3049 - Probable Cause, Supported By Oath And Particularly Describing The Place To Be Searched, And The Things To Be Seized.

We have heard news this week that the FBI has made a raid on Mar-A-Lago, the resort and hotel complex owned by Donald Trump's management company, and that various papers have been seized.

This follows revelations that in the very last days of the Trump Administration, and possibly unconnected to the insurrection and violence against the Capitol Building, that documents were being shredded and that as many as 15 boxes of documents had been removed either by Trump's own personal staff or on direction of the former President.

Although we do not have exact details of what the FBI were looking for, we can be reasonably sure that this was part of an ongoing crime investigation. Exactly which ongoing crime investigation this was part of, we do not know because there are so many of them. Such is the nature of the man and by extension the administration, which it must be said, was probably run identically to his private operations.

Naturally, the right wing media in the United States (lead by Fox News) has decided to paint this as a witch hunt because that fits the ongoing narrative and means that they can continue to run existing story lines with goodies and baddies. In short, this raid on Mar-A-Lago is good for television as Fox News especially can portray this as their hero being unfairly treated for something that he didn't do.

What I find particularly strange about this is that the narrative seems to want to portray this as though Mr Trump was personally violated and that his own home was raided. This demands that the audience denies what they already know as true. Donald Trump as far as we know, does not actually live at Mar-A-Lago. Mr Trump has an apartment in Trump Tower, New York City. The whole descent of Donald Trump down the escalator to open the 2015 run for the Presidency, was as we were led to believe by the same news media who now want to push a different story, was him coming down from his gold appointed apartment, to speak with the crowds.

Mar-A-Lago, is a resort and hotel, which his management company owns. In all likelihood, the FBI raids on Mar-A-Lago, were not raids upon Mr Trump's home but on a registered address where his business interests are officially domiciled.

I shall not go into the exact wording of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution but the Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures. In short, people in the United States have a right to the quiet enjoyment of their personal papers and effects, and the Fourth Amendment says that law enforcement officers need a warrant in order to carry out, said searches and seizures.

I would think it nigh on impossible, that an organisation as high profile as the FBI, would attempt to undertake a raid and search, unless they'd secondly obtained a warrant and firstly been absolutely sure of what they were looking for in the first place. Especially in the case of looking through the papers and effects of the former President of the United States, the FBI would want the process to be absolutely watertight before even attempting such a thing. From what we can gather the FBI removed about a dozen boxes that had been stored in the basement storage area, subject to the documents being held illegally per violations of various laws dealing with the handling of classified material and the Presidential Records Act.

I also think it nigh on impossible that Mr Trump, had he been in Mar-A-Lago, would not want a copy of the search warrant issued with gave authority for the search and seizure of his stuff. The man is as litigious as the sky is blue and would swear an equally blue streak across the sky if he thought that the government had been used without proper authority.

I have no idea what the FBI were looking for. What I do know from my time on the other side, both inside the courts and while being present while police recordings were going on, is that the process for getting a warrant is pretty good and that law enforcement officers need to have an idea of what they expect to find before they get there. The chances of going on a fishing expedition are actually pretty low considering that this is such a high profile case. When you have reports that documents have been removed, and presumably accounts detailing where those things might be, then I would expect that the FBI have acted on what they think is a reasonable suspicion and taken reasonable actions in line with their suspicion.

The difference between this and the Watergate investigation, is that Richard Nixon was still in the White House when that played out. Again, the so-called "smoking gun" was found after a warrant had been obtained and because law enforcement officers acted on what they thought was a reasonable suspicion and took reasonable actions in line with their suspicion. Mr Trump has left the White House and so the difference in that set of mechanics is one of location.

Herein lies the real damage to the civic fabric which is being done here. The really big underlying principle here is that everyone is equal before the law and nobody is above the law. In English Common Law and by extension American Common Law, this principle was tested to the utmost, when in 1649 parliament indicted Charles I for tyranny, held court at Westminster Hall, and found him guilty of said tyranny. If no less than the king himself was not out of reach from the long arm of the law, then a private citizen who is not the monarch nor the head of state, should also be not out of reach from the long arm of the law. By attempting to pull at threads that the media themselves have stitched into the civic fabric, they consciously tear holes in that same fabric. I think that it is fair to say now, that there are some sections of society which aren't connected to others at all.

Horse 3048 - Constitutional Survey - V(i)

Part V – Powers of the Parliament

<><><><><>

51. Legislative powers of the Parliament.

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

(i.) Trade and commerce with other countries, and among the States:

(ii.) Taxation; but so as not to discriminate between States or parts of States:

(iii.)  Bounties on the production or export of goods, but so that such bounties shall be uniform throughout the Commonwealth:

(iv.)  Borrowing money on the public credit of the Commonwealth:

(v.)  Postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and other like services:

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

(vii.)  Lighthouses, lightships, beacons and buoys:

(viii.)  Astronomical and meteorological observations:

(ix.)  Quarantine:

(x.)  Fisheries in Australian waters beyond territorial limits:

(xi.)  Census and statistics:

(xii.)  Currency, coinage, and legal tender:

(xiii.)  Banking, other than State banking; also State banking extending beyond the limits of the State concerned, the incorporation of banks, and the issue of paper money:

(xiv.)  Insurance, other than State insurance; also State insurance extending beyond the limits of the State concerned:

(xv.)  Weights and measures:

(xvi.)  Bills of exchange and promissory notes:

(xvii.)  Bankruptcy and insolvency:

(xviii.)  Copyrights, patents of inventions and designs, and trade marks:

(xix.)  Naturalization and aliens:

(xx.)  Foreign corporations, and trading or financial corporations formed within the limits of the Commonwealth:

(xxi.)  Marriage:

(xxii.)  Divorce and matrimonial causes; and in relation thereto, parental rights, and the custody and guardianship of infants:

(xxiii.)  Invalid and old-age pensions:

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

(xxiv.)  The service and execution throughout the Commonwealth of the civil and criminal process and the judgments of the courts of the States:

(xxv.)  The recognition throughout the Commonwealth of the laws, the public Acts and records, and the judicial proceedings of the States:

(xxvi.)  The people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws:

(xxvii.)  Immigration and emigration:

(xxviii.)  The influx of criminals:

(xxix.)  External affairs:

(xxx.)  The relations of the Commonwealth with the islands of the Pacific:

(xxxi.)  The acquisition of property on just terms from any State or person for any purpose in respect of which the Parliament has power to make laws:

(xxxii.)  The control of railways with respect to transport for the naval and military purposes of the Commonwealth:

(xxxiii.)  The acquisition, with the consent of a State, of any railways of the State on terms arranged between the Commonwealth and the State:

(xxxiv.)  Railway construction and extension in any State with the consent of that State:

(xxxv.)  Conciliation and arbitration for the prevention and settlement of industrial disputes extending beyond the limits of any one State:

(xxxvi.)  Matters in respect of which this Constitution makes provision until the Parliament otherwise provides:

(xxxvii.)  Matters referred to the Parliament of the Commonwealth by the Parliament or Parliaments of any State or States, but so that the law shall extend only to States by whose Parliaments the matter is referred, or which afterwards adopt the law:

(xxxviii.)  The exercise within the Commonwealth, at the request or with the concurrence of the Parliaments of all the States directly concerned, of any power which can at the establishment of this Constitution be exercised only by the Parliament of the United Kingdom or by the Federal Council of Australasia:

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

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I do not know if it is coincidence that the Constitution takes exactly 50 sections to lay out the terms of how the parliament is constituted. Given that this was written by a bunch of sweaty beardy men in places like the Sydney and Melbourne Town Halls and in the middle of summers past, it would not surprise me. 

Section 51 is possibly the most legislated and argued over, source of contention within the whole document; with good reason. Sections 51 and 52 are the shopping lists of powers which the Federal Government of the Commonwealth of Australia is deemed to have. This is where the parliament gets it lists of things that it is allowed to do. Moreover, case law which is pursued through the High Court, is mostly about determining what the Federal Government does not have the power to do. Courts are mostly places about establishing guilt, blame and or remedy if something has gone awry.

Section 51 (xxxv.) for instance, which has to do with "Conciliation and arbitration for the prevention and settlement of industrial disputes extending beyond the limits of any one State" was famously visited in the so-called "Engineers' Case" of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers v Adelaide Steamship Co Ltd (1920) [28 CLR 129, [1920] HCA 54]. This particular case overturned the assumed doctrine of implied intergovernmental immunities and reserved state powers. Arguably it is this case which established the most critical basis for the modern understanding of federalism as it applies in Australia.

This case which saw the Amalgamated Society of Engineers take an award case which affected 844 employers across Australia to the High Court, asked the question of whether or not Commonwealth law made under the "Conciliation and Arbitration" power regarding industrial disputes (s.51 xxxv.) could bind employers across the country. The bench which included the first Prime Minister Edmund Barton and started under the Judiciary Act 1903 meanders all over the place including the Acts Intepretation Act 1901. Ultimately it held that because the Commonwealth of Australia is a sovereign State, then the powers ceded to it by the Constitution are in fact valid and just.

That sovereignty was again brought into question with Mabo and Others v Queensland (No. 2) (1992) [175 CLR 1, [1992] HCA 23]. The Mabo Case decided that when acquiring property in a Territory or in a State, the Commonwealth must do so on "just terms". It then further goes on to suggest that there is an original unextinguished native sovereignty, overturned the doctrine of 'terra nullius' in favour of the common law doctrine of aboriginal title, and in effect recognised native title in Australia for the first time. The Constitutional basis for this was that Commonwealth had infringed section 51 (xxxi) - "The acquisition of property on just terms from any State or person for any purpose in respect of which the Parliament has power to make laws".

On that note...

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Any sensible reading of the Constitutional Convention debates of the late 1890s, makes it clear that the bunch of sweaty beardy men in places like the Sydney and Melbourne Town Halls and in the middle of summers past, intended that section 51(xxvi.) be a source of power for parliament of tne new Commonwealth Parliament to deliberately enact racially discriminatory laws.

(xxvi.)  The people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws:

Having learnt from the American experience, it seemed a bit gauche to mention 'coloured races' or 'aboriginal natives' specifically; so this power is deliberately vague, even though everyone knows exactly what it was supposed to mean.

122 years' later, groups like the IPA who do not want to acknowledge or recognise aboriginal sovereignty want to make the race provision to disappear but not for the same reason.  The existence of the race provision in the Constitution means that rich and powerful people (ie. their patrons) might incur some kind of disadvantage, and racist and supremacist groups do not want to acknowledge or recognise aboriginal sovereignty because they might have to give that advantage up. 

https://ipa.org.au/ipa-review-articles/race-has-no-place-in-constitutional-reform

"Now, recognition advocates wish to adopt the spirit of 1967 yet rather than remove the remaining references to race in the constitution, they wish to insert provisions of race in. This is a step backwards.

Saddest of all, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders taken collectively have fallen behind. Well-intentioned but misplaced government assistance has led to welfare traps in many communities, and the response is too often an ever-more paternalistic response from the federal government. Symbolic changes to the constitution will not remedy this."

- Simon Breheny, Morgan Begg, The IPA, 1st Apr 2016

This is the IPA wanting to whitewash the Constitution and never recogise that first peoples exist, much less that they have any dignity and deserve to have that dignity recognised.

If this ever gets to a referendum, which by the way has been a standing wish of the IPA for quite some time, then this will be promoted under the guise of "equality". One should always be suspicious of championing equality when the underlying motive is precisely the opposite.

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(ii.) Taxation; but so as not to discriminate between States or parts of States:

I have real doubts whether things like the Zone Rebate which is contained with the Income Taxation Assessment Act 1997 is in fact legal. My guess is that it being a "rebate", which is a sort of forgiveness of taxation, is one of those lovely grey areas that no parliament has the inclination to want to change. 

There was also a High Court challenge to do with the passage of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936; presumably in the same vein that people objected to the income tax being imposed in the United States. The Australian Constitution at s51(ii.) contains one word "Taxation" as being the scope of what it is allowed to pass laws on. That scope is practically prefectly plenary for any purpose and premise.

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(iv.)  Borrowing money on the public credit of the Commonwealth:

Contained within Section 51, (iv). remained like a dormant land mine for more than 70 years. During the Whitlam Government, the Liberal Opposition who really objected to the Government's policy plan, decided to choke the treasury and restrict the supply of money. Whitlam, upon not being able to procure the necessary funds to undertake his design, used s.51(iv) to procure loans from various parties in Saudi Arabia, which became known as the imaginatively named "Loans Affair". This was one of many steps on the path towards the 1975 Constitutional Crisis but nevertheless, Whitlam borrowing monies from international markets on the public credit of the Commonwealth made use of an express power contained within the Constitution.

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

Nominally the Governor-General is the head of the armed forces through the reserve powers. Part (vi.) explicitly hands the control of the "forces to execute and maintain the laws of the Commonwealth" to the parliament. What this means in practical terms of that the parliament could in theory declare martial law but by the same token, to do so probably requires the consent of disparate and often disagreeable factions and parties within that same parliament. I can understand that this might be important in terms of repelling foreign invasion and this might in fact be the basis for parliament deploying the military in cases of natural disaster but it doesn't quite hand absolute control over to the parliament or the relevant ministers in the same way that the US Constitution does.

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(viii.)  Astronomical and meteorological observations:

I would like someone to explain to me exactly what the framers of the Constitution were thinking when they installed this. I can imagine that the setting up of the Bureau of Meteorology was at least partly on their minds because the ability to predict weather is incredibly useful for things like the safety of shipping. What I do not understand is why Astronomical observations are a thing that there would need to be laws for.

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(xii.)  Currency, coinage, and legal tender:

I find it pretty wild that in 1901 at the inception of the Commonwealth, the only native coins of the various states, were either the remnants of the Holey Dollar and Dump (5/- and 1/3) and the gold coins which had been made. Australia practically had no native circulating small coinage at all. Silver coins (2/- 1/-, 6d. 3d.) were minted in 1910 and copper coins (1d. 1/2d.) followed a year later. 

There are other provisions within the constitution which bar the states from coining money; which makes sense if you want to control the money supply, but I still think it madness that for the opening few decades of the Commonwealth, if you wanted to buy milk, bread, or a pie, Britannia not only ruled the waves but also people's pockets. From 1910-1936, Australia had some of the most boring coinage in the world. 

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(xv.)  Weights and measures:

I love that in the 1890s that the framers of the Constitution were aware of the metric system. Ounces, pounds, furlongs, chains, inches, pints, firkins, tons, acres... the imperial system of measurement is one glorious rectangle: it is a wreck and a tangle. 

Hooray it's the Metric System! No way. We'll keep out bonkers measurement system, including the currency which has subunits in 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 16, 20... until the 1970s, thank you. Even now, as someone who was born after the correction/imposition, I will think of feet and inches and speed in miles, like some kind of withered appendix.

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(xxx.)  The relations of the Commonwealth with the islands of the Pacific:

Go right back to the beginning of the Constitution and you will find that New Zealand has been tentatively pencilled in. In the early conventions, delegates from both New Zealand and Fiji showed up to see if they wanted to join the new Commonwealth. It could have been that apart from Tonga which still retains its own monarchy, that the entire Pacific could have been one giant far flung Commonwealth. As it is, New Caledonia is part of France in the same way that Tasmania is part of Australia.

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52. Exclusive powers of the Parliament.

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

(i.)  The seat of government of the Commonwealth, and all places acquired by the Commonwealth for public purposes:

(ii.)  Matters relating to any department of the public service the control of which is by this Constitution transferred to the Executive Government of the Commonwealth:

(iii.)  Other matters declared by this Constitution to be within the exclusive power of the Parliament.

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s.52(i) is the mechanism which allowed the Federal Government to select and designate territory upon which to place the nation's capital, Canberra. Australia had an almighty cat fight between Sydney and Melbourne which both wanted their city to be the capital and in the end, the solution was a kind of Solomon's Baby, which attempted to slice the problem in half and pleased nobody.

s.52(ii) underpins the regulations relating to the public service and which also became a point of contention with the setting up of the Australian Taxation Office. In the end, the Commonwealth eventually won the exclusive right to impose income tax and I suppose that if given the chance, there are those who want to reignite this bunfight.

I love s.52(iii). Any piece of legislation, company constitution or replaceable rules, or set of accounts, or rules and laws in general that contains the word "other", I always find amusing. I think of Babar's friend Zephyr, who when placed in charge of a bunch of records and filing system, filed everything under S for "Stuff" and O for "Other Stuff". Section 52 (iii) is like placing everything that they didn't think of in the rest of Section 51 and 52, into the file of O for "Other Stuff".

Of course it makes sense the parliament has the power to make law with regard matters which are declared by this Constitution to be within the exclusive power of the Parliament. Why even say it at all? Because as 55 men were yelling at each other in the sweaty basements of the Melbourne and Sydney Town Halls, they knew that if anything can be argued over, it will be. 

Horse 3047 - Monat Is A Scumbucket Multi-Level Marketing Scheme

Some time late last year, a client of ours was recruited by one of her friends to participate in a "great business opportunity". It was only after it came time to do tax returns that it became apparent for her that her "great business opportunity" was little more than a flashy looking pyramid scheme. Admittedly, the company in question didn't want to call it a "pyramid" because of all of the negative connotations but that still doesn't change the underlying truth that a multi-level marketing scheme, which is being touted as a vehicle for "small business", is scant disguise for a company which is very effective at severing the chain of business risk and abrogating all of its responsibility. Turning contractors into "small businesses" is wonderful because the company doesn't have to worry about any kind of employee entitlements. Also, if the thing goes bang, the company doesn't have to pick up any of the pieces either.

The name of this multi-level marketing company is Monat; which I assume is an invented word which is pronounced like that of Claude Monet. Monat produces hair care, skin care, and other beauty products, which are as far as I can tell of average quality but at vastly inflated prices. From the outside the obvious question is why anyone would choose to become a third-party seller of a product over which they had little to no control over the stock and unless you are running a retail premises which sells a vast array of produce, then I just don't understand it. 

The first inkling that I ever got of this, was an email from this person:

Dear Andrew,

If you're looking for quality anti-ageing hair care products that work, the Monat range is definitely worth a try.

I am a local rep based in Mosman, this brand launched into Australia Oct 2021, started originally in America in 2014 and has seen huge success.

The results speak for themselves.

- 30 day money back guarantee. 

- Vegan 

- Gluten Free 

- Safe for color treated hair

- Custom Products to suit your hair needs.

Message me here for a free consultation, I'd love to help.

Yours faithfully, (name withheld).

This person then came into our office and wanted to have a meeting; which when it happened, was an attempt to hawk their wares and to sign me up for the 'great business opportunity'. Never mind the fact that I am gainfully employed in a small business already and I am quite happy being an employee of a small business as it is.

It appears to me after reading through the documentation that Monat gives its marks, that Monat is the perfect textbook pyramid scheme. Of course, it is not going to admit that it is a pyramid scheme and even after hundreds of complaints to the USDFA and the Better Business Bureau and dozens of lawsuits, it has still managed to recruit half a million rubes and charlies.

https://www.wxyz.com/news/national/complaints-class-action-lawsuits-pile-up-against-hair-care-company-monat___

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has received and is in the process of assessing 187 adverse event reports related to Monat products. The FDA received these reports between  Aug. 2, 2017 8/27/17 and March 9, 2018.

More than 500 complaints have been filed with the Better Business Bureau in South Florida, where Monat is headquartered.

- WXYZ Detroit (ABC7), 14th Mar 2018

Yet despite the lawsuits and constant controversy around the company, it still hasn't been shut down yet. The reason for this is because it has such a disjointed structure, it is really hard to cut all the heads off of this horrible hydra.

Of course it's reaction, is to file defamation cases; on the basis that everyone who signs up to join the program, has already signed a nondisparagement contract with them:

4.3 – NONDISPARAGEMENT

Monat wants to provide Market Partners with the best products, compensation plan and service in the industry. Accordingly, we value constructive criticisms and comments. All such comments should be submitted in writing to the Customer Service Department. While Monat welcomes constructive input, negative comments and remarks made in the field by Market Partners about the Company, its products or compensation plan serve no purpose other than to demotivate other Monat Market Partners. For this reason, and to set the proper example for their Marketing Organization, Market Partners must not disparage, demean, or make negative remarks about Monat, other Monat Market Partners, Monat Products, the Compensation Plan, or Monat’s directors, officers or employees.

Wow. Just wow. It is one thing to ask for discretion but these prize knaves do not even try to hide their motives and actions.

I however am not a Monat Market Partner; so I am not covered by this nondisparagement contract. I can make all of the value judgements and disparaging comments I like. Monat is a cult. Monat is an expletive deleted cult. It exists purely to prey on trusting people, it eats widow's houses, it alienates its marks. It's a scumbucket cult.

Having been given a saved video of one of this person's "training sessions" via an online Zoom call, I came to the opinion that Monat was not merely a cult but in this case, a licence for the kind of bullying that one would find in the school yard. I bet that the second that anyone attempts to shed doubt on anything that they'dbe ostracized by their "friends" in the "community".  You’re literally brainwashed.

The experience from this lady (and I am assuming that it is not uncommon) is that you're going to stop hearing from your "friends" the moment that they have decided you are are of no used to them in getting to the next level of whatever the rewards structure of the organisation is. Your "friends" in a multi-level marketing company are your upline; which means that the prime reason that you are going hear from them, is because you hitting a certain number of sales, or achieving certain rank, or bringing on new marks helps them get a new rank or maintain the one they are currently on. 

Depending on how narcissistic you upline "friends" are, they might not even acknowledge you in public any more and in the case of this lady, she was ostracised by her teammates and then blacklisted by the group. It seems pretty obvious to me that Monat, is just another scumbucket multi-level marketing company which has successfully developed an internal cult like culture. 

After doing a bit of ferreting, I have found that there is a nickname for the logical endpoint of a lot of multi-level marketing small businesses - the GFC, or "Garage Full of Crap". This is the final metastisisation of the cancer, where the rube has been taken for so much of a ride, that they've been dumped out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of stuff that they're only likely to get cents in the dollar for.

The reason for this is to do with the parasitic nature of the cult. The incentive structure is set up such that the biggest incentives come from to recruit new distributors into the company. Like any classic pyramid or ponzi scheme, most people get a commission based on the product sales that the distributors below them buy from the parent company.

Unlike any legitimate business, advancement in the up the chain is achieved by recruitment rather than by job promotion. Nobody goes up a level by being good at the job but rather by the number of people they recruit and everyone in the downline sub-recruits.

Monat is also running a confusopoly by deliberately shading what is going on with really stupid terminology such as "Market Partnet", "Product Volume" and "Group Volume" which adds a level of abstraction and distraction to the underlying fact that it is really nothing more than a parasitic pay-to-play system where the objectives are met by ongoing recruitment minimums and "incentivized purchases". As the only way to start off and become a distributor is to to buy a starter kit and to maintain that distributor status is dependent on making minimum monthly purchases/sales, then the primary buyer of the crap is the participants themselves.

The problem is that the scheme is designed such that people make more money getting commissions off the product that distributors beneath them are required to buy from the company than they can from selling the good at retail prices to customers outside of the business. That means that the main customers of the company’s products are not customer outside the company but the distributors within it; hence the common end point of the GFC.

No, this isn't a "business opportunity". No, this isn't actually a way to make money on the side. I don't respond to positivity because as an accountant, I want to see things like balance sheets and profit and loss statements, before I cast judgement. I will look at the expected future maintainable earnings, the actual rate of return on investment, and whether or not this thing actually spins a profit or not. I do not care what you call "levelling-up" or what your fancy titles are. I'm going to call a spade a spade and say that Monat, is very much the spade with which people dig their own financial graves with and pay for the privilege of doing so.

Monat is a multi-level marketing scumbucket scheme; which exists to eat the houses of the easily led but first, it will fill their garages with rather average bottles of goop. 

Surely if the products were good enough in the first place, then the company would retail them themselves like any other company? No. The sad truth that Monat preys upon is that the product is not their relatively average bottled goop but rather, the product that they are in the business of trading, is the trust and goodwill of their participants. Just like any good ponzi scheme, the product is their marks and it appears that the naive trust of ordinary people, is a market which will eventually glut but not before they've ripped the wallets of their marks for everything they could get.