Horse 3354 - Eleventhly, Peter Dutton's Nuclear Energy Plan Is Stupid

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-20/nuclear-dutton-coalition-unanswered-questions-beak-rules/104000664

Yet when Dutton and his colleagues stood up before the media yesterday, they outlined a policy with many questions unanswered — including, most crucially, the actual cost of their nuclear rollout. The Coalition says it will reveal the cost down the track. But to leave unanswered such a crucial detail when the entire debate is centred around the cost of energy leaves the policy vulnerable and impossible to critically assess.

- Patricia Karvelas, ABC News, 20th Jun 2024

When an 18 year old schoolboy became the face of a push for nuclear power in Australia, my immediate suspicion was that there was something suspiciously suspicious about this. When Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton, made an announcement that it will be Liberal Party policy to have seven nuclear reactors in Australia by 2035, my immediate suspicion was that not only there was something suspiciously suspicious about this but that his benefactors like Gina Rinehart must probably own a uranium mine. When the Minerals Council of Australia also came out in favour of have seven nuclear reactors in Australia by 2035, my immediate suspicion was immediately quashed because I know know that there is nothing suspicious about this and that this is just pure raw naked business speaking.

However, the entirety of the 'debate' being pushed by the Liberal Party and their handlers at Sky News, is almost entirely a disinformation campaign which runs on nonsenseleum. Nonsenseleum is apparently a renewable resource as Sky News seems to be able to mine virtually limitless quantities of the stuff.

Therefore, in true Socratic fashion, let us ask: 'What is Nuclear?'

In the most basic terms, the world has not progressed much beyond the steam age. A steam engine works by setting a thing on fire, usually rocks, and then using that fire to boil water to turn it into steam, which we then ask to do work. A coal fired power station works by setting a thing on fire, which are rocks called coal, and then using that fire to boil water to turn it into steam, which we then ask to do work by spinning turbines which we can then use to make electric. A nuclear power station works by having spicy rocks which are always on fire, which are radioactive rocks called uranium and plutonium, and then using that nuclear fire to boil water to turn it into steam, which we then ask to do work by spinning turbines which we can then use to make electric. 

However, as fun as nuclear power is, there are a lot of things that the nuff-nuffs in the Liberal Party have either missed or are deliberately not telling you.

Firstly, despite what the Minerals Council of Australia wants to tell you, nuclear power is NOT renewable. Just like anything else which is in the ground, there is only a limited amount of stuff which is readily accessible. The spicy rocks in a nuclear reactor come from various uranium oxides; which are actually a finite resource. They will run out at some point.

Secondly, as steam engines, coal power stations, and nuclear power stations, are all basically kettles with spinny things attached; which we then use to make electric or do work with, then they need water to put in the kettle. The problem is that nuclear power stations need a lot of water. Therefore nuclear power stations must be located near large bodies of water. This poses a problem. Perhaps someone at the Liberal Party, maybe even cosplay cowboy Senator Matt Canavan could tell the city boys, Australia is an arid country. This means that water resources are limited. I know that if you are Barnaby Joyce that you can sell 80 Megalitres of water for a cheeseburger and a box of goon, but for everyone else who lives in the country, the fact that we do not have lots of water everywhere in Australia is a very real reality which makes itself known to be a very real reality, quite a lot of the time.

Thirdly, although there are such things as molten salt reactors which will sort of self-shutdown when they stop being molten, salty sea water is not generally compatible with nuclear reactors. The Fukushima Nuclear Reactor which went into meltdown and then shutdown, shut down because all the salty sea water from the sea got in there. That's really handy if you want to stop a nuclear reactor from reacting and stop making electric but most of the time, you do want it reacting and making electric. That means putting a nuclear in Australia not near the sea; which is easy because Australia is big but bad because Australia doesn't have other water where there is no sea.

Fourthly, the thing about building nuclear reactors is that they are very expensive to build. This is not necessarily a problem if you are just starting out building a whole country because you have just been bombed to the nines in a great world war (or bonus round in a second world war), but if you are not, then being expensive is bad. It is worse if you are a country starting from scratch. Not many people have that kind of money and private investors are unlikely to stump up the capital. This means that generally speaking, nuclear power plants rely heavily on government subsidies; which is bad if you are the Liberal Party and you have just spent 80 years trying to convince everyone that government shouldn't own anything ever, because communism will eat your babies and turn the white people into mutants or something.

Fifthly and speaking of turning babies into mutants or something, where do you put the spicy rocks once you are finished with them? The spicy rocks in a nuclear power station do not stay that particular kind of special spiciness forever and need to be put into a bin. We do not currently have a good enough bin for  the storage of radioactive waste. Australia does currently produces low-level waste when it makes nuclear medicines (one of the ironies being that you can cure some radiation with other different radiation) but there's not a lot of the stuff. Australia's only real nuclear medicine nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, currently does store nuclear waste at its own facility but as with every temporary measure, every temporary measure is always effectively permanent until a more permanent facility is completed. 

Sixthly, and related to fourthly, if private capital is not capable of stumping up the cash to build seven nuclear power stations, then government capital must be used. This is fine if they were to remain in government hands but given that the only Liberal Party policy which has been permanent is to sell every single thing in government hands that they possibly can to their criminal friends, then we must assume that the seven nuclear power stations including the ability to generate nuclear weapons absolutely will end up in private hands at some point. Why should we trust the character of people whom we do not yet know? 

Seventhly, where exactly would Australia store nuclear waste from 6 or 7 reactors? It's bad enough trying to convince the NIMBYs to put houses for people, from whom they might accidentally catch poverty from, in their backyard. Who wants nuclear waste from 6 or 7 nuclear reactors in their backyard? No-one.

Eighthly, although the spicy rocks do not stay that particular kind of special spiciness forever and need to be put into a bin, they still remain dangerous to human health for thousands of years. Australia can not just bury those spicy rocks in the ground because of a thing called the Great Artesian Basin. It is Great, which means that it is big. It is Artesian, which means that there is water under the ground from which most of the people not on the edge of Australia get their water from. It is a basin, which means that it is a big thing of water. Burying those spicy rocks under the ground in Australia, means that we would be poisoning the water supply for a very long time. When I poison the water supply; now everybody dead, then oops.

Ninthly, although the spicy rocks do not go boom and send spiciness everywhere most of the time, most of the time is still not all of the time. Events like Three Mile Island, or Chernobyl, or Fukushima, do not need to happen very often for the consequences to have very very long tails. If events like the disaster at Bhopal didn't involve spicy rocks and still are having consequences 40 years later, then a disaster which does involve spicy rocks will last longer. Also related is the fact that there are nefarious and nasty people in the world, who might want to make your spicy rocks go boom and send spiciness everywhere. I do not know what a directed terrorist attack on a nuclear power station would look like but I do know that you can't hide or move one very quickly. 

Tenthly, as it stands nuclear power stations supply about 11% of the world’s electric. Given that we are running out of other fossil fuel sources, that will put demands on Australia's uranium resources very quickly; an as nuclear energy is nominally about can be up to six times more expensive than renewable energy sources, this seems like the timeframe of 2035 is in fact too late to make any kind of discernable difference to get ahead of the future building costs.

Eleventhly, although the Liberal Party doesn't accept that climate change is a thing, insurance companies already think that current Liberal Party policy is complete junk. I tend to believe insurance companies who have a vested interest in spinning a profit due to contingent risks, than cosplay cowboys who can only see as far as the 2025 election. The awful truth is that due to the increasing impact of climate change which is in fact happening now, this means that rapid transition is needed. Even if we accept the Liberal Party's timeline, this means that the seven nuclear power stations are due to be completed in about 11 years' time. Development of renewable energy sources is happening now. The reason why the Liberal Party doesn't like renewable energy goes all the way back to the question at the beginning of this piece "does Gina own a uranium mine?" If the answer is "yes", which it is, then any and all sensible renewable energy policy must be destroyed immediately and forever.

As jack of no trade and master of no trade, and just an accountant which means that I have applied OCD to tell you what is wrong with your stupid proposal, when I can write a piece with the word 'eleventhly' in it,  then it is really really really really... stupid. Don't let an 18 year old be the spokesperson for your campaign because you look like a dill. Don't let Peter Dutton be the spokesperson for your campaign because you look like a dill. Look, just don't do it. It's dangerous. Stay Safe. 

Horse 3353 - What Really Happened With "What Really Happened In Wuhan"?

A book review.

aka

I read this garbage so that you don't have to.

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I finally got around to reading Sharri Markson's 2021 book "What Really Happened In Wuhan: A Virus Like No Other, Countless Infections, Millions of Deaths"; and I have to say, I just don't get the joke here. This book, part-fantasy, part-thriller, part comedy routine, is the kind of book which wants to live at the centre of a conspiracy theory but is unable to prosecute the case at all.

The book which styles itself as some kind of expose, reads more like a penny-dreadful thriller novel, of the sort which would have been serialised in The Strand magazine in the1890s alongside Sherlock Holmes. Markson's book is not as well put together as a a Sherlock Holmes novel. Holmes used logic and deduction to try and establish what happened. Markson's book is more like Conan-Doyle's other work Commander Challenger, as it uses what amounts to magic, crystals, and half-baked spiritualism to try and establish what Markson thinks happened. Unfortunately, the story makes no sense and her logic is non-existent.

The basic premise is that in the WIV facility which is a few kilometres from the Wuhan markets, where the first big cluster of virus infections was discovered, a staffer became accidentally infected carried the virus outside. That by itself might have been plausible, except she then claims that the WIV facility was actually a bioweapons facility to engineer new weapons. That is a very bold claim; which as the book continues, writes cheques that it simply can not cash. The problem with this as a theory is that due to the nature of a virus being so small and hard to trace, the forensic ability to do so is actually impossible and any evidence is circumstantial at best.

The book starts off by claiming that Trump adviser Mike Pompeo had "enormous evidence" that there was a deliberate leak. Mike Pomepo who was then US Secretary of State commissioned Miles Yu at the Washington Times to conduct an investigation to see of there was a possibility of a leak from the WIV. Miles Yu's report actually found "no direct, smoking-gun evidence" and at best there was evidence which was circumstantial which suggested that there was a "possible leak". This is a far cry from "enormous evidence".

The book then basically goes into full-on conspiracy mode; citing that because President Trump went public and that Prime Minister Scott Morrison backed him up, then there must have been good evidence within the Five Eyes International Security Network. The problem with this is that at the time, Australian security organisations such as ASIS and ASIO, saw the Yu Report as insubstantial; and that this was a similar case to trying to find Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction; which also did not exist.

Markson then claims that the reason why the lab leak theory did not gain traction in various scientific journals, was that editors of scientific journals were toeing the company line and that they did not want to be seen as racist. Furthermore, the World Health Organization now painted as super-villain, was compromised by cooperating with China during the outbreak. Ms Markson then tries to cite the fact that because three-quarters of the scientists who she tried to line up interviews refused to speak to her, then they must also be in on the cover up. Never mind the fact that by this stage, her newspaper was already publishing articles which were based on no evidence at all.

There are reports intelligence sources, which Ms Markson will not name, who claimed that in October of 2019 which was before Patient Zero was discovered in Wuhan, that the mobile phone network was shut down and that roads in and out of the city were closed. This is of course unverifiable and her source is not named; which suggests to me that she might have made this whole story up.

Ms Markson cites a statement by the Chinese Delegation to the UN Convention On Biological And Toxin Weapons which if you follow through the citation and the links therein, the statement itself appears to date from 2011. Clearly she hadn't actually read the paper that she cited because in context, this was China condemning the Syrian Government which was in the middle of fighting a civil war, and a warning to nations like Iran that China would not tolerate the supply of Biological weapons to either side in that civil war. To then make a connection that China was working on bioweapons at Wuhan eight years later, is an extremely long bow to be drawing. Her then suggestion that there is a risk of China inventing weapons with specific race-based capability of infection, is not only idiotic but borderline racist. 

Here's the problem with the book. Just because you have politicians who make accusations of a thing, is not evidence of a thing. Scientists who do not want to speak to you, are not evidence of a cover up, but more likely to be because you have a reputation as a bad journalist. Statements from governments which exist years before a thing, which are vaguely about the same subject as the thing, are not evidence that they were doing a thing. The book is utterly replete with this kind of nonsense.

Quite frankly this book is a far cry from the kind of journalism which won Ms Markson two Walkley Awards. In the olden days when The West Australian and Fairfax newspapers still bothered to do quality journalism and hired editors and sub-editors, this would not have been approved for publication. As a piece of long form journalism, it just doesn't stand up. As a thriller/fantasy/crime novel, it doesn't really make the proper connections in logic to prove that the villain did it. As a News Corp. publication, it's fine. This is in a very long tradition going back to when Sir Keith ran the Melbourne Herald, of making up the story and then hoping that nobody notices. This book is written for the kinds of audiences who probably though that Bat-Boy was real and/or who got their daily news from Mx when that was still in print.

The front cover of the book should really have a question mark on it. "What Really Happened In Wuhan: et cetera" should read "What Really Happened In Wuhan?" and the answer, even after reading this book is "we just don't know". Certainly this book tries to preach to you what it thinks that the answer is, but it should be treated as the actual artifact that it is; which is the inane and insane ramblings of someone who was stuck in their house during lockdown and had hours and hours of time to fill. 

As for my rating of this book? I give it: *****

They are not stars. They are asterisks for everything wrong with this book and it's asterisks all the way down.

Horse 3352 - Will Nigel Farage Do Anything As An MP?

Betteridge's Law Of Headlines states that any newspaper headline which exists in the form of a question, can always be answered with 'no'.

Now then...

Avalanches about - business continues below.

When Nigel Farage decided to launch Reform UK's manifesto on a rundown council estate in Merthyr Tydfil this week, he did so knowing that neither the Tories, nor Labour, nor the Lib Dems, nor the Greens, were ever going to visit places like this. Launching Reform UK's manifesto in Merthyr Tydfil is purely about what marketing people from the 1980s would have called the 'optics' of the event. This was purely about making Nigel Farage appear to be the political messiah for places like this, and painting him as the hero who will give voice to the voiceless.

Optics is all this needs to be. The truth is that as soon as he's gone, that's the end of it. Farage has no intention of ever giving people like this a voice. Even when it comes to Reform UK, the political 'party' which Farage currently wears the tie for, Farage has no intent there either. Farage exists almost purely as an actor on a political stage, spouting whatever lines are necessary to fulfil the current role he is in. As we found out well before Brexit, there is zero substance to the man. Quite literally everything and anything that he says is as hollow and as temporary as an easter egg.

Reform UK is therefore quite an apt party for this political charlatan to be spruiking lines for. It is as equally as vapid and hollow as Farage. Its political manifesto, if it can be called that, is also equally as devoid of substance as its celebrity thespian. The thing about political manifestos is that they usually contain a list of policies and promises that the party will achieve if it gets to government. Reform UK will not get into government. Reform UK has no intention of honouring any of its promises and nor does it need to.

What Reform actually offers the people of Britain, is a set of excuses to blame anyone other than white people for their predicament; which is exactly the kind of thing that a small, very racist, portion of the population likes: Decimate the civil service. End the BBC, teach real 'history' so that children can learn that black people were every bit as cruel to white people as white people were to them, teach children that slavery was justified because they were doing it to each other, tax cuts for everyone, stop the boats; that kind of thing. The pamphlet itself actually contains less information than an average pizza parlour pamphlet.

Nothing that Reform UK says either needs to be subtle, plausible, sensible, or even doable. That is not Reform UK's job. Nor is the point of Reform UK do act as a protest vote either because a protest vote would suggest that the people who vote for them want to register displeasure at something and want positive change. A vote for Reform UK is not even about that. Really the only reason that it exists, is as a conduit for people’s rage. Reform UK is theatre dressed in the clothes of politics, with no actual intent of playing anything other than a pantomime clown.

This is where Farage excels. Farage is a posh boy who is playing the act of being rough. Farage likes to play in the clothes of what he thinks that normal people look like, despite the fact that when it actually comes to normal people, he thinks that they are disgusting. He likes to dress up with pint in hand and maybe even a cigar because that is the storybook version of what rich people think poor people are. In reality, Farage is as establishment and old money as you can get.

Even when it came to his most prized costume, pretending to be as British as John Bull, that costume came off as soon as possible. When it came to the actual implementation of Brexit, Farage applied for and got a German passport within 30 days of the legislation being passed. As the instigator who pushed the Conservative Right to make this policy centre stage during the 2015 General Election in which David Cameron was trying to hold together a Conservative Party which was fracturing, Farage used the opportunity to get free publicity knowing full well that he would never be subject to any of the consequences. As an MEP for Europe, he was on the gravy train right in the middle of Brussels, and even then he knew that his actions were of zero consequence to him.

The truth is that I have no idea if Nigel Farage believes anything that he says. Mind you, I do not think that he needs to believe anything that he says either. His current election run for the seat of Clacton is likely based on someone running some numbers and deciding that he could pick off the Conservative candidate and win sufficient number of votes to beat the Labour candidate. Owing to the fact that the United Kingdom uses a most votes wins system to decide who gets sent to the House of Commons, the actual amount of work that any potential MP needs to do to win most of the 649 seats is minimal. Farage as celebrity clown, merely has to rely on his name to achieve enough brand recognition to get enough old racist duffers to go out on a Thursday and put their cross in a box.

I suspect that the people of Clacton will soon discover that a vote for Nigel Farage is a vote for self-disenfranchisement. He will never deign to speak for any of the issues of the people of Clacton. That of course assumes that he would turn up in the House of Commons very much at all. I suspect that as an MP who would be subject to the rules of the House, being told to sit down and be quiet after being a disruptive schoolboy, probably no more than twice, will mean that he can claim that his right to free speech is being curtailed and thus he wins more free publicity. I think that Farage will end up being like Sir Isaac Newton, whose only recorded words in the House of Commons were to request that someone close a window.

Farage is the same kind of politician as his friend Donald Trump; who is equally devoid of substance. I genuinely think that Trump had no plans beyond 20th January 2017 and that the only reason that he ran/is running for President is that he likes being at the centre of the theatre. Nigel Farage also likes being at the centre of the theatre and when tested to see if he would join the Conservative Party he consistently says 'no', which indicates to me that he is not concerned with the actual machinations of parliament.

Perhaps this is his saving grace. One of the pitfalls about voting for clowns is that eventually they will laugh us all to hell. Farage is certainly a clown who likes to caper in the sawdust ring of politics but the fact that he is content to play the fool who stands aside from the people whom he wants to claim as his pantomime villains, means that he will never be allowed near the levers of power. Perhaps one day he might be sent to the House of Lords for reasons that make less than zero sense to me but the best that that future party will be able to hope for is that they have appointed Lord Belch to a comfy bench for naptime. 

Horse 3351 - Supercars Chooses To Shrink And That's Why SVG Left

The rise of Shane Van Gisbergen to NASCAR second tier Xfinity Series success has come as no surprise to anyone in Australia or New Zealand. His 14 year rise through Supercars was such that when Triple Eight Engineering needed a replacement for the aging Craig Lowdnes, he was an obvious and amazing fit. What followed was a multi-year battle between him and Scott MacLaughlin at Dick Johnson Racing and when MacLaughlin left to join Roger Penske's Indycar team, Shane was more or less left at the top of the hill in Australian motorsport. He won three Championships and three Bathurst 1000's which by my crude index system, puts him in the top ten of all touring car drivers in Australian motorsport history.

But the fact that he left to go and race in a NASCAR street race (which he won) and then liked that so much that he decided to quit the Supercars series in favour of his American dreams in NASCAR, serves to highlight that Australian motorsport is kind of broken and that Supercars in particular is also broken.

Let me explain the motorsport landscape in Australia. The top tier of Australian motorsport is unassailably Supercars. There are then second level series such as Super 2/3, TransAm, and TCR, and there is a pretense that there is a pathway system in Australia but everyone knows that the pathway is deliberately designed to be inherently broken, that the Supercars series is a closed shop, and that there really is no opportunity for any new players unless they buy one of the existing franchises. Note that I have not mentioned Formula cars here. Any driver who wants to seriously go Formula racing, must leave Australia and do Formula 4 or Formula 3 in England. That's it. Australia is simply a waste of time in that regard.

The actual Supercars themselves, are the result of an evolutionary dead-end, which has left them trying to chase some kind of nostalgia for a world which no longer exists, to attract fans that they refuse to cultivate, with cars that bear no relation to anything that anyone can buy; based upon the remnants of cars which no longer exist. What a Supercar actually is, is a slightly worse GT3, which is made to a set of bespoke regulations; which ensure that no other manufacturer will want to join.

Having run out of 5L V8 engines which were the backbone of Australian motorsport for half a century, the series then turned its attention to GM and Ford in the United States. Rather than buy in the 360cid engines which are ubiquitous in stock car racing in America, Supercars let Ford run its Coyote V8 and GM run an existing 350 Chev derivative and the result has been nothing short of boring. Despite half-hearted attempts to equalise the Mustang and the Camaro, the differences between the engines are so great and the differences between the shape to the rear ends of the two cars are such, that the Mustang basically stands no chance of winning at any high-speed circuit whatsoever. 

Not only does the Supercars series have cars with advantages that are baked in and will not be resolved until Gen-4 (if that ever happens) because of the sunk cost fallacy, the management and funding model of the series is equally broken and myopic. Supercars by virtue of being the inheritor of what once was the Australian Touring Car Championship, now commands the lion's share of sponsorship dollars in Australia like never before. It would say that it has a symbiotic relationship with television royalties and even pundits in the industry will tell us time and time again that the only way to pay for all of this, is to have subscribers pay for it on Pay-TV as the old free-to-air model for television generally has broken down across the board.

While there might be quite a lot of truth in there, mixed in with the batch of dough is the hubris of Supercars management, and the fact that unlike Formula One, or the English Premier League, or Cricket, there is not a whole world of willing subscribers from whom you can extract subscription payments from. Supercars is after all only a domestic touring car/GT championship and its prime audience comes from Australia, with some residuals in New Zealand and maybe 1% in the rest of the world.

Supercars Management have basically tried to stand on the throat of motorsport fans in Australia and if it isn't subscription payments for Pay-TV, it is ticket prices that have increased massively in relation to the rate of inflation. Although they might claim that this is because they want to offer a better experience, the truth is that at many circuits around Australia, camping numbers have been restricted and the so-called improved experience involves exactly the same grandstands that were put up more than 30 years ago.

The net result of all of this, is that we now have a highly professional series, which together runs no more than about 27 cars at the very biggest race series, with an insensible pathway into the series unless they are already connected with an existing team, no real hope that any new manufacturer will want to play, and very little opportunity for the rest of the world to sent their best drivers to com play any more. The other net result is that the drivers in the series, are being pulled every harder to the bright lights of NASCAR, where they run cars which are semi-broadly similar and where their skills are transferrable.

The truth is that if you are an international motor car company, there's no reason to even look at Australian motorsport. If you are a foreign GT3 team, you have the Bathurst 12 Hours to try and conquer; which means that you can ignore Supercars. If you are an international driver, the Bathurst 12 Hours with 3 drivers per car, offers ample opportunity to come and play; which also means that you can ignore Supercars.

In a sensible world, Supercars, Super 2 and Super 3, would all just admit that the whole premise of what used to be Supercars, died in 2016 with the end of the Falcon. Nobody takes a car off the production line to go front line motor racing in Australia. TransAm with its way cheaper cars, could have and should have become the standard. They should have all come to a sensible agreement that while 27 cars for a top-level series is nice, the corwn jewels of Australian motorsport have always been endurance racing which have included Sandown and Bathurst. Those events work well when they are very very very big. 27 cars is a joke. 56 cars is nice. The bigness of an event means that you actually do attract overseas drivers, give space for up-and-comers to display their wares, and give little teams at least a chance to play with the big boys.

In deliberately choosing a bespoke car which is so fragile that they can't go banging into each other, in choosing to close the shop so that very few people are allowed to play, and in choosing to extract every single dollar out of fans to the point where casual fans have basically been excluded, everything that made Supercars what is was is being eroded. That's fine, but it does not inspire the next generation nor grow the series.

Horse 3350 - Vault-Tec and Bottle Caps: Economic Nonsenses

Probably by now you will have had time to see Fallout on Amazon Prime and will have least had some time to absorb the submerged lore of the series. If not... aw well.

The short summary of the Fallout universe is that a company called Vault-Tec sold a series of bunker spaces, that people could retreat to in the event of a nuclear war. What they did not tell people though, is that in reality the various vaults of which there were more than a hundred scattered around the United States, were actually in reality a series of designed social experiments to keep various kinds of people in confined spaces, to see what would happen in preparation for interstellar travel.

Of course the problem is that it is doubtful whether any interstellar expeditions were ever going to happen; so to keep the business profitable, there had to be the perpetual threat that a nuclear war would take place. 

The lore across various video games and even the television series is so unreliable and tortured at this point, that the only really consistent thing is that either there was a nuclear war between China and the United States which actually did kill millions upon millions of people and the Vaults actually proved to be useful; or there was never a nuclear war and Vault-Tec themselves dropped a series of nuclear devices to ensure that the usefulness and the utility of the narrative that they had told everyone was justified.

Say what you like about the aesthetics of the series and about the likelihood of the world being diverted into some kind of perpetual 1960s dieselspacepunk future, it just seems to me that the whole business model of Vault-Tec and therefore the premise of the entire Fallout franchise itself, is nonsensical.

In World War II, which was the first time that mechanised warfare properly reached the skies, the level of cover that people has as the bombs began to fall was minimal. During the blitz on London, or bomber raids on Dresden and Berlin, or aerial bombardment of Singapore, or the firestorming of Kyoto, Kawasaki and Tokyo, people really had nowhere to hide except for the few Civil Defence Shelters which had been hastily dug, of places like the Underground, U-Bahn, of in sheds, barns, and churches that were of little strategic value to bomb. Although having said that, the indiscriminate bombing of Pottery Factories in Dresden, or even incendiary devices on Tokyo, were of little strategic value anyway but morality is often functionally non-existent in times of war.

After World War II when it became apparent that nuclear devices were a viable option after the United States dropped two of them (and likely would dropped four more by the end of 1945 had the war gone on), it also became apparent that existing civil defence against nuclear devices were useless. Central Hiroshima was levelled and flattened to no more than two feet thick, after the flash of a nuclear fire and shockwave thereafter, reduced everything to elements and in some cases people were vapourised to the point where the only thing that they left behind were shadows. No existing civil defence shelters could stand up to that.

Even instructions on how people could make their own civil defence shelters were woefully inadequate. Anderson shelters from World War II would likely be flattened, but given that at very least, the kind of thing that one would need to build in order to even stand up against the flash of nuclear fire would at the very least be made of steel, it is not the kind of thing that can or would be built by individuals. From that standpoint, the idea that Vault-Tec should target high net-worth individuals is in principle sensible but here's the rub: it is a bad business model.

Presumably the way that Vault-Tec would derive revenue, is by selling a subscription service to a place within a Vault, as an insurance hedge against a nuclear war from happening. That's fine but as soon as such a nuclear war starts happening, the revenue stream will be cut off. In order to maintain the revenue stream, whilst there does need to be a contingent risk, that is a very real and present threat of the worst happening, the idea that that risk should be no longer contingent but realised, is bad. 

The thing about other kinds of insurance policies, of which public health is also an insurance question, is that the same experiment can and does get performed over and over and over again. Billy Brown from Banana Town in his JMC Trucko XLT might not actually wipe himself out in a motor accident, but another 26 year old in a similar truck might do. Dorothy Dix from West Apple will eventually die of one of a dozen things that might go wrong with her, but she is equally one of several hundred thousand old ladies in similar circumstances. While Reg Sledge from Galah Heights, who is a roofer and framer, might not fall off the roof of a house that it being built, there are many other tradies who are just like him. In the aggregate, we can add all of these risks together, work out what the chance of an individual thing happening is; then adjust insurance premiums accordingly. Rememeber, an insurance premium is essentially a bet against the house where the person making the gamble does not want to win and the house has nigh on perfect information to hold up their end of the bet.

This is why Vault-Tec's business model and therefore the premise of the entire Fallout franchise itself, is nonsensical. At the core of the series, is an insurance question which the subscribers desperately hope and pray will never happen, and which Vault-Tec has no interest in happened for if it does, the goose that lays golden eggs will die.

The other side of the lore is also nonsensical. If Vault-Tec leases out the vaults for a series of social experiments, presumably in the advancement of some hitherto imagined interstellar space program, then that's fine I suppose except for the fact that there is no evidence anywhere that any kind of space program exists. Now I do not have a problem with the idea of an unreliable narrator but the Fallout series just doesn't do a particularly good job of convincing the player/watcher that this is the case. The whole franchise in every aspect, whether it is due to the soundtrack, or that making evil choices will actively hurt your game, or even the way that the protagonist Lucy in the TV series is portrayed as naïve, leads the player/watcher to a place of sincerity. 

There's what is just so nonsensical about Fallout. Sincerity as narrative unfolding device is excellent if you then want to go for the massive plot twist and the big reveal. The problem is that Vault-Tec as villain, which is in control of the environment under which the narrative is being told, can not both be innocent and evil, can not both be duplicitous and sincere; internally the logic can not be true. Perhaps which is worst of all, is that Vault-Tec has no commercial reason to bring down itself. So while the games and the TV series might be fun, the business logic at their centre, is total nonsense.

Addenda:

Fallout's currency across most games is Nuka-Cola bottle caps. If you are going to use a readily available token in a post-apocalyptic world, then bottle caps from a self-confessed high sugar soft drink is as good as anything else I suppose. The question which I was asked to calculate is what the exchange rate of one Nuka-Cola bottle cap to the US Dollar is. This is also a nonsensical exercise.

If you want to work out the effective exchange rate, then you need to look at what the effective buying power of various currencies are. Pokemon is in fact an excellent case study for determining effective exchange rates because if you look at the price of Poke Balls, various potions, gums, gems, items, hotel stays, park entrance fees, et cetera, then prices in game remain remarkably stable across three decades. The going rate of 150P for a Poke Ball is pretty common in all areas; within all games. There is likely a deliberate effort on the part of Pokemon video game designers, to peg prices at 1₽ = 10¥ and/or 1₽ = $0.10

Fallout has no such price stability. Various medical packs and anti-radiation packs, price that you pay for passage to somewhere else, hotel stays for recovery, et cetera, have no sensible basis for prices. Furthermore, even though the games are open world, the reason why you would even need money at all at times is not obvious and prices are pretty arbitrary. 

Yet strangely that somehow feels appropriate. In a post-apocalyptic world, the very meaning of money comes into sharp focus. Money is a token system which only derives value from the level of acceptance that people are prepared to place in it. When there is no state with the ability to claim their tokens back through taxation, then the value of the token must by inference be arbitrary.

A common feature among early American tokens before the issue of the Currency Act 1792, is that they sometimes were overtly self-aware of this fact. "Value Me As You Will - I Am Good Copper" is a slogan that appears on quite a number of New England tokens, for tokens that were nominally a penny? a cent? who knew? Nobody did.

The best way to describe the value of one Nuka-Cola bottle cap in Fallout is: 1N = 1N

Horse 3349 - Kakosynaisthima - Element VIII - Anger

I have heard it said that Anger is not actually an emotion but a response to what has happened. I reject this notion entirely as every emotion including anger can be played out some kind of response to what has happened; if this is true, then does this mean that all emotions are merely responses to what has happened? Of course not. It must therefore be a stupid notion. By way of demonstration, this paragraph is proof of the fact that rather than being a response, I have chosen to be angry at the statement and made a value judgement about it. Can you actually have a response to something which has not happened? 

Whilst it is true that emotions can be a response, the beast which shouts "I" at the heart of the kosmos in an effort to bring the "yummy, yummy, yummy" closer and push the "not yummy" further away, has a massive amount of agency in the decision process to determine what those responses are. Furthermore, an emotion as a materiel of the human heart can be generated before an event has happened. Abstract notions of love and hate can be the result of circumstance but they can also be be the result of active decision. To that end, Anger operates like any other emotion and can very much be the result of an election. One can very much choose to be angry.

If fear is the mind killer and the anesthetic of bravery, because it quietens and deadens someone into inaction then anger is a kind of cardinal opposite. Anger is one of the twin flames which burns inside the human heart, which fires up a person into action; with the other being the flame of hope. Of themselves, flames are neither good nor bad, because the true measure of goodness or badness is fitness of products which result. 

The broadest telos of anger is that its job is to turn wants and desires, needs and wishes, into action which occasions work. Power is the ability to do work and anger as a deliberate choice, is a consequence of the exercise of some kind of power. Of all the elements of Kakosynaisthima, Anger appears to be the most active. Whereas boredom, pain, loneliness, poverty, longing, frustration and even fear all happen within an individual and are mostly confined within that individual, the results of anger are turned outward and the effects also tend to happen to other people.  Just like fire of itself is neither good nor bad, neither is anger. Just like fire can keep someone warm, do work by boiling water make steam trains work or spin electricity generators, or can burn a house down, anger has the power to do work and whether or not that work is useful, useless, constructive or destructive, is a matter of where that work is being directed. Also just like fire, anger tends to burn from the fuel of the other elements. 

Anger which burns from the fuel of boredom, tends to refine it into diligence. Boredom and its close relative ennui, tend to stand in the face of things that need to be done, and then not do it. Again the question of what kind of work comes into play, as an angry kind of boredom can result in random vandalism. The stereotypical bored and angry child or teenager who engages in graffiti, or minor property damage, or passive loitering with no purpose, are the most visible signs of an outworking of anger from boredom. Refined properly though and that anger invents legitimate projects, such as curiosity or the creation and invention of some arts. 

Anger which burns from the fuel of pain, tends to refine it into revenge. When pain causes injury, anger directed to eject the cause of that pain is the natural result. The problem here is that directing anger is not necessarily something which people are skilled at. The beast which shouts "I" at the heart of the kosmos in an effort to push the "not yummy" further away, thinks itself the hero of its own story. In burning the fuel laid down by pain, the beast often discards and burns any notion that what is doing is either just or unjust. When pain demands a salve to sooth it but the beast is either unaware or actively does not care about the consequences because it has convinced itself that it is righteous by its own standards, then the flame of anger is only likely to create more pain and continue to fuel the fire. It is really only when the object causing the pain has been removed that someone can move on.

Anger which burns from the fuel of loneliness, has no obvious ends by which the loneliness ends. One can attempt to fill the void by finding community and commonwealth other people, but if anger is the manufactured response then the more likely outcome is by trying to fill the void by filling with the the unlimited lusts and wants that the heart generates. Generally speaking, lusts and wants that the heart generates as demand drivers fall into an ungluttable market for which there is no end. What do we find at the centre of someone who has tried to satisfy every desire by all means necessary? We generally find someone who has discovered that they like everyone else are uniquely alone in the kosmos.

Anger which burns from the fuel of poverty, is met with only two genuine ends. Either the person works to change their circumstances or joins a collectively to collectively change the kosmos, or the the person works to change their circumstances by stealing from others; or the person learns to accept their conditions as being independent from their value as a person. Poverty exists as a direct result of the fact that the marketplace for the control of money and power always results in an exactly square ledger. All of the great pushes for democracy, the expansion of the franchise, the winning of civil rights, and the blessings of a welfare state which actually apportions the rewards of the economy to a greater number of people than merely a select few, has always been the result of anger which has resulted in the collective change the kosmos. Anger because we wish to secure some kind of basic dignity or equality in some way, is more often than not, justified. 

Anger which burns from the fuel of longing, can refine it into envy. Envy as the refined product takes the basic desire to fulfil various needs and wants, and boils it beyond the point of frenzy. At the most extreme point, it turns what once was longing into envy and then turns the flame outwards to scorch others and take the objects of those needs and wants, maybe by any means necessary. Envy and its driver of covetousness, is simply expressed as the statement that if you have something that I want, then I will either take what you have or I will invent designs so that you can not have it. On the other hand Anger which burns from the fuel of longing, can refine it into the building of commonwealth and community. 

Anger which burns from the fuel of frustration, is possibly the most productive of the lot. Frustration which suggests that someone can not do something, which is then burned in the flames of anger either creates a work of success caused through directed effort, or failure which results in someone coming to the sometimes awful realisation that they have found yet another limit to their powers in the kosmos. The beast which shouts "I" at the heart of the kosmos upon burning the fuel of frustration in anger and the failing at what it wanted to do must either find the will within to try again or come face to face with the fact that a being limited in space and time and power is in fact limited in space and time and power.

Anger which burns from the fuel of fear, generally tends to have no objective attached beyond getting rid of the source of fear. Fear is the notion that a thing, circumstance, or person, has the power to harm, damage, or even kill you. Fear itself as a dumb indicator that a thing might go wrong, is not particularly a good indicator of the wisdom which someone might need to take necessary actions to deal with the thing. Anger therefore, when directed at a thing wants to get rid of the thing, when directed at a circumstance wants to get rid of the circumstance, and when directed at a person wants to get rid of the person. The danger is that Anger fulled by fear, shortens the event horizon to the point of extreme myopia such that in wanting to get rid of the power to harm, damage, or even kill them, wants to deal back similar or a greater degree of harm, damage, or even death back at them. All too often we see someone who in a perceived state of fear, burn that fear into anger, and actively try to hurt the people that were close to them; all while claiming that they were always in the right.

Anger because we have been wronged in some way, may or may not be justified. Indeed that notion itself of what is just and what flows out of that into justice is instructive. Anger which results in a just outcome, means that the flame of action has burnt through the dross and refined the situation into a proper acceptable product. Anger which serves only to burn through everything and which destroys anything which might have been good, while it might achieve perfect peace through the destruction of all components, is unlikely to produce anything of real lasting value.

Anger because we have lost some kind of advantage in some way, may or may not be justified but is more often than not, not justified. Remember, the beast which shouts "I" at the heart of the kosmos is interminably selfish and because it can see the world from not other standpoint, will invariably think that its cause is just. The problem with this is that the loss of some kind of advantage, is almost always because other people have had to fight tooth and nail for it. It must be said that one of the aims of power once secured, is to retain control of that power. Power of course is the ability to act, to force change, and to do work to bring about some desired outcome. 

Of course it must be said that if one can choose to be angry, then one can also choose not to be angry. Choosing not to be angry at something but accepting that a situation is difficult, or that other people are stupid, obnoxious, and daft, or to come to the ghastly revelation of looking at one's self in the mirror of reality and realising that we too can be stupid, obnoxious, and daft, is to realise that anger as a choice, is not necessarily productive. To reject anger as a choice, might require the manufacture and exercise of the harder virtues of patience, kindness, forgiveness, and peace making. Whether the object upon which someone's anger is fixated and which burns towards is a thing, circumstance, organisation, system, or person, then setting aside anger and choosing a different course of action might be a better thing to do. If one chooses to remain angry and yell at something or someone, then the chances of that thing ot person turning around and coming to wild agreement with you, are lower than any genuine attempt to try to reach reconciliation and restoration. The response to someone who is angry at you, is usually one of the other elements of Kakosynaisthima, such as anger, fear, frustration, or even loneliness or boredom.

Horse 3348 - The Mouse Cleans House

Apparently a directive from the very top of the House of Mouse, now that the Mouse is getting his gloved hands into Pixar proper, is one of stupid oversight and diktat to decree what kinds of films should be produced. This kind of thing smells suspiciously like the kinds of rumblings that Nine Ent Co. made towards Fairfax after the television network acquired the newspaper outlet and several years' on, if we look from man to pig and pig to man and from  man to pig again, we can no longer tell the difference.

One of the things that gave Pixar its distinguished place in the entertainment kosmos, was that as it was actually independent, it was free to pursue whatever it liked. This means that films like Toy Story were certified bangers, while other films like Cars 2 are stinkers. Freedom to fail (which sounds odd as Cars 2 made a profit anyway), is one of the reasons why Pixar is/was able to turn out interesting films. The Mouse on the other hand, is quite content to mine nostalgia for all it is worth, and keep on tapping the seam and the same formula to churn out a slightly different princess movie once every few years (which will collect a billion dollars).

The directive from The Mouse (of which there is no actual documentation) is believed to tell Pixar that it should focus on films with "clear mass appeal" with less focus on "directors' autobiographical tales" like Luca and Turning Red and that: "The studio’s movies should be less a pursuit of any director’s catharsis & instead speak to a commonality of experience".

We have a word for this. It is... WHITEWASH!

Granted that I have not seen Luca, but Turning Red is an entirely adequate film which I suppose is a kind of morality play and allegory for a teenage girl's passage through puberty. Neither of these films are likely to set the world on fire but as middle-of-the-road middling mid-rated films, they are fine. There should be a sense of adequacy in producing entirely adequate films. In principle there shouldn't be anything wrong with making functional art

The problem that the top of the House of Mouse has is that this simply isn't good enough. Rather than making a thing which is allowed to be and breathe on its own terms, The Mouse has decided that it wants to turn up the volume and only demand billion dollar blockbusters. Shoot for the moon and if you miss, you'll end up in the stars, right? No! Shoot for the moon and if you miss, you're dead. In response to the directive from the very top of the House of Mouse, it has decided that instead of nickel and diming its way with films that might have been interesting to some people, the thing that it wants is to cut any and all things that don't fit its central premise. Presumably this means that it wants to drown the market in more princess films because Frozen was absolutely massive.

It is not hard to see why The Mouse would want to do this. If it looks across the industry and sees Marvel turning out a million superhero movies which are licences to print money (for reasons that I do not understand), and it sees Illumination Pictures which appears to have created a whole niche out of building a world from gibberish spouting banana tic-tacs, and then also sees the horrendously vomitacious horrrorshow that is Velma, then the business conclusions that it comes to can only be: line go up make money; line go down do not make money. Line go down is caused by... don't say it... don't say it.. don't say it... diversity.

Oh no.

CULTURE WAR ALERT.

****  CULTURE WAR  ****  CULTURE WAR  ****  CULTURE WAR  ****

**** LENIN ALERT **** LENIN ALERT **** LENIN ALERT **** LENIN ALERT ****

Although The Mouse has made films like Moana, Mulan, The Princess And The Frog, Lilo & Stitch, Luca, Turning Red, and Encanto (most of which I have not seen), which has made use of cultural reception to tell various stories, such as Pacific Islanders, Chinese, Mexican, African-America, et cetera, The Mouse likely isn't concerned about putting different faces and voices on screen if they do not spin a profit. However you diversity wash the stories you tell, a multi-billion dollar corporation is only ultimately concerned with one thing and one thing only - profit.

However it this seems like a rant somehow in favour or against DEI, BLM, Pride, just rememeber that the only reason that multi-billion dollar corporations divwash, blackwash, rainbowash, greenwash, or patriotwash, is also in service of that same one concern - profit.

The Mouse's diktat to Pixar telling them that "The studio’s movies should be less a pursuit of any director’s catharsis & instead speak to a commonality of experience" sounds scathing but is actually far less sinister than imagined. That phrase "commonality of experience" sounds like some kind of push for general inclusion but really it should be seen for what it is; which is a naked demand for cash. The only questions that The Mouse actually cares about is: "Who Has The Most Money?" and "How Do We Get It?"

What happens if an animation house actually does try and go for a deliberate mass market appeal in the overt sense? What would happen if you hired a blockbuster director and then used the available resources such as a full orchestra and a crack team of animators? This experiment has been performed and it was called "Tiny Toon Adventures". The most noticeable feature of Tiny Toon Adventures is that in trying to appeal to the biggest mass market that it possibly could, it actually appealed to nobody because it committed the most heinous crime of all - it wasn't funny.

I should mention some more examples of this, such as Animaniacs, The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show, and latter seasons of The Simpsons. In trying to the biggest mass market that they can, they end up being derivative and just space fillers. Of course all of that is at rival animation houses; it couldn't possibly happen in the House of Mouse, could it? Possibly.

Bluey which appears on Disney+ was the result of no diktat from the Mouse. Ludo Studios were free to do whatever the heck that they wanted; and produced a very big little TV show for big people that they could watch with their kids (or that kids could watch with their parents). This is absolutely the key to producing anything of quality. Management has to back off, to let the people who they have hired make things. Those things then need to be put into the market; where the market will decide whether or not the thing is good. This also implies that those things should be allowed to fail.

This means that you can reduce literally this entire post down to a few basic components; which are in fact the only questions that The Mouse actually cares about: "Who Has The Most Money?" and "How Do We Get It?" Maybe there actually is a place for a directors' autobiographical tale, if it is compelling enough but more importantly, good. Equally the Mouse should say to someone: "This is boring; we should not make a movie about this."

And this is the whole problem with trying to explicitly make a runaway blockbuster. It's hard. If the answer isn't to try and go for a deliberate mass market appeal and it isn't trying to aim for diversity and inclusiveness, then what is it? Believe it or not, the House of Mouse already kind of has the answer within its kosmos. The answer is to try and produce something which is good.

Horse 3347 - Wynyard Platforms 7 & 8: What Might Have Been But Never Can Be

Anyone who has used Wynyard Station since 1959 will be quite familiar with the fact that the entire layout of the station is delightfully daft. Wynyard with its platforms 3 & 4 upstairs and 5 & 6 downstairs is an enigma. Platforms 1 & 2 used to exist and in fact the tunnels are still there, although partly fill up with car park but the fact that 5 & 6 are underneath 1 & 2 which are no longer there, means that the four platforms are not only offset from each other but they are on different levels with the remnants of the booking hall between them. 

The usual imagined story for Wynyard Station's daftness is that there was supposed to be not one but two railway lines heading over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and that a wee little thing called The Depression starved the NSW Treasury of monies for a while, and a second wee little thing called World War II also got in the way. By the time that Sydney completed the City Circle, plans were already afoot to tear at the fabric of the transport system by myopic tory knaves, of the sort who have continued to stall this fine city to this very today.

The two lines which would have gone over the Sydney Harbour Bridge would have been the North Shore Line which does exist and the Northern Beaches line which does not. The credit and vision of this is attributed to Dr John C Bradfield, after whom Bradfield Highway, that is the six lane roadway which passes over the Sydney Harbour Bridge is named. In many respects he is arguably the father of Sydney's railway system.

However, even Dr Bradfield's vision for the future transport of the City of Sydney did not exist in a vacuum. Indeed there were in fact previous plan's which came before him and one of those was by some almost forgotten and certainly unheralded boffin called Mr Hay. I have found precious little about Mr Hay and I have no idea who important he was within the NSW Department of Works, but evidently Hay's Scheme was reasonably well know and goes even further to explain why Wynyard has four platforms, why it originally had six platforms, and why the architecture of the station suggests that it should really have eight platforms.

Variations of the Sydney Underground system always seem to include stations at Town Hall and Wynyard Square, more or less in their current positions, as far back as 1890. They also always seem to include stations at Circular Quay with a raised viaduct, and a return loop with all kinds of alignments; similar to the current set up at St James Square and Goulburn St/Museum.

This 1912 scheme includes stations at Liverpool St and Darlinghurst; which would probably then continue to somewhere in the region of Moore Park and on to the Eastern Suburbs. In fact the current Eastern Suburbs Railway (ESR), could have also started from the two centre platforms at St James and through the stub tunnels which currently make a right hand turn into flooded bedrock.

But what this 1912 scheme makes clear is that in addition to the ESR, there should also be a Western Suburbs Railway (WSR); which would have had stations at places like Rozelle, Drummoyne, Gladesville and maybe as far afield as Ryde, Rydalmere and Parramatta. The WSR in the 1912 Hays Scheme, imagines a station underneath the GPO in a similar manner to how Martin Place exists today; before turning left and underneath the two northen lines; to possibly come out at pipehead and crossing Darling Harbour with some kind of Bridge or Tunnel.

The idea of tunnelling underwater was already a thing in London. By 1890 the Underground had already tunnelled under the Thames; so a project like tunnelling under Darling Harbour was already technically possible. A little thing called the First World War got in the way of Mr Hay's Scheme and so all of these pretty little drawings amounted to a whole lot of nothing but there are instructive as to what was to come.

This is where my theory comes in and why I think that Wynyard looks this way that it does.

1 & 2 and 3 & 4 are obviously in the style of the New York Subway; which was the symbol of looking to the future. That might sound absolutely bonkers given the eventual state of the New York Subway and that by all accounts it constantly smells like urine but this was more than a century ago and Wynyard Station is 92 years old.

What I think the plan by the time that Wynyard Station was approved was, was for 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 to be up top and 5 & 6 and 7 & 8 to be below. My suspicion is that St James would have been where the ESR would have turned off and head east via the central platforms but that Wynyard would have been a little buit more normal, with 5 & 6 being the City Circle platforms and 7 & 8 turning off and heading west for the WSR. As I imagine a lower level at a Wynyard Station which never was, it would have looked like a 1:1 copy of St James station in the dress colours of Blue and Grey which it originally wore as opposed to the Green and Cream which St James station wears.

Had Wynyard Station been completed as per what I think that the 1912 Hays Scheme and the imagined plans for what Bradfield was thinking of, then I think that it might look bit like this picture; but possibly with extra supports in the centre, or even a continuous wall. As it stands, the lower levels of Wynyard Station are only the right hand half of this picture. The left half which could have been built at the same time that the station box was built and opened in 1932, never existed. Very clearly though, it should. Otherwise, the fact that you do only have two lower level platforms with weird offset descending stairs, is dafter than a nine dollar note. 

My perpetual melancholy and now infinite sadness is that Wynyard Station by reason of being hemmed in by the Sydney Metro and what will be the Western Sydney Metro (to be labelled as M1 and M2), will never attain its full complement of 8 platforms. The Western Sydney Metro basically does the job that the 1912 WSR would have done, and the further burrowing of tunnels through the city is such that it would be impossible to thread a needle for full size Pullman railway car tunnels in that part of the bedrock. There is a feeble hope that platforms 1 & 2 will be restored to former working glory if the idea of a Northern Beaches Railway (like an L) ever takes off by 7 & 8 will only even remain the stuff of past future imaginations. 

Horse 3346 - THE PEOPLE V JOHN LE FEVRE [2024] - Judgement

THE PEOPLE V JOHN LE FEVRE [2024] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

H3346/1

We have learned of a dispute which has arisen and which rattled though the internuts until it finally made its way to this court until it found this fake internet court's attention:

https://twitter.com/JohnLeFevre/status/178492926559250034

Someone who has decided to give themselves the title of "Entrepreneur", a Mr John Le Fevre, has decided to write 40 laws for men's fashion. It might have been acceptable had they been sensible laws which genuinely address how one should put one's attire together, but instead Mr Le Fevre has not just gone off piste but has gone troppo, berko, nutso, and whacko. 

In realms such as language, fashion, literature, films, art, et cetera, as all of these things are subjective, making objective laws is ill-advised. Style guides should be descriptive rather than prescriptive, save for instances where you want there to be a unified style across the family of thigns you are producing. So when Mr Le Fevre produces 40 "laws" and this Fake Internet Court gets tagged for comment, we take notice. 

On first viewing the laws are as daft as they are bad. They are daft because they dip into the realm of shenanigannery and not very good and jovial shenanigannery either. They are bad because it isn't exactly clear who these laws should apply to, if in fact anyone. A useful axiom here is that Law is Bad Law if it is unenforceable; it is More Badder Law if it is internally contradictory and nonsensical. 

This Fake Internet Court's task therefore, is to evaluate the 40 laws in turn and see what kind of merit, if any, exists. It should go without saying that one who sits in judgement should be aware of their own failings and shortcomings before bringing someone else into judgement; so of course this Fake Internet Court readily admits that there is not a speck in our eye, not a plank in our eye, but an entire 95-gun three-deck all-wood ship-of-the-line in our eye. We not only sail the high seas of Hypocrisy, we know its waters very well. Hypocrisy, ho!

These are the facts as this court sees them:

Speaking as someone who looks at episodes of Doctor Who and Poirot not as mere television programs but as fashion options, I am not exactly the person speak about what the latest trends in fashion are. If I were to compile any laws for fashion, they would be thus:

1. Wear clothes.

2. Wear clothes that are appropriate (this also involves safety gear).

3. That's about it.

Personally I don't wear very many t-shirts because I don't particularly like them and I also I don't wear very many shorts because I don't particularly like them either. People like what they like and don't like what they don't like. Obviously don't wear a death metal t-shirt to court or church, and don't wear a top hat and a greatcoat to the beach (for the simple reason that I do not like the beach and I do not want to get sand in either my top hat or greatcoat).

So when I get tagged on a Tweet about laws for fashion, two things happen. Firstly I wonder why I should care. Secondly, I get out my pointing finger of judgement and point point point and wag wag wag because that's funny. Most of the time, wear what you like; it's fine. Thirdly, I take notes about all the various points about the laws. Fourthly, I start writing day and night like I am running out of time. Fifthly, I realise that I said that only two things would happen but only after it is too late. Oh well. 

I have nothing personally against John Le Fevre. I have no idea who John Le Fevre is. He might be a saint or a sinner, a knave or a knight; I know not. His 40 laws for fashion, which are all don'ts, give away that he lives in a world which is not populated by ordinary people and is populated by the kind of people who have a lot of money. If this is true, then as I work in the Sydney suburb of Mosman which is full of more money than even John Le Fevre lives in, then I can tell you that the very rich also mostly don't care what you wear. It is only the great middling classes who want to aspire upwards who care for things like fashion, and manners. The very rich and the very poor care not.

I shall mist John Le Fevre's 40 laws because they are as I see it, very strange indeed. 

Below is the link to his tweet and the 40 laws follow:

https://twitter.com/JohnLeFevre/status/1784929265592500345

Here are 40 things a man should never wear:

1. Flips flops unless you’re near a pool or beach.

Mr Le Fevre has never been to Australia, has he? Wearing flip-flops, or thongs, is not only acceptable and normal, it is practically part of the national dress code. Except if you want to go to a pub, where the wearing of flip-flops is generally banned because of the combination of glass and alcohol (and is therefore an OH&S issue because the pub does not want to conduct triage on people's cut feet), you should be able to wear flip-flops in the supermarket, in court, in church, in fact everywhere that isn't High Church of England and even then, Jesus himself likely wore sandals; so who does Mr Le Fevre think he is? Does he think he's better than Jesus?

2. Flamboyant pocket squares. All it says is you pay $1,200 a month for a car you can’t afford.

The people who have a pocket square already have the suit jacket. How much they pay for their car, is not even remotely connected here. Secondly, a bank or other lending institution isn't going to extend a line of credit to people if they can not afford to pay. That is a bad business risk. $1200 per month over seven years is only about $100K; which means that the person has bought a nice car but not overly nice. On top of this, a pocket square can be had for about $50 at a high end shop like Zara or Boss. This does not seem like a ridiculous extravagance.

3. Statement socks. They don’t give you personality or style.

No they do not. They also do not detract from it either. 

The best socks that I have ever had, were a pair of Adelaide Crows socks made by Sekem. They were lovely because they were so warm and I tend to have cold ankles and cold feet. I wore those socks with Doc Martens boots, as a Court Recorder on the floor of the High Court Of Australia on multiple occasions. So, Ha!

4. Cargo shorts.

I do not like the look of cargo shorts because I think that they look daft. However just because I do not like them is not enough reason for someone who does, to like them.

Having said that, Cargo shorts have a utility which normal trousers and jeans do not. I would expect that someone who likes cargo shorts also likes to do things outside; in which case the fashion statement here is one of rugged outdoorsmanship. "Bravo" and "Hurrah" to the person who likes cargo shorts. Fair play to you.

5. Turtlenecks. Circumcise that sweater.

Again, this is a matter of what people like and do not like. I think that Mr Le Fevre seems to think that as he is the self-confessed arbiter of what fashion is, that he gets to be the final judge. Of course as the self-appointed judge of the Fake Internet Court of Australia, I stand in absolute hypocrisy here. 

6. The guilt of your ancestors’ sins.

I can almost guarantee that Mr Le Fevre is likely to be a white person. I can almost guarantee that Mr Le Fevre is likely to be the kind white person who tries to excuse his veiled racism with the phrase "I was only just pointing out that..." was if he did it with any other motive than to harm people and cause offence. 

7. A pro sports jersey with another man’s name on the back of it.

S-Y-D N-E-Y,

I am Sydney 'til I die.

With a knick-knack, paddy-whack, give a dog a bone,

Mr Le Fevre, GO ON HOME!

Of all the least important things in the world, football is the most important. Precisely because it does not matter, the world inside a ball is bigger and better than grown-up things live love, taxes, wars, and politics. 

If you can not instantly recall line for line, some piece of sport's commentary, then quite frankly, you know nothing about passion, about skipped heartbeats, about watching everything all fall apart in an instant, or occasionally watching as time stands still and we get as close to glory and perfection as we possibly can.

No.

DO Put another man’s name on the back of it:

Yorke - 19

Skrtel - 37

Gerrard - 8

Dalglish - 7

Cantona - 7 

Also, DO Put another woman’s name on the back of it:

Kerr - 20

Vine - 5 

Earps - 1

Arnold - 18

Catley - 7

Ignore Mr Le Fevre's Rule No.33. Do wear your heart on your sleeve and on your back.

8. Facial hair that doesn’t look intentional.

How about no? Why? I appoint myself as the ur-example.

Even though I am a 45 year old man who is going grey disgracefully, I still have an amazing ability to look as though I was 17 years old and with my finger up my nose. Mrs R likes me to sport a little bit of fuzz so that she doesn't have to walk around with someone looking like a teenager. I do not know whether to take this as a complement or not. 

9. Jewelry (other than watches and wedding rings). The only thing more disappointing for a woman than seeing a desirable man with a wedding band on, is seeing a ring on any other finger.

Oh, so Mr Le Fevre is speaking for women now as well, is he? Mr Le Fevre appears to have some kind of personal vendetta against people having nice things. Just who does he think he is to speak not only on behalf of but for women? How does he get to appoint himself as the arbiter of what woman find desirable in a man. That's incredibly presumptive and horribly rude.

10. Backwards or flat brim baseball caps. Or any hat inside.

This is 2024. Who is wearing a cap backwards these days? Is Mr Le Fevre complaining against imagined teenagers who have time-travelled from the 1990s or something? And also, wearing a hat inside is fine. I do not know why this point of manners was invented in the first place. It is dafter than a nine dollar note.

As I write this on the train (inside), there is a lady with a Manchester United beanie, a man with an old school New York Yankees hat, a chap in a black Trilby, and I myself are sat sitting with a Cheesecutter. We are all in open defiance of this Law 10.

11. Pleated or cuffed pants.

I have to wonder what world Mr Le Fevre thinks that he lives in. Surely Pleated or cuffed pants haven't existed since the beginning of machine made trousers in the 1840s. Does Mr Le Fevre think that people have pantaloons and chaps or something? I know that we have just exited an Elizabethan Age but that was Elizabeth II not Elizabeth I.

12. Sneakers with a suit. It’s a good look for 1% of men, but you’re not David Beckham.

NO. DO IT.

Especially go for the classics like Chuck Taylor All Stars or Nike Dunk-Hi. It's cool.

13. Fashion watches - Chanel, Hermes, Gucci, and even Cartier.

My guess is that if someone has a Chanel, Hermes, Gucci, or even Cartier watch, it is because they like watches. I can't come at spending that much money on a watch when a Seiko will do the job reliably for years and years. Quite frankly a watch is one of those things which is so personal and hangs around for so long, that fashion is not exactly a concern here. 

14. Hoodies after the age of 40, unless the weather requires it.

There are two very good cases for wearing a hoodie and age has nothing to do with it.

Firstly that it is cold. My biggest problem with hoodies is that they are not warm enough. They are not thick enough; the are not fleecy enough. They look as though they should be able to give you a nice warm hug but always consistently fail to do so. Secondly, a hoodie is the universal uniform for people with ASBOs or people who want ASBOs. Hoodies tell the world they they should "go away" and "leave  me alone". 

Taken together, old people who tend to feel the cold more, have more of a physical reason to want a hoodie. Young people who want to brood in a world of angst, want everyone to go away. This the Hoodie is arguably the most democratic and universal piece of kit by strange default.

15. Double-breasted suits. The vast majority of men can’t pull it off.

The vast majority of men don't have a double-breasted suit. If you have bought one, then it is because you like the look of it. Some people like the look of having two sets of buttons. 

Here's the thing about why No.15 is daft. The statement that "The vast majority of men can’t pull it off" is an outright lie. To wit, I like wearing hats. I have been told that some people think that they can’t pull it off wearing a hat which is obviously a lie because if I can, and I am just a random person, then anyone can. If you do a thing more than about three times, people think it is normal; because it is.

I personally wouldn't wear a double-breasted suit because I like the look of a waistcoat and tie. That reverts back to the statement that people like what they like and don't like what they don't like; not because there needs to be a rule about it.

16. Any shorts longer than the knees.

Oh I wish I could find shorts longer than the knees. Unless it is very hot, I do not want air going up... to Georgia, looking for a soul to steal (BAM BAM). I live in a country where it appears that shorts are always inadequate and made all the worse by the existence of Stubbies. Shorts below the knees would be the answer to hopes and prayers for years.

17. Skinny or ripped jeans.

Ripped jeans? Skin is showing...

Where'dya think you're going, baby?

Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy.

But here's my number; so call me, maybe?

I am basically as noodly as Kermit The Frog. Finding ANY jeans that fit is already a task in itself. I wouldn't but someone else might.

18. Vineyard Vines.

What the sweet Johnny Major are you talking about? Vineyard Vines? Is that a footy team? Look, I wouldn't even tell people not to wear a Manchester United, Collingwood, or Western Sydney Wanderers shirt. Vineyard Vines? Hooray, boo? Go, Riverstone Rivers!

19. Country club logo golf shirts where you’re not a member. I don’t care if you played Pebble once, it’s a conversation-starter for losers.

Again, who does Mr Le Fevre know who does this? Is he mistaking Gant, Ralph Lauren, Polo, or Hugo Boss for something else? 

To that end statement "it’s a conversation-starter for losers", well is it? This sounds to me that someone went somewhere because they like golf. This person has a passion which was enough to drive them to go somewhere. Such a person is likely to be interesting. Please, do tell me about how you went to the Royal and Ancient St Andrews, or Augusta, or Torrey Pines, or Canoostie. I don't even play golf and I want to know how you approach a shot which requires backspin with an undercut 9-iron.

20. Short-sleeve button-down shirts.

I am sorry if Mr Le Fevre has added ignorance to his list of crimes but Short-sleeve button-down shirts are ace. Perhaps the greatest exponent of Short-sleeve button-down shirts was Gene Kranz who worked as Flight Director on several Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. In Mission Control he often wore Short-sleeve button-down shirts with a waistcoat and tie. 

Short-sleeve button-down shirts are the uniform of someone who wants to get serious stuff done and look serious while doing it. They likely work in an environment which is warm; which was certainly the case in Mission Control where there were banks of 1960s computers everywhere. Short-sleeve button-down shirts are cool; they are also cool in a warm environment.

21. Identifiably-designer belts.

I'm sorry but Mr Le Fevre seems rather a bit pre-occupied with looking at other people's butts here. Unless someone was wearing a brass belt buckle in the shape of Texas, or with the Great Seal of some armed force, then I wouldn't have a clue if someone was wearing a designer belt or not, much less being able to Identify what the designer was.

22. Dirty sneakers in the office. Even with a relaxed dress code, you should take care of sneakers in the same manner as dress shoes.

Counterpoint:

If someone walked into an office with a pair of obviously dirty Dunlop Volleys with the traditional blowout hole (as they all develop), then it would take about five minutes for that not to be weird. Further to this, if someone walked into an office with a pair of obviously dirty Dunlop Volleys with the traditional blowout hole, then they would instantly be cooler than Steve McQueen because they do not give an iota about what you think.

23. Oxford collars.

Given that an Oxford collar is just a collar with buttons to hold it in place, what exactly is the objection here? 

24. A backpack.

Why? I might need useful things which are in there; such as a laptop, sandwiches, a coat in case it gets cold, something to drink, a longneck of Extra Special Bitter, groceries, a football, Christmas presents. A backpack is fine.

25. Tevas, Crocs, Birkenstocks, or Uggs.

Mr Le Fevre has never been to Penrith, has he? The kinds of people who are going to wear Crocs or Uggs in public are also the same kinds of people who are really into things like doing do-eys in the carpark and hangin' around Sennalink. The kinds of people who are going to wear Birkenstocks in public are also the same kinds of people who are really into things like pilates, and wearing activewear despite never actually doing anything active but isn't it fabulous. Both of these kinds of people who are likely to take their dogs to the supermarket; though there is a distinct differnece between a Toy Pekingese and a Rottweiler.

26. Bowties without a tuxedo.

As the Doctor once said: "I wear a Bowtie now. Bowties are cool." Argument. End of.

27. Monk straps, tassels, or square-toed shoes.

Why?

28. Deep V-neck t-shirts.

Why again?

29. A fake watch.

Que? Who does this?

I'll take "Things that never happened" for $400, please.

30. Dress shirts with a pocket.

Has Mr Le Fevre seen shirts since the 1880s? Even in 2024, the idea that a dress shirts has a pocket is incredibly useful. One might need to keep a USB stick there, or a business card. One might walk into a club where you will be issued with a ticket as a temporary member. One might have bought a raffle ticket for a meat tray, or some kind of lucky door prize, or a 1969 Holden Monaro 327 GTS. Yes to the pocket.

31. Baggy clothes. Get the essentials, even jeans, tailored.

This isn't the 1990s. That kind of thing has gone out of style.

Besides which, some people are just self-conscious about how their bodies look. This isn't helped at all by people with attitudes like Mr Le Fevre's.

Besides which again, if you are complaining that people shouldn't have flamboyant pocket squares because they don't have the money, then where are they magically getying the money to have jeans tailored? 

32. Anything with big logos.

What is this supposed to mean? Does this mean something like the Adidas trefoil? Or the big Nike swoosh? Or how about the Jack Daniel's Old No.7 label? What about the logos for Metallica, Nirvana, or the Ramones? What about Castrol, Shell, Red Bull, M&Ms, Halford's, or any other motorsport sponsor? 

33. Your heart on your sleeve.

HUR-HUR-HUR... This is not even a very good dad joke. Please see me after class. You need better material.

34. Sports sunglasses. Quality shades serve an important function; they let women know you appreciate nice things and are responsible enough not to lose them.

I hate to tell you but Sports sunglasses serve an even more important function; they shield your eyes from the brightness outside and protect your eyes from UV rays. A cheap pair of Sports sunglasses which are polarised and have UV filtering, from a petrol station for $20, will do they job just as efficiently as "Quality shades", whatever that means.

35. Noticeable cologne. Men generally have a weak sense of smell and get desensitized to their own scent, so it’s worse than you realize.

NO. QUITE THE OPPOSITE.

Granted that men and especially teenage boys can smell like a thousand gorillas jammed into shipping crate (and let's be honest, that is what the back of the 173X bus does smell like on sports day), this does not mean that men should not smell of Noticeable cologne. I would rather the smell of Lynx Africa (which is the universal smell of "I have not had a shower yet") than the absolute horrorshow of the 173X bus.

36. Graphic t-shirts.

Congratulations, No.36 is just No.32 rebanged. 

The best graphic t-shirt that I have seen someone wear recently was of the retro throwback design for Brad Keslowski's Castrol Mustang. Quite frankly it kicked butt, took names, rolled around the top like a mad thing, and won all the kudos and all the marbles. 

37. Pajama pants in public.

Mr Le Fevre has never been to Melbourne, has he? The kinds of people who are going to wear Pajama pants in public are also the same kinds of people who are really into things like crystals, reiki, pilates, eastern medicine, om, going vegan, hemp clothing, et cetera. They are also the same kinds of people who will also tell you chapter and verse about where their coffee comes from, or how they found themselves in Thailand, or at the other extreme end how they were doing nangs in Frankston last week.

38. Windsor tie knots.

This is just called a 'tie'. Does Mr Le Fevre not know how to tie one? 

In a sea of black and white office attire, the tie was the last domain of colour in the office. From the classic striped club tie, to the uniform tie, or ties with The Phantom or Scooby-Doo on them, the tie was sometimes the only place of individuality in an otherwise funless office environment. Some time around about 2010, the sea of black and white office attire sort of expired and business people tend to not wear a tie at all. 

39. A “going out” shirt.

After literally saying that men should not wear graphic t-shirts, V-neck t-shirts, and short-sleeve button-down shirts, what's left?

People literally used to have a set of clothes which they called their "Sunday Best" for “going out”. After spending 40 laws on what people should and should not wear, then what in blue blazes is Mr Le Fevre going on about here? 

I bought my sister an "eating" shirt last Christmas; which was also inadvertently good enough for "going out". 

40. Women’s clothing.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay. I sleep all night and I work all day. 

Final Judgement:

After reading through Mr Le Fevre's insane 40 laws, then I would like to amend my own list:

1. Wear clothes.

2. Wear clothes that are appropriate (this also involves safety gear).

3. That's about it.

4. Ignore Mr Le Favre at all costs. He is a will-o-the-wisp, a flibitty-jibbet, a clown, a knave, and worst of all a flog.

Mr Le Fevre, you are guilty of both eejitation and nutwittery. You have brought hateration and holleration into this fake internet court and as you have no sensible business by inventing laws in a discipline in which you have no jurisdiction, we order you to desist and stop this egregious pretense. 

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

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H3346/1 - Ed)

Addenda:

Upon being ratio'd into the Shadow Realm by this very post as a reply (1173 likes to his 19) John Le Fevre either removed his Tweet in an act of cowardice, shame, or sensibility. This post remains intact though.

Horse 3345 - 253: I Know That Was Then But It Could Be Again

For this post I will mostly be referring to engine capacities in Imperial because even though Metric is better, it does not make historical sense to do so here.

I was speaking to a friend of mine at the weekend who had been to the Australian National Motoring Museum and on display were the lasts from the Holden 253 motor. Firstly I found this utterly amazing as the engine had gone out of production before I was born, then secondly I went into quiet silent rage at the fact that Australia was and still is capable of making amazing things; its just that the people with money and power all think that the Australian people are scumbuckets who aren't worthy of doing so. All Australia is good for is selling dirt and extracting rents from. 10th December 2013 will forever be the darkest day in Australian automotive history; for that was the day that Treasurer Joe Hockey yelled at the automakers from the floor of the parliament and within the week they'd all announced that they were leaving (a Merry Christmas to all).

Anyway, the Holden 253... why was it?

General Motors were politely asked by the Australian Government to build cars in Australia after the Second World War because there was always the thought that in the event that there needed to be quick mobilisation, that car factories could be very quickly commandeered into making planes, and trucks, and guns, and cannon. et cetera. General Motors saw Australia as a small bug that could be easily crushed under their thumb and rather than send Australia their biggest and best, they sent Australia a smallish car which became the Holden 48/215.

The thing about Australia is that we've always been a nation which is as mad as a bucket of wet mice thrown into a cement mixer; so giving us anything to play with is always both a bad and a brilliant idea. General Motors found that they were competing with Ford and Chrysler and thus began the stupidest horsepower race in the world. Holden would increase their engine capacities steadily and 179 became 186 and eventually 202 in their six-cylinder line; while Ford's Thiftpower Six would grow from 144 all the way to 250. 

However, in 1964 when Ford released a 289 V8 Falcon, and Chrysler also released V8 versions of their cars, Holden knew that they were in trouble. Detroit always saw Holden as this small bug and so respectfully told Holden where to go but didn't have the decency to provide the petrol to get there. In response and because they knew that Detroit wouldn't be looking, in January 1965 the engineering division embarked on its own covert engine program and didn't tell anyone. Eventually after iteration and counter iteration, two capacities of V8 engine were developed; with 253 V8 to compete against Ford's 250 I-6 and 308 V8 to compete against Ford's Windsor 302 V8. Eventually Holden would also buy in the small-block 350 to Ford's Cleveland 351 V8

Holden's V8 program proved to be better than the equivalent US engines in every single metric. They were light, more powerful, and drank less petrol; which is why we never saw the Chev 305 V8 engine in an Australian production car. 

The 308 and then 304 was always the star of the show as that was the engine which appeared in the Torana and then Commodore which won at Bathurst but the 253 was actually a quietly brilliant if overlooked engine. I think that people forget that in 1969, 185 ponies which was more than what Chevrolet was getting out of its 305 was actually pretty dang nifty.

The entire of the long motor, that is the complete engine assembly from fan to flywheel, including all the leads and hoses, filters and other auxiliaries weighs just 460 pounds. At a compression ratio of 9:1 with a 2-barrel carburettor, I have doubt that the engine could be refitted with a set of modern inlets and fuel injection and put up some very handy numbers indeed. The other thing is that the 253 is just 22 inches wide; which means that it will fit into the engine bay of a Cruze. What I find insane about this is that even though the last 253 was delivered in the late 1970s, the fact that the lasts still exist mean that with some modern tooling, it wouldn't be that hard for a factory to turn them out by December this year. 

Engine blocks are usually created using a method known as 'casting'. Wooden shaping models known as a 'last' are then covered in a clay/sand and then either allowed to dry or bake. The clay outers then become the mould into which molten iron or aluminium is poured into and the whole thing is then water cooled. The outer clay is then broken off and compounded to be used all over again and the engine block then goes through its final finishing and dressing before it is ready to accept other engine components. 

Now weirdly as I have found out, the lasts for various iterations of the Holden 308 and 304 motor still exist; as do the lasts for the Red/Black 202 motor. What I didn't realise is that the lasts for the 253 motor also still exist. This means that in addition to the lasts for the Family II, as well as Ford's Thriftpower Six (eventually in its Barra type) and Ford's Windsor 302G derivative; that most of the engine lasts for engines in widescale production still exist.

What this actually means is that if someone could actually wrangle the Intellectual Property away from both General Motors and Ford Motor Co, who to be honest have both badly betrayed the people of Australia, that there is still the latent ability to produce reproductions of some of the most venerable engines in Australian automotive history. Moreover as the continued existence of the Thriftpower Six proved, just because an engine was old did not mean that it could not be improved to meet modern standards. 

The only real downside to the 253 becomes obvious when you see one in-situ in a Torana:

Anyone who has spun a spanner on a V8 Torrie knows that changing the rear spark plugs on the V8 is like playing Twister. Spin the spinner and call the shot - Twister ties you up in a knot. So it is with the 253 and the 308 in a Torana. In a Kingswood or Commodore (yes, there were 253 VB and VCs) you have space to play with but not in a Torana.

If I get to be ludicrously wealthy, then I do not want a new car but a new car company. I would buy J300 Cruze under licence and I would see if I could wrangle the IP to develop the 253 into a modern engine. General Motors betrayed and abandoned us; that still hurts. Unlike the people with money and power, I believe that Australia was and still is capable of making amazing things; really stupid mice thrown into a cement mixer things.