Horse 3462 - Unchain The Indy 500

 In an act which has been quite rightly seen as 'cheating', the two cars of Joseph Newgarden and Will Power were pulled up before qualifying for the 2025 Indianapolis 500, were denied their runs and will start from the last row of the grid.

Joseph Newgarden and Will Power, both of Team Penske, were found by the IndyCar technical inspectors to have filled a seam to close off airflow over the rear attenuator.

The rear attenuator is a safety device designed to absorb and reduce the force of impacts. Most likely the seam was filled in an attempt to gain an aerodynamic advantage; in a sport where even a thousandth of a second makes a difference.

One thousandth of a second at 200mph, is about 4 inches. Multiply that over the course of the Indianapolis 500 and you have the length of a cricket pitch.

Of note here is that IndyCar is a spec series which uses spec parts and the rear attenuator is one such spec part that is not allowed to be modified.

Now while I understand the desire to create a level playing field because we want to maintain the veneer of sporting competition, I think that the Indianapolis 500 in particular is a race looking for a series and the very act of trying to make the sport fair, runs counter to what the spirit of the event should be.

When the Indy 500 started back in 1911, the rules set was such that the bound box which competitors found themselves in was massive; and they basically got to play with whatever they wanted. 

Various engine capacities limits have come and gone, in some cases there was turbocharging and supercharging allowed, but probably the most impressive things that were ever raced in the Indy 500 were Freddie Agabashian's Cummins Diesel Special of 1952, and the series of gas turbine cars which culminated in the Lotus 56 'red wedge' of 1968. The fact that Joe Leonard's Lotus 56 retired from the race while leading; just eight laps from the finish was enough to scare the organisers into regulating gas turbine cars into extinction.

As someone who is interested in the history of motorsport and how that relates to what we get on the road, that's tragic. Companies like Chrysler and General Motors both experimented with gas turbine cars and the fact that this line of innovation was semi-killed by motorsport, kind of resigned us to missing out on what could have been a jet car future. 

If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then the rules set that I would run the Indianapolis 500 by would be to give the teams a central safety cell, a set of standard tyres and maybe brakes, and then tell them to have at it. 

I think that the Indianapolis 500 should be the laboratory of speed where the most bonkers mental hatstand ideas should be allowed to flourish. If you can build a car which uses the safety cell and can rip around the famous two-and-a-half mile speedway at 307 mph, and you can find someone daft enough to sit in the driver's seat, then go for it.

Because if the rules set is so loose that practically anything is possible and allowed, then not only does this remove the entire argument about cheating, but we'd get to see the actual greatest spectacle in motorsport. 

Horse 3282 - Let MARC Play Properly

The Bathurst 12 Hours has firmly established itself as one of the world's great GT races. In some respects it has taken on a lot of the functions that the Bathurst 1000 in October used to play, in that that touring car race no longer invites overseas teams and has closed the shop to such an extent that privateer and teams wanting a one in a million shot, will never be allowed to play again.

Being a GT race, the Bathurst 12 Hours tuns according to GT3 rules, though to pad out the field, it has allowed Improved Production Cars and GT4 cars to play in the past. It has also allowed Invitational Teams to play as well and in this respect, I think that the race organisers openly show weaponised incompetence.

If you look through the list of competitors for the last decade, you will see the team MARC appear again and again in the Invitational Class. MARC Cars Australia Pty Ltd which is a race car manufacturing company, originally built a a prototype for South Africa's Global Touring Car Championship (GTC) and have supplied the tubular chassis ever since. The premise is simple, MARC provides a chassis, the teams are then free to source a bodyshell and panels to fit on the outside, then the engines are mandated at 2-Litre turbocharged and producing 325kW and 600nm of torque. 

However, MARC still wants to be able to sell it chassis beyond merely South Africa and putting it on the world's stage at the Bathurst 12 Hours is a sensible idea. However, at the Bathurst 12 Hours, MARC cars are effectively not eligible for a race win because they are consistently kneecapped so as not to show up the GT3 cars. 

In the past, MARC cars have included the Mazda 3, Ford Focus and Ford Mustang, and all run some version of Ford's Coyote V8. The MARC cars according to their own website are described as:

https://www.marccarsaustralia.com.au/marc-car-ii.html

MARC II V8, a second generation car featuring a more powerful 5.2L version of the Coyote V8. The Mustang inspired MARC II is a fully carbon body, paddle-shift operated Albins 6-speed transaxle gearbox with GT-style aerodynamics. 

- MARC Cars Australia Pty Ltd.

Here's where I think that the organisers of the Bathurst 12 Hours demonstrate weaponised incompetence. They have chosen to allow a car into an Invitational Class but not allowed it to win outright or effectively compete against anything else. Is it truly a race when you are the only competitor?

The problem is that that the MARC cars from the outset do not properly fit into a GT3 class. FIA GT3 does allow for a very large variety of car types to be homologated; seemingly with no limits on engine sizes, drivetrain configuration, or even rollcage and chassis construction. FIA GT3 homologation though, must be endorsed or approved by the manufacturer; which means that an independent fabricator like MARC would never be allowed to submit their work for GT3 homologation.

The unbelievable truth is that there is a series which upon finding that they FIA homologation process was too hard, decided to allow "FIA GT3 like" cars in its series; then even went and provided a standardised chassis and a crate motor for the purposes of allowing independents to join in. The Japan Automobile Federation (JAF) in running Super GT in Japan, has two classes being GT500 which was their eventual successor to Group A, and GT300 which as the name might suggest, is not exactly a GT3 series but a GT3 plus series.

In addition to FIA GT3 cars, there are so called "Mother Chassis" cars which teams are then free to put whatever they like over the outside, and JAF regulations which allow teams to build a car as though it were a GT3 car but without the need for FIA homologation. This is why for instance, there has been Toyota GT-86 MC and a Subaru BRZ JAF car but not an actual FIA GT3 Toyota GT-86 or Subaru BRZ.

So what gives? The Subaru BRZ JAF car took the EJ20 four cylinder boxer engine from the World Rally Championship WRX. The Toyota GT-86 MC uses the standard GT300 crate motor which as a 4.5L V8, looks suspiciously similar to the Nissan VK45 which is also a 4.5L V8 engine. How do these things run together in the same series? How do they run in the same series with the existing GT3 cars like the Lamborghini Huracán, Porsche 911, Mercedes AMG-GT, Audi R8 LMS Evo II, Lexus LC500 and Nissan GT-R? A curious thing called "Balance of Performance".

The end point of imposing Balance of Performance is obvious. As GT3 is already a mix of cars and GT300 further mixes those things, with engines in the front, back and centre, driving the front or the back, then power and weight is played with, then fuel flow rates are played with; along with a standard set of front and rear aero; all in the name of balancing the performance of the cars to make sure that they perform roughly the same on track and produce similar lap times. As far I can tell from the JAF GT300 regulations, weights and power generally range from 1000kg and 267kW to about 1330kg and 350kW.

Now here's the thing, if the FIA can do this kind of thing for FIA GT3 cars, and JAF can do do this kind of thing for FIA GT3 cars and JAF cars and Mother Chassis cars, then why is it beyond the organisers of the Bathurst 12 Hours? Are they just incompetent at running the race? Do they think that this is too hard? 

Since the JAF allows a team to put any engine ever made by a manufacturer into any car produced by that same manufacturer, then why aren't MARC allowed to out a Coyote into a Ford Focus and have it BoP'd against GT3 cars? It seems to me that Ford's 5.2L quad-cam Coyote V8 would already be a suitable candidate under JAF regulations. Since the JAF would have this car which produces "615 Bhp @ 7000 RPM" tariffed at 1725kg (since that's what the BoP works out to be), then what's wrong with that? I am sure that MARC could derate the amount of power coming out of the engine to be exactly equivalent with say the BMW M4 and the same weight by adding or removing ballast. If I can do these kinds of basic calculations, why is it beyond the organisers of the Bathurst 12 Hours?

From the outside, motorsport always looks like a plaything for the rich and by the rich that sometimes we are allowed to look on at. It also looks at though, given that Australia doesn't even have a motor industry any more, that the organisers of motorsport in Australia are perpetually too lazy to let people in Australia try to innovate and invent, because it is too much work for them to work out how to compare the new things to other things.

Quite frankly, I think that MARC should be allowed to play because they have invented a thing. If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then I'd have contracted MARC to act as the standard for our own Mother Chassis type cars and then maybe we'd have seen a whole flood of fabulousness in the Bathurst 12 Hours, just like they have in Super GT in GT300. However, MARC is not allowed to play because the shop is closed... again.

Horse 3270 - Christmas Is Too Long. We need Novemberween.

Happy Thanksgiving, 'Murica. Or as it is called in Australia, and in most of the parts of the world in Not America, Thursday. 

Even though I live in Australia and Thanksgiving is not at all a thing here, that has not stopped various shops claiming to have "Black Friday" sales. This is nonsensical on three fronts.

Firstly, there is no Thanksgiving here and therefore no Friday immediately following it. We certainly are not taking a day of leave off, in order to go shopping. Many Americans, after having the Thursday public holiday off, will also take Friday off as well and turn this into a four-day long weekend. This is sensible if Thursday is a public holiday.

Secondly, the tax year in Australia runs from July 1 through to June 30; so the idea that this is the last chance for businesses and firms to go into the black for the year (hence why this is called "black" Friday), is patently ridiculous. There are still seven months in the financial year and the pre and post Christmas sales yet to come. 

Thirdly, this is Australia. Black Friday sounds like one of many events in history where we might have had bushfires so bad that catastrophic loss of life has happened. In Australia, this is not a commemoration of Black Friday. Black Friday sounds like it is a day of misery, when peoples' houses, property, and many lives, have been blackened and destroyed by fire.

If I may borrow something else from 'Murica... that's one strike, two strikes; you're outta here, Black Friday.

Yes, I live in Australia and as such I live in the remnants of an Empire which reached its peak in 1914, and the slowly collapsed like a flan in a cupboard. Therefore as someone who lives in an area of the world where neither Halloween or Thanksgiving is a cultural thing, or even remotely relevant to the history or geography of the nation, this is going to sound a bit weird.

We need a beginning of summer festival.

We need a Novemberween holiday.

Woolworths and Coles would like to make Halloween a thing so that they can sell chocolate and sweets for children to harass their neighbours to get, and whilst it might be fun for some kiddies to dress up, most don't and it just looks really silly when Civil Sunset is 07:42pm and Astronomical Twilight isn't until 09:20pm. Ghoulies, Ghosties, Valkyries, Skellingtons, and Wolfmans simply do not walk around in daylight. Draculas can not walk around in daylight because they will turn into dust. (Beware though. Draculas can have any job.)

Neither does Thanksgiving actually make any cultural sense in Australia, because while being thankful for what you have is a good practice, our history of genocide of first nations people isn't whitewashed with myth-making of Pilgrim Fathers. The autumnal traditions of Pumpkin Pie and by extension Pumpkin Spice Latte (which is actually just the spice in Pumpkin Pie and not actually a pumpkin spice), also do not make cultural sense here. 

Nevertherless, I think that we need beginning of summer festival and a Novemberween holiday, not because I think that we need those things because I want Australia to culturally shift closer to 'Murica but rather, that without those things, Christmas has invaded and absorbed all of the space left behind. Christmas is a gas. Left unchecked, Christmas expands to fill all of the space in the calendar container and it occupies far more space than the merely the date which it falls on.

This year, I was Whammed on November 7th. This is ridiculous. Whamaggedon should not begin until the 1st of December. Whamaggedon is a game of strategy and skill in which the player tries to go as long as possible without without hearing "Last Christmas" by Wham! If the player hears the song between those days, they are out of the game. All I can think of is that Woolworths and Coles and Aldi et al. are a pack of dastardly knaves without remorse, and try to Whambush players against their will.

A similar problem happens when one of forced to hear the almost psychotic 'wob wob wob wob' of "Wonderful Christmastime" by Paul McCartney. The ex-Beatle, having decided to include 122 "Nah"s in the ending of "Hey Jude", simply couldn't leave well enough alone and made use of the fact that as Christmas is an annual event, he could use it inflict pain and suffering to millions every single year.

A third member of the triumvirate of the Christmas house of audio pain, which begins with a series of chimes played on a celesta, is of course "All I Want for Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey and Walter Afanasieff. Now there is a lot to be said about this song, which is a masterclass in song writing as the chorus runs from Cmaj, C7, Fmaj to the deliciously spicy and christmassy D minor 7 flat 5 chord (Dm7b5); so I can't fault it from a technical perspective but I am convinced that if you play that song backwards you will hear the Devil and even worse, if you play that song forwards you will hear the Mariah Carey.

Then there is the problem that Christmas things go on sale seven weeks before the date itself. That might very well be fine for things like mince pies which have an expiry date of 13th January 3024, or bottles of wine which can be laid down for years before they are woken up, but for chocolate that's simply too far away. Chocolate does have an expiry date, when the cocoa butter in the chocolate separates and rises to the surface due to temperature fluctuations, or 'sugar bloom' where the sugar in the chocolate absorbs moisture and then crystallises on the surface. Then as the chocolate which is a solid mixture loses all of its structural integrity, it crumbles and blows away as though it were an Egyptian pharaoh.

As it currently stands, the run home to Christmas in the calendar, pretty well much begins on the Monday immediately after the Bathurst 1000. The end of September has the Festivals of the Boot with the Australian Rules and Rugby League football Grand Finals and apart from that weekend of Bathurst, there is nothing of import whatsoever. Indeed the last public holiday before Christmas is Labor Day which is on that first Monday in October.

Some say that "the race that stops the nation" The Melbourne Cup, which is on the first Tuesday in November might be a thing to break up that last quarter but as more people work from home, as less people work in big offices, and as the banks and insurance companies lay off people left, right and centre but still make super-super-profits, the ability for people to care even a jot about a horse race which they don't care about, is way way less. The Melbourne Cup for lost of people, only really mattered because it involved mid-week sandwiches and booze at work. With fewer and fewer people working in big offices, that kind of one-day community has been dissolved. There are no more free sandwiches. There is no more free booze. The Melbourne Cup no longer stops the nation. Most people, have no idea it is on. I do not know who won it this year. I do not care.

That space in the calendar with Halloween being a joke and Thanksgiving not being a thing, has meant that Christmas reaches further and further back into the year. This is rather a bit ironic given that as more people from different faith traditions call Australia their home, even the cultural hold that Christmas has, is fading. Those lights that you see over people's houses, are now equally likely to have gone up in mid-October as preparation for Diwali than for Christmas.

Simply flipping what exists in the Northern Hemisphere, to a point in the year exactly six months later, doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. The end of April and beginning of May would equate to events like Easter and May Day but given that Easter is already Easter and May Day might already map to Labor Day in October, then this seems silly. There is no obvious end of May and beginning of June holiday that I can think of, which would fit for November 30.

If were Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then with my powers untold I would install some kind of spring festival on the last Friday in October because everyone loves a long weekend and another summer festival on the first Monday in December because everyone loves a long weekend. Call them Magpie Day and Waratah Day for all I care. Name one of them after Australia's favourite saint, St. Bin Chicken. Crikey wikey argumente, amen.

Because Christmas in its current three month form is a monster. Monster is a technical term for a plant which has either grown oversized or has developed oversized and possibly cultivated growths. Christmas and now Black Friday with no Thanksgiving, have become monstrous and hideously too long. Make it stop. I can only hear Mariah Carey, Wham and that 'wob wob wob wob' so many times. 

wob wob wob wob

wob wob wob wob

wob wob wob wob

wob wob wob wob

<i wanna bang my head on a coffee table... make it stop>

Horse 3250 - Xerry Red Telefone Bocs

This blog post is not about the state of the website formerly known as Twitter. Nor is this website about the Universal Container of Sets and all probable possible propositions P. This blog post is about the 24th letter of the alphabet and about the daftness of the glyph that we use.

I have no idea of what kind of English that the people of the rainy islands to the northwest of Europe spoke before the arrival of the Roman Empire (men think about the Roman Empire several times a day apparently) but I do know that the runic system of letters that the Anglish English used was slowly abandoned for this new fangled Roman character set. Some letters were added and some went away as needed. We've lost some like Yogh, Eth, and Thorn, and we've picked up a J and W but X was one of the original gansta stylee Roman letters, yo.

The dumb thing about picking up the Roman letter set is that English ended up using X for the same purpose as the Romans did. Sure, X rox da box, like a fox with pox, but then we have to use unwieldy combinations of letters for other things when X would have done.

When we transliterate Chinese into English, X takes on a kind of "zh" sound. Chinese Premier Xi Jing Ping would sound quite different if his name was pronounced in English with the usual "cs" that X takes on. Likewise when we transliterate Spanish into English, X takes on a kind of "sh" sound but where the back of the tongue creates a tighter point at the roof of the mouth. Both "sh" and that "sh" in Spanish, are aspirant noises and can be made with no vocal chords whatsoever.

If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else then I would remove all instances of X as it currently stands and re-use it for a better purpose. If I am not putting X to use as the "cs" sound, then "what am I going to use it for?", I do not hear you ask because that's not how tecst works. Simple. I am going to make X take on the sound that it had in Greek, which is "ch".

In English "ch" is a plosive sound which has no right to be rendered with a 'c' or 'h'. However, by using X instead and suddenly X and that sound have a happy home together. "King Xarles the First" might look silly to us now, but all written systems are ultimately arbitrary anyway. To someone who grows up with X as "ch", then this would look normal. 'Xarles went to xirx' is a sensible looking thing. The train from "Rixmond to Xatswood" would still run on time. 

Remember, the King of Korea got mad with the daft preponderance of Chinese characters and locked all of the academics in a palace until they invented the Hangul (Korean alphabet); then on 9th October 1446 it was published and released into the kosmos and suddenly Korea had an excellent writing system which everyone eventually learned. Likewise, President Mustafa Atatürk in an effort to modernise Türkiye, made Türkiye change from an Arabic script to a Latin script. The point is that people can and have got used to changes in writing systems and pretty quickly. 

As for taking a tacsi home, or grabbing a bindle and riding the rails in a bocscar, if this sounds garish, obnoxious and daft, then remember that there is no X in the Welsh language and they cope perfectly well. That black cab that charges a fare? That's called a Tacsi. Suddenly "Ecks rocks da bocks, like a focks with pocks" looks daft but intuitively correct.

Also as Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, I would put an end to "ph" in place of "F". Again if we turn to Welsh, then "Teleffon" looks strange to an English speaking audience but it still looks intuitively correct.

Of course as I am writing this, I am very much aware of my nemesis in grammar, Noah Webster. Webster who is famous for his "Blue Backed Speller" which would ultimately lead to the Merriman-Webster Dictionary, deliberately changed the spelling of American English because he saw existing words and spellings as arbitrary and bad. Is what I proposing to do any different at all? Absolutely not. I will readily admit that I stand upon Mount Hypocrisy and cry "Havoc! Let slip the dogs of war!" into a kosmos that doesn't care. Webster thought that the 'u' in words like 'colour' and 'flavour' was unnecessary and he was also liberal with chucking about 'z's and also preferred the 'ize' ending. However, not once did he correct the X problem or the 'ph' problem. 

Horse 3200 - Supercars' Parroty Parody Parity Party

It seems that the spectre of parity has been perennially at the feast of motor racing since the very beginning and in the Australian Touring Car Championship since day dot. The current whingefest by Ford teams about the Chevy Camaro having a clear and obvious advantage over their Mustang, is the same as Ford whiging about Monaro, Holden whinging about Falcon, Holden and Ford whinging about RX-7 and Bluebird, Nissan whinging about 240, Nissan whinging about Sierra, Holden and Ford whinging about GTR, Holden and Ford spending 25 years whining about minor differences about Commodore and Falcon, with occasional whinges from Nissan and Volvo and Mercedes, and Holden whinging about Mustang. Is there anything new under the sun?

So called "Gen-3" Supercars are in response to the fact that the Falcon which suffered an existence failure, was replaced by the S550 Mustang which when wrapped over the top of the Falcon underpinnings for Car Of The Future/Gen-2 looked goofier than Mickey's friend riding a surfboard right foot forward. When Holden also suffered an existence failure, the teams then scrambled for any kind of relevance and decided upon something which was supposed to retain the DNA of Supercars; while at the same time betraying everything that went before. The Camaro isn't even on sale in Australia and the Mustang except for one month in 2016 has never outsold the worst sales months figures for Falcon.

In trying to hatch a new formula, Ford went with a 5.4L version of their Coyote engine, while Chevrolet just went to the GM racing parts bin an pulled out a 5.7L small block derivative. On this point, an engine which has had no practical race development versus an engine which has been racing continuously for more than 50 years, was never going to be a fair fight. Also in trying to hatch a new formula, the two camps went their own way to get whatever aero kit they could homologated and of course this was going to result in a blatantly unfair fight, one way or the other; even Blind Freddy could see this.

I know that I am but a poor keyboard warrior smashing text into the world, and that as part of the chorus of howling morons who don't make any technical decisions whatsoever, then how come even I could have see this? If you are not running a spec series, which Supercars is not any more, then minor differences in equipment will be magnified. 

Ford drivers are generally complaining about a lack of aero compared with the Chevy drivers. I assume that because the chassis and undertray is the same, then this advantage is being caused by the airflow over the top of the cars. I suspect that this is likely caused by the styling and packaging decisions made by the car markers; as they are made without regards for motor racing.

The Chevy presents a brickish wall to the air in front; then as the air spills over the roof, it then trails off a squarer boot lid than what the Mustang has. This means that the Chevy, is doing a better job of having the air interact with the rear wing, and the flatter boot lid means that the underside diffusers are probably more effective. Meanwhile, the Mustang has more of a rounded bootlid; which means that the air is more likely to be more laminar as it flows over the cars. This is excellent for a road car where the object is to reduce wind resistance but awful if the object is to get  the air flow to interact with the rear wing and diffuser.

Drivers like Chaz Mostert and Cam Waters have been complaining that the Mustang doesn't feel like it is grounded at the back and that there is little effect from the rear end aero kit of the car. This is ironic given that Walkinshaw Andretti United switched from Holden to Ford, because they probably guessed that there would be an advantage. This would be hard to guess given that both cars were blank slates at the time.

If I were Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then I would have called for a solution which NASCAR uses; which is excellent. That is that the chassis and undertray be identical and that the glasshouse also be identical. Differences to the glasshouse are purely cosmetic and the differences in the shape of the aft windows is irrelevant as the C-pillars are identical. The point of difference is the cosmetic differences between the grille and light clusters front and rear. I would have also mandated a control KRE engine because let's be perfectly honest here, the punter watching the racing from the outside honestly couldn't give a thousand revs, what the technical specs actually are. As long as race cars sound like race cars, then people are happy. 

The thing is, as the Supercars themselves are bespoke bits of kit, and the panels can be pulled off and replaced, then admitting that Gen3.1 has been a parity nightmare is still an option and the above suggestion can be implemented. The cars are already something that isn't for sale in Australia versus a car which in this guise also isn't for sale in Australia. I would even go so far as to say that a common glasshouse with common aero and only changing the grilles and light clusters, would allow other brands to compete. If say Brad Jones racing got backing from Audi, then it wouldn't be that difficult a process to get the front and rear grilles and light clusters approved.

I should at this point say that my rather worthless opinion here, has been shaped with reference to other series like GT3, Super GT both GT500 and GT300, LMP2, NASCAR's three series of Cup, Xfinity, and Trucks, as well as iRacing. For that last series where literally nothing is real, graphics can be changed to make a car look like anything and I have seen such illustrious car brands as ZIL, Trabant, Lil' Tykes, Tonka, Packard, and Breville, in various online racing series. If it sounds dumb to suggest that video games should influence real world motor racing, bear in mind that all commercially built cars in the world are now built on CAD, and shaped and edited before even one of them gets to be in the real world. I would even go so far as to say that abandoned intellectual property such as the XA-XC Falcon and the HG Monaro, would also be excellent choices for a Supercars team to go racing with; if not Supercars then TA2.

This whole parity saga, could have been foreseen, should have been foreseen, and like a classic tragedy, Supercars proceeded anyway. If you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes and time after time and again and again the parity wars prove to be a stupid game. Supercars chose this.

Horse 3192 - There Does Not Need To Be Two Kinds Of Rugby

 In the now great tradition of Australian Rugby wandering why it is always the ugly sister at the ball, there have been a number of pieces written in The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald trying to answer the question. The answer turns out to be pretty obvious to anyone who follows sport in Australia and that is that Football, Australian Rules, and Rugby League are the ball sports of the ordinary common people and Rugby is the posh peoples' sport. Rah-Rah can not really escape its image of not wanting to dirty its hands by ignoring the oiks because at almost every level of the game, Rah-Rah wants to ignore the oiks.

Curiously, the ABC's reply is the most honest:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-14/australian-rugby-union-wallabies-wallaroos-grassroots-schools/102464748

It simply illustrated there is a long-standing perception of Australian rugby union that it is the domain of the private schoolboy.

Galloway and others cannot be blamed if they genuinely feel this way, given the substantial number of Wallabies players and rugby administrators — present and past — who went to private schools.

Among last year's Wallabies squad, almost three-quarters of players who were educated in Australia finished their schooling at private or independent institutions.

Of the 25 players named in the Australian Schools and Under 18s squad last September, only three completed year 12 at public schools.

- ABC News, 14th Jun 2023.

I am surprised that anyone is surprised by this.

Before I begin this, I have to lay my cards on the table and say that I think that Rugby League is a stupid game and that Rugby Union is only just a notch above it. I think that the rules of Rugby League have been mangled beyond the point of anything sensible for the purposes of being shown on television, and that it very much suffers as a result. The game mechanically does not reward possession, in that after a tackle count of six, a team must give the ball to the opposition. It got here after the rise of the NFL in the 1970s, with its four down count but did not include the NFL's provisions to restart the count if a team did something with that possession. Had Rugby League frozen the rules in 1966, it would have been (and was) a better game.

All that aside, I think that it is bonkers crazy that there are two kinds what is essentially the same game. The rugby codes exist because of the codification of football, when the carrying game and the kicking game separated. The kicking game formed the Football Association and the carrying game formed the Rugby Union, named after the school which supposedly legendarily had William Webb Ellis pick the ball up and run with it.

The Rugby Union and the Rugby League split further over a pay dispute, namely that players who wanted to be paid something for their efforts because having to train took away from their livelihoods, and the two games progressively diverged a bit. The really daft thing is that both games survived and continue to do so; to the detriment of each other.

I shall use the example of Australia here, since this illustrates the idiocy nicely.

At school level, whether or not a school plays Rugby League or Rugby Union, is mostly determined by a combination geographical location and economic fortune of the school. Public schools tend to play Rugby League more and private schools tend to play Rugby Union more; and together this is an excellent way of maintaining a de facto economic apartheid; which is already rampant in the school system in Australia.

At club level, amateur clubs tend to follow the same kind of geographical split. At professional club level, the League clubs who are mostly backed by multi-million dollar gambling hubs, are able to attract money from everywhere; including sponsorship and TV rights. Club Rugby is amazingly anaemic.

At state level, a weird thing has happened. The Rugby League has correctly identified that limited supply keeps the price and interest up; and so there are three state games per year. There are only two states who play at state level because the rest of the country outside of New South Wales and Queensland struggles to care about throwball at all. The Rugby Union though, kind of invented its own multi-national provincial "club" system, and made use of the fact that countries like New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, and the island nations of the Pacific, still have some latent need for the game below international level.

At international level, Rugby League struggles to maintain any kind of relevance at all. As the engine room of professional Rugby League is New South Wales, then the only interest which can exist is if anyone can beat Australia. This is ironic given the fact that Australians mostly don't care an iota about the Kangaroos. The only other nation which can consistently put up a fight against the Kangaroos is the New Zealand and yet again, the Kiwis are but a poor attendant and sideshow to the All-Blacks. 

The Rugby World Cup is genuinely cared about by more than just a few countries. Admittedly the Rugby World Champions are only ever likely to be one of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, England, maybe France, and with a very long shot Wales; but the point is that at international level, The Rugby World Cup is properly a thing. The Rugby League World Cup is almost a joke, even to the people who are in it.

Rugby League in New Zealand is almost like the second-chance draw for prizes in a lottery. New Zealand very very much cares about Rugby but Rugby League is the sport for the lads who weren't quite good enough. New Zealand would likely survive excellently well if Rugby League were not a thing. If the Kiwis simply disappeared, who would care? Who would know? The All-Blacks on the other hand are a source of national pride, and almost national identity. If the All-Blacks lose a Bledisloe Cup series, it almost warrants a Royal Commission; and for the perpetrators to be hung, drawn, quartered, and the parts dragged through the streets. At very least, everyone in a losing Bledisloe Cup series should be led into a field and hit with sticks.

If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then there would not be two kinds of Rugby. There just isn't any obvious point to two. Roll the clubs into some kind of tiered system and have them rated against each other. Maybe play some kind of Cup competition. It is likely that a club like Randwick would not do well against South Sydney, but they might find that they are a good match for Newtown.

At state level, the provincial competition is already the logical pathway towards the national side in many countries. I'd keep it. Ironically I'd also keep the three State of Origin matches because they have comprehensively proved their worth.

At national level, duplication is stupid. The only nations where there is any differentiation is Australia and New Zealand and to be honest, the Kangaroos and Kiwis, are but pathetic shadows of the Wallabies and All-Blacks. I do not think that any other country, including England, would particularly care or even notice that the two codes merged at national level. I could throw around words like 'synergy' and 'efficiency' but when you are talking about the tribal differences between poshball and oikball, those things tend not to matter so much. If this was an industry with two similar products, then management looking to maximise profit, would have merged the two codes a long time ago. The perception of difference is only on the outside as internally, both players, coaches, and indeed corporate managers have moved between the two without any cares about with the posh people or oiks think.

Otherwise, the state split of New South Wales and Queensland with throwball and the other states playing Australian Rules football is fine. This is a weird weird intractable split. However, the split between two kinds of rugby is dafter than a cat playing shuffleboard with a scrubbing brush on the Titanic. I do not understand what that metaphor means, just like I do not understand why there needs to be two kinds of rugby.

Horse 3167 - Fragments XX: I Don't Always Write Fragments. But When I Do...

M15 - The 15-minute City Conspiracy

I have no idea how the 15-minute city conspiracy theory started but it seems to be one of the more unhinged conspiracy theories that I have heard of. Put simply, the 15-minute city conspiracy theory seems to cite road construction as evidence that civil governments are going to install checkpoints to keep the population from going anywhere and thus keep control of the population somehow. Further supposed evidence for this was that the that the Covid-19 pandemic wasn't real and that it was an excuse to implant 5G micro-tracking in everyone. Just the writing on that sentence makes me question why anyone would think that this is remotely credible.

I don't understand how people can possibly conceive that governments have the capacity for mass tracking and surveillance, when they can't get simple things like taxation processing done properly. One of the reasons why the relatively light touch to keep us within 5km of our houses during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, wasn't due to the overtly coercive force deployed by governments but people's despite to maintain law and order imn the face of an unknown and possibly very dangerous contingent threat. 

I also wonder about the sanity of people who wouldn't want things like schools, hospitals, shopping centres, libraries et cetera within 15 minutes of their house. Are these people seriously actively arguing in favour of having more inconvenient cities, being stuck in traffic for longer, and wanting longer commutes? Admittedly I have no problem with commuting 44km one-way to work but that's because I have a job. If someone wants to pay me six figures to work closer to home, then I am willing to lay that burden down.

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L150 - Levi's 501 Turns 150

According to the flickering advert boards of insanity, in between hawking eau de eye sting, soaps that smell like oatmeal, and sunglasses that have a retail price of more than a small hatchback, the 501 Jean by Levi Strauss & Co. is 150 years old. This means that this particular line of denim, dates from 1873; which is bang in the middle of the reconstruction era; in a state that wasn't really unconstructed.

The State of California, was given statehood pretty quickly after the discovery of payable gold and hence payable taxation streams. The gold miners, 49ers, all flooded to San Francisco to seek fortune, based upon the literal chance of striking it rich. It takes a canny businessman though, to see that the real fortunes to be made were not in dirtying one's hands by digging for gold but sending one's hand into the pockets of miners, by selling them things. Levi Strauss & Co. 

The 501 jean which dates from 1873, is well after gold fever has subsided and the rolling drudgery of normal life has returned. Evidently people still wanted a hard-wearing pair of pants; which given that indigo as one of the first synthetic fabric colours which was properly cheap, must have been pretty neat as well. I do not know if they had hep-cats and cool people in 1873 but there must have been enough people who liked these jeans to warrant their repeated sale.

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A20 - ABC

https://www.theage.com.au/business/companies/abc-hires-consultants-amid-nationwide-radio-ratings-slump-20230317-p5ct3t.html

Australia’s national broadcaster has established an internal advisory group and brought in external consultants to try to stop the dramatic decline of its radio audiences in capital cities across the country.

In the first GfK radio ratings survey of the year, all of ABC’s metropolitan stations, as well as respective breakfast and drive time programs, reported a concerning drop in audience share compared to the same time the previous year. The cumulative audience, which quantifies how many people listened to a station at least once during the week, has fallen in every single market.

- The Age, 20th Mar 2023

To be honest, the announcement that radio ratings have fallen at the ABC is not surprising. So-called "legacy" media like Radio, Television and especially Print media has been decimated in the past ten years; to the point where ratings look anemic right across the board. It also does not surprise me that The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, which are part of Nine Entertainment Co. are reporting this as a loss for the ABC because they need to feel good about themselves as they too, suffer falls in revenues across their media assets. 

As the national broadcaster and one of the last bastions where actual journalism takes place, the ABC losing ratings is not something that should be merely laughed off. A lot of this has to do with the editorial choice by management to make the ABC run a screen for the tory interests which hand picked them. ABC flagship programs like 7.30 and Insiders, are not quite the hard hitting investigative journalism that we used to have and should expect in a functioning democracy. It is telling that the hardest criticism of the government's spending of more than a third of a trillion dollars on nuclear submarines, comes not from journalists but from a former Prime Minister who is now unchained.

However having said that, this article appeared in both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald; which as Nine Entertainment Co. print media assets, are crowing far too loudly to be taken seriously. Nine Entertainment Co. which also happens to own Macquarie Radio, owns such radio stations as 4BC, 2GB, and 2UE. We can all take a giant belly laugh at the hilarious collapse of 2UE which went from being a fortress and stronghold of talk radio, to the point that having now morphed into a music station whose key demographic appears to the the residents of morgues, now likely has an entire audience which would struggle to fill a taxi.'

The ABC Local Radio Network has lost market share against stations like 2GB; not because they are inherently bad but because commercial radio has almost practically committed suicide. 2GB has managed to hold onto and consolidate all of the ex-2GB/2UE audience into one angry sordid right-wing wailfest. 2GB has decided that it wants to be a close of Fox Radio in the United States; because there is commercial advantage in stoking the fires of racism, xenophobia, sexism and any other culture war which they can light the flames to. 

Of course as expected, I would not be sitting atop my high horse if I didn't intend to ride it somewhere. I fully intend to ride this showpony into the ring and dazzle everyone with my amazing feats of utter boredom. Hey, it's a zero trick pony. My plan to drive audiences and ratings to the ABC is... make stuff they'll like.

Wow.

Inform. Educate. Entertain.

Wow.

If I was Grand Poohbah And Lord High Everything Else, then I would pivot Radio National into something closer in spirit to BBC Radio 4, and leave pretty well much everything as is. The ABC Local Radio network already excellently serves its niche. Triple J is perfectly happy to wear its 'ratbag radio' badge. ABC News Radio already basically is a cousin of the BBC World Service. Likewise, ABC Classic FM already is a cousin to BBC Radio 3. 

I would however make ABC Radio National the actual showcase for comedy and drama. We currently don't really do scripted comedy or drama on the radio and the medium is excellent at trialing out things because the lack of a visual dimension means that everything must live and die on the strength of performance and writing. Also, comedy radio panel shows are excellent. I find it scandalous that we do not have our own news quiz. This is also an excellent place to put on comedy shows from places like the Melbourne Comedy Festival and Adelaide Fringe. 

As for ABC TV, the only real suggestion that makes any sense is to increase the budget. When the ABC produces TV drama and comedy, it draws from the whole pyramid of Australian theatre and is of such good quality, that it invariably gets exported. We are perfectly capable of making our own equivalent to Scandi crime drama, Britain's police procedurals, satire, and panel shows. If the ABC produces drama and comedy, it can then sell those shows overseas. 

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CC13 - The Crown Is A Corporation

It should be noted that the Commonwealth of Australia IS a corporation. This is the one fact that the mad conspiracy theorists have correct. As with any corporation, the Commonwealth of Australia has a set of replaceable rules called a Constitution; which may be changed subject to the rules spelled out within the bounds of said Constitution.

Unlike a limited liability corporation such as a listed or unlisted company (usually denoted by Limited in their name), or a Non-Limited Company of the form that mining companies like to use, or a Proprietary Limited Company, shares in the Commonwealth of Australia can not be bought or sold. However, just like any other corporation the Commonwealth of Australia has a share, which happens to be owned by itself; through the rather opaque concept of the person of the Crown. The Crown is Corporation Sole which means that not only does it theoretically have a share which presumably is inheritable, but as a Corporation it has all of the useful powers of legal personhood in that it can buy things, own things, sell things, can enter into contracts, sue people, and be sued by people. Also like any other Corporation, it appoints a board of Directors which we call the Parliament, and it appoints agents in the Civil Service who carry out the functions and the business of the Corporation.

Get it? Got it? Good.

So the reply that the racists have that they are not responsible for the actions of people before them, is in fact perfectly legally true. Why should we hold people alive today responsible for the actions of people long since dead? The truth which racists will generally always deny, is that the Commonwealth of Australia which is corporation sole, and this also goes for the Six Several Crowns of the States, are still the same legal persons that they always were. 

There is a very good case to be made that the Crown of the State of New South Wales came into existence upon the declaration of the colony which traditionally is settled at 26th January 1788. At that point, Captain Arthur Philip was no longer just a Captain of a Fleet of 11 ships but the Governor of a Colony, which was corporation sole and intertwined with the legal person of The Crown. Various Acts of the British Parliament followed including the passage of responsible government in 1855, which handed more control to the Crown of NSW. A similar series of events occurred for each of the other five several States. Likewise, the proclamation of the Commonwealth Of Australia on 1st January 1901, invented a new Crown as Corporation Sole, bound by the replaceable rules of the Constitution. 

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SS17 - Sam Pan the Kikkoman Fan's Terrible Plan

There are some questions that I get asked about that really make me question whether or not there is intelligent life on Earth at all. The real reason why we've not seen aliens is because they've already seen us and decided that we're stupider than a bucket of sentient space slime.

The question was: How much Soy Sauce could someone drink and still be safe?

This question came to my boss via a client via their 18 year old son. That ought to be enough information right there to frame this nicely. Nevertheless, if you ask a silly question you deserve a silly answer, or rather you deserve a sensible answer to show you just how silly you are.

As best as I can determine, the only thing in Soy Sauce which is likely to kill you is salt. Salt is a very simple chemical with only two elements and the bonds between the Sodium and Chlorine atoms are so strong that the chemical is dealt with exclusively as a solid component. 

The LD.50 of salt, that is the Lethal Dose which would typically kill 50% of the population is a lower bound of 0.74g/kg of body weight. For the purposes of this calculation, I'm going to assume that our genderless victim called Sam Pan the Kikkoman Fan, weighs 60kg.

60 * 0.74g = 44.4 of salt

A tablespoon of Soy Sauce (20mL) contains 900mg of salt, or 0.9g.

Sam Pan the Kikkoman Fan who  weighs 60kg would need to drink 49.3 tablespoons of Soy Sauce, or 987mL of Soy Sauce.

It probably goes without saying that Sam Pan the Kikkoman Fan, if they drank almost a litre of Soy Sauce, is going to have a bad time. They're not going to experience the same kinds of lightheadedness as alcohol, water, or other kind of intoxication and the kind of coma that they lapse into will be quiet. Perhaps the biggest deterrent to drinking almost a litre of Soy Sauce, is the prospect of drinking almost a litre of Soy Sauce. I don't know about you but there are far more pleasant things to be drinking a litre of. 

Horse 3120 - A Plastic Spoon In My Mouth

The 2022 edition of the FIFA World Cup increased the playing squad numbers of the teams from 23 to 26, as a concession to the allowance that there are now 5 substitutions allowed in most levels of football. While I have seen kit numbers which are exotically bonkers (including numbers as high as 99, numbers like 0, 00, 03, and nerdy things like π and e) in other competitions, I am old enough to be able to remember 10 World Cups and 9 of those only had 23 players in a squad; which meant that the highest kit number was 23. 26 is a slightly weird thing to look at.

After speaking to a good friend of mine, I was asked about whether or not having 5 substitutions changed the game for the better or worse. This is quite a sensible question as as there are only 11 players on the pitch, having the ability to change 5/11 (45%) of the playing staff at once, will markedly change the complexion of both the side and can markedly change the complexion of the match. From a team management perspective this is quite excellent because if you are trying to break a 0-0 duck or are losing badly, then any, all, and as many options as possible is more gooder¹. 

Let's take a trip back in time to the beginning of professional football. In the 1870s, sides were still amateur and in the age of 'improvement', sport itself was endowed with probably a sense of greater nobility than was necessary. 11 players were named on a side and maybe a concession would be allowed to replace someone if they were obviously injured but in general the 11 players which started the match would be the 11 players who ended it. This presents problem in and of itself. If you have a player who is injured and especially if they are in a critical position such as playing as the goalkeeper, then an injury could vastly change the outcome of a match. 

It wasn't until 1958 that 1 player could be named as a 12th man; which brought football in line with cricket. From what I have seen from looking through FA Cup Final lists, the number 12 was almost always a second goalkeeper or there would be someone in the existing XI who could be changed out of their existing kit and into the goalkeeper's No.1 kit. 

It wasn't until 1987 that 2 players could be named in addition to the 11 on the pitch and curiously, this usually meant that the substitutes would be assigned the kit numbers of 12 and 14. 13 was usually ominously missing². Plenty of fixtures were played where no substitutes were made at all, right up until the 1980s. The prevailing theory was that a manager would play their best XI and that they'd have the best chance of winning. Of course it was really only in the 1980s when the quality of players started to be objectively measured that anyone did consider that someone from the best XI might actually be worse at the 60 minute mark than someone who was nominally worse but fresher.

In 1994 and after the invention of the Premier League, when wages exploded as a result of money from BSkyB and massive amounts of revenue from advertising, that the clubs started complaining that 2 players was not enough. The 1994/5 season saw the introduction of 3 substitutes from 3 reserves.

The 1998 FIFA World Cup, which at this stage was football stepping into the hundreds of millions of dollarpounds in revenues, allowed 3 substitutes from 5 reserves. and this remained until the grand unpleasantness of 2020 when the SARS Cov-2 pandemic decimated playing squads and so the rules were changed yet again to allow 5 substitutes from 9 reserves.

At international level though, since national football associations were sending squads of 23 around the world, instead of naming just 5 on the bench, the whole remaining 12 were named. A manager at international level now had the ability to substitute anyone from their touring squad onto the pitch. 

Of course this does beg the question of what would happen if unlimited substitutions were allowed and we have answered that very question in international football. What happens, is quite frankly, absurd. The most heinous example that I can think of of unlimited substitutions was in 2003 when England played Australia at Upton Park. Sven Goran Eriksson swapped out all 11 players at half time; which meant that for the second half, Australia was playing an entirely different side³. 

So what do I think? 

If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then in my not very well paid opinion, we have already seen the sweet spot for the numbers of substitutions allowed and the depth of the bench allowed. I think that 3 substitutes from a bench of 5 allows a manager to select a forward, a midfielder, a defender, and a goalkeeper, and someone else; to replace anyone who is injured or very tired, with a like for like player. Three substitutes is I think, the upper bound of what is sensible in order to not fundamentally change the complexion of the side on the pitch.

Managers and coaching staff will want as many options available to them all of the time because their objective is to win football matches. Of all the things that don't matter, sport is the thing which matters most of all, and since sport doesn't matter, then winning by all means necessary and within the rules available, should always be first, foremost, and last, on the minds of all of the players and managers and coaching staff who play by proxy.

Likewise, the people who play the really stupid sport of money, up in the corporate boxes (and who have ruined the game for everyone else) also want as many options available to them all of the time because their objective is also to win football matches. Players aren't just players but assets who need to be protected for maximum optimal usage.

Also as a corollary to this, as players are listed as multi-million dollarpound assets, the people up in the corporate boxes want to display their assets more often. As playing squads are now 40 and 50 odd players deep, the idea that the same XI would play week in and week out, has been unheard of in a very long time. Having massive squads also necessitated players having permanent squad numbers, simply because the entire XI might change from one week to the next and even if they didn't, a player might be listed in different positions from week to week and that would mean that they had different numbers throughout the season. Having players in the same kit number is also handy for replica kit sales.

I have watched a lot of World Cup Finals and FA Cup finals (albeit not necessarily in prosecution of this question) and I think that matches from the 1960s and 1970s do have a quality which is not evident in modern matches. That level of tiredness which descends is something which is lost in the modern game. Players had to dig deep within themselves to find something late in a match. I do not think that this happens to anything like a degree of that any more. Players are professional, players are fitter and stronger, and players are playing with the knowledge that they can be replaced. They now play with that knowledge and are far more prone to throw themselves around like ragdolls. When both managers and players knew that the 11 players who started the match, were also going to be the same 11 players who ended it, the game was played at a slower speed through sheer necessity. It looks absolutely amazing now that the Preston North End side with won the League and Cup Double in 1888/89, not only undefeated but also passing through the FA Cup without conceding a goal, only used 11 players all up. 

As someone who has played the game and watched the game, I actually like the idea that players get tired and that performance can drop off during a match. It does mean that substitutions are a tactical card which can be played and under the conditions of 3 substitutions from 5, the impact of a triple substitution is crazy and immense. I also like the idea that management needs to be careful so that they do not run out of options. I think that 3 substitutions from 5 is the sweet spot, where both the tiredness of players and the unexpected impact of substitutes is most entertaining.

¹I like the distinction between "better" and "gooder" because they imply something slightly different. 

²The first ever player to appear in a No.13 kit in an FA Cup Final squad was Kevin Hitchcock who was listed as the replacement keeper for Chelsea in 1993. It would not be until 2002 when William Gallas actually appeared on the pitch as a player in the No.13 kit.

³This match answered that philosophical poser of the Ship of Theseus (or Captain Cook's Axe). It turns out that if you do replace every single part, then you still end up with the same thing; even if you replace all of the parts at once. England was still England and as such, England was still rubbish6

Horse 3116 - The A-League Grand Final's Move To Sydney

https://keepup.com.au/news/why-sydney-is-the-new-home-of-the-a-leagues-grand-finals

From 2023, A-Leagues fans will be no different, as Sydney becomes the home of the Isuzu UTE A-League and Liberty A-League Grand Finals for the next three seasons.

- A-League Statement, 12th Dec 2022

The A-League in a process that is as mystifying as it is senseless, decided to award the Grand Final to the Sydney Football Stadium on a permanent basis for a period of years. Although this does add a degree of permanence to the finals, as Australia is vast an unwieldy, doing this is a great inconvenience to anyone who isn't Sydney, Western Sydney, Macarthur, the Central Coast, or Newcastle. Amazingly, this squeaked through with majority support of the clubs; which I can only take it to mean that the clubs who were okay with this were Brisbane, Melbourne City, and Obligatory Western Melbourne FC. For everyone else, this would have them hopping mad.

I can understand Football Australia's desire to want to establish tradition because so much of the world that we live in, is built upon tradition and collective story. Tradition and story both work better when they repeat themselves on a regular basis. By doing so, tradition and story benefit from a past which is predictable and reliable. The problem that the A-League has is that in wanting to sever itself from the ethno-cultural shackles of the past, it kind of had to invent its own future. It did this at a time when there was no proper national Cup; so cam to the then logical conclusion that the people would want a finals series after a regular season. A structure like this is fine if you have one league with no hop of promotion and relegation, or perhaps many conferences which is what exists in the United States but that's all that that structure should be used for. A finals series is sensible if you have a multi-group stage followed by a knockout phase, which is what the World Cup, European or Asian Champions League do, but for a league, it is unnecessary and silly.

The cultural centre of Australian football is in principle, either a cousin of the English, or broadly European. With the exception of Switzerland which has its own insane and unique way for deciding who its league champions are, all leagues in Europe play a league without a final series and the champion is the team with the most points at the end. There is nothing wrong with this at all. It is sensible.

The cultural centre of Australian sport generally though, has been slightly different. Both the AFL and Rugby League have had finals series for quite some time; so nobody questioned the sensibility of having a finals series in principle or even if it was fit for purpose. I suppose that the A-League wanted some sense of carnival for its last game of the season and having a Grand Final was the vehicle to do that. This is despite the fact that a Cup format already has that by nature and once the Australia Cup was established, it should have been that carnival.

If I were Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then football in Australia would be organised with a League in which everyone plays each other twice or four times, both home and away, or three times where the number of home and away games that the sides get are all equal. It would be 4 points for a win; 2 points for a score draw; 1 point for a scoreless draw; 0 points for a loss. The league champion would be the team who has earned the most points at the end of the year. This is far more sensible as it means that teams end up playing all the way until the end of the season. Granted that this can mean that a team might be crowned champions-elect well before the end of the season but the truth is that if that happens, then such a team is deserving of being league champions. However, I am not Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else and the solution arrived at, appears to be a solution in search of a problem. My solution for the Grand Final of the A-League, would have been to eliminate it on the basis that it is silly and pointless.

As for the Cup, well we have one of those now. It is possible for a rank amateur team of tradies and butchers to win the Australia Cup, although it is highly unlikely. The structure of a cup is such that everyone must win every game that they play and because it is a knockout competition, by its nature it produces a Cup Final. This is also sensible. Maybe there is a place for the Cup Holders to play the League Champions in a Charity Shield type match but I do not think that this is necessary. 

When it comes to Cup Finals, in most cases in Europe, the Final is played at a ground which is not home to anybody. If this was the case in Australia, then the Cup Final should rightfully be played at Bruce Stadium, Stadium Australia or the MCG but all of these places are equally bad for watching football in. Olympic style stadia have weird ends that are perfect for athletics and oval sports but not football which is played on a rectangle. Of these grounds, my choice for playing the Australia Cup Final would be Bruce Stadium; not only because it is mutually horrible for everyone but as it is in the nation's capital, that seems to me to be the logical home for it.

All of this is quite apart from the fact that neither Football Australia nor any of the clubs in the A-League own their own grounds. This is one of the perpetual problems for sport generally in Australia, where teams are tenants of their grounds rather than owners. I find it insane that AFC Wimbledon which is a third-tier English football club can own its own ground in London but professional teams in Australia are either unwilling or unable to. I would have thought that from both a cash flow and taxation perspective, that it would make more sense to pay for and own an asset rather than pay for the rental of one and have no say in the running of it at all. From that perspective, the best answer would have been for Football Australia to build its own ground somewhere and then lease that ground out to tenants while it is not in use. If I could pick anywhere in the country, then an 80,000 seat stadium in Albury would have been the perfect venue.

Horse 3077 - Big Angry Cats vs Danger Noodles

I have been asked by someone to give my prediction of who is going to win the 2022 Rugby League Grand Final. Even when I pointed out that I do not watch Rugby League, I was assured that my opinion would still be useful as I could probably work it out using data. In this respect I am probably the truest neutral that ever existed because not only am I not tainted by personal preference or prejudice on the subject, if the only thing I have available to me is the data with no context, then I'm not going to be tainted by those things. I have no iron in the fire. 

So then, what kind of data am I going use for this endeavour? Wins, draws, losses? No. Points for and against? No. Form over the last five matches? No. Average winning and average losing margin? No. All of these are fine metrics which might be useful for someone who actually cares about the game but I don't. There's one piece of data which is really strange and surprisingly reliable.

You will note that in 20 years of Australian Rules Grand Finals, in a roughly 2:1 ratio you can work out who is going to win, just by looking at the relative angriness of the mascots. It is made a little bit more difficult by trying to decide who would win in a fight between birds/animals/people and the weather but in general whoever you think would win in a fight, will win in the Grand Final.

2002 Lions 75 - 66 Magpies - Cats can rip birds to shreds (1-0)

2003 Lions 134 - 84 Magpies - Cats can rip birds to shreds (2-0)

2004 Power 113 - 73 Lions - Cats should not be playing with electricity (3-0)

2005 Swans 58 - 54 Eagles - I have no idea how to rate bird on bird violence (4-1)

2006 Eagles 85- 84 Swans - I have no idea how to rate bird on bird violence (5-2)

2007 Cats 163 - 44 Power - Cats should not be playing with electricity yet somehow they won? (5-3)

2008 Hawks 115 - 89 Cats - Cats can rip birds to shreds but birds still won? (5-4)

2009 Cats 80 - 68 Saints - Cats have staff (6-4)

2010 Magpies 68 - 68 Saints (no net result)

2010 Magpies 102 - 52 Saints - Birds are a nuisance in nesting season (7-4)

2011 Cats 119 - 81 Magpies - Cats can rip birds to shreds (8-4)

2012 Swans 91 - 81 Hawks - I have no idea how to rate bird on bird violence (9-5)

2013 Hawks 77 - 62 Dockers - Birds are a nuisance in nesting season (10-5)

2014 Hawks 137 - 74 Swans - I have no idea how to rate bird on bird violence (11-6)

2015 Hawks 107 - 61 Eagles - I have no idea how to rate bird on bird violence (12-7)

2016 Bulldogs 89 - 67 Swans - Dogs can rip birds to shreds (13-7)

2017 Tigers 108 - 60 Crows - Cats can rip birds to shreds (14-7)

2018 Eagles 79 - 74 Magpies - I have no idea how to rate bird on bird violence (15-8)

2019 Tigers 114 - 25 Giants - Cats have staff (16-8)

2020 Tigers 81 - 50 Cats - If I had no idea how to rate bird on bird violence, then I have even less of an idea how to rate cat on cat violence (17-9)

2021 Demons 140 - 66 Dogs - Dogs have masters (even if those masters are demons) (18-9)

2022 Cats 133 - 52 Swans - Cats can rip birds to shreds (19-9)

Of itself that seems like a trivial result because anyone can look at a series and draw conclusions from things that aren't there. Humans are pattern seeking machines who  find patterns in information they are presented; including when no such pattern exists.

However, when you then apply this same bizarre reasoning to a similar 20 year period of Rugby League Grand Finals, in a roughly 2:1 ratio you can also work out who is going to win, just by looking at the relative angriness of the mascots. Again, it is made a little bit more difficult by trying to decide who would win in a fight between birds/animals/people and the weather but in general whoever you think would win in a fight, will win in the Grand Final.

2002 Roosters 30 – 8 Warriors - I have no idea how a flock of chickens beat a band of Warriors (0-1)

2003 Panthers 18 – 6 Roosters - Cats can rip chickens to shreds (1-1)

2004 Bulldogs 16 – 13 Roosters - Dogs can rip chickens to shreds (2-1)

2005 Tigers 30 – 16 Cowboys - Big Angry Cats can rip people to shreds (3-1)

2006 Broncos 15 – 8 Storm - Does a horse just stand out in the weather? (3-2)

2007 Storm 34 – 8 Sea Eagles - Bad weather stops birds from flying (4-2)

2008 Sea Eagles 40 – 0 Storm - Except if they just stay in the nest (4-3)

2009 Storm 23 – 16 Eels - Bad weather stops danger noodles from wiggling (5-3)

2010 Dragons 32 – 8 Roosters - Big Angry Mythical Beast can rip chickens to shreds (6-3)

2011 Sea Eagles 24 – 10 Warriors - Birds are a nuisance in nesting season (7-3)

2012 Storm 14 – 4 Bulldogs - Bad weather stops dogs from running (8-3)

2013 Roosters 26 – 18 Sea Eagles - I have no idea how to rate bird on bird violence (9-4)

2014 Rabbitohs 30 – 6 Bulldogs - Rabbits can outrun a dog (9-5)

2015 Cowboys 17 – 16 Broncos - Cowboys can wrangle and break-in horses (10-5)

2016 Sharks 14 – 12 Storm - A shark is unaffected by weather on the surface (11-5)

2017 Storm 34 – 6 Cowboys - Bad weather keeps people inside (12-5)

2018 Roosters 21 – 6 Storm - Except if they just stay in the nest (12-6)

2019 Roosters 14 – 8 Raiders - And if they remain inside a chicken coop (12-7)

2020 Storm 26 – 20 Panthers - Bad weather stops cats from running (13-7)

2021 Panthers 14 – 12 Rabbitohs - Big Angry Cats can rip bunnies to shreds (14-7)

2022 Panthers v Eels

I know nothing about the form of the two sides going into this year's Rugby League Grand Final. I do not really care about Rugby League at all and to be honest, I think that the last truly great Rugby League season was 1966 when St George had won their 11th successive Grand Final. A four-tackle rule was introduced to replace unlimited tackles, which in my opinion was done purely to stop St George from winning more; which says that nobody else could honestly work out how to beat them within the rules that existed.

Having said all of that, as someone who not only knows nothing and actively dislikes the game of Rugby League, my pick for the 2022 champion is the Panthers for no other reason than Big Angry Cats can stop Danger Noodles from wiggling.

Aside:

If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else and in charge of the AFL fixtures list then there'd be a round of:

Lions v Tigers

Cats v Dogs

Demons v Saints

Crows v Magpies

Hawks v Eagles

Bombers v Dockers

And the rest I'm not really bothered with because it should be:

Blues v Reds

Kangaroos v Koalas

Giants v Titans

Swans v Ibises

Suns v Moons

Power v Electricity Blackout

but half of those do not exist.

Horse 3066 - The Impatient Republic of Australia

After Horse went to press yesterday, the news shot around the world that Queen Elizabeth II died peacefully at the age of 96. The nonagenarian monarch was one the throne for 69 years; having seen 16 Prime Ministers as Queen, and having lived through two world wars, one hot and one cold. Her son Charles III will ascend the throne and oversee a Britain which has decided to play the Australian game of the Thirsty Knife with its Prime Ministers, as a result of brexitatiously brexiting from the European Union and is now left shivering on its own brexitatious bed of nails.

The vast majority of Australians have only ever seen one monarch, some two, some four, though there are a very few number of people who have seen as many as six. Even before the Queen has been laid in state, there have already been discussions about Australia becoming a republic. It is almost as if the republicans have been waiting for this day just to unleash all kinds of agitation. I think that Australia becoming republic is inevitable but mostly because we have a lot of people who after looking at all the other nations around, have decided that we want that. Australia will sleepwalk towards becoming a republic because we simply do not have the imagination to consider what would happen if this came to be.

Advocates for a republic want to wrap the argument in optimism by saying that it is time that we "grew up" and left the monarchy as though it was the same as moving out of home and despite the fact that Australia hasn't really been interferred with by Britain since about 1941. The argument is wrapped around not much more than a change of symbols; seemingly without much consideration of what mechanically happens afterwards.

For my part, I am not really a monarchist. Granted that I do see the story of monarchy as a line of succession which goes well beyond Alfred the Great but that story also happens to include wars, genocides, slavery, exploitation of people and resources; which would have happened with a monarchy or not. The outrages of history when the abuse of greatness disjoins remorse from power, happens if the person at the top is a King, Emperor, Kaiser, Fuhrer, Lord Protector, Captain, General, Pope, Chairman, or President. I don't think that it really makes that much of a difference whether the King is on the back of the coins or not, or if it is Marianne, or Lady Liberty, or a shield thing, or a fasces, or anything else. 

The suggestion for the mechanics of becoming a republic is usually that we'd replace the Governor-General with a President and that nothing will change and that it will all be lovely. Change the name of the Office; change the coins, change the flag; job done. Nope. Politics is never ever that simple and the danger lurking behind the curtain is that where the is an office of power, there is always someone who wants that office. The people who want the offices of power, are almost always the people who are the most ill-advised to have them.

The biggest argument against becoming a republic is in fact the Appointments Scandal with Governor-General Peter Hurley and Prime Minister Scott Morrison. If we run the clock back to 1999, and the Republic of Australia became a thing, then the whole matrix of circumstances changes.

The Australian people rejected the 1999 Republic model, not because they were particularly loyal to the Crown but because polling at the time suggested that the model was wrong. The Referendum Convention although well meaning, was always looking inwards and never really saw the obvious fact that the Australian people have a very strong will and want to elect the head-of-state. The 1999 Republic model failed because the people of Australia want to choose their Grand Poohbah.

As we learned repeatedly throughout the premiership of John Howard and the initial periods of premiership of Julia Gillard, Malcolm Turnbull, and Scott Morrison, the word that gets thrown about is 'mandate'. John Howard frequently claimed a mandate to do horrible things, immediately after an election; based upon the political philosophical standpoint that an election enables the person who has just been handed the keys of office, the power to act. Conversely, incoming Prime Minister are always berated and held to ridicule with the statement that they have no mandate to act because they weren't elected.

If the Republic of Australia was a thing, then the appointments of Scott Morrison to the Ministries of Everything, would have perhaps still been scandalous but immediately justified by the fact that the Grand Poobah was elected to the position which gave him the commissions. As it stands, and as it should have stood, not many people really know what the powers of the Governor-General are and that's a brilliant thing because they are usually loathe to use them. If the Republic of Australia was a thing, then the appointments of Scott Morrison to the Ministries of Everything, was not only just but mandated.

Can you imagine what might have be wrought if Peter Dutton or Pauline Hanson, had been President? If the office of the President is an elected role, we have to absolutely assume that not only will knaves want the role but that knaves will get the role. Australia, which has been crabwalking away from Britain for 122 years, has spent the last 77 years crabwalking towards the United States culturally. We have sent John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison, to the tob job recently; we must assume that electing the President immediately opens the job to mandated collusion.

As for the Queen herself, she was someone's mum, grandma, great-grandma, and she got given the job because of circumstances set into motion while she was still a teenager. To be in a job for 69 years is hard. To have been living in a fishbowl for 69 years is even harder. Probably her only night of freedom ever, was on one strange night in 1945 when for a while, unbridled joy broke out. If nothing else, 96 was a decent innings and even your opponents will clap you as you make the long walk back to the pavilion.

As for Australia, the world has changed and already we have people who want change the system further; without regard for the consequences which will unfold. 

The Queen is dead. Long live the King. Long may we say 'God Save the King" because nothing will save us from the knaves who we absolutely will install.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Art IV, Sec. 2. (I)

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

No really:

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

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

- Alexander H. Stephens, 21st Mar 1861

Horse 3046 - The Case For "Vote No" Is A Scummy Sham

The Albanese Government has published a draft question to be put to the people of Australia with regards to The Voice to parliament, as recommended by a very long process, which included the Uluru Statement From The Heart in 2017. Australia has never ever come to terms with its colonial past but instead, absorbed the story of dispossession and theft, by whitewashing the story with a settler narrative; which wasn't helped by abject racism which was originally enshrined in the Constitution. 

You would expect that as part of any kind of truth telling and equity process, that at the very least there would be some kind of dialogue between the Crown and First Peoples but it appears as though Australia still very much retains a right-wing authoritarian racist element, which would cheer the hearts of white supremacists and the same kinds of people who would form lynch mobs. 

It does not help that the current Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, refused to be in the parliament when the Apology to the Stolen Generations was made; nor does it help that people like former Prime Ministers, John Howard and Tony Abbott have been given very large platforms by Sky News Australia (which itself is part of an organisation which actively wants to remove provisions to the Racial Discrimination Act because its employees have fallen foul of it) and been allowed to pour petrol onto the fire which fuels outright racism.

I would like to be kind when it comes to judging people's motives but the biggest objections to any kind of reconciliation, recognition, and remedy process which includes an indigenous voice to parliament, is lead by Australians who either don’t understand their own history, who were never taught it and have not wanted to know it; so never sought to educate themselves. Given the history of this country, we have to conclude that there are a lot of nasty and openly racist people who lack even basic empathy.

On top of this, the couching of the argument as an unreasonable demand by people like Littleproud on the floor of the parliament itself, is disingenuous political fear mongering in plain sight. The suggestion that there's somehow a lack of detail despite there being a 277 precis about The Voice, is an open lie. The draft question posed, is actually rather plain, simple, and easily understood.

I was asked the following questions on Twitter; which were more than likely asked in bad faith, given that this person then expressed notions that first people would eventually die out through natural processes (which sounds awfully like forms of eugenics from the late 1890s) but even questions asked in bad faith can still be answered in sensible terms:

Do ALL Australian people currently have EXACTLY the same rights, the same representation (such as it is), at the moment? Are all equal?

Isn't it racist to say all have an equal right, but some should have an extra right, because of race?

- Handle Withheld, 31st Jul 2022

The short answer in a word is, "No". All Australian people do not currently have exactly the same rights. I realise that this might be a subtle thing to grasp but we as a nation have repeatedly confirmed that First Peoples do not have the right to equity.

One of the principles at common law is that someone who causes damage of property, both real and non-real, should make good and fix or repair the damage. Notions of equality attempt to ensure that people have access to the same rights and opportunities; notions of equity should attempt to do what is right, and just, and proper. 

Any reading of the first nine clauses of the Constitution, will tell you that First People are conspicuous by their absence. They were never consulted about the process of federation and right up until the various land rights claims of the 1970s, 80s and Mabo v Queensland No.2 (1992) there wasn't even the hint that those claims would be honoured.

However to suggest that land rights are the be all and end all, is too miss the mark by miles. The opening nine clauses of the Constitution tell a far more egregious story. What they demonstrate is open discrimination by omission. Futhermore, the intent of things like the race provision and the original inclusion of Section 127 goes on to demonstrate active exclusion to process.

Are all equal?

Again, No. Having capital stolen from you, has multiplier effects. From the inception of the nation, not only did stealing land exclude First People from the lands but also the rewards which may have followd by means of rents and royalties. If you multiply the active exclusion from the economic rewards of something for more than 200 years in some cases, then that further adds to the problem of economic inequality. 

Some should have an extra right, because of race?

The fact that someone even thinks like this suggests that they are unaware of the privilege that they possess or worse, actually do understand the privilege that they possess and want to preserve it, including if this comes at someone else's expense. When you are in a place of privilege, any move towards equity and and equality begins to look like oppression. The ugly irony is that people asking this question are actively arguing for a denial of equity on the basis of race. This might not even be a case of irony, it might just be straight up knavery.

I also find the hiding behind "equality" as an excuse for not wanting The Voice, as deeply dishonest. If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then I would go further than just The Voice to parliament and complete the process of federation; by formally recognising the original sovereignty of first peoples, which by the way was never ceded, and admitting first people as a 'virtual state' which would entitle first people to at least six Senators. Proper equality should logically come with representation and I think that this is best expressed on the floors of parliaments. We are not even close to having that kind of dialogue for the simple reason that  nasty and openly racist people who lack empathy will do everything that they can do stop it. As usual money speaks for money, power speaks for power, and those who control one or both, generally do not want to give it up; so they will couch argument in the language of liberty. Scratch the surface though and ask just a few questions and you find that liberty, empathy, liberty, fraternity, extend only as far as their fists will allow and they want to continue punching downwards.

The underlying problem is that Australia has never ever come to terms with its original sin. Australia likes to whitewash its history by claiming that this continent was settled by a peaceful settler class in addition to its penal colony origins. The untold truth is that this came at the expense of people who were at times deliberately exterminated and destroyed through acts of genocide. Their descendants were then denied and excluded from any kind of equity, much less ever getting say on the legislation which would directly affect them.

The Voice, which in my opinion is still a pathetic half-way attempt at token action, is still only a first but necessary step in a process not yet imagined; which should lead to reconciliation, treaty, representation, and very far off in the distance, the possibility of dialogue and forgiveness.