Antony Green and his take on the Greens

Green is always worth a read.

He rides a bike too - doubleplusgood.

Jamie vs Verity

Another in my soon-to-end series on election posters. That's because the election is in 16 days, and after that, we hopefully won't see any more posters for a while.

Poor old Verity Firth can't win at anything. Whoever nailed up her posters has screwed up big time - they put a nail in the bottom and a nail in the middle - but not one in the top. That's meant that after a few weeks of rain and wind, many posters have folded in the middle and fallen over, completely obscuring the message. Here's an example.

That must be a metaphor for the hopeless Labor government - shoddy work that looks good initially, then falls apart after a short while.

According to the local rag, here are the centrebet odds on the candidates:

Balmain

Jamie Parker (Greentard) – $1.20
Verity Firth (Wife of junkie) – $4.50
James Falk (Boring normal dude) – $9

Marrickville

Fiona Byrne (Greenloon) – $1.22
Carmel Tebbutt (wife of Labor stooge) – $4
Rosanna Tyler (who?) – $9

Drummoyne

John Sidoti (Lib) – $1.22
Angelo Tsirekas (Lab) – $3.50

Strathfield

Virginia Judge (Lab) – $1.85
“John” Causcuscelli (Lib) – $1.85

Interestingly, the paper spells Labor as “Labour” and stuffed up the name of Charles Casuscelli. Guess they had the cadet reporter do that story. I know he's a wog with a tricky name, but even I can spell it correctly. Sheesh!

Even more election posters

Angela D'Amore still has her office going, even though she won't be the local member any more in 2 1/2 weeks time. That's not preventing her from using up her printing allowance in a misguided attempt to puff up her legacy. By April 1, people will be saying, "Angela Who?"

The alternative Angelo Tsirekas poster - the one that is not a leftover from a previous mayoral campaign. I don't get the use of slogans - "One of Us". What the hell does that mean? That he's not an alien from the Planet Zog?

Found this in a backstreet - almost fell of the bike when I saw it. It's the only one I've seen so far. Adam - here's a hint. Get a haircut before your next formal photo session. My motto is, "Never trust a Green in a suit". That goes for business suit, lounge suit or koala suit.

Ah, the missing poster from my last trawl - James Falk, the Liberal candidate for Balmain. We've heard very little about him in the media, because the media are obsessed with the battle between the Green and the Labortard. Poor old James gets no oxygen because he appears to be normal. My suggestion is that he takes drugs, crashes his car into a gay bar and then runs naked down the main street of Balmain with a flaming torch stuck up his bum. If he does that, he might cop a line in the local rag.

More election posters

As requested by the Tizona Group, I bring you four more election posters. I did a special ride today, just for you guys. First off, we have the current Mayor of Canada Bay, Angelo Tsirekas. He has a few different posters, all similar to the one above. I think this is actually his old mayoral campaign poster, with a "Drummoyne" sticker stuck over his old mayoral election slogan. Labor have written this seat off, so he's having to make do with a budget of sweet FA.

God knows why he went with yellow - I always associate that colour with cowardice. One thing I have noticed though - he doesn't try to chat my partner up when I accompany her to functions he's attending. Rumour has it that he got a bit too friendly with ladies other than his wife last year, and was booted out of the marital abode. It appears things have since been patched up. He's got excellent name recognition though, having been mayor for years, so I think he is in with a reasonable chance. The Labor voters that were walking around six months ago saying that they'd never vote for D'Amore (since hauled up before ICAC on corruption charges and suspended from the Labor party) will vote for Tsirekas. His name doesn't stink like D'Amore's did (she is also Joe Tripodi's sister-in-law). As a newbie, he also isn't associated with the wretched Labor government.

Jamie Parker, who is the Mayor of Leichhardt. He's hoping to knock off Verity Firth in Balmain. Although he's a Green, he's been spotted parking his big black Mercedes some distance from functions and then walking so that people don't get the idea that he is in fact a rich, capitalist plutocrat. He's certainly richer than the other candidates shown here. I hope that all that blue sky in the background isn't full of CO2.

Alex Elliot - never heard of him, and don't ask me why he went with black and white. Cost perhaps? It stands out though.

John Sidoti, currently Mayor of Burwood and the Liberal candidate (sorry about the distant photo - the road was too busy to cross - will try to get a better photo). It's always fun around here when the elections are Greeks vs Italians. Sidoti has added a large format poster to his repertoire - the ones on the right of the trailer. They really stand out. Interesting how the Liberal is photographed on a green background, and the Green on a blue background (traditionally the conservative colour).

More to follow after the next ride. I didn't spot a poster for the Liberal candidate for Balmain this morning - I know they are out there, but there weren't any in the spots that I rode around today.

A carbon dioxide tax and compensation

If we're going to be taxed for breathing out, the least the idiots in Canberra can do is make sure that everyone who emits CO2 pays for it equally. No compensation - everyone suffers equally.

"But what about the poor?", you say.

Well, the poor don't currently get a rebate on fuel excise do they? Everyone pays the same amount of tax on petrol or diesel, regardless of their income. The more miles you drive, or the thirstier your car, the more you pay. Everyone has the same incentive to drive less or to buy a stupid little buzzbox.

The whole idea of this lunatic tax is to get us to change our behaviour to one thought more suitable by our overlords in Canberra. What's the point of exempting a whole favoured swathe of the population from the impact of the tax - what incentive do they then have to adjust their life styles to those favoured by the Green elites?

Everyone is going to have to sweat equally in summer. No exceptions. You voted for these clowns, you can suffer with the rest of us.

Hello from Newtown

Newtown is one of the avant garde areas of Sydney. I used to spend a bit of time there in my pre-family days, getting plastered and seeing bands at the RSL, or catching a drag show at a gay pub. The area also has a plethora of excellent Thai restaurants, and it's home to one of the densest concentrations of 2nd hand book stores and record stores in Sydney. I guess it's at least 7 years since I was there "properly" - that is, having enough time to walk up and down the main street as well as stop for a bite to eat, a coffee and some book shopping. It's even longer since I was there on a Saturday night, chundering a kebab into the gutter before crawling into a taxi for the trip home.

An old mate was in town on Saturday, and had a few hours to spare before catching a plane home. I picked him up and we spent a good 3 hours just chilling in Newtown and remembering the good old days.

From what I saw, not much has changed. As we were walking back to the car, I suggested a game for us to play. We'd count how many of the following we saw over the next few minutes:

• children
• people with no visible tats
• people with no facial peircings
• people who were not begging
• people who weren't playing strange musical instruments in the street whilst dressed like a Nepalese shaman
• straight people
• fat people

We got to two - him and me.

Newtown is quite overwhelmingly alternative. We really stood out as a couple of straight squares - we didn't even have a skateboard between the two of us, or a pair of $600 designer eye ware. Or a $200 Armani T-shirt stretched over a finely honed product of the gym.

It's an interesting place to visit, because it is so alien to those of us now living in the suburbs - even if I'm not that many suburbs away. I'm in the inner west, which is reasonably cosmopolitan, wealthy and tolerant - but Newtown is another planet.

Consider this - I saw one pram and 3 kids over a 3 hour period. Out here, kids are everywhere - the place is bursting at the seams thanks to a mini baby boom, and all the schools are overcrowded.

You rarely see someone around here with facial piercings or dreadlocks. You get the odd visible tattoo, but that's more on Saturday night when the slick young wog boys come out to party. We know a lesbian couple, but they aren't brazenly open about it. They certainly haven't gone in for the sorts of hair styles and modes of dress that generally shout "lesbian" to all and sundry. If there are any gays in the area, they're being very quiet about it.

We never get any beggars in any of the shopping areas, and whilst you see some shabbily dressed bogans from time to time, you certainly don't see any outright freaks.

Another thing that stood out is that almost every power pole had a Greens election sign nailed to it. I swear I saw more Green's signage in one street in Newtown than I have seen in the entire inner west.

I'm trying to get to some sort of point here. My point is that Newtown is a mecca for the sorts of people who work for the ABC or Fairfax - the leftoid press. If you lived in Newtown rather than say Strathfield or Macquarie Links (a reasonably affluent gated community way down south), your view of the world would have a certain tilt to it.

I guess this is why the SMH is constantly running stories on stuff like homelessness, gay issues, drug use, squatters and so on. These are all clearly big issues in Newtown - but not out where I live. And Newtown represents about 1% of Sydney if it's lucky.

I can see where the ABC/SMH are coming from - the place where I live is pretty boring. Yes, it's suburban dullsville. The neighbours are chiefly interested in things like which daycare centre to put their kids into and gossiping over the argument that broke out over a parking spot outside the church this morning. Their big concerns are things like mortgages, utility bills and having to get up at 5.30am to drive to work. It's pretty tame and pedestrian compared to getting off your face on acid at a gay venue in Newtown and spending the night playing bongo drums with some Byron Bay gypsies and a couple of trannies with bodies like Marky Mark.

And in case you are wondering why the ABC types cluster in Newtown, here's a map for you. Newtown is the blue circle at the bottom, the ABC the blue circle in the middle. Distance between those two points is 4km - an easy walk.

This is one reason why I think the ABC should move to somewhere west of Parramatta. It's never going to represent the views of middle Australia whilst it's staff are immersed in an environment like Newtown.

Monday photos

My brain has been too fried by the heat this week to bother with posting photos. It's just been too damned hot to sit at the PC. Thankfully, we have a bit of a cool change coming through at present - the house might cool down enough to allow a decent night's sleep.

I was hoping we were in for a thunderstorm on Monday when I took this photo at about 0600 - a good drenching of rain would take the edge off the heat. No such luck. I simply sweated like I have not sweated in years.

This bloke was feeling the heat, riding into town in his work clobber on a very trendy bike (white wheels and all). When I pulled up next to him at the lights, his face was dripping. I was the same - but at least I was heading for a 10 minute freezing shower and a change of clothes, allowing me to feel reasonably fresh and clean for a day in the office.

Normally the only time you see Dikes on Bikes is Mardi Gras time.

Why did I photograph this bloke? Probably because I was overtaking him. The madness overtook me soon after, and I just had to overtake everyone I met. There was a big pack of bikes moving through Pyrmont towards the ANZAC bridge - as soon as we hit the spiral leading up the bridge, I went for it. As others changed down, I changed up, and I fairly ripped past one and all. There was only one out of over a dozen that got away - only because I got stuck behind some dopey pedestrians. Why, oh why, do I do stupid stuff like that on a skin melting day?

The state election is approaching, and we're seeing various political types from time to time standing on street corners, annoying the pedestrians. The bloke in the suit and hat was a Green. He didn't exactly fit the stereotype of hip young thing with numerous facial piercings. He looked about 75 - at least he was in a dark green suit.

Dams and floods

The Shadowlands starts a debate on how useful dams might have been in Queensland.

As Gavin notes, Peter Garrett knocked back a Queensland dam because it might have impacted on the habitat of some endangered frogs and things.

I'm wondering this - how would the impact of the dam compare to the impact of a fucking enormous flood? Do those habitats still exist, or are they now 30 feet under water? What sort of condition will those habitats be in when the waters subside, and will those endangered species ever come back? What if they've all been wiped out by the flood? Can we then start pouring concrete for a new dam?

Of course Garrett and the Federal environmental pubes would never consider such an outcome, as they couldn't conceive of it ever raining again in Australia thanks to climate change.

Idiots.

More on the collapse of the Green dream

What is it with media pundits and their inability to do simple sums? Here is Cheryl Kernot in the SMH today:

The Greens recorded a very marginal increase in their base vote and lost a seat in the upper house, dampening the hype that began with the election of Adam Bandt in the federal seat of Melbourne.

Yes Cheryl, they did record a marginal increase in their base vote - they went from 297931 in 2006 to 302950 in 2010. However, almost none of that increase appeared in the 4 seats that were hyped as going Green - Brunswick, Melbourne, Richmond and Prahran. They actually shed an aggregate of 2147 primary votes in these key seats.

The big winner in all of them was apathy. The donkey vote has remained stable since 1999. What is clear though is that more and more Victorians just aren't energised to get out of bed and vote in state elections anymore - and this is particularly true of Labor voters. Instead of swinging to the Liberals, they just stayed in bed. Why make the effort to spoil your ballot when you can sleep in instead?

Brunswick - the Green vote came of a low base in 1999, almost quadrupled by 2006 to 9890 and then collapsed like a souffle in 2010 to 8062. Their share of the primary vote went up slightly because the Labor vote imploded. It's interesting to note though that in this seat, much of the Green vote appears to have come from the Libs, not Labor. There goes the notion that Labor party voters are drifting Green.

Melbourne - the Greens didn't run a candidate in 1999, but have steadily increased their vote since then. This was the only one of the 4 key seats where their vote increased between 2006 and 2010. In this seat, the increase in the Green vote nicely matches the decline in the Labor vote. In this instance, we could say that Labor voters have gone Green.

Richmond - the Green highwater mark was 2002, and they have gone backwards ever since. Their primary vote is 18% down on 2002. Labor has shed over 9000 primary votes in that time, but it appears none have gone to the Greens - most have joined the party of apathy. Again, the idea that Labor voters are going Green has been shown to be a myth.

Prahran - this has gone from Labor to Liberal. The Green vote dropped 24% from 2006. The Labor vote collapsed, dropping 36%. Instead of those Labor voters leaking to the Greens, they have charged into the apathetic camp. There is no support here for the idea of Labor voters turning Green. Why did the Libs win Prahran? Their primary vote was lower than it was in 2002 and 2006 - but as you can see, the Labor vote evaporated. 4200 Labor voters stayed in bed, as did 1500 Greens. The loss of those primary votes and the Green preferences was enough to give the seat to the Libs. Questions have to be asked - why did all those Labor voters stay home? What put them off so much?

Here is a seat the Greens will never win - Broadmeadows. The reason I picked this seat is that I know where it is - when you drive from Sydney to Melbourne, you drive through it on the outskirts. It's always looked like an outer suburban shit hole to me. That's because it has a big Ford factory. Everyone knows Fords are crap. I had no idea until now that the member was one John Brumby. Fancy that.

Brumby's vote has dropped by about a third from 2006, but he still romped home. Note that the Green vote dropped by about 12% from the last election. Clearly, Labor voters on the fringe are not defecting to the Greens. My take is that they are over Labor, but only a very small number will swap to the Libs - but none will go Green. Instead, they just stay at home and do nothing.

OK, one last chart - this one from Derrimut, which I guess is a sort of mid-outer western suburb. As I have no idea what Melbourne geography is like, I am going to guess that this is classic battler territory. Mexicans - feel free to correct me.

This seat didn't exist in 1999, so we only have 3 elections to go on. Notice that the Greens didn't run a candidate in 2002 - it's only recently that they have developed to the point where the can run someone in most seats. That fact alone - putting up a candidate - is going to push up their total vote. If you didn't run someone last time, you got zero votes. The increase in the total number of Green votes across the state does not necessarily mean that their candidates are getting more popular - it may just mean they are running more candidates.

If I ran 10 candidates at the last election and they got 10 votes each, and I ran 20 at this election and they got 6 votes each, then I will get more votes in total - even if the popularity of my party sank like a stone.

What all this says to me can be summarised as follows:

• The idea that Labor voters are going Green holds true in only certain, limited electorates
• Labor voters did not swing to the Greens or the Liberals - they swung to apathy. They are still Labor voters at heart, but can't bring themselves to vote for another party.
• The Greens have not captured them - if anything, the pandering to the Greens may well have produced all this Labor apathy. The Labor base was anything but energised.
• The Libs didn't win government by attracting a lot of voters - only 50,000 more in total voted for them than in 2006. Labor lost because 240,000 of their voters failed to vote. They lost the will to vote Labor. I've heard for years that oppositions don't win elections - governments lose them. The numbers here back that idea up.