Aboriginal health stats and other misinformation

I have been looking at a number of reports into Aborginal health, or a lack of it, and trying to make some sense of the numbers.

According to the Human Rights Commission, Aborginals made up 2.2% of the population at the last census. That's 410,000 people out of say 19 million.

One of the reasons given for poor health outcomes is that 26% of Aboriginals live in remote or very remote areas, as opposed to 2% for the rest of the population.

Now when you read a stat like that, you go, "Wow, that's a big difference in percentages - that must be a root cause of bad health outcomes".

However, do the maths.

26% of 410,000 people is about 100,000 Aboriginals living in remote areas.

2% of the remaining 18,600,000 non-Aboriginal population is 372,000.

Right. So whitefellas outnumber Aboriginals in remote areas by over 3:1. But are the health outcomes for the whitefellas in remote areas as bad as for the Aborginal population in that area?

I doubt it. If it was, I'm sure we'd know about it.

So let's forget about the "remote" argument for a minute. It looks like a crock of shit. If white people can live in the same location without horrible health problems, then remoteness is not a causal factor.

But if it is a factor, then we should immediately close down all the remote townships and ship everyone off to places that are less remote. If you can't get good services to the people, move the people to the services. The WA government closed the town of Wittenoom because of asbsestos. If remote townships are as "toxic" as asbestos, then they should be abandoned. Is it worth staying where you are if it's killing you?

How about another statistic - that of low birth weight.

According to the Department of Health:

Low birthweight infants (weighing less than 2,500 grams at birth) are more at risk of developing conditions such as coronary heart disease and stroke when older. In 2000-02, live-born babies of Indigenous mothers were twice as likely to be of low birthweight as babies born to non-Indigenous mothers (12.9% compared to 6.1%)

Indigenous infant and child health is significantly poorer than that of non-Indigenous infants and children. A 'low birth weight baby' weighs less than 2500 grams at birth^[41] indicating, among other things, foetal malnutrition. There is a growing body of evidence that suggests a malnourished foetus will program its body in a way that will incline it to chronic diseases later in life.^[42] Beyond infancy, normal growth is considered vital for good health in adulthood. Significant numbers of Indigenous children demonstrate failure to thrive

OK then, why are so many Aboriginal babies low birth weight?

High fertility at younger ages contributes to the relatively high fertility of Indigenous women. Teenage births are more common among Indigenous women than among other women. In 2003, the teenage (15–19 years) birth rate among Indigenous women was more than four times the overall Australian teenage birth rate. Teenage pregnancies are associated with low birth weight.

So what they are saying really is that some Aboriginal kids are fucking each other silly and popping out kids at an amazing rate.

So what is the government to do about that? Say sorry and issue a chastity belt? How about they take the kids away and put them in a boarding house where they can be supervised and controlled and taught a few morals?

Oops, can't do that anymore. Strike that thought.

But why are Aboriginal teenagers getting pregnant so often?

I thought about this last night. It must be boredom.

When I was a teenager, I was as randy as the next kid. I spent most of my teenage years trying to get laid, mainly without result. It was the same for most of my friends. The reason we were unsuccesful is that the girls we knew were remarkably reticent about opening their legs. It's as simple as that - unless a girl consents, there is no sex, so the chances of getting pregnant are pretty low. I'd say they are zero, but then I'm a stickler for the facts.

What kept their legs closed?

I'd say the main factors were these:

• a strong moral upbringing by their parents
• a lack of loosening agents, like drugs and alcohol
• few opportunities to slip away unnoticed

Hell, we certainly tried to overcome all three barriers. We tried to talk them out of it (overcome the moral objections), but that rarely worked. So we then held parties and plied them with beer, wine and vodka (wine coolers were a favourite), but most passed out or vomited before they lost their inhibitions. Even then, the opportunities for having parties were limited, because our parents kept us on a tight leash, and they kept us busy. We played organised sport almost every weekend, trained before or after school several times per week and played disorganised sport on every free day. In between, we studied.

So what the hell is happening in Aboriginal communities? Well, I think we know that in some cases, the parents are getting drunk or stoned and don't give a fuck what their kids do, the kids aren't going to school or doing any sport so they are just BORED. Perfectly respectable friends of mine did a bit of burglary when they were teenagers because they were BORED. Committing crime is quite exciting, you know. I've committed the odd criminal act, and thinking about some of the more extreme things that I got away with still gets the heart racing.

But do you know how much input the government had into keeping me active as a kid?

Nil. Not one iota. It was all down to my parents, the parents of my friends, and some dedicated teachers. Government and government agencies had nothing to do with it. They are not the answer.

If kids are stuck in some bumhole and they're bored, yank them out of there and send them to a boarding school in the city. By force if necessary. I went to boarding school with kids that came from some pretty remote sheep and cattle stations from the boondocks of WA, and they were pretty wild when they arrived. Being out in the sticks your entire life can mess with your head.

Stuffing kids into boarding school was of course the sort of thing that we did up until about 1970, until some people started having "issues" with it. They complained about things like kids being caned for being naughty. Well I got caned for being naughty - got six of the best across the arse from a nasty ex-Rhodesian teacher who was notorious for being the hardest caner in school, and let me tell you this - I never fucked up again. It was humiliating and it hurt like hell and yes, I cried. Everyone did. It was supposed to make you cry - the idea being that if it hurt that much, you'd never forget it, and you might think twice about doing something naughty next time you got a stupid idea into your head.

Got that? It was supposed to hurt. You remember painful lessons really, really well. Unless you are a complete and utter blockhead.

Another statistic - the death rate.

According to NT Health:

The overall death rate for the Indigenous population is more than twice that for the total Australian population. The greatest differences occur in the middle age group of 25 to 54 years. In 2000 the leading causes of death among the Indigenous population were diseases of the circulatory system, external causes of injuries and poisoning and malignant neoplasms. These accounted for 26%, 14% and 14% of Indigenous death respectively.

It is premature adult death and not excess infant death that accounts for the reduced life expectancy of Indigenous people.

So what's the cause of all these people dropping off in middle age?

• Half the adult Indigenous population aged 18 and over were current daily smokers, about twice the (age-standardised) rate for non-Indigenous adults.
• 16% of Indigenous adults aged 18 and over drank alcohol at risky or high risk levels, a similar (age-standardised) rate to non-Indigenous adults.
• Three quarters of Indigenous people aged 15 and over were sedentary or exercised at low levels.
• 57% of Indigenous people aged 15 and over were self-reported as overweight or obese, which (when adjusted for age differences between the two populations and for survey non-response) was 1.2 times higher than for non-Indigenous Australians.
• 14% of Indigenous people (20% in remote areas) aged 12 and over had no usual daily fruit intake, twice the rate for non-Indigenous people.
• 5% of Indigenous people (15% in remote areas) aged 12 and over had no usual daily vegetable intake, over six times the rate for non-Indigenous people.

Let me get this right. They smoke heaps, drink a fair bit, eat shit, avoid fruit and sit around like a bunch of lard arses. And who is to blame for that? The individuals concerned? The fat turds that lack the willpower to give up the fags, can't be arsed exercising or don't bother to eat a healthy meal? Nooooo - someone else is always to blame. Especially the government.

After reading some of this stuff, I am starting to think that we should just say: "Sorry. Yep, we're sorry for stuff that happened a long time ago. But that's over - now sort your sorry fucking lives out and pull up your socks and get on with it. You've gotten your apology - you've got no excuses left now."

So, how do we solve these diet, smoking, drinking and exercise problems - particulary amongst those under 18?

Grab the little fuckers and send them to a boarding school where they are kept active, closely supervised and mixing with a peer group that provides positive images.

Actually, I'd scrap the last item. The kids that we looked up to where those that could get laid on a regular basis, were good at sculling beer and tops at fighting Catholics when we played sport agains the Micks. Clean living swats like me where not the preferred role model.

I'm starting to see a repeating pattern here - something about kids and boarding schools..... hmm, wonder if that's been tried before?

This is just a lovely set of numbers:

In the NT, Indigenous infant mortality has declined substantially since the early 1980s. In 1981 to 1983 there were 31.3 infant deaths per 1 000 live births and in 1997 to 2000 the rate reduced to 16.9. There are many reasons for this fall in Indigenous infant mortality rates. The main reason is increased access and better resourcing of primary health care services. There is, however, still great disparity between the rates for Indigenous and non Indigenous infants with the Indigenous infant mortality rate almost 4 times the non Indigenous rate. The 35 Indigenous infant deaths recorded in the NT in 2000 comprised 81% of total infant deaths

Infant mortality 4 times the whitefella rate! Hells bells. That number just kicks you in the balls.

It must be a lack of money. Something must be done....

Per capita expenditure for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people was estimated $4 936 per person compared with $1 433 per person for the rest of the population.

Ok then, I got that wrong. It's not a lack of money. We are spending just under 3.5 times as much on blackfellas health as whitefellas. Maybe too much money is the problem?

Language barriers? Maybe language barriers prevent them from talking to doctors etc?

• 80% of Indigenous peoples reported speaking only English at home, which is about the same as the non-Indigenous population.
• 12% of Indigenous peoples reported speaking an Indigenous language at home; with three quarters of those recording they were also fluent in English.

Those numbers tell me that nearly 90% of Aboriginals are fluent in English. So we don't have huge numbers of Aboriginals running around that can't communicate with a doctor.

My in-laws arrived in this country without a word of English between them. Somehow, they figured it out and raised three healthy kids. I went to school with a lot of kids whose parents came out from Italy, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Greece and all those places without a word of English between them, and somehow they turned out fit, healthy and morally centred kids. All the parents also became pretty fluent in English, even though many of them started learning it at the age of 25 or 30 - and that's a hard time to learn a language. I have never seen a lack of English as an impediment. If half the planet can learn enough English to do business with us and the rest of the planet, then I don't see why it is so hard for people who are born in an English speaking country to learn a bit of English.

I could rant on about learning English all day, but think about it. You can travel to just about any country on the planet and find that all your needs will be serviced by someone that speaks English. I've sat in a restaurant in Italy with people from Japan, Germany, Holland, South America, South Korea and numerous other countries where they speak something else at home and everyone conversed in English. Maybe not very well, but well enough that we could all understand each other.

Hell, in a job I had a few years ago, about half my team where from a non-English speaking background. And by that, I mean they arrived from Cambodia about 10 years before with no English at all. Some had utterly rotten spoken English - but they could understand me, and I could understand them. I had guys that grew up in Vietnam, China, Yugoslavia and other places like that where they didn't start learning English until they arrived in Australia as adults. Not only were they functioning pretty well, they were all earning at least $60,000 per year doing fairly skilled work.

What is the best way to ensure that kids are fluent in English?

Get them out of the remote communities where it is not spoken regularly and immerse them in a 100% English speaking environment. That sounds remarkably like a boarding school to me.

Crummy housing is also given as a reason for poor Aboriginal health, with overcrowding being cited as a big problem.

But is overcrowding really a cause of poor health?

When I lived in London in the early 1990's, 8 friends of mine lived in a 3 bedroom flat - a very small 3 bedroom flat. They had bunk beds in each room, and 2 of them shared a single bed as one worked nightshift and the other dayshift. Now that was overcrowding!

Did any of them get horribly sick?

Only when they drank too much Newcastle Brown Ale. Overcrowding did not seem to affect their health.

My parents grew up during the Depression, and they had a stack of siblings - and they both grew up in small houses. The house that Mum spent her childhood in was a dirt floored shack made of hessian on a farm out on the far edge of the WA wheatbelt. All the kids slept on the verandah, which was enclosed with fly screens, and they slept on pretty horrible beds made of bush poles and the like. Mum likes to tell the story of how her Mum was cooking one day, found the kitchen to be oppresively hot and cut a window in the kitchen wall with a pair of scissors.

In short, she grew up in housing conditions that today would be considered..... unbelievable.

As for poverty, well, my in-laws arrived from the former Yugoslavia with the shoes and clothes that they were wearing and not much else. You can imagine the kind of conditions Mum grew up in - her family walked off the farm during the Depression because they went broke. I guess they were homeless for a while. Some of your ancestors probably walked off a ship in leg irons. They started with nothing but the convicts clothing on their backs.

Poverty is something that you can pull yourself out of. But only if you want to.

Then we have infant mortality rates. I have been Googling all over the interweb looking for stats on infant mortality. The good news is that it is way down. I had lots of trouble finding stats that I could understand, but have a look at these numbers.

In 1978, PNG had an infant mortality rate of 110 per 1000. That's enormous. But back in 1900, the rate in Australia was 103 per 1000. In 1950, that had been reduced to 25 per 1000. These days, Australia has an infant mortality rate of about 5 per 1000, except amongst Aboriginals, where it is around 20 per 1000. Cuba has an infant mortality rate of around 6 per 1000.

In Afghanistan, before us nasty people invaded and overturned the Taleban, it was around 165 per 1000. Yikes.

So, what do I make of all that?

If you have poor sanitation, bad hygenic practices, a poor diet, bad water and a lack of basic medical attention, you have a horrendous infant mortality rate. I have been trying to find numbers for Australia and the UK for before 1900, but I imagine that if you go back to say 1850, the infant mortality rate in inner-city Sydney was probably comparable to Afghanistan under the Taleban.

Lowering the infant mortality rate is pretty simple - so simple, they were able to do it in Tasmania 100 years ago, when they didn't have the medical sophistication that we have now, or the fabulous wealth that we now enjoy.

In 1908, the Chief Health Officer for Tasmania noted that Hobart had the second highest infant mortality rate to any other state capital. He attributed this high death rate (and an even higher rate in Launceston) to 'sheer ignorance on the part of mothers of the elementary principles of child-feeding and child-care' and recommended 'one carefully selected trained nurse' be employed for 'popular education of young wives and mothers in the health protection of thehome and the care of infants and children'.

At this time, Dr Truby King established the Karitane Mothercraft hospital in New Zealand to reduce the infant mortality rate through the education of mothers. In Dunedin, his statistics demonstrated a remarkable decline in infant mortality from diarrhoea:

• 1907: 25 babies died per 1000 live births
  
• 1913: 4 babies died per 1000 live births
  
• 1918: there were no infant deaths from diarrhoea
  

In 1917, the Chief Health and Quarantine Officer (Tasmania) recommended the employment of a nurse to home visit mothers and provide instruction on infant feeding. He surmised that the infant mortality rate could be significantly reduced by minimising deaths from diarrhoea. This was to be achieved by educating women to improve breastfeeding and hygienic food preparation.

His simple words spell it out for even simpletons to understand. I will repeat the important ones:

'sheer ignorance on the part of mothers of the elementary principles of child-feeding and child-care'

What do those words really mean? What is "child feeding" and child care"?

I can comment on these as I am now a Dad. I had no idea what they meant a few years ago.

I'll summarise it as follows:

• Wash your hands
• Bathe your kids daily, or at most, every two days
• Change their nappies when they have done a poo
• Wash your dishes and the baby bottles
• Change and wash your clothes on a daily basis
• Keep your house clean and get rid of the more obvious risks to baby
• Feed your baby regularly (preferably via mum's tit)
• Mum is not to drink, smoke, do drugs or have a shitty diet

Is it that hard? Really? Wash your hands, stick the kid in the bath, run the washing machine every day or so.

Doing this does not require money. It does not require education. It doesn't require you to live in a major coastal city. It just requires commitment and discipline and effort. I don't like having to do three loads of washing every day - but it has to get done. It just has to. Your job as a parent is to ensure that it's done, because no one else is going to do it. I want to flop on the couch in front of the TV as much as the next person, but there is no getting away from doing some basic chores on a daily basis. Shopping for food. Cooking meals. Washing dishes. Changing nappies. Getting the kids out of bed in the morning, feeding them and taking them to school. Nagging them to do homework. Tidying up. Taking Monkey to the park/pool/playground etc for an hour a day.

Being poor is not an excuse for nothing doing the washing. When I was at Uni, I was poor. I stacked shelves at Coles for about $10 an hour between 10pm and 2am, I worked the late shift in a video hire shop and spent my holidays weighing wheat trucks in the middle of nowhere. At one point, our washing machine blew up, so me and my two flatmates chipped in and bought one from the Trading Post.

I think we paid $100 for it. Washing machines were worth real money back then, back before China started making stuff. The classic thing is that we, the children of middle and upper-middle class parents, bought a washing machine from a bloke in a Housing Commission house. I guess the government had given him a new one, so he was selling the old one.

That washing machine represented a good night at the pub for the three of us, but we recognised where our priorities lay, and we spent our cash on a washing machine. Because we were still thirsty, we spent the small amount of money that we had left on a home brew kit, and that saw the start of a major exercise in brewing high strength rocket fuel. But that's another story. Being on the bones of your arse is no impediment to keeping clean.

All it really takes is a bit of selflessness. Kind of what the missionaries did when they gave up a comfortable life in suburbia and treked out to the back blocks of nowhere to start schools for the native kids. Apart from teaching lessons, I'm sure it involved an enormous amount of work in cooking meals (without a microwave or gas stove), doing laundry (without a washing machine), washing up without a dish washer etc etc etc. How is it that we have come to despise those people, rather than admiring them?

In the end though, is the simple explanation for the difference between black and white mortality rates explained by the proposition that some Aboriginal parents do not give a flying fuck about their kids? If they cared enough, they'd stop smoking, cut back on the drinking, cook a proper meal at least once a day and clean the fucking house. Is it really that hard to do a bit of washing and cleaning? Does it really come down to a lack of that?

I lived with a flatmate years ago that I called "Couchy", because she never left the couch. She had a job, which required her to turn up for 7.5 hours per day, but once home, she turned on the TV and lay on her couch with her cat on her lap.

In the year we shared a place, she never cleaned the house (as in ran a vaccuum cleaner around, dusted or scrubbed the bathroom and kitchen), never mowed the lawn, never took the rubbish out, never did the washing up. Her diet consisted mainly of fast food or fish fingers.

In essence, she was just fucking lazy. Nice, good fun to drink with on Friday night, but bone idle. Utterly disinterested in anything that took her away from her beloved TV and couch.

She had a job that put reasonable money into her pocket. Our house was dingy, but clean and spacious and liveable and close to Bondi. She could afford overseas travel and was certainly able to afford some binge drinking every Friday and Saturday night. She was educated to a diploma level, was kind of comfortably well off, but just bone fucking idle.

So if kids are dying because their parents are as bad as Couchy (or probably much worse), why are we leaving them in those circumstances? What would you prefer:

1. Placed in a boarding school from age 10 to 17. Graduate with solid education, gain entrance into University, speak excellent English, have great job prospects and have a good social group. But spend 10 months of the year away from Mum.
2. Stay in some dusty, crime ridden dump in the middle of nowhere with Mum, who is a drunk, and her current boyfriend, who changes every 3-4 months. Catch numerous infectious diseases each year. End up malnourished and filthy, attend school irregularly, start sniffing glue at 13, get into petty theft soon after, have no job prospects, get abused by "Uncle" Mike and barely speak English at 17. Spend more time in court than in school. But spend all the time with your Mum.

The answer seems pretty clear cut to me.

This is why I think the whole 'stolen generations' and the need to say sorry is a load of bollocks. We have nothing to apologise for, and there is an entire generation out there right now that should be whisked away from their parents and sent to boarding school as soon as possible. If that involves taking them away without their parents consent, then so be it. It's not as if they don't have telephones or a postal service in these remote towns. Mum can always ring up once a week to say hello.

If she's sober enough to remember.



The main causes of mortality among Aboriginal infants were infection (29%), SIDS (27%), prematurity (16%) and birth defects (15%). In the most recent years studied, the relative risk compared to non-Aboriginal infants of death due to infection was 9 times higher and the risk of SIDS was nearly 8 times higher. There are measures that can be taken in the current state of knowledge to reduce the number of deaths from SIDS or infection.

Overall, 51% of Aboriginal mothers smoked. In 60% of infant deaths, Aboriginal mothers smoked during pregnancy. The risk of SIDS for infants of Aboriginal mothers who smoked was nearly three times that of Aboriginal mothers who did not smoke.

This is hilarious

Thanks Kae, much appreciation for the guidance to Rage and Biscuits.

Pile of steaming bollocks

This came my way this week:

Apology to stolen generations – questions and answers

This material has been prepared by Reconciliation Australia to help Australians understand the background to the apology that will be made to the stolen generations by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

1. Who are the stolen generations?
2. How do we know these people’s stories are true?
3. Why is it important to apologise to the stolen generations?
4. Why should Australians today apologise for something we aren’t responsible for?
5. What does an apology mean to me as a non-Indigenous Australian?
6. Why should we apologise when many Aboriginal people are actually better off because they were removed from dysfunctional families?
7. Will an apology lead to claims for compensation from members of the stolen generations?
8. Why is the word ‘sorry’ important as part of the apology?

1. Who are the stolen generations?

The term ‘stolen generations’ refers to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians who were forcibly removed from their families and communities by government, welfare or church authorities as children and placed into institutional care or with non-Indigenous foster families. The forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children began as early as the mid 1800s and continued until 1970.

This removal occurred as the result of official laws and policies aimed at assimilating the Indigenous population into the wider community.

The 1997 Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, conducted by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission found that between 1 in 10 and 3 in 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were forcibly removed from their families and communities in the period from 1910 to 1970.

The Western Australian and Queensland governments have confirmed that in that period all Indigenous families in their States were affected by the forced removal of children. It’s not possible to know precisely how many children were taken because government records of these removals are poor and many government files are inaccurate.

The stolen generation should not be confused with other government policies which aimed to help Aboriginal children from remote areas to go to school with their parents full consent. It should also not be confused with the removal of Indigenous and non-Indigenous children from dysfunctional families under welfare policies that continue to apply today.

2. How do we know these people’s stories are true?

All State and Territory governments have acknowledged past practices and policies of forced removal of Indigenous children on the basis of race. As part of this formal acknowledgement, all State and Territory governments have apologised for the trauma these policies have caused.

The report of the Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, called the Bringing them Home report, contains extensive evidence of past practices and policies which resulted in the removal of children. It also details the conditions into which many of the children were placed and discussed the negative impact this has had on individuals, their families and the broader Indigenous community.

The Inquiry took evidence from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, government and church representatives, former mission staff, foster and adoptive parents, doctors and health professionals, academics, police and others. It received over 777 submissions, including 535 from Indigenous individuals and organisations, 49 from church organisations and 7 from governments.

3. Why is it important to apologise to the stolen generations?

The Bringing Them Home report found that the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and communities has had life-long and profoundly disabling consequences for those taken and has negatively affected the Indigenous community. For many of the children, removal meant that they lost all connection to family, traditional land, culture and language.

It never goes away. Just ‘cause we’re not walking around on crutches or with bandages or plasters on our legs and arms, doesn’t mean we’re not hurting. Just ’cause you can’t see it doesn’t mean …I suspect I’ll carry these sorts of wounds ’til I the day I die. I’d just like it to be not quite as intense, that’s all. Confidential evidence 580, Queensland. Bringing Them Home Report

The reality of Australia’s stolen generations is not a thing of the distant past. Children were being inappropriately removed from their families by Australian authorities until 1969. Many people affected by the tragedy of the stolen generations are still alive today and live with its effects.

The Bringing Them Home report recommended that the first step in healing is the acknowledgment of truth and the delivery of an apology. It is the responsibility of the Australian Government, on behalf of previous Australian governments that administered this wrongful policy to acknowledge what was done and apologise for it.

This issue is a ‘blank spot’ in the history of Australia. The damage and trauma these policies caused are felt everyday by Aboriginal people. They internalise their grief, guilt and confusion, inflicting further pain on themselves and others around them. It is about time the Australian Government openly accepted responsibility for their actions and compensate those affected. Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter (In Buti A, Bringing them home the ALSA way)

4. Why should Australians today apologise for something we aren’t responsible for?

Individual Australians are not providing the apology. The apology is being provided by the Australian Government in recognition of policies of past governments. Similarly, the former Australian Government apologised to Vietnam veterans for the policies of previous governments.

The current Government is apologising for wrongful policies of governments. No individual Australian is being asked to take personal responsibility for actions of past governments.

5. What does an apology mean to me as a non-Indigenous Australian?

Following on from apologies already made by all State and Territory governments and the churches, an official apology to members of the stolen generations by the Australian Government is an important step towards building a respectful new relationship between us as Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Respectful relationships are essential if we are to solve persistent problems.

In this way, the apology will allow us to work together more effectively towards closing the 17-year life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children - the starkest evidence of how government policies have failed. It is an important starting point in healing the wounds and an historic step forward for our nation that we can be proud of.

The apology is not an expression of personal responsibility or guilt by individual Australians. But it does reflect our Australian values of compassion and a fair go, and allows the victims of bad policy to feel that their pain and suffering has been acknowledged. It’s important that Australians understand the background to the apology so they understand why it’s a good thing for the nation – it is this understanding that will realise the great potential of this historic moment to move our nation forward.

These days I don’t understand why it should be such a big deal to say sorry for the injustices that have been done to Indigenous people. I know some people feel differently but, to me, saying sorry just feels necessary as a first step towards moving forward together. Daniel Johns, lead singer of Silverchair

6. Why should we apologise when many Aboriginal people are actually better off because they were removed from dysfunctional families?

It is true that some Indigenous children were removed from their families on genuine welfare grounds. It is also true that some children who were removed received some advantages, for example in education, but the overwhelming impact of the forced removal policy was damaging. People involved in the removal of children genuinely believed they were doing the right thing. But as we now know, they were not.

It’s important to understand that the “stolen generations” refer to those children who were removed on the basis of their race alone. In contrast with the removal of non-Indigenous children, proof of neglect was not always required to remove Indigenous children. That one of their parents was of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent was enough.

The predominant aim of the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families was to absorb or assimilate children with mixed ancestry into the non-Indigenous community. As Brisbane's Telegraph newspaper reported in May 1937: Mr Neville [the Chief Protector of WA] holds the view that within one hundred years the pure black will be extinct. But the half-caste problem is increasing every year. Therefore their idea is to keep the pure blacks segregated and absorb the half-castes into the white population. Perhaps it will take one hundred years, perhaps longer, but the race is dying.

The Bringing Them Home report found that many children were removed solely on the basis of skin colour. Because of this, siblings from the one family who were considered to be of lighter skin colour would be removed when others were left.

The suggestion that stolen generations children were better off is untrue on any reasonable
assessment of the cases where they were placed in situations of deprivation, neglect and abuse.
People who were removed gave evidence to the Inquiry of their mistreatment under State care - this ranged from inadequate food and clothing, to physical, sexual and psychological abuse.
Almost a quarter of witnesses to the Inquiry who were fostered or adopted reported being physically abused. One in five reported being sexually abused. One in six children sent to institutions reported physical abuse and one in ten reported sexual abuse.

7. Will an apology lead to claims for compensation from members of the stolen generations?

The Bringing Them Home report recommended the establishment of a national compensation fund for people affected by the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. The aim of the fund would be to offer reparation to those affected and avoid the courts having to deal with costly individual litigation.

An official apology is not directly related to compensation. All State and Territory governments have apologised and this has not triggered any rush of compensation claims.
The Tasmanian Government has chosen to set up a compensation fund for members of the stolen generations in that State. It has provided $5 million in capped payments to be divided among eligible people and their families. http://www.premier.tas.gov.au/speeches/stolen.html

The Government of South Australia is also considering establishing a fund.
Queensland and New South Wales have ruled out stolen generations compensation funds,
although both States are providing reparations for policies under which Aboriginal people could be put to work but not paid.

The West Australian Government announced in late 2007 the ‘Redress WA’ program to provide
monetary and emotional support to people who were abused as children in State care, including
members of the stolen generations.

http://www.redress.wa.gov.au/

The Australia Government has said it will not establish a fund at the national level but will direct
funds to counselling services for members of the stolen generations and services that help people who were removed as children to find their families and communities.
Reconciliation for me is about recognising the past. Acting in the present. And building a better
future. The Hon. Paul Lennon MP, Premier of Tasmania

8. Why is the word ‘sorry’ important as part of the apology?

The word ‘sorry’ holds special meaning in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. In many Aboriginal communities, sorry is an adapted English word used to describe the rituals surrounding death (Sorry Business). Sorry, in these contexts, is also often used to express empathy or sympathy rather than responsibility.

During the 2007 election campaign, then Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd also recognised the
significance of the word sorry:
“… simply saying that you’re sorry is such a powerful symbol. Powerful not because it represents some expiation of guilt. Powerful not because it represents any form of legal requirement. But powerful simply because it restores respect”

9. Why didn’t the former Australian Government say sorry?

In 1997, the recommendation of the Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Children from their Families for an official apology was not taken up by the new Australian Government led by John Howard. Mr Howard argued that it was not appropriate for the current Government to apologise for the actions of past governments. He also said he was concerned that a formal admission of wrongdoing would lead to compensation litigation.

All State and Territory governments did issue formal apologies in the period following the Inquiry and these did not generate a rush of compensation claims.

In 1999, the Australian Government moved a motion for reconciliation with an expression of:
“deep and sincere regret that indigenous Australians suffered injustices under the practices of past generations, and for the hurt and trauma that many indigenous people continue to feel as a
consequence of those practices.”

10. Will the apology mean that reconciliation has been achieved?

An apology from the Australian Government to the stolen generations is one important step in
achieving the overarching objective of reconciliation which is to close the 17-year life expectancy
gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children. It is important because it removes a barrier to us establishing a more respectful relationship as Indigenous and non-Indigenous fellow Australians.

Closing the life expectancy gap involves consistent, long term action by governments, and by all
Australians, in health, education, housing, employment etc and also in building respectful
relationships that generate better outcomes for us all.

Aboriginal academic Marcia Langton suggests that a formal apology will achieve two things: firstly it will aid in the restoration of a sense of dignity and legitimacy to those who have suffered, and secondly it will acknowledge the serious harm done by previous governments to a class of people on the grounds of their race.

True reconciliation between the Australian nation and its indigenous peoples is not achievable in
the absence of acknowledgment by the nation of the wrongfulness of the past dispossession,
oppression and degradation of the Aboriginal peoples. Sir William Deane, Governor-General of
Australia, 1997

Case Study: Canada's ‘Common Experience Fund’

Canada’s Indigenous population shares some of the experiences of Indigenous Australians. From
the early 1880s, Indigenous Canadian children were removed from their homes on the basis of their race and placed in church-run, government funded residential schools. From 1920 until early 1970 this removal was experienced by practically all Indigenous children. These schools were created to encourage assimilation and to suppress Indigenous culture and language.

The United Church of Canada recently apologised for this “horrendous period of Canadian history” and the Canadian Government also extended a formal apology in the form of an action plan. The action plan included a statement of reconciliation in which the Canadian Government recognised and apologised for “the single most harmful, disgraceful and racist act” in their history.

The apology led to a range of lawsuits and helped Ottawa’s Government to come to a settlement
with First Nation representatives. As a result of the settlement, the Canadian Government provided a $1.9 billion compensation fund for the ‘common experience’ of all people who were affected by the removal of Indigenous children. All residential school survivors are entitled to apply for the ‘common experience payment’. If the applicant is successful they receive a standard $10,000 in compensation and a further $3,000 for each year they were placed in the school. The Government has also provided an extra $3 billion in compensation to survivors who suffered sexual and physical abuse in the residential schools.

Currently 85,080 applications for the ‘common experience’ payment have been received. Of that number, 56,625 have been processed with 46,910 being successful.

Interesting site

Australians on the Western Front.

Why are cyclists coffee mad?

As much as I like a good coffee, or reading about coffee, I am not a big coffee drinker. I guess I will be forever black balled from the fraternity of road cyclists. I think the membership test involves knocking back 10 short blacks and then riding until your pants explode.

I have never done the coffee and riding thing. Well, may be I did it once, when I stopped at a shop that sold handmade chocolates and coffees, and I had to sample a bit of each. But that was a one off, although I will do it again if I ever ride down to the airport again on a day when that cafe is open.

My normal pre-ride drink is a bit of Endura, because I used to suffer from wicked muscle cramps and spasms. I'd wake up at 3am with a cramped calf muscle and it would be agony. Nasty, nasty way to get woken up. Since I started to do the Endura thing twice a day, the cramps have gone and never come back.

But today, I decided to tempt fate and screw with my routine. I made a short black coffee using instant muck and had a bit of that before hitting the road.

Big mistake. Within about 2 kilometres, my heart was absolutely racing, even though I was just tonking along at a slow cadence. It was going so fast, I started to feel sick. Clearly, a caffeine jolt first thing in the morning before a bit of exercise is not the thing for me. The only jolt I need is to do a fast cadence spin on the flat to get the legs warmed up.

I do enjoy a coffee after I get to work, but some mornings, I can't take just a single latte. I drink about half of it for the taste, but have to stop at that because just that amount sets my heart racing again. Other mornings, I need a whole coffee and then feel like a short black on top as a bit of a booster. I have no idea what causes the variation in the reaction to coffee on different days. Probably sleep.

PS - this blogicle may hold the answer.

A day in the life of...

This morning felt like a scene out of The Truman Show. There I am, riding along when this guy pops out of a side street right in front of me. I tailed him for a while - long enough to get this photo at least.



Then a few streets later, another cyclist pops out in front of both of us and hightails it up the hill. I hadn't warmed up enough to catch him, but there he is, slogging away from us in the distance.



That scene was repeated all the way into town. As I headed around the Bay, this dude in black popped out in front of us.



Then unfortunately, so did this thing, and I got a lung full of rotting fish and week old nappies.



When I got to Lilyfield Road, it happened again. There I am, cruising along when a bike suddenly appears in front of me. What is going on? Is this leap out in front of other cyclists week?



Check out the calves on this guy.



On the way home, I was momentarily annoyed by this bloke on his electric bike. He seemed to make a point of trying to overtake me at the worst possible moments, like at choke points or when we were trying to negotiate a nasty set of traffic lights.

The electric assist is not a bad idea. Look at the way he is dressed - he could ride from one end of town without breaking a sweat, whilst I get home looking like I have just taken a dip in the pool.



I still dragged his arse off though. He was toodling around behind Darling Harbour and I just ripped past him. Har har har - take that Mr Electric Dude. The only thing he really used his battery for was to run two red lights. I hate that.

I tailed this guy for a while on the way home, mainly because he was the first cyclist to not leap out in front of me today. I was intrigued by what he was wearing. His shirt is not lycra, but it is made out of some easy to breathe exercise material. I don't get the wearing of a shirt like that and then a reflective belt over the top. Why not just do as I do and buy a nice lycra shirt that is very breathable and is so bright, it's amost reflective all over?



This runner deserves a mention. I tailed him for a few hundred metres, and clocked him at 23km/h. He was really moving, and he looked unbelievably fit. Way to go - what an athelete. This man is a running God.

Heath Ledger is dead

And so what?

Towels

Tomorrow is a very important day in the bike commuting calendar - it is towel changeover day. This is not a national day celebrated by bike commuters everywhere - it is simply the day when I have remembered to take a fresh towel into work.

Towel changeover day should have happened 3 weeks ago, so as you can imagine, the current inhabitant of the locker room at work is getting a bit manky. However, it is better to have a manky towel than no towel at all - which is something that I discovered to my cost last year. I had to dry myself with a pair of socks.

The lesson from that episode is to never bring the manky towel home until you have taken a fresh towel into work. I thought I'd just bring the manky towel home, and I'd automatically remember to take a fresh one in the day after.

Um, wrong.

The moment I threw the towel into the washing basket and set foot in the back door, all thoughts of soft, fluffy towels were completely forgotten about.

I have also figured out that if I am to take a fresh towel in, I have to pre-load it into my backpack the night before. That's because my morning routine is so rigid, and I am so dopey in the morning, I will never remember to pack one at 6am. If I was able to remember to pack one at 6am, I would have had a fresh towel at work 3 weeks ago.

So I have just packed a towel.

One trick about having a towel in a shared locker room is to have an old, ragged towel that looks like it was last used for cleaning a wildebeest. There are 12 lockers in our locker room, but about 50 people seem to use the room. That means that towels are hanging everywhere, and there is a big sign in a prominent position that reminds people to not use a towel that belongs to someone else. I am not overly thrilled by the idea of a co-worker using my towel without me knowing about it, but I am not so hung up on it that if I discovered such an act, that I'd take the towel out onto the footpath and set it on fire. That said, if you really want to avoid having your towel used more than once a day, don't have a gorgeous, fluffy towel that screams "use me". Have a scratchy old thing with the fringe hanging off that says "put me out of my misery and throw me out".

The sad thing is that I have a reasonably large collection of such towels.

Bike free day

I'm having a day off - no pedal work today. That means I don't have a chance of cracking the 100 mile total this week, but it meant that I was free to go for a longer, faster ride yesterday.

OK, longer and faster have to be put in perspective here. I am talking about the equivalent of giving amphetamines to a turtle. Instead of going step.............step...........step..............step, he would be going step......step.......step.....step - you see the mammoth increase in speed that I am talking about?

It just meant that I was free to push it on the hills and the flats as I would not be crawling out of bed at 6am for the ride into work. I pulled Jackie Stewart out of the memory banks and gave it the "More power!" all the way home. The upshot was that by 8pm, I was almost asleep standing up. Amazing how well I sleep after really giving it the gun on the way home.

So I have no morning routine to attend to this morning. I don't have to worry about putting fresh socks and jocks in my back pack, finding the case for my reading glasses (so they don't get mangled as they jostle around in the backpack with the bike chain, phone, wallet etc). Last night, I didn't have to lay out some knicks and a jersey and some socks in the office, in preparation for an early morning change. (I have found that I wake fewer people up if I get dressed outside the bedroom when it is pitch black).

My morning drink was a coffee instead of a glass of Endura (to ward off the cramps and latter-day muscle spasms). I actually got to eat breakfast at home (an omelet with truffles no less).

There was no getting the hands dirty whilst putting a few more pounds of air in the tyres. No tippy-toeing across the wet grass in bare feet to the back patio where I pull on my socks and shoes and helmet and gloves. No fretting about whether I had forgotten my company ID or not.

Funnily enough, the morning seems to be really empty and without purpose as a result.

Call me utterly gobsmacked

I never thought I would see the day when Iemma did something where I would give him two big thumbs up, but the day has arrived.

After ending up with two waterlogged vandals, there were calls for maps of Sydneys underground caverns and stuff to be removed from the Sydney Water website.

That's completely flaming stupid. The people that go crawling around in these tunnels have been doing it for years - long before an interweb existed - and taking the maps down will have no effect. I hate people who have one reaction to any event - a kneejerk reaction.

Iemma slapped them down with a bit of common sense.

The Premier, Morris Iemma, said yesterday he saw no need for Sydney Water to remove maps of tunnels and drains from its website despite the tragedy.

Mr Iemma said Sydney Water was working with police in investigations into the incident but said staying out of drains should be a matter of simple common sense.

"Regardless of where you get the information from, whether you access it from the web, whether you get it from the newspaper or whether you just get it by driving around, these are not places for you to be," Mr Iemma said.

"It is in the territory of personal responsibility.

Common sense! Personal responsibility!

Hooray!

I also read today that idiots are setting lots of fires per day on CityRail's trains. I am sure the SMH will print a story before the year is out of a vandal choking to death on the smoke from his own fire, and some kneejerking fool will call for all seats to be removed from CityRail trains, because if you pour petrol all over them, they will burn.

Two view from the Iron Cove bridged

The local wing nuts have been busy this week, running around sticking posters on every available vertical surface that beseech thee to get thyself to a rally to object to a new bridge at this location.

I think the protesters are confused. What they should be objecting to is an extra bridge, not a new one. For those of you not from around here, the latest proposal is to slap up another bridge next to the existing bridge, thus moving the morning and evening bottlenecks about a kilometre up the road in each direction. I don't care - I ride a bike in order to avoid sitting in a car during peak hour traffic. I did a survey on happiness and stress tonight, and it reminded me that I have very little stress in my life. That's mainly because I have assiduously avoided the major causes of stress - traffic and huge debt. Plus working in an office full of numb skulls.

Riding to and from work with a view like this helps to keep my stress levels down around the level of a Buddhist monk. That's a ferry getting ready to pull into the wharf at Birkenhead Point. Nice.

That's the view in one direction as you rde across the Iron Cove Bridge. I like this view.



Here is the other view. This bridge amazes me because there is absolutely no guard or safety rail between the footpath and the road. Libertarians might think thats a good thing, but all you need is for two joggers to collide and one of them is going to end up under a car speeding past. I always get paranoid when it's really windy, and the cross winds start blowing the bike this way and that.



I like the idea of a new bridge because it might include proper paths for pedestrians and cyclists, rather than the abortion which the RTA has currently saddled us with. So the pointy headed protesters can take their posters and stick them up their arse. I want to see concrete, and lots of it, and sooner rather than later.

More bottoms

Ah, another fellow commuter, snapped as we ground up a hill in Pyrmont. Some commuters favour the baggy shorts, like this guy. I don't, because lycra is so much better when it gets wet, and you can never tell whether the ride home will be dry or wet. This guy is also well rugged up - it was 18 degrees when I left this morning, and I just wore my normal short sleeved cycling jersey. It was nippy for about 1 minute, and then I hit a hill and all worries about being cold vanished. I can't believe that this guy seems to be wearing two layers of puffy jackets.



I've always been interested in getting some panniers like those above, but it would mean converting my lean, mean road bike into a commuting plodder. That is, I would have to fit a carry thing at the back, and that is just so un-cool. I'm also not a big fan of mudguards. Yes, it keeps the spray off your back, but if it's raining hard enough, a bit of spray up the back will make no difference. If it's not raining very hard, then stop being such a pussy.

Then we have racing guy here below, except that he was not racing very fast. This is more my look - a small back pack, lycra knicks, a "proper" cycling jersey and a road bike completely free of accoutrements.



I think I look a lot wider from the rear though. I used the monorail recently, and discovered just how narrow the exit gates are at the turnstiles. My hips (as in hip bones) touch on either side if I go through without rotating sideways a bit. I have no idea how the fatties get in - or out. Maybe that's the point? Does the monorail have a weight limit that we don't know about?

Lunch with Wil Anderson

I used to enjoy listening to Wil Anderson on TripleJ. Even saw him do a live show once - he was pretty funny. This week, I even got to have lunch with him.

Well, not exactly. I was sitting at the bar at one of those sushi train places, and he plonked down beside me. I usually take no interest in my fellow sushi-scoffers, so I did not realise it was him until we both got up to pay.

He sat there reading torn out pages of what looked like New Idea. Why? I have no idea. He was making notes on them too. He might have been looking for pointers for a new comedy routine, but it is just as likely that he was looking at Rove McManus and writing "Die, you fucker, so I can take over your show".

Things to note - he ate nine plates of sushi. All of it of the cheap variety. I ate 7, which is more than I normally put away, but I was looking at his pile when I got to five and I thought, "If he can do that many, then I should not be worried about having another two bits of eel on rice".

He also ate very fast. He just grabbed those plates off the train and stuffed that sushi in. He sat down next to me when I was on plate 2 or 3, and he put away 9 plates and got up to pay before I had eaten another 4. And I am not exactly a slow eater. I normally hoover up food like a ... Dyson.

I paid him no attention because I was totally transfixed by the two women on the other side of me. One had clearly just broken up with her boyfriend, and she was completely miserable and in need of a good cry. Which is exactly what her friend recommended that she do. Not in the restuarant, thank goodness, but possibly when she got home and hopped in the bath. Without the toaster.

What utterly fascinated me is that I sat there for 5 plates of sushi, listening to her go on and on and on about how terrible she felt and how miserable she was and how her life was now a steaming pile of shit, and then...

....her phone rang.

She answered it with a very perky hello. Then she went on to say: "I'm fine thanks! Top of the world! Feeling great. Everything is good!"

I figured that she had to be in sales.

How on earth did she manage to switch from near suicidal to completely perky in less than a second flat? I almost fell off my chair when I heard that.

Which just goes to show that electronic surveillance is over rated. You are more at risk of being eaves dropped on by someone at a sushi train than by say ASIO.

My final summation: chicks are wierd.

And so is Wil Anderson. He needs to grow out of thongs and jeans that are too long so that the cuffs are all frayed. He's starting to look old... kind of like I am. Welcome to old-farthood, Wil.

Slum town

When I feel like extending my ride home just a wee bit, I take a left as I go down the big hill on Lilyfield Road and head out towards Leichhardt, home of the people with many tinfoil hats.

Leichhardt is one of those councils that has a thing about promoting "affordable housing", instead of telling the plebs to fuck off out to the fringe where the rents are cheap. Housing would be more affordable for the rest of us if the 15% of the suburb that is set aside for dole bludgers and drug addicts was bulldozed and turned into nice middle class housing.

One of the markers of the affordable housing precinct is the cavalcade of shopping trolleys. I snapped these hiding their light under a bushel down the back of a laneway that will never, ever be visited by the trolley collector (unless I tip him off). The difference between a chav wanker and a middle class wanker is that a dole bludging wanker will hide a trolley in the most difficult spot to collect it, whilst a middle class wanker will dump their trolley on my front lawn, making it very, very easy for the trolley man to collect it.

I used to think that the wanker down the street was complete scum for dumping her trolley on my lawn every day, but now I consider her as being very considerate - at least compared to the flea ridden housebreakers that dumped these.



Oh look! A lonsome trolley in a laneway. I am sure that when I pass by here again next week, it will have bred and produced a trolley snake.



Another indicator of tribes of the ill-bred is the vandalised electricity substation. The silly fuckers around here can't even paint a decent picture when they vandalise things - they just scrawl some impossible to read tag on public infrastructure and fuck off. If the government won't ban spray cans, they should at least start cutting the thumbs off these pricks.



Slums. Why can't we have them on the outskirts of the city - like they do in places like Rio? Why do we keep our trash close at hand?

Deadshit

Spotted this absolute tool on the way to work this morning. I hate - hate - HATE fucking wingnuts that ride around with their helmet dangling from their handlebars - or in this case, their backpack.



If you don't want to wear it, just leave it at home. The stupidity of carrying one without wearing it just does my head in.

Tool is breaking two of my other cardinal rules for staying alive - he's got the MP3 player cranked up, so he can't hear the traffic, and he's dressed in black from head to almost foot, which allows him to blend into the bitumen particularly well.

Silly new stories, briefly

People, not cars

Yes, we're heard that one before. Hell will freeze over first.

As for this: and create lively spaces to meet and connect socially.

What that means is create spaces where the mentally ill and the work shy can annoy the living hell out of everyone else.

Vandals drown

Hooray. Although the SMH calls a drunken spree of wanton vandalism "an adventure". Maybe I'll have to go visit their editor and have "an adventure" in his office with a can of pain and a half litre of vodka. I'm sure he won't mind some hijinks.

The kicker - the survivor was 27. Aren't people supposed to have grown out of this sort of thing by that age?

Leichharct council and long waits

Leichhardt are officially the slowest council in NSW. That's no surprise to anyone that has ever read the minutes of a council meeting. It's also the most wooly headed council, and the mayor allows all sorts of unnecessary crap onto the agenda. The agenda is in fact just a pile of mad agendas being pushed by fringe groups. I'm amazed they ever get around to reviewing DA's.

Resuscitation, Danish style

Is the SMH the stupidest paper in the country?



Maybe someone mistranslated a word, but last time I fired a rifle, it was not refered to as "resuscitation". That's what you did if you shot the wrong person and wanted to stop them from karking it.

Find the sign

Here is a stitched together shot of an intersection on a major bike route. When you come to this intersection, you have a choice of going left or right. If you ride like me (ie, with no map), then you generally rely on signs to point you in the right direction.



Many of my friends advocate using The Force in a situation like this, and that is exactly what I normally do, but I'd rather follow signs erected by the RTA rather than using The Force, which tends to be a bit unreliable with me.

If you like, you can click on the photo and see an enlarged version, and you can then play "hunt the sign" - like I did when I got there for the first time and had no idea which way to go.

I'd advise you not to play "hunt the sign" for too long, as there isn't one.

Good one, RTA.

You boneheads.

Poverty, malaria, whales and all that

Africa is a poor, benighted place. Wouldn't want to live there. It's got war, civil war, civil strife, crime, poverty, disease, diseases of poverty, war crimes - the whole nine yards.

I occasionally walk past a do-gooder shop that wants to "end poverty now". That seems to involve giving people in Africa my money. I don't mind giving Africans my money, but I want something in exchange. I gave poor Chinese people money last week in exchange for a bike for monkey. We gave money to poor eastern europeans today when we bought a box of Lego. We stopped the Japanese and South Koreans and Singaporeans and Hong Kongers and Malaysians from being poor by giving them lots of money, and in return they gave us cars, digital watches, TV's, walkmen, CD players, VCRs, light trucks, clothes and shoes, mobile phones and many, many other things. Us westerners have been solving poverty in Asia for 60 years since WWII by buying lots of stuff from lots of Asians.

Africa would get a lot more money if they gave people something worthwhile in exchange. I'm not talking about witchdoctor masks and tiger penii - I'm talking about mobile phones, cars, computers, fax machines, aircraft parts, power station turbines, ships and all that sort of stuff. Think of how rich the Africans could be if they only made stuff that other people wanted!

I think I am getting off track, as usual.

Malaria is a big problem in a lot of Africa. Bill Gates has decided to throw lots of his money at the problem. In time, his swarms of scientists may develop a cure. Good luck to them - I hope they do. Malaria kills millions, debilitates millions more and is a major deadweight drag on development.

But what if we discovered that the most effective cure was derived from whales? How would our tree hugging friends react then? Is it worth say 100 humpbacked whales per year to save 5 million African children, or are whales so sacrosanct, they all have to die?

It's the kind of conundrum that should make their heads explode, but never will. DDT could save millions, but we aren't allowed to use it anymore because of a few deformed frogs.

Fuck the frogs. A good step on the path to ending poverty would be to spray DDT around like hot air from Al Gore.

And what is wrong with jailing criminals?

The Stupid has an article today about how NSW leads the stakes in jailing people for certain crimes.

Some incredibly stupid statements are attributed to an academic:

"The result of that has been it affects the NSW taxpayer and affects the services - including roads and the hospital system - because more money is going into jails in NSW when there are some reasonable alternatives," (The criminologist Paul Wilson, from Bond University in Queensland).

My suspicion is that the type of people that he refers to are already a burden on the taxpayer in some form or another. They're probably public housing users, big consumers of Police and hospital emergency time, addicted to welfare rather than work, and all sorts of social services only exist because of these people. Think of DOCS and all the other do-gooder agencies.

Putting them in prison is not cheap, but leaving them to roam the streets is not cheap either. If we locked up a large number of criminals for a long time, would we see a reduction in the demand for all the above mentioned services?

I believe so. Although shrinking a government agency is never easy, so we'd probably continue to have bloated departments full of people suddenly not having much to do.

NSW reported the highest imprisonment rate in Australia as a proportion for sexual assault (with 93 per cent of people convicted of those offences being jailed), robbery (82 per cent jailed) and more serious robbery offences (84 per cent). More people were jailed for breaking and entering and burglary offences (77 per cent) than in all other Australian and international jurisdictions, including the United States (72 per cent) and England (70 per cent).

That makes me feel much better. I like the fact that we lock the buggers up more than anyone else.

The report confirmed a "generally high rate of recidivism" in NSW, showing that jail was not resulting in rehabilitation.

No, what that means is that we are not locking them up for long enough.

The report also showed that many people in NSW were receiving short custodial sentences. In 2006, 27 per cent of the NSW prison population were serving a sentence of less than two years.

I can't understand why we're not locking burglars up for say 5 years at a stretch. The longer they spend behind bars, the fewer people they can rob. They'll eventually reach an age where they are too old to climb through windows or over fences, and their burgling days will be over, and we can cease to lock them up.

If some people have to spend 90% or more of their life from the age of 15 to 45 behind bars, I am not going to weep.

The Gore effect

I can't believe that some Wikipedia killjoys want to delete the entry on the Gore effect.

It's a phenomena that we seem to be seeing more of these days - and I am not referring to prissy little monkeys trying to impose their version of reality on the rest of us. I refer instead to Sydney experiencing a cool, wet summer to date.

When was Al Gore last here? Not sure, but the effect certainly lasts for a long time.

Even if the wikipedia zealots do manage to delete the entry for the Gore effect, it's not going to go away. The notoriety of the effect will live on long after they have grown up and seen the light of day. Or choked to death on a plate of lentils.

Miles and miles and miles...

I feel like a baby fur seal.... that has been clubbed a few times. I put my head down for 5 minutes after getting home, and woke up an hour later feeling totally whacked. Eyeballs are stuffed with cotton wool, can't walk through the house without crashing into door frames.

This is what comes of charging home tonight. Two weeks ago, after the Xmas break, I did a measly 100km for the week. That went up to 140km last week, with no ill effects. I was looking to crack the 100 mile mark this week, but was derailed by breaking a pedal on Tuesday. The result is that I came in just shy of 130km this week. Not a great distance for those that live in flat country, but a bit of a chore on the hills of Sydney.

I rode home with a bloke last night who lives in North Rocks. I could Google it, but I don't want to know where it is. Mainly because it is north of Parramatta, and the bloke looked about 50. He tries to ride to work 3 times a week, and each leg must be at least 30-40 km. Or more. Makes my paltry efforts seem... paltry. The result was that he was about half my size, which is why I am trying to push the weekly mileage up towards the 200km mark, and to keep it there. I have already gone in a couple of belt loops since Xmas, but I have a lot more to go. I will be happy when my pants fall down one day.

I have a biography of Jackie Stewart on my Amazon wish list. It is now down to 29 books, and I came close to buying the lot today. I am not sure what is holding me back...probably the feeling that I should reduce my unread pile to say five books, down from the current 8 (I finished Frank Chalk's book yesterday, and gave it to J with a recommendation to read it). I mention Jackie Stewart because I love the Top Gear episode where he gives Captain Slow a driving lesson, and all you hear for five minutes is Jackie yelling out, "More power, more power, full power".

That refrain was going through my head on the last leg home tonight. It was raining when I hit the Bay, which meant it was utterly free of the usual post-work congestion of a million strollers. Even the cyclists had taken the bus. I just opened the taps and thought "More power", until my legs could take no more. They are still shaking.

Thank you, Jackie. Best ride home I have had this year.

Bloody whaling

So the Japs want to make sushi out of some big, blubbery blubberbags. So what. The usual crowd are bleating more loudly than stuck minke whales, whilst the rest of the country is concentrating on the cricket.

I suggest we hire a nice cruise liner, put all the activists that want to tongue kiss a whale on board and send them south. When they spot some whalers, they can be put into little rubber dinghies with a paddle and sent forth to protect the whales.

Picking them up afterwards should be optional. In fact it would be better if the cruise ship beat a hasty retreat after dropping of the blubber heads - preferably retreating as far as the Caribbean.

Problem solved.

What really ticks me off is that in this supposedly "free trade" environment that we find ourselves in, why can't I get whale sushi at my local Jap diner?

The nut behind the NRMA wheel

The President of the NRMA stirred things up a bit this week by telling the RTA that the Epping Road bike lane is a waste of money. Predictable amounts of poo then hit the fan.

I am an NRMA member, and I buy a fair bit of insurance from them, and I think the guy is a twit. He seems to not get the point that motorists do more than just drive their cars. Why, some of them get out of them from time to time and walk. Others even jog, or ride a bike, or take a bus or a train or a ferry. Or even a plane.

Most of us are consumers of multiple modes of transport. At some point, everyone has to get out of their car and walk - even if it is just from the garage to their door. Ok, except for those in wheelchairs.

Anyway, I think he is a pin head because he is focusing solely on the needs of motorists - but there is no such thing as a "motorist." I drive a car, but do not consider myself a motorist. Hell, I've rebuild numerous car engines, stripped and rebuilt a few cars, and scrapped the odd one as well. I am not some anti-car, tofu wielding whale cuddler. I've even spent a lot of time driving trucks. I love the sound of a loud V8, and hate the sound of a turbo-popping rice burner. I am a petrol head that currently has that interest parked in limbo.

I am a person, not a motorist. There are some places that I prefer to drive to, and others that I prefer to ride to. I am yet to find somewhere that I want to catch the bus to, but that is another matter. Although I ride twice a day during the week, if you look at total kilometres per mode over the last six years, it is car - 100,000km and bike 10,000km. I have ridden a lot, but driven 10 times as far.

Call me a heretic, but I am reasonably satisfied with our road system. Sure, there are some terrible spots on the Pacific Highway, but they can be safely traversed if one has patience and pays attention and avoids falling asleep. The road system gets me where I want to go, and most of the time, I get there with little frustration and few delays. That's mainly because I am very careful about when I travel, and avoid peaks and bottlenecks like the plague.

Bonehead Evans though seems to think that the peaks and bottlenecks will go away if we throw more tarmac at the problem. No, it won't solve the problem. Road usage at certain points will always grow to exceed the capacity of the road at certain times. Which is great if you own toll road shares, like I do. I bought them because I heartily believe that traffic on our toll roads will continue to grow at a faster rate than the economy is expanding at.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I am sure that Evans doesn't have the answers. He should stick to running the breakdown service and keep his yap shut.

Buttocks

Another photo in my occasional series of fellow bike travellers (or commuters, as they may prefer to be known as).

I snapped this guy as he was idling around the Bay. It was blowing a gale, so I tucked in behind him for 30 seconds, thinking that he could shield me for a bit. But he was barely crawling along, so I showed him my bottom instead.



These commuter bikes have small diameter wheels. I'm not sure what that's supposed to achieve - greater stability perhaps, or a smaller overall sized bike? Something that will squeeze into the boot of the car?

I am pleased to see that he is wearing a high-vis shirt. I'm very glad of anything that will stop my fellow bikers from being knocked over by a car, and getting the, "Sorry, didn't see you mate" treatment.

What the f..?

There is a particular street that I ride down from time to time that I call "public housing heaven".

That means that most vertical surfaces, plus some of the horizontal ones, are covered in graffiti. The laneways are infested with shopping trolleys. One has so many, the locals have thoughtfully started to push them together so that they take up less space. They don't leave the trolleys where the trolley-man can find them of course - they hide them away behind shrubs in barely used lanes where they will never be found.

If you want to smell the ferals, this is the place to be.

But then I spotted this - what the fuck?



And then another one on the car behind! What is going on here?

More global warming

You may not realise it, but this canal is very full of water. It never gets this high. According to the usual suspects, who are spreading panic, this is due to global warming.



Personally, I blame the moon.

Upsold

I almost forgot - when I bought my new pedals yesterday, the salesman upsold me on some tube patches. I needed some additional patches for my patching kit, and they normally cost bugger all. However, he sold me on some glueless patches, which cost $6.

Woo-hoo, big upsell, given that the pedals cost $129. Still, I was gratified to see that he cared enough about selling to upsell me on the most trivial item, even at 2 minutes past opening time, when he was still munching on his breakfast (an apple). Nice to see someone doing their job.

Preparing to ride

It's 6am, and I'm up and trying to wake up sufficiently to go to work. The sun is not up yet - I will wait a little while until it gets light out there, and then I'll go. I have a very powerful light on the bike, but I see no point in fitting it when I can just wait 15 minutes for a more powerful light to pop up over the horizon.

My clothes are on the armchair behind me. Before I rack out at night, I pull out the cycling kit that I am going to wear, along with any clothes that I need to take to work (socks and jocks mainly). That's so I am not crashing throught the wardrobe in the dark at 6am and waking J up.

I know that I am sufficiently awake when I can remember to pack all the other things that I need into my baby backpack - I have this tiny little backpack that reminds me a bit of a purse. I used to ride with a normal sized backpack, but it kept sliding around my shoulders when it was only 1/4 full. All that I need in summer is my wallet, my glasses, my phone, my bike lock, my security tag for the office and perhaps something to read at lunch. That's topped up with a pair of socks and jocks.

Aha, but something is missing. Where do my cycling photos come from?

I also stuff the camera into my back pocket, where I can get to it as I am riding.

In the past, I have left without one of these items, and have had to do a quick U turn when some blocks from home to collect the missing thing. So I am now rather particular about where all this stuff goes - it is all piled up in one spot, and it never leaves that spot (if I have any say in the matter). That way, it doesn't matter if I am all bleary eyed - I just scrape it into the backpack and go. Some items, like the bike lock, never leave the backpack when I get home (the backpack is pretty much dedicated just to cycling, so I don't have to worry about a family member using it for some other purpose, thus upsetting my delicately organised system).

Without a simple system and a bit of order, I'd be screwed.

Similarly, the helmet, gloves and shoes are outside the back door on a "shelf", just waiting for me to walk past, grab them and put them on. They go in the same spot every night, without fail. My cycling jerseys and knicks go in the same spot in the clothes drawer, so I can find them in the dark if necessary.

It's funny - reading Frank Chalk just rams home how disorganised many of his kids are. Nothing to write in, nothing to write with - but never without a mobile phone I suppose. If I was a plumber for instance, and I had an apprentice that turned up day after day without some items of kit - no safety boots one day, half his tools missing the next etc etc, I'd fire the little bugger. If you don't have what you need to do the job, you're not employable.

Speaking of which though, I started work yesterday without a pair of black socks. I had no socks at all. I had to wear my shoes over bare feet until I popped out at lunch and got a pair at Woolies. It looked downright wierd, especially as I had a few meetings with people at an area without a table, and everyone else noticed. I then had to regale them with why I had no socks.

I am not going to tell you about it - I am going to go for a ride.

Pedantry

Well, I'm approaching the end of It's your time you're wasting, and I have found a mistake.

I am 85% of the way through by the way - see, I can understand and calculate percentages. Lucky me.

Well, I thought I found a mistake on page 167. It was there last night. Then again, it's 6am, and my eyes are encrusted with sleep goo, so it might just take a while for it to reveal itself. Sneaky little bugger of a thing - I knew I should have highlighted it whilst I was awake.

The book by the way is a good yarn all the way to the end. Ok, it's a good yarn to 85% of the way through. If I knock off the remaining 15% tonight, I'll let you know if the last 15% is as good as the first 15%. Mr Chalk, bless him, has not produced a thigh bruising book of 1000 pages that runs out of steam at the halfway mark and is padded with useless blather. It's short, punchy and contains just the sufficient number of pages to make his point.

If only other authors could do the same. It would also help if editors did their job properly.

I still recommend that you go buy this book.

End of a pedal

I was about halfway home last night when I got stuck at a red light. Which can be nice, as an occasional breather is sometimes required on Sydney's hills. As I took off from the lights, I heard a metallic tinkle - the kind of tinkle that I have heard before - and was not surprised when my cleat no longer clipped into my right pedal. The poor old pedal had finally worn out, and a crucial bit of tin had snapped off.

To give you some idea of the wear and tear that a bike can suffer from repeated use, I have taken these close ups of the pedal. Not the crater that has been worn on the side of this one - there should be no crater there. This is the result of me unclipping about 10,000 times, and the cleat rubbing against the metal as it unclips to one side. Amazing that it should wear down this much.



Here are the two pedals side by side. The one on the left has a nice gouge, and the other has none. That's because I am a "right foot stander", which means I unclip my right foot 99.9999% of the time when I have to pull up at a traffic light or stop sign.



Now some people might laugh at that - the thought of a cyclist actually stopping at a stop sign or red light, but some of us obey the road rules most of the time. This pedal proves it.

I now have a shiny new pair of Shimano pedals, and they are wonderous indeed because I one can clip in on either the top or bottom. In fact they really don't have a top or bottom. The Wellgo pedals that I am getting rid of did have a top and bottom, and what it meant is that everytime I took off, I had to flip the pedal right side up with my toe, and then search for the cleat hole. Doing the flipping took a lot of practice, which is all wasted now. Ah well, such is life. One learns a skill, and then finds that technology has made it redundant.

Discovering that there are double sided pedals out there was a revelation to me though. It's like I had been watching black and white TV all my life, and suddenly found that colour has been available for 30 years. I wonder which hole I have had my head stuck in for the last 4 years.

Squishy

I find the best way to cross the city from east to west is to zip down towards Central and to follow the tram tracks. Oops, gotta call them "light rail" in Sydney - tram is just too old fashioned a word.



The downside of following the tram tracks from Darling Harbour across to Pitt St is that they are used by trams every now and then. I never, ever get in front of one - I am paranoid that I'll fall over and get chopped into little bits. If one is in the vicinity, I just tuck in behind it and patiently follow it until I get to peel off a bit further up the line. They don't move very fast - barely faster than a fast walk, so following them can be a bit of a chore. Also, the stops go on forever. A bit like a Fidel Castro speech if you ask me.

I was riding down the tracks the other night when I spotted a family waiting on a platform for a tram. They had a hyperactive 4 or 5 year old, and he was pointing at the tracks and yelling out something about rails, and then he saw me coming and yelled out "He's going to get SQUASHED by a tram", as he pointed straight at me. The parents, started chiding him for being a bit upfront with a complete stranger, but it cracked me up. Kids can come out with the funniest things at times.

The following night, there was a family at the same spot with younger kids. Once again, I was pointed at, and this time called a tram. Smallest bloody tram in Sydney if you ask me.

Taken on a cold, wet, windy day

I blame global warming.



No, I take that back. I blame Clover Moore. Or perhaps Al Gore has made a secret visit to Sydney recently?

The daily ride

I was out the door a bit late this morning - around 7am - mainly because I was so groggy, I could barely walk in a straight line. I went outside and looked at the weather and tossed up whether to wear a spray jacket or not. I didn't bother. It becomes completely unnecessary within a few kilometres, unless the temperature is heading towards single digits.

I start by ambling around the back streets of Five Wog. The pavement quality is awful - you could run the Paris to Dakhar race around these streets and apart from the lack of sand, no one would notice the difference in ride quality. I saw a bit of tarmac tonight that reminded me of a dam that has dried out in the drought - you know how the mud shrinks and cracks? That's how it looked.

After a few minutes of bashing my bum on the blasted backstreets, I have a decision to make - where am I going to cross Great North Road? It's not a great road, and I'm not entirely sure it goes north, but it's a pain to get across because of the terrible intersections that litter it through Five Wog. If I've really slept in and the traffic is moving, I'll take a traffic light option. If I am on the road by 7, I'll chance my arm at a crossing without lights.

Once across, I ramp up the cadence and get my legs spinning with very little effort. It's flat, and I'm not aiming to go fast - I just want to get the blood circulating. Unfortunately, as in many places in Sydney, the flat runs out all too soon, and I am starting on my first, gentle hill of the day. After that, it's all downhill to The Bay. The downhill bit can be nasty chilly in winter, even with leg warmers and a jacket and thermal vest. The core temp simply hasn't risen enough to combat the chill. But that was not a problem today. It had been raining overnight, so my biggest worry was a slippery patch of road.

Once onto The Bay cyclepath, I pick up the pace to around 30km/h and keep it there - again, with the aim of getting the blood flowing and the brain working. There are always a few idiot pedestrians walking in the bike lane, and one has to be awake enough to swerve around them. One day, I am going to be half asleep and I'll swerve late and clip some bugger on the achilles with my pedal. That is going to hurt.

I spend a bit of time looking over my left shoulder, taking in the view across the water towards the Harbour Bridge, and then the CBD. Some morning are crystal clear; others are shrouded in fog. Every morning presents something worth getting up to see.

When I get to the bottom of Lilyfield Rd, I turn left and avoid going up the lung busting brute in front of me. I head around towards a rowing club and the loonie bin, and take an easier route up the hill. It's longer, but I reckon I haven't been on the road long enough when I hit that hill to be properly warmed up. I also prefer the crossing at the top of the hill where my loonie bin detour pops me out.

Then it's back onto Lilyfield Rd, and a brisk ride along the bike lane. Traffic on Lilyfield Rd is generally sparse - bikes sometimes seem to outnumber cars and buses - but one has to be awake to the idiot that looks at the empty road and plants his foot. There are a few ups and downs, but it's easy to hit 50kmh on the downhill stretches and to use that speed to catapult the bike up the next hill. There's a lovely, fast turn at the bottom of one hill, where one can lean right over as the turn is taken, but the apex is currently smeared with gravel, and hitting the gravel whilst leaning is a recipe for disaster. I am avoiding the bike lane at present and staying way out in the middle of the road. Cars don't seem to mind as I am taking the corner at the speed limit - it's not like I am slowing them down.

There's a nasty speed bump on Lilyfield Rd that has to be taken with care. I can get across it at 50kmh, but the side of the speed hump where the bike lane is looks like an IED has been planted in it. It's best to get out into the car lane and flog it across the middle of the speed hump. It's interesting doing this stretch in a pack of 4 or 5 other riders. The traffic lights at the top of the hill cause a bunch to form, and then it is a silent race down the hill to see who can get over the next crest in the lead. There are no prizes for being first, but everyone wants to demonstrate that the are the strongest and fittest. Thanks to my mass, I rocket down the hill faster than anyone else, and if I get going fast enough, it's enough to slingshot me almost to the top of the next hill in a high gear. Momentum is the key. I often have so much of it that I have to brake to avoid running into the rear of another cyclist as I zoom up the next hill - and I'm rolling whilst the guy in front is frantically pedalling (and I haven't been drafting - I'm talking about the other bloke having a 50m lead and me just zooming up behind, but behing unable to pass due to the traffic).

Then it's the ANZAC Bridge, and I'll have to leave it there for now.

Time to be moving

It's almost 7am, and I should have been on the road half an hour ago. It rained a lot last night, so it's cool outside and I am debating whether to wear a spray jacket or not. The road is calling (and so is work), but I just want to sit here and blog for an hour or more.

Really what I want to do is go back to bed and sleep for another two hours. When I got up, I couldn't even walk straight.

Ah well, here we go. Target for this week is 100 miles. Or 160km for you newfangled folk.

Opinion is not news

"Opinion", "blogs" and "letters" are not news.

They are opinions, not facts.



No wonder the SMH has turned to shit.

Teeth and freedom

I needed to have some urgent work done on the choppers recently. I bit into something a bit too vigously and found myself crunchy on three bits of broken tooth. I think what happened is that many years ago, I had an amalgam filling put into that tooth, and the dentist only left a bit of a sliver of tooth on the outside of the filling. 25 years later, the filling and bit of leftover tooth parted company.

It didn't hurt. I suffered no toothache, but I wanted to have it fixed quick smart in case I did. Nothing worse than a bit of toothache.

I had two choices.

Go to my normal dentist in Mosman, and pay $1,500 (again) to witness an amazing bit of tooth making technology in action, or:

Go to a local dentist, and pay $200 to have some goo slapped over the hole.

I chose the latter option, mainly because of the difficulties that I have with parking at the new location of my very expensive dentist, and I didn't really want to drive back from Mosman after a morning on the gas.

I love the fact that I have a choice. If I paid $1,500, I would have luxuriated in an amazing waiting room, complete with an enormous fishtank and very comfortable lounges. I would have been tended to by some excellent staff, and I would have been treated by a dentist that never jabs me in the nerve when he sticks the needle in. He also would have stuck a fibre optic camera in my mouth and shown me in great detail the problem with my tooth, and explained what he was going to do, and then taken a 3D snapshot of it, fed that into a CAD-CAM machine and had it grind me a plug of porcelein that would fit beautifully into the hole. And the colour would match that of the rest of my teeth.

I still would have walked out a nervous, sweating wreck, but I would not feel that I had wasted $1,500.

But I still gave the local quack a go. She learned how to pull teeth in NZ, which is probably a good thing (unless she practiced on whethers) and the waiting room was clean and well appointed (but not luxurious). Parking was not a problem.

But she did stick the needle into my nerve, causing me to partly freak out, and when I asked for gas, she gave me a wee trickle and then didn't take it away. What I wanted was a huge hit of gas at the start - enough to make me want to have a needle - and then no gas at all. Half an hour on gas gave me heart palpitations and a very horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The filling did the trick, but it looks like a bit of Tippex blobbed onto carbon paper. Thankfully, it is in a tooth up the back of my mouth, so no one is likely to notice (except for my old dentist, if I ever go back to him).

The wonderful thing is that my health fund paid for half of it, whereas if I went to Mosman guy, I would have been out of pocket $1,400.

And instead of being half freaked out by Mosman-guy, I was totally freaked out by Drummoyne-gal. I almost drove into the Bay on the way home - I was that wired.

Still, I made my choice, and I'm not unhappy with it in the end. But at least I had a choice. That to me is as important as being toothache free.

Ooooo, nice tatoo

Took Monkey to the pool today. There we are, sitting at the last traffic light before the pool when a motorbike pulls up next to us. The rider is wearing shorts, and I can see that he has ink all up both legs and over both arms as well.

I didn't stare, as I didn't want him to rip my wing mirror off and smash my car up with it. He took off, and I hoped I wouldn't see him again.

We jump in the pool.

A new lifeguard turns up. It's the same guy.

I got a closer look at his leg, and noticed that he had "Psalm 91:1" on one of them.

It turns out that the Psalm says "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty."

Please note that is the first Psalm I have looked up. Ever. Probably not a bad thing to have on your leg if you ride a motorbike.

This guy rocks!

Go to this website and watch the videos.

No, it is not gay sheep porn. It is someone defending some of our rights, and doing it in a way that brought a big smile to my face. As the yanks would say, he kicks ass.

I just wish he had kicked them in the balls, but that's a bit difficult to achieve.

I went to a school with a bloke who became a lawyer and ended up working for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) in Sydney. I never spoke to him about his work, but I never imagined him to be such a softcock. We went and saw a band once. He got totally shitfaced, and passed out whilst sitting on the bog at the venue. Luckily, the boggers had no doors, so it was easy to find him, but I had to pick him up, pull his pants up and carry him out of there slung over my shoulder.

Not a good look.

Bodies like the HREOC shit me to tears.

My only other contact with HREOC is that some years ago, they apparently suffered a budget cut and were forced to get rid of some staff and ditch some expensive office space in the city. The company that I was working for at the time took over a floor from them, and it was a lovely place to work. Big offices - and lots of offices. Most places that I've been in have say 1 office per 20 or 30 workstations. This place had a ratio more like 1:4. Given that offices take a lot of space, and are thus expensive, they were throwing a lot of money around on rent.

I had to get a cabler in to do some work. He turned up, looked around a whistled. When I asked why, he said "This is the most expensive workstation furniture that you can buy".

Your tax dollars at work.

Freaky photo

I took this photo at a recent BBQ. I was using the "fireworks" setting on the camera, which is the closest thing to taking a long exposure photo. It gives you 2 seconds of exposure. The only light source was two mosquito candles on the ground, and I then amped up the brightness, contrast and colour saturation.



Looks like a scene from a vampire movie.

By the way, the candles seem to attract mosquitos, rather than deter them. I sat outside reading Frank Chalk's book tonight and was only able to swallow a dozen pages before the biteys moved in.

(God, I hope I got the apostrophe in the right place).

Criminal question

Do burglars still steal CD's when they rob your house?

I thought of that question whilst reading a series of comments on Samizdata regarding the CD.

I have been robbed on numerous occasions, and have rebuilt my CD collect some 5 times. I hate to think how many I bought over the years - probably well over 1,000. However, I have not been burgled in about 15 years, and that was the last time any CD's went walkabout.

I also used to be paranoid about taking my CD's out of the car. I don't have to worry about that any longer (with the iTunes adaptor on the car stereo), but we still carried CD's in the car up until 6 months ago. At what point, years ago, did I stop worrying about some young thug breaking a window to run off with my CD collection? When did I stop taking the CD's out of the car when I parked it?

If anything should convince the music moguls that CD's are a dead letter, the lack of desirability to thieves should be a huge, flashing neon sign saying "No one cares about them anymore".