How hard is it to steal the idea of an Egg McMuffin? Do you need to be Dr Evil in order to turn out a counterfeit McMuffin that actually has similar properties to the real thing? Like hold-togetherness and taste?
One of the companies that I am enslaved to has a cafe on site. Not that it's got the ambiance of a French cafe - all the workers are disgruntled, overweight women in their 50's, and they are as friendly and customer focused as East German Border Guards.
They sell two types of food before 11am - those that are lumps of sugar encrusted with more sugar, and your more traditional fat, lard, salt and protein combination. Kransky sausages that have shrivelled to half their original size whilst baking in the bain-marie overnight are a crowd favourite. The only other thing for sale is a blatant McMuffin rip-off. Except that they have utterly failed to reproduce the key quality of the original McMuffin - you can guarantee that none of it will end up on your expensive business shirt and tie. Can you imagine how annoying it is to start the day with a crisply laundered and ironed 100% cotton shirt, matched with an expensive silk tie, only to have egg yolk drip onto both?
If there is one thing McDonald's does well, it is the fact that almost all their food is drip-free. Sure, that results in ketchup so thick that it can double for sealing cracks in your bathroom, but you don't see many aggro people walking out of Maccas trying to rub a stain off their clothes.
The great McMuffin ripoff has resulted in a glutinous breakfast item that is the most wretched example of intellectual property theft that I can imagine. They stole the idea, but not the cheese. They obviously haven't studied the essential properties of the McMuffin to the extent that I have, and I can tell you that the secret is the cheese. It is a loathsome yellow slab of stuff that is as far removed from cows as I am from iguanas, but it performs the cardinal role of binding the ingredients together. It looks like glue and tastes like glue because it is glue. I've never sat down in McDonald's, opened my newspaper and taken a bite of a McMuffin and suddenly discovered that 80% of my breakfast has slid out from between the toasted thingys and ended up sitting on page 1 of the newspaper. McDonald's have invested a lot of time and effort into inventing a glue that looks and tastes something like cheese, and they've been very successful.
The hilarious thing is where this cafe is located. A multi-billion dollar multi-national behemoth inhabits this particular building, and they sell billions of dollars of goods and services to governments around the world - and their food department can't even reverse engineer something as simple as breakfast. Is it any wonder that so many government projects end up being years over due, way over budget and never deliver what was originally asked for?
Monday, 16 February 2009
Sunday, 15 February 2009
Should bicycles be registered?
Every time Andrew Bolt or the Daily Telegraph run any sort of story that mentions a bicycle, the anti-bike nutters come out in force. A persistent thread to their lunatic rantings is that bicycles should be forced to pay registration and insurance like cars - so that they contribute to road funding - and only once they do that, should they be entitled to use the roads. The argument is always made that "My registration charges pay for the roads - you don't pay rego, so you cyclists should get off the roads".
I guess we should wind the clock back at least 100 years and ask why the state insists that all vehicles are registered, because that might provide some hints as to whether bikes should be registered or not.
Consider what the roads were like in 1909. The Model T Ford was just 1 year old, and at that time, had not been produced in sufficient numbers to drive down prices. At that time, the famous production line process had not been sorted out, so it was turned out in quite limited numbers. In essence, in 1909, the car was still the plaything of the rich, requiring a chauffeur to take care of all the dirty work.
The standard 4-seat open tourer of 1909 cost US$850 (about £180 at the time, equivalent to $20,300/£9,000 today),[21] when competing cars often cost $2,000-$3,000 (equivalent to $48,000-$72,000 today)
I imagine the second hand car market was also quite limited - still in its infancy perhaps. Governments were quite happy to start taxing this new-fangled device via a registration tax because it was a tax on the wealthy, rather than the working man. The worker walked, caught a cheap workman's train, or rode a bike.
Sales started to lift off just as WWI started, and the war made all governments hungry for revenue. I'd have to go and look up some of my history books, but I'm sure the result would be that heavier taxes were slapped on cars to fund the war effort - not to fund better roads.
I know that various politicians of all stripes have justified new or increased motoring taxes by saying that the extra money will be spent on road works, but that is almost always a lie. Motoring is simply a docile cow that can be milked with ease.
If you want proof that registration charges are not used to fund road maintenance, simply read the latest RTA annual report. The financial statements tell the whole story.
The RTA does make a bit of money from selling fancy number plates that I presume it can keep to spend as it likes, but it is a drop in the ocean:
So where does the RTA get its money from?
A total of 5,204,316 "vehicles" were registered in NSW last year - that includes cars, motorbikes, trucks, buses, light and heavy plant and trailers. I can't figure out where all the money is going, because if we assume an average rego cost of $400, those 5 million vehicle owners should be paying over $2 billion in fees and taxes just to register them.
That number would probably be a lot higher, since heavy trucks pay through the nose in registration fees. I'm sure I could find the dollar figure if I wanted, but I can't be bothered. Let's just assume that most anti-bike road ragers drive cars, and they pay a registration charge similar to mine. There are 3,443,036 cars, 4WD's and people movers in NSW. At $400 per car or people mover, they'd be paying $1.38 billion in registration charges - still under half what it costs to run the RTA each year.
Before we go on, let's look at how the RTA spends that money:
I know some people like to think that all that $3 billion in revenue must be spent on tar and concrete, but it's not. From what I can tell, at most, $1 billion is actually spent on road works. The RTA reported a surplus in 2008 of $1.3 billion. It also "spent" $785 million on depreciation - which is a bigger cost than maintanance, and a bigger cost than wages, salaries, contractors and superannuation. Wear and tear on our roads and bridges and culverts and earthworks is the biggest expense.
What do all these numbers tell us?
I can tell you that they confuse the hell out of me. You've got money coming in from registrations (but we don't know how much), and it goes straight to Treasury. Treasury then mixes up that money with the money from all other sources and doles it back out.
What seems to be the case though is that registration charges on cars comes nowhere near paying for road maintenance - car owners pay $1.38 billion in rego, and the RTA spends $2.3 billion on the road network.
Truck drivers will chime in now and say that they pay massive registration fees, and that is true. If anything, the 98,000 heavy trucks and prime movers are heavily subsidising the 5.1 million "other" vehicles on the roads - although a 72 tonne semi does hundreds of times more damage to the pavement than a Kia or a motorbike. If anything, truckies should be telling whinging car drivers to bugger off and get out of their way because they are paying much higher road charges.
Why do trucks pay more?
Partly, it is because governments know they can afford to - trucks are businesses, and businesses can be milked more heavily than families. The other reason is the extra damage they do to our roads. So if we are happy that trucks should pay heaps for doing lots of damage, we should also be happy with the idea that bikes pay nothing in road charges, since they do no damage to concrete or tarmac roads.
As for "milking" cyclists for tax revenue, it's worth remembering that many cyclists are kids (riding to school or sport), and a 13 year old kid generally doesn't earn much in the way of income. We don't tax kids in the main - we tax adults, and adult activities, because adults tend to be the people that own real property, or have an income worth taxing.
We could also talk about fuel excise all night, but that goes into consolidated revenue as well and is mixed up into a great big bucket. It is not hypothecated revenue.
Insurance. Let's talk about insurance. Another argument the anti-bike crowd make is that cyclists have no insurance.
That is a lie.
As a member of Bicycle NSW, I automatically get:
Not everyone joins an organisation like Bicycle NSW of course, but I think the money is well spent. In fact, the numbers are paltry - only around 9,000 members at present - but they are growing, and insurance is available and taken up by serious cyclists.
Now let's talk about number plates themselves. Why are cars, trucks, trailers, buses and motorbikes required to show a set of plates, yet bikes are not?
Imagine what the roads would be like with no number plates. You are in a supermarket carpark and you see a Lexus bump into a Falcon and scratch the paint, and the Lexus then buggers off without stopping. You go to write a note to leave under the windscreen wiper of the Falcon - what do you say? "A bronze Lexus scratched your car"? How useful is that?
Cars have an identifying number plate so that if two of them crash, the cars involved can be identified for insurance reasons and so on. They have them so that when you speed past a radar trap, you can be fined. If you overstay in a parking spot, a traffic warden can write you a ticket.
The reasons can be boiled down to two - insurance and policing.
Now then, consider the difference in outcomes if I fail to take a corner in my 4WD and end up in your front yard, and if I fail to take a corner on my bike and end up in your front yard.
In the first case, my 4WD will probably end up embedded in your bedroom, having taken out your fence, various trees and plants, a gnome or two and your bedroom wall. The damage bill will be in the tens of thousands of dollars. Even if I manage to reverse out and shoot through, my number plate will allow the Police to find me, and thus your insurance company.
In the second case, my bike will hit your fence, and I will be catapulted over it, probably to land on a gnome, breaking several ribs. At most, you will have a scuff mark on your fence, a flattened gnome and a moaning victim on your lawn. The ambo's will probably do more damage when they stomp across your flower bed to pick me up.
Now consider vehicle on vehicle crashes. Out of all the instances in 2008 when a bike hit a car, how many resulted in the car being undriveable? Actually, I know of one - when Junior tore down a driveway and took out a Hyundai, writing it off. But it is pretty rare for a cyclist to mangle a car. In his case, although he wrote the car off, he also wrote himself off, and the bike. He was in no fit state to leap back on his bike and tear off, leaving a frustrated driver behind wondering who to blame the crash on. He was carted off in an ambulance for emergency surgery.
When a car and bicycle collide, the cyclist never gets to run away in general. Most often, they are lying on the pavement waiting for an ambulance to arrive. Identification is not an issue.
What about speeding?
Well, when bicycles are consistently able to do 60km/h in a 50 zone, ore 130km/h in a 110 zone, I'll endorse the idea of number plates for bikes, so that the cops can fine them for speeding. However, given that most cyclists roll along at 20-25km/h, I don't see this as an issue. Even the super fit, super fast pack riders rarely exceed 50km/h, even when they are in a hurry.
And parking tickets?
How many bicycles per year are parked in such a way to warrant a parking ticket? I'd guess that if a bike was parked really, really badly, the traffic wardens would just cut the lock and impound it. Parking tickets for bikes is rarely an issue in most locations.
Yes, there is a problem with bikes zooming through red lights and stop signs, and I hate seeing cyclists doing it. I know it infuriates other law abiding motorists, which is why I don't do it. However, even if we did put number plates on bikes, how many fines do you think would be issued per year? Fines could only be levied in two circumstances - if a red light camera catches the bike, or if a cop sees it happening and pulls the cyclist over and writes a ticket.
In the case of a traffic camera, smart cyclists would simply not zip through the red light. In the case of the second, it happens already - cops write tickets for cyclists if they catch them breaking the law. A number plate is not required - what they are after is the drivers licence of the cyclist (which is not much use if the cyclist if 14 years old). The only way to stop cyclists from zooming through red lights is to put more Police on the roads - but the same applies to motorists.
Phew. I think I have come to the end of my argument.
Oops. Not quite.
Let's talk about the motorist argument of "I pay my taxes, so I have a right to use this road, and you don't".
If I walk into a shop tomorrow and buy a $3,000 bike, I will be paying $270 in GST. Each year, I spend about $1,000 on maintenance and accessories - again, paying $90 in GST.
There is a car around the corner on sale for $1,700. We need a 2nd car, so this is worth considering. It would do a maximum of 50km per week, if that - essentially, we just need it to drop the kids up the road at day care.
It's an economical car, so at 2,500km per year, it will use less than 250 litres of fuel. I think the current excise is 38 cents per litre, plus GST. So we'd pay $95 in petrol excise per year.
In essence, buying and running a new bike would contribute more into the tax coffers than running a second car (excluding rego costs).
And as for this whole "cyclists pay no tax" crap argument, I offer this:
In 2008, I paid $72,000 in income tax. It was a very good year.
In 2007, I paid $34,000 - and that is pretty much the level I have paid for 5 or 6 years.
Since 2004, when I started cycling, I estimate I have paid $240,000 in income tax alone. I'm not even going to bother adding up all the GST, fuel excise and other taxes that I have paid on top of that. I reckon I have contributed more to road funding on my own than every bike hating dickhead that spews their bile on Daily Telegraph blogs and forums.
I guess we should wind the clock back at least 100 years and ask why the state insists that all vehicles are registered, because that might provide some hints as to whether bikes should be registered or not.
Consider what the roads were like in 1909. The Model T Ford was just 1 year old, and at that time, had not been produced in sufficient numbers to drive down prices. At that time, the famous production line process had not been sorted out, so it was turned out in quite limited numbers. In essence, in 1909, the car was still the plaything of the rich, requiring a chauffeur to take care of all the dirty work.
The standard 4-seat open tourer of 1909 cost US$850 (about £180 at the time, equivalent to $20,300/£9,000 today),[21] when competing cars often cost $2,000-$3,000 (equivalent to $48,000-$72,000 today)
I imagine the second hand car market was also quite limited - still in its infancy perhaps. Governments were quite happy to start taxing this new-fangled device via a registration tax because it was a tax on the wealthy, rather than the working man. The worker walked, caught a cheap workman's train, or rode a bike.
Sales started to lift off just as WWI started, and the war made all governments hungry for revenue. I'd have to go and look up some of my history books, but I'm sure the result would be that heavier taxes were slapped on cars to fund the war effort - not to fund better roads.
I know that various politicians of all stripes have justified new or increased motoring taxes by saying that the extra money will be spent on road works, but that is almost always a lie. Motoring is simply a docile cow that can be milked with ease.
If you want proof that registration charges are not used to fund road maintenance, simply read the latest RTA annual report. The financial statements tell the whole story.
(e) Administered ActivitiesWhat this says is that the RTA collects your car registration money and then gives it straight to Treasury. Treasury then puts it all into one big bucket, and uses that bucket to pay for schools, hospitals, Police etc and pet political projects.
The RTA administers, but does not control, the collection of various fees, fines and levies on behalf of the Crown Entity. Monies collected on behalf of the Crown Transactions Entity are not recognised as the RTA’s revenues but are separately disclosed in the Program Statement – Expenses and Revenues. The RTA is accountable for the transactions relating to those administered activities but does not have the discretion, for example, to deploy the resources for the achievement of its own objectives.
Transactions and balances relating to the administered activities are not recognised as the authority’s revenue, expenses, assets and liabilities, but are disclosed in the accompanying schedules as “Administered Revenue and Administered Liabilities”.
Administered revenuesThe "consolidate fund" is the dead giveaway - that is a Treasury term for where it consolidates all revenues from various sources - property taxes, payroll taxes, stamp duty, speeding fines and car registration charges.
Consolidated Fund
– Taxes, Fees and Fines $403,547,00
– Other $631,167,000
Total Administered Revenues $1,034,714,00
The RTA does make a bit of money from selling fancy number plates that I presume it can keep to spend as it likes, but it is a drop in the ocean:
Sale of Goods
Number Plates $72,749,000
So where does the RTA get its money from?
Government ContributionsTreasury doles out a bit over $3 billion each year to the RTA from general revenue. The "administered revenue", which covers all "taxes, fees, fines and other" comes to just over $1 billion, or about 1/3 of all RTA income. I have no idea how much registration fees bring in, but I can tell you this - my current registration fee is $52 and the motor vehicle tax is $341 - which I think is calculated on engine displacement or power. The total is $393.
Recurrent Appropriation $1,429,710,000
Capital Appropriation $1,828,911,000
Total Government Contributions $3,258,621,000
A total of 5,204,316 "vehicles" were registered in NSW last year - that includes cars, motorbikes, trucks, buses, light and heavy plant and trailers. I can't figure out where all the money is going, because if we assume an average rego cost of $400, those 5 million vehicle owners should be paying over $2 billion in fees and taxes just to register them.
That number would probably be a lot higher, since heavy trucks pay through the nose in registration fees. I'm sure I could find the dollar figure if I wanted, but I can't be bothered. Let's just assume that most anti-bike road ragers drive cars, and they pay a registration charge similar to mine. There are 3,443,036 cars, 4WD's and people movers in NSW. At $400 per car or people mover, they'd be paying $1.38 billion in registration charges - still under half what it costs to run the RTA each year.
Before we go on, let's look at how the RTA spends that money:
Expenses
– Employee Related $501,856,000
– Other Operating Expenses $175,891,000
Maintenance $774,408,000
Depreciation and Amortisation $785,639,000
Grants and Subsidies $40,906,000
Finance costs $51,352,000
Total Expenses excluding losses $2,330,052,000
I know some people like to think that all that $3 billion in revenue must be spent on tar and concrete, but it's not. From what I can tell, at most, $1 billion is actually spent on road works. The RTA reported a surplus in 2008 of $1.3 billion. It also "spent" $785 million on depreciation - which is a bigger cost than maintanance, and a bigger cost than wages, salaries, contractors and superannuation. Wear and tear on our roads and bridges and culverts and earthworks is the biggest expense.
What do all these numbers tell us?
I can tell you that they confuse the hell out of me. You've got money coming in from registrations (but we don't know how much), and it goes straight to Treasury. Treasury then mixes up that money with the money from all other sources and doles it back out.
What seems to be the case though is that registration charges on cars comes nowhere near paying for road maintenance - car owners pay $1.38 billion in rego, and the RTA spends $2.3 billion on the road network.
Truck drivers will chime in now and say that they pay massive registration fees, and that is true. If anything, the 98,000 heavy trucks and prime movers are heavily subsidising the 5.1 million "other" vehicles on the roads - although a 72 tonne semi does hundreds of times more damage to the pavement than a Kia or a motorbike. If anything, truckies should be telling whinging car drivers to bugger off and get out of their way because they are paying much higher road charges.
Why do trucks pay more?
Partly, it is because governments know they can afford to - trucks are businesses, and businesses can be milked more heavily than families. The other reason is the extra damage they do to our roads. So if we are happy that trucks should pay heaps for doing lots of damage, we should also be happy with the idea that bikes pay nothing in road charges, since they do no damage to concrete or tarmac roads.
As for "milking" cyclists for tax revenue, it's worth remembering that many cyclists are kids (riding to school or sport), and a 13 year old kid generally doesn't earn much in the way of income. We don't tax kids in the main - we tax adults, and adult activities, because adults tend to be the people that own real property, or have an income worth taxing.
We could also talk about fuel excise all night, but that goes into consolidated revenue as well and is mixed up into a great big bucket. It is not hypothecated revenue.
Insurance. Let's talk about insurance. Another argument the anti-bike crowd make is that cyclists have no insurance.
That is a lie.
As a member of Bicycle NSW, I automatically get:
- Australian Cyclist magazine - 6 issues
- $20m Public liability insurance - real must have!
- Personal accident insurance
- Great member discounts and prizes
- Social rides calendar
Join for only $90 or $135 per household, kids included!
I pay the family rate, so we are all covered by the same basic insurance that a car driver with a green slip has. If I crash into the back of a Bentley (which I almost did one day), I have some coverage.Not everyone joins an organisation like Bicycle NSW of course, but I think the money is well spent. In fact, the numbers are paltry - only around 9,000 members at present - but they are growing, and insurance is available and taken up by serious cyclists.
Now let's talk about number plates themselves. Why are cars, trucks, trailers, buses and motorbikes required to show a set of plates, yet bikes are not?
Imagine what the roads would be like with no number plates. You are in a supermarket carpark and you see a Lexus bump into a Falcon and scratch the paint, and the Lexus then buggers off without stopping. You go to write a note to leave under the windscreen wiper of the Falcon - what do you say? "A bronze Lexus scratched your car"? How useful is that?
Cars have an identifying number plate so that if two of them crash, the cars involved can be identified for insurance reasons and so on. They have them so that when you speed past a radar trap, you can be fined. If you overstay in a parking spot, a traffic warden can write you a ticket.
The reasons can be boiled down to two - insurance and policing.
Now then, consider the difference in outcomes if I fail to take a corner in my 4WD and end up in your front yard, and if I fail to take a corner on my bike and end up in your front yard.
In the first case, my 4WD will probably end up embedded in your bedroom, having taken out your fence, various trees and plants, a gnome or two and your bedroom wall. The damage bill will be in the tens of thousands of dollars. Even if I manage to reverse out and shoot through, my number plate will allow the Police to find me, and thus your insurance company.
In the second case, my bike will hit your fence, and I will be catapulted over it, probably to land on a gnome, breaking several ribs. At most, you will have a scuff mark on your fence, a flattened gnome and a moaning victim on your lawn. The ambo's will probably do more damage when they stomp across your flower bed to pick me up.
Now consider vehicle on vehicle crashes. Out of all the instances in 2008 when a bike hit a car, how many resulted in the car being undriveable? Actually, I know of one - when Junior tore down a driveway and took out a Hyundai, writing it off. But it is pretty rare for a cyclist to mangle a car. In his case, although he wrote the car off, he also wrote himself off, and the bike. He was in no fit state to leap back on his bike and tear off, leaving a frustrated driver behind wondering who to blame the crash on. He was carted off in an ambulance for emergency surgery.
When a car and bicycle collide, the cyclist never gets to run away in general. Most often, they are lying on the pavement waiting for an ambulance to arrive. Identification is not an issue.
What about speeding?
Well, when bicycles are consistently able to do 60km/h in a 50 zone, ore 130km/h in a 110 zone, I'll endorse the idea of number plates for bikes, so that the cops can fine them for speeding. However, given that most cyclists roll along at 20-25km/h, I don't see this as an issue. Even the super fit, super fast pack riders rarely exceed 50km/h, even when they are in a hurry.
And parking tickets?
How many bicycles per year are parked in such a way to warrant a parking ticket? I'd guess that if a bike was parked really, really badly, the traffic wardens would just cut the lock and impound it. Parking tickets for bikes is rarely an issue in most locations.
Yes, there is a problem with bikes zooming through red lights and stop signs, and I hate seeing cyclists doing it. I know it infuriates other law abiding motorists, which is why I don't do it. However, even if we did put number plates on bikes, how many fines do you think would be issued per year? Fines could only be levied in two circumstances - if a red light camera catches the bike, or if a cop sees it happening and pulls the cyclist over and writes a ticket.
In the case of a traffic camera, smart cyclists would simply not zip through the red light. In the case of the second, it happens already - cops write tickets for cyclists if they catch them breaking the law. A number plate is not required - what they are after is the drivers licence of the cyclist (which is not much use if the cyclist if 14 years old). The only way to stop cyclists from zooming through red lights is to put more Police on the roads - but the same applies to motorists.
Phew. I think I have come to the end of my argument.
Oops. Not quite.
Let's talk about the motorist argument of "I pay my taxes, so I have a right to use this road, and you don't".
If I walk into a shop tomorrow and buy a $3,000 bike, I will be paying $270 in GST. Each year, I spend about $1,000 on maintenance and accessories - again, paying $90 in GST.
There is a car around the corner on sale for $1,700. We need a 2nd car, so this is worth considering. It would do a maximum of 50km per week, if that - essentially, we just need it to drop the kids up the road at day care.
It's an economical car, so at 2,500km per year, it will use less than 250 litres of fuel. I think the current excise is 38 cents per litre, plus GST. So we'd pay $95 in petrol excise per year.
In essence, buying and running a new bike would contribute more into the tax coffers than running a second car (excluding rego costs).
And as for this whole "cyclists pay no tax" crap argument, I offer this:
In 2008, I paid $72,000 in income tax. It was a very good year.
In 2007, I paid $34,000 - and that is pretty much the level I have paid for 5 or 6 years.
Since 2004, when I started cycling, I estimate I have paid $240,000 in income tax alone. I'm not even going to bother adding up all the GST, fuel excise and other taxes that I have paid on top of that. I reckon I have contributed more to road funding on my own than every bike hating dickhead that spews their bile on Daily Telegraph blogs and forums.
What sort of loonies ride in the rain?
The radar picture for Sydney was not as green as yesterday - with the green being rain. It rained all day yesterday - a constant "English" drizzle that varied between "I won't bother with an umbrella" to "where are my gumboots?"
I took advantage of a gap in the rain to go for an hour-long spin this morning, which is pathetic, but the best I could do.
Another picture of the bike path construction works on The Bay in Drummoyne. One lane of the road has been closed for 2-3 weeks now, and it looks like it will be closed for another month at least. When talking about the costs of building these paths, I forgot to include the cost of a donga for a site office and the rental of portable dunnies.
Those yellow caps, which look like flowers, are plastic caps on the top of reinforcing bars that will form support pylons for the new bike path. I didn't count the number of pylons, but I'd guess they must be pouring at least 50 of them.
Here's a warning sign telling drivers not to park their car on the bike path - the graphic shows how the path is jacked out over the cliff at this point.
If I had been going just a bit slower, I could have taken a photo showing how the path is jacked out over the "cliff" at this point, and supported on pylons - but I was going too quick, and took a pathetic photo. If you look under the path where it curves, you can see that there's nothing there.
The next few photos show how the path has been extended in stages. This is the easiest stage, where the land is flat and there was plenty of verge to build a wide path on. Notice how the combined pedestrian/bike path is easily as wide as a car lane in toto. On a sunny day, these paths are crowded - you need a path that wide to accomodate the hordes of people that exercise around here.
One stage joins onto another - for some reason, the design changed between one stage and another, and we go from a pink path for pedestrians and asphalt for bikes to asphalt for both. I like the different colours - it makes it easier for most people to figure out that one path is for one mode and one path is for another mode. Except that a small percentage of the population are complete morons, and it never passes their tiny little minds that if they are on a bike they should stick to the bike path and if they walking then they should stick to the walking path.
Interlude - I spotted this rowing eight seemingly adrift in the Bay - except that it turned out to be moored. I've never seen a rowing shell moored in open water - you either put them on trestles on the beach, or you row them. You don't park them in the water like a sail boat.
Yet another stage of the path. This time, the designers decided to separate the bike and pedestrian paths with a nature strip. Again, most people are sensible enough to realise that the paths are separated because each one is for a different function or mode - one for two wheels, and one for two feet. However, as usual, there are morons that don't get it, or they just decide to ignore social convention, and be a pain in the arse for everyone else - cyclists and pedestrians alike.
Yet another stage - here the separate paths join into a single mixed-mode pink path. I hate this bit of path - the mangrove trees on the left block visibility and hang over the path, potentially whacking anyone walking or riding on the left in the face, and it's too narrow to pass two people walking abreast - and I'm not just talking about cyclists passing pedestrians - I am talking about joggers passing pedestrians or dog walkers (the dog counting as a second person) or fast moving walkers trying to get past dawdling pram pushers. The faster pedestrians often hop onto the road, without looking behind them, and come close to getting cleaned up by cars tearing around the corner.
Another interlude - notice the bus. This is the only one I saw this morning that was not plastered with a big sign saying something like, "This is a clean, green bus that is contributing to reducing climate change". Whatever.
The message was pretty clear - if you care about climate change, you should be riding on this bus.
However, how many people do you reckon have made the switch from cars to buses because they want to cut their CO2 output? Would I be wrong if I attempted to count all of them on one hand? Out of the millions of car drivers in NSW, have any made the switch to buses because of that slogan?
I hate this kind of feel-good pap. People are exhorted to make the change, but none ever do. If people really cared about climate change - I mean if they really, really cared, they'd be pouring onto the buses in record numbers. Yes, bus passenger numbers swelled late last year, but that was because of increasing petrol prices. I'll be interested to see if passenger numbers have stayed up following the higher petrol prices, or whether they have since fallen back.
I'm sure this sort of bus slogan makes some people feel good, but it shits me to tears.
I took advantage of a gap in the rain to go for an hour-long spin this morning, which is pathetic, but the best I could do.
Another picture of the bike path construction works on The Bay in Drummoyne. One lane of the road has been closed for 2-3 weeks now, and it looks like it will be closed for another month at least. When talking about the costs of building these paths, I forgot to include the cost of a donga for a site office and the rental of portable dunnies.
Those yellow caps, which look like flowers, are plastic caps on the top of reinforcing bars that will form support pylons for the new bike path. I didn't count the number of pylons, but I'd guess they must be pouring at least 50 of them.
Here's a warning sign telling drivers not to park their car on the bike path - the graphic shows how the path is jacked out over the cliff at this point.
If I had been going just a bit slower, I could have taken a photo showing how the path is jacked out over the "cliff" at this point, and supported on pylons - but I was going too quick, and took a pathetic photo. If you look under the path where it curves, you can see that there's nothing there.
The next few photos show how the path has been extended in stages. This is the easiest stage, where the land is flat and there was plenty of verge to build a wide path on. Notice how the combined pedestrian/bike path is easily as wide as a car lane in toto. On a sunny day, these paths are crowded - you need a path that wide to accomodate the hordes of people that exercise around here.
One stage joins onto another - for some reason, the design changed between one stage and another, and we go from a pink path for pedestrians and asphalt for bikes to asphalt for both. I like the different colours - it makes it easier for most people to figure out that one path is for one mode and one path is for another mode. Except that a small percentage of the population are complete morons, and it never passes their tiny little minds that if they are on a bike they should stick to the bike path and if they walking then they should stick to the walking path.
Interlude - I spotted this rowing eight seemingly adrift in the Bay - except that it turned out to be moored. I've never seen a rowing shell moored in open water - you either put them on trestles on the beach, or you row them. You don't park them in the water like a sail boat.
Yet another stage of the path. This time, the designers decided to separate the bike and pedestrian paths with a nature strip. Again, most people are sensible enough to realise that the paths are separated because each one is for a different function or mode - one for two wheels, and one for two feet. However, as usual, there are morons that don't get it, or they just decide to ignore social convention, and be a pain in the arse for everyone else - cyclists and pedestrians alike.
Yet another stage - here the separate paths join into a single mixed-mode pink path. I hate this bit of path - the mangrove trees on the left block visibility and hang over the path, potentially whacking anyone walking or riding on the left in the face, and it's too narrow to pass two people walking abreast - and I'm not just talking about cyclists passing pedestrians - I am talking about joggers passing pedestrians or dog walkers (the dog counting as a second person) or fast moving walkers trying to get past dawdling pram pushers. The faster pedestrians often hop onto the road, without looking behind them, and come close to getting cleaned up by cars tearing around the corner.
Another interlude - notice the bus. This is the only one I saw this morning that was not plastered with a big sign saying something like, "This is a clean, green bus that is contributing to reducing climate change". Whatever.
The message was pretty clear - if you care about climate change, you should be riding on this bus.
However, how many people do you reckon have made the switch from cars to buses because they want to cut their CO2 output? Would I be wrong if I attempted to count all of them on one hand? Out of the millions of car drivers in NSW, have any made the switch to buses because of that slogan?
I hate this kind of feel-good pap. People are exhorted to make the change, but none ever do. If people really cared about climate change - I mean if they really, really cared, they'd be pouring onto the buses in record numbers. Yes, bus passenger numbers swelled late last year, but that was because of increasing petrol prices. I'll be interested to see if passenger numbers have stayed up following the higher petrol prices, or whether they have since fallen back.
I'm sure this sort of bus slogan makes some people feel good, but it shits me to tears.
Health bureaucrats paid to do nothing
The SMH, as usual, seems to know stuff all. It published this story today about health bureaucrats being paid to do nothing, and it seems to have no idea at all about current government policy.
The government has tried several times to have voluntary redundancy scrapped and to replace it with forced redundancy if it decides to abolish jobs in the state sector. The unions have generally blocked it at every turn.
So if your position gets abolished thanks to a restructure, as has happened in this case, you get put on the unattached list, and you sit around doing nothing and drawing a full pay cheque. It is not the fault of the bureaucracy - it is the fault of a gutless government drawing up rules that say you can't get rid of someone if you no longer need them.
Past redundancy packages have been pretty generous. They can include:
He was so happy, he nearly kissed me. Him and his wife bought a caravan, and a 2nd hand 4WD and they took off on an extended around Australia holiday, which will probably last 5 years or so.
To cap it off, this bloke had undergone numerous heart surgeries, including a transplant, and he was not that healthy. If we'd kept him for another year, he probably would have dropped dead in the office. To cap it off, he was a member of the old State Superannuation scheme, which means he paid bugger all in, and will get paid a certain amount out, regardless of the state of the stock market etc.
I don't begrudge signing off on that redundancy at all - the government was silly enough to write the policy, and they were silly enough to push out very unhealthy old buggers who were about to retire. I guess you could call it a form of stimulus.
In my view, any public servant paid over $100,000 should be on a contract of some sort - the idea being that you can terminate the contract at will. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be given some sort of payout, but they shouldn't be allowed to just sit around as unsackable koalas (koala - protected species). Remember, even though these managers are paid up to $130,000 each, they will all be members of a union, and the union will fight tooth and nail to obstruct getting rid of them.
It's really quite perverse when unions start defending what used to be called "fat cat" managers, and doing their best to ensure that they get the largest possible payout from the taxpayer. Just for fun, let's do a calculation on a manager earning $130,000 with 15 years service:
If you are earning $130,000, you are in the top tax bracket, so you are probably losing 40% of your salary in tax, giving you an after tax income normally of $78,000.
Let's assume that after tax, the payout for this bloke is $190,000. That adds up to nearly 2.5 years of his usual after tax income.
Not bad, hey? And just remember, the unions will defend the idea of getting that sort of payout to the death. All paid for by your taxes.
AT LEAST 17 health bureaucrats in western NSW are being paid up to $130,000 a year to do nothing because they were sidelined when the structure of the area health service changed four years ago.
The news of their annual wages bill, which could top $2 million, comes weeks after it was revealed the Greater Western Area Health Service was mired in debt, owing more than $60 million to creditors across the state.
The government has tried several times to have voluntary redundancy scrapped and to replace it with forced redundancy if it decides to abolish jobs in the state sector. The unions have generally blocked it at every turn.
So if your position gets abolished thanks to a restructure, as has happened in this case, you get put on the unattached list, and you sit around doing nothing and drawing a full pay cheque. It is not the fault of the bureaucracy - it is the fault of a gutless government drawing up rules that say you can't get rid of someone if you no longer need them.
Past redundancy packages have been pretty generous. They can include:
- 3 months pay if you go quietly, and go now
- 3-4 weeks pay for each year of service, with no limit on the size of the package
- Another month or two of pay, simply because you are being made redundant
- Don't forget your long service leave
- 12 weeks for going quietly
- 40 years service x 4 weeks
- 12 weeks long service leave
- 8 weeks as the base redundancy package
He was so happy, he nearly kissed me. Him and his wife bought a caravan, and a 2nd hand 4WD and they took off on an extended around Australia holiday, which will probably last 5 years or so.
To cap it off, this bloke had undergone numerous heart surgeries, including a transplant, and he was not that healthy. If we'd kept him for another year, he probably would have dropped dead in the office. To cap it off, he was a member of the old State Superannuation scheme, which means he paid bugger all in, and will get paid a certain amount out, regardless of the state of the stock market etc.
I don't begrudge signing off on that redundancy at all - the government was silly enough to write the policy, and they were silly enough to push out very unhealthy old buggers who were about to retire. I guess you could call it a form of stimulus.
In my view, any public servant paid over $100,000 should be on a contract of some sort - the idea being that you can terminate the contract at will. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be given some sort of payout, but they shouldn't be allowed to just sit around as unsackable koalas (koala - protected species). Remember, even though these managers are paid up to $130,000 each, they will all be members of a union, and the union will fight tooth and nail to obstruct getting rid of them.
It's really quite perverse when unions start defending what used to be called "fat cat" managers, and doing their best to ensure that they get the largest possible payout from the taxpayer. Just for fun, let's do a calculation on a manager earning $130,000 with 15 years service:
- 12 weeks pay for going immediately
- 15 years x 4 weeks for redundancy
- 8 weeks redundancy base payment
- 14 weeks long service leave
If you are earning $130,000, you are in the top tax bracket, so you are probably losing 40% of your salary in tax, giving you an after tax income normally of $78,000.
Let's assume that after tax, the payout for this bloke is $190,000. That adds up to nearly 2.5 years of his usual after tax income.
Not bad, hey? And just remember, the unions will defend the idea of getting that sort of payout to the death. All paid for by your taxes.
Saturday, 14 February 2009
Shock horror - the arsonist will be declared a looney
I hear they've caught a bloke in Victoria and suspect he's been setting a few fires. The hunt is on for anyone else with firelighting tendencies, and the locals sound like they are going to lynch anyone found with a box of matches.
I predict here and now that anyone charged with arson will quickly be declared to be suffering from some form of mental illness. The "everyone is suffering from some form of mental illness" crowd, henceforth known as the "mental-forming industry", will be able to diagnose the arsonist from a thin sheaf of press clippings and a blurry photo in a newspaper. He'll have "issues", and a history of some sort of childhood problems. Blah blah blah.
Frankly, I don't think you are nuts if you like lighting fires. I like lighting fires. Everyone I know likes lighting fires. When you consider that until the invention of electric or gas lighting and the piano, the only night time entertainment man had was watching a fire. Consider a fire as the caveman's TV. Stories used to be told around the fire. Primitive tribes still have ceremonies where grown men cover themselves in mud and feathers and dance around a fire. I have only seem about five minutes of "Survivor", but the end of each episode always seems to involve something to do with fire.
If we didn't like fire, we wouldn't have fireplaces, regardless of whether they are still burning wood or have been converted to gas. We like candles. We like burning torches. A bonfire on the beach, and a few cartons of beer, is the perfect teenage idea of a good night out.
Fires are good. Fires are fun. Fires are dramatic. Fire turns marshmallows into gooey edible things. Fires cause unpunctured cans of baked beans to explode. Fires really cause empty shaving cream cans to explode.
However, there is a time and a place for fire, and a stinking hot day with high winds is not the time to light one, and a block knee deep in kindling is not the place. The arsonist should not be considered to be mental because they like fire - they should be considered mental because they clearly lack the sort of impulse control that stops the likes of you and me from tossing a match into dry grass when the temperature is off the charts.
Anyway, I'm sure we will be hearing from someone in the mental health crowd, saying that this person needs to be "understood", and all they really need is a big hug. Oh, and by the way, sending someone with mental health problems to prison is a really, really bad thing to do. So the judge should just let them go, so they can get "treatment".
Like I said, you heard it here first.
I predict here and now that anyone charged with arson will quickly be declared to be suffering from some form of mental illness. The "everyone is suffering from some form of mental illness" crowd, henceforth known as the "mental-forming industry", will be able to diagnose the arsonist from a thin sheaf of press clippings and a blurry photo in a newspaper. He'll have "issues", and a history of some sort of childhood problems. Blah blah blah.
Frankly, I don't think you are nuts if you like lighting fires. I like lighting fires. Everyone I know likes lighting fires. When you consider that until the invention of electric or gas lighting and the piano, the only night time entertainment man had was watching a fire. Consider a fire as the caveman's TV. Stories used to be told around the fire. Primitive tribes still have ceremonies where grown men cover themselves in mud and feathers and dance around a fire. I have only seem about five minutes of "Survivor", but the end of each episode always seems to involve something to do with fire.
If we didn't like fire, we wouldn't have fireplaces, regardless of whether they are still burning wood or have been converted to gas. We like candles. We like burning torches. A bonfire on the beach, and a few cartons of beer, is the perfect teenage idea of a good night out.
Fires are good. Fires are fun. Fires are dramatic. Fire turns marshmallows into gooey edible things. Fires cause unpunctured cans of baked beans to explode. Fires really cause empty shaving cream cans to explode.
However, there is a time and a place for fire, and a stinking hot day with high winds is not the time to light one, and a block knee deep in kindling is not the place. The arsonist should not be considered to be mental because they like fire - they should be considered mental because they clearly lack the sort of impulse control that stops the likes of you and me from tossing a match into dry grass when the temperature is off the charts.
Anyway, I'm sure we will be hearing from someone in the mental health crowd, saying that this person needs to be "understood", and all they really need is a big hug. Oh, and by the way, sending someone with mental health problems to prison is a really, really bad thing to do. So the judge should just let them go, so they can get "treatment".
Like I said, you heard it here first.
Clear a fire break, get abused in parliament - with photos
If you want to see the source of the fuss and bother in my next post, go to Google Maps and type in "Bimberi Nature Reserve". If you zoom in a bit, you will see some faint lines that cross the national parks from east to west - if you keep zooming in on them, you'll eventually see the fire trails and high voltage power lines in detail.
These cleared trails are described as 60 metres wide, which is about right when using the scale in the bottom right hand corner of the Google page. But note that the pylons themselves appear to be about 20 metres wide (if you go to Google and look for yourself and zoom in as much as possible, the ghostly grey/blue towers will appear).
Clearly, the sensible thing is not to clear a trail only as wide as the pylon - if the pylon is 20 metres wide, you don't clear a 20 metre wide track and allow tall trees to rub up against the wires and pylons - you clear enough space on both sides so that a fire won't take out the wires or pylons. Sixty metres sounds about right to me.
The thing that struck me when looking at these parks from a long way up is that yes, the trails are visible - but very faintly - but they are tiny scratchings across a vasts series of parks. The amount of national park in that area is immense - someone told me once it was larger than Switzerland.
So it's not like we're that short of trees that we have to stress over a few fire trails.
These cleared trails are described as 60 metres wide, which is about right when using the scale in the bottom right hand corner of the Google page. But note that the pylons themselves appear to be about 20 metres wide (if you go to Google and look for yourself and zoom in as much as possible, the ghostly grey/blue towers will appear).
Clearly, the sensible thing is not to clear a trail only as wide as the pylon - if the pylon is 20 metres wide, you don't clear a 20 metre wide track and allow tall trees to rub up against the wires and pylons - you clear enough space on both sides so that a fire won't take out the wires or pylons. Sixty metres sounds about right to me.
The thing that struck me when looking at these parks from a long way up is that yes, the trails are visible - but very faintly - but they are tiny scratchings across a vasts series of parks. The amount of national park in that area is immense - someone told me once it was larger than Switzerland.
So it's not like we're that short of trees that we have to stress over a few fire trails.
Clear a fire break, get abused in parliament
It has taken me all morning to track this down, but I remembered vaguely that some years ago, one of our electricity companies engaged a contractor to clear trees and so on from below high voltage power lines - after a bush fire knocked out part of the grid - and the contractor and managers were dragged through the courts for their trouble.
Here is an excerpt from Hansard from 21 June 2001:
A Parliamentary committee investigated this incident, and their report is available on line.
Buried on page 63 of Transgrid's annual report for 2002/2003 can be found this statement:
The report is worth flicking through quickly, because almost every page has something to say about how Transgrid is protecting the environment etc. They clearly had to pay a huge penance in addition to the court fines.
From the ACT Hansard:
And from the ABC:
It would not surprise me if someone at Transgrid got the sack over all this. I hope they are sitting at home today, having a beer and feeling well vindicated.
Here is an excerpt from Hansard from 21 June 2001:
The Hon. RICHARD JONES [3.58 p.m.]: I support the motion moved by the Hon. Ian Cohen for General Purpose Standing Committee No. 5 to inquire into the monumentally disastrous clearing that occurred beneath TransGrid powerlines in the Kosciuszko National Park and surrounding areas. TransGrid, the State-owned electricity supplier, has effectively cleared a 35-kilometre scar through three New South Wales national parks, the Brindabella, Namadgi and Kosciuszko, the Bimberi Nature Reserve and Bago State Forest. Nothing but dirt is left on the 60-metre-wide path; no doubt there will be grass there in the next few weeks.
TransGrid sanctioned the removal of fire fuel material beneath the 330,000 volt grid after the section automatically shut down last January during a bushfire. It shut down to prevent the power grid shorting and causing costly damage and loss of electricity along the network. Although TransGrid is entitled to ensure that its transmission lines are free from vegetation to prevent bushfires, it is not entitled to destroy every living thing in its path. Although the damage caused to flora and fauna living around the TransGrid powerline is inestimable, it is feared that tens of thousands of native animals and plants have been destroyed, or face destruction, and many waterways have been left at risk of siltation.
The Hon. IAN COHEN: No-one opposes proper bushfire control and mitigation but this is wholesale slaughter, way beyond appropriate bushfire mitigation.
The Hon. IAN MACDONALD (Parliamentary Secretary) [4.13 p.m.]: The Government shares the concerns of honourable members regarding this issue, but we believe this motion is not the way to resolve them. As we have already made clear, the Government is extremely concerned about the environmental vandalism that occurred while clearing the easements. At present the appropriate environmental regulatory agencies are investigating the matter, and we should allow them to conduct their investigations as a precursor to any prosecutions that may occur. The chief executive officer of TransGrid has assured the Minister for Forestry that all land clearing in the area has stopped, with remediation work the only priority and activity. TransGrid is working to remediate the site as quickly and as efficiently as possible. As part of the remediation of the easements, all dead trees are being removed from waterways and bush to ensure that they do not further damage remaining vegetation. The area is being contoured to stop water running down the easements and carrying silt into the river, and silt fences and hay bales are being used to secure the site. This work is being carried out in consultation with the environmental agencies, and a long-term rehabilitation plan is being prepared.
The Minister has also spoken to TransGrid about reviewing its procedures to ensure that this sort of incident never happens again. This process will include appointing a dedicated environmental liaison officer in the southern region. The Government is very concerned about what has happened. That is why the Minister for Energy has made a report available. However, regardless of the outcomes in that report, it should be absolutely clear that the Government is keen to ensure that any prosecutions by the relevant regulatory agencies proceed as smoothly as possible. This is the Government's key focus. This Government expects all of its agencies to comply with all environmental requirements. If they do not, they can expect to be prosecuted like any other organisation or individual. We believe this process should be supported.
A Parliamentary committee investigated this incident, and their report is available on line.
In general terms, the submissions were concerned with ensuring that: remedial action was taken to repair and regenerate the damaged land areas; the responsible parties were identified and subjected to the available penalties and made responsible for all remediation costs, and that procedures be put in place so that land-clearing of this nature never occurred again.That report includes the usual feel-good fluff:
TransGrid has liaised with the NSW EPA regarding the status of work in NSW, including the submission of a Rehabilitation Plan 29 June 2001. The rehabilitation plan was prepared by independent specialists following consultation with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, State Forests and the performance of archaeological surveys involving local aboriginal groups.
Buried on page 63 of Transgrid's annual report for 2002/2003 can be found this statement:
It should, however, be noted that TransGrid was the defendant in two sets of proceedings arising out of environmental incidents in the south of the State in early 2001. The Environment Protection Authority prosecuted TransGrid in the Land and Environment Court on four counts under Section 120 of the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 of causing waters to be polluted, and the National Parks and Wildlife Service prosecuted TransGrid in the Downing Centre Local Court on two counts under Clause 15 of the National Parks and Wildlife (Land Management) Regulation 1995 of damaging vegetation in a park and two counts under Section 57 of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 of picking vegetation in a nature reserve. TransGrid pleaded guilty to all counts and was convicted on all counts. The Land and Environment Court imposed penalties totalling $80,000 and an order for $50,000 prosecution costs. The Local Court imposed fines totalling $3,500 and an order for $236 court costs.
The report is worth flicking through quickly, because almost every page has something to say about how Transgrid is protecting the environment etc. They clearly had to pay a huge penance in addition to the court fines.
From the ACT Hansard:
MRS DUNNE (11.32): Mr Speaker, this bill incorporates a number of important amendments to the Nature Conservation Act 1980 which have come about as a result of what might be called the Transgrid nastiness in 2000. In 2000, utility contractors contracted by Transgrid did a whole range of clearing under their power lines through Brindabella National Park and Namadgi National Park. In doing so they cut a 400 to 500-metre wide swathe through some tens of kilometres of Namadgi National Park and Brindabella National Park, which caused a huge amount of environmental damage.
Transgrid actually fessed up to what they did and came to the party by providing money for compensation and for regenerating the area. But as a result of this process, it was realised that there were deficiencies in the ACT's Nature Conservation Act. For the most part, people envisaged that damage to vegetation would be a case of somebody cutting down one, two or three trees, not tens of square kilometres of damage, as was the case with the Transgrid clearing under the power lines.
These amendments to the Nature Conservation Act, which the opposition supports, will ensure that unlicensed clearing of native vegetation in a reserved area or the damaging of land in a reserved area is, with certain exemptions, illegal. A whole range of new offences relate to the removal without a licence of rock, soil, sand, stone and similar substances. The legislation will also ensure that destruction that is allowed is in accordance with the provisions of part 6 of the land act; or in relation to a management plan; or in accordance with the bushfire fuel management plan; or is necessary to avoid imminent risk of serious harm to persons.
Generally, I believe that these changes are good, welcome and address the problems that we encountered because we now create the notion of not just damage but serious damage and material damage, which are important gradations that fit in with changes in the criminal code.
I commend the government for bringing forth this amendment and also a concomitant amendment to the Environment Protection Act, which requires government agencies to report on damage. I think that this is a good step forward. We will be supporting these amendments and we will be supporting the bill in principle.
And from the ABC:
An electricity company that bulldozed 35 kilometres of the Namadgi National Park in ACT will pay $350,000 compensation.
TransGrid cleared the area without authority early last year to make way for new power lines.
The compensation is an out of court settlement, with $120,000 to pay for ongoing monitoring of the damaged area and the remaining $230,000 to be spent on ACT environmental community projects.
ACT Urban Services Minister Bill Wood says the Government has also strengthened environmental legislation to prevent another similar incident.
"There were procedures in place before," Mr Wood said.
"There are even more rigorous requirements in place now, it will have to be signed off very clear before anything else is done, before any other routine work is done."
It would not surprise me if someone at Transgrid got the sack over all this. I hope they are sitting at home today, having a beer and feeling well vindicated.
Wasting our money on "waste-a-structure" bike paths
Andrew Bolt has noted that the Woin Swan/KRudd "stimulus package" includes $40 million for bike paths.
Some might think that is a lot of money for bike paths. I've trawled through the comments on Bolt's site, and in amongst the usual anti-bike rants, there is amazement that bike paths should cost anything at all - why surely all you do is mark a lane with paint, and that's it?
Our council developed a bike plan a few years ago. It was costed at $46 million, and like all government projects, I bet it will end up costing 50% more than that.
At present rates of expenditure, it will take our council a century to fulfil the plan. Even if Rudd gave our council the entire $40 million package, it would not complete the plan. Yet there are 150 councils in NSW alone, and perhaps 400 or more across the country.
Assuming there are 400 councils, and that the package is split evenly, they'll get $100,000 each - barely enough to hire a consultant to write a bike plan for those councils that don't currently have one. I doubt this package will result in much asphalt being laid - all it will generate is a stack of paper 40 feet high with lots of pretty photo mock-ups and coloured graphs and maps - and obligatory photos of multi-cultural children playing together. And those plans will not be written by blue collar construction workers in need of a pay packet - they'll go to people in suits earning $120 an hour.
The following photos show part of that plan being implemented - an extension of the bike/pedestrian path around The Bay. There isn't enough road for council to simply paint a white line to create a bike lane, so what they've done is rip up the old, narrow footpath on the left and they're building a much wider path that will essentially hang out over the cliff where all that bush is.
You can see from this photo that the budget is being spent on renting concrete road barriers and fencing, machinery to dig up the old path, trucks to cart the spoil and waste away, and concrete to create pylons that the path will sit on. Engineers are required to design the path, surveyors to do their measuring thing, project managers to run the whole show and OH&S people to ensure that no one drops a truck on their foot. Planners have to be engaged to arrange closing half the road, that has to be coordinated with the RTA, advertisements need to be placed in the local papers, residents consulted and informed, waste management plans formulated, water management plans written up, flora and fauna cutting plans drafted and approved and blah blah blah.
I'm sure that pouring the concrete is the cheapest part of the project.
This photo shows how high the road here is above the water - we're 5 or 6 metres up, and whilst the drop to the water is not vertical, it is very steep. Lots of concrete pylons are being sunk into the cliff top to support what will end up being a cantilevered path of some sort that will stick out over the cliff - they've done the same with the last section that was upgraded, and there are signs all the way around warning motorists not to try parking on the path, since it is not rated to support cars. If anyone tries that, they are going to end up upside down in the water 5 metres below, with a few tonnes of bike path sitting on their car.
This shows a bit of the form work being put together. In the middle of the photo, you can see how boards have been laid flat over a bit of empty space to create a base for the concrete path to be laid on.
Building these things isn't cheap. They don't have to be built super-strong to support cars and semi-trailers, which reduces the cost somewhat, but they still contain a lot of concrete, require a lot of labour and plant, and so whilst cheaper than a road, they are not exactly a line of paint sprayed on an existing road.
The Bay is one of the premier exercise paths for miles around, plus part of the route that non-motorists take when commuting to the city. It services a reasonable chunk of Sydney, including 3 councils, and gets huge volumes of foot traffic (joggers, pram pushers, dog walkers and plain old pedestrians) - yet parts of it are just bare dirt. Each year, the councils that surround The Bay scrape up a bit of cash and extend the paths somewhat - Canada Bay is the best in this regard, whilst Leichhardt blows all their cash on frivolous stupidities like statements of support for Gaza, and has no money left over for roadworks and drainage, let alone bikeworks.
The first section our council did was easy, so the money went a long way, paving maybe a kilometre of flat, easy ground. The next section was more difficult - the same amount of money paved maybe 300 metres. The section they are doing now is much tougher, so they're doing maybe 150 metres this year. The next section is even worse - they might only do 50 metres next year, or they might decide to do nothing for a few years, put the money aside and then do a 200 metre chunk in one go.... in 2013.
If you ask me, $40 million for bike paths is an insult, and whoever asked for it to be included in the porkulus bill was an idiot. All it has done is raise the ire of taxpayers. Money should be put into bike paths only if building them is viewed as a good idea, and where they'll deliver significant benefits. Just tossing money at them any old how is wasteful, stupid and counterproductive. Plus it's a drop in the ocean - a trivial amount that will do nothing - and this sort of thing is a state or local responsibility. The federal government should just bugger off and concentrate on the things it should be doing, not the things other levels of government should be doing.
I'm sure the usual "bicycle representative groups" will be lined up to say something positive about the money - as far as they are concerned, any money is good money - but it sickens me to think that instead of funding bike paths on their merits, they will be funded via a stupid, economically illiterate idea that will see money going to undeserving, useless infrastructure.
I'm not even going to call it "infrastructure". Let's call it "waste-a-structure" instead. Or "Pork-o-structure".
In the US, they are using this idiotic term "shovel ready" projects. Boy, do I laugh when I hear that. Let's imagine that our council, as part of its planning, has already prioritised spending for the next 10 years on bike projects (actually, it has). And it has even gone to the trouble of spending seed money on doing detailed designs and costings for those bits of path it wants to build over the next 2-5 years (which I doubt - they wouldn't have the money to do that - the detailed stuff would be done in the year the money is to be spent - but let's imagine that they have).
Let's also imagine that I was employed by Woin Swain on Monday to spend $5 million on 'shovel ready' projects in our council area. What would I find?
In Woin's imaginary world, I would walk into the council chambers and introduce myself to the council engineering team. They'd be sitting in front of a huge row of pigeon holes, and in each hole there would be a set of blueprints for bike paths that they want to build over the next 5 years. Each site would have been surveyed in detail, and an engineer employed to design where the path should go, how the interfaces would be laid out, what structures had to be moved or changed or demolished or built, how drainage would be handled and whether lighting was required.
The engineer would have produced a detailed budget, showing costs for labour, plant hire, materials, consultants and so on. Every facet of the project would have been costed, and every detail thought of.
They'd have done a subsurface scan as well to locate any services, like gas, water, sewerage, power and phone lines, and worked out whether they had to be moved as part of the project.
An environmental consultant would have written a report detailing the impact the construction would have on local frogs, birds, snails and grasses.
An aboriginal consultant would have written a report detailing the impact on local sacred sites, and prefaced it with a demand for $100 million in compensation from council.
A traffic engineer would have done traffic surveys (putting those rubber car counters down on the road) and worked out the impact the bike paths would have on motorised traffic. They'd have also written a traffic management plan.
And on it goes. In Woin's imaginary world, I would be shown to a desk that would contain a stack of these reports, along with recommendations, risks, issues and plans. All I'd have do is pull the big lever bolted to the side of the desk, and the plan would rumble into action........
That is as good as a description of Woin's wet dream as you will read anywhere.
In reality, the only plan will be the council bike network map, which shows all the "missing links". That's all council would give me, and I'd be told to get on with spending the $5 million.
6 months later, after fighting a major bit of paper warfare, I'd probably be at the point where I'd be getting an order approved to employ a surveyor to spend a week surveying the preferred locations, when the local MP (John "stroganoff" Murphy) would march in demanding that instead of building routes that the council and residents had determined they wanted, we were to build the routes that his 12 year old nephew thought were "ace".
A week later, a letter would turn up from his office, complaining that the sandwiches we served were not "big enough", and didn't contain enough lettuce. Plus he wanted extras at the next meeting, so he could take some home to his wife.
In short, a year would be wasted whilst we had a council-state-federal argument about what to build, and the next year would be spent getting approvals to bring on surveyors, traffic engineers, structural engineers, environmental consultants and so on to write plans and reports - and in the third year, those people would actually get a purchase order, and they'd go to work taking measurements and counting frogs and writing reports - assuming they hadn't all gone broke in the meantime as all their work had dried up.
The rest of the 3rd year would be taken up with reading and digesting the reports, running community consultation sessions and negotiating with the local aboriginal industry so that just before Christmas, tenders would be issued to actually lay concrete.
After getting back to work in late January in year 4, it would take 3 months to evaluate and approve the tenders, and the work would then be scheduled to start work in about August.
The whole job would be over in September, and I'd spend the remainder of the year writing project closure reports and so on.
My fee for those 4 years work would be $1 million - $250,000 per year is the going rate for a contract project manager once you take into account agency fees and the like. 20% of the entire project would be spent on one person - quite a bit to "create" one job.
And since the routes were based on the desires of John Murphy's 12 year old nephew, they would go nowhere useful - and his nephew would now be living somewhere else entirely. But at least Murphy's newsletters to his constituents (multi-page, in full colour, posted to all and sundry, paid for by the taxpayer) would be full of stories on this wonderful new, job creating "green" infrastructure.
Like I said - waste-a-structure.
Some might think that is a lot of money for bike paths. I've trawled through the comments on Bolt's site, and in amongst the usual anti-bike rants, there is amazement that bike paths should cost anything at all - why surely all you do is mark a lane with paint, and that's it?
Our council developed a bike plan a few years ago. It was costed at $46 million, and like all government projects, I bet it will end up costing 50% more than that.
At present rates of expenditure, it will take our council a century to fulfil the plan. Even if Rudd gave our council the entire $40 million package, it would not complete the plan. Yet there are 150 councils in NSW alone, and perhaps 400 or more across the country.
Assuming there are 400 councils, and that the package is split evenly, they'll get $100,000 each - barely enough to hire a consultant to write a bike plan for those councils that don't currently have one. I doubt this package will result in much asphalt being laid - all it will generate is a stack of paper 40 feet high with lots of pretty photo mock-ups and coloured graphs and maps - and obligatory photos of multi-cultural children playing together. And those plans will not be written by blue collar construction workers in need of a pay packet - they'll go to people in suits earning $120 an hour.
The following photos show part of that plan being implemented - an extension of the bike/pedestrian path around The Bay. There isn't enough road for council to simply paint a white line to create a bike lane, so what they've done is rip up the old, narrow footpath on the left and they're building a much wider path that will essentially hang out over the cliff where all that bush is.
You can see from this photo that the budget is being spent on renting concrete road barriers and fencing, machinery to dig up the old path, trucks to cart the spoil and waste away, and concrete to create pylons that the path will sit on. Engineers are required to design the path, surveyors to do their measuring thing, project managers to run the whole show and OH&S people to ensure that no one drops a truck on their foot. Planners have to be engaged to arrange closing half the road, that has to be coordinated with the RTA, advertisements need to be placed in the local papers, residents consulted and informed, waste management plans formulated, water management plans written up, flora and fauna cutting plans drafted and approved and blah blah blah.
I'm sure that pouring the concrete is the cheapest part of the project.
This photo shows how high the road here is above the water - we're 5 or 6 metres up, and whilst the drop to the water is not vertical, it is very steep. Lots of concrete pylons are being sunk into the cliff top to support what will end up being a cantilevered path of some sort that will stick out over the cliff - they've done the same with the last section that was upgraded, and there are signs all the way around warning motorists not to try parking on the path, since it is not rated to support cars. If anyone tries that, they are going to end up upside down in the water 5 metres below, with a few tonnes of bike path sitting on their car.
This shows a bit of the form work being put together. In the middle of the photo, you can see how boards have been laid flat over a bit of empty space to create a base for the concrete path to be laid on.
Building these things isn't cheap. They don't have to be built super-strong to support cars and semi-trailers, which reduces the cost somewhat, but they still contain a lot of concrete, require a lot of labour and plant, and so whilst cheaper than a road, they are not exactly a line of paint sprayed on an existing road.
The Bay is one of the premier exercise paths for miles around, plus part of the route that non-motorists take when commuting to the city. It services a reasonable chunk of Sydney, including 3 councils, and gets huge volumes of foot traffic (joggers, pram pushers, dog walkers and plain old pedestrians) - yet parts of it are just bare dirt. Each year, the councils that surround The Bay scrape up a bit of cash and extend the paths somewhat - Canada Bay is the best in this regard, whilst Leichhardt blows all their cash on frivolous stupidities like statements of support for Gaza, and has no money left over for roadworks and drainage, let alone bikeworks.
The first section our council did was easy, so the money went a long way, paving maybe a kilometre of flat, easy ground. The next section was more difficult - the same amount of money paved maybe 300 metres. The section they are doing now is much tougher, so they're doing maybe 150 metres this year. The next section is even worse - they might only do 50 metres next year, or they might decide to do nothing for a few years, put the money aside and then do a 200 metre chunk in one go.... in 2013.
If you ask me, $40 million for bike paths is an insult, and whoever asked for it to be included in the porkulus bill was an idiot. All it has done is raise the ire of taxpayers. Money should be put into bike paths only if building them is viewed as a good idea, and where they'll deliver significant benefits. Just tossing money at them any old how is wasteful, stupid and counterproductive. Plus it's a drop in the ocean - a trivial amount that will do nothing - and this sort of thing is a state or local responsibility. The federal government should just bugger off and concentrate on the things it should be doing, not the things other levels of government should be doing.
I'm sure the usual "bicycle representative groups" will be lined up to say something positive about the money - as far as they are concerned, any money is good money - but it sickens me to think that instead of funding bike paths on their merits, they will be funded via a stupid, economically illiterate idea that will see money going to undeserving, useless infrastructure.
I'm not even going to call it "infrastructure". Let's call it "waste-a-structure" instead. Or "Pork-o-structure".
In the US, they are using this idiotic term "shovel ready" projects. Boy, do I laugh when I hear that. Let's imagine that our council, as part of its planning, has already prioritised spending for the next 10 years on bike projects (actually, it has). And it has even gone to the trouble of spending seed money on doing detailed designs and costings for those bits of path it wants to build over the next 2-5 years (which I doubt - they wouldn't have the money to do that - the detailed stuff would be done in the year the money is to be spent - but let's imagine that they have).
Let's also imagine that I was employed by Woin Swain on Monday to spend $5 million on 'shovel ready' projects in our council area. What would I find?
In Woin's imaginary world, I would walk into the council chambers and introduce myself to the council engineering team. They'd be sitting in front of a huge row of pigeon holes, and in each hole there would be a set of blueprints for bike paths that they want to build over the next 5 years. Each site would have been surveyed in detail, and an engineer employed to design where the path should go, how the interfaces would be laid out, what structures had to be moved or changed or demolished or built, how drainage would be handled and whether lighting was required.
The engineer would have produced a detailed budget, showing costs for labour, plant hire, materials, consultants and so on. Every facet of the project would have been costed, and every detail thought of.
They'd have done a subsurface scan as well to locate any services, like gas, water, sewerage, power and phone lines, and worked out whether they had to be moved as part of the project.
An environmental consultant would have written a report detailing the impact the construction would have on local frogs, birds, snails and grasses.
An aboriginal consultant would have written a report detailing the impact on local sacred sites, and prefaced it with a demand for $100 million in compensation from council.
A traffic engineer would have done traffic surveys (putting those rubber car counters down on the road) and worked out the impact the bike paths would have on motorised traffic. They'd have also written a traffic management plan.
And on it goes. In Woin's imaginary world, I would be shown to a desk that would contain a stack of these reports, along with recommendations, risks, issues and plans. All I'd have do is pull the big lever bolted to the side of the desk, and the plan would rumble into action........
That is as good as a description of Woin's wet dream as you will read anywhere.
In reality, the only plan will be the council bike network map, which shows all the "missing links". That's all council would give me, and I'd be told to get on with spending the $5 million.
6 months later, after fighting a major bit of paper warfare, I'd probably be at the point where I'd be getting an order approved to employ a surveyor to spend a week surveying the preferred locations, when the local MP (John "stroganoff" Murphy) would march in demanding that instead of building routes that the council and residents had determined they wanted, we were to build the routes that his 12 year old nephew thought were "ace".
A week later, a letter would turn up from his office, complaining that the sandwiches we served were not "big enough", and didn't contain enough lettuce. Plus he wanted extras at the next meeting, so he could take some home to his wife.
In short, a year would be wasted whilst we had a council-state-federal argument about what to build, and the next year would be spent getting approvals to bring on surveyors, traffic engineers, structural engineers, environmental consultants and so on to write plans and reports - and in the third year, those people would actually get a purchase order, and they'd go to work taking measurements and counting frogs and writing reports - assuming they hadn't all gone broke in the meantime as all their work had dried up.
The rest of the 3rd year would be taken up with reading and digesting the reports, running community consultation sessions and negotiating with the local aboriginal industry so that just before Christmas, tenders would be issued to actually lay concrete.
After getting back to work in late January in year 4, it would take 3 months to evaluate and approve the tenders, and the work would then be scheduled to start work in about August.
The whole job would be over in September, and I'd spend the remainder of the year writing project closure reports and so on.
My fee for those 4 years work would be $1 million - $250,000 per year is the going rate for a contract project manager once you take into account agency fees and the like. 20% of the entire project would be spent on one person - quite a bit to "create" one job.
And since the routes were based on the desires of John Murphy's 12 year old nephew, they would go nowhere useful - and his nephew would now be living somewhere else entirely. But at least Murphy's newsletters to his constituents (multi-page, in full colour, posted to all and sundry, paid for by the taxpayer) would be full of stories on this wonderful new, job creating "green" infrastructure.
Like I said - waste-a-structure.
Friday, 13 February 2009
Will forcing kids to stay at school until 17 jack up truancy rates?
The always excellent Bystander provided a link today to an article at the BBC on how parents of truant children in the UK are being sent to prison on average every 2 weeks.
The BBC provides the following fast facts:
I have no idea what it is like in Australia, but are we kidding ourselves when the government wants to raise the leaving age to 17? Is there any point in forcing a bunch of 15 and 16 year old kids, who don't want to be in school, to enrol? If their parents have little control over them, they just won't go - they'll go truant all day.
I'll be very interested to see whether a year after the new laws come in, whether our truancy rate has exploded or not. Just because a kid is enrolled in school, doesn't mean they will actually attend.
The sad thing is, these kids don't necessarily want to get out of school because they have a job to go to. They want to get out in order to do nothing.
The BBC provides the following fast facts:
- 63,000 pupils truant each day
- Most truants are girls, peak ages 15-16
- 266,000 persistent truants in spring 2008
- 10,400 prosecutions in 2007
- Unauthorised absences higher now than in 1997
I have no idea what it is like in Australia, but are we kidding ourselves when the government wants to raise the leaving age to 17? Is there any point in forcing a bunch of 15 and 16 year old kids, who don't want to be in school, to enrol? If their parents have little control over them, they just won't go - they'll go truant all day.
I'll be very interested to see whether a year after the new laws come in, whether our truancy rate has exploded or not. Just because a kid is enrolled in school, doesn't mean they will actually attend.
The sad thing is, these kids don't necessarily want to get out of school because they have a job to go to. They want to get out in order to do nothing.
Michael Costa gets his best work from me
Not quite. But close.
Costa continues his series of excellent articles in The Aus this week with one about Canberra's castles in the air.
This almost had me lying on the floor at work, howling with laughter:
It's so very true. In fact, I don't think he has any idea how bad it was down in the engine room, trying to deliver these things and report back to Treasury at the same time on progress. The more frustrated Treasury got with our slowness in spending money, the more reports they required us to submit in order to track progress. Of course that meant spending more time on reporting on our lack of progress, as opposed to spending time actually driving the project forward.
In my humble opinion, the best project managers are hard, aggressive bastards that take no prisoners. There is a time to be nice, and there is a time to rip people's heads off and shit down their necks. If you want projects to happen, you have to let loose the bastards. Keeping them cooped up in their offices, poring over spreadsheets of reports that they need to complete in triplicate means they have less time for yelling at people. Project managers are at their best when they are cracking whips.
As for the insanity of reporting, I had to report on progress several times a week. I had to submit reports to several different groups, and each required almost the same information, but always in a slightly different format from each other, so that I couldn't just do one report and then copy that information into all the others. It was maddening, and extremely time consuming.
Some smart-alec decided to computerise the system, but it was never available at reporting time. Let's say the deadline for submitting your report was 4pm on Tuesday. At 3.30pm, all the people that had to lodge a report would logon and try to submit their reports, and the system would crash, or slow to a crawl. I don't think I ever got a report in on time. At 4.01pm, a series of nasty emails would be sent out from high above demanding to know in great detail why our reports had not been submitted as required.
Why not submit our reports earlier?
Well, in order to create each report, we needed information from our financial system, and it would only be updated by around 3pm on reporting day. And of course when everyone jumped in to get their information, it would grind to a crawl, so it might take half an hour to extract and manipulate a few figures for the various reports. One report might require you to extract a result from the financial system, and then add 17% to it. Another might have a loading of only 5%. Don't ask me why - I asked once, and immediately regretted it.
So you finally have your numbers together at 3.30pm, and you then have half an hour to try and get them into a computer system that isn't working. Sheer madness - repeated every single week. And because we were constantly late in submitting our numbers, someone decided that our reporting timeliness should be tracked, and a report created to report on that as well. And so on.
Anyway, I have left a comment at The Aus, but I doubt they will publish it.
Costa continues his series of excellent articles in The Aus this week with one about Canberra's castles in the air.
This almost had me lying on the floor at work, howling with laughter:
Speaking from bitter experience, if the states are able to complete even their own ambitious capital works programs on time and within budget, it will represent a dramatic departure from past practice.
One of the more frustrating aspects of putting together a state budget is collating and assessing annual agency capital works performance against budgets.
This involves a detailed assessment in each government agency, project by project, of how their projected capital works programs have progressed over the previous budget year. Despite monthly reporting and regular monitoring, invariably there are significant deviations from what was proposed at the time the annual budget was delivered. Projects suffer delays, cost overruns and scope creep.
It's so very true. In fact, I don't think he has any idea how bad it was down in the engine room, trying to deliver these things and report back to Treasury at the same time on progress. The more frustrated Treasury got with our slowness in spending money, the more reports they required us to submit in order to track progress. Of course that meant spending more time on reporting on our lack of progress, as opposed to spending time actually driving the project forward.
In my humble opinion, the best project managers are hard, aggressive bastards that take no prisoners. There is a time to be nice, and there is a time to rip people's heads off and shit down their necks. If you want projects to happen, you have to let loose the bastards. Keeping them cooped up in their offices, poring over spreadsheets of reports that they need to complete in triplicate means they have less time for yelling at people. Project managers are at their best when they are cracking whips.
As for the insanity of reporting, I had to report on progress several times a week. I had to submit reports to several different groups, and each required almost the same information, but always in a slightly different format from each other, so that I couldn't just do one report and then copy that information into all the others. It was maddening, and extremely time consuming.
Some smart-alec decided to computerise the system, but it was never available at reporting time. Let's say the deadline for submitting your report was 4pm on Tuesday. At 3.30pm, all the people that had to lodge a report would logon and try to submit their reports, and the system would crash, or slow to a crawl. I don't think I ever got a report in on time. At 4.01pm, a series of nasty emails would be sent out from high above demanding to know in great detail why our reports had not been submitted as required.
Why not submit our reports earlier?
Well, in order to create each report, we needed information from our financial system, and it would only be updated by around 3pm on reporting day. And of course when everyone jumped in to get their information, it would grind to a crawl, so it might take half an hour to extract and manipulate a few figures for the various reports. One report might require you to extract a result from the financial system, and then add 17% to it. Another might have a loading of only 5%. Don't ask me why - I asked once, and immediately regretted it.
So you finally have your numbers together at 3.30pm, and you then have half an hour to try and get them into a computer system that isn't working. Sheer madness - repeated every single week. And because we were constantly late in submitting our numbers, someone decided that our reporting timeliness should be tracked, and a report created to report on that as well. And so on.
Anyway, I have left a comment at The Aus, but I doubt they will publish it.
Thursday, 12 February 2009
Someone paid for this ad
Photographed on a clear, but windy day recently. We heard the plane doing the skywriting, but none of us could figure out what the message was supposed to say.
There is only a minute or so between these shots. By the time the last letter had been smoked, the first letters had drifted into nothingness.
I hope it was not an anti-smoking message.
There is only a minute or so between these shots. By the time the last letter had been smoked, the first letters had drifted into nothingness.
I hope it was not an anti-smoking message.
US unemployment goes up as real estate agents get the boot
A fascinating, but little reported factoid from the US is that a hell of a lot of real estate agents and mortgage brokers have lost their jobs as a result of the collapse in the housing market. This is one blog post that covers the incredible rise in the number of real estate agents over the last 30 years, and their rapid decline of late.
Membership of the NAR has fallen by 218,000, which represents 16% of agents. I read somewhere that heaps of mortgage brokers and originators are now without jobs as well.
Let's assume for a minute that out of the umpteen million now unemployed in the US, half a million were previously employed in inflating the housing bubble, selling mortgages to people who could not pay them back, fraudulently inflating house values and processing "liar" loans. Stop for a second, and tell me whether you really give a bugger if one of these blood sucking leeches is out of a job.
Do you really want to re-inflate the bubble so that they can go back to their bad old ways?
Do we really need agents boosting the market so they can make a sale and take a fat commission? Do we want crooked mortgage brokers to once again stuff the pockets of the poor with unaffordable loans? Are we not better off with cheaper housing, which allows first home buyers to get into the market without taking on a crippling level of debt? Cheaper housing might also allow us to get housing commission tenants off the public tit, and into private housing.
Remember that many of these Realtors, brokers and valuers were also dealing with clients who were buying a second or third home - a holiday home or an investment property. Is it really the job of the taxpayer to boost the market to maintain the value of holiday homes that are occupied for only a few weeks per year?
I'm not trying to play the class envy card here, as I really want to buy a flash ski lodge at Hotham, but come on, is it really a problem if the value of ski lodges falls by 60%? If no ski lodges are built this year, does the collapse of the construction industry in that area mean that many people will potentially be made homeless? I doubt it.
Frankly, if a million real estate agents suddenly find themselves wandering the streets in ragged suits, begging for change at traffic lights and maniacally jangling the keys to the black 5 series BMW that they once leased, I will not weep. I won't suddenly feel the urge to stimulate the economy to put them back to work. I say good riddance, and may they join a few thousand bus loads of lawyers at the bottom of the ocean.
Membership of the NAR has fallen by 218,000, which represents 16% of agents. I read somewhere that heaps of mortgage brokers and originators are now without jobs as well.
Let's assume for a minute that out of the umpteen million now unemployed in the US, half a million were previously employed in inflating the housing bubble, selling mortgages to people who could not pay them back, fraudulently inflating house values and processing "liar" loans. Stop for a second, and tell me whether you really give a bugger if one of these blood sucking leeches is out of a job.
Do you really want to re-inflate the bubble so that they can go back to their bad old ways?
Do we really need agents boosting the market so they can make a sale and take a fat commission? Do we want crooked mortgage brokers to once again stuff the pockets of the poor with unaffordable loans? Are we not better off with cheaper housing, which allows first home buyers to get into the market without taking on a crippling level of debt? Cheaper housing might also allow us to get housing commission tenants off the public tit, and into private housing.
Remember that many of these Realtors, brokers and valuers were also dealing with clients who were buying a second or third home - a holiday home or an investment property. Is it really the job of the taxpayer to boost the market to maintain the value of holiday homes that are occupied for only a few weeks per year?
I'm not trying to play the class envy card here, as I really want to buy a flash ski lodge at Hotham, but come on, is it really a problem if the value of ski lodges falls by 60%? If no ski lodges are built this year, does the collapse of the construction industry in that area mean that many people will potentially be made homeless? I doubt it.
Frankly, if a million real estate agents suddenly find themselves wandering the streets in ragged suits, begging for change at traffic lights and maniacally jangling the keys to the black 5 series BMW that they once leased, I will not weep. I won't suddenly feel the urge to stimulate the economy to put them back to work. I say good riddance, and may they join a few thousand bus loads of lawyers at the bottom of the ocean.
Should we hand over National Parks to the blackfellas?
A few years ago, we paid a quick visit to Kakadu. While we were there, my brother and me took a helicopter tour of the park.
Once we were up in the air, I made a comment to the pilot about all the fires we could see - all around the horizon, columns of smoke were billowing upwards. None of the fires were furious or out of control - they appeared to be lazy grass fires, slowly spreading this way and that until they burned out. I made a further comment about National Parks and backburning, and the pilot laughed so hard, we nearly went into a spin.
His response was that most of the fires were set by blackfellas looking for a feed, or blackfellas that just like to watch a nice fire. The rest were set by blackfellas that were lost. If their car broke down and they couldn't fix it, they'd start a fire, safe in the knowledge that a helicopter or plane would turn up for a look-see before long, and they'd get picked up. They were quite relaxed about it, and the regular burns were just part of everyday life in the NT.
He also said that some tourists didn't like the burning off - the smoke etc, and the fact that if you visited a certain site, there was a reasonable chance it would be a smouldering mess. However, his attitude was that they just had to live with it (and he made his living from tourism), and there were plenty of sights to see - if one was on fire, or recently burnt out, you just went to another one.
Piers Akerman raised this interesting conundrum today:
The easiest way around this problem is to hand over ownership of all national parks to the local blackfellas, and give them carte blanche to "manage" them as they see fit. And I don't mean just setting up a token council with a few tame local blackfellas in charge - I mean scrapping the department that controls them and handing them over lock, stock and barrel. Whitey should just bugger off and leave them to it.
Frankly, I can think of nothing more enjoyable than watching footage of white, suburban middle class green protestors battling blackfella park rangers over the burning of a patch of scrub.
Once we were up in the air, I made a comment to the pilot about all the fires we could see - all around the horizon, columns of smoke were billowing upwards. None of the fires were furious or out of control - they appeared to be lazy grass fires, slowly spreading this way and that until they burned out. I made a further comment about National Parks and backburning, and the pilot laughed so hard, we nearly went into a spin.
His response was that most of the fires were set by blackfellas looking for a feed, or blackfellas that just like to watch a nice fire. The rest were set by blackfellas that were lost. If their car broke down and they couldn't fix it, they'd start a fire, safe in the knowledge that a helicopter or plane would turn up for a look-see before long, and they'd get picked up. They were quite relaxed about it, and the regular burns were just part of everyday life in the NT.
He also said that some tourists didn't like the burning off - the smoke etc, and the fact that if you visited a certain site, there was a reasonable chance it would be a smouldering mess. However, his attitude was that they just had to live with it (and he made his living from tourism), and there were plenty of sights to see - if one was on fire, or recently burnt out, you just went to another one.
Piers Akerman raised this interesting conundrum today:
Greens leader Bob Brown has taken no responsibility for the huge lock-up of forest reserves. It is bewildering to listen to Brown and other extremist environmentalists call for more wilderness areas, areas left in as pristine a state as possible, when they also purport to support the claims of Aboriginal Australians that they managed the “wilderness” for perhaps 40,000 years through regular burning.
The easiest way around this problem is to hand over ownership of all national parks to the local blackfellas, and give them carte blanche to "manage" them as they see fit. And I don't mean just setting up a token council with a few tame local blackfellas in charge - I mean scrapping the department that controls them and handing them over lock, stock and barrel. Whitey should just bugger off and leave them to it.
Frankly, I can think of nothing more enjoyable than watching footage of white, suburban middle class green protestors battling blackfella park rangers over the burning of a patch of scrub.
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
I hope the post-fire inquiry is better than this one
On the opening night of the 2000 ski season, there was a fire at the Thredbo Alpine Hotel. I know all about it, because I was there in the hotel.
I did a bit of Googling tonight and found this report from the NSW Fire Brigades into the fire. Whilst I am sure the technical details about how the fire started and spread are correct, the rest of it is fiction. Total fiction.
That is not terribly surprising. When I eventually got home, I looked up the news reports on the fire, and all of them might as well have been reporting on a different event as far as I was concerned.
A bunch of us went down for the opening weekend, and we were staying in rooms near the fire. As was our usual practice back then, we all gathered at one person's house in Sydney on Friday night, went to bed early, and then started driving around 2am - the idea being to reach Thredbo in time for the opening of the ski lifts at 8.30am. We took turns doing the driving, but none of us got much sleep in the car that night.
We then hit the slopes like demons, skiing like madmen all day until we were dropping with fatigue. When the slopes closed, we checked into the hotel, and then started drinking. We had quite a few drinks in the bar that contained the fireplace that was the cause of the fire.
I don't know what time I went to bed, but I do know that I totally crashed out, utterly, utterly exhausted.
I remember dreaming about a ringing bell, and then I heard banging on our door - something like "you have to get out" was yelled, and that was it, followed by the sound of running feet going up the corridor. Dames staggered out of his bed, stuck his head out the door and muttered something about smoke. I was too delirious from fatigue and booze to really comprehend what was going on. I'd been through a few false alarms with fire alarms before, so I figured that if we had to evacuate into the cold, open air for a false alarm, I'd at least dress for it.
Dames and I took a minute to climb into our ski gear and warm boots, a few seconds to grab our keys, wallets and phones, and then we opened the door into a scene from hell.
The corridor was completely full of smoke. It was impossible to see more than a few feet. The alarm was still blasting away, and we couldn't see any signs indicating which way to get out. We kind of worked out that the fire was coming from our left, so we went right.
The Alpine is one of those buildings that meanders this way and that. We ended up getting lost, and took much longer to get out of the hotel than we should have. We went up and down various corridors and stairs, trying to find a way out. Being drunk and disoriented didn't help. I think we walked straight past a couple of fire exits.
We eventually staggered outside and found the evacuation point.
That is crap. There was no "practiced evacuation". Talking to staff afterwards, we found that many had only started work that week, and they'd had no fire training. They were as much in the dark as we were. Confusion was the order of the day. The staff were well meaning, but befuddled and leaderless.
Dames and me were the only two not in pyjamas. Some people had slippers on, but others were barefoot - and it was extremely cold. I was warm and dry and comfortable, but 138 other guests were miserable. What happened is that some guests simply walked off and knocked on the doors of apartments where they had friends staying, and they crashed the night with them.
By the time the Police arrived and took control and did a headcount, they found that instead of having 140 guests (as per the manifest), they had about 40. The first thing the Fire Brigade had to do was axe down every door in the hotel to ensure there was no one left inside. It took the Police until about 9am to account for everyone.
There is a timeline on page 6 worth looking at. The "fire brigade" that arrived 10 minutes after the alarm went off was the local volunteer brigade, which consisted of a drunken chef in a ute with a small fire pump on the back - something suitable for small bush fires, but not a multi storey hotel fire.
I probably should have gone to hospital as well. Being the last person out of the place, I inhaled a hell of a lot of smoke. I inhaled even more when the staff marched us through the hotel, which was on fire, to another location on the other side of the hotel. It was surreal being walked through a lobby full of smoke, where there were firemen walking around in breathing apparatus. A few gave us very odd looks as we stepped over their hoses.
We were disoriented because we were pissed as parrots and tired as hell. A lot of Schnapps was imbibed that night.
In my opinion, this report is a snow job. It is a typical, modern, politically correct document designed to offend no one. It is polite. There are no barbed comments. The shambolic, diabolical nature of the evacuation and follow up is not discussed. The fact that fire trucks could not get close enough to the hotel to effectively fight the fire is not discussed - especially galling in that they could not get close because guests had double parked in the driveway, and they'd all left their keys in their rooms, so they couldn't move their cars. Dames was the only guest who walked out with his car keys - but his car didn't need to be moved. Until the Police took over, the evacuation and management of guests was chaos personified. The staff were utterly clueless.
It also appeared that the trucks that attended were old and underpowered for the terrain that they had to tackle. On the way home in the morning, we passed one struggling up an incline outside of Jindabyne. It's no wonder they took so long to arrive from Cooma and Jindabyne - and no mention is made in the report of how long it took those trucks to arrive, only the distance they had to cover.
I didn't see any staff trying to fight the fire, but then again, I was hammered.
I hope that the Royal Commission into the Victorian fires does not go down this path. I really hope that all those people didn't die for this sort of soft-soap rubbish to be produced in their memory. If a lot of people are not offended and upset by the findings of the report, then it won't be worth the paper it is printed on.
I'm happy to tell you that I fucked up big time. Instead of getting dressed, which took time, I should have split as soon as our door was banged on. Sure, standing around in the snow is no fun, but it beats collapsing from smoke inhalation in a corridor and dying. We were bloody lucky to get out in one piece, and I know that. The difference between life and death can be seconds, and we used up some of those precious seconds through bad choices.
I was the only evacuee to get any sleep that night. We were eventually dossed down by the Police in the local community centre. We were given a blanket each, and as there were no beds, we had to sleep on the carpet.
After 7 years in the infantry, sleeping in some of the most horrible conditions nature can throw at you, I had no problems conking out in about 15 seconds flat. Trouble is, all the smoke had really aggravated my propensity to snore, and I snored so loudly, the other 139 guests got not a single wink of sleep between them. We were fed a free breakfast at a restaurant in the morning, and I heard many a bleary-eyed person complain about that "bloody snorer".
He he.
As far as I am concerned, two good things came out of the hotel fire.
I never trusted the media again. The reports on the fire were even more of a fantasy than this Fire Brigade report.
I always check the fire exits now whenever I check into a hotel. I always watch the safety briefings when I get on a plane. I'm never going through that sort of crap again.
I did a bit of Googling tonight and found this report from the NSW Fire Brigades into the fire. Whilst I am sure the technical details about how the fire started and spread are correct, the rest of it is fiction. Total fiction.
That is not terribly surprising. When I eventually got home, I looked up the news reports on the fire, and all of them might as well have been reporting on a different event as far as I was concerned.
A bunch of us went down for the opening weekend, and we were staying in rooms near the fire. As was our usual practice back then, we all gathered at one person's house in Sydney on Friday night, went to bed early, and then started driving around 2am - the idea being to reach Thredbo in time for the opening of the ski lifts at 8.30am. We took turns doing the driving, but none of us got much sleep in the car that night.
We then hit the slopes like demons, skiing like madmen all day until we were dropping with fatigue. When the slopes closed, we checked into the hotel, and then started drinking. We had quite a few drinks in the bar that contained the fireplace that was the cause of the fire.
I don't know what time I went to bed, but I do know that I totally crashed out, utterly, utterly exhausted.
I remember dreaming about a ringing bell, and then I heard banging on our door - something like "you have to get out" was yelled, and that was it, followed by the sound of running feet going up the corridor. Dames staggered out of his bed, stuck his head out the door and muttered something about smoke. I was too delirious from fatigue and booze to really comprehend what was going on. I'd been through a few false alarms with fire alarms before, so I figured that if we had to evacuate into the cold, open air for a false alarm, I'd at least dress for it.
Dames and I took a minute to climb into our ski gear and warm boots, a few seconds to grab our keys, wallets and phones, and then we opened the door into a scene from hell.
The corridor was completely full of smoke. It was impossible to see more than a few feet. The alarm was still blasting away, and we couldn't see any signs indicating which way to get out. We kind of worked out that the fire was coming from our left, so we went right.
The Alpine is one of those buildings that meanders this way and that. We ended up getting lost, and took much longer to get out of the hotel than we should have. We went up and down various corridors and stairs, trying to find a way out. Being drunk and disoriented didn't help. I think we walked straight past a couple of fire exits.
We eventually staggered outside and found the evacuation point.
The hotel became smoke logged and one hundred and forty guests were successfully evacuated from the structure. On-duty hotel staff assisted by other staff who returned to duty (on hearing alarms or sirens) ensured that the practiced evacuation procedures of the hotel were fully implemented.
That is crap. There was no "practiced evacuation". Talking to staff afterwards, we found that many had only started work that week, and they'd had no fire training. They were as much in the dark as we were. Confusion was the order of the day. The staff were well meaning, but befuddled and leaderless.
Once outside the hotel, evacuated guests were confronted with sub-zero temperatures and snow on the ground. They were eventually marshalled into indoor areas where refuge from the cold outdoor temperatures could be provided. Accounting for the guests and providing refuge from the extreme climatic conditions created some challenges and resulting from a debriefing after the fire, hotel management revised evacuation plans including a full review of marshalling areas.
Dames and me were the only two not in pyjamas. Some people had slippers on, but others were barefoot - and it was extremely cold. I was warm and dry and comfortable, but 138 other guests were miserable. What happened is that some guests simply walked off and knocked on the doors of apartments where they had friends staying, and they crashed the night with them.
By the time the Police arrived and took control and did a headcount, they found that instead of having 140 guests (as per the manifest), they had about 40. The first thing the Fire Brigade had to do was axe down every door in the hotel to ensure there was no one left inside. It took the Police until about 9am to account for everyone.
There is a timeline on page 6 worth looking at. The "fire brigade" that arrived 10 minutes after the alarm went off was the local volunteer brigade, which consisted of a drunken chef in a ute with a small fire pump on the back - something suitable for small bush fires, but not a multi storey hotel fire.
There were two people taken to hospital (one staff member and one security officer) as a result of smoke inhalation. Initially, occupants were marshalled outside but this strategy was revised due to the cold weather and they were moved to an area inside the structure. There were some negative comments from guests regarding the process of relocation from the original marshalling area as there was reportedly some migration back through the lower level and through light smoke.
I probably should have gone to hospital as well. Being the last person out of the place, I inhaled a hell of a lot of smoke. I inhaled even more when the staff marched us through the hotel, which was on fire, to another location on the other side of the hotel. It was surreal being walked through a lobby full of smoke, where there were firemen walking around in breathing apparatus. A few gave us very odd looks as we stepped over their hoses.
Further staff reports indicate ‘disoriented people’ not following evacuation signs even though some people were quite close to nominated exits. In part this may have been due to smoke coming from the fire room located next to an exit on level three. More discussion is contained in the section titled ‘basic human behaviour in fire data’.
We were disoriented because we were pissed as parrots and tired as hell. A lot of Schnapps was imbibed that night.
In my opinion, this report is a snow job. It is a typical, modern, politically correct document designed to offend no one. It is polite. There are no barbed comments. The shambolic, diabolical nature of the evacuation and follow up is not discussed. The fact that fire trucks could not get close enough to the hotel to effectively fight the fire is not discussed - especially galling in that they could not get close because guests had double parked in the driveway, and they'd all left their keys in their rooms, so they couldn't move their cars. Dames was the only guest who walked out with his car keys - but his car didn't need to be moved. Until the Police took over, the evacuation and management of guests was chaos personified. The staff were utterly clueless.
It also appeared that the trucks that attended were old and underpowered for the terrain that they had to tackle. On the way home in the morning, we passed one struggling up an incline outside of Jindabyne. It's no wonder they took so long to arrive from Cooma and Jindabyne - and no mention is made in the report of how long it took those trucks to arrive, only the distance they had to cover.
I didn't see any staff trying to fight the fire, but then again, I was hammered.
I hope that the Royal Commission into the Victorian fires does not go down this path. I really hope that all those people didn't die for this sort of soft-soap rubbish to be produced in their memory. If a lot of people are not offended and upset by the findings of the report, then it won't be worth the paper it is printed on.
I'm happy to tell you that I fucked up big time. Instead of getting dressed, which took time, I should have split as soon as our door was banged on. Sure, standing around in the snow is no fun, but it beats collapsing from smoke inhalation in a corridor and dying. We were bloody lucky to get out in one piece, and I know that. The difference between life and death can be seconds, and we used up some of those precious seconds through bad choices.
I was the only evacuee to get any sleep that night. We were eventually dossed down by the Police in the local community centre. We were given a blanket each, and as there were no beds, we had to sleep on the carpet.
After 7 years in the infantry, sleeping in some of the most horrible conditions nature can throw at you, I had no problems conking out in about 15 seconds flat. Trouble is, all the smoke had really aggravated my propensity to snore, and I snored so loudly, the other 139 guests got not a single wink of sleep between them. We were fed a free breakfast at a restaurant in the morning, and I heard many a bleary-eyed person complain about that "bloody snorer".
He he.
As far as I am concerned, two good things came out of the hotel fire.
I never trusted the media again. The reports on the fire were even more of a fantasy than this Fire Brigade report.
I always check the fire exits now whenever I check into a hotel. I always watch the safety briefings when I get on a plane. I'm never going through that sort of crap again.
I was only following orders
I'm sure the PM spoke some harsh words to Centrelink staff yesterday, but that would have been uncalled for. Yes, it was bloody deplorable that this happened, but the bureaucrats were simply applying the policies of the day.
The bureaucrats should of course be glad that the poor sods lost their guns in the fires - otherwise, a few Centrelink employees might have been making the journey to the morgue as well. However, I'm sure those same staff have had it drummed into them that if they are caught disobeying Centrelink policies, they'll be sacked. Until told otherwise, they had to hang onto the cash.
I'm also sure that some thieving bastards will drive into these areas from Melbourne, pose as survivors and make off with a handout from Centrelink, the Red Cross and the Salvos. Episodes like this bring out the best in people, and the very worst.
Bushfire survivors have criticised the Federal Government for demanding families who lost everything produce identification before they receive financial help.
Less than 24 hours after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told Parliament grieving families' stress was compounded by their loss of legal identification, journalist and survivor Gary Hughes wrote an open letter to Mr Rudd attacking Centrelink officials' unreasonable demands.
Hughes, who escaped with his wife as flames swallowed their St Andrews home on Saturday, asked Mr Rudd to cut red tape.
"Survivors unable to produce identification were told they needed at the very least a copy of a bank statement to prove who they were," he wrote.
"Come back with a bank statement, they were told, and their applications for emergency relief would be processed.
"Kevin, how are people who most likely have also lost their cars supposed to get ot their bank and back? Catch a bus? Beg a lift on a passing fire truck?
"And if these already deeply traumatised people managed to get to their bank, get a copy of their statement and get back to the relief centre, they were told it would take at least two days to get the money."
The bureaucrats should of course be glad that the poor sods lost their guns in the fires - otherwise, a few Centrelink employees might have been making the journey to the morgue as well. However, I'm sure those same staff have had it drummed into them that if they are caught disobeying Centrelink policies, they'll be sacked. Until told otherwise, they had to hang onto the cash.
I'm also sure that some thieving bastards will drive into these areas from Melbourne, pose as survivors and make off with a handout from Centrelink, the Red Cross and the Salvos. Episodes like this bring out the best in people, and the very worst.
One small drawback with electric cars
If there's a blackout, and your car is flat, how do you get to work?
I'm not talking about hybrid cars that still contain a petrol or diesel engine - I'm talking about cars that purely run on battery.
At present, we have energy diversity - power at home from electricity (generated from multiple sources), hot water from gas and transport from diesel, petrol or LPG. But if we move to electric cars, we put most of our eggs in one basket.
I'm thinking of putting an inverter in my car so that when we have our next power failure, I can use the car as a generator and keep things like the fridge and freezer running. Whilst we have a very, very reliable power grid, it does not have 100% uptime. 99.99% still means a reasonable amount of downtime per year.
I'm not talking about hybrid cars that still contain a petrol or diesel engine - I'm talking about cars that purely run on battery.
At present, we have energy diversity - power at home from electricity (generated from multiple sources), hot water from gas and transport from diesel, petrol or LPG. But if we move to electric cars, we put most of our eggs in one basket.
I'm thinking of putting an inverter in my car so that when we have our next power failure, I can use the car as a generator and keep things like the fridge and freezer running. Whilst we have a very, very reliable power grid, it does not have 100% uptime. 99.99% still means a reasonable amount of downtime per year.
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