From our anecdotal observations in just this area, the top end of the housing market has gone very soft. We've been thinking of moving, mainly because this place is falling down around our ears, and J has been keeping a close eye on local rental properties for some time.
The magic point in the market in this area seems to be around $650 per week for a 3 bedroom home. If you ask more than that, chances are no one will nibble, let alone bite. J has been watching asking prices drop from $750 and $700 a week by $50 to $80. And that's just in one week. Those properties at the top end - costing a grand or more - are advertised week after week after week.
However, if the price is $650 or lower, the place disappears from the market faster than a cow trying to cross a pirahna infested river.
I wonder if people are downsizing from the top end of the market - abandoning the $1200 apartment with the water views and settling for a $650 house that is a few blocks back from the harbour? Is that a sign that the froth has definitely left the economy?
Thursday, 9 July 2009
Everything you ever wanted to know about homelessness
Thanks to two articles in the Silly today (two for the price of none!), I now know a lot more about how homelessness is defined in Australia.
As they used to say on Twin Peaks, "The owls are not what they seem".
The articles in the Silly pointed me at this report from the 2006 census. I doubt you want to wade through 95 pages of tables and text, so let me try and summarise some pertinent ideas for you.
For starters, you need to understand how "homelessness" is defined.
I notice that not having a separate bedroom and living room counts as tertiary homelessness. When I was in my 20's, I knew quite a few singles that lived in bedsits in Kings Cross. Some were international flight attendants, who did not spend much time at home, others were professionals and so on. Does owning your own bedsit in the Cross (as they all did) suddenly make you homeless?
Now comes some stats:
If you ask me, if you have a place to stay for the night, then you are not homeless. If you have shelter from the elements, so that you can stay dry if it rains, and you have access to lighting and heat and water, then you are not homeless. Dossing in a public park with no tent and no fire obviously equates to a fairly miserable situation - but not one that I am unacquainted with, having spent months sleeping like that out bush during my time in the Reserves.
There was many a warm night when I could not be bothered raising my hootchie, and I slept in my clothes wrapped in a large garbage bag - I didn't take a sleeping bag at times to avoid the extra weight and bulk in my pack.
You tend to stink after a while - clothes impregnated with days and nights of stale sweat take on an odour not quickly forgotten - but I also know from experience that after a day, you no longer smell yourself. You might stink to high heaven, but your nose simply ignores the experience.
My prejudies aside, it's worth remembering that of the 100,000 or so classified as "homeless", only 13% are sleeping rough, and even then they are probably moving in and out of hostels and shelters on a regular basis. Or, alternatively, you could say that the homeless statistics are inflated by a factor of 8 by those that have a vested interest in fluffing up the numbers - the "homeless-charity complex", to coin a phrase.
The survey divides each city up into regions and finds that:
Or are those services, such as charities, simply in or around the CBD because that is where they setup shop back in 1920, when the city was much smaller and there were slums in The Rocks and Redfern etc, and they've stayed there every since our of inertia?
Or, the CBD usually has the highest concentration of pubs, and some pretty manky pubs at that, who will serve anyone at any time. And if you get thrown out of one for weeing on the bar, it's a short stagger down the road to the next pub. Plus if you need a feed, there are plenty of fast food joints selling fat and salt topped off with plastic cheese - the perfect thing after chundering half digested port all over your shoes.
There are also lots of people in the CBD, so if you spend your days cadging money from pedestrians, you go where the density of pedestrians is highest. I doubt that there are a lot of homeless people in the CBD because of high rents or lack of accommodation - the homeless are there because it is a happy hunting ground. Booze, food and easy marks abound.
They also include living in shipping containers as homeless. My godfather, who was a state MP for decades, lived in a shipping container for months whilst his house was built. I am so going to enjoy telling him that he has been a homeless bum. I don't remember him complaining about it too much at the time.
Hell, my mum grew up in a hessian shack in the bush with a dirt floor. If I rang her tonight to tell her that she grew up officially homeless, she'd laugh her head off. They had a farm and food, they had clothes, they had a Model T ford and pots and pans and furniture and a bible and they went to church every Sunday. Although shoes were an issue - she didn't get her first pair until she started school at age 12, having been home schooled until that point. And sure, if it got a bit hot, her mother improved the ventilation in the kitchen by chopping a window in the hessian wall with a pair of scissors.
From that life of hardship, which was pretty typical of settlers in the wheatbelt back then, and was shared by my father in separate circumstances, they went on to great and important things. Growing up rough did nothing to hold them back. And whilst the housing was rough as guts at times, and they lacked refrigeration and electricity and telephones and so on, dad says that he never saw his father without a tie and hat. Ever. How many people in similar circumstances today would turn up every day for work in a suit? How many would even turn up for work?
Living in a caravan should not preclude anyone from holding down a job, saving money and living a normal, albeit different, life. His caravan had a shower, hot water, a nice bed, a place to eat and a kitchen where simple but good meals could be prepared. What more do you need in order to live life?
I'll be interested to see what happens when all that new accommodation is built for rough sleepers - whether they will take it up. By 2013, can this mob guarantee that I will never have to step over a drunken bum and a huge puddle of piss to step into my office? I doubt it.
If the woman takes it that far though, the court should make an order that she is never to hook up with him again - possibly on pain of her being locked up. I am sick to death of these mental females that get their face punched in, then shack up with the bastard again and go through it time after time after time. One chance, that's it.
Phew, I am exhausted after doing all that. time to open a bottle of metho and have a drink.
As they used to say on Twin Peaks, "The owls are not what they seem".
The articles in the Silly pointed me at this report from the 2006 census. I doubt you want to wade through 95 pages of tables and text, so let me try and summarise some pertinent ideas for you.
For starters, you need to understand how "homelessness" is defined.
Primary homelessness describes the situation of all people without conventional accommodation, such as people living on the streets, sleeping in parks, squatting in derelict buildings, living in improvised dwellings (such as sheds, garages or cabins), and using cars or railway carriages for temporary shelter.OK, I can understand that. I've seen a number of them in my time. Most of them were drunk, getting drunk, or sleeping off being drunk.
Secondary homelessness describes the situation of people who move frequently from one form of temporary shelter to another. On census night, all people staying in emergency or transitional accommodation provided under the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP) are considered part of this category. Secondary homelessness also includes people residing temporarily with other households because they have no accommodation of their own, and people staying in boarding houses on a short-term basis, operationally defined as 12 weeks or less.Hmm, been there, done that. What I did not expect to find is that someone who has been in a boarding house for months is classified as homeless. The way I have always envisaged the homeless is those that do not have a fixed roof over their heads - ie, rough sleepers. This is getting interesting.
Tertiary homelessness describes the situation of people who live in boarding houses on a medium to long-term basis, operationally defined as 13 weeks or longer. Residents of private boarding houses are homeless because their accommodation does not have the characteristics identified in the minimum community standard (Chamberlain and MacKenzie 1992): they do not have a separate bedroom and living room; they do not have kitchen and bathroom facilities of their own; their accommodation is not self-contained; and they do not have security of tenure provided by a lease.I bolded that bit about the "minimum community standard", because that tickled my fancy. Essentially, if you wanted to, you could continually increase the number of homeless by fiddling with that standard. In a decade from now, the way McMansions are being built, the minimum standard may be that if you don't have a separate media room for your 50 inch plasma TV, then you are defined as homeless. Similarly, you could halve the homeless rate overnight by simply saying that living somewhere with a shared bathroom is no longer defined as tertiary homelessness.
I notice that not having a separate bedroom and living room counts as tertiary homelessness. When I was in my 20's, I knew quite a few singles that lived in bedsits in Kings Cross. Some were international flight attendants, who did not spend much time at home, others were professionals and so on. Does owning your own bedsit in the Cross (as they all did) suddenly make you homeless?
Now comes some stats:
- Boarding houses - 7626 persons, 28% of total
- SAAP accommodation - 5110 persons, 19%
- Friends and relatives - 10,923 persons, 40%
- Sleeping rough - 3715 persons, 13%
If you ask me, if you have a place to stay for the night, then you are not homeless. If you have shelter from the elements, so that you can stay dry if it rains, and you have access to lighting and heat and water, then you are not homeless. Dossing in a public park with no tent and no fire obviously equates to a fairly miserable situation - but not one that I am unacquainted with, having spent months sleeping like that out bush during my time in the Reserves.
There was many a warm night when I could not be bothered raising my hootchie, and I slept in my clothes wrapped in a large garbage bag - I didn't take a sleeping bag at times to avoid the extra weight and bulk in my pack.
You tend to stink after a while - clothes impregnated with days and nights of stale sweat take on an odour not quickly forgotten - but I also know from experience that after a day, you no longer smell yourself. You might stink to high heaven, but your nose simply ignores the experience.
My prejudies aside, it's worth remembering that of the 100,000 or so classified as "homeless", only 13% are sleeping rough, and even then they are probably moving in and out of hostels and shelters on a regular basis. Or, alternatively, you could say that the homeless statistics are inflated by a factor of 8 by those that have a vested interest in fluffing up the numbers - the "homeless-charity complex", to coin a phrase.
The survey divides each city up into regions and finds that:
It is usual to find a higher rate of homelessness in the inner suburbs of capital cities. This is the case in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart and Brisbane. People often gravitate to the inner city, where services for homeless people have traditionally been located.I bolded that last bit. I have to ask, why do is the highest density for services for the homeless located in areas that are the most expensive to do anything? Surely, if you have a set budget for homeless services, you want it to stretch as far as possible, so you setup shop where land is cheap - like anywhere but the CBD. Are the homeless gravitating to the CBD in order to tap into existing services, or are the services gravitating to the CBD to serve the homeless? It's a bit chicken and egg, isn't it?
Or are those services, such as charities, simply in or around the CBD because that is where they setup shop back in 1920, when the city was much smaller and there were slums in The Rocks and Redfern etc, and they've stayed there every since our of inertia?
Or, the CBD usually has the highest concentration of pubs, and some pretty manky pubs at that, who will serve anyone at any time. And if you get thrown out of one for weeing on the bar, it's a short stagger down the road to the next pub. Plus if you need a feed, there are plenty of fast food joints selling fat and salt topped off with plastic cheese - the perfect thing after chundering half digested port all over your shoes.
There are also lots of people in the CBD, so if you spend your days cadging money from pedestrians, you go where the density of pedestrians is highest. I doubt that there are a lot of homeless people in the CBD because of high rents or lack of accommodation - the homeless are there because it is a happy hunting ground. Booze, food and easy marks abound.
The report also includes new information on marginal caravan park dwellers and Indigenous homelessness.We have a family member who is currently living out of the back of a van up in Queensland. Another member regularly takes to the road and lives out of their van. I would not class either as broke, or even poor. They have the potential to earn good money; they simply choose not to, preferring life on the road. A life without attachments and chattels, where they can "live in the moment". I will now have to tell them that the are homeless vagrants.
They also include living in shipping containers as homeless. My godfather, who was a state MP for decades, lived in a shipping container for months whilst his house was built. I am so going to enjoy telling him that he has been a homeless bum. I don't remember him complaining about it too much at the time.
Hell, my mum grew up in a hessian shack in the bush with a dirt floor. If I rang her tonight to tell her that she grew up officially homeless, she'd laugh her head off. They had a farm and food, they had clothes, they had a Model T ford and pots and pans and furniture and a bible and they went to church every Sunday. Although shoes were an issue - she didn't get her first pair until she started school at age 12, having been home schooled until that point. And sure, if it got a bit hot, her mother improved the ventilation in the kitchen by chopping a window in the hessian wall with a pair of scissors.
From that life of hardship, which was pretty typical of settlers in the wheatbelt back then, and was shared by my father in separate circumstances, they went on to great and important things. Growing up rough did nothing to hold them back. And whilst the housing was rough as guts at times, and they lacked refrigeration and electricity and telephones and so on, dad says that he never saw his father without a tie and hat. Ever. How many people in similar circumstances today would turn up every day for work in a suit? How many would even turn up for work?
It is common for homeless people to move from one form of temporary shelter to another. It is also common for homeless people to move both within and between states.It costs money to move interstate, unless you hitch all the time. Is homelessness a result of poverty, or something else?
The minimum community standard is a small rental flat––with a bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom and an element of security of tenure––because that is the minimum that most people achieve in the private rental market. However, the minimum is significantly below the culturally desired option of an owner-occupied house.Drat. I was going to say that this standard equates to the sort of accommodation I had at uni, and some of my student mates lived that way for 4 or 5 years, depending on the type of degree they were doing. I don't remember it ever doing any of them any harm - except perhaps to their livers. I don't understand why a uni student, who may be working part time and studying and so on, can live a "normal" existance in a university college, whilst a non-student in the same standard of accommodation is somehow seen as being terribly disadvantaged.
....there are a number of institutional settings where people do not have the minimal level of accommodation identified by the community standard, but in cultural terms they are not considered part of the homeless population. They include, inter alia, people living in seminaries, elderly people in nursing homes, students in university halls of residence and prisoners.
In some communities, local SAAP workers send homeless people to the local caravan park if there is no alternative accommodation available. Caravan parks may also house some people on a longer-term basis who are unable to re-enter the private rental market.Shearers, fencing contractors, miners all live in caravans. My sister bought a Coaster bus from a shearer's cook, and the cook lived in it for years as she travelled from farm to station to farm. What's so bad about living in a caravan? A mate of mine, who has been a millionaire and lost it all a few times, and is now running his own multi-million dollar business again, spent a few years living in a caravan whilst he poured every cent he had into a business venture.
Living in a caravan should not preclude anyone from holding down a job, saving money and living a normal, albeit different, life. His caravan had a shower, hot water, a nice bed, a place to eat and a kitchen where simple but good meals could be prepared. What more do you need in order to live life?
Local informants talked about ‘makeshift cabins and metal sheds’ and people buying blocks of land, but being ‘unable to build a house because they could not find work’. There were few households with someone in full-time work and a household income of $1000 or more. The number of blockies was low.Ah. Some people have scraped up enough money to buy a few acres of land, but are struggling to find the money to build a house on that land. Gee, how did it come to pass that someone sitting on say a $100,000 block of land, which they own outright, is considered homeless? Sure, they might be living in a tin shed on that block, but what is wrong with that? I helped build a house on a farm once, and the family moved in once the roof was on. No walls were put up until it started getting cold, and even then, the windows were made of clear plastic fertiliser bags. The floor was paving blocks loosely deposited on top of compacted sand. It was a great house for a family of four, who were also putting everything they had into getting a business up and running. If you ask me, your house does not dictate your circumstances.
The Australian Government’s White Paper on homelessness has proposed two ambitious goals: ‘to halve homelessness by 2020’ and to provide ‘supported accommodation to all rough sleepers who need it’, along with interim targets for 2013.It's never going to happen. I will predict now what will happen. Some people who are currently renting privately, but who are on low incomes, will see a huge amount of new public housing being built. They will engineer their circumstances in order to take advantage of that new housing. They will reduce the amount of rent they pay by going on the public tit. Demand will outstrip supply, and the number of homeless will continue to grow.
I'll be interested to see what happens when all that new accommodation is built for rough sleepers - whether they will take it up. By 2013, can this mob guarantee that I will never have to step over a drunken bum and a huge puddle of piss to step into my office? I doubt it.
Since the White Paper, the government has announced a further $6.6 billion to be spent on the construction of 20 000 homes for public housing, the largest expansion of public housing for many years.Will this induce more people to seek public housing, as it is cheaper than private housing? Why pay rent if the government will give you something for next to nothing?
Let me get this straight - government fucks these kids up via the "care and protection" system, and then we think that the solution is for the government to get even more involved in their lives via the provision of housing?
It is known that some groups are particularly vulnerable to homelessness, such as young people who have been through the care and protection system
Second, it is important to recognise that most people do not sleep rough on a permanent basis. .... only two per cent... was consistently without shelter, but 49 per cent of the sample had slept rough occasionally.If that is the case, why do people make such a big deal out of it? Is sleeping under the stars from time to time the end of the world?
Most commonly, families become homeless because of a housing crisis or domestic violence. Adults in families experiencing a housing crisis are typically unemployed or outside of the labour force. These families are usually poor and often have accumulated debts. In most cases, the family is facing eviction because of rent arrears.Looking after this group invites moral hazard. What is to stop an unscrupulous mob from renting a house privately, then refusing to pay rent over an extended period, using every wheeze to delay eviction, and then sponging off the state once they are evicted and suddenly "in crisis", running to Today Tonight with a sob story worth of tabloid television air time.
Some families become homeless as a result of family breakdown involving domestic violence. .... One form of early intervention is family counselling to help couples work through their relationship issues, and another form of intervention is to remove the perpetrator of violence from the family home.If you ask me, if a bloke thumps a woman, it's lockup time for the bloke. I'm talking a few months in prison at least. I see no reason for a woman with kids to be out on the street after taking a bashing from a bloke - he should be behind bars, and that's it.
If the woman takes it that far though, the court should make an order that she is never to hook up with him again - possibly on pain of her being locked up. I am sick to death of these mental females that get their face punched in, then shack up with the bastard again and go through it time after time after time. One chance, that's it.
A significant proportion of the people with a long-term housing problem have substance abuse issues and/or mental health issues, which complicates their exit from homelessnessThat presumably means that they have totally fried their brains on cheap plonk or drugs, and are essentially incapable of living a "normal" existence. I have a solution for them, and we used to call them looney bins. If someone is so far gone that they are pooing in their pants, then putting them in a nicely furnished apartment is not much of a solution. The sad fact is that they probably need to be put into a mental institution of some sort for the rest of their life. Those brain cells are not coming back.
Phew, I am exhausted after doing all that. time to open a bottle of metho and have a drink.
Multiculturalism at its finest
Funny how no one mentions multiculturalism when people from different ethnic groups start to kill each other in large numbers.
Few talk of brutality by their own side except to rationalise what went on. "We Han Chinese are organising to protect ourselves," says Chen. Uighurs only talk to me cautiously, out of fear of police reprisals and also of Uighur informants.Can't we all just get along? Sing kum-ba-ya and all that?
A quietly spoken woman in Shaanxi Lane confirms she saw out her window her fellow Uighurs slaughtering Chinese people. "But this does not mean they are animals," she says. "Do you know June 26?" - referring to the murder of at least two Uighur workers by Chinese mobs in Guangdong province.
Asked whether she saw Uighurs killed, she switches to English and answers in code. "Those women are Muslims," she says, nodding towards two women dressed in black with white headscarves. "Muslim women wear white scarves when they are in mourning."
A Chinese construction worker said he watched Uighurs slaughtering Chinese - "slicing their throats like lambs" - in Shaanxi Lane and then armed police killing Uighurs. Uighurs have claimed that "hundreds" of their own were massacred on Sunday night, but the facts are thin on the ground.
Follow the logic
From Life at the Bottom, talking about poverty, health and life expectancy:
He's talking about the UK, but he could of course be talking about the wretchedness and squalor of any number of Aboriginal communities, which seem to disgorge nothing but appalling health indicators, mindless violence, nihilistic behaviour and early death.
We know that Aboriginal life expectancy is poor, and that "something must be done". I wonder if smoking could also account for up to half the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal life expectancy, and if so, what the government expects to do about it. Smoking seems to be amazingly prevalent in Aboriginal society - my brief encounters from time to time have found that almost everyone smokes from about the age of 10. Roll your own, unfiltered smokes seem to be the tar delivery mechanism of choice.
Smoking is of course a voluntary activity. I know that it is addictive to a degree, but I don't believe that it is as addictive as the nicotine-replacement industry likes to make out (being an ex-smoker myself). They have a vested interest in telling the smoker that it is not their fault that they smoke, that it is hard to quit, and that they need to spend lots of money on nicotine replacement patches in order to relinquish the filthy habit.
Again, the smoker is told that their "addiction" is not their fault. It is the fault of tobacco companies, luring them with irresistible advertising. It is the fault of their parents, who had the gall to smoke in the car with us when we were young. It's peer group pressure. It's always something else, and never the desire of the smoker to smoke because they enjoy the activity.
Anyway, who is going to be game to try and get between a blackfella and his smokes? Smoking in white society has been demonised to the point where smokers are seen as vaguely evil, worthy of punishment and morally decrepit. To be a smoker is a loser, and smoking in the wrong place at the wrong time can bring criminal charges. Smokers are the lowest of the low. They are bums, useless carbuncles on the backside of humanity, leeches who consume more than their fair share of health resources, weaklings who are unable to control their base cravings, knaves and fools for continuing to undertake an activity certain to hasten their demise, morally reprehensible for puffing away in the presence of children - an act almost likened to child abuse - financially stupid for being so idiotic as to fork out ever increasing amounts of cash for the cured leaf of an abominable plant.
Now, can we turn around and say that to blackfellas? Can a white man say that they are:
Such pussyfooting around might explain why so many Aboriginals continue to smoke, and why there has yet to be an effective campaign to get them to cut back. So we continue to tip-toe around the truth, and in the meantime, lots more Aboriginals die young. The soft headed do-gooders of course insist that Aboriginal health can be fixed with more money, more nurses, more clinics, more doctors and so on, but the greatest gain will probably come from weaning them off the legal weed. And the extra money in their pockets could then be spent on useful things, like house maintenance, better food and so on - things that will produce further health improvements.
Good luck with that.
By no means can the poor not afford health or a nourishing diet; nor do they live in overcrowded houses lacking proper sanitation... or work 14 backbreaking hours in the foul air of mines or mills. Epidemiologists estimate that higher cigarette consumption among the poor accounts for half the difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest classes in England - and to smoke that much takes money.
Notoriously, too the infant mortality rate is twice as high the lowest social class as in the highest. But the infant mortality rate of illegitimate births is twice that of legitimate ones, and the illegitimacy rate rises steeply as you descend the social scale. So the decline of marriage almost to the vanishing point in the lowest social class might well be responsible for most of its excess infant mortality. It is a way of life, not poverty per se, that kills.
He's talking about the UK, but he could of course be talking about the wretchedness and squalor of any number of Aboriginal communities, which seem to disgorge nothing but appalling health indicators, mindless violence, nihilistic behaviour and early death.
We know that Aboriginal life expectancy is poor, and that "something must be done". I wonder if smoking could also account for up to half the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal life expectancy, and if so, what the government expects to do about it. Smoking seems to be amazingly prevalent in Aboriginal society - my brief encounters from time to time have found that almost everyone smokes from about the age of 10. Roll your own, unfiltered smokes seem to be the tar delivery mechanism of choice.
Smoking is of course a voluntary activity. I know that it is addictive to a degree, but I don't believe that it is as addictive as the nicotine-replacement industry likes to make out (being an ex-smoker myself). They have a vested interest in telling the smoker that it is not their fault that they smoke, that it is hard to quit, and that they need to spend lots of money on nicotine replacement patches in order to relinquish the filthy habit.
Again, the smoker is told that their "addiction" is not their fault. It is the fault of tobacco companies, luring them with irresistible advertising. It is the fault of their parents, who had the gall to smoke in the car with us when we were young. It's peer group pressure. It's always something else, and never the desire of the smoker to smoke because they enjoy the activity.
Anyway, who is going to be game to try and get between a blackfella and his smokes? Smoking in white society has been demonised to the point where smokers are seen as vaguely evil, worthy of punishment and morally decrepit. To be a smoker is a loser, and smoking in the wrong place at the wrong time can bring criminal charges. Smokers are the lowest of the low. They are bums, useless carbuncles on the backside of humanity, leeches who consume more than their fair share of health resources, weaklings who are unable to control their base cravings, knaves and fools for continuing to undertake an activity certain to hasten their demise, morally reprehensible for puffing away in the presence of children - an act almost likened to child abuse - financially stupid for being so idiotic as to fork out ever increasing amounts of cash for the cured leaf of an abominable plant.
Now, can we turn around and say that to blackfellas? Can a white man say that they are:
- morally decrepit
- a loser
- a criminal
- a bum, leech, carbuncle
- weak, useless and unable to exert any self control
- knaves, fools and financially irresponsible
- child abusers
Such pussyfooting around might explain why so many Aboriginals continue to smoke, and why there has yet to be an effective campaign to get them to cut back. So we continue to tip-toe around the truth, and in the meantime, lots more Aboriginals die young. The soft headed do-gooders of course insist that Aboriginal health can be fixed with more money, more nurses, more clinics, more doctors and so on, but the greatest gain will probably come from weaning them off the legal weed. And the extra money in their pockets could then be spent on useful things, like house maintenance, better food and so on - things that will produce further health improvements.
Good luck with that.
No rides for you
As if the lousy weather of late is bad enough, I had to go and contract a cold this week. It's been raining on and off for days - frequently enough to make any ride a wet one, if it went on for more than an hour. I've had a lot of couch time over the last few days, alternatively reading Theodore Dalrymple and sleeping.
Since I started reading Life at the Bottom, I've been having rather nasty little nightmares. I blame the lack of oxygen reaching my brain due to a bunged up windpipe, rather than the contents of that book. Still, it doesn't make for a good night's sleep.
When I woke up on Tuesday morning, I was quickly gripped by the worst coughing and hacking spasms that I have ever experienced in my entire life. I had a lump of snot stuck in the back of my throat, and it was refusing to budge. It seemed to be quite elastic, but firmly tethered at the far end - like the inside of a golf ball attached to a rubber band. I'd cough the thing up to the back of my tongue, but it would then refuse to detach and go any further, and that would make me retch and almost vomit. It was terrible. I gargled with cold water and warm water and even hot coffee, but nothing would tempt it to depart from its lair.
The best description that I can give of its consistency is that of half congealed blood. You know what blood is like when you get a really big clot of it, and it is no longer wet and liquid on the inside, but it has become a large, malleable ball of goo. That's what the snot was like.
I had to give up on my attempts to hack it out when one cough produced a lightning bolt of pain that went across both shoulders and straight up the back of my neck and into my head. I've never felt anything like it - it was like an electric current that zapped across and up with the utmost speed. I was sure a force 10 headache would have followed that, but all that came on was the usual cold and flu stuff - lethargy, difficulty in breathing and very, very loud snoring. Which is odd, as my vocal cords were so thickly coated in goo, I could hardly talk at times.
Ah well, back to the couch. And I've been too stupid to tape the Tour de France each night, so I don't even have that on disk to while away the time.
Since I started reading Life at the Bottom, I've been having rather nasty little nightmares. I blame the lack of oxygen reaching my brain due to a bunged up windpipe, rather than the contents of that book. Still, it doesn't make for a good night's sleep.
When I woke up on Tuesday morning, I was quickly gripped by the worst coughing and hacking spasms that I have ever experienced in my entire life. I had a lump of snot stuck in the back of my throat, and it was refusing to budge. It seemed to be quite elastic, but firmly tethered at the far end - like the inside of a golf ball attached to a rubber band. I'd cough the thing up to the back of my tongue, but it would then refuse to detach and go any further, and that would make me retch and almost vomit. It was terrible. I gargled with cold water and warm water and even hot coffee, but nothing would tempt it to depart from its lair.
The best description that I can give of its consistency is that of half congealed blood. You know what blood is like when you get a really big clot of it, and it is no longer wet and liquid on the inside, but it has become a large, malleable ball of goo. That's what the snot was like.
I had to give up on my attempts to hack it out when one cough produced a lightning bolt of pain that went across both shoulders and straight up the back of my neck and into my head. I've never felt anything like it - it was like an electric current that zapped across and up with the utmost speed. I was sure a force 10 headache would have followed that, but all that came on was the usual cold and flu stuff - lethargy, difficulty in breathing and very, very loud snoring. Which is odd, as my vocal cords were so thickly coated in goo, I could hardly talk at times.
Ah well, back to the couch. And I've been too stupid to tape the Tour de France each night, so I don't even have that on disk to while away the time.
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
Act!onaid stupidity - international edition
I had a small rant at Act!onaid a few weeks ago. The top execs are very well paid, and if it was not for government grants, 93% of their income from donations would be soaked up by expenses.
Now we have an article from the UK Telegraph that lifts the lid on their ideology.
The more I see of some charities, the more I conclude that those running them and working for them are a bunch of power-tripping greedheads who have found a niche where they can wallow in guilt funded luxury and boss the little people of the world around. Apart from the Salvos and Vinnies, I am hard pressed to find any major charity that has not been taken over by management consultants who are more interested in a car space and a fat salary than trying to enable the less fortunate to lift themselves out of poverty and squalor.
Now we have an article from the UK Telegraph that lifts the lid on their ideology.
The more I see of some charities, the more I conclude that those running them and working for them are a bunch of power-tripping greedheads who have found a niche where they can wallow in guilt funded luxury and boss the little people of the world around. Apart from the Salvos and Vinnies, I am hard pressed to find any major charity that has not been taken over by management consultants who are more interested in a car space and a fat salary than trying to enable the less fortunate to lift themselves out of poverty and squalor.
Comments on all sorts of stuff
I'm glad I don't pay for newspapers anymore. I look at the online editions and rarely find more than 2 or 3 articles worth reading. How is it that I can pick up a 49 page copy of the Spectator and find something of interest in 80% of the articles, yet less than 1% of the SMH makes sense on any given day? I pay for the Spectator, and am happy to do so. I'm not sure if it is the mix of articles, or the viewpoints, or the superior writing and editing that attract me - all that I know is that if the SMH folded tomorrow, I would not mourn it for an instant.
Except as a source of stupidity.
The Law Reform Commission is stuffed full of ancient critters, and its mausoleum like corridors need to be invigorated with fresh blood, somewhat like giving a vampire a goblet of virgin's blood as an early evening pick-me-up. Instead of new people, how about just abolishing the commission? Do we really need a flood of new and reformed laws?
I like the way they do things in Alaska, where the legislature sits for 3 months and then packs up and goes home. I'd be happy for Parliament to only sit one year in two, and to allow the courts, police, business community and so on to digest the latest pile of waffle to emerge from the bowels of the bear pit.
I'm sure those working at the commission see their work as being vital to the well being of the state, but if they closed their doors for a decade, would the world really come to an end?
Personal screen savers and wallpapers have been banned from Sydney City Council computers - wow, that's big news. BFD*. Whilst I detest odious little control freaks like our Muppet Mayor, it has to be remembered that they are council computers, not personal computers. You want your own screensaver, pay for your own computer. It does suck though when IT decides to do something without telling its customers in advance. What is it about geeks and their inability to communicate with the outside world? We have all these technical gizmos - i-phones, Blackberries, Twatter, Faceplant and so on; all designed to improve personal interaction, and geeks still churn out change after change without informing a soul of their intentions.
Given that our schools are intent on churning out a generation of functional illiterates, how much worse is this going to be in future? I'm sure I'll go into the office next year to find a sticky note on my screen saying "ur keybrd sux. lol. Nu kybrod uner dsk. Cll Fizpig if prolbm."
Welcome to the new age of corporate communications.
I'm wondering what services our council are going to take the axe to this year, given that their request for a rate increase got kiboshed. I read in the local rag that our local Labor MP, Angela D'Moron, opposed the increase for some unknown reason. She's been running around the suburbs, white-anting the Labor Mayor and doing her best to stab him in the back - there is a long history of bad blood there. The local Labor councillors and party members, who mainly hate her guts (she was parachuted in by head office), are up in arms. Nothing like a bit of interminable warfare within the ranks to enliven one's day.
I don't see what her angle is. What's she going to say? "I made sure your council got no more money this year, so your roads, paths, verges, drainage pipes, parks, seawalls, libraries and so on are going to be even shittier at the end of this year than they are now - and that's all my own work. Old people will go unfed, dog shit will go uncollected, and childcare services will be cut back. Aren't I just fucking marvelous?"
Her moronic government is blowing $160 million of our cash on an unnecessary bridge just down the road from here, and that represents 3 years of total council expenditure. I had a flick through our council financial statements the other day, and we have a backlog of something like $49 million in maintenance.
You want to know why I own a 4WD? It's because our local roads are appalling goat tracks, liberally coated in the smashed spoilers of low riding sports cars that were unable to navigate the pot holes without leaving something behind. She saves a few peanuts at this end, but advocates flushing over a hundred million down the toilet at the other end. The thing is, we don't want the money spent on her stupid bridge, but we do want it spent on fixing up wonky foot paths and leaking drains and roads that would not look out of place in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
I guess she knows that since she's going to lose her seat at the next election, the only available job will be in local government, and maybe she is eyeing off the mayoral chains and cloak. It's pretty rare for an MP to step back into local government, but it has been done before.
If I was council, I'd dig up the street outside her office and then cite a "shortfall of cash" as their reason for being unable to fill in the six foot deep moat (preferably complete with punji stakes smeared with faeces at the bottom, and unfed piranha fish).
*Big Fricken Deal.
Except as a source of stupidity.
The Law Reform Commission is stuffed full of ancient critters, and its mausoleum like corridors need to be invigorated with fresh blood, somewhat like giving a vampire a goblet of virgin's blood as an early evening pick-me-up. Instead of new people, how about just abolishing the commission? Do we really need a flood of new and reformed laws?
I like the way they do things in Alaska, where the legislature sits for 3 months and then packs up and goes home. I'd be happy for Parliament to only sit one year in two, and to allow the courts, police, business community and so on to digest the latest pile of waffle to emerge from the bowels of the bear pit.
I'm sure those working at the commission see their work as being vital to the well being of the state, but if they closed their doors for a decade, would the world really come to an end?
Personal screen savers and wallpapers have been banned from Sydney City Council computers - wow, that's big news. BFD*. Whilst I detest odious little control freaks like our Muppet Mayor, it has to be remembered that they are council computers, not personal computers. You want your own screensaver, pay for your own computer. It does suck though when IT decides to do something without telling its customers in advance. What is it about geeks and their inability to communicate with the outside world? We have all these technical gizmos - i-phones, Blackberries, Twatter, Faceplant and so on; all designed to improve personal interaction, and geeks still churn out change after change without informing a soul of their intentions.
Given that our schools are intent on churning out a generation of functional illiterates, how much worse is this going to be in future? I'm sure I'll go into the office next year to find a sticky note on my screen saying "ur keybrd sux. lol. Nu kybrod uner dsk. Cll Fizpig if prolbm."
Welcome to the new age of corporate communications.
I'm wondering what services our council are going to take the axe to this year, given that their request for a rate increase got kiboshed. I read in the local rag that our local Labor MP, Angela D'Moron, opposed the increase for some unknown reason. She's been running around the suburbs, white-anting the Labor Mayor and doing her best to stab him in the back - there is a long history of bad blood there. The local Labor councillors and party members, who mainly hate her guts (she was parachuted in by head office), are up in arms. Nothing like a bit of interminable warfare within the ranks to enliven one's day.
I don't see what her angle is. What's she going to say? "I made sure your council got no more money this year, so your roads, paths, verges, drainage pipes, parks, seawalls, libraries and so on are going to be even shittier at the end of this year than they are now - and that's all my own work. Old people will go unfed, dog shit will go uncollected, and childcare services will be cut back. Aren't I just fucking marvelous?"
Her moronic government is blowing $160 million of our cash on an unnecessary bridge just down the road from here, and that represents 3 years of total council expenditure. I had a flick through our council financial statements the other day, and we have a backlog of something like $49 million in maintenance.
You want to know why I own a 4WD? It's because our local roads are appalling goat tracks, liberally coated in the smashed spoilers of low riding sports cars that were unable to navigate the pot holes without leaving something behind. She saves a few peanuts at this end, but advocates flushing over a hundred million down the toilet at the other end. The thing is, we don't want the money spent on her stupid bridge, but we do want it spent on fixing up wonky foot paths and leaking drains and roads that would not look out of place in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
I guess she knows that since she's going to lose her seat at the next election, the only available job will be in local government, and maybe she is eyeing off the mayoral chains and cloak. It's pretty rare for an MP to step back into local government, but it has been done before.
If I was council, I'd dig up the street outside her office and then cite a "shortfall of cash" as their reason for being unable to fill in the six foot deep moat (preferably complete with punji stakes smeared with faeces at the bottom, and unfed piranha fish).
*Big Fricken Deal.
Confusing cause and effect?
Have a read of this article in the Silly - it's about locking up crims. Young crims.
Putting young offenders in custody is not only expensive but ineffective. More than half of those released reoffend. The younger they're incarcerated, the more likely their recidivism.
This implies that being locked up causes crims to commit more crime. I have an alternative idea - maybe magistrates are locking up those that they feel will commit more crime.
Consider two kids arrested on a Saturday night. One is in school, from a stable family, and has been picked up for being drunk and urinating on a car. He has no previous form, and his parents are horrified at the fact he has been arrested. Both parents work.
One is a teenager, but has rarely attended school for years. He is from an unstable home environment, with his mum shacking up with a new loser every 6 months. He's been picked up for break and enter for the 5th time. He has plenty of form, and has been committing crimes most weekends since he was 14. He already has a nasty drug and alcohol habit, even though he is too young to enter a pub. His mother does not give a fuck that he has been arrested, and screams at the cops for arresting her "innocent" little thug. She has never worked, and has been on welfare since dropping out of school at 15.
The loser in the second instance has never been locked up before, even though he is responsible for more crime than you can poke a stick at. The judge finally loses his patience, and locks the little bastard up. He gets out a month later - and goes back to committing crime. Is that a surprise? Did a spell of incarceration cause him to commit more crime, or is it the fact that he is a criminal through and through cause him to commit more crime? All a bit of gaol time has done is to prevent him from robbing people for a short period.
As for really young kids being incarcerated and being more likely to commit crime when they get out, maybe they are being locked up at a really young age because they are thorough-going little shits! Maybe the judge has realised that even though they are 13, they are already a hardened crim with no remorse, no morals, and no desire to go straight and live a "normal" life.
Nearly one in two juveniles in custody report some form of serious past abuse, including violence and neglect. Do we really think detaining a young person with that sort of background is an appropriate response to their problem?
Maybe these kids know all the right buttons to push, realising that if they can spin a good sob story, the beak might go soft on them. Even if the judge takes a hard line, some soft-headed goose in the media, or a charity, might start bleating about how badly they've been treated, how it is not their fault, etc etc etc.
It costs the NSW Government about $150,000 to lock up a young person for 12 months.
Why does it cost so much? Instead of saying, "It costs too much to lock them up", why don't we look at how we can lock them up really cheaply.
I have every sypathy for someone that has come from a poor background, and who genuinely wants to change their situation and to improve themselves and leave their crappy life of crime behind them. They deserve our encouragement and support. However, that is a change that they have to want to make themselves - it has to come from within. For those that show no genuine desire to change, I say we just lock them up as cheaply as possible and keep them locked up until they see the light, or get too old to climb in old lady's windows.
I don't conflate "youth" with "innocence", and I don't see why locking up habitual criminals who just happen to be young is thought of as a bad idea. I hear people say, "But they are missing the best part of their lives, it's cruel and unfair".
No, it is cruel and unfair on the rest of us to allow young predators out to prey on the law abiding and the weak. And is someone who is smoking dope all day and stealing cars at 15 really experiencing the "best part of their life"?
I say good luck to Mission Australia, and I hope they can turn some lives around. But they should not be so soft as to turn the other cheek every time. Those little turds that essentially spit in the eye of those that are trying to help them should be thrown straight into pokey, and left there for a long, long time.
Putting young offenders in custody is not only expensive but ineffective. More than half of those released reoffend. The younger they're incarcerated, the more likely their recidivism.
This implies that being locked up causes crims to commit more crime. I have an alternative idea - maybe magistrates are locking up those that they feel will commit more crime.
Consider two kids arrested on a Saturday night. One is in school, from a stable family, and has been picked up for being drunk and urinating on a car. He has no previous form, and his parents are horrified at the fact he has been arrested. Both parents work.
One is a teenager, but has rarely attended school for years. He is from an unstable home environment, with his mum shacking up with a new loser every 6 months. He's been picked up for break and enter for the 5th time. He has plenty of form, and has been committing crimes most weekends since he was 14. He already has a nasty drug and alcohol habit, even though he is too young to enter a pub. His mother does not give a fuck that he has been arrested, and screams at the cops for arresting her "innocent" little thug. She has never worked, and has been on welfare since dropping out of school at 15.
The loser in the second instance has never been locked up before, even though he is responsible for more crime than you can poke a stick at. The judge finally loses his patience, and locks the little bastard up. He gets out a month later - and goes back to committing crime. Is that a surprise? Did a spell of incarceration cause him to commit more crime, or is it the fact that he is a criminal through and through cause him to commit more crime? All a bit of gaol time has done is to prevent him from robbing people for a short period.
As for really young kids being incarcerated and being more likely to commit crime when they get out, maybe they are being locked up at a really young age because they are thorough-going little shits! Maybe the judge has realised that even though they are 13, they are already a hardened crim with no remorse, no morals, and no desire to go straight and live a "normal" life.
Nearly one in two juveniles in custody report some form of serious past abuse, including violence and neglect. Do we really think detaining a young person with that sort of background is an appropriate response to their problem?
Maybe these kids know all the right buttons to push, realising that if they can spin a good sob story, the beak might go soft on them. Even if the judge takes a hard line, some soft-headed goose in the media, or a charity, might start bleating about how badly they've been treated, how it is not their fault, etc etc etc.
It costs the NSW Government about $150,000 to lock up a young person for 12 months.
Why does it cost so much? Instead of saying, "It costs too much to lock them up", why don't we look at how we can lock them up really cheaply.
I have every sypathy for someone that has come from a poor background, and who genuinely wants to change their situation and to improve themselves and leave their crappy life of crime behind them. They deserve our encouragement and support. However, that is a change that they have to want to make themselves - it has to come from within. For those that show no genuine desire to change, I say we just lock them up as cheaply as possible and keep them locked up until they see the light, or get too old to climb in old lady's windows.
I don't conflate "youth" with "innocence", and I don't see why locking up habitual criminals who just happen to be young is thought of as a bad idea. I hear people say, "But they are missing the best part of their lives, it's cruel and unfair".
No, it is cruel and unfair on the rest of us to allow young predators out to prey on the law abiding and the weak. And is someone who is smoking dope all day and stealing cars at 15 really experiencing the "best part of their life"?
I say good luck to Mission Australia, and I hope they can turn some lives around. But they should not be so soft as to turn the other cheek every time. Those little turds that essentially spit in the eye of those that are trying to help them should be thrown straight into pokey, and left there for a long, long time.
Sunday, 5 July 2009
Let me throw a slew of numbers at you
I enjoy reading the Dr Housing Bubble blog listed on my sidebar over on the right. I love the way the author slices and dices statistics to show just why he thinks housing markets in the US like California are doomed to be stuffed for years. Read a few articles to see what I mean.
I thought I'd have a crack at analysing housing in Five Wog.
How much to buy a $750,000 home in this suburb? That will get you a small, rundown 3 bedroom place in a rough part of this neighbourhood.
The banks these days are going 80/20 - 80% loan to 20% deposit, which means a deposit of $150,000. Gone are the days of the 100%+ mortgage. I hope.
That leaves us with a $600,000 mortgage over 25 years.
One of those online repayment calculators gives us a figure of $3771 repayment per month.
I've heard around the traps that banks want to cap repayments at 31% of pre-tax income, so how much do you need to earn to afford a mortgage of $3771 per month?
You need $12,164 per month, or $3041 per week.
Accoridng to the ABS 2006 Census, there are 3,073 households in Five Dock.
Of those, 302 earned over $3,000 per week. This was before the financial crisis, remember. At present, it is only those lucky 302 who could afford to bid on a $750,000 property, assuming the minimum $150,000 deposit. And assuming that they met all the usual documentation provisions.
A further 322 earned between $2,500 and $2,999. In the days of easy money, banks would have let these people have enough money to bid for a $750,000 house, even though someone on $2600 a week would be tipping 36% of their pre-tax income into their mortgage - even more if their deposit sucked.
A further 237 earned $2,000 to $2,499. Imagine earning $2200 per week and having to fund a $3771 mortgage, especially with kids. You'd be facing repayments of 43% of pre-tax income.
Some people in this last group of course were given mortgages of that size, and larger. I'm reliably told that there are quite a lot of people in this area who have not made a repayment in 6 to 9 months on their $800,000 mortgage. The banks are looking the other way, trying not to spark a panic by foreclosing on them and flooding the market with properties that just have to be sold. I'd assume that everyone in this group, if they have a mortgage like this, is fucked. They are financial zombies, waiting for the banks to turn off the life support.
Those in group 2 are probably not in great shape either. The bonuses that they depended on are gone, as is any hope of a good pay rise in the near future. Once Rudd gets over his panic and decides to pay back debt, it is this group that will cop it in the neck in terms of tax increases, which will further squeeze their available cash. Then there is unemployment - from what I have seen, companies have ruthlessly culled managers and executives in this pay band. The cafes are filled with morose looking middle aged men who have recieved a nice payout, but have not worked for 6 months, and have little hope of finding work in the next 6. Financial armageddon is just around the corner for them.
Those in group 3 should be sitting pretty - those earning over $3,000 per week; except that they are not sitting on an affordable $600,000 mortgage. If you are earning that much, why put up with living in a pokey dog box in the scungy end of Five Wog? These people are sitting on million dollare mortgages, which means a repayment of $6,285 per month. Ouch. You need an income of $5,000 per week to keep your repayments down to a manageable 31% of pre-tax income with a mortgage like that.
Now for the fun part.
2 years ago, you'd go to an auction for a $750,000 house and there would be bidders there from groups 1, 2 and 3. You had a pool of 861 households in this suburb who could afford to bid - 28% of all households in this area. You are talking a wall of money.
Now you'd be lucky to get 302 eligible households - 9.8% of households. What happens at auctions when 2/3 of the previous bidders are left out of the market?
Of course I am being silly by only limiting my search to households in this suburb, but I had to simplify things, or I'd be here all night.
The other fun thing is that I'd assume that most of these households are 1.5 or 2 income households. The mean taxable income for this area is $57,900.
What happens when the 0.5 of a job disappears, or one of those 2 jobs vanishes?
Me, I'm waiting for the banks to give up and start foreclosing in earnest. That's when things will get interesting.
I thought I'd have a crack at analysing housing in Five Wog.
How much to buy a $750,000 home in this suburb? That will get you a small, rundown 3 bedroom place in a rough part of this neighbourhood.
The banks these days are going 80/20 - 80% loan to 20% deposit, which means a deposit of $150,000. Gone are the days of the 100%+ mortgage. I hope.
That leaves us with a $600,000 mortgage over 25 years.
One of those online repayment calculators gives us a figure of $3771 repayment per month.
I've heard around the traps that banks want to cap repayments at 31% of pre-tax income, so how much do you need to earn to afford a mortgage of $3771 per month?
You need $12,164 per month, or $3041 per week.
Accoridng to the ABS 2006 Census, there are 3,073 households in Five Dock.
Of those, 302 earned over $3,000 per week. This was before the financial crisis, remember. At present, it is only those lucky 302 who could afford to bid on a $750,000 property, assuming the minimum $150,000 deposit. And assuming that they met all the usual documentation provisions.
A further 322 earned between $2,500 and $2,999. In the days of easy money, banks would have let these people have enough money to bid for a $750,000 house, even though someone on $2600 a week would be tipping 36% of their pre-tax income into their mortgage - even more if their deposit sucked.
A further 237 earned $2,000 to $2,499. Imagine earning $2200 per week and having to fund a $3771 mortgage, especially with kids. You'd be facing repayments of 43% of pre-tax income.
Some people in this last group of course were given mortgages of that size, and larger. I'm reliably told that there are quite a lot of people in this area who have not made a repayment in 6 to 9 months on their $800,000 mortgage. The banks are looking the other way, trying not to spark a panic by foreclosing on them and flooding the market with properties that just have to be sold. I'd assume that everyone in this group, if they have a mortgage like this, is fucked. They are financial zombies, waiting for the banks to turn off the life support.
Those in group 2 are probably not in great shape either. The bonuses that they depended on are gone, as is any hope of a good pay rise in the near future. Once Rudd gets over his panic and decides to pay back debt, it is this group that will cop it in the neck in terms of tax increases, which will further squeeze their available cash. Then there is unemployment - from what I have seen, companies have ruthlessly culled managers and executives in this pay band. The cafes are filled with morose looking middle aged men who have recieved a nice payout, but have not worked for 6 months, and have little hope of finding work in the next 6. Financial armageddon is just around the corner for them.
Those in group 3 should be sitting pretty - those earning over $3,000 per week; except that they are not sitting on an affordable $600,000 mortgage. If you are earning that much, why put up with living in a pokey dog box in the scungy end of Five Wog? These people are sitting on million dollare mortgages, which means a repayment of $6,285 per month. Ouch. You need an income of $5,000 per week to keep your repayments down to a manageable 31% of pre-tax income with a mortgage like that.
Now for the fun part.
2 years ago, you'd go to an auction for a $750,000 house and there would be bidders there from groups 1, 2 and 3. You had a pool of 861 households in this suburb who could afford to bid - 28% of all households in this area. You are talking a wall of money.
Now you'd be lucky to get 302 eligible households - 9.8% of households. What happens at auctions when 2/3 of the previous bidders are left out of the market?
Of course I am being silly by only limiting my search to households in this suburb, but I had to simplify things, or I'd be here all night.
The other fun thing is that I'd assume that most of these households are 1.5 or 2 income households. The mean taxable income for this area is $57,900.
What happens when the 0.5 of a job disappears, or one of those 2 jobs vanishes?
Me, I'm waiting for the banks to give up and start foreclosing in earnest. That's when things will get interesting.
F*&k me drunk
Three flats in one week. Clearly, something is askew in the heavens. I will have to read the entrails of a chicken by moonlight to divine what is amiss in the cosmos.
I was planning on riding yesterday, but that was kiboshed by J being sick. Before I could go today, I had to change the back tube, which was still flat from my ride home on Friday.
Changing a tube at home is easy on a sunny day. Find a picnic chair, gather ye tools and implements and settle if for a quick spot of tube off/tube on. My weapons of choice are a powerful stand-up pump, three tyre levers (one broken), a pair of latex gloves (to avoid the dreaded black finger) and a nifty tool for getting the last bit of tyre bead back over the rim when all is done. Oh, and a spare tube - either new or patched.
My latest disaster - the core of the valve blew out as I removed the pump several miles from home. It came out with such velocity, it would have done significant damage to any eyeballs in the vicinity. Never had this happen before.
My nifty, $25 bit of yellow plastic that is great for aged finger and thumbs. I use kevlar reinforced tyres, and they stretch in the same way that flak jackets stretch - hardly at all. The blokes that work in bike shops who change flats all day long have thumbs the width of my wrist - they flick tyres back on with seemingly little effort, whilst I strain enough to develop a hernia. I found this bit of plastic advertised in a magazine, and bought it over the internet.
One end hooks inside the bead of the tyre, and the other side rests on the rim. You simply lever the bead up and over the rim. Simple. Getting it off afterwards is not always that simple, as the hook bit gets trapped under the bead and is reluctant to depart.
After changing this tube, I forgot to put my road pump back on the bike. So of course I got a flat after going over some broken glass 15km from home. I swapped the tubes over, and then waited for another cyclist to go by. Most cyclists will stop and ask how you are if they see you with your bike upside down on the side of the road - it's like flying a flag upside down.
I had to wait about 15 minutes for someone to come past. I thought the path I was taking was well patronised - I always see other cyclists on it - but perhaps they were all in bed after staying up all night to watch the first leg of the Tour de France (I taped it). A very nice bloke of 62 pulled over and helped me out - he was riding into town where he was going to spend the afternoon assembling bikes in a bike shop. We rode together for 10 minutes or so and had a nice chat - he used to race when he was younger, and seemed to know every prominent cyclist in NSW personally.
It was a pleasure to drift along with him, although I had to leave him in the end as I was freezing. When I left, my bike thermometer read 23 degrees - beautiful weather - so I dressed light. Within 10 minutes, it was reading 17, and I was starting to feel nippy. I had to raise my flat cruising speed to 32-35 km/h to keep the blood flowing to my extremities. Even now, my toes are still chilled. He was tonking along at just over half that speed, and I could feel the icicles developing from the sweat that had previously been running down from my brow.
In a way, it's a good thing the flat cut my ride short - my legs were totally out of puff. The other day, they were zinging along with all turbos screaming. Today, the battery was utterly flat. No signal available. Out of service. It is so much nicer to be sitting inside a nice warm house - except that the bike needs a thorough degrease and clean.
Ah well, time to put the degreasing clobber on. Ciao.
I was planning on riding yesterday, but that was kiboshed by J being sick. Before I could go today, I had to change the back tube, which was still flat from my ride home on Friday.
Changing a tube at home is easy on a sunny day. Find a picnic chair, gather ye tools and implements and settle if for a quick spot of tube off/tube on. My weapons of choice are a powerful stand-up pump, three tyre levers (one broken), a pair of latex gloves (to avoid the dreaded black finger) and a nifty tool for getting the last bit of tyre bead back over the rim when all is done. Oh, and a spare tube - either new or patched.
My latest disaster - the core of the valve blew out as I removed the pump several miles from home. It came out with such velocity, it would have done significant damage to any eyeballs in the vicinity. Never had this happen before.
My nifty, $25 bit of yellow plastic that is great for aged finger and thumbs. I use kevlar reinforced tyres, and they stretch in the same way that flak jackets stretch - hardly at all. The blokes that work in bike shops who change flats all day long have thumbs the width of my wrist - they flick tyres back on with seemingly little effort, whilst I strain enough to develop a hernia. I found this bit of plastic advertised in a magazine, and bought it over the internet.
One end hooks inside the bead of the tyre, and the other side rests on the rim. You simply lever the bead up and over the rim. Simple. Getting it off afterwards is not always that simple, as the hook bit gets trapped under the bead and is reluctant to depart.
After changing this tube, I forgot to put my road pump back on the bike. So of course I got a flat after going over some broken glass 15km from home. I swapped the tubes over, and then waited for another cyclist to go by. Most cyclists will stop and ask how you are if they see you with your bike upside down on the side of the road - it's like flying a flag upside down.I had to wait about 15 minutes for someone to come past. I thought the path I was taking was well patronised - I always see other cyclists on it - but perhaps they were all in bed after staying up all night to watch the first leg of the Tour de France (I taped it). A very nice bloke of 62 pulled over and helped me out - he was riding into town where he was going to spend the afternoon assembling bikes in a bike shop. We rode together for 10 minutes or so and had a nice chat - he used to race when he was younger, and seemed to know every prominent cyclist in NSW personally.
It was a pleasure to drift along with him, although I had to leave him in the end as I was freezing. When I left, my bike thermometer read 23 degrees - beautiful weather - so I dressed light. Within 10 minutes, it was reading 17, and I was starting to feel nippy. I had to raise my flat cruising speed to 32-35 km/h to keep the blood flowing to my extremities. Even now, my toes are still chilled. He was tonking along at just over half that speed, and I could feel the icicles developing from the sweat that had previously been running down from my brow.
In a way, it's a good thing the flat cut my ride short - my legs were totally out of puff. The other day, they were zinging along with all turbos screaming. Today, the battery was utterly flat. No signal available. Out of service. It is so much nicer to be sitting inside a nice warm house - except that the bike needs a thorough degrease and clean.
Ah well, time to put the degreasing clobber on. Ciao.
A cracking read
I would not say that Theodore Dalrymyple's book, "Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass" is a can't put down book. But it is still a great read, although I can only digest a chapter at a time because the subject is a tough one to deal with. You can only take so many attempted suicides, beaten wives, hopelessness and depravity per day.
From what I've read so far, he makes it clear that the problems of the underclass are all about self control and self worth. Poverty - or lack of money - is clearly not an issue. He rips apart the fantasies and fads of modern psycho-babble and the "intellectuals" in a refreshingly straight forward manner.
I wish I could write like him.
From what I've read so far, he makes it clear that the problems of the underclass are all about self control and self worth. Poverty - or lack of money - is clearly not an issue. He rips apart the fantasies and fads of modern psycho-babble and the "intellectuals" in a refreshingly straight forward manner.
I wish I could write like him.
Saturday, 4 July 2009
New research?
The SMH announced today that:
Crikey, The Age used that December article twice as well - once in the Lifestyle section and once in Essential Baby. That's extra, extra recycling.
About the only difference between the latest article and the previous ones is that Doctors Craig and Mullan are no longer Doctors in the most recent incantation. They are plain old Lyn and Killian. Isn't it patronising and demeaning to strip women of their hard-earned titles like that?
I wonder what Barbara Boxer would make of that discourtesy?
Adele HorinNew study? Really? Would this be the same study mentioned back in December 2008 in The Age?
July 4, 2009
THE Howard government's family policies left a legacy of stressed, overworked parents and set gender equity back a decade, a new study shows.
A study by Lyn Craig and Killian Mullan, of the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of NSW, shows the ascendancy of the family model promoted by the former prime minister: a father in full-time work and a mother in part-time work, depicted in his speeches as "the policeman and the part-time sales assistant".
Mums still bear brunt of houseworkAdele Horin must be really into being green, since she seems to be rather good at recycling old articles.
Adele Horin
December 1, 2008
Dr Craig, with colleague Dr Killian Mullan, will present the findings at an international conference of time-use researchers, starting at the Wesley Conference Centre in Sydney today.
Crikey, The Age used that December article twice as well - once in the Lifestyle section and once in Essential Baby. That's extra, extra recycling.
About the only difference between the latest article and the previous ones is that Doctors Craig and Mullan are no longer Doctors in the most recent incantation. They are plain old Lyn and Killian. Isn't it patronising and demeaning to strip women of their hard-earned titles like that?
I wonder what Barbara Boxer would make of that discourtesy?
Pizza - carbohydrate of the Gods
A pizza you will not find on the take away menu anytime soon - olive tapenade base topped with thinly sliced tomato and Parmesan cheese. Different, and delicious. The trick is to make a thin and crispy base, apply a thin smear of tapenade and drain the tomato slices for as long as possible to get the water out of them. Otherwise, as happened on the second attempt, they dump a gallon of water onto the pizza once it goes into the oven, and that is not good for crispiness.
Oh, and plop some aoli on top as well.
Tomato sauce - 8 tomatoes slow roasted in the oven for 3 hours after being sprinkled with sugar and salt, plus a huge thing of garlic, a wad of fresh oregano from the garden, a glug of balsamic vinegar and a bigger glug of olive oil. Whizzed up in the blendy thing. Good to eat as it is.
Too damned much tomato paste on this pizza. Normally, I make a perfect amount for 3 pizzas. However, tonight I made two pizzas with an olive tapenade base, and two with tomato. The first one got 1/4 of the tomato paste, because I forgot I was making two with tapenade. Instead of putting the tomato paste in the fridge, I put all of it on this pizza. Should have put half of it in the fridge - too much tomato sauce really is too much.
My soon-to-be-trademarked wrinkly pizza base. This is what happens when you roll the dough out about 50% larger than the pizza stone. Oops.
Caramelised garlic aoli, on pizza. Surprisingly good. You would not want to be riding behind me tomorrow morning.
I got no photos of the 4 cheese pizza. It all went before I could get a photo.
Oh, and plop some aoli on top as well.
Tomato sauce - 8 tomatoes slow roasted in the oven for 3 hours after being sprinkled with sugar and salt, plus a huge thing of garlic, a wad of fresh oregano from the garden, a glug of balsamic vinegar and a bigger glug of olive oil. Whizzed up in the blendy thing. Good to eat as it is.
Too damned much tomato paste on this pizza. Normally, I make a perfect amount for 3 pizzas. However, tonight I made two pizzas with an olive tapenade base, and two with tomato. The first one got 1/4 of the tomato paste, because I forgot I was making two with tapenade. Instead of putting the tomato paste in the fridge, I put all of it on this pizza. Should have put half of it in the fridge - too much tomato sauce really is too much.
My soon-to-be-trademarked wrinkly pizza base. This is what happens when you roll the dough out about 50% larger than the pizza stone. Oops.
Caramelised garlic aoli, on pizza. Surprisingly good. You would not want to be riding behind me tomorrow morning.
I got no photos of the 4 cheese pizza. It all went before I could get a photo.
Tony Abbott - legend of liberty
Tony Abbott rightly branded the NSW government a "nanny state" this week for banning parents from smoking in a car with kids, and promptly copped some flak from one of the usual fake charities - Action on smoking and health.
The funny thing is this - I have trawled through the ASH website, and done several google searches, and can find no sign of an annual report for ASH. Interesting. I'd like to see exactly where their funding is coming from, where it is going, and what their top management is earning. ASH is supposedly partly funded by the Cancer Council, but a review of their latest annual report does not mention ASH in the Grants section of their financial statements on page 54. Hmm. Unless they are hiding it under the $4.1 million they spend on advocacy.
Working for a charity like the Cancer Council is not bad work. The top 7 managers took home $1.279 million between then, or an average of $182,000 each.
The Mad Monk was also criticised by a mob called "Democracy Watch - Australian for Political Funding Reform" - and if you read their web site, you get this:
In other words, he was attacked by a front group for the Greens. Why can't they just come out and say, "We are the Greens"?
The funny thing is this - I have trawled through the ASH website, and done several google searches, and can find no sign of an annual report for ASH. Interesting. I'd like to see exactly where their funding is coming from, where it is going, and what their top management is earning. ASH is supposedly partly funded by the Cancer Council, but a review of their latest annual report does not mention ASH in the Grants section of their financial statements on page 54. Hmm. Unless they are hiding it under the $4.1 million they spend on advocacy.
Working for a charity like the Cancer Council is not bad work. The top 7 managers took home $1.279 million between then, or an average of $182,000 each.
The Mad Monk was also criticised by a mob called "Democracy Watch - Australian for Political Funding Reform" - and if you read their web site, you get this:
Copyright Notice
Copyright © The Greens NSW 2004 - 2008. All rights reserved.
The Democracy4sale research project welcomes the use of data on this website by journalists, academics or anyone with an interest in political party donations.
We request that you credit either the Democracy4sale project or the Greens NSW.
In other words, he was attacked by a front group for the Greens. Why can't they just come out and say, "We are the Greens"?
Friday's ride
I could not blog about my ride yesterday - I was in bed by 7.30pm, passed out - stone cold dead from from exhaustion.
I knew it was going to be windy before I started, but not how windy. In my interlude from riding to work, I have not been riding on windy days. If I look out the window and the tree limbs are swaying too and fro, I go back to the couch. Therefore, I am totally out of shape for riding into the wind.
Getting to work was not too bad. It was chilly - a brisk 10 degrees when I suited up - but not evilly chilly. It's odd that I felt colder on the way home, when the bike thermometer was reading 20, than on the way to work. Then again, the thermometer seemed to wake up a kilometer into my ride and rapidly plunged to 17, then 15 degrees. That was more like it.
Except that I had believed the temperature as given by the thermometer to be correct, and had stuffed my jacket in my backpack, and gone with fingerless gloves rather than the full length gauntlets. My jersey was still damp with sweat from riding in that morning, and I was soon having trouble grasping the brake levers due to numb fingertips! I have been issued a locker at work, which will allow my wet gear to dry properly during the day, but have not been issued with a key.
The only way I know I have a locker is that I walked past them and saw that my name had been put on one of them. I have been told not to approach she-who-issues-the-locker-keys, as that is the best way to have my locker rights revoked. I have to wait until she feels that it is time to pay me a visit and hand over the key.
The problems really started when I hit the ANZAC bridge. The ANZAC bridge is fine to ride over when heading into the city - the bridge is reasonably steep, but from the Balmain side, you have this long, straight downhill run before it starts heading sharply upwards. Sensible riders go hell-for-leather on the downhill part and try and build as much speed and momentum as possible before tackling the rise. That sometimes means scooting between pedestrians at 50km/h on a confined path, which can be a bit hairy, but that generally gives them the idea that they should keep left, rather than filling the path from side to side.
The city side of the bridge is altogether different. Some wise engineer at the RTA came up with the idea of building a zig-zag approach for the bike path, so by the time you have ascended to the deck proper of the bridge, all momentum is gone. The zig zag path is also fairly steep - it's common to get stuck behind mountain bikes going zshh-zshh up the path in low-low gear, which equates to walking pace for most humans.
And when you get to the top of the zig zag, you find yourself facing the steepest part of the bridge. Somehow, that engineer with a wacky sense of humour managed to design a bike path that is most off-putting to beginner riders. Bike paths are supposed to be easy to use in order to encourage fat, unfit bastards to start using them. Building a path on one of the most heavily used routes into the city that has a degree of difficulty that would not be out of place on the Tour de France is not the best way to tempt first time riders to come back for a second attempt!
I don't mind it now of course - I usually come up the zig-zag a few gears up from low, and have the stamina to push up and over the steepest part at a reasonable clip. Thin, young wiry bastards occasionally go zipping past me, making me feel like a lumbering hippo trundling up the ascent, but in the main I find it an every day challenge to see if I can improve my time from the base of the zig-zag to the crest of the bridge.
Yesterday was different. As soon as I emerged from the zig-zag, which is in a wind shadow, I rode straight into a ferocious head wind. I was suddenly in low gear, pushing for all I was worth to get up to the crest. Every rotation of the cranks was an effort, and I didn't have the luxury of getting into a really, really low gear like mountain bikes do. I just had to grit my teeth and bear it, hoping that my spleen would not explode out of my side halfway up the hill. It was push-push-push-gasp, push-push-push all the way to the top. I even had to push on the downward slope, so nasty was the headwind. Normally, I coast down under brakes. This time, I had to pedal to keep moving!
Once I was over the top, the fun didn't stop. Apart from a nasty headwind, I was also being buffeted by strong gusty side winds. They were enough to push me sideways a bit every now and then, and I am not as light as a feather. I was giving everything a wide berth, worried that I'd be going around a pedestrian when I'd get bumped sideways enough by the wind to force a collision.
I got a feel for the strength of the wind when I hit the Bay Run. The Run loops this way and that, so sometimes the wind is in your face, others at your back. I came around a long bend and the wind was now behind me. I pushed up through the gears until suddenly there was no noise - the roaring in my ears was muted, and I was riding in the Cone of Silence. I was barely putting any pressure on the pedals, yet I was tonking along at 40km/h.
About 500 metres later, I was doing zero. I'd had another flat.
I found a park bench, and sat down to change the tube. That went ok, until I removed the pump after inflating the fresh tube. The bit that lives inside the valve stem came shooting out under pressure and disappeared into the grass, leaving me with a very flat tyre and no spare tube.
Thank goodness for mobile phones. J came and picked me up.
I woke up several times during the night and had to scrub bits of sand and grit out of my eyes. It was even worse this morning - I had a crust on my bottom eyelid of crud that had worked its way out overnight. On windy days, you really need to swap the sunglasses out for a set of goggles.
Such is life in the saddle. I am about to head out to buy some more inner tubes.
I knew it was going to be windy before I started, but not how windy. In my interlude from riding to work, I have not been riding on windy days. If I look out the window and the tree limbs are swaying too and fro, I go back to the couch. Therefore, I am totally out of shape for riding into the wind.
Getting to work was not too bad. It was chilly - a brisk 10 degrees when I suited up - but not evilly chilly. It's odd that I felt colder on the way home, when the bike thermometer was reading 20, than on the way to work. Then again, the thermometer seemed to wake up a kilometer into my ride and rapidly plunged to 17, then 15 degrees. That was more like it.
Except that I had believed the temperature as given by the thermometer to be correct, and had stuffed my jacket in my backpack, and gone with fingerless gloves rather than the full length gauntlets. My jersey was still damp with sweat from riding in that morning, and I was soon having trouble grasping the brake levers due to numb fingertips! I have been issued a locker at work, which will allow my wet gear to dry properly during the day, but have not been issued with a key.
The only way I know I have a locker is that I walked past them and saw that my name had been put on one of them. I have been told not to approach she-who-issues-the-locker-keys, as that is the best way to have my locker rights revoked. I have to wait until she feels that it is time to pay me a visit and hand over the key.
The problems really started when I hit the ANZAC bridge. The ANZAC bridge is fine to ride over when heading into the city - the bridge is reasonably steep, but from the Balmain side, you have this long, straight downhill run before it starts heading sharply upwards. Sensible riders go hell-for-leather on the downhill part and try and build as much speed and momentum as possible before tackling the rise. That sometimes means scooting between pedestrians at 50km/h on a confined path, which can be a bit hairy, but that generally gives them the idea that they should keep left, rather than filling the path from side to side.
The city side of the bridge is altogether different. Some wise engineer at the RTA came up with the idea of building a zig-zag approach for the bike path, so by the time you have ascended to the deck proper of the bridge, all momentum is gone. The zig zag path is also fairly steep - it's common to get stuck behind mountain bikes going zshh-zshh up the path in low-low gear, which equates to walking pace for most humans.
And when you get to the top of the zig zag, you find yourself facing the steepest part of the bridge. Somehow, that engineer with a wacky sense of humour managed to design a bike path that is most off-putting to beginner riders. Bike paths are supposed to be easy to use in order to encourage fat, unfit bastards to start using them. Building a path on one of the most heavily used routes into the city that has a degree of difficulty that would not be out of place on the Tour de France is not the best way to tempt first time riders to come back for a second attempt!
I don't mind it now of course - I usually come up the zig-zag a few gears up from low, and have the stamina to push up and over the steepest part at a reasonable clip. Thin, young wiry bastards occasionally go zipping past me, making me feel like a lumbering hippo trundling up the ascent, but in the main I find it an every day challenge to see if I can improve my time from the base of the zig-zag to the crest of the bridge.
Yesterday was different. As soon as I emerged from the zig-zag, which is in a wind shadow, I rode straight into a ferocious head wind. I was suddenly in low gear, pushing for all I was worth to get up to the crest. Every rotation of the cranks was an effort, and I didn't have the luxury of getting into a really, really low gear like mountain bikes do. I just had to grit my teeth and bear it, hoping that my spleen would not explode out of my side halfway up the hill. It was push-push-push-gasp, push-push-push all the way to the top. I even had to push on the downward slope, so nasty was the headwind. Normally, I coast down under brakes. This time, I had to pedal to keep moving!
Once I was over the top, the fun didn't stop. Apart from a nasty headwind, I was also being buffeted by strong gusty side winds. They were enough to push me sideways a bit every now and then, and I am not as light as a feather. I was giving everything a wide berth, worried that I'd be going around a pedestrian when I'd get bumped sideways enough by the wind to force a collision.
I got a feel for the strength of the wind when I hit the Bay Run. The Run loops this way and that, so sometimes the wind is in your face, others at your back. I came around a long bend and the wind was now behind me. I pushed up through the gears until suddenly there was no noise - the roaring in my ears was muted, and I was riding in the Cone of Silence. I was barely putting any pressure on the pedals, yet I was tonking along at 40km/h.
About 500 metres later, I was doing zero. I'd had another flat.
I found a park bench, and sat down to change the tube. That went ok, until I removed the pump after inflating the fresh tube. The bit that lives inside the valve stem came shooting out under pressure and disappeared into the grass, leaving me with a very flat tyre and no spare tube.
Thank goodness for mobile phones. J came and picked me up.
I woke up several times during the night and had to scrub bits of sand and grit out of my eyes. It was even worse this morning - I had a crust on my bottom eyelid of crud that had worked its way out overnight. On windy days, you really need to swap the sunglasses out for a set of goggles.
Such is life in the saddle. I am about to head out to buy some more inner tubes.
Friday, 3 July 2009
Green madness in Byron
The fruitloops in Byron Bay have gone off the deep end again, refusing to allow landowners to build seawalls to protect their properties from erosion.
I have a simple solution.
The landowners should give the council two fingers and build the walls anyway. When the council turns up with a bulldozer to demolish it, lie down in front of the dozer. At night, put sugar or sand in the fuel tank. Cut the hydraulic lines. Chain yourself to your sea wall. Get your friends to run around singing "we shall overcome" whilst waving red banners. Make sure young children are involved, and put at risk by heavy earth moving machinery. Call in the media and accuse the police of brutality and excessive force. Scream, rant and throw yourselves to the ground in a theatrical manner. Arrange for every ratbag, rent-a-crowd loonie to join in.
If it's good enough for the greens to pull those kind of stunts in order to block legalised logging activities, why shouldn't they be given a taste of their own medicine?
I have a simple solution.
The landowners should give the council two fingers and build the walls anyway. When the council turns up with a bulldozer to demolish it, lie down in front of the dozer. At night, put sugar or sand in the fuel tank. Cut the hydraulic lines. Chain yourself to your sea wall. Get your friends to run around singing "we shall overcome" whilst waving red banners. Make sure young children are involved, and put at risk by heavy earth moving machinery. Call in the media and accuse the police of brutality and excessive force. Scream, rant and throw yourselves to the ground in a theatrical manner. Arrange for every ratbag, rent-a-crowd loonie to join in.
If it's good enough for the greens to pull those kind of stunts in order to block legalised logging activities, why shouldn't they be given a taste of their own medicine?
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Side by Side
Whenever I visit Junior's school, I try and pick up a copy of a newspaper called "Side by side", which is described as "the newspaper for NSW public schools".
It's a bloody awful newspaper - full of the worst public sector goop one can imagine. They might as well translate old copies of Pravda and publish that instead. Everytime I try and digest it, I imagine an editorial committee of wierd-beards in their birkenstock sandals (plastic, zip-up shoes in winter), grey cardigans and corduroy trousers deciding on how to waste another slab of taxpayer's funds. I can't for the life of me think why anyone would read it voluntarily. I read it because it utterly horrifies me, and reminds me that socialism must be encased in a concrete block and dumped somewhere offshore in a depp ocean trench.
I was reading one of the issues that I picked up recently and found that I was vaguely disturbed. I couldn't put my finger on it, but then it struck me that the paper was putting an awfully large amount of emphasis on two issues only - green issues and black issues.
I pulled out my ruler and tried to determine how much of the paper was devoted to each topic.
For starters, the paper is 28cm x 39cm and has 24 pages. That gives it 26,208 square centimetres of paper to play with.
(These numbers don't add up precisely, because I was not being altogether precise in my measurements).
Of those 26,208 square centimetres of virgin paper, 6,888 were used on white space, headers, footers, advertisements and the usual "published by" legal guff. 28% of the surface area of the paper was devoted to.... nothing useful.
There were a stack of job ads at the back for teachers - they got 4,368 square centimetres. Sport took up 1,638 centimetres. That left 11,442 square centimetres for news.
3,724 square centimetres of available "news" space was devoted to environmental or aboriginal issues - 33% of the news. There was almost nothing devoted to what I would term educational issues - it was all puff pieces on greenies and various aspects of aboriginal education.
Thinking that issue must have been devoted to those issues, I took my ruler to the next issue.
The results were fairly similar.
Now two papers does not make a good sample, and the paper does not seem to be available on line, so I can't do any more analysis until I scarfle another paper on my next visit to the school. But bloody hell, if that doesn't give you a taste of where the heads of our educational bureaucrats are at, nothing will.
(There was nothing devoted to special needs in either issue).
It's a bloody awful newspaper - full of the worst public sector goop one can imagine. They might as well translate old copies of Pravda and publish that instead. Everytime I try and digest it, I imagine an editorial committee of wierd-beards in their birkenstock sandals (plastic, zip-up shoes in winter), grey cardigans and corduroy trousers deciding on how to waste another slab of taxpayer's funds. I can't for the life of me think why anyone would read it voluntarily. I read it because it utterly horrifies me, and reminds me that socialism must be encased in a concrete block and dumped somewhere offshore in a depp ocean trench.
I was reading one of the issues that I picked up recently and found that I was vaguely disturbed. I couldn't put my finger on it, but then it struck me that the paper was putting an awfully large amount of emphasis on two issues only - green issues and black issues.
I pulled out my ruler and tried to determine how much of the paper was devoted to each topic.
For starters, the paper is 28cm x 39cm and has 24 pages. That gives it 26,208 square centimetres of paper to play with.
(These numbers don't add up precisely, because I was not being altogether precise in my measurements).
Of those 26,208 square centimetres of virgin paper, 6,888 were used on white space, headers, footers, advertisements and the usual "published by" legal guff. 28% of the surface area of the paper was devoted to.... nothing useful.
There were a stack of job ads at the back for teachers - they got 4,368 square centimetres. Sport took up 1,638 centimetres. That left 11,442 square centimetres for news.
3,724 square centimetres of available "news" space was devoted to environmental or aboriginal issues - 33% of the news. There was almost nothing devoted to what I would term educational issues - it was all puff pieces on greenies and various aspects of aboriginal education.
Thinking that issue must have been devoted to those issues, I took my ruler to the next issue.
The results were fairly similar.
Now two papers does not make a good sample, and the paper does not seem to be available on line, so I can't do any more analysis until I scarfle another paper on my next visit to the school. But bloody hell, if that doesn't give you a taste of where the heads of our educational bureaucrats are at, nothing will.
(There was nothing devoted to special needs in either issue).
Losing lights
I was such a lazy sot this morning. I was up at 0615 (thanks to a Monkey elbow in the ribs), but sat around reading blogs and drinking coffee for an hour before developing the will to go outside. It's not like it was windy or wet, or even particularly cold. It was chilly - around 10 degrees - and still. I think my problem is having an office at home with no view - I can't see the sky from my desk, and that affects my motivation to move.
Once I did get moving, the sky was quite spectacular - those clouds are almost an upside-down ski field.
I hit a major bump on the road on the Leichhardt side of the Bay, and unbeknownst to me, my headlight bounced right out of its cradle and landed on the road (it was light enough to not need it to be switched on). There was a pack of half a dozen riders behind me, and they were kind enough to pick it up, catch me up and hand it over. That saved me at least a hundred bucks, and the prospect of riding home in the dark.
A similar thing happened on the way home - I crashed into a pot hole in Kent St, and heard a clatter behind me. I checked that I still had everything - pump, water bottle, wallet, camera and phone - and could not work out what had made that noise.
At the next set of lights, a cyclist pulled up next to me and told me that my back light had departed company with my bike, and the bloke coming up behind him had picked up my light! The light had fallen apart, with the base remaining attached to my bike, and the blinky bit and batteries hitting the road. All I got back was the blinky bit - the batteries had speared off somewhere else, so I had to ride home with no tail light. I have a spare front light in case my big rechargeable battery goes flat halfway home... now I need yet another tail light in case the primary light meets a bad end. Where will this end? So much for high speed, low drag.
That's two big favours other cyclists have done in one day - I must have built up some good karma somehow. Perhaps it's sending those care packs to the troops.....
And here we have the city at sunset - yes, it really was that pink. I have not fiddled with this photo at all. I think smog helps.
One thing that did bug me today is that I had no grip in my hands. My gloves kept on sliding around on the handlebars, and nothing I did would stop it. I normally change grip once a minute or so in order to stop my hands and forearms from going numb - I have racing handlebars, so one minute, I'll grip them using the horizontal part of the bar, and the next I'll change to the forward poking part. It didn't matter what I did - my hands kept sliding around, and I had trouble pulling on the brake levers when I needed to.
I initially blamed the gloves, as they were the full-fingered set. They lack the palm padding that the fingerless gloves have, and the baby seal skin that lines the palms of the fingerless gloves generally grips the handle tape like glue. However, when I swapped gloves for the ride home, the fingerless ones were just as bad. It's as if the handlebar tape has suddenly lost all its stickiness; or my forearms have suddenly developed a bad case of piss weak.
Tomorrow morning will be interesting, when I ride again at dawn. I am back to checking the weather forecast every night before bed - gusty winds tomorrow. Not very warm either. I feel major ball shrinkage coming on.
Once I did get moving, the sky was quite spectacular - those clouds are almost an upside-down ski field.
I hit a major bump on the road on the Leichhardt side of the Bay, and unbeknownst to me, my headlight bounced right out of its cradle and landed on the road (it was light enough to not need it to be switched on). There was a pack of half a dozen riders behind me, and they were kind enough to pick it up, catch me up and hand it over. That saved me at least a hundred bucks, and the prospect of riding home in the dark.
A similar thing happened on the way home - I crashed into a pot hole in Kent St, and heard a clatter behind me. I checked that I still had everything - pump, water bottle, wallet, camera and phone - and could not work out what had made that noise.
At the next set of lights, a cyclist pulled up next to me and told me that my back light had departed company with my bike, and the bloke coming up behind him had picked up my light! The light had fallen apart, with the base remaining attached to my bike, and the blinky bit and batteries hitting the road. All I got back was the blinky bit - the batteries had speared off somewhere else, so I had to ride home with no tail light. I have a spare front light in case my big rechargeable battery goes flat halfway home... now I need yet another tail light in case the primary light meets a bad end. Where will this end? So much for high speed, low drag.
That's two big favours other cyclists have done in one day - I must have built up some good karma somehow. Perhaps it's sending those care packs to the troops.....
And here we have the city at sunset - yes, it really was that pink. I have not fiddled with this photo at all. I think smog helps.
One thing that did bug me today is that I had no grip in my hands. My gloves kept on sliding around on the handlebars, and nothing I did would stop it. I normally change grip once a minute or so in order to stop my hands and forearms from going numb - I have racing handlebars, so one minute, I'll grip them using the horizontal part of the bar, and the next I'll change to the forward poking part. It didn't matter what I did - my hands kept sliding around, and I had trouble pulling on the brake levers when I needed to.
I initially blamed the gloves, as they were the full-fingered set. They lack the palm padding that the fingerless gloves have, and the baby seal skin that lines the palms of the fingerless gloves generally grips the handle tape like glue. However, when I swapped gloves for the ride home, the fingerless ones were just as bad. It's as if the handlebar tape has suddenly lost all its stickiness; or my forearms have suddenly developed a bad case of piss weak.
Tomorrow morning will be interesting, when I ride again at dawn. I am back to checking the weather forecast every night before bed - gusty winds tomorrow. Not very warm either. I feel major ball shrinkage coming on.
Having fun with numbers
The MSH (SMH) ran a story today on the Gravy Plane - how our retired politicians are using their free travel passes. They kindly posted some PDF's of who has been doing what, so I decided to analyse the numbers to see if anything stood out.
For starters, providing data in PDF format is beastly, and it required some massaging to get it into Excel. By massaging, I mean getting the bloody data into the right cells, not fiddling with the data IPCC style. For that reason, I only worked on those who spent over $50,000, which conveniently happened to be those on the first two pages. There are 10 pages of data - I could not be fagged to massage the bloody lot. Let's just go with the frequent fliers.
I plotted the data using simple X-Y scatter diagrams. The pinko Labor types were first - note that I have fixed the scales for each party at the same maximum values so that the charts are not distorted via different scales. Nice fit on the R-squared value. The trend line is a 2 factor polynomial. The uppity-down axis is the number of flights each member has taken, and the cross-the-bottom axis is the aggregate value in $,000.
Then come the Tories - the best fit trend line was a straight line rather than a polynomial, and the R-squared is a disappointing 0.54.
Whoa, check out the Nationals. That massive outlier is Ian Sinclair, who just happens to sit on the board of that fake charity that I had a look at a few weeks back. If he has been flying down to Sydney for board meetings, then the charity should foot the bill, not the taxpayer.
I tried getting fancy by using a radar plot to see if anything jumped out at me, but apart from Sinclair, the plots are all fairly similar.
For those in the top 66 frequent fliers, the average cost for retired Labor members is $79,000 and $81,000 for Libs. The Nats are blown out to $92,000, but that shrinks to $78,000 if you remove Sinclair. In other words, they are all equally into the trough, with barely a pork chop to separate them.
I then tried a different tack, analysing them by state rather than party. Since blogger renders tables like crap, I am doing this as dot points. The first number is how many members that state had in the top frequent fliers, and the second is the average cost for the top fliers in that state:
WA tops the league in cost, as you might expect given the cost of flights from there to anywhere else.
What the hell is it with Tasmania though? They have a minuscule population, not a lot of members in the reps, yet they have more members in the top frequent fliers than WA. Are they that desperate to get out of Tasmania?
Queensland - big state, not a lot of members in the top list. The top member on the list comes from Townsville, which is a long way from anywhere. A quick check on the Qantas web site shows that a flight from Townsville to Sydney is more expensive than one from Perth to Sydney. It's a loooong way.
Then there is South Australia. Crumbs! 11 members doing their best to get out as often as possible, averaging $83,000. I guess they were just popping across to Melbourne for a civilised weekend.
Victoria - big state in terms of population, yet only 1 more member in the top list than South Australia. Yet they are still expensive - why would anyone living in Victoria want to go anywhere else? I can understand people in Tasmania and SA wanting to split, but Victoria tends to be pretty nice.
NSW tops the list as expected, having the highest number of ex members. The average is pulled up a bit by NSW having Ian Sinclair with his snout right in the trough, and then the next highest is the globe trotting Tim Fischer, who lives in the middle of nowhere.
The fascinating thing is that the 4th biggest spender for NSW is Janice Crosio, who was the Member for Prospect - which is an electorate in western Sydney. The others are all Nationals who live out in the boonies. Janice Crosio is just down the road a bit from me. She took 154 flights to total up her $98,000, whilst Noel Hicks, who lives in the sticks as the member for Riverina-Darling, took 336 flights in order to spend $99,000 - a grand more than Janice.
I'd be interested to see where she has been zooming off to.
For starters, providing data in PDF format is beastly, and it required some massaging to get it into Excel. By massaging, I mean getting the bloody data into the right cells, not fiddling with the data IPCC style. For that reason, I only worked on those who spent over $50,000, which conveniently happened to be those on the first two pages. There are 10 pages of data - I could not be fagged to massage the bloody lot. Let's just go with the frequent fliers.
I plotted the data using simple X-Y scatter diagrams. The pinko Labor types were first - note that I have fixed the scales for each party at the same maximum values so that the charts are not distorted via different scales. Nice fit on the R-squared value. The trend line is a 2 factor polynomial. The uppity-down axis is the number of flights each member has taken, and the cross-the-bottom axis is the aggregate value in $,000.
Then come the Tories - the best fit trend line was a straight line rather than a polynomial, and the R-squared is a disappointing 0.54.
Whoa, check out the Nationals. That massive outlier is Ian Sinclair, who just happens to sit on the board of that fake charity that I had a look at a few weeks back. If he has been flying down to Sydney for board meetings, then the charity should foot the bill, not the taxpayer.
I tried getting fancy by using a radar plot to see if anything jumped out at me, but apart from Sinclair, the plots are all fairly similar.
For those in the top 66 frequent fliers, the average cost for retired Labor members is $79,000 and $81,000 for Libs. The Nats are blown out to $92,000, but that shrinks to $78,000 if you remove Sinclair. In other words, they are all equally into the trough, with barely a pork chop to separate them.
I then tried a different tack, analysing them by state rather than party. Since blogger renders tables like crap, I am doing this as dot points. The first number is how many members that state had in the top frequent fliers, and the second is the average cost for the top fliers in that state:
- ACT - 3 members, $62,000 average
- WA - 6 members, $117,000 average
- TAS - 7 members, $72,000 average
- QLD - 7 members, $91,000 average
- SA - 11 members, $83,000 average
- VIC - 12 members, $87,000 average
- NSW - 19 members, $73,000 average
WA tops the league in cost, as you might expect given the cost of flights from there to anywhere else.
What the hell is it with Tasmania though? They have a minuscule population, not a lot of members in the reps, yet they have more members in the top frequent fliers than WA. Are they that desperate to get out of Tasmania?
Queensland - big state, not a lot of members in the top list. The top member on the list comes from Townsville, which is a long way from anywhere. A quick check on the Qantas web site shows that a flight from Townsville to Sydney is more expensive than one from Perth to Sydney. It's a loooong way.
Then there is South Australia. Crumbs! 11 members doing their best to get out as often as possible, averaging $83,000. I guess they were just popping across to Melbourne for a civilised weekend.
Victoria - big state in terms of population, yet only 1 more member in the top list than South Australia. Yet they are still expensive - why would anyone living in Victoria want to go anywhere else? I can understand people in Tasmania and SA wanting to split, but Victoria tends to be pretty nice.
NSW tops the list as expected, having the highest number of ex members. The average is pulled up a bit by NSW having Ian Sinclair with his snout right in the trough, and then the next highest is the globe trotting Tim Fischer, who lives in the middle of nowhere.
The fascinating thing is that the 4th biggest spender for NSW is Janice Crosio, who was the Member for Prospect - which is an electorate in western Sydney. The others are all Nationals who live out in the boonies. Janice Crosio is just down the road a bit from me. She took 154 flights to total up her $98,000, whilst Noel Hicks, who lives in the sticks as the member for Riverina-Darling, took 336 flights in order to spend $99,000 - a grand more than Janice.
I'd be interested to see where she has been zooming off to.
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Fascinating stuff
Locking people up is a sucky, but necessary thing to do. The SMH has been reporting on crime and punishment lately in a manner that suggest intense disapproval. Take this latest one for instance:
There has been a surge in the number of juveniles on remand in the State's prisons, following a trebling in the number of arrests due to breach of bail conditions.A surge, or just a return to the tougher sort of environment that used to exist before the namby-pamby, feel-good, "it's all society's faultt" mob took over?
New data from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research shows a 32 per cent increase - from 181 to 239 - in the number of juveniles gaoled while on remand between 2007 and 2008.239 little crims locked up? That doesn't sound like a lot to me out of a population of 6 million in NSW.
The rise is due to an increase in the rate at which police are arresting juveniles for breaching bail conditions, along with those on remand spending longer in prison, the bureau said.Hoorah! The little turds commit a crime; they get bail; they go out and commit another crime and the cops nab them for it. However, instead of being let go to commit more crime, they get locked up. What is there to not like about that?
One third of bail breach arrests involved committing another crime, according to a study of a portion of the cases by the bureau.That in itself tells me everything we need to know about what sort of kids these are - bad. One crime can be dismissed as youthful exuberance or stupidity (been there, done that - but never got caught). But being busted for a crime and being brought in front of a Magistrate should be an experience that causes a person to go, "Whoops, better straighten out and be good from now on". If they don't want to make that change, I won't weep for them. Life is about making choices, not excuses.
However the most common bail condition breached was not complying with a curfew order, which accounted for 35 out of 50 cases, and not being in the company of a parent (29 out of 50 cases).Curfew order. Something that says, "You will not leave your house at night and fart around with other young crims, causing trouble and stealing the property of others". How difficult is it to comply with that? Stay at home and don't go out and steal stuff. Don't get drunk or stoned (at age 14 or 15). Don't carry a knife. Do your homework.
Also contributing to an increase in the length of time spent in prison on remand was a move by the State Government in late 2007 to block lawyers shopping around for lenient magistrates in the hope of getting bail for their client.Sounds like a sensible move to me. The government could go a step further and move to dismiss those magistrates. It's times like these that I like the US system of electing judges at this level. Don't like the piss-weak magistrate in your local court? Vote them out.
The Bureau said there was no link between the longer time being spent in prison on remand and the reduction in property crime which has been evident over the past few years.Really? Amazing bit of logic, that. I'll have to dig the report out and see how they justify that statement.
Self portrait
Two photos by Monkey. One of them is he.
Is that just the coolest self-portrait or what?
Is that just the coolest self-portrait or what?
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