Knob-jockey of the day

I'd like to say hello to my knob-jockey of the day - the driver of BGY71U. There I am, tonking down the street towards a T-junction with my right arm outstretched indicating that I am turning right. I had heard this character coming up behind me - he had the typical "exhaust the size of a baked bean can" appendage on his car, and I had an inkling that he'd be less than civil as a result.

Yep, my instinct was right. He simply cut right in front of me and turned left, even though I was indicating that I was going right.

Maybe he'll do that same trick in front of a truck one day. Back in the day - late 1980s that is - I got to fang around in one of these - a Mack truck. Not for long mind you, and I wouldn't really call it "fanging". I did discover though that if you blew the air horn when passing a herd of cows, they'd all lift their tails, poo explosively and run away. I also discovered that cow farmers did not find that amusing.

Have a look a the front end of this baby. When I was given my first spin in one of these, my instructor warned me that not long before, a Commodore had cut in front of one as the Mack was pulling up at a red light. The Commodore ended up being half its normal length, with the rear axle somewhere in the back seat and the bumper of the Mack resting on the head of the driver (who was crushed).

Mastering the art of the gear change in one of these was something that took a while. I was pretty good with the crash gearbox in the F1 6x6 (pictured below), but the gearbox on the Mack was something else.

By the way, the photo of that F1 was taken in Vietnam in 1970 (not by me - I was still in nappies back then). Just to give you an idea of how long the military keeps stuff, I drove one of these for the last time in 1990 (I think).

Back to the Mack. If my memory is still working, it had a line on the tacho for gear changing. You'd double-de-clutch, and whilst in neutral, you'd have to wait for the revs to drop to that line before pressing the clutch again and going into the next gear. That was the same going up and going down. I never gained enough experience in the driver's seat to do it by ear - I had to watch that dial like a hawk and rely on it for my changes. If you tried too soon, or left it too late, you'd never catch the gear you wanted. Such was life when we were young.

I seem to have drifted off thread somewhat. Ah well, stuff happens.

Why are ute drivers so impatient?

Another day, another potential collision with a ute driven by an idiot. I know that I like to have a go at taxi drivers from time to time, but I swear, ute drivers are 10 times worse. I read the other day that tradesmen are showing up much more often in the crash and speeding statistics than their percentage of the population would normally suggest. Something to do with them driving long distances to and from jobs, and speeding and falling asleep at the wheel. I can believe it. The bastards never, ever stop for me at roundabouts or traffic lights. They seem to think that just because Australia is in love with shows like Renovation Rescue, that ever other bastard on the road should give way to them.

Anyway, here I am doing a bit of overtaking. We're in a 50km/h zone, which means that there is not a huge difference in the speed between someone on a bike and a car travelling at the speed limit. On some stretches of this bit of road, I travel at the speed limit - 50km/h.

So I wait for the car coming up behind us to pass, then I look over the shoulder and see that the next car coming up is way back at the bend - a good hundred metres or more away. I know that at the speed we are travelling, I have plenty of time to pass and get back in.

Or so I should have. I get past in a few seconds, and next thing you know, I've got a horn-honking ute up my arse. He must have been travelling in order to get on my clacker that quickly.

I just wish some of these pricks would have a suck on an acetylene bottle and then go out for a smoke.

Malicious, useless or stupid?

This clip is from a few days ago, when I took a detour and had a look around Abbotsford. There I was, ambling along in the bike lane (not much of a lane really - more of a collection of busted up tarmac and pot holes bounded by a white line) when I see a bus coming towards me. I can also hear a car coming up behind me.

Well, bugger me if the driver of the car decides to pass me (they had a tonne of room) and then has a bad case of the chicken guts when they see the bus coming and they go left hand down into my tiny bit of mangled and battered tar.

For crying out loud, if you require 9 feet of separation between yourself and oncoming traffic, it really is time for you to give driving away and to start taking public transport. This is Sydney. If you haven't lost a wing mirror to a bus or a taxi, then you really aren't trying hard enough.

I had a small thought afterwards that maybe the driver was being malicious and was trying to run me off the road or scare me, but as their actions were not accompanied by the usual horn honking and arm waving and incoherent swearing, I think they were more useless than nasty.

Still, it's small consolation if you get knocked over anyway. Whether the driver was being incompetent or idiotic, hitting the concrete is still going to hurt in the same way.

Tuesday photos

Is it Tuesday already? Where is Friday? I need a day off already.

Weather was much better today, and all the fair-weather cyclist hordes came out again after hiding indoors from a bit of rain on Monday. Harden the fuck up, people.

Spent a bit of time chasing this bloke. From the angle of his arms, you can see he was working pretty hard. Either that, or his bike geometry is seriously messed up.

He passed lots of people, with me trailing in his wake. He was in a hurry to get somewhere. Zipping along behind him with one hand steering the bike and the other waving a camera around was not that easy.

Woops, had to duck back in to avoid a head on collision.

Note the head down position - a sign of being nicely puffed after a short, sharp climb.

That bloke took off and left me behind after we departed the bridge, so I sat behind this fellow for a few blocks. I was rather taken with his Brooks saddle - I think this is the first real one that I have seen.

The chaos that is a traffic light change at Sussex st when things are busy. Bikes going in all directions, all jostling for position and ducking and weaving through the pedestrians.

Not all car drivers are bike-hating loons. Next time you are in your car, keep an eye out for how many have a bike rack on the rear or on the roof. After spotting this car, I started keeping count, and saw three in just a few blocks. It's worth remembering that an awful lot of motorists are cyclists, and that almost all adult cyclists are motorists.

Here endeth the day.

One accident in a gas fired plant has killed more than the entire US civil nuclear program

Interesting.

Questions they won't ask

For the PM

What advice did you give to your kids in respect to losing their virginity?

Monday photos

Here is the untouched, unvarnished view from this morning. I haven't greyed out the colour or anything like that. It was so grey and drizzly and miserable, I thought I was in Scotland. Except that the water out there is about 2 feet deep (so no Loch Ness Monster), and we rarely see men in skirts with no undies running around the area. Although Mardi Gras is approaching.

Here is the same spot mid afternoon. Hard to believe it was the same day.

A contrail crossing one of the support wires for the ANZAC Bridge.

More from a wet, wet morning. It didn't bucket down - more like a constant, light drizzle that wasn't even sufficient to plaster down the hairs on my forearm. But it was enough to totally fog my glasses, and cause me to discard them after a kilometre or so and ride half blind. It was 22-24 degrees; beautiful riding weather really.

The bloke on the left doesn't have a rear mudguard, so he had a beautiful wet streak up his bum and back from the spray off his back wheel. A good day to be wearing lycra, since it doesn't bunch or chafe when wet.

A bloke with booties on his feet to keep them dry. I bought a new set last year, then packed them away at the end of winter and completely forgot about them! Would have been perfect today.

The morning rain diverted most cyclists and pedestrians onto the buses I presume - this walkway is normally packed with both, and is a rat run from hell. This afternoon, there was me and one other bloke on it.

And according to the weather bureau, we have more of the same to look forward to.

Cosy green scheme - where does it lead?

From the SMH today:

THE federal Environment Department has been accused of bungling the popular green assessment and zero-interest loan program and giving favourable treatment to one company.

Concerns were raised after the department established a computer link to streamline approvals for one company to assess homes, while other firms struggled with an overloaded phone system that receives 23,000 calls a day.

A spokesman for the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, said the NSW company Fieldforce was given a computer link to relieve pressure on the phone system as it is the largest company operating under the program.

Did they really get the computer link for that reason? Or was it because Tim Flannery is shilling for Fieldforce?

I agree

I am being attacked by muppets

Why is it that you can write a few thousand blog posts in your dusty little corner of the interweb and gather fewer comments than a fat chick at a school dance; then you pen something that a certain group finds objectionable and suddenly the comments roll in. OK, dribble in. I am not even unpopular enough to be flamed by a horde of muppets. Sigh.

It is fascinating though to be the object of abuse for a bunch of "tough guys". Like a few readers of this blog, I have stood at attention in the sun and wind and rain and had my personality (and all it's defects) inspected and loudly shredded by experts for hours on end.

Strangely enough, this got me thinking of 1735099. He pops up on sites that I peruse on a regular basis, and when he does so, he sometimes takes a pounding. Some might think, "Why would you come back after having to put up with crap like that?" And my answer would be, "What crap? He's put up with much tougher crap (like being shot at by both sides) than you or I will ever have to put up with."

A bit of on-line sparring is a laugh-a-minute compared to quietly trawling through the jungle for weeks on end looking for well armed gentlemen who want to kill you.

Which is why I find the tough guys with their tough number plates so interesting. I like a lot of hot cars. Just because I ride a bike, it doesn't make me some car-hating green freak. No, what I hate are idiots. I hate idiot pedestrians. I hate idiot drivers. I hate idiot dog owners. I hate idiot taxi drivers. I hate idiot bus drivers. I hate idiot surfers. I even hate idiot cyclists. And to me, having a number plate that says WE4PON spells "idiot". Just like "IM2SXY" or "HOTGUY". If you can't see that the owners of these are tools with a capital "T", I suggest you get back on the bus with all the other window lickers.

Thursday photos

A quiet day on the photo front. Almost. Here's a chap who is a cross between a cyclist and a para-sailer. He's wearing a yellow reflective vest over a normal shirt, and he's obviously got it partly open at the front and collecting air because from the back, it's billowing out like a drogue chute. I tried one of these vests early in my cycling career, and quickly switched to a proper lycra jersey. It might look like a mu-mu on me, but at least it doesn't billow out like a table cloth draped over the backside of an elephant with gas.

The other thing about this chap is that he had a horrible skid lid on his noggin. Most of my fellow travellers are into helmets that have more holes in them than the ships of the Spanish Armada, or the latest IPCC report. This one looks more like my ski helmet - a perfect receptacle for keeping heat in, rather than letting it out. This bloke is well on his way to a baked head.

Backus Packus Extremis. At first, I thought he was lugging around a set of golf clubs. My next thought was that it was a cricket bag. In the end, I had a good look from side on and couldn't decide what the bag was for. Cornering with this on would be a real bitch.

Dogs and their idiot owners

I like dogs. Well, most dogs. But there are times when I really hate their idiot owners. Like a pair of them walking their dogs on the bike path and blocking it completely, when there is a perfectly good (and empty) pedestrian path right next to them. Yes, run from my wrath, you gumbies.

Riding in the rain

I don't give a bugger about the rain when I'm coming home - especially if I've gotten wet on the ride into work. However, I have this thing about getting on my bike in the morning when it's raining. I like start in the dry. I don't care if it starts raining at the end of my driveway - so long as I have pulled the bike out and mounted up in the dry. It's a weird psychological thing.

The rain came in today at just the right time - when I was on the edge of the CBD. That meant I was warm (and looking forward to a refreshing cooling off), and it wasn't that far to work, meaning I wouldn't actually have to ride in the rain for that long. 10 minutes max.

As I waited at a red light, the bloke next to me made a comment that at least we weren't in suits. There were about 10 of us in a pack, idly watching the suits scurrying across the road under their umbrellas in a torrential downpour. The suits looked at us in a pitying way - we were stuck in the middle lane, just having to cop it - but when you've got the good gear on and it's 24 degrees, who gives a bugger? Much worse to be under a leaky umbrella that is being blown this way and that, and treading in a puddle and having to squelch around with a wet sock for the rest of the day.

Anyway, here is a brief view of rain falling in buckets. Look for the rooster tail coming off the rear wheel of the bloke in front as I cross his path. Yes, not very interesting really.... but what the hell.

Wednesday photos

Great number plate. No idea what the significance is.

A very relaxed bloke (in thongs) chatting on his phone as we cross the Pyrmont Bridge.

A regular sight as I cross Victoria Rd. The P-plater in the black Barina indicated by the yellow arrow has attempted to turn right at the lights from the middle lane - a no-no in peak hour traffic. The furious honking of horns from the cars piled up behind that car was something to hear; like the bellowing of wildebeast.

Another sign of an old sweat - a saddle with holes worn in it from extended use, and a frame that is beyond cleaning.

I had always thought that the RTA cleaned the path over the ANZAC Bridge with some sort of motorised street sweeper. I went in late earlier this week, and found 3 blokes doing it the old fashioned way with brooms and a bin. In typical RTA fashion, this bloke was leaning on this broom having a gas bag.

Perfect accessory for today - a waterproof sachel. It absolutely pissed down this morning just as I reached the CBD. That meant having to change into wet clothes for the ride home, as we don't have any drying facilities in the office. Yuk.

High tides and low tides

As part of their ongoing quest to foment moral panic in our midst, Ashfield Council has put up the obligatory "global warming is going to drown us all" type signage around The Bay. Their take on it is that we'll be seeing higher high tides in about 30 years time, and when that happens, our feet will get wet.

Oddly enough, as I went past a few of those "moral panic markers" today, the tide was as low as I have ever seen it. It was mudflats in all directions.

And mud bins as well.

Here's a tide marker, with feet dry.

Here's the blurb from council.

Another view of the low tide. The interesting bit here is that it appeared there had been a very high tide earlier in the day. All the floaty-type rubbish had been blown down this end of the Bay, and then it had been blown out of the water and onto the foot path and grass. The water level would have to be really high for water bottles and so forth to be blown back onto dry land.

So it looks like we might be experiencing record high and low tides.

Some parents are idiots

A TEENAGER banned from school because of her hair colour says she only changed it because she was teased by students about her naturally red locks.

Phylicity Ward, a Year 10 student at St Paul's High School in Lake Macquarie, was told on Friday not to return to school until she changed her hair colour to something "more natural".

Phylicity? WTF?

Darling Harbour

A selection of seven photos of the Darling Harbour area, taken just outside the Maritime Museum. The grey tub on the left is HMAS Vampire, the smaller grey tub on the right is HMAS Advance. People as ancient as me might remember the TV series "Patrol Boat" - this is that patrol boat. The thing with the masts in the background is the Endeavour replica.

A cruise ship of some sorts leaving the harbour. You can just see a tug at the stern. I liked the way it is framed with the light house.

A big flag pole.

A green and yellow ferry heading for the Darling Harbour wharf, framed by the guns of the bat boat.

And how better to close off than with a view of some banners.

Monday photos

More on my series on newbies. This is not a newbie - the faded state of his gloves gave that away. They were bleached half white from the continual application of sweat and sun. It's the little things that give the old sweats away. The state of your handlebar tape can also provide a clue - unless you are the obsessive type that rewraps your handlebars as soon as they start looking a little shabby.

Bloody hell, it was busy this morning. I was in the middle of this pack going over the Pyrmont Bridge. Most were just tonking along at a sedate, pedestrian friendly pace, but two tools decided things were moving too slowly for them, and they blasted down the outside in an attempt to shave 4 or 5 seconds off their ride into work.

No pedestrians were killed in the taking of these photos.

Gumby

Yeah, ok, I was taking this light a little late. My excuse is that I was charging up the hill to this intersection, and when you're on a good thing, you stick to it. What I wasn't expecting was this gumby turning left from the right hand lane right in front of me.

Feral van driver

Geez, it was a lovely morning this morning. The sun was shining, the wind was not blowing, and even the taxi drivers were sane and staying in their lanes.... and then I came across this crane obstructing the road. The crane was not the problem. The lollypop man was not the problem. I was not the problem. I didn't mind the holdup at all, as the repressed engineer in me likes watching big tall things lifting stuff into the sky.

No, the problem was the dickhead driver of the van who didn't want to obey the lollypop man at the other end of the single lane, and stop. He was driving at me so furiously, the lollypop guy had to stick his lollypop in front of the van's windscreen in order to get him to stop.

Frankly, I thought the van was not going to stop, and I was looking for an exit as he approached. But you should have heard the van driver go bezerk at the lollypop guy after he pulled up. I didn't catch exactly what he was saying, but I got the volume (very loud) and the tone (exceptionally furious). The tone and noise was all about "How dare you think that I was not going to stop", when both me and the lollypop guy were certain he was about to tear the wrong way into a one way traffic flow.

I should have stopped and gone back and told him that I was with the lollypop guy, and that if he wanted to be a racing driver, he should do some try outs at the track. Dickhead.

Damn the LACC and their speedy riders

I was the hubbard for a moment this morning. Doesn't happen very often. Still, when you get taken out by a group that race every weekend, it's not that bad.

Happy, shiny wheels

Took a tip today from my neighbour, who is much thinner and faster than me on two wheels, and hung the bike from the hills hoist in order to give it a de-grease and scrub.

Boy, do I wish I found out about that trick 5 years ago. A burdensome, filthy, back-aching chore was actually not too bad. Monkey even gave me a hand, which consisted of him scrubbing the same section of wheel about 50 times. I have this feeling I am going to apply the brakes in the morning and find that..... I have no braking power because there is still soap all over the rim.

I now have a clean, shiny bicycle - almost like a newbie. Except for the chips and scratches in the paint work, and the creaks and groans that it gives out every time a hill is hammered (the bike creaks and groans - I puff and pant).

I figured out today that there are several more indicators of newbie status. The first is the lack of a weather beaten look. If a cyclist has smooth, soft skin that is any colour but dark brown, then they are a newbie. I have the look of someone that has squinted into the rain/sun/hail/wind/bug swarm once too often.

Another sign is the legs. I mentioned calf muscles the other day - when a good cyclist is moving, their calf muscles start to look like a sock full of snakes having an orgy. But the thighs are also worth looking at. Size is not necessarily the issue - look instead for funny looking muscles poking out of odd places. You'll know it when you see it. A newbie will have the soft, round thighs of an office worker. An old hand has thighs that are as angular and chunky as... I don't know - maybe think Jesse Ventura in Predator.

The forecast says it is going to rain all week. Why on earth did I wash my bike today?

Slip sliding away

There's a great clip over at Copenhagenize showing lots of cyclists losing it on an icy patch and going down. Just the sort of thing WRX drivers would salivate over.

Had my own version of this last time it rained. We don't get ice down this way - never gets cold enough - but we do have concreters that love to lay the smoothest bit of concrete you've ever laid eyes on. They must buff it until it shines like marble.

Which is great if you like smoothe, shiny concrete, but not so great when you want some grip in the wet. Then I prefer concrete that has been bagged shortly after laying.

The difference with my little slide is that it was a power slide. Yes, hard to believe that I could put out enough power to have the rear break out, but I amazed myself and did just that. It was an uphill section with a right angled bend, and as I put down the juice to go up and around the corner, out went the back of the bike.

It whipped out so sharply, one shoe clip popped out of the pedal and that essentially self corrected the problem. With no more power going down, the wheel stopped spinning and I was able to stay upright and get the bike back on track.

It reminded me of when we used to do broggies as kids in the gravel. Great fun with a bike with a back-pedal brake on the rear wheel. Get some speed up, hit the gravel and then stand on that pedal and see where the ride takes you. Safety Nazis don't like kids doing that these days, as the dust kicked up during the broggy is seen as an environmental hazard. And it scares the lizards.

Is the west really a destroyer of cultures?

Every now and then, us westerners (and white guys in particular) get accused of destroying an "ancient and noble" culture. Coca-Cola seems to be the favoured weapon of choice.

But stop and think for a minute. Think about what has happened to western cultures over the last 20, 50 and 100 years.

British culture appears to have been destroyed since Blair came to power - that was not that long ago.

The 1960s and 1970s supposedly saw huge seismic shifts in western cultures - hippies, the sexual revolution, the green movement and so on. Australia's culture looks nothing like it did in say 1959.

My grandfather, who was born in the late 1800s, would not recognise Australian culture today, and I doubt we would fit easily into the culture of his time.

In short, cultures are changing and evolving all the time. They are undergoing a process of creative destruction.

What I find hilarious is that the people that complain about the destruction of the culture of a tribe of remote African pygmies are the same that demand that we must change our own culture (new flag, new national anthem, new head of state, worship multi-culturalism, erase the influence of the church, stamp out bogans etc etc). Even better, they are the first that demand that we stamp out practices in other countries such as female genital mutilation, which are cultural practices.

"Progressives" in other words are far and away the worst culprits when it comes to destroying cultures.

Separated at birth

Kae gave me an idea about separated at birth.....

Are we in a real estate bubble?

Here's an interesting equation to apply here in Sydney:

This is the kind of metrics that scream housing bubble. And keep in mind rental prices are more sensitive to monthly data because you are paying this amount out of your net income. No tax breaks, toxic mortgages, or any other gimmick. One simple rule when evaluating real estate is trying to figure out a home price based on rental income. One I use is the following:

$2,250 x 12 months x 10 = $270,000

We're currently renting, and the owner has had the place valued three times in the last 3 months (he's re-financing). We know what the valuers think the place is worth - we asked them.

I ran the above equation on our rent, and compared it to the valuer's estimation.

According to the above equation, either we are paying less than 1/4 the rent we should be, or the place is over valued by a factor of 4.5.

The price would have to fall 78% to bring it back in line with what it is renting for.

Ouch. Bubble anyone?

Culturally sensitive negotiation technique

That's gotta hurt.

Moonbat monitoring

My favourite moonbat, Mark Mann, copped an utter pasting this week from a cabal of angry westies. Poor bugger. It must be a shock to the system to emerge from the company of your hip friends in a Leichhardt cafe, were you have been discussing the evils of capitalism, to suddenly be brought face to face with the harsh reality of life in the suburbs. Or life out west. Or death out west, as I prefer to think of it.

But isn't that the beauty of the interweb - connecting the east and west (and is eastern and western suburbs)?

Mark provided a link to a fascinating report (if you are into these sorts of things) on how much food we waste each year. Being an inquisitive type, I took a look.

Before I dip into the report, just remember that it was published by The Australia Institute. Here is their philosophy:

Our Philosophy

With new dilemmas confronting our society and our planet, a better balance is urgently needed. Unprecedented levels of consumption co-exist with extreme poverty. Technology has connected humanity as never before, yet civic engagement is declining. Environmental neglect continues despite heightened ecological awareness. If genuine progress is to be achieved, conscience, equity and concern for the future must be the guiding principles of our democracy. Socially just, environmentally responsible and economically viable solutions are possible, but only if insightful questions are combined with excellent research.

Hmm, only rates about 7.6 on the moonbat scale. "conscience, equity and concern for the future must be the guiding principles of our democracy" - bleah, I want to vomit. How about liberty, prosperity and freedom as our guiding principles?

Let's get started:

Australian households are throwing out more than $5 billion worth of food each year..

Shocked? Well, let's wait a minute, get past the headline, and ask how that number was calculated.

reducing food waste has the capacity to deliver significant environmental benefits at no cost to government. Food retailers represent a major barrier to implementing effective food waste policies, since their profits are contingent on the amount of food sold rather than the amount of food consumed. To overcome this, better public understanding of the problems associated with food waste needs to be a priority for governments at all levels. Without considerable policy change in this area, household waste is likely to grow as incomes rise and the number of occupants in each household shrinks.

What an illiberal bucket of poo. Read that again, and see if you can detect the call for even more government regulation in our lives. It implies that eeeeevil supermarkets, who make profits (!), have to be regulated. And stupid consumers need to be told what to do.

Agriculture contributed 14.8 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2007. Additional to the direct emissions from agriculture are the emissions associated with transporting food to the shop shelf and then to the consumer’s home. Further emissions are generated from the decomposition of organic waste. Food waste is an unnecessary and easily avoidable contributor to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and reducing such waste would, in a literal sense, deliver ‘least cost abatement’.

To me, this is why they published this study. As with so many things these days, it's all about global warming. We must be taxed and regulated and told what to do, all in the name of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. And in case you think I am exaggerating, here is a note from page 5:

The categories used in the survey were selected to permit the future calculation of greenhouse gas emissions associated with food waste.

In a note at the bottom of page 2, I found this:

It is worth noting here that agriculture and transport fuels are insulated from the government’s Climate Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). Furthermore, the single approach of ‘price-based mechanisms’ in the CPRS appears misguided when people already act irrationally in throwing away $5.2 billion worth of food.

Is it "irrational" for me to throw away rotten food? Should I drink milk that has gone off, and eat chicken that is past it's used by date?

The average Australian household throws out an estimated $616 worth of food a year, which equates to $239 per person

For our household, that would equate to $1195 per year. I take the bins out each week, and I know what goes into our kitchen bin. I also do the shopping a lot of the time, so I know what food costs and what we are throwing out. I ran a few numbers through my head, and there is no way we are throwing out even 10% of that - unless we get an attack of moths in the flour etc. Even then, tossing out half a bag of weevil infested flour costs less than $2. I just can't see where numbers like that come from. We have 4 hungry males in the house - we chuck out almost nothing! The poor old worms in the worm farm are starving!

While it is possible to reduce food waste and, in turn, reduce the impact of food production on the environment, our results suggest that food wastage will continue to be a problem unless government takes steps to address it. In fact, without significant policy changes, it is likely to increase. The results presented in this paper reveal a strong link between household income and levels of food waste. Given expectations of continued increases in household income, it is likely that food waste will also increase

So getting richer is a problem, is it? So what is the solution - make us poorer?

Then we get into the survey. This is a ripper:

Q25. How many people in your household are vegetarian?

I surmise that because the authors found no link between being a vegetarian and being less wasteful, they said nothing in the report about meat eaters vs vegos. It would make me laugh if they found that vegetableheads in fact throw out more food than us carnivores - but I guess we will never know.

Most of the questions are like this:

Q17. Please estimate the original cost of rice, pasta or bread that was thrown away in the

past week.

• Less than $1
• $1-$5
• $5-$10
• $10-$20
• $20-$50
• More than $50
• Not sure

Which is fine, except that everything is based on estimates, and the ranges are quite large. Think about the cost of rice, pasta and bread for a minute. We go through 5 or 6 loaves of bread per week, and all we toss out are the crusts. We're buying around $20 worth of bread per week, and tossing out maybe 30 cents worth - assuming crusts have value to someone.

A 1kg bag of rice is about $4. We feed the worms a few spoon fulls each week that the kids haven't eaten - maybe 20 cents worth. Same with pasta. Oops, not the same with pasta. We never throw out pasta.

The problem with the survey is this - it fails to ask you what you spend per week on these products, so it's very easy to over estimate how much you waste in dollar terms. It's a beat up.

The only way I can see them getting to the values they have reported is via this question:

Q18. Please estimate the original cost of any restaurant or takeaway food that was bought in the past week and not eaten, and then discarded.

We know takeaway is more expensive than making it yourself. If I throw out a container of Pad Thai, I am tossing out the equivalent of 4 or 5 loaves of bread, or 3kg of rice in value terms. When we get Thai, it usually costs us up to $80 to feed the family. If we throw out half a container of Red Curry Beef, that's the same as tossing out six or seven dollars. But it is a very small amount of waste. And in terms of a meal that might consists of 10 containers of food, hoiking half a container (5% of the meal) is not the end of the world.

In summary, I think this report is full of overinflated figures that have been created via a dodgy calculation and surveying methodology. On top of that, the findings are beaten up, confusing the value of products with the volume of space they take up in landfill. And it's all done in the name of foisting more regulation and tax on all of us.

A pox on this survey.