Spring Cycle, Part 2

Lots of people caught the train to North Sydney, so the crowds really picked up at that point. Riding to the start line became a real chore, with me stuck in traffic barely able to crawl up a shallow rise at 15km/h.

This recumbent was an interesting bike, with an internal hub for gears and lots of really low gears. I doubt the wisdom though of dressing in black in something so low to the ground (and invisible to drivers).

Don't see many cyclists in purple.

The start line - it's way off in the distance. It took me 15 minutes to get from where I joined the queue to the actual start. Very boring. They were letting packs of about 150 go at a time, and leaving lots of time between them.

At last - the start, with nothing out in front. We were held here for several minutes to let the group in front get away. I caught the rear of that group within a kilometre or so. There were some very slow riders out yesterday.

The toll gates on the Harbour Bridge - and a sign "do not stop". That was my motto for the day - just keep going, and don't stop.

Lot's of people did stop though on the bridge for photos. Plenty also stopped for flat tyres. I'd see dozens of people changing flats over the next few hours. A big risk was damage from collisions, like getting a pedal caught in someone's spokes. There were a lot of hopeless cyclists weaving to and fro, which is not good when in a tight pack.

40km/h speed limit - I wish. There was a stiff headwind blowing, so I was happy to cross the bridge at 25km/h. That made me one of the fastest people in my group!

Onto the bridge proper, with the two eastern lanes closed to traffic. The expansion joints in the road are a total menace.

How nice to have a big strip of concrete between us and that bus.

Now, for part 3.

Spring Cycle, Part 1

Sunday was Spring Cycle - a day when well over 10,000 cyclists brave Sydney's roads (and weather) for a ride from North Sydney to Homebush Olympic Park. You can do a variety of rides, depending on your fitness level etc. I opted for the full length ride of 50km - that became 80km once you add on getting to the start line and then getting home. Entry is $60.

After getting caught in the crowds the year before last, I vowed to get to the start when the "intermediate" group was supposed to take off. Silly me - I left home at least 45 minutes too late for that. More on that later.

At 6.30am, Lilyfield Rd was deserted, apart from a cold, bored cop standing at the lights waiting for the action to start. (He's not in the photo).

When I got to the end of Lilyfield Rd, the first of the fast movers were appearing. They must have started on the dot of 0630. I was still half an hour away from the start.

As I crossed the ANZAC Bridge, there were more early movers on the old bridge below me.

Even more appeared on the expressway as I hit the edge of town.

Along the edge of Barangaroo, there were hordes of cyclists - some yelling at me that I was going the wrong way.

I really had to hand it to the parents that towed their kids for the entire 50km - like the little girl in the middle on the pink bike.

Check out the rivets on that bridge.

I have no idea why she put her leg out - I think she was that much of an amateur, she was losing her balance! I was to strike lots more like that before the day was out.

Through the rails is the blue of the pool below Luna Park. I used to swim there when I lived over this way. My bike temp gauge was reading 12 degrees - and there were people doing laps in the pool. I was never that keen on swimming - doing laps before 0700 in Sunday when it's freezing.

Then the dreaded stairs to get off the Harbour Bridge.

And now for the next installment....

Water cuts and refugees

I know that there are resettled refugees living and working in the Murray-Darling area because my in-laws have helped quite a few to settle there over the years (my in-laws being refugees themselves).

Somewhere like Griffith is probably not a bad spot to live if you've recently been accepted as a refugee. The area was developed by post-war immigrants, so it's wog heaven. There's lots of entry level jobs that anyone can do even if you have little or no English - but are willing to work hard. The place is over run with backpackers every year from every corner of the globe, who speak every language imaginable, and they all seem to get work picking and packing fruit and so on.

The lefties, and the Greens in particular, are full of compassion for refugees. All the refugees I have ever met (and I won't claim to have met a lot) want to get on with life. They want to work, buy a house, perhaps start a business, get the kids educated and so on. I am yet to meet a slack-arsed no-hoper.

And that's exactly what those resettled refugees in the Griffith area have done - found employment, picked up English as they went and settled into the community. However, the Greens will destroy their way of life if the water cuts go through. They'll be out of work, they'll lose their homes and businesses and they'll have to move their families elsewhere and start again. The most vulnerable members of the community will be those that will suffer first.

I bet the Greens never factored that in. Where's their compassion now?

Heatbulbs - what a great idea

(Reuters) - A German entrepreneur is bypassing a European Union ban on light bulbs of more than 60 watts by marketing his own brand as mini heaters.

Siegfried Rotthaeuser and his brother-in-law have come up with a legal way of importing and distributing 75 and 100 watt light bulbs -- by producing them in China, importing them as "small heating devices" and selling them as "heatballs."

Thanks to Tim Worstall for that.

Remember, you read it here first.

The Murray-Darling - predictions of a fiasco about to unfold

Here are my predictions of the unintended consequences that will occur if the Greens get their way.

Water cuts will lead to thousands of job losses, business closures and a fall in food production. Greens will blame "greedy banks" for business bankruptcies.

One Green apparently stated that instead of growing our own food, we should just import "cheap rice" from Asia. Their usual hatred of "globalisation" will be forgotten in their desire to replace locally grown rice with globally sourced rice.

With a fall in food production, food costs will increase. The Greens will blame "greedy farmers" for increased prices, not a reduction in supply.

Cheap rice will be imported, but the Greens will complain that Asian farmers are not being paid enough for it (at the same time as complaining that local farmers are being paid too much), and demand that we pay a "fair trade" price for rice.

Rice prices will go up to "fair trade" prices. The Greens will then complain about the impact of rising food costs on the poor. The Greens (and ACOSS) will demand higher dole payments or food subsidies. It will be lost on them that the poor and unemployed were previously farmers on the Murray-Darling, or business owners in the major towns.

Rural job losses will lead to migration to the cities. The Greens will then complain that there are too many people in the cities, and that we should encourage jobs in country areas. Creating jobs will require subsidies, so taxes will have to go up.

Greens are drawn from the wealthiest segment of the population. They will predictably scream the loudest when tax increases are mooted, or they will get stuck into tax avoidance schemes. The increased tax burden will predictably fall on middle Australia, as the Greens cry out for higher taxes, then pay their accountants and lawyers to avoid paying them.

At the end of all this, the Greens will fail to comprehend that all of this is their fault.

You just can't win

The police have been issued with Tasers because they tend to fatally shoot too many mentally deranged people.

When they use a Taser on someone who is mentally deranged and not cooperating, they cop even more flak.

Crikey moses people - what do you want? Do you want the police shooting loonies or just zapping them? Make up your freaking minds please!

I don't believe policing is supposed to be a fair fight. It's supposed to be an unfair fight - the police should always have more force and violence at their disposal than crooks and neer-do-wells.

Because if the cops go man on man with loonies, they generally end up getting injured - and then the same people that complain about police shootings and zappings complain about the cost of police compensation costs!

Friday photo

Just the one photo today. After the road-choking hordes of yesterday, there wasn't much to snap today. Or maybe it just seemed that way.

Bloody wind was blowing a gale on the way home - straight into my face of course. Legs are now cooked.

After a bit of time off the bike, it took the legs 4 days to properly recover from having a rest. Until yesterday, I was getting cramps and what felt like minor muscle tears all over the place. After 5 days in the saddle, they've finally hardened up and feel back to normal. I swear that my hammies were so tight on Wednesday, you could have played the Deliverance theme on them.

Will you pedestrians please get the f*ck out of my bike lane

How hilarious that Tim Blair should have a posting today on Clover Moore's fairly useless bike lanes. I have been trying to use the lane through Pyrmont most days - I think I am close to giving up. It's too narrow, which means it's slow, and I have to stop or slow down nearly every day because idiots step from the footpath into the bike lane without looking. Most aren't crossing the bike lane - they've decided to walk along it like these four.

The bloke with the carton of beer on his shoulder veered hard left just as I reached him and I avoided him by the skin of my teeth. Even after that near miss, he didn't go back to the footpath - he just continued on walking up the bike path, chatting on his phone.

This path might work if the council puts up an electric fence between the pedestrian bit and the bike bit.

Ride to Work Day photos

As the title suggests, today was Ride to Work Day. Doesn't mean much to me, as I ride to work almost every day. Might as well proclaim a Drive to Work Day for those that prefer or have to drive.

It was a murky old day, with a few light showers in the morning - I thought that would discourage a lot of faint hearted newbies.

But no, they were out in all shapes, ages, sizes and speeds.

There was an official stand at Pyrmont, where you could pick up a free banana, get a voucher for a cup of coffee at a nearby cafe and get yourself filmed by the camera man.

I've never seen the route this crowded before - the queue at the lights was something else.

This trail of cyclists stretches the length of the entire block and beyond.

It was two way traffic two.

And they stretched around the bend as well...

I didn't take any photos on the way home because the heavens opened and it poured. I was drenched within seconds - but no matter. I love that kind of weather - a balmy 20 degrees, no wind and lots of rain to cool you down. It would be horrible if you weren't wearing lycra - but that's why I wear lycra. You never know how conditions will change throughout the day.

Tuesday photos

Dude in a suit - don't see too many of these on bikes. We've got a long way to go before Sydney starts to resemble Copenhagen. Still, gotta start somewhere.

After a few weeks of stuffing around, most cyclists appear to have gotten used to the idea of using the new green bike lane through Pyrmont.

A bloke like me - ie, someone who fails to clean their bike regularly. I could hardly see the lower part of the frame through all the mud that had built up on it.

Heavy load - something I really try to avoid. This bloke has a really bulgy backpack on - which creates all sorts of imbalances. Here's an idea - just pack less crap.

Carbon Trust - epic fail

Words fail me. So I'll just paste a link.

Monday photos - with very cool cargo bike

Here it is - a Sydney first. Family on a cargo bike - how very Copenhagenize. They looked like they were having a hoot. I've been thinking about getting one of these for popping down to the shops.

Now that the weather is getting warmer, we're seeing more family cycling around the place. Over winter, the kids and mums disappear, and only us older grizzled types are silly enough to brave the elements.

How do you tell a PRO cyclist from a commuter? Easy - a PRO cyclist will never be seen dead in a fluoro, high-viz top. They'll be burning around the place in the team colours of some obscure Basque outfit. They'd rather sandpaper their knob than pull on a high-viz jersey. See The Rules for more on this.

And finally, my first flat in a few months. Had a nice big shard of glass go right through the front tyre. It did rain a bit this morning, but luckily not when I was sitting on the footpath changing the tube. That would have been quite unpleasant.

Abbott in Afghanistan

What should we make of visits by politicians to the troops?

Personally, I think they're a pain in the arse. If you want to talk to the troops, debrief them when they return.

We had Kim Beasley pay us a visit during an exercise when he was Minister for Defence back in the late 1980s. Our company had been dropped off somewhere, done a lengthy patrol and was settling into all round defence when he popped in for a visit. I remember him looking sweaty and uncomfortable as he was led around from position to position. It was baking hot, and dusty as hell and we were digging in. Normally, we'd be stripped off, but the CSM had marched around and ordered us to keep our kit on; apparently my naked chest would have been offensive to the Minister.

I had to dig more than anyone else in our section, as I was the gunner. The rest could dig a shell scrape and then gradually enlarge it over a few days. As we were going to be there for a while, I had to dig a proper U-shaped pit to the regulation depth as quickly as possible. That meant moving a lot of dirt.

So there I was, shovelling sand onto a hootchie (we didn't just throw the sand anywhere - signs of digging are a great way to give your pit away - we would cart it away somewhere else in the hootchie and cover it over) when Beasley rolled up. He had the usual cluster of brass in tow, plus the RSM. The RSM stood behind Beasley slightly to one side, where Beasley couldn't see him, and fixed each digger with a death ray stare as Beasley chatted to them. That stare said, "Say the wrong thing, and we will be having words". Words with the RSM was something to be avoided at all costs, so we were very careful about what we said.

Actually, at that point, a short break was probably welcome. He asked the standard questions - how is your kit, how is the food etc etc. I had to stifle a laugh - almost all my kit by that point was non-regulation. I replied that it was excellent - and it was. I had paid a lot of money for it, and had stashed all the crap that the Army issued me in my parent's garage.

He wandered off happy, thinking that he was overseeing a system that was delivering great kit to the troops. No one bothered to tell him that all of us had bought our own boots and sleeping bags, many had non-regulation packs and most would soon be following me in ditching their Boer War era webbing for the modern seat belt stuff I had found. Everyone threw away the wet weather gear and bought their own. Out truck drivers had bought their own radio sets in order to talk to each other, because the Army wouldn't provide them.

Unless a politician has a nose for ferreting things out, they're liable to be fed a truckload of bullshit, and they'll go home thinking everything is perfect. Beasley seemed to think he had a top notch Army, when it was falling apart at the seams due to lack of funding and clapped out, Vietnam era kit.

I would have preferred that he stayed at home and organised for me to get a better pair of boots.

Government work pays quite nicely

Four advertisements from the Financial Review this week.

Stephen Conroy wants someone to explain teh interpipes to him. Senior Advisor - pays up to $146,000 plus a $27,500 allowance. Not bad.

Conroy really must have trouble understanding teh interwebs - he needs another advisor to show him how to use Facebook. This one pays up to $80,205 plus a $25,000 allowance. Not bad money for showing a silly old bugger how to use Twatter and explaining which mouse button does what.

The AG is after a Media Advisor, which pays $118,000 plus a $25,000 allowance.

Bob Brown wants a Senior Media Advisor. Not sure how that differs from a Media Advisor. It pays to work for the government as Bob's media advisor will only get up to $96,000 plus the usual $25,000 allowance.

Great poster

For those with teenagers - see it here.

Sorry if I'm boring you Cav.....

....but tough shit. I'm in one of my infrequent "analysis" modes. I read something - I have to analyse it.

Today's rant is about the financial illiteracy of council "sustainability directors". Methinks that their stupidity is going to lead to council finances being unsustainable before long.

Here's stupidity in black and white:

Council is taking $12.3 million off ratepayers over the next 5 years and spending it on a pet project called "solar cells". The Director for Financial Unsustainability thinks this is great because Council will save $500,000 per year.

Wonderful - a payback period of around 25 years. That's so woeful, it's not funny.

But it gets better.

The best way to evaluate a project like this is to look at the Net Present Value of the cash flows. If you want to know more about that, read this explanation at Wikipedia. The essence of a discounted cash flow is that 10 bucks today is worth more than 10 bucks tomorrow, or in a years time, or in 10 years time. We can thank inflation for that. There is also the opportunity cost - if you give me 100 bucks today, I can put it in the bank and at the end of the year, have $105. So if you offered to give me 100 dollars now or 100 dollars in 12 months time, I'd take it now.

You can calculate the Net Present Value of a cash flow using the NPV function in Excel. Let's plug in the numbers, assuming a Discount Rate of 6%.

Council is spending $12.3 million over 5 years - let's assume an even spend of $2.46 million per year. If we plug that into the formula, it gives us an NPV of $10.36 million. That is the Net Present Value of the costs.

Now lets look at the benefits, assuming the solar cells have a life of 20 years.

Oh dear - the NPV is only $5.73 million. This project is a stinker. It's going to cost ratepayers $10.36 million to garner a return of $5.73 million.

But you protest - solar cells last longer than 20 years! OK, maybe they will. Let's calculate the NPV over 40 years.

It climbs a bit, but only to $7.52 million. So it still stinks.

Let's run the numbers on the energy savings.

According to the City of Sydney annual report, the council chews up about 40,000 MWh per year at a cost of around $2.8 million. It costs a lot to run all those street lights and things. That means Council pays about 14 cents per kilowatt hour for power at present.

Council is going to spend $12.3 million to install 2000kW of solar panels.

However, a 1kW system costs about $9,000 to install (before rebates). Unless council is getting a big subsidy from another layer of government, it should cost them $18 million to install - although they could be getting major economies of scale by installing so much. I'll assume they have driven a hard bargain, and will in fact get those panels for only $6,000 per kw installed. If they haven't, and the true cost is more like $9,000, then this project stinks like a bucket of carp heads in the noonday sun.

A 1kw panel produced around 1600 kw of power hours per year in a sunny climate. Therefore, this 2000kw system should generate 3.2MWh per year, or 3,200,000 KWh. At 14 cents per kilowatt hour, council will save $448,000 per year - just a bit short of the $500,000 quoted in the letter to the paper. I guess Chris Derksema bumped the benefits up to the nearest hundred thousand to make them sound better.

However - solar panels degrade. They can lose 20% of their capacity. Which means in 20 years time, council won't be saving $448,000 per year - they'll be saving $358,400. The cost/benefit analysis gets worse every time you look at it.

The only way to make this sort of financial analysis stack up is to assume a massive increase in power costs - which of course is exactly what the Greens are going to inflict on us. Now you know why.

Not quite true, Tanya

Last week, the Minister for Human Services and Social Inclusion, Tanya Plibersek, had an article published in The Age and SMH. In it, she said:

Take jobless families. While unemployment in Australia is half the rate of Europe and the US, last year 619,000 children under the age of 15 were living in households where neither parent was working. Employment is the surest path out of poverty for every member of the family. Kids who grow up in jobless families are more likely to be unemployed as adults.

This information appears to be based on a report from the Social Inclusion Board (who thinks up these titles?) I bothered to read the report. It appears that the Minister, or her flunky, didn't read it as closely as I.

In June 2009, 619,000 children (15% of all children) were living in jobless families. Of all jobless families in June 2009, 67% were one-parent families and more than half of these one-parent families (56%) had at least one child under the age of five years. It is important to note that some children living in one-parent families may have another parent living elsewhere who was employed and providing them with financial support as well as acting as a role model for employment, however this is not always the case. Almost all jobless families with children under 15 years were in the lowest equivalised gross household income quintile (93% of couple families and 82% of one parent families).

The Social Inclusion Board's report gives a more accurate and nuanced picture of the situation. Tanya gives the impression that we have this massive, enormous, humungous number of kids in families that don't have a working parent. What the Board tells us is that there are a lot of families that have broken up due to divorce etc, that the kids are living with mum (who can't work as she is running a household) - but dad (who is living somewhere else) may well be working (and paying child support etc), and having the kids stay with him regularly, thus seeing a working role model.

I know a bloke who is a big cheese with a listed company. He has several kids, and he is divorced. His wife has the kids most of the time. He earns over $1 million per year. His wife and kids get a very good share of that income - they are doing quite nicely, thank you very much. Under Tanya's definition, these kids are part of the 619,000 who are living in a household without a working parent. The Board uses the same number, but is at least honest enough to say that the other parent may be working and acting as a role model for employment. It has no idea how many families are like that, so it doesn't give a number.

Everyone reading this blog post will know someone who is divorced or who has been divorced and single at some point, possibly with kids. In every single case I know of, one or both parents have continued working. Things might be different in other socio-economic groups, but I think Tanya needs to get her facts straight before publishing an article in the paper, and The Age needs to ask some common sense questions and do some background checking before unthinkingly publishing stuff from Ministers. Think of all the divorced doctors, lawyers - politicians even - where the wife ends up in a separate household with the kids, doesn't work and lives on alimony. Dad continues working. (I'm not saying that not working is a bad thing - having mum at home might be the best thing for those kids).

By the way: "Minister for Human Services and Social Inclusion" - does that sound slightly Orwellian to you? It does to me.

Expensive babysitting?

ICAC are investigating our local MP, Angela D'Amore, for expense rorts.

One former staffer, Karen Harbilas, who worked for Ms D'Amore in two periods, between 2003 and 2004 and again during 2006, as a relief worker, said Ms D'Amore asked her to falsify two claims.

She said she was asked to write the name of another staffer, David Nicoletti, instead of her own on the form making it appear as though he was the one working in parliament.

In fact, it was her working at Parliament House, babysitting Ms D'Admore's child, an activity also carried out on occasions by Mr Tripodi's mother, Ms Adamson said in her opening address.

Ms Harbilas admitted she knew it was wrong to claim the money but said Ms D'Amore had told her to do it.

Bloody hell, it's not like she is paid so badly that she can't afford to pay for a baby sitter out of her own pocket.

Ms D'Amore's lawyer Alexander Street told the hearing the MP denied any wrongdoing and was careless rather than corrupt.

"She did not read the forms, she was careless," he said.

OK, so she's stupid and incompetent rather than corrupt. That's nice to know.

I've signed a lot of timesheets and expense claims and credit card statements and phone bills and vehicle log books in my time as a manager. Thousands of the bloody things. One thing is for sure - I made sure that all my staff had filled in all their paperwork properly (and on time), and I checked the bloody stuff before I signed it (as painful as that was). I had several dozen staff at one point, scattered all over the state, and I had to know where they were and where they'd been and what they had been doing before I signed anything. I had to satisfy myself that they weren't misusing their time or the company's assets or credit cards before I approved any claims or expenditure.

Because if I didn't, I would have been hauled in front of Internal Audit or ICAC and sacked.

The problem with these Labor hacks is that none of them have managed or administered anything before they got into parliament. They have no idea how anything works, or how to run something. They're clueless. It's no wonder they fail so utterly and so spectacularly. Pity they ruin our finances in the process.

More:

Ms D’Amore was not at the inquiry today but she has previously stated she will “vigoriously defend” the allegations.

The inquiry heard that Mrs Harbilas never worked in the electorate office in 2006, she only worked at Parliament House.

I've worked on a couple of corruption inquiries. I'll bet that the first thing the investigators grabbed were the diaries. When Angela gets on the stand, she'll be shown a stack of diaries and taken through them one by one, and if they show Mrs Harbilas being at Parliament House on the days in question, she'll be asked to "please explain".

I'd love to be there to hear her answer that one.

If Mrs Harbilas was issued with a mobile phone, the bills will quickly show where she was making calls from. If those calls all originate from the CBD rather than Five Dock, Angela will have even more problems.

And then there'll be things like Cabcharge taxi claims and so on. Plus details of when the various parties logged on to different computers at each location. They might even subpoena bank records, looking at the location of credit card purchases and cash withdrawals. Electronic toll payments are another thing that brings people unstuck.

It's amazing what they can do with all that data. Hopefully, they'll use it to rid us of this troublesome parasite.

A tale of two computers

Before reading any further, do yourself a favour and read this article on a school in Harlem.

Read it?

OK, now we can move on.

More on our continuing education dramas.

Our household is awash with computers. We have 3 PCs and 4 laptops - and if I bring my work laptop home, we have 5. Eight computers, for a family of 5. We almost had 9 - except that the 2nd hand server that I was given failed to boot when I finally got around to rebuilding it.

All was well in our happily wired household, until Julia Gillard decided that it was time for the taxpayer to give Junior his own laptop. Pre-laptop, we had the house setup so that the PCs were in an open area where they could be easily monitored, and we had clear rules about what they could be used for (and when they could be used). Junior mostly abided by those rules, although he was banned from time to time for misuse.

Because we were able to manage and monitor his usage, we ensured that he did his homework and wrote up his notes and cleaned his room etc etc etc. Things were pretty simple - get your homework done and your room tidied, and then you can goof off on the computer until an hour before bedtime. At that point, he'd be kicked off and told to go read a book for an hour.

Then Gillard's bloody laptop arrived.

They're supposed to be locked down, but they're not. Within a few weeks, all the kids at school knew how to load games and swap pirated movies and music. Instead of using them in class to take notes, many now use them to play games or watch movies - in class. Teachers now spend most of their lesson teaching from the rear of the class, simply so they can keep an eye on what the kids have on their screens.

When Junior gets home, he's supposed to do his homework - on the laptop. However, unless we sit with him and watch him like a hawk for an hour or so, the homework gets shoved aside and a game starts up. He couldn't do that on our computers because we have them locked down enough to prevent that. He just can't help himself - he is totally addicted to games.

I know that deleting the games won't do much - they'll be back again tomorrow, as he'll just copy them from a mate's laptop.

I also know what you're about to say - "Why not take it off him?" That's easier said than done. For starters, the school gave the laptop to him, not to us. It is actually his. He hasn't paid for it, and he hasn't earned it, but it's his. He signed for it, not me. I've discussed this with quite a few of my fellow parents, and we all feel that there is a psychological block in place that we have to get over before taking it away. I'm also not sure how the school will react - although I doubt they'll give a bugger. They don't care if the laptops are being misused - they didn't pay for them either.

I hate the way Gillard has foisted this problem on us. If Junior needed a laptop (which he doesn't), we would have bought him one. Or given him one of the laptops that we already have. Gillard would have done us a huge favour if she'd given us a voucher, and told us to go and buy a laptop with it. That way, we would have been handing the laptop over to Junior, and we would then have a modicum of authority over how it is used. Instead, we've been royally fucked. I hope Junior treats it the way he treats all our other electronic gadgets - if he is true to form, it will be broken by Christmas. More than anything else, the laptop has contributed to his sucky attitude to school this year. Yes, there have been other factors in play, but the laptop has a major multiplier effect. The sooner it's a pile of electronic junk, the better.

The other thing that I hate about it is that Gillard and Co. clearly put no thought into how the laptops are supposed to be used. A laptop is just a chunk of hardware - it's useless without software. If the education department had spent some money on building or buying some useful education software, I'd be a lot happier. Instead, they have just foisted the dreaded things onto schools and told the teachers to get on with it. A sad indicator of the IT literacy of Junior's teachers is that the principal can still barely log onto their PC, and until last year, was unable to use email.

I swear that these laptops are going to be the educational equivalent of Mao's Great Leap Forward - which was anything but. I am yet to talk to a single parent that's happy with the laptops - they're all suffering the same problems we are. It won't be long before emergency departments start reporting kids turning up with a Gillard laptop smashed over their head by an angry parent.

On the other hand, we're experiencing how useful computers can be for educating kids - if they're used sensibly. Number 2 is now doing Reading Eggs, which is a really helpful aid with his reading. It is not a magic bullet - it's just one of the things we are using to teach him to read. We still read him a couple of books every night (he is a mini-Paco, with 18 linear feet of books in his bookcase), sit down and practice writing letters and words almost every day, and do all the usual puzzles and so on that have words and letters in them. We sing the Alphabet Song and if we are in the car, we spell out objects that we drive past. In short, we're doing our bit as parents to ensure that he can read and write and knows his numbers - and computer based learning plays a part in that. But it's not the be-all and end-all.

Reading Eggs is costing me a bit over sixty bucks a year. It's all web based, so you don't need to load any software on your machine and it will run on an old clunker. You can buy ex-govt and ex-corporate PCs with Linux on them for just over $100. Assuming you've got an internet connection, for $160, you've got the perfect educational machine - and a truly useful piece of educational software.

So there you have it. Government gives away "free" laptops to kids - bloody expensive disaster. Parents pay for computer based education out of their own pockets - cheap success story.

Yes, I know some will say, "But what about the poor?" Here's my answer - if those of us in the educated middle class are having problems controlling what our kids are doing with their laptops, what do you think the feral kids down in the housing estates are like? Do you think their parents are ensuring that they are getting any value out of Gillard's toys? I think not.

Great arguments from last term

Junior is going through a rough patch with his schooling at the moment. He's acknowledged as being very smart, but his results in most subjects are absolute crap. If he likes the subject, he does a little bit of work (and I mean a minute amount) and comes near the top. If he doesn't like it, he completely switches off and gets marks deserving of the nuff-nuffs on the special bus. Seriously - they are so bad, he should have been kept back a year.

Here are some classic arguments that we've had so far this year:

Homework.

"Why should I do my homework? It never gets checked".

Sadly, on checking with his teachers, that's almost entirely true. If they bother to set homework (half don't), they check it once a month at most. We teach him he has to do it every night - but the school has taught him that he needn't bother. Aaaaargh! There are no consequences at school for failing to do homework. There are consequences at home, but it doesn't fix the fact that there is a stack of homework that he hasn't done.

And what do his teachers say when I ask for a list of all the homework he's missed? "He'll have to get that from his friends".

Trouble is, they haven't bloody done it either! So what's the point in asking them!

Assignments

"So what if it's late? They won't take any marks off."

Again, that's largely true. In most cases, the first we found out about an assignment being set was when a letter arrived from the school telling us that it was overdue. Consistently handing them in a week late has not yet resulted in any marks being lost. I even argued with one teacher that they should deduct marks so that he'll be taught a lesson - I was told that I was being a bit "harsh". There are no consequences for handing in assignments late.

Diary

"I don't bother to write anything in my diary because my teachers never check it".

True. Not only don't they bother, but the school is considering doing away with diaries because kids use them so rarely. The idea that they don't bother to use them because the teachers don't bother to check them is lost on the school executive. We have a saying in business - "the only things that get done are what the boss checks". My main job as a manager is being a nitpicking bastard who checks everything - and then goes back and checks it again. Once people learn that someone is checking, they start doing. Amazing.

There are no consequences for ignoring the diary, which of course leads to homework not being done and assignments being handed in late. I am dumbfounded that my teachers managed to check our diaries in each and every class - when there were 30 or more per class - yet the modern crowd can't do it when class sizes are half that.

School uniform

"You'll wear the bloody uniform because the school has a uniform policy and they keep telling us parents that it's to be followed".

"No one else cares about the policy, why should I?"

"Because I bloody-well care, which means you will care. I don't give a shit what anyone else wears - you will wear the uniform".

Guess what? The school executive talks about enforcing a uniform policy, and sends a lot of guff to parents about following the policy - but only one teacher actually bothers to enforce the policy.

There are no consequences for being out of uniform. Result - half the kids are wearing something non-uniform. The parents of every other kid (ie, those in uniform) are having daily rows with their kids about dressing properly because they can see a lot of kids getting away with breaking the rules.

Dropping crap everywhere

"Pick that up - you don't just drop rubbish where you feel like it. Put that in the bin."

"Why? We never get told off at school if we drop rubbish".

Although schools go on and on and on about being green and environmentally friendly, when it comes to littering, most appear to not give a rat's arse. Some teachers will pull kids up and put them on detention, but others pretend they never saw it happen. There are next to no consequences for trashing the place.

Tardiness

"Get a move on - this and this need to be done NOW!"

"Why are you so uptight about this? No one cares if I'm 10 minutes late to class".

This is so depressing - true again. Response from teacher, "We try to maintain a relaxed atmosphere here - telling kids off for being late could make them feel excluded and put-upon. We don't want them to feel pressured and stressed".

I could go on and on and on. I won't, because it will probably bore you as much as it annoys me.

I like the school. I like Junior's friends - they are a really nice group of kids. I like the parents that I have met. I like most of the teachers - although a few make me want to climb up a water tower at lunch time and open fire.

The problem is that we enforce what we think are a reasonable set of rules at home. You don't lie, cheat or steal. You don't murder your siblings or covet thy neighbour's push bike. You do what you're told when you're told, and you don't talk back (that will be the day). If you are given a job to do, you do it properly and quickly. If you do a slapdash job, you'll do it again until you get it right. You don't keep the rest of the household waiting by being tardy. You clean your own crap up and you get your work done on time and you do it to the best of your ability. When your work is done, your time is your own and you can relax and goof off.

Trouble is, to the school, I might as well be talking a foreign language. Theft is "redistribution of inequitably gained possessions" (OK, I made that one up). We try and ram home that actions (or lack of action) has consequences. Trouble is, the school teaches him exactly the opposite. Which version wins? That which is easiest for Junior to follow - ie, actions have no consequences. It's bloody difficult as a parent when the school constantly undermines us on what I think are some pretty basic principles. The result for us are some pretty horrendous arguments. Good thing we live in a wog neighbourhood - screaming and yelling are par for the course around here. I'm strangely gratified to know that one neighbour is having exactly the same problems with his oldest kids - we can hear their arguments from a block away.

Is there any point in sending him somewhere else? Probably not - some of our friends are teachers at other schools around Sydney, and the problems that I have listed above appear to be systemic.

I'm really not bothered about what they are teaching the kids as far as the curriculum goes - it will all be forgotten shortly after they leave school anyway. I doubt I'll ever get into an argument about whether the history course is too "black armband" or not. What drives me round the twist is how slack and sloppy they are - it is not a tightly run ship. No one seems to have a grip, and few of the staff appear to give a damn. Those that do are clearly in a minority, and they probably feel it even worse than I do as they have to live with it every working day.

The bottom line is that quite a few teachers seem to be utterly petrified at the idea of telling kids to pull their bloody socks up.

actionaid in the news again

actionaid (or act!onaid if you prefer their stupid spelling) is on my shitlist again.

After reading the annual report of their Australian operation last year, I discovered that their top two executives were raking in an amazing $354,000 between them. Those from a "charity" that managed to raise only $2 million from the public (the federal government kindly tipped $6 million of our cash into their pockets).

• Public donations - $2,007,315
• Costs to raise those donations - $1,002,507
• Admin costs - $873,390.

If it wasn't for the generosity of the Australian taxpayer, this charity would have a measly $134,000 to spend on "charitable works" after paying the CEO, CFO, rent, phone bills and so on. In other words, 93.5% of the money that they raise from the public is spent on salaries, a plush office, travel expenses, nice furniture etc etc.

Why are they in the news again?

You know that silly video that 10:10 has put out?

It turns out that the UK arm of act!onaid has been giving 10:10 money and support. Well spotted, Richard Sharpe.

Don't you love the way these "charities" operate? They pay their executives an incredible amount of money (3-5 times the average wage in Australia), suck up to the government in order to get a wodge of our money (that we wouldn't give to them ourselves) and then they spend it on this sort of alarmist propaganda.

I wouldn't mind if the CEO was earning $80,000 and they were spending 90% of what they raised on buying food and clothing for orphanages in the third world. But they're not. They're fleecing us, paying themselves a fortune and then using our money to ram their ideologies down our throats.

The sooner these "charities" are de-funded and de-registered, the better.

Where have all the school hours gone?

I enjoy having a good rant over at Maralyn Parker's blog at the Tele. I never get to meet anyone in real life that shares her views on education, so if I want to debate those ideas, it has to be done virtually.

Most of my friends and co-workers now have kids, so education is a hot topic for many of them. Funnily enough, when I've directed them to Maralyn's blog, the bulk have recoiled in horror after reading a few entries. I always encourage them to read more and to join the debate, because if one side keeps its mouth shut, the other wins by default.

All the parents that I mix with are aged from their late 30's to early 50's, and all were educated under a tough, no nonsense regime. They despair at what they see today in our schools - and often it's the little things that set them off.

Talking in class and talking back to teachers are the sorts of things that send my fellow parents wild. We were taught to have the utmost respect for teachers, and giving them lip was an excellent way to end up being bent over a desk and caned a few times on the bum. The idea of attacking a teacher - even laying a finger on one - was so abhorrent that if an angry kid threatened to hit a teacher, his fellow students would lay into him to prevent him from making such a terminal blunder.

How far things have fallen, and how quickly.

I started primary school in a fairly rough country town. My fellow students were almost all from blue collar backgrounds. Quite a few would get through a packet of smokes a week when aged 9 or 10 (and I'll admit to smoking quite a few at an earlier age than that) because all our parents smoked and drank and blue singlets were a common sight amongst the parents. By the time I was 7, I was an expert waiter at any family function. I knew how to light cigarettes for the adults (and I could roll them too), I could crack the top off a king brown and pour beers with just the right amount of head, and I knew how to get into a wine cask in order to get the tap out. One uncle actually had some faded visible tattoos - he had been in the merchant navy at one point, and had picked them up in some exotic Asian port. Those who can remember what it was like in the early 1970s will appreciate how rough and risqué that was.

The fathers of my fellow students, and my relatives, drove trucks and worked in coal mines and saw mills and on the wharves and served at sea and so on. They were you typical 1960s-1970s Ocker stereotypes. My parents were the first in our family to move into the professional middle class, but there weren't many professionals in a country town in those days, so there wasn't the class segregation that you get today, where professionals and blue collar types never mix.

[For instance, Balmain used to be solidly working class. Now it is all professionals and luvvies - the working class has been pushed 30 or so km to the west, meaning that luvvies who portray working class types in movies never actually get to meet any in real life.]

It was a small school, so all the forms were mixed to make up classes of 30 or so.

And whilst the background of most kids was pretty rough, the school was run with what today would be described as an iron fist. I was petrified of the Headmaster, as were all the kids. Given our backgrounds, we were all larrikins, and prone to talking back in class and mucking up. At least for the first week. After a suitable number of us had been caned, things settled down pretty quickly. I doubt a parent ever complained, since most kids had also been belted by the father - as in whipped with their dad's trouser belt for some indiscretion.

I have one abiding memory of that school - how quiet it was when lessons were in progress. When we were told to read, everyone put their head down and read. It was ok to sound out words, but you certainly didn't start chit-chatting with the kid next door. You read until you were told to stop, or until you finished your book and went and go another one. Doing anything that would interrupt the attention span of another child was punishable - so you kept your head down and your mouth shut and you got on with it.

I wish it were so today.

I left the following comment over at Maralyn's today, and it's going to be interesting to see what sort of reaction it gets.

Irene, that "bygone era" served me quite well. We've been using an alternative method of discipline for 25 years or so, and you could say that at this stage, it has been tested to destruction.

Since I left school, average class sizes have halved. The school day has stayed much the same - 5 hours of instruction per day. However, from what I can see and what I have read, it is harder and harder to educate kids these days.

Why is that?

When discipline was tough and uncompromising, we got about 4.5 to 4.75 hours or actual teaching per day. A few minutes were wasted at the start of each class with roll call and setting up, and then it was straight into work with no interruptions until the end of the period. It was work, work, work with no skylarking and no stuffing around.

These days, teachers seem to spend a huge amount of time trying to bring order to their classes. Disruptive kids are the norm rather than the exception. Are kids getting 4.5 hours of instruction these days? I doubt it. A massive amount of money has been poured into employing more teachers and teacher's aids - billions of dollars per year - and a lot of that is being wasted because teachers are unable to sit a class of 15 to 20 kids down for 45 minutes straight and use that entire time to stuff some knowledge into their heads.

Try crunching two sets of numbers.

We have two schools. Each teaches for 40 weeks a year, 23 hours per week (minus two hours for sport). Each therefore has 920 hours to spend per year on teaching.

School A (let's call it the "1980 model") is from a bygone era and is tightly run. Due to the lack of disruption, teachers get to use 95% of that 920 hours for teaching - 874 hours.

School B (the 2010 model) is run on soft and squishy modern principles. Teachers lose 30% of each class trying to maintain order. Add in 5% for admin etc, and that means they only spend 65% of their time teaching - 598 hours.

276 hours of teaching time per year has gone down the drain, never to be recovered.

The bygone era was tough, but by gum, it was effective.

A couple of interesting books and some good quotes

Two books by the same author:

50 rules kids won't learn in school

I loved this review, as it tells me all I need to know about a certain type of teacher (ie, wishy washy)

After reading through Sykes "Rules you won't learn in school" I'm very glad he has never influenced either my own children or my students. Just responding to the "11 Rules You Won't Learn in School" which has been floating around on the Internet for years, let me to these responses:

Dumbing down our kids

There are some great review this book, such as:

There is that moment of sublime revelation experienced by Winston Smith in George Orwell's 1984 when he reads a book that explains everything he already intuited from his experiences with the bureacracy and Big Brother. I experienced the same epiphany as soon as I began reading Dumbing Down Our Kids.

As a teacher, I have already endured the idiocies chronicled in this book. Cooperative learning? That was a two-day seminar. Self-esteem? Another inservice. Hey, I attended one in which the presenter passed out a packet of information including - so help me God - a "hugging homework" assignment. Did someone say "mission statement?" As a member of the campus Site-Based Decision Management Committee, I put in my two cents' worth when I tried to insert the notion that education should develop individual knowledge and responsibility. It was okayed and seconded by fellow teachers. Somehow, the version now hanging in our school district boardroom omitted my input. Equity? Been there, done that with our equity specialist. Here's an updated version of Mother Goose rhymes from an inservice handout I saved:

Jack be nimble,

Jack be quick,

Jack jump over the candlestick.

Jill be nimble,

Do it, too.

If Jack can do it, so can you.

If Winston Smith were a teacher, he'd know the party line is preceded by the phrase "research is showing." Party committees are headed by hacks with self-important titles like "equity specialist" and "curriculum coordinator". The language is corrupted to the same extent as Oceania. Students engage in "cooperative learning" formerly known as cheating. "At-risk students" is preferred to "just plain lazy".

The aeries of districts are crowded with doctors of education. It should come as no surprise that universities dole out honorary doctorates in education to distinguished guests because they are less likely to perpetrate the least amount of damage, unless he or she attempts to put it to use as an administrator or, worse, a consultant.

"Dumbing Down Our Kids" is filled with samples of impermeable writings by people who are so besotted with their own self-importance that sarcasm would be wasted on them. A dissertation for a doctorate in physical ed stated "The purpose of this research was to create a connectionist model for simulating contextual interference effects in motor skills. The model was a multiple layer, heteroassociative, nonlinear, feedforward interpolative recall network trained by back-propogation of errors."

Oh.

Another pioneer in New Math curriculum frankly admits that "I do not do long division or long multiplication anymore." He helpfully and frankly admits he's lazy and found a better method of doing math which "involves pushing a few buttons on my calculator." Incredibly, this pioneer is the founder and director of a mathematics project at the University of Chicago. From the same people who brought us the A-bomb, yet another bomb. I leave it to you to decide which bomb is more deadly.

Textbooks are largely "books without authors. . . slaves to readability indexes, and mandated never to offend any conceivable special interest group."

It simply amazes me that so many dunderheaded fools, from federal to state to local level, actually get to make decisions that affect how I work in the classroom. I work in a business that is ostensibly set up to make people smarter. And yet the very same people who run the business are as dumb as a crate of anvils. It is as if NASA contracted a company that specializes in running fireworks stands to design heat shields for the spacecraft. I can't make people walk a mile in my moccosins, but if reading this book makes them boil with anger, then at least I'm not alone.

I'd be worried if it was random

Joe Hildebrand really should know better. He's written an article in The Daily Telegraph about random breath testing - and pointed out that it isn't all that random.

Joe, I'd be worried if the cops were sitting around, wasting their time and our taxes by positioning their RBT units where there is little likelihood of them busting a drunk driver. Police resources are limited - you use them where you'll get the most bang for your buck. That means - duh - doing breath testing where there are lots of people drinking and driving.

Mention is made of Kings Cross, and how few tests are carried out in that area. Well duh, because parking and traffic in that area are an utter nightmare, if you're going there to get on the turps, you catch the train or a cab. Or you walk. There are no drunk drivers to breathalyse as the drunks are all staggering around looking for a taxi home, rather than trying to remember which backstreet they parked their car on.

Most tests are carried out in the west, where public transport and taxis are few and far between and where the distance between pub and home is too far to walk. Of course there are likely to be more pissed idiots behind the wheel out there. Why am I having to tell you this? Why couldn't you figure it out for yourself? Jeez Joe, are you drunk?

The cops are obviously using their brains, figuring out where the problem areas are and concentrating on those. If they were deciding where to place their RBT units by throwing darts at a map, I'd be really worried.

Power of the press

I like relaxing with a newspaper over breakfast. As groovy as the iPad is, I don't see myself sitting down to a latte and some bacon and eggs anytime soon with an iPad. I like my table to be covered by half an acre of newsprint.

If I am having a leisurely breakfast, I'll knock off all four major papers - The Aus, the Fin Review, the SMH and the Telegraph. My favourite is The Aus; partly for it's political slant, but mainly because it is the only paper with enough content to last me through a proper cooked breakfast. I can knock off the Fin Review, SMH and Telegraph in the time it takes me to wade through the first section of The Aus.

Somewhere in The Aus today was a whinge from some lefty crackpot about the power of that particular paper, and how it was being misused to attack the Greens. Don't ask me to find that story for you - I've been to the pub, and the keyboard is swimming before my eyes. Googoogoogling is a bit beyond me at present.

The gist of the argument seemed to be that The Aus is powerful because it sells a lot of copies, therefore lots of people read it, therefore the opinions contained therein can have a major impact on the deluded masses.

If you ask me, they got it completely arse about. People read papers because they are attuned to the content. You won't find me reading Green Left Weekly an awful lot, because the articles and editorial slant shit me to tears. I'd rather have holes drilled in my toenails than read that paper every week.

The Aus is more powerful than Green Left Weekly because more people subscribe to the political slant of The Aus than to Green Left Wankly. It is more powerful because more people have the values and beliefs of The Aus than the Green Left Workshy. Papers are not so much opinion shapers as echo chambers. If the editor pushes opinions that annoy the readership, the paper will fail.

The whinger just didn't get that. The Aus is powerful because it echoes a large group of people. Green Left Weekly is a powerless rag because it echoes the beliefs and values of a very small group of people.

I thought that would be pretty fucking obvious to most people. I guess not.

Wednesday photos

Sheesh, Wednesday already. The body has finally warmed up after a bit of time off the bike. The first two days back on the bike were misery - I had no energy; no get up and go. I felt soft and winded.

Yesterday morning was completely different - a revelation. The legs had hardened up after 80km or so and were in fine form. After two days of being passed by grandmas and little kids, I was racing the Big Dogs to and from town - and almost holding my own. There's a lesson in there somewhere - the body works so much better if you give it a hiding.

Speaking of which, this was a fit bastard. I was puffing up a long hill when he just cruised past me without so much as a deep breath.

Another fit so-and-so. I held him for a while, and then he just blew me off in a burst of acceleration up a hill.

Two people who didn't go blasting past me. I wanted to go blasting past them, but had a bit of trouble as they were blocking the entire path. Thankfully, they were awake and paying attention and moved into single file as soon as they were aware of me behind them. It's nice to find switched on people like these - too often, I get stuck behind some slow moving gumby with headphones, and they can't hear me yelling at them from behind to move their arse out of the way.

Just suck it up and give way

Haven't seen mounted Police for quite a while. Wonder why they were about? There were two TV camera trucks parked outside the court house on the left (where the clip-clops came from), and crews standing around the entrance, so I guess a case of some import was being heard today.

The driver of the car behind me to the left got on his horn when the light went green - he was furious at the driver at the front for not taking off. I could hear him saying, "Oh shit!" as the Police finally cleared the intersection and he suddenly saw the reason for the hold up.

Some people swear at the strangest things

I get sworn at every so often - generally by some angry bloke in a car who is fatter, balder and hairier than I am (if you can be bald and hairy at the same time). I also get a bit of friendly chit-chat from some motorists, and then there are those that like to pull your leg. Four young blokes in a fast looking black Commodore pulled up alongside me today and asked if I wanted to race. I was very tempted - just to give them a laugh - but unfortunately I was about to turn off and couldn't take up their challenge.

I am not used to being sworn at though by joggers. As I went past the woman in the short clip below, she freaked and launched into a tirade of abuse. Of course she had headphones on, so had no idea that I was approaching from behind, and didn't seem to understand that as it's a shared bike/pedestrian path, there is in fact a small chance of encountering someone on a bike.

I'm pretty sure I didn't give her cause to jump out of her skin - I wasn't hooning and I didn't get close enough to invade her personal space. I think she was just zoned out with her music, and was shocked at meeting the unexpected.

Alternatively, she could have been bonkers. Which is why I kept going and pretended I didn't hear a thing.