The Nurses' Strike

Anyone who knows me knows that I am overly familiar with Victoria's health system. I have seen it from pretty much every angle possible both public and private. What I have to say about this may anger some of my nursing friends, but I think they need to think beyond their own ward a little bit.

Victoria has a pretty chronic shortage of nurses. This is a fact. Our big hospitals send people on recruiting drives interstate and overseas. Nurses are worked pretty hard - to the point where most are actually part-timers rather full time staff. They have to rotate on and off night shifts as well. So there can be no disputing a pay rise for at least cost of living (which is more than has been offered).

Where it comes unstuck is the rigid adherence to existing nurse:patient ratios and demarcations between job classifications. There are barely enough nurses at the moment to fill available positions. The government wants to be able to bring in lower skilled (and paid) nurses aides (or similar). Thus would enable them to open more beds and perhaps save money on a per patient basis. Nurses see this as a devaluation of their skills and work. To some extent maybe it is.

But, and this is a big but, when cost cutting measures occur in hospitals - fewer cleaners, clerks, porters or maybe social workers - nurses are the ones who get lumped with the extra work. The doctors' union is too strong to allow any of this "unskilled, non-clinical" work to land on their shoulders, so nurses bear the burden. This nurse's aide concept should allow the nurses to relieve themselves of some of this burden. A skilled division 1 nurse is not needed to change sheets, clean up vomit, feed a demented old man or deliver a bed pan in most cases. This can be done by anyone. If you argue against this then I'll run for parliament campaigning to bring in child licensing for prospective parents. Trade these jobs away nurses. Let someone else do it whilst you do dressings, plan discharges, administer medications and check wounds. Trade the ratio to one division one nurse to six patients provided there is a nurse's aide for every eight patients. This should give you more staff overall on each ward plus free up division one nurses to hopefully open some more beds across the entire system.

Nurses, it's time to change the mindset of the negotiations. Think about what you can get out of what the government wants rather than what they might be trying to take from you to get it. My last point is about productivity gains. There is no way that nurses can get more indirect and non-direct care positions in this bargaining period. You added heaps in the previous one and it is too big a drain on budgets and direct care personnel to do it again. Nurses in offices don't add much to patient care.

I think the writing is on the wall for Mehm

As a Melbourne Victory fan, I've noticed a few newspaper articles this week beginning to speculate on the future of manager Mehmet Durakovic.  I have to agree.  Durakovic's major problems are that the team tactics seemed to have changed twice already this season and that the glittering array of attacking talent has not in any way gelled.

On paper Melbourne Victory looks the team to beat in the A-League.  On the field it would seem that Broxham, Leijer, Vargas and Covic are having to do too much to keep the goals out, whilst the 'talent' struggles to string together more than three passes most of the time.  Wonder why Fabio and Kemp didn't get forward on the weekend against Perth?  Well we never had the ball long enough for them to run that far!  Except when we were playing lots of predictable balls across the back.  So we reverted to Merrick's counter-attacking game plan.  Incredible given that we were playing against 10 men for almost an hour!

It helps only the opposition that Kewell, Thompson, Rojas and Hernandez basically refuse to defend.  That's why we've seen Pondeljak return to the line-up in recent weeks as he runs both ways.  That only leaves the back four plus Broxham and Celeski/Brebner to defend.  I'm staggered we haven't coughed up more goals.  In a league that has emulated the AFL with the forward pressure, this malaise is going to hurt the Victory and soon.

So we have to start looking at the manager/coach.  Surely the slow ball movement and defensive laziness have to be blamed on this group.  Mehm even mentioned that they weren't fit enough to go the distance after the Perth debacle.  Well Mehmet, that's all on you!  If they're not fit seven games into a 27 game season, what hope do we have?  We were pretty lucky against Brisbane as it is public knowledge that they have been doing heavy training loads to build extra stamina for a good crack at the Asian Champion's League next year.  It would seem that Melbourne's training consists of looking at pictures of Kewell's new house!

My point is this.  Durakovic has until about Christmas (maybe not that long) to start winning matches or his New Year's resolution will be to find a job without using seek.com.  Both workrate and combination are lacking from the Victory's play.  Deficiencies in those areas fall as much on management as on players after a six month off season.  Lastly if Durakovic gets the sack, why should Kevin Muscat get to stay, let alone be the next manager as so many seem to think?

The short, short version.

Gay Marriage
I used to be against this with a pretty low overall care factor.  You know I was happy with equal tax status and de facto unions and what not, but I thought "marriage is for a boy and a girl - no buts!"  Recently my care factor has reduced to zero thanks to things I've seen in the paper.  Things like Kim Kardashian's pay-per-view marriage that only lasted for 7 episodes and mail-order 17 year old brides coming into Australia has just broken my resistance.  If there are so many complete rubbish marriages between boys and girls, then why stop gay people getting hitched.  In my experience they seem to be better at choosing "life-partners" anyway.  So this conservative has given in.  You want it - you can have it.

Carbon Dioxide Tax
This bit of bastardry is now law.  Upsetting but its done, much like speed limits, I'll just have to wear more clamps on my personal liberties.  Forget what Tony Abbott says about repealing it.  No government will ever give up that much revenue.  Nor will taxpayers give up the income tax cuts that came with it.  The biggest shame is that it is really a social welfare policy and a means of imposing central control on the economy rather than an environmental policy.  If it were an environmental policy they probably would've just need to tweak existing environmental protection laws rather than pass 19 bills that created three massive bureaucracies and radically changed the tax and welfare system.  They'll be fiddling with this, just like the superannuation laws - endlessly.

Speed Limits
I'm over speed limits. Fifty here, forty at some times of the day, sixty at others, now eighty.  It is crap!  I don't give a fuck about the road toll in Victoria.  If some drunk teenager wants to get in a car with a dozen of his mates and wrap the car around a pole - they deserve to die.  That level of collective stupidity gives us problems like Tasmania (the state is broke and about half of them are government employees) or people who waste all their money at the pokies.  I would like to be able to drive around and look at the road and other cars rather than my ugly speedometer.  All those places that are marked as 40kmh piss me off.  During the day you can't go much over 40kmh anyway as the road is so congested, so the limit is just to catch you and take your money should the road clear up for a minute.  It's not safer, it's not environmentally friendly to drive around in second gear and it makes having a car way less economical.  Let's go back to the good ol' days where the speed limit was sixty everywhere except on big roads with six lanes that were 80.  Let's simplify and get back to watching the road.  I'm sick of trading off my liberties to maybe help save the life of some mouth breathing ape who does stupid things with their car.

Shareholder returns

Company returns to shareholders are not enough.  For example, say a company has a half a billion shares on issue: for every $5 million it spends on increasing remuneration, that's one cent removed from the dividend to shareholders.  Currently we have boards and executives enjoying huge remuneration increases that massively outstrip shareholders' returns.  It has to stop.  You can make it stop.  You have a superannuation fund: it almost certainly owns shares in large companies.  Write to your super fund and demand that they vote against these huge increases.  Here's the letter I wrote to mine - feel free to cut and paste so you can send it to yours.  It will probably be far more effective and efficient than camping in the city square with some smelly hippies!!

Complaints Officer

HESTA Super Fund

PO Box 600

Carlton South, Vic 3053

Dear Sir/Madam,

I write to you upon receipt of my annual report.  Thanks you for actually making money this year.  You managed to make about 10% which is pretty good.  However when I look at the segmented earnings I see that the return on share investments was not as good.

It is for this reason that I must demand that you vote against company remuneration reports for any companies I have an interest in who propose to increase directors and/or executive remuneration beyond any increase in shareholder returns from profits.

It is inexcusable for these already well paid people to continue to expect that shareholders stand idly by whilst company profits are used solely to line their pockets.  Super Fund managers must start to take action to protect the long term interests of members.  Shareholders should not be expected to have capital gains be their only avenue to profit from share investing.  This seems to have become commonplace over the past decade and it must cease.

Given recent articles in daily newspapers and other media, I believe that I should expect to see some board spills over the next 12 months as fund managers exercise their fiduciary duty to their members and vote against wage rises and excessive remuneration packages at company AGMs.

Please do not disregard this notice.

Sincerely,

Graham Bushnell

Bushnell is back! Some short comments on current topics.

Occupy Anywhere Protests
Congratulations 'organisers': Those who are members of rent-a-crowd anonymous and 'I've got an irrelevant axe to grind' international now have somewhere to go.  They are currently bottling up city streets all over the world chanting about being poor or gay or short or fat or not rich enough or controlled by the man.  BEST IDEA EVER - we'll just have a giant protest with no purpose or proposed outcomes!

Apparently it started as a protest against those fat cat bankers.  Have to say I can agree with that.  Squandering my savings, stealing my investment returns as bloated wages and generally not adding anything tangible to the progress of society.  But Western countries re still allegedly "free", so they have a right to do that stuff if there's a market for it.  I won't be asking for more government control (of anything).  I will be voting against remuneration reports and directors at annual meetings and I will be writing to my super fund to request they do the same for my stolen money.  No one can add their bullshit agenda to that kind of protest.


Industrial Relations in Australia
Again congratulations!  This time to the lefties who voted in this terrible minority government.  Strikes are back in fashion.  As are go-slows on construction sites and closed shop workplaces.  Union power is growing again and holding back the economy - right when it can't afford to be held back in most sectors.  Union membership is still in decline.  More power to another minority!

Note to workers: Your union doesn't look after you - it looks after itself.  By that I mean its political power base and leadership.  Why else did they all merge in the 80s and 90s?  Easier for the ACTU and ALP to control.


Mining Tax
Pray that this is not passed by parliament in it's current form.  It is diabolical.  The original proposal as per the Henry Taxation Review is the correct structure for this tax.  It is fair and even.

The mining tax is an important policy that must be passed as it will slow down the investment in mining which is crowding out the rest of the nation's economy.  Don't think that these projects won't ever happen because of a tax - that is utter crap.  They just won't all happen at once.  Since you can only dig up the country once, it's important that we don't sell it all in the next 40 years.  It's also really important for the owners of the holes (taxpayers) and not just those doing the digging to get the best returns possible.  This tax will also provide a revenue stream for all that infrastructure and middle class welfare taxpayers keep asking for.

Like a child, I went on a tram ride

So the other day I was in the city running some errands including returning a novel that was missing 50 pages (weird!).  I was kind of bored after achieving my weak ass goals, but not ready to return home yet.  For some reason unbeknownst to me, I decided that I would take a tram ride from the city all the way to the end of the route and back again.  Choosing route 59 to Airport West seemed like a good way to check out parts of the city I have never seen.  Here's how it unfolded.

Once I boarded the tram at Elizabeth and Collins Streets, I was surprised at how full it was at about 3pm.  Also I noticed that from the half of the tram I could see, I was a about a 3:1 chance to win a game of spot the round eye.  Now I'm just making an observation, not insinuating anything here.  This was not a persistent feature of the passenger mix across the whole journey.  Other passenger types I got to enjoy was the girl who talks the entire tram ride to her non-replying boyfriend (she had a large coffee in hand), schoolboys (they reek like the dog pound) and the smart arse schoolboy who has to try and piss the driver off by pressing the door buzzer as many times as possible at each stop to the point where the doors freeze.  No crazies or drunks.  First time for everything on a full tram!

It was nice to ride past Victoria Market and realise that not very far out of the CBD, most of the buildings were only two or three stories tall.  Looks like a good area to maybe live in as the tram heads along Flemington Road toward the hospital precinct.  Nice old houses, wide streets.  Probably costs a mint.  Further out I got to see what Essendon, Niddrie and Moonee Ponds look like.  Finally they stopped being fantastical places that exist only in conversations.  Essendon and Moonee Ponds looked like fairly nice places.  Niddrie looks like a bucket of shit - maybe it will be the next Brunswick in the property game?  Oh and what you see of Airport West also looks like a bucket of shit.  I can't even recommend it as a parking destination.

My favourite part of the day was on the way back into town when five ticket inspectors got on board.  Why five?  Are they expecting to have some dance crew step to them like in the movies?  At this point there were more Yarra Trams employees on board than passengers.  Anyway, once I pulled my earphones out and realised the guy wanted to see a ticket, I opened my wallet and started to pull out my myki.  Inspector man didn't even wait to see the whole card before saying, "that's fine" and wandering off.  No way to check that it wasn't validated.  Who pays for trams, honestly?  So the lesson of the day was that five gestapo can't even check if you've voluntarily activated your myki on a tram.  The combination of myki and ticket inspectors seems to be an absolute winner for freeriders like me.  It's disturbing that $1.3billion buys such a retarded system. 

Don't ever feel guilty about not paying for tram rides!  It's not your fault it's so easy.

Personally I think Yarra Trams accruing large losses will be the only way to remedy the system.

Social Engineering or Just Stupid?

Please read this article from today's Herald Sun:

Men banned as Muslim women win council backing Paul Tatnell

MAN bans are spreading as two more council functions are declared off-limits because it is "not appropriate" for men to mix with Muslim women.

And in a surprise twist, VCAT backed the latest bans, declaring there was no discrimination and councils no longer needed to apply for exemptions.

The Darebin City Council ban will be in force for a music concert to be held in December, while another female-only event to mark the end of Ramadan was cancelled last week. The council sought the bans because it was "culturally inappropriate for young women to participate in recreational activity with males present".

But Ratepayers Victoria president Jack Davis said the bans were "another case of segregation".

"I think it is totally wrong. I think it's ridiculous and I do think it is discrimination, and it goes against what the average ratepayer wants," Mr Davis said. "We are seeing more and more of this kind of stuff."

Moreland council recently banned men from a dance event while Monash council put up curtains at a public pool so Muslim women could have privacy during a female-only exercise classes.

Darebin Mayor Diana Asmar said: "The December event is a 10-week workshop series that teaches young women DJ-ing skills. The program culminates in a social event that the young women plan and run themselves." "Darebin's approach is to always identify barriers to community participation and address them," she said.  Darebin council, with the support of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, originally asked VCAT for an exemption under the Equal Opportunities act so it could have women-only events.  VCAT ruled the events would not discriminate against anybody and special exemption was not needed.

An Equal Opportunity spokeswoman said the decision meant "organisations do not have to go through a formal VCAT hearing to put in place practices to assist groups to achieve substantive equality".

A spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria, Nazeem Hussain, said the Darebin decision was not "controversial or surprising in the slightest".

I want to take this article and turn it on it's head.  I have no problem with any group of women having a women only party for any reason - so long as when men do the same they aren't pilloried by the feminist mafia.  Not knowing much about Muslim culture I'm not sure about what is and is not considered appropriate behaviour, but planning a social event in Australia that leaves out males does seem a tad odd.  The pool with curtains seems to be a reasonable idea as it is only necessary during the affected class.  All that culture stuff aside - the REAL question here is why is a local council organising this sort of thing?  It is an absolute waste of taxpayers' money.

Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, governments do not need to and should not organise and pay for either social events or barely useful short courses.  Governments should be providing the infrastructure for community clubs to run their own functions.  By this I mean that councils should maintain ovals for sporting clubs and provide club rooms or libraries with meeting rooms for chess or book clubs to use.  A local council does not then need to add education and socialisation to its agenda.  They really should operate under the "if you build it they will come" principle.  Either that or stop bleeding the ratepayers.

If a community can't figure out how to organise its own social events then it is probably a doomed community anyway.  Best to let it whither on the vine.  No need for some government to try to prop it up.

Women who have fought for equality and opened up clubs such as the VRC and MCC to female memberships should also be concerned.  Local councils are undermining their efforts and will gradually bring back segregation if not checked early and firmly.

Lastly a side note to the whole thing.  If Muslim women aren't supposed to attend functions with men, one has to ask whether a 10 week disk jockeying course is really appropriate behaviour also?  Last time I checked there was Fernwood Gyms, the Lycaeum Club and perhaps one other women's only club around town.  Not too many DJ gigs going at any of those!

Fast and Furious 5

OK another movie review for you folks.

If you haven't seen Fast and Furious 5, you should.  It is, by a good margin, the best of the Fast and Furious series.  Don't be put off by the fact that Paul Walker couldn't act dead if you shot him in the face or that Vin Diesel is only slightly more life-like than your average department store mannequin.

This movie is a great merger of the action sub-genres of heist and chase.  Dwanye 'The Rock' Johnson is the super cop chasing our favourite fugitive protagonists who in turn have decided to go head to head with Rio De Janeiro's barrio kingpin.

I can assure you that there is precious little time wasted on character development in this movie.  It has as many characters as Ocean's 11, but few have much to say.  The line, "I had a life before I knew you." is used both for comedic purposes and to cover the lack of depth for most of the characters.  This movie is all about cars and stunts with the predictable cheesy and corny lines to accompany crashes and races.

Whilst I had offered nothing more than back-handed compliments to this movie, it is very entertaining.  The director, Justin Lin, keeps it moving at a good pace, whilst the script and locations allows for some great car and foot chase scenes.  It is a simple story well done. The combination of stunts and CGI is good as it keeps a degree of realism to the movie.

Next time you want a night off and some brain candy, give this movie a look - unless you don't like car chases!

Level crossings and PSOs on Melbourne's rail network: what do they have in common?

A few months ago the Committee for Melbourne announced via press release that it would probably be a good idea if the private sector was allowed to help remove some of Melbourne's level crossings.  During the same period much press has been given to the Ballieu government's plan to have Protective Services Officers (PSO) at every train station and their need for training and toilets.  Much like the gang in the sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I want to combine the two ideas.

Firstly, some background.  The Committee for Melbourne is 'an apolitical organisation that looks strategically at issues that impact beyond the short term electoral cycles. The Committee brings together Melbourne’s most influential businesses and organisations to work collaboratively to enhance Melbourne – economically, socially and environmentally.'  They have been involved in projects like the Citylink freeways and the creation of the city circle tram.  In June they announced that removing Melbourne's 172 level crossings at an average cost of $100million was likely to need the private sectors help.  Removal of level crossings is seen as a major step in increasing rail service frequency and alleviating road traffic congestion around points of intersection.

PSOs form part of the Ballieu government's law and order agenda.  They were promised pre-election as a means of combating violence and graffiti at and around railway stations.  The use of PSOs to create confidence and safety around the rail network is a good idea as this city becomes more reliant on rail travel.  In the course of considering the roll-out of this program, it was realised that the PSOs would need to be able to perform bodily functions whilst on shift and that there would need to be working toilets at railway stations.  The problem is that many stations do not have working public toilets and a few do not have toilets at all.  They have been locked up and not maintained for so long that major works may be required at some locations.

Of the fifteen or so level crossings that I know well, most have an adjacent railway station.  So let's combine the two problems.  To put the railway line under the road will require rebuilding the train station where it is adjacent.  For the private sector to invest $100million to solve this problem for the taxpayer they will want to build a bit more than just a train station on the available area.  So I say let them have the rights to build shops or apartments above or in front of the station.  Give them a 99 year peppercorn lease.  Make sure that they build sufficient car parking and public toilets for the PSOs.  Stipulate that they station must be well lit and have multiple entry points.  Add lease clauses for recycling bins if you think it's important, but get the ball rolling on some redevelopment.

Obviously grade separation and rebuilding of railway stations takes a lot longer than renovating some bathrooms, but level crossings and the awful old and tired stations have got to go.  Commuters deserve better and would love to have PSOs patrolling clean, new, 21st century railway stations.  Dear Ballieu government, it will be a vote winner!

Cowboys and Aliens

Why this movie has a rotten tomatoes score of just 45% boggles my mind.  Independence Day has a score of 60%.  They are both about alien invasion and saving the world.  Cowboys probably has a better cast.

Daniel Craig is the bewildered hero, Harrison Ford and Sam Rockwell co-star with Olivia "I'm in everything in 2011" Wilde is the female lead.  John Favreau directs so Cowboys and Aliens rolls along at a decent pace and has ample comic relief.  The movie is called Cowboys and Aliens, so I don't know what sort of screenplay people were expecting.  It's a fairly standard alien invasion plot, just set back in the wild west.

Favreau combines CGI and some awesome horse stunts to give the actions sequences as realistic a feel as possible.  I reckon they managed to get every kind of horse stunt possible into this movie.  Congratulations to the wranglers!  Also there is plenty of homage paid to the western genre and the urge to have the hero imitate Indiana Jones and not leave his hat behind no matter the situation was clearly too strong to resist.

Cowboys and Aliens is very enjoyable and is certainly on a par with Independence Day.  Watch and enjoy.

Competition Policy: Epic Fail?

One of my favourite economic bug-a-boos is forced competition in any market.  In Australia we are seemingly in-love with this false competition.  We regulate financial services, telecommunications, airlines and electricity quite heavily.  We also like to "enforce" competition in banking, transport and retail. Other than provide bureaucratic jobs in the regulatory bodies, does this do anything much for Australia overall?

Without actually doing a doctorate (or reading a whole one) on the topic myself, I suggest that elements of competition policy are inefficient and burdensome.  The National Competition Policy (NCP) reforms of the 1990s were wide ranging and largely beneficial to the Australian economy.  Those reforms were behind the corporatisation of many government businesses and the introduction of competition in energy and telecommunications among others.  It also created the ACCC - the so-called competition umpire.  I'm not going to pick on the NCP reforms but more on some of the outcomes and the actions of ACCC.

Let's take the tabloid's favourite market: groceries.  Woolworths and Wesfarmers dominate this area.  It is, contrary to popular belief, a competitive set of markets.  Coles and Woolworths have had to deal with competitors like Franklins and IGA and foreign antagonists such as Aldi and Costco.  Apparently when the two “big bullies” use their size to compete with smaller, local businesses, people don't want to enjoy the lower prices, they whinge about predatory pricing hurting the little guy.  Fact is: sometimes a market is only big enough for one and a half participants.  Think about the Australian airline industry through the 1990s.  There was always Qantas, but Ansett, Compass, Compass mark 2, then along came Virgin as the market grew and airlines reduced their cost base.  So when the market is reduced to a monopoly with monopoly profits, economic theory tends to hold up and another competitor will enter the market.  That’s why we got Compass airlines twice.

Another failure of competition policy is Telstra.  When Optus was given access as the initial competitor to Telstra, it boggles my mind that Optus agreed to enter the market when the natural monopoly part of the telecommunications industry – the copper wire – was owned and operated by the retail competitor.  The NCP recommends that regulation and ownership of non-contestable sections of an industry be regulated (or just run by government I think).  So Optus has always been behind the eight-ball.  The dream of Optus’ coaxial network competing with Telstra’s was stymied by local councils who didn’t like overhead cables.  Roughly 20 years later, I think most of Australia would agree that structural separation should have occurred before Optus and before privatisation with the network business probably being retained by the government.  Since this didn’t occur, Telstra shareholders have been screwed six ways from Sunday by successive governments and mostly the ACCC.  Telstra would have finished building the National Broadband Network had the ACCC not disallowed the pricing scheme Telstra wanted to use to allow its competitors access to the upgraded network.  So dual policy failure – Telstra shouldn’t have owned the network and with its Universal Service Obligation should have been allowed to get a commercial rate of return on its network investment.  Instead, we are now in the $40billion process of re-nationalising the country’s telecommunications backbone.

Bank bashing has almost become Australia’s pastime.  We forget however, that there is a massive, yet intangible barrier to entry for new players in the banking Industry: customer confidence.  Through the decade leading up to the Global Financial Crisis, we saw a massive increase in participants in banking services: GE money, ING, RAMS, Wizard, Citibank to name a few.  They mainly offered mortgages and credit cards.  The four pillars of Westpac, ANZ, NAB and CBA kept their profits up by finding new fees to charge customers.  Customers are reluctant to change financial institution for two main reasons: 1. in the electronic age, notifying all other institutions connected to a primary transaction account is difficult and time-consuming and 2. People won’t give their money to an institution they don’t trust or can’t access easily.  New players in banking take a long time to build up public trust.  With the four pillars policy rigidly in place, it takes new entrants and smaller players a long time to achieve the scale and consumer confidence to begin to impact on the degree and type of competition.  Without the four pillars there would be mergers amongst the big four banks and this would create niches and points of difference that foreign or regional banks could exploit.  My answer to your “too big to fail” argument is to either keep banks as banks or force all financial institutions to offer all financial services in some way.  Personally I think keeping banks as banks and not insurance companies or fund managers or stock brokers is the best way.

Lastly, in competitions like the lottery, war, sport or pass the parcel, there is a winner.  Why can’t a market have a winner?  Why regulate and bureaucratise on the off chance someone wins before market conditions change?  Remember the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit involving bundling windows and Internet explorer?  It went on for so long that by the time there was an outcome it didn’t matter anymore.  So Microsoft won the initial browser competition only to be gazumped by open source and google.  Markets change, annoying government interventions change, consumers change and technology changes.  The lesson here as in the four examples at the top of the paragraph is that victory is fleeting and staying on top for any length of time is impossible, so why force competition?

Captain America = shit

So what's wrong with another comic book hero hitting the big screen?  Everything if it's as bad as this particular piece of hollywood trash.

After the joys of The Punisher, DareDevil and Electra to name a few, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that comic book characters can be become awful movies.

At some stage in a either a high school drama or english class, I learned that the success of fiction is based on 'the willing suspension of disbelief' on the part of the audience.  It is the job of the writer/director/actors to keep the audience in this state of mind.  I lost it about five minutes after yet another american hero took drugs to improve his performance.  It wasn't when he was chasing - and catching - cars.  It was when the guy he was chasing got into the nazi bat-sub in Queens, New York.

The suspension of disbelief came back for a little while after that as the captain sold bonds and did USO shows.  But and I should have known there would always be a but, almost everything about Hydra was in no way believable in the context set up in the first 30mins of the movie.  If you set up a movie in the context of World War 2, then you can only extend reality so far before it becomes ridiculous.  So Hydra has super weapons - fine.  That the US captures them and then doesn't use them is not!  Hydra turns on the Nazis and there are no reprisals?  Ernst Rohm's ghost will tell you that doesn't happen.  And so it continued.

Personally, I have severe struggles with movies set in the past that have technology we don't yet have today.  I hated League of distinguished Gentlemen for this reason.  Captain America suffers many of the same problems. 

Add to the plethora of implausibles a by-the-numbers script.  If you ever watch this movie, at the start of each scene guess the outcome - 99% of the time you'll be right if you've seen a few action movies before.  The love interest getting used as a hostage is probably the only part of a stock standard action flick missing.

On a happier note, the two veterans in the cast - Tommy Lee Jones and Hugo Weaving - were both pretty good in their roles.  Chris Evans and his CGI buddies did ok too.

High Speed Rail - what is the deal?

Firstly I must state two important facts about East Coast High Speed Rail in Australia:

1. I am a massive fan of High Speed Trains.  Having ridden Fast and Very Fast trains on three continents, it is my preferred mode of travel.
2. This week the government released a preliminary report which was designed to inform and scope a detailed (probably all the way to a business-case) final report.

Due to the combined facts that the news in this country has next to nothing to talk about (car crashes - woo!) and tend to barrack for the ALP, you would have found it hard to miss this story over the past couple of days.  As usual, it seems that the journalists read only the executive summary before filing a story.  All the stories just quoted the biggest figure they could find to finance the project and potential travel times and prices.  Little mention of what route it would actually take or that the ticket prices used in the analysis were based on current low-cost airfares or existing rail fares.  I will now attempt an unbiased summary of the salient points in about 500 words.  I may fail both.

The study broke the Melbourne to Brisbane journey into four parts:

• Melbourne to Canberra
• Canberra to Sydney
• Sydney to Newcastle (the subject of a greater detail sub-study)
• Newcastle to Brisbane

Potential routes for the high speed railway were examined for each segment.  There were about 20 potential routes examined and some were straight-line and impractical, but served as a good basis for comparison.

The study of these routes was done in two phases - an initial high level one to weed out some of the poorer options and then a second, more refined study of the remaining choices.  Options were examined based on construction costs including likely tunneling and bridging, patron catchments, land acquisition costs and environmental sensitivity.  Existing transport corridors and government development plans also played a major role.

The report estimates that an HST would be a viable operation with the potential for a profit-making enterprise to cover operating and maintenance costs.  But, it's the fourth paragraph of the report that is the shortest and most damning:

"International experience suggests it is unrealistic to expect the capital cost of a HSR network to be fully recovered"

Which is both true and not true.  The capital costs will not be fully recovered in dollars, but in less tangible ways like time savings, productivity gains, or accelerated growth in towns serviced by the HSR network.  These benefits are real and estimated in the report, but also unlikely to be able to fully make up for the dollar costs over the study period (2036-2056).  Then again, Melbourne and Sydney’s metropolitan railways were built largely in the 1880s and we’re still getting the intangible benefits from them.

Whilst I write this summary I had better not that it includes capital costs only.  By that it means:  “The risk-adjusted cost estimates include land acquisition, stations and city access, maintenance and stabling facilities, power infrastructure, civil and rail infrastructure and IT and ticketing systems. They exclude client planning and procurement management costs, which are likely to be in the order of 10 to 15 per cent of the estimate.”  They also in no way cover operating costs like train leases and electricity.  

Cutting to the chase, to build the whole thing based on these broad estimates will cost between $61 billion and $110 billion.  This sounds like heaps which it is and it isn’t.  Labour costs a lot in Australia, as does land in inner city areas plus you're dealing with some remote and sensitive areas between major cities.  Also the $110b equates to a 90% probability of completion within budget (ie P90 in the table below).  Maybe given current labour laws and government it is best to use this figure only?

Segment		Length	Stations	Risk Adjusted Cost Est ($2011b)
	Corridor Name	(km)		P10	P50	P90
Brisbane to Newcastle
	3 Direct Corridor (via Beaudesert)	676	4	$21.7	$28.9	$35.9
	3a Direct Corridor (via Gold Coast)	701	5	$24.9	$32.6	$40.6
	4 Coastal Corridor (via Beaudesert)	701	7	$20.0	$23.8	$27.8
	5 Coastal Corridor (via Gold Coast)	706	8	$22.2	$26.9	$31.7
Newcastle to Sydney
	8 Central Coast Corridor	120	4	$10.7	$14.2	$17.9
Sydney to Canberra
	11 Hume Highway Corridor (via Southern Highlands)	271	4	$10.9	$15.1	$19.2
	12 Princes Highway Corridor (via Wollongong and Southern Highlands)	290	5	$15.0	$19.8	$24.5
Canberra to Melbourne
	14a Hume Highway Corridor (via Wagga Wagga and Albury-Wodonga)	552	4	$19.5	$22.4	$25.6
Brisbane to Melbourne (totals)
	Best route (5,8,11,14a)	1649	20	$63.3	$78.6	$94.4
	cheapest (4,8,11,14a)	1644	19	$61.1	$75.5	$90.5
	dearest (3a,8,12,14a)	1663	18	$70.1	$89.0	$108.6

You can get the reports at:

http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/rail/trains/high_speed/index.aspx

Another opinion:

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/hugging-the-rails-on-a-fast-track-to-nowhere/