The joys of Melbourne's trains.

For the second time this week there were no trains on the Sydenham line. That's the one that ends at Watergardens station way out west.

Both outages occurred due to bozos being hit by trains. My outrage is directed squarely at Metro for having a wholly inadequate plan B for this scenario. Eventually a couple of crappy old buses turned up to ferry us poor sods to a place where the trains were running. The driver hardly seemed to know what he was doing. Lets couple that with the facts of heavy traffic and cold and that you need ten buses to cover the loss of one train. Hopeless.

Point two is that the hub and spoke train network means that alternatives are just not present. Maybe the first home builder's bonus could've been spent on some new railways. Nah you idiot voters love the bribes!

Rant ends.

Senator Conroy - wrecking ball in a suit

Let's face some facts about government in Australia:

1. The Treasurer is a prize fool
2. The Prime Minister can't buy a jacket that fits properly
3. Wilkie is never getting his pokie reforms

These are all blatant failings, but there is one getting under the radar even though he gets mentioned in the press almost every day.  He doesn't make big headlines very often, offers next to nothing in terms of sound bites, but he is going to wreck free speech in this country.  That's right I'm talking about Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Communications and Broadband.

Here's some recent articles from The Age where he is quoted or mentioned:
The Age search page

On top of being the guy responsible for what will be one of the great loss-making ventures of all time - the NBN, he may well be the one who curbs your right to have a ridiculous blog like this one or perhaps read a bit of insanity.  He may control how much football or cricket gets shown on delay by channel seven; got the last say on video games and porn as well.  Let's not forget that he blackmailed Telstra into selling the copper network to the NBN and agreeing to 'structural separation'.

Over the past couple of years Senator Conroy has been at the forefront of the proposed internet filter for the whole country, recently he's talking about media diversity.  'Media diversity' is used in the recent context of stopping people like Gina Rinehart and Rupert Murdoch from having the media outlets in which they have large shareholdings reflect their personal views since the ALP and greens do not agree with them.  Former Senator Bob Brown thought along these lines too.  He thought News Ltd was out to get him: turned out it was just some of the more radical Greens who wanted him gone!

In this day and age a pretty good argument can be mounted that media diversity laws are completely un-necessary.  The digital age is seeing the rapid convergence of media types and a much greater overall choice in news services.  Sure the big channels/mastheads/websites are owned by a few big companies, but that it basically the nature of the Australian economy as a whole.  If you don't like those outlets there are plenty of blogs, foreign agencies and street corners wackos you can turn to.

Had you read just one of the articles in the link above you will have noticed that the reporting is in no way neutral.  Mainstream media has been bereft of facts and plagued by over-editorialising for the past decade and a half at least, so no more complaining about Fox News.  At least they don't pretend to be neutral.

During his tenure, Conroy has strengthened the minister's control of the ridiculous anti-siphoning list of big events that must be shown on free to air TV, started spending $40 billion without a cost-benefit analysis and is seeking to curb free speech and expression via an internet filter and limit the rights of directors to control their companies.  Seriously consider your Senate vote at the next election people!!

The Australian Football League - integrity not needed

Congratulations must go to that bastion of sportsmanship and fairness - the AFL.  Today they announced that they had changed the rules without actually changing the rules.  Here's the press release:
http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/208/newsid/135397/default.aspx
and the letter to clubs.

So umpires have been 'instructed' to jerk their knees in reaction to another media storm.  Much like the 'head is sacrosanct' edict, this will no doubt create more confusion and lead to a rash of free kicks not paid in similar circumstances in earlier rounds of the season.  For the players it must be like trying to get sense out of a professional on Friday afternoon after a wet lunch - you know the answer will be different Monday morning.

Free kicks decide games and no doubt this knee jerk reaction will have an impact this weekend.  Nevermind fans, your hopes of seeing your team play in September might just get sunk this weekend.  As opposed to last week when the rules were different!

If it wasn't bad enough that there is no integrity in the fixture or the player draft which both have ridiculous compromises for the sake of money, we can now add changing the rules mid-season. 

I can't decide if the change itself is worse than the reactionary nature of administration that brought it about.  Actually I can.  The change is minor and will be a harsh enforcement of existing laws, but the fact of the change is a sign of weakness.  It's a shame the press can't get the AFL to act the same way on Grand Final ticket prices or having the roof open at Etihad Stadium.  This week we have seen the press baying for change, players and coaches really just seemed to want consistency.  Fans? Well who cares so long as the keep paying.  Can't say I enjoyed seeing David Swallow on a bad ankle or Gary Rohan's leg fracture, but if the AFL in its infinite wisdom, maintains a Laws of the Game committee that can't sort these things out during the six month off season, then too bad.  Wait till the next season.  Try not talking to the press about the subject.

Perhaps if the Laws of the Game committee worried about the things that most rules are for in any sport, we wouldn't have this problem.  Most rules in any sport, especially contact sports, are for player safety.  In the AFL, rules are for fiddling with.  Quick kick-ins have resulted in the now never enforced deliberate rushed behind rule.  Time-on for throw ins resulted in two new ruck rules.  The list goes on over the past 20 years.  Now we fiddle mid-season with the rules, so that players have to adapt again.  Since players are contracted on a season-by-season basis, could a suspension for an infraction as a result of this sort of rule change be grounds for claiming lost earnings through the courts?  Or the loss of a finals berth by a club?

Integrity - the AFL craps on about it, but ignores it as often as possible.  The AFL worries about it image so much almost that one image seems to have caused this rule change, but the bigger picture is rotten.  Un-explained team changes, a highly compromised fixture that leaves some teams as perennial also-rans or poor or both, officials and associates that bet on games, tanking for draft picks and now mid-season rule changes.  If you're so worried about your image as compared to competitors, how about running a league where the goals don't move during competition?

Excellent Article

Once again I'd like to point you at an opinion piece I've found in one of the papers.  I think it casts light on both manufacturing and politics and their inter-connectedness in Australia.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/manufactured-crisis-20120428-1xro9.html

I know that some of the opinions in the article are counter to postings I've made previously on this blog.  Especially in relation to the car industry.  However if you're unwilling to accept a different point of view and/or perhaps change your own view, will you ever grow as a person?

This opinion is even more poignant given the diabolical nature of Australia's current parliament and the ruling party's head-in-the-sand attitudes to "workers".  Marxism is dead people.

The folly of governments with money

Monorail may link new avalon station to airport
$300m more from taxpayers to save car jobs

Here are two great articles about how governments spend money. 

The first is a proposed Monorail linking a couple of sheds built next to a runway (Avalon or Geelong airport) with a railway station that doesn't yet exist.  If the Simpsons has taught us nothing else (and it has taught us plenty), monorail is a synonym for both 'white elephant' and 'waste of money'.  The article reads like a dreamer's bedside table notepad.  You'll be able to check your bags before you get on the monorail.  Monorail will be cheaper than regular rail.  This sounds as impractical as it is stupid.  No thought given to security, traffic going the other way or scale. 

Why did Victoria's transport minister pass comment?  This proposal is barely beyond the 'I just thought of it' phase and this article is clearly intended by the airport operators to help facilitate government funding of a rail link.  Ministers should not pass comment on what is not much more than idle speculation.  Politicians wonder why the general public struggles to take them seriously!

The second article is one of my favourite topics as it poses a unique quandary for policy makers in Australia.  There are very few countries (about a dozen I think I read somewhere recently) that retain the ability to design and build cars from scratch.  Australia is one of them.  But we spend a fair bit of taxpayer's money to keep it that way.  From a pure market point of view, that money is a waste as we could just import or assemble vehicles and hang on to at least $1billion a year.  But pure markets are for dreamers and academics.  In the real world there is the political considerations of losing heavy industrial capacity.

There are the obvious job losses at car manufacturers and then the closure of parts suppliers.  But what I believe is the most important and best argument for large government subsidisation of the auto industry is defence.  We are not just a country, we are also a continent.  So if this continent loses the ability to manufacture vehicles, it becomes a strategic weakness in terms of defence posturing and wartime capability.  As a wide open land next door to the most populous region on earth this can not be ignored.  The engineering and manufacturing skills needed for the design and manufacture of vehicles is very important to the defence of a continent.  We can't rely on the yanks for everything.

Ideally and ordinarily I'd pump for the free market economics solution and save the money, but he who fails to prepare for war is destined to find himself in one.  Perhaps the re-introduction of import tariffs might be a better way to support heavy manufacturing as it shifts the cost burden onto the consumers and producers of foreign cars rather than across all taxpayers who tend to resent the concept of government handouts to specific industries.  With a very strong Australian dollar this protectionist measure actually has some merit for help the auto industry stand on its on feet whilst imported cars are so cheap.  But governments have been giving the car makers handouts since the tariff wall started to come down in the 1980s, so both parties are kind of wedded to the concept and the car makers know they are going to be supported, so they keep putting their hands out for more.  If the idea didn't fill me with dread, I would suggest nationalisation here - but that would probably cost way more than subsidisation ever will.

So two articles about government expenditure and no mention of cost-benefit analysis or mention of any great argument for not spending the money on a pile of paperclips.  Not that cost-benefit analysis is necessarily helpful.  Take the Monash freeway here in Melbourne.  For some reason it was originally built as a two-lane road with traffic lights, yet within twenty years and a few billion extra dollars it is a four lane monster with grade separations.  Obviously the cost-benefit analysis in 1990 didn't look too far ahead or else it would have been economical to build the road at full size back then.  So what I guess I'm getting at it that if it buys votes (auto subsidy) and offers a good photo opportunity (monorail) it is more likely to get assessed and funded than if it may actually accrue long-term benefits to the community (large freeway).

New Year, Same Shit

So the serious drinking season has come to an end and it's back to work for most people this week.  To all the bozos who have made new year's resolutions or said such insightful things as, "I'm glad to see the end of that crappy year!": have you got any idea of what you need to do to change?  My answer is probably not.  You're going to go back to your job and do everything the same way as last year, treat your wife and/or kids just the same and then do some more complaining about how tough it is to make ends meet.

Here's some hard truths:

1. Australia is probably the richest country on the planet right now - you are one of its very wealthy citizens.  Tough shit if you can't afford a third bathroom in your suburban palace or an overseas holiday.
2. Your lack of insight on point one probably makes you think you are just a battler and the world is against you.  Actually you are in a position of economic power that your kids will probably never know.  Don't waste the opportunity.  Stop wasting your money on grog and 500g steaks you can't finish.
3. If you didn't like 2011, do things differently - don't continue to whine like a fat pig.  If that's how it was always done and you're whining, change the damn record.  Your approach is wrong.  It's not the world - it is you.
4. On the subject of resolutions, did you write it down? put in a time frame, set benchmarks or even tell anyone?  If the answer is no, stop kidding yourself.  You are just a damn windbag making a crappier noise than a set of bagpipes.  Hell, I'd like to slap you!
5. New Year is basically just another rubbish Hallmark holiday.  I have no idea why it is pretty much a global public holiday.  Who cares?

Well that's pretty mean-spirited of me isn't it?  Can you actually find any good reasons to argue any of those points? 

No.

Australia, stop whinging and get back to work.  Drinking season (roughly Dec 10 - Jan 3) is done for another year and it is good fun.  At no stage in that time did you stop and think about how frivolous it all is and opt out to save the money you supposedly don't have.  Just threw in the odd sook about the government not doing enough or some such, right?

Time to spit out the dummy and sack the friggin' Nanny!