On the dumbing down of Australia (and the rest of the world)

Those of you who know what I do not for a living... hey wait, I need to be more specific. Let me rephrase that.

Those of you who know where I acquired my skills in cut price business administration will be relieved to know that I won't be rattling on about the sad state of the education system. Not much anyway.

No, I'm talking about dumbness in professional circles - the sort of people that should know better.

The rot started with the demise of the corner shop and the rise of the supermarket. At this point I could go on to say that it was the availability of motorised private transport that triggered this change, but I won't bother. The supermarket model was a major shift away from the old system where one man (sometimes with help from his family) ran the whole thing - butchered the cow, laid out the meat on the shelves, wrapped it up and took your money. Consequently he knew everything there was to know - but only in his field of expertise.

When supermarkets tried to become all things to all people, that intimate knowledge was lost. In the drive for low prices the retailers hired the cheapest labour money could buy, and didn't bother to teach them anything about the product. Here's a cash register, all you have to do is punch in the numbers and take the money. Customers decided that low prices were more important than real product knowledge or even friendly service, specialist shops couldn't compete and went under, and the age of mediocrity was born.

The spread has been slow but distinct. Supermarkets created a market for dumb blondes who know nothing beyond running a cash register; the population rose to the challenge and produced them. As usual it made more than the supermarkets could use (remember they were trying to cut costs, staff are just an expense really) and the employment market was flooded with them.

Gradually other industries realised that they could hire this cheap labour, thus at a stroke solving their recruitment problems and slashing their expenses. They would get just a few clever people to make the decisions, and have a bunch of these cheap Retail Workers doing the donkey work.

Soon the universities discovered that eighty percent of their graduates were just doing donkey work for the smart guys - needing only slightly more grey matter than a Retail Worker. Why are we wearing out our lecturers teaching students things they will have forgotten by the time they need to use it? Why not just teach them the things they should have been learning in high school, like how to put a sentence together correctly? (Oops, I forgot I said above I wasn't going to make slurs about the public eddication system like that. I apologise. I think.)

It only takes a few years for all sorts of industries to be flooded with mediocrity once the universities start to churn it out. Not just universities either - here's some examples.

Aviation
You would have thought that flying would be the very last place you'd want to find mediocre training. In aircraft things can go wrong very fast, and there's no way of pulling over to the side of the road to chill out and think about the problem. But about a year ago one of the columns in Australian Aviation magazine talked about a trend whereby people trained as pilots, couldn't get a job with an airline (due to the number of military pilots being lured away by large amounts of money), and instead decided to become instructor pilots.

Many of these raw instructors, said the columnist, had never been in an uncontrolled spin because they couldn't afford a flight in an aircraft rated for them. How could they be an effective trainer?

Possibly the impression of mediocrity is just a reaction against the fact that all the World War II pilots (who had thousands of hours under the most incredible conditions) had died or retired. But I think the AA columnist has a point.

Household goods
How long have you had your freezer? Most people don't keep them for more than five years - ten at the most. When something goes wrong, they get replaced. Gone are the days when you could call a repair person who would take the back off, find that some condensation had corroded the contacts on the motor to the main pump, replace a few wires as preventative maintenance, pocket his fee and leave you with a working device.

No, you first assume that the old one is a write-off (after finding out that the warranty expired last month) and try to buy another. Then you get a bunch of hopeless salespeople trying to tell you the difference between this model and that model, and arranging delivery by a separate company that can't guarantee delivery schedules more accurately than a 48 hour window.

Why is it so? Because nobody in Australia knows how these freezers work. They're designed overseas, manufactured in huge quantity and shipped out here. The only person who knows what speed the motor is supposed to run at doesn't speak English.

Car repair
Once more - gone are the days when a mechanically-minded person could learn about engines and then tinker with a car until it works. No, every engine is different and they have to go to a course to learn it. As often as not it's a case of reprogramming the computer to make it work - and of course the computer is locked up and nobody can touch it.

Engineering
Engineers used to be incredibly brilliant people - they could do calculations on a slide rule that would baffle a lot of electronic devices. The trainees were apprenticed to an experienced engineer for years and learned the job properly.

Nowadays they are trained to use a calculator or CAD program at university, then sent out to a big firm to practice. The blueprints come out looking great, but do they know that this kind of soil can be a tin crust over a mass of low-density stuff underneath? No, they start digging and then find out the hard way. That's why building projects cost so much.

Nursing
Medical science is another place you'd expect to find none but the very most cluey people available. They make a mistake, someone dies. They show a lack of confidence, a patient worries and takes longer to recover.

But where in the old days they had years of intensive on-the-job training in the field, now they do a long university course without ever once seeing a patient, are awarded a piece of paper, and go out and practice. No good.


And there are lots of other examples of course. It constantly amazes me when I watch the Mythbusters, that they can find experts in all sorts of areas. You want to know what the actual steel cap out of a safety boot looks like? Here's one. This is just a travelling boot salesperson - not only does she know the name and price of each boot, but she knows how they work. A breath of fresh air.

Of course, it's not all bad news. Recently I was looking at buying an electric booster unit for my bike - climbing out of the Scotchman's Creek basin is no fun when you have to do it three times a week after a day's work. The salesmen in the shop (there were two or three) just happened to be the ones that designed the circuit that controlled the power to the motors. They were able to answer every difficult question I threw at them, and at one point even offered to design a modification to one product to suit our requirements - with a rough quote on the spot. I was seriously impressed.

Interestingly, it's the supermarkets, which started the downward trend, that are doing the most to reverse it. They're (re-)discovering that once you've cut costs to the bone, the only way to make money is to have more customers. Real rocket science folks. And to have more customers, you have to make sure they're happy to come back to you. Getting into brain surgery here! And how do you make them happy? You give them good service.

Of course it's a long hard road, reversing 50 years of bad attitudes. Entire procedures manuals have to be rewritten. Point of Sale software has to be modified. What gives the most trouble is taking away safeguards - they were put in place for a good reason (even though the reason assumed the worst of both customers and staff) and the responsible course is to protect the company. But the consequences of doing so are that the company can't give good service. It takes real guts (in a corporate vice president sort of way) to fix that sort of thing, and it happens slowly. But we ARE seeing progress.

Summer Tones, or, how to sing despite the heat

(For those that aren't accessing this via the link from Facebook, it won't make much sense to you. Allow your attention to wander, as what I am about to say does not concern you. There's plenty of things you could be doing, go walk the dog or something.)

In the cold sober light of dawn I take keyboard in hand to write a review.

I'm guessing none of you have ever been the subject of an Angelico review before and are quaking in your ballet shoes, but fear naught, for there is nothing to fear but fear itself!

I knocked off work at 6:15pm and took the 6:28 train (w00t!) to Armadale. Young Fabian also knocked off at 6:15pm and took a car. I was there first, he had to park. Mwahaha, you car drivers don't have it all your own way.

I should mention, first of all, that I had exchanged my blue uniform for a white shirt and what is known in big business circles as a "tie". Pronounced phonetically. A tie is a strip of overpriced cloth intended to command respect for the wearer. It is designed to constrict blood flow to the brain, thereby giving "suits" (the people who wear ties) an excuse for the bad decisions they make about economic crises and things. (I only wear them to convey respect to other people - so far the only ones so honoured have been prospective employers, important people in the public transport industry, lead sopranos from shows I was in who I think will be COMPLETELY AWESOME as Princess Ida, and the Summer Tonians. Feel very special.)

So in I walk, buy my ticket and immediately sight a familiar face. Johnny Edmonds, what brings you here? I've known these people for years, and Jin is playing! What brings you here? I know Stacey, I'm her boss in fact, hey it's a small world! (And yes Stacey darling, I'm going to keep rubbing it in until it's completely rubbed... you know how I enjoy taking a joke too far. Especially if it's about you.)

So I manage to sit up the front. Why not, under the spout where the blessings come out. Hey wait it's Saturday, it's not a church it's just a hall. Wake up Michael...

During the course of a meandering (aka interesting) conversation Johnny drops a compliment. Something along the lines of "I think your family is really weird - and I mean that in the nicest possible way!" Brilliant - incredibly perspicacious of you. That describes us to a T. I wear it with pride.

At precisely 11 minutes past starting time Kristian's Girlfriend(TM) comes out and asks us to turn our phones off. It's being recorded you see. Ah, that's why Fabian was in stage blacks, thinks I. I'll have to demand a copy of the resulting DVD on pain of refusal to work Saturdays after this roster finishes.

So Kristian and Jin come out to a smattering of applause, lots being from up the front - Johnny is very supportive of his wife and she sure doesn't disappoint him (or anyone else). I should have said earlier how I know Johnny. He was our rehearsal accompanist for Mikado, Patience and Gondoliers, and his ability was such that he was selected as Musical Director for A Song to Sing O - during which time Melvyn Morrow paid him some handsome compliments that the entire cast agreed with 100%. By now you will have guessed that he is no mean judge of piano playing ability. I wonder how it would be to be married to someone completely brilliant at something you yourself are completely brilliant at... Well I'm in no danger of that, no volunteer organization is going to be completely brilliant at efficient administration and such boring-like subjects.

So as I said, a smattering of applause. It has been said that "Applause before the show is faith; applause during the show is hope; applause after the show is charity." Of course that's only talking about bad shows, like the one I blogged about in October. Go ahead and heap abuse on that post girls - I will be disappointed if you don't.

Anyway I'll get to the point sooner or later. Kristian opened his mouth and sang. I'm glad it was in Frog (no offense Tiffane, I always say that) because I didn't have to try to follow the plot of the song and could just listen to the sound. Brilliant stuff, you deserve to do extremely well in your upcoming studies and have a distinguished career.

Then he switched to German, and again it was a brilliant sound - also it sounded really German, with the exception of the guttural sounds which would probably damage the throat.

The applause by now was picking up nicely.

Back inside and out come Stacey and Daniel. Stacey sings about a man who refuses to propose to her, and seems to be throwing significant glances somewhere. I crane my neck to see who they might be aimed at but gain no useful information (sic). Argh, better luck next time. Now - I've heard that voice many a time and oft as the expression is, including singing as well as spoken. I was interested when I heard a few bars of nothing in particular in the lunch room one day, highly impressed with a performance of Eurydice which she insists was not acting at all (which makes me very, very afraid - because if it wasn't acting it must have been genuine, it was nothing like the second-by-second cues I've seen done by people who REALLY can't act), completely captivated by a random excerpt from a Christmas carol during a work BBQ, and still I was blown away. No other description.

Incidentally that one was in English, hence my ability to understand the words - when I bluff to Niluka that she has no idea how many languages I speak, I'm talking Q-Basic and VX-REXX with a smattering of HTML 2.0 if you call that a language.

Then we had another Cox&Boxism (aka stage directions "Exit James John Cox, Enter John James Box") and Kristian and Jin came back in. Another song in German just to remind us that he has a great voice and the show isn't just about fun words, then an English one about a condemned prisoner contemplating his impending doom. The programme said something about hanging but it sounded more like he was going to walk the plank. Good acting BTW Kristian, I was getting really worried there until the song finished, the acting dropped and you acknowledged the applause (which by this time was fairly impressive for a small audience in a church hall).

Then a piece of Mozart and we start getting into the patter (which I love above almost all other kinds of music). If I had found the time to think of it, I would have been worried because everything Kristian had sung so far was the very opposite - but my unformed worries were unfounded. I have a theory about timing that states that a person has an internal CPU clock speed which regulates everything else. Singing in time depends on the tempo being an exact multiple of the clock speed. I have heard people sing patter when they aren't used to it, and notes sometimes land in the wrong spot because they were getting too close to their clock speed and the mathematics didn't work out right. Kristian, unless you were wired on caffeine last night, you have no worries in that department.

(My theory states that clock speed also determines how fast you type, run up stairs and process visual information. And it can change over time.)

Exit Kristian and Jin, Enter Mandy and Daniel. This is the first time we've seen Mandy and it's nearly the end of the act! I guess it's no worse than Archie Grosvenor, and certainly better than Private Willis.

Mandy cuts loose on another piece of Mozart and dammit I'm incredibly impressed again! Can't we have at least one dud? Another cheerful pattery song. Another flawless exhibition of adequate(TM) clock speed. Her voice sits very high, I don't think I've heard more than three or four other people in the world sing like that. Of course I've only been listening to that sort of music for about five years, but still that's only one a year so it still counts as a compliment. Do Lucia one day Mandy. Just don't be one of three split over five performances.

And then Jess comes out again to say it's interval! What, already?

So we go round the back for the old brandy there - or rather, very welcome cold water. Tiffane turns up and says hi - she also is here straight from work. General catching up takes most of the interval.

Johnny and Jin have to go, they have something else on. Good to see you again, take care, happy studies! Oh dear, does that mean I'll be alone in the front pew? No I'll have the honour of a charming young girl sitting next to me. I'm flattered Tiffane!

As a dedicated stage crew regular I really enjoyed watching everyone move the screen that blocks the sight lines to the door. I just wanted to say that.

Mandy opens Act 2 (or Act II if you like that sort of thing), which is only fair since she's been kept out of most of what has gone before. She sings two bits of Schubert, in some dialect of German I don't understand - but the facial expression told us what we need to know. Well done Mandy's face.

The programme prepared me for something interesting in the next one - it said something about being drawn from folk music and lacking something compared to classical kulchered music. It certainly stood out from the mould, and Daniel got to cut loose on the piano a bit. It was kind of sad and wistful, which is not the sort of music I like to sing but I sure like to hear it sung by a good sop. During one performance of Pirates when Mabel was singing her aria, the police were waiting in the wings and the two first tenors (who were therefore not subpoenaed into changing out of pirate costume) were downstairs letting the makeup cake on our faces, Jamie said to me "You know, when I had my first video of Pirates I always used to fast forward this bit..." In his defence, he said, he was only 10 years old at the time. So what was I saying, ah yes, sad sop arias sung incredibly well are a Good Thing(TM).

PS Steph if you're reading (you probably aren't, most girls in the world wouldn't read my blog unless forcibly sat in front of it and threatened with a large, ugly firearm) - you already know I love you, I'm not trying to earn brownie points, OK?

Cox Mandy, Box Stacey. With Mario on the guitar - a bit of a business putting all the gear together, particularly with two guitars. I was going to ask afterwards why the difference (I mean, I could see they were a different shape but what does that do?) but I forgot. Quite a performance - a lot of arm movement unlike any other guitar playing I've seen. Good fun, guitar-accompanied singing is different from piano, nice contrast.

The first two songs were by Benjamin Britten, just to prove that the Poms have a bit of kulcher. Poms, Frogs, Krauts, Wogs, I'm going to insult everyone equally today. The programme says the first one is from Northumberland but when I was over there I didn't hear anything like it. I guess like most of the modern world they follow the lead of the Beatles. Then a tragic song of a man who accidentally shot his fiancee. Again, I would never sing a song like that but I love hearing them done well.

The next song was a weird one (in the good sense Johnny used above!) - lots of la-la-la stuff and then a sort of hum which Stacey somehow (I have no idea how) projected to the entire hall. Just the technique would take months to learn I'm sure. According to the programme it was meant to be done with a sop and EIGHT cellos. Being an avid fan of the big strings, I think that would be Something to Hear. Hopefully it wouldn't detract from the singing though.

Another Coxandboxery, in come Mandy and Daniel. And Jess? Ah I know what's happening, it must be either long or complicated so Daniel needs a page turner. It's quite a good job - you get to watch (and learn) all the music, hobnob with some VERY competent musos (I worked with Frank Platford, if any of you don't know the name you must be too young), you do none of the hard work and get the credit at the end!

Mandy, please accept my sincere apologies - my attention was half on the accompaniment for that number. It went well. Daniel made clear indications when he wanted the page turned, and Jess stayed inconspicuous until the right time and then turned the pages quickly and silently. It takes good teamwork and a bit of practice. That sort of thing deserves a curtain call - even if there's no curtain.

Now my scroll bar is rapidly shrinking so I'll skip to the end - a Donizetti. All I knew about Donizetti (apart from that horrible LdL) was that Sullivan parodied him to make Mabel. Now I can state categorically that 1) he was parody material (I do have a fairly keen sense of the ridiculous, hopefully that doesn't affect my career prospects in foreign climes), and 2) Sullivan did a really good job of it.

And so to dinner. The familiar post-show buzz was in the air such as I haven't felt since Pirates. You know, talking at Notch 8/Pedal to the Metal/Full Throttle/Parallel Transition (take your pick), laughing at the tiniest thing, saying ridiculous things that wouldn't normally be funny, nobody knowing what's happening and all following each other, good fun. Eventually we ended up at a restaurant next door to Malvern tram depot, how good is that?

More post-show conversation, unwinding, talking about future plans (another of these shows? I'll be first to book!), etc. Pizza at 11pm is never a good idea, but hey, let tomorrow take care of itself, it's party time!

And then home, some people have had a hard day's work, others have had a hard day's preparation and sorting out last minute issues. Hugs all round (I just LOVE being around musos!) and I caught the train home with about 45 seconds of waiting time.

So - a night of incredibly good singing. Today in church I was almost afraid to let myself be heard because I fall so far short of the mark... I once thought I was on a good thing, but that was before the stress of Patience in England put me so far out of form it took 18 months to get over it (and I'm still not up to where I was). There will be no duets in the stationery aisles. I'll just listen.


Afterthought: I don't think there's any one person in the world who will understand ALL the veiled references I've put in. That means I managed to allocate at least one to each of the different groups of people who I *hope* will read this. Have fun!


PS - can someone tell me exactly how many languages were represented? I lost count.

I have a dream...

No it's not a dream about hearing less US-centric news involving people treating a mere mortal like he's the Saviour of the world (or at least a small part of it). No, it's just a dream about the end of software piracy.

Software piracy is easier than (say) copyright violation in the printing trade, simply because it's a lot of work (and even a bit of money) to photocopy a book, bind it and make it look like the real thing. Technology is at the point where practically anyone can copy a CD byte for byte, burn another, and even make a cover which looks like the original.

The copy is functionally identical to the original (anti-piracy features aside) so the recipient gets what they want (unlike a photocopied book which loses quality, especially of photos). The only problem is that the author of the software doesn't get the money from the sale - which all has to pay for his/her living expenses while they were writing the thing [sic].

This has become such an issue that many software companies have gone bankrupt and the remaining users of the program have no access to tech support or updates. In other cases people with a great idea for a software package have just let it drop, knowing they could never make it a paying proposition. The ones that survive have had to resort to increasingly elaborate anti-piracy measures, including some fairly costly and/or inconvenient measures like holographic stickers on registration cards or a registration process with fewer automated steps.

But there is another kind of software - the free open source stuff. The authors write for the fun of it (or because they see the need for the software and want to do the human race a favour), and give away the source and the executable code for free. These people don't care about piracy - in fact they prefer people to copy it to their friends rather than putting extra traffic on the official web site.

These people pay their living expenses themselves - usually by having a paid job in another sector and developing software in their own time. Prime examples of Busy People.

So how can we encourage a lot more of these programmers to go open source?

For a start, we have to get them out of these big companies. Nobody is going to be able to fund the building of a flashy corporate head office and a pack of marketing staff out of their own pocket, unless they're seriously deluded. What does the corporate structure do for software? It gives a large project some oversight which helps eliminate inconsistencies between different bits of the program and other silly issues - or rather I should say it CAN help. It brings in experts from the field the software will be aimed at. It gives the software publicity to help build up a userbase. But all those functions seem to be achieveable by large open source developer groups too.

Next, we have to reduce their direct expenses. Free open source development tools are a must - but since that's both the first problem the developers encounter, and the problem they know best how to solve, there are now plenty of very high quality development tools. Computer hardware to do the job is no longer all that expensive, and most people who program and are good at it will be enough of a geek that they want a high performance computer at home anyway.

The only thing left is to reduce their living expenses - in other words, somehow pay them a salary. But nobody is going to buy the work, where is the money coming from?

And this is where the dream comes in. Let these people take a part time job somewhere, even if it's nothing flashier than phone tech support or customer service at an electronics shop. But then let them claim every hour spent in software development under the GPL on their tax, the same as they could claim donations to a charity. Let's say a typical geek spends 20 hours a week at their part time job, earning say $16 an hour. That's $320 a week. The rest of the week, after taking out the usual time spent on the things that just have to be done, would easily amount to 30 hours which could be devoted to this tax deductible software project. Even if the tax office can only afford to give $18 an hour, that's still $540 a week, bringing the programmer's total income up to $45k a year - easily equivalent to a good software engineer salary at a major IT company.

Apart from eliminating piracy by making software free, this will:
- Increase productivity by eliminating the programming hours spent on anti-piracy measures
- Turbocharge IT innovation by effectively creating an infinite number of available jobs in programming
- Bring the advantages of specialised software to people who currently wouldn't use it because the cost outweighs the benefit
- Encourage amateur and start-up activity in other fields (eg music, business) by making full professional grade software available to everyone

Safeguards would be necessary. But the biggest hurdle would be convincing people of the Generation Y idea that says you don't have to pay for something for it to be worthwhile.

Happy new year from the midga!

Yeah I guess I should acknowledge the fact that it's 2009.

Year of the financial meltdown. Yep, I've blogged plenty about that.

Year of the continuing death throes of Microsoft monopoly. I've touched on that.

Year of lots of work for me. I guess I hinted about that too.

It has been well said that "May you live in interesting times" is an old Chinese curse. Welcome to the curse folks - better here than in the boring old middle ages when there were no blog servers.

Emissions trading

You all knew this was coming. It was inevitable. It's the Midga response to Penny Wong's emissions trading idea. Now I've only just got up and not eaten anything yet today (it's my day off, I can spend it in bed if I want) so my brain isn't feeling too good - therefore this will be a goonish response not a 100% serious one.

First, a disclaimer which will come as a relief to all of you - I'm not going to tackle the whole thing of climate change. I want people to reply to my blog, but I don't want it that badly. I'm going to assume that Wudd and Rong want the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere reduced and take it from there.

Ullo ullo - what's goin' on here den?

Nothing!

OK, I'll clear off then.

He's gone! Heeeee'''''sssss - goooooooonne! To cover the silence, I will tell a little jokule! Penny Wong is the Ministrer for Climate Change - so why doesn't she change it faster? Ehee! Pauses for audience applause, not a sosinge. Thinks: if I'd told the joke about Sabrina they would have applauded.

Bluebottle you little devil, stop that naughty thinks! You're too young for that sort of thing!

Thinks: that's what you think!

[jelly splosh in face]

Ehee! You have splashed me in the face and wetted my shirt all the way down the legs! Exits left to change shirt. Remembers second jokule and comes back. Laddies and gennerplums, what is emissions trading? It's when I misser Seagoon gives me his cigarette smoke and I give him my [BLEEEEP] Ties self to mast, waits for 50 lashes. Mr Greenslade, you have bleeped me! Can't I say [BLEEEEP] on the BBC? Well how about Methane? Ladies and gennlemens, Seagoon gives me his cigarette smoke and I give him my methane! Still not a sosinge. Exits left to buy record of applause.

That was the Goon Show, a BBC recorded programme, ...

Ahem, I'll be a bit more serious now.

1. Will emissions trading reduce carbon emissions?

I guess this is the most important point. Effectively "emissions trading" really means "emissions tax" - every industry that makes emissions will be made to pay up. Companies that abate the carbon they produce (usually by planting trees) will of course pay a negative tax. The rest of the kitty will be spent by the government on things it feels are strategically important - research into environmentally friendly technology, rebates for Working Families who put solar panels on their roof, sweeteners to car manufacturers who build low emission vehicles in Australia, and of course keeping Penny and her department in superannuation.

And of course to save the WFs from having to pay the passed on costs, Kevin Claus is going to give rebates on things that are thought of as essential like petrol and electricity. If you're finding it confusing at the moment, so am I, it looks like we're all going to have to become environmental economists before we can understand what goes on.

But in its simplest form, the idea is to make people's hip pockets (a very sensitive part of the anatomy) feel the pain that they inflict on the atmosphere. Sounds all well and good. But will it work? Andrew Bolt (whatever you might think of him, he does come up with some good ideas) wrote one of his columns on that very thing. 30c/l price increase on petrol was the idea at the time. It will save our children's children, said Kev. But hey, said Andrew - we've just had a 30c/l increase in the last two months due to the price of a barrel of oil! Has it cut consumption all that much? No, it's just created more hot air from people talking about it (to say nothing of the environmental destruction of a Senate Enquiry printing millions of copies of their findings on paper that a tree died for).

However, and this is where I will very briefly allow my other life to enter my blog, we did notice that public transport patronage went through the roof at the time - a 30% increase in patronage I think was the figure quoted. But a 30% increase from a base of an 11% market share doesn't equate to much really. Did anyone notice freeways getting emptier? Nor I.

OK life, that's your lot, now get out. [SLAM] Insert a Greenslade quote involving listeners with a degree in higher mathematics.

So the question was, will it work: NO. Midga 1, Rudd-Wong, 0.

2. Will it have harmful side-effects?

Will it ever! Let's see if we can brainstorm a few...

1. Rorting - can anyone imagine a savvy company with an eye for a dollar or three and no conscience? Funny, so can I. Can anyone name ten in one breath without stopping to think? Yes, quite. Now imagine this hypothetical company making press releases about becoming carbon neutral by planting trees on public land. And claiming its carbon credits of course. A tree will absorb a tonne of CO2 over its life - I know that because I read it on the internet. It was in the Google snippet in fact. Actually opening the link would have told me it takes 100 years to get to a full tonne but let that pass. This hypothetical company is planting 200 trees a year which means they can claim to have abated 200 tonnes of CO2. OK, that was fun and we paid on average $1000 a year more for the planting than we would have spent on carbon tax, but we probably made that up in goodwill with our press release. Good times.

In five years we'll have used up all our available land, so we'll call in an environmentally friendly logging company to cut down those trees and make woodchips for export. Then we get to go round again! Anyone notice a problem here? I don't think Penny's Department for Climate Change will be checking up on every single company that's claimed carbon abatement to make sure they actually do it.

Midga 2, Rudd-Wong 0.

2. Apathy - can anyone imagine people just paying up instead of making efforts to reduce their carbon emissions? The pattern is fairly clear. Australians don't economise until it becomes absolutely necessary (and usually not even then). When prices go up sharply they whinge, and some might try cheaper alternatives for a while. But like a frog in a pot, they get used to it after a while and just pay anyway.

Look at the price of coffee in the 70s - there was a shortage, the price went way up, people paid it anyway. (After the shortage finished the price just stayed up, of course. No good business misses an opportunity like that.) And petrol in the last year or two, as I said above. And what about Council rates, they go up by massive percentages but people don't move to Dandenong South just because it's cheaper there.

Midga 3, Rudd-Wong 0.

3. Overheads - has anyone factored in the energy usage that would be required for all this carbon abatement? I'm guessing tractors will be used to look after the trees. Will they be plug-in hybrids connected to dedicated wind power plants? I don't think so. Do solar panels use silicone? It's made by melting sand in a very hot kiln. Will the solar panel manufacturing company's carbon emissions be treated the same as everyone else's, or will they get special grants because they're innovative? Truth be told, the energy required to make a solar panel is still greater than its output over its entire life. That fact isn't repeated often, it's politically incorrect.

Midga 4, Rudd-Wong 0.

An alternative

Just let it get hotter! What's the prediction, 2C by 2050? That means for every day in 2008 that's 16C (cold enough that I'll stay inside and play computer games) it will be 18C in 2050 (warm enough that I'll go outside and pick some of the nectarines off the tree before they go rotten). So the polar ice caps will melt and the sea will rise by six inches? That will drown the ants! Every island with a beach that slopes at 20 degrees will lose (fires up calculator and works out the sine of 20 degrees) 18 inches of their land, and everyone who lives within 18 inches of the high water mark will lose their home! But let's not stop there - everyone who suffers from fever during the hot summer will die because their body temperature will be 2C higher than it used to be! Fever happens more than pneumonia doesn't it? And people will use their air conditioners more often, leading to spiralling increases in heat and energy usage, and the planet will rock off its orbit and dive into the sun!

No?

Well how about just creating huge tracts of land somewhere in the middle of the Simpson Desert for the dual purpose of sucking carbon out of the atmosphere and desalinating water, like I put in my last post?

Midga 5, Rudd-Wong 0. There's something to be said for water on the brain.

Apology to blondes

Today we honour the fair haired peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were the subject of "blonde jokes" – this blemished sector in our nation’s humour.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have failed to prevent inflicting profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the sale of hair colouring products to minors, alienating blonde children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Dyed Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parody writers of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parody writer resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, fair and dark-haired, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their looks, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.

Signed: the Prime Midga Mr Ruddiculous

Water, water everywhere, but never a drop to drink

We've finished with psychology and we're back to politics. Ladies and gentlemen, this song is called Rattler, or, how a high school dropout with water on the brain can out-think the best political brain in Spring Street.

In case any of you don't believe me, yes, I did drop out of high school after about Grade 14. It was university level education by Australian education standards but we homeschoolers call it high school because we have high expectations. As for the water on the brain - that's metaphorical, not physical. I've had a fascination with dihydrogen monoxide since the age of four.

Now as we all know, Mr Brumby has achieved quite an amount of publicity for his proposed solutions for Melbourne's coming water crisis. All publicity is good publicity isn't it mon Premier? Ah well, better luck next time.

The letters sections of the newspapers are ringing to the sound of people offering solutions - and the criticisms of the solutions offered. Great fun reading.

Let's go back a few steps and look at the situation in detail.

Back in the 70s the Cardinia reservoir was built, and the government of the day promised that Melbourne would never need to have water restrictions again. That idea lasted until very recently (30 years, not bad for a political promise!).

So suddenly water becomes a hot topic (no puns please) and the government Must Do Something About It.

I know, says Mr Brumby, the Goulburn is in flood this week, let's build a pipe to take all that water away from where it's doing damage to where it can be useful! Brilliant thinking sir, but did you know floods recede in less time than it takes to build a pipe?

Well just in case the pipe construction takes longer than we expected, we'll have a desalination plant too. Oh hang on, that takes lots of power. Well we'll bury the carbon!

Talk about thinking aloud without worrying about whether it's a good plan or not...

Let's all go back to primary school. Australia is a dry continent, right? And that's because it gets really hot, right? And because it's hot the water dries up and we need more of it. So let's spend lots of energy heating water to purify it, then cooling it and using it to replace the water the heat dried up.

Anyone else seeing a really big short cut we could take here?

OK, enough politics, down to a bit of just plain water. Here's my ideas for making sure there's plenty of water for the extra million people whose taxes are going to pay for public transport improvements in the next ten years.

1. Wider use of grey water
Grey water can include just about anything - stormwater mixed with leaves and dust from the drains, household waste water (excluding the really nasty stuff - that can still be sewage), water from rivers deemed not clean enough for drinking, etc.

What we can use grey water for is just about anything that doesn't involve human or animal consumption. How many industries need water for cooling? It doesn't have to be guaranteed free from bacteria, it just has to have a high latent heat of vaporisation. And even in the household every toilet flush, every car wash, every floor mop can be done in grey.

For the same cost as a north-south pipeline, how many residential areas could be fitted with grey water pipes? And which would be better for the water supply, really?

2. No half-measures with pipes!
Our good friend in Darwin constantly reminds us that the rain in the wet season is infallible, the lawn grows so fast he has to hose the clippings off his driveway after mowing, and by the time he finishes it's time to mow again. And while we're moving onto Stage 3a water restrictions here there are floods in Queensland and northern NSW.

So let's have a massive network of pipes - not for constant flow like the north-south is supposed to be, but just enough to balance water needs with water supplies. And of course we have a wonderful river system - all we have to do is pump water up to the source of the rivers and let it flow down hill to where it's needed. Hey presto, we have water in the river to keep the lesser carnivorous polkadot bellied Murray trout population alive, AND we can pump the water off in the population areas and drink it (or wash our cars in it)! Two for the price of one!

3. Catch that great steaming monster before it flies away!
Evaporative cooling is quite efficient in terms of energy consumption and mechanical simplicity - but of course it uses water. But it doesn't really "use up" the water - it will be back again, as rain - somewhere.

So why not capture it? Build a nice long steam pipe heading down to an underground condensation tank with a Stirling Engine to pump the steam down and the water up. Free water. Probably drinking quality.

4. Don't be ridiculous
Sorry to have to say it, but rice (for instance), which needs to be grown in a paddy field, is not exactly a suitable crop for the Echuca area. Not without a lot of irrigation anyway. Until we have that network of pipes and a plentiful supply of tropical rainwater, we should be importing our rice. Swap you for some wheat? It's more suited for our climate.

5. Make it rain!
If you get out of your warm bed on a winter morning and go to some of our fringe suburbs where open paddocks, apple orchards and medium density industrial estates share a square mile block (a dying breed I'll admit) you can see that the fog forms on the open ground. Thus, a large body of plant matter will partially sustain itself, by attracting precipitation.

Of course it has to be a large body of greenery to achieve critical mass, but that sort of thing should be possible to organize.

The other thing is to make sure the water doesn't blow away. Open paddocks big enough to swing a combine harvester probably won't hold much. Stick a few lines of trees in to break the wind and watch the grass grow.

6. Free desal!
Roll up, roll up! Yes folks it's absolutely FREE! Just warm your seawater in the heat of the sun and condense the vapours and it's yours gratis and for nothing!

I touched on this above. Why spend energy heating water to purify it so it can be used to replace the water lost to heat? We should be using some of our excess square kilometerage for a sort of greenhouse setup, which can have seawater or bore water introduced, heated in the sun and the vapour captured to make drinkable water.

There was an experimental setup in Queensland which did exactly that, and had a fairly ingenious safety cutout so that it would never let unfiltered water through - if anything went wrong it would fail safe and shut itself down completely. It was even designed to be isolated from maintenance for years on end.


So there you have it. Plenty of ways to manage our water crisis without spending heaps of energy, or robbing Peter to pay Paul, or leaving the fish out to dry. Can I be a consultant and earn a six figure salary now?