back in the ussrbrisvagas

Mr and Mrs VVB returned safely to the arms, charms and whatall of house, cat and offspring no 2 this arvo. Blogging will be resumed probably after I'm back at work and back in the rut. For the meantime there are eleventy thousand photos, both digital and traditional negatives, to sort through and choose which to print.

The highlights?

• arriving in Melbourne to find that the reception for the "apartment hotel" was on floor 8 and the lifts were u/s. So I trudged up to 8, got the key to the room (which was on 9), wedged open the stairwell door, went back down and collected Mrs VVB and the heavy bags and went up to 9. Slowly. There was an elderly French couple waiting in the lobby and even after two treks to the room and time to get settled, the poor dears were still waiting for the "in 30 minutes" repair when we went back down. At least I got to exercise my minimal, vestigal French. They got the lifts working but they soon went out again for a few hours.
• the fabulous National Gallery, and how much the inhabitants of chateau VVB prefer traditional forms of art;
• the museum isn't where it used to be 40 years ago;
• buying food (to cook) on Easter Sunday can be a challenge in Melbourne CBD;
• the Spirit of Tasmania is quite good fun even if you don't sleep like you expected to;
• Tasmania is breathtakingly beautiful - every turn you make unveils a new vista (hence the number of photos);
• especially Port Arthur and the Huon Valley;
• but we don't think we'll go to live there, altho' we did discuss it a bit and spent an afternoon looking around to get a feel for the suburbs (we've had a real estate feed coming in for about a year);
• it takes about a week until you stop thinking about work during the ritual 2am awake period;
• the proprietors of both the owner-operated places we stayed at were ex-Queenslanders (including a couple from the next suburb who also patronise the shop where offspring no 2 works - yup, it's a small world);
• you don't really miss the internet and newspapers and all that hoo-ha;
• and you don't want to come home.

But here we are. Selected photos later.

just a song before I go

As those of you who laboured (ha ha) through last night's ode to the government's new-found interest in my innards will know, chateau vvb is off on some long-delayed holidays, leaving vvb-ette to mind the chateau and cat.

So in a frame of mind to give you something to have a laugh at and almost certainly stir up the culture wars - well, if there were enough readers it would - here are couple of articles from something called Radar.

First up, America's worst colleges. As Radar says, this really should be a useful service. The dominant and successful colleges I imagine do all sorts of advertising to attract the "best and brightest", but what if you're mainly known for irrelevant courses or the propensity of the student body to engage in antisocial or criminal behaviour? Shouldn't prospective students get a few insights into the bad along with the good?

Although I must say that America's entrepreneurial society does spawn some, er, inventive ways of raising money even in a student body.

Second, American colleges' worst courses. Lots of so-called cultural studies of course with an emphasis on making something out of nothing from popular TV shows. But I was most taken with The Textual Appeal of Tupac Shakur. That'll be the late Tupac, of course. The idea of gaining an extra credit for learning the Humpty Dance should appeal to those who are driven to achieve at all costs.

Enough of this frivolity. The serious business of ensuring we have packed everything has commenced. As it's been a while since Mrs VVB and I have been hols, this endeavour holds the potential to presage the inevitable tension that will erupt the within the first minutes of collecting the hire car.

Just joking folks. This holiday has been a long time coming and I reckon we're up to making the most of it. How I'll deal with lack of Crikey and blogging is another matter. So, to make up for that, the reading material I'm taking is:
- Amory Lovins and others - the Natural Advantage of Nations;
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation - Educating for the Creative Workforce;
- Jeremy Clarkson - ...and another thing.

I've just tested the first bottle of Coopers Pale Ale. Quite tasty but utterly flat. Bugger.

a guest post by offspring no 2

This blog is being written by offspring number 2.....why? There's some heavy stuff going on here in Casa de VVB, and Mr. VVB felt that perhaps I should write about it.

I arrived home today and collected the mail (as usual), and proceeded to the front door. Lent up against the door was a large A4 packet, marked clearly 'Australian Government'...very official. It was addressed to Mr. VVB. I left, and have just returned to the house to discover that the official package was in fact a once in a lifetime opportunity for Mr. VVB to participate in...

The 'NATIONAL BOWEL CANCER SCREENING PROGRAM'!!

What an opportunity. What an honour. Mr. VVB is indeed a very lucky man.

The general gist is that the Australian Government would like Mr.VVB to provide them with 2 very special little brown presents.

So what's in the packet? Let's have a look.

• Two specimen collection sheets (Did you know that someone makes money out of making paper that you poo on?)
• Two collection sticks (I thought that a spoon would have been more appropriate)
• Two collection tubes (no comment)
• Two labels (he gets to name them)
• Two screw-top transport tubes (so they can go everywhere he does)
• Instructions for sample collection (in case you have never sampled your own excrement before).
• One reply paid envelope. (Which appears to be addressed to the wrong person, I'm sure if Mr.VVB were going to send his poo somewhere it would be to John Howard).

Storage and handling seem to be of concern, displayed in clear red writing. "Sample tubes should be stored at room temperature in a dark, dry location. May be stored in fridge but do not freeze."

So here's Mr. VVB, he's just done his service to Australia...and now he's going to put his two new friends (Todd and Jeremy...he got to name them, remember) in the fridge next to last night's left overs.

Will he do it? Won't he? Will he be allowed on to a plane to Tasmania with the kit, or will it be considered a weapon? All that and more when VVB returns in 2 weeks....

Over and out.

Postscript from VVB:

Various thoughts spring to mind, foremost amongst which is "Australia expects every man this day to do his duty...then collect it in a bag and send it back to us."

As for instructions on how to collect, in case you haven't collected sample of your own excrement before...hmmm, yes. Not one of my hobbies, so, no but yes, but no.

Also, how does someone invent the floating poo catcher? And what testing does it go through to determine fitness for purpose? I think someone's been straining to get to this point.

Anyway I think I'll leave Todd and Jeremy in the fridge, maybe someone can feed them to the cat.

As mini-VVB-ette said...over and......OUT!

Post-script to the post-script: You know it's an election year when you get an unsolicited letter from the government asking you to tell them about something that's very important to you. And enclose a demonstration.

free falling

Stacks of times throughout the day various things will suggest themselves for a blogpost. If I was rooly rooly keen I'd write them down and then, when the evening comes around (what song does that come from?), I could post. It'd be ever so efficient.

Regrettably, with the need to actually try to concentrate on work, allied with the attention span of a gnat - and the observant amongst you will note the incompatibility of those two factors - I don't. Then every evening, when it comes around, I have to try to remember what it was that so damned fascinating, or at least moderately interesting, so I can write. Speaking of attention spans... playing video games gives you a longer attention span? Didn't I read somewhere yesterday that the makers of board games like Monopoly are having to bring out new versions that last 20 minutes, not a whole evening, to cater to Gen Y?

Fortunately for all of my reader, work has been insinuating itself into my life to a greater extent recently. This has aligned nicely with an ennui, a certain je ne sais quoi, with the whole bloggerama thing. There are, believe it or not, only so many times you can whinge about Howard and co. No, actually that's not right, many others in the 'sphere do it literally incessantly and VVB is more than happy for them to continue to do so, and we'll come around and leave a comment occasionally. Maybe you're supposed to get some feeling of belongingness by being part of the vast left wing echo chamber but if so, the feeling has passed me by.

It'd also be far more effective to write posts offline, to mould and sculpt them into finely honed pieces of literary brilliance. I believe other people do this, quite obviously I don't. But if I did, there'd have to be an awful lot of sculpting. And would it still be a blog? Ah, the unfathomable, the imponderable questions of life.

No, me neither.

So, what about that David Hicks eh? Did you see Major Mori on the 7.30 report tonight? Good performance I thought, very professional, then he started to sound like he wanted out but Red Kezza just kept on coming. Mori remained professional in his responses but the tone started to sound a bit, not peeved exactly but certainly keen to bring it all to a close. Especially the answers about having to save up questions for Hicks himself when the gag - if it lasts any possible appeals - comes off on 31 March 2008.

How about that Australian Howard Government eh? What a bunch of blokes. Go team.

My neck hurts. Goodnight.

time and a word

A very short post after a very long week. Contains (as yet) no gratuitous swipes at our dully elected overlords in Canberra (and their HQ at Kirribilli) but does contain one unwarranted piece of reflexive anti-Americanism.

I was in the lift at work today and someone got in and said g'day to someone else in the lift, they had a short conversation and then this person got out a few floors later. And said "ta-ta". I don't think I've heard that phrase for about 20 years. Next thing someone will be saying "hooroo".

Unlikely though, they'll probably be saying that they did something from the "get-go". This obscure saying has migrated from commercial radio, where Americanisms seem first to get picked up, into the mainstream media and also into more general usage. I've always used the phrase "from the word 'go'", but I suppose I'll have to change. However before I do, I'll need to know what a 'get-go' is. Anyone know? What is it that is being got? And where do you go once you've got it?

And while we're on the subject of lifts, how stupid is it to have stairwells that you can't use as alternative routes between floors? Bloody fire regulations I imagine.

Oh look, we can't have a VVB post without a gratuitous swipe etc etc etc. Even though I expect to engage in so-called political discourse with people of sort of roughly like-minded persuasion to me, I have lately been amazed by the number of folks who reckon Alexander Downer is a hypocrite and a pompous prat. Good on 'em. The rest of us knew it from the get-go.

perfect government

Perfect government? Sounds like an oxymoron. It's apparently a song by NoFX. Not to worry, it seemed an appropriate post title for covering these two stories from the 'left' and 'right' aligned newspapers in the UK, the Guardian and Times respectively.

In the Guardian, we learn that the venerable institution, the British Council, is undergoing all types of grief as its usual approach of funding all types of artistic representatives of the country is 'enhanced' (I bet that word crept in somewhere) to pursuit of 'strategic objectives' of the government.

I've got a bit of disclosure here - in various parts of my previous lives I've run across British Council people overseas and I've also had a hand in funding Australian artistic types to take our own messages overseas.

It's all typically fraught. Who do you fund? How do you choose them? What's the actual objective: raising awareness of the country; supplementing more mainstream tourism promotion activities; making people think you're great guys; slipping a few overseas trips to those struggling in garrets? Even more fundamentally, should it be done at all?

My own experience over about 18-24 months was instructive. There was no competition. There were no proper, documented processes. We relied on expert advice from the Australia Council and a couple of similar arts bodies. Some of the suggestions appeared to reflect the personal preferences of the experts we consulted, or what was 'hot' at the moment, and some appeared quite inappropriate (although I should say I had no particular knowledge of these art forms and reacted in what I took to be some sort of 'typical middle class' way). Also, this was all some time ago and I would hope that processes have improved a bit since then.

My experience over that period indicates that any effort to have a country's overseas cultural representatives serve some sort of 'strategic imperative' is doomed to fail and I wasn't surprised to read in the Guragian article that the artistic interpretations of climate change chosen were pretty naff. And would be counterproductive, I imagine.

In the Times, we learn that the overwhelming trend towards numerical targets and other anally-retentive but very seductive ways of measuring government performance are also having counterproductive consequences. Of course, what gets measured gets done (and this phrase also produces about 1,280,000 results on Google). But the issue is what to measure. Where it's a difficult environment, simplistic measures of activity can be subverted easily (I was going to reference the Larvatus Prodeo post on Centrelink, but their servers are down). That's human nature.

Of course numerical indicators are needed, if for no other reason that this is the way that Treasuries around the world operate and such measures of activity are good for lonking numbers of people to numbers of things done. What gets lost is the nuance of any situation and ideally any numerical targets should be supplemented by qualitative feedback, in other words has any difference been made. This needs to be 'rich', the recent description of preference, for example by providing case studies and similar. You need something that can be learnt from so that services can be improved and any unintended consequences rectified.

So from all of this , what the lessons? Even where some government intervention is warranted, setting suitable performance measures is far from simple. And second, governments should understand what is propaganda and what isn't, and steer clear of the former.

As if. Perfect government indeed. Am I biting the hand, etc? No, just looking to make things a little better. It's no fun to be doing one's best to deliver some sort of service while getting continually diverted, or subverted, because of inappropriate performance indicators.

money...

"It's a hit,
don't give me that
do goody-good bullshit."

"The World Cup show will go on although there will be calls for it to be
abandoned. But to do so as a mark of respect would do a disservice to one who
gave his life to, and now for, the game. Woolmer would not want that to happen.
Besides which the financial implications of pulling the plug, the millions of
pounds that would be needed to be paid out in compensation, could come close to bankrupting the game."

Oh yes, talk of honour and so on, but the second paragraph gets to the heart of the matter.

state of the heart

Friday night you don't get 7.30 Report, you get StateLine. It's a good listen, but blogging and reading with the TV to your back in the distance, it's hard to get stuff straight and get it down quickly enough.

But they've got Ian Macfarlane on and apparently he's the PM's representative in Queensland. This statement - as I heard it - was not qualified in any way so I don't know in what context, or through what mechanism, he is the PM's representative. He's a personal friend? It's factional? Because he's a minister?

Anyway, the interviewer asks Macfarlane about the process for replacing the recently booted-through-the-back-door Senator Santoro and gets the response, "Oh, that's a question for the Liberal Party."

So, Senator Macfarlane is not a member of the Liberal Party? No, in fact he is. He's a member of the parliamentary rather than organisational wing certainly, but even so, wtf? Obviously the target demographic for StateLine has some fab powers of deduction that take a detour - probably left - around the extensive grounds ("huge tracts of land") of chateau VVB.

So, have we poor denizens of hacienda VVB been misled (help! help! I've been misled!), or is this just lazy journalism? Or are there some conventions of Parliament of which the poor, misled serfs of el rancho VVB are unaware? (Very likely).

While we're on the subject of the ignorance of your 'umble correspondent, here are a couple of other conundrums which are perplexing us:

- why can I only post a picture to the top of the blog post rather than where the cursor is?

- why doesn't new Blogger "remember me on this computer?"

- when someone posts a comment I get an e-mail version which I have to moderate to publish to the blog. When I've done this, I get another identical e-mail. Why?

Tomorrow, we bottle the Coopers Pale Ale and test the last batch of ginger beer. Yippee! Also, no proofreading. Well, actually there is but it's kind of different.

sounds of silence

Sounds of silence would be preferable to the sounds of people in love with the sound of their own voices. The cacophony from the sandpit has been quite disturbing of late.

Principal amongst these people, we would rate Peter Costello (raiding the honeypot, honourable members! the honeypot! the pot with the honey in it!).

In an entirely different category would be Lord Downer of Behind the Green Line (I have always thought that this man is a grub...but this man over here, honourable members, is a human! A human man, honourable humans and other members opposite!).

I'm glad that all the inhabitants of the sandpit are enjoying themselves, because it certainly isn't adding to the common weal, honourable readers. The weal! The common one!

And now, having vented, back to proofreading.....

simple minds

It's the end of the weekend, we all have to be serious tomorrow as we go back to work, so VVB would like to help you feel that you have sufficiently enjoyed the weekend by linking to the funniest thing we've seen for a long time. We must be missing something, we looked at the headline and thought, "this is news?" WTF?

don't forget to remember

I guess a lot of people drink to forget. This is a theme that occurs particularly in country and western songs, I think. I can't remember any, so that means.....

...no it doesn't, how about Tonight the bottle let me down?

These exceptionally random thoughts were stirred while I was just then brewing up batch no 16, a Coopers Australian Pale Ale. In fact what initially got me thinking was trying to divine Mrs VVB's objectives in buying the brewing kit in the first place. Is she trying to get me to drink myself in to an early grave? Or just out of her hair? Or just keep me off the streets? Actually, in that last instance, it's the failure to win Lotto that has been the bigger factor.

Anyway, we await with much anticipation how the Pale Ale will work out. Next weekend we can test the latest batch of ginger beer - the first batch was grouse.

If you needed help in trying to forget things, then alcohol is a first best alternative compared to what seems to have happened to this bloke - a high ranked US soldier who volunteered for what he thought was a job that had to done in Iraq, but instead found himself in a morass of corruption and rampant self-interest that simply undermined the very reason he volunteered in the first place. It's hard to imagine the torment he must have gone through. OK, he wasn't a battle-hardened soldier in the first place, but...

The figure that stuck in my mind was the 22 suicides out of 846 US military deaths in Iraq in 2005. Not a figure that's hit the papers anywhere, I imagine and not good for those 'selling' the war. Via Political Daily Review.

And via SciTechDaily, a link back to a local article about creating more ideal working conditions in cube farms by cancelling out ambient noise, a technology already available for headphones. This reminds me of a time when I was about to lose my very official, status-related office and said to the team that I looked forward to moving out with them. They were horrified because I was "too noisy" and they'd only let it happen if there was a cone of silence around my desk. Of course the machinations of the traditional hierarchical organisation meant that I had to keep my office anyway and they were not in any danger.

Interestingly enough, only a couple of years after that incident I went to work in an office where a whole bunch of us were plucked from our hermetically sealed, status-related offices and flung together in a project environment. Were we noisy? Well, no more than most and we got the job done. And all of us, as I recall, really enjoyed being out from behind glass and whatever that tacky stuff is that they make offices out of, and into the open environment. Good fun all round.

And finally. I'd line up with the Tory MP who said that banning little kids from singing about pigs for fear of offending Muslims was 'bonkers'. This to me is the original type of political correctness, and in retrospect it was a short greasy slope from changing 'chairman' to 'chairperson' until we got to the particular type of lunacy highlighted in the story.

The next two weeks are going to be exceptionally busy for me so the rate of posting is going to decline even further. Which could be a shame as, we hope, our feudal overlords continue to disappear up their own fundamental orifices, creating all manner of opportunities for snarky stories. Damn.

a question of balance

Catching up on the blogrounds the other night, not having subscribed to RSS feeds, but feeding the face at the same time when your ABC news comes on, the Santoro inadvertent oversights story first. Seemed to be over fairly quickly, then it was our fearless little leader visiting the troops in our name (tm). Sound of nails on blackboard, yes, that's him speaking. Back to the announcer, more story. Sound of nails on blackboard again. Back to the announcer. WTF? Sound of nails on blackboard again? Three clips for one story? How long has this been going, five minutes? Ooh, who's that? It's Kevin. Nope, he's gone, all of 7 seconds. Looks like the effort that has gone in to stacking the Board over all these years has paid off, we now have acceptable balance.

On a far more uplifting note, a good story in the Australian colour mag today about a bloke who tried to make it as a muso, didn't really work out, then started teaching young offenders and ne'er-do-wells to write and perform simple songs. With a view to reinforcing, or maybe introducing, some self-esteem. Seems it has mainly worked but the bit that got me was the satisfaction he got from seeing the results. I love those stories - for those of us still deep in the machine, it's a reaffirmation of the possibilities of life if you can grab, or make, the opportunities. Aaah, to have a transferable skill. Anyway his name is Allan Caswell and he has at last got a record released, so we might get that.

And for a final whinge, what is it with low-profile tyres? You get a puncture, if the wheel does one more revolution the tyre's stuffed and you have to buy a new one. Has happened twice with the current set of Toyos, Maybe that's why they were cheap.

it's along way to the top

It seems to be covered in mud. As always, the issue du jour (that's latte speak) is covered in excruciating detail elsewhere. So what can Chateau VVB turns its attention to that might add value? Ooh, this is veering awfully close to metablogging which is, I understand, a bit de trop (that's chardonnay speak).

No, as a ten-year inhabitant (not quite a citizen, I still support the wrong team) of Brizvegas, it's about the journey to work. I'm still a climate gobbler, that is to say, a single occupant of a thirsty car on the daily commute. I leave for work 45 minutes earlier than I did when I came here so I can get out of second gear at least once on the 13 km trip.

Mayor Campbell is building tunnels everywhere except the leafy western suburbs I inhabit, so both the routes into town are chocka after 7 every morning. I'd use public transport except I'm not much of a fan of buses. I do like trains but, as we never had a train line out here in the leafy west, there'll never be one because of the cost, financial and social, of resuming enough properties. Unless we get a tunnel, of course.

It's the same or worse in Sydney and Melbourne. We're growing, we all need to get thither and, after we've been to thither, either yon or back again. So it would seem that population growth is the culprit. Of course the rationalists and classical capitalists are seen to be all in favour of unrestrained growth because it gives them a bigger market much more simply than seeking new markets elsewhere, which makes profitability easier (provided you're running a halfway efficient business).

That's a simplistic argument even if I am kind of attracted to it initially. However such simplistic approaches leave out the human ('soft') factor - not all bosses are avaricious, grabbing bastards. The growth at any costs model is of course attractive to governments as it is a more or less self-fulfilling prophesy - you don;'t have to be particularly good at what you do if you've got natural advantages (as of course we do in the leafy western suburbs).

I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about stuff to start making any comments about natural carrying capacity, whether in urban or rural areas (stop that laughing, DH and SD!). However it seems to me that limits must be reached in terms of water, arable land and what-all. Technological advances have traditionally delivered increases in carrying capacity, but some of these now come under scrutiny - eg the costs of transporting food. I reckon we can expect to see mega-changes in the paddock to plate model as highly centralised and standardised models that deliver costs benefits to the distributor and/or vendor are shelved in favour of more local production. Which gets us back to the local arable land thing - eg Sydney has lost lots. Where do we get more?

How did we end up here? Probably by tunnel, in the meantime we should cogitate on how long can it go on.

baby you can drive my car pt (n+1)

This is the story of the mighty Land Crab, a tale of not so much woe as inconsequence. Guaranteed to appeal to about .005% of my reader. But, on the outside chance that you are intensely interested in why someone would buy a Mk1 Austin 1800, and what happened when he did...don't say you weren't warned, and read on!

Why did I buy it? Some months earlier I had attempted to demolish the block of flats across the road from my folks' place, which was where I was living at the time. A deadly cocktail of alcohol and unrequited love combined one night, resulting in a very bent Triumph 2000. So it got carted off for several months' straightening and I immediately bought a Yamaha RD250. Another story entirely, for another time. Although it sort of prompts me to see whether there are any models of that bike.

Anyway bikes are exciting but a bit of pain in some circumstances. So, one Saturday I was out with a mate who wanted to look at an EH Premier. It was a lovely car and he bought it. It served him very well and indeed I also benefited as it was the tow car when I brought the Triumph 2500 home after its water-ingesting incident, some years later. But I digress. While he was doing the deal on the Holden, I was wandering around the yard and up the back - they were always up the back - was an Austin 1800. A rush of blood, well something...to the brain occurred. I took it for a drive and decided I had to have it. I was skint at the time so the land crab became the only car I've ever bought on hire purchase. I got some cash a few months later and paid it off after only two payments, which seemed to result in me getting a bad credit record. I assume this had something to do with AGL not making enough interest on the deal, but who knows?

Those of you familiar with the 1800 will recall that it probably was the slowest car in the world. Powered (using 'power' in its loosest sense) by the B series motor in single carburettor 1800 cc form, it didn't so much accelerate as acquire momentum by osmosis. Dead bears decompose more quickly, I would think. On the credit side, it was probably one of the most comfortable cars ever built - with two bloody great armchairs up front, it was like sitting in someone's comfy lounge.

This one turned out mainly OK. It let me down badly only once. I took my old man back to Dubbo to collect a Morris Marina, bought from his old business when he decided to upgrade to a contemporary car from his 1958 Austin A95. As we were just crossing the bridge over the Macquarie River to commence the trip home (ie, we had done all of about 2 km), it jammed in second gear. Turns out this was a design fault that many Mk1's fell victim to - they used a cable gear change and the cables would stretch and twist. The Mk 2s adopted a rod change mechanism. So we had to turn around and leave the car with my uncle for repairs.

However that incident led to probably the funniest thing to happen with the land crab. When I came back to collect the car, I decided to go to Sydney for a few days. I was cruising down the Mitchell Highway when, just out of Bathurst, the cops pulled me over for (allegedly) speeding. Now the cops around Bathurst had a fearsome reputation at that time so I wasn't surprised to be stopped, except I was in the 1800. I simply didn't believe it was that fast and that's what I told them. And they in turn didn't believe me.

Eventually the Triumph 2000 was repaired and returned to me. I found someone equally loony to take the 1800 off my hands. Would I have another one? Hmm....probably not. Very comfortable seats, though. I recommend them.

I saw the sign

In yesterday's AFR, Laura Tingle at last managed to get a comment into the mainstream media that seems to have been missing: John Howard's contempt for Parliament through his refusal (for want of a better word, refusal rather take some liberties with motivation) to answers questions in Parliament. While Tingle situates this comment by recalling Keating's decision to not always even turn up to Question Time as similarly dismissive of the role of Parliament, this is the first time I can remember where an MSM opinion leader has taken the PM to task on his attitude to Question Time.

I've seen several references recently to Kevin Rudd turning his back to his adversaries, but it seems to me that Howard has been doing this for years? Is this an accurate reflection?

Anyway, going off about the lying little piece of sh*t is just par for the course at Chateau VVB, so probably best to move on. There has been a sign, we have seen it, and maybe some others have too. That would be a good thing.

Now, I read a whole heap of stuff in the papers this morning which could have been brought together in something of an interesting fashion. But that was then, this is now. I didn't mark them and as I trawl (not troll, that's a small Nordic gnome as far as I'm aware) back through the papers the only theme that springs out is the consistent attempts to damage Kevin Rudd's reputation by the hired hands of the government. I've just got to Christopher Pearson who's into it in spades. If you added the right-wing cheer squad to Malcolm Mackerras's pendulum, the world would look very different.

This obsession has got to stop, it's unhealthy. Mrs VVB and I were out for our evening walkies last night and discussing how best we could help Offspring No1 and Offspring No2 into housing - this thought has been brought on by Offspring No1 getting a promotion at his work and, while currently without a partner (prey? victim?) on the horizon (is this correct?), is starting to feel the need to 'settle down'. So Mrs VVB and I were discussing home affordability and how things had changed from when we were starting out. So I was rabbitting on about interest rates and particularly the fall in affordability compared to low nominal interest rates, and how the PM and alleged Treasurer seem to comprehend the latter but not the former, which is a real indicator. And so she says, "How did you bring them into it?" Meaning why rather than how, if you follow me.

And as an aside, we communicate with our offspring through our blogs. So much safer:-)

A really interesting article was the piece in the Australian magazine about the David Hicks campaign - that is to say, the efforts made by his family and supporters to turn public opinion. As I started to read it I thought it was going to be a counter-attack by the government or its mouthpieces against the growing public support for Hicks. There's certainly a few comments about Major Michael Mori and how he has run his part of the campaign. I guess in an ideal world you'd think that a lawyer would simply do the job in the official arenas of his responsibility. Not so, it seems. Mori has taken decisions that appear well outside of the strict legal niceties of the case. However, this is no ordinary case and I wonder whether Mori decided early on that he would have to step outside the usual boundaries. The article in total is quite balanced.

There's a comment from "one senior government official" that "they (Hick's team) have won the image battle". This is in part about the effort to remake Hicks' public image, for example influencing the photos used of him from the usual one of him with the rocker launcher in his Kosovo Liberation Army period to when he was younger (as young as 9) and in civilian clothes.

It seems Dick Smith has been to see the PM on a number of occasions about Hicks. Several years ago, Howard was dismissive. Most recently, he seemed "genuinely concerned that the process had taken so long." Well, that's what the article says. And it's the Australian, so it must be on the money.

Anyway, time to go. Bottling the second batch of ginger beer tonight. I'm currently sucking on a sample (well, actually the third sample this evening if we're being pedantic) of batch no 14, a Coopers Draught. Quite quaffable, even if I do say so myself.

I should be so lucky

Heard on the ABC TV news a couple of minutes ago, the American ambassador claiming that it was actually a good thing that David Hicks has been held without charge for five years because it provided him with the "opportunity" to "conduct what I call lawfare". Is that really what he said? Brings a whole new dimension to the aphorism that a diplomat is someone sent overseas to lie for their country. (*)

Nice one, Your Excellency. A nice little bit of dog whistling to insinuate that it's only David Hicks' and other legal activities that have delayed the trial.

Not the need to fabricate some sort of legal framework where none existed, that would guarantee a guilty verdict. No fault of the US at all, you understand.

So on that logic, it would be better if he was detained without trial for 70 years, because then he could die in a familiar environment?

While that dopey trio of shameless blame-shifters, Howard, Downer and Ruddock, have used every opportunity to demonise Hicks in the eyes of Australians - oh, until recently, of course.

Actually, shameless doesn't quite fully capture the disgusting level of amorality the three have consistently displayed. Anyone got a better word? And one for his Excellency?

(*) Actually, look at the link. The author, Philip Habib, calims it's better for diplomats to be honest. A trait that's gone out of fashion over the last 11 years.

church of the poison mind

Bob Brown, look out! Mahatma Gandhi, look out (oops, too late). And whoever it was yabbering the other day about the C of E and Catholics getting together, look out!

You have been spotted, Dick. And we'll all be out looking for people who think beauty is absolute but love of peace is relative. Whenever I go to the local mall from now on; when I'm in the sandwich shop; when I'm in any meeting at work, for sure, I'll be asking: "Well then, do you think peace is absolute?" And when they go "yeah", I'll be thinking, "oh oh, here comes another one." Sort of. And beauty is absolute? In which beholder's eye, might one enquire, innocently?

Spare me. There's enough serious stuff going on around the globe without superannuated blokes in gold and ermine and what-all spouting this kind of thing. Frightens the horses, it does.

I mean, seriously. I know people who cleave very closely to their faiths. From my p.o.v. they're welcome to it but I don't begrudge them, those who genuinely believe, even if I can't relate to the deal. I find people like this very open to discussion and I, similarly, don't get pigeonholed by them just because I don't believe.

But this sort of thing should have had a bridge built out of it years - no, centuries - ago.

stuck in the middle with you

There's not nearly enough being written about the Rudd/Campbell/Burke series of who was seen doing what, and with whom, behind the bike sheds. And who was cheering, who was taking bets, and who was acting as the cockatoo. This abominable scarcity of informed and/or half-witted commentary cannot be allowed to go on without Chateau VVB adding its tuppence-ha'penny's worth - yes, we remember that currency, that's a proper sort of currency - so here it comes. Prepare to be underwhelmed, or navigate away now.

I reckon Modia Minotaur is mainly on the money; I'm very worried about rose-coloured glasses; and I'm not surprised that those of conservative disposition see it differently.

While some believe that the little liar has his timing wrong, I'm more inclined to think that the theory is to hit Rudd early, get him out of the Labor leadership and discredit Labor generally by continuing to throw mud then bank on other issues, both known and currently unknown, to slowly bury Labor in the lead-up to the election.

The little liar had no choice but dispatch Campbell after Costello succumbed to his own delusions of adequacy with an over-the-top demonstration of his formidable oratorical powers. Whether Campbell was for the long walk in any case, I'm not close enough to this sort of stuff to tell. Doesn't matter anyway, the little liar is pretty economical with his favours (I almost said 'focused' or 'strategic' just then - what a giveaway).

Rudd has no choice but to tough it out, treading that thin line between 'yes I admit I did it but please forgive me ' and 'so what, let's keep our attention on the decline in our democracy after 11 years of the little liar'. All the malarkey about 'honeymoons' is just lazy journalism and utterly irrelevant to the story. Everyone can't be right, except within the safety of the space between their own ears. So it will indeed be interesting to watch the fallout and the general public response.

honesty

More a place-holder than an actual blog post, this is just an excuse to link to an article that encourages managers to be honest with their staff. Evidently there's so little of this about that someone felt the need to write such an article. Exit, to the sound of conclusions being drawn.

Elsewhere, people seem to feel similarly to me about the farce that is parliament. The quick clips I have seen before I could turn the TV to another channel ("Rodder's Life" on Briz 31, a truly excellent intro to d.i.y. shows: "This is the back bit of the car....you can see under there what we done...and now I'm gunna tell you how we done it") simply remind me that (a) parliament is 95% circus and 5% kindergarten, and (b) Peter Costello is his own worst enemy. Actually, that last statement may not necessarily be totally accurate...

If Kevin Rudd had lunch with Brian Burke, he should get a rabies injection, after which he should return to the circus kindergarten and tell Peter Costello to pull his head in.

We should also have a referendum at the next election with the following question:

"I do/do not want a nuclear power plant in my backyard. I do/do not want a nuclear power plant in the prime miniature's (*) backyard."

That should short-circuit a lot of argy-bargy and obviate the need for any expensive inquiries - not that they seem all that necessary any more.

(*) I mistyped "minister" but the spell-check only gave me "miniature". Now that's hardly original but is it the first time that a spell-check has cast an accurate character assasinnation on the lying piece of shit?

bits and pieces part (n+1)

Killing off the princesses

Well you keep reading about girls who think they are, or want to be, princesses. There may not be many about in future if some behaviour I saw today is commonplace: namely, two separate incidents where young women just stepped off the kerb in defiance of the red light - well, I am a princess and people must understand that I come first - and both almost got run over. They'll need to figure out that wandering through the mall while texting, and expecting that everyone will clear a path, doesn't work in all circumstances.

Promoting the princesses

Maxine vs the lying piece of shit, eh? Ms McKew comes over as very intelligent, able to marshall the facts and responses, and not averse to a stoush. The Libs will need to do better than trot out the Mad Monk with his silly put-downs. Or the lying piece of shit with his "the candidate" turn of phrase.

Wannabe princesses

Brendan Nelson puts his foot in it, then turns up in Parliament to declare that black is, in fact, white and the rest of us were wrong, or deaf. Or stupid. As well as getting valuable column inches in the Letters to the Ed. Get over it, you stuffed up.

let the good times roll

One of the benefits of getting out of your normal surroundings is the opportunity to reflect on a few things from a different perspective. Whether you come to different conclusions, or simply the number you first thought of, is another matter. Anyway, here a few reflections prompted by a quick trip to Melbourne this week.

A colleague and I stayed at a brand new serviced apartment building in the Dockside area ("development"? "precinct"?). It was very new, with a kind of sleek but somehow not very substantial design. In fact its appearance - its surfaces - were a prelude and introduction to what I saw later when I ventured out to dinner.

Having obtained instructions to walk to the Dockside restaurant precinct ("strip"?), I was quite struck by the comparative absence of life. There was this enormously wide road (in fact only 2 lanes each way but with a broad median strip and tram tracks on one side made it seem far wider), but hardly a car. And no one walking along it as I was. The immediate comparison was with those pictures you see of Pyongyang. With Telstra Dome a massive edifice on the right, and it being just on dusk, it genuinely felt a bit odd, verging on surreal. Having read for some years about the 'buzz' of Docklands, you couldn't help wondering where it all was.

Of course, it was soon revealed - lots of expensive boats, the three (?) apartment towers and the the row of restaurants. And all of a sudden, people everywhere, mostly young and mostly dressed up. I was on the mobile to Mrs VVB, assuring her of my safe arrival, as I walked up and down looking for a suitable eatery.

I had sort of expected to be dining with my colleague and his wife, who had accompanied him to stay for the weekend, but it turned out they had family in Melbourne and gone off elsewhere. So I was dining alone, which I loathe. Trying to pick a restaurant out of many - about 20 odd I think - is hard. I had enquired at the hotel desk, but for their recommended place you definitely needed to book. The menus out front showed that most of these places were more expensive than I am used to. Anyway I found one, which managed to turn out a pretty much indigestible fish and chips and it still cost $30. THe salad was great.

While waiting and eating, I had a bit of a think about the whole design of this area. The mian builings were all very arty from my perspective, lots of brushed aluminium and sleekness, strange angles (ie not 90 deg) and appalling public art. There was a lot of variation in the fit-out of the restaurants, fortunately.

I'd read about the boom which had accompanied the building of the area and then the decline in demand which I believe saw owners soon sitting on a capital loss. Then I thought about the row of restaurants. Was there any covenant that decreed that only restaurants could operate? I looked at the full tables of people, obviously more accustomed to forking out this sort of money for dinner than I am, and wondered what happens if it all goes a bit sour.

For example, we had assertions in the late 90s that the business cycle was now dead and it's all good from now on. This country is certainly riding a wave of prosperity, driven mainly by raw materials exports. There's lots of disposable income and, either by personal predilcition, (they prefer flexibility, or they prefer to rent and invest elsewhere), or because housing affordability has fallen, more people are renting and spending the difference on consumption.

I wondered about any linkages between a specifically designed restaurant strip, apartments that look like they are going to date very quickly, apparent lack of any other retail or services (and I didn't venture further so that stuff may be about but if so there's not much of it). Is such a precinct sustainable in the longer term? Is it designed to mutate and change or is it some mega version of so-called consumer durables that in fact aren't?

It pretty hard not to think about this stuff in a value-free way so I tried to eschew the usual VVB doomsday scenario stuff. It just all seemed to me to be rather incompletely thought-through design. Not so much that the developers had just come in, ripped everything up and plonked this stuff down, because obviously a lot of reclamation work had gone on and it is certainly a massive undertaking. More that it felt as if it wouldn't age all that well. The scale and proportion of the apartment towers is massive. Lower rise and more integrated design, including shops and other services would seem to be a better way of ensuring some longevity.

I wonder how much the design reflected recent socio-economic trends such as smaller families, but more apparently lots of unmarried people living alone, longer working hours, and restaurant patronage so common a pastime as to be almost stereotypical behaviour.

It's also very easy to be nostalgic for more familiar streetscapes and it's even easier to think about picture-postcard European streetscapes with low rise apartments, lots of cafes sprinkled with other shops with people about everywhere and conclude that all design should be like that because it has persisted and adapted for so long. Nor of course do we want some romanticised 1950s streetscape with no services available.

If we do get some fairly dramatic economic downturn at some stage, how resilient will such an apparently monocultural urban design be compared to an area with more diverse settlement and activity patterns? Can human ingenuity overcome any apparent design flaws - yeah, I know, this is starting starting to get awfully value-laden despite the protestations, so it's really all about that I just didn't like it - and enable the area to change usefully and gracefully?

It'll be fascinating to watch.

how green was my valley

Of late I've had a very little bit to do with some people who have a number of ideas, and real world projects, about things that can be done to, in the broadest interpretation of the term, make the world a better place.

Pretty subjective and to be consistent with views I should hold on tolerance, I shouldn't take too much exception to those of serious alternate disposition.

When it comes to environmental issues (hereafter referred to as 'stuff'), it gets interesting. There's a line of argument that environmental advocacy (for want of another term) is in fact environmental religion. In other words, that the seemingly more widespread adoption of environmental stuff has gone beyond 'true believers', but in reaching the mainstream the proselytisers have gone beyond science into unvalidated assertion. And because environmental values/sustainability seem to be axiomatically a Good Thing, it's easier to dupe the masses.

As someone never too immersed in matters environmental (and I can hear the cackles of certain readers from here), I don;t have either a track record of activism/advocacy (or even practice) or a sufficient understanding of the science to back up what I've started to think about recently.

My cop-out position is 'common sense': ie we have growing population and dwindling non-renewable resources. Does not compute, as they used to say. Can technology again ride to the rescue. History says yes, the true believers indeed say yes. Is it likely to be a total solution? Unlikely at current rates of population growth and resource depletion, I'd reckon.

Another cop-out, my usual answer is always "somewhere in the middle".

Anyway I think all of this might get tested in the next few months as I come up somewhat more closely against the true believers than has been the case heretofore. I think it's a Good Thing.

In other news - or entertainment, if you're of such a mind...

Highlights from The Hon Alexander Downer MP, Minister for Foreign Affairs, on 7.30 Report with Kerry O'Brien:

"Significantly partial British withdrawal." (Red Kez)
Downer argues the numbers.
Kez talks about Syria.
Downer reiterates the numbers - again - and talks about Basra.
NB Mr Foreign Minister - it's at the other end of the country.
"Everybody has an exit strategy" (Downer)
"Oh not everybody has an exit strategy." (Downer, several seconds later).

caught in the act

What is it called when you're in the middle of a meeting and something happens and the chair says "you should put that on your website."

Well kind of embarrassing is one, especially when it's only a semi, kind of, partially anonymous blog - well it's anonymous to those outside the poisnal circle. Still, no one picked up on the comment which was just as well. Could have diverted us for hours, it could have. Which was the last thing we needed, agreed?

It's moreso when you can't remember the incident that sparked the comment. So I hope you read this before we catch up tomorrow, Mr Chair.

I should copyright that 'smart' stuff....oh wait, that's already been done.

In other news, a strong groundswell of support for the trampled-on citizen's rights of David Hicks seems to have provoked a change of mind, if not change of heart, by the federal government. A realisation, if you will, that justice must also be seen to be done. Or perhaps a realisation that the 'processes' put in place by the US fall far short of accepted norms of justice. Oh no wait, that was because of the polls.

When you wish upon a star....

OK, back to work. Smart stuff :-)

here there and everywhere

During the increasingly longer periods between posts at VVB, I have been trying to figure out why the periods have in fact become longer. As is often the case there are several likely factors and last night I decided to try to capture them in print - well, electronically anyway - as a bulwark (?) against the likelihood that the periods will continue to get even longer. As confused as I am? Good, then let us begin.

It's partly a reflection on blogging, brought on by a few posts I have seen recently which have spoken about stuff which I have been feeling. As it matures - and bear in mind that VVB is only a bit more than 12 months old and I've only been following blogs for about 2-3 years - the blogosphere seems to have become much more of an echo chamber. Of both right and left wing types, and of course 'vast' in both cases. And I feel it's become quite draining to read, over and over again, the same arguments from the same posters along with the same rebuttals.

I guess this kind of discussion/argument used to take place mainly in the front bars of pubs. If so, presumably there wasn't the vast quantity of 'stuff' (argument, assertion, and so on) that ubiquitous computer ownership or availability facilitates. I imagine that a stoush down the pub on a Friday night would be something to look forward to, while wading through it every day is somewhat tiring. So more power to those who manage to do it and, to be fair, probably in fact do make a lot of effort to keep it fresh.

On the obviously other hand has been the Rudd 'honeymoon' and the possibility of a change of government. Now there's plenty of analysis elsewhere on this issue elsewhere and I certainly couldn't add anything new, apart from the probably obvious comment that any change of government is exciting in a way - the thrill of the new, I suppose. VVB of course is no fan at all of the current federal government, full ownership of which was ceded to Mr Howard some time ago. It may sound like fantasy but I actually wouldn't be as opposed as the casual reader might think to a Liberal government of a different hue - ie one without Howard and few of his main men. Mainly this apparently heretical view derives from the fact that as long as the Washington Consensus rules the 'western' (actually Anglo-Saxon I guess) democracies, there's bugger all difference between the nominally left and the nominally right and as long as a government shows some appreciation of those aspects of life on earth that can't be priced, I'd be supportive. A Labor government would not necessarily change policy settings as extensively as we might suppose - or hope.

So a government that was less socially divisive would be wonderful. One that was less egregiously market-driven government than the current one would be also good, if unlikely for some time, and it would matter less what was on the letterhead.

But back to the track. The possibility of a federal Labor government is exciting. You get that feeling of something in the air. And, entirely coincidentally, I've had best of Bob Dylan on the car stereo this last week. Listening again to Blowin' in the Wind, Times are a'changing and so on suddenly started to get the juices flowing a bit. I was too young at the time those songs 'hit' to appreciate what they meant (we did sing Blowin' in the wind in primary school but we also did 'marching' every week, along with pledging our allegiance to God, Queen and saluting the flag, which was flying from the flagpole outside, course). However the insights subsequently accumulated and internalised makes it feel - a bit - like I 'was there'.

Lack of attachment aside, what those songs do in fact is foster feelings of change but, most particularly, of hope. That things can be better. That we'll take account of the things that matter to us, not just those that have a price tag attached.

In fact even in conversation today I was lamenting the marketisation of everyday life. A friend was telling me about his house that, because of some local peculiarities in the real estate market, is now in fact worthless. The land has appreciated but in pure financial terms his sensible course is to demolish the house and build a new one to extract maximum return from the land. But he and his wife like the house, even though it needs some renovations. So they'll renovate rather than rebuild - in effect valuing the social (or sentimental) aspect rather than the financial.

Not as good an example in the recounting as it seemed at the time of telling, but I hope you get my drift. All the emphasis is on getting rich, at whatever cost. Economic liberalisation has brought us greater wealth so, therefore, more liberalisation will bring us even more wealth. But no one counts what we lose as we go. One day, enough people will. And what about that other economic law, the law of diminishing returns?

The last factor impinging on the lack of postiness is that I am extremely f'n busy at work and don't feel as much like putting together even the usual desultory VVB rant. I'd rather pick up the guitar and in fact I should do so as there will be another 'do' coming up at work and I'm pretty damn rusty.

So enough from VVB for now. This weekend (after I've bottled batch number 14), the story of another of the motor cars that have blighted my life. Not.

Afterthought: for those amazed/intrigued/bitterly disappointed at the admission about an alternative Liberal government, let me just say:

• (1) Malcolm Fraser - redemption is possible (can't imagine that ever happening with the lying little piece of shit currently ensconced at Kirribilli, rather than the Lodge, though); and
• (2) all Labor governments are not necessarily good just by definition. All governments get tired and most get enraptured by their own publicity.

The thought that comes after the afterthought: having been mentioned approvingly in dispatches earlier this week at Club Troppo, apparently because I am possibly for turning, let me clarify. Which is, of course, code for digging a deeper hole for oneself: I think the current federal government is the worst in living memory. But some previous governments under nominally the same label have been bearable. And no doubt some future ones will be also bearable.

.

takin' care of business

Here's a ripper yarn out of the UK about the delicate interplay between business and government. There's a lot of it about of course - just ask any citizen who lives near a planned tunnel. Anyway, in this case the potential incoming Conservative government in the UK says it will repudiate any contracts relating to the proposed UK ID card. Lots of crossover with us here in Oz on such a subject, of course.

It seems that the main industry body for the IT industry weighed in with some ill-judges threats about the inadvisability of breaking any contracts. And that if the risk of said potential breakage seemed to go up, then the monetary compensation might need to compensate. Pretty standard business response. Except in this case, the potential future gummint has said "just try it, Jimmy" or something to that effect.

While there's obviously more at play here, it's instructive that the Conservatives would so blatantly, for want of a better term, take on a major industry, particularly one which is always touted as essential to contemporary economic growth (IT often being labelled a 'driver' of other sectors as well as an industry in its own right). Of course it's always that little bit easier to be hairy chested in opposition but, from our perspective in Australia, you don't often see a government of any persuasion muscle up so openly.

The other aspect of interest is that the Conservatives are opposed to the ID card, which to my understanding is more a true conservative (ie old style Liberal in Oz terms) position. In other words, even the threat of global terrorism is insufficient to warrant such a prospective intrusion into individual rights, especially the right to privacy. Seems you wouldn't get that robustness (dare I say 'faith'?) from a government of any stripe here, because everyone's bought into the clash of civilisations/here come the endtimes scenario (I very nearly wrote 'narrative' just then, dangerous).

And with the obvious exception of Bob Brown, everyone here seems to have accepted a world in which the interests of business reign supreme. In fact the current storm in a short black cup about coal really shows it up: if the Libs here were fair dink, they'd accept the need for investment into alternative energy sources instead of leaving it until the very last minute when the current major energy companies realise that they need a new revenue stream to meet the next three-monthly growth projections. Isn't that why we don't have gas light lighters any more?

FInally - isn't the Times of London a great read?

head injuries

If Peter Garrett is going to continue using the extremely irritating pseudo-business phrase 'going forward' as frequently as he did on 7.30 report tonight, I might have to go forward to reconsidering my vote. Where's the Maintenance of Less Irritating Forms of English Language Usage Party when you need them?

Apart from that phrase intruding into my consciousness as I was scoffing dinner, I didn't really pay a lot of attention, but whenever I glanced at the screen Malcolm appeared the more polished performer. Garrett seemed to hesitate a bit more - you could almost hear the media training cogs clicking over. Watch out for the crocodiles. There was a bit of that from Turnbull as well. Interesting, really: after a few years they will become very practised at not answering the question at all, but at the moment the natural inclination to do the right thing and address the substance of the question still seems dominant. Wouldn't it be nice if we could have a bit more of that from those who dominate the ether?

Also, dark suit, Peter. We are on TV, not stomping about the environment.

the Torana's tale

When you look at the list and pictures of the various cars we've owned, it's strongly British for the first 30 years and then goes a bit European. This is the only Holden amongst them. I never really owned it, but this is its story.

We came home from Pakistan in late 1979. Mrs VVB was pregnant with offspring no 1 and we were due to go to Singapore after the birth, a period of only a couple of months. We were essentially broke in cash terms - living in Pakistan had eaten up our little savings as the allowances were out of date for most of our two years and when they were adjusted, it was only from when the process (an inspection) was done, about a year late. So buying a car for a couple of months was out of the question as was renting even moreso.

Uncle was still alive and running the former family car business, now just a workshop and small second hand yard. Following the two oil shocks and, of course, the Whitlam government, the economy was in a hole. Thirsty V8s were not popular and he had this Torana SLR (4.2, not the SLR5000 as per the model) on the lot. The deal was I would use it and then flog in the larger and (hopefully) more receptive market of Canberra rather than Dubbo.

So we came home, Mrs VVB moved in with my folks (as I recall) and I got on a commuter flight to Dubbo. The flight was via Orange and we landed just on dusk. A few folk got off - it was about an 8 seater - and the pilot helpfully unloaded their baggage. He then turned the lights off in the terminal, as there were no staff on duty, and locked it up. Now, to the best of my memory the lights on the runway also went off, but I can't swear to this. We took off heading due west and had barely gained much altitude before we could see the lights of Dubbo in the distance.

This was amazing. Having grown up there and travelled by road to Sydney many times as a child, Orange was "are we there yet?" away. But here it was, rushing towards us on the horizon. Perspective, it's a strange animal.

Barely a few minutes later we touched down and uncle was there with this green beast. It being a Friday night, he was overdue at the bowling club, where he was on the committee, for the regulation several sherbets so he gave me the keys and I adjusted the seat and mirrors. He warned me about the power it had and I assured him that I had been driving the office Caprice v8 in Pakistan and I realised it wasn't like my old British bangers. No, he said, it's very different.

I fired it up, manhandled it into first (the gearshift was like pushing a rock through a concrete abutment), eased forward and wound on a little lock and then applied a very little throttle. I reckon I nearly did 3 doughnuts in the airport carpark before I wrestled it straight and through the gate. I agreed with his assessment that it in fact did drive differently to a Caprice and we continued to agree over a number of cleansing ales with his bowling mates.

The next day I set off back to Canberra. I must have used about 3 tankfuls of petrol, it drank juice like it was going out of fashion. Induced, I have to admit, by a very enthusiastic use of the throttle. I had never driven any thing like this before, even my old Triumph 2.5Pi, when it was going well and had instant throttle response, didn't have the kick in the back that this thing delivered. I very nearly threw it off one corner, after which I moderated the enthusiasm a tad.

Suffice to say we got home safely, if somewhat poorer. It was a kind of fun thing around town because of the non standard twin exhaust - of course you were forever poking it in the guts, especially in the tunnels on Capital Hill, just to listen to that sound. It snorted and rattled and the idle was all over the place, there was no suspension to speak of and the seats were crap, but it made you feel very alive.

So young offspring no 1 made his first car trip in it, home from the hospital, which probably explains why he now owns a Calais V8 (pictured above because I can't, for the life of me, get it to appear here).

But I couldn't sell the damn thing, even to a couple of mates I knew who bought and sold cars to supplement their wages. So uncle was obliged to take it back and we choofed off to Singapore. The lung cancer crept up on him, he had been a lifelong smoker. He had to liquidate the business which was pretty much in debt by then and he died alone in 1982.

Would I own one now? Dunno, I'd have to drive one again, they were really crude. The SLR5000 was always the model to have and a couple of mates at work in fact did own them. Perspective, it's a strange animal.

here we are now, entertain us

I got far too much stuff on to even commit the usual VVB skim across the top and apart from that, the world is rubbish except where the ever reliable Gerry gives you something to restore hope. All our various politicans and pundits and paid informants and disinterested observers and professional agitators and men on the Clapham omnibus can take a long walk off a short pier.

In the meantime, all you fans can avail yerselves of a lifelike Kurt from Modellautos von Raceland. Enjoy and we'll see you this time next year.

we built this city...

And also its infrastructure. So we've had several years of increasing ambient noise about the state of the nation's infrastructure - roads, rail, dams, skills and so on. The blame game is rampant - federal, state, whatever. About 20 years' worth roughly speaking, we used to more or less have what was needed, now we don't. As the drought in particular bites deeper, water becomes the headline issue and the debate mutates to whether we should curtail use or build more capacity, and then mutates even finer to whether we build dams or desalination plants.

Not surprisingly, to VVB's point of view, is the seemingly corresponding period of time that an obsession with budget surpluses has ruled economic policy in the country. A reliance on market forces - ie the in this case the willingness of private capital to invest in long-lived assets without an immediate and commensurate return on investment - has not, as continually promised, resulted in provision of said infrastructure. Bugger me, I wonder why not?

So to get around this we invented the private public partnership, or PPP, which compounds the problems because it relies on highly sophisticated (for which read dodgy) contractual arrangements between government and a private provider. Merchant bankers and the like have much experience in these types of contract, government typically didn't. And even if suitable expertise was recruited, the desperation of governments (and we're talking all persuasions here) to do the deal ended up with stupid arrangements like Cross-city tunnels where the poor bloody taxpayer gets it coming and going.

Now this is a very simplistic analysis - in fact it's not even analysis, it's jumping to a conclusion based on a simple correlation without proving causation - except it just makes sense, doesn't it? So how long can this insanity go on? Maybe this post on Club Troppo - although focused on application of currently orthodox economic theory to developing nations rather than our own highly evolved island - points to a ray of hope?