Resch's - It's Got To Make A Comeback

Resch's has slowly been disappearing off tap in pubs around NSW for the last 20 years. Now it’s hard to find it on tap outside of clubs and old school pubs. This is just wrong. Resch's drinkers need to take a stand.

Resch's is a proper beer. Like it says on the tap: "A Real Drink!", or on one of those old style posters: "A Man's Drink". 

Resch's Draught. Resch's Pilsener. Remember Resch's Dinner Ale? I last saw that on tap about 10 years ago.

I love those old Resch's posters. There’s one that says "Resch's Refreshes" above a picture of Easts playing Newtown, with one player looking like he's trying to twist the other one’s head off in a tackle:

Here's one that's of that style, if not as good:

Here's a better ad. Imagine this on the SCG fence or the wall of the front bar at your local (wouldn't be appropriate in the Ladies' Lounge of course):

Look at the plethora of beers on tap at pubs which have been "modernised". There are the wheaty German ones, Asahi, Cooper’s Red and Green and a slew of boutique stuff, some of which is pretty good if you want to go from beer to beer in a sample fest.

If a pub can afford to put on boutique beers, what’s the problem with Reschs? Too many dopey little gen Xs and Ys drinking piss like Becks and Heineken because their little palates don’t like the hops, probably.

The more down market teens and twenty somethings drink these stupid, gimmicky beers like Carlton Cold, Hahn Super Gay, Toohey's Extra Gay or Toohey's Blue Ice. Soulless rubbish.

American beers are full of soap. If you want to wash a swearing kid’s mouth out, just do it with Budweiser. I drank a glass when I was in New York. Once. Didn’t even finish it.

I can’t understand how American beers can be so bad. I’ve been to central Europe. Every country there knows how to make beer … well. America has tens of millions of immigrants from central Europe. What’s the fucking problem? Does all the sugar in their food kill their taste buds?

I’m glad Cooper’s has made a comeback. It’s got a bit of variety and I’m generally happy enough to drink it, although not in preference to Resch's.

The most bizarre thing is that you can only get Resch's Draught on tap and only Resch's Pilsener at the bottle shop. What are Carlton & United doing? Surely if people want to drink Resch's Draught at the pub, they’d buy it to take away. Conversely, if they buy Resch's Pilsener at the bottle shop, why wouldn’t they drink it at the pub? I used to and still would. Yet I haven’t seen Resch's Pilsener on tap anywhere for at least 10 years. Just doesn’t make sense.

In fact, it doesn’t make sense that Carlton & United brew Resch's in the first place, when you see some of the other crap they churn out.

How does CUB manage to make Resch's, KB and Sheaf Stout and then give us Foster's, Carlton and VB? Edmund Resch must be turning in his grave to have his pride and joy beside that swill.

Foster's tastes like half an ordinary beer poured into half a glass of water. Not Vitamin F at all. Carlton is not much better, but at least it’s inoffensive.

VB? Vaginal backwash. Fuck me! I don’t know how anyone can drink this piss. It’s as if CUB have stirred several cakes of soap into the Carlton vat and stuck the green VB label on the result.

In CUB’s defence, there are actually some great beers in their stable, like the old school KB. "Kids’ Beer", we used to call it as we gulped it down as teenagers. Or Sheaf Stout, which as well as being perfect in a large mug on a winter evening, is far better than Guinness in a beef and Guinness pie. Asahi is pretty refreshing on a hot day. It has a clean, crisp taste and genuinely goes well with Japanese food.

Cooper's, Sheaf Stout, Resch's. These are proper beers. Each has its own style and flavour.

What the fuck are Foster's? Budweiser? VB? Watery, soapy piss, that’s what.

Toohey's New is an old school, plebeian beer that's still widely available on tap. It's pretty ordinary, but can be drunk if there's nothing else. Kind of like ordering a beef in black bean sauce and a sweet and sour pork from the take away. If it can survive, how can Resch's possibly fail to kick its arse if properly marketed?

People who like proper beer need to campaign to bring back BOTH Resch's Draught and Pilsener on tap AND into the bottle shop.

Some cheeky young barmaid said to me a little while ago: "We don’t have Resch's on tap here … isn’t that an old man’s beer?"

"Do I have big ears with hair growing out of them? Are my trousers pulled up above my navel with my tie tucked into them?" I asked. "You cheeky young whippersnapper!"

Resch's is definitely old school, but that can work in the hands of a good marketer. DEV-O are old school and their work is quality that never dies.

Even if little twits in their teens and early 20’s won’t drink it, who cares? Aren’t there enough drinkers in the 25 – 40 age group?

I think Brian Fingerton needs to use the enormous reach of RTBB to start an on line campaign.

Bring back Resch's now, CUB! Get Pilsener back on tap and market it properly.

Update: RockNRoll Smorgasbord has reminded me of a beer I had forgotten: Old Kent Brown. I used to drink this occasionally when I was at uni. It's pretty good. Here's a list of pubs where you can still find it on tap.

I've also been drinking James Squire Amber & Golden Ales lately, partly because the pub around the corner from work has them on tap (but no Resch's). These are more beers to be drunk in cooler weather, out of a mug, especially the darker and creamier Amber. Resch's is best drunk out of a longneck.

On Overtime and Penalty Rates

Periodically, the issue of overtime and penalty rates returns to the economic agenda, the thesis of the right wing of politics being that they are an impediment to employment.

Of course they are. Any commercial employer would need to think carefully about their expected return before paying someone 2½ times normal wages for an 8 hour public holiday shift. Government services such as hospitals and police have less of a choice, so the extra wages are factored into budgets, although they often run a skeleton staff on nights and weekends.

The counter argument is that the majority of activities in Western society are structured around a weekly schedule, with work during the day from Monday to Friday, weekends for sport and leisure and night times for family and entertainment. Thus, people who work outside the normal hours need extra compensation for missing out on potential social and family time, or a share of the extra profit they have helped bring in. Quite reasonable if that extra compensation is not so onerous that it removes the motivation of the employer.

So, what’s the correct balance and how can it be achieved?

John Alexander, Federal MP for Bennelong has proposed that penalty rates be abolished as a guaranteed award entitlement, wholly negotiable between employers and employees on an individual basis.

ACTU president, Ged Kearney made the predictable union response, which is essentially my argument above, albeit with politically pious misrepresentations of her opposition, such as “few people outside the Liberal Party want to live in a nation where we treat with contempt the people who serve us our Saturday morning coffee”.

John Alexander deserves credit for consigning that too pleased with herself fraud, Maxine McKew to the political dustbin. However, his proposal misses a key point about wage negotiation: the power relationship between employers and employees is not symmetrical.

Overtime and penalty rates may already be negotiated to a significant extent as part of Individual Flexibility Arrangements (IFA) under the Fair Work Act 2009, so I suspect what John Alexander is really on about is completely removing from awards formulae such as double time and a half for public holidays. The effect would be to remove an anchor point for negotiations when conditions are being traded for increased hourly rates, thus establishing a completely free market for work outside standard hours, with rates of pay for identical hours and tasks varying by business and even individual employee.

This all looks great to the type of economist who begins by assuming symmetries such as employers and employees having access to all information relevant to their economic decisions, or no employer being large enough to materially perturb the market. These conditions aren’t satisfied by the real market: employers know more relevant information than employees (such as what their entire workforce gets paid) and there is an unequal power relationship, almost always in favour of the employer. Consequently, none of the conclusions regarding the establishment of market equilibria apply in reality.

Economists like this remind me of the joke about the physicists who derive from first principles the optimal milking machine. When asked how it works, one begins the explanation: "Consider a spherical cow …"

In the same SMH article as Ged Kearney’s comments, an academic apparently of the above variety, Mark Wooden makes a facile version of the free market is best argument. He does not explicitly say the market would reach and eventually fluctuate about an equilibrium, but he implies it.

Looking at Mark Wooden’s CV, he’s made a very successful career out of constructing simple, linear models of various economic interactions and using undergraduate statistical techniques to fit them to survey data and test a set of hypotheses, the tests being dependent on his choice of model. All pretty easy stuff if you can do maths. Even easier when you have honours and PhD students to do the number crunching. I’ll bet he’s very good at networking.

Lots of academic papers does not imply a genuine understanding of the real economy.

The point I want to make is that macroeconomic processes are more like evolution than like the thermodynamic equilibrium style systems favoured by many economists.

Suppose many individuals trade away their overtime and penalty rates, allowances and leave loadings for higher, but more uniform hourly rates. In the absence of award rates, the values of the net trade offs will be correlated, with the correlation provided by the information available to employers, but not the employees. Without anchors such as award prescribed overtime and penalty rates to allow each employee to determine the value of what they are trading away, this information asymmetry is more likely to have the effect of driving down overall employee compensation. Eventually, we are likely to reach a point in most industries where the norm is that work outside of standard hours does not pay much more than working standard hours, due to the cumulative effect of some employees being willing to accept less than others for the same work and employers being able to bargain with more knowledge than employees regarding what wage offers the potential employees will except.

If the economy is represented as consisting of small employers, as it is in many equilibrium economic models, the information asymmetry above is small. However the real economy contains sufficiently many large employers, whose bargaining power is an order of magnitude greater than their employees. This is what causes the asymmetry.

Effectively, the value of society’s temporal structure: evenings for family, weekends for sport and leisure will have been eroded by the cumulative, correlated effects of the lowest common denominator. The lumpenproletariat will always lose to the more powerful and better informed via this process, but in this case, so will we all.

That’s why we need to keep some level of mandated overtime and penalty rates. It’s not so much to save the ignorant and powerless from themselves, but because the consequences of their cumulative decisions in this case will be as important as the erosion of the meaning of the weekend.

Firstly, let’s define clearly which employees we’re talking about: people who aren’t in senior management or very specific, technical roles ie. most working people. Senior management have always negotiated their compensation with their employers on an individual basis, as have specialized programmers, financial market traders etc. They don’t receive overtime or penalty rates.

Even in a very strong economy with very low unemployment rates, ordinary private sector employees can’t demand whatever pay and conditions they like; even small business employers will simply wait for another applicant.

Public sector employees cannot negotiate wages and conditions with their employer on a fair basis: they have the entire government bureaucracy against them.

When the economic pendulum swings, there is nothing other than the industrial awards system to prevent employers offering very low wages, with no penalty rates.

Suppose we did free up overtime, penalty rates, sick leave etc. and allowed them to be negotiated away on an individual basis. If one or several employees agree to trade away certain conditions, such as penalty rates or sick leave, there is nothing practical to prevent employers pressuring the remaining employees to do the same, even if those employees have said conditions written into their own contracts.

It is all very well for a government to say that there will be safeguards such as making it illegal for employers to demand renegotiation of employment contracts.

But there are ways and means. Small businesses simply give casual staff on the old contracts progressively less shifts, citing falling profits. They make permanent staff redundant, unless they have been working there so long it is not worth it. It’s possible for affected staff to bring a case before the Fair Work Ombudsman, but any business with a decent accountant and legal advice should be able to gradually engineer such changes to its workforce with impunity.

Large businesses find the process even easier due to natural staff attrition. Very few redundancies are required, unless they are in a real hurry. Just offer only the new contracts to all new employees. Don’t negotiate unless the employee is one in a hundred: someone else good enough will come along and take the job under the conditions you’re offering.

Public sector employers are in an even stronger position relative to the employee. The management culture of bureaucratic blame avoidance in these organizations will allow managers to follow the new hiring directives, even to the obvious detriment of the organization as a whole.

But the real issue is not what occurs within any one employer: it is what happens across an entire industry or across the entire economy.

Gradually, more and more people trade their entitlements and conditions away for higher hourly wages. Each recession, these wages are cut in real terms. There is nothing to stop this as collective bargaining disappears and legislation setting out core entitlements is amended. Over time, perhaps a generation, the new conditions become the norm and the balance of power has swung too far toward employers, who see nothing wrong with “asking” employees to work on Saturdays instead of playing sport or being with their family.

Those opposing this argument often try to represent employers as small business people such as a café or shop owner or a tradie.

Of course, many of them are. In such cases, there is room for flexibility (within reason), since the employees’ wages are coming directly out of the owner’s pocket. “I need to open this Easter Friday, but I can’t pay you $50 per hour. It’s not worth it to me, so we’ll both lose. I’ll give you $35.” That can work, because it’s a private arrangement and the wage price information doesn’t spread widely and rapidly.

When such flexibility doesn’t work is where the employer is represented by some middle level manager with no material financial stake in the business, but is trying to impress (or is following the instructions of) someone higher up. The point is that it doesn’t take much hierarchy within an organization for significant diffusion of responsibility to develop and for managers to start acting like dickheads: refusing to admit they are wrong, licking arses, pursuing personal vendettas etc. It’s the employees who will suffer and with such a powerful lever as flexible wages and conditions to pull, suffer they will.

If society wants to keep temporal structures which are a fundamental component of its organization, such as weekdays being for work and nights and weekends for rest and leisure, it needs to keep some base level rules about pay and conditions which can’t be traded away independently by many individuals, gradually leading to the erosion of these structures.

Penalty rates needs to be at sufficiently attractive levels to compensate workers, particularly for 24/7 employers such as hospitals and police.

So, how much are the overtime and penalty rates we’re talking about? Are they consistent? Are there fairly evident base levels, with some other provisions which can be traded away without detriment to society as a whole?

I’ve picked four industries which by are significantly affected by any changes and reflect a cross section of employers: retail, hospitality, restaurants and health. The figures I’ll quote are for full time employees.

Casuals generally receive an extra 25%. Why?

Because permanent employees receive paid holiday, long service, sickness and carers’ leave. That’s 9 public holidays, 20 annual leave days and up to 15 days of personal / carers’ leave, plus an 11% long service leave accrual, all paid. It means permanent employees receive a given annual salary in return for working 43 weeks per year. Thus, casuals, who are only paid for any hours they work, should receive an extra 9/43 = 21% on all shifts just to be equal.

But casuals get a flat 25% loading on all shifts. That is, 150% pay on Saturdays instead of 125% = an effective 20% extra. Sunday work is 225% pay instead of 200% = 12.5% extra. To receive 21% extra for Sunday work, casual workers would need a 42% Sunday loading. Additionally, given that casuals often work shorter shifts, the proportion of time and money spent traveling to and from work is greater.

In light of this, the flat 25% casual loading is pretty accurate compensation for the loss of paid leave.

I’ve included a fair bit of information so we can see which provisions seem to be standard across all industries and which vary significantly.

The General Retail Industry Award 2010 allows a 25% loading for Saturday or evening work (after 6pm). After 6pm on Saturday gets 50%. Sundays get double pay and public holidays get 2.5 times normal pay. Overtime receives a 50% loading for the first 3 hours, then 100% after that. Note that the overtime rates already incorporate the loading for after hours work, so that if you do overtime from 6 – 9pm, you get an extra 50%, not an extra 50 + 25%.

Base wages are from $17 to $21 per hour depending on job level.

Employees can negotiate time off in lieu, which must be pro rata. That is, if someone works a full Sunday, they can take two weekdays off in lieu.

The Restaurant Industry Award 2010 has almost the same penalty rates as for retail employees, except Sundays only get a 50% loading instead of 100%. Monday to Friday, it allows a 50% loading for the first two hours of overtime and 100% for any extra hours beyond this. There are additional 10 – 15% loadings for working between 10pm and 7am. Base wages are from $15.50 to $20 per hour depending on job level.

As one might expect, the Hospitality Industry Award 2010 has identical base pay scales and almost identical overtime and penalty rates to the restaurant industry. The only differences are that the 10 – 15% shift work loading begins at 7pm instead of 10pm and the Sunday loading is 75% instead of 50%.

The Health Professions Award 2010 covers doctors, nurses and support staff, so of course pay scales vary greatly. Day work on either Saturdays or Sundays receives a 50% loading and public holidays receive what seems to be the standard 150% loading. The award allows what seems to be the standard overtime loadings of 50% for the first two hours and 100% for any extra hours beyond this. Any overtime on Sundays is a 100% loading from the first hour. Shift work begins at 6pm and receives a 15% loading.

The first thing that struck me is the small allowance for shift work compared to overtime. Shift work usually gets an extra 10 - 15% (25% for retail) and overtime gets up to 100%. Overtime is basically shift work after you have already worked, so it should receive more than ordinary shift work, but the discrepancy in rates seems excessive.

An extra 10 – 15% doesn’t seem enough for working nights, given the documented adverse health consequences, many of which seem to stem from sleep problems due to a disruption of circadian rhythms. An Australian Bureau of Statistics 2009 survey says that approximately 15% of Australian workers do shift work, so a significant proportion of the population is potentially affected.

Perhaps the onerous overtime provisions are intended to act as a deterrent to employers regularly asking employees to stay back. If there’s a regular need for someone to work those hours, they should employ another person, presumably on a casual basis.

Suppose for example a hotel wanted someone on reception from 7 – 11pm. Overtime would cost them an average 75% loading, whereas a casual shift would cost them 35% (plus the administrative costs of the extra employee).

The punitive extra 40% cost of 4 hours regular overtime versus an extra casual would thus tend to result in the employment of more people.

The real question here is: how much overtime is sought by employees? Another ABS survey found that approximately 25% of employees in the accommodation and food services industries would prefer to work more hours. This doesn’t mean all of those 25% want more overtime, but we know that at least three quarters don’t.

If many employees want overtime, it’s probably because of the high pay rates. But this is exactly the situation where employers should be allowed to reduce the loading.

Clearly there is a need for some measures to prevent employers abusing the system and pressuring employees into overtime. In theory, these already exist in the awards as proscriptions against unreasonable demands, but it’s really only permanent employees who can refuse without fear of punitive action through reduced shifts.

So, there needs to be an overtime loading for the 2+ or 3+ hours rate which is significantly more than the 15% shift plus 25% casual allowance. But 100% instead of 40%? You could probably cut this to 50% and standardize the time at which it cuts in at 3 hours, then let people trade away any award amount above this for higher hourly rates of pay.

I can’t see how employers could complain about Saturday wages. An extra 25% is a problem? Anyone saying that shouldn’t be in business. $4 or $5 per hour ie. $30 – 40 per shift for missing out on playing sport doesn’t seem unfairly balanced in favour of the employee. An extra $4 or $5 per hour for working after 6pm? Considering the employer is probably making a considerable profit if they choose to be open on a Saturday night, paying an extra $8 – 10 per hour over the weekday rates seems pretty reasonable to me, considering your employee is working while everyone around them is enjoying themselves.

The Sunday and public holiday rates could probably be re-examined. Why do you get a 50% Sunday loading working in a hospital or a restaurant, 75% in a hotel and 100% in a shop? That’s just stupid.

Make it 50% flat as the non-negotiable component and let people negotiate away the rest if they want to.

We need a big loading for public holidays to encourage people to work, since this will mostly apply to services which must stay open: hospitals, police, the fire brigade, hotels, service stations. But is a 150% loading too much as a non-negotiable base?

I think so. Christmas, Easter and New Year’s Day are more than an average Sunday, but does that necessarily mean you aren’t allowed to negotiate down to a 50% loading? Maybe, since a large proportion of such wages are paid by the government and we don’t want the gradual erosion of the incentive to work such days by the action of many individuals trading away the loading.

What does trading away above base award conditions mean in practice?

In a given industry, say nursing or police, there are a known number of nights, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays which must be worked. The proportion of total working hours in each category and thus the total number of yearly base equivalent hours per employee is easily calculated.

It is therefore simple for the government to provide an online calculator for each industry award which stores base rates of pay and current award loadings. It would allow the proposed new loadings to be entered (rejecting ones which were too low) and the new, hourly rate of pay returned. Very simple and a useful tool for both employers and employees.

This means each award would need to have its own standards, as well as there being universal base levels.

One might well ask why the Fair Work Ombudsman doesn’t already provide such a calculator, given that some trading can already occur under IFAs. It provides a document of guidelines on preparation and use of IFAs, however in typical public service fashion, the document makes no mention of the information employers and employees most want: If I trade away this, what should I get paid now?

No wonder many employers are unwilling to try to implement variations to the award. Some decisions by Fair Work Australia overturning what appear to be legitimate interpretations of the IFA rules don’t help much either.

Any differences between award and general base level overtime and penalty rates will probably slowly evaporate as a significant number of individual employees choose to negotiate away some penalty rates in favour of higher hourly base pay rates and are then preferred for employment. Industry commissions will tend to reflect the new norms in their future revisions of award conditions, for example by responding more positively to requests to increase hourly rates and lower Sunday loadings for example.

This would have the negative effect of decreasing the distinction between weekend and weekdays, but also remove some of the impediments to casual employment on Sundays and public holidays which get free marketers excited.

We don't need to go as far as the Liberals’ former Work Choices policy, however we can also be more flexible than legislating double time and a half. If reasonable general loadings are maintained by legislation eg. 50% overtime, 25% casual, 25% Saturday, 50% Sunday, 75 - 100% public holiday, society still maintains its necessary distinction between days & nights, weekdays & weekends and public holidays by valuing work at such times disproportionately.

At the same time employers are freed up to say: “I want to open on Sunday. I’m offering $27 per hour instead of $34, but you’ll get $18 an hour during the week instead of $17”. People should be able to make their own decisions about such offers without society being destroyed.

Don't Be A Dickhead And Use EFTPOS For Small Amounts

Recently there has been a big advertising campaign by EFTPOS to get people to use their cards for very small purchases. The ads specifically encourage people to use EFTPOS for amounts under $20.

Do it when you’re in front of me in the queue and see what happens.

The entire overt premise of this campaign is bullshit.

How long does it take to pay cash? About 10 seconds?

How long does it take to pay by EFTPOS? About 3 - 5 times longer.

How could this possibly be better, unless EFTPOS likes pissing people off by making them stand in queues while some selfish dickhead in front of them fucks around with a keypad instead of forking over a tenner and taking their change.

So why are EFTPOS encouraging behaviour that has to be damaging to their consumer brand?

Because the value of the data on spending patterns they collect and sell to marketers far outweighs any brand damage. That’s right. They only give a fuck about consumers to the extent they use their cards and provide EFTPOS with valuable data.

It’s the same with Flybuys. You get 1 point for every $2.50 you spend at supermarkets.

You need 2,500 points to get a $20 Flybuys gift card, which you can then spend at the supermarket or 22,500 to get a return flight from Sydney to Melbourne or Brisbane.

So, if you spend $56,250, you can get a return airfare. How long would that take? About 5 years? More?

The catch is the points expire after 3 years. So unless you spend nearly $400 every week at supermarkets and a few other places, you’ll never get your flight, unless you only want to go one way. Even then, it’s an average $200 per week spend.

At $200 per week, you’ll get a $20 gift card about once every 7 months.

What do Flybuys want?

The same thing as EFTPOS: your spending pattern data, which they sell.

So, when you see the EFTPOS ads, see THROUGH them. Don’t be a dupe AND a dickhead and waste your and other people’s time while giving shifty corporate pricks your personal data for free.

Where's Jewish In The Religions Question In The Census?

Last night was time to answer 60 questions in Australia’s 5 yearly census. Most of them asked for information which the government already has or could easily pass legislation to obtain from its various databases: address, previous address, age, income, children. Although it’s a bit of a pain in the arse to have to tell them something they already know, it’s not exactly an invasion of privacy.

At least this time it could all be done online, which only took about 15 minutes. Aside from the lack of a navigation frame, it was all pretty easy.

The religion question always gets a few people going. Since 2001, some people in several countries have some fun by answering Jedi and some other people get a little too precious about it.

One aspect of this question which really pissed me (and probably a lot of other people) off was the set of listed categories which had a check box:

• Catholic
• Anglican
• Uniting Church
• Presbyterian
• Buddhism
• Greek Orthodox
• Islam
• Baptist
• Lutheran
• Other [ box to type in ]
• No religion

What’s missing?

Jewish or Judaism. It’s not exactly a minor religion in this country. They probably could have put Hindu and Sikh as well.

There are seven branches of Christianity, which is fair enough since checking a radio button makes the stats a lot easier than parsing a free form text field. They could easily have thrown in a few more, like Mormons.

Well no I don’t actually: I think their religion is a cult, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t be in the list.

Given the primary purposes of making the form easy to fill out and the data easy to collate into standardized categories, what could possibly have led the ABS to add Islam and Buddhism to the list, but exclude Judaism?

This must have been a conscious decision. Are they trying to say Islam and Buddhism are sufficiently important in Australia to have their own box, but Judaism is not?

Who is responsible for designing this form, the ABS or Marrickville Council?

In fact, both Judaism and Hinduism are in the ABS’s broad categories of religious groups: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Other Religions, No Religion. So why then exclude Judaism and Hinduism from the check box list in both the online and paper forms?

An innocent oversight? Hard to see how it got through. A lefty trying to make a statement? Hard to see how that got through either, unless it was a cabal of lefties. Possible if the census is written by sociologists.

People Who Buy Their Train Ticket With A Card Need Their Heads Kicked In

Update 2015:

The Opal Card certainly fixed this problem in Sydney. It doesn't actually stop the people described below being fuckwits, but does remove one avenue for them to impose their fuckwittery on the rest of us.

Original Article:

Don’t you just want to bash people who use a credit card to buy their train ticket when there is a queue of twenty people behind them?

The queue is long, but it’s moving smoothly as everyone just forks over the cash and takes their ticket until … dickwad asks for a weekly ticket and pays by card. Usually said dickwad takes double the time of a competent person to complete this task as well.

It’s even worse when there are separate queues for two ticket windows and some cretin who hasn’t heard of the internet is holding up the other one with a dozen inane questions about which ticket does what.

What is so difficult about buying your train ticket with cash? It’s not like these people try to go through the barrier and then realize their ticket is out of date: they know beforehand they need to buy a new ticket that morning. I can understand a few people genuinely forgetting until they were walking down the escalator, but for most of these selfish pricks, it’s a conscious choice, which is why bashing them should be legal.

What are they buying? Almost always a weekly or fortnightly. Is it too much to expect someone to have the foresight and consideration to withdraw $50 from the ATM the day before? Who walks around with fuck all money in their wallet anyway, except for kids and losers?

Why do you need to use a card?

“It’s for the points”. Really? What’s that worth to you? 30c? Battler.

“I didn’t bother to go to the ATM. I’ll just use EFTPOS”. So you have the money in your account, you just couldn’t be bothered getting it out yesterday, even though you’ll need to get money out today because there’s none in your wallet? Ignorant fuckwit.

“I only have enough cash for necessities like lunch until pay day, so I’m putting everything else on my card”. Are you fucking serious? How old are you? 18?

Ironically, most of these people probably whinge about government services, queues in banks, traffic jams and any number of other logistical problems which are caused by the same behaviour and could be vastly ameliorated by punishing the selfish and stupid.

At many of the larger stations, there is a barrier system, with a single queue approaching multiple windows, like at the airport or a bank. This largely solves the problem as long as there are at least three open ticket windows; there is a significant chance of a pair of fuckwits holding up both of two windows, but little chance of getting three such people all at once. 

However, this system is only used in peak hour, the barriers removed too early and almost always as one ticket window is shut. Why not leave at least one row permanently in place? It’s not like it’s getting in the way of something incredibly important.

More useful to the public would be a more effective deterrent to the dickheads: a cash or Paypass only window, where lengthy enquiries were not allowed.

Put big signs up: Card payments and enquiries these windows only. Cash and Paypass only at this window. Strictly enforce the enquiries rule ie. people can ask simple questions: “What ticket do I need for a weekly which will take me to Parramatta but also let me catch buses?”, but anything more complex is directed to the enquiries window.

If the person trying to ask ten questions in the cash queue abuses the ticket seller for directing them to the enquiries counter, I’ll bet the ticket seller will get some vocal support from the queue behind.

Put a system like this in place and watch the decrease in card use and consequent decrease in waiting times as the self absorbed arseholes become the only ones having their time stolen, by other self absorbed arseholes.

If you public transport employees want respect and more than a 2.5% pay rise, then show some understanding of the needs of the public your job it is to serve and start making some sensible decisions.

Update:

Some stupid bitch bought a $7 ticket with a card the other day, while holding a $10 note in her hand!

She was of course right in front of me in the only queue. She took out the $10 note, then asked the ticket seller if she could use a card. He told her the ticket was only $7 (Yes, good, just give her the ticket), then said: "But you can use your card." (Gaahhh! You fucking cretin!)

"Don't", I said.

She just turned around and looked at me, then used her card.

As she was getting her ticket, I said: "That's right love, it's all about you isn't it? You just hold everyone else up."

She pulled the type of really stupid face only someone with a double digit IQ could pull and said: "Have a nice day", to which I replied: "Fuck off, you stupid, selfish, ignorant bitch."

She didn't have much of a response to that. I heard a small intake of breath behind me, but I wasn't interested.

I said to the ticket guy: "Mate, she had the cash in her hand. Don't tell her she can use a card and take five times as long." He actually apologised.

You may think I was a bit aggressive, or even misogynist because it was a woman.

As if I wouldn't have said the same thing to a man.

Selfish, ignorant people need to be told. She probably won't do it again.

Bring Back The Pacific Islanders Rugby Team

How many rugby fans would like to see a combined Pacific Islanders team in the same format as the British & Irish Lions?

If teams tour the Pacific Islands, they would play each of Fiji, Samoa and Tonga separately, but when the Islanders tour Britain and France for example, they would do so as a combined Pacific Islanders side. There is no reason why players from smaller rugby nations like the Cook Islands and Niue shouldn’t be eligible for selection either.

If the touring team played together regularly, it would be a strong side which would play an open, attacking style of rugby. They would be very popular and draw large crowds and thus television revenue which could be used to further develop the game in the Pacific Islands.

The combined side would also be part of a southern hemisphere Five Nations tournament with Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina.

The concept is not new. In fact a Pacific Islanders team played one test each against Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in 2004. They lost all three matches, but the games were competitive, exciting and drew good crowds. The scores were 14-29, 26-41 and 24-38.

Combined Islanders teams toured Europe in 2006 and 2008, with a single 25-17 victory over Italy.

The venture dissolved due to financial issues and internal disputes, with the Samoan Rugby Union leaving the alliance in 2008. I suspect this failure had more to do with lack of vision, poor financial and political management and inadequate support from the IRB than any inherent unviability of the concept.

Had Australia, New Zealand and South Africa shown some longer term vision and included the Islanders team as a permanent fixture in a Southern Hemisphere Four Nations tournament from 2004, the individual Pacific rugby boards would have been forced to work together and also subject to more financial scrutiny, as well as earning a lot more money.

I reckon the 2006 and 2008 European tours would also have been more successful.

Additionally, the Super 15 tournament might have been improved with the inclusion of Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, obviating the need to create fifth, weak Australian and South African teams.

With Argentina expanding the Tri Nations tournament to four in 2012, maybe it’s time to make it Five Nations and bring back the Pacific Islanders.

Golden Point Wins Should Be Worth Less Than Wins In Regulation Time

Whether or not you like rugby league’s "golden point", you may find the following a reasonable question:

Why are the same number of competition points awarded for a golden point victory as a 50-0 win?

Just a brief explanation for those who don’t know what the "golden point" is:

Formerly, if rugby league games finished with the scores level after the regulation time, a draw was declared and both sides got one competition point each, except in the case of a finals game, where extra time was played.

In 2003, the NRL introduced the golden point system for all matches, regular season and finals. In the event of scores being level after regulation time, the teams play two extra sessions of five minutes each. The first score of any kind in either period wins the game.

For a regular season match, if no team scores by the end of extra time, the game is a draw and both sides get one competition point each. In a finals match, the second period of extra time continues until one team scores.

Since its introduction in 2003, there have been 57 golden point games in the NRL, with Manly beating Parramatta 36-34 in the first one. Of these, only 9 have ended in draws. Slightly under half (27) have ended with a field goal.

The golden point is generally agreed to be a good system for finals matches; certainly fairer to the winner than the debilitating mid-week replay in the event of a draw after 20 minutes of extra time.

Many people think it adds some extra excitement to regular season games and I’m inclined to agree.

What I don’t accept is teams receiving the same number of competition points for a golden point victory as for a comprehensive win.

If you’re going to have two points for a win, then just have the old system of a draw at the end of the 80 minutes.

If you’re going to use the golden point system, make it 4 points for a win in normal time, 3 points for a golden point win, 2 points each for a draw after extra time and 1 point for a golden point loss.

Here’s the ladder after round 24, 2011 ie. at the end of the regular season, with the points under my proposal. I’ve also not given any points for the 2 byes, because that’s just fucking stupid.

2011
Team	Pts	Wins	GP Wins	GP Loss	Draws	Alt Pts
Melbourne	42	19	0	0	0	76
Manly	40	18	0	0	0	72
Brisbane	40	18	1	0	0	71
Wests	34	15	1	0	0	59
St George	33	14	0	0	1	58
NZ Warriors	32	14	0	0	0	56
Nth Qld	32	14	0	1	0	57
Newcastle	28	12	0	1	0	49
Canterbury	28	12	1	0	0	47
Souths	26	11	2	0	0	42
Easts	24	10	0	1	0	41
Penrith	22	9	1	0	0	35
Cronulla	18	7	0	0	0	28
Parramatta	17	6	0	2	1	28
Canberra	16	6	0	2	0	26
Gold Coast	16	6	1	0	0	23

Under the alternative points, Nth Queensland Cowboys finish 6th and the NZ Warriors 7th, probably a fairer result, considering the Cowboys’ golden point loss to Souths on a very dodgy penalty.

This changes the matches in week 1 of the finals: Manly would play the Warriors and Brisbane would play Nth Qld.

It also would have changed the last round of the regular season. Had Souths beaten Newcastle by more than 17 points in round 24, they would have made the finals, but under the alternative system, Canterbury would have made it.

Would such a system have been too hard to think of?

Well, not for a competent governing body. However, we shouldn’t have expected common sense from David Gallop et al.

Introducing a reasonable idea in principle, then implementing it in a lazy, ignorant way is typical of the David Gallop run joke that the NRL administration has become.

Just look at the salary cap shambles.