Chuck A Brown Eye At Corporate Greed

Smash the capitalist system by chucking brown eyes!

Liam Warriner was arrested for mooning the Queen as her motorcade drove by. He was also part of the Occupy (insert city) protests.

What’s the point of just sitting in Martin Place or Federation Square chanting dopey slogans? Why don’t all of you go and stand outside the head office of a big bank or miner and brown eye its staff as they arrive for work and then again as they leave?

Shout: “You’ve licked enough of these to get where you are! Give ours a clean! Rimming is not just for the rich!”

How are the police going to arrest 1,000 or more people for chucking brown eyes? Organise flash mobs to descend on a different target each day in a game of cat and mouse with the authorities.

Those corporate fat cats would soon think twice about stealing from the shareholders via exorbitant and unearned remuneration packages if they had to run a gauntlet of brown eyes from the great unwashed each morning!

On a more serious note, I notice that Liam Warriner was also charged with willful exposure under the Summary Offences Act 2005.

The problem is that this charge specifically relates to exposing one's genitalia, which is not the same as mooning. It is laid against genuine pervs who derive sexual gratification from flashing at people. The conviction doesn’t have in brackets (only mooning) on your criminal record, so he’ll always be on a police database of pervs. Even if he’s found not guilty, the police will still maintain the charge record on a database somewhere.

Later in this guy’s life, if there is ever a rapist in the area, or some dirty old man flashing at kids or trying to photograph them, he’ll be on the police shortlist of people to speak to. It could possibly even count against him if he ever wants to teach or otherwise work with children.

Does he really deserve this? Surely a Section 6 public nuisance charge is sufficient. He’s only going to get a fine anyway.

This is where the police need to act with some restraint. Even if you do think he’s a dickhead, mouthing off with his wannabe left wing hero slogans, don’t be even bigger dickheads and potentially cause him problems for the rest of his life by charging him with an offence which most would interpret as having a sexual undertone and is usually intended for low level perverts.

Additionally, mooning the queen’s motorcade from a distance is not much of an effort. Surely at least a pressed ham with smallgoods on her window would have been a more appropriate protest against elitism.

If the paparazzi had caught a snap of her maj from the right angle, her shocked face would have been framed in a bumprint on the window, perhaps with some ghostly smallgoods on her chin.

On Scrums

During the 2011 NRL grand final, justly won by Manly, there was an incident where Anthony Watmough played the ball facing more in the direction of the sideline than the goal posts. It didn’t advantage Manly or alter the flow of the game, but assorted paid and unpaid clowns started going on about “Why weren’t Manly penalized?”, as if the referee had just missed a deliberate forward pass.

Who gives a fuck? The point is simply to roll the ball behind you to the dummy half and let the attacking side get on with the job. Since 1995, the defending side can’t even contest the play the ball anymore.

Have you ever seen a rugby league scrum? The props are usually standing upright, with the attacking hooker hanging across the scrum. The props cock their leg and try to piss on the halfback as he feeds the ball under the second row’s feet. I rarely see a penalty awarded for not feeding the ball in straight or not packing properly. When one is given, it appears to be at random.

Again, the point only seems to be to give the ball to the team feeding the scrum while half the players are concentrated in a small section of the field. How often do you see a rugby league scrum won against the feed?

When league scrums are such an obvious farce, why would anyone care about the play the ball in an ordinary tackle? Just pass it between your legs and get on with it.

I know a rugby union scrum is made more stable by the two extra players on each side, but that is no reason why league scrums should be such a joke. Forwards used to pack down properly, push and hookers contest the ball. Why can’t they still do it?

There are occasionally mealy mouthed suggestions of doing away with scrums in rugby league because of the farce they have become. Instead, why don’t the people who run rugby league, who allowed this situation to occur in the first place, rectify it? Set proper scrums and fans might be interested.

Rugby union scrums on the other hand are so technical that they are often reset two or three times before the ball comes out. Often, the result is a penalty instead, particularly with a northern hemisphere ref.

Scrums in rugby union are a serious business: wins against the feed, wheeling through 90 degrees, pushover tries. They are often where the battle of the forwards is won and lost.

The problems with them are too many boring, time wasting resets and far too many penalties for dubious, technical infringements which result in 3 points to boring (mostly northern hemisphere) teams who play for scrum and ruck penalties instead of running the ball.

So often, one sees the front row collapse with the ball won and at the number eight’s feet, then the referee blows it up for a reset. How does this increase safety? There is no need for another scrum in this situation. Just get the ball out and run with it.

The ref should shout: “Use it or lose it!” If the team who has won the ball doesn’t get it out within 3 seconds, the scrum is reset and they lose the feed.

The front row will not be on the ground any longer in this scenario and there will be no need for another scrum, another possible collapse, or a stupid penalty which just pisses fans off, unless they are British and think 12-9 all in penalties is a good game.

Obviously if the ball hasn’t reached the second row by the time the front row collapses, then the scrum needs to be reset, but the above rule change would improve the flow of the game immensely.

The principal bad outcome of far too many scrums are highly dubious penalties awarded against the defending team for collapsing, which then result in 3 points to the opposition. How can the referee tell who is at fault for collapsing a scrum in most cases? What front row would deliberately collapse in their own 22?

I asked this question of a first grade front rower who played for the Australian Schoolboys. His answer: “Of course you wouldn’t. It’s the other bloke pulling or pushing you down. Sometimes a weaker front row will just collapse under the pressure, but it’s not intentional.”

Someone else made the observation that since the referee can’t tell in the majority of cases who is at fault when a scrum collapses, if you’re in doubt just penalize the attacking team so at least no-one can score any points as a result.

The suggestion was partly facetious, but illustrates an important issue: points are being scored and often games won and lost as a result of unfair scrum penalties.

Obviously there need to be penalties for foul play, such as deliberately pulling the front row down, feeding the ball under your own hooker’s feet or packing down at an angle so you’re spearing in. However, there are many breaches of the rules which are unintentional, such as a front rower briefly putting their hand on the ground to avoid falling down, or even a front row collapsing because they are not strong enough to hold the scrum up.

There is a school of thought that a dominant front row proves its case by breaking up the opposition, causing them to collapse or splinter and lose their bind under the pressure, thus receiving a penalty as a reward. I agree with everything except the penalty part. There is nothing wrong with receiving a free kick, or ten metres and a free kick or another scrum, but not 3 points.

There is a better solution: the rules already distinguish between intentional and unintentional forward passes, so why shouldn’t they distinguish other unintentional infringements?

Extend the range of infringements which result in a free kick instead of a penalty. There could be an intermediate category of infringements which result in a ten metre loss as well as a free kick. If a front row loses their bind, puts their hand on the ground or unintentionally collapses, march them ten metres and give the opposition a choice of a free kick or another scrum.

What if they did it within 10 metres of the goal line? March them half the distance, even allowing the minimum 5 metre rule to be waived in that case. You can’t give a penalty because it’s still the same infringement. If the attacking team really wants a shot at goal, let them put the five eight behind the scrum and go for a drop goal. Only a gutless side would do this from a 5 metre scrum anyway.

Would these rule changes ever get passed? Not with the IRB controlled by the northern hemisphere. How would their teams ever win a game?

We need to get more representatives from the Pacific Island nations on the IRB and increase the southern hemisphere’s voting power. Then we can get rid of all these stupid penalties that make you cry out: “What the fuck was that for? You’re a fucking clown, ref!” and actually have some properly flowing rugby games, which of course would always be won by Australia, New Zealand or South Africa.

A Victory For Common Sense ... Topeka Decriminalises Domestic Violence

Topeka, the capital of Kansas has just voted to decriminalize domestic violence, along with a list of other misdemenour crimes.

Domestic battery is still a crime under Kansas state law and offences occurring in Topeka would normally be prosecuted by the Shawnee County DA. However, the DA’s office has not been prosecuting misdemeanours for some weeks, due to lack of budget.

The DA’s move was seen as an attempt to force the city of Topeka to prosecute the domestic battery cases, however they apparently do not have the resources either. Instead, they responded with their own political tactic: decriminalize domestic battery and other offences so the county will have to find the budget to handle the prosecutions under state law.

Unfortunately, Topeka City Council’s tactic does not yet appear to have succeeded, meaning any people arrested for domestic violence are held for 72 hours, then released.

Given that city councils’ responsibilities are mostly things like urban planning, garbage collection and issuing parking tickets, one might ask why they would still have the responsibility of prosecuting assaults. This should have been made the clear responsibility of the county under state law, obviating the motivation for this farcical situation.

There are ways communities could free up funds to prosecute assaults:

• Stop prosecuting people for possessing small amounts of drugs for personal use. If you don’t want to legalize personal use of some drugs, at least make the penalty for possession a fine. How driving 30km/h over the speed limit on a suburban street is just a fine but puffing on a joint gets you a criminal record is beyond me.
Stop jailing people for personal use of drugs. Steer them into treatment instead.

Shoot A Police Officer ... Get Away With It Because Of Anti Muslim Climate

This is absolutely insane! An admitted terrorist who shot at police has been acquitted. How could this possibly happen?

The accused, known as BUSB during the trial, but now identified as Bradley Umar Baladjam was carrying two concealed, loaded pistols, which he subsequently admitted was “to prepare for a terrorist act … motivated by his religious beliefs”.

When approached by uniformed police, one with his gun drawn, the accused pulled out one of the pistols and started shooting, wounding one of the officers. He was charged with, among other things “attempting to murder or cause grievous bodily harm to police Sergeant Adam Wolsey and shooting at him with intent to resist apprehension”.

At a judge only trial, Judge Leonie Flannery acquitted BUSB of these charges on the grounds that intent to shoot at the officer could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

The fact that the incident occurred on November 8, 2005 and the accused could still not be publicly identified during the trial suggests he was still awaiting trial on other charges. In fact, the acquittal in this case was handed down on June 10, 2011, but has not been allowed to be publicized until recently.

One can only hope this arsehole is currently in prison after having been sentenced on other matters. A response by the NSW police minister to a question without notice from Fred Nile shows the matter has been through multiple trials and retrials. Even so, five years is far too long for charges to be decided.

BUSB’s defence was that he had only intended to fire a warning shot.

Excuse me? Since when do you get to fire a warning shot at the police? You don’t get to do that in this country, Judge Flannery.

The judge found that BUSB:

“… put the pistol in his pants because he was concerned for his safety, and in the state he was in, brought about by his illness, his concern that he was going to be arrested, and the climate of anti-Muslim feeling in the community at the time, he believed that he might be harmed by police".

Umm … he was carrying a pistol because he was concerned he might be arrested and might be harmed by police. So, one might draw the conclusion that he was carrying the pistol with the intent of using it to defend himself against police. But of course, he always intended to just fire in the air if confronted.

If so, how did he fire a horizontal “warning shot”?

In an absurd piece of what one might describe as PC judicial activism, Judge Flannery stated:

''I am not satisfied that he put the Browning [firearm] in his pants because he was planning to shoot his arresting officers”

Well, he didn’t have to intend to when he left home. The question is whether the intent was formed at any time right up to his arrest and existed at the time he fired the weapon. A warning shot is fired into the air. To wound one of the arresting officers, he must have fired at an angle equal to or below horizontal. How is there reasonable doubt as to intent?

And what is this bullshit about the climate of anti-Muslim feeling somehow casting doubt as to his intent? That is a non sequitur.

The accused’s statement above, that he put the pistol in his pants because “he was concerned he may be arrested” is surely evidence supporting the claim of intent.

This is not a case where a judge should be assisting the accused by trying to find ways in which he could possibly have not meant to fire at the police. Baladjam is a militant Muslim. His actions and views are diametrically opposite to the fundamental precepts of our society. He does not deserve assistance via judicial activism.

This is an absurd verdict. Worse, it opens the possibility of others attempting to use the judgement as a precedent and proffer a defence of fear.

The judge should have her appointment reviewed on the grounds of competence.

Equally as disturbing is the abject bungling of this matter from the outset by both the terrorism squad and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Why were inexperienced officers from the local police station asked to arrest a terrorism suspect?

The description of the attempted arrest reads like a storyline of the Keystone Cops (except for the speaking part, obviously):

"The two junior officers had trouble getting out of the car: one could not open her car door because of a child safety lock, another struggled with her seat belt. None of the officers was wearing body armour and only one appeared to have his firearm drawn. He later said he approached the man, saying: 'Mate, hang on a minute. Can we have a word?'"

They were given a description of the suspect by the terrorism squad over a mobile phone while they were driving down the street looking for him.

These officers should never have been placed in this situation. They were clearly inadequately prepared and that is clearly the fault of their superiors and the terrorism squad.

According to the NSW police minister, Baladjam was acquitted of three indictable offences (apparently the most serious ones) and convicted of two, related firearms offences.

This greasy prick should have been taken by the terrorism squad and charged with everything available. How could someone admit to carrying concealed firearms with intent “to prepare for a terrorist act” and because “he was concerned he may be arrested”, shoot a police officer and not end up being found guilty of at least several serious offences?

Surely there are a string of other charges available in such a matter. I'm not a fan of the trifecta (resist arrest, assault police, hinder police) as it is regularly abused, but surely it was appropriate here. Why was Baladjam not charged with every offence the police and DPP could think of in case some of the main charges did not succeed? All he ended up with were two firearms convictions.

Additionally, the public might well ask how a competent prosecutor could not secure a conviction on ANY of the three most serious charges, even in the face of an activist judge.

Perhaps it may have been better had the police just blown his head off.

No wonder militant Muslims are acting with such confidence in Western countries. When they see things like this, they must be laughing at us. This is precisely the time we need to go in as hard as possible against these people, not manufacture reasons to acquit them.

I suppose we should be thankful we're not in the UK: he might have sued the police for infringing his human right to pursue jihad ... and won.

The police are often justifiably criticized for their performance and their attitude toward the public. This is because we need and expect an honest, competent police service who see themselves as part of the community.

The quid pro quo is that police should expect that if they are shot at when making a legitimate arrest, they will be backed with the full support of their superiors, the DPP, the judiciary and the general public. Most certainly, they should expect the full range of charges to be laid and a judge who does not search for reasonable doubt via spurious logic.

Why Batsmen Don't Walk Anymore

These days, it’s considered old-school for a batsman who edges a ball through to the keeper to simply walk off without waiting for the umpire’s decision. “Walking” used to be considered the gentlemanly thing to do. So why has it disappeared from pretty much all levels of cricket?

There have been a few much discussed incidents at international level. Andrew Symonds being “caught behind” on 30 and then going on to score 162 no against India is one which comes to mind. Opinion was divided. Those supporting him argued that Australia had poor decisions go against them, so why not get one back?

In contrast, I can remember Doug Walters’ character being assailed in the mid 1970’s when he allegedly didn’t walk on a much thinner edge. He denied hitting it at all.

Today, in the Australia vs Sri Lanka test, Mahela Jayawardene asked for Michael Clarke’s claimed catch to be referred to the TV umpire. There was no way he was walking until it was independently verified that the ball had not hit the ground before it went into Clarke’s hands. Most people thought this fair: what’s the TV umpire for if not to adjudicate based on objective evidence?

One explanation proffered for why professional cricketers no longer walk is that they are professionals. At international or provincial level, a cricket "career" means the same thing as it used to in terms of statistics, but now there is another dimension: money. You’re paid to score runs and win matches. If you don’t produce consistent results, you’ll be dropped and you’ll lose your livelihood.

Playing elite sport is a job. Cricket is no exception. In fact, elite cricketers’ earnings began to rise with the advent of World Series Cricket in the late 70's. Not only have their base salaries greatly increased as they secured a greater share of television rights, for the most popular players, advertising endorsements now provide even more income than they receive from playing actual matches.

According to the Courier Mail, in 2007, Australian captain Ricky Ponting was on a base contract of $800,000 and in form opener Matthew Hayden was on $650,000. Adding in endorsements, Ponting, Hayden and Brett Lee were estimated to each earn over $2M per year.

In 2006, players in the English test squad had base contracts of £300,000.

Even Australian state cricketers have contracts worth $25,000 - $50,000 p.a.

That’s a lot of income at risk if you’re out of form, have had a couple of bad decisions, then get a faint edge. But is keeping your job sufficient to explain not walking at elite level?

No. If the rest of the population still thought walking was the right thing to do, proven non-walkers would lose advertising endorsements and possibly even be fined for “bringing the game into disrepute”.

But this never happens. We rarely, if ever even hear former cricketers say: “He should have walked. That wasn’t right. Someone should have a word with him about sportsmanship”.

In fact, walking is rare at grade or even park cricket level, unless it’s a blatant edge which can be heard from the boundary … and sometimes not even then.

If it’s rare to walk at any level, retention of employment can’t be the sole explanation for the change. To say that winning per se has become more important than how the game is played is not an explanation because this is a symptom rather than a cause. Such an attitude definitely exists more now than it used to, but there must be some cause which initiated and then supported this change.

Did the change trickle down from elite level, or was it a change in general attitudes which is now so established that elite cricketers have grown up with the new mores?

I suspect it was originally the former and now it’s the latter. Cricketers took cues from their role models and now take them from their peers.

Look at Tony Greig’s run out of Alvin Kallicharran in 1974. That was well before cricketers’ pay or prize money could justify such an action (if ever it could be). Such behaviour would never have been contemplated in a club game at that time. It represented a change in attitude toward winning at all costs by some at the elite level. Tony Greig, always a complete prick, was one of its pioneers.

The Indians recently tried to pull the same stunt on England’s Ian Bell.

Commensurate with the decline in "walking" is the increase in highly speculative and often outrightly dishonest appealing. Umpires will make some bad decisions and the more appeals they get, the more bad decisions they will make. Why would a batsman previously given out LBW from a thick edge onto the pad or caught behind from a ball they were nowhere near, now walk on a thin edge?

I don’t walk for precisely this reason. I’ve been given out LBW to an overly enthusiastic appeal on the last ball of the day from a clear inside edge onto the pad, then had the opposing captain say to me: "You were a bit unlucky there, mate" as we were walking off. No shame about it. "Fuck off!" I said.

I’ve also played matches without official umpires (the batting side does it) and the cheating here is appalling. I’ve had LBW appeals turned down where the batsman has padded up to a ball which would clearly have hit the stumps.

It’s usually the same people who make blatantly dishonest appeals who whinge the loudest if you don’t walk. The batsman’s typical response is: "When I stop getting crap decisions from bullshit appeals, I’ll start walking."

Let’s also not pretend there aren’t cultural factors involved. Plenty of test cricketers from all nations have been fined for excessive appealing in tense situations, but anyone who has umpired or played against a team of subcontinental players knows they are by far the most prolific and blatant offenders. They only care about the result, not how it was obtained. When you look at the corruption in their societies, you can see where the attitude comes from.

I play with a few teammates of Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan origin and they freely discuss what every cricketer knows: If you play a team consisting entirely of curries, expect a lot of cheating. Our guys rip into them in Hindi. It’s hilarious to watch.

No-one is trying to pretend that white players don’t cheat.

Here’s a summary of 10 controversial test cricket dismissals. Only 3 are absolutely beyond the pale cheating: Carl Hooper’s run out of Dean Jones, Tony Greig’s even more disgraceful run out of Alvin Kallicharran and the worst in history, the slimy Sarfraz Nawaz’s appeal against Andrew Hilditch for handled ball.

The offenders: A white South African émigré, a West Indian and a Pakistani.

What I’m saying is what every player has experienced: there is in general more frequent and more shameless cheating from subcontinental teams.

It’s not their DNA which causes it: it’s culture. Interestingly, you don’t see the same level of cheating in culturally mixed teams.

A culture in which transgression is principally understood externally via shame rather than internally via guilt is far more likely to lead to cheating in group situations where responsibility can be diffused and shame is not felt due to the support of colleagues.

One team cheating can make the other cheat in response. Teams who “confidently” appeal for anything will cause the opposition to not walk even for thick edges, as well as make speculative appeals themselves, although one needs use psychology to temper the latter to the disposition of the umpire, who is generally looking to give you a few LBWs to punish a team of shifty pricks.

In summary, a batsman has to deal with dodgy appealing, poor umpiring decisions, and regularly playing against a bunch of shifty, often mouthy pricks who would never walk themselves. Add to that the financial incentive at elite level. Why would you ever walk?

Corporate Clowns Blow $150M Of Other People's Money

The title says it all. How is it possible for VERY well paid, VERY senior people to sign off on a $150M loan which is provisioned only 5 weeks later? That’s what happened when CBA and NAB lent $150M to UK listed company Healthcare Locums.

A loan of this size written by banks as large as CBA and NAB would not require board approval, but it would almost certainly need approval from the executive committee, which would normally contain the head of credit and the chief risk officer. These people are on high six figure salaries, with big bonuses. In return, shareholders should quite reasonably expect competence in their specific area of alleged expertise.

Statistical credit risk models can only work well if the balance sheet and P & L information they are given is true. Competent humans need to look carefully over board minutes, audit reports and ongoing business activities of the counterparty to ensure the accounts are a correct representation of the state of the business.

Equally important in a credit assessment are criterion scored assessments of behavioural factors such as the quality and experience of management, budgeting and financial reporting and risk management strategies. Shareholders expect that for a $150M loan, these assessments would be overseen by senior credit and risk people.

There doesn’t appear to have been any such competent human oversight in this case. Healthcare Locums had recently spent $10 million buying a business whose auditors refused to sign off on its books. How could this not have been picked up?

How could the “aggressive accounting practices regarding revenue recognition and extremely poor levels of corporate governance” which surfaced barely one month after the loan was signed off not have been found by competent, senior credit staff?

One possible explanation is the corporate lending unit riding over the top of risk management in order to push the deal through. I’m not saying that happened in this case, but I’ve seen it before. It should be particularly alarming for shareholders if the lending areas of these banks have once again gotten the upper hand over risk management, given the current credit and economic climate.

It’s all very well to claim ''bank advisers crawled all over the transaction'' and “bank executives were shocked by what followed”. The first statement sounds like typical corporate, arse-covering bullshit and the second like damning evidence of gross incompetence.

But I’ll bet no-one loses their job over this. They should.

I'm not holding any CBA or NAB at the moment, but I often do. Were I a shareholder, I would expect the people who signed off on this transaction to be sacked.

The thing that really makes people angry when they read this is that many of the hopeless twats who signed off on the deal are paid huge salaries and bonuses compared to most: 5 to 10 times the average wage.

For this, they appear to have blown at least half of the $150M of shareholders’ money. The recovery rate won’t be great: what’s the collateral? That’s our super you clowns are pissing up against a wall.

Even worse is how conceited a lot of these people are; the air of entitlement they have. Entitlement to their excessive salaries, entitlement to bonuses utterly incommensurate with their true contribution to the business, entitlement to spend shareholders’ funds on expensive lunches and dinners with the corporate credit card, entitlement to lay off lower level staff in order to cut costs.

Most people don’t mind seeing someone get paid 500K or even over 1M a year if they have actually invented, created or manufactured something useful which generates a lot of revenue. Most don’t object to those salaries for wise investment or risk managers whose decisions genuinely make high returns or prevent significant losses in an economic downturn.

They don’t object to a string of executives on 200 – 300K if they actually have real talent and knowledge and work 60+ hours a week.

What they do object to is a cabal of corporate cunts with their snouts in the trough, walking around like they deserve their rewards, then producing results like this. Ordinary performers on three or four times the average income because they are good at networking and sucking the right cock does not make people on the average wage feel like putting in "a fair day's work for a fair day's pay".

Society is becoming more fractious. A significant element of the discontent stems from what is felt to be an unfair allocation of remuneration and hence access to resources such as quality housing in good locations. This will only get worse if the world economy struggles over the next few years, as I believe it will.

Very few things make people angrier than a sense of injustice. If we want society to be more cohesive, we need to ensure high salaries are earned rather than stolen in an organized senior executive racket.

Scientists Create Artificial Arseholes

Not sure I want my first science entry to be about artificial arseholes, but the need for practice “greens” for my new game show seems an appropriate segue.

New Scientist reports the world’s first artificial sphincter, made with human cells, but so far only implanted in mice. They initially tested if it would grow by implanting one onto a mouse’s back.

I don’t know if I’d like another arsehole in the middle of my back. However, I can think of plenty of people who deserve one sewn into their mouth.

I like the quote: "We can custom-make them the size and diameter we want". I’m saving up to buy a huge one and plant it right in the middle of the school oval where the famous Fairfield Phalluses were drawn.

I liked that they tested their lab built sphincters with “electric shocks and chemicals”, to make sure that they “contract and relax like normal sphincters”. Because I always wire mine up to a battery to make it behave normally. Although, perhaps testing it out with a few drops of amyl nitrate has some practical value.

Surely more practical test conditions would have elicited more useful data. Sew one into Roxxxy the Sex Robot and give her a solid reaming. Instead of using electric shocks to see if the arseholes "contract and relax like normal", I’m sure Bob Brown, Christopher Pyne and other "professionals" would volunteer to give them a couple of licks to see if they react properly.

Apparently Alan Jones has ordered one gross of the arseholes to enjoy in the privacy of his well appointed closet. Seems an appropriate unit of measure: a gross of arseholes. Jonesy just goes through them like lollies. Tears through them like a puppy with a new toy.

The name of the scientist who engineered them gives us a clue as to the master plan hidden behind their development: Khalil Bitar. That’s right: it’s Karl Bitar, former ALP national secretary. I always suspected the name “Karl” was an Anglicism.

So now we know what he’s been up to these past months: cloning himself for a new round of branch stacking to take over the ALP.

Thass Yo Ass!

I was recently watching a scene from Blacks On Blondes in which two well endowed coloured gentlemen were giving a correspondingly well endowed, but not terribly bright blonde lass a double bunger.

The one who was poking her up the bum pulled out, went around and stuck it in her mouth. As she looked up at him, with his dick in her mouth, he said: "Thass yo ass … Thass YO ass!" She just nodded in agreement.

After I stopped laughing, I thought: what a great name for a TV game show. Here’s how it would work:

There is a centre stage, raised three to four feet above the ground, but covered in a curtain so no-one can see what’s underneath. In the stage are cut six circular holes, each about one standard bum width in diameter. Six people stick their bums up, one through each hole, so that the bum surfaces are approximately flush with the stage.

A contestant has to putt a golf ball into each of the six bums. The balls are then placed in egg cups and the bum owners lined up in random order at the opposite end of the stage.

The contestant then has to match each golf ball to its correct bum. They take each ball, sniff or lick it and then yell, along with the crowd: "Thass … YO ass!", pointing and tossing the golf ball to their chosen bum owner.

Prizes would work like the final showcase on The Price Is Right. As each bum owner is guessed correctly, another prize lights up on the list. The prize for getting all six right could be a car, with four brown eye chucking arses for hubcaps.

To make the game harder and more fun, you could have the stage set up like putt-putt golf, maybe with a rotating windmill which could knock the ball into a different arse. Or the contestant might have to putt the ball up a ramp into a laughing clown’s mouth, which would then deposit the ball into a random arse.

Of course, the bums would have to be clamped open somehow so the putts would not "rim out", but that is a simple, logistical matter. The best method would probably be for the host to shout: "Ready … all bums … brown eye!" before the contestant putts.

So, who would be the bums? People who wanted to be on TV while earning a hundred bucks and a petrol or grog voucher. Out of work actors, uni students, suspended footballers, people sentenced to community service. Each set of six would need to have fairly similar physical characteristics to ensure the only senses used in the ball allocation were smell, taste and ESP. But you could have a set of six middle aged, white guys, followed by a set of six young, black guys, followed by a set of six Asian girls. Just to make it interesting, you could throw a set of trannies in once in a while.

I imagine a very popular spin off would be Celebrity Charity Thass Yo Ass, where a celebrity putted the balls into the arses of six other celebrities, with each correct guess earning progressively higher donations to their favoured charity.

Of course, you’d have to choose the celebrities carefully. If you made Alan Jones one of the arses, the ball would just fall in and you’d never get it back. If Bob Brown was doing the putting, he might just take the ball out of the egg cup, give it a couple of licks and put it in his pocket for later.

The Weakest Link, The Million Dollar Drop, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader, Celebrity Big Brother … these shows are rubbish.

Celebrity Thass Yo Ass … now that's a TV show worth watching!

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.