The Political Piety Of The Left

The overwhelming majority of humans still think in a religious way. They want to have a set of fundamental tenets about the world and particularly about what constitutes right and wrong behaviour. These tenets are axiomatic. That is, they are assumed to be true without the necessity of proof. From them derive ethical and legal codes.

So it is with the political left. The “fundamental truths” of their secular humanism are their ideals of “universal” human rights, their belief in the ability of political culture to alter “base” human behaviour and their division of society into privileged and oppressed groups. Successful or dominant groups are automatically deemed to have privilege, which must be overturned by government. Minorities and the less successful are then necessarily oppressed by the privileged and require state intervention to right these wrongs: massive redistribution of wealth through taxation and subsidies, ideological indoctrination via the education system, affirmative action and legal curtailment of free speech.

Disagree with the left’s secular axioms and you are not just wrong in the sense of argument, but morally wrong and therefore a bad person, unfit to be part of the great rule making enterprise.

Just like religious people who think that pious adherence to their beliefs makes them morally superior to the rest of us, politically pious lefties also think of themselves as morally superior … and just like most religious people, they are egregious hypocrites.

Instead of “Heretic!”, the modern cry of the pious lefty flock is “Racist!”.

Think Islam is a problem? Racist! (Despite religion being a choice and therefore politics).

Don’t want an amendment to the body of the Australian Constitution to recognize Aboriginal sovereignty? Racist! (Despite its potential for activist abuse).

Think many asylum seekers are lying and should be sent back? Racist! (Despite many of them actually being from Pakistan).

Think that culture is a primary cause of poverty? Racist!

Think that the Palestinians are reaping the outcome of continually provoking wars with Israel and then losing? Racist! Support “freedom fighters” who want to drive the Jews from Palestine? You’re one of us, comrade!

Scream “Racist!” loudly and often enough and it justifies not only failure to sustain a counterargument, but all the excesses of hysterical mob rule: defamation, assault, destruction of property, sabotage of legal businesses – the same behaviour as the far right.

The left elites, who have privileged positions in government or the public service are quite happy for the above to occur as the climate of fear created helps them to enact and administer totalitarian laws. No overturning of THEIR privilege of course, despite them being overwhelmingly white, Western and university educated, because they are the politically righteous.

Purely ideological positions rarely can be supported by reasoned argument. Often their tenets fail to cohere with evidence from the real world. This conflict renders their adherents all the more vicious when challenged, because they have nothing other than the brute force of their agents to back their positions (they need to have the police do their dirty work for them of course).

“You’re not English if you’re black.” We’ll put you in jail and take your kids away.

A 72 year old woman writes that she’s sick of Muslims getting away with harming animals and generally ignoring our laws when it suits them? Threaten her with prison, steal her money and have your political gangs threaten and harass her.

We need a political Protestantism to fight them. Citizens freely debating and deciding the rules for their social and economic interaction, not the Socialist Church.

Gabe Watson: Not Murder, But What?

The guy is without doubt absolute scum, but that wasn’t the charge. There was nowhere near sufficient evidence produced at Gabe Watson’s trial to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that he murdered his wife. The judge had no choice but to direct an acquittal, without sending it to the jury.

To secure a murder conviction, the prosecution needs to prove that the accused did something illegal which caused the victim to die. The intention part is more complicated than simply that the intention of the action(s) was to cause the victim to die. For example, in Queensland, where the events occurred, it’s still murder under the Crimes Act if the accused was trying to hurt someone else, but accidentally killed the victim. Most jurisdictions have a similar murder definition.

In the United States, where Gabe Watson was eventually tried for murder, distinction is made between first degree murder, which requires premeditation, and second degree murder, where premeditation is absent.

However, in each of these jurisdictions’ definition of murder, the accused has to actually do some action which causes the death. There is nothing in the definition which says that inaction directly leading to death is murder, in the sense that an action was available which would almost certainly have prevented the death.

An example of the latter: Suppose a person sees a very heavy object falling and about to hit someone else. It is sufficiently heavy that any reasonable person would believe that the person would be killed if the object hits them. The first person could easily pull the second person out of the way, without risk to themselves, but chooses not to and allows the other person to be killed.

A pretty nasty thing to do (or not to do). Most people would believe it should be a serious crime of some sort but I can’t see how it fits any definition of murder. It comes down to a reasonable and practical definition of action versus inaction. Colloquially, I said “a pretty nasty thing to do” and many other people might use a similar phrase in this context. But the first person didn’t actually DO anything at all: just stood there and let it happen. That’s not the same as causing something to happen.

In the Queensland Criminal Code, there is Section 290, which says:

Duty to do certain acts

When a person undertakes to do any act the omission to do which is or may be dangerous to human life or health, it is the person's duty to do that act: and the person is held to have caused any consequences which result to the life or health of any person by reason of any omission to perform that duty.

It’s supported by Section 293, which says:

Definition of killing

Except as hereinafter set forth, any person who causes the death of another, directly or indirectly, by any means whatever, is deemed to have killed that other person.

These are probably the closest the QLD criminal code comes to punishing inaction, but it still doesn’t cover the above example, because the first person never undertook to save or even look after the interests of the second.

There was no conclusive evidence presented that anything Gabe Watson did caused his wife to sink to the ocean floor and become unconscious, which was what directly caused her death. If the prosecution can’t even demonstrate direct cause and effect, intent is a moot point.

Obviously he has done something very seriously wrong and deserves some kind of punishment. Despite his lies, he left her there to die.

In diving, there is a buddy system. He was supposed to stay with her. He could have inflated her buoyancy vest to stop her sinking. Even if the valve was faulty, he could have held onto her and inflated his own. The story about swimming against the current because they were surprised at its strength doesn’t ring true. You’re supposed to drift with the current, then put up an inflatable flag (fill it with your expelled air) and the boat will come and get you. After 55 dives, he must have done this at least several times before, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten his Advanced Open Water Certificate which let him go below 20m to the wreck. His story just doesn’t add up.

I suggest most juries would find beyond reasonable doubt that Gabe Watson could have saved his wife, but left her to die. But what crime is this?

Could it be argued Gabe Watson undertook to save her life if he could, by virtue of both his marriage vows and the fact he agreed to be her diving buddy and therefore under Sections 290 & 293 or something similar (if it exists in Alabama), he is held to have caused the death? Then you can start examining evidence for premeditation and intent.

It’s a bit of a stretch to get to murder though.

Had the prosecution brought more sustainable charges, which may have supported an argument along the above line, instead of going for the bullseye, maybe the judge would not have had to acquit. Some form of manslaughter? If the judge had been able to send it to a jury, I’ll bet Gabe Watson would be in prison now, where he probably belongs.

If we are going to review the law to make clearer and particularly to extend the criminalization of inaction leading to death, we need to think and argue very carefully though any proposed legislation prior to enacting it. Such a law has the potential for all manner of activism, both from the police and the judiciary.

People do not necessarily have a tacit duty of care toward one another. It may be argued that in a civil society, such duty does exist, however even if it did, it would not necessarily be universal.

In a situation where a person made an explicit undertaking for the care of another, without duress, then laws such as Sections 290 & 293 of the QLD Criminal Code above may work well. But attempting to extend them to an assumed, general duty of care would be the kind of social engineering and Trojan horse of activism so abused by the left and their egregious rule making enterprise.

Suppose you walk around the corner and see a man who has been stabbed. It is late at night and there is no-one else around. If you call an ambulance, he will probably live, but if you walk on, it is likely no-one else will come and he will almost certainly die. Should it be your legal duty to help him?

Most people would stop and help and many would say that it should be one’s legal duty. But now suppose the man had molested your kids or raped your wife in a home invasion and was acquitted on a technicality. Why should the law force you to help such a person? You didn’t stab them. Let them save themselves.

People would react in a variety of ways in this situation. Some would still call an ambulance. Some would offer an observation about karma and walk on. Some of those would feel guilt later, some would not.

My point is that this last situation is one of personal ethics and philosophy. People who try to criminalize failure to help in such a situation are attempting to impose their personal philosophy on others. There is no reason why they should be able to. There is no clear right or wrong here. It is not even a situation where the overwhelming majority of society supports a particular ethical position and so imposes it on the small minority, whose opposition is deemed antisocial or even pathological eg. crimes like murder, rape, theft.

Where do Gabe Watson’s actions fit on the spectrum?

Murder? I can’t see how.

No case to answer for any crime? Does his responsibility to his wife disappear because he decides he’s made a mistake in marrying her?

She went diving with him down to 30m in a strong current. He agreed to be her diving buddy. He also recently married her. He explicitly gave her reason to trust him to help her and then they both entered a potentially dangerous situation.

In my opinion, he had a duty of care. She had a reasonable expectation he would help her if she got into trouble. He basically tricked her and she died. He should have faced criminal charges of some description; probably some type of manslaughter.

This is one situation where America’s absurd litigiousness may result in some form of justice: her family can sue him into bankruptcy in a wrongful death claim.

This Sentence is a Politically Motivated Travesty

To jail a female teacher for 40 years with a non-parole period of 20 for having sex with a 14 year old boy is ridiculously harsh. It is out of all proportion to the severity and impact of the offence. People have served lesser sentences for murder.

The Coweta County, Georgia judge imposed the sentence on the recommendation of the Assistant DA Kevin McMurry, who said:

We believe that children deserve to be protected. This woman groomed and enticed a young boy she knew from birth to engage in these sexual acts. I crafted the sentence to take these things into account. We want to send a message that this will not be tolerated. I wanted to ensure she would receive a harsh sentence which recognized the life-long impact and damage done to this child. Children are important and they deserve to be protected. She abused her position and the trust bestowed on her from the family and she had to be punished for this.

Sounds like a political speech to me: an attempt to create a moral panic and then establish his law and order credentials with the frightened Christian folk of Coweta County. Kevin McMurry is currently running for Superior Court Judge in Coweta County. The election is on July 31 this year, so remember to vote Kevin McMurry if you want to protect your innocent children from Satan’s army of child molesters.

I am not suggesting Shannon Schmieder hasn’t done anything wrong or a 39 year old woman having sex with a 14 year old boy should be legal. My point is that the sentence in no way represents “the life-long impact and damage done to this child”, which would probably not have been very much if everyone from his mother to the legal authorities had not made such a huge song and dance about it, telling him he’s a victim of a child molester and that he’ll require extensive therapy.

Listen to his mother:

We were told by investigators that our 14-year-old was a victim of child molestation. This was horrifying and unbelievable … Words can't begin to explain the heartache we've experienced this past year and the betrayal we've endured … We've all been in counselling for several months … We are continuing to hurt. We will struggle in fully trusting again.

Get over yourself, woman. You make it sound like your son was molested by some dirty old man and will now be confused about his sexuality and so full of guilt and self loathing, he’ll need an army of therapists just to prevent him becoming a hopeless drug addict.

“My son has had his innocence stolen from him!”

He’s a 14 year old, obviously heterosexual boy, for Christ’s sake. If he’s like most other 14 year old boys, he’s probably seen plenty of pictures and videos of women significantly older than him doing a lot more than he did with Shannon Schmieder. He probably whacks off half a dozen times a day. What do you imagine he’s thinking about? His baseball card collection?

What’s going to damage him more? The affair with a 39 year old woman or everyone he knows from his mother to legal authorities to counselors telling him he’s been molested, is a victim and that he has to be in counseling for months to deal with “what’s happened to him”?

How is he going to react when he fails at something later in life, as we all do? Tell himself it’s all because he was a victim of child abuse? Know that’s not the cause, but use it as an excuse to everyone else? Treating him like a victim will increase the likelihood of him acting like one.

Can you imagine therapy sessions with his mother present? She will fuck him up far more than Shannon Schmieder.

Where’s his father in all this? Even if he’s not around, surely there is some sensible, male authority figure who can sit down and have a balanced talk with him, with his hysterical, smothering mother as far away as possible.

“So, you’ve been poking a teacher, mate? Well, look, you haven’t done anything wrong and no-one is blaming you. How are you feeling?

You know that someone her age shouldn’t be having sex with someone your age, don’t you? You understand that she’s in trouble with the police and you might have to go to court and tell them what happened, even though you might be embarrassed?

If you do have to go to court or talk to the police, we’ll all be there to help you. Just say what happened. No-one is going to blame you. If you don’t want to tell all the details, you don’t have to.

Are you finding it a bit much with all the fuss everyone is making? Is it embarrassing at school? I understand. Probably best not to make a big deal about it at school. It’s OK to talk to your best friend, but if you don’t like people saying things, just tell them you don’t want to talk about it.

If you’re ever upset or feel like you want to talk about anything or that people are pushing you into something you don’t want to do, you know you can always come and talk to me and I’ll help you, don’t you?”

That’s all that needs to be said to a teenage boy. He doesn’t want all this attention. The biggest risk to this boy is making him feel a victim and drawing him into a huge production, which appears to be more about his mother’s feelings than his.

His is not the same situation as a 14 year old girl who has been having sex with a male teacher. He won’t have to endure being called a slut by his male and female peers and the bullying and ostracism she is likely to receive from her female classmates. A girl in this situation will almost certainly face far stronger and more varied social pressures than a boy, be more at risk of psychological damage and need far more counseling.

He hasn’t been molested by an older male, so there’s no gay angle to make him feel dirty and ashamed and confused about his sexuality … and before the gay identity politics brigade start blowing their whistles and screaming “Homophobia! No-one should be made to feel dirty and ashamed about being gay!”, homosexual molestation of kids IS worse, because it is highly likely to confuse them sexually before they have begun to properly understand any feelings they might have.

Although sexuality is a lot more fluid than most people would like to admit, the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of people are not gay. If a significantly older man has sex with an underage boy, or a woman with an underage girl, the power relationship and position of trust which is being abused could be the principal cause of the younger person’s sexual response, not their “true, gay feelings”. They might be going along with it because they are impressionable and weak and acquiescing to the authority, rather than enjoying any of it.

The same could be said about heterosexual sex with an underage person, however it is highly likely they are heterosexual anyway, so the confusion regarding sexual identity will almost certainly be much less, particularly if they often think about having heterosexual sex anyway, as most teenagers do (particularly boys). They’ll be doing it for real in a couple of years anyway.

If the young person is gay, already out and comfortable with this, there’s probably not nearly as much of a psychological impact, but such a person would be quite mature for their age and probably near the age of consent anyway.

There have been many cases of essentially heterosexual boys, molested by male teachers when young, who have been far more fucked up by the experience than if they’d had sex with a female teacher. The reason is because of the shame and confusion they feel.

Some feel weak, less of a man because they went along with it, despite not feeling any attraction. It’s bound up with their sense of what it means to be a man: to be able to stand up for yourself and take care of yourself.

For others, there is a nagging seed of doubt that they can’t shake. Am I really gay? Then why do I like sleeping with women? Or do real straight guys enjoy it much more? Do I dislike gay men because of my experience, or is it self loathing? How could I ever tell my girlfriend / wife about this? What will she think of me? I certainly wouldn’t want any men I know to know about it. They would look down on me.

Whatever the feelings and whatever the reasons, a much greater state of psychological confusion and distress is overwhelmingly more likely to result from an underage, but pubescent boy having sex with an older male than with an older female. In fact, if she was halfway decent looking, the boy would probably enjoy it and his stature would increase in the eyes of his friends. The real danger is if he falls in love with the woman, which could equally happen with a young girl and an older man.

An underage girl will receive social censure and quite possibly bullying from her peers regardless of the sex of the older person, although it will almost certainly be greater if the older person is a woman. She’s more likely to be able to talk about it though.

If the sex is with a prepubescent child, that’s at the upper end of the scale regardless of gender, although I suggest homosexual molestation is still marginally worse and should attract a greater punishment because the child is probably heterosexual and therefore more likely to suffer greater psychological damage.

If the sex is with a pubescent child, an older man and underage girl is definitely worse than an older woman and underage boy, because the boy probably thinks about sex with older girls and women many times a day anyway and will not face the same censure from his peers as the girl. Homosexual sex with underage girls or boys does deserve a greater punishment because of the greater psychological confusion and distress it will almost certainly cause, unless the underage person happens to be gay, already out and comfortable with their sexuality, which would be rare for an underage child.

So, what punishment is appropriate for Shannon Schmieder?

Certainly not 40 years’ jail. That is ridiculous. It is in no way a “sentence which recognized the life-long impact and damage done to this child”, which if the case is handled correctly, wouldn’t be much.

She is described in the press reports as a “39 year old elementary school teacher”, which gives the impression that she seduced one of her students. In fact, she wasn’t even teaching at his school. However, her profession probably does make her conduct worse, since though not actually being the boy’s teacher, or even teaching at his school, he still would have looked up to her as an authority figure. It’s an abuse of social authority and power, which warrants punishment of itself, as a deterrent.

She’ll never teach again. Even without a custodial sentence, she’d probably have to leave town, but almost certainly couldn't leave the state until her probation was up. Her face has been splashed not just across the local papers, but the internet. It’s cost her a considerable amount in legal fees. None of these are trivial.

Let’s be honest: although the boy won’t have the memory of losing his virginity with his first serious girlfriend, he’s a teenage boy. If he was more or less normal before the affair, he will have very few detrimental, long term effects as a direct result. His real problems appear to be his smothering, hysterical mother and the assistant DA turning a matter which should be handled quietly and discreetly into a public production. Their goals and needs seem to be being placed before the boy’s. Surely his well being should be the highest priority here? I suggest that would be best served by having a male whom he respects available to talk to any time he needs and otherwise being allowed to get on with his life.

If I’d been 14 and fucking a much older woman, maybe I’d have been led astray a bit, but at least I would have enjoyed it. If found out, I’d just want everyone to fuck off and leave me alone. That’s probably what this boy wants too.

Based on the above, I wouldn’t have given Shannon Schmieder a custodial sentence at all. I’d have given her 12 to 24 months, fully suspended, plus 1,000 hours of community service cleaning graffiti or feeding the homeless or something else useful, plus compulsory therapy.

When a much older man is fucking an underage girl, we think of him as a dirty old perv and a predator, which is probably true. But when it’s a much older woman with a teenage boy, the first thing many would ask is "What’s wrong with her? She must have some psychological problems: low self esteem, loneliness."

I know that in some cases, the woman is a predator, but surely a criminal psychologist’s report can help a court distinguish between the two.

I don’t think Shannon Schmieder is at the predator end of the scale. Have a look at the pictures of her in the article. She’s not exactly top shelf. Probably sad and lonely.

This is precisely the type of case where a mature judge should decide the sentence, not follow the “advice” of a careerist prosecutor or the victim impact statement of a hysterical mother who thinks her son is still 8 and playing with Matchbox cars.

Let’s make sure this engineered moral panic doesn’t take hold in Australia.

Paedophiles who prey on prepubescent children should be locked up for a very long time and subjected to lengthy periods of strict monitoring upon release, with the possibility of reincarceration under the Mental Health Act. But let’s recognize that an older woman having sex with a teenage boy not too far from the age of consent is still wrong, but not even remotely in the same league.

Let’s also recognize that if the wellbeing of the boy in such a case really is paramount (as it should be), the best approach may be making as little fuss as possible, especially not telling him he’s been a victim of child molestation and needs ongoing therapy.

What Is The Problem Here?

Porn is legal for adults. So is gambling. People who look at porn on the internet are more likely than the average person to want to gamble on the internet.

Shane Warne hardly has a saintly image. He’s a yobby bloke, good at sport and is banging a bird way out of the vast majority of men’s league¹ and certainly far better looking than most of their wives².

Now he has a legal online poker site, so he advertises it on porn sites.

So what is the problem here?

Is this confected opprobrium suggesting that porn is somehow worse than gambling? I fail to see how.

If Warnie was the face of Uncle Toby’s, people might have a point. But he’s not. He’s a beer, sport, sex and gambling type of bloke. It’s not illegal. In fact, it’s fun.

Is this manufactured shock because he has given his name to a children’s charity? So fucking what? The kids are probably happy that his poker site can help them. Frankly, he could release a sex tape of him and Liz Hurley if the proceeds went to a children’s medical charity. The (Lord and) Lady Godiva of the internet age.

Warnie can be a wanker at times, but he doesn’t deserve crap for making sensible marketing decisions for his legal business.

On that note, he’s very sensibly called the site 888poker.com and even offered $8 free credit to attract Asian gamblers. I’d invest in it if I could. It will probably make a fortune.

¹ With the possible exception of Fingo

² With the possible exception of Fingo’s

Are Cryptic Crosswords For Wankers?

For younger people, cryptic crosswords improve their vocabulary and grasp of the structure and origins of their language. For older people, the language processing is very important for relational memory, particularly as the often more obscure associations require the activation and reforming of long range connections within the memory areas of the brain. Only a small proportion of connections in a network need to be long range for it to significantly increase performance. Conversely, networks with only short range connections tend to process information slowly and perform representation, decision and comparison tasks poorly.

Associative reasoning and memory tasks have been shown to aid neuroplasticity and delay or ameliorate symptoms in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

So, there are good reasons for doing cryptic crosswords and many people do them for the intellectual and mental exercise. However, they do tend to attract their fair share of intellectual onanists and wannabes.

The clues can often have a twee sophistry which can provoke a bashing in the wrong environment: obscure literary or classical references, sometimes coupled with poncy puns. Here are a couple. The answers are at the bottom of the page:

Nice pain (6,5) ¹

Fury over a painting with eggs (7) ²

There are people for whom solving such clues engenders a smug satisfaction; the kind of people who laugh just a little too long and loudly at an obscure joke or cultural reference at the theatre: “Ha! Ha! I understood that, you know!”

Slightly higher than average IQs, but no real intellectual horsepower. The kinds of people who learn lots of facts to pretend to themselves and others they are more intelligent than they actually are, but can’t solve complex problems and can't distinguish nuance from casuistry in complex arguments. Guardian readers.

It doesn’t follow that everyone who does cryptic crosswords is at least a bit like this, but it can tar you with that brush if someone who doesn’t do the cryptic and has only a passing interest in genuine intellectual pursuits asks you how to solve the clues. There is often that brief, awkward silence after you have explained a few answers, where you can almost feel the other person thinking: “You actually choose to spend time doing this? I didn’t realize you were a bit of a knob end.”

Even if some of the clues are a bit wanky, the cryptic is relaxing to do while you’re on the train or eating your lunch. It’s a sufficiently different task from one’s paid work to clear the mind. If you get the whole crossword out, you do feel some small satisfaction.

Being able to solve a cryptic crossword is evidence of higher than average intelligence. Just don’t feel smug about it. It doesn’t mean any of your political opinions are correct.

Here are some clues. Make up your own mind whether they are a worthwhile exercise in associative thought and relational memory training which outweighs their tweeness. I’ll put the answers at the bottom of the blog.

Lowers temperature repeatedly in cold beer (6) ³

Chance for pawn to steal talent (11) ⁴

Beat up for sport (4) ⁵

If these aren’t to your taste and you’re more into physical activity for “relaxation”, there’s always the Tug Toner.

¹ French bread: pain is French for bread, Nice is a French city. I can imagine a few smug self-congratulations for that one.

² Tempera: fury = temper, over “a”. I didn’t know tempera was a painting with eggs until I searched for words which fit with the letters I already had. Some Guardian readers who got that one didn’t even have to smell their own farts to feel superior.

³ Cattle: C = cold (as on the tap), beer = ale, so “tt” inside Cale. Lowers = cattle because that's the sound they make. I kind of like this one.

⁴ Probability: p = pawn (as in chess notation) + rob = steal + ability = talent. It’s not so hard if you already have a few letters from the cross clues. You work out the word and then know it’s right because you can justify it with the clue.

⁵ Golf: beat = flog, then turn up = golf. Hard unless you have cross clues, but you feel good getting it if you only have a few to go.

You Can't Work Out Price Increases By Dividing Medians

If you have a market in which each of the goods are different and most don’t trade in any given period, you can’t calculate a growth rate by dividing two periods’ median observed prices. An example is residential property sales and rents.

The reason for this is obvious to people with even a modicum of numeracy: since in each period, most properties do not sell, the median sale from one period will not be the same property as the median sale from another period. The same applies to rents. If the region is small, say a suburb or postcode, the median sale or rental properties in each period can vary greatly in size and quality, given the small amount of data from which the medians would be calculated. They may not even have the same number of bedrooms.

Imagine comparing the weekly rental of a three bedroom house in 2010 with the 2011 weekly rental of a four bedroom house in the same suburb, but perhaps closer to a bus stop or the beach. You’d be pretty dumb to divide one by the other and believe that meant rents in the suburb had increased by that much over the course of 12 months.

But that’s exactly what happened in an article by Bronwen Gora in January 29’s Sunday Telegraph, which unfortunately I cannot find online. There is a table titled Biggest Rent Increases. It quotes median advertised rents from 2010 and 2011 in ten suburbs, then calculates the percentage rise, interpreting it as the percentage increase in actual rents in those suburbs.

The top three “increases” were Clovelly ($515 to $1300 = 152%), Bellevue Hill ($600 to $1400 = 133%) and South Coogee ($550 to $1200 = 118%).

Does anyone actually believe that rents in those suburbs have increased over 100% in 12 months? Any halfway decent journalist shouldn’t.

Even if Bronwen Gora and her editor don’t know much high school maths (which they evidently don’t), shouldn’t those figures ring alarm bells? Shouldn’t they have at the very least rung the data provider and said “There’s something wrong with this calculation. I don’t know what it is, but can you follow it up before I publish?”

That’s the minimum level of competence I’d expect from a journalist and certainly from an editor. If you don’t have the expertise to understand the error and its cause, at least have the nous to realise something about the numbers doesn’t smell right and follow it up.

Good property journalism requires some understanding of economics and finance, which in turn requires a grasp of mathematics: statistics, plus a bit of calculus and algebra to understand at least the qualitative parts of discussions of relationships between say, prices and interest rates. Things which are taught in all but the lowest level higher school certificate maths courses. Unfortunately, too many journalists mirror wider society in having completely forgotten whatever limited understanding of these skills they may have briefly gained at school.

This ignorance is a serious problem for modern, Western societies. It results in a large proportion of our population being unable to effectively participate in the new financial economy, because they do not understand it.

Now, back to the absurd “market analysis” which sparked this rant in the first place. What should be done to estimate the true rental increase from 2010 to 2011?

First, understand that since different properties are renting in each period, we’ll never know the exact increase in the same way as we can know the increase in the price of the same basket of groceries. That’s how many measurements are in real life: we can’t know the exact value or size or amount, but a bit of statistical analysis can give us an estimate which is sufficiently accurate for many purposes.

If there are at least say, 20 or 30 properties for rent in each period and we know things like their land size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms and whether they have a view, it is possible to make a statistical model which controls for these attributes as well as the date of the observation.

Then pool all the properties and use the statistical model to estimate 2011 rents for those which rented in 2010 and vice versa. That way, we’ll have either actual or estimated rental values for each property in 2010 and in 2011. To dampen statistical errors in the estimation, divide the sum of the 2011 rents by the sum of the 2010 rents. Subtract 1, multiply by 100 and that’s your percentage increase.

Because all statistical models have some estimation errors, the answer will necessarily be an approximation, but it will be close enough for most purposes. It certainly won’t say something ridiculous like 152%.

I got hold of the rental data for these suburbs and tried a very simple version of the above method. I got Bellevue Hill +6.8% and Clovelly +4.1%. A bit more believable?

South Coogee didn’t work so well and gave +15.2%. This was because there were many more high value properties renting in South Coogee in 2011 than in 2010. A better statistical model than I have time to construct would better control for this and give a lower figure.

I’m not saying I expect journalists to be capable of doing this type of analysis, or even to spend the time doing it if they could. But the data provider should be able to.

My point is that instead of parroting obviously useless and erroneous information, a competent journalist should have recognised that rent increases of over 100% in a year in well established suburbs of Australia’s largest city are clearly wrong and asked the data provider to provide the correct figures.

This is the level of understanding we should expect of the average adult citizen in a modern economy, so it’s certainly what we should expect of journalists writing articles for them.

Happy To Pay For Your Trip Home – As Long As It’s One Way

The sheer cheek beggars belief: the Islamic Women’s Welfare Association has told the Federal Government that it should give tax deductions to newly arrived migrants so they can visit relatives in their homelands. Their reasons?

"Migrants face a lot of sacrifices such as having to travel long distances to visit relatives, spending on communication costs, missing out on some events occurring in native countries."

"This loss should be compensated by the Government in one way or the other to retain migrants in their country of adoption."

If that wasn’t enough, they also stated that

“Muslims prefer to live close to their own people.”

and that the Australian government should

“consider how to facilitate the purchase of homes for new migrants".

Australia regularly advertises in Muslim countries for immigrants because we’re struggling to build our population. It’s so difficult to find people who want to move here. After much research, we decided that what we really need in this country are poorly educated people who don’t speak English, come from medieval, tribal based cultures, follow an aggressive, dogmatic, alien religion, express little interest in assimilating and generally reject Australian culture and values, whilst being happy to claim all the benefits of Western society, including social security and free healthcare.

Australia is so grateful to you that you’ve sacrificed so much to grace us with your presence. We recognise that you had several countries vying for your considerable talents and your net value add since arriving has been enormous.

Just like key employees, we’d better make sure you’re adequately compensated. We wouldn’t want you choosing to take your unique services elsewhere.

If you ever deign to get off welfare and actually work for a living, I guess the Australian taxpayers should throw in a car as well.

The quote “Muslims prefer to live close to their own people”  is telling. This epitomises the problem with Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and Asia in particular. Far too many want to stick with “their own people” and have no intention of assimilating. They want to keep bringing more people like them over here and create their own areas, with their own rules. They don’t see that if they make a life here, Australians should be “their own people”.

This is why so many Australians don’t want them here. It’s not our fault. It’s theirs, because of their attitude. They reject our values, with dissembling such as “We’ll be Australians, but in our own way.”

It’s a cultural issue. It becomes racial because so many immigrants use their own race to identify which culture they want to adhere to. Even the more moderate, open minded ones don’t speak up enough and tell the others to fit in.

Here are some ideas:

How about you work and save for the things you want in life, as the rest of us do?

If you move here, make an effort to understand the social structures which made Australia the free and prosperous society you wanted to come and live in. Value and support them. That includes learning English.

Don’t think you’re entitled to special areas, rules, allocations or representatives in parliament. You’re not. Things don’t work that way here, except in a few areas for Aboriginals.

If there is an incompatibility between Australian culture and your own, you change your behaviour. I don’t mean things like food where it’s simply different. I mean mutually exclusive things, like forced marriage and showing your face in public. Australian soldiers are not “foreign troops”.

If you can’t do this, then you have no place here. Australians can pay for your ticket back “home”. While you’re leaving, we’ll cancel your passport and citizenship, since you clearly obtained them by fraud: lying under oath.

I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

Some immigrants obtain Australian citizenship as a flag of convenience, to avoid deportation back to the socially repressive, often violent, economically backward shitholes from which they came. The above words mean nothing to them.

These people aren't that hard to identify. If we threw them out as the frauds they are, we'd have a lot less trouble with "multiculturalism" and its ensuing identity politics and separatism.

A Clear Case Of Unconscionable Conduct

It is not in any way reasonable conduct for the Sherriff to allow a forced sale of a house for $1,000.

If a judgment of debt is made against someone and they refuse to pay, then the Sherriff is required to seize and sell whatever property is necessary to satisfy the debt, plus enforcement costs. The Sherriff has a duty of care to several parties: the creditor and debtor in the judgment, plus any other parties who have a lien over or other interest in any property sold. The Sherriff must take all reasonable steps to obtain fair value.

The debt judgment in this case was for $96,000. The house sold was valued at $630,000, with a mortgage of $460,000. Although it’s in a bit of a shitty area, it’s close to transport and has 6 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and a garage. The address is 2 Wirraway Place, Braybrook in Melbourne if you want to have a look. That’s between Footscray and Sunshine.

So how could any reasonable person, acting diligently and honestly, possibly believe that selling the above house for $1,000 at “auction” meets the above duties of care?

Apart from the glaringly obvious: that any real estate agent could have sold the property for well over $500,000, the sale didn’t even recover the $96,000 judgment.

Where is the mortgagee in this episode? Why haven’t they protected their interest? Surely their specific charge ranks ahead of the Sherriff?

The Sherriff’s legal defence? Not that they hadn’t done anything wrong, but that “the Sheriff's Act made the office immune from being held responsible for the outcome of such an auction”.

What a load of bullshit! The sale should be quashed, costs awarded against the Sherriff’s office and the employee sacked and probably sued by the Sherriff’s department for recovery of the legal costs.

The first impression I had on reading this article was corruption. How much was the Sherriff paid under the table? I have seen no evidence that anything like that occurred, but the sale does look suspicious.

The home owner, Zhiping Zhou is not blameless in this episode.

He has tried to portray himself in the press as a hard working immigrant, wronged by a lazy and incompetent public servant. That may well be true, but he’s also a bit shifty.

A business associate of some description had to take him to court to have him pay money he owed. He then ignored the judgment, plus multiple letters from the Sherriff demanding payment.

He seems to be trying the “No Engrish” defence, but has been here for at least several years and admitted during cross examination that he owns four other properties. He built the Wirraway Place house himself in 2007.

Looks like a shifty prick who doesn’t pay his debts.

And the bloke who bought the property for $1,000?

It’s so far cost him $119,000 to try and keep it. It would serve him right if he got none of it back.

Gordon Ramsay's Dwarf Porn Double Found Dead in a Badger Den

If I’m going to read a tabloid newspaper, this is the type of article I want to see, not hypocritical exposes of celebrities taking drugs or criminal thefts of private data such as the medical condition of Gordon Brown’s son.

I don’t really care if it turns out not to be true, as Gawker.com later discovered. If I’m flicking through a tabloid, I don’t expect to believe everything I read.

People don’t expect the highest standards of journalism from tabloids. However, if you’re not going to check your facts or even if you fabricate them, at least make the copy legal, harmless and amusing.

I won’t describe the article in detail. It’s funnier to read it yourself. One thing that particularly cracked me up was the claim that the dwarf Ramsay look alike starred in “the X-rated movie Hi Ho! Hi Ho! It’s Up Your Arse We Go!”

The dwarf porn actor pictured in the article does exist, however his name may not be Percy Foster and unfortunately the above title appears not to exist, an oversight which will hopefully be soon rect(um)ified. The actor’s stage name is Joey The Midget and he did appear in The Adventures of Big Schlong & The Little Dong

Outsourcing Technical Jobs To The Third World Will Ultimately Cost More Than It Saves

There are times when companies need to restructure their operations and cut staff or even whole departments if capital is scare and a particular business unit cannot be competitive on a risk / return basis. There are also situations where staff cuts are a result of sheer bloody mindedness from short sighted management who do not fully understand the underlying issues and the consequences of their actions.

The forced redundancies in Westpac IT’s Testing Services Department in order to outsource the work to India is an example of the latter.

When a piece of software is created, Testing Services simulates how customers will use it. They test the workflow ie. Do all the boxes on the screen accept the desired type of information and correctly perform the intended operations? Is there sufficient help to show the user what to do? Does the entered data save where it is supposed to? Does it retrieve properly? Do new screens pop up when they are supposed to?

They also try to break the software. That is, they enter data in unintended formats or make the wrong choices on the screen and see if the programmers have written the proper error handling routines to not only prevent the software from crashing, but to explain the error to the user and in some cases, autocorrect.

In a bank, this means enterprise level software: internet banking, account management systems for tellers, loan application and processing systems. There are serious reputational consequences if any bugs slip through and the software crashes in the live environment.

The point is, testing software like this is not a purely robotic exercise. It requires knowledge of both the business processes supported by the software and the needs and competence of the end users.

To whom are Westpac outsourcing these tasks? The Indian (now global) IT consulting firms Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys. If you believe the claims these firms make about their industry experience, it might seem they have the skills to handle comprehensive testing of enterprise level banking software.

If you read quotes from the redundant Westpac staff, reality is somewhat different:

The new recruits don't have any experience in testing systems and most of them have never worked in a bank.

It is extremely demoralising to train people who are highly incompetent to take your own role. We get constant stupid questions every single day. Basic tasks that we are expected to perform they can't perform.

Westpac management will probably try to spin these comments as sour grapes, but their “Head of Employee Relations” ie. Head of Payroll, Michael Johnston gives it away when he says: “You will appreciate that there may be a greater level of assistance expected as part of any transition activities”.

Great work, Michael! Replace a department of experienced workers who know the business and can easily be walked through the business requirements and functional design documents with a bunch of data entry operators with no banking industry experience and no knowledge of Australian consumers. The developers will now have to spec out the testing in such minute detail that they may as well write a set of automated test scripts themselves and do away with Tata and Infosys altogether.

Additionally, Westpac’s “employee relations” will now be poisonous across the whole IT department as no-one will feel they can trust management. But Michael Johnston will get a bonus at the end of the year, won’t he?

Although I see this instance as a gross abuse of management authority, I can also see where in house IT departments contribute to themselves being seen as bloated cost centres.

Dealing with IT in a large corporation can make even the Buddha want to get a gun and blast away. They too often have a culture of absurd bureaucracy and little sense of commercial realities, such as the need for back and forth during development.

Usually, their Design Costing Team or similar will estimate such overinflated timings and man power requirements for each task that with transfer pricing requiring actual expense items against departmental budgets, managers often canvas outsourcing the job.

Economically, that would be OK if the outsourcing was to a local firm, with specific expertise and the ability to communicate quickly and easily.

My experience of working with Indian IT firms is that they are robotic. Everything must be specified to such minute detail that you may as well write the code yourself. Although there are some very good Indian IT people, you won’t be working with any of these. The people you will actually deal with have no understanding of your business processes or customer requirements. Their code is inelegant, highly repetitious and poorly commented. Large slabs appear to have been copied from other programs. Mistakes are covered up and denied.

What will be the cost of all the extra time dealing with the new problems created by the outsourcing? I’ll bet Westpac didn’t factor that in.

Will Westpac now hold more capital for operational risk, given the lower quality of the IT product testing? Of course not. They will probably deny the quality is lower.

I’ll bet they also didn’t factor in the drop in productivity due to decreased employee morale. What an unbelievable insult! To be made redundant and then asked to train your clearly less competent replacement, as well as being required to be party to sending another Australian job to a low wage, third world country, thus lowering the standard of living for most Australians, while helping some oily cunt in senior management meet their ill conceived KPIs.

The Head of HR’s response? “Staff need to act professionally in assisting their replacements”.

How about they act in a rational economic, business like manner instead? That is, you fuck me, I’ll fuck you.

• If you have sick days owing, you won’t get paid out for any unused ones. Call in sick. Go to a doctor and tell them how stressed and depressed you are, how after putting on your suit to go to work, you literally had to run to the bathroom to vomit from the sheer weight you felt descend upon you. Ask to be referred to a counselor and go on stress leave. A slew of stress leave applications will soon have someone’s outsourcing scheme (and KPIs) in a mess.
• If you do go to work, work only the required hours. Work as slowly as possible while you’re there. Take a long lunch. What are they going to do? Fire you?
• Delete any documents you have created from the system. Management won’t even know they are there to ask you about why they are gone.
• When training your replacement, make your explanations as cursory and ambiguous as possible. Then you can blame any failure to learn on the inexperience of your replacement, or a language problem. If you’re really feeling aggrieved, leave out important information on each system. You can even tell your replacement things that are wrong as long as you don’t do it in writing. There will be no proof the other party just didn’t simply misunderstand.

Management has shown its staff no loyalty. Why should it expect any in return?

If we want to maintain our relatively high standard of living, Western countries cannot keep outsourcing jobs to low paying countries. There are many more people in those countries than there are of us. Their ability to train sufficient numbers of people to perform any given standard of job is faster than is our ability to retrain our own people to do a higher standard of job.

This is where the classical theory of comparative advantage breaks down. Third world countries will replicate our manufacturing and service industries, not develop complementary industries. They will work for much cheaper wages. This may seem irrational to classical economists, but the cost of the "inefficiency" now will be repaid in the future when they gain market share. Because they have so much larger populations, only a small percentage of them need to gain equivalent levels of competency as our domestic workforce, but almost all of our workforce will need to constantly retrain.

This dynamic is not sustainable. It can only result in lower wages for most Westerners and thus increasing income and wealth disparity and social division.

Large sections of our manufacturing industries have gone overseas. Now our service industries are following. What will be left outside of small business? Medicine, law and real estate. Sport? Mining and tourism, the public service, plus a few senior management positions in finance and insurance?

Liberalism does not imply the absence of the government from the economy. An unregulated market for large corporations does not necessarily create better economic outcomes, either for most citizens or for the economy as a whole.

A free society requires many balances in the distribution of power within, so that citizens believe they have a genuine stake in that society and will derive an acceptable reward for an honest effort in life. This will not happen if we commit economic suicide by allowing the management of large corporations to keep sending jobs overseas in order to increase their bonuses.

Corporations need to support the structure of the society which allows them their prosperity. They cannot make record profits while outsourcing jobs and expect citizens to not demand laws to curb their behaviour.

This is one area where the government needs to involve itself in the economy. Apply a punitive, default payroll tax to any jobs deemed to be outsourced to countries without comparable wages and working conditions. A certain number of jobs need to be kept onshore. Large companies like Westpac can view the extra cost as a proxy super profits tax. Actually, it doesn’t matter how they view it. Their profits are sufficient and the salaries of their senior management already excessive.