Getting close to cyclists

Some cyclists are nicer than the others

Generally I have a live and let live attitude to my fellow road users and I try very hard to be laid back even when they do things that deserve my ire. Its an unfortunate fact of life though that cyclists are one class of road user that I tend to think are more often contemptible than virtious when it come to the way that they share the bitumen with the rest of us. Its their arrogant disregard for the road rules that pisses of so many motorists. Things like ignoring red lights, riding more than two a breast and blocking the roads to faster traffic by doing so that gets up my nose. Now they want the nanny state to create more unenforceable laws that favour them.

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Frankly,I can see no way apart from a massive increase in video surveillance that any legal instrument such as this could be workable,especially when cyclists can and often do wobble from side to side by a good half  of a meter when they are trying hard. There are already enough incentives not to hit cyclists with your car. Firstly panel work is expensive, secondly blood is not something that you want to have to clean off your family wagon, thirdly as these loonies tend to fly in flocks so if you hit one you run the risk of their pals getting belligerent if you clip one in passing. The risk of getting a ticket for passing too close to one of these luvvies? That is no disincentive whatsoever to the very natural desire to send them into orbit when they follow their usual and very   annoying behaviour.

Cheers comrades

Pat Condell “Useful idiots for Palestine “

Sadly what Pat has to say is   far too true..

Cheers Comrades

The lefty who doesn’t want poor young mothers to finish school

 

These poor women should not be made to complete secondary school!

 

I thought that lefties strongly believed in education, partly because it’s a way for poor people to improve themselves and their lot.

But it seems I may be wrong, after Jeremy Sear expressed his disgust that government welfare policies will now encourage young mothers from disadvantaged areas to finish secondary school:

Thank God we’re finally going to cut poor teenage mothers off welfare if they won’t find the magical time they don’t have to do Year 12, so their children can grow up in cardboard boxes while their mums go to school. And until they get the message, they and their children can starve…

Those darn people poorer than me. Man, it’s just so satisfying making their lives more difficult, isn’t it?

Anyone who believes in education for all would not think that making these young mums finish school is about “making their lives more difficult”. The benefit of finishing secondary school is obvious to anyone familiar with the realities of the labour market, where almost all employers prefer to hire candidates who have successfully completed their secondary schooling. Furthermore, the benefits of having superior literacy and numeracy, as well as a basic understanding of subjects such as science or history are also obvious.

But not obvious to Jeremy it would seem. Jeremy would presumably prefer young mums to be paid sit-down money and not have a future by obtaining a proper education.

Jeremy’s claim that children would “grow up in cardboard boxes” is another claim which shows just how out of touch with reality he is. In reality, most of these young mums will have parents of their own who already play an active role in the children’s upbringing. Those grandparents look after the kids when their mums go out partying with their friends. Young mums in low income families will also qualify for JET childcare, which means that they will be paying next to nothing for quality care for their young kids.

As a result, it is absurd to claim that this policy is about increasing the suffering of young parents.

What an ignorant, misinformed rant by Jeremy on this occasion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Schadenfreude trifecta

Its a good time to be on the conservative side of politics, especially when those on the left are doing such a good job of entraining us as they flail about like a fish out of water, desperate for some oxygen and sadly doomed by their circumstances. So without further ado I offer a trifecta of reasons to be cheerful on this fine November morning.

Polling still looks bad for Labor in Julia’s home state, in fact despite the Slipper thing there is no new dawn for the red team, its all doom and gloom even it seats previously considered safe.

Click for source (pay-walled citation)

Not to be out done the Greens are having their own problems and somewhat bitter machinations over the future direction of their party:

Click for source (pay-walled citation)

All of which just makes my day more lovely!
The final leg of this trifecta is the rather sad piece in the Age this morning form my “favourite” senior writer Jo Chandler who seems really desperate to play the Hanrahan, “we are all rooned” card on the Climate Change issue in the face of the bound to fail talk-fest in Durban.

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Perhaps she should consider this piece*which suggests that the assumptions about climate sensitivity to increases of Co2 are not as high as her favourite panic merchants have been claiming:

Of course in her usual sycophantic style if someone has a suitable qualification  in “climate science” and is consistent with the doom and gloom liturgy  then Chandler accepts uncritically almost anything that they say. I can’t wait to see how Jo Chandler grinds her teeth to bloody stumps when the Durban summit falls in a heap as it inevitably must.

So that concludes my Schadenfreude trifecta and hopefully that will give Sandpit readers some thing to mull over while I an swinging the angle grinder today because my aim is to get the mods to the Corolla diff done (well at least tacked together) so that I can slip it under the back of the car in preparation for the arrival of an engine donor car  in a few days.

Cheers Comrades

*Hat tip to regular reader Lin for this link

Slipper’s thirty pieces of silver…

I have no trouble in congratulating the Gillard  on engineering Slippergate  which has vastly improved the stability of  her government, but really all it has done is reinforce the perception that she and her government are both somewhat sleazy and that she holds the keys to the lodge, not through a popular mandate but because of the most devious Machiavellian machinations.

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Of course this has to be somewhat disappointing for the coalition to lose one of their votes in the house but it does mean that they get the chance to bring back the very talented Mal Brough who can now stand in Peter Slipper’s seat at the next election. The obvious question is why did Slipper turn rat? The fact that he has form for party hopping and political opportunism may hold the answer here, along with the fact that he will get an extra 75k a year and a commensurate increase in his parliamentary pension when he loses his seat at the next election …

Cheers Comrades

Pink Batts UK style

Believe it or not but I am a big fan of home insulation , mainly because I know what a difference it makes to the comfort of a house during adverse environmental conditions. however that has never stopped me being rather critical of Brother Number One’s “home insulation” scheme which was , to say the least badly conceived and administered in a way that encouraged waste of another sort. Now I discover that the Tory Government in The UK is creating its own scheme to insulate the home of Britain…

Click for source.

It certainly looks like a better designed scheme than the one devised by our own dear Brother Number One, in the first instance the subsidy is much more modest, but only time will tell if that is actaully so.

Cheers Comrades

Fairground Fun

While I’m sure that Labor men like Ray will take some heart from  Julia’s improvement in the preferred PM ratings  but overall the latest Polling still looks pretty grim for his Party of choice. The question surely has to be not which person is “preferred” as PM  but which one can command the most seats in the house after the election and on that more important measure …

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So how does that old saying about swings and roundabouts go again?

Cheers Comrades

Rightious Royals oppose “Big Wind”

Just a quickie today, slept in and I have another specialist appointment to go to. Anyway love this little piece from the Daily Mail about the way both Prince Philip and Prince Charles are less than keen on the ever sprouting wind farms…

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Of course advocates for these sorts of schemes all insist that the subsidises are just there for the start up, but I tend to think that they will be rather like afirmiative action, something that is easy to introduce but very hard to get rid of lest you be deafened by the rent seekers from “Big Wind”who seem to not only have their snouts in the subsidy trough but their hands in our wallets as well.
Cheers Comrades

The Greenies and their schemies

I am a big fan of efficiency in engineering, and in the way that our energy utilities work as well which is one reason that I abhor the whole concept of a Carbon Tax. The notion that it is a good idea to make a proven energy technology artificially more expensive, so that an unreliable and unproven technology can be artificially more competitive/attractive to consumers just strikes me as being economic madness and nothing more than making the ground fertile for the spivs and shysters who are utterly gleeful at the prospects of the green religion and the schemes to “save the planet”. But what do you expect when the Profits of the Green religion are using the selling of papal indulgences as their business model?   Anthony Watts points out the essentially evil sort of scheme that now exists in his home state of California (cited just recently  as a Green beacon by “JM”) . Just look at the way that this particular scheme is designed to gouge money from both the Tax payers and the electricity consumers:

I’m no accountant but the whole scheme would create serious lustful trouser staining for some members of that profession. Talk about evil scams by the uber-rich to sting the common people this one is just so evil that it beggars belief, and worse still its being done in the name of saving the planet.

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What worries me is that under the Gillard “clean energy future” we have the perfect ground for similar scams to be perpetrated upon the Australian public do I hear anyone saying “it can’t happen here?” well I will utter just one name and if you think about you will agree that we should be afraid, very afraid… Christine Milne … This Zealot is going to be in control of the 10 billion dollar “Green energy fund” and there are none so susceptible to the spivs and schemers than an ideologically driven zealot with their hands upon taxpayer’s money…
Its a worry Comrades, a big worry

Christine Milne; away with the fairies

The Joys of simple motoring,or a father and daughter project

Its looking good out of my window as I write this morning just watched another perfect Queensland sunrise and I have the joy of taking my son to his swimming lesson and then we are both off to replenish the very empty pantry here at Chez Hall. Despite the fact that I have yet to have my breakfast of champions I actaully feel pretty good this morning, heck I even managed to mow here yesterday and on Thursday I went to my first yoga class in ages because my teacher has been in India for  the last seven weeks. But I also feel good because I know that tomorrow the starting point  of my new project arrives in the form of a rather old and somewhat decayed Morris Minor that I am going to be doing up for my daughter’s first car. Regular readers will appreciate that my daughter is only twelve at present  but they should  also realise that fixing old cars takes time so hopefully the five  years between now and when my first-born will be able to get a licence will be more than enough time to do a really good job on the car. This is going to be a father daughter project that we will work on together with the aim of me teaching her how cars work and how they are properly maintained.

Why a Morris Minor?

Well my first ever car was a Morris Minor 1000  van  and I do know my way around them pretty well so that is a good place to start, secondly they are just a good design (thank you Sir Alex Issigonis) that with a little subtle  modernisation can be made to work really well as an everyday car. Further like the best designs they are elegantly simple and simple to fix so my daughter will be able to be self sufficient when it comes to servicing and  maintaining the car.

The aim is certainly not to make the car into a concourse restoration, we will be aiming for a thoroughly modern car in terms of performance and handling and safety  to that end the car will have refurbished suspension and disc brakes front and back, modern radial tyres (wider than the skinny  Cross ply originals), It will have retractable seatbelts front and back (even though these are not required in such an old car) in terms of its engine I want something that is fuel injected and lightweight and at present I’m thinking the engine out of a Suzuki Swift will be ideal especially as it very easily bolts up to the RWD gearbox out of a Suzuki Sierra. Its not going to be a fire breathing hot rod but it should be sprightly and very able  transport with the one thing that  many modern cars lack, style. I will however be doing my best to banish the prince of darkness  from the electrical system. Originally burdened with typical Lucas electrics the car will get a thoroughly modern wiring system that runs  a dedicated earth to each light and appliance, rather than using the body of the car as the earth circuit, decent lights are essential in this day and age so the car will have the very best available now (xenon headlights) with all of the tail lights and other secondaries illuminated with super bright LEDs

Anyway if you want to follow the progress of the build I have created a blog to document it and I will be more than happy to welcome Sandpit readers there as long as they realise that it is not a place for politics or snark its a blog about fixing an old car for a new century.

Cheers Comrades

Morris Minor Two Door blog

Counter arguments requested

The thing that must vex the true believers about Bjorn Lomborg is that as a believer in AGW himself the faithful are somewhat restricted in the sort of arguments that they can put against his good sense, good sense like his opinion piece in today’s Oz. Where the whole core of his argument is that no matter what you believe about global warming there is no point in endorsing any measure or policy that will be ineffective in its central aim, namely to mitigate climate change.

Click for source (paywalled citation)

I would just love to hear any possible counter argument against this good sense…
Cue JM & Craigy

Cheers Comrades

The twenty….. or is it the 99%?

Hello hello hello !

Don’t you just love these feral protests around the world; like the half arsed effort in Melbourne that has just been broken up by the Police:

amazingly there were just a few protesters:

“People can stay there but they do have to remove goods that are in breach of the local laws,” she said.

“We have been instructed to remove ‘objects’ & ‘things’ get down to TG [Treasury Gardens] if you can,” said an Occupy Melbourne tweet.

“Actually it’s only ‘objects’ & ‘things’ that have been ordered to leave. People have a right to be there.”

A “double ring” of up at least 50 police had surrounded about 20 protesters and their main tent by just after 8am.

As one protester screamed epithets including “Australia [is a nazi wet dream]“, police dragged about six people from the circle. Three of them, all men, were arrested.

By 8.40am, all uniformed police had left the site, with most of about 10 tents taken down, but not confiscated.

At the scene, Inspector Bernie Jackson said the strong turnout was because police did not know how many protesters they might confront, so opted to send in “as many resources as possible”.

The operation was only to remove “structures”, not evict protesters, he said.

“Council have been giving them notices over the last few days to remove them [structures] and they [the council] asked us to help them if they weren’t,” he said.

“The protesters have been made well aware of what they can and cannot do,” said the City of Melbourne spokeswoman. “We have actually been issuing notices to comply every day for the past couple of weeks.”

Read more: 

Which must mean that if the protesters are the “99%” that the number of economic villains is very small indeed…
Cheers Comrades

 

A quick grab bag

Another attempt to make me glow in the dark this morning so not much time to post but a couple of hints and portents to give you all something to think about:

Firstly it seems like MTR is still on the air down in Melbourne despite a premature  internet orgasm from our learned friend  at the prospect that it would cease broadcasting a few days ago. Jezza mate it ain’t over till its over…

While we are on the subject of radio I was saddened to hear that one of the genuine nice guys of radio Richard Fidler has had a “cooking misadventure” and badly burnt himself. Richard is one of those rare birds on the airwaves, an absolute gentleman who makes the talk-show really sing because he does not have an  overt agenda and he draws out of his guests a level of frankness that those of a more confrontational nature can never muster.

Julia seems to be making something of a mild recovery but to be honest   its hardly the sort of thing that you would bet your house on being sustained. Frankly I welcome the possibility that the ALP may actually do a few thing right in government, simply because it will mean that the Coalition has less mess to clean up when they regain office, well one thing that would be right has to be to sell uranium to India  despite it not being a signatory to the non proliferation treaty. (there you go Ray, me endorsing something Gillard is doing!)

Finally a quick message to the good doctor, Jason Wilson, its half way through November and the Bolt Report is still on the air so give me a call next time you are in Brisbane and we will have that Latte and you will discover that I am not the villain, or the fool, that my critics think that I am…

Finally a cute and amusing gif

Cheers Comrades

Brought to you by The AGE

Don’t well just love a Media  Hacking scandal? Well the leftie Luvvies do when it has any connection to the Murdoch Media they have been turning themselves inside out with joy at every new revelation about wrongdoing within that empire. Their Joy may turn into something altogether less pleasant as this scandal gets up to speed because its not just a rather poor taste quest for trivial gossip about celebrities its about a news media that has sought and obtained access to one of the big two’s political data base which goes to the heart of the way that we do politics in this country. And Yes it comes from the media organisation that has run hard on the UK phone(voice mail) hacking scandal.

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Of course this scandal is not new and I discussed it previously here

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Now I think that it is entirely reasonable to apply the same rubric that our latte sipping friends have used against News LTD and to suggest that a rather , shall we say, “elastic”set of ethics is operation at Fairfax when it comes to the respect for internet security and privacy and who knows if the culture at that newspaper endorsed the hacking of the ALP then who could think that some of their number would think twice about hacking the internet presences of any lesser mortals who may have  more prosaic security? Maybe its time to hold the owners editors, sub-editors, senior writers and even common journalists to account for the methods that they have been willing to use in pursuit of their political agenda.
Cheers Comrades

The Age IT team

Gold Coast wins …. what exactly?

So many bogans, so little taste.

They’re really excited up there today in those classy and salubrious suburbs like Robina, Labrador and Tallebudgera over the news that Queensland’s Gold Coast has beaten off Sri Lanka to win the right to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

If you thought the last Commonwealth Games held in ‘Dikshit Delhi’ was like casting pearls before swine, what does this decision to hold them on an over-populated and over-developed stretch of sand and ex-swamp land say? I reckon the competing nations are going to be in for one hell of a shock when they arrive and realise they’ve landed in the middle of an out-of-date, crass and plain ugly sea of bad taste suburbia. Full of bogans. Welcome to the Gold Coast – land of the retired and try hards.

Oh, but it’s on ‘the coast’. Yeah, and it’s too bloody hot to play sport!

But wait, according to officials:

The Commonwealth Games is predicted to deliver $2 billion in economic benefits to the Gold Coast and about 30,000 jobs in the next seven years.

Yeah? Well good luck with that, Queensland, but you just won a rod for your own back in my opinion. I don’t recall Melbourne’s 2006 Games doing much for Victoria’s economy … and they were actually held in a real city!

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