Bob Hawke: Yard Glass Guzzler
Hawke set a new world speed record for beer drinking whilst studying at Oxford College. Hawke drank 2 1/2 pints from a yard glass in just 11 seconds. Hawke suggests that this achievement contributed to his political success by endearing him to a voting population with a strong beer culture.
Going by the attached clip he has not lost the talent.
Perhaps Julia needs to learn to sink a yard!
Bob Hawke: Does not spill a drop from the plastic cup!
Tonight marks the final of the NAB Cup for 2011. This is the AFL pre-season competition for anyone not in the know. I will be barracking for Essendon tonight. Usually I despise both teams, but as Julia Gillard said during the election campaign “We all hate Collingwood!” Perhaps one of the smartest phrases she has ever uttered.
Today has been a challenge relying on CityRail with severely delayed services that were not CityRail failures. Someone had decided today was a good day to die in Petersham. The Police operation to subdue that person from harming themselves caused a severe delay across the entire city bound network.
I personally sat at North Sydney for 30 minutes, however 2 minutes before the train continues onthe outlook was for as long again. The flow on effects are continuing with a train to Newcastle seen with standing room only. I pity anyone standing for that distance. The platforms resemble the train station from “Slumdog Millionaire” presently. However they were worse 10 minutes ago.
The network has not coped at all due to an indiviuals act. A single point of failure in the network brings this cities main public transport system crashing to it’s knees. I do not hold CityRail at fault, rather the successive governments of all persuasions had the vision to ensure network robustness.
I am hopeful that the network will recover before the service I want leaves in a little under 1 hour. I then hope that Bobbie is on time, and not screwed by work and or her public transport links so that we can get hope before 9:00pm.
We have all no doubt been there when something is so blatantly in need of attention but can not be done due to some need to jump through hoops for the sake of making it too damn hard. I had that dubious pleasure twice yesterday.
In the first instance I had a task to design a change to some Interfaces. There was no suggestion, nor need, for a change but my unprocessed task prevented others from proceeding. All I did was effectively document that there was no need for change. Would have been nice if the change management system had notified me of the task. Perhaps it needs a change!
The second was to address a problem I detected last week. I found the fix on Friday which consisted of a Windows registry change and server reboot. Though I can do it my line of demarcation does not allow me to perform the task. So I decided to request the group that was understood to be responsible at this level to fix it.
Unfortunately the impacted servers are in a beauracratic hole where they are not production, but kind of are. As a result the support team assigned were not prepared to touch them, however they wpuld likely do the work upon instruction from the project team.
So I engage the project team leader responsible. All I got back was a request for yet another beauracratic layer to be navigated, and a request if I could do the work which is widely known is not in scope of my services! So I engage the next layer of red tape mongers copying in all impacted parties.
The project manager then foolishly responds requesting yet another hoop to be jumped through. My draft response had lots of capitalisation telling him that what he wanted needed to come from his team. Thankfully I engaged my boss who essentially said the same thing, just without the incendiary comments. Draft aborted, all out war avoided.
I know that there is a place for process and change control, but when the dilineation of responsibility is unclear or not understood it simply wastes adds time and money. It also increases blood pressure, frustration and dissatisfaction. We can all live without this crap!
The limbo has continued today. At one point the ABC had the ALP with 72 seats and the LNP with 69 (3:36pm). That figure continues to vary regularly throughout the day. There are five seats still marked as too close to call, however the projections have been consistent with each side falling short of an absolute majority with 73 seats each.
Whilst Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott both debate whether primary of two party preferred counts as a negotiation point I think we should move forward (sorry) from that insane debate and examine what this mean for Australia?
What it means simply is that the 1 Green and 3 Independent MP’s all of a sudden become the most powerful Australians within current society. Deals will need to be cut between the major parties and the smaller, usually insignificant, MP’s. This is a good thing as real negotiations will need to occur and the electorates generally forgotten by successive governments will finally receive attention. In terms of who goes where is an interesting one.
The Greens MP, Adam Bandt, would logically side with the ALP as they are further left than the LNP. Further, policies such as the NBN are common to both the ALP and the Greens. The good news is that the proposed internet filter/censor would likely be ditched under such negotiations. Noises to date indicate that this allegiance is the most likely outcome, however there are no guarantees.
The 3 independents though are probably even more important. These 3 MP’s are all from regional Australia and all were previously associated with the conservative side of the fence. All though have valid can varying reasons to why those allegiances are in the past. This was very evident on election night with the stouch between Barnaby Joyce and Tony Windsor. Further evidence suggests that Bob Katter and Barnaby Joyce have a similar distaste for one another. Clearly their past conservative allegiances do not mean that they will automatically side with the LNP. Negotiations with Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott are likely to see vast improvements for regional Australia, primarily in the electorates they represent. However, I get the feeling that all three see their importance as an opportunity to bring regional matters to the forefront.
There is also the new Independent National Party MP, Tony Crook. Mr Crook has just ousted seemingly perennial representative (and known loose cannon) Wilson Tuckey from the seat of O’Connor in Western Australia. Mr Crook has been hasty to let it known that he does consider himself allied to the LNP, rather as another crossbencher. Mr Crook has reportedly put his support on auction with a price tag of $850 million for regional Australia. Not sure if Mr Crook’s approach is the best long-term approach for his constituents, but it does make his position on the matter clear.
Regardles, what is clear is that the combination of the gang of four regional MP’s that are not strictly aligned with the LNP are going to ensure Australia pays attention to the needs of regional Australia. Not a bad thing by any measure, the bush is often neglected.
It will be very interesting to see what the LNP and ALP offer in order to secure the support of these MP’s in order to form a government. The LNP ofcourse have the conservative moral ground and are traditionally strong in encouraging exports. Typically these tie in with the goals of regional Australia, they also have the position on the mining super profits tax, that is it will be scrapped. Again a strong concern for Regional Australia. Other issues though remain.
Clearly telecommunications is going to play a large part within these electorate. Of all the candidates that were interviewed on election night it was these three that had to communicate with the nation by crackly telephone lines with a still picture on screen. It was a throw back to the early 80′s, with the only thing missing the presence of the bakelite phones with ring dials. Telstra has never served these areas particularly well, and never will as new infrastructure is not seen as instantly commercially viable for the TelCo with its goals defined by short to medium term success, not in the longer term gain. Should the TelCo be forced into servicing these area and taking the hit? In my opinion no, but this goes back to when Telstra was privatised. The public should have retained ownership of the infrastructure and leased capacity to Telstra and any other player, in much the same way that the national broadband network is modelled.
Reportedly Bob Katter would like to see more made of ethanol fuels and Rob Oakshott wants an emissions trading scheme (ETS). Though Kevin Rudd fell short on environmental matters both of these are more likely to play to the ALP side than the LNP. Especially when you consider that there are severe question marks on whether Tony Abbott:
Like him or hate him, he floundered badly here. Ethanol deserves a great deal of attention and could be a good alternative fuel source with appropriate research. It of course will also give the sugar farmers another market for their product.
I will finish with a prediction that we will be back at the polls in the next 6 to 18 months. Whichever side forms government will then try and put runs on the board quickly and try to win an absolute majority. If it is the LNP we will be back to the polls sooner than the ALP who will need more time for the electorate to forget the mess of the first term and the shocker of a campaign. Interesting and nervous times remain.
MyFitnessPal - Free Calorie Counter