Something more ambitious

Al-Qaida Kim Jong-Il Victim or Bust

Two weeks! Jesus god. How will I ever get everything done?

posted by Nicholas @ 9:20 PM 0 comments

Working in a call centre

At three in three afternoon I go to my call centre job. I’ve been doing this most afternoons for the last few weeks. My call centre is run by a company that contracts out to charities; they professionally raise funds. As the perky trainer explained on my first day, “Of course charities could do this themselves, in-house, with volunteers. But what they’ve found is that they can generate more revenue by hiring us. We’re the professionals at this.”

I’m morally ambivalent about this job. It’s better than selling aluminium siding or Florida holidays, but there’s a lot here that make me uncomfortable: the idea of outsourcing charitable donations, the profit-taking and wages, the guilt-trippy high-pressure tactics I am forced to use, the inhumanly mechanised nature of the operation.

I keep having these moments where something happens, something quite normal for here, and it strikes me as surreal. I blank for a moment, I feel a wild anxiety, and this line comes into my head:

What the fuck am I doing here?

*

I go to my desk. Adam hands me a stack of call sheets. There are 153, and I have to count and sign for them. At the end of my shift they will be counted again by somebody senior to me: a supervisor, a trainer. Should there be 152, I will be fired. You can also be fired for looking at a mobile phone in the office, or making a personal call. Security is taken very seriously, here.

I start dialling numbers. I am working on “Amnesty International Upgrades”. This means I call people who donate on a monthly basis to Amnesty International, and I try to get them to raise their donations by guilt-tripping them. To do this I tell them the story of The Rape of Aisha. The Rape of Aisha was a horrific event that happened in Somalia last year – Aisha, a 13-year-old girl, was raped by three men. The local Wahaabist militia, a seriously unenlightened bunch, then stoned Aisha to death for adultery. Nice. I remember reading about this at the time and being horrified. But by now I have told the story of The Rape of Aisha too many times. At least once each shift I remind myself that it is still a horrific event that happened to a real person. But it has become performance. I pause dramatically at certain moments. And new details have crept into the story along the way. Now, everybody in my “team” refers to Aisha as a “13-year-old schoolgirl”, and she was attacked “while walking home from school one day”. This wasn’t in the original reports, which were not even that definitive about her age. But I’m the only person here who has read the original reports. I know it’s a distortion, but I say it anyway, the same as everybody else.

It could be worse. I could be on WSPA signups. There, they call people who foolishly signed a petition and try to convince them to become regular donors by going on about bear-baiting and the like. At least the people I call are active supporters of Amnesty, and are sometimes interested; the WSPA signups are practically cold-calls, and people really don’t appreciate being told that shit, then asked for money. I hear it’s brutal.

But only a small part of my time is given over to re-telling The Rape of Aisha. Mostly what I do is call numbers and get no response. The call sheets I have been given suck, because Adam doesn’t like me. I think he senses I don’t like him. For a while it seemed like he liked me, or at least thought I might work out. For a while I was getting some clean sheets in with my junk. The clean sheets haven’t been dialled before, and it is easy to get people on the line and talk to them. You need to get six people on the line and talk to them each hour. This is easy with clean sheets, but now I am getting dreck again.

These numbers have been dialled six, seven times. These people don’t want to talk to me. They have worked out by now that it is Amnesty International trying to get them to increase their donations. They are irritated by the daily calls. They see the number come up on their mobile phones, and choose not to answer. They have told past callers to call their home numbers in the daytime, and their business numbers at night. They are always in meetings, or on the freeway, or just stepping out. They will not talk to you.

Of course, they could just say, “No. I will not increase my donation.” But they prefer to give an excuse, or avoid the call, and the callers are happy to let them give an excuse. Because if they give a firm “No,” well – that’s a negative. That fucks up your stats. So everybody prefers the fiction of, “I’m busy, now – try me tomorrow. On my home number. During the day.” And you dutifully note that down on your sheet.

Of the six people I am theoretically supposed to speak to, 2.4, or forty percent, must agree to upgrade their monthly subscriptions. This is your conversion ratio. My conversion ratio is good! I hit a high of sixty-five percent on one shift, but it has declined since then, and now sits around fifty percent. My calls were taking too long, which meant my “connects” – the number of people I speak to in an hour – were too low. So I cut my spiel back, and consequently my conversion ratio took a hit.

There is a lot of crap about Somalia and the United Nations in the official spiel, but nobody does the official spiel. It would take ten, fifteen minutes to get through all that. You reduce it to its essentials, then wing it. You rush through the Somalia and United Nations shit, because nobody cares. You dwell on Aisha. You don’t rush The Rape of Aisha. Aisha brings the big bucks. People don’t care about the logical connection between that, Amnesty International, and the United Nations. They just want to feel they’re doing something to stop 13-year-old schoolgirls being raped and stoned to death on their way home from school.

What the fuck am I doing here?

*

I am OK at this job. People give me money, when I can talk to them.

I’m not great at this job. John is great. John is my hero. John is from Northern Ireland, he speaks slowly and his voice is full of warmth. John’s conversion ratio is seventy percent. People love to speak to him. He hits the same sentences every call, and there is not a wasted word in them. When he first speaks to somebody he is full of warmth, then he charmingly asks for two minutes of their time. And they are happy to give two minutes to John. He starts with a few sentences on the suppression of journalists in Somalia. Somehow when John tells of this it sounds tragic, yet when I do it, it’s boring. He then gives The Rape of Aisha. His voice is full of sorrow and sympathy. He goes for his “first ask” – he always knows the perfect amount of money to request. Should he somehow overreach, he saves it with his “second ask” – and of course they can find that extra five dollars a month for John.

John raises three thousand, four thousand dollars a shift. My high-point was $1800, and that was a freak day with forty clean sheets. John gets nothing but clean sheets.

John is an enigma. This place is full of extroverts; John keeps to himself. When he wins awards at weekly meetings, he seems embarrassed.

I want to be like John.

*

The “second ask”:

An email from my friend Kate: “Huh! I got one of those calls. I only give $25 a month, but I've been doing it forever and want to keep doing it, and if I up it, I might at some point cancel it. Longevity is better. I wonder if AI facor that in when they pressure people to up their monthly contribution? That they might later cancel it altogether?”

My reply: “Yes, Kate, I do understand. But firstly, what I'd say to you, Kate, is that understand that this doesn't have to be permanent. If you do increase your contribution and then find you need to go back to $25, it's absolutely no trouble, and we're happy to do that. But what I'd say to you, Kate, is that even a small increase, even as little as $1.25 a week - $5 a month - from you and people like you, can make a huge difference, given the urgency of the situation. $1.25 a week - $5 a month - is that something which might be manageable for you, Kate???”

Kate: “Ahhh haha! you got me. If they called back I might consider it. Nick.”

The second ask is all about showing empathy, acknowledging the validity of the person’s reasons for not wanting to increase their monthly donations, then turning around and asking for more anyway. Excessive name repetition seems to help – I got that from John.

What the fuck am I doing here?

*

I am pitching to a supporter. I am in full flight. I am doing The Rape of Aisha.

I didn’t have this person’s interest at the start – as usual, my Somalia stuff just got a lot of disinterested “mmm-hmms,” but they perked up when I mentioned how the miltia, “instead of arresting the three men, turned around and arrested Aisha. They accused her of being an adulteress. This is a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl, rememeber, Susan, whose only crime was that she raped.” I then give the fate of Aisha. “She was stoned to death… by fifty men… in front of a stadium of 1000 people.” I pause. “I don’t know how you feel about that, Susan…” I pause again. People like to vent in their own way at this point. All is looking good, and I am pleased. This is a training call, and I know I’m being monitored by Liam.

I go into the build-up for my first ask. My voice is impassioned. I am gesticulating. I’m practically on my knees. I keep using the word “urgent” and repeating Susan’s name. I ask…

There is a pause. You can hear the conflict in people’s minds at this point. They don’t want to give more money, but they don’t want to say no, either. Finally Susan ventures an excuse – she supports lots of other charities.

I am understanding. I ask her, chattily, about the other charities she supports. She tells me a little. I say that of course we wouldn’t want her to stop giving to another charity for us. She feels relieved. She thinks she has convinced me, and that I am nice and understanding. “But Susan, what I would say to you, is that many of our supporters are passionate and give to many charities. And often they find they can’t afford a large increase in their donations. But at this point in time, even small increases – as little as $1.25 – blah blah blah.” I hit her with the second ask. Another pause. Who can say no to an extra five dollars a month? She isn’t happy about it, would never have volunteered it, but agrees anyway. I thank her profusely – feeling, as I always do, a little guilty. I give her a few moments of warmth, but this call has already gone on too long, and I need to get her off the phone. I wish her a great day; she thanks me. They usually do. My wild, atonal, slightly hysterical enthusiasm – they never ask me, as they sometimes do other people, if I’m being paid for this. I am so obviously a passionate volunteer, giving up his time to help out a charity he believes in.

I go for my review with Liam. My reviews are always the same these days, so I’ll tell you instead about the first review I had with Liam. It was on my first day of calling: I was still nervous, still fumbling, but I did manage to get the extra sixty dollars a year on my second ask.

“Come on, let’s have a chat,” Liam says. We go to the staff room. Liam is like many people who work here – mildly extroverted, some university education, good-looking, white, middle-class. These people have the sort of natural bonhomie to do well at this. I always get on fine with this type of person. Such people have usually lived relatively trouble-free lives, they are relaxed and comfortable with others, have uncomplicated internal lives, are rarely mean or malevolent in their motivations. It’s easy for me to get on with people like that. And I like Liam. But I rarely become good friends with such people. There tends to be a gulf of understanding that is mutually recognised.

“So, how do you think you’re going?” Liam says, brightly.

“Alright. I could do better,” I say.

Liam nods. “What do you think you’re doing well?” he asks.

“I’m slowing down,” I say. “I’m listening to John’s calls, and trying to do it more like him. I think I’m becoming more familiar with the material, and I’m engaging better with people. Making it more of a conversation, less of a sales pitch.”

“Yes, exactly,” Liam says. He looks down at his notes. I seem to have thrown him a bit. “That’s exactly what I was going to say to you,” he says, and repeats back what I’ve just told him. “Now,” he says, “is there anything you think you need to improve on?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Liam – my tone of voice sucks. It lacks modulation. Every sentence sounds the same, it’s sort of excited and flat at the same time, and I need to improve it.”

Liam looks really startled now. “Yes, again,” he says. “That’s what I was going to say to you.” He thinks. “What might you do to improve it?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s a bit of a general problem in my life, actually. It’s one of the reasons I took this job.”

“Oh – give it a bit of a polish-up, huh?” Liam says. He seems more than a little confused by me.

I half-nod, half-shrug. There is a gulf of understanding. Hi, Liam, I’m Nicholas. I’m extremely self-aware; so much so that it is a bit of a problem for me. It makes me sensitive and conscious of the moods of others, probably excessively. I spend a lot of time second-guessing myself. I’m constantly monitoring myself and how people are responding to me. Mostly my self-assesment is accurate, but when it becomes divorced from an external reality strange ideas can bloom in my mind, become excessive, inaccurate, obsessive, harmful. It makes me a writer, makes me who I am, but often it makes me insecure as well. I don’t know how to do what you do, Liam – I don’t know how to just relax and assume everyone likes me. I’m introverted, I spend too much time in my head, and you know what else? I have a more-than-slight phone phobia when it comes to talking to strangers. I didn’t mention this in the interview. Perhaps it’s because I can’t see who I’m talking to; perhaps it’s just that I’ve indulged it, and not confronted it.

What the fuck am I doing here? But we’re getting a little closer to an answer to that question.

These days my training sessions with Liam tend to sound the same. He says, “Ah, your tone of voice is still no good, but it seems to be working anyway. Keep it up.” I think he’s dispirited. It’s true – what I do works, but not in the way it should. I speak too fast, I am full of babbling enthusiasm, I sound like a hopelessly sincere and committed university student volunteering his evenings – and people are impressed by this and give me money. And of course, I’ve learned short-cuts. I cheat. These days it’s all The Rape of Aisha and name repetition. That’s all I really know, all it’s about. It’s a long way from the artistry of John.

Liam’s right – it sucks, but it’s working, so what can you do? But I am not happy either.

I want to say to Liam, “Liam – where have you been all my life? Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it. Follow me around, watch me, listen to my conversations with people, then we’ll do reviews.” I imagine how these would go. Liam would say to me, “Yeah, you seemed engaged. You listen well, of course, and you said interesting things. They seemed to genuinely respond to you and enjoy your company. Now, what do you think needs improving?”

“My nervous half-smile?” I would venture.

Liam would nod. “Yes! And sometimes your laugh is a little nervous, too. It betrays you. And the body-language? It could be more open, less reluctant. But hey, they were laughing, they kept talking to you, obviously they liked you. Keep it up, good job.”

*

I’ve been having lots of epiphanies lately. Things came unstuck for me not so long ago. That was scary. It’s strange: I write here that I am a very self-aware person, and a year ago I would have said that I had a good understanding of myself. Yet over the last six months – gradually, then suddenly – I’ve come to see that in many ways my self-assesment has been shallow, unquestioning, awry. There were great confronting questions which I never thought about at all, because they made me anxious. And there were answers I thought I knew, understandings I thought clever, which turned out to be not-so-clever; that on closer examination turned out to be giant convoluted structures for coping with anxiety. They all toppled over at once, and my sense of self toppled with them.

I closed the bookshop about two years ago, now. At the same time I stopped writing this blog, and even my half-hearted attempts last year were not the same. I haven’t written anything particularly personal on this blog for a long time.

I thought at the time that it was a good idea to draw a curtain across my life. I felt overexposed. I thought that closing the bookshop would be good for me, that it would give me time to write and think, but it gave me far too much time. I made my life so perfectly safe, but looked at another way, I indulged in every fear I had, large and small. And I drew a curtain across it so nobody could see. And behind that curtain I distracted myself from my low-level unhappiness with rituals and elaborate imaginings and took comfort in my safety-from-fear, while in reality I became more introverted, more self-conscious, more self-doubting. I indulged bad habits – didn’t keep my place as clean as I should, didn’t eat as well as I should, smoked way too many cigarettes – and without realising it I was very careful with what I thought about, less I realise the trouble I was in. My excessive introversion affected my manner and confidence.

Epiphanies, a dalliance with the tenets of cognitive behavioural therapy, and then a rejection of some of it – I got gung-ho for a while, then decided that I didn’t want to adopt every thing. Didn’t want to dispense with some aspects of myself that were perhaps less-than-perfectly functional, but which made me creative, humorous, sensitive, ambitious. Still – epiphanies, and CBT, and between them I formed a conception of what I wanted to be. And that I will put down here – not my path to understanding, but the understanding itself. It’s not a bad thing to declare publically.

Put briefly: I want to confront every fear, until I am no longer afraid. And I want to change my thoughts from a raging mix of ill-controlled imagination, regret, self-doubt, and occasional insight into a concentrated and consciously directed stream of focused attention. I want a sort of controlled, creative derangement, when I need it; I want to be perceptive and sensitive and open to people and the world around me; I want the ability to be confidently and sociably in the moment with strangers and friends, with no more self-checking and inter-personal monitoring than is necessary to not act like an ass. I’ve said it before – understanding it, but not always knowing how to approach it, or why it sometimes seemed to move away from me – there is a me that feels like me. Hopefully it is still where I am headed, perhaps more consciously than before, and for sounder reasons. I feel a long way from it at the moment, but am determined to pursue it through practice and engagement with people and situations I might otherwise have avoided. I want to do small things well and with integrity, until those things accumulate and become habitual.

Does this explain why I’m working in an out-going call centre, pitching Amnesty International upgrades to strangers? Or am I just dressing up something mundane in glorious rags?

*

Everything here is measured statistically. At the start of each shift Adam comes across to me and we go through my stats.

Adam is the only person here I dislike; unfortunately, he is my supervisor. His flat affect and cold manner make me wary. There is something of the sociopath about him, and also quite a lot of the anal pinhead. He is English, and uses the word “mate” in that excessive way only English people living in Australia do. The statistics we are measured on are our connects – that is, the number of people we can get a yes or no from in an hour – the average value of our upgrades, our conversion rate – what percentage of people we can convince to upgrade – and our average income per hour. Adam has a little speech which he thinks is clever. He says, “I don’t care about income per hour. I think it’s a stupid statistic. Because – ” and here he pauses – “if you’re hitting your targets for each of the other categories, the income per hour will take care of itself.”

I don’t mind the statistics. They sit happily with the reasons I am here. Each time I speak to somebody on the phone I try to engage with them, focus, be pleasant and charming. I use the metrics – average upgrade and conversion rate – as a meaure of myself. My goals, and the call-centre’s, happily coincide. And I try to do the same with each real-world interaction, too – each small conversation I have with a co-worker. I don’t have metrics on my success with that, but my guess? About fifty, fifty-five percent. About the same.

For a while I seem to be progressing and doing well at this job. My income per hour is where it should be; my average upgrades are high, and so is my conversion rate. Each day I get better call sheets, which gives the statistical illusion of progress, although it is actually a fiction controlled by Adam.

But Adam is not entirely happy. I am not making enough connects. This is something I don’t give a shit about – it is about how fast you can dial, how quickly you can get people off the phone, how much of your ten-minute break you are willing to give up so that your statistics are acceptable. And more than anything, it is about the sheets you get – how called-out they are. Still, I’m mostly meeting my quota for income per hour, which I believe is the only measure that should matter when assessing job performance. Who cares by which path you get there?

But Adam gives me his little speech, and I make a mistake. I question him. I say to him, “Come on, Adam – surely there’s more than one road to Damascus. If I’m making less connects, but getting higher than average upgrades, then surely it doesn’t make any difference, so long as I’m making my money.”

Adam pauses; a look crosses his face as if a wire has come unsprung. “No,” he says definatively. “You need six connects an hour.” And he explains again about how if I hit each of these targets, my income per hour will take care of itself. I look at him. He looks at me. We don’t like each other.

This is a failed social interraction. A bad one. I stop getting clean sheets. Adam stops telling me, “You’re going to make it, mate.” I am fucked.

*

Here is how it theoretically should work: each team has its targets. Each member of that team has the same targets. The call sheets are handed out randomly. People who do well meet or exceed their targets. People who don’t, don’t.

Here is how it works in practice. The supervisors are under pressure from higher up to make sure their team hits its targets. So they do something sensible – they take the fresh, clean call sheets and give them to the best, most experienced callers. These callers then kick ass, smash their targets, and win weekly prizes. They give the bad, called-out sheets to the new people. The new people break their heart trying to meet targets that are impossible, because they can’t get anybody on the phone. Their supervisors advise them, “call faster,” as if this will solve the problem – because nobody will acknowledge the truth about the call sheets. If the new person seems to be making progress, they are gradually given better data; perhaps, dialling their asses off and hustling like crazy, they can last it out long enough to become relatively senior – about a month – and then they get given decent data. If they don’t seem to make progress, or their supervisor doesn’t like them, they are given dreck until they are eventually told that they are not meeting their targets and are let go, or until they break down and quit. Unfortunately, I figure all this out too late.

Turnover in this place is massive. Every day there are three or four new trainees – and presumably, three or four people gone from the day before. The five people with whom I started become three. Then one wigs out, mid-shift. This happens a bit. I don’t blame him. He’s doing the call-sheets I had the day before, and I felt like killing myself. He turns them in to Adam, declares “This isn’t for me,” and leaves.

There is just me and this one other guy left from my incoming group. I chat with him outside. “I think I’m getting fired tomorrow,” he says. “I’m not meeting my targets.”

“I think I might be as well,” I say. “Don’t quit. Make them fire you.” I am talking to myself.

*

John sits across from me. He is on the phone relating The Rape of Aisha. He looks over to me. I do a supercillious impression of serious concern. I nod, my eyebrows furrowed. He relates a shocking detail. My eyebrows shoot up and I do a little pantomime of aghast amazement. The corner of John’s mouth twitches. He looks away. He doesn’t want to burst out laughing during The Rape of Aisha.

I smile to myself, although I wanted him to laugh. But John is too good at this job for that. Meanwhile I can’t get anybody on the phone. I keep dialling. It is all very Glengarry/Glenross.

*

At the end of our shift, John asks me if I want to get some pub food, have some drinks. I say sure. I am surprised. John is my hero! The only person I’ve met in this place whom I genuinely admire.

We go to the corner pub, have some food, a few beers, talk. We get on well. I’d forgotten this about myself, though I used to expect it. I’d forgotten that when I liked somebody in a group situation like this, that I usually became friends with them. It seems a small miracle to me, until I remember. How have I got to this point, to no longer expect that people will enjoy my company?

John is a traveller, I guess he doesn’t know many people in the city. I don’t think we’re going to become best mates, but we get on well, the conversation flows easily, we talk about work, travel, writing, lots of things. John seems to think I’m amusing and intelligent. I feel better about myself than I have in a while.

*

The next shift I am given call-sheets that have been called so many times that there are no longer spaces in which to write the details of each call. The calls have spilled over beyond their allotted section on the form, they’re scrawled in gaps and margins.

Adam comes to review my statistics from the previous shift. He tells me I really need to hit one hundred percent on this shift. On every measure – not just money. Particularly, I need six connects an hour, which I have never achieved.

There is no way this can be done. I ask him how he thinks that will be possible. “Call faster,” he says. I ask him how the call sheets are assigned. He doesn’t answer; takes offense at the question. He tells me that he could call these sheets and get six connects an hour. He tells me he has to get on to other things.

I am fucked, and know it. For some reason – pride, maybe – I give it my best shot. I spend my shift dialling constantly. I fill in details while the phone is ringing; I skip breaks. I don’t make my connects, but somehow, scrounging desperately, giving my spiel in two minutes, guilt-tripping like a bastard whenever I can get a human voice on the line – I make my money, or close enough. It is a fucking miracle.

*

Towards the end of the shift, Adam tells me to gather my things. I follow him to the meeting room.

Adam tells me it’s not going to work out. He says I’m not a team player. “We need team-players here,” he says. “Questioning me about call-sheets, questioning me about connects…” He can’t fire me for not making my money, because tonight – somehow – I did. He is left with this. This is my tiny bit of pride.

“We don’t need to drag this out,” I say.

“Fine,” he says. He asks for my swipe-card back, which I give him.

I tell him, “I have to say, Adam – you’re not the most supportive boss I’ve ever had, either.”

“That’s your opinion, mate,” he says. I don’t rile him, though – his affect is still flat, he is coldly dispassionate.

I leave. I’m disappointed. This job was mostly horrible, but it was good for me for the moment, and in a strange way I was enjoying it. I never was planning to stick with it for long. Another month, no more. It was something to practice with, something to keep me occupied. I think I mostly succeeded by my personal measures, although I completely failed to charm Adam. I wonder if it is something self-destructive in me: that the one person with whom I never much tried to get on was the one who controlled my success or otherwise. Still – I think the phone phobia is permanently gone, even if I never did develop a polished telephone manner.

I have something much more ambitious planned for a month from now; the next stage of this journey, this excoriation of fear and self-doubt. I won’t say what it is just yet, because it’s still a bit up-in-the-air and I don’t want to jinx it – but hopefully it will happen, and if it does, there will be plenty to blog about.

posted by Nicholas @ 11:14 AM 2 comments

Travel blog

http://newsrantsinternational.blogspot.com

posted by Nicholas @ 3:57 PM 0 comments

Reducing your carbon footprint under an Emissions Trading Scheme

Reducing Footprint "Waste of Time" - from The Australian.

Email from my father:

Nicholas

Is what I read in yesterday's paper correct in that putting in energy saving devices like the reduced emissions light bulbs, solar heating etc will do nothing to reduce emissions but will only free up more energy for the protected providers to sell to someone else.

If this is the case, why am I and others bothering apart from perhaps saving a few dollars a year on electricity bills?

My reply:

Broadly, it's true. If your power company is allocated more free permits than they need because you, and others, voluntarily reduce their emissions - which is probably likely with Rudd's stupid scheme - then yes, that will be the result.

I pointed this out to you when you got that company in to change your lightbulbs for free - that they would then sell your carbon credits to another polluter, resulting in no net difference.

But there are other ways of looking at it. The idea of an ETS is that you limit the total amount of pollution, making it a scarce but valuable resource. Therefore it is used by those who can get the most economic benefit from it. So by cutting your emissions, you free those "wasteful" emissions (in that you don't really need incandescent light bulbs) to be used by a more productive part of the economy.

For this you get an economic benefit in the form of cheaper power bills. This is the basic valid idea of an ETS.

For the moral part of it, you get two things: 1, you know that you personally are emitting less carbon and doing your share, and 2, you are allowing a part of the economy that has more need of the carbon emissions to make use of the scarce but valuable resource.

If the result is "windfall profits for power companies" blame Rudd's stupid quarter-hearted badly designed useless scheme, not the concept itself. A very low cap on carbon emissions, and tons of free permits, makes it all very fuzzy and inefficient, and the economic benefits for both industries and individuals in cutting their emissions gets distorted and becomes meaningless.

posted by Nicholas @ 12:45 PM 0 comments

5 percent

Five percent.

I don't need to say much beyond what I've already said. There is one thing worth noting, though, which I haven't seen mentioned yet. Traditionally when these figures are discussed one uses 1990 as a baseline, in accordance with the starting date of the Kyoto protocol. The five percent reduction, however, is based on Australia's emissions in 2000.

According to Wikipedia, "Analysis has projected Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions at 109% of the 1990 emissions level over the period 2008–12 ... This is slightly above its 108% Kyoto Protocol limitation."

posted by Nicholas @ 3:51 PM 0 comments

Africa

AIDS, war, famine, and some pretty horrible governments. Looking forward you can add global warming and ethanol-induced rises in the cost of food. That last was probably the dumbest idea the environmental movement has ever advocated (back-to-nature communes didn't result in too many deaths).

There's an interesting critique of this graph here, which doesn't question the figures - they come from the World Bank - but points out that it isn't a universal picture of Africa. Still - this graph made me feel sick.

posted by Nicholas @ 11:19 PM 0 comments

Pathetic

Rudd et al have gone from calling climate change the "great moral challenge of our generation" to saying that Australia wouldn't do very much unless developing nations came on board, to now saying that no matter what developing nations agree to, we're still not going to do very much:

It is expected the Government, in its white paper to be published next Monday, will aim to reduce greenhouse gases by 2020 by between 5 per cent and 15 per cent. The final figure will be set after an international meeting on climate change in Copenhagen late next year, when the intentions of the rest of the world will be better known ... A Chinese adviser in Poznan warned at the weekend that Australia would derail global climate talks if it stayed with a maximum target of 15 per cent for cutting greenhouse emissions.

It was nice that Rudd and Co ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but perhaps they should have read it first. Like this bit:

1. The Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Accordingly, the developed country Parties should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof. (my emphasis)

If you still think this government is in any sense green or concerned about climate change, consider this: they are way to the right of Arnold Schwarzenegger on this issue.

posted by Nicholas @ 3:55 PM 0 comments

My five best and worst gigs

I am flip-flopping on the question of the US bailing out its auto industry – this article from the New York Times scared the hell out of me. I am not going to stand resolute and Bushlike on free market principles while the global economy collapses. But I still hate the idea. Something needs to be done about companies that are “too big to fail”. My idea – I think it’s not a bad one – is that when a corporation becomes so large that its economy starts to resemble that of a developing nation, the IMF should come in and do an audit, as they do for developing nations.

But I don’t want to talk about the GFC today. I recently convinced my father to take me to see Leonard Cohen in January. This is good, as I couldn’t have justified the $145 ticket price for myself. If this review is anything to go on, it should be a special show. It will mark a milestone for me – he is the last of my musical heroes, excluding people who have died and bands that have broken up, that I am yet to see in concert.

I think after this show I could never see another gig and still feel satisfied that I saw the best bands and musicians of my time. There are plenty of things I wish I had done in my life that I didn’t do, but going to gigs has not been one (well, I still regret missing Summersault.) If I never see another gig I will still be able to tell my children, should I ever have them and should they have good taste in music, that yes, I saw all those people. (Contrast to my father, who spent most of 1965 in London and didn’t go see anybody. I’ve quizzed him about this. “Why not?!” I demand. He shrugs, looks sheepish, and says he was too busy drinking at pubs.)

I still love music, but over time I've become more passive about it. I've come a long way from the time when I would make special trips into Sydney to go to Waterfront and buy records based on their textaed sticker recommendations. These days I'm content to let others do the work for me, and will only check out a new band if a few people whose opinion I respect tell me I should do so. And I no longer care about good seats (or standing right at the front), or whether a band or person is "cool" or not. I guess it comes with getting older.

Anyway to celebrate my seeing of everybody I love I have compiled a list of my five best gigs, and as a bonus my five worst as well. In no particular order. The best ones first.

Tori Amos, State Theatre, 1994. The entire concert was just her and a piano, excluding two songs with tape backings – Cornflake Girl, which was kind-of dissapointing, and a cover of Prince’s Purple Rain, which was seriously amazing. If there is anything that all these gigs have in common, it is that in each there was no holding back – everything was given in the performance.

This concert did have one downside. I went with my father, who had picked up on my mid-nineties enthusiasm for Tori. And he had a cough. The audience was made up mostly of earnest young girls. All was fine until Tori launched into her a cappella song about being raped, “Me and a Gun”. And the whole place was all reverential silence. Except for my father, who coughed throughout the song. So it went, “There was me and a gun [cough cough] / and a man on my back [cough cough cough].” I hunkered down in my seat; I don’t know that I’ve ever been so mortified. I thought we were going to be set upon by angry young feminists.

I feel bad telling this story, when my dad has taken me to see so many concerts I could not have afforded myself. It wasn’t his fault, but it happened.

Bikini Kill, Wollongong Youth Centre, 1997. I went to a lot of great shows at the Wollongong Youth Centre, but this was by far the best. The Youth Centre used to be the Wollongong Art Gallery, and in high school our class was invited, along with other classes, to paint flags for it, which were then hung in the hallway. For some reason me and a bunch of my friends painted ourselves as horror movie characters; I was a small vampire. So it was always a little strange to go there and see this horror-movie depiction of myself hanging in the hallway.

The show: I was friends with Laurie, who was in the support band, and I helped him bring in his gear. Kathleen Hanna moved a guitar case out of the way and smiled at me! There were about 300 people in a room that could hold about 200, Bikini Kill seriously rocked and were all punk-rock meets Toni Basil. People kept calling for “Carnival”, and Kathleen Hanna demurred. She said it was an old song and they were over it, and instead we should all go form our own bands and cover it. Then they came back for a second encore, and played it. It was great.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Annandale 2004? I wasn’t a fan before the show – in fact I had to be pretty-much dragged to it by Bree. Since then I’ve listened to their big album a few times. It’s decent, but I don’t love it. But I’ve never seen a better rock show. Hard to say why; it’s a mysterious thing, when a band rocks so well that the entire audience is captured by it and transported somewhere. Commitment and intensity have a lot to do with it.

Jens Lekman supporting some lousy Candle Records act who I forget, Bulli Family Hotel 2005. A weird return for me to the pub where in 1990 I filmed a terrible horror movie, The Third Floor, with some friends. I’d never heard of Jens Lekman and went, I suppose, for the lousy Candle Records act I forget, and also because it promised to be a fun roadtrip back to my old stomping grounds with Tahlia and her friends. Jens performed solo, half the time accompanying himself on his ukulele or whatever-it-is, the other half a-cappella. Again, a performance of total mesmerising honesty. It is the only time I have ever been at a gig where, after the support act finished, half the audience immediatley stood up and went to buy his album. It started a long musical love affair with me and Jens.

Patti Smith supporting Bob Dylan at Wollongong Entertainment Centre, 1998. A really weird audience; it was the grand opening of the Entertainment Centre and most people seemed to be there to support the debut of a worthy Wollongong venture, or else because they liked Peter Paul and Mary’s covers of Bob Dylan back in the sixties. Anyway, Patti Smith was the support; me and a bunch of other people who were actually there for the music stormed the front of the stage, in the process severely pissing off the connected socialites of Wollongong who occupied the front-row seats. One snotty twenty-something in the front row kept hissing at us, “Please return to your assigned seats!” The security guards tried to clear us out and Patti Smith stopped the show and started arguing with them, saying she liked us there. They said it was a security issue; Patti asked us if we would show co-operation by sitting down for a song. Which we did. And she rocked out angry and hard, and then we stood up again, and it was great.

Bob was OK; I’ve seen him better. The lukewarm response of all the non-fans who were expecting a greatest hits package from a genteel folky ruined it a bit; it was Patti who made it one of my top five concerts.

Looking at the list in total, the most obvious question is, why are sexually liberated feminist rock chicks so prominent? It's not really representative of my whole music collection. I have no idea.

Now, the five worst:

Sonic Youth, the Metro, 1998. I don’t know what I expected, but by the fifth 10-minute improvised feedback jam session I was wondering what crime I had committed to deserve dropping fifty bucks on this show. Some would call it genius; it sure did nothing for me.

Cat Power, Newtown RSL, 2001? Chan was doing a tour in which she played songs to accompany a silent film. Except the video player didn’t work, so there was no film. After the first song they gave up on the movie, and during the second, the lights guy turned the lights up on Chan, who was playing on a completely dark stage. She paused mid-song to snarl “Turn the fucking lights down, please!” So the rest of the show was Chan doing very slow, dreary piano ballads in the dark in a very noisy room. I think I lasted about an hour and a half of this before giving up and leaving.

Bob Dylan, State Theatre, 1992. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen The Bob five times. I’ve seen him great, awful, and indifferent. I saw one show where he sang like it was 1965, full-voiced and bending his notes and hitting the high ones with his triumphant sneer (it was the night after he won his Academy Award; perhaps he was happy.) I saw a show a couple of years back where he seemed completely drunk and spent most of the night trying to play piano solos which were far beyond his abilities as a pianist. But this show – the first time I saw him – was truly, memorably awful. He had a backing group that made every song sound identical, and mumbled so terribly that you frequently had no idea what he was singing. Songs went like this: [three minutes of screeching hard rock and mumbling] “Like a rolling stooone” [four minutes more of screeching hard rock and mumbling]. He also hardly faced the audience. During the depressed post-show analysis, the conversation went like this:

“I kind of liked Desolation Row.”

“He did Desolation Row?!”

“What was that song about buffalo?”

“What song about buffalo?”

“He said it was about buffalo before he started. I heard it clearly. He said, ‘This is a song about buffalo.’”

(Ohmygod! The web is amazing. 16 years later I can confirm he really did do a song about buffalo! And he did do Desolation Row, too, although not Like a Rolling Stone - that was a hypothetical example.)

Sebadoh, The Metro, 1999. Probably should have been a great show. The three songs I got to hear were certainly pretty good. Unfortunately I was talking to Mel beforehand in Alexander’s, and she had an abstract Swatch watch which she completely misread, so we missed almost the whole thing. They broke up a couple of months later.

Cat Power supported and backed by Mick Turner and Jim White of the Dirty Three, Thirroul Beaches, 1999. Yes, the worst concert of all time. It should have been one of the best.

I feel bad that Chan has two spots in my five worst concerts, particularly as she has such a reputation for giving bad shows. I should say that I’ve seen her 3 and ¼ times, and she’s only been bad once – the previously discussed Newtown gig. This was the ¼ time, and it wasn’t her fault.

I was so excited about this show! It was bizarre that it was even taking place. Back before Cat Power were huge, she did this tour of Australia with the two talented people from the Dirty Three. And for some reason, they were playing at a local pub near my home in Austinmer. It wasn’t a place known for gigs; it was taking place in a seriously tiny back room.

But somehow I missed the important piece of information that that it started – I don’t know why – at six thirty. So I got there at 8.30, expecting a great night, and caught two or three songs before the whole thing ended.

My friend – who hadn’t even been into Cat Power until I got her into them – was also there. And afterwards I went and saw her. She said, “You missed a great show, man.”

I asked what she was doing now – I was still ready for an evening. She said she was just going home.

So I went home, very disapointed with the evening.

The next time I saw my friend, she said to me, “Wow! You missed a great night the other night.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“We stayed at the bar afterwards. And we were drinking with Chan and Mick and Jim!” (They were on first name terms, now, it seemed.)

“You were?!” I said.

“Yeah! And we stayed out with them really late. And guess what! After the bar closed, we all went to Austinmer pool. And we went midnight skinny dipping with Chan Marshall!”

“…”

“What’s the matter?”

“…”

Worst gig ever. I couldn’t listen to Cat Power for two years after that.

Anyway, what’s your best and worst?

posted by Nicholas @ 5:29 PM 3 comments

Today it's mood C

I haven't really been absent from this blog. If you had sat at your computer and constantly reloaded this page for the last week you could have read a variety of odd posts that I put up for an hour or so, then deleted. I've been going through a period of blog angst that will not be unfamiliar to those who read the old version of this blog. NRSR mark 2 - the resolutely impersonal version - was supposed to avoid these problems!

My angst has had two causes. One is that I haven't been happy with my prose. I find it hard enough to write about politics and economics at all; trying to do so with style and elegance seems beyond my abilities. Clarity is all I can hope to achieve, and very often I know I don't achieve it.

The other problem has been that when I write about such things I focus inevitably on things that make me angry, which makes me feel like I come across far too negatively. So I'm going to try to note things I approve of, as well as things that send me demented.

So, the good: well, I like it that Obama seems to want to pick a "team of rivals" as his cabinet and advisors. I said in my Obama-critical post that I distrusted polititians who seemed to seriously believe in a Christian god; that I thought it showed a lack of intellectual rigour. By contrast, picking people with different views suggests the opposite. The Bush years have shown the folly of a president who surrounds himself with people of identical viewpoints.

Unlike most people, I thought the G20 communique was pretty good! I mean with Bush banging the drum for rampant free market capitalism, Sarkozy wanting to regulate pi to 3, and even Rudd holding typically resolute on populist issues such as executive compensation, I expected much worse (yeah, that's me being positive...). The final document supports free trade, asks for regulation to correct market failures and no more, commits its signatories to not erecting trade barriers, and reaffirms support for action on climate change and a recommitment to the Millennium Goals. Hey, that's all my ideology! Good one, G20ers!

On the bad side, I think Henry Paulson is the most dangerous man in the universe. One doesn't need to understand economics to read his explanation of his actions in the New York Times and conclude that this is a man way out of his depth. Particularly disturbing is this sentence: "The answer to the second question is that more access to lower-cost mortgage lending is the No. 1 thing we can do to slow the decline in the housing market and reduce the number of foreclosures." Wow! It's not so much that he's wrong as that he can say that without any sense of irony at all. Maybe he could bring in an exciting new system in which anybody can get a cheap home loan without even showing proof of income, and then to help manage the risk, they could bundle those loans together and sell them on the free market!

Today markets in the US and Australia have reached new records lows. I shouldn't try to offer explanations, really; nobody has the answer and I know less than most who comment on these things. Depending on my mood I drift between three explanations for what is going on now. Either a) it's not about mortgage backed securities, credit default swaps, and excessive leverage anymore; people are just panicking. b) there's nothing to worry about - the world is just shedding a lot of "fictitious wealth" that was based not on economic fundamentals but on bubble economies. or c) we're heading for deflation, a liquidity trap, a run on US treasuries, and it's time to get a good seat on the breadline. Today I'm leaning towards explanation C.

Getting back to this blog, I'm sorry that so many of these posts are dull, particularly for people who aren't all that interested in the things I've been writing about. But I've realised that there is no point trying to do this in a completely impersonal way, so if you have some patience I might have some more interesting and personal stories to tell soon - assuming, that is, that something interesting and personal happens to me sometime soon. I am as always at the mercy of both my Muses and my moods.

ADDED: Thinking about it, one probably can't get a seat on a breadline. I suspect you have to stand.

posted by Nicholas @ 11:47 AM 0 comments

Another pro-green, pro-free trade, anti-Rudd and -Obama rant (ps: I don't like Nathan Rees, either)

Al Gore's plan to start solving the world's climate problems while simulataneously dealing with the economic crisis is definitely worth reading. He makes the point that if you're going to be stimulating the economy through infrastructure spending anyway, you should take the opportunity to build the smart grid.

I've been reading about the smart grid recently in the book I mentioned in an earlier post: Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded. When Friedman writes about the smart grid, it's incredibly exciting; the Wikipedia entry I linked to is pretty dull by comparison, but sorry, I'm just not in a mood to explain in detail why it's such a great idea. If you're interested in such things, the Friedman book is fantastic, by the way. (Really quick explanation - a two way grid, so you can sell electricity into the grid as well as taking from it; spot prices for electricity, rather than an average price, so that at times of peak demand correspondingly "smart appliances" can either shut down, or alternatively return energy to the grid at a profit to the consumer. Thus eliminating the stupid system whereby electricity companies build power stations to handle the demand on the couple of hottest days of the year. There are other benefits as well.)

In contrast, Obama's first priority seems to be stimulating the economy by protecting the US car industry. So much for those who said he was just saying protectionist things to get elected. Kevin Rudd - it almost goes without saying, doesn't it? - is going to do the same thing.

Anyway, thinking about Al Gore made me remember the 2000 election. I'm not sure I followed it that closely at the time - what I seem to remember is that both Gore and Bush were seen as bland centerists (woah!), Bush ran as the compassionate conservative (double woah!), Al Gore ran from Bill Clinton, and Bush "won" mostly because people thought he would represent a return to morality (as many woahs as you want). Remembering this leads me to conclude that a US presidential campaign is a pretty useless way of judging what sort of president a candidate will be. So I'm going to lay off Obama, at least until he takes office. I don't hate him, he's a smart guy of decent sentiment and mostly reasonable positions, and I hope he'll be the president we all want. Still, I wish Al Gore had put his hand up. How lucky the US is to have such a passionate voice arguing for sensible and achievable solutions to global warming! The Australian Greens are so retarded. I mean, I vote for them, but boy are they dumb. Sixties hippies. I'm yet to hear the words "smart grid" even mentioned in Australia.

Back to the car industry - I just don't understand this continual propping up of the auto industry, both here and in the US. For as long as I can remember, in both places, car manufacturing has been a struggling industry. It's not hard to work out why - this sort of heavy manufacturing can be done so much more cheaply in developing countries than in first world countries like Australia and the US. Is this going to change sometime soon? This isn't a bad thing. Moving such industries to developing countries means jobs for really poor people who don't have the luxury of a welfare safety net, and cheaper cars for people in developed countries. In really brief form, that's why free trade is a good thing.

There's a bit of greenwashing - supporting hybrid cars - in both plans, but greenwashing is all it is. If you really want to support the development of hybrids, there are better ways. Increase petrol taxes (yeah, right), or alternatively give a tax credit or rebate to people who purchase hybrids.

But while I disagree with combating the economic crisis by giving money to car companies, it is still conventional Keynesian economics. As long as you stimulate, it doesn't mattter a huge amount what you do with the money. I wish governments would put it to something useful instead of just protecting their voter base, but what can you do?

I mentioned a while back how economists, when you hear them asked about the possibility of another great depression, tend to laugh and say "No way. We know so much more now." What they'd say we know is that in downturns, governments should increase spending. The thing you definitely don't do - the classic mistake of the Depression - is increase taxes and cut government spending. Despite my criticisms, both Rudd and Obama know this.

To what dark corner of the world would one have to go to find a government so stupid, so incompetent, as to not understand this? Where could one find a government that would actually increase taxes and cut spending while heading into a massive financial crisis?

Ladies and gentlemen: Nathan Rees.

posted by Nicholas @ 7:17 PM 2 comments

Obama revisited

I'll leave that previous post up, but on reflection I think it wasn't the right time for it. I had an email exchange with Tim, some of which I reproduce below, that makes me feel like I missed the real import of the moment a bit.

Tim's comments in bold:

for some reason it didn't appear on your first fake 'obama wins' post so i have to send it to you

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!

posted by Nicholas @ 10:49 PM 8 comments

Obama really defeats McCain

Obama won, and I am glad. If I had a vote in the US elections, I would have voted for him.

But... I don't know whether this is the right moment to voice my reservations or not, but I will anyway. To use an American expression, I never drank the Kool-Aid with Obama. I was for Hillary in the primaries - I thought she seemed more practical. I have hope, and I certainly want change, but I really hope that Obama stops talking about those things now, and starts coming up with real and sensible solutions to America and the world's problems.

I still don't really know who Obama is. Perhaps it's just my geographic distance. I see three Obamas - there is the intellectual, left-leaning policy wonk, and the Oprah-esque guy who talks about change and hope and his troubled upbringing a lot, and there is the Republican caricature of a tax-and-spend Socialist who pals around with Bill Ayers. I'm OK with two of those, and it's not the ones you would think. I'm OK with a tax-and-spend Socialist who hangs around with Bill Ayers! I kind of like the Weather Underground - to me, they were not terrorists but left wing revolutionaries. Given their time, given the Vietnam war and the assasinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, given a series of left-wing revolutions around the world, they formed an incorrect but to my mind reasonable opinion that revolution was the way forward, and had an admirable courage in seeking to put what they believed into action. And the only people ever killed by Weatherman were, um, Weathermen... (I'd like Bill Ayers as Secretary of Homeland Security! Hey, he's qualified in a way no other candidate is likely to be. That's a half-serious if unlikely suggestion.)

The one who bothers me is the Oprah-esque guy who sounds great but doesn't have policy solutions. What little Obama policy to have been made clear to me causes me some problems, and some questions. Specifically:

1. Is he for free trade? He's made some statements that suggest he isn't. I hope that if he does have doubts about free trade that people like Warren Buffett can talk him out of it, as the last thing the world needs now is a revival of protectionism. Dan tells me he's really from the University of Chicago school of economics, which is quite different - that's Milton Friedman economics, which is waaay different. Where does he stand on this very important question?

(As an aside, the one bum note I thought Obama made in his victory speech was when he suggested we were in the middle of the worst financial crisis in a hundred years. What happened to "since the Great Depression"? Is he just engaging in excessive rhetoric, as I suspect, or does he believe that to be literally the case?)

2. Is he an isolationist? I find his position on Iraq troubling. Specifically, the question I want answered is this - if pulling out of Iraq was likely to precipitate a major civil war with potentially hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualites, but would save a much smaller number of American lives, where would he stand? Doesn't America, having taken the incorrect decision to invade in the first place, now have a moral obligation to the Iraqi people not to leave before the country is stable, however long that takes?

Similarly, where does he stand on using American military might to confront horrible atrocities committed in other parts of the world? As a "child of Africa", what about the Sudan, what about Somalia, where this week The Guardian reported that a 13 year old girl who had been raped was stoned to death for adultery?

3. What policy solutions does he really have on global warming? With a Democratic Congress and Senate, will he make the difficult decisions which are required, or not? During one of the debates he suggested that he was for a Manhattan Project-style government backed solution. I used to be for this, but in the book I've been reading - Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded - Friedman argues convincingly that this is the wrong solution, and that the Manhattan Project and Apollo missions were specific cases of massive projects with a single customer and no immediate economic opportunities. Friedman instead suggests a market-based approach, and urges among other things a massive increase in US taxes on petrol. Will Obama push that sort of an agenda? I somehow doubt it.

4. Not a policy question, but I always have reservations about politicians who seem to seriously believe in a Christian god - it suggest to me a failure of intellectual rigour. I understand that in the US, politicians have to at least nominally profess their faith, but some seem to be going through the motions, and others don't, and Obama seems to really believe it.

Enough of my doubts, it's probably a day for celebration. He can't be worse than George W.

posted by Nicholas @ 4:25 PM 0 comments

I remember Goosey Goose

A long time ago, in the execrable year of 2002, while I was down at Austinmer, I returned from a walk on the beach one day and announced to my father, "There is some sort of weird bird in Austinmer pool."

"It's a goose," he said.

The goose - known variously as Austin, Goosey, and Charles - had arrived on the beach some weeks before and had happily set up residence at the southern end of the beach, spending time in the pool and on the rock platform there. Contrary to its racial stereotype it did not appear foolish, but instead possessed, on the occasions I saw it, an austere and haughty dignity.

Its welfare was investigated by the RSPCA, who pronounced it a domestic goose or gander of undetermined sex. They had no explanation as to how it had arrived on the beach, but said it was healthy, and as it appeared happy, there was no reason to move it.

The goose was quickly and informally adopted by the local community. The Illawarra Mercury ran several stories on it, quoting local residents. John Roach gave insights on Goosey's habits:

"It's generally very placid, although when old Bill Redfern brought some bread and scraps down to it yesterday it got a bit feisty... It alternates between thinking its a seagull and a dog. One morning it'll be standing among the gulls and the next it'll be chasing them like a dog." He also said, "Of a morning you see webbed footprints where it's been goose-stepping up and down the beach."

Locals looked out for the goose. A woman who ran a local takeaway store claimed to the Mercury that she fed it three times a day with goose food. (This woman was never so kind to customers, in my experience, so I'm not sure what to make of this claim.) Goosey provided a lot of happiness to a lot of people.

On the 10th of October, the Mercury reported that fears had been temporarily held for the safety of Goosey. One morning it was not in its usual place near Austinmer pool. It was soon spotted wandering the suburban streets of Austinmer. Concerned residents tried to shepherd it towards the relative safety of Glastonbury Gardens, but upon being approached Goosey took flight, and headed back to its usual digs near the pool.

Still, residents were becoming concerned - some thought Goosey had grown thinner in recent weeks.

Austinmer beach gets busy in the summer, and perhaps that plays a part in the mysterious fate of Goosey. On the 11th of December, the Mercury reported:

Austinmer Beach residents are mourning the loss of their pampered community pet, Goosey. His many mates fear a loathsome opportunist has swiped the handsome black and white bird for the Christmas buffet. Goosey (pictured) was last seen downing a peanut butter sandwich at the beach on Sunday afternoon ... The Golyas have led a search party to nearby beaches but there have been no sightings.

Residents got together and offered a $400 reward for information leading to the whereabouts of Goosey. The Mercury reported that an unidentified person had seen Goosey being bundled into a car. It was popularly supposed that tourists - probably the much-despised Westies - were resposible.

Despite the reward, nothing more was seen of Goosey. On the web he exists in the collective consciousness in the form of a Myspace group - The Austi Goose Memorial Group, in a painting by artist Wendi Reis (reproduced below), and now in this blog post. It is probably foolish and sentimental to believe that a goose needs a permanent internet memorial, but nevertheless, I just wanted to say, I remember Goosey Goose.


Goosey in happier times

posted by Nicholas @ 6:46 PM 0 comments

Obama Defeats McCain

Heh. Just to freak you all out I am jumping the gun, Chicago Tribune style.

posted by Nicholas @ 5:24 PM 0 comments

This is a con

I've been reading the Treasury modelling on the impact of the government's carbon trading scheme - or Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, as they like to call it - because that's what I do.

I was about halfway through it before I spotted the appalling piece of slight-of-hand that has been used. I'll try to explain as clearly as I can, but stick with me, as it is a little complex:

The IPCC has said that the world has to stabilise its atmospheric carbon levels at around 450 parts per million to avoid potentially catastrophic consequences. I won't go into all the consequences of stabilising at higher levels - you've heard them all before. Read the IPCC report if you're interested. Just understand that anything higher than that is really, really scary.

So, the treasury has modelled four scenarios, two based on the government's proposed CPRS, and two based on Ross Garnaut's scenarios. The four models are, in the report, known as CPRS-5, CPRS-15, Garnaut-10, and Garnaut-25. Respectively, they look at stabilising carbon levels at 550ppm, 510ppm, 500ppm, and 450ppm.

So you will hear - you are already hearing - a lot from Rudd, Swan et al about how we can achieve our carbon reduction goals at little cost. And the report shows that all four scenarios are quite cheap in terms of GDP.

HERE'S THE CATCH - the CPRS scenarios use a realistic assumption, that Australia as a first world country, in accordance with the commonly understood principle of differentiated responsibility, will take on a greater role in immediately reducing its carbon emissions, allowing the developing world time to catch up.

The Garnaut model, on the other hand, assumes unified world action in 2013 to reduce emissions, with worldwide emissions eventually being assigned equally on a per capita basis. The big advantage to this model, from Australia's point of view, is that as Australia's population is likely to grow significantly in future years, our carbon reductions as a country need not be so stringent. Unfortunately, only Garnaut is proceeding on this assumption - the rest of the world isn't. The rest of the world thinks that the developed world needs to act first to reduce emissions, and that the developing world will continue to increase its emissions in the near future as it industrializes.

Here's the point - and it's really, really significant. The unlikely Garnaut scenario is the only model in this treasury analysis that allows for a stabilisation at 450ppm. The CPRS scenarios - the realistic scenarios - don't consider the possibility of stabilisation at 450ppm. They examine stabilisation at 510ppm and 550ppm. Presumably, it would cost too much, and the Rudd government doesn't want to deal with questions about how much it would really cost Australia to play its part in stabilising atmospheric carbon levels at a point that is not catastrophic.

To put it as simply as I possibly can: the Rudd government has not bothered to model a realistic scenario for reducing carbon emissions in order to stabilise atmospheric carbon at an acceptable level. If they did, it would presumably show that it might actually cost a little bit to achieve that. And they're worried the public might not like that. They don't want to get caught having to answer the question "Do you want to fuck up the planet, or would you rather have Working Families have to pay significantly more for their electricity bills?"

They didn't even model it. They didn't ask the question. They don't want to know the answer.

But you probably won't hear this anywhere else other than on this blog - the Labor party won't tell you, the Liberals won't suggest a more stringent target than Labor is advocating, and the Greens are too stupid to understand economic modelling and will just say that all the proposals are inadequate. Go read it for yourself: Section 2.2, The Scenarios and Assumptions.

ADDED: I was probably (certainly?) a little presumptuous in assuming nobody else would notice this particular deception. Marian Wilkinson in the Herald today makes much the same points I did, and Tony Jones, god bless him, gave Penny Wong a pretty hard going-over on Lateline last night, making the problem clear by focussing on how the proposed emissions scenarios would mean the death of the Great Barrier Reef, and trying to ask Penny if she was comfortable with that? (She evaded, naturally.) In contrast, Kerry O'Brien's interview of Rudd last night was so dewey-eyed that even Angela Bishop would have thought it a soft interview. Instead of asking Rudd any difficult questions, he took the time to ask Rudd how he was going, handling so many tough problems - surely no human could manage it? Even Rudd seemed a little surprised, and had to scramble in his bag of cliches for a response, eventually settling on "Well, I don't know what you are recommending - a cup of tea, a bex, and a quick lie down."

posted by Nicholas @ 9:58 PM 0 comments