njptower's posterous

Oct 31 / 2:36pm

Infrastructure financing and government cowardice and opposition lies

Our society needs infrastructure so that we can go about our daily business. Electricity, water, transport (public, road and air), schools and hospitals are the principal examples of the areas where infrastructure is required to deliver services to the people.

Let's pick an oldy but a goody, Citilink, to examine some of the issues.

We, the people, needed a better(?) road system. Government decided not to provide us with the roads with our money, but chose the public-private partnership route. There was dodgy financing involved with stapled securities, special arrangements to "encourage" users to use the system and public guarantee of debt and income. The public sector, us, kept the risks and transferred the profits to the private sector.

The new road was tacked on to existing roads that we had paid for - we did not receive compensation for this.

The new water desalination is another example where the private sector is guaranteed income and we have to pay extra for the privilege.

It is government's responsibility to provide us with the fundamentals like water, however, they are frightened to do so because they would have to borrow to do this. And the opposition party of the day will bleat about inflicting debt on our children. So government says private sector is carrying the debt, but this is, in fact, extreme carelessness with truth. Government is guaranteeing the debt and paying the private company money so the private company can pay its interest bill and make a profit.

So, in reality, it is the government's debt, but without the debt appearing on the government balance sheet.

Debt is not necessarily bad, we all borrow to buy our homes, we even borrow to do renovations or extensions, and as long as we pay off that debt, we considered by banks and our friends and families as be eminently sensible.

But if government borrows to renew or increase infrastructure (effectively our home) then it is called irresponsible. It is not - the government is doing its job providing the essentials.

The misrepresentation that borrowing for infrastructure burdens our children with debt ignores the fact that the infrastructure has a lifespan. For the early part of its life, we are paying for it, then as our children get into the work force and use the item, then it is their turn to pay.

Conversely, with water, they are using the infrastructure without the means to pay for it when they are young, so at some stage they should pay for the water they consume.

The overall cost of the project via the private route has to be more costly to community in the long run because private sector has higher costs of borrowing and also has to ensure significant returns to their shareholders.

Public-private partnerships are flawed and a fraud on the community.

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Oct 28 / 1:04am

Bike Helmets

Police on bikes at the local station stopped a number of people for not wearing helmets. Fair enough, but then I considered the penalty these people faced, a fine of $50.

The riders, there were three of them, included a woman, probably in her fifties, who looked as though she may have been a pensioner - the bike was old, she was wearing a dress, and of course, no helmet.

Having been knocked off my bike and hitting the ground head first, I am glad I was wearing a helmet - the helmet shattered, I was concussed which is a far, far better result than skull shattered and dead! So I understand the value of helmets.

The less well-off would struggle to pay the fine - it represents a considerable slug of their income (most of which is probably not disposable anyway!).

My solutions:-

One, make the fine a percentage of income - the poor can afford the fine and if a highly paid person gets a high fine, well, you wonder why they are paid heaps when thy are patently stupid to not wear a helmet!

or

Two, just like cars with an unroadworthy sticker, the rider must present themselves at the local police station with a helmet (educative and not as expensive as the fine!) if it is their first offence, for subsequent nabbings, then hit them with the fine.

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Oct 27 / 3:30am

Now this is a ferris wheel

The photo is of the ferris wheel in Hiroshima - probably not made by the same Japanese company that built and is now unbuilding Melbourne's Southern Star wheel.

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Oct 26 / 7:12pm

Bikes and Buses or Bikes vs Buses

The old perennial of where pushbikes should be allowed has reared its head after one (and only one) cyclist in Sydney broke the law twice, once by riding in a prohibited place, a dedicated bus lane, and then punching the bus driver.

There is no excuse for either activity but the vehement condemnation of cyclists in general because of this clown has been predictably outrageous.

Cycling is one part of the total road transport mix, just like cars, motorbikes, trucks, buses, trams and pedestrians. We all want to get from A to B as quickly as possible, however, for the good of us all, we need to consider efficiency as well.

It is patently inefficient to use many single person carriers to transport workers to the workplace, large tracts of scarce CBD land are dedicated to housing these vehicles, the consumption of fuel as the cars crawl along at a snail's pace is great and contributes to increased greenhouse gases.

Better alternatives are having a more compact city so that commuting distances are reduced, car pooling, using public transport or getting fit and riding a bike.

The last option only really becomes viable when cycling's dangers are reduced - this requires ALL road users to show respect for each other.

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Oct 21 / 10:51pm

The disposable world

Next door's nature strip had flowers growing in it. I said to the wife, we should take cuttings, we didn't. Half an hour later, next door mowed nature strip including flowers - what a waste was our thought!

Hard rubbish collection day - saw some reasonable furniture being thrown away and it rained so the slightly imperfect furniture was rendered useless. I am sure that someone somewhere could have used the sofas and beds.

We should focus less on the new but rather re-invent, re-use and recycle.

I was inspired to write this after reading this set of rules

http://kittenflower.blogspot.com/2009/10/my-rules-to-live-by.html

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Oct 20 / 10:14pm

The Fall of Rome

No, not the song by Australian Crawl, but the poem by W H Auden.

I hadn't heard of this guy until an article/lecture by Mark Scott who delivered the A.N. Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism, 14th October, 2009 .

The poem is stunning, evocative of a society in decline and thought-provoking.

The Fall of Rome
by W. H. Auden

(for Cyril Connolly) The piers are pummelled by the waves; In a lonely field the rain Lashes an abandoned train; Outlaws fill the mountain caves. Fantastic grow the evening gowns; Agents of the Fisc pursue Absconding tax-defaulters through The sewers of provincial towns. Private rites of magic send The temple prostitutes to sleep; All the literati keep An imaginary friend. Cerebrotonic Cato may Extol the Ancient Disciplines, But the muscle-bound Marines Mutiny for food and pay. Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK On a pink official form. Unendowed with wealth or pity, Little birds with scarlet legs, Sitting on their speckled eggs, Eye each flu-infected city. Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, Silently and very fast.

The clerk defaces the business document in a way many feel like doing when thinking of the executives living in luxury while the wage-slaves toil on drudgery.

I am going to read more of Auden's works

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Oct 20 / 1:18am

Air and transport safety

I am a nervous flyer at the best of times but when I hear of Virgin's wheel problems today, Qantas's exploding gas bottles a while ago, I get very very nervous.

The airlines are cutting costs by cutting maintenance, but then, maintenance seems to be a declining priority in so many fields of transport. Trains have issues on an almost daily basis.

So how do executives deal with the issue, easy, they say they are doing their jobs cutting costs and increasing shareholder value.

I wonder how much value there is when the company is sued when a plane falls out of the sky. No problem, the execs who oversaw the deterioration of the fleet are long gone with their obscene golden handshakes.

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Oct 17 / 11:15pm

Under Water

I love this urban sculpture - it is at Caroline Springs, way out west
of Melbourne 28.9 k frrom CBD

But Eastlands, Ringwood to CBD by car is 28 km - hmmm

The west, the unexplored part of Melbourne

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Oct 16 / 9:39pm

Water (& money) down the gurgler

Plans are afoot to relax Melbourne's water restrictions. The water minister must be channelling Ken Bruce (who, as we know, "has gone completely mad").

We are wasting billions on a de-salination plant which is designed to increase greenhouse gases and pollute the coast down near Wonthaggi. Melbourne is stealing the water from north of the Great Divide (our food bowl) with a pipeline that has cut through reluctant landowners' properties.

The dams MAY get to the trgger point of 37.5% full which will mean moving to Stage 2 - you will be able to wash your car with a bucket, you can fill your swimming pool, and the big one:

RESIDENTIAL GARDENS

Manual watering systems that you turn on or off by hand can only be

used between 6am-8am and 8pm-10pm on alternate days.

Automatic watering systems that turn themselves on and off can

only be used between midnight-4am on alternate days.

Hand-held hoses fitted with a trigger nozzle can be used at any time

to water gardens.

Our gardens are being re-designed to be drought tolerant or to cope with grey water or recycled water. We divert the washing machine water to a tank outside, we wash vegetables in a bowl and save the water, we save the cold water before the warm water starts in the shower. We water with the hose in the 2 hour morning window on the Tuesday & Saturday.

Our flowers are coming along nicely, the vegetables, don't know yet, trees are looking good.

I am sure most people are doing likewise, so what is the imperative to allow dramatically increased use of water.

My policy would be to hold off on the relaxation of restrictions until we see our dams 70 to 80% full.

It is easier to maintain the discipline than to have it realxed then re-introduced as it inevitably will be.

UNLESS - the increased use of water is designed to drain the dams and artificially create a justification for the desal plant.

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Oct 15 / 5:36pm

A leafy view

On a cool spring day, the trees are showing their new leaves

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