Political fallout

Marin raised an interesting point in the comments section yesterday - Australia has a compulsory voting policy, and that skews the political landscape and changes the way that the parties market themselves.

Australia has a 95% electoral turnout rate, the highest in the world. The UK (where voting is optional) has a 76% electoral turnout rate. From my experience of living in both countries the level of political interest is roughly the same, which means that around 20% of Australian voters are turning up purely because they have to and not because they want to. The electoral role for Australia stands at approximately 14.5 million, which means that just under 3 million people are standing in line at the polling booth not because they feel strongly about the way the country is run and want to make a difference but merely because they're avoiding a $40 fine and a stern letter.

At the last election there was an overall gap of approximately 1 million votes between the two major parties. So that apathetic voter population has the power to decide who will run the country. And to get that vote, the parties abandon policy (anyone who cares enough to read up policy has probably already made their mind up) and resort to crass advertising tactics, soundbites, threats & bribes. Given that it's estimated that the next election could cost the Australian public more than $100m, the most effective campaigning tool for the ALP could be to do no advertising before the election but just have the candidates hand out $50 bills to people standing in line on polling day. After all who's not going to vote for a guy that just gave them $50?

In keeping with this theme, here's today's musical choice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkVijd9g_Hk

Incidentally this clip was buried in the middle of the Tony Abbot 'blooper reel' in yesterday's post, but it's worth highlighting. Welcome to your future Australia...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amUNEsSdy_g

It's a political circus...

Three years ago the democratically elected Prime Minister of Australia was ousted from his position by a coterie of backroom boys worried that some of his policies were upsetting the mining companies by threatening to *gasp* request that some of their profits get diverted away from the boardroom and into the Australian economy via the tax office.  This was causing some (corporate funded) bad publicity in the run-up to an election and so he had to go.

Fast forward three years - his replacement has weathered a tough hung election and has somehow managed to keep the reigns of power via a loose affiliation of Labor (sic) and independent MPs. However an election is coming and she seems to be running out of ideas to keep the voting public entertained, and so last night the knives were out once more. Gillard "the Pretender" is out and Rudd "the incumbent" is back in again, although this time the roles are reversed & Rudd is the one that is ousting the elected official. So in essence you don't vote for a Prime Minister if you vote for the ALP, you vote for the party and some people you may never even know the name of will decide who gets the top job. Based on either the responses from opinion polls or the positions offered for the service, depending on your level of cynicism.

All of this would be funny if it wasn't for this man, the mad monk who is looming in the wings and waiting to ascend to the top step come the next election.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB7cVFY_LCg

Yes, this right-wing, excessively conservative Christian homophobe who's only policies seem to be denying those of the opposition - that's when he can remember the scripted lies that his team have put together for him to parrot out - will almost certainly be our next prime minister.

If politics is a circus then all we seem to get are the clowns.
  

Pave 1, carbon 0

I was in Melbourne for the prestigious 'Melburn-Roobaix', an homage to the Paris-Roubaix bike race. The ride takes in a bakers dozen of paved/cobbled sections of Melbourne's back alleys, and you get the map when you register. It's a completely unsanctioned event which attracts thousands of riders who meander through the northern suburbs of Melbourne, thronging every cafe and pub on the way. It's a fantastic event, although I managed to leave my camera memory card in the computer so I don't have many pictures.

I do have this - the reason why my ride finished prematurely

My fork has a carbon steerer (the tube that goes from the forks through the headtube and which the bars bolt on to). It's a second-hand fork that I've had for 6 years so it's had a good life but I think the combination of a long life, the journey down and the repetitive vibration of the cobblestones proved too much. Luckily it happened when I was climbing at low speed - I stood up, pulled on the bars and there was a horrible cracking & ripping sound coupled with a yielding sensation. I somehow rolled off the front of the bike and escaped with a mildly bruised elbow. I was giggling when I stood up and realised what had happened because it could have been a lot worse - if it had happened on a downhill I could have lost my teeth, my nose or even broken my neck...

Views of Melbourne

 Under the Clocks

 The bay on a dead calm morning

Frost on the boards

Luna Park

 Breakfast in Ackland St

 Rugged up

 Obligatory bike shot

VACC - my first 'real' job in Australia, temping for the insurance company finding files. It was here that I decided that I was going to move to Australia

 A firepit in Federation Square

 Cold beers

 Weaving through the pedestrians at Southbank

 Docklands

Beer!

Under the clocks

Off to Melbourne today for a weekend of bikes & beer - the bike is nicely tucked up inside its bag, has been checked in and hopefully will make it there intact...

And there's only one song we could play today....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZVZeGpD-zk

Getting rid of the shakes...

What do you think of the two videos below? The first one is the drone video from yesterday as directly recorded by the tablet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx7vOMf1cqg&feature=player_embedded

 

The next one has been processed with 'Videopad Pro', a free (for home use) video editor with an anti-shake feature.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkJe3Kp7frQ&feature=player_embedded

 

Can you tell the difference? And if so which do you prefer?

Droning on

I've got a new toy, a Parrot AR 2 drone, and it is awesome

It's a remote-controlled quadcopter, which is cool enough in its own right, but the technology behind it is really innovative. For a start it has a wireless router on-board, so you connect to it and control it via an app that you download to a tablet or smart phone.

There are a few different control options for the drone - you can control it via a virtual joystick by pushing your thumbs around on the surface of the tablet. But you can also choose to control it by tilting the tablet - the drone will then tilt and move in the direction to match. And you can choose relative or absolute control - in absolute control the drone will move in the direction that is indicated regardless of its orientation. In other words if you want it to go left you direct it to move left, and this works whether the drone is facing towards you or away from you. 

The control is also a little different to a standard remote controlled toy because if you aren't steering it it will attempt to hold position, so it will try to correct itself when its being blown around by the wind. It also uses downward-directed ultrasonic sensors to hold the set altitude above ground level, so if you fly 'up' a slope it will gain height to maintain the same above-ground altitude. Not sure how that works if you fly 'off' something like a bridge, I'll need to find out.

All of the photos are taken with it wearing its 'inside' shell, which helps protect the propellers when it flies into something (which it seems to do fairly regularly with me on the controls). That also makes it very susceptible to wind, and in my trial runs it was pretty gusty and rough. You can see this in the attached film, recorded on the tablet via the inbuilt internal HD camera which is streamed in real time directly to the screen. How cool is that??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xx7vOMf1cqg

The video quality is a bit poor so I'm looking at an alternative recording option (watch this space!). Once I get the controls sorted I want to try filming people on dirt jumps from the air or chasing someone down singletrack. Any other ideas?

Stone Monkey

I've been down in Sydney again this week, and after conversations over the weekend and during a quiet evening I started thinking about some of the climbing videos that we used to watch - badly worn VHS copies of copies that were taken arond from party to party and always played to death. Yup, climbers are obsessive like that. One of the all-time great was 'Stone Monkey' featuring Johnny Dawes back in 1986 which heralded a new waves of gritstone climbing in the magnificent Peak District. Here's an edited copy that condenses down some of the best bits - stick with the slightly dodgy dream sequence, it gets a lot more serious later on. Enjoy!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK8goXiIPDU

Can you do more?

One of the funny things about juggling is that however good the tricks you can pull out with three balls, someone always asks if you can do four. I can't, but apparently if you can then people will ask if you can do five. And so on. You can imagine someone watching this and immediately asking 'can you do 13?'

In some ways it's the same with homebrew. One of the most common questions is 'do you distill as well?', and in my case the answer is no. I'm sometimes tempted to investigate the joys of whiskey making but, apart from it being illegal, there's always the chance of this happening. With a batch of homebrew beer the smell of a dodgy brew is usually enough to convince you not to drink it, although this also happens with some of my more experimental beers. And no-ones ever died from a hop overdose. Yet.....

The perfect pub garden?

I miss the UK style pub gardens, and our new house gave us the opportunity to recreate one overlaid with our own themes. So last weekend we had a small gathering, luckily on the only dry day of the long weekend. Come Sunday afternoon the seating was prepared

The bar & beer pump was ready to go, pulling a homebrewed English-style session ale

and the tables were laid with bike books, magazines and the odd 'wierd tales' publication

The doily looks very delicate, but underneath it was a bowl of beer-candied bacon. It didn't that it was that good, but it was fun to greet people with 'hello, thanks for coming - want some bacon?'

The hand pump (thanks Clinton) was a winner

 and as the afternoon progressed the toys came out

before it was time for a snacks - slow cooked smoked ribs

As evening fell it was time to pull out the firetoys - there are a few videos around but I can't embed them, hopefully this will work as a link though. Thanks to Fly for editing out the bits where I drop stuff or burn myself...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaeKfNkK95o

Thanks to all for coming, it was a truly fun afternoon and I had a ball. Liz lost me during the clean-up, and later found me asleep in the hammock clutching a half eaten chicken leg and smiling to myself. Time to start planning the next one...
 

Half Man Half Biscuit

It's easy to write off HMHB as a 'comedy band' but over the last 30 years and 13 albums they've proved themselves to be something far far better. Their music has progressed from post-punk through to blues & folk via classic 90's indie jangle and can probably best be described as 'Urban Folk'. And the lyrics are a strange blend that mix current affairs, petty urban-dwelling angst, arcane music references, popular television and football  They pillory the memes of the day in a way that requires at least three listens and generally a couple of google searches before you understand all of the references and realise that one of the people he's taking the piss out of is you.

There don't release videos, but there's plenty of uploaded tunes on Youtube along with compilation videos put together by fans. Here's a few to be going on with -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djIXYW9X3Qg

(CAMRA is the Campaign for Real Ale)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEag0ss9pFU

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glB6ZJfrEzs

Also worth listening all the way to the end to hear the late great John Peel speak

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kaOGsC1S1s

One that always makes me think of Marin, and I reckon you could make a good bike-based cover

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FR842KUaOw

I found this when I was looking for the other links - hadn't heard it before and it's awesome for the intensity, the guitar work, the sing-along chorus and of course the opening lyrics...another album to add to the 'Need to Buy' list