The State Transit Authority’s own figures show the number of people travelling without a ticket or with the incorrect ticket has shot up by more than 40 per cent in the past year.

Is this true? Unfortunately it’s contradicted by the very next paragraph:

From March 1 to May 31, 2008, officers from the STA’s Revenue Protection Unit inspected 10,151 buses, fined 2628 passengers and cautioned 1590 others. In the same period this year, they inspected 14,134 buses, fining 3780 passengers and cautioning 1857 others.

So the number of people fined has shot up, but the number of busses inspected has shot up by about the same amount, leaving the people fined per bus inspected figure unchanged at about 1 in 4.

If you add people fined to people cautioned, then the figure per bus has declined very slightly, so perhaps the number of people travelling without a ticket has fallen!

The Australian Hotels Association (AHA) says people should be forced to forfeit some of their annual leave if they do not take enough holidays.

The association says Australians are saving up too much money, while the tourism industry is floundering.

AHA chief executive Bill Healey says people should be forced to cut back their annual leave to 300 hours before each new financial year.

He says the amount of leave accrued by Australians is a liability for businesses.

“There’s $31 billion on business balance sheets,” he said.

“There’s 121 million days of leave that are sitting there and we want Australians to take that leave and to go out and enjoy our great destinations and spend some money, because that’s what’s going to keep the wheels of the economy turning.”

So Mr. Healey would like the government to impose intrusive regulations on Australians for the benefit of his members.

Of course there are legitimates reasons why an employer might wish to restrict the amount of leave their employees accrue, and they should be allowed to restrict them. An employer might believe that their employees are more productive when they take regular holidays, or might not want them on leave for long periods. That decision should be up to individual employers, not the government.

But points to Mr Healey for stating correctly (in accounting terms) that accrued leave is a ‘liability’ for businesses, leaving the implication that it is also a ‘liability’ in the common sense, i.e. a problem that something should be done about.

Not the first or the last rent-seeker inspired by the GFC.

John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

Future Human 1: “What is your name?”

21st Century Human: “Jake — what happened to me?!?”

Future Human 2: “You have been frozen for 300 years”

Jake: “Thanks for thawing me out — what are your names?”

FH1: “We have chosen names belonging to highly esteemed humans from the 20th century, to make you feel comfortable. You may call me ‘Adolf Hitler’ and my colleague ‘Josef Stalin’”.

FH2: “Do those names comfort you?”

Jake: “Not exactly…”

FH1 (to FH2): “Odd — my research indicates that the person depicted on his garment — ‘Che Guava’ I believe — was of a similar temperament to our namesakes.”

Jake (to himself): “Must be some cultural misunderstanding…”

FH2 (breaking an awkward silence): “You must be in need of nutrition”

Jake: “Yes! What’s on the menu?”

FH2: “My chef excels at preparing kitten — eaten live of course!”

Jake: “My sense of oneness with nature does not allow me to inflict such suffering on an innocent feline!”

FH2 (to FH1): “What is he talking about?”

FH1 (to FH2, chuckling): “Remember, Josef, 21st century humans had not yet mastered the ‘life force’ — Jake is without any protection from it.”

Jake: “What are you talking about? What’s the ‘life force’?”

FH1: “It is an emanation based on principles you would not comprehend, having an effect on the mind such as to produce the scruples you have evinced in respect of consuming juvenile examples of the crepuscular mammal known as Felis catus in a manner inflicting discomfort.”

FH2 (to FH1): “Adolf, it’s a myth that standards of vocabulary have declined in the last 300 years. Stop showing off.”

FH1: “In summary, the ‘life force’, which so many short sighted 21st century scientists scoffed at, is real, and produces a sense of connection with the rest of life and the universe which affects the mind’s perceptions of moral behaviour.”

FH2: “Fortunately, Jake, there were some people who did not dismiss the ‘life force’, and once science had confirmed its existence, we were able to control it. I can assure you that a widening of culinary practice has been the least of the changes which the removal of this effect has wrought on our society!”

Jake: “Now wait a minute — while I once believed in a life force such as you describe, a good friend (who incidentally was later elected first president of the planetary federation, and whose remains are preserved in a barrel of Johnny Walker Blue Label under Nelson’s Column) explained to me that it was impossible for a natural force to have such an effect on the mind!”

FH1 (sneering): “Really? And how did this primitive justify such an opinion?”

Jake: “It is well known that the phenomena of human consciousness appear only at a very high level in the brain’s structure, and are built on top of neural structures whose purpose cannot be discerned other than by correlating their activity to the expression of particular thoughts and emotions, so any force which influenced specific high level processes in a specific direction would need to be ‘aware’ of the structure of the human brain and mind to an implausible degree.”

FH1 (laughing heartily): “That argument is entirely correct! Perhaps your friend alone among 21st century humans possessed true intellect!”

FH1 (to FH2): “Despatch the recovery robots to the London glacier at once — this would be a prize beyond price — I only have 2 litres of Johnny Walker blue left.”

FH1 (to Jake): “Describe your friend’s personal hygiene? — anyway, despite that argument being completely correct, your friend suffered from a failure of the imagination.”

Jake: “So the life force does exist? But that’s implausible!”

FH1: “But you should start believing in implausible things once they have been proven to be true! Once the life force was proven to exist, we discovered it to be emanations from a device left by the alien race who created humanity, buried deep in the mantle of Earth. We speculate that it was designed as an ecological control to force humanity to coexist with other species.”

(Jake is speechless)

FH2: “Of course Adolf, the genetics of our tastebuds have proven more effective in persuading us to keep other species around!”

(FH1 and FH2 laugh and slap each other on the back)

FH1: “Once we had discovered the source, blocking it was an easy matter — let us assist you”

(FH2 produces what appears to be a conical tinfoil hat, already a part of their ostentatiously futuristic costumes, and places it upon Jake’s head)

FH1: “Is that better?”

Jake: “Well, I do feel a bit peckish.”

FH2: “Great!”

Jake: “Can we have some tabbies?”

FH2 (calling): “Fred… get some tabbies!”

It’s a well constructed hardcover.

The negative points are: - It has an ‘inky’ smell. - The paper is thinner than usual, so you can see the printing on the other side of the page.

Neither is a real problem.

Apparently this means: “Excellent management guidelines several times to enhance the combat effectiveness”

I don’t know if the translation is inaccurate or the subject is poorly written.

It reminds me of the apocryphal story about the translation software which when used from English to Russian and back again translated “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” into “The Vodka is good but the spam is raw”.

I was doing some telephone support trying to reattach it to her wireless network tonight. I was ultimately unsuccessful, but I did learn two reasons why HP laptops suck.

1. HP has their own ‘wireless assistant’ wizard, with a plethora of confusing options, so even my limited knowledge of Windows network configuration was useless.
2. The laptop has a wireless on/off switch on its front. This switch was in the off position, but the software couldn’t tell that. All it could say was ‘please check the network switch’ — and it didn’t show a picture giving the switch’s location. I had to Google and then describe the location over the phone. It’s a hardware switch when it should be a software switch, and to add insult to injury, its state isn’t even visible to the software!

It may also self select an interesting group of people — I wonder what a version of Slashdot which only those people knew about would be like?

I’m not sure whether the promoters primarily make their money from investors or customers, but it seems that there’s enough money in it to keep a steady stream of ‘inventions’ coming.

The press (or ‘mainstream media’ as us bloggers call it) loves the ‘Aussie innovation’ angle, so I’m pleased that the Sydney Morning Herald has got a grip and has published a series of many critical articles.

Firepower have now threatened to sue blogger Daniel Rutter, a step which I think they will find counterproductive in the age of Google.

The Herald has treated another magic fuel additive completely differently — again, see Dan for the details. An initial uncritical puff-piece, followed by a mysterious two-stage withdrawal of the article, with no real description of the reasons for doing so.