The ABC joined the ranks of woomeisters by reporting on the views of the “Australian Vaccination Network”:

The Australian Vaccination Network lobby group says more testing of the swine flu vaccine needs to be done before it is given to the public. The Federal Government has ordered 21 million doses of the vaccine developed by CSL.

Unfortunately giving air time to these woomiesters just encourages them and that is not something our nationally-funded broadcaster should be doing.

The Australian Vaccination Network, despite its harmless sounding name, is a full blown Anti-vaxxer organisation.

If you look at their website, all pictures of babies and wildflowers, they just appear to be one of those mushy alternative medicine types, but when you read what they say in detail:

We believe it is a parent’s right to choose what’s best for their child…some would say that this is one of the most basic rules of any civilised society.

Vaccines have never been tested

The gold standard of medical science is the double blind crossover placebo study. This test has never been performed on any vaccine currently licensed in Australia. In an astounding leap of logic, contrary to all rules of science, vaccines are assumed to be safe and effective and therefore, it is considered to be unethical to withhold vaccinations for the purposes of testing them.

Vaccines can cause serious long-term side effects

According to medical reports, children are now less healthy than they have ever been before. More than 40% of all children now suffer from chronic conditions, something that was unheard of prior to mass vaccination.

Vaccines do not necessarily protect against infectious diseases

For the very real risk of both short and long-term side effects from vaccines, parents are asked to allow their children to be given vaccines that at best, will provide a temporary sensitisation to illnesses and at worst, can make their children more susceptible to both opportunistic and infectious illness. As evidenced by the recent whooping cough outbreak in SA, the only Australian state which actually records vaccination status in cases of infectious illness, 87% of all those who contracted whooping cough and whose vaccination status was known were fully and appropriately vaccinated.

Pharmaceutical companies have paid for almost all vaccine research to date

Just as the tobacco companies paid for corrupt and incorrect research which purported to show that tobacco and tobacco products were safe for human consumption, so too the pharmaceutical companies have paid for and produced almost all of the research into vaccines.

Some childhood illnesses have beneficial aspects and therefore, prevention may not necessarily be in the best interests of the child

Measles, for example, has been used in Scandinavian countries to successfully treat such autoimmune conditions as eczema and many studies have performed which show that children who do not contract measles naturally as a child are more likely to suffer from certain cancers later in life.

With lists like this it is not even clear where to start:

There is ample evidence vaccines are effective, mass vaccination helped eradicate smallpox, which once killed as many as every seventh child in Europe.

While claiming the need for serious testing of vaccines, AVN can make wild assertions that children are less healthy than every before (tell that to families of the 19th century with their child mortality rates) and that chronic conditions are associated with the rise of vaccinations.

Pretty much all drugs produced by Pharmaceutical companies are tested by those companies, are AVN suggesting that all pharmaceuticals be avoided?

The measles is good for you!

They just link misinformation together in a long line of false assertions. As the Australian Sceptics report they:

…ignores the fact that this is an open debate rather than the back-room conspiracy which it claims vaccine production and distribution to be. It is happy to quote scientists claiming this vaccine is not safe enough, while it usually claims that scientists are silent on the risks of vaccines. It provides publically-available statistics and information on side-effects while at the same time claiming that such information is not available.

This double standard is also shown in the AVN demanding a full scientific investigation of vaccine safety and efficacy while promoting homeopathic treatments that have been scientifically proven to have no efficacy beyond a placebo effect and no effective ingredients whatsoever.

The ABC reporting this rubbish is no different to them reporting the anti-psychiatrist viewpoints of the Scientologists.

You may have seen the reports that the PM swore at someone once, but I didn’t realise how serious it was until I read the report in the SMH:

The PM said in the presence of three female MPs: “I don’t care what you f***ers think,” News Limited has reported.

Three female MPs! Three! Blokes might be able to take that tough language stuff, but surely not female MPs?

Reading the weekend paper a few weeks ago, I came across this “advertisement”:

They are always interesting, these notes put in national newspapers, that are not adverts or job ads, indicating that some section of the community has some (at least what they perceive as) interesting information for the rest of us.

It is surprising that the ad does not really give you much information at all about the organisation. The only description is that the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood is “dedicated to understanding and ameliorating the human condition”. This unfortunately could be used to describe half the organisations in the world! The “human condition”, at least on plain reading, could cover most human traits: love, hate, addiction, depression, religion. They only other real pointer is the description of the defamation case that the article is about, one where the SMH apparently implied that the Foundation “placed demands on its members which tore families apart”. From that one could infer that it might be a religious organisation or other such organisation (although on closer inspection it is not, see below).

Nonetheless a visit to the organisation’s website does not really help to clarify matters. It mentions the court case above, a book called “Freedom”, and an interestingly a link to a discussion forum post that makes positive comments about someone called “Griffith”. This stood out a bit for a foundation website, this Griffith must somehow be central to the foundation.

The description of the FHA page adds little, although it does mention a Foundation Director, Jeremy Griffith. More information on him is available on wikipedia:

The FHA promotes and provides a forum for Griffith’s theory of human nature. Between the years 1975 and 1988 Griffith developed a theory which claims to explain human nature, good and evil and provide a way to a better life. Griffith’s theory developed from reflections on the nature of human beings as both loving and hateful, a state of being he refers to as the human condition. He also wished to develop an explanation for humanity’s destructive effect on the natural environment. In 1988 he established the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood as an organization to promote, support and discuss his theory.

The organisation has about 50 members who support the program of FHA, which seem to be based around the philosophical like writing of Jeremy Griffith.

The understanding of the human condition explains the difference between our instincts and intellect and the effect that difference has had on our behaviour. It describes how the anger and selfishness felt by humans is the result of these two factions within ourselves—the gene-based instinctive learning system struggling against the nerve-based intellect’s capacity to understand.

This conflict, which started some two million years ago when consciousness emerged, causes humans to live with an undeserved sense of guilt that is characterised by competition and aggression. Once guilt is removed by being explained—which the FHA says is now possible—the competition and aggression in humans naturally subsides.

He appear to use some aspect of biology to construct a theory around our instincts and intellect on how that can improve our understanding of our condition – and maybe provide guidance to future actions.

Without going into it deeper I am not sure how far this advances us. Dualism has been around for a long time.

Mother Jones, a US magazine, has an article about life in America at $195 a week. This is the income earned by a staff member at Wal-Mart $10.50 an hour:

Edick’s monthly take-home pay—about $800 at the time I visited—doesn’t go far either. She lives in a tiny apartment with a broken stove and mostly empty fridge that barely works. Rent and utilities run about $450 a month; when it’s cold outside, she often sets the thermostat to 50 degrees to lower her bill. Gas and car insurance cost another $160 or so, depending on prices at the pump. And then there are the doctor visits, covered only after a $1,000 deductible—plus medicines for a thyroid problem, chronic anxiety, and osteoporosis.

To balance the budget, Edick often skimps on food, some weeks spending little more than $10 on groceries, about one-quarter what the federal food stamp program calculates is needed for three “thrifty meals” a day. She patronizes the grimy discount stores whose prices run even lower than Wal-Mart’s, and can tick off their notable sales going back for months.

Poverty can occur in any country, any society, and it one of the great tragedies of America that it is so wide spread there. Edick is not the lowest paid American, the US Bureau of Labour Statistics produces a report on the lowest pad workers in America, the top five by occupation are:

2,602,950 food preparation and serving workers paid $8.03 an hour
575,510 fast food cooks paid $8.11 an hour
509,550 dishwashers paid 8.20
541,370 counter attendants, cafeteria and coffee shop workers at $8.57 an hour
401,070 Dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers $8.36 an hour

Source: Employment and wages for the 10 lowest paying occupation in the United States, May 2007

Poverty is a largely hidden tragedy in societies. It is largely addressable by governments and this is why it is a affliction that American could have cured. This is a society that has just spent $800b on conducted a completely unnecessary war in Iraq (and more on a largely unnecessary war in Afghanistan).

What should a country like America do? There are number of policies that would improve income distribution without much impact on the economy as a whole:

1. universal health care provided regardless of ability to pay
2. a progressive tax system include negative taxes for low income earners (ie a payment to low income earners)
3. a higher minimum wage (there is lots of debate in the economics field on the effect on minimum wages. A simple model of markets would suggest that raising the minimum wage will create unemployment, however the empirical evidence is quite mixed and there a strong arguments why it would not impact greatly on employment)

That wouldn’t solve poverty, but would go a long way.

I have not been through many recessions but my memory of the last recession, the one at the beginning of the nineties was that it was very Australia focussed. This one seems to be much more of a global phenomena. But maybe that is just how your memory works.

On looking, it appears my memory is wonky. The very first line of the Wikipedia entry for the Late 1980′s Recession is:

The recession of the early nineteen-nineties was an economic recession that hit much of the world in 1990-91.

As a prior St Kilda resident and property owner in St Kilda I have just completed my ballot paper for the St Kilda election.

I voted for a group called Unchain Port Phillip, a group based on Unchain St Kilda, which I discovered while searching the interweb about the candidates. While I had never heard of them before they did gel with my opposition to the proposed development of the St Kilda triangle.

The St Kilda triangle is a triangular parcel on land near the beach front of St Kilda (just next door to Luna Park), which currently contains the Palais Theatre and a lot of car parks.

From Google Maps it looks like this:

From the Unchain website it looks like this:

Why did I vote this way? It is not based on some kind of particularly lefty social justice viewpoint; to most of the soft left hippy St Kilda types I imagine I would be considered quite right wing, given my pro-free market stance. Our country wouldn’t be where it is without free-markets and an active business community.

But we do have a balanced economy with a private and a public sphere. One thing the early Victorian public administrators did in Melbourne was to set aside land for private use and land for public use, giving us the legacy of public parks that are distributed around Melbourne.

This balance between public and private space seems to have been abandoned in recent years such that public spaces are routinely turned over to completely or predominately commercial activities, and so the public sphere is continually diminished to our societies detriment.

I admit to no great knowledge of the detail of the triangle development, but it was clear from the media reports that it was to be another anonymous development of shops and bars and restaurants and cafes. Did anyone ever think of just turning it into a public park? That not every space that becomes available has to be turned over to a developer?

This is all ironic given the proximity to the memorial to Carlo Catani nearby on the Esplanade, the designer of the original St Kilda foreshore. I get the sense that if the foreshore was developed now, the development would be handed over the Metrocone Developments and the St Kilda pier would not have a kiosk on the end, but rather three restaurants, a 24 hour bar/nightclub and a pokies venue.

When reviewing the information on the triangle development of the Port Phillip website, it reported that the development will devote a massive 16.5% of the total ground space to retail development. If this same approach were used for Fitzroy Gardens there would be 4.2 hectares of shops in the gardens, rather than one small café. (and Unchain asserts that you only get this 16.5% figure because the “public space” includes walkways between the retail venues).

Maybe I am being old fashioned but I think that we should use public space for public purpose, and the proposed triangle development does not live up to that objective.

This is the ad being run by the current government on climate change, on televisions across Australia.

Political campaigning was something that the ALP complained about quite a bit before the election (see here and here).

Apparently ALP policy on the use of advertising in elections was to have independent scrutiny of advertising campaigns:

In 2007, Kevin Rudd made an election promise that campaigns over $250,000 would be scrutinised by the Auditor-General.

So now we have the policy in place. And what is the policy? From the department of Finance and Deregulation the policy [link to pdf] is:

A. all members of the public have equal rights to access comprehensive information about government policies, programs and services which affect their entitlements, rights and obligations;
B. governments may legitimately use public funds for information programs or education campaigns to explain government policies, programs or services and to inform members of the public of their obligations, rights and entitlements; and
C. government campaigns shall not be conducted for party political purposes.

To some extent these are just platitudes, but they to provide a guidance for what should and should not be in a public advertising campaign, and for that they should be praised. The only problem is that under these guidelines all the Howard governments would also get through. In that sense the Climate Change ads by the current government are no different to the Howard government ads.

The thing that distinguished the Howard government ads was not so much the content, but rather the amount of them and the proximity to the election, and these guidelines do nothing to address that.

During the recent debates about greenhouse gases statements have been made about not making an effort on greenhouse gases before large emitters like China and India make some effort.

Of course, China and India are large greenhouse emitters because they are large countries, each with around a billion inhabitants. This is largely due to arbitrary political boundaries, if we look at the India State of Kerala (just as valid a unit of analysis) we would get a different picture for its 31m inhabitants.

Thus the best thing to do is look at emissions per person. Any sensible global scheme for stabilising the emission of greenhouse gases would involve a standard emission target per person across the world. Any alternative, such as allowing US citizens higher emissions than allowed in India or China would be a pretty hard argument to put forward.

So in this context how does the argument that we should not take any action before India and China do stack up?

Information on emissions per person is available on this Wikipedia page.

The data a bit old, from 2000, but serves the purpose.

The emissions for Australia are 25.9 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person, for the United States it is 22.9 tonnes per person.

In China 3.9 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person and in India it is 1.8 tonnes.

China and India are way below developed countries levels of emissions.

The emission reductions required in the developed world are so far in advance of what the developing countries need to achieve. We need to get started way before them if we are going to achieve our objective, and it is not necessary or practicable to wait for them before undertaken to reduce developed world emission.

BONUS POINT:

My understanding of the global warming issue is that it a very significant environmental disaster confronting us. The whole “waiting for India and China” negotiating strategy must by definition be based around an argument that if agreement is not reached we will just abandon attempts to reduce emissions and let global warming occur. This “waiting” argument seems to equate global warming more with an argument about whether to go down to the shops to get some milk, rather than a massive environmental disaster where if we all don’t start bailing soon the entire ship is going to sink. In that circumstance it is not in the best interest of anyone to sit around saying “you start bailing first”, “no you!” Just grab a bucket and get at it!

There have been press reports about Kevin Rudd working the public service too hard, but more to the point, is he working too hard (even if he has a valet)? My non-professional view of the media reporting is that he seems to exercise fairly tight control over his Ministers. It would seem that all policy announcements go through him first. But how sustainable it that in the long term, and does it stifle the adaptability and (for want of a better word) “reactability” of the Government? Time will tell.

The next year or two is going to be really interesting on greenhouse gas abatement policy. A key policy response proposed by economists has been carbon trading or a carbon tax (both of which increase the cost of energy and fuel), but generally this has not really been tried anywhere (at least not effectively). And yet the massive increase in petrol prices seen recently mimics just the sort of price increase under a carbon tax (and is in fact much higher – John Quiggin estimates 5-25 cents per litre for a carbon tax).

Because of the massive capital investment in many energy using technologies, cars houses, trains etc, there are always going to be vast differences in the short term and long term adjustments to higher prices (leaving the car at home and catching the train, versus moving closer to work).

We are currently seeing the short term adjustments to higher prices, the changes in behaviour we can make with the current capital on hand (ie not buying a new car).

In Melbourne public transport usage is up something like 20 percent.

Car usage, or at least fuel usage, is going down. See this article by Peter Martin.

With these short term adjustments it will be interesting to see whether the high fuel prices continue for a couple of years, and what adjustments we see from that.

I expect the sale of smaller cars, fewer trips, even more use of public transport, people moving closer to their work, or working closer to their homes and pressure for government to develop urban policies that fit in with the effect of higher oil prices.

Last month John Quiggin wrote a post on the potential for greenhouse gas emission reductions focussing on the air travel market. He argues that it would be relatively easy to get a 75% reduction on emissions (well emission intensity to be precise). His estimate is driven by two main factors, a more efficient fleet of planes, and reduced frequency of overseas holidays.

In booking my recent Xmas holiday, I had an experience which tends to back up his view. Virgin Blue offer carbon offsets for flights. The price of offsetting my Melbourne-Queensland flight was under $3. While the emission reduction technology is obviously different (assumably some tree planting process) the cost seems to be quite low.

If you go to a toy store today it is full, from floor to ceiling with plastic toys, and 99.9 precent of those toys were made in China. The electronic store down the street? Full of electronic goods from China. The clothes at Target? China. David Jones? China

The western worlds consumption is being driven by production in China. In the first industrial revolution, Asia provided the raw goods for production in England and Europe, in this one China is producing goods directly for the west, and vast quantities of them.

In some ways this is a one off event. When China becomes as rich as the rest of the Western world, there may not be anyone to replace them, we may have to produce goods for ourselves again, at the high salaries we pay ourselves.

It may be that these cheap plastic toys are a once is a life time experience. We a living in a unique period with a billion people living on our doorstep willing to make our goods for a dollar a day. It may not come again.

The BBC is reporting that the new Rudd Government has changed the Australian Government policy on selling uranium to India. The previous Howard Government had agreed to sell uranium to India, however India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and international treaty to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. As India will not sign the treaty, Australia will not export uranium to them.

This is another good move by the Rudd Government. I am beginning to loose some of the cynicism about Rudd that I developed during the election campaign, as they continue to make a number of small but significant policy changes, such as closing down the ?Pacific Solution? and signing the Kyoto Protocol. Lets hope there are more of them.

Well, to report on my election estimate and the results. I expected a 8.5% swing to the ALP, the actual swing was 5.6% according the the AEC Virtual Tally Room.

Not perfect, but not too bad either. I declare myself satisfied. I should have said 8.5% plus or minus 3%.

The first numbers coming in of the night seem to be all over the place. Particularly the scrutineers numbers. The Liberals (Nick Minchin) seems to always show “no change”, and for Labor (Julia Gillard) we see massive swings. Assumably the truth is somewhere in between.

7.02 pm Antony Green, the human election machine has called the first East Coast swing of 4.8 percent, which is right on the cusp of a change of Government.

7.16 pm On three booths the Swing against John Howard in his seat is about 1 percent more than required to turn the seat.

7.30 pm Eden-Monaro has had a swing on but it is unclear that it is enough to turn the seat over. However as the Labor candidate says, the count does not include the Queanbeyan booths, which are going to be more labor.

7.36 pm. Kerry is reporting on the seats called by “The Computer”. How does the computer call seats? At least with Antony Green, you know he is an expert, but what is the skill of The Computer? They seem to have had problems with The Computer not having the most up to date figures, with Antony reporting more recent figures (although where does he get them – except from a computer?). Maybe they are over-reliant on The Computer?

8.08 pm The swing is on, but it seems unlikely that it will a call can be made yet, The Computer doesn’t have a final position yet.

9.10 pm The ABC is calling the Election for Labor with at least 81 seats. It is not clear what the role of The Computer in this, but assuming some humans were involved I would say this is it (although they are calling Bennelong for the ALP which I don’t think is really able to be called at this time).

9.20 pm WA is just starting to come in, and it is all over the place. Who knows how it is going to turn out. Regarding the seat of John Howard, it is difficult to see how it is going to turn out. The ALP has got a swing on, but it is so close, that it could come down to pre-polls and postal votes (what is the difference – I don’t know).

9.50 pm The two party preferred vote is now at 5.8 percent. Not quite my predicted 8.5 percent, but at least enough for a Government change. The reported predicted (by The Computer) is 87 to labor (although the AEC is only reporting 71 – but they are more conservative).

The Green vote seems only to be up 0.6 percent. I was hoping that they would win Melbourne, and they did poll 20%, above the Liberals, but obviously the Liberals directed their preferences to Labor.

11.05 pm Kevin Rudd walks up to give his speech. I am happy with the change, but hoped more would have come from the third parties.

Someone asked me quizzically if the public knew anything about what has been causing the interest rate rises, because if they did, what could they possibly think about the spending spree the political parties have been on. I think the honest answers is that most of public don’t see the link.

They do not necessarily see the link, with the election promises pumping bazillions of dollars into the their pockets, which they will rapidly spend, further pushing up inflation, with the RBA pushing up interest rates to try and dampen the inflationary pressures.

But the politicians do. Thy know the link, which is why it is confusing to see them spout line about good economic management and about keeping interest rates down, but at the same time promising bazillions in tax cuts and expenditure promises (and mostly not infrastructure, but rather further direct transfers to individuals). Either they don’t really intend to meet their commitments (there are probably already committees going through the promises and sorting them into “core” and “non-core”), or they are not being truthful about keeping interest rates down. Either way they appear to be lying.

In their defence we must recognise the amazing ability of the human mind for self-deception, rationalisation, and especially for cognitive dissonance. There must be a lot of that going around in politics at the moment.

While researching the below post on US pennies, I cam across the odd fact that the Australian dollar was nearly called the “Royal”. With the introduction of decimal currency, it was considered that the name should be changed from the Pound, and while their were no stand-out alternatives the Government decided on the Royal, although public pressure soon turned that decision around (but not before specimen notes had been produced). See this RBA article.

Bob Brown was on the Insiders. The greens are getting the preferences of labour in all the mainland states.

This guy looks like the cat who swallowed all the milk!

Apparently last week there was a bit of Attack Ad to-and-fro-ing by the Kevin07 and Howard11+ campaigns.

One thing I particularly noticed was the computers used by the two. Kevin is using a Apple Cinema Display. John Howard is using, well it is not clear, some small Dell like object. He is also in the dark somewhere, while Kevin Rudd is well lit with natural light. It would appear Howard can?t do anything right at the moment.

They are a fickle bunch, those members of the commetariat on The Insiders! For months now they have been commenting on how steadfast the poll numbers are. They have their four poll average that they report on every week, and they have remarked on how steady the numbers are, that nothing seems to be able to change them.

Now the election is on, the numbers are changing! And the Commissars of the commetariat have suddenly changed tune, now its all “those numbers were soft” and “people are really now having to focus on who they will vote for”.

I think they are as clueless as the rest of us!