ajhenryblog

Brexit or Can I Have My Money Back

Last Thursday seventy-two percent of the UK’s population turned up to vote and just over half of them voted to leave the European Union. Days later, a petition supported by more than three million signatures called for the government to annul the decision. In other words, they want their money back.

In 1971 Gerry Rafferty released a song with the lyrics, Can I have my money back, money back, money back? Can I have my money back please sir? The disgruntled Scot wrote the song after dealing with corporate setbacks to his productivity and many Brits believe Europe is doing the same.

Google released data on search trends in the days after the vote with the one basic question topping the list, “What is the EU?” The British had some time to think about their place in Europe since joining in 1973 and had a prior warning from the Foreign Minister, Phillip Hammond of the series Yes Minister. Hammond pointed out that Britain had the same policy objective for at least five-hundred years—pit one country against the next and divide and rule. Britain couldn’t break the whole thing up from the outside, but once in, “Could make a complete pig’s breakfast of the whole thing.” So far, Britain is doing that nicely.

But before dismissing the Brits as a daft and barmy lot and paraphrasing the Noel Coward song, Only mad dogs and Englishmen vote in referendums, there may be sound reasoning for the decision to opt out. Former chairmen of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan said in an interview with “Squawk on the Street” that the stock market reaction to the ‘leave’ vote could be the tip of the iceberg. Greenspan said the “euro currency is the immediate problem.” He went on to explain that the southern part of the Euro zone is being funded by the northern part and the European Central Bank. European political integration is failing.

If that is the case, and five-hundred years of foreign policy cannot be overturned in the scant years since Rafferty released his song, then the Brits who voted ‘leave’ may well be pointing out that the Emperor ain’t got no clothes.

As for those Brits who want the vote overturned, well, they were never going to get their money back—it all went on the Euro sausage.

Two Things You Never Knew About the Milk Wars

A recent plea by farmers to get a fair price for milk has highlighted two things: what is fair and what is fair dinkum?

It seems ‘fair’ is a notion best described by the Australian expression from World War I where soldiers exchanged gossip behind the sanitary carts as a furphy.

The problem started when the major supermarkets introduced milk at $1.00 per litre. It meant that dairy processors slashed farm gate prices from $5.50 per kilo to around $4.75 per kilo. For a lot of farmers, it meant milking and feeding the cows to be more expensive than what they get back. It is predicted that many of the 6000 dairy farmers will go belly up, and to pile misery onto an already sour situation, the New Zealand giant Fonterra backdated the price cuts telling farmers to hand back the ‘overpayments’.

It hardly seems fair. As K. E. Boulding describes fairness in his book The Organisational Revolution: The concept of a fair day’s work, as well as that of a fair day’s pay, plays an important role in modern industrial disputes. The phrase is bandied about freely by trade unions and managements and both sides think that they know what they are talking about. Yet the notion of a fair day’s work is something of a will-o-the-wisp—the more closely one examines it, the more elusive does it become.

But this is the lucky country whereby if one works hard they will reap the benefits of their labour, won’t they? Perhaps it should now be called the country formerly known as lucky. In an article from the Labour Standard of 1881, fairness for work is described as, The workman gives as much, the Capitalist gives as little, as the nature of the bargain will admit. This is a very peculiar sort of fairness. So there we have a definition stating that working for a fair day’s pay is peculiar. Try telling that the Holstein Friesians as they line-up patiently in the early morning mists waiting their turn to be the cows that milked the supermarkets—or should that be the other way around.

The big supermarket chains are crying that they’ve been unfairly labelled baddies because they do not control farm gate prices. The reason farmers are being ripped off unfairly is because of a collapse in global milk prices. This is due to Russia announcing a trade embargo on dairy products from the West. The Cold War has escalated to the Milk War. Now, not only does the farmer have to put up with not having enough money to pay the banks, they must be wary of spies in the herd, especially the ones wearing ushankas. And don’t forget the cow that came in from the cold.

Which all sounds a bit far-fetched, but when you consider China is building a dairy farm that is a cow metropolis—one hundred thousand cows in the city of Mudanjiang, fifty times bigger than the biggest in the UK, and three times bigger than anything in the US. All rather peculiar as most Chinese people are lactose intolerant. The reason—Russia wants Chinese milk so Putin can stick it to the European Union producers after they called the Ukrainian Crisis a tad unfair.

In the meantime, the Australian government has offered low-interest loans to farmers who are already up to the eyeballs in debt. The offer is a bit like using good whisky to pour on fluffy slippers that just caught alight—ineffectual.

The end result makes no sense. If farmers are forced to walk away from their farms because the price offered to consumers is too little and the entire industry collapses, where will those of us who like a drop of milk on their Weet Bix get their milk from? The answer is pretty obvious, it will come from the same place we get our smart phones, activity trackers, and just about everything else, China. The Chinese word for ‘milk of cow’ is niunai, in case you don’t recognise the name in supermarket shelves in the near future.

The unfortunate casualties of any war, especially the Milk War, will be those mournful, bellow-in-the-night, lugubrious, soft-nosed, doe-eyed creatures—the cows themselves. A drop in the demand for milk means the cow must die.

Hardly fair at all in my books.

Sources:

Frank Chung news.com.au

Lucy Barbour abc.net.au

Dailymail.co.uk

Why Not Become Leader of the Bespoke Pack

Bicycle–that thing you rode as a kid and left in your parent’s garage, or wheeled into the pawn shop on the very day after you passed the driving test, never to be seen again. The machine you said was in the past along with the skate board and Razor scooter.

Until…

Until you reach a certain age or large digit on the scales, which for most people, happens at around the same time; somewhere around the middle whereby both the belly and time seem to expand in a continuum, the appeal of peddling to get somewhere takes on a new interest. Middle age is the abrupt realisation that the future is being squeezed little by little into an icky end. Knowing your bicycle, that simple yet efficient machine parked in the hallway of your apartment, or suspended from the wall of your garage, can take you on a daily commute across to the other side of town using just leg muscles and a good breakfast for propulsion, instils a feeling of power and self-righteousness.

Bicycles are much more than just a cheap means of transportation. They are products of vigorous imaginations—enter the world of bespoke cycling. The custom bike is as much a work of art as it is a contraption to pedal down the street, and like art of the modern kind is just as weird. The low riders with extended front forks and faux petrol tanks look uncannily like their chopper counterparts, except for one glaring omission—a large gap of air is where a smelly engine would normally be.

The owners–and they are always proud owners–of custom bikes dress the part with leather vests festooned with patches and obligatory tatts across each deltoid. While the low-rider owner looks out of place beside lycra clad, latte slurping road bike riders blocking the entrance to cafes with their Bianchis and Tour de France team colours, while flaunting man-bulges and misshaped bottoms made larger by ungainly padding, the low-rider owner seeks other riders of the same ilk. Mostly in pubs to enjoy a quiet ale while covetously eyeing the work and detail of their fellow owner’s machines.

The humble bicycle is not just a simple machine of ingenious design, but a means of acceptance to others of the tribe.

Dude, Where’s My Drone?

Drones, they’re everywhere. Camera shops that once sold tripods and lens, now sell drones. Computer stores found helicopters sell better than touch screens. Toy shops long suspected toys are not just for kids and a quadcopter with a gimbal mount is living proof.

It’s when you get into the serious side of buying one that you find out boffins do not use the ‘D’ word—drones are not called drones.

They are referred to in geek speak as RPAS. The next time you walk into a toy store adopt a knowing swagger when approaching the sales assistant and drop the RPAS. Unless you wanted to use the shorter UAV: Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or if your budget was tight, say SUAS: Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. But for most occasions, the Remotely Piloted Aerial System is fine to use. You could speak the parlance of advanced users by dropping FPV: First Person View whereby a pair of goggles connects to your smartphone to let the controller see a birds eye view in real time of the UAV’s flight.

Imagine in the not-too-distant-future when drones take to the skies like a flock of seagulls spotting a newly unwrapped parcel of fried potato chips. Drones will be the delivery service of the future. Pizza orders will be delivered by drone, which puts an entirely new spin on Eagle Boys Pizzas. As drones get bigger such as the hexacopter, six props for better lift, they have the ability to carry heavier loads such as a six-pack of beer. Think of watching a game in a packed stadium where the queue for a plastic cup of beer goes out to the car park when you can have a drone locate lock into your phone’s GPS and deliver enough cold beer for you and your mates.

Authorities have already stamped rules and regulations for flying a drone to dominate their control as fun police. Drones are not allowed to fly within thirty metres of people or animals, which makes magpie bombing of that pesky bird who attacked you last week out of the question. Drones cannot be flown over populated areas, which wipes out almost all of the fun things you bought the drone for in the first place.

Then there’s inter-office drones. Send a tweet to the coffee shop down stairs and have your cream doughnut and coffee delivered to your desk. Or the personal drones, the ones that wake up at six in the morning and hover above your head until you wake up. A much bigger Octocopter would pick you up and carry you into the city and plonk you on the footpath, all remotely controlled from an app on your phone. And when it is time to leave work, your Octocopter would be hovering outside. One those nights when someone suggests drinks after work, the ride home would be the safer option and you’d reset the time and location on your app. Oh, but wait, there was that pub crawl, which sounded good at the time. Dude, where’s my drone?

Where Is My Parcel and Why Is It Lost

Got up and walked to the next room to wake the computer because machines need routine just like everything else on the planet. It’s usually to check emails I get from real estate agents telling me about properties I don’t want to buy or that guy promising to reveal the secrets of playing piano even though I don’t play piano anymore because I need to hold a freezer brick in my hand. I don’t have to hold the brick for a minute, but hold it for like twenty minutes to let the cold penetrate soft tissue, which I am told will reduce swelling. Luckily, I have a free hand that can work the track -pad to highlight the emails and hit the trash can avatar and see them gone forever.

But, not today. Today, I did something different. I woke the computer and went to the AusPost tracking site and entered the tracking number for a parcel. On Monday there was the message ‘Received by Australia Post’, and on Tuesday, the message changed to ‘In Transit’. By Wednesday, I was bubbling with anticipation but the message remained unchanged. The message didn’t change for the following days either, just said in transit and I took it to mean the parcel was still moving.

It is between states, en route, a celestial body, albeit a small passing across the face of the sun and possibly one day ending its transit by stopping at my doorstep. That is if In Transit is not code for something else like the codes NYC trash workers use for stuff they collect. Codes such as Disco Fish to mean filled with maggots, or Mongo which is stuff that is still usable, or the ubiquitous Urban Whitefish to refer to the used condoms they pickup. Of all the possible codes available for In Transit,one sticks out above the rest. The code word for ‘lost’.

The Pretender

I guess he was a little undersized for Elvis. Although he was around the same age as the King was when he was in his prime, I doubt he could match the cultural icon’s lifestyle. Elvis once said in an interview that he could tuck away eight deluxe cheeseburgers, two bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches, and three milkshakes—it’s little wonder he was called the King.

There was no denying it, though, this guy running his hands around the picture frame of Elvis in his US Army uniform wanted to be Elvis. People who want to be someone else are always puzzling. For starters, the crooner is dead, died back in August 1977. Many still dispute his demise, believing the King is still going strong and living in the backwoods of Memphis.

People wanting to be Elvis is not new, they’ve been around since the 1950’s. The first known Elvis impersonator was Carl ‘Cheesie’ Nelson, but Elvis’s favourite pretender was the comedian Andy Kaufman. And then there was the story that Elvis entered himself into a lookalike competition and came third. The story was reported in the tabloid Weekly World News right next to the headlines, Aliens Abduct Bigfoot.

As he gazed at pictures of the Memphis Flash, I imagined thought bubbles floating above his head flashing like LED door signs saying The Elvis Sighting Society is not a joke, or Elvis was seen in a Chuck E. Cheese.

“That was the ’68 Comeback Tour,” he said pointing to Elvis in a black leather jacket.

But it was the picture of Elvis in a white jump suite with a Mexican Sundial that captured his interest.

“The ’77 Tour,” and I caught a tone of sadness in his demeanour as he studied the corpulent face, sweating profusely, yet smiling.

“I’ll be back to get that one.”

Yeah, sure you will. Elvis hated the tag, Elvis the Pelvis, but the guy walked away with a swagger and a hip-thrust jerk, with thought bubbles floating above his head, saying, ‘Everybody in the whole cell block is dancing to the jailhouse rock’. Given that the King would be in his eighties if he were alive today and considering his diet of cheeseburgers, it would be safe to say Elive is has left the room.

Michael Jackson, on the other hand, is most definitely alive.

I hate you Diana Palmer

She wore a crocheted hat, dun-coloured, and not out of place on Miss Marple. Or perhaps it was the way she peered at the picture as though examining faults in the printing. She was drawn by the posters of Superheroes and was muttering something about the comic books she read as a teen. She said he wore a mask.

Bazinga! Let’s see, there’s Antman, Batman, The Black Hood, Black Canary, Captain America, Catwoman, Dare Devil, Doctor Fate, Flash (the new one), Green Lantern, Hawkman, Ironman, Lone Ranger, Zorro, Spiderman, Red Arrow… But then, looking at the woman I began to explain that masks were pretty much de rigueur for comic book heroes. I took a stab and named the oldest one I could think of, The Phantom.

Miss Marple was thrilled.

Lee Falk created the character and originally called him the Grey Ghost. It was published in 1939. Falk wanted his costume coloured grey but the colourist liked purple and it got to the printers before Falk could say, ‘we’re forming a union, jerk hole, my foot and your face’… or maybe that was Skateman. Whatever, it was okay in the end because The Phantom is many coloured, red in Turkey, blue in Scandinavian countries, and brown in New Zealand. The Phantom has no super powers as such, just his wits and a couple of .45 pistols. He also lives in the Skull cave where all former Phantoms are buried, in the fictional country of Bangalla.

Miss Marple didn’t give a toss about any of that as it was the girlfriend who got her fired up, and it seems kept her mean ever since. Miss Marple was so resentful of Diana Palmer, she read every comic she could get until things were rationed after the war, which meant paper was in short supply and the comics went out of print.

As it turns out, Miss Marple’s envy has endured throughout the years. A green-eyed bitterness towards a fictitious lover, a real phantom jealousy.

Por Izquierdo

Por Izquierdo (to the left)

The day I turned leftie was not through choice or the want to show off ambidextrous skills, but through desperation. An injury to my right index, the trigger finger, meant I could not longer shoot a gun (even if I wanted to), nor do much else for that matter. Perhaps not as dramatic as Lord Nelson who was to endure the slow and child-like process of learning to write as a leftie after losing his right arm during the battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife; nonetheless, I milked the disability for all it was worth. And I can tell you it wasn’t worth much.

I suffered in silence copying page after page from Tim Winton’s Dirt Music until I willed my clumsy left hand to draw an ugly amoeba that resembled the letter ‘o’.

I went to Google to find out if this dramatic change will scramble my brain worse than the confused state I lived in as a right-hander. I was encouraged in learning there is no genetic evidence for handedness.

I also found out that only ten percent of the world’s population is a leftie, which means I am now a minority and wondered how long it would be before negative comments appeared on my Facebook page. I ventured on to see if there are benefits to being a southpaw, and apparently there is. Lefties are said to be good at complex reasoning and score higher in creative daydreaming. This was something I could relate to and wondered if I could utilize this newly acquired skill. Perhaps go on to study and get a BA of Daydreaming, though employment opportunities could be limited.

Lefties have a long and somewhat gruesome history. Lifting a glass for a toast with your left hand is believed to deliver a bad omen to all present. Cheers and here’s to your underwear shrinking. By far the most famous leftie was Joan of Arc. In a painting by Bussiere she is clutching her chest with her left hand. Rossetti has her left hand predominantly holding a her sword, Bastien-Lepage has her gesturing, Lynch has her holding a flag, while Matejko in his painting Maid of Orleans has the young peasant girl leading the French army to victory over the English with her left arm raised in victory. The depictions of left-handedness were to convince she really was evil and had it coming when it came to getting tied to a stake and burnt by those leftie hating English.

Lord Nelson, what were you thinking?

Around the 18^th and 19^th centuries saw hard times for lefties. Usually, upon being discovered as a leftie, it was beaten out of the hapless south hander. It was believed they were evil. Now that I have turned leftie I’m forced to consider the options: daydreaming of ways to dominate the world for evil gain, mwahhahaha.