Mobile speed cameras Google Earth kmz file

I have created a Google Earth file of all the new mobile speed camera locations. Enjoy.

Oh yeah, and slow down!

Do UEFA deserve 13 spots at the World Cup?

29 games have been played so far this world cup, some more memorable than others. Between the jabulani, vuvuzela and dubious refereeing decisions, there has been plenty of controversy, all of which has been covered elsewhere. I want to move on to the most important aspect of any world cup: the teams.

FIFA has long been heavily biased towards the European teams, and this year UEFA accounts for over 40% of the spots in the world cup. Let’s look at the numbers for the first 29 matches to see if this bias is delivering entertainment for the punters.

UEFA teams have scored heaps of goals so far, as anyone will tell you. 20, in fact. But what if we look at goals scored per game played?

European teams have scored only 0.87 goals per game. Less than half South America’s score rate, worse than North America and New Zealand, and on par with Asia. Only Africa have been less inspiring than Europe, and they haven’t exactly impressed this world cup.

Do we really need a world cup clogged with so many boring defensive European teams? Wouldn’t we be better off with the addition of Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica and Bahrain, and the removal of Portugal, Greece, Slovenia and France? So we lose one or two big names, but France have performed abysmally anyway, and Ronaldo didn’t exactly set the world on fire against Côte d’Ivoire.

I’ll keep an eye on the stats and update this table, but I’m not expecting too much from Europe. Hopefully they’ll all get knocked out early and we can get on with the goal-fest!

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story

Paul Sheehan’s latest diatribe on the UK elections really highlights the decline of journalism in the Fairfax empire.

… despite the resounding rejection of the Labour government, with the Tories winning 306 seats … their 36 per cent of the primary vote does not make a mandate. This is the basic problem with a first-past-the-post voting system. It is also why Australia’s proportional representation system is a far more supple, equitable and practical way of expressing the electorate’s intentions.

The mandatory distribution of preferences under this system creates, by the end of the voting process, a two-party system. Under the Australian system, this British election would still have been a knife-edge but it would also have delivered a mandate to govern.

Firstly, Australia’s House of Representatives does not have a proportional voting system. The Senate does, but since we’re talking about electing government here, and government comes from the lower hours, I think we can assume that Sheehan is trying to refer to the House of Reps.

Secondly, I have run some primitive numbers on the UK election, assuming that they did have proportional representation. Here are my results:

Clearly, fringe parties win out under a system of proportional representation, making it harder for on major party to form a stable government. This is obvious from looking at Tasmania, which has proportional representation in its lower house, and ended up with 10 Labor, 10 Liberals and 5 Greens.

Now let’s compare Sheehan’s earlier comment:

Australia’s proportional representation system is a far more … practical way of expressing the electorate’s intentions.

With this, from later in the page:

… proportional representation [is] the least practical in practice.

Is their something in the desalinated water supply down in Pyrmont, or do Fairfax journalists and editors simply get higher grade drugs than the rest of us?

Anyhow, if you read down further, Sheehan’s solution to all our problems appears to be to weight everyone’s vote based on their contribution to society. Maybe giving people a free subscription to The Sydney Morning Herald in return for forfeiting their vote will have the same effect, eh Paul?

Damn you, Calibri!

Why?

The Hon. Kristina Kerscher KENEALLY, MP

Who is this young upstart set to be our next premier? Touting a mightily strange accent, she seems to have emerged from the woodwork 15 months ago and is now clinging to the wheel of NSW’s very own Titanic.

Here are some facts so that we can all pretend we have known her for years:

1. She’s 40.
2. She’s from Las Vegas.
3. Her uncle-in-law is prominent Manly fan and author Thomas Keneally.
4. She is the Member for Heffron, an electorate in South Sydney.
5. She joined parliament in 2003.
6. Before the spill, her last quote regarding the Labor leadership was “I have always supported the Premier: Bob Carr; Morris Iemma and now Nathan Rees. Now is the time to put this ridiculous leadership speculation behind us.”
7. She rolled our old garbage-collecting friend 47 votes to 21.
8. She succeeded Frank Sartor as Minister for Planning and Minister for Redfern Waterloo, took over his job as Minister for Infrastructure when he was dumped by Rees, and bested him in the Right Centre Unity ballot to choose the next premier. He’s probably not too happy.

I’ll give her a 65% chance of lasting until the next election, although I’m still hopefully that Frankie can make a comeback. Not that I like the guy, but I’ve got $5 on him leading the Labor party to the 2011 election.

May you live in interesting times.

Boat people: evil?

Of late my hyperbole meter has been going through the roof, as often happens when Australian politicians start talking about “illegal immigration”. An interesting article by Michael Epis pretty much sums up the hypocrisy being spouted by the RuddBot, so we can skip over that topic and go straight to a solution.

But first, let’s reflect on NSW’s transport woes.

Actually, let’s not; we all know that Rees and co. couldn’t transport their way out of a central coast nightclub. Straight to the solution.

Why are we wasting taxpayer dollars bribing Indonesia to cop all the illegal immigrants, when we could be ferrying them in to Australia and putting them to work? In the 1940s,with all the post-war immigrants flooding into Australia, someone with half a brain did just that, and we created one of the greatest renewable energy projects in the world – the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme. Today, with climate change threatening to engulf small pacific nations, thereby increasing the number of people looking to jump into leaky boats, we are arguing about how best to offload our responsibility under the relevant UN Convention while at the same time offloading our responsibility to reduce emissions.

Why don’t we just kill two birds with one stone?

Ship in the refugees and put them to work building wind farms, tidal power plants, whatever. Hell, build a giant treadmill attached to a turbine and make them run on it in 4 hour shifts. Work them on a project for 5 years, then give them citizenship.

Let’s build some public transport while we’re at it! A new metro with more than 6 stops. A bullet train from Sydney to Melbourne. Some bloody cycle lanes that aren’t just a line painted on the road.

When we’ve finished with all this stuff, we can move on to further projects, such as demolishing the Cahill Expressway, building a giant wall between Australia and Queensland, filling in all the potholes on our roads, and locating Barnaby Joyce’s brain.

WC2010 – the penultimate qualifying week

The story so far:

Qualified

1. South Africa
2. Japan
3. Australia
4. Korea Republic
5. Netherlands
6. Korea DPR
7. Brazil
8. Ghana
9. England
10. Spain
11. Paraguay

11 teams in, 21 to go. 72 matches in the next week will see at least 12 more teams qualify, with just the playoffs and maybe some African spots to be sorted out in November. I’ll go group by group.

UEFA 1

Denmark will qualify with a home win over Sweden this weekend. Sweden, Hungary and Portugal all have a chance to qualify if they win both their games and other results go their way. If Sweden beats Denmark this weekend, there will be no Cristiano Ronald at the world cup!

UEFA 2

Switzerland will qualify with a win and a draw from their 2 games (away to Luxembourg, home to Israel). Greece, Latvia and Israel all have a small chance to qualify if they win both their games and other results go their way.

UEFA 3

Slovakia will go through with a draw at home to Slovenia. Should they lose, they’ll need to beat Poland away from home to ensure their passage. If they don’t Slovenia is in with a chance. It’s an epic battle between the former Czechoslovakians and the former Yugoslavians. My money is on the boys from Bratislava.

UEFA 4

Germany will descend on Moscow needing a victory to ensure their progress. A draw will keep them as favourites to progress, but a loss will put Russia in the hot seat. Whichever country doesn’t qualify automatically will be seeded into the playoffs anyway, so it’s likely we’ll see both teams in South Africa.

UEFA 5

Spain is already through. Bosnia just need an away win over Estonia to make the play-offs.

UEFA 6

England is already through. Ukraine need an upset win over the poms to get the upper hand in the battle against Croatia for the playoff spot.

UEFA 7

Serbia are through with a home win over Romania. If they lose, then France’s slim hopes are alive. A win for France will stitch up the playoff spot for them.

UEFA 8

An away draw against Ireland will put our old friends Italy into the Cup, hopefully lining up a revenge match for us. If Ireland wins, they still have a very slim chance of overtaking Italy for direct qualification, but will most likely go into the playoffs.

UEFA 9

The Netherlands are through already and play Australia tomorrow night in Sydney. Norway have sewn up second position, and are odds-on favourites to miss out on the play-offs by virtue of being the worst second place team.

AFC

Côte d’Ivoire are almost guaranteed to qualify after this weekend, needing just a draw against Malawi. Cameroon, Tunisia and Algeria all have a good chance to qualify this week with wins if other results go their way. For Togo and Nigeria, a win this week will put them in the hot seat to qualify with a win in November, but everyone else needs to win and hope for results to go their way.

CONCACAF

The USA just need a win to go through. Mexico need a win and a draw. Honduras and Costa Rica need two wins. El Salvador need a miracle. It will be a tight battle between Honduras and Costa Rica to see who goes down to South America to get flogged in the playoff. Both teams will need to get a result against the USA to maximise their chances. If they both win, then it’s bye bye Uncle Sam.

CONMEBOL

Brazil and Paraguay are of course already through. Chile just needs 2 points to be safe. Ecuador can also be safe with wins from both their games. For everyone else, it’s going to be a nail-biting week. Argentina seems to have the easiest passage with a home game against Peru to start up with. Colombia face Chile, Venezuela face Paraguay and Uruguay face Ecuador; losses for any of these teams would see the end of their campaign. Looks like Diego Maradona could be spared the mantle of “Worst coach ever*” for the time being.

Playoffs

Last but certainly not least: The AFC/OFC playoff 1st leg! Bahrain vs New Zealand. What a world cup it would be if Australia, South Africa and the kiwis were involved. See you next time.

*Excluding Frank Farina

More world cup qualifying

75 games are in action on the 5th, 6th and 9th of September. We should get at least a couple of additions to the world cup lineup (currently South Africa, Japan, Australia, Korea Republic, Netherlands and Korea DPR).

New Zealand’s playoff opponent will be decided in the Asian 5th place playoff between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

In Africa, Ghana can go through with a win over Sudan if Mali and Benin draw.

In Europe, Denmark can go through with wins over Portugal and Albania if Hungary don’t beat Sweden and Portugal.

Slovakia can go through with wins over Northern Ireland and Czech Republic if Poland don’t beat Northern Ireland.

Germany can go through by beating Azerbaijan if Russia loses to Liechtenstein and Wales and Finland doesn’t beat Azerbaijan and Liechtenstein.

Spain can go through by beating Estonia and Belgium if Bosnia-Herzegovina don’t beat Armenia and Turkey.

England can get through no questions asked with a win over Croatia.

Serbia can get through with a win over France if France also lose to Romania.

Italy can go through with wins over Georgia and Bulgaria if the Republic of Ireland loses to Cyprus.

Almost anything could happen in CONCACAF – Costa Rica, Honduras and the USA could all qualify if results go their way. More than likely it will remain a 4-way battle with Mexico for the direct spots.

In CONMEBOL, Brazil can qualify by beating Argentina and Chile. Chile can qualify by beating Brazil and Venezuela if Ecuador don’t win both their games. Paraguay can qualify by beating Bolivia and Argentina if Ecuador don’t get at least a win and a draw, and Uruguay don’t win both their games.

Looking forward to a lot of time spent on footytube.com next week.

The aftermath

Ricky Ponting has won the mantle of worst ever captain, by losing the ashes a second time. Here’s my assessment of what we need to do now.

• Keep Clarke and North.With 446 runs at 64 and 367 runs at 52 respectively including two centuries each, they were easily the best batsmen in the team.
• Strip Ponting of the captaincy. Give it to North. Give it to Clarke. Transplant SK Warne’s brain into Hilfenhaus and give it to him, I don’t care. Just let Ponting focus on what he does best: scoring runs.
• Put Watson on notice. His batting was fine for an all-rounder, but why are we selecting an all-rounder if we’re not going to bowl him? Of the part timers North, Clarke and even Katich all performed better. Watson either needs to bowl more and take wickets, or start scoring centuries.
• Keep Haddin. I don’t think we have a better alternative.
• Drop Katich and Hussey. Ignoring their one decent innings each, their averages were 31 and 22 respectively.
• Bring Hughes back. We need to develop an opening batsman, and he’s the man. He’ll fix the short ball problem this summer, and if he doesn’t we can just drop him next year. Give the man a chance.
• Bowling becomes tricky. No one took more than 6 wickets in a match. Only Hilfenhaus had an average under 30, but his best innings was 4/60. Our attack needs work. I think that, with everyone fully fit, the best lineup would be Clark, Lee, Johnson and Hilfenhaus. Hauritz is a hack. If one of those four is injured, I would bring in Nathan Bracken.

That’s it for the team. The following people should also be given the boot for their role in our defeat:

• Andrew Hilditch
• David Boon
• Merv Hughes
• Jamie Cox
• Tim Nielsen
• Liz Ellis
• Kevin Rudd

Furthermore, I propose a referendum to alter the constitution at the next election:

Should Australia lose a test cricket series to England, the Governor General shall immediately dismiss the Government and force an election.

The priest and the policeman

This disturbing piece of news could easily have had a much more hilarious outcome.

Police charge selves with internet grooming

Over the last month, detectives pretending to be a 13-year-old girl on an internet chat site have been talking a 54-year-old priest from Liverpool.

Police say he was sexually explicit during the correspondence, and they arranged to meet the priest for the purpose of sexual activity.

However, in a bizarre twist, it turned out that the “priest” was actually a 13-year-old girl, posing as an old man.

Upon arriving at the rendezvous, police realised their mistake, and were forced place themselves under arrest. They charged themselves with using the internet to groom a person under 16 years of age.

The detectives will face Parramatta Local Court today.