ML Hayden must go

Allow me to present the latest in my series of questionable uses of cricket statistics highlighting why popular Queenslanders should be dumped from prominent sporting positions.

ML Hayden: born October 29, 1971 in Kingaroy, QLD. One of Australia’s greatest openers. High score: 380 at the WACA Ground. 30 test hundreds in 100 matches. 127 catches.

RT Ponting recently stated that Hayden was “undroppable”. However, many in the media have been questioning his performances of late, so I thought that I would trawl the cricinfo archives and put together my favourite misued tool, a graph.

At first glance, you can see that ML Hayden used to be brilliant, but now sucks and should be dropped. Let me explain. I have graphed Hayden’s average counting all tested from each plotted point until the present. So, the end of the graph shows just his last innings, the middle of the graph shows the latter half of his career, and the start of the graph shows his actual average over his entire career.

Legitimate.

The graph clearly shows that, since last summer against India (where he was brilliant), ML Hayden has sucked pretty comprehensively. In fact, he has been in decline since the last home Ashes.

So should we drop him? Yes! Do we have a reliable replacement? Probably not. Is that going to stop me from calling for him to be dropped? No!

Ponting, you’re next on my hit list.

White paper update

Since I have now actually read the white paper, I thought that it would only be fair to make a couple of retractions.

Don’t get me wrong; 5% is a pathetic target and too low. The minimum acceptable target should have been 10/20%, and realistically we could have gone 20% now without worrying about what the rest of the world is doing, and tried to push for a 30% target in Copenhagen with the moral high ground behind us. Always start high in negotiations.

The point is, setting a high target now will stimulate technological advancements in the green sector, setting Australia up to make a lot of money in the next 50 years as the world moves towards a low carbon economy. Whoever moves first will reap the biggest rewards.

The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme looks quite good, with a few minor cop-outs. Firstly, the price cap is stupid. The higher the price of carbon, the more money the government will receive to reinvest in efficiency, and to return to households. Same deal with not allowing exports of permits: the effect that this would have is essentially bring money into Australia to promote abatement activities and efficiency increases.

The good part of the Scheme is the allocation of EITE permits, based on an industry’s historic average emissions intensity. This has probably got a lot of greenies knickers in a knot, however the way the Scheme is structure still gives the full advantage to businesses who are operating in a more carbon efficient manner over the big polluters. Note that this is in direct contrast to my opinion yesterday, which I espoused without reading the document.

Allocating free permits to the trade-exposed heavy polluting industries prevents these industries from moving overseas and continuing to pollute. Instead, they can stay here, reduce their emissions and make a profit from the sale of their free permits. Companies who do not reduce their emissions will be forced to fork out just like everyone else, so the same incentives will apply to reducing emissions as if they didn’t receive any free permits. I guess to only objection is the fact that the government is essentially handing these guys free money, but then they’ve got $23.5 billion over forward estimates to hand out to everyone else, so we shouldn’t complain too hard.

That’s it for me.

Stilts and Houseboats

Let me preface this by stating that I am not surprised.

Kevin “Copperfield” Rudd has pulled yet another trick out of his bag, juggling some very dubious numbers to make a 5% reduction commitment look like a 41% reduction! At least that’s what Penny Wong was yammering on about on AM this morning. Who put this rabid lunatic in charge of climate change anyway?

Anyway, the Australian Government’s latest Apology Paper details first of all that it’s just too hard to set a target of greater than 5%, before justifying the 5% target against the background of increasing population, and then goes on to canonise the Hawke and Keating Governments for some unexplained reason.

The Wongster’s message this morning was that everyone will have to do their part in contributing towards a low-carbon economy, however Middle Australia will have 120% of their costs given to them in pork-barrel payouts, at convenient moments leading up to the next election.

Furthermore, the big polluters will be given 90% of their costs in pork-barrel payouts, which effectively means that they’ll be paying a maximum of $4/tonne for carbon emissions – less than the current (woeful) price of an NGAC certificate! And the more you pollute, the more you save!

And what’s with limiting the maximum price? What ever happened to the free market? How are renewables going to compete when carbon pollution has a capped price?

Oh yeah, my favourite section: new polluters will get compensated at the same rate as existing polluters! I can build a brown coal-fired plant in 5 years and claim my 90% handout. Genius.

I will rate the white paper under my new two-tiered rating scheme. First of all, the potential to save the world rating:

Secondly, the spin rating:

In conclusion, K-Rudd has provided a great platform for me to launch my new business: Stilts and Houseboats. Bring on the flood!

Royal North Shore Hospital

Greetings, fellow travellers in the NSW public health system. After spending 24 hours surrounded by a variety of old people producing a variety of interesting noises, I am now 100% qualified to write a critique on the the state of play in our hospitals. The critique will be in the form of a diary.

5:30pm Monday: I leave work and make my way towards the hallowed ANZAC memorial futsal ground, where tonight’s encounter is to take place. This is a semi-final against our nemesis team The Gunners. Last time we played them, one of their number was sent off for trying overly much to incapacitiate yours truly.

6:00pm Monday: Kickoff. The next 18 hours or so are not terribly clear in my mind, so I will try to fill in some blanks with heresay, speculation and rumour.

The Combat Wombats were outplaying The Gunners all over the park, however a few lucky shots and a handful of poor refereeing decisions saw us trailing by a couple of goals late in the second half. In an attempt to inspire a resurgence, I boldly left my goal in order to effect a clearance, however unfortunately a member of the opposite team took it upon himself to recklessly slide in to the challenge, leaving me on the ground, but more importantly winning the Wombats a penalty.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t convert, and The Gunners moved through to the final. At this point, it became apparent that I couldn’t see out of one eye, and didn’t know what my name was, and so the courageous Bec Sheehan stepped up to the plate and drove me to the hospital.

7:00pm Monday: We arrive at Royal North Shore Hospital, presumably at the emergency department. After searching my pockets for wads of cash, the triage nurse dumps we on a chair and says “suck it up, princess”. Bec kindly calls Sonia for me (despite the fact that I have, unbeknownst to myself, already called her several times), and within 20 minutes or so she arrives and Bec heads off to catch up with the rest of the team.

8:00pm Monday: We are still sitting in the waiting room in the emergency department, when I realise that I don’t know Sonia’s name. It soon becomes apparently that I don’t know the name of the company where I work, and I can’t remember which birds the Queen of Hearts used as croquet mallets. I get hauled up to the neurosurgeon for a CAT scan.

9:00pm Monday: We are back in another waiting room, awaiting the results of the scan. I have pins and needles up my arms and across my face, so Sonia amuses me by making me do finger exercises. I feel tired, so I decided to go to sleep on the floor.

10:00pm Monday:

Oh, how long has he been on the floor for?

11:00pm Monday: The nurses finally find a bed for me. I think I have been throwing up by this stage. I fall asleep for the night, and Sonia fires up her laptop to catch up on some important work. Oh yeah, at some stage someone must have stuck a needle in my hand because I’m now attached to a drip, as well as a heart monitor just like in the movies. Awesome.

6:00am Tuesday: I wake up, ready to go home. I remember Sonia’s name, but still have no idea what happened on Monday night.

8:00am Tuesday: Breakfast consists of Weet-bix, toast, the worst cup of tea I have ever had, fruit salad, orange juice and a piece of bread. Not too shabby for a hospital.

9:00am Tuesday: I get transferred to a ward. I get to lie back on the bed as it goes through all these doors, ER style. Double awesome.

10:00am Tuesday: The rest of the morning is spent doing these stupid post trauma amnesia tests, once an hour. In between, we go and sit in the sun and plan the USA trip next year. I take some phone calls from clients, but I can’t remember what they said any more.

12:00 noon Tuesday: Lunch consists of steamed silverside with parsley sauce. Ranksville.

2:00pm Tuesday: A new occupational therapists tries to restart all the PTA tests. Luckily I see what’s happening, and manage to move her along before I get trapped for another 4 hours in this hell-hole. I finally get discharged from the hospital, and Sonia drives me home.

It is now almost 48 hours later, and I’m still not sure what happened on Monday night. Also, I can’t remember details of any conversations I had today or yesterday. This is going to make catching up on work interesting. Anyway, thus endeth my first experience of being admitted to the emergency department. It was as pleasant as it was memorable.