Republic of Ireland 0 – 3 Australia

An absolute cracker of a goal from David Carney sealed off a nice win over the world #37 overnight. Our next game on the 5th of September should be interesting – an away match against Korea Republic. Hopefully Pim can get some of the A-League blokes on board to give them a bit of experience.

Another 16 teams were in action overnight in world cup qualifying. With Honduras and Costa Rica playing right now, not a lot has really happened overnight. With Norway’s thumping of Scotland it looks like the second place group 9 UEFA team is going to miss out on the playoffs. Mexico beat the USA which puts them back in a solid position, while Trinidad and Tobago kept their hopes of a second consecutive world cup alive with a win over El Salvador.

All eyes now on the 5th, 6th and 9th of September, when 75 matches should see a few teams cementing world cup slots. England is the only team likely to qualify during this time, but Brazil can sneak in as well with a couple of wins.

Update: Honduras smashed Costa Rica 4-0! CONCACAF is looking interesting, with just 3 points separating the top 4. T&T are now pretty much done, and it’s going to be a scuffle to avoid a playoff with South America. The pressure’s back on Mexico, with must-win games against Honduras and Costa Rica next month.

Andrew Hilditch must go

Dear Andrew,

I have compiled some statistics, for your edification and education. I provide these free of charge so you don’t have to go through the rigmarole of having to actually watch any cricket.

At the moment, the only person who needs dropping from the ranks of Australian cricket is AMJ Hilditch.

Regards &c.,

Making money in the GFC

The last 12 months have been tough. Especially for certain multinationals who rely on a lot of people getting sick to make a buck. During uncertain economic times, it pays to turn up to work, and all of a sudden the population stays healthier than normal. What to do?

Imagine that you could get some of your boffins to develop a new strain of some common virus. Something highly infectious, but not too virulent (it would be immoral to kill too many people). You could introduce it to some out-of-the-way location (say, Mexico) so that you wouldn’t be traced. Then, because it’s not actually a very dangerous virus, you whip up a little media frenzy by contacting a friend (say, R. Murdoch* Rupert M.) who also wants to make a bit more money.

Because it’s a slow news month, the hype surrounding your new virus spreads around the world quicker that the actual ‘flu. Governments start panicking, installing heat sensors at airports, and gearing up for pandemic mode.

Luckily, you have already developed a drug that will prevent and treat your new virus. Gullible health ministers start to order millions of doses of your cure.

Step 3: profit.

Sounds far fetched? Think I should be breaking out the tinfoil hat? Or do you recall a history of dodgy practises in this industry?

I’ll be reserving my judgement on this one for now.

* Name changed to protect confidentiality

Countdown to the world cup

111 days and 176 games remain until we will know the last of the 32 teams who will be playing in South Africa next year. 16 days after the 4th place CONCACAF team plays the 5th place CONMEBOL team, we will know exactly who Australia will be up against next June.

Let’s look at the best case scenario first:

The seeded teams should be: South Africa; Italy; Brazil; Germany; Spain; England; Argentina; France. No prizes for guessing who we’d like out of this group.

The Europe pot will depend largely on the draw for the second-place playoffs, but Slovakia look good to top group three, so I think we’ll assume they’ll be there.

We can assume that we’ll be in a group with CONCACAF, so we don’t have to worry about those guys. The last group will be CAF/CONMEBOL plus an odd CONCACAF side if CONCACAF wins a 4th place. Algeria is topping their group in CAF, so let’s draw them too.

So our best case scenario: Australia (#16), Slovakia (#42) and Algeria (#47), South Africa (world #72).

Worst case scenario: I guess you could take your pick from the seeded teams, but let’s just assume that playing the world number one is not a good thing and pick Brazil.

Netherlands will end up unseeded due to the intricacies of FIFA’s matrix. They’ll be the hardest team in the UEFA pot.

For the final pot, you can either assume that the USA will get put in there, or (more likely) that it will be a 5th place CONMEBOL team which would make Côte d’Ivoire the highest ranked. Since this is worst-case scenario, let’s go with USA.

So, our worse-case scenario group: Brazil (#1), Netherlands (#3), USA (#12), Australia (#16).

As you can clearly see, it’s all in the draw!

Fun facts with Fielding

Senator Steve Fielding is organising a climate change briefing, and is inviting the entire senate!

I can’t see how any responsible senator could vote on an emissions trading scheme without listening to what the world of science has to say on the issue.

Sen. Steve “the fact-finder” Fielding

Giving the seminar will be prominent climate-change denier and chief scientist for News Corp., Professor Bob Carter. To keep with this theme, I am organising a few briefing sessions of my own, that I invite you all to attend:

1. The holocaust, with David Irving
2. Evolution, with Sarah Palin
3. Accounting standards, with Kenneth Lay
4. How to organise informative seminars, with Steve Fielding

You get the picture.

The swine, the swine!

Just when you thought that the media hype surrounding the swine had died down, along comes reliable Joe Hildebrand.

UP to 10,000 New South Wales people could die of swine flu in a two-month period – more than double the rate of all other deaths – unless there is mass vaccination, experts warned.

Source: news.com.au

A quick glance down through the article reveals that the “expert” is actually a nine-year-old kid, and the “new modelling” was based on a game of hopscotch.

Meanwhile, the federal government is reportedly ordering 21 million vaccinations, to be delivered after the flu season is finished.

However, according to startling new modelling performed by experts at the North East Institute, the government could be wasting their money. Unless we act now, Joe Hildebrand’s scare story could in fact be blown out of the water. Allow me to demonstrate.

Using the popular disease vector modelling program Pandemic, we can see that if the swine flu takes hold, our population could be decimated with only 41 people remaining after three months!

If you want to be one of the remaining 41 people, I suggest it’s time to start reading this site. Bon voyage!

Politwitter

The Twitter bandwagon is well and truly in full swing, with hip characters such as Big Kev, Malcolm Turnbull, Joe Hockey, Kate Ellis, Nigel Scullion and Tony Burke all getting in on the action. However, I believe that this time they have bitten off more than they can chew, and will soon be breaking one of the number one rules of politics.

Politicians are elected by the people, for the people. While in practise they are generally serving the interests of their party, they also have historically kept in touch with the electorate and been generally approachable. To raise an issue with a politician, all you need to do is write them a letter.

Letters written to a politician will be answered; in fact it is unthinkable that no response would be received to a letter written to the office of, say, Malcolm Turnbull. Sure, it much be a response from a lackey, but you still feel loved. With email, the same applies (with the obvious exception of the Rev. Fred).

Now with Twitter however, these pollies are eliciting thousands of messages from Middle Australia every day. Many of these tweets have pressing questions crammed into their 140 characters, and yet the vast majority will go unanswered.

This is a dangerous game to play, people. If my question isn’t worth 140 characters, then your policy surely isn’t worth my vote.

Fitzgibbon: gone!

549 days into the Rudd government, we have the first ministerial casualty: Joel Fitzgibbon. After selling national secrets to China and NIB, he has been forced to step down in order to avoid having to listen to Julie Bishop’s incessant whine in his ear.

Of course, the Rudd government had already overtaken the Howard government’s 487 days in power without ministerial dismissal, and to beat the new record you would have to go back to the Whitlam government which took 939 days to sack Jim Cairns.

Now that the Rudd government has gotten past this important milestone, let’s hope we can start the ball rolling. It’s scandal season!

The war on bikies

With the recent media hype surrounding bikie violence, I have been contemplating delving into the fray myself. Thankfully, I was spared the effort by Nick, whose excellent article was published by newmatilda.com, as the leading story no less!

Before he brought his new laws to State Parliament in a surprise move on Thursday, Rees had lamented the possibility that he may not be able to ram them through the legislature at the speed of light, because if hurriedly drafted they might be subject to pesky judicial review.

Quit or die

The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them is if they follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow, and say I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide

- Senator Charles Grassley, Iowa

This kind of “guts or glory” hyperbole is the missing link in Australian politics, and has been for some time. Despite Big Kev’s careful placement of such words as “shitstorm” into recent interviews, it is quite apparent that Australian politicians are still a long way from suggesting that senior executives should top themselves.

So where did we go wrong?

I was born during the reign of Malcolm “pants-down-in-Memphis” Fraser. Soon after we had Bob Hawke, with his famous “any boss who sacks an employee is a bum” America’s Cup victory speech. Keating’s insults were by and large limited to big words that noone else could understand, and Howard was too busy looking over his shoulder at Costello to come up with any truly brilliant pieces of invective.

Big Kev cannot and will not save us; his vocabulary is strictly limited to statements such as “we’ll be very cross with companies closing down after taking our subsidies”.

None of these figureheads of Australian politics come even close to the levels of potential controversy achieved by our good friend Senator Grassley.

Australia doesn’t want political correctness any more. We’ve had the Keating years, we’ve had the apology to the stolen generation. We all acknowledge that we are living in a diverse and exciting society where everyone has an equal place. Now let’s get back to calling apples apples.

Top finance executives who steer their companies towards collapse and then take multi-million dollar payouts should not be encouraged to kill themselves. It should be mandatory. Compulsory corporate seppuku, that’s what I’m talking about.

Furthermore, in order to raise the capital required to get these companies spending again and restart the economy, each business should hold a charity-style shareholder’s auction. The winning bidder will be able to nominate the method by which their overpaid office-bearer dispatches him/herself from this plane of being.

We could even sell the rights to the live auctions (and subsequent deaths) to Channel Ten.

I look forward to my proposal being debated during the next session of parliament.