Shit! Shit shit shit!

Sir Roger on his way home tonight happened to catch a little Pink Floyd on his mobile-wireless-machine-that-plugs-directly-into-the-ears, what used to be called a “tranny” before that term, too, was hijacked by some people.

And although it is no secret that Sir Roger is the world’s biggest fan of Pink Floyd (who – in the form at least of Roger Waters – are touring America and Europe over the next year or so) he had never really heard the words of the song he was listening to. He was, frankly, shaken because of the final verse and how closely he identified with it. So shit shit shit! Sir Roger was (and somewhat remains) in existential/ontological crisis.

But there’s more. Are we all comfortably numb? Are we all saying, “Julia, Tony … whatever, as long as you don’t rock my boat and disturb my comfortable numbness. I know there are big and great challenges for the world but I can’t bear to think about them. Give me the simple ones with simple slogans. Clunkers. Immigration. Laura Norda. And I know there were dreams and visions of great and exciting possible futures once, but now just let me rest in my comfortable numbness”? Aren’t we?

So up there is the song for you to listen to and watch and here are the lyrics of the final verse that put Sir Roger in a spin:

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Ohh!

Hmmm ….

… if you extrapolated straight trendlines from the last few days, the Coalition would overtake Labor by about the 12th of August. The Coalition isn’t much better placed numerically than it was a fortnight ago but it is certainly on the move down. Labor hasn’t really been affected too much but there’s obviously something very nasty lurking in Julia’s woodshed. It’s probably time now for Labor to actually take this election on, lash out and hit a few boundaries and stop playing Geoffrey Boring Boycott to Abbott’s Rodney Hogg. (On the other hand, England defeated Yallop’s collapsible cricketers 5-1 in that ’78-9 Ashes series, so … bad example? What analogy would you use?)

This chart is an aggregate of figures from seven betting agencies:
Centrebet, Sportingbet, IASBet, Paddy Power, WBX, LuxBet and BetFair

Technorati Tags: politics, Australian politics, Australian political values, elections, Australian election, federal election, Australia, betting, gambling, betting markets, betting odds, hung parliament, minority government, coalition, Labor, Liberal, National Party

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Note the narrowing in the last day or so with the Gillard leak, although the tightening is really only from the Coalition down. The Labor Party is very flat. The gap is still very large and nothing to give any heart at all to the Coalition. Interestingly, Paddy Power’s prices went against trend and moved apart to $1.07 (6¢ less than $1.13 two days ago) against $6.00 ($1.00 worse).

This chart is an aggregate of figures from seven betting agencies:
Centrebet, Sportingbet, IASBet, Paddy Power, WBX, LuxBet and BetFair

So what would you do? put $50.00 on Labor at Betfair at 1.32 and ~$10 on the Coalition at Paddy Power at 5/1? Would that be a guaranteed profit? Hardly worth the trouble at the tiny profit when Labor wins?

Technorati Tags: politics, Australian politics, Australian political values, elections, Australian election, federal election, Australia, betting, gambling, betting markets, betting odds, hung parliament, minority government, coalition, Labor, Liberal, National Party

Jon Stewart at his outraged and outrageous best in this must-watch report:

Remind you of any particular local group of people? Australian politicians (any of them), maybe? Arse-covering Australian bureaucrats, perhaps? Your boss?

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Here’s the recent more or less hourly betting at Betfair over the last couple of weeks. A clear if brief improvement in the Coalition’s odds on or about Sunday evening but not reflected in the Labor Party’s odds.

Technorati Tags: election, market, politics, Australian election, federal election, Australia, political values, Australian politics, Australian political values, Gillard, Abbott, leaders debate, betfair, graph

The “Leaders Debate”.

#1: On the big sign behind the two debaters, where was the bloody apostrophe? Was it a title – “Leaders‘ Debate”? Or was it a statement – “Leaders Debate”? – in which case, where was the bloody fullstop? Fucking country’s being invaded by fucking illiterates. No, wait, they’re “home-grown” illiterates.

#2: Sir Roger was watching the Channel 7 worm. Here are his first impressions.

He was quite amused by Abbott’s attempt at a thrilling new concept: Tony Abbott, Action Man, brings you his “ACTION CONTRACT!” One of his political advisors thought this up, for sure, and the worst thing is that Abbott didn’t have the political nous to realise that it is cheesy and transparently an attempt to fool people that he’ll ever be anything other than just another politician.

Channel 7′s worm showed a clear distinction between responses of the women and the men (unlike the Channel 9 worm). The difference was so stark that it seemed almost as if Morgan had only two handsets and gave them to a married couple on the brink of an acrimonious divorce.

Women like Gillard and seriously dislike Abbott.
Men seriously dislike Gillard and like Abbott.
Women like Gillard more than men like Abbott.

Both men and women like Gillard’s idea of stopping people leaving the port of origin before they even get on board the boats. Why? Sir Roger conjectures that that is because when they get on the boats we are forced into a moral conflict between our fear of the invaders and the disruption we fancy they might cause to our comfortable society on the one hand, and our comfortable fantasy that we are a generous, welcoming and humane people, on the other. If they don’t get on the boats in the first place we will never have to face the fact that we are increasingly becoming, in a world we see as increasingly threatening, a greedy, hard people.

Climate change is a big downer for both men and women which suggests that Gillard’s community consensus policy is a big mistake.

The worm crashed for both men and women when either “leader” said they’d tell the truth to the Australian people, or be “fair dinkum”. No-one believes either of them. People expect them to lie, know they lie, and don’t like them telling direct lies and asking to be believed. That is treating people as fools.

Neither women nor men liked them putting each other down.

Both women and men, but especially men, really dislike the way Gillard took Rudd’s job and her refusal to talk about it.

Tony’s summing up fell flat. He didn’t really get the lift he would have wanted when he talked about the economy. This “takeout” is fairly crucial. It is known that people, whatever the content that went before, remember the last impression. That’s why they always have cute animal stories at the end of the tv news bulletins. People remember enjoying the news, even if there were deaths and wars in the beginning.

So who won? Well, Channel 9 says their worm gave it 67% to Gillard. Don’t think that’s right. Channel 7′s worm analysis gave it to Gillard although website visitors are giving it resoundingly to Abbott. Don’t think that’s right, either. 9′s Oakes gave it marginally to Abbott. But as he remarked, it was a debate between political midgets. So there was a loser and it’s the Australian people.

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This chart is an aggregate of figures from seven betting agencies:
Centrebet, Sportingbet, IASBet, Paddy Power, WBX, LuxBet and BetFair

Sir Roger has chained his statisticians to the desk and they are hard at work on deciphering the latest betting markets on the outcome of the Australian federal election. His chart will be updated regularly.

It is a strongly held assertion that the betting markets, especially in a two-way race, are more accurate in predicting outcomes than opinion polls and a lot more than accurate than most individual predictions. Or to put it another (Wikipedia) way, “In practice, the prices of binary prediction markets have proven to be closely related to actual frequencies of events in the real world.” Election betting may be even more accurate because it is influenced by participants who have inside knowledge or significant professional expertise. You could see this when the betting on 21 August tightened remarkably in the week before the election was called.

On this basis the outcome of the federal election is a shoo-in for Labor – at this stage. You can see from the chart that support for the Mad Party is blowing right out from an already inauspicious start.

“Never tell the truth when a lie will do”?
It is, of course, in the interest of political hacks/journalists/news agencies (“too close to call”) and politicians of both major parties (“very close indeed”) to claim that this election is going to be the closest fought election in the history of the universe. No it’s not. It might become tight but it’s not yet. And you know it.

So stop fucking lying for once.

If you want more sophisticated analysis of the polls and the betting markets Sir Roger recommends you visit Crikey’s Possum Pollytics and the Pollbludger both of whom are excellent psephologists and, importantly, enjoyable to read.

By the way, this has been niggling at Sir Roger for a time:
With all the talk about the dangers of minority governments and hung parliaments, it is a fact that for decades Australia has had hung parliaments at both state and federal levels. Howard and Menzies and the rest all ran minority governments. This is because the Liberal party has rarely had an outright majority and has almost always had to form a coalition with the National (née Country) Party. Only in Queensland, Sir Roger believes (correct him if he is wrong), has a non-Labor party been able to form a majority government. So what’s the anxiety? If you want stable government without the terrors of hung parliaments, vote Labor. If you dare.

Technorati Tags: politics, Australian politics, Australian political values, elections, Australian election, federal election, Australia, betting, gambling, betting markets, betting odds, hung parliament, minority government, coalition, Labor, Liberal, National Party, Country Party, Queensland, psephologist, psephology, Crikey, pollbludger, possum pollytics, Howard, Menzies

The Center for Inquiry is running a free expression video contest. “The right to freely express oneself is vital in a modern society; we would like you to tell the world why.” All you have to do to win US$2000 is create a short public service announcement style video about the importance of free expression.

One of the insidious, and growing, pressures on freedom of speech right now is the assertion that people – particularly specific groups of people with their own, usually religious, notions – have a right not to be offended. They have no such right and it is wrong to pander to such people in order not to upset them. The basis of free speech in Australia is little more than tenuous, based on a particular interpretation of Sections 7 and 24 of the Constitution and only in relation to political comment. Nevertheless, Sir Roger has made somewhat of a career – a largely unheralded career admittedly – of giving offense or of not avoiding giving offense, if that is what is taken, and he is not at all interested in stopping now.

Anyway, give it a go if you feel like it, or if you can. $2000.

Technorati Tags: freedom of speech, free expression, competition, Center for Inquiry, society, modern society, video, video competition, offense, offensive, values, Australian values, Australian political values

Sir Roger has been analysing the push versus the pull momentum for Values Australia to optimize next-generation communities. He has of course had to ponder the feasibility of incentivizing transparent metrics and whether the economies of scale exist to innovate synergistic partnerships. He has drilled down and data-mined and knows that one of the early outcomes for all stakeholders will have to be reintermediate granular e-business while mapping the KPIs for growing bricks-and-clicks metrics.

But the very first requirement, as you and one both know, is to calibrate the language of this new economy. And that is why Sir Roger has taken advantage of the Web Economy Bullshit Generator. It is clear that the language generated in this way will deeply impress the type of people who make decisions in a collaborative eyeball to eyeball environment and it is highly unlikely that they will ever guess that the terminology is in fact content-free.

Sir Roger recommends a game in which you collude with your colleagues in a bet to see which of you can first successfully use one of the randomly-generated bullshit phrases in an actual meeting. Your bullshit input should be at least greeted with knowing nods if it does not generate serious discussion among the other participants. Which would be much better.

So thank you for taking this meeting. It was great to be able to eyeball you at last. You know I’m available 24/365. And now one is off to benchmark some distributed synergies.

Technorati Tags: business, economy, corporate, language, bullshit, generator, bullshit generator, jargon, weasel words, unspeak, gambling, betting, game, fun, Australian values, Australian corporate values, Australian economic values, humour, humor, values