Sunday, 1 November 2026

Cricket and other stuff

 Test Cricket

How did we lose a series we should have won 3-0? Well how about selecting an opener who has not played much cricket over the last 2 years. What about selecting a first drop who has not performed for years.  How about selecting a number 6 as opener. This means you are two down for not much a lot of the time. Then you get to our middle order brittleness that was exposed in the last two tests.

What about transition problems. We have a heap of players in their mid 30s or approaching it. I can see quite a few retiring after the Ashes. We did have a great quartet of bowlers but clearly they were affected by the test schedule. I think Hazelwood and Lyons cannot play 5 tests and are showing their age. Boland should be used at present to give some bowlers a rest.

Whoopsy I forgot to mention the pitches and swing. There was precious little swing in all three tests. There was a bit of nip but not a lot and only spun from the footmarks. In other words the batsmen should have had the time of their lives yet they did not. Batting technique everywhere is poor.

Polling

The ALP continues to lose votes as another rate rise looms. Fancy that. I can't believe it!

Housing Affordability

home prices are falling at the largest for over 20 years. IF you want greater affordability then this is a good thing. If you want hose prices to rise you do not understand the topic.


USA

DOJ has lost the-presumption-of-regularity. In the case of the two FBI agents charged they have not even talked to anyone who actually heard what they said!

Trump's  lawyers were very poor in the WSJ case and look to be the same in the BBC case.

Few people it appears rank voting. We civilised aussies call it preferential voting. This writer does. Putting up a candidate with the same name as a major candidate can work in first past the post. It doesn't in rank voting

UK 

The Labour party has brought down quite austere budgets and as Simon Wren-Lewis shows this has come about by taxes and spending. By the way the UK are much better than other leading nations where the USA are  clearly the worst.

Thursday, 29 October 2026

Around the Traps 30/10/26

 It is time for Around the Traps again.

Aussie,Aussie,Aussie,Oy,Oy,Oy

OZ Climate

Northern America

Europe

Asia

Wonk

General

Climate

Andrew Gelman (mainly stats)

Dianne Coyle ( quirky + book reviews)

Vox Wonk

Wednesday, 28 October 2026

the coming rate rise and some other things

 CPI

The ABS released the September CPI yesterday ( the quarterly numbers have to be downloaded). It wasn't good and no-one thought it would be. HERE is Isaac Gross on the figures. I do not disagree.

The trimmed mean has in reality stopped rising BUT it aint falling. The non-tradables rate is rising and is too high. It appears higher fuel prices ( fossil fuel ) has been integrated into the system.

Thus a rate rise is all but guaranteed.

Serbia

 The pro-russian government has fallen due in part to student unrest. This is a good thing unlike in France where it has been overtaken by far-left fanatics..

The Prince

you haven't read the book. you should 

Israel

They have had an election and no-one understands the result. THIS might help.

US DOJ

They are trying to put Jim Comey in gaol but they are sooo incompetent and embarrassing

Tuesday, 27 October 2026

Elon Musk.

 Steve from Brisbane had a post on Musk. Then Fred Kaplan wrote about Musk and the fall-out from the mid-terms.

I have never had much time for Musk. Tesla always looks over-priced but to give him credit he initially made it a 'new' company but now it is lagging behind competitors mainly from China! He was mad to get into politics where he has made twitter a cesspit and made owners and potential owners of tesla cars very cheesed off.

His space X company looks overpriced as well. It clearly has the worst AI around.

His adventure via DOGE was a disaster where neither he nor his people had a clue about government consequently his group made little savings in dollar terms but cost lives and the USA's soft power status.

His companies get suspiciously good treatment from the government and his  understanding of world politics is pathetic. this can be gauged by his declaration of Ukraine as 'warmongers'.

In irony of irony he has actually admitted he got into the USA on untrue terms.

Monday, 26 October 2026

some stuff on Climate

 Well snowy 2.0 is obviously in the news.

Peter Hannan argues against it.

Andrew Blakkers   is for it. It does last 150 years!

We still have rising temperatures.

Tamino on rising sea temperatures

You have to know how to detect it.

Zeke Hausfather on how not to detect global warming

Sunday, 25 October 2026

A Few Things

 France ( and some other countries)

The demonstrations appear to be taken over by the far left more so given the far left leader there has supported them. I have said previously a coalition of islamists and far left rioters would be very strange. The fact some people have seen a palestinian flag has led some to believe this is being exacerbated by islamists. Only problem is when I saw the flag being waved it was by a white man!

Hugh Scofield is reporting the students who started the demonstrations are cheesed off that the far left  have tried to to hijack this.

Macron has attempted to implement some sensible economic policies and has been stymied in parliament. He has been very poor since his disastrous early election gamble which blew up in his face. In some way he could be the reason why the presidential election could be between the far right and the far left both of whom are economically illiterate.

A-League

Well what a difference a week makes. The Melbourne derby was great. a good crowd, good football and a draw probably the best result. The Wanderers  also played good football in Auckland against Auckland and won well.

Ben Roberts-Smith

A judge found him guilty of war crimes based on the balance of probabilities ( not beyond a reasonable doubt.) He is now on a publicity tour but only interviewed by people favourable to him. Thus he is given soft questions. He complains about the definition of war crimes beinde retrospective BUT he is being charged along the previous definition. I do not get why his apologists believe they know more than the judge in the libel case and that he had the best legal practitioners  money could buy but still badly lost . He had little credibility!

Test Cricket

We lost to SA by an innings and one of the crucial SA bowlers only bowled 3.3 overs. It seems all those who criticised SA in the first test and now doing the same to Australia now. Rabada was not fully game fit but still got to over 150k a number of times. I suspect he will be better in the third test.

We have to decide what the batting lineup is and whether Boland plays or not.

Why is the a dearth of supporters watching these matches?

USA

Omar's house in Washington was raided. The justice department are not supposed to do this 60 days prior to an election let alone during the election period.  It is failing the pub test to suggest she would attempt to get out the country since she is running for office again. This does look performative.It also should be in the FBI's hands. Why did they raid her washington house and not where she actually lives if they were actually after new information. Yeah we can guess. How have they come across such information they could not find in 2019 and only just found it now?

Two FBI agents have been charged over lying to congress in the hunter biden laptop debacle. One HUGE problem is they were not indicted via a grand jury but by complaint. So the defendants said let us have the Judge see if there is a case now. The DOJ said nonono. We need time which makes no sense given it was done via a complaint. This again looks performative.

The republicans have allowed their campaign to be swamped by utter trash when an add for the governorship was put on alleging the democrat candidate was a liar by her mother. This is the same woman who deserted their home when her husband The step-father) was indicted for raping her daughter she is now calling a  liar. Naturally Trump joined in this disgusting race to the bottom. I do hope they get their just deserts for this disgraceful act.

Israel

They go to the polls yet it is a tight election. I don't get it. The present government was asleep at the wheel when october 7 occurred yet some people want to vote for them again?

Brazil

They are having an election. It is between Lula who beat a man whol ike trump refused to concede and wanted an insurrection. He failed BUT his son is running


Thursday, 22 October 2026

Around the Traps 23/10/26

 It is time again for Around the Traps.

Aussie,Aussie,Aussie,Oy,Oy,Oy

OZ Climate

Northern America

Europe

Asia

Wonk

General

Climate

Andrew Gelman ( mostly stats)

Dianne Coyle ( quirky + book reviews)

Vox Wonk