Let's think laterally about refugee policy

I have a suggestion. It's not created out of any very deep thought, or even halfway decent consideration. It's just an idea, considered briefly, and thrown into the world to see what happens to it.

These are fairly indisputed facts:

• There is a massive refugee problem worldwide, and particularly in Australia, which has become something of a destination of choice and has a large and ugly legacy of (concentration) camps scattered around Aus and the neighbouring region to highlight this.
• This population of the displaced contains both political asylum seekers fleeing death or torture, and the ambitious opportunistic, looking for a better life in a more affluent society with plumbing and clean water, and everyone in between.
• Australia spends quite a large amount of money each year, I believe over and above UN requests, in international aid programs.

Can you see where I'm going with this?

My suggestion for debate is this: whenever Australia accepts an asylum seeker, we take the cost of doing so out of our aid to that country. You chase your own people away, you can pay us to look after them.

Quite obviously, there are a huge number of arguments around carrot-versus-stick approaches to encouraging behaviour change, and I don't believe that punishment has any legitimacy as a useful tool. However, if we can link aid moneys to human rights performance indicators, can we get it past the moral philosophers, and should we?

Not just bad editorialising, but bad editing as well: road safety reporting

This is a tale about journalists who are Clueless in coup coup land, and the editorial slants that this reveals.

The problem is this article: Fatal bikecrash tips Queensland road toll to 316 (Courier Mail). First problem: "bikecrash" is one word? Since when? "England test upset" might be (Drop The Dead Donkey, can't find the quote listed anywhere), but I have never seen "bike" and "crash" shoved so carelessly together before.

So far, we've got a bald and perfectly objective statement. Most fatal road accidents get reported in some way, so so far, so good.

However. If you read the article (it's not long), you will notice that they refer to "a man riding a powerful sports 1000cc motorbike". WTF? This is not standard reporting. I can not remember any mention of the bike that has crashed unless it is a scooter (please let's not argue about this, it's got two wheels and an engine, it's a bike) or there was a club run involved, or the journalist recognised the name "Harley Davidson".

This worries me for the simple reason that the Courier Mail is even less not adverse to editorialising news content than most outlets aren't.

Just lately, they have stated (quotes not guaranteed to be accurate): "Government backflip puts Queensland water supply at risk" on water recycling, which I heartily suspect was a backflip on the Mail's part, and have started giving heavy publicity to the whole issue of young carers (good on them, at least) in the news pages, because they support an annual fundraising event.

So this focus on "powerful sports 1000cc motorbike" (as though Robyn Ironside even knows the significance of any of those words) is a worry. Is the Mail about to start being nasty to superbikes? (Once they work out what the categories are?) Are they going to start calling for power restrictions, without having the decency of targeting those fucking annoying import Japanese coupes and SS Commodores, as well?

What about "Heavy cruiser-style bike"? Or "low-powered scooter ridden by someone without a bike licence"? How about a little even-handedness: "Car collided with garishly coloured, loud bike with a rider in bright yellow leathers."

I await developments with depression.

I will also, I swear, keep an eye out for all bike accident reports in 2009, and will collate how many appear to be written with an understanding of the issues, with objectivity, or with evidence of targeting bikers. And, if I can, I'll analyse each one in these pages.

It seems it COULD be worse, after all

Following a history of airline hijacking and bombings very nearly as old as airline transportation itself, Al Qaeda has managed to frighten airlines and various federal authorities into instigating a string of measures so draconian that it's hard to keep track of the human rights and logic violations at work.

But, it seems that it could, after all, be worse.

According to the highly entertaining History Without the Boring Bits, in 1972, Jack Jensen, of Fort Worth, Texas (surprise, surprise) suggested installing a hypodermic syringe underneath each seat, allowing hijackers to be injected with a disabling or fatal dose of... something, at the pilot's discretion. Airlines allegedly decided that passengers wouldn't be able to relax, and decided not to adopt this system.

We also have the problem that, quite apart from putting that authority in the hands of the pilot... Don't most terrorists stand up when they start with the whole announcing-themselves-and-making-demands schtick? Particularly if they know about counter-measures like that?

Random design comments

It's sad what you notice, sometimes.

Take The Dark Knight. Apart from being a disappointingly sketchy and shallow display of Christian Bale's talents, and a heavy - if fairly deserved - cutting to emphasise the recently departed Heath Ledger, although a more sophisticated human story than I was expecting, it also lead me to notice a poor bit of design on the world's most beautiful motorcycle.

The MV Agusta F4 has held that title, with little hope of anything supplanting it - yes, even the new Ducati 1098 - since it was penned by the fresh-from-the-916 master himself, Masimo Tamburini, as a 750cc superbike in 1998. Most of what's happened since has been evolution of components, and a string of limited-edition variants which sell for heart-stopping amounts of money. But it is still arguably the finest looking motorbike on the planet - all the proportions are right, it's elegant with understated flanks and a touch of aggression about the fuel tank and the posture, and it has such a beautifully simple headlight that it still looks better than every incarnation of a Japanese superbike for the last ten years - even the best R1 couldn't quite match it.

But...

While Bruce Wayne is riding through Gotham on his F4 (Bastard!) I couldn't help but notice the tail.

The F4 has four stubby exhausts underneath the taillight, which look fairly cool, and the taillight itself is neat and sharp-looking. Unfortunately, there is a complete visual break between the two, and the whole back end of the bike just looks jarringly out of sync with itself, which is both odd and unexpected from the man who gave us that sublime front.

Oh, well. Maybe he's not an arse man.

Minor nuisances from the mobile world.

There are (please don't be surprised by this, it would be really depressing) a huge number of applications available for S60-powered phones like the N95 which use network connections. In fact, even ebook readers can go away and talk to their own stores.

So it can be quite tedious to have to tell an application which connection you want it to use, between the mobile network and any local WiFi networks, every single frigging time.

And there is one, that's one application which handles this intelligently. Shozu. Specify connections, tell it which to try first, and it will then work it's way through the list. Which means that if I'm within range of an accessible and free WiFi node, I won't have to worry about getting slugged data charages.

Can't everyone else work this out?

Your daily dose of ludicrous: red pens

If teachers mark students' work with a red pen they run the danger of offending children because red is an "aggressive colour". See Courier mail.

I am nearly at a loss for words.

I can, in fact, hardly do better than the words of Deputy Opposition Leader Mark McArdle, who said:

"Given your 10-year-old Labor government presides over the lowest numeracy and literacy standards of any state in Australia, don't you think it's time we focused on classroom outcomes rather than these kooky, loony, loopy, lefty policies?"

Does it really soften the blow if your essay is returned so smothered with purple ink you can't read it, or the "F" is written in green, or you find "Rat shit" scrawled across the top in a fetching shade of mauve?

But wait, there's more.

Just to illustrate that Queensland seems to be adept at breeding proto-fascist governments of any stripe, see this brilliant piece of wartime-government evasion from our premier:

"Premier Anna Bligh called the question trivial at a time of "such economic peril"."

Well, Anna, if you can't focus on competing demands of government at the same time, resign.

No, it really is about revenue raising

Queensland police, who appear to have noticed that their current speeding deterrents aren't working, are considering publicising the locations of mobile speed cameras, in an attempt to get people to slow down (Courier Mail).

Now, there are many arguments over the use of sneakily hidden (and don't ever try to argue that they aren't - hiding behind bushes, in gulleys beside the road, over the crest of hills...) speed cameras to monitor speed limits. There are at least as many arguments over what the speed limits should be, and how much speeding actually contributes to the road toll, but let's not go there right now. The main complaint, in detailed form, can be summarised thusly:

• There is no deterrent effect to random speeding fines turning up in the mail a couple of weeks after the event.
• Therefore, there're obviously not serious about actually stopping people from speeding.
• Therefore, they're not actually interested in the road toll.
• Therefore, cameras are a revenue-raising exercise.

I think that just about sums it up nicely. Well, have a look at the nice, sweeping, general, claim in that article: If people slow down before getting to the cameras, and don't get booked, then funds received from speed cameras could drop by $30 million. I'll write that again, shall I:

$30 million

So: Every year, speed camera fines add up to somewhere in the region of $30 million, and people are still speeding, and the road toll keeps on climbing. Now, while I'm not in favour of conspiracy theories which claim that the government is doing this deliberately in order to make as much money as possible (medical costs from accident victims, let alone care costs, probably exceed that each year), do you think I would be justified in claiming that we can see here the mark of incompetence?

• Item: People are still speeding
• Item: The road toll is getting worse.
• Item: They've only just now started trying something different.

Yep, doesn't seem all that competent an administration to me.

Now, let's get back to the more contentious issue of whether the police should be doing anything about speeding at all.

Please note, from the article:

"A similar move in 2001 by South Australian police corresponded with a sharp drop in the level of speeding detections.

"But no independent analysis of the program had been done to link the drop with publicity of camera sites."

Notice what's missing? No mention at all of accident rates, or even safety in general, vague terms.

The entire article is talking about speeding, and narry a mention of "every K over is a killer" to be seen.

Which leads me to these three conclusions:

• Incompetent or bored and careless journalists
• A new editorial direction from the Courier Mail
• South Australia didn't see a change in accident rates coinciding with this drop in speeding offences detected.

Now, I can think of two very good possible explanations for that last conclusion:

1. It's not the speed that's the problem, it's the incompetence of the drivers
2. The way people react to an approaching speed camera (braking, taking eyes of the road to glance at the speedometer, nervous twitch of the steering wheel, flashing lights at oncoming drivers who get distracted, etc.) causes crashes.

Obviously, those two are compatible, and indeed probably occur together more often than not.

Here's a thought: train drivers properly. Maybe when they're able to judge safe speeds, distances, and the behaviour of other road users, they might not exceed those limits quite so much.

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. That would require the government doing something pro-active and innovative, when it's so much easier to just try and punish, when any matric-level psychology student could explain that punishments don't work.

What I particularly love is the way that the Courier Mail is spinning this: "Revenue to fall". Oh no, if the police try something which might have an impact upon speeding, the government will be worse off!

Are they trying to be sarcastic? That's my job...