Bush contemplates writing memoirs

This story was posted on ABC on-line this morning. See here

I can’t wait. The chapter on “Why I Invaded Iraq” would make fascinating reading, as would “Hurricane Katrina – How I Dropped the Ball”. There might also be some interesting material on his service in the Reserve.

He’d need a writing coach.
I’ll volunteer.

Hybrid Hysteria

There’s been heaps of media lately about Rudd’s announcement on local production of Hybrid Camrys by Toyota at Altona. Some of the comment, both for and against, has bordered on hysteria.

Precious little commentary has focused on the merits of the hybrid as a vehicle.

About four years ago, the manager of the fleet that I use in my advisory work leased three Toyota Prius Hybrids*. All three have just about finished their lease period, with an average odo reading of about 80000km. This distance has been covered by a range of drivers (a mix of gender, age and experience) and in a variety of conditions (city and bush driving, extremes of temperature, and roads varying from freeways to graded gravel).

On a couple of occasions I used a Prius to drive to places as far west as Cunnamulla, and on one trip I covered 1600km in 5 days. You get to know a vehicle pretty well in these situations.

The cars have proved the most reliable in the fleet, with less down time than, for example, the Commodores. Most drivers, once they’ve adjusted to the unique gear drive selector, enjoy driving them. My personal experience has been positive, especially when driven in the city, where 4.8lit/100km is the best I’ve seen in real world conditions. On the open road, they drop to 5.5 lit/100km, just the opposite phenomenon of conventional vehicles.

They’re not very suitable for gravel surfaces, because of their light build and low ground clearance, but driven with care, they can be used in these situations. They are also not an enthusiast’s car, having as much personality as a wheeled household appliance. But then, if I want to drive something for enjoyment, rather than as a work tool, I’d use my MX5 roadster. My hire vehicle of choice is the Prius, because of the fuel savings. I drove one around Adelaide last January in temperatures over 40 degrees with no hassles.

In fact, if I hadn’t needed a car that would tow a trailer, my last purchase would probably have been a Prius, bought through an ex-government fleet auction. For mine, this is their single biggest disadvantage. Assuming that the engineering on the Camry hybrid is as well-sorted as it obviously is on the Prius, the vehicle itself would be well worth a look. The inability to tow is a liability in the Australian market.

All the rest is politics – and you will understand, dear reader, that I don’t want to go there, despite the fact that everyone else has. Even Barnaby Joyce, a pollie that I admire for his independence, had a go, describing them as “golf carts”. Having driven one out to Barnaby’s territory (St George), I would suggest to him that he drives one and makes up his own mind.

Of course, his comment wouldn’t have anything to do with the politics of the announcement.

*I don't know the plural of Prius.

Chance Encounter

 A few weekends ago, my wife and I traveled to a provincial centre some 80km away to participate in a “show and shine” with our car club.

It was a glorious day – or at least it started out that way – with an autumn sun providing gentle warmth, and no wind to speak of. The road was lightly trafficked; the countryside a picture, and once we left the main road, the drive engaging.

There was a wide variety of vehicles on display ranging from street rods to classic British sports cars. There were also lots of bikes, and of course, bikers.

Standing beside a cluster of Harleys was a leathery looking character wearing a Vietnam Veterans Motorcycle club jacket. He displayed some interesting tats, and wore the signature head scarf. He looked about my age, but wasn’t as grey as me, and looked as fit as a whippet.

Despite my wife’s “are you sure this is a good idea” look, I walked up to him, extended my hand and introduced myself as a fellow veteran.

“Nice bike”, was my observation. He shook my hand. It emerged that he’d been in Vietnam at the same time I was, but had served in 4 RAR. During all this time, he kept his left hand hidden behind his back.

As he relaxed and became more animated, his left hand, or what was left of it, emerged. There was no hand as such, but a well-worn leather gauntlet covering a stump.

“Got shot up in a bunker system”, was his explanation. “Copped it in the arse as well”.

We shared warries about bunkers. My story had a happier ending. I mentioned that I’d gone back to Vietnam a couple of times. He looked at me as if I had rocks in my head.

“I wouldn’t ever do that mate – it would bring back too much shit” was his dismissal. Fair enough.

“The whole bloody thing was completely stupid”, was his closing observation as we wished each other well and went our separate ways.

It rained on the way home, so we had to put the top up. I thought of him. You can’t put a roof on a Harley, but his leathers probably kept him warm and dry.

Motoring Costs Comparison

I thought it might be interesting to do a comparison which reflected the real costs of motoring using LPG, diesel and unleaded used in a hybrid. This is based on actual fuel prices and real world fuel consumption based on my driving experience.
One of my three vehicles is LPG powered (3.8 lit Falcon with Sequential Vapour Injection - not the primitive Ford E-gas setup), the hybrid is a Prius I drive as part of my work fleet, and the diesel figures are from my brother's new Peugeot 307.
It's based on a mix of town and country driving.

LPG -

Price per litre - 0.67.9

Consumption - 12.5lit per 100km

Cost per 100km - $8.48

Diesel -

Price per litre - 1.70

Consumption - 8.0 lit/100km

Cost per 100km - $13.60

Hybrid

Consumption - 5.0 lit/100km

Price per litre - 1.49

Cost per 100km - $7.45

It makes LPG look pretty competitive.

Fear and Risk

This extract is a review of “Risk – The Science and Politics of Fear”. I’m posting it in the context of a proliferation of blogsites (A Western Heart is a good example) using fear as a driver for a range of loony viewpoints. Perhaps the head can be taught to rule the gut in this issue. It’s worth a try.

Many of you won't believe this, but Western societies are safer than they ever have been in history. This is hard to believe because of a constant struggle between two human factors, the Head (rational thought) and the Gut (hard-wired survival instincts). This conflict is laid bare in a new book by Dan Gardner: “Risk: the Science and Politics of Fear.” Within this 300+ page book, Mr. Gardner, a journalist and historian, throws the fear that pervades our lives into sharp relief. He not only shows how we're all wired to be terrified of unrealistically small risks, he also shows that the media, our governments, and big corporations encourage these fears. Sometimes they encourage them for mercenary reasons; other times, the fear is encouraged inadvertently.

A century ago, your window to the world was in fact the front window of your house. You paid attention to threats that were local. You could read the paper and note the threats that were far away, but they had little impact on your daily assessments. Fifty years ago, your window to the world was the television. With visuals and the humanizing effect of in-person interviews, distant threats became more real and pertinent to Gut. Today, what you see on television has become your local community, with all of the rapes, murders and abductions from around the world neatly organized and queued up for your consumption. When a sweet little girl 1400 km away goes missing, Gut tells you that all little children in your immediate community are at risk. The truth, of course, is quite different.

Where were you on 9/11? Everyone remembers. I also remember that the U.S. airline industry took it in the pouch for a full year after that tragic day. Almost no one wanted to fly, because Gut said that the risk was too great, and Head had no data to mitigate that fear. Everyone decided to drive instead, and this choice caused a spike in driving deaths. In the U.S., there is a 1-in-135,000 chance of being killed in a hijacking if you fly once a month for a year -- trivial odds, especially when you consider that there is an annual 1-in-6,000 chance of being killed in a car crash. Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives on 9/11. The switch from flying-to-driving caused an additional 1,595 people to die the year following 9/11. The news media didn't notice, because it wasn't spectacular like 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina. Only the loved ones of the dead paid any attention.

Looks like a good read.

Millennials and History

I’ve been asked by a history teacher at my daughter’s school to do a number of presentations on Vietnam (specifically about conscription and the divisions it caused). Thinking about it – this is a daunting task.

The teacher in me asked her what prior learning the students had and what it was she wanted to focus on. The answer came back – social division and conscription.

How do you get these concepts and a true sense of the time across to a group of Millennials who generally have lived the good life (this is a relatively expensive private school) in a provincial city on Queensland – shielded by their wealth and lifestyles from an understanding of the historical realities of the sixties and seventies? How can they understand the tensions and debates of the time – then so stark without the distractions of the Net and the mobile?

The answer is that probably you can’t, so I’ll tell them my story, invite questions in the hope that I can turn a lecture into a conversation, and hopefully pepper it with some tips about researching the source documents and interrogating them to determine the difference between truth and spin.

If I can ignite a spark of interest that leads to honest and organised inquiry in just one or two of them, it will be worthwhile

Fuel

This letter in today’s Australian makes sense to me –

We badly need solutions that require courage and vision. In spite of the rhetoric, neither side of politics can do much about fuel prices. Reducing the excise by 5c a litre would have a negligible impact and be overtaken within days by further price rises, and government inquiries into oil pricing are toothless. High oil prices are here to stay due to diminishing supply and increasing demand from China and India. We badly need solutions that require courage and vision. Why do thousands of heavy trucks travel each night between Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane, for example, when a single freight train could carry the cargo of more than 100 trucks? This would surely reduce cartage costs, fuel consumption and road accidents. With nuclear-powered energy, we could produce as much clean electricity as we need to power industry, trains and small electric vehicles for short journeys and city driving. The Government needs to stop waffling and get the infrastructure right. It can't "Fuelwatch" its way out of this. Mick Whybrow Birkdale, Qld

The problem, of course, is that solutions requiring courage and vision may not necessarily prove popular, and the repercussions would be felt at the ballot box. There is too much vested interest in the transport industry (for example) to give the revival of the railways a guernsey. Nice thought though.