The House(s) of Fran_mart

The investigation reported below arose through a discussion of voting systems and a question being asked about the number of candidates per constituency in the UK (with first past the post). I initially contacted the UP Elections Commission.  They didn't have information about the number of candidates per constituency but gave me a link to the UK House of Commons Library (HOCL) who publish a mass of data online.  After a bit of fiddling I found a useful briefing which has the number of candidates for each constituency for all general elections since 1918 . The basic data from that shows the following for 2019: Chorley is the seat with 2: this is the current Speaker's seat and by convention he stands as an independent and is usually unopposed.  In 2019 the Greens broke with convention (how unusual) and ran against him. The seat with 8 candidates was Strangford in Northern Ireland.  This has a full array of the Irish parties (including NI Conservatives in the Wiki, whi...

This is a little musing about a couple of items related to COVID 19.  The first is a reaction to an article on the ABC site headed "something like "You only need one number to monitor COVID".  The proposed indicator is the change in the average rate of new infections for the previous 5 days compared to the same data for the previous day.  If the value is below 1 it means the rate of new infections is dropping. It isn't a bad indicator but does have a flaw.  Here is an image of the Australian data for the period starting on 19 April. (The ABC show a much longer time series with the data below for quite a while.) The value of the indicator can first be calculated on 24 April and shows a value well below 1 as the calculation of the 5 day sum excludes a value of 41 and includes a value of 14.  However the next day 13 drops off and is replaced by 20 so the value goes well above 1 but dropping the next day as 26 is replaced by 16.  I show the number of new c...

We have a few things to do in Canberra so headed up there on 13 April.   This was after an attractive, albeit low key sunrise. My first thought as we drove was to notice the rather heavy traffic coming in to Mallacoota - possibly the seafood Festival is a big attractor? The heavy traffic continued when we got to the Princes Highway with a lot of caravans being a notable contributor.  Nothing dramatic just a bit surprising.  I presume it is folk seizing the second half of the school holidays and the Easter/ANZAC Day weeks coming up. Getting on to Imlay Rd and the traffic dies away.  We saw 2 other moving vehicles in the 57 km.  No log trucks, possibly explained by: all the signs about smoke hazard; and the number of State Forest fire-fighting utes around Imlay Creek. I think a fair chunk of forest is about to be lit up.  According  to the RFS the plan is for 2,000 hectares to go up. The issue of Habitat Reduction Burns continued in...

I have just read a very interesting article by Peter Martin about the ABS new responsibilities.  I went to check the ABS website to see what they have to say about it there: in terms of a media release etc there is, as Peter Martin suggests, nothing.  Nada.  Zilch. Hakuna habari (I just thought I'd chuck in a bit of Kiswahili for fun: it means "We have no news." and is totally different to the Lion King's motto of  Hakuna matata ). However they do have some acknowledgement of the role in the form of this notice on the home page: That is too big a mouthful to swallow so I have come up with the acronym shown in the title of this post.  I've included the lower case 'a' to make it pronounceable even though it is now one character more than LBGTIQ, which is another unduly long but possibly relevant acronym in this context. Now that we have come down to admitting the damn thing is a Survey why can't the Government recognise that there are already l...

I had to drop the Pajero off at the dealers in Queanbeyan to get the air bag replaced as a recall but needed to be home by 10:00 to talk about the fire with a researcher from Woolongong U (and a rep of the RFS).  As the car was estimated to be needed all day I decided the solution was for Frances to pick me up at the entrance to Cuumbeun NR at about 9:30. In the event the car was done by 9:35 - presumably I was about the first car in, as the others were delayed by the fog and frost.  This was the scene on Yass Rd after I'd dropped the car off.  I walked through Queanbeyan up to Old Sydney Rd recording some common birds as I went.  Although Galahs are common I think they are also pretty spiffy.  The road crosses into the bottom of the escarpment and gets a bit average thereafter.  This is not a shot of the road works near Douglas Close (they don't have quite the slope, but are otherwise similar).  Spiderwebs were catching the dew. ...

In a discussion on Facebook of my first post about the upcoming Council elections Peter Marshall mentioned the fact that landowners who are not residents can also vote in the election.  This is in line with the philosophy of " No taxation without representation ".  (However I don't think we'd find people tipping chests of tea into the Molonglo if this rule wasn't around.) A separate roll of non-resident voters is set up by Councils as described by the NSW Office of Local Government  (OLG). The Local Government Act 1993 (the Act) requires council general managers to prepare and confirm the rolls of non-resident owners, occupiers and ratepaying lessees of rateable land in the council’s area (the non-residential rolls).  The non-residential rolls are to include the names of the persons who:  have applied, at any time, for the inclusion of their name in any such roll; and  on the closing date (40 days prior to the election) are, in the opinion of the ge...

It was recently pointed out to me that elections for the merged Queanbeyan Palerang Regional Council (QPRC) are due in September this year. 11 Councillors will be elected (a fair drop from the 9 in Palerang and 10 - including the Mayor - in Queanbeyan ). A concern has been expressed that the likely makeup of the merged Council will be 10 from Queanbeyan and 1 from Palerang.  The basic numbers don't support that view. This post summarises the criteria eligibility to enrol to vote and then estimates the numbers potentially eligible from 2011 Census data.  (With of course a few amusing comments added in.)  This enables an assessment of the relative numbers of voters in each of the two former components of QPRC.  The post concludes with a few thoughts about the make-up of the 'new' Council afterthe election. Who can vote? Although people can enrol from the age of 16 they can't vote until they are 18.  I initially suspected that was invented by the Ministry...

I read on the ABC site today of the death of Robin Millhouse, sometime Attorney-General for South Australia and Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia. The obituary on the ABC site mentions quite a bit about him but doesn't make a few links between the different parts of his principles that tended to go against each other.  Before getting to those it should be noted that he did stick to what he believed in.  After the Liberal Movement (of which he and Steele Hall were founders) morphed into the Australian Democrats, Millhouse stuck with the Democrats whereas most others went back to the Liberals. The ABC mentions that he was a committed Christian so it wasn't that surprising that my first memory of him was when he led protests against the performance of Jesus Christ Superstar in Adelaide  in 1972.  This was during the Dunstan years so it also isn't surprising that a member of the Liberals wasn't well known to me. However it is unusual to find a person...

For the benefit of young persons (and others not familiar with the early works of Dame Edna Everage) the shows by his alter ego, Bazza Humphries used to feature a lot of floral art, mainly around Gladioli and Carnations.  As I have commented elsewhere, in Strine those big words get shortened to 'glads' and 'carnies'. A little more Ocker nostalgia before we get to the meat of the post.   Gladys Moncrieff was a rather famous Australian singer inn the mid 20th Century.  She was known as "Our Glad" and since she shuffled off the ultimate stage in 1976 this title is now available for use by Gladys Berejiklian, the current Premier of NSW.  (At least one commentator has described being appointed to this position as " being handed the poisoned chalice".) Anyway she has decided to hose out the scuppers of her Cabinet and replace some of the denizens with others.  It being NSW Parliament this probably just means "same-same but different". Howev...