This drinking game is easy. Tune in to the ABC on election night and drink when any of the following are said:

• Bellwether
• Small booths
• Redistribution
• Pendulum
• Eden Monaro
• Early returns
• Quietly confident
• The Australian people
• Notionally
• Large booths
• The door’s still open
• Too close to call
• Lindsay
• We’ll know more shortly
• Vindication
• Scrutineers
• Factional Warlords

If you really want to get smashed include the following:

• Swing
• Preferences
• Balance of Power

The advanced section for seasoned gamers is as follows:

• Two drinks whenever Antony Green has bought up the wrong slide.
• Two drinks for a cross to the tally room.
• Two drinks whenever Kerry chuckles after interviewing a losing candidate.
• Three drinks whenever Antony says that the computer is wrong.
• Three drinks whenever someone seen as a ‘future leader of the party’ loses. (This does not apply to Peter Dutton, no-one seriously believes he could lead a Shetland pony)
• Three drinks whenever a Politician on the panel refuses to concede a seat that their side has obviously lost.
• Three drinks if you can get a tweet read out on air

And for the truly committed ALP and Greens supporters:

• Scotch and razor blades if you hear the phrase “Tony Abbott is our new Prime Minister”.

Last night, watching the Hawke bio-pic, the difference between Rudd and Keating was crystalised for me in two moments, their respective victory speeches after winning an election. Both Keating and Rudd’s victories were impressive for different reasons, but after 11 years in the wilderness it’s not hyperbole to say that Labor supporters were absolutely desperate for their 2007 win and so had enormous expectations for Kevin Rudd.

This is what he gave them.

And there was another 15 minutes or so that you can search out if you like. I remember how ecstatic I was when Howard conceded, how thrilled I was to hear what Rudd would have to say, and how flat I felt after he delivered a pretty mediocre speech. Which is not to say he couldn’t deliver a great speech, the apology to the Stolen Generations gave me shivers, but on the night that he defeated Howard I wanted more than dull platitudes.

Compare that to the brilliance of Paul Keating speaking after beating John Hewson.

It’s hard to pick a favourite part from that speech, but I find the overall tenor, his belief in the people of Australia, inspiring.

And to the Australian people, through hard times, it makes their act of faith all that much greater. It’ll be a long time before an opposition party tries to divide this country again. It’ll be a long time before somebody tries to put one group of Australians over here and another group over there. The public, the public of Australia, are too decent, too conscientious and they’re too interested in their country to wear those sorts of things. This, I think, has very much been a victory of Australian values, because it was Australian values on the line and the Liberal party wanted to change Australia from the country it’s become: a cooperative, decent, nice place to live where people have regard for one another.

I think that for Keating it was about more than winning, it was about a vision for a more egalitarian and proud Australia. I wish that Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard could inspire such passion for our nation, we are all poorer for the anodyne, vacillating, focus group tested blandness that passes for political discourse from all of our major parties these days.

We miss you Paul.

(Hat tip to @cooo_ee who found the Keating audio and transcript for me.)

While the idea of the kids having a lemonade stand on the nature strip seemed incredibly cute, the pessimist in me thought that we would spend the afternoon placating disappointed children. Nevertheless we set about finding a recipe for fresh lemonade and getting to work in the kitchen. The lemons from our tree were amazing, the juice almost exploded from them as I cut them in halves and it took no time to get enough to make our lemonade.

While the lemonade cooled Buster Boy set about preparing his lemonade stand. With the help of the Troll Princess he made a sign, found some disposable cups and a tin for the money he hoped to make, and brought a table and chairs from the Troll Princess’ room to the front yard. By this time the fog had lifted, the clouds had parted and the sun began to illuminate our street.

Still feeling pessimistic I went inside to phone our next door neighbour and another friend who I hoped could come over and provide some custom for the lemonade stand. Both phones rang out. I managed to reach our friend’s wife who told us that he was still at sport with the kids for another half an hour or so, and while on the phone I heard the front door slam open and the Troll Princess holler “We’ve got a customer!”.

Sure enough, a passing car had seen the kids out the front, pulled over, and bought a cup of lemonade. The kids were ecstatic, Rach and I were a little dumbstruck. Then it happened again, and again, and again. Complete strangers pulled up to buy cups of lemonade, and were pleasantly surprised when they discovered that the lemonade was actually quite nice. Along the way the Troll Princess decided to abandon the heady world of beverage service to play with the girl next door, but Buster Boy remained resolute. Soon enough the lemonade had run out and I was sent to the kitchen to prepare another batch, and then to the supermarket to buy more cups.

It was fantastic seeing all of these people give some time and a few cents to take part in the kids’ endeavour, they represented a range of ages and without exception treated our kids with warmth and respect. I don’t think I can adequately explain how proud Buster Boy was of himself, the lemonade stand was his idea and he sat on the nature strip until the sun had fallen below Nail Can Hill before he would consider shutting up shop for the day.

The whole experience was an amazing reminder of how wonderful people can be, and what good things can happen if you trust your kids and let them make decisions for themselves. It would have been very easy to dismiss the idea of the lemonade stand, the thought certainly occurred to me, so I’m glad that it ended up showing the kids that they can be rewarded for working hard and believing in themselves.

And what you all really want to know, they made twelve dollars.

Oh sure, it must have felt wonderful for the last couple of years having Heather Ridout nodding on cue every time that the PM made an announcement, and I have no doubt that you all loved reading her press releases that contradicted the opposition as they were busy behaving like a bunch of injured seagulls fighting over a chip as they attempted to decide on a leader, but you should have known it couldn’t last forever. As soon as you introduced policies that might harm the bottom line of corporate Australia they showed you where they stood, and it wasn’t by your side.

The naivety displayed by Rudd and Swan was almost touching as they put together a policy which not only improved the way the Australian people are compensated for the mineral wealth that our nation holds, but also had some very positive changes for the broader business community. The ALP knew they would face a fight with the big miners, but did they really believe that they’d receive support or plaudits from the rest of the business community? Did Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan really believe that small mining companies, who received some incredibly generous terms from the RSPT, would defend the new policy and risk upsetting the larger miners who they will one day hope to attract as joint venture partners or sell out to?

The stark reality is that corporate Australia doesn’t like the ALP. They’ll tolerate a Labor government and they’ll even cozy up to it while the Liberals are going through one of their periods of opposition induced self immolation, but it never lasts. Did the whiz kids running the ALP machine believe that all of the donations before the 2007 election were a sign that the business community were looking to forge a new partnership with the ALP? They should have known better if they did, the corporate world knows which side its bread is buttered on and was just hoping to play nice in the hope of not having to face any real reform.

Rudd has been criticised, especially in the wake of today’s agreement, for being too confrontational with the mining companies, I say that’s bollocks. If anything Rudd wasn’t confrontational enough. If the RSPT had been a basic 40% tax on profits beyond the bond rate, with no sweeteners at all, today’s deal may have ended up looking like the original Rudd proposal. There’s no point for the ALP to try to play nice with corporate Australia because their efforts will never be appreciated and they will never receive any support when the going gets tough. If you want proof of that you need look no further than the gaggle of industry groups who today came out whinging about elements of the reform policy which have had to be scrapped to allow the miners to have their way. Not one of these organisations has been heard from supporting the RSPT, they sat on the sidelines rather than helping to secure something in their own interest, and now they bleat about the fact that they’re not getting all that they thought that they would.

The question that needs to be asked is whether Prime Minister Gillard and her cabinet will learn this lesson? The ALP need to start behaving like a real Labour government and place the good of ordinary citizens first, because it’s become brutally clear that the corporate sector will not lift a finger to support this government. What makes the whole affair even more disappointing is that the government already had a template about how to deal with big business in the shape of Stephen Conroy. The way that Conroy effectively sidelined Telstra via the National Broadband Network was brilliant, he played hardball and looks to be on track to achieve the reform of Telstra that is so sorely needed. Compare that to the antics of Sol Trujilo and Phil Burgess when dealing with the previous government and you realise how effective Conroy has been.

This same lesson is playing out again with News Limited. The News Limited tabloids tentatively jumped on the Kevin 07 bandwagon because they don’t like backing a loser, but the honeymoon lasted until about December 2007 before they started going feral. The ALP needs to treat News Limited like the hostile organisation that it is and deny it the sort of access, and government advertising, that it craves.

It’s time for the ALP to remember its roots, to sell their policies based on what they will do for the Australian people, and prepare for the onslaught from self interested lobby groups who will never be truly satisfied while we have a Labor government. It’s time for the ALP to remember who its friends are.

We’d waited at the bus stop for a long time with no sign of the bus and had assumed that it was extremely late as we’d arrived at the right time and hadn’t seen it drive past. That was when my phone rang.

The call that we got from the school said that Buster Boy had caught the wrong bus and gone to West Albury. We both thought that seemed strange as he’s very good at remembering details, but didn’t dwell on it as we were more concerned with when he’d get home. We were told he’d been transferred to another bus and would be dropped at his normal bus stop soon. At that point we decided to split up, Rach stayed at the bus stop where Buster Boy gets dropped off in the afternoon and I walked to the other side of the block where he gets picked up in the morning.

After a short wait a bus rolled around the corner and pulled up at my stop, there was no sign of Buster Boy so I assumed that he’d got off at the other stop where Rach had been waiting. I rounded the corner and looked up the hill to see Rach and the Troll Princess, but no Buster Boy. At this point the concern really began to kick in.

I called the bus company to find out what was going on. It turned out that Buster Boy had been on the right bus, he’d told the driver that she’d gone the wrong way, so she assumed he should be in West Albury, which was where he was now headed. I was placed on hold while they got in contact with the bus driver to organise somewhere for us to meet. I was told to be in town in fifteen minutes, the bus would meet us at the last stop in town before it went back to Wodonga. We rushed home, grabbed the car, and raced to the bus stop where we nervously waited.

After what seemed an eternity a green and white bus lurched into the bus stop and Buster Boy hopped off and ran over to us for a hug. We looked for blotchy eyes, or tear stained cheeks, but saw neither; he’d held it together through the whole ordeal, only letting the tears fall once he was safely back with us.

Rach and I felt absolutely horrible. Buster Boy had been on the right bus, so we figured that we must have been late to the bus stop, and were therefore the cause of his distressing afternoon. It was made even worse when through his tears he started to apologise for not getting home.

What came next was rather confusing, Buster Boy said that he’d missed his stop because the driver, who he hadn’t seen before “didn’t go up the hill”. He told us that when the bus started going in an unfamiliar direction he went to talk to the driver, telling her the street that he lived in and even pointing it out as they drove past. Rach and I didn’t know what to make of this, we didn’t doubt what Buster Boy had told us, but we also couldn’t imagine why the bus would deviate from its route.

We took him home, comforted him, and tried to reassure him that it would be OK to come home on the bus again. Buster Boy wasn’t convinced, so we agreed to leave any further discussion until morning. Despite that, Buster Boy told us again, more than once, that the new driver had gone a different way and that’s why he’d missed his stop. The certainty with which he told this story had me wondering where on earth the bus could have gone.

This morning we made a note to put in with Buster Boy’s bus pass, with his bus number and the stop where he gets off in the afternoon. Buster Boy wasn’t happy about coming home on the bus again, but realised that he wasn’t going to win the argument. We walked to the bus stop and Buster Boy obviously still felt some anxiety about the return trip, in honesty I did too.

By this stage I was almost convinced that there’d been some unaccounted for change of the bus route yesterday, but couldn’t imagine how or why. I rang the bus company to say thanks for the way they’d looked after Buster Boy, but hoped that I’d have an opportunity during the conversation to ask whether the bus had taken a detour for some reason. The opportunity didn’t present itself, I was left wondering.

As the time for the bus grew near this afternoon the sky remained grey and the rain poured down. Nevertheless, I went to the bus stop about twenty minutes early and stood beneath my umbrella, still with a slight pang of guilt, thinking that perhaps the bus had been early yesterday and we’d missed it. Today the bus pulled up on schedule, and my heart leaped as I saw Buster Boy tearing down the aisle to be first at the door. As the bus came to a stop I could see the driver talking to Buster Boy and as the door opened I caught the tail end of the conversation.

From what I could gather she was telling him that he should have said that this was his stop yesterday when she asked, and that had she known she would have come this way. Buster Boy was right, she didn’t go up the hill. She must have asked the kids on the bus as a group if any of them got off at Chambers St, the other kids from his stop weren’t on yesterday and Buster Boy wouldn’t have known the answer, so she took a short cut.

After a big hug, Buster Boy told me that he’d shown the bus driver his note, and what’s more he’d told her that she needed to go up the hill today. I was proud that he’d overcome this morning’s anxiety and taken some control of his situation, but the best was yet to come. As we walked down the hill towards home, hand in hand, Buster Boy looked up to me from underneath the little hood on his wet weather jacket and said, “Dad, you were right. It is OK going on the bus in the afternoon”, my heart soared. One of the wonderful things about kids is how quickly they can regain their confidence.

We got home to Rach and the Troll Princess and plenty more hugs. I retired to the kitchen to put make some hot chocolates and share what I’d heard with Rach. Her relief was palpable, quickly followed by a sense of absolute disbelief that a bus driver who was unfamiliar with all of the kids on her bus would change her route. Personally, I’m just glad to know that on this occasion we hadn’t failed our little boy, and that whatever worries he had have been well and truly dispatched.

Over the past few weeks I’ve seen the hashtag #C25K popping up in my twitter stream, but I only recently decided to investigate what it meant. Turns out that quite a few of the people I follow had begun the Couch to 5k running program. C25K is an interval training program and although that’s hardly a new concept, its popularity has meant that a bunch of helpful resources have been created to assist you to get off the couch.

This morning I downloaded a music mix that was designed to accompany the C25K program, with the beat changing up or down according to whether you should be jogging or running, from Podrunner Intervals and loaded it onto my iPod, found my barely used pair of sneakers and headed out the door. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the first transition from a brisk walk to a jog felt like it was going to make my lungs explode, but by the time I reached the cooldown part of the workout I was actually disappointed that I had no more jogging sections to come.

Three times a week for the next 9 weeks I’ll be following the C25K program, if all goes to plan I’ll be able to do a 5K run in 30 minutes, which seems like quite a feat at this point in time. The concept of ‘getting fit’ always seems rather nebulous to me, the beauty of C25K is that there’s a well defined goal and an obvious way to get there.

Update: Second session finished. Buster Boy woke me up just after 6 and I se out with all of the other nutters. Part way through I started to worry that my usually dormant asthma was about to make a comeback, but it turns out it was mostly my under-developed lung capacity that was causing the problem.

So it comes to this. Tiger Woods has been in the headlines for having a few mistresses. I’m sure they each have their own stories to tell however it’s one in particular that has grabbed the headlines recently. Jaimee Grubbs, dubbed Mistress Grubbs in this article from the SMH online, has decided to share her story on national TV, bless her. The article starts with her apologising to Tiger’s wife, Erin Nordegren, for the immeasurable hurt and emotion she has caused her. Right there I’m thinking ‘Ok, really, an apology on national TV? That’s pretty poor form right there love.’ Following that though, is a quote from her saying ‘If it wasn’t me, it was going to be other girls.’ So what, that makes what happened ok does it? Well, thank God you were there Jaimee to stop that from happening. Oh, wait a minute…

Not only does she go on to share the details of her relationship with Tiger, I mean she even talks about their first kiss, but she has the gall to talk of her own personal anguish and hurt at finding out she wasn’t the only woman in Tiger’s life, and she’s not referring to Tiger’ wife! No, it’s the 10 other women he’s seduced over the years. According to Jaimee, what they had together was a relationship of respect, sacred intimacy and trust. He made her feel like she was the only woman (again Jaimee, apart from his wife).

Are you kidding me Jaimee?! What do you think could possibly be gained by sharing this on Extra TV? Let’s see, if I check out their website maybe I can see why you thought this would be the perfect platform for you to air your grievances. Yes, your story fits really well alongside others like David Hasselhoff’s wife asking his fans to help save him, some playmate who is about to pop out a baby any second and, surprise, surprise, other celebs airing their own dirty laundry about exes. Yes, this is a great opportunity for you to tell Erin how sorry you really are.

Here’s a clue. Next time you feel hard done by by some man and feel the need to share, buy a book, call it a journal and write it in that. If you’re not up for that (ie, writing is not your thing, or if you are illiterate), go the tried-and-true method which is to get a bunch of your girlfriends, get pissed and slag him off that way.

As for the excuse, and I quote,’ “I wouldn’t have pursued him if he didn’t pursue me. I mean, when he did, I just figured he was single and I didn’t think to ask,” she says ‘, well, I have some news for Jaimee. Dear, dear simple Jaimee, we live in fairly modern times here and there is this thing called a computer and you can access like, loads of info on lots of different things, including the marital status of celebs. So when he said ‘Hi, my name is Tiger and I play golf’ or whatever he said, did it occur to you that at any point you could find this stuff out. Shame on your friends too, clearly they don’t read tabloid gossip mags, use a computer or are illiterate, because they too may have been able to slap you around the face and tell you to wake up to yourself.

To top this off, Jaimee confesses that her motivation for wanting to share her story was when she found out she wasn’t the only woman in Tiger’s life, I mean apart from his wife (again, that last bit is for you Jaimee).

I’m going to call it. Bullshit. How can you use that excuse as justification for your decision to tell your story on TV? Maybe you wanted to get in first and be seen as the woman Tiger really cared for, that these other women didn’t matter as much as you did to him? That what you and Tiger had was ‘special’. Maybe you wanted people to understand it, to see things from your perspective. Well I’m telling you, far better that you had kept your mouth shut.

Stuff like this great song by Root, called “Joe Blogs“. It’s a bit TISM 2.0

Apex was formed in Geelong in 1931, it was three young men who wanted to make a contribution to their community in the face of the Great Depression. Apex grew quickly throughout Australia, particularly in rural areas, you’d be hard pressed to travel through the small towns in our country without finding an Apex park. Once established, the clubs set about working to improve their local communities in ways that only they as locals could.

When I first joined Apex I was informed by an older member, bearing in mind that in those days members were retired at age 40, that we were there to fill in the gaps. . What we did was see the problems that bureaucracies could not and find solutions that they would not. This philosophy was repeated by thousands of local clubs across the nation, and collectively it was organisations like ours who changed the country. Apex bought the first guide dog trainers to Australia in 1957, started Australian research into Autism in 1968, helped to create the Foundation 41 Research Unit in 1972, funded SIDS research in the early 1980s, along with dozens of other achievements. Other service organisations have similar stories to tell.

But just as important as our collective national efforts were the things these clubs gave to their local communities. Not just the parks and monuments, but the help that they gave to people who didn’t have somewhere else to turn. Over the years our club has chopped firewood for widows, provided holidays for institutionalised orphans, thrown Christmas parties for new migrants, helped maintain accommodation for the homeless and provided equipment for everyone from the local rescue squad to a school for the disabled. While we are lucky today that our social services are so much better resourced than in the past, I worry that it has an impact on our commitment to our local communities when so many people look firstly to different levels of government to solve problems that are within our own abilities to deal with.

There is a well understood psychological effect that people regard things more highly when they have had to make some effort to obtain them, when we work hard to achieve something we appreciate it and care for it much more than if it is simply given to us. This isn’t just the case for individuals but for communities as well, many of the things we value the most are those that were achieved despite a lack of outside assistance. How do we engage people in building their communities’ civic resources when the process is owned by local councils or government departments? How can we make a disengaged community value the programs and infrastructure that is then provided for them?

Thanks to a combination of drought and maintenance problems our fountain hasn’t run very often over the past few years, but it’s the redevelopment of the open space in the CBD that has consigned it to demolition, it no longer fits the Council’s plans for how this space should be presented and used. So the gift that these service clubs made to our town will shortly be removed, and no doubt with it part of the memory of their contribution.

This is being repeated throughout small towns in Australia, community assets which were built by local volunteers are being dismantled by councils that no longer want to maintain them, and sadly in many cases the organisations that contributed these things to their community are no longer around to have a say. In many small towns the service clubs were a big part of the social fabric of the community, they created bonds between the families involved, provided services and support for others and helped to build a culture of civic participation. I remember when I travelled throughout the countryside as a child there would be signs at the entrance to every town proudly displaying the list of local clubs and where and when they met, for the benefit of travelling members and for new residents looking to connect with people.

Sadly those signs are few and far between these days, as are the clubs they represented. The decline in participation hasn’t just affected our organisation, similar stories are told by Rotary, Lions, the Country Women’s Association and other service clubs. As the clubs fade, the halls, parks, monuments and memories of their contribution also tend to be neglected. I think that we are losing a lot more than fountains and swing sets though, we are losing some of our sense of self reliance and of community ownership.

My personal favourite part of the track was probably Siberia, watching the bikes power up the hill before dropping back into the Hayshed. At this part of the circuit you can really appreciate the power of the MotoGP bikes. Even with incredibly sophisticated traction control trying to improve their behaviour the bikes buck and squirm around on the track, almost as if they are trying to throw the riders into the gravel.

Casey Stoner had a customised paint job featuring the Australian flag on his bike and a new set of matching leathers, which was a nice touch for his home GP. Despite the fact that he led from very early in the race Stoner was rarely far from Valentino Rossi. Each lap we’d see them coming over the hill from Siberia and try to judge the gap between them, then a few seconds later they’d blast past us on the hill at Lukey Heights giving us another glimpse of how close they were.

After Stoner clinched the win I took the opportunity to wander across the track and infield before leaving. One of the things that shocked me was the construction of the ripple strips, there was a step down of about an inch at the outside edge between each section, with the step becoming less pronounced towards the inside of the strip. Riding over this on a normal bike, while cornering would be fairly disconcerting, to do so on a MotoGP bike at over 200km/h is simply a frightening thought.

The following morning we left Phillip Island around 6am, and finally saw some sunlight. After stopping for breakfast at Healesville my riding companions headed towards the Hume Freeway, while I continued back the way we had come. It was a beautiful day, and one of those rides where everything just seemed to click, smooth and fast. The roads were filled with bikes returning from the GP, I’d follow along at the back of a group for a while before going my own way again. The ride was mostly uneventful, the only thing upsetting my trip was my luggage rack working its way out of the brackets that hold it onto the bike when I was about 70km from home. Thankfully, apart from a few scrapes on the outside of my bag, there wasn’t anything damaged.

A 900km round trip, my first visit to Philip Island and the MotoGP, it was all intensely satisfying. There is something very special about being out on a bike, even more so when you have the chance to travel with others. My Ducati is by no means a touring bike, no windscreen, an uncomfortable seat and no paniers are good clues to figuring that out, but that’s partly what makes it so much fun to take it on this sort of trip. Sadly Mrsdave doesn’t share my enthusiasm for discomfort and no luggage, so there will need to be a change or addition to the garage before she agrees to come along with me, I’m hoping for the latter.