LUV, US Elections, Gaming, Socialising

[tcpip]

Last Tuesday night convened the monthly LUV meeting. A good turnout, and two excellent speakers which have spurred my hitherto laziness on the need to learn and use HTML5 more extensively. Have also made initial preparations for LinuxConf AU 2013 and, across The Ditch, Multicore World 2013.

This Sunday Dean Edwards, Vice-Chair of Democrats Abroad (Au) will be speaking at the Kooying ALP FEA on the US Presidential elections. Expected a good turnout and interest. Have followed the polling closely at RealClear Politics and FiveThirtyEight, both of which suggest an Obama victory.

Pendragon game last night introduced the mythic story of The Fisher King. Earlier this week my review of jiawen's Blade and Crown was published on rpg.net. Last Sunday Redmond finished a session of Dark Hesresy. Still working away way to complete the next issue of RPG Review with last minute articles coming in; hopefully will complete by early next week.

Last Saturday evening caseopaya and I enjoyed the company of Brendan E., where we enjoyed dinner, drinks, and several episodes of Archer. Also very much enjoying the Friday evening gatherings organised by Keith P., a multicultural mix primarily of local students with themed discussions which help both cultural communication and understanding (not to mention English skills). Tomorrow afternoon will have other visitors (work and ex-work) colleagues and their partners to tour the Willsmere estate.

Comments

[ideological_cuddle]

Willsmere as in the place in Kew, or some other Willsmere?

I ask because my boss just moved there this week!

[tcpip]

Willsmere in Kew is indeed the place!

You must come and visit :)

[ideological_cuddle]

Oh, you live there?

I'll probably be there on Sunday to help the boss with her A/V setup, as it happens. I was looking at the rental listing for the place she got and thinking it looked awesome, particularly for the price, and was all set to go looking for more listings until I saw how unsuitable it is for public transport...

[tcpip]

Yeah, we lived there for a little over two years now.

It's a great location, a short walk to the public transport on Princess Street/Willsmere Rd. Plus there's a courtesy shuttle in the mornings to Kew junction.

Alas, I will probably miss you on Sunday. I have an early morning at St. Michael's and then off to the Unitarian Philosophy forum, then some gaming in East Melbourne, followed by a Kew ALP function.

[ideological_cuddle]

Hm. It looks to be about a km to Princess St, though from there I guess you've got the bus down to Kew Junction. By suburban standards that's pretty reasonable, but I live in Carlton... ;->

What're the local facilities (shops, that kind of thing) like? Much within walking distance, or is it mostly houses?

[tcpip]

It's a very nice 1km walk down to Princess Street. Look it up on Google streetview.

Local facilities, to be fair, are not the best. Willsmere itself has good local facilities (library, gym, tennis courts, swimming pool). But the closest shops are either at Willsmere and Earl Streets or the Junction - both of which is a good 20 minute trek.

[ideological_cuddle]

It does look really nice, and if I were more "normal" it'd absolutely go toward the top of the list of places to look at.

The catch for me is that I am utterly dependent on public transport and close-by facilities -- too blind to drive, and mobility more broadly is an issue thanks to the MS. Thus winding up renting a house somewhere as insanely expensive as Carlton.

[tcpip]

Yes, I certainly understand how the mobility/PT issue can be justifiably off-putting for many. Apparently there used to be a little coffee-shop-cum-milk-bar, but the population wasn't there to sustain it. That might be different now as there has been a fair bit of development.

Carlton is indeed insanely expensive, especially in recent years. The only places in the inner urban regions that are remotely affordable in the private market would be parts of Richmond and Abbottsford. As for the public market, there is a waiting list greater than a lifetime. As always, it is ration by price or by time.

Oddly, because of the reputation of Willsmere, it remains one of the more affordable parts of Kew.

[ideological_cuddle]

There may be some affordable bits of Richmond, but from what I've seen looking at listings there's not much of it -- unless you want a tiny falling-apart dogbox, anyway.

Mind you my house here isn't that much more expensive than the two-bedroom place the boss has leased at Willsmere, and what I have is a two-bedroom (really one plus a study which is unusable in the summer!) townhouse tucked away in a little square thingy across the road from Melbourne Uni.

Have to go a bit further out to get much cheaper, there's some stuff in Moreland. But mostly, if it's close to PT, particularly trams or rail, then it's going to be pricey. The market has spoken.

[tcpip]

Wow, sounds like you picked up quite a good spot next to Melbourne Uni...

Yes, the market has spoken.. But the market is biased when it comes to real estate. There's not many other industries where the supply of a core component is perfectly inelastic.

Oh, but I could go on for hours about the economics of land...

[ideological_cuddle]

Yes, this house is remarkably good. It's relatively modern -- looks to be maybe a 1970s or 1980s build -- but reasonably good with insulation and so on. There are two others in this row, we have a little shared open area, and my neighbour on one side is a coffee shop who needs the parking space I have, so I get free coffee in return for that. :)

(And yes, the cost of coffee is a factor I take in to account when comparing rents.)

There are all sorts of issues with this stuff, absolutely. The one I find most annoying is that although politicians typically don't take PT very seriously, and many people are quite dismissive about it and are quite happily living their car-centred lives, there's enough demand for PT that all the property close to it is much more expensive.

Which is a real bugger if you don't get the choice to have that car-centric life. Because I'm making university/community-sector style money but competing with bankers and lawyers for housing...

[fluffyblanket.livejournal.com]

I always knew Australia was another continent,but your entries convince me that it's another planet-a utopian one!
:D

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think I'm just fortunate due to the company I keep.

Oh, and the economy. It is, as one 'blogger puts it, a Beautiful, Inspiring, Set Of Numbers.

[fluffyblanket.livejournal.com]

Julia Gillard could help Obama with numbers.
My computer tehnician,José, shares my concerns.He's an (A)narchist , a Baha'i and a yoga expert.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, there is several serious things which Australia has done which has worked well. Our economic position is not just the result of good luck.

* A shift in our tax base. A mostly quiet revolution in Australia's public income system has occurred under Rudd-Gillard. We're moving the tax-base off income earners, especially low-income earners, and on to resource usage and holdings (e.g., mining tax, carbon price).

* We've investing in serious infrastructure. The most significant being the National Broadband Network, but also (with some bumps along the way) with education. The stimulus response to the GFC worked very well for us as well. I was a little cynical of the amount that was going directly to individuals at the time, but even that seemed to have panned out OK.

[blarglefiend.livejournal.com]

The neat bit with the money to individuals was that it was enough to be a genuine windfall, so while many used it to pay down debt or add to their savings, enough used it to go buy stuff, which is a useful if short-term bit of stimulus which everyone can wrap their head around.

In the States an awful lot of their stimulus went to tax cuts. Which is a tiny incremental change in income, at best, so it doesn't really get noticed and is spent, if at all, in tiny slow amounts. It's a trickle where what you need is a bit of a flood.

The school halls and so on were more useful as stimulus, but the cash payments weren't entirely without use.

We had real stimulus, almost everyone else opted to water it down or do crazy austerity tricks in the hope that the confidence fairies would sort it all out. Keynes wins, once again.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

.. which everyone can wrap their head around.

That's a good point, and one which I (being a grognard bean-counter) missed; it generated a psychological effect of economic confidence.

In the States an awful lot of their stimulus went to tax cuts.

And even as direct bail-outs to the very people who caused the problem in the first place!

The problem with tax cuts as a stimulus method is that unless the drop in public income is made up from other sources, then there is next to zero net effect. In fact, if the money is taken away from infrastructure projects it can make the situation even worse.

[blarglefiend.livejournal.com]

I'd draw a distinction between stimulus and the bank bail-outs. You'll notice that the Irish did bank bail-outs too and those have not exactly been stimulating the economy...

The GM bailout worked pretty well though, so naturally while Romney was against it at the time (very much on the record) now he's trying to claim it as his own.

Another problem with tax-cuts as stimulus is that they're hard to wind back. When you don't extend them you get accused of raising taxes, so it's very difficult for a politician who wants to be re-elected. They wind up being built in to the system over the longer term -- so they're ineffective and contribute to a structural deficit.

Infrastructure as stimulus is tricky too though. The big-ticket stuff takes quite a long time to get to the point where you're actually employing lots of people and buying materials, so unless you just happened to have something big where all the preliminary work was already done, it's... useful, but not immediately so. So you need to do the school halls and the roof insulation too.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yes, that distinction between stimulus and bail-outs is very accurate. I have written a couple of pieces myself on the GFC in general and the situation in Ireland in particular.

Likewise your remarks on infrastructure. That has to be carefully considered and part of overall planning developments. After all, if one doesn't take such a point of view the pyramids of Egypt could count as an infrastructure project!

[blarglefiend.livejournal.com]

Well, if you can start building your pyramids right away then they do count as stimulus. Keynes was being a bit facetious about burying money then letting people dig it up, but there's a core of truth to it.

Just not as infrastructure!