Fixing MP Entitlements

The politicians are saying the problem is the rules are too opaque, and they need to be made clearer. I guess they need rules where they are not tempted to push the definitions of what is allowed to the absolute limit of shameless logic-twisting, intention-denying interpretation, just because everyone else in the parliament is doing it too.

In fact all this really needs is leadership: one decent PM who will say, at the beginning of his or her term in office, "Look, let's stop all this nonsense and all agree to just claim the bare minimum, and let me set up someone whose task it will be to check what you're claiming and disallow anything that would make a reasonable person go, 'Well, that's not reeeeally what the designers of this entitlement had in mind...' "

But since we don't have that, sure, I guess we need to tighten the rules and make them "more transparent".  So fine, it's not that hard.  In fact, the existing rules are actually pretty clear, except for spelling out what is an allowable business trip.

But ok, here are my new rules:

Travel and Accommodation:

• Business Class air travel is fine
• no charter flights or helicopters unless there is no commercial flight
• no air miles can be accrued (the same rule some companies have for business travel)
• you pay for any family traveling with you
• taxis or hire cars for urban travel but not for travelling between home and your electorate office
• no travel allowance for party fundraisers or social events
• if you have a "work meeting" at the same place as a social event, you pay half the travel cost (and travel rules as above still apply)
• you can't use your accommodation allowance to pay off your mortgage on a Canberra home. Yes you might have bought the home because you have to spend part of the year in Canberra for work, but the fact you are buying it gives you a personal financial advantage (property wealth) so you can't DOUBLE-DIP by claiming an allowance as well. 
• To achieve the above, change the flat dollar allowance MPs get for accommodation and food while in Canberra to two separate items, being a flat amount for food and a claim for accommodation, which is only paid for booked-and-paid accommodation 

Study Tours:

• Stop that nonsense

Superannuation:

• Same as the rest of us

Retirement allowances:

• existing redundancy arrangements for MPs who lose their seat are fine
• no funded office or driver. Use a home office
• Scrap the Gold Pass arrangements for free air travel within Australia for retired long-serving MPs - it's encouraging too many of them to stick around for too long. Let's make it 3 free Business Class trips a year for self and spouse, to attend the odd thingy. 

NOT HARD.


I also think it's a good idea as someone has suggested, to rename them from 'entitlements' to 'expenses' or 'claims'. If you are told something is an 'entitlement', you are apt to claim it. Just as many taxpayers routinely put in work expense claims for the couple of hundred dollars' stationery claims you are allowed to make without receipts - and can I just add, that I also think this is appalling. Don't do it, people.

There has been unhappiness about MP entitlements before, but this time it's the current government's own harsh budget and rhetoric ("The age of entitlement is over!" - oh, I love it) combined with Hockey's out-of-touch announcements ("poor people don't drive far", "people should get a good job paying good money") combined with the usual dubious expense claims by all of them, that is bringing this to a head.

To finish off: this is the funniest Bronwyn Bishop helicopter meme in my opinion:

Bronwyn Bishop says goodbye. #auspol pic.twitter.com/VuIQbpqY9q

— Tim Jones (@forthleft) August 2, 2015

Regulation

Choose your preference.

Be A Late Merger, But Don't Be A Dick

Apparently, road rage has increased dramatically in recent years. I don't think that's surprising news to anyone.

I think the way people get angry on the roads has changed.  I'm pretty sure that in the past people yelled and honked and gestured at each other more, but there was less getting out of the car and attacking the other driver with fists and baseball bats (which you just happen to be carrying in the boot).

These days there's less of the former but a lot more of the latter. In fact I think there's less of the former BECAUSE there's more of the latter. I myself no longer engage in angry beeps, drag races at the lights or angry headlight flashing, because it no longer seems wise to do it.

Or perhaps I'm just getting old.


Last month Fairfax ran a poll asking readers what behaviour angered them most on the roads. The top voted items were:

Late "push-in" mergers..........27% 

Tailgating..........24% 

Drivers on the phone and not paying attention..........17%

"Failing to indicate lane changes", "cyclists flouting road rules" and "drivers travelling too slowly" all pulled just 8% each. "Travelling at the speed limit in right hand lanes" got 7% and "parking aggression" 1%.


If I had to nominate the things that rile ME the most, they'd be:

Sudden lane changes that force you to drop back

Failure to indicate

People merging badly onto freeways

Drivers running red lights

Until fairly recently, I would have nominated late merging. But I'm a late convert to late merging. In fact, I was converted by reading Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), the first chapter of which is all about how the author became a late convert to late merging.

The thing is, you're supposed to merge late. The most efficient way for all traffic to move is to use all lanes until a lane ends. If you're like I was, you would see the left lane ending up ahead, think "Better do the right thing and move over", and merge right, silently seething at those who zipped up the left and merged only at the last minute. Who do they think they are, I'd fume.

But I was wrong. It creates more inefficiency merging early, because those who do make the other lanes move slower, and the left lane goes to waste.

So now I merge later, BUT... there is still a right way to do this. I still get irked by those who try to zip past you when you are merging and sneak in ahead, or those who try to push in after a car you've just let in - it's supposed to be like a zipper, one car from each lane in turn.

I'm a big believer in doing the right thing on the roads. It's good karma: your tolerant, polite behaviour reduces stress for others and increases the total sum of goodwill on the road, and may have a butterfly effect preventing an accident somewhere down the line. Or as The Plastic Mancunian says, "pay it forward".


My anti-road-rage philosophy can be summed up as follows:

Anti Road Rage Philosophy:

1. Apologize if you make a mistake (the little wave, the little grimace, the exaggeratedly mouthed "SORRY!")

2. If someone else makes a mistake, think (a) it's just a mistake and (b) have you ever done the same thing? (because at some point you have)

3. Be a late merger, but don't be a dick 

photo by PDXdj via Flickr Creative Commons

When Language Evolves Wrong

Language evolves. Pedants, get over it! I smirk or eye-roll at those who get uppity over things like these:

• Slang / teenagers speaking like US movies
• Foreign-born shopkeepers or business owners with more pressing concerns than written grammar, putting apostrophes in the wrong place on window signs  
• 'Over' used with a number instead of 'greater than'.
• Adjectives used as adverbs - "when language evolves wrong" [ironic use, see], "when things go bad" ["badly" is fastly disappearing]
• "their" used as a gender-neutral possessive pronoun instead of the cumbersome "his or her"
• Split infinitives - surely no-one cares about this anymore
• Fragmentary sentences and sentences that start with And. Move on. Literature did, some time ago.

But we all have our language pet hates. And though I thought I was pretty cool over this stuff, once I started listing them I found I had quite a lot.

So here are mine:

• "less" used with plurals, instead of "fewer". I know - this battle's long lost, I need to GET OVER IT
• the incorrect form of a word (noun/adverb/verb) used where there are two forms - e.g. "the account has been setup" [set up]; "please login" [log in]; "Big savings everyday" [it should be "every day" - or else make it an adjective, as in "everyday savings"]
• "factoid" used for "fact". A "factoid" is not an interesting tidbit of information, but a supposed-fact or a folk-belief presented as fact, such as "Eskimos have 200 words for snow"
• incorrect word formations caused by people forgetting there is an actual other word for what they're trying to say - business English is a big offender here. My biggest problem at the moment is "in agreeance" instead of "in agreement"
• malapropisms that become widely used (hello again, business English): "Let me take a new tact" (tack); "this is a one-of situation" [one-off]; "they are one in the same" [one and the same]
• parentheses, m-dashes or semi-colons used incorrectly - such as when each part of a sentence divided by a semi-colon isn't related or doesn't form a grammatical sentence, or, as is becoming VERY common now (tsk tsk), when the bit in parentheses can't be taken away without destroying the grammar of the sentence around it (in which case it shouldn't be in parentheses)
• lists where one of the items doesn't match the verb in the list header. You know the sort of thing: "All reports must be: (1) typed, (2) not have errors."  Or where there are not enough "and"s in the sentence because the list ends with a pair that needs its own "and" - e.g.: "ribbons, buttons, needles, odds and ends" 
• too many commas, or commas in the wrong place (Though I am all for the Oxford comma, and other commas before "and" where they increase readability)

Then there are the classics: 

• "infer" used for "imply"; "disinterested" used for "uninterested"  - though I am starting to care less about those (there's that evolution happening)
• your/you're; there/their/they're
• its/it's (I can see this one evolving into a single all-purpose "its" right before my eyes)
• me/I, me/myself (business English, I'm looking at you again, with your attempt-at-formal "please contact myself at...")

Photo by Faisty.com via Flickr Creative Commons

And the ugly portmanteaus - 

• the ones that are too cute, like "staycation" 
• the ones that try too hard or don't rhyme with the original word, like "mansplain" (I HATE that one). 

But unlike the anti-portmanteau commentators I've read, I quite like "chillax" and "recessionista". They are inventive and fun and they work. (Says me anyway).

There are also a few phrases I hate - just HATE. These are:

• "It was on for young and old." I've always hated it - so weird and old-fashioned and strange. 
• "Flat chat" for "busy". "Flat tack" is OK.
• "First in best dressed." This one has come about within my lifetime and I'm not happy with it. When I was a kid, only the root phrase was in use, which was "first come, first served" or "first in first served". I may be wrong but I have a dim memory that "first in best dressed" came about through application to wardrobe-related-only situations as a play on "first in first served". So that was cool and all, but then the specific phrase supplanted the general phrase*, and now the new phrase makes no sense.

(*Let it be known I have no issue with this phenomenon in itself. I am quite happy with "walk the talk" which has evolved from "He can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk?" - though thinking about it, it's a shame to have lost that phrase. It was too long to survive I guess.)

But I am utterly relaxed on these:

• incorrect usages of over/more than/greater than [because I personally get this wrong a lot - therefore, not important]
• use/usage [meh - both can be correct, 'usage' is not always wrong]
• the American expression "I could care less" for "I couldn't care less" [I could care less about it]
• replying "I'm good" to "How are you?", instead of "I'm well" [I use both]
• "is" or "are" for implied-plural nouns - e.g., "my bank is profitable" or "my bank are not passing on the Reserve Bank interest rate cut". Either is correct (the grammar, not the situation, boom-tish).

On the other hand, I find really odd and jarring that American grammar of using "would" instead of "had" for the past or conditional perfect: as in, "I wish you would have told me" instead of "I wish you had told me", or "if I would've known" instead of "if I had known".  That's annoying.

Oh, but have I mentioned that I also hate it when people correct other people's grammar, especially on social media?  It's snobbish, cheap, and rude. (Grit your teeth and write a blog post instead).

Finally, if I have made grammatical mistakes in this post: this means that you are a pedant and language evolves and GET OVER IT.   :-)

What do you hate?

What could[n't] you care less about?

What Women Shouldn’t Want

The Age fashion section recently ran a feature declaring that our love of Mad Men-inspired fashion is on the way out. (We’re now heading back to the 1920s for our inspiration, apparently).

I think I am glad. Like everyone, I love the styling in Mad Men. But also, I am fed up with 50s and 60s retro nostalgia. We quite possibly need a break.

Pastel tin laundry peg baskets? Floral aprons? Giant $800 cake mixers? Over it. Over it all.

We need to remember what these things actually represent. Not some rosy, fake warm view of the past but the reality of what that past was like, especially (but not only) for women.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Mad Men, but you’re supposed to watch it and remember how crappy things used to be, not sigh over beautiful clothes and martinis at lunchtime. Or, at least do both.

Remember the flip side, sisters:

_____________________________________________________________________

Retro style: Fantasy Vs. Reality


Fantasy:
Husband = Don Draper
Reality:
Husband = Don Draper
or more likely:
Husband = one of the way lesser guys with all their crap and crap salary too (You have no salary, remember)

Fantasy:
Gorgeous clothes
Reality:
Pantyhose. Every day.

Fantasy:
People are slim without exercising
Reality:
Cigarettes, alcoholism, diets

Fantasy:
Whiskey in the office
Reality:
You’re a woman. You’re not IN the office.

Fantasy:
No crazy career pressure for women. You can stay home and manage your house and kids.
Reality:
Crazy pressure to find husband early, and pick a good one. You pick wrong, you ruin your life.

Fantasy:
Social norms – everyone knows the rules.
Reality:
There were A LOT of rules.
Dinner party hostessing anyone?

_____________________________________________________________________

The present is better than the past, in almost every way. And I’m going to skip over the serious stuff here (financial independence, access to birth control, equal opportunity at work, equitable divorce) and just look at clothing and style.


When I was a kid in the 1970’s and 80’s my mum, who was slim, stylish and clever (and always starving herself on diets) taught us tips and tricks on dressing and looking our best. Not in a bad way, just as useful asides in our everyday life.

And there were definitely rules to learn.

Every season, skirts were of a “type” (A-line, gathered with a yoke, straight, or wrap-around), and a specific length – above the knee, below the knee, calf, ankle. (Unfortunately the most flattering length, on the knee, completely skipped the 80’s and most of the 90’s). Every season my mum would adjust all our skirt hems up or down to the correct current length. If a skirt could not be altered to the correct length, you just couldn’t wear it. You’d look odd.

Make no mistake; this was not just my mum. This is how it was.

I still remember how refreshing, interesting, and faintly shocking it was, when my mum told me about a friend’s grown daughter: “Michelle doesn’t worry about length for daytime anymore.” Wow! Revolutionary! Could it be? Could that work?! We tried it – we never looked back.

And remember that? Daytime clothes and night-time clothes? Night was dressier. You had a day bag (just one!) and an evening bag (just one!). Daytime perfume and night-time perfume (daytime was likely a cologne; night-time was the full ‘spicy’ or ‘oriental’ eau du parfum).

And all this was just in the 80’s! For the 50’s and 60’s you can magnify that by ten.

So yes, the past was stylish. It was stylish because it was ruled by rules – norms that were, to current tastes, stifling, and admitted little variation.

It’s like visiting some European cities – I admire that people are gorgeous, stylish and well-dressed. But after a while I grumble that they all look the same. There’s much less individual style, experimentation or whimsy. No crazy dyed hair, kooky ensembles or ugly shoes. Those things may grate sometimes, but I find I miss them when they’re not around.

So take “inspiration” from Mad Men – and other sources – all you like. But don’t discount the wonderful things available right here in the present: freedom, individuality, self-expression, and the ability to wear track pants for the dash to the corner shop.

Picture Credit: http://www.blingcheese.com/image/code/40/mad+men.htm