Lewis Hamilton

 Lewis Hamilton

There are nineteen other Formula 1 drivers, asking themselves. “just how the hell do I beat Lewis Hamilton.” None of them have yet found the answer. He now holds the record of 93 wins. But that’s not what makes him great. It’s what he does when it doesn’t all go his way. Jensen Button, himself a World Champion, and Lewis’s team mate at Mclaren. Said when Lewis left to join Mercedes and partner Nico Rosberg. “Nico had better watch out, Lewis can get speed out of a bad car.”

Take the British Grand Prix a few years back. Lewis as expected takes pole position in qualifying. But no one expected the time. It was a scintillating new record. No one was going to beat it, he knew it and was getting out of the car. Suddenly his time disappeared of the screens. Disallowed for exceeding track limits. Hamilton gets back in the car. By this time has can just about make it to the start finish line before qualifying ends. I remember thinking, I hope he can at least still get pole. With only one single opportunity, he produced the identical lap. Taking pole. Mere mortals like us cannot do that, it’s just not possible. Unless you’re Lewis Hamilton.

Monaco. Poor qualifying, a circuit it is next to impossible to pass on. The race starts wet, Hamilton is about sixth, going nowhere. The track starts to dry, everyone heads for the pits to change from wet to intermediate tyres. Except Hamilton who now has a long lead, but the wrong tyres. Somehow he alone managed to keep life in his his tyres. When the track dried further he went straight onto slicks. Having now only stopped once. Whilst everyone else had stopped twice. He won the race easily.

Imola, recently. Again not on pole. Messed the start and runs third. A narrow track with few passing opportunities. The leaders stop for fresh tyres. Hamilton, no longer held up starts putting in blistering laps. He tries to open up enough of a lead to be able to, in turn stop for tyres and still come out in the lead. Remember he is still on his original tyres. He starts to do it. But back-markers loom, these will take time to pass. The team ask him. Can you get another 10 laps out of those tyres. This will enable him to pass the back-markers and continue to stretch his lead to give him time for the stop.

Fate lends a hand. A safety car is called, slowing the field. Hamilton dives for the pits. Emerges with new tyres and a healthy lead. Lucky? Yes, but winners often make their own luck. They place themselves in a position to take advantage of any luck that comes their way. If he hadn’t eeked out those extra laps from his original tyres he would have finished third.

That’s why he is now entering the realm of the truly greats. Even when it’s not going his way, he still finds a way to win.

An Unhealthy Bureaucracy

To the uninitiated. This is a “Patient Care Board.” There is one adjacent to every hospital bed in NSW. In 2017-2018, there were 61,647 hospital beds in Australia. How many of those are in NSW is hard to tell. After lengthy research I found a very concise report: 

https://www1.health.nsw.gov.au/pds/ActivePDSDocuments/PD2012_054.pdf

It’s a 20 page report, called: Bed Numbers Data Collection. It tells you what constitutes a hospital bed. How the report was compiled. Everything. Except how many hospital beds there are in NSW!

Which brings me back to our “Patient Care Board.” In all my too numerous trips to hospital, in the last few years. I have never seen one write on. Let’s do some maths. A figure plucked from the air, let's put a price of $5 each and one-third of the beds for NSW. That is $100,000. Then we need to mount each one. $100,000 + for something that has never been written on.

This is what I love about bureaucracy, why did someone not ask the nurses why they didn’t write on the whiteboard that already existed?

In the meantime we cannot get competent surgeons. Hospitals cleaned or maintained.

Internet Service Provider ?

 

Or:

I nternet

S ervice

P eril

What can possibly go wrong, right? Wrong.

Once you get past the inept political posturing. Fibre to Node. Wireless. Fibre to the premises. And what now you’re trying to work from home, and your kids are home too. Trying to study online. And what! Now you expect it work!

You crazy!

Well that's infrastructure taken care of. (laughed out loud)

Now lets get down to ISPs. These are the service providers who bring it all to your door. They rent band width off NBN Co, and bill the customer, you. It’s simple isn’t it. Laughed out load again. The first thing to remember, in all this. “We give higher speed, blah, blah. It’s all coming through the same network, it’s all the same cable. It belongs to NBN Co, not your ISP.

Now, I decided I need a bigger data allowance, unlimited. My current ISP won’t come to the party on cost. So I make the decision to change. “Oh that will cost you $150.00 in termination fee!” I’ve been with them more than a year. Long story short I contact the Telecommunications Ombudsman. Late Friday afternoon. I get an almost instant response. He contacts my ISP. All of a sudden there is no contract. I can terminate any time I like, 24 hours notice, no termination fee. Sorted in under an hour. What tells me the Ombudsman had heard that one before!

So now I’ free to find the ISP of my choice. Not hard, a known name, good price, unlimited data. But no. This guy wants me to formally, in writing, wave my rights to the Customer Service Guarantee! Under consumer law. It is actually hard to imagine how this would ever impact a retired pensioner. But! How about the arrogance of a company who thinks it should not be bound by the consumer laws of the country in which it operates. No thank you, keep looking.

Here’s another one. Good price. I highly recommend you do some research on any of these ISPs before signing up. “Never got connected, can’t get my money back.” Stay away from that one. I recommend using.    https://www.productreview.com.au

There’s some sad stuff out there. And there in lies the problem. ISPs have way too much power. There’s too much money in providing communication these days. We’ve moved on since 1872, Australia’s first telegraph line. It’s a different world. No one with wires and crimpers is coming out to change your line over. Some innocuous, faceless clerk at a keyboard will hit a few keys, and your bill will pass from one ISP to another. And then another arsehole can wreak havoc with your credit card, screw up your email address, and keep you awake at night. Wondering if in the morning you might have a connection, your phone will be live once more. Will you be able to watch the next Grand Prix. Keep up with the news.

ISPs are a bunch of lying thieving rat bags who have way too much influence over government and unwarranted access to your money. Trust no one!

Seventy Years On.

I ’m only 163 centimetres tall, so I can’t even claim to be a big kid. Sixty years ago, my Dad took me to the London Motor Show. I saw my first Lotus, and swore to own one, when I was a grown up. What do I drive today? A Lotus. My 5th

I also dreamt of being the next Stirling Moss. I wasn’t. But I do have a trophy cabinet with about sixty trophies in it. I gave it shot! Some years ago when over in Australia on a visit, my mother remarked to a group of my friends. “The only thing that surprises me about my son, is that he is still alive.” When in the UK visiting her. I announced my intention to go to Covent Garden the following day. Mother claimed this was not possible due to the then current terrorist activities in London. I told her. “The day they stop me doing what I want, when I want to do it, they have won. But it’s not today.”

Life has had it’s battles, alcoholism, bankruptcy, cancer. The toughest was alcohol. Bankruptcy? Planning and discipline got me back from that. Cancer? Well that wasn’t even a fair fight. I was always going to win that one. And though I haven’t yet. It’s only a matter of time. I mean what do you do when diagnosed with cancer. Why, you make a come back to motor sport of course. I thought everybody knew that. To actually win after a thirty year absence from the track. That might be special.

I’ve taken the odds to everything in life. But not the Corona Virus. That’s not just my odds. That's everyone around me, loved ones and friends. I’ve lost too many friends. It doesn’t seem fair somehow. I took all the risks, and I’m still here. Dad, Carol, Terry, Silly John, all lost to cancer. Never took risks, but gone. My Dad died at 53.

So what’s next for Roger? Well Europe seems out for a while yet. So a bit more motor sport. After all I’m only 70. So that’s 2021 taken care of. Followed in 2022. By a tour of all the European iconic Opera Houses. La Scala to St Petersburg!

What a life! How fortunate I am to have lived it. I’m not a victim of anything. Rather a victor of everything!

What I Have Learnt in Lockdown.

I have learnt many wondrous things in lockdown. Some I already knew, Just needed a reminder. Others confirmed I was right in the first place. Then there are those I knew, but but didn’t need to be reminded of.

Take television. Growing up in post war London, we didn’t have a television. Later we did get one. It was big, only the screen was small. Black and white, and only one channel. The BBC, British Broadcasting Company. I soon developed the view, that if your sole topic of conversation was either the weather, the British weather at that. Or last night’s television! You were best off to shut up! In the course of our recent lockdown I have sadly watched a little more TV than normal. Education is a wonderful thing. I have learnt which is the first item of clothing a woman removes on arriving home. In my almost seventy years, I have never witnessed this. I’ve known a few women in my life. Been fortunate to witness a number undress. I may even have helped on occasion. But never have I seen the bra come off first!

Now I know a lady. She claims it is possible to remove the bra via a sleeve. Thus far she has declined my invitation to demonstrate. Leaving me to ponder the validity of her claim. Or the television add.

Other revelations! Sport is not important. You may be saddened to miss your favourite tennis tournament, football match. Or in my case motor race. But it’s not important. It’s the television rights that are important. Ways must be found to circumvent boarder restrictions, so the games can go on! There’s no one in the stands. No one to cheer. Just an empty venue, save for the cameraman. Foxtel must prevail. Well why not it does over our government.

In the late 80’s I was busy studying and writing papers on supervision and motivation of the remote workforce. Telecommuting was coming, but we had to wait almost forty years and a pandemic to see it eventuate. Do you know what FTN is? It’s fibre to the node. Another brilliant assassination of a poorly implemented piece of infrastructure. It was never a good idea, but it took a pandemic for the government to realise it. Anyone from IT saw this one coming a decade back. Similarly, I have waited 40 years fore the paperless office. The cashless society. Covid 19 has taken us closer in 5 months than the last 5 decades!

Tis the season to renovate. When it all started I bashed the plastic at Bunnings. Stoked up with all the materials for next few projects. The Pagola wasn't scheduled to be finished before June. That was completed in March. New trellis, new gate. New security. Including a smart lock on the front door. Now I don’t need to take keys with me when I go out. It even talks to me when I get back.The headboard, the seamless door frame. The bedroom is complete! Now I’m out of stuff to do. This is when you start getting silly and working through the software that will enable to lock or unlock your front door from Istanbul! To say nothing of the 15 IP address I now have in my house.

Or you start trying to configure a computer just to play your old Tomb Raider games. Then there are all those annoying little things that never worked properly. But you had learnt to live with. This is the time to fix them all. I’ve run out of them too.

At the height of the lockdpwn I realised as a retired racing driver. The most dangerous thing I was doing, was going down to the shops for a fresh loaf of bread. Answer, buy a bread maker. I soon figured I could do better myself and started baking it myself. Sold the bread-maker, but continued baking.

We also learnt that the most important purchase in our weekly shopping is bog roll. Nowhere in any news bulletin, from any news agency anywhere in the world, did I ever hear mention of Covid 19 ever causing diarrhoea! Yet toilet paper disappeared overnight off every single supermarket shelf in every village, town, city or capital throughout the world. WHY! People were fighting over it in the isles. And this was all while they were still publishing the local newspaper. Where was the panic?

Of the superannuation withdrawals you ask? Figures suggest that 64 per cent of it has gone on discretionary items such as clothing, furniture, restaurant food, gambling and alcohol. Rather than essentials like survival. In a world where toilet paper has become the number one priority. One is left to ponder where ours went wrong.

Isolation

Isolation

Isolation? How tough is it, if you've lost your job, it’s tough, and probably worse to come. My heart goes out to you.

For a writer, photographer, a racing driver. All things you do on your own. Add to that, I’ve always been something of a loner, it’s OK. A few adjustments. There’s no motor racing, so that’s out. There’s no travel, so no Opera House tour of Europe. That wasn’t on this year’s agenda anyway. All of which means less expenditure. So this has become the year of the house.

I’ve done damage to the credit card at Bunnings. Stocking up on materials for the next few projects. Look at it this way, I’m doing my bit to keep the economy ticking over. So I’m reading researching, writing, editing, and home projects.

The big question is. “Do I need to go out.” The only thing I regularly run out of is fresh bread. Answer, buy a breadmaker. Now I have 12 kilos of bread flour and way too much yeast. I shan’t need to buy bread for a few months! Of other household items? Well I’ve always made it a practice to have an “Unbroken” pack of all things I regularly consume. Soap, toothpaste, bleach, tea, rice, tinned stuff. I use long life milk to make yoghurt so I have plenty of that. About 2 dozen eggs. The irony is, there is no shortage of fresh food. Toilet paper you ask? Well I have two toilets, so I always keep an unbroken pack upstairs, and another one downstairs.

I have a medical appointment next week, so I’ll have to go out for that. Sadly I don’t have enough melon to last me until then. (Rock melon please). I’m using less fuel, and the dishwasher well that looks like being about every 8 days, without visitors.

My take? The next time you complain about what they are teaching our kids at school, look back at yourself. It wasn’t our kids who bought all the toilet paper!

Lotus. For those who know the difference.

Eric Abetz

Eric Abetz 

I’ve always held the view, that if you don’t think you are going to like the answer, think twice before asking the question. Not our Eric, why oh why, if you were a sane moderately intelligent Liberal, would allow Abetz on a committee? Where could you find a more stupid person, a greater liability to your cause? 

Workers are overpaid, dole recipients overpaid, politicians, apparently not. Opposed to same sex marriage, wants to beef up Religious protection laws. Oh and let's just get this question right, it may go down in history! “No ineligible project or application was funded.” Of all the inept questions we have heard from politicians over the years, that one is way up there on the list, what an absolute effing idiot. And so are we, we’re paying his wages.

Bridget Mckenzie

Come on, how stupid do you think we look. That’s right, us the voter.

Do you seriously expect us to believe that no one else knew. That Bridget Mckenzie, disappeared to her office and conjured up this wonderful plan to appropriate Sports Grants to favoured marginal electorates. Or is a staff member about to take the fall, and it was all done in secret. Come on, what do you take us for. That may be the most insulting thing of all, treating the voters like idiots.

Angus Taylor

Angus Taylor

There can be few bigger wastes of space in Canberra than Angus Taylor. 14.2 million on domestic travel! How believable is that, yet he makes the accusation in Federal Parliament, apparently without even checking the accuracy of his information. Please note this is the Minister for Energy and Emission Reductions ! The behavior of Angus Taylor is so inept, so steeped in stupidity, he should be frog-marched out of Parliament. People that stupid should not be permitted in the chamber.

14.2 Million, when the real figure was $229,000. Did he not expect that someone might not pick up an almost 14 million discrepancy, how can anyone be that stupid.

Currently as Australia burns, Mr Taylor has found a convention fire shelter in which to hibernate, Scott Morrison is rumored to be holding the key. This guy’s Ministerial title includes “Emission Reductions”

Liar, Liar, Pants on fire. But seriously what does it take to get the richly deserved sack!