Yani's Blog

This is for the geeks amongst us, although most people will probably appreciate this.

This was first published in 1982 in InfoWorld and is attributed to John Unger Zussman and later published in the November 2, 1984 edition of the University of Waterloo‘s mathNEWS. I was given a photostat copy in the mid 80s and used it in a computer magazine I was editing at the time. It has since become quite widespread on the internet under the title “Lesser known computer languages”, probably because most computer guys cannot spell gazetteer. Read and enjoy…

 

SIMPLE

‘Simple’ is an acronym for Sheer Idiot’s Programming Linguistic Environment. This language, developed at Hanover College for Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to ‘begin’, ‘end’, and ‘stop’. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can’t make a syntax error.

Programs written in Simple do nothing useful. They thus achieve the results of programs written in other languages without the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.

SLOBOL

Slobol is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler. Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they compile, Slobol compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the coffee.

Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom sitting at their terminals while waiting for a Slobol program to compile.

VALGOL

From its modest beginnings in Southern California‘s San Fernando Valley, Valgol is enjoying a dramatic surge in popularity across the industry. Valgol commands include ‘really’, ‘like’, ‘well’, and ‘y*know’. Variables are assigned with the ‘= like’ and ‘= totally’ operators. Other operators include the California Booleans, ‘fersure’ and ‘noway’. Repetitions of code are handled in ‘for/sure’ loops. Here is a sample Valgol program:

like y*know (I mean) start
if pizza = like bitchen and
b = like tubular and
c = like grodyax
then
for I = like 1 to oh maybe 100
do wah – (ditty)
barf(1 ) = totally gross (out)
sure
like bag this problem
really
like totally (y*know)

Valgol is characterized by its unfriendly error messages. For example, when the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the message: gag me with a spoon

LITHP

This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of an ‘s’ in the character set. Programmers must substitute ‘th’. Lithp is said to be useful in proceththing lithtth.

LAIDBACK

Historically, Valgol is a derivative of Laidback, which was developed at the (now defunct) Marin County Center for T’ai Chi, Mellowness, and Computer Programming, as an alternative to the intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley. The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs while they worked. Unfortunately, few programmers could survive there for long, since the center outlawed pizza and RC Cola in favor of bean curd and Perrier. Many mourn the demise of Laidback because of its reputation as a gentle and non-threatening language. For example, Laidback responded to syntax errors with the message:

Sorry, man, I can’t deal behind that.

C-

This language was named for the grade received by its creator when he submitted it as a project in a university graduate programming class. C– is best described as a ‘low-level’ programming language. In general, the language requires more C– statements than machine code instructions to execute a given task. In this respect it is very similar to COBOL.

SARTRE

Named after the late existential philosopher, Sartre is an extremely unstructured language. Statements in Sartre have no purpose; they just are. Thus, Sartre programs are left to define their own functions. Sartre programmers tend to be boring and depressed and are no fun at parties.

DOGO

Developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Obedience Training, Dogo heralds a new era of computer-literate pets. Dogo commands include ‘sit’, ‘stay’, ‘heel’, and ‘roll over’. An innovative feature of Dogo is ‘puppy graphics’, a small cocker spaniel that occasionally leaves deposits as he travels across the screen.

Lingua Programmatica

As a programmer who has frequently been frustrated by the lack of flexibility of conventional high-level programming languages, I am pleased to report the recent completion of a new language that promises to leave Pascal and the others stumbling in its tailwind. The new language is called LATIN (not to be confused with the natural language, Latin, with which it is, however, identical).

LATIN offers such conveniences as Roman numeral mode (for those who are tired of trying to deal with clumsy Arabic numbers), output to marble, and a sophisticated user interface that features not just icons but also omens. The package includes complete error detection and punishment. Program execution is rapid; however, programmer execution is painfully slow. The carefully written documentation is hand-copied on papyrus scrolls by Egyptian slaves, and scans nicely. The language is provided on a sturdy double-sided discus, designed for years of troublefree use.

Availability of LATIN is something of a problem at present, as the compiler is written not in assembler but in an intermediate-level language called GREEK (G-Code), which has yet to be implemented on any microcomputer.

And this one by Karl Hildon . . .

NORTH

NORTH programs can only execute efficiently where snow falls at least 5 months of the year. This is because many NORTH programmers become sick and fed up with their environment and move on to SOUTH. Almost all NORTH programs are totally useless in the SOUTH environment.

NORTH programs are immediately recognizable by the “, eh ” suffix which seems to be necessary after every line. Although there are other slight differences, most NORTH programs can be translated to SOUTH by replacing the “, eh ” suffix with “, uh “.

Debugging NORTH programs is no probs. The “Gimme a break” command can be inserted to stop programs from taking off with goofs, and after an error, the “Check it out” command shows the offending botches.

The following is a demo program that comes with the NORTH interpreter:

10 hosers = 1, eh
20 buzz hoser, “what’s happenin’ man?”, eh
30 far out, eh: hosers = hosers + 1, eh
40 it hosers < beer/6 then 20, eh
50 if dough = 0 then cruise, eh: goto 50, eh
60 if donuts = 0 then cruise, eh
70 if beer < 24 then cruise, eh: beer = beer+24, eh
80 killer, eh
90 on stereo goto heavy metal, heavy metal, eh
100 while beer > 0, eh
110 beer = beer – hosers, eh
120 endwhile, eh
130 if munchies then do food, eh
140 if burnt out then crash, eh: else 70, eh

RENE

Named after the famous French philosopher and mathematician Rene DesCartes, RENE is a language used for artificial intelligence. The language is being developed at the Chicago Center of Machine Politics and Programming under a grant from the Jane Byrne Victory Fund. A spokesman described the language as “Just as great as dis [sic] city of ours.”

The center is very pleased with progress to date. They say they have almost succeeded in getting a VAX to think. However, sources inside the organization say that each time the machine fails to think it ceases to exist.

FIFTH

FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and BLOTTO. Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY, CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH, and WHATEVERSAROUND.
The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers who end up using this language.

 

• More oganisation leads to greater efficiency

I once had a discussion with a colleague who was appointed to yet another process improvement workshop to look at a particularly inefficient installation procedure to try and make it more efficient. The discussion went something like this…

Me: What makes you thing that it will deliver a more efficient process?

Her: silence… “Well we are going to see how we can improve the delivery”

Me: I can tel you know exactly what the problems are and how to improve it

Her: silence

Me: Are there any people on the team that have the technical background to understand the technical complexities of the process

Her: silence … Erummmm … no

Me: How do you think that a team of non-technical people who do not have the background to understand the technical problems will deliver a more efficient process – given that the problems are highly technical in nature

Her: silence …. Erummmm …. well…

Me: In all your many years with the organisation and the many many process improvement teams you have been on has one delivered a more efficient process

Her: Long silence ….. Well no, not really

Me:What make you think this team will be any different

Her: You’re right

Me: I know

For reference, that conversation was about three years ago and as far as I know the exact same process is being used today.

I was listening to an academic and author several days ago being interviewed on the radio which leads me to the next myth.

• Untidy people spend an hour a day looking for things

In fact this is untrue and a myth perpetrated by the people who make an industry out of teaching people to be tidy. The truth is that both untidy and tidy people spend an average of 7 1/2 minutes looking for things. except for obsessively tidy people who spend an hour a day searching for things.

He also discovered that the average tidy person spends between 1 and 4 hours tidying their house, and the only difference it makes it to make them feel better.

Now you may say that the above two myths are more or less the same and you would of course be correct. There is a huge industry in corporate process improvement and personal organisation.

The only people who believe that process improvement and organisational efficiency improvements lead to more efficient organisations are the people who sell these programs and the managers who have no idea how their organisation really works anyway. The only thing I have seen these programs do is to extend delivery times, increase costs, and generally stop me from doing my job.

One of the most effective mechanisms for getting things done in an organisation is to use what are called informal networks. These are networks of contacts outside the formalised processes and are far more efficient ways of getting things done than the formal processes. Anybody that has worked in a large organisation is familiar with the concept of informal networks. The problem being that the process improvement and organisational restructure gurus would have us eliminate these informal networks. This suits middle management because it means that it gives them the illusion that they have more control over their organisation. In fact what this does is reduces efficiency and increases costs.

If you want an efficient organisation sure have your formal processes but make them simple by reducing the number of boxes. It seems to me that the more boxes in a flow chart the happier the middle management. The truth is that the less boxes in a flow chart the faster a process is. The aim of a process improvement should be to reduce the munber of boxes in the flow chart – not to formalise every minute step. Also allow organic informal networks to develop. These are self regulating and lead to huge increases in efficiency. They look untidy but actually behave like neural networks and can deliver huge cost savings.

On the domestic front – get over this obsessive desire to be tidy. Sure make sure your house is clean but don’t waste your time and energy obsessing over the state of your house. No one cares except for you.

There are a lot of commonly held beliefs that have no foundation in fact. Many of these are held to be true even though they are now proven to be quite untrue. I will try to shatter some of these myths below.

• We only use 10% of our brain.

This is false on so many levels it is hard to know where to start. This was first stated just over 100 years ago and has been promulgated from generation to generation and is absolutely false. We use all of our brain and as modern science will tell you the brain is a complex and diverse beast with each area looking after quite unique functions. When even the smallest pert of the brain is damaged it effects our cognitive function. The brain is extremely adaptable in that the brain can utilise other parts to perform the function of the damaged part, as long as the injury is not too severe. In any case we actually use 100% of our brain.

• Prohibition does not work

The oft quoted example is the prohibition on the sale of alcoholic beverages in the US in the 20s and 30s. The interesting thing about this example is that it actually achieved what it set out to do. In the early part of the 20th C in the US alcoholism was an extremely serious social issue. The common belief was that wowsers got the ear of government, but this is far from the truth. There was a runaway increase in the rate of consumption of alcohol and it was of a major concern to society. The fact that there was a constitutional amendment illustrates the perceived severity of the problem.

Studies have shown that the consumption of alcohol decreased dramatically during prohibition and that the common belief that all of the legal drinking houses went underground is not supported by the facts. Even after prohibition was repealed the rate of consumption per capita did not reach anywhere near the level it was before prohibition. In fact as of the early 90s the rate of consumption was still well below pre-prohibition rates. This is not to say that there were other serious issues that occurred either directly or indirectly as a result but we can say that this does prove that prohibition works.

• Private industry does things more efficiently.

You will find that the proponents of this theory is private industry. I have worked in the public and private sector and can say that in my experience that this is not true. People will rort the system if they can despite best efforts. In any case private industry’s primary motivation is profit so that it will necessarily increase the cost if only because they want to return money to the shareholders. I am not saying that we need to repeat the post war privitisiation blitz but that we should not privatise merely because we believe it will lead to increased efficiency.

• Universal health care results in spiraling costs due to over servicing.

I will tell you one of the causes of spiraling costs. Oversubscribing of drugs. There is a huge industry that depends on the over subscription of drugs. I recently read a report that stated that statins (used for reduction of cholesterol) should be given to all diabetics over the age of 50. I was horrified. The side effect – which are very common – can be horrendous, despite the increasing evidence that they actually do not decrease the risk of coronary disease. In fact it is probably that the only people to benefit from this are the drug companies.

Getting back to my original point, over servicing occurs whether you have universal health care or no. What needs to happen is that procedures have to be put in place to reduce the prevalence regardless of the system. In any case the slight rise in over servicing (which by the way is tiny compared to other rorts that are driving up the cost of health care) is an extremely small price to pay for the provision of health care to all ones citizens. One of the signs of a civilised society is that we take care of the needy and disadvantaged, and on that basis the richest country in the world could be regarded as one of the least civilised.

Conclusion

Critical thinking is the practice of looking at issues and beliefs from all sides and analysing those issues in a critical way to determine the truth or otherwise of the claims. I often take the opposing point of view from my own and argue as if I was opposing myself. This sometimes leads to interesting results.

I recently had a lengthy email discussion with my son about GM foods and took the pro GM line in order to show him how critical thinking works – not because I necessarily support GM.

We need to always question what we are told, not just accept as face opinion – especially if it comes from someone we trust.

I received an email from someone in the US the other day and it was a list comparing Republicans and Democrats in what he thought was a funny way. I will not dwell on his sense of humour, which seems to consist of laughing at and ridiculing anyone who thinks differently to him.

The list (what is it with lists?) contained the following;

Republicans want to torture and then execute guilty terrorists at Guantanamo;
Democrats want to release them and provide compensation for their distress.

I quote this because it seems to represent a particular mentality of many right wing  Republican supporters in the US. They have no understanding of the issues involved with the injustices being promulgated by the US in the name of their so called “war on terror” and no desire to understand those issues. They assume that because they are there they must be terrorists.

What I find most interesting is that the mentality being demonstrated here is identical in every respect to that demonstrated by the people involved in the terrorists attacks.

The similarities are actually quite chilling

• Ultra right wing relio-political views that are xenephobic in nature
• Inability to submit to open rational debate
• Parochialism
• No desire to submit the accused to proper systems of justice
• Blind adherence to the views of their political masters
•  Engaging in illegal acts and justifying this on the basis of their desired end
• A desire to convert the world to their relio-political system by force if necessary

People with some perspective on world affairs and who can see beyond the end of their nose would probably find this amusing if it was not for the gross injustices being perpetrated by these people.

Journalists hold themselves up to be the guardians of modern society and shine the light on the issues that are important to us mere mortals.

This article is one such beam of illumination. Or is it. I head a current affairs report on the same interview and the commentary by the radio journalist seemed to bear no relation to what the Archbishop was actually saying.

The highlight seemed to be the story of the “Three wise men”. As anybody who has actually read the account knows there was never any mention of three people and that number is extremely unlikely.  In fact a little research would lead you to the conclusion that the popular “legend” is nothing but made up and that the biblical account is somewhat different. The baby was actually walking around by the time they arrived so the picture of them arriving on the night of the birth to find a baby in a cattle feeding trough is quite wrong. In fact there is a lot we know and more we can guess but most of the popular story is wrong. This is actually the point that the Archbishop was making.

Now onto the virgin birth. What was the actual point he was making. He did not deny the virgin birth – in fact he claimed to believe it. What he was saying was that we expect people to jump through all sorts of idealogical hoops and to confirm to some type of norm before they become acceptable to God. God imposes no such requirements. God is interested in relationship and complete and perfect knowledge is not a pre-requisite for God’s love for us and for us to come into a relationship with him.

Finally the date of Jesus birth. Well hello!!! No one has ever claimed that Jesus was born on the 25th of December – or anything near that date. I think he was making the point that the actual date of Jesus birth is irrelevant. What we are celebrating is the Son of God not some arbitrary date. As we celebrate the incarnation of the Son let us think about our heavenly father and his love and grace – not the irrelevant issues that have nothing to do with Jesus and his life.

One of the rarer meteorological phenomenon is the ice storm. Severe ice storms occur about once every ten years.

An ice storm occurs when the temperature at ground level is well below zero, the temperature in the intermediate layer between ground level and the precipitating cloud is much warmer, above zero, and the clouds are at or below freezing. The precipitation starts out as snow but melts in the intervening layer as it falls. Once it hits the surface it immediately freezes. This is called freezing rain and it coats everything in ice. Unlike snow which is friable and will drift and fall off surfaces the ice clings and weighs down that surface resulting in falling trees, roofs and power lines. A severe ice storm can be devastating and fatal.

At the moment there is a severe ice storm in the US Midwest and a contact posted this.

“ Oklahoma got hit the hardest. We got hit not once, but twice by ice storms. I lost power during the second one. My power was out for 133 hours, over 5 days. It finally came back on this evening. Last I heard 57,000 in Tulsa were still without power. Some may be without power for two weeks. At one point nearly 600,000 were without power in Oklahoma and around one million in the midwest.

“Hundreds of crewmen from 14 different states came to our rescue to help restore power. Heard on TV some may be here through Christmas. Also heard tonight one of the out of state crew men fell off a pole and landed on a fence and broke his leg 🙁 My thoughts and prayers are with him and all of the others who are working out in this weather to restore our power so that we can be warm once again.”
Pictures

(Used with permission)

I first heard about ice storms when I watched the imaginatively titled film “The Ice Storm“. The cinematography is brilliant, well worth a watch.

Once again those for whom English is not their native tongue have made their mark…

“Nilesh,

Your utmost interference & resolution required.”

The now legendary figure of Nelson Mandella was for one section of the population a terrorist who was responsible for the slaughter of many innocent people and was quite justly incarcerated. On the other hand he represented all that was honourable and just in the fight against tyranny in South Africa. I well remember a short but memorable conversation with a friend many years ago who was from South Africa. When I mentioned Mandella his only comment was that that men was evil and should never have been released. I make no judgment here. The situation is far from simple and the issues anything but clear cut, my only point being that a lot of what one believe is not necessarily based on fact but personal perspective and often the facts are secondary.

I was reminded of this by an article in the news regarding objections adult shops have regarding what they believe to be unfair treatment.

In this article they say that “THE adult-entertainment industry has declared war on the fundamentalist Exclusive Brethren sect for allegedly infiltrating local councils.” This is typical of the emotive statements in the article. What do they mean “infiltration”. Do they mean that they have stood for local council, campaigned and lobbied for support, completed the democratic process of gaining sufficient votes to gain a position on local council and taken up their post? Maybe we should look more carefully and we might find that Labour party members and Liberal party members have infiltrated state and federal parliament. And – heaven forbid – maybe an anti pokies independent has infiltrated the federal senate. If they want people on council to represent their views it is a simple matter of standing for election, lobbying for campaign funds, campaining and attempting to get sufficient votes to get elected.

No where in the article has any wrongdoing been proven. It is full of allegation without a shred of evidence. To be quite frank I do not agree with the group in question on many issues but I defend their right to represent those issues in whatever legal way they desire. In fact quite the opposite, what this lobby group is doing is attempting is to censor the Exclusive Brethren for no more reason than disagreeing with them.

I could go on but I think the point can be highlighted by simply quoting some of the emotive language in the article. “infiltrating local councils”, “bankrolling legal challenges”, “sanctioned bribery”, “refused him planning permission”, “infiltrated other morals groups”, “secretly being elected to local councils”, “moral agendas”, “entryism”, “decisions on moral matters have been compromised by this cult”, “Lithgow councillor Martin Ticehurst said he was disturbed”, “Councils should not be allowed to accept money from any activist group”, “It could be perceived as a form of bribery”, “The sect”.

Now I accept that in order to sell news it has to be dressed in emotive language, and that much of the language is contained in quotes but the apparent blind acceptance by this  journalist of the assumptions behind this article is all too common in reporting of these and similar issues.

The bottom line here is that adult shops are being hypocritical in their attitude here. It is fine for them to thrust on society their moral code but dare anybody disagree with them then they are branded as sectarian, extremest activists and insinuations of illegal activity are alleged.

There is nothing in this article that indicates that the Exclusive Brethren have done anything illegal or immoral.  In fact they appear to have done nothing more than exercise their democratic right. It appears to me that the adult shops are terrified that the democratic process is not biased in their favour.

The first and only formal debate I ever took part in was in high school and was on the subject “The end justifies the means” and I was on the con side. Our side won convincingly.

The principle that the end does not justify the means was one in which I believed then and I have not changed my opinion since.

There has been a lot of debate in the last few years with respect to some of the techniques used by the US in the name of security. Almost anything can be justified on the grounds of security and almost anything can be condemned on the grounds of human rights. How is a man to judge? To quote Gandalf “As he has always judged”.

There are several problems with the techniques that the CIA have used. I have written about rendition before so I will move over that one. In this blog I want to briefly address the more extreme techniques that they have used to extract information.

The two principle issues are the reliability of the information and the human rights issues. Of course it is being argued that the discomfort and endangerment to the individual is outweighed by the protections to the greater population. This is the old argument of the end justifying the means. Note that I am not going to address the argument of the ends justifying the means per se – I will leave that for another time – although the issues are related.

Any information obtained under duress is inadmissible as evidence in a court of law – at least in most western countries. This is because what is said when a person feels threatened is not to be relied on as being the truth. People have a strong motivation to lie if they think that their treatment will be abated if they tell the interrogator what they think they want to hear. For the same reason information gained under duress is unreliable for the conduct of further investigation. It is easy to be led astray or sidetracked by false evidence and the success of an investigation can be seriously impeded if techniques are used that are likely to produce tainted information which is relied on to direct the investigation. Of course this alone is not sufficient justification since the investigator may still consider the risk of the accused escaping conviction and the unreliability of their evidence as being worth it against the possible outcome of maybe avoiding a terrorist act or bringing other people to justice.

There is however a more compelling argument. Either constitutionally or legislatively we have a protection from eiter excessively violent punishment or bahaviour from law enforcement. One of the reasons is to protect the individual from the abuse of power. The state has effectively limitless power with respect to the individual and this power has to be moderated using checks and balances to avoid its abuse. That is why we have laws against assault and battery regardless of who carried them out. This is as it should be. Everybody has a right to be free of abusive treatment regardless of their situation. It is of little use in a civilised society to replace one form of terrorism with another – however it is justified. What is the difference with a radical religious extremest carrying out acts of terror and the security service of a western nation suing violent methods on a suspect to extract information?

I think the best parallel we have for the behaviour of the CIA interrogators is the inquisition. The very things that made it wrong then make it wrong now.

Guilt is a powerful emotion and leads to behaviours which are sometimes quite irrational and extreme. I was once told that many of the psychiatric wards would be deserted if we could solve the problem of guilt. One of the biggest problems is that those who feel guilty often do not know that that is what is driving them and even when they do they are unaware of what is causing that guilt. It is often for things for which they had no control. Some instances are abusive parents or a parental relationship break down. The list is endless.

But collective guilt…how do you deal with that. The Japanese psyche is still sufering in many respects from WW II and it drives many of their policies. The US is suffering at the moment with the debacle in Iraq and whatever your politics it is not looking good.

What do we as Australians have to be guilty about?

Let me first talk a bit about motivation. I was listening to a discussion on the radio about climate change and the person being interviewed said that the problem was that we were being intellectually engaged but not emotionally engaged. Most of us accept that there is some degree of climate change but very few of us are actually engaged enough to actually care. This was, he explained, because the scientists had intellectually engaged us but it was our emotions that actually motivated us. We needed to be emotionally engaged before we would take substantial steps to react to the problem.

Now with all of this in mind I was asking myself why it was that Australia was on the verge of changing governments? This is counter intuitive. It is almost unheard of that in a time of stability with all the indicators looking positive that a country changes government. Inflation is relatively low, interest rates are resonable, employment s high, peoples quality of life is high, current accounts deficit is not unreasonable – a little high but manageable, and a significant budget surplus. We are relatively safe and except for severe environmental conditions – for which we do not blame the government – we are very well off. It makes no sense whatsoever that the government should be so far behind in the polls – and has been since the new opposition leader was elected.

There is only one reason that this could be the case. We are suffering from guilt. There are three significant issues that are playing out in this campaign but only one of them has been mentioned and then not in a way that would engage us. They are immigration, Iraq and industrial relations.

There are very few people in our community that are comforted by the thought that children may be suffering in detention camps for refugees, let alone all the other problems that have been highlighted. The death of people who were repatriated, the psychological damage done to people who after years of detention were finally accepted as refugees. The illegal detention of Australian citizens. The detention and deportation of people for trivial reasons and for bureaucratic reasons. Whatever you think of detention centers the unfortunate cases that have made the headlines are disturbing.

Whatever the initial reasons for the Iraq invasion where the situation there by any standards is not ideal. Also our association with a country that champions itself as a bastion of democracy on the one hand and is associated with illegal rendition and torture on the other does not always engender a good feeling about that relationship. We are at that point now where the allies do not wish to stay but we know that the situation will descend into total chaos if they leave.

Work choices has been championed by the right as a utopia of industrial relations and condemned by the left as a complete negation of workers rights. The truth is probably at the mid way point but three is a sneaking suspicion in many peoples minds that we may have somehow betrayed the working class without really understanding how. You hear anecdotal stories of abuse but nothing substantial. You see some evidence of people being taken advantage of but it is all quite nebulous. You feel as if you should feel guilty about allowing it to happen but you are not really sure why. Is this because the right have so skillfully manipulated the legislation that you don’t really understand it. Or maybe the left have misrepresented the situation so that it really clouds the good it has done. In any case it ads to the guilt we thing we should feel – even if it does not directly contribute towards it.

So let us assume for a moment that I am right and that one or more of these issues makes us feel uncomfortable with who we are. This creates in us a very subtle cognitive dissonance in that we like to think we are caring and generous people but our government has created these situations for which we feel a portion of blame and so bear a degree of guilt. It is so subtle that we do not realise we feel this guilt. How do we express that guilt without admitting it? Well first of all we find excuses for abandoning our current Prime Minister. We like Rudd. We think it is time for a change. He is not as bad as the last few Labour leaders. He is a moderate and will probably do a good job. Liberal has been in for long enough. Give the other guy a go. All of these reasons sound rather pathetic and are not substantive in any way but we can convince ourselves that this is the reason that we are going to vote Labour.

What of the three issues I mentioned above. Neither party has gotten a real grip on IR. They have really pussy footed around it until it has just petered out. The Opposition do not want to go in too hard since in reality they are in favour of most of the changes – whatever they say – and all they are going to do is “fine tune” it. So to come in too hard will seem a little like rotten eggs. The Coalition is not going to strongly campain on it since it touches a raw nerve with too many people and for every one they convince that the IR changes are beneficial another person feels somehow betrayed – without really knowing why.

Immigration has been studiously ignored during the whole election campaign. One reason is that the policies of both Labour and Liberal are so close that they are almost indistinguishable and again for every vote gained one is lost. It is like opening a raw wound – they really do not want to go there.

So the bottom line is neither party has had the courage to address this collective guilt because to do so would highlight it and thus make them the object of this guilt. Guilt can have unpredictable results when poked and prodded.

So, In my opinion the reason for the swing is quite irrational and as such is likely to produce an unpredictable outcome. However I believe that the guilt which we suffer will only be assuaged with a change of government and we will all wake up Sunday morning to the news that Labour has a small but significant majority and a new era of Labour reign will be ushered in.