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Australia vs England – Price Comparison

A common conversation I have had since I arrived in England a little over a month ago, is how surprised I am at the fact that nearly everything here is significantly cheaper than in Australia (except transport costs- public transport and fuel). When it comes to groceries though – necessities and treats, my experience of prices so far are so very strongly in the UK’s favour, that it is becoming very hard for me to justify living in Australia any more.

So I logged in to two supermarket giants here in the UK, and compared prices with Coles and Woolworths, and this is what I got:

 

Item Tesco Asda Woolworths Coles
Fresh Food
Gala Apples, Loose (kg) $4.35 $2.63 $4.97 $5.48
Closed Cup Mushrooms, Loose (kg) $4.50 $4.18 $11.96 $10.48
Brown Onions Class 2, Loose (kg) $1.49 $1.46 $1.88 $2.48
Meat
Bacon (best / kg) $8.73 $8.73 $9.90 $8.01
Chicken Breast $11.12 $11.12 $15.50 $10.90
Lamb Leg (roast) $12.04 $15.03 $13.48 $14.00
Pantry
750-775g CornFlakes $3.73 $3.01 $5.36 $5.34
Coke 2L $2.68 $2.68 $3.92 $3.91
Cheapest pasta (kg) $0.96 $0.96 $1.20 $1.20

From this small sample, it is immediately clear how badly australia is competing, and it would be easy to continue comparing prices like this and continue the trend. I was even trying to pick products which Australia should fare better with – meats and grain based products should be abundant in our giant agricultural country! And yet the UK was cheaper on every front.

Here is the averaged results:

Actual Exchange Rate
1.5046
Item UK Average Aus Average
Fresh Food
Gala Apples, Loose (kg) $3.49 $5.23
Closed Cup Mushrooms, Loose (kg) $4.34 $11.22
Brown Onions Class 2, Loose (kg) $1.47 $2.18
Meat
Bacon (best / kg) $8.73 $8.96
Chicken Breast $11.12 $13.20
Lamb Leg (roast) $13.53 $13.74
Pantry
750-775g CornFlakes $3.37 $5.35
Coke 2L $2.68 $3.92
Cheapest pasta (kg) $0.96 $1.20
$49.70 $64.99

You can also see the current exchange rate used to calculate the AUD value of the GBP purchase price (from XE.com). The UK is cheaper, often times significantly, in every single product compared.

To be fair, the AUD is at the strongest it has ever been. It has doubled in value compared to the UK over the past 10 years and if we were to use an exchange rate of 3.0 dollars to the pound, then we would have all but one of the above products cheaper in Australia (mushrooms are way over priced in Aus!). So to give the benfit of the doubt, and assume that our grocery prices are simply on a delay with respect to our dollars value, lets compare the prices with an assume dexchange rate of 2.5 and 2.0:

Rate 2.5 Rate 2
Item UK AUS UK AUS
Fresh Food
Gala Apples, Loose (kg) $5.80 $5.23 $4.64 $5.23
Closed Cup Mushrooms, Loose (kg) $7.21 $11.22 $5.77 $11.22
Brown Onions Class 2, Loose (kg) $2.45 $2.18 $1.96 $2.18
Meat
Bacon (best / kg) $14.50 $8.96 $11.60 $8.96
Chicken Breast $18.48 $13.20 $14.78 $13.20
Lamb Leg (roast) $22.49 $13.74 $17.99 $13.74
Pantry
750-775g CornFlakes $5.60 $5.35 $4.48 $5.35
Coke 2L $4.45 $3.92 $3.56 $3.92
Cheapest pasta (kg) $1.60 $1.20 $1.28 $1.20
$82.58 $64.99 $66.06 $64.99

2.5 is probably an acceptable average value for the AUD to GBP, and hovered around that value for quite a long time – but hasn’t really been there for the past four years or so. While 2 was seen about 2 years ago as the value surged straight past it to our current 1.5 position. When you accept the value of 2, then we get costs more in line with what you would expect – Meat and grain products are still cheaper in Aus, but other things are cheaper in the UK.

OK, I have managed to do, what I so often do when trying to research ideas – managed to investigate far enough to disprove my own position. Yay.

Let me explain. My thoughts were that Australia was ripping us all off, charging way too much for every day products etc, when they should be much cheaper – and simply comparing the prices in the UK vs the AUS prices ‘clearly shows that’ – BUT, when you take the time to consider that the AUD has only been at 1.50 very recently, and only for the last couple of years, you cannot expect all of our grocery prices to be set so as to reflect this strength! It takes time for the benefits of a strong currency to somehow filter through to the farmers, the transporters and the other involved businesses so that they can lower their prices (or perhaps more accurately, so that the rest of the worlds prices can catch up with our new value).

Basically, what I am really noticing is that “The AUD is strong at the moment – now is a good time to take advantage of that”. No shit huh? If the dollar was to retrace back to an exchange of 2.0, then suddenly my whole perspective of “Australia is expensive” would be completely unsupportable – yet the prices would probably be the same.

Let this be an important lesson to me to remember that the rapid fluctuations of international currency markets can not be used to immediately label the regular prices of daily living “Expensive” and “Cheap”.

I wonder if the recent study which found Sydney to be the 6th most expensive city in the world made the same mistake I did?

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Alan Jones on Climate Change and the Carbon Tax

On Monday the 20th of June, Alan Jones went to air on 2GB with this clip: http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=9196

I know a lot of people listen to him and find him very persuasive. More importantly, many many people think he is standing up for the common people, fighting the good fight against corrupt and incompetent government who just don’t have the facts. Unfortunately, when it comes to climate change information, Alan Jones is not only misinformed, but I cannot seriously think he is anything other than ideologically driven to present his own perspective in spite of reality.

So I sat down, and spent the time to go through this radio clip, and respond to everything that was said. The following essay was the result:

Doctor Vincent Gray Can’t Measure the Earth’s Temperature

Alan starts off with his discussion with Dr Vincent Gray. Dr Gray is a chemist and physicist who Alan sells quite strongly. But the very first thing this guy says is just ridiculous – and Alan Jones blindly agrees with him (in that same way you hate people in the background nodding along to Julia Gillard etc) Alan Jones was uttering the occasional “Yep” and backing up what Gray was saying without even needing Gray to actually finish what he was saying. He was just making sure *you* know that Gray is right, whatever he says.

But what he was saying was ridiculous. The idea that “we know the temperature of The Moon, Venus and Mars” but not Earth. Seriously? Does that even sound sensible? Of course it doesn’t. The obvious reality here, is that we make simple statements about ‘the average temperature of Mars’ being around -55 °C – but this is just a simple number which is easy to round off, and not get too caught up in being exact, because, -45° – -60° – who cares? Right? It’s not an exact measurement of all parts of the planet, including day temperature, night temperatures, surface, altitude subterranean etc. It is just a simple measurement which we summarise for the purposes of practicality, and no one really cares either way.

Meanwhile, we actually do measure the local temperature over many many parts of earth, and then come up with an average MUCH more accurate than the average temperatures we give to other planets. Just because we can’t say with 100% accuracy measure ‘the exact’ average temperature of the whole planet (if such a thing is even possible) does NOT in any way discredit the fact that we have a lot of accurate local measurements from all over the planet which we can use to establish an average temperature.

And what is most important about this, is that the discussion here is about the CHANGE in temperature. So even if we didn’t get thermometers in all of the places we wanted to get them, it doesn’t matter so much. What does matter, is that the temperatures from the past (the discrete local ones and the averaged overall ones) are lower than the ones in the present.

This guy has left me immediately with a complete lack of respect for him, his knowledge and his credibility – just from what he has said. Trying to figure out who he is though – doing a search about his background reveals a lot though, and his position makes a lot more sense… You can’t expect much else from someone who is 1. Not a climate scientist, and 2. Involved in Coal Mining research, and 3. A member of an ex-lobbying organisation called the “Scientific Advisory Committee for the Natural Resource Stewardship” which refused to reveal whether energy companies are funding them or not. (http://www.desmogblog.com/vincent-gray)

Basically, these are the words of a politically and financially motivated individual who happens to have a doctorate.

Bob Carter, Can’t Find Evidence of Human Temperature Increase

I note that he carefully chooses his words when explaining his point, to be that after all of the spending (billions of dollars!) we haven’t been able to find a link between human actions and temperature increase.

First of all, I am certain that his assertion that “billions of dolars have been spent trying to connect” is just absolute rubbish. I am sure billions of dollars have been spent, but that is just research. Investing in scientific research is THE single most effective use of money in my opinion, and there is no central design to how that money is spent. It is just stupid to think that there has been all this money spent TRYING to achieve a particular outcome. We are talking about an international, inter-discipline consensus. It has nothing to do with spending money ‘trying’ to get a result.

Secondly, he doesn’t actually answer (in this small clip of him anyway) the question which Alan put to him: “Warming or not?”. He only addresses whether he thinks humans have had any affect. He only flippantly refers to humanity emitting ‘some extra’ CO2, but denies that we are causing a temperature change.

On the point of ’emitting some extra’ CO2, as he puts it, my first question is “How much is ‘some extra’?” Because the way he says it, it sounds insignificant. Wikipedia’s entry on country based human emissions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions) has it at 29,321,302,000 metric tons per year. And this article: http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions-basic.htm goes in to great detail on how much CO2 humans release per year in comparison to natural sources.

What is relevant here, is that even Bob Carter agrees that ‘we all know’ that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. This is not disputed. More CO2 will cause temperatures to rise. The question is whether the amount that human activities are increasing CO2 by, are enough to cause a large enough change to global climate to warrant concern. Well, measurements of CO2 indisputably show how much CO2 we have added to the atmosphere: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_Earth%27s_atmosphere shows that over the past 200 years we have increased CO2 concentration from a very stable 260-280ppm to about 390ppm currently. So we have increased the CO2 concentration by about 50% – and I say we, because the timing of the increase, after such a long period of stability – at least 10,000 years, does match perfectly with the industrial revolution, where humanity started pushing CO2 in to the atmosphere. It seems absurd to claim that the sudden increase is not connected to our activity – if you have a problem with this assumption, say so, and I will see if I can find some sort of research which validates or contradicts the assumption.

So, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it influences temperature upwards. Human activity has increased CO2 significantly, and continues to do so. Temperature has been increasing for quite a while now (http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-temperature-correlation.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming).

So, is there is connection between human activity and global temperature increase? Well, there is nothing conclusive there, but the implication is obvious. The correlation is clear. The theory makes sense. If we know CO2 causes warming, and we see CO2 increase, then temperature start increasing after it….well, it makes sense. Unfortunately, science doesn’t make the absolute assertions which political commentators and lobbyists do – as far as I can tell, Bob is fundamentally right on that one carefully worded point – there is no proof that human activity CAUSES the temperature increase.

But I, and pretty much every qualified climate scientist thinks you would be mad to assume we don’t.

(side note, unrelated to his statements in this little clip, but I found this information about Bob Carter interesting: http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/bobcarter.html)

Doctor Timothy Ball, IPCC Only Look at Man Made Climate Change

This just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, of course the IPCC is set up to look at man made climate change – there is nothing any government can do about natural climate change, we can only influence human behaviour, and thus can only control climate change which happens at the hands of humanity.

But the assertion that the science done which the IPCC refers to is done without consideration of the natural cycles and influence is just absurd. This is true conspiratorial thinking at its worst – this implies that all of the climate scientists who do research in the field are either 1. Idiots, or 2. Part of a global organisation determined to make people pay more tax. Both of which are just nonsense (particularly when you consider that these climate scientists come from the complete spectrum of all of the first world countries, from developing countries and from numerous political persuasions). Scientists do science. For the most part, they don’t give a shit about politics in general – which is part of the problem every time a scientific principle becomes the target of political discontent – The SCIENTISTS, the ones who know what they are talking about, don’t get involved (they just keep doing their work), while all of the political nutjobs and agenda driven cranks come out of the woodwork and start claiming to be specialists in fields they are only loosely (in time or knowledge) associated with in order to make their political opinion known. (and of course the organise themselves into lobby groups and political activity groups in order to get their perspectives heard better).

Anyway, I’m rambling on this points. What I am trying to say, is that the research that the IPCC uses, surely, is the research done by climate scientologists, from universities all over the world. No scientist is going to ignore the complexity of the global climate when trying to research the impacts of human activity. Of course natural elements will be considered (and usually normalised, so that the impacts of human activity can be clearly seen!)

In order to reply to this lunacy any more clearly, I would need Dr Ball’s evidence for the claim in the first place.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tim_Ball

Richard Lindzen Supposes Why The Government Would Introduce a Carbon Tax

This guy, a very respectable looking scientist, has one hell of a track record: http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/Lindzen.htm

But the excerpt here is just about his guess as to why we would be introducing a carbon tax, obviously assuming that the reasons given (to disincentive carbon usage, and promote non-carbon based energy sources) aren’t real. So in order for that guess to even make sense, you need to look at how the carbon tax ‘income’ is going to be used by the government.

The wikipedias entry on Carbon Tax has a section for Australia, and states that the current negotiations on the carbon tax “included commitments to ensure all funds collected go back to homes and businesses to assist in the transition to renewables.” So ‘collecting taxes’ cannot be the purpose of introducing a carbon tax, if all of the money collected is already redirected to a new expense. There is no net gain to the government in this, and thus their provided reason – “because CO2 causes global warming, and we need to do our part as a nation to reduce our outputs” fits perfectly in line with this course of action.

Of course, you could argue that the government is useless and/or corrupt and what they say can’t be trusted. But that has nothing to do with Climate Change, and is another issue entirely. All I know, is that the science says anthropogenic climate change is real, and we need to do something to stop it, and the government has proposed a way of doing something about it. Doing something is definitely better than nothing.

Also, my experiences thus far have taught me, that for all of my frustrations at our own government, I do not think they are corrupt (on the whole), nor do I think that they are that incompetent. I have also come to realise that an average government is much better than no government (visiting Madagascar really helped me to see this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDv4sYwjO0).

Also: http://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Richard_Lindzen.htm

John McClean on the Data

This was fun listening to Alan introduce this one. Talking about how important the data is in science and how so much of science is done with data analysis etc. So I was expecting to hear that John McClean had gone through the scientific research on CO2 influences on global temperature and the science that matters on this issue – I was very surprised when Alan instead started describing how John spent has “PAINSTAKINGLY” spent his time analysing the data of how the IPCC came together. Wait. What?… OK, lets see where this goes….

OK, so Alan talks about John McCleans research. One of which was about how El Nino Southern Oscilliation can account for warming trends. That paper is extensively critiqued here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=162 – it is probably hard to understand, but basically, John used data manipulation to remove long term trends and highlight noise in the data in order to get his conclusion. So Alan’s claim that “John cannot be sensibly refuted, because he merely presents the data of the IPCC” is simply false. Data can be manipulated – specially selected start points, certain filtering methods (which are necessary – but need to be used correctly!), and other techniques can all be used to make data look to say something which is doesn’t. I think it is worth looking at this page again, which makes this point very well: http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-temperature-correlation.htm where the first graph looks like there is no correlation, even though it is the same data over a longer time frame clearly shows there is a correlation.

Now, for the rest of this discussion, it is just rubbish. Scientists citing the own work. Completely normal. Scientists in a very specific field of research regularly working together – of course this is normal! Who else are they going to work with? Creationists? You work with the people who work in the same field! No one else is qualified to work with you!

Chapter 9 – the only chapter that deals with anthropo-climate change. All of the Authors come from only one field? The most appropriate one for the job by any chance? Alan uses the derogative term “Computer Jockeys” to make it sound like they are just unskilled labourers only makes me distrust Alan even more… As if the facts aren’t enough – he has to make sure you emotionally disconnect from these qualified climate modellers, and think of them as mere computer using slackers who don’t know what they are doing. This is not an honest method of inspection of the facts. They also try to paint the picture that they are just doing it to maintain funding for their position – as if climate modelling was just made up as part of the climate change propaganda system in order to give jobs to 50 people? Insane…

Alan tries to make it sound like “Only one chapter of the whole report tries to link global warming to human causes” as if that is a negative thing. But this is how arguments work!! You make a claim, argue the position, and then move on. You don’t argue a position, and then argue it again, and then try again just in case people don’t believe you. When it comes to a formally constructed argument, as is the case in any sort of scientific publication, the argument is a linear process. You make a claim, present your evidence and argue the logic for the evidence leading to the conclusion, and then move on to the next claim. Hence why there were 8 chapters before the human connection, and two chapters after it, which assume it was correct. This is elementary stuff, and Alan ‘should’ know better. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t now that I have heard him).

The Bit That Matters

So John reviewed the reviewers of chapter nine, and has reached the conclusion that only 5 of the reviewers support the claim. Well this report here SLAMS McClean very thoroughly: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/12/john_mclean_and_the_nrsp.php
That is a must read, because obviously McClean is the main focus of this interview, and his review of the IPCC methodology is what this interview is all about, so that article is the most important response I can post.

I loved this bit:

Scientists were declared to have a vested interest if they were an IPCC author, or an IPCC author of a previous assessment, or if any of their work was cited by the report, or if they worked for a government, or if they work for an organisation that gets government funding, or if they have a “possible commercial vested interest in the claim of man-made warming”

Basically – anyone who might know what they are talking about will have a vested interest. Hilarious. Again, as stated just above, when you are talking about a specialised scientific field, there are only a small group of qualified individuals who are capable of analysing and reviewing the information. It isn’t collusion – it is necessity! You don’t get Chemical Engineers to check over the work of Quantam Mechanists, and you don’t get Architects to check over the work of Climate Scientists. You only use climate scientists! This is just obvious! So the fact that you have the same group (somewhat large group imo) of people authoring papers, and reviewing papers and referenced in the papers – is just a bloody obvious consequence of specialisation!

SIGH.

Then Alan comments about how Gillard and Rudd say that over 4000 scientists support man made global warming, as if this ‘5’ number contradicts that. Ignoring the fact that the 5 number is wrong, how many scientists participate in the review panel on a specific government report is almost completely irrelevent when it comes to how many accredited scientists agree with a scientific conclusion. This is an ongoing problem I am finding as I work through all of these professionals that Alan has on his show – they are repeat performance spokesmen of the denial establishment. While some of them are actually scientists, it seems like the spend most of their time touring and talking to people about how their science background justifies them to tell everyone how wrong all of the scientists are – MEANWHILE, the bulk majority of real climate scientists DONT tour around telling everyone how right the science is, they just do their bloody jobs. That is why every now and then there is a special little commission made, or paper published etc, which SHOWS, UNEQUIVOICALLY, that the bulk majority of all climate scientists (virtually all of them) agree that climate change is man made. Because that is the best they can do, to show their concensus. Because they aren’t all going to start going around talking to talk show host, and getting press coverage etc. They are just bloody scientists. (http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm AND

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

is a must view piece. Just browse the list of Scientific Organisations which agree global warming is a man made event. And then try to justify any position which claims the whole thing is a fabrication, orchestrated by governments trying to get more tax money. It doesn’t make sense. No one, no organisation, and certainly no government can possibly influence so many different scientific organisations, across so many countries, and so many fields. It is just ludicrous.

My favourite was this section:

Statements by dissenting organizations

Since 2007, when the American Association of Petroleum Geologists released a revised statement,[103] no scientific body of national or international standing rejects the findings of human-induced effects on climate change.[2][3]

Not ONE. Not even the PETROLEUM geologists disagree anymore. And Alan Jones is doing his best to get every vested interest ‘scientist’ to come on his show, and represent his own opinon, acting like the whole thing is some sort of bizarre ‘government’ controlled thing to get tax money out of people!!! And yet the national academies of science from countries as diverse as China, the USA, Kenya, Russia and Senegal all agree that it is man made! How on earth is that a governmental conspiracy???

It is all Based on Models

“it is all models, it isn’t real, just models”. Well, the whole point of models, is to reflect reality. So just dismissing them offhand doesn’t do them justice. A little evidence wouldn’t go astray here….
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm

And then they go on to make ridiculous implications about the peer review process, making poor old John McClean sound like the victim of the evil peer review process.. poor baby had to respond to peer review comments, and clarify points etc on his paper… Like every other scientists who ever published in a scientific journal! I haven’t bothered to look up to see whether his assertion that IPCC doesn’t require authors to respond to reviewer comments is true or not, because the IPCC is NOT a peer reviewed Journal. It is a panel! It is a different thing.

So no, this whole radio interview and bit, was a complete sham and fabrication of media hype. Hollow rhetoric framed to make it sound far more scandalous and conspiratorial than it really is. Even a little digging shows that these guys are a strict minority of politically motivated media attention seekers, who have no right to wave their ‘science credentials’ around the way they do.

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Web Social Phenomenons

I have just been getting myself aquianted with a couple of recent web phenomenons. Fiverr isn’t exactly new, but it is still a very current trend which I definitely think deserve classifying within the realm of ‘most recent’ internet trends. In case you don’t know what Fiverr.com is, it is all about ‘what would you do for a fiver?’ Basically, it is a giant list of ‘services’ of sorts being offered for the price of $5. And of course, you can request services for $5 too, if you can’t find exactly what you are looking for.

I think I like this website and trend. Superficially it seems to offer a LOT of really useful services for very cheap. And if you can use any of those services, then they are all bargains. I have taken a few deals out already, but am still waiting for delivery of them all, so I will have to report in again on what I thought of those services. I hope to continue exploring and finding really good services through fiverr for a while to come.

The second phenomenon I have found, thanks to Fiverr, is called Twiends. Now this one I am far less sure about. In fact, I am pretty sure it highlights exactly my biggest complaint and annoyance with the overall social phenomenon scene created by Facebook and Twitter et al. That you end up with giant crowds of people – who don’t really care…

I guess I will have to explain this – How Twiends works, is basically you follow people on twitter, or like pages on facebook and in return you get ‘seeds’. These seeds then allow you to ‘pay’ other people to follow your twitter account and like your facebook page. Pretty simple, apparently completely within T&C of both organisations (since they aren’t actually being ‘bought’ or ‘sold’) but completely pointless too…? I mean, what is the point of getting people to follow you who are only following you so they can get more people to follow them… Surely the people who have blindly followed you have blindly followed many other people too? So how are your tweets and updates even going to get through the noise of all of their other follows and likes???

The analogy which comes to mind is of these social networks being like a large party, where there might be 1000 people, but everyone self-organises in to smaller social circles where they can have discussions with one another. You can’t talk to everyone, but at least the 5-10 people in your circle can hear you. But with Twiends, it feels like we are trying to turn that party in to a rave where everyone is free to talk, but it is so noisy, no one can hear anyone at all. You might accidentally hear what the raver next to you says, but it is by accident more than design.

What is the point of all of it all anyway?

 

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SydneytoHobart Website Progress

I am making some good progress with SydneyToHobart.com.au. A few days ago I came up with a decent purpose for it – basically it can solve the problem I had last year when I tried to go in to the city to watch the start of the race: I had no idea where to go! So SydneyToHobart.com.au is all about helping people to figure out where to go, when to get there and how to get there to watch the start of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. Simple enough, and hopefully enough people will be interested in that same problem as the Sydney to Hobart race approaches.

Monetisation is still not settled. It might just be an adsense blog, or if I can sort it out well, I will try to sort out advertising deals with local cafes and restaurants. There is also scope to affiliate with the numerous boats who offer spectating from the water for a fee.

Not a big issue at this point. First challenge is actually to get adequate information together. I’d love to be able to find a few Sydney to Hobart spectating veterans who would like to help out. But until they offer themselves up to help, I am all on my, like with all of my projects 🙁

😀

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Global News Network Syndication

I am very happy to report my first ever Flippa.com purchase. I am even happier to (tentatively) report it as a complete success. I will have to write another entry about my evolving Flippa strategy because this post is about my new website, a global news syndication network, KLTNews.com.

Not a bad domain name. The KLT doesn’t really stand for anything, it is just ‘cool’ (I guess???) but basically it makes a short, somewhat easy to remember domain name for a simple automated news syndication blog. And it actually looks really good. I sort of broke all of my own basic rules when purchasing this one, but it was really very cheap, and so the risk didn’t seem to be very big.

My job now will be to develop it a little bit further, bring in some more traffic and help improve its overall penetration in to the news market. With a design as well made and intuitive as it has, there is good scope for return traffic and visitor retention.

Wish me good luck with my new website!

 

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Google +1 Button Released

I just found out that Google have released a +1 button. I’m not exactly surprised, it has been an obvious next step for quite a while now, and something which Stumble Upon and numerous other social network style referral systems have had in effect for a while now. It is just a big deal that now there is a direct system which actually influence the Google Search results. It is quite amazing and exciting and terrifying all at once. Exactly how this is going to change the SEO scene is anyone’s guess…

Obviously, the first concern is abuse. I have no doubt that very soon you will be able to see threads over at places like Digital Point where people will be offering to +1 other peoples pages if you +1 theirs, and people will offer +1ing services and all of that sort of stuff. No doubt Google realise this and are doing everything they can to make such things pointless and a waste of time of the people trying to do it.

This does however make me wonder what the value could possibly be of the +1 if they are going to try to stop people from gaming the system. If the system is to have any impact on search results, then it is gameable. If they make it ungameable, then how could it possibly have any significant impact on the search results?

Seems hard to comprehend, but don’t think for a second that I would risk not having the button on my main websites in an effort to get improved rankings on Google. The risk of not getting every slight advantage offered isn’t worth it!

So how about you head on over to Sports Arbitrage Guide right now, and +1 that homepage for me 😀

PS: If you want to add the +1 button to your website now, just visit this page: http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/index.html

 

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Lake District Walks Added to TDMSKP

I have just added three new walks to TDMSKP from a recent trip I took to the Lake District. We stayed in Waterhead, just south of Ambleside in a YHA. From there we had a huge day, completing all three of these walks!

First we walked to Troutbeck, then up to Wansfell, then along the ridge to Wansfell Pike, and on down in to Ambleside. ON the way in to Ambleside we quickly walked through Stock Ghyll Park, taking plenty of photos of the beautiful waterfalls in there. After a nice relaxing lunch we started on the second major walk, heading towards Rydal Hall, then on to Grasmere. The return half of the circuit took us to Rydal Cave, which was quite spectacular.

Anyway, be sure to check out the three guide articles I have put together for these walks. They are just the beginning of Immortal Outdoors in the UK! Immortal Outdoors is still under construction, but with progress being made, it will hopefully be ready before this trip is out 🙂

 

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You will probably ‘fail’ at arbitrage trading too…

Originally posted on Sports Arbitrage Guide’s Blog

Most people who start arbitrage trading, fail. They won’t last more than a few months. They can’t perform when they lose all of the soft books and so unable to keep up their profits, they give up in desperation.

This is the line which I have heard for a long time now in ArbForum, and which I even began to believe myself. There is some level of truth to it – that most people don’t get past the “OMG, Bet365 limited me and now I can’t get my 3% arbs anymore! What do I do now?” stage. It is hard to go from the cushy, easy, straight forward early phase of arb trading in to the lonely, desperate, difficult stage and survive the transition…

When you start arbing, you get hundreds of pounds in free bonuses just handed to you. Every sportsbook offers you bets of several thousand pounds on every major league you look at. 2-6% arbs are in abundance and they seem to last hours. It really is an amazing experience to cash in so easily…but then you start getting limited at these soft books. Gradually you find the arbs getting thiner, and the bonuses stop coming in. You find yourself forced to either struggle to get on the 1% arb between Pinnacle and SBOBet before the line changes in 30 seconds, or you get a 2% arb which stays for hours, but will only allow you to bet £20 on it. The change is pretty stark, and of course you feel it.

But is ceasing your trading because of this change really a failure?

I’ve been working closely with someone over these past couple of weeks and with a few hours of setup, an hour or two at most a few days a week, and less than £10,000 trading capital, I have helped this person make over £600 in the first two weeks. We have just started to see the first limits, but everything is still working fine and we haven’t even deposited in all of the bookmakers we would like to use. £600 profit in two weeks, from a very lazy few hours per week approach, from money which was just sitting in the bank earning shit interest (I think it was going to take over 15 years of bank interest to earn how much we made in two weeks of casual trading), and it ain’t over yet. This week is already sizing up pretty well – probably another few hundred pounds profit again.

If they walked away from their trading right now, would they be another arb failure? I don’t know about you, but I like the idea of failing and making £600. If only all of my ventures failed with so much clear profit!

Temporary Part Time/Full Time Position Available

So in reply to this common view, I am going to propose a new way of thinking about this reality. Part Time trading has been a concept since arbing began. Plenty of people profess to trade part time, and to be honest, I don’t know how anyone trades full time (it can be pretty mind numbing!). Well, guess what, people can also trade temporarily too!

For too long, people introduced to arbitrage trading have been confronted with the idea that you are either a career trader, or you are a failure. Now, new traders can decide for themselves whether they want to just arb for a short period and re-asses what they think of it after that period, or whether they want to commit to becoming a full time, permanent arb trader. There is no one right way. As long as you are able to make the money which justifies your time – you win.

Personally, I now identify myself as something akin to a ‘Casual Contracter‘. I’m not full time, that is for sure. I am also not permanent. I come and go as I please, and trade when I please. And I recommend this style to everyone who can afford to do it. It gives you the freedom to do other things (run your own business, keep your day job, or whatever) and not feel stressed by ‘performing’ to a high arbing standards, while still giving you the benefits that come with being able to make extra money, pretty much on demand.

Arbing is a skill you learn once, and then re-apply as often as you like. And every time I have come back to trade a bit more – I have made more money. Failure just doesn’t seem like the right word to describe my non-permanent arb trader role…

Good luck to all of you, and I hope you all fail with as much profit as possible too!

 

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Why Militant Atheism is Necessary

Militant Atheism is necessary as a force to counteract the unbalanced political and social power that popular religious belief systems have wielded for too long through their powerful standardising of beliefs. It is impossible to persuade people to change their point of view when their point of view is not actually their own and they don’t care about the subject matter. As such, the only option left is to challenge the foundation of the belief structure itself so as to undermine the authority of the people who decide what their followers should and should not believe.

For, Against and Other

It is true that on any contentious point you will get people with extreme points of view on each side. You will also get a lot more people right in the middle who don’t care, and then a complete spectrum in between of people who care, and may have opinions leaning one way or the other. What matters though, is that most of these people, particularly those who are not in the ‘extreme point of view’ position, can have their views changed by evidence and reason.

Where Religion changes this game, is how it allows large numbers of people to be made to believe the same position, often to the ‘extreme’ point, just by asserting that it is true and providing a bible quote or two. And it really only works with holy texts too. If you get a group of climate change deniers together, and tell them that they should also understand that abortion is fundamentally wrong – then it is unlikely that the assertion will carry any sway with them. There is no reason for that common belief system about climate change to carry over in to the world of the abortion debate. There is no reason to accept the claims of the ‘leader’ in this scenario… but when the leader is actually representative of “God” or a “holy text” or any other sort of manuscript which is somehow meant to hold the secrets of life (in an absolute sense) – then suddenly the leader, who has some sort of special ability to understand, or interpret or present the information known to God or the Holy text/manuscript, can make just about any claim on any topic – because God does actually cover everything… All topics are in fact related to ‘God’.

Every Belief is Related to God

So, religious institutions have a special belief power over people. As soon as someone gives over their ‘Everything belief’ to God or the Bible or the Koran etc, then when their religious source says “Homosexuality is evil”, then the most ambivalent person on earth on this topic is very strongly inclined to simply accept this claim as fact. After all, who can argue with God?

Of course not all people agree about all things in religion. Hence the two great schisms in Christianity. And the break between Judaism and Christianity. And ditto again with Islam. And all of the different forms of Hinduism and Buddhism. And the different denominations of Christianity and Judaism and Islam… etc.

So there may very well be a form of each religion for each specific combination of beliefs. To an extent anyway. But I don’t think most people feel free to ‘shop around’ for their belief system. Most people are born in to it. Or stumble in to it haphazardly – converted to ‘Christ’ by some major life changing experience you don’t usually stop to analyse all of the sub-beliefs that go with the church that you just happened to walk in to. So you end up in some belief system which tells you that slavery is actually OK in Gods eyes… Sorry, wait…no one (publicly) believes that one anymore, so I should use a more modern example. You walk in to a church that believes that homosexuality is a sin and that homosexuals are going to suffer for eternity in hell. Now thanks to your recent “Finding God” experience, you are open and ready to receive the word of God!! Hallelujah! And after all of the niceties and meeting all of the wonderful smiling people, and hearing how loving and wonderful and forgiving God is, and Good and all of that great stuff… you eventually find out that homosexuals are evil and going to hell.

“…That’s odd. I’ve never really though about homosexuality before.” you might think. Maybe never encountered it much – or when you did, simply didn’t care. But now… well now you know that God has ordained it. You know the truth… because “God said it”. The fact that it is people telling you this is irrelevant – they are simply relating to you God’s own words. So what on earth can you do other than believe them????

How long do you think it will take to turn someone who has never given the slightest shit about someone else’s sexuality and private life before, into someone who thinks the homosexuals are evil, when they are surrounded by other people who have been similarly brainwashed by rhetoric claimed to be in the name of the central belief?

The logical cause here is very straight forward.

  1. You believe <religious concept> is true.
  2. Leader of <religious concept> states that <belief>, because <religious concept>
  3. You believe <belief>.

So in order for someone to challenge <belief>, arguing against topics related to the belief is a waste of time: they aren’t the reasons the belief is held. You have to argue against <religious concept> or the leader, because those things are the actual logical causal reason for the belief to be held.

Christians who are disgusted by homosexuals are not disgusted by homosexuals because of anything homosexuals have ever done – they are disgusted by homosexuals because of what their religious leaders have told them. To argue with them about how homosexuality is just a private lifestyle that has nothing to do with them is to miss the point – they don’t CARE about that. What they care about, is their belief system itself. If you want to argue about homosexuality with a Christian who ”hates fags”, then you have to argue about Christianity.

Why This Matters

This matters because the beliefs of the people, determine the policies of the Governments. And when beliefs are artificially created by powerfully people within religious organisations, politics is affected in an imbalanced way. It is imbalanced, because politics engages in the actual topic itself – it will engage in arguments about gay marriage, on the terms of gay marriage. But when the argument isn’t actually about gay marriage, the political process is a complete waste of time. Politicians simply cannot engage in a campaign for Gay marriage, and then spend their time pointing out all of the flaws in Christianity. It isn’t acceptable, and won’t work either. But that is what needs to be done, because the people who are stopping gay marriage equality are doing so because of their religious beliefs, not because of the stuff the politician is talking about.

The idea of how our democratic system is meant to work, is that the differences in opinions held by it’s constituents are the fuel for the debate and are the basis of debate. Differences in opinion are acceptable, and entirely part of the system – but what is far more important than holding different opinions, is the opportunity to change opinions. Whether they be the opinions of the extremes, or simply swaying the opinions of the people in the middle who don’t really care – as long as evidence, facts, reason and logic can be used to sway numbers to a particular belief about contentious points. And as soon as disproportionate numbers of people have their beliefs determined by an external influences in such a way so as to prevent a change in belief…. then democracy cannot work. Instead, we have a democratic portion of the population, constantly dragging a theocratic portion along with it.

The Real World

There is no better example of this than the Gay Marriage debate. This is the sickest of sick public policy debates to waste anyone’s time in the last few decades. (I wanted to say ‘ever’, but I quickly remembered women’s rights (another Religious doctrine maintained that fight for a while) and before that, slavery (yet another religious doctrine kept that one alive way too long too)).

You see, for this debate, just like women’s rights and slavery, there were people who saw the injustice of the old system, and there were bigots who simply didn’t like the idea of giving equal rights to people who they viewed as lesser than themselves. These two roles exist with and without religion. And if religion was taken off the table, then I think the number of people supporting gay marriage would drastically out number the people who are against it, and the number of people in the middle who don’t care would simply vote for it, because it won’t harm them and will give rights to more people. Problem solved. But because religion is involved, a ‘debate’ rages on the topic as if there is actually some sort of pro and con analysis going on here.

There isn’t!

It is just complete BULLSHIT coming from religious flocks who think that homosexuals don’t deserve the same treatment as them because someone in power has convinced them that ‘God’ said that homosexuals are an abomination. And because of that a priori assertion of lesser value, they then attempt to shackle together ridiculous arguments to rationalise their position after the fact.

Nonsense like “Gay marriage will destroy the institution of marriage” – Yeah bullshit. Tell that to the 50-70% divorce rate already in existence amongst heterosexuals. I feel stupid even pointing that out, because everyone knows that argument is complete rubbish and how ‘destroyed’ the sacred institution of marriage already is!

The point here is that all of the powerful counter arguments made against the ridiculous arguments made by the ‘religious right’ who are 95% of the time behind the anti-gay-marriage movement – are almost completely a waste of time. As articulate and clever, and cutting and poignant and perfect as they are – they are completely wasted. Because the people they are ‘arguing’ against, don’t actually care. They don’t hold the belief themselves. They were never convinced that homosexuals shouldn’t be married – they are simply following the belief pattern handed off to them by their religious leader.

You cannot argue against someone, who doesn’t care about the argument.

And that is why Militant Atheism matters.

If we ever want to get public policy back on to the track of ‘Reason’ and genuine debate between the extreme positions in an attempt to sway the moderates – we need to remove the large class of people who would be moderate, but are pushed to extremes by absolute belief systems forced on to them by religious instruction that they have chosen to believe in.

When someone’s mind is locked in on a belief because of religion, then arguing the points of that belief is useless. You have to address the source of the belief itself – the actual religion.

Needless to say, this same point applies to Creationists inhibiting scientific education, anti-abortionists inhibiting reasonable social programs, people against stem cell research without understanding the science first…anti-euthanasia absolutists… etc Where religion has a position, people are forcibly influenced into that belief position too. Rational debate is therefore impossible, and social policy is improperly affected.

For the sake of a sensible, reasonable, progressive society which continues to IMPROVE – we must throw off the shackles of religion. Because one thing all of these religions have in common, is the absolute forbiddance of progress.

The Bible doesn’t come in wiki format.

Militant Atheism

To me, Militant Atheism is all about stopping the religious groups of our world from exerting their numerical powers and superstitious beliefs over political processes. I don’t care about Jehovah’s Witnesses coming to my door. I don’t care about friends and colleagues praying for me. I don’t care at all what people do in private, or even in public for that matter. What I do care about, is when laws are made which create injustice, inequity and force stagnation of knowledge, and those laws are made simply because too many people have been brainwashed into agreeing with those laws, because a mythology has been used to convince them of that position. Not reason. Not evidence. But mythology.

No longer should our advanced society allow itself to be hindered by mythology.

Further Information

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100 Percent Winners Review

Reposted from Sports Arbitrage Guide Blog

After a little research in to the 100 percent winners setup, exactly what is going on here is pretty clear to me. The creators of this software are experienced internet marketers who have already had success with a previous program in the Forex world, and are simply building on that success and making more money by branching out in to the arbitrage trading world. Unfortunately, the people who have created the whole 100 percent winners brand, are, as I said, Marketers, not arbitrage traders.

The Marketing of 100 Percent Winners

So what we have, is one of the best marketing campaigns you will have ever seen. They have the amazing sales page which covers every base you might worry about. They have the testimonial videos, the beta testing results, the explanations, the money back guarantees etc. They even have multiple domains, each covering different aspects of the marketing launch, including 100percentwinnersscam.net where people who are worried it is a scam, might actually believe they are about to be told all about how much of a scam it is – but I can guarantee that when you subscribe to that page, you will be told a ‘frank’ version of how it is probably actually pretty good afterall, and you might even make money using it…

Meanwhile, of course, they have set up an affiliate program and I assume started recruiting professional affiliate marketers well before launch date, so that they could saturate Google with positive affiliate-biased reviews and spin of their software. When you search 100 percent winners, or any variation of that term, you only get pages made by the company, reviews about the company posted by the company or someone affiliated with them, and affiliate pages selling the article. One affiliate page made me laugh:

Hi,I am Jones James and I from Chicago.I swear to the God the following 100 Percent Winners reviews is my real experience with the product.I got really interested when I first heard of sports investing and decided to test 100PercentWinners software.I paid 100 Percent Winners 3 weeks ago. This is going to completely change my life.$3,740 in first week…$21,095 in 4 weeks…and the best part is it’s completely automated, so once you set things up it all runs on autopilot.I love 100 Percent Winners.For the first time ever i’m in control of my life now.

Who knows how long this legal loophole is going to last, but I know this:Some smart people are going to make an absolute killing with it while it lasts.

LOL. Yeah. ‘swear to god’ alright. And lie your arse off. “Completely Automated” – even the company doesn’t claim that on its sales page. “Legal Loophole” FFS. Seriously. Who makes this shit up?

Getting back to their sales pitch itself, they talk all sorts of nonsense about $320,000 profit since the middle of 2010. I call BS on that one. They then highlight some 17-40% arbs they have placed in the last 24h – 100% legit and audited, they say. Bull. Shit. says I. And then their video showing how to make $320 in 3 minutes. Aside from the fact that I have trouble believing that it is legitimate – lets assume they got lucky and found a palp on betcity (which they didn’t show the cancelled bet there btw), the technique they showed in placing the arb will cause major losses for anyone trying to learn how to arb trade. They placed the bets at Pinnacle before even looking to make sure the odds were real at BetCity!!! Absolute sure fire way to lose money. Ugh.

100 Percent Winners – The Software

OK, full disclosure here – I was going to purchase the software and see for myself, and then probably use their full refund option (which I believe will be legitimate), but after simply browsing their videos, and thanks to a screenshot posted on Arbforum by someone who has already subscribed, I don’t really think I need to see the software myself. It is obvious that the software is basically just a simple alert service, which does *essentially* the job designed to do, but without any real caution for the reality of arbitrage. ie: No filters for palps, and no real finesse to finding the real arbs.

100 percent winners software screenshotWhen I saw the price being charged for a subscription, my first thought was not of it being expensive (as no doubt some people who stumble across their page will worry about). No, my first though was “How can someone run a decent alert service for that amount?” You can’t. No development team could create and maintain decent arbitrage software and make it worth their while for such a small ongoing subscription fee. Most of the market leading alert services at the moment charge 100 percent winner’s initial fee of $150 or more, every month.

Now if we look at the screenshot provided here, you can see so many obvious palps it isn’t funny. The first ‘arb’ there, for 90%!!!!!! has Stan James and Stan James. Yeah sure. A bookmaker will absolutely accept bets that guarantee itself a loss of 190% of whatever you bet. And as for the rest of them, simple experience tells me, and any other arber looking at that image, that none of those arbs are real.

Is 100 Percent Winners A Scam?

I wouldn’t call it a scam. You’re not about to lose your life savings by buying 100% winners, but you might lose $170 if you don’t ask for a refund… and then you can only blame yourself. No, I think these guys are just clever marketers who like bending the truth ‘a little bit’…. And besides – they aren’t even really making any money off the arbitrage sales. Their profit comes from the $490 Pro Tipping service they try to flog to you after you find arbitrage isn’t making you any money. (see the 100 percent winners affiliate page to see where their profits come from, and why so many people are trying to flog this software so hard).

I don’t think 100 percent winners is really worth anything. I mean, you spend money on arbitrage software to help make finding arbs easier, or at least hand enough to you each month to pay for itself + some profit. And every alert service I have ever paid for has been able to do that. I doubt 100 Percent Winners could. Maybe it could – but between all of the errors, palps, and false positives that fill it’s display, how would you ever find a real arb?

So if you actually want to do arbitrage trading, I recommend shopping around for a better service (and trialing a few of the free options out first). Buying 100 Percent Winners to do arbitrage trading is sort of like buying a rolex in Bali for $10. It seems like a bargain at the time, but in one week time when it stops working, you realise that it wasn’t even worth the $10.

Join the Discussion

Join our discussion on 100 Percent Winners in our forum. Ask questions if you want, or just tell everyone what your experience of their service was like.