Sephy’s Platzish

I’ve been hearing stories and reading articles over the last couple of months on how the increases in interest rates is meaning that homeowners will be facing higher mortgage repayments - I understand the pinch that you all are facing with this situation, but there is one big thing that doesn’t make sense.

Here in the States, we have a couple of major types of mortgages - fixed rate and adjustable rate (also known as an ARM) - they are what they sound like. With an ARM, it can change rates generally around every 6 months, but sometimes (and this is what happened in the subprime situation) the rate will be locked in for a period of time, and then shoot up to a more “proper” rate after a few years.

Obviously, the fixed rate mortgage is self-explanatory. However, what I don’t get, and this is something that isn’t explained is this - why does an increase in interest rates mean an increase for, it would seem, all homeowners?

Is it possible to get a fixed-rate mortgage in Australia, or is it all based on following what CommBank, NAB, ANZ and the other banks are lending at for the current term?

Of course, I can answer my own questions by wandering the ABC website - apparently at least BankSA (part of St. George) do offer fixed rate loans. Then again, in the rest of the world, it might sound like every American homeowner is facing the bank’s chopping block, so maybe it’s not unprecedented…

Today marks the end of one season, and the end of three distinct, yet very accomplished careers. One of those careers will be known to almost all in the US, but the other two will likely be completely unknown unless you follow that particular sport.

The first is the announcement that Brett Favre is going to hang up his pads and jersey and head off on his tractor into the Mississippi sunset. Of course, that means that all the local TV channels are in full-blown breaking news mode, and have been for about an hour as I write this (though channel 58 - not surprisingly, I may add - only went into breaking news at about 9.20). In fact, since I have a TV card, here is what the TV stations are showing, in single shot per station mode, between 9 and 9.20 or so:

It’s also hilarious to see who all the news channels can dig out of the framework to interview - so far, I’ve heard interviews with reporters from the Biloxi Sun-Herald, a TV station in New Orleans, three radio commentators (two current, and one former ALL the way from California), even the owner of a collectible shop. So far, I think channel 12 is winning this battle with having his brother on the phone. Scratch that - channel 4 have his bro on the phone now…but 12 is the first to have someone live out in front of a stadium…the baseball stadium…

You know what? I’m hearing everyone on all the stations, because now the former commentator calling ALL the way from California is on channel 6. By the way, of course, you can weigh in on it -

However, let’s move on from this news (which accidently was released by the team website last week, but discounted as an error), and move onto news that already happened today. About 3 hours before the news broke about Brett retiring, I heard the end of the international cricket season in Australia live as it happened in Brisbane, with the Aussies trying to recover the Commonwealth Bank series from the Indians, only to be bowled out 9 runs short. With the wicket of James Hopes falling, that marked the end of the international careers of two outstanding cricketers - Adam Craig Gilchrist and George Bradley Hogg. Gilly will be going on to continue that great tradition of former international cricketers going on to make a name for themselves on the TV by signing on with Channel 9 to be a part of their rejuvinated Wide World of Sports programs, starting at the end of this month. Maybe next year, he’ll be seated next to Tony Grieg and Bill Lawry and trading barbs during a test match.

Actually, these retirements in the Aussie cricket team made me realize something about Brett’s retirement - I think this is the perfect time for him to go because the majority of people are thinking why is he going now, instead of going for even one more year and then having everyone wondering why he didn’t retire earlier. I also can appreciate how he can just say, yep, I’m ready to retire, because it’s something I’ve heard from a lot of these fellas who have retired from test cricket over the last couple of years.

Of course, this also marked the end of the 2007-08 international cricket season for the Australians, which means that this was the last day of the season of ABC radio cricket broadcasts. In a way, it’s like the end of baseball season, with the familiar voices going away, but just until next year - and you’ll still hear them through the winter because cricket commentators tend to pop up in the most unlikely places - and not unlikely places such as calling AFL games. Naturally, as it is with baseball commentators, there are the fellas who you take a liking to - for me, my favorite combination in the booth this summer has been Kerry O’Keeffe (ABC Bio) and Harsha Bhogle, though really Kerry with anyone is a great combination because he is quite the natural comedian.

The biggest thing I like about Harsha is that he always has that grin on his face, because he is (as was noted by Kerry a couple of days ago) always happy and upbeat. Also, it’s fun to listen to a different accent to ones that you are accustomed to hearing. Although a lot of the commentary was filled with laughter, you can always walk away having learnt something about the game, or about culture in general.

The last match of the season wasn’t without its own action - Roy got into the action, literally by handling a streaker on his own -

With the cricket season done in Australia, that brings the rest of the international calendar - the tour to Pakistan, which looks like it will be cancelled in the end (a poor decision if you ask me - yes, there is terrorist problems in Pakistan, but remember that this is a high security thing featuring people who are admired - plus, of course, the Ashes went on after the 7/7 bombings). After that is the trip to the Carribean for a shortened test series against the Windies for the Frank Worrell Trophy. You would expect that with the poor form of the West Indies, the Aussies should be able to retain the trophy easily. After that, it’s a chance to reconnect with the ABC Cricket team as Bangladesh comes into Australia for a two-test Winter series up in Cairns and Darwin, then it’s time for the return series in India, which brings us full-circle to the start of the 2008-09 season.

However, the prospect of seeing or hearing international cricket doesn’t end with the end of the Aussie season - there’s the Test series starting up between England and New Zealand in a couple of days’ time, and I believe that those broadcasts are on Radio Sport, which has commercials, but that’s OK with me, at least I can get that, unlike Test Match Special which restricts their broadcasts to UK only. Then, we get into the English summer when New Zealand and South Africa come in for a total of 7 tests, 10 ODIs and 2 T20s, which should be available through TMS (of course, there’s also podcasts to keep track if all else fails - I do need something to listen to on the way home at night and if I get really desperate, I can always listen to the whole summer of cricket again).

Just real quickly, I want to just give my thanks to the folks at the ABC for providing entertainment through a really cold winter, and I look forward to being able to do it again next year - I’m guessing with Bryan Waddle hopping into the commentator’s chair to fill the third slot alongside Glenn Mitchell (a/k/a Mr. Karen Tighe) and Jim Maxwell, and then possibly Neil Manthorp for the second part of the season? And, of course, all led by Princess Grace.

By the way, in the time that I’ve been writing this (I had to take a break to attend to something else), two channels have come to their senses and left the reporting for this go until at last 3 pm, but channels 4 and 6 are still in full-blown coverage mode. At least 4 is supposed to have news right now. Also, both ESPN and ESPN2 are covering the story. I’m guessing ESPNews has coverage of their own as well, but I don’t get that channel…and now at 1.30pm, only channel 6 is left (for now, but 4 is coming back at 2), and they’re showing a special from NFL films or something….

Like was said elsewhere - Brett Favre retires - no other news shall be covered for at least 36 hours

If you don’t follow free-to-air TV in Australia (which, if you’re not from there, makes complete sense - I don’t follow the ins and outs of it, but since it has been all over the news, I’ve had some interest in it), you aren’t aware of the storm that is Underbelly. Meg wrote about 9’s changing of the show’s site to basically remove any mention of details of the show.

Why did they change the site?

A judge told them they had to block broadcast of the program into the whole of Victoria because it, apparently, it would influence potential jurors in a trial. Over here, we’d handle that by asking the pool if they had heard of the program and whether or not they had seen it on TV. Why this couldn’t be done in Australia is beyond me - it seems to be something very logical to do, instead of forcing a TV station to nix what turned out to be a very well-watched program, even outside of Victoria.

However, the ridiculousness of the situation doesn’t stop there - shortly after the show aired (as happens with almost every show aired in the US and probably in a lot of other countries as well), someone (or more likely, a group of people) uploaded the show to certain websites - which exact ones they were, I don’t know, but the main sites that I know of did not allow users to post information about the show. As RT from Untwisted Vortex pointed out in his articles - Downloaded Pirated Anything is not Illegal, and Followup to the Previous Article - the followup’s included so that the whole story is there - the only thing that can happen is a civil suit as that is all copyright infringement is (which is what happens when you redistribute a TV show, for instance, on the internet.

Now, of course, it’s in 9’s interest to keep the show out of the hands of Victorians (not so much because of the ban, but because of the lost advertising revenue, I’m guessing), but if you read one story on their own website, they claim that there is an organization who are wanting to bring legal charges against people uploading the show.

Because of one line in that story, some sites that I know of have actually quietly gone away for the time being - when the ruling was handed down, the decision was made that it would be somewhat hands-off, but the vagueness of that one line made the world all blurred, and generally made things not so good.

The attention that this show has garnered has caused the judge to revise the decision, after reports of one hotel showing the program off of a legal satellite stream, to block any exhibition of the program from or into Victoria. Even before the tightening of the decision, one national network, Nine Imparja, which broadcasts to a wide swath of the country, including the Northern Territory, South Australia, regional Queensland and most of the rest of the country via satellite, chose to not air the program, giving viewers the following advisory -

Meanwhile, viewers in Melbourne were graced with the presence of former 9 head, host of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?, president of the Collingwood Football Club, Eddie McGuire, with this announcement, which included the note that the program would be replaced by the Shawshank Redemption.

By the way, these, along with videos of news reports on the ban are the only videos you’ll find on YouTube about the show - they’re policing uploads of the show pretty closely apparently.

One last thing - to the judge in this case, and to the Department of Public Prosecutions - forcing a TV station to block broadcast of a program for such a weak reason as possibly influencing potential jurors is something you shouldn’t be encouraging. Especially if you believe in a free press. It’s not to say that we’re just as good; in fact, sometimes the TV stations here are too weak - they’ve been known to drop programs even before they air on the premise that they might get complaints about it.

Whatever happened to common sense?

I watched one of the more curious events in recent history this afternoon - the Australian Prime Minister formally apologizing for what were some pretty disgraceful actions by literally stealing aboriginal people from their families and moving them to other locations such as orphanages. Out of that comes the term “Stolen Generation“.

Obviously, I’m not totally versed in the history or the story behind why the government decided to do this, but it is, to me, right that the government should apologize for their actions. The fact that they did this, and it was officially sanctioned government policy to do something like this was reprehensible. Another thing that should be remembered is that there are people who are still quite young - the youngest members of the group would be around 40 years old - which makes the whole thing an extremely personal thing.

While I was watching the ABC stream of the apology, one thought came into my mind, and that was the fight that has been going on in this country over getting reparations for descendants of former slaves during the two centuries or so that it was permissible here. Someone might thing that this is me trying to compare apples and oranges, but there are one or two similarities. Mostly, it has to do with the fact that it involved taking people away from their homeland, and that it affected people who were of a different race to the majority.

However, where the arguments for an apology stand up, they fall down for reparations. When it comes to slavery; yes, it was allowed by the government, but there was no edict from them saying the people *must* be taken in as slaves. Unfortunately, that was something that individuals chose to do because they, honestly, didn’t care about these “strange” people from Africa.  Yes, there were efforts by some slaves to become free, which were very successful (see the Underground Railroad), but at times there were some regrettable things that the government did to keep slaves as slaves (such as the Dred Scott case, which said that even free blacks could not be citizens and that slaves were actually property).

If there were to be an official apology issued by our government, I think it would be for decisions such as Dred Scott, because of the effects that it had on people of the day, but now that well over a century has passed, and the last actual slaves (or first generation children after slavery) have now passed away for quite a long time, possibly the argument is reduced for offering reparations.

I know that I’m not answering anything in this, and maybe I’m opening more cans of worms than is necessary, but if a descendant of a slave owner decides to offer descendants of their ancestors’ slaves reparations, they should be able to, but it doesn’t have to be a big deal involving lawsuits and messy legal battles.

In the end, when it comes to slavery, the responsibility ultimately comes to the descendants of the owners of slaves to determine whether or not they feel that they are responsible for their ancestors’ actions. Personally, I think that it should almost be one of those “it’s in the past, let it go” situations, but again, the more you think about it, the more your position almost seems to soften on it.

Sometimes you just have to cave in and talk politics from time to time. Of course, tonight literally almost half of the country has gone to the polls and, while the official results are still being tallied, a picture is emerging about who will be vying for our votes for President.

Or is it?

Personally, I thought that tonight’s events would make our vote in two weeks’ time nearly irrelevant. However, with almost all of the races called, it appears that the race is almost totally still wide open, with the candidates nearly splitting the delegates evenly among them. Personally, I’m starting to lean towards voting for Obama in the primary because I definitely want him to be the Dems’ candidate. We don’t need another 4-8 years of someone from the same 2 families being in the White House.

And, let’s be honest here - I’ve actually liked Obama since he started running for the office; he’s one of the youngest serious candidates in a long time, and even though I don’t see eye to eye with him on a lot of the issues, I’m not certain over any of the candidates on the other side. Let me list some of the issues that I have with the Republican candidates right now.

• McCain: He might be a war hero, but the fact that he’s in his 70s is somewhat disconcerting, but of course it’s not unprecedented to have someone who is older in office…on the plus side, he seems to get the idea of not spending money you don’t have - that’s why he voted against the tax cuts in 2002.
• Huckabee: Actually, he’s not that bad, but I don’t think we need to have a baptist minister as our President. He’s the weakest candidate, but could just be that spanner in the works to make the race a little bit interesting.
• Romney: Honestly, this guy creeps me out. It’s not that he’s a Mormon, but it’s his views. He seems to be so far to the right that he’s almost a reactionary. Add in the fact that he’s been the darling of the hardcore political talkers, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster, in my opinion.
• Ron Paul: There are a few things that I agree with him on, like being more true to the Constitution, but seriously, he’s gotten a whole 6 delegates. He might have a niche following on the Internet, but it really hasn’t shown in the polls to date.

Who will I wind up voting for in a couple of weeks at our primary (that’s the 19th, for those who showed up at the polls today to vote…), I’m leaning on doing what I did 4 years ago and crossing over to the Democratic ticket; then I did it and wound up voting for John Edwards - on the basis that he wasn’t John Kerry, if I remember correctly.  Let’s see where the next couple of weeks take us for polling and how the candidates fare.