I must briefly interrupt the flow of the story "The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time" to honour the fundamental purpose of this thread, which is to explore the problem of differential post recency flagging.

John Simpson, in this post yesterday to the topic "Please Stand Aside Now John and Allow Peter be Our Next Prime Minister", see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=985#17267 , highlighted a possible further implication of the accelerated red flag fall that is occurring on some posts. Could the accelerated flag fall have the effect of enabling a prolific poster to post again sooner than some others, when otherwise that poster might remain up against the site's posting limit within any 24 hour period?

I have not as yet tried to check whether the OLO clock continues accelerated as the black post recency indicators progress from "2 hours ago" to "3 hours ago", and so on. More work to do! As if I haven't enough to do already, what with having to write entertaining (true) stories about the events of yesteryear, expose the incompetence of the Australian Electoral Commission's Central Incubus (er, I mean Office), get rid of Malcolm T, task the research staff of the Commonwealth Parliament, and brief the Governor-General on his possible options in the face of apparent nation-wide electoral improprieties threatening to sabotage the Constitution.

This is all definitely worknotcalledchoiceanymore, possums. Oh, and I nearly forgot, lambaste The Australian, and bait the Fat Controllers while I'm at it. Before you know it, someone will be asking me to plan a re-structure of the High Court as well! Yeah, bugger off youse bludgers! There are just too many problems. And 350 words will only go so far to fix them all up.

Yesterday, (when all my troubles seemed so far away), the red flag came down on this post, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6297#92705 , to the article "The States are Redundant", at least 50 minutes early. Am I paranoid, or what!

Nil Bastardum Carborundum!

The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time - Part 4

Now Joh's discomforters (for there were more than one of them; three, in fact) had not of themselves presumed to latterly badmouth the then but recently intended Parkinson's NSW 2004 election-time publicity stunt. They had between them, one way and another, obtained a legal opinion from perhaps the most pre-eminent practioner in the field of Constitutional law in the entire British Commonwealth, in relation to the operation, inter se, of Sections 154, 180, and 181 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918.

Mr Leolin Price CBE QC, of 10 Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A3SU, (who as Australian [NSW] Queen's Counsel is able to appear in all Australian courts) had indicated, amongst other things, in generality that "modern law-making in Australia - as elsewhere - [had] been infected with slovenliness and inefficiency.".

Yeah. Right on!

For it had become apparent to Joh's discomforters that for the Governor-General to fulfil the requirement of the statute, viz. that of Section 181 of the CEA that he issue a supplementary writ forthwith to deal with the totally failed election in the Division of Wentworth, as the consequence of the (then prospective) death of a candidate, the Governor-General would have to cancel the one existing writ under which all the other 50 or so elections in the other Divisions within the State of NSW were intendedly proceeding, and start that electoral clock afresh! Just imagine the utter mayhem! The costs incurred by the AEC in consequence would be the least consideration; just think of the prolongation of the uncertainty as to the outcome of the Federal elections, with 51 seats undecided, for starters.

Politicians' bladders are not built to take that sort of strain!

What blinding incompetence on the part of the then Australian Electoral Commission to have recommended such a change to electoral legislation to the Parliament as would fail to provide for such easily foreseeable possibility as the death of a candidate between close of nominations and the poll!

It appears I may have answered my own question posed in yesterday's first post above "Could the accelerated flag fall have the effect of enabling a prolific poster to post again sooner than some others, when otherwise that poster might remain up against the site's posting limit within any 24 hour period?"

I deliberately attempted to post my first post on this thread yesterday early, 10 minutes or so before the 24 hour posting limit period had expired. (I had made four posts to this topic the previous day, Thursday, and was up against the posting limit.) As it should have, the OLO site locked me out and displayed the lockout notice, which advised that I could post again in one hour.

I again attempted to post around 0750, as my then oldest post became 24 hours old at 7:48:55 AM. This time, only 10 minutes after the first attempt, the post was accepted, seemingly showing that the OLO posting limit program takes input from the timestamp on posts, rather than any more approximate method of triggering.

The question has to be asked as to why the posting recency flagging is not also tied to the posting timestamp. Was the red flagging feature introduced when OLO was first set up, or was it a feature added after the site had become operational? My suspicion is that the flagging program has the capability of being tweaked where the posting limit program does not. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that such a feature, or weakness, depending upon how you want to look at it, was built into the site's software to permit tweaking from outside by a third (unidentified) party.

Such a concern is seen to exist with respect to electronic vote recording and counting in the USA, hence the infamous "Diebold Variations", see: http://homepage.mac.com/rcareaga/diebold/adworks.htm

It seems, from submissions made to the Parliamentary Inquiry into the 2004 Federal elections, similar concerns exist with respect to the unlawfully centralized electronic roll-keeping regime of the Australian Electoral Commission.

You're barking mad aren't you Forrest?

The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time - Part 5

There would have been much alarmed clucking, not only around the political commentariat traps, but among Federal Executive Councillors, at this development! The Central Incubus of you-know-what would undoubtedly collectively have expected to MIUAUG its way out of this one, of course. The High Court of Australia, was it to have been asked by the Governor-General for a ruling, may well have taken resort to the principle "ut res magis valeat quam pereat" to avoid legal nonsense and assert that in spite of the requirement of the Act for only eight writs there was room for a new writ and a supplementary election as had been the case before this legislative blunder was made.

If the High Court was asked. You cannot have legal debate and contention in such circumstances as being mid-stream in Federal elections!

The Governor-General, however, with both the unequivocally clear letter of the law, and electoral precedent to guide him, would have remained free to take a different approach, one perhaps indicated by that provision in Section 61 of the Constitution that charges the Governor-General with the "execution and maintenance of this Constitution, and of the laws of the Commonwealth.".

Section 181 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act provided that the Governor-General should issue the new writ FORTHWITH. A 1989 report into the conduct of elections to the NSW Parliament, a report by a then serving, plus a retired former, Electoral Commissioner, speaking with respect to the meaning of "forthwith" in an electoral context, quoted the meaning as being "at once". The schedule to the CEA set out the form writs were to take. There existed no form for any supplementary writ different to that of the eight prescribed by the Act. The law guided the Governor-General clearly: as it stood, the Governor-General was required to replace the writ for all House of Representatives elections within the State of NSW!

To think, all this, just so Central Incubus could bully DROs and usurp roll-keeping!

TBC

The States of the Nation: A Parable for Our Time - Part 6

It was not that alarmed clucking would have worried Joh all that much, especially not when looking down upon the cluckers from a great height, as was prospectively in view. He had been around chooks most of his life, and they held no fears for him. Indeed, he had been known to regularly feed chooks. He knew, as a consequence, that it was very easy to take wheat off blind ones.

Joh could see that a lot of wheat was being taken off a lot of blind chooks around Canberra, for example. (You know, the national capital you have when you want national government to be hidden away from the people. The place where they build bridges over artificial lakes.) The problem was that anything Joh could have done to stop it would have been represented by the Public Purveyors of Lies as just sour grapes or spoiling tactics directed against his mate, John, in the Federal sphere.

The answer came to Joh in a dream. He was to go quietly. He had done enough, and his family suffered enough, in the service of the nation over many years. Besides, John (his Federal mate) reckoned he knew best about Malcolm, who was not Joh's Federal mate at all, in that he, John, had welcomed Malcolm's entrance into the national capital as but an expression of "robust democracy" at work within the Liberal Party. "Let him find out for himself", thought Joh. "That bloke will turn out to be an albatross around John's neck!".

And so it came to be. See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=445#8741

Joh had found out, you see, that his election result in 1986 had, through no doing of his, been likely assisted by massive electoral fraud. It was such a massive win that his party had been able govern in its own right in the land of the banana-benders, but with that win came all those hangers-on with skeletons in their cupboards!



TBC