{"id":2838,"date":"2010-09-30T20:26:06","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T10:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bikeme.tv\/?p=2838"},"modified":"2013-09-02T10:49:49","modified_gmt":"2013-09-02T00:49:49","slug":"yes-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/yes-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"YES, MINISTER"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>IT is clear to even the dumbest NSW government staffer that the Keneally government is in its death throes. It is like a gut-shot dog, whining and trembling and dragging its flea-bitten form under the house to die. The next election will certainly see it politically slaughtered and flayed for the disgusting way it has mismanaged NSW. The opposition will feast on the greasy yellow hearts of Keneally\u2019s ministers and it will grow fat and sassy at that overladen table.<\/p>\n<p>As a wonderful example of just how utterly appalling the Keneally government has become as it swirls down the shitter of irrelevance, let me direct your attention to the latest in a long line of Transport Ministers, one David Borger, and the nonsense that is being pedalled in his name.<\/p>\n<p>I refer to this article, which appeared in the uber-tabloid and fishwrapper of note, the loathsome Daily Telegraph<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailytelegraph.com.au\/news\/nsw\/inquiry-into-motorbike-safety\/story-e6freuzi-1225918628272\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.dailytelegraph.com.au\/news\/nsw-act\/inquiry-into-motorbike-safety\/story-e6freuzi-1225918628272<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Now there\u2019s a load of quite obvious bullshit being aired in this article \u2013 and by implication, attributed to David. But I was especially excited to read that there had been a \u201c28 per cent rise in the number of motorcycle riders killed in accidents in the past decade\u201d.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2839\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2839\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2839\" alt=\"YesMinister1_600x338\" src=\"http:\/\/bikeme.tv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/YesMinister1_600x338.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/YesMinister1_600x338.jpg 600w, https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/YesMinister1_600x338-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2839\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Oh, if only they were running NSW&#8230;<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Really? I thought to myself.<\/p>\n<p>The assertion that motorcycle fatalities have increased \u201cin the past decade\u201d is just cack \u2013 and if David actually said this, then David\u2019s time as a Keneally government minister would be refreshingly brief. So I did some digging and this is what I discovered about motorcycle fatalities in NSW, straight from the Roads and Traffic Authority website\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1999 57 m\u2019cycle fatalities per 78,604 m\u2019cycle registrations<\/li>\n<li>2000 62 m\u2019cycle fatalities per 84,617 m\u2019cycle registrations<\/li>\n<li>2001 74 m\u2019cycle fatalities per 94.361 m\u2019cycle registrations<\/li>\n<li>2002 55 m\u2019cycle fatalities per 78,604 m\u2019cycle registrations<\/li>\n<li>2003 58 m\u2019cycle fatalities per 99,251 m\u2019cycle registrations<\/li>\n<li>2004 60 m\u2019cycle fatalities per 105,289 m\u2019cycle registrations<\/li>\n<li>2005 63 m\u2019cycle fatalities per 111,253 m\u2019cycle registrations<\/li>\n<li>2006 66 m\u2019cycle fatalities per 120,827 m\u2019cycle registrations<\/li>\n<li>2007 62 m\u2019cycle fatalities per 133, 512 m\u2019cycle registrations<\/li>\n<li>2008 54 m\u2019cycle fatalities per 140,583 m\u2019cycle registrations<\/li>\n<li>2009 69 m\u2019cycle fatalities per 162,076 m\u2019cycle registrations<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Interesting, isn\u2019t it? Motorcycle fatalities in NSW have actually stayed around the 60-odd mark while registrations have more than doubled. The lovely RTA graph on this page illustrates it perfectly, ie. Motorcycle fatalities have, in real terms, actually gone down.<\/p>\n<p>So I rang David\u2019s office and asked to speak to someone who could shed light on all of this, because David thinks he is in possession of \u201cfacts\u201d. He even says so himself: \u201cThey are the cold facts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sadly no-one was available to speak with me personally, but it was suggested I email a lady called Cara, who would clarify the nonsense contained in the newspaper with what I hoped would be an erudite wisdom befitting someone who purports to speak for a minister of the state.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCara,\u201d I typed. \u201cWould you be kind enough to advise me as soon as possible where the minister got the figures he referred to in the following article (above)? I refer specifically to the \u201828 per cent rise in the number of motorcycle riders killed in accidents in the past decade\u2019. Any information you can give me regarding the source of this statement, or how it came to be made, would be great.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Within an hour, Cara responded. But not to my question.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHi Boris, the figures in the story were not in a quote from the Minister. The following figures are correct: Last year the NSW provisional road toll was 460, which included 69 motorcyclists. In 2008 the road toll was a record low 374, with 55 motorcyclists killed. That\u2019s an increase of 25 per cent in motorcyclist deaths in one year. More than 2,600 motorcyclists were injured in 2009, an increase of seven per cent compared with 2008.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThanks for that, Cara,\u201d I typed, feeling that perhaps my original question wasn\u2019t clear. \u201cCould you please point me to where the raw data for these figures comes from?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHi Boris,\u201d Carla responded. \u201cNSW Police and the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At this point, I stopped typing to Cara. Clearly, it was not going to get me anywhere, and it certainly wasn\u2019t going to get me an explanation as to why the bloke in charge of transport in NSW doesn\u2019t understand that motorcycle fatalities are going down and have been for a decade.<\/p>\n<p>Could the Daily Telegraph have been making shit up? Well, you should be bright enough to make up your own mind about that. But what I\u2019ve made my mind up about is that David Borger is yet to publicly distance himself from the garbage-cloaked-as-fact put forward in that newspaper story.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, Minister. That state election can\u2019t get here fast enough for me. How about you, David?<\/p>\n<p>Then maybe we could have an inquiry into some really important things. Like how our former Transport Minister interpreted important data when he was in office.<\/p>\n<p>Cos that\u2019ll be fun, won\u2019t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IT is clear to even the dumbest NSW government staffer that the Keneally government is in its death throes. It is like a gut-shot dog, whining and trembling and dragging its flea-bitten form under the house to die. The next election will certainly see it politically slaughtered and flayed for the disgusting way it has [&#038;hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[220],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2838"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2936,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838\/revisions\/2936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}