What I’m pondering for this Saturday’s state election is who am I going to put last? It’s not like a Federal byelection, when every man and his dog decides to run. No, in my district there isn’t a huge assortment of weird and wacky parties, nor are there any independents. All you’ve got are ALP (sitting member), Libs, Greens, Family First and the Citizens Electoral Council.

Apart from CEC, I happened to compare transport policies of the parties while helping to compile an election scorecard for the PTUA.

What’s particularly enlightening if you read the Family First literature is that it’s all just a bunch of policies of (in my opinion) varying degrees of benefit, but marketed under the FF banner. You wouldn’t want to be against families would you? Then you MUST support building a freeway through Melbourne’s northeast green wedge! And that’s just the start — they want billions of dollars of new freeways. Family First says it’s good, so it must be good for families! What crap.

As for CEC, well it’s a little hard to find anything of actual relevance to state politics on their web site. The only thing relevant to transport is a picture of a maglev train on their banner. Ah yes, maglev: very fast, fantastically expensive, a technology that has been implemented commercially precisely once.

And they appear to be stringently pro-nuclear, with their leader Lyndon LaRouche claiming if we don’t build reactors then the world economy will collapse and we’ll turn into dingoes. Or something like that. Indeed, in this as in other issues they appear to blindly follow the beliefs of LaRouche. Which I guess is okay if you really believe one bloke has the answer to everything. Maybe if he’s God, he might. I wonder what he thinks of the South Morang rail line, or building a railway station at Southland? Perhaps as long as the trains are nuclear-powered.

So, it would seem the competition for who goes on my ballot last is pretty hot.

And there’s lots more in the upper house.

The streets were closed to traffic, the barricades went up. Yes, the Bentleigh festival was on again.

But 15km away from the sausage sizzles, roaming families, showbags and Humphrey B Bear, some streets in central Melbourne were blocked-off for the third day, for the G20 meeting. Hearing about the violence in Collins Street on Saturday, it seemed like a world away.

I can’t for the life of me understand the motivation of the few dozen protestors who turned violent unless it’s simply to have a go at the police, and generally cause trouble. It seems a long way from the vast majority of people attending who were simply trying to highlight important issues such as environmental destruction and poverty.

Bono was on Lateline on Friday night appealing to the Australian government to give 0.7 percent of GDP to aid for eliminating poverty.

I support that. And even better, I’m going to rejig my regular charity donations to make sure I’m personally donating at least 0.7 percent of my income to charity. By my calculations I’m currently over that (1.008%), though some of it is going to Greenpeace, which doesn’t directly work on poverty issues.

Now, when will my government join in?

Although I and a few others at work wear ties most days, the bulk of the men (and of course all of the women) don’t. Ties are a purely decorative item, and sometimes they’re expected, sometimes not.

Lately I’ve been pondering if I should buy some new shirts. I don’t know if my neck is getting thicker or what, but sometimes the collars seem too tight to be comfortable.

Anyway, the forecast is 36 degrees today. I got to the foyer at work this morning and decided I wanted to go tie-free for the day. I think I might do the same whenever it’s going to be over 35… especially with the dodgy airconditioning at work.

Problem is that after… what, twelve years? of wearing a tie to work (at least Monday to Thursday), not wearing one feels unnatural, like that feeling I get when I go out without my keys in my pocket. I feel naked. Incomplete.

I’m gradually getting used to it.

About once a month I go into the Commonwealth Bank (CBA) at 21 Swanston Street, fill in one of those quick deposit envelopes, and shove it with a cheque through the slot, in order to push money into one of my only remaining CBA accounts.

That branch has been there for decades. It’s where I opened my a bank account when I was about 12, which I had until late last year when I’d had enough of the CBA shafting me.

In past decades it was often a very busy place, but recently it’s been fairly quiet, and hadn’t been renovated in many years. It had a kind of nasty odour about it, too. I wondered if they might close it, given there is another branch less than a block from there. It might become just a row of ATMs.

But no, they renovated it with bright new colours and service desks out in the open and all the usual new bank stuff. But you know what they forgot to put back?

The displays that show the current date. They weren’t high-tech — someone must have flipped the card(s) every day — and maybe it didn’t fit the new, modern image. But given most people have to fill in the date on a form somewhere on the rare occasion they go into a bank branch, it was essential.

What’s the date today please?

Ever noticed how crowded the trains are on the weekend on the busy lines since the footy finished? I don’t mean on race days, I mean on “normal” weekends. People are not just having to stand, but sometimes it’s a struggle to fit aboard, because they’re running short 3-carriage trains.

It’s not a new thing; I’ve been complaining about it for years, as have others.

And it’s been getting worse, as petrol prices have got more people travelling by train (up 11% in the past year). In one recent extreme case, short trains were left to cope with a crowd of 33,000 people attending a weekend soccer game.

Of course it’s almost understandable that peak hour trains are packed, when (just about) every train is six carriages, and all of the serviceable fleet is in action. But on weekends, when most of the fleet is sitting doing nothing, it’s inexcusable. The government and Connex both claim to want to get new customers onto the train… but anybody trying it out and experiencing these kinds of conditions will go back to their car and never come back.

Connex is just trying to cut costs (mostly maintenance) — they’ve admitted so themselves. Apparently the lure of 40% of any additional revenue earned isn’t enough for them. If the privatised system worked, the government would take one look at the problem and order them to put on more carriages. But no.

The problem has been largely unnoticed, out of the public eye. The weekend before we went to Sydney, on Sunday morning, I got some video footage organised. A few days later I gave the footage to a contact at Channel 7. That night:

• Press release: Connex driving away customers — Call for weekend train upgrades

Once again, the pictures make the story. After years of being fobbed off, Connex now say they are reviewing the situation. I’ve told them I’ll organise a followup story if they don’t fix it. Anybody want to put money on what happens next?

(Ran into the reporter last weekend. He gave me some useful filming tips for next time…)

A few times a week I make a left hand turn out of a side-street into a divided road. Frequently there is someone in the divided road doing a U-turn against me. And an alarming amount of the time, they fail to give way. I’ve got deliberately cautious now, it happens so much, seemingly particularly when that other vehicle is a 4WD.

The rule is clear. If you’re doing a U-turn, you give way to everybody. EVERYBODY. Even little-ol’-me, who is facing a stop sign.

The other day, ironically, it was someone with a personalised licence plate: SMARTY. Not very Smarty if you have a prang failing to give way.

(All the posts from the Sydney trip are now online)

Read an article yesterday about new non-tuck school shirts to avoid the endless problems of students not tucking their shirts in. Seems to make sense, particularly in summer.

As far as I recall, during my school-uniformed years (years 9-12), while most didn’t, I did tuck my shirt in. But then, I was a geek. I also seem to recall I never wore shorts, which must have been bloody hot on the hottest days. What was I thinking? Some kind of phobia about displaying my knees in public?!

In year 12, there were special jumpers you could wear signifying your superior status over the other students. I think it was maroon instead of the usual green. Or was it green instead of the usual maroon? No, the former. With a special logo and VCE 1988 lettering. But a quirk in the school rules said you couldn’t wear the jumper without a jacket, unless you were wearing shorts. Some of us rebelled against that, keen to show off the status. And got told off for it. Seemed like a silly rule to me.

Though not as silly, I think, as the proposals from one SRC (School Representative Council) presidential candidate to introduce school cardigans. Cardigans?! We were teenagers, not retirees.

From a distance, I couldn’t hear the conversation, but from the gestures I guessed it went something like this:

He, on platform 2: “Is this the platform for Frankston trains?”

She: “No, I think it’s platform 3. Down there, across the tracks.”

“Thanks.”

So he followed her advice, went down and across the tracks.

Perhaps he should have asked the staff member on duty instead. A Frankston train approached, on platform 2, as I saw him poke his head out on platform 3. He realised the mistake and ran back.

The woman watched too. She slinked away to the very far end of the platform, and put on her sunglasses, perhaps hoping if he missed the train and came back, he wouldn’t be able to identify her.

He ran back onto platform 2 in time, and thanks to the driver pausing to adjust a mirror, just made the train.