You’ve probably been told - as if it was a proven fact - that cars beyond a certain age cost more to repair and maintain. This, allegedly, makes it more economical to trade up to a new car rather than keep an older car running. When speaking to several car salesman recently (for research only) they implied I was throwing money down the drain if I didn’t replace my old car immediately. Being a curious fellow, and they being salesman, I wondered if it is really true.

In the spirit of the Mythbusters TV program, I decided to put it to the test. Since buying my car over 20 years ago, I have kept track of every dollar I have ever spent on it, and most of the numbers were already in a spreadsheet. I did some calculations, made some charts, and the result was clear.

(Continued)

The world is full of coincidences, and I found this one interesting. Two men, on opposite sides of the world, both former politicians turned lobbyists, both convicted of crimes relating to their times in politics … and both named Brian Burke.

Brian Burke One, who has his own Wikipedia article, was the Premier of Western Australia from 1983 to 1988. During that time he conducted what were to become known as some shady deals, and allegations of improper conduct led to a royal commission. In 1994 he was charged with various offences including travel expense rorts, and served seven months of a two-year prison sentence. In 1997 he was imprisoned for stealing campaign donations, but this conviction was later quashed.

Brian Burke Two, a former state senator in Wisconsin, US, was convicted of misconduct in 2005. He was sentenced to six months in prison for using taxpayer funds to pay aides to solicit cash for his state attorney general campaign, and for altering records. The gory details are in this article.

Further similarities are revealed in the image on the right (from the WisOpinion website). The text on it reads “How Brian Burke’s reckless ambition and a political system where breaking the rules became commonplace conspired to end his brilliant career”. This was written about the Wisconsin Brian Burke, but could be applied just as well to the West Australian Brian Burke. Even the expression on Burke Two’s face - that innocently pleading “Who, me? I never done it!” look - has a lot in common with pictures I’ve seen of Burke One.

Speaking of which, photos of the West Australian Burke are suspiciously absent when doing a Google image search. I wanted to include one which showed the similarities in their expressions, but I couldn’t find one, which is remarkable considering how often his face has been gracing our TV and newspapers recently. I suppose that’s one thing the Burkes don’t have in common.

My sympathy goes out to all the other Brian Burkes of this world who really haven’t done anything wrong!