Truly amazing.

You’ve put up a serious topic …. the lack of space that is still public – and – an almost casual use of bureaucratic power to stifle public expression of displeasure.

Yet in two-and-a-half days there have been only a meagre thirteen comments. Why? These are two matters that eventually affect all of us in one way or another.

Thanks …. can’t say I have ever seen the Cockburn Gazette on sale at the newsagent’s in town over on this side of Australia.

When you look at all the “celebrity” trivia and utter drivel dished up to us day in day out, perhaps you can understand my annoyance at not being informed about a serious and egregious bureaucratic attempt to silence a legitamate community protest.

Maybe it’s because I lived in Queensland during the worst years of Joh’s rule and don’t like to see the same sort of thing happen to others.

<blockquote<yet when something like this happens, I read about it on a blog and not in the newspapers nor see it on TV nor hear about it on radio.

To be fair, the story did run on a local news site.

Yes, because local shopping centres couldn’t possibly see the advantage of being on the council’s good side. It’s not like they deal with planning or anything like that….

I guess I’m just used to municipalities where the developer-council relationship is one where the developers are the ones issuing edicts, not the councillors. How refreshing to learn that there might be some places where this isn’t so.

We have had all the hullaballoo in the news[?] media about the evils of terrorism …. yet when something like this happens, I read about it on a blog and not in the newspapers nor see it on TV nor hear about it on radio.

It is important news. It is news we in Queensland [or Tasmania or wherever] have been denied.

Here is a local government organization using its constituents money to carry out actions that correspond to one of the main aims of terrorist organizations …. that is, to silence dissent and the reasonable expression of community displeasure.

That should have been headline news.

I’m not exaggerating. The difference is only in degree and in actual methods used.

Of course there is a world of difference between the use of bureaucratic power to stifle protest and the use of murderous force to stifle protest …. but the result is the same …. and those in the community who try to object to egregious wrongs are shut up.

According to a report in Cockburn’s local community newspaper this week, staff at the council have been contacting shopping centres asking them to remove the protestors.

*boggle* Obviously this is a shocking move on behalf of the council, but who on earth at the local shopping centre has been listening to them? Or is that the point of the story – that the shopping centre staff have been falling down laughing at these “requests”?