An open thread where, at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
(Prefer to join a more focussed discussion? Try our recent roundtables for recent lively discussions or browse our archives for topics of interest)
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
First?
And to add some …err…romance ( as if yas needed more)
And the trifecta;
@jumpy, Jump In my car looks like an easy 12 bar blues song for guitar. Have to give it a go. Wish me luck as I ‘m swimming a km in Port Philip Bay (first big bay swim) later this morning. Been told I have to wear a wet suit. Water’s too cold to do without.
Looking forward to doco “Decadence” being released. Partner thinks it’s a bit of a downer for some reason. Why can’t people be happy with and interested in declinism?
Any of you still planning to move to NZ if Abbott gets in as PM? Really? Still?
(Sorry if I spoiled your Saturday breakfast!
)
Saw a classic example of how Mark Scott’s ABC operates these days on Thursday morning. I was watching the cricket on Ch9 with the mute button on (as one does!) and in between overs just after 11.30am I decided to surf over to ABC24. Bob Brown was having a press conference and above the scrolling text in the more substantial text bar was “Bob Brown: (something about his response to the pollie pay rise?)”. After a few moments I decided to un-mute and was surprised to hear that BB was actually talking about the Coalition’s audit scandal that had been reported in the Age that morning. BB was not holding back using terms such as lies and liars on several occasions but all the while, several minutes, the larger text bar remained on the pollie pay rise issue. I thought this was a bit strange but assumed he had been talking about this issue before I turned over and this ‘technology’ might just be a bit slow and clunky. But no!! BB was then asked a question about gay marriage and began in an exasperated tone “ I just don’t understand JGillard, her views are stuck in 1911 not 2011”. BAM!! straight away before the guy could finish his sentence the larger text changed to “Bob Brown: JG views stuck in 1911” and remained there for the rest of the interview. Perhaps the software is only slow and clunky when it has to produce something derogatory of the Coalition?? We then went back to the host who gave his obligatory ABC24 summary of the press conference we’d just watched. He summarized the gay marriage issue and the pollie pay rise issue at length, including reading out some negative facebook feedback, but ignored completely the Coalition’s audit scandal even though it was a substantial and dramatic part of the interview. Believing (naively?) that this was an issue of “lead-item” status I then watched a full circuit, twice, of the scrolling text bar. Something on gay marriage, something on a former NSW minister scandal, something on Jeremy Clarkson etc. but nothing about the audit issue. Then to be 95% sure I then watched the midday news on ABC and it covered the gay marriage issue from both a national viewpoint ie.ALP conference, as well as a Queensland one which included a lengthy interview between the viper and ABligh but again nothing on the audit issue. Had to go to work at this stage but from reading PBludger etc. the silence on this issue remained.
So there you have it folks!! It’s been a week in which we’ve had a mid-year budget update and the Coalitions response has been to accuse the government of fiscal chicanery most of which has been dutifully broadcast/scrolled by the ABC usually without any caveats or perspective. It’s then been a week when an issue has arisen that goes not only to the heart of the Coalition’s fiscal chicanery but one which had also ultimately determined whether we had a Labor minority government or a Coalition minority government just over a year ago. For some reason THEIR ABC thought this was not worthy of broadcast. The only reasons I can think of is sheer incompetence or grubby, partisan unprofessionalism. Either way not a good look for a publicly funded organization.
Is it any wonder ‘we’ have ‘short memories’, and purportedly or actually ‘don’t care enough’ about the ‘important’ things? I despair of scrolling text information on the idiot box. It’s bloody irritating. I just want to watch whoever/whatever is on, but find it impeded and degenerated by my trying to read (with with some vague semblance of concentration) the scrolling text. I find it difficult not to automatically read it and if I try not to then a part of me feels like I’m missing out on something potentially important. Both sources of information or all the sources of information I am trying to process are downgraded. Which in itself is disconcerting. I mean FFS. Fair enough if it’s a genuine NEWSFLASH, but as a constant, even on a ‘News” stations it’s plainly ridiculous. But television is ridiculous.
FFranklin, you imply something sinister about the ‘bot’ or mere sod perhaps furtively poised at the keyboard to enter the latest ‘news’ at the ABC. Save it for the banks. I think there’s definitely computer programmed bias happening there. I don’t think much intelligent editing gets done with scrolling news items. I hope not much intelligent editing gets done with scrolling news items, so I can go on vainly trying to ignore it. So much fucking effort these days involved in screening out the crap.
Labor has changed its platform on gay marriage. There’ll still be a conscience vote, but this is great step nonetheless.
“So much fucking effort these days involved in screening out the crap.”
Makes me wonder why waste the time watching “the idiot box”?
10/10 Ootz.
dear FFranklin
thanks for your observations. so, they even left the big story about the liberal party’s accounting firm’s professional misconduct off of the mid-day bulletin?
i’m not surprised. i’m not even dismayed anymore; i’ve so come to expect it, i can barely raise a talk-back or throw a sock at the box when they do it. i think this rot set in before mark scott’s tenure at the helm, though he’s endevoured, it seems, only to perpetuate & extend it. and someone somewhere at the abc has oversight of the “bot” for the scolling text, its content, the frequency of its updates, its “pause” button. they know what they’re doing when they do these things & its not in the public interest. from what you report, they buried breaking news unfavorable to the coalition.
al-jazeera is something like news used to be before the “economic rationalism” overture to the culture wars gutted overseas network bureaus.
yours sincerely
alfred venison
I was going to post this in the other thread about Thatcher but I thought all might like a read about this as it’s a different view of the political situation in the UK and how Thatcher won the culture wars.
http://wosland.podgamer.com/?p=12069
Helen @5 it’s the lesser of two weevils and NZ would still look good but I don’t think it will come to that, I think folk are seeing Abbott for what he is: a US Republican lookalike, in a cheap suit.
ffranklin, it occurred to me this week that the federal opposition uses numbers the way other people use swearwords, just to add some colour and emphasis to what they’re saying, not to convey any numerical meaning. As long as they sound impressive it doesn’t matter what the actual numbers are, they are not meant to be taken seriously.
Good evening friends from the Spirit of Tasmania, currently out in the middle of Port Phillip Bay en route to Devonport. On present indications there will be a great many bellies shaved with a rusty razor ere long, one of which may well be mine.
su, I’m trying to figure out if it’s a win or not.
My gut reaction was that it’s empty symbolism.
Whenever something goes bad for Julia Gillard, the same person always seems to crop up in the public arena:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2011/12/04/rudd-in-buoyant-mood-at-same-sex-celebration/
From what I’ve been reading this has gone very well for Gillard.
Not according to Twitter #alpnc, or the 10,000 gathered outside the National Conference.
Well the so-called “Bali Teen”* (what? there’s only one teen in Bali and he’s an Australian?) is heading home. Hmm … how will this affect revenue for the Australian media? Max Markson. Time for a Productivity Commission report IMO.
Let’s be clear. I’m against people being locked up anywhere on drug charges. I’m also against minors being put on remand for offences that ought to be regarded as misdemeanours in rational jurisdictions. I also think legal entrapment is a horrible thing — and that has been (quietly) alleged here. On all these grounds, I have some sympathy for the child and by extension, the family.
That said, let’s not forget some context. Indonesia is part of the developing world. First worlders who holiday in the developing world need to weigh the advantages of a cheap hioliday made possible by cheap labour against the political risks associated with places with eccentric local usages. Nobody can pretend, post-Corby and the Bali-9, to be in any doubt about the workings of the Indonesian justice system. You go there very much at your own risk. If it was indeed the case that the child ‘had a drug problem’ then Bali was not the place to go for a family holiday, cheap as it might in theory have been or not. Acquaintances of mine who return from parts of the developing world regularly report the existence of snitches who get paid by the police to report criminal activity by tourists, based on the possibility of local cops putting the arm on them for money. While this is bad form, given the inequities that drove the tourists there in the first place, it’s hard to be completely sympathetic. Perhaps they’ve all read Robin Hood or at least get the concept. The legal bill here was, apparently, about $100,000. Hopefully, ‘trickle down’ will work its magic and some unintended good will come out of this.
Who knows? Perhaps the “Bali Teen” will cut a deal with Markson and the ultimate payees will be people buying products advertised on A Current Affair, which might be the fairest thing of all, assuming that the money is confiscated Hicks-style by the government.
It’s all very Brechtian …
*PS: I’ve also heard balaclava teen which on syntactic and punning grounds, is amusing
Good grief:
Uni students believe cows are plants
Sigh … Stories like this are just so troubling. Had this been amongst socially disadvantaged communities, one could begin to understand, but first year psych students? Little wonder that the Food & Grocery Council is so keen to block information on food products!
Damn! Borked the link. Could mods please fix? TIA …
[fixed ~tt]
Fran @ 21 – 10% of people think that beef is a vegetable? I think its more likely that 10% of respondents were having a bit of fun
I understand that pepper spray is a condiment … Apparently if you occupy! restaurants it’s used.
I don’t know about beef being a vegetable, but mutton certainly is!
Chris@23 – and in 1957, a hoax report on April Fools’ Day by the current affairs programme Panorama convinced many people in Great Britain that spaghetti grew on trees.
[Moderator note: pointedly snide personal snark directed at another commentor deleted - lift your game, jumpy!]
Apologies Mod
Mine was a comment meant in jest , as were the 4 before me, not a”"pointedly snide personal snark directed at another commentor “” as was interpreted . My regret is that i didn’t add a
.
(FTR, without the ” red dotted line thingy” ,my comments would all look that way)
Truly, no offence intended.
[Moderator note: if it hadn't been for previous history (not just from you, admittedly) of pointedly snarking on the same commentor, you might have been given a greater benefit of the doubt.]
Struth, even got the ” strong” on the wrong word.
[fixed ~tt]
This just in:
ABC wins contract for Australia Network
The ABC has been awarded a permanent contract for the federal government’s Australia Network broadcasting service, the government says.
One in the eye for the Murdochracy.
Thats it , something funny is going on, apple off.
Did Jumpy’s comment relate to Fran’s musing that she would find it more understandable for socially disadvantaged people to not know that meat isn’t a vegetable? If so, I think the snark is justified. It’s quite offensive to presume that level of ignorance on the poor.
When I went to uni I started out in on-campus accommodation and the only people that knew how to cook were myself and the two other people that came from single parent families.
It’d be kinda nice if middle class Aussies could recognise some of the attributes being poor CAN give people, not least having to take greater responsibility at a younger age, including knowing how to cook from scratch, rather than relying on expensive, pre-packaged, highly processed food stuffs.
Btw: my first day in my new accommodation began with the ‘senior resident’ launching into diatribe about the poor and how pathetic and ignorant welfare families are. It’s amazing how people act when they think everyone around them is just like them. Of course, if you happen to be a member of the cohort that is being vilified your supposed to be so ashamed of your circumstances that you just wear it without protest.
Furious …
I was thinking more generally about food group knowledge and diet rather than about which people thought of beef as a vegetable. It’s hard to imagine that anyone wouldn’t know that. I accept that my text was ambiguous on this point. Perhaps the subject group had some wags in it on that point, as Chris above suggested.
fb @ 32, this is what the researcher said:
Yes, indeed she did!
Fran @ 30, about time. I never understood why they opened it up for tender in the first place.
DI @ 35 – it does seem to have been a pretty stupid thing to have done given its pretty clear they’ve done everything possible to make sure that the ABC win the tender. Perhaps they just wanted the illusion of a competitive tender and then realised there was no way they could fix the result? And it does look like the government will have to pay compensation now
The SKY consortium would have done anything to secure this contract including an uncommercial bid just to get the deal; the ABC was always behind the eightball. At least the viewers in asia will be spared inane advertising.The contract should never have gone to tender inthe first place.
Just watching the new Nigella Lawson series; it occurred to me to try and find out whether she shares her father’s views on climate change. Can’t find anything; it looks as though she is deliberately cagey on that. Google will throw up a story about her disowning her dad over it, but that’s an April Fool article.
Anyone know?
We haven’t had a “condemn” thread for a while, so maybe this is the best place for this.
I heard this morining that a bomb had been detonated in Kabul and also in Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan and that 54 people had been killed and about 150 injured. Self-evidently, this is a dreadful thing. Anyone who claims the title human being ought to do whatever they reasonably can to stop such things happening.
That said, what captured my attention was the ritualistic use of the phrase {…} condemns the bombing in the strongest possible terms. When this comes from a government I always wonder why they bother. Is there any evidence that such condemnations change anyone’s behaviour for the better? In the absence of such condemnation, would anyone imagine that governments would be indifferent to what are clearly murderous criminal acts? If they said nothing but we later found out that the authorities were working energetically to find the perpetrators and hold them to account, would anyone be surprised? I don’t think so.
Since I am on the topic …
What would “the strongest possible terms” amount to? What words would one use? It is odd that having condemned something in such terms they don’t say what the terms are.
Has any government ever condemned something other than in the strongest possible terms? Can anyone recall someone condemning something in the most equivocal of terms? Perhaps when challenged they could curl their lip, raise an eyebrow and look quizzical or puzzled.
I condemn in the strongest possible terms the use of the phrase “I condemn {…} in the strongest possible terms” by agencies not willing to use the terms or convinced that the phrase will not amount to sound and fury, signifying nothing. Death to the trite meaningless phrase!
I condemn Fran for a recursive condemnation …
I condemn San Fran’s lack of decent coffee. Americans can’t make a decent espresso.
Oh dear …
Mom denied food stamps shoots kids, kills self
The 99% just got smaller …
Only about one week left to get written submissions into the Brisbane City Council against our favorite environmental nuisance Koaport Pty Ltd.
Compare:
http://nowastesite.com/html/potential__impact.html
with this court case about environmental nuisance:
http://archive.sclqld.org.au/qjudgment/2011/QPEC11-020.pdf
This has been troubling me as well. It’s not as if she’s some cooking guru getting on with her life and therefore her father’s opinions about anything are totally irrelevant.
My hairdresser is Lauren. The next time I go to see her for a cut and colour I will ask her for her views on climate change and then make some quiet enquiries about her father’s views on the same topic.
I will report back on what I find out.
Things go according to script in Fukushima where the healdine news is “baby formula recalled after radiation scare in Japan” (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10771645) followed by the totally unexpected news that low paid contract workers with inadequate protective clothing and inadequate training have been engaged to do the clean up grunt work. Who would have thought?
I am not, generally speaking, someone who is normally found on the same side of a discussion as GregM, but on this occasion, it’s hard not to be. I think we should stay clear of sins of the father claims and be utterly indifferent to Nigella Lawsons views on environmental policy, save to the extent that she is a citizen with as much right to be right, wrong or stupid as anyone.
If she is indeed being “cagey” it might well be that she doesn’t want to get into a public spat with her father, or else have a public view on the matter, neither of which approaches sound like something for which she ought to be harangued.
Disclaimer: I’m not a fan of Nigella Lawson’s work on TV. Her ads on TV irritate me for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. I don’t know what her views on climate change are and am not interested in finding out.
Yes, it’s relatively unimportant what Nigella thinks, just a thought balloon GregM; Here’s a paper bag for you to hyperventilate into!
I recently bumped into the lead singer from LMFAO at the airport, but negligently forgot to ask his (and his father’s) opinion about climate change.
Sorry about that. Won’t happen again.
“Yes, it’s relatively unimportant what Nigella thinks”
As Lord Lawson’s daughter, Lord Monckton’s sister-in-law, Conservative Party Chairman Lord Saatchi’s sister-in-law, and Charles Saatchi’s wife, you almost have to forgive our Domestic Goddess the sins of the whole bloody Thatcherite establishment and media apparatus…
Insert quip about accidentally almost melting priceless frozen blood art piece (I heard she plugged in the vacuum cleaner).
Oh dear … NZ are 4-56 and the test is only in its 19th over. One each to Starc, Pattinson (controversial as there may have been inside edge on the LBW but upheld under UDRS) and 2 to Siddle … A number of boundaries were scored off the edge between the slips and one off the inside edge past Haddin’s glove on the full down to fine leg …
Bowlers on top.
Now 5-60 … NZ collapsing … another to Pattinson …
Oh no! 6-60! This is a rout. Pattinson strikes again as Young goes …
Iran electronically hijacked the US reconnaissance drone!
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28114
This event is a strategic game changer in the Middle East. As the linked article indicates, it may provoke Israel into taking unilateral action against Iran.
I venture to suggest that Iran’s achievement is a major technological feat at least as remarkable as the Soviet shoot-down of Francis Gary Powers’ U2 in 1960.
akn, the levels were far below the government limit, the batch was only 40,000 tins, and they’re exchanging them for free. These powdered milks would be allowed for import into Australia under current food standards which are, incidentally, much laxer than Japan’s (Japan’s limit on cesium is 200Bq/kg; Australia’s is 1000).
Also, I think we’ve been over the “low paid” worker thing before, and established that they’re earning more than most other freeters do. That might explain why they’re doing the job, eh? But I note that this time your claim is unsourced.