Ostraya, Ostraya, Ostraya, Ostraya, We Love You, Amen!

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
Status
Not open for further replies.
It will be about how wonderful the world is and how magical it is and how lucky we are while every proletarian will be facepalming themselves to death.
 
You all know I could write shitloads on this, but I'll stick with something simple: every day, moving back to New Zealand becomes more attractive.

If only more bands would go there ...
 
Then there's this article - Fairfax is broke and dying before our eyes - it needs Gina

The author's main point seems to be "Fairfax is losing money. This can be completely attributed to the content. Gina has money. She should make The Age and SMH her own brochures. Then they will live on."

Seriously:

The first objective of any media company is to earn a profit, or have a patron who will tolerate losses. All the other objectives, promoting democracy, providing alternate voices, enhancing civilisation, whatever, are subsidiary to the first objective. Right now Fairfax can’t earn a profit and doesn’t have a patron.

Specifically it has been reported that Gina Rinehart has refused to guarantee “editorial independence” at Fairfax. Who can blame her? It isn’t like that “editorial independence” has produced an excellent product commanding a price premium. Fairfax needs to be restructured beyond simply changing the size of the paper. One of the benefits of a takeover is that inefficient and ineffective work practices get abolished.

But some might argue that Gina Rinehart will use Fairfax to push her own views and agenda – as opposed to the current editorial stance. How much of a problem is this really? It doesn’t matter who owns the media – if they cannot attract other paying customers the media patron will lose money and eventually will sell out or shut down.
Click to expand...
 
Idiotic article not deserving of comment, really.

What I find fascinating is the way the media has evolved. Stick with me for a minute, folks. Up until the 1860s-70s, it was normal practice that a newspaper would be closely aligned with a particular politician/party. Name me any prominent Kiwi politician of the era and I can tell you which paper they either owned, edited, or had close family/business connections to. An Australian historian could do exactly the same here. It was a perfectly ordinary aspect of both politics and media, and many politicians happily supported loss-making newspapers because it got them elected and promoted their interests.

In the 1870s, the rise of the daily meant there was a move away from newspapers being intimately tied to politics. They had higher production costs and more copies to sell, so they became more commercial and less overtly political. Obviously they still had their political connections and champions, but over the course of decades, they gradually evolved from being informative to entertaining. It sold rags. Even the most libelous Aussie and Kiwi papers of the 1850s would print, unedited, parliamentary debates at the expense of local news. Today, not even the most refined, dignified broadsheet would consider printing parliamentary debates - especially not at the expense of METRO SKIPPING STATIONS!!!1!1!11 or whatever.

But what's really interesting is that the political connections over the last decade or two have regained significance. The bizarre part of this, however, is that it's coming back in a way quite unlike the 1850s - you can say what you will about the papers then (many were dreadful, albeit dreadfully entertaining), but you had some degree of balance. Every faction had its paper. Now, we see an interesting convergence of media ownership in the extreme right wing. If Rinehart takes control of Fairfax, I'm not sure there will be a single left wing, centre, or even moderate right wing daily rag left in any capital city of Australia.

So if we're now all about politically-owned, politically-motivated newspaper publishing again, if we're so happy to flick the clock right back to colonial times, then how soon before somebody with ALP/Green connections decides to start a daily in a major city? Because if this were the 19th century, I promise you there'd be one starting very quickly, even if it made a spectacular loss. I imagine I shouldn't hold my breath for the Melbourne Daily Times though.

(I will actually buy a beer for anybody who gets the "Melbourne Daily Times" reference.)
 
I suspect even Charlotte won't get it, and she puts up with me living in the 19th century more than anybody else. :sigh:
 
Earthquake registering 5.2 on Richter scale hits Melbourne as Gina Rinehart makes a move onto the Fairfax board.
 
I find it appropriate how similarly unattractive Moe, Gippsland and Moe Szyslak are.
 
Axver said:
Earthquake registering 5.2 on Richter scale hits Melbourne as Gina Rinehart makes a move onto the Fairfax board.
Click to expand...

Fairfax is in Sydney... for now...

The gloating from various News Ltd columnists is fairly fucking rich given (a) they're about to be gutted as well, and (b) their own broadsheet also loses an astonishing amount of cash, and that can't be because it's 'of the left', which they all seem to believe is the Fairfax issue.

Watch what happens when Uncle Rupert dies.
 
A good article from Joe Hildebrand, whose show Dumb, Drunk and Racist premieres tonight on ABC2.

My favourite bit:

To draw your primary sense of self worth from the country you were born in or your racial background is, by definition, the height of idiocy. Think about it: It is the one single element over which you had absolutely no say. It is the one thing that you played absolutely no role in achieving. To be more proud of that than anything else is, frankly, rather pathetic.
Click to expand...

So it turns our plenty of us are dumb, drunk and racist | The Punch

Also check out my interview with him on mah blog
 
Of course the show has to begin on the night I head overseas.

Hooray for iView/YouTube!
 
You lot see Paul Keating mouthing off about current politicians again? Such a champion.
 
Well no, but his comments about Tony Abbott and Angela Merkel are great anyway.
 
I'm uber-depressed after watching Dumb Drunk & Racist tonight and then doing further reading.

It seems there were a number of attacks on Australians by middle-eastern men in Sydney in the early 00s, gang rapes, but these cannot and should not be extrapolated to anyone of foreign descent. There is no excuse for the violence that occurred that day.

Then I kept watching ABC2 only to see a Ross Kemp doco where he was interviewing Rwandans, talking about the genocide, and woman talking about how they were mutilated, both their limbs and their genitals.

And then I read this - “Please God. Please make it stop.” | natasha smith

very. fucking. depressed right now. :sigh:
 
Wow, wow that blog post. Just unbelievable. Amazing she's managed to pick herself up.

Shouldn't have read the comments, even after that there are some dickheads ranting on about Muslims being inherent rapists and naive young white women "deserving" it. Luckily most seem alright.

Can't believe I missed both episodes of DD&R, was looking forward to it too. Gonna have to find them online or get the DVD.

I knew that there were various gang rapes and other crimes occurring in the early 2000s in Sydney by Lebanese men. I imagine there were also quite a few by Anglo men. No excuse for Cronulla.
 
You can catch up on both here ABC iview

iView is awesome, wish the other channels would stop being so pig-headed and get it.

I'm a little better this morning, but fuck, the world really sucks sometimes.
 
I actually think I despise Sophie Mirabella more than Tony Abbott. Such a reprehensible individual.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom