Category: Communication

Cole’s Red Spot Specials

Terence is not a name I’d choose for myself or any of my future children. Nor is it a name I’d ascribe to a dog, a cray fish or a cockroach. One must, when one meets a Terence, enquire as to why they chose not to adopt the more acceptable Terry – or even Tezza… but I digress.

Terence Cole was the man responsible for the “Cole Report” the document produced following a $10 million inquiry into the so called “AWB scandal” – the biggest piece of politically charged controversy since the children overboard fiasco. The Australian Wheat Board – or the wheat mafia – is the organisation which represents Australian farmers to ensure they get the best possible price for exported wheat. The AWB decided that the Iraqi wheat market was particularly lucrative due to UN imposed trade sanctions – and sought to secure the Iraq contract by providing “payments” to the Hussein regime. These payments were worth $290 million and were reportedly used to supply Hussein’s soldiers (heretofore referred to as Moustache Petes*) with weapons of individual destruction (ie guns). (Sidenote – if I was going to start selling miracle weightloss pills I would call them weapons of mass destruction). Somebody flipped the lid – blew the whistle – or revealed what was going on and the whole thing created a public furore… well actually it didn’t. It should have. But the whole issue hasn’t really engaged with the public at all. The Australian gradually moved the AWB scandal coverage from the front page to the middle – in a surefire sign that the issue wasn’t moving any more papers. It hasn’t had an adverse affect on the government’s popularity – which should be at record lows according to the media’s protests over changes to industrial relations laws, media ownership and this scandal.

The problem – perhaps epitomised best by the actual report – is that no mud from this situation is sticking on John Howard’s Teflon ministers. Once upon a time ministers were called on to resign at even the whiff of a scandal. Now the government prefers to take to the trenches and sit out the public furore before making any moves. The fact that the memos made their way to Alexander Downer’s department – but were not read by the minister – suggests a gross failure on behalf of the bureaucrats involved. Labor tried laboriously to labour home the point – but failed to score – with John Howard now winning the PR battle by calling for apologies to all the senior ministers who were so spuriously burdened with the weight of the opposition’s aspersions. But really – who cares? Nobody. And we should – on one hand we’re off liberating the Iraqis (a concept I’m not entirely opposed to provided the traditional interpretation of “liberating” is adhered to and not the Bush government’s – which requires the carpet bombing of “liberated” areas to truly ensure the “liberated” state is reached.) – and on the other we’re putting guns in their hands. Surely we could have supplied them with water pistols, or something slightly less deadly. Perhaps water pistols should be standard issue weaponry in all wars – then Pte Kovco’s mother would not have to attack the government for any form of cover up over his death in Iraq.

And finally, I’ll be in Brisbane from tomorrow until Monday – if you’d like to see me please contact my agent to negotiate an exorbitant appearance fee.

* I’ve never mentioned the moustache Petes before – I just wanted to use the word heretofore – I will also hereafter refer to said shady characters as moustache Petes – particularly in this month of “Movember”**
** A stupid concept.

Storm in a coffee cup

Having spent the last three posts ranting and raving about sport, religion and politics – and pretty much ruling myself out of any dinner party invites in the next little while (only death and taxes to go and I’ll never be invited anywhere again…). It’s time once again to make you all feel slightly jealous about how great my job is.

Last week I went for a ride in a helicopter. It was my first ride in a helicopter and we (the pilot, the owner and a former mining magnate, come helicopter enthusiast, from Charters Towers) circumnavigated Magnetic Island before hovering above the Strand – photos from that trip can be viewed here.

Two days later I took to Cleveland Bay in a replica Schooner – the Providence V – an 18 year old, 64 ft, 8 sail boat now running tours and charters from Magnetic Island. The boat offers sailors the chance to hoist the sails and run around on the rigging. I partook in the former but left the latter to members of the Magnetic Island choir who were on the boat to provide the “entertainment.”

If that’s not enough to entice you to North Queensland for a holiday – how bout a $50 cup of coffee? This is perhaps my favourite work related story ever. It marks my first Courier Mail front page story (and by “my” I mean I wrote the press release – which you can read here). The Herveys Range Heritage Tea Rooms are selling Kopi Luwak – or “Cat Coffee” from the start of December. The coffee comes from the jungles of Indonesia – and more specifically from the digestive system of the civet – an Indonesian cat. It sells for up to $1250 a kilo – and this is the only place in Australia selling it on the menu. The media coverage has been phenomonal with the story picked up by Channel 10 News in Brisbane, ABC radio around the country, commercial radio in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Perth and That’s Life magazine will actually be paying the Tea Rooms for the story. Talk about a storm in a teacup.

A funny rant about emoticons

Hello chaps

“…this is our school let love abide here, love of God, love of mankind, and love of one another.” – School prayer, Maclean Primary School (possibly paraphrased)

Religion in government run schools is a flashpoint subject. There’s nothing that will get the blood boiling for your average atheist than to have religion try to eke its way in to the school curriculum. The issue has been hotly debated in the US for years and the debate has hit our shores with the PM’s decision to fund chaplains in State Schools. The issue has been in the peripherals for a long time – last year it was the proposal to teach intelligent design in the science room – France had an impassioned debate over the rights of students to wear religious clothing to school – the secular state/church relationship is peculiar to say the least.

Surprisingly for some, the chaplaincy scheme is almost as unpopular with Christians as it is with Joe Blow atheist, albeit for different reasons. Whatever your philosophical position on the matter – Australia is a country that celebrates religious freedom – and encourages diversity of beliefs – as a result of the s116 of the constitution (which rules out an official state church). This freedom is a result of the historical hard work of many Christian men and women who staunchly fought for that right – along with fighting for other notable causes such as equal rights for women and aboriginals, the labor union movement, the founding of the Liberal party etc… where there is political or social progress in our history there’s generally been a Christian involved (some would describe the advent of secular humanism and other small l liberal advents as progress – I would argue that they’re generally an example of the use of freedoms won earlier or blatant plagiarism of ideals from historical groups). There is a strong social and historical argument for the teaching of Christianity in schools – but the context it’s taught in is open for argument – should Christianity enjoy a protected position as the religion of choice taught in RE? Should Christians be given special preference in these newly formed government funded chaplaincy positions? The philosophical answer to both those questions is probably not – if we’re upholding a society where people are free to believe whatever they want (which is as important for Christians as it is for Muslims, atheists, Jews and Mormons) we possibly need to provide equal access to all the options (an all or nothing approach of sorts).

I’ve been having some conversations with Mr Benny lately on the issue – below are some extracts from the emails we’ve sent back and forth…

“I hate school prayer.” – Ben

So do I, but for theological reasons – I don’t mind the idea of a Christian praying for the school every day – that’s great – but forcing people to pray to a God they don’t believe in is ridiculous and should be offensive to all Christians because it belittles the idea of God.

“I’m happy to have the history of religion and umm i lack the ability to express this part – i think it’s perfectly good to have the “stories” (sorry i know that’s a real bad word I just can’t think of the right one) of religion to be taught in the same way as science, maths, Shakespeare etc. My concerns stem from the fact legislation is being brought in and it is moving towards what I just mentioned, but the ideals are then being raped by religious zealots intent on promoting religion in schools. $20000 goes to a school, the discretion on who to employ is falling within the schools, you have some religious people in positions of authority, a religious chaplain is employed, and suddenly you have $20000 of tax payer’s money to have a preacher in a school.” – Ben

This argument is interesting but somewhat contradictory. Who is going to get to teach the religious subjects? Suggesting an atheist teach religion is like suggesting a drama teacher teach physics because they have some grasp of the concepts involved but no understanding. A religious teacher should be just as free to promote religion as an English teacher is to promote the beauty of the English language – or a science teacher is to promote the complexity of a plant. That’s what education is – it’s being presented with a series of views and deciding which ones appeal. Because of the “wonderful” nature of postmodernism in education there’s no truth that can be taught as an absolute anymore anyway so children aren’t being forced to believe anything. I can deny gravity if I can justify it. The anti RE argument is also completely flawed – RE in state schools is an opt out system where parents who feel strongly enough can pull their children out of a class – in an interesting side note we don’t have opt out science, or opt out maths so clearly there’s already a distinction between the subjects. What we do have is an opening for anyone of any religious persuasion to come in and teach RE – in my primary school the JWs had their own religion classes – and I can only assume if a Muslim wanted to teach Islamic RE classes during that timeslot that would be a possibility under the current legislation.

The role of the counsellor/chaplain needs to be clearly defined – and Christians are just as concerned about the implications of this legislation as everyone else – nobody wants crazy people running around on school grounds converting kids to an obscure cult. And the last thing Christians want is for a government driven by a politically correct agenda to water down the gospel into a more palatable mix of peace and love – without all the nasty bits.

“I swear, if there are reports of school chaplains directing students to prayer and such if they are approached for counselling then I will go and punch them in the face myself (that’s just student X, not a student they have a history with and know is of their religious persuasion).” – Ben

What guidance can a guidance counsellor offer – when is a student allowed to leave school grounds to seek counselling from a church – a large number of community based, government endorsed counselling services (ie the Salvation Army) are church based anyway so you’re not solving whatever your perceived problem is by keeping counsellors out of school – unless your problem is that it shouldn’t be happening at school because of your political ideology – and that’s a rabid breakdown in rationality if the ideal is more important than the people impacted. People will not be forced to use these counsellors – they’re there for those who will – and in that case it’ll be $20,000 well spent – the fact is that $20,000 will only pay about a half of a person and the other half will come from the combined churches in an area – so the federal funding is probably ensuring chaplains have an obligation to act as counsellors rather than religious salespeople.

And therein lies the concern for Christians – in paying the chaplain, the government then essentially pays to have some control over their message/methodology – which is a breakdown in the separation of church and state in the other direction – ie the state should not dictate the practices of a church. Most Evangelical Christians feel strongly about the notion of the gospel being the only way to God – any watering down of this message fails to serve their purposes as much as it would be a failing if the education system was to employ a “preacher.”

I read Premier Beattie’s plea for churches to pray for rain with interest – particularly the paragraph referring to members of other faiths as “brothers and sisters” who should be encouraged to pray to their Gods – which God will get the credit now if it rains? Seems pretty confusing to me – not to mention the politically correct agenda being pushed and signed onto by the heads of Queensland’s major Christian churches… shame, shame, shame I say.

Public Relation Learnings of Kazakhstan for Make Benefit Glorious readers of blog

Getting a grip on the PR industry has been a pretty steep learning curve. While at the most basic level PR is just journalism for a private company there are layers and layers of complexity occurring behind the scenes. PR can involve paid advertising campaigns, crisis management, positive media coverage, sponsorship deals, and any number of interactions with the “public” (and by public we mean the customer). The basic premise behind the industry is that free advertising is better than paid advertising – and PR is a way to make your advertising dollar stretch a little bit further. The reason I bring this up now is because I’m currently witnessing the best PR campaign ever, and the worst, simultaneously. In the red corner, weighing in at around 80kgs is Borat, in the blue corner weighing in at a whopping 1,217,416,000kg* are the people of Kazakhstan.

Borat is a reporter from the country who gets up to all sorts of politically incorrect hijinks.** Borat has a new movie coming out. A movie that has the government of Kazakhstan so worried that in the ultimate PR exercise they’ve forked out $50 million to make their own movie.

Round one of the long running sparring match began when Borat hosted Europe’s MTV music awards and depicted Kazakhstan as a less than desirable country. Kazakhstan responded by deregistering his website www.borat.kz on the basis that he was bringing the country into disrepute. They threatened a law suit against Borat’s alter ego, Sacha Baron Cohen, the Jewish UK comedian behind Ali G and Borat. Borat responded with a video supporting his country’s decision to “sue this Jew” citing Kazakhstan’s progressive attitude towards women and homosexuals who are now apparently allowed to ride on the inside of a bus – and not forced to wear funny hats. Most judges scored round one comprehensively to Borat.

The Kazakh government hired two Western public relations firms to counter Borat’s claims, and ran a four-page advertisement in the New York Times pushing the nation’s democracy, education system and the power and influence enjoyed by women. Borat responded to official Kazakh complaints by issuing his own “press release”, which consisted of arbitrarily arranged Cyrillic characters.

Kazakhstan tried to rally in the third round by going to the top – a Kazak diplomat was predicted to use a meeting with US President George W. Bush to lobby for a ban on the US release of Borat’s movie. Borat staged a media conference outside the Whitehouse gates inviting president George Walter Bush to a free screening of his movie. More free publicity for the movie, more body blows for the Kazak government.

Kazakhstan tried changing tact a little too late in preceedings – deciding to play by the mantra if you can’t beat them, join them. The daughter of the President of Kazakhstan acknowledged in an interview that the country had “damaged our image much less than its closure, which was covered by all global news agencies,” and said “We should not be afraid of humour and we shouldn’t try to control everything, I think.” The country invited Borat to come for a visit to see what the nation had to offer. And the ambassador to Britain admitted that he’d had a good ol’ belly laugh when he watched a private screening of the movie.

The strategic shift was a case of too little too late with Borat a clear winner on points. The Kazakhs tried adopting Borat’s methodology by sending a TV reporter to the British premiere pretending to be Borat’s brother. Unfortunately the reporter got lost on route while Borat attended the premiere in a ramshackle limosuine towed by mules.

The adage that all publicity is good publicity will probably ring true in this case – I’m itching to see the new movie when it’s released in Australia in November. Google’s news search engine has a number of news articles covering the tit for tat spin battle – the heights of which resembled an Ashes showdown between Shane Warne and the English cricket team – also hotly anticipated.

*calculated by multiplying the population of Kazakhstan by 80kg (estimated average weight of Kazakh citizen based on sample size of 1)
** see below

There goes my hero

I promise today will be a long blog with many tangents. Here are the topics I will discuss – as this list will serve as a reminder for me as I write the blog and as a warning for you, my faithful readers: the excessive number of songs dealing with heroes and heroism, the excessive number of songs named Betterman (as a tangent), heroes specifically (and meeting one of mine), Andrew Finden’s amazingly well thought out contributions to my blog brought on by a nostalgic walk down memory lane, the advertising industry, the media, Kevin Rudd, Quality magazines, Big Day Out… a week of relative inactivity brought on by the absence of my nearest and dearest Townsville friends: what I do when I lack stimulation.

Songs about heroes
Once upon a time I was part of a hugely successful soccer team somewhat appropriately named Mitchie Mayhem. Our strategy was to reduce the opposition to our level of chaos (mayhem) and then beat them into submission. One particular year our team overcame improbable odds to make the finals – we were required to win a high proportion of our last few games to qualify. One week, to inspire our boys to victory I sang a song about heroes during the warm up. We won, and it quickly became a prematch superstition which was firmly entrenched by the time we made the grand final. By my count, and in my somewhat hazy recollections, there were 8 matches that required songs and there were no reruns. Off the top of my head there was There Goes My Hero, the Spiderman hero song, Wind Beneath My Wings… the list goes on. It looks like easy song writing fodder.

Tangent – Betterman
While we’re on the subject of easy song writing fodder – what’s the deal with the number of songs named Betterman? Robbie Williams, Pearl Jam, John Butler Trio… there are numerous songs out there – why can’t anyone just be content with the man they are…

Heroes
What is a hero anyway? Someone who inspires? Someone others aspire to be like? Have you ever met your heroes? I’ve always been a little reticient to meet people who inspire me, or whose achievements I aspire to because of the fear I’ll be disappointed. Last night I put a face to a person who’d been a faceless hero of mine for some time. I appreciate good advertising. I appreciate wit. And as a result I’ve always been a fan of Virgin Blue’s advertising campaigns and corporate branding. Last night at a work seminar I met the man behind the marketing. He was talking about the advertising industry and had some really good things to say – no one had any idea that he was the Virgin guy until he brought it up in the last 5 minutes of his presentation. His approach to that account totally blew me away – in pitching for the role he basically told Richard Branson that there was no way he could be the face of an Australian airline because Australians know him as a crazy British guy who crashes hot air balloons – hardly someone you’d trust to fly you around the country on a budget airline. I can’t go on too much about this because of all the topics I have to cover. But I almost got his autograph at the end – that’s how cool I think he is. He also loves puns, when he said that I felt an almost instant connection to him. I’m very rarely in awe of anyone’s intellect or creative vision – but this guy was good. Except when he called himself a guru. That almost lost him points, even if it was slightly tongue in cheek. I’ve also always had a problem with the arrogance involved in labelling yourself as a “creative”. But I’ll forgive him that.

Andrew Finden’s comments
While I’m on the subject of inspiration, I was going back through the comments on some of my older posts, as I do, and I read through some of Andrew the Opera Singer’s comments. I’d like to congratulate Andrew on his always informative, well educated voicing of sometimes contrary opinions on the pages of my blog. One particularly interesting comment of Andrew’s that I’d like to query but didn’t actually do at the time was from the post on whether derivative art is bad art, he said:
“Does this mean that all these boy bands are ok? Heck no! The real problem with pop music is that it’s dumb. It’s like having a painting with a yellow panel, a red panel and a blue panel. It’s not hard to understand. It’s basic and simple. Good art is not basic, and is not always easy to understand. Mozart doesn’t repeat three chords over and over. It has intricacy and complexity.”

My question is this – is the statement that good art is not basic fair in an era where subjectivity rules and minimalism is the new black – can’t a 3 chord (or even a one chord) song with evocative (but not necessarily complex) lyrics be just as valid as a piece of art? Shouldn’t artistic value be determined by emotional response?… which segues nicely into my next topic…

The Advertising Industry
One of the things Mr Advertising Guru had to say was on the topic of corporate branding. Branding is bigger than your corporate logo. Branding is the “emotional response” people have to being presented with your company – it’s the associated feeling, the vibe, the connection people feel to your product or services. A good advertising campaign and established brand will communicate a positive message and evoke a positive response from your target audience. Being the media afficianado (I almost used the word guru) that I like to think I am, I realise that advertising is what makes the media world go round (unless you’re the ABC – in which case tax is what spins your world). Without advertising there is no content. Tourism Australia are moving towards campaigns without paid advertising. The basic premise is that because editorial content is more credible than a paid ad it’s more valuable to the customer. We work out the PR value of our editorial generated by multiplying the advertising rate by an obscene 9 times.

There are a number of problems with this model – without advertising there’s no editorial, there’s a very grey line between obtaining editorial coverage and the talkback radio “cash for comment” fiasco.
Following the Tourism Australia case study for a little while longer – Tourism Australia want editorial content to carry their key messages. (side note: Tourism Australia are doing what the government is doing and moving towards a user pays system). To justify all the travel editorial out there the media will need to find advertising from other sources for their travel shows, travel liftouts in newspapers, and travel magazines. This search will lead them to small businesses and the costs will fall on the heads of the little operators to fund. No media outlet will provide editorial without advertising dollars to back it up.

The state of the Media
Again, a natural segue from advertising to the media itself – I’m worried by the cross media ownership laws. Small country towns will suffer if all their outlets are bought by the same company only allowing the one “voice” to provide news and information. However, the concept of owning multiple media platforms is also quite exciting and I’m sure the different media outlets are salivating at the prospect of being able to sell advertising packages across multiple platforms. The buzz word for this is “convergence” and Nine are already doing it to some extent with PBL owning the Bulletin – having a local paper, or a national paper, where you can cross promote your content and bundle your advertising will make a lot of people a lot of money.

Quality Magazines (and Kevin Rudd)
John Howard has been in the newspapers this week speaking out on Quadrant – the intellectually stimulating but admittedly verbose and elitist culture watch magazine. The PM likes it. He doesn’t like the rest of the “left wing” media. There are a number of interesting magazines that I suggest you all buy because magazines are the coolest thing since sliced bread. These are: The Monthly (which this mo
nth features an article from Kevin Rudd on the mix of religion and politics which is well worth a read, I have a lot of respect for Kevin Rudd (who I also met this year) this article enhanced my respect for him), Quadrant, Rolling Stone, J Mag, The Bulletin (just for John Birmingham’s column really, and sometimes the cover stories are good), Dissent (for some lefty balance), The Quarterly Review. If you read all these then you too can be a well informed, self proclaimed media afficianado.

Big Day Out
I am most definitely going to Big Day Out next year because so are Muse. You should all join me. I also heard a rumour somewhere that Thom Yorke will be coming… but that could just be hearsay.

My Week
This week has taken way too long. Robyn, Tim and all the people who brighten the doors of JJ’s (my house – don’t ask what it stands for) are off on a camp. Dave and I have been spending some quality time, although mostly I’m playing computer games because they’re proven to make time go faster. Other people are still around in Townsville (Scooter is still here, and CB is around – but no one has really been providing me with any stimulus so I’ve created my own fun by killing France in Civilisation 3. That’s pretty rewarding actually – we should all declare war on France every once in a while.

So there you have it, over 1600 words of pure substance (as in it’s 100% the same type of substance – whether it’s gold or “other” is up to the reader to decide… that’s the nature of art – but this certainly isn’t minimalism)

Cannibal (press) corps(e)

The battle for the hearts and minds of the average stupid Australian (or the below average Australian, or the 2.6million viewers who tune in nightly to Current Affairs programming on Australian commercial television) between Channel 7’s Today Tonight and Channel 9’s A Current Affair stooped to an all time low this week with the mission to save little Papua village menu item Waa Waa. Waa Waa is an example of nominal onomatopoeia – he’s a very sad little boy. Sad because his parents died horribly and suddenly when he was a smaller boy. And sad because as a result his village have decided he’s cursed and like all cursed little Papuan children he must be eaten. Now, not wishing to make light of little Waa Waa’s situation – it’s no laughing matter really. The media feeding frenzy surrounding his situation is causing a bit of a stir as each media outlet seeks to save the fortunes of the little fella. Today Tonight’s queen of shtick, Naomi Robson, and her crew made a secret dash to Papua (partially to escape the negative stigma surrounding her decision to don the khaki in tribute to Steve Irwin)… only it turned out to be not so secret… and not so legal – the team were discovered to be working on tourist visas and were promptly deported. Their head of programming has accused Nine’s 60 minutes reporter who covered the original story of shamefully (or shamelessly) tipping off the authorities and leaving the poor boy to his fate. Claims Nine vehemently deny. They also believe leaving Waa Waa in his village in the foreseeable future is better than forcibly removing him at this tender stage of life (hopefully not too tender) as he’s not scheduled for the dinner plate for another 10 years or so. The story provides both networks with a little fodder for doing what they do best – and that’s eating one another.

The title of this post of course refers to popular(sic) death metal band the Cannibal Corpse and is a play on the situation and the press corp. Clever hey.

In other news it seems the best way to earn a stay of metaphorical execution in a high profile case under the Australian judicial system is to attempt suicide (at least if you’re Steve Vizard’s book keeper).

It seems the SMH have answered my long standing economics and employment theory – supply and demand means the crappiest jobs require the highest pay – it’s all about scale really – cleaning toilets in outback WA is probably worth 4 times what I earn…

Beazley and Howard seem determined to have all Australians singing from the same songbook (quite literally – at least in the mind of a talkback caller who suggested all Australians should know the words to the national anthem). They’re putting mateship on top of the pile of Australian values – which is all nice and stuff but the SMH has different ideas about the priorities and the issue at hand here, and here, and here.

Former Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Jim Soorley is a first rate spanner (that’s a tool). I can’t read his column without wanting to simultaneously write some form of complaint about his poor standards of intellectual engagement with an issue, blow up his letter box, and punch the nearest inanimate object. Luckily, impulse control is something I’m working on.

Stay tuned for my in depth profile of the seminal influence on my Art Rock career – it should be online in the next couple of days.

Rock over London, Rock on Chicago… you can look up that sign off online if you want a clue.

Free will vs election

Disclaimer – Be warned, this blog is long and talks about politics – for a lighter look at the world – go outside during the day, or hit your light switch…

Dear Andrew (and friends)*

I was sitting at the Coffee Club in Brookside (a free plug for my sister’s workplace) yesterday drinking a very fine cappuccino (exaggerated for the sake of the story) with some very fine people. The fine people included the always entertaining Mr Andrew Poyser, the always enjoyable Mrs Sarah Poyser, and the always very lovely Miss Robyn Burt. Roo apparently thinks my blog is full of rubbish but would read it if it was an email addressed to him – or would participate in a conversation with similar content – also known as talking turnstile**. And so today’s blog is in that form in a bid to double my readership by including Andrew and Sarah (and unborn Poyser who I suggest should be called Nathan) that would mean my total readership consists of 5 Poysers – Mark, Steve, Roo, Sarah and unborn Poyser… meaning that Poysers represent 83% of my total readership of 6***. If this blog were a democracy they’d have a clear majority. Luckily**** this blog is not a democracy.

Unfortunately Queensland is. I say unfortunately because based on last Saturday’s election there just aren’t enough quality candidates to fill all the required positions in Queensland’s parliament. I think the skills shortage stretches to the government. An interesting side debate at this point would be to discuss the merits of using high wages and good super packages to attract top quality people into government. It’s an argument that makes sense to me. Otherwise you’re left with showboaters who just do it for the attention and don’t actually know how to govern. At that point the achievements of government become the development of a sports stadium and several other tourism and lifestyle enhancements. Ala the Beattie government.

Here’s my retrospective analysis of the former Beattie government’s performance from a series of emails involving my politically motivated friends Ben and Joe^

Email 1 from Ben:

“Why do you think Beattie isn’t very good. I find him quite the vessional^^ leader. I’m trying to think over the past 8 years and I find it really hard to pull Beattie apart. OK, our health system needs work and Beattie probably should take care of that. And 2 years ago I said that trains were going to become a bigger and bigger issue in Brisbane and despite all the growing concern Beattie has ignored this and I think this will blow up in his face next term. Hell, public transport around Brisbane is getting worse and worse and I think this may have gone under the radar this election by next time I doubt he’ll be so lucky. The Goodwill Bridge was a bit frowned upon and the Smart State campaign wasn’t the huge success that he (and no one else) thought it would be but they were just stupid projects on the side and well, I kinda like the Goodwill Bridge and I think everyone who uses it would agree and only people with no reason to go near it really opposed it, like most things.”

Well, I don’t like Beattie for several reasons and my reasoning is included below – however I should point out that I’m pretty sure the Goodwill Bridge was a local government (Brisbane City Council) development so the state can’t really claim credit for it anyway – should they want to…

My response 1:

“If you break it down to the lowest common denominator – the State government are responsible for health, education and roads. Beattie has absolutely stuffed up every one of these areas.

All the problems are of his making – if he’s going to blame the population increase for the health problems that’s his fault. His government have aggressively targeted relocators from other states. It’s his fault. The water shortage wouldn’t be as big a deal if the population was a more manageable size in the South East corner. Public Transport and road congestion wouldn’t be as big a deal if he hadn’t been busily attracting 3000 people to the South East every week (that figure may be slightly inflated). Sure more people means more money for the state from Federal coffers and a greater capacity to generate economic stimulus – but if you’re not supporting more people with more infrastructure then quite frankly you’re buggered.

Beattie is the master of superficial – he’s a great ambassador for the state – but his policies are screwy and the state will gradually eat itself if he’s left in control.

He’s trying to claim that the rate of employment in Queensland as a positive outcome of his governance – which is tripe – everyone in Queensland should be employed – we have a skills shortage in North Queensland (and in fact everywhere). If the government was training and educating people better for the last 8 years that wouldn’t be a problem – the fact is people aren’t pursuing apprenticeships, people aren’t going to uni as much as they were… sure people are getting jobs, but anyone can operate a checkout, drive a forklift or pack a crate.

He’s rubbish. His policies are rubbish. Luckily for him, the opposition are rubbish too.”

Ben responded with a very long email which I’ll summarise for the sake of brevity… or less verbosity…

“Point 1 – The entire campaign was aimed at bringing skilled people to the state, which in actual fact has failed terribly with more skilled people going out and a net massive increase in stupid people, mostly pensioners/retires I noticed in the last demography reports I saw. So basically Queensland is becoming the new Florida, and now I think of it the comparisons don’t end there.

Point 2 – I think health problems are partly intertwined with lack of trained staff. Which brings us to education. This is an area i dont totally agree with you.… blaa blaa blaa^^^ …. university education rates are at the highest they have ever been in Australia, I was working with the census data not long ago that showed that since 91 the number of people with degrees increased from 6.9 to 12.8 (those numbers might be slightly off, they were around there though) and this census it was predicted to be at 14.9 (we will find this figure for sure mid next year).Now, I could simply go and find this report as it is in my massive pile of papers on my desk, but i am lazy. However, my point is the number of university educated people is rapidly increasing, as university is seen as an easier job than work (or so I presume). However, if you mapped the growth in certain areas, such as doctors, they should be increasing at the rate of population growth..

Point 3 – Finally, there will always be some unemployment, as it is made up of cyclic, redistribution and lazy ppl.(sic)(editors note: funny that Ben is too lazy to write people) also, I’m not sure if this is true but I think it might also be the case the proportion of the population of labour age in the labour force may be changing, as further study is eating a chunk of the population up that has historically been a very productive age bracket.”

That really is a summary – he clearly doesn’t spend enough time working…However, lots of the stuff I scrapped was Brisbane specific – ie skills shortage and public transport are bad in South East Queensland etc etc… So here’s my response – and that ought to close out today’s entry – it ought to, but then it would miss my really good ideas that I’ll now close with instead *(part b) :

1. Queensland is bigger than Brisbane

2. A fairly large chunk of the state’s economy is derived from minerals processing and mining – a large percentage of those operations occur in the state’s north – eg Townsville is a $10.2 billion regional economy growing at 12% per annum.

3. Beattie has made a lot of stupid industrial policy announcements in this election. Bowen is a rubbish site and making it a major point in an industrial triangle is a stupid decision. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

I don’t count arts degrees as university degrees – I have a feeling that I read that while numbers are currently up – enrolment figures for universities (particularly regional universities) are in decline – this may be because of increased competition (more places across the board means that some unis are sharing their former stranglehold on places) but JCU is undergoing massive funding cuts because they aren’t getting the numbers they need. We’re pouring out lazily educated students who are too lazy to move anywhere into a lazy workforce. The fact that I got a degree without visiting the library, attending classes, or in fact learning anything particularly useful during my degree reflects poorly on the standard of education on offer.

The skill shortage generally refers to skilled labour – ie tradespeople, apprentices and construction workers – there are already too many engineers and economists… We don’t need uni trained people really – we need people who are prepared to do the jobs that are readily available and essential. But at the end of the day, no one wants to be a sewerage treatment worker… or do anything hard. Because people are lazy and stupid… once again that’s the result of a crap education system allowing crap parents to breed crap children and it’s a downward cycle of crap.

We then involved Joe in the discussion because quite frankly, he’s a political animal…

Joe what do you think of Peter Beattie?

I will be spending 4 hours handing out “how-to-vote” cards tomorrow. Enough said.

I asked who for and he got a little insulted – but this is why (brilliant election idea number 1):

I ask because I figure you could produce your own how to vote cards and hand them out for neither party… That’s what I’d be doing.

Brilliant election idea number 2:

What do you think would happen if we encouraged enough people to write our names on their ballot papers across every electorate?

Brilliant election idea number 3:

I think the Coalition should completely target their campaigns in Beattie’s and Bligh’s electorates – putting all your eggs in one basket is frowned upon but I think if they could knock the leaders off their perches it would be almost literally a major coup. Imagine if Springborg and Flegg had spent the entire campaign period doorknocking personally in the seat of Brisbane and convincing residents to change their vote. If they could push that campaign widely in the media it may have shown they were proactively doing something about getting rid of Beattie.

I’m suggesting they work hard at getting rid of Beattie – it would be the best way to ensure the destruction of the labor government. Think about it take away Beattie and Labor are stuffed – name one other Labor politician outside of your local member and the big portfolios… Beattie has tried to be all things to all men – he hogged the ministerial portfolios to the point where he was minister for about six things as well as Premier. They’d be stuffed without him. He only just managed to scrape 50% of the vote in his electorate anyway – unfortunately it was split between 4 other candidates.

*I had to add the (and friends) because addressing this entry to Roo and then mentioning him in the first paragraph would have been odd. The joys of non linear writing…

** a very old in joke based loosely on an AFL ad and the concept that the content of our conversation is somehow a marketable commodity and would attract large numbers of interested parties…

*** estimated.

**** Luckily used loosely – I’m sure they’d do a good and responsible job of governing my blog.

^ Names not changed to protect the guilty.

^^ A word made up by Ben – to be understood based entirely on the context of use in the sentence. It’s like a random adjective. Or a vessional adjective.

^^^ irrelevant disagreement removed

Everybody loves …mond

There are certain moments in time that everyone remembers. Big incidents create certain residual memories. Points frozen in time. Everyone remembers what they were doing and where they were when they heard that Princess Diana died (I was in the car driving back from a youth group outing to Pizza Hut). Everyone remembers what they were doing on September 11 2001 (I was watching the West Wing). I have a feeling today will be one of those moments.

Here are some of my observations on today’s experience:

1. Denial is really the first (illogical) step in coming to terms with bad news. I had the same experience with several people today – “are you joking,” “surely this is a hoax”… let me suggest that that’s an unreasonable response – a mainstream media outlet can not afford to falsely proclaim the death of someone famous (ever since Mark Twain’s demise was famously “greatly exaggerated” media outlets have been careful – except for a few notable slip ups). It also wouldn’t be a funny joke.

2. The phrase “unexpected death” should be limited to deaths which are genuinely surprising. While I respected and admired Steve Irwin and his genuinely laid-back larrikin style – the fact is if you make a living playing with very dangerous animals there should be a level of expectation that you’ll meet your demise (untimely as it may be) in this manner. I guess what was unexpected was that he was killed by a comparatively innocuous animal.

3. Genuine people are hard to find – and appreciated by the masses. Steve Irwin is one of those people that no one has a bad word to say about. His conservation based agenda may not strike a chord with you – but his passion for the cause was incredible. He genuinely practiced what he preached. There’s a lesson there for anyone who is trying to engage with people in a real way.

4. Going doing something that you love is still going… How is it better to die at the hands of something you love than at the hands of something you don’t? Would it be more satisfying to be shot by your spouse or by a stranger – I’m going to suggest the second would be at the very least less disatisfying (how many negatives are there in that sentence – what I mean was – being killed by a stranger would be less emotionally distressful than being killed by your spouse… maybe… or maybe it’s all the same. You’re dead anyway right?)

5. Jokes about these situations never take too long to emerge – I’ll leave you to investigate the suncream joke for yourselves – “it would have offered protection from harmful rays” is the punchline. I’m not looking forward to seeing the Chaser do anything on him this Friday.

I was going to blog about the Catholic church and their exorcist’s verdict on Harry Potter – but I’ll put that on the backburner while I deal with the burning issues… Is using the same word twice in the sentence funny the second time? Rarely… but, like a Harry Potter omnibus, I’m on fire tonight…

Farewell good and faithful servant

Pluto is no more. Well it’s still there. But now that it has no “planet” status is anyone going to care? The process, or act, of deplaneting a large orbiting object is interesting and probably sets a dangerous precedent. Who gave International Astronomical Union the final say over planetary status? I didn’t. Did you? I heard recently that you can purchase yourself a star in the solar system from a particular company who claim to own them. How does that work? I think I’ll start selling blocks of land on Neptune (for the non astronomy buffs out there – Neptune is gaseous)* Space is a funny business. The last great frontier (presumably the bottom of the ocean isn’t great – nobody seems to have claimed land in the depths of the sea yet either). But I digress…

I’ve written an obituary for Pluto (and by I’ve written I mean I’m writing it now – and you’re reading it after I wrote it – which means it happened in the past. Unless you invented a time machine and some how breached the space time continuum (wow space and time travel – this post is a geek’s dream))…

Pluto was a loyal and trustworthy companion. Dogs are not only a man’s best friend but a mouse’s as well. When John Steinbeck wrote Of Mice and Men he should have penned the sequel “Of Mice and Men and their Dogs.” There were many occasions where Pluto came to my rescue…

Actually confusing the planet with the Disney character isn’t as funny as I’d hoped it would be. To continue in that vein would be to flog the proverbial dead horse – or in this case dead dog… or rather, dead planet. Flogging an inanimate object is futile. So I’ll stop. In fact I’m not really able to work up a full head of steam over Pluto’s demotion into the “Dwarf Planet” category – except to say that it strikes me as a little politically incorrect to have a problem with “dwarf” status. I mean at the end of the day dwarf planets are like every other planet – just horizontally and vertically challenged.

Mmm. Clearly I should spend more time writing stupid stuff and less time on Press Releases, election briefs and other serious matters.

*I’m not claiming to be an astronomy buff – I had to track down a gaseous planet for the purpose of that joke. And by joke I mean statement.

Cross media ownership laws: For dummies

Tonight I was going to spend a bit of time writing about my thoughts on the water crisis, the Israel situation and other events of global significance. But I changed my mind. Instead I’m going to run another one of my journalism tutorials for the uninitiated… My bachelors degree says I’m an expert (or it might, if I pulled it out of the envelope).

I have probably said something about cross media ownership laws before – but if I haven’t, let me say, for the record, that laws restricting cross media ownership are a good thing. Allowing the one super duper media company to control the media across the spectrum is not a good thing. Anyone who thinks that the press is free from editorial constraint is naive – the owners of a publication can dictate what gets printed. If an owner has control over more than one outlet they start to have the dangerous capacity to control the public agenda. For example – in a small country town if one party owned the local radio station and newspaper – they’d have almost total control over the messages getting out to the locals on any given issue – they’d essentially control what’s left of the public sphere (the place in which public discourse takes place (these days it’s talk back radio and the letters and opinions pages in newspapers)). This is a bad thing if you believe people should be able to reason out truth for themselves, rather than being told what to believe.

Funnily enough, in a survey conducted by crikey, journalists aren’t exactly over the moon with the proposed new laws. Here’s the stats (and a neat summary of the proposals – a voice = 1 media outlet).

The results show that most journalists are highly sceptical of plans to relax cross-media and foreign ownership restrictions and replace them with a new minimum of five significant media “voices” in metropolitan areas and four “voices” in rural areas. More than 63% of journalists surveyed said they believed Australian media companies have “too much influence” in deciding how Australians vote, and 71.4% said media owners had too much influence in determining the political agenda.

Alliance federal secretary Christopher Warren said the survey reveals that the people who work in the media know the truth about the Government’s proposed media changes. “The changes will undermine diversity, affect the integrity of journalism in Australia and further empower media owners who already have an unwelcome influence on their employees to report the news in a way that suits the owners’ political or commercial agendas,” he said. “The health of Australia democracy is at stake and these media law changes will clearly result in fewer voices and fewer choices for the Australian people.”

I guess there would be positive benefits if someone with taste (say Fairfax Holdings) bought out Channel 10. At least they’d have the decency to take Big Brother off the air.

Irony, Irons and other stuff

A little while ago someone suggested I write about the misuse of the word irony in the lexicon. Well I would, but ironically I don’t know anything about the topic (See that was funny on a couple of levels). I will point out my favourite example of this societal abuse of the word – Angst ridden Canadian Balladeerette (is that a female singer of ballads?) Alanis Morissette’s song ironic. The only irony in that song is that it doesn’t actually contain irony…

“A traffic jam when you’re already late
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It’s meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn’t it ironic… don’t you think?”

No Alanis I don’t think… and clearly neither did you. I’d suggest that’s more like poetic justice… as found in the correctly titled song Poetic Justice – written by Tom Kimmel and covered by Jane Saunders.

I feel like the king when the queen loses faith
And the crowd rushes in to tear down the gate
While the whole palace slept, and I never rang the bell.
Maybe that’s poetic justice, but it’s pretty hard to tell.”

Actually – perhaps ironically that doesn’t sound like poetic justice to me – but perhaps that’s due to a lack of context. Ironically, again, Jane Saunders released an album called Poetic Justice – with the Tom Kimmel song as the title track. The song contains these lines:

“I feel like the king
When the queen loses faith
And the crowd rushes in to tear down the gate
And declare what was mine
I stole from someone else
Maybe that’s poetic justice
But it’s pretty hard to tell”

So if her album is named after the song, and she sings the song, could she not be declaring something as hers that she stole from someone else… Guilty as charged I say.

So as you can see it’s almost impossible to learn anything ironic from a female song writer… or in fact from anyone at all. Except perhaps H.W Fowler who is quoted on Wikipedia (note: I understand the irony of claiming it’s hard to learn about irony from anyone and then turning to the source of all “reputable”* information**) as saying

Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear and shall not understand, and another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware, both of that “more” and of the outsider’s incomprehension.”

So there you have it. An ironic insight*** into irony.

My iron beeps when it’s been left on for too long. Isn’t that a useful function. I discovered this while preparing to attend the races (of the equine variety) yesterday. Perhaps ironically*** (after my post last week) I did place a bet on a horse and it was quite literally pipped at the post. I bet $5 and lost – I figure the $5 goes a small way towards repaying Jupiters Casino for kindly inviting me into their corporate marquee for the day and feeding me seafood and cake. They would have provided me with free beer too (or heavier stuff) if I wasn’t feeling fluey and congested still. I had a day last week where I wasn’t feeling fluey and congested but then I got up at 4.55am to host the Today show breakfast people up here and the lack of sleep didn’t help my cause. (Look how I tied four pieces of information into the one paragraph – watch and learn people… For those at home wondering what the four pieces of information are: 1. My iron beeps, 2. I went to the races, ate at the corporate tent and placed a bet (all one topic (but three pieces of information I guess)), 3. I am sick, 4. I had the Today show up here last week). Wow. Are you awestruck yet? Probably not. I should point out that I’m actually not as arrogant as I sometimes sound…

* “” Denotes sarcasm
** referring to Wikipedia
*** used ironically

Rubbed out

Like millions (well hundreds and thousands (the number, not the little colourful balls of sugar)) of others I’ve been hotly anticipating the hotly anticipated new Thom Yorke solo album, The Eraser. So today… upon its release… I bought it. And I listened to it. And now, here are my thoughts.

This album is slightly more avant garde than any of Radiohead’s work (for the uninitiated and uninterested, Thom Yorke is the singer from Radiohead). The music is a series of syncopated and sometimes rhythmic noises. With very little musical quality whatsoever. Except, and this is a big exception, for Thom Yorke’s voice. I’ve decided I could happily listen to Thom Yorke sing over any noise in the world. It wouldn’t make me happy, because Thom Yorke is a very melancholy kind of guy. But it would be a pleasurable experience nonetheless. He also writes lyrics with cool words and concepts. And his cover art is good. There’s my in depth analysis and review of the CD. I was also looking forward to the release of Muse’s new album. But it wasn’t available at Wow. I wish Townsville had a JB Hifi. Actually, that would be bad for my bank balance.

Another variation on the rubbed out theme – Steve asked me what I thought the Italian guy said to Zidane in the build up to his send off this morning, and I must confess I did not get up for the World Cup. I set my alarm, but promptly metaphorically threw it at the wall. I actually dropped my phone rather half heartedly on the floor. If Zidane is the typical French creative genius then I imagine it was something along the lines of “Oi, you French poof” which was enough to send my favourite all time player, Eric Cantona into a violent fan directed frenzy (see below) – he’s not my favourite player because he karate kicked a fan in the head. He karate kicked a fan in the head because he’s my favourite player. I’m not sure the logic there worked any better than it did in that trashy teen movie which I won’t admit to viewing. My sisters have a lot to answer for.

My parents, and sister, arrive in Townsville tomorrow – it’s the first time they’ve ever come to stay at “my” house. So I’m inventing all sorts of new house rules… actually I’m tidying my room. Maybe.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMCmHBqRXnQ]

Ronery… so ronery

Just when you thought I couldn’t get any less holy – I open a post with a Team America reference. For those of you who haven’t seen the movie… don’t. I can’t recommend it in good conscience. However, I will continue to quote it because it’s actually very funny, and now surprisingly (well it’s actually not really a surprise) relevant given situations in North east Asia. It seems the craziest man ever to wear platform shoes has taken short man syndrome to the next level. Crazy Kim the coiffured nepotist from North Korea has decided to flex his military muscles by sending 7 really expensive missiles to the depths of the Sea of Japan. It says a lot about a man’s character if he’ll gladly waste seven missiles when his people are starving. There were plenty of better places to aim the missiles. The Big Brother house maybe. Channel 9. Boy, am I mister current events or what… Why didn’t he test them by firing them at a terrorist you might ask? Well for starters Hazem El Masri was indoors… and secondly Kim Jong Il is a terrorist in training. He’s just not very good. Yet. He clearly needs more practice – the US reported that one missile fizzled just 40 seconds after launch. There’s a lot of places you can take missile jokes. But I won’t. One can only hope his missiles didn’t harm any whales. I suspect that’s why the Japanese have imposed trade sanctions – it’s certainly the only reason anyone can think of for imposing sanctions on the Japanese. I think the popularity of karaoke would be another one, and the popularity of anime… and those stupid game shows… and umm… well I guess there are lots of potential reasons actually. But I feel sorry for the poor Japanese, not only do they have to put up with a crazy irascible despot on their doorstep, they’re not allowed to snack on their favourite meal in the whole world. Whale. For some reason the rest of the world doesn’t see taste testing as a scientific test. Last I heard science was the use of the senses (observation) to test a hypothesis. I think on that basis Japan can eat all the whales they want.

Another man who is apparently lonely at the moment, allegedly, is Michael Costa. The New South Wales politician who bares a striking resemblance to Dr Evil (oh no, now I’ve also referenced Austin Powers… I’m scraping the bottom of the pop culture barrel tonight)
has apparently (allegedly) been visiting ladies of the night. More specifically a lady of the night. An anonymous lady of the night. An anonymous lady of the night who anonymously made the announcement on talkback radio. Rather than letting the event fade into obscurity Costa decided to sue for defamation – now everyone knows he was the politician named (Merrick and Rosso cut the caller off almost immediately and released an apology without naming said politician). Costa needs a new PR adviser. I fail to see how suing a radio station where the hosts were clearly not culpable (they could perhaps have beeped out the name if their production team had been working on the industry standard 3 second delay) will achieve anything. Particularly if Merrick and Rosso can prove the claims to be true – truth is a defence to defamation provided it’s in the public interest (and the moral conduct of a politician probably falls into that category – some would argue that this shouldn’t be the case, but if you’re going to hold yourself up as a public figure of good moral stature then there has to be accountability). Thankfully we now have uniform defamation laws to make defences easier to remember – it seems these new laws scrapped the public interest element too. Hooray. Defamation was the one area of law I was actually good at. I figured it might come in handy.

Escaped animals

Some animals should be kept in cages. Certainly these emos should be kept safely in their paddocks. Goats should definitely never be ‘scaped. Having played the role of the scape goat professionally for the very first time I can reveal that it is an unpleasant experience.

I now thoroughly endorse Eddie McGuire’s policy of terminating the employment of all the stupid people at Channel 9. Hopefully he’ll leave the locker room pretty stale (as in not Fresh).

It would seem Fr*sh were less than happy with a few elements of their Townsville visit – and the AFCM director was less than happy with Fr*sh, and in turn less than happy with me. As the most junior member of the Fr*sh trip I became the “fall guy.” Luckilly I’d kept all my correspondence with the Fr*sh Producer and AFCM so the buck was passed back up the chain. Not before Townsville Ent*rprise’s good name (and my reputation) were besmirched in certain circles. If you want a happy career – never work with children, animals or television personalities. The Fresh producer is the first woman I’ve met with short man syndrome. I’ve never met such a belligerent** and vindictive person – she was so lovely to deal with – until something came back to bite her. It’s not my fault that she couldn’t schedule a film shoot properly. I didn’t force her crew to stay up drinking till 3am the morning before a shoot. Grrr (that’s the first and last time I’ll spell out a sound like that on my blog. It’s a little hackneyed. It’s not even onomatopoeia – i’m pretty sure “growl” would be the word I was looking for there – I’ll make up for it by using cool words wherever possible tonight).

On the bright side, a number of really cool people backed me up. Which was nice. Our Chairman, CEO, and my manager in particular. And the totally awesome AFCM Public Relations guru who is now writing me a glowing reference which I can use to fight the good fight against the opression of the national media powerhouse that is Lyndey Milan. I hope she googles herself today. I wouldn’t put it past her to be doing that every day. I’ve never met anyone who’s been directly two faced before. This blog entry is slightlty cathartic. Maybe I should make it slightly defamatory as well, but at this point I’ve managed to keep it tied to the truth – despite the Fresh team’s flagrant* disregard for virtuous conduct.

And here I was thinking the trip had gone well. Ignorance truly is bliss. I think I’d prefer to be oblivious of any machinations behind the scenes (are machinations always behind the scenes? I guess they can be transparent) that are not my doing.

There ends the rant.

I really have no other news actually. Homestarrunner has finally been updated again.

So the words I taught the kids today were umm fangoriously, besmirched, belligerent, hackneyed, flagrant and umm linebacker…

Somebody needs to go get an icecream sandwich…***

*I told someone I’d use that word today.
** and that one.
*** for the uninitiated that was from here