Horses and Bayonets

I find it mind-boggling how many people get their political analysis from CNN without ever actually viewing the footage or reading any of the transcripts on whatever this media outlet’s incomparably inept journalists comment on. I don't take anyone's opinion on politics at face value, especially views that are held by CNN correspondents.

The reporters at CNN might pretend to meticulously scrutinise the presidential debate, and make shrewd, snippy notes of their observations, but then they sit on their glittery soundstage and deliberate for hours and hours and hours about the most inane drivel and discuss, at great length, just how stupendously amazing and sparkly the democratic candidate was, regardless of how that candidate performed.

This is called left wing bias and most of the media are guilty as charged. Spin it until it fits their narrative, which is to keep democrats in power in the White House.  No-one knows why the majority of the mainstream media are left wing.  It's all just a big mystery.

They want Barack Obama to stay in the top job, and they want Mitt Romney to go far, far away, and take his pesky logic, common sense and economic credentials with him. How the hell is a bungling incumbent president supposed to maintain the top gig if there is someone who is actually qualified for the job challenging him?

CNN are always, always, always on the Democrat's side, and they spend the rest of their time demonising Republicans.  This doesn’t change.  Ever.  They don't do balance.  There is no neutrality and there never will be.  If you are neutral at CNN you will be fired by the network by the end of the day.

But who cares, you say.  Well it matters, because there are a lot of people out there who only tune into  this stupid media outlet during election time and don't appreciate how the media influence the public agenda. And let's be clear; CNN tell you what to think. So don't let them hoodwink you; read the transcript and watch the debate for yourself.  Think for yourself.  CNN have an agenda and they want you to buy into it and vote appropriately.

And despite endless harping on about wanting the truth from their presidential candidates, many of the electorate really don't care that much about fact checking, and just take Obama’s side for reasons I cannot fathom.

Exhibit A. During the last Presidential Debate, incumbent Barack Obama mocked his opponent, Mitt Romney:

"You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed."

This 'horses and bayonets' exchange generated 105,000 tweets per minute on the debate hashtag. Why do people take Obama's word at face value, but think Mitt Romney lies through his teeth? This drives me crazy, because it's a fallacy. We know that Obama either was either fairly liberal with the truth in regards to this exchange, or, as Commander-in-Chief, he is hopelessly out of touch with the Defence Forces. How do we know this?

It turns out the marines use bayonets quite a bit, and horses are used to get around Afghanistan, as they are one of the easiest forms of transportation. I guess Obama's not as in touch with his military as he likes to proclaim. Although focusing on such a trivial point shows that Obama was a little desperate as he tried to deflect attention from the deaths in Benghazi in the foreign policy debate and any kind of questions whatsoever to do with the economy.

The Incredible Shrinking Mountain

I don't know if this is an Australian thing, but plastic bottles ain't what they used to be. Coca-Cola Amatil, the makers of the deliciously tasteless Mount Franklin spring water beverage, have decided that the best way to completely piss off the thirsty people of Australia is to use 35% less plastic in their new easy-crush bottles.

That's great, CCA executives; a container that's easy to crush when empty. But you know what that means? It means it's also friggin' easier to crush while your drinking it.  Or when you twist open the lid a bit too heavy-handedly.  I bet this was one of those massively stupid decisions that chief executives make when they are brushing their teeth in the morning. 

I thought I was bulking up a bit too much at the gym before I read the side panel advertising the incredible shrinking bottle. CCA claims that one little bottle now creates a carbon footprint that is 27% lighter than the previous little bottle. A lighter carbon footprint, my arse. You sell your products in plastic, you dickheads.  I imagine it's more to do with reducing overheads than saving the world, but kudos where kudos are due.

All the inner city hipsters with their hippy, environmentally friendly lifestyles have probably whipped out their special wind-powered calculators they use to measure the square root of their carbon footprint and have figured this is a good enough deal to stop drinking water straight out of a grimy tap in a back alley and start buying plastic.

Anyone who hoodwinks the hipsters into believing they are saving the earth – which has been perfectly capable of looking after itself for 4.5 billion years without their help - gets my stamp of approval. 

The Tart Adventures of Harry & Julian

Oh, Prince Harry.  I imagine one's grandmother is not terribly amused at one's tawdry shenanigans in the skank capital of the entire solar system with a bunch of trashy American hookers or their classy equivalent.  

Seriously, who knew there were so many cheap and tacky trashbags in the world, prepared to whip their clothes off for the international media due to their incessant need for attention?  Oh wait, we did know that.  These women are everywhere, in many shapes and sizes of Kardashian.

I imagine the latest bunch of promiscuous ladettes are employed in professions involving poles and the ensuing dancing around of or else they wouldn't be too comfortable parading themselves so overwhelmingly underdressed in a global public forum in what appears to be a bit of a honey trap. 

And I think we all know what Harry's Scotland Yard detail were doing during the naked hotel room polo match romp or whatever it was.  I imagine the attention to detail was there, but it probably wasn't focused on handing out fines for unladylike behaviour under The Police Act 1827.  I imagine what those boys want right now is an Invisibility Cloak.

In other media tart-related news, embattled Wikileaker Julian 'Sausaage' Assange is still stuck in the middle of a war-torn nation state that is not a signatory to the Geneva Convention.  Or else he's still glamprisoned in posh war-torn Knightsbridge in Ecuadorian Britain on his blow-up camp bed.  I keep getting those two confused.

Assange's Wikileaks reminds me of the wind-up jewellery box I had as a kid, which opens to the sound of ballerina music - with a magnetised ballerina flippin' around like a drunken lout on the mirrored centre stage.

Although when you pry open the Wiki box, you get a garbled lecture from Assange on blah, blah, blah, I'm going to humiliate the United States of Crazy by exposing their secrets, blah, blah, blah.  But much to the chagrin of the wannabe Bond, the United States weren't humiliated; they were just plainly and understandably rightly pissed off.

I agree that Assange should be able to release anything he wants on his Wikileaks files, but I also think he needs to accept that there are consequences to those actions.  He hasn't got his head around that yet.  Probably never will.

Of course nation states have secrets.  There's nothing wrong with government secrets when you are dealing with sociopathic middle eastern nations.  We wouldn't have the freedoms we do if governments didn't have secrets.  Oh the irony of it all, Julian.  Secrets are how countries negotiate their way through the brutal and bloody minefield that is global politics.
 
Like a game of poker, you keep your game face on, your cards close to your chest and you hedge your bets, hoping the guy on your left who is winning is from the West and not the Middle East.  But you never, ever show your hand, Julian.  It goes a little something like that.

And then along comes the progressive leftwinger windbag who decides to open the damn pandora's jewellery box in the name of open governance.  No such thing as open governance in global political affairs; people couldn't handle the truth anyway, my 'pinion. 

Blogger Grim

Sometimes I really feel like writing something on my exceptionally average blog, but I feel a crushing sense of blogger's block. Obviously it's not that grim, because words are being produced, but it's bothersome none the less. At these trying times, I try to think of the kids in the Horn of Africa. Because they don't even have access to Blogger.  The horror.  Settle down, I'm not mocking the Third World, I'm just a pragmatist.

If I had my way, there would be no leftwingers with any power or authority anywhere in the world - including key posts in the United Nations - as they are completely incapable of handling any international crisis due to their weak ideological dispositions and senseless decision making and, thus, there would be proper policies in place that would mean that no kid in the whole world would be without Blogger. Or food.  Maybe. Well I imagine the situation would be far less dire if we could just find a way to disband the hapless U.N.

And I can think of a whole bunch of world military leaders who just get in the way of anything decent and good, but the United States aren't allowed to 'take them out' because that would make the U.S. the bad guys, apparently. This is just part of The Wonderful World of Leftwing Logic.  When I say 'take them out', I don't mean on a date; I mean the other thing.

Speaking of the world's bad eggs, I note that renown psycho, Robert Mugabe, is dying, but unfortunately it didn't happen years ago in his prime killing days. But fortunately there is a front row seat waiting for him on the rollercoaster to hell. It's a very long front row.  Why have I been so preachy and self-righteous lately? FFS. And why am I blogging about hell and death and starving children and mass murderers? FFS. I am totally depressed now.

MMXI

It all began one Saturday morning three hundred and fifty something days ago. It was a quiet day, with much of the free world resting sore heads and pledging to start the new year with fresh resolve about changing or improving something in their life; a resolution most never planned on keeping past January 2.

Lots of stuff happened this year, as it seems to do every year. 2011 news bulletins showed us war, revolts, natural disasters, failing economies - all served in convenient, easy-to-forget two-minute snippets and topped off with an inspiring story of courage about a polar bear or somebody in India with an inoperable brain tumour.

Africa continued to starve due to the policies of the United Nations. So the U.N. did the only thing the U.N. knows how to do, which is to kowtow to suppressive regimes who know that the U.N. lacks any real power to do anything because it is completely ineffective and pacifist.  Although one thing the U.N. did in 2011 was to designate the year the International Year of Forests and the International Year of Chemistry, which would make one big accelerant bonfire.

Thanks to Facebook and other social media we watched the birth of Arab Spring, which resulted in most of the shitty countries of the world that have yet to discover democracy - Syria, Egypt, you name it - rioting and rampaging towards, well, who knows. All I know is there is a whole lot more anarchy in store. The criminal sect of the unemployed youth of London rioted through Tottenham, but not over a desire for change; just a desire to obtain a free HDTV.

Italy and Greece showed the world that they don't deserve to be nation states – SHOCKER - and they sure as shit don't deserve to have the rest of Europe bail them out. But the E.U. bailed them out.

The E.U. continued on their merry way of making important, yet stupid, decisions.

The Osama bin liner was expertly killed by a team of SEALs in Pakistan and the world went awesome! Except for the leftwing fools in the west who think that the U.S. government don't have a right to kill a man who is the definition of evil because he has human rights, you know. These human rights lawyers and the like don’t have a clue what life is like outside Toorak or the North Shore, let alone in a Middle Eastern country.  And they think the west killing a madman means we are just as bad.  Ah, the leftwing and their beloved dichotomy of good and evil. 

They seem to think the west is always on the precipice of crossing over to the dark side. I am always confused over the leftwing's confusion over who the bad guys are. The way I see it, the bad guys are the ones who deliberately fly aeroplanes into buildings and strap bombs to their chests and detonate themselves in packed nightclubs with the intention of killing a lot of westerners. And the good guys are the ones trying to stop them. I hope that clears up any confusion or grey area.  Same goes for Muammar Gaddafi and Kim Jong-il. Good riddance.  I hope their next life is everything they didn't want it to be.

Natural disasters lived up to their name.  Japan got hit with a massive earthquake, then drowned from the resultant tsunami and then had to deal with four leaking nuclear power plants. Our own Queensland and Victoria did not fair any better with unwanted attention from mother nature.

Wills and Kate got hitched. Two billion people watched. Bert and Ernie also got married, even though they are just friends. I think a bunch of confused 6-year-olds were forced to watch by their politically correct parents who are willingly destroying their kid's childhood.  

The highly reputable British trashbag tabloid, News of the World, was shutdown due to a phone hacking scandal. Apparently every other newspaper in the world is scandal free.

Barack Obama canned the 40-year-old NASA space program because it was gnawing away at funds that he preferred to spend on useless government programs that did nothing but create more bureaucracy, more socialism and more welfare dependent citizens. The U.S. space program has devoured US$196 billion over the years (around US$450 million per mission), but it was, without a doubt, one of the best things to come out of the United States.  And there goes the hopes and dreams of a generation.

Picasso, Shakespeare and the cultural elites

I recently spent a whole day with cultural elites, who think Picasso and Shakespeare are marvellous, inspired geniuses and their work is remarkable and breathtaking, and I learnt that cubism doesn't necessarily refer to the cryptic puzzle amazingness of Mr Rubik.  Picasso and Shakespeare are actually two artists largely responsible for the first widespread use of the term "WTF?" 

My first cultural appointment of the day was hanging at the Picasso exhibition in the NSW Art Gallery with the Pablo connoisseurs.  I don't really care for art, and I especially don't care for the kind of art that the pretentious cultural elites are referring to when they pompously spit out comments like, "you have to have an eye for Picasso".  Well fucking excuse me then.

A notable example from
Picasso's 'WTF' Collection

My mistake; I thought I was looking at the artwork of a psychologically damaged man who thinks strategically placed shapes on a canvas will entertain the elitists.  Oh, wait, it does.  I must admit that I appreciate his early work, when he was into the classics; before he got bored and depressed and started experimenting with cubes and odd shapes and chopped up guitars and human body parts. 

He seemed to have quite the eye for limbs separated from the human torso - a skill trauma surgeons and serial killers must have appreciated over the years.  I also observed a life-long obsession with goats - goats on the beach, a sculpture of a goat with a large appendage (perfect for the patio if you have the cash) and a naked man carrying a goat, to name but a few.  Yes it is weird, but it is art, so pipe down.

Apparently the deconstructed guitar is supposed to represent a journey through time, but I think it looks horribly ugly.  And I think a great deal of his later work is mediocre and also horribly ugly.  But listening to the loud know-it-alls on my tour through the his life's work, I heard a story of a man on an incredible journey, with many ups and downs, and I became far more intrigued with why his style changed at particular points in his life than the actual work itself.

And it occurred to me that this is surely why his work confuses the hell out of me; it is a representation of what must have been going on in his head.  Which makes the art critics who deconstruct the meaning of his work all the more absurd.

So, yeah, you do have to have an eye for Picasso; most telling, his canvases reveal that his many lovers apparently had three or more breasts, and noses where their eyes should be.  I'm glad my head isn't so screwed up that I can understand this excursion into his subconsciouness. 

My next cultural appointment of the day was attending the Bell Shakespeare's contemporary interpretation of Julius Caesar at the Sydney Opera House's Playhouse.  It's kind of funny that Shakespeare is considered to be the finest dramatist of all time, because anyone who has been forced to read or listen to any of his work will tell you that they can't understand a thing anybody is saying.

Bell Shakespeare produced an interpretation with much yelling and pontificating and chalk dust throwing (interpretative blood) and overblown theatrics and a girl in high heels played Cassius, like Shakespeare isn't confusing enough already.  But I very much liked it.  Art thou was not bored or confused that much at all.

Canberra jail is a great escape

I’ve always had this loopy idea that the Alexander Maconachie Centre (AMC), Canberra's favourite holiday destination for the seasoned criminal fraternity was, you know, more or less secure. More secure than less would be the ideal amount of secure, I am fairly certain.

Alas, last week the computer mainframes that control security infrastructure at Canberra's premier and only ClubMed correctional resort crashed, causing surveillance cameras, door locks, retina scanning devices and ankle and neck tags to fail. Epic electrological failure. Prison guards were forced to do perimeter checks and manually lock and unlock doors the old fashion way, like getting up off their arses to check perimeters and lock and unlock doors. 

Pretty flowers and white picket fences - domestic-style bliss.

 

The whole idea that prisons are controlled by computers makes me a little nervous.  Is it just me, or did anyone else think that prisoners were locked in cells behind big, dirty, iron doors with prison slats? When did this type of dainty prison infrastructure go out of favour? For AMC, which prides itself on being a 'human rights compliant prison', it's because they don't want prisoner's feelings getting hurt being surrounded by iron bars all the time which makes them feel like... criminals.  

I don't know. I kinda feel that people in jail are supposed to feel like they've monumentally screwed up, so it makes sense that they should suffer some sort of indignity, like occasionally being tossed delicately  into a stinking jail cell without a smart TV.  That's how being a criminal works I'm pretty sure. What better disincentive to not break the law than having no Foxtel?  I can't think of any. 

Let's see what the AMC has in the way of deterrents.  Well about half of the accommodation is in five bedroom domestic-style cottages designed around a central Town Square.  So it 's basically like living in the Cotswolds with staff dressed like Mr Plod.  These cottages are apparently designed to facilitate normalisation; to enable prisoners to develop and practice living skills. 

Well, given the nature of their circumstance, it seems the last time these cons practiced living skills they failed miserably; and I do believe their idea of normal may greatly conflict with mine. But normalisation is the key, so it's a good thing they have a friggin' TOWN SQUARE, because one never knows when one may feel inclined to start a civic riot, pee on a commemorative monument or pilfer from the local delicatessen. Or put another way, put their normal living skills into practice.

The designers also thoughtfully installed Environmentally Sustainable Development initiatives, due to criminals renowned concern over water storage, grey water recycling and solar hot water systems.  Going to prison used to suck; these days it's just a sabbatical in a holiday resort.

Osama's WAGS

Terrorists are a colossal pain in the arse to interrogate; what with their incessant whinging about the lack of internet access in Guantanamo which means they can't chat to their terror networks on Skype or update AnnihilateTheWest.com, and their outrage at the new rule that prohibits them from spending their days carving out a labyrinth of underground tunnels and escape routes with spades and shovels.  Did it not raise any eyebrows when local demand encouraged Bunnings to build a home improvement outlet in Gitmo?

The human rights lawyers, unemployed hippies, smug, self-righteous students and leftwing journalists who huddle around terrorists in their time of guilt need have a tendency to muddy the waters of public opinion, so it is often the case that these mass murderers are perceived by the public as simply innocent bystanders who were caught in the wrong desert at the wrong time. 

Sure, these guys were caught brandishing AK-47s in a terrorist training camp, but I think we have all found ourselves in that sticky situation from time to time.  Just ask David 'Traitor' Hicks.  Oh, that's right, now that he has a book out, he refuses to answer pertinent questions like, "are you ever going to give a satisfactory explanation for your presence in a terrorist training camp?"  Maybe Hicks is a camel.  Has anyone thought to ask him if he's a camel?  Because that would be a satisfactory explanation. 

And now with the Democrats in power in the United States, the officials at Gitmo are not allowed to use any of the techniques that enable them to get terrorists to spill the beans; like asking them questions that may hurt their feelings, may catch them out in a lie, or do anything that they would usually do when, you know, they are interrogating a dangerous terrorist who possesses information imperative to international security and/or the future stability of the west. But that’s okay, don’t push him; I guess he’ll just talk when he’s ready..

Without the use of interrogation techniques, it may as well be a job interview with an explosives company. The leftwing seem to think terrorists will open up to express their feelings of hatred and their plans for the next jihad on the west if they are simply offered a cup of hot cocoa and a milk arrowroot. They have zero concept of how these terror networks operate. And the terrorists know all too well that the western media are sympathetic to human rights, so they milk it for all its worth through their nutty support network in the west (see: human rights lawyers and the Fairfax media).

But just when you thought terrorists were difficult interviewees, spare a thought for the U.S. Government officials who have just questioned three terrorist WAGS; otherwise known as the Wives and More Wives of Osama bin Laden. These women were reportedly equally as charming and amicable in their demeanour as their dead husband was in his heyday. I can just imagine how the conversation went.

Government: “What do you know about bin Laden's future terrorist plots?”
Wife 1: “How dare you ask me any questions! You are all racist! I have human rights, you filthy American white boys! I hate you! Where's my human rights lawyer?!?!”, amid a whole bunch of shrieking and ranting. 

They were apparently hostile, which some sections of the media find surprising for some reason.  I wonder if they co-signed the letter Osama wrote expressing his desire to see President Obama assassinated.  If anyone in the world could be found guilty by association it should be this odious trio.  I guess they will get their comeuppance when they are forced to appear in a new television pilot; The Terrorist Wants a Wife.  Or maybe The Terrorist Blew up his Wife.  My feeling is they will want a six figure sum to do a series of The Real Housewives of Afghanistan.    

And now al Qaeda has gone all al Qaeda on the Middle East. Again. Not that they ever stopped. They've just seemed to have ramped up the suicide bombings.  If they want to blow each other up just let them go.  It saves America doing it.  I'm so tired of hearing about their civil war and general irrational crankypantsness.

Graduation shoes

In a couple of weeks I will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Finally.

I was never terribly good at school when I was a young thing, but my brain isn't crash hot at storing long-term memories, so I really have no idea what I actually did with my time, but I do recall that I didn't open too many textbooks. So, despite a lack of real evidence that it would be a particularly good idea, seven years ago I decided to go to uni after a good, solid ten years out of the education system.

Like many mature-age students, I struggled at first. The reading matter was impossible (not difficult, just too left-wing for my liking - that'll teach me for studying humanities), the workload was demanding, and everyone else that seemed to be in my orbit was about 42 years younger than me. So that was tops. I studied full-time and worked part-time, and then I studied part-time and worked full-time. Nothing worked really well for me, and it all sucked for a good few years, but, looking back, I wouldn't change a thing.

So now I am going to my graduation in March.  Although I refuse to believe they won't make me do an extra unit until I actually get that piece of parchment in my hand. Before I started telling people about my graduation, I was all calm and chill about it. Then people, as they are wont to do, started to warn me about things to do, things not to do, things to avoid, etc etc etc. So now I am quite terrified about the looming graduation.

First, there's the shoes. See, I don't really care about shoes. They are a boring topic of conversation, and there is not much to discuss once you finish yakking about the brand, the style, the cut, the colour. I don't care about stupid shoes. Some people do, and that's cool, but I don't care for conversations about shoes. But now I am quite obsessed about what foot attire I should wear to my graduation, because someone told me to be careful about walking up the stairs to receive my degree because it would be terribly embarassing to trip and fall.  Why the hell did she need to plant that seed of destruction inside my head?
 



Actually, the possibility that I will trip over in public, thus humiliating myself in front of hundreds of people, is something that I would likely have come up with all by myself.   I didn't need her help in feeding my insecurities and lack of confidence in walking up a couple of stairs in front of a bored, therefore judgemental, bunch of people.  And then she just told me not to stress about it and to stop overanalysing. Well, I actually have quite a gift for overanalysing. And, besides, if people could just stop overanalysing all by themselves, I would have just wasted four years of my degree studying psychology.  If people could work out how to get rid of anxiety all by themselves there would be no need for psychologists.     

 

Bonding with James

I have had an affinity with the James Bond genre, as I like to refer to it, since an early age.  Living in India in the very late seventies, I spent a fair bit of time bonding with James, as my mother used to take my sister and I to regular Bond screenings at the American Embassy in New Delhi.

I was always transfixed when the fictional British Secret Intelligence Service agent lit up the big screen. This probably had less to do with the plot, and more to do with the fact that television was a bit of a foreign concept in India back then, apart from the odd black and white episode of I Love Lucy, if you could manage to find the right channel on your telly.


I look tired cos I have been fighting terrorists

 Back in the day, I admired Bond’s strength, wisdom, and heroism, and delighted in watching him kick the crap out of the bad guys, time and again. I suppose I was a bit of a tomboy.

And even back then, I saw the Bond girls as talentless bimbos, and I remember pondering the point of them at all, and then working out they served as annoying distractions for Bond’s roving eye, and to provide a bit of suspense before he inevitably crushed the bad guys.

Bond is the longest running and most financially successful English-language movie franchise in history, having grossed about $12 billion at the box office. The Bond series is the spy genre. To quote a Bond movie power ballad (and the catchcry of the tawdry real estate agent, LJ Hooker); nobody does it better.

Bond knows that the only way to snatch power back from evil men who threaten to destabilise the free world is to kill them, then take their toys.

Bond has shown time and again that you save a country from destruction at the hands of bad actors with poorly Russian / Arab accents by killing them, taking away their nukes, making out with their chief nuclear scientist, who tends to look remarkably like a supermodel, and then explaining yourself to MI6. Situation handled. Sometimes Bond will simply dob in the baddies and then take their toys, but those movies are a little dull. Geez, we are lucky that Barack Obama doesn't get to write a Bond script. It would go like this:

James Bond travels to Iran to track down a psychotic mad man called…. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Wow, that name sounds familiar). Bond finds him, and learns that he is trying to sell nukes to (insert another insane Middle Eastern country), again.

The pesky and stupid U.S. President (obviously a Democrat, and obviously played by method actor Sean Penn) forces Bond to back off, by telling him we need to “negotiate” with the mad man, and that he isn’t crazy as such, he just wants to be hugged, and mad man was just kidding around when he said he wanted to annihilate the West.

By some incredible coincidence, this movie eerily resembles reality, when negotiations fail with said mad man, and the western world explodes into tiny pieces. The end.  The Bond genre is over, and we are all dead.  Not shaken, not stirred; just dead.  Yeah, thanks a bunch Barack – way to wipe out a franchise / the rational thinking portion of the human race.

How about you just stick to destroying the free world, and leave movie making to movie makers who have balls. Actually, it’s also preferable to have a President with balls, but we can’t have everything. If the international political arena were a Bond movie, the good guys would not be winning right now.

Nine green bins clogging up the street

Recycling is one thing, but sorting rubbish into nine bins? The geniuses running the City Council in Newcastle-under-Lyme, in Great Britain, thought it best to make the locals sort their rubbish into nine bins. That’s right, nine bins. But that's nothing.  The average number of bins into which residents in the UK are required to sort their waste is four.  163 councils force their electorates to sort rubbish into five or more bins!  But why, you may ask.

Well, the eco warriors over at the European Union have devised a ridiculous landfill directive, that has set legally binding targets on member states, one of which is Great Britain, to reduce the amount of waste headed to landfill sites. And you will get fined if you act rationally by not meeting these targets; for example, by failing to enforce people in your electorate to place nine collection bins outside their house on garbage day.



Evidently, it is irrelevant to the EU that the concentration of methane gas has barely increased in the last twenty years. And the fact that many climate scientists know that carbon dioxide generated by human activity has caused little or no global warming must be dismissed by the EU as ‘CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL’.  You simply cannot let facts get in the way when you have an eco agenda.

Apart from the nauseating platitudes this sycophantic Council must receive from the eco warriors, there seems to be no great point in insisting that these poor people sort rubbish in this way. Going to so much trouble, you’d think for sure the Council would have the garbage guys at the other end ready to tend to the refuse. Well no, that doesn’t seem to be happening in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

There are no coloured teams of workmen at the end of the line ready to sort rubbish for “Team Used Teabags” or “Team Used Shampoo Containers".  Just a steaming pile of mismanaged garbage that is pissing off the locals and emitting a great deal of stench. In fact, the MP for Newcastle-under-Tyme, Paul Farrelly, has invested £1 million to try and stop the “noxious smells” that are emitting from a local landfill site. Something to do with locals residents with young families that have been complaining about the smell for a while now. Ah yes, the environmental consequences of idiotic decisions. The money has gone towards an elaborate system that “controls odours", apparently.

Don't we all


Of course, as usual with hard-core greenie types, recycling to the enth degree is only obligatory if it doesn’t involve personal inconvenience. That is, it is far more gratifying to inconvenience other people than yourself.  Councellor Gary Porter, chairman of the Local Government Association Environment Board in the UK, says the various recycling requirements reflect the different areas of the UK, and "what works in inner-city London won't necessarily work in rural areas."

That’s right. You simply cannot make the inner city, latte-sipping London greenies recycle in this way.  It is, afterall, their job to preach about recycling, and then others have to pay the price for their whinging. That is the way it works. Which is why councils in London are exempt from sorting each bit of their rubbish into four or five or six separate bins.  Fortunately for Mr Porter, he empties his garbage right in the heart of London. 

You see, the whole point of being a greenie eco warrior is to create the most amount of inconvenience for the least amount of effectiveness. That’s how they roll.  For more on this, see any environmental action plan proposed or endorsed by Al Gore.

Sure, it’s not practical to have nine bins outside every London home, but doesn’t this go against the left wing eco ideology that human’s are destroying the world? I think it is likely that Londoners are using more consumerables than their rural neighbours, and the rural residents are likely using more home-grown recyclable products than Londoners, which can be chucked into their backyard compost.

Rather than trust the ‘science’ of acclaimed global eco warrior hypocrites like Al Gore, here are the views of actual scientists on the gases debate. Professor Charles Wax, a Mississippi state climatologist; "there isn't a consensus among scientists." And Richard Lindzen, formerly of the IPCC, and meteorology professor at MIT, who says, "there is no substantive basis for predictions of sizeable global warming due to observed increases in minor greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons."

X-ray machines at airports

If I hadn’t recently passed through Homeland Security on my way to the United States, I would probably have struggled to come up with something ‘X-y’ to write about in my A – Z Writing Challenge.  Sometimes the alphabet hands you lemons, so you just have to make alphabet soup.

If I were stretched for an ‘X’ topic, I could discuss the rather tawdry suburb of Fyshwick in Canberra.  If you don’t know about Fyshwick, let’s just say they put the X into X-rated and sell more than just xylophones in their whorehouses, I mean warehouses.  

Rather than the infinitely captivating and topical issue of xylophones, today I will rant on about x-ray machines at airports. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are masters of the x-ray machine universe, and their foot soldiers have all the qualities I want airport security to possess; they are thorough, consistent, stern-faced, have no time for idiots, and serenade you with xylophones as you embark on your journey. I’m sorry if that didn’t happen to you, maybe you just got the regular ones who x-ray your shoes.

On my recent trip to Hawaii, I was asked by the DHS to take off my thongs for some inexplicable reason. Perhaps rubber thongs have made their way onto a contraband list of prohibited goods that can house home-made bombs.  I hope someone has told Rip Curl. 

Who am I to question the ways of Homeland Security.  I just took my thongs off as instructed, in a fairly expeditious fashion. If you want to see freedom or your thongs again, don’t mess around with these people.

If you ever decide to start up your own airport, you should definitely consider hiring the services of the DHS for all your security requirements. Perhaps they should consider venturing into the bouncer industry. The drunken hooligans who pour out of our city’s nightclubs to fight each other with broken schooners would be wiped out in a night. And then they could deport them on the spot to a place far, far away; like Iran.

And then they would be Ahmadinejad’s problem. Hmm, I wonder what he would do with them? Ah, if only it could come true. I shall write to Kristina Keneally with my plan; it’s no more ridiculous to what they already have on the table. Good grief, I have digressed today...

As critical as they are, Homeland Security haven’t always done their job properly. After 9/11, the Bill Clinton-appointed Democrat in charge of the U.S. transportation department created a whole bunch of stupid regulations that inconvenienced thousands of airline passengers, but made the planes no safer.

He didn’t want to look like he was racially profiling anyone who might actually be a terrorist, so he banned airport security staff from calling attention to any faces that looked like the several dozen men who had just killed thousands of Americans.

Instead, the new legislation resulted in little old ladies being strip-searched, just in case they were hiding a set of boxcutters. Elderly men were forced to strip to their underwear because of steel bits in their legs, women were asked to remove their bras, and some kid’s GI Joe toy gun was confiscated.

Thank god that didn’t get onto the plane – who knows what that kid could have got up to with a miniscule toy rifle. But at least we weren’t offending those poor terrorists.

Princess and the Prius

Princesses

I’ve been thinking about changing my work situation, mostly because I’d rather stick a hot poker in my eye than continue to turn up at my current place of employment. So, I have been pondering professions that I might prefer, and ‘Princess’ keeps popping up. But I’ve noticed that you never see any jobs advertisements for Princesses on Seek or in the Saturday Classifieds. And the jobs page on the official website of the British Monarchy tell me they need a ‘Liveried Helper’ and ‘Drawings Conservator’, but no ‘Princess’; which needs to be addressed.

I’ve been there and done that with the ‘liveried help’ slave stuff, but I don’t know if Princess is a viable career option for me either. I mean, how far can you go in that line of work? Where are the college career counsellors when you need them? Maybe I should assess myself against the royal criteria before I start flicking off my resume to Buckingham Palace. Here are some things that may work against me.

I’m not very people-orientated. Then again, neither are most of the Royals. But there is an expectation that you should not snub commoners. I can’t imagine how highly annoying it would be if I was required to greet every homeless bum and weirdo and French President I saw on the street with a gracious smile, a bit of a hello and a handshake. That’s just gross, even through my velvet and faux fur gloves, and would be terribly tedious.

And I do tend to prefer eating food with my hands rather than through the more dignified and modern means of cutlery. This curious habit could pose a problem over lunch at Windsor Castle. I don’t know why I prefer to eat in this style; perhaps I am more closely related to apes than the average bear. Don’t judge me, I don’t see your diamond-encrusted tiara.

However, there are some things that may give me an advantage over others in this job market. For example, I tend to walk into things and trip at random intervals throughout the day, and this skill, if developed correctly, will work in my favour when learning the art of the curtsy. Plus I do look good in crowns of gold, silver or foil, and I can work a pure powdered pastel without looking like a human version of My Little Pony.


Prius

Prius' are not logically or causally linked to princesses. What, you thought there was going to be a connection? The Toyota Prius is a fully hybrid electric car, which means it is the ultimate politically correct status symbol for any self-respecting left wing environmentalist. And Prius owners simply must tell you how ‘friendly’ their hybrid is whenever you are talking about vehicular transport, earthy type things, or any topic completely unrelated to their stupid car.

While driving a Prius means never having to explain yourself in their world, that doesn't stop them trying to bore you senseless in their smug, pretentious, ignorant kind of way, completely oblivious to the pointlessness of it all. Like real evidence that their car is somehow superior. Any evidence gathered from the IPCC is not considered real evidence, as they have largely been discredited and there is also the issue of relevance.

Sheesh, where to start with Prius drivers? How about here: The man Bill Clinton put in charge of the CIA, former chief James Woolsey Jr., drives a Prius because they don’t use much fuel, and fuel is from the Middle East, and oil profits go to terrorist groups apparently, and you are indirectly funding terrorism, and you are just as bad as those terrorists because you don’t drive a Prius. The next time you’re behind a Prius at the traffic lights, spare a thought for the driver. He thinks you’re a terrorist. So use your time wisely and stare him down in his rear vision mirror.

There are so many morons in the world, it’s hard to keep track of them all, but rest assured a great majority of them probably own one of these cars. I have a very loose understanding of what goes on in the heads of these people, but to continue Woolsey’s ingenious thought process, if you buy products that are made in China you are funding child labour. And if you eat a Big Mac you are enabling child obesity. Reader, you disgust me. Those poor kids.

I'm pretty sure child labour in China is caused by communism, child obesity is caused by eating too much, and terrorism is caused by people who don’t give a rats if the West drive around in their Prius’.

Random terrorist: “Oh, the West are all driving Prius’? Well, I don’t despise them anymore and I’m going to stop trying to annihilate them. I might just take my camels for a walk instead”.

I don’t think so.

Oprah's Aussie Adventure

Who can forget Oprah’s whirlwind Tour of Duty of Australia in early December 2010, to film episodes for her final season on air (until she comes back on air). The media went stir-crazy, and celebs went to great lengths to be seen with the talkshow queen, like abseiling like a lunatic into her show and smashing their head on sound equipment. The Australian Tourism Board members followed her around, wagging their tails, wetting their lips and drooling and slobbering like bloodhounds.

Oprah visited Queensland, when it was dry and sunny, and the Red Centre, when it was hot and yuck; and her ‘Ultimate Viewers’, flown in from all around the U.S., flew to various capital cities, one of which was Tasmania. Are we trying to get tourists to come here or avoid coming here? Her shows were filmed near Sydney Opera House to the adoration of thousands, who clamoured over each other to get tickets in a bid to nab some pearl bling from one of Oprah’s eight million sponsors.

I can’t say I know much about Oprah. I know that she possesses the same amount of ignorance about international political affairs as most left wing celebrities (are there any other kind), which means supporting the status quo, thinking organisations like the United Nations are relevant, adoring Barack Obama, and hating George Bush.

And I know that she deplores racism, but often it seems that she is the only one talking about it, blaming white people for this and that, and being generally divisive, such is the wont of many black celebrities; like Tyra Banks (“white girls don’t understand anything!”), and Rev. Al Sharp (“white people are stupid!”). Racist much?

When they criticise white people it’s okay, but white people are never, ever allowed to criticise them. They’re like feminists. Feminists verbally attack men whenever they feel like it, but men are never, ever allowed to question women, or they’ll be ripped apart by idiots like Naomi Wolf.

Um, moving right along. I think I would very much like to cruise in O's shoes for a while. I watched her first Australian episode the other night and she convinced me that I need to see Australia. In her first hour on Hamilton Island, she patted a koala. And the next few hours were filled with flying in a chopper over the Great Barrier Reef, landing on the delectable sands of Whitehaven Beach for an evening BBQ cooked by Curtis Stone and seafood presented on platters by male models in their underpants, and being serenaded by the ten tenors.

In contrast, my first hour in Oprah's country was spent waiting in an immigration queue, the second hour was spent waiting for the hotel mini-van, and I got into my hotel room a good six hours after landing on U.S. soil, and then collapsed from sleep-deprivation, hunger and sheer exhaustion.

NASA and nutrition

NASA, the world leader in space exploration, aerospace and aeronautics research and technology, and kids nutrition. Huh? Yes, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has a program to encourage fats kids to stop eating so much and start exercising a lot more. Man, why hasn't anyone thought of that before? Thank god we have those NASA researchers to come up with this ground-breaking stuff.

Yesterday NASA launched a health and nutrition competition called "Mission X: Train Like an Astronaut." Nearly 4,000 kids in 25 cities worldwide will participate in the six week pilot. At first glance this seems a little out of NASA's gamut, what with their focus on outer space and all. And then I thought about it again and I said to myself, who the fuck came up with this idea? Well, I don’t know, but it has Michelle Obama’s spacefood bar-free fingerprints all over it.

Only Michelle could produce a kids health awareness campaign out of a department that has absolutely nothing to do with health or nutrition. If anyone could link two things so distinctly different, it’s the First Lady. I’d be pretty pissed if I got a job at NASA and had to spend my time working on obesity programs.

During the program, the kiddies will no doubt learn that the astronauts that have sucked up enough to actually venture into the great unknown must choose their meals about five months before lift-off. NASA convenes a “special taste panel” so these space cowboys can taste the food and spit it out in a safe, controlled environment. The idea is to pick the meals that they find the least repulsive, as they will need to stomach it for days or months at a time. I know, I wish that I had paid more attention in aerospace class as well, and then I too would be living the dream.

Personally I think astronauts are excellent role models for kids. How often do you see them groping cosmonautic women in dark corridors at the international space station, sniffing a line of cocaine through the air on a night out orbiting, or doing anything controversial or inappropriate that requires discipline or fines at the hands of NASA? Discounting the fact that their hygiene practices may not be the most sanitary in the universe, they are ideal role models. Perhaps a little time spent in the outer space sin-bin would be useful for the entire stable of NRL players, where there is no-one around to care about their lack of law-abiding behaviour.

Education

People often ask me why I get so wound up about left-wing academics. Well it's most likely because I have had to put up with them for the past six and a half years at university. I spent those years pretending to understand and vaguely put up with their never-ending, idiotic obsessions with Marxism, feminism and socialist ideals; ideals that fail to work in the state that I like to call reality.

Humans just don't possess innate socialist tendencies. When was the last time you heard about someone winning the lotto and separating the money EQUALLY throughout their community? Yes, never, it doesn't happen, because humans don't behave like that. It's just not the way we are.

Well, guess what? I’m free of uni and I’m not indoctrinated – quite the opposite in fact. I really had no idea how truly deluded from reality politics academics were until I began uni, and now I am feeling a new freedom in my life, and I'll never have to put up with them again, nor should anyone else have to.

The left-wing ("let us control the schools and in a generation nobody will be able to read") propaganda machine is alive and well in early education institutions as well. If I were a primary school kid these days, I would be pretty annoyed every day going into my state-sponsored torture chamber, more commonly known as a public school classroom, because I wouldn't be spending my days learning how to read and write, and by the time I got to Year 12, I probably wouldn't have a clue what Australia Day commemorates because the Education Unions insist that I'm taught things like how racist and anti-feminist the Constitution is.

And I wouldn't feel right about getting ahead in the world (see: getting a job promotion, for example), because the politically correct progressives who run my school would have taught me that no-one deserves to be smarter than anyone else.

Public education at any level in Australia is not about education, it’s about indoctrination. Teaching only a section of history and ignoring the rest that doesn’t fit in with their left-wing ideology (see: Marxism, feminism etc) has nothing to do with learning or letting the students decide on the facts for themselves. It’s simply about brainwashing, and it starts during the earliest years of schooling. Unfortunately, those cunning academics at the tertiary level have geniously created a system that protects them from having to do their jobs properly – it’s called “tenure”.

Britain and Blogs

Britain 

Anyone would think the Old Blighty had put the globe into a state of world peace, cured chronic world hunger, and put a laptop into the arms of every Ethiopian child. Well no, they’ve won a couple of cricket games. You played well England, and we played appallingly. The better team won. If I cared about the Ashes I’m sure I would be devastated. But at the end of the day, Australians are the winners. We are the ones mother nature chooses to bless with sunshine, sunny winters and beautiful beaches. But well done England.

Blog

What to call my blog, I ponder. Play the ball and not the man is a philosophy I always try to maintain when arguing politics, but one that is not always embraced by my opponents. They would rather attack the man than the policy. This is usually due to the fact that their argument has no substance and is just an appeal to emotion.

How do you know if they are left-wing?

The left won’t argue with you. You need to be aware of this. Their idea of a battle of wits is to say “Bush lied!” in front of an adoring audience and be wildly applauded for their courage.

And when they do argue, they jump from one idiotic point to the next so you can never quite catch them out in a lie. It’s like arguing with a 5-year-old. And you will find their retorts will bear no relation to what you said; unless you were, for example, talking about your intelligence, your age, your looks, your morality, your personal obsessions, or whether or not you are a fascist.

So the name of my blog reflects my preference for playing the ball (and not the man) when discussing stuff.

The Titanic and my reluctant acceptance of James Cameron

Six and a half years ago I was required to provide a presentation on a topic of my choosing for my first ever university presentation. One evening I was in my local Public Library in Canberra, browsing the shelves, the old fashioned way, when I came across a book about sunken ocean liners, written by Robert Ballard, the man credited with discovering the underwater graves of many of the twentieth centuries great ocean liners.

I sat on the floor and read, glued to the pages, book after book; I couldn’t get enough information about the Titanic, Lusitania, Mauritania, Britannic, etc. And so began my inexplicable obsession with sunken ocean liners.

I created a visually powerful powerpoint presentation full of simplified diagrams of bulkheads, icebergs, keels and lifeboats. I spoke of tales of survival and of tragedy, and of the notorious mis-quotes prior to the maiden voyage, that are in retrospect easy targets for derision with the benefit of hindsight of the cause of the tragedy.

My new obsession turned the chore of completing the assessment into a remarkably simple task. After my presentation, I reluctantly returned my books to the library, and decided that I would continue this research when I had time. These ocean floor monoliths weren't going anywhere.

That was in 2004, and I have thought alot about these ocean liners since then. I have no idea why, or what forms the basis for my interest. It just intrigues the hell out of me. The fate of the Titanic is a terribly tragic story. The desperation of one man to achieve greatness and supremacy in the eyes of his peers, and the world, enabled him to envisage the most spectacular ocean liner ever seen, but it also contrived to push him to challenge the forces of mother nature and ignore all calls to logic and reason.

His vain attempt to make history by pushing his super liner through a field of insurmountable icebergs is one of history’s great dramatic ironies, and one of its most well-documented tragedies.

The Britannic was equal in size to her sister Titanic. And like Titanic, she did not take one paying passenger to their destination. Her life as a luxury ocean liner was never to be. Her exquisite livery and interior was stripped before her maiden voyage, when she was requisitioned as a hospital ship to serve her country in World War One. She now lies on the floor of the Atlantic, mortally wounded from a missile attack during the war.

I’ve recently watched the movie Titanic on DVD, for about the hundredth time. I unfortunately didn’t get to see it on the big screen when it was released for some reason. And, for the first time, I watched the commentary components, which were fascinating. The director, James Cameron, has a real passion for the wreck and paid great respect to the tragedy through film.

I’ve never much liked Cameron. Despite my admiration for the talents of various people in Hollywood, I tend to view their liberal political beliefs as largely hokum. When it comes to politics, I try to separate the man from the ball, but Hollywood people don’t make it easy.

Their views are largely devoid of any reason or logic, and if they could coherently explain their views to the public without resorting to completely incomprehensible gibberish that misquotes and ignores facts, most people would call for their heads.

Their political views are just an appeal to emotion; an unrelenting devotion and worship to the environment and any other cause that is popular with the Hollywood elite on any given day. (As opposed to an actual religion, as they are EVIL, as you must be an atheist to fit in with Hollywood types.)

Cameron is your typical left wing Hollywood windbag, who insists on dictating to others how they should live, the taxes they should pay, the cars they should drive, the correct toilet paper to use, the carbon footprint they should leave. I don’t care that Cameron is richer than God, that’s not my beef.

Just because you are wealthy doesn't mean that you can tell us how we should live; all the while flying around in your private jet, lighting up your own house like a damn Christmas tree, and rallying politicians to hit the peasants with ridiculous energy saving taxes that do little more than make the Hollywood smug-set feel good about themselves. It’s hypocritical and plain dishonest.

Anyway, so I read that Cameron has been to the Titanic wreck many, many times to film and has quite the connection to the sunken ocean liner. So now I am forced to like him, which is a great annoyance to me.

The cultural left's aversion to Cirque

It must have been traumatising for Quentin Letts to have to review a performance of Cirque du Soleil, in this case the incredible Varekai.  Cirque does not really meet the criteria of ‘suffering’ for the arts that is important to be considered ‘art’ in the view of the cultural left.

They tend to have an aversion to anything with deep pockets & no doubt see Cirque as nothing more than an evil, capitalist cash cow. Because being a successful business in the arts field is EVIL. You have to suffer for your art or it not really art. Something along those lines, I don’t understand how their stupid little brains work.

Although it seems to me that Varekai would appeal to the cultural left. It definitely has one of the hallmarks of their precious postmodernism; like a fairly incomprehensible narrative! Not in a negative way, but in the sense that it is open to interpretation, which is a good thing.

I imagine Quentin sat there for the entire show, biting his nails, trying to find some plausible neo-feminist angle in the storyline on which to base his critique, the pompous twat. But he didn’t find one, so he denied there was any narrative (Cirque’s version wasn’t “intellectual” enough for him). Because fascinating, “intellectual” types like Quentin don’t do “spectacle”, they only do “art”.

Public service broadcasting - its relevance

There is agreement in the literature of the role Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) should play in society and that it should be judged on the way it manages that role. Both the ABC and the BBC, arguably the most influential public broadcaster in the world, take measures in programming to justify their existence. Some commentators see this as a justification for PSB, there is also criticism PSB lacks consumer sovereignty, is no more relevant to society than commercial broadcasting, and its programming is prone to bias and interference by the government.

While government intervention into PSB can be seen as an economic success, one commentator highlights the need for governments to take care to avoid PSB failures, and there is call for PSB to adapt to the new technological era of endless choice for the consumer to avoid becoming irrelevant.  PSB includes television and radio that receive funding direct from the government, from a specific tax (eg. a television licence fee) or from public donations.

There is mostly agreement in the literature I read of the role that public service broadcasting should play. According to Burns (2008: 868), a public service broadcaster should be universally available, have universal appeal, have provisions for minorities, should educate the public, should remain distant from vested interests and have freedom from the programme maker.

Jacka (2006: 344) discusses the vision of the BBC’s founder, Lord John Reith, to see public broadcasting as a new way of forming public opinion; a ‘public service’ that would act as a “moral and educative force”. The Reithian ideals can be summarised as the access to fine culture for all and the key role it should play in informing the public, reaffirming that high quality content continues to be a defence for the existence of PSB.

According to Oesterlen (2008: 34) public service broadcasters assert their value and cultural credentials by broadcasting high culture to prove they are still culturally relevant and beneficial to the taxpayer. Oesterlen (2008) discusses BBC's global broadcast of the Shakespeare play King Lear as an attempt to assert power in determining cultural content in the new competitive media landscape of the twenty-first century.

The ABC Charter (ABC Online) maintains the ABC is valuable to society. Its core functions include keeping the public informed through programs that contribute to a sense of national identity, that educate and entertain and that reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community. Also, to transmit internationally to encourage an awareness of Australia and enable expatriate or travelling Australians to be aware of what's going on at home. The Charter also says the ABC has an awareness of the multicultural nature of the Australian community, and has an understanding of its responsibility to provide a balance of popular programs with those of special interest.

But what about what happens to the taxpayer’s dollars? According to Doyle (2002: 61), PSB is valuable to society from an economic perspective. The author discusses this value in terms of its ‘public good’ characteristics; which are its non-excludability, meaning the consumption of the good by a viewer does not reduce its availability for anyone else, and its non-exhaustibility, meaning no-one is excluded from accessing the good.

But Doyle (2002: 64) also explores public broadcasting as a market failure, due to the fact the price and quantity of the goods are not determined by supply and demand, so there is no mechanism for direct revenue from the consumer. This is relevant because PSB is funded by the public. The author (2002: 66) discusses the idea that governments produce PSB because it is thought the market does not supply the values that are need to maintain a civil society, and the people are not capable of judging what is in their own best interests. Cooper (2007: 2) says governments know that television is engrained in modern life, and will seek to control what may be broadcast, as a form of social control.

But according to Williams (1996: 103), public service broadcasters are “running smack” into television’s basic law, which is “give people more choice, they use it”. Williams (1996) also found that the public don’t really want to be educated by television. In a study, the author looked at the most popular television programs in 1995, even before the internet had really caught on, and found consumers want popular, commercial television, not specialised PSB. The top programs from the ABC didn’t even rate in the top 100.

Other literature says commercial television is just as relevant as PSB in terms of keeping the public informed on important issues. Krajina (2007: 198) thinks popular commercial television is as useful as PSB, and should not be condemned as “mere profit-motivated irrational pleasures”; because consumers are involved in “rational deliberation” as active citizens. The author (2007: 199) looked at the power of “democratic entertainment”, through an assessment of a game/talk show “The Pyramid”, which involved informed discussions on important national issues with an audience, celebrities and politicians.

There is agreement in the literature that consumer sovereignty is important to viewers; they like to engage and have some say in a medium they are paying for. According to some commentators, PSB consumers do not get to dictate what is produced, so there is a lack of consumer sovereignty. Doyle (2002) argues that in a normal market, public service broadcasters would need to meet the preferences of their consumers if they wished to remain in business.

Others argue consumer sovereignty is a myth that is perpetuated by the media to defend its programming (Pauwels & Bauwens, 2007, 149). Pauwels & Bauwens (2007) argue TV viewers have a choice of programmes, but it is merely a reflection of the consumers’ personal socio-economic conditions and relations, and a choice only from what is on offer, which is not to say it is what they really want.

To this end, the extent consumers come into contact with different forms of cultural expression can be limited. The authors also explore the “interiorisation of consumer sovereignty” (2007: 58), the idea that viewers blame themselves when they can’t choose a program they like, and in doing so, they actively contribute to their own powerlessness, by actively reproducing the myth of consumer sovereignty.

According to Ferguson (2007: 182), the democratic ideals of access and participation are critically important in defending the existence of PSB in today's environment of endless programme choice and mediums. Particularly so in an era where governments are cutting back on PSB funding and commercial and pay television broadcasting are rapidly expanding.

Richards (2005) discusses this as a “gentle, gradual, evolving, historic act of liberation” for consumers. That is, the liberty to determine what they watch and what they listen to, on their own schedule.

So, what of the future for PSB, particularly in Australia? Curran (1981: 324) discusses the growing disparity in revenue between the commercial broadcasters and PSB which means outlets like the ABC will continue to be vulnerable to political pressure, as long as it relies on government funding. And Dempster (2000: 56) points to the ongoing accusations of bias against the ABC generated from both sides of politics.

One commentator gave a description of the failure of the PSB model in New Zealand, as an example for governments to avoid. Cocker (2008: 40) gives an insight into the several eras of bad policies from New Zealand governments, including the early restrictive regulation of television and an unwillingness to give public service broadcasters political independence or adequate funding. According to Cocker (2008: 42), the New Zealand model has never met public expectations and needs and has not measured up to the ideals of a public service broadcaster in a democracy.

The literature was reviewed in relation to the role, value and future of PSB. There is agreement among commentators that PSB should be judged on how it manages its role. One commentator highlights how public service broadcasters take measures to justify their existence, and there exists criticism over its lack of consumer sovereignty, whether it is any more relevant for society than commercial broadcasting, and the issue of bias and interference by the government. One commentator argues PSB can be viewed as an economic success, another warns of a PSB failure. Further, there is commentary regarding the future relevance of public service broadcasters in the new technological era of endless choice and mediums for consumers.


REFERENCE LIST

ABC Online (2008) ABC Charter 1983, About the ABC. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/ABCcharter.htm Accessed 9 April 2009.

Burns (2008) Public Service Broadcasting meets the Internet at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 22, 6, pp. 867-881.

Cocker, A. (2008) Broadcasting in New Zealand: A story of public policy failure. Australia Journal of Communication, 35, 2, pp. 39-55.

Cooper, C. (2007) Television on the Internet: Regulating News Ways of Viewing. Information & Communications Technology Law, 16, 1, pp. 1-16.

Curran, J. (1981) The Impact of Advertising on the British Mass Media. Media, Culture & Society, 3, 1, pp. 43-69.

Dempster, Q. (2000) Death Struggle. Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest, NSW.

Doyle, G. (2002) Understanding Media Economics, First Edition, Sage: University of Glasgow.

Ferguson (2007) Locking out the Mother Corp: Nationalism and Popular Imaginings of Public Service Broadcasting in the Print News Media, Canadian Journal of Communication, 32, 2, pp. 181-200.

Jacka, E. (Edited by Cunningham, S. & Turner, G.) (1997) The Media and Communications in Australia. Allen & Unwin: Sydney.

Krajina, Z. (2007) Democratic Potentials of Media Entertainment: Reading ‘The Pyramid’. Political Thought: Croatian Political Science Review, 16, 5, pp. 179-202.

Oesterlen, E. (2008) Lend me your 84 million ears: Exploring a special radio event – Shakespeare’s King Lear on BBC World Radio Service. The Radio Journal, 6, 1, pp. 33-44.

Pauwels, C. & Bauwens, J. (2007) ‘Power to the People’? The myth of television consumer sovereignty revisited. International Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 3, 2, pp. 149-165.

Richards, E. (2005) OFCOM Annual Lecture: Trends in Television, Radio and Telecoms, 20 July. Available online at: www.ofcom.org.uk/media/speeches/2005/07/

Williams, R. (1996) Normal Service won’t be resumed. Allen & Unwin: St Leonard’s , NSW.