Thoughts on FFVII Remake

It's been about a month since the long-awaited remake of the classic playstation game, Final Fantasy VII was announced, so I thought I jot down some notes

Firstly - IT IS MIDGAR

I cannot stress this enough, there seems to be widespread confusion that because it looks very different and a train station was called 'South Edge' it's the future city of Edge (which is a settlement on the edge of the ruins in the game's film sequel)

There's a few points here:

The first scene shows a bird and sky, which seems anathema to Midgar - but it also shows a crane - which is very similar to our unfinished road at the edge of the city - also one solitary bird? Maybe that's a juxtaposition to the many birds that return at the end

(Also - is that the sister ray?)

It's a city of glass and steel, yes, and shown in clear daylight, while the old Midgar was always shown in darkness and had a fairly limited central tower section which was essentially Shinra HQ, this was really just a limitation of the 90s technology - Midgar was supposed to be on the scale of Tokyo.

If you actually look at the original game (OG) you only ever see a few screens on the plate, and a handful of people - bear in mind this was the first representation of a city in the FF series, and about as good as it got back then - if you are going to remake this game, then absolutely this needs to be a real city, with skyscrapers and businesses outside one company (although all must be beholden to Shinra of course)

Midgar looks clean, again, on the plate it actually was pretty clean - just dark, again,if you look at the game, the people on the plate are supposedly living in luxury off the cheap and abundant lifeforce of the planet, it's decadent, the land around might be withering, but life on the plate should be desirable and modern, and was pretty good according to Barrett (and the Mako pipes are a dead giveaway)

If you think about the OG - 8 massive reactors? For one tower and 8 fairly low rise suburbs? Nah, Midgar was always supposed to be massive and imposing

The roads, pipes and the iconic vehicles all indicate this is Midgar in daylight - if you look closely, you can see the Valentina Easter Egg poster (which is akin to a billboard in the original) and the flashing of neon lights under the highways, indicating a bit more grit and underbelly on the ground (well, plate)


Onto 'Edge' - firstly, the iconic opening scene was always at 'North Edge' station (makes sense considering that opening sequence), should be a dead giveaway, it just means the edge of the plate. Second, I can't believe Edge could ever get that big - sure it could be gone by the epilogue scene, but no way is it turning into a new Midgar and disappearing completely between then and now (while leaving the original ruins!)

As far as I'm aware, (in this slightly retconned image from the sequel) future Edge is towards the top right of the vista - you just couldn't make it out in the game...either way it's pretty small

Midgar is clearly never redeveloped, as per the original game, so there's no way a 'clean' Midgar is going to appear with defunct mako pipes around - it's Midgar, guys, as it should be.

 Now with that out of the way, after a brief fade to black, we are clearly in Midgar - it's red, and polluted! and there's a freight train!

Briefly to continue my theme from before - there are clearly those skyscrapers in the background, this is the same Midgar but at the plate level

While this is an obvious nod to the original green park, it's also clearly on the plate, I have another theory about this...

The brief blackout indicates a break, now I don't believe this has anything to do with a time jump, (anymore than the short in-game period) but represents Meteor hanging in the sky - why else would it be red?? This the only possible reference to Meteor, which is kind of a big deal, so I'm sticking with that

Now, what exactly those kids are looking at - I subscribe to two theories, it's either the reactors firing up together to fire the Sister Ray (which would be pretty cool) or it's the lifestream in the finale

The latter I feel is unlikely, as by this point Meteor would be destroying them, but if you remember the finale, it's all about the kids watching from Kalm

I'll tie my colours to the mast and say it's the former, and I expect a lot of imagery of children in this remake

The next scenes are obviously Midgar, a reactor and presumably AVALANCHE (whether Biggs and Jessie, or they've been expanded, not sure)

I think we can all agree this bad boy is Midgar!

I've always wondered who the hell lives next to those lights? Not such a great @%$#^$ pizza to live on in my view

Opal is a welcome development, but the fare structure is flawed

The long overdue rollout of Opal in Sydney continues apace, with more and more buses now accepting the cards and the best value paper tickets being retired in about 8 weeks

Unfortunately, my usual bus company are yet to launch their readers, and with my last ever quarterly expiring in September I face yet more price increases as I won't be able to use Opal the whole way or buy a periodical Multi - meaning I have to fork out for the ever annoying traveltens until I'm allowed on the bus

Anyway, I digress, hopefully my bus company will roll out by September and I'll be fine

What I did want to talk about was the savings - while the media and many commentators point out that many people will be worse off under Opal, I keep seeing comments like 'What is everybody whinging about? I save $2 a week!'

The government propaganda is correct - the majority of people do save money with Opal, and judging by the amount of people who queue up every day I'm perfectly happy to agree most benefit from the new structure

That's not the problem, the point is that the savings on offer are vastly lower than the current offerings

What the fuss is all about

Weekly/Fortnightly ticket savings: from $1 per week (MyTrain 5) to $3.40 (MyTrain 3)

Monthly losses: vary widely from a weekly equivalent of $4.50 (5 again) to 35c (3 again)

Quarterly losses(13 weeks): from $4.86 per week to $13.08 a week (that's a simple 1 through 5)

So you can see that if you used to buy a ticket from the Blue mountains (or Wyong, Gosford etc) every week you'd now save $1, but if you used to buy a monthly you'd be paying $4.50 more each week for Opal, a quarterly works out at a cost of over $13 a week extra

Now, quarterlies and yearlies might be a lot of upfront cash but for a simple monthly ($100-$200 upfront) that's $216 bucks a year more (working off a 48 week year) and for the frugal person on a quarterly it's over $600 extra! (Basically a 25% and a 50% fare increase respectively)

The fact that a lot of people regularly bought a Weekly or Fortnightly really doesn't matter, they either weren't smart enough or didn't have the means to pay for a longer ticket - bully for them, they save at most $163 over a year, while people who choose to take the cheaper options can lose well over $600

And that's just the trains...

While longer distance commuters are discovering that Opal will cost them (and longer distance travellers are the ones who tend to buy those big periodicals because their transport costs are significant and the savings largest), anybody who needs to get a variety of transport loses even more

I'm not going to bore you with more scenarios, but those who use MyMultis can lose up to $1000 a year, in short, because the MyMultis existed to give those who needed a bus and a train (or a ferry) a break from paying for both. In my own case I basically get bus travel with my train ticket - it doesn't make sense that someone in the western suburbs should pay hundreds or dollars more simply for living some distance away from Sydney's fairly limited train network.

Not any more, if you change modes, you pay full fare for each trip (or journey, or whatever it is) - that's a clear change in policy.

Now, there are always going to be winners and losers - people who alternate days and locations, or don't work a full week may lose out on the weekly reward and end up paying more than before, but could also win on reduced single fares and the ability to use off-peak fares. Swings and roundabouts will always apply in this situation, but the penalty to those who use more than one type of transport is extreme and an unfair penalty on those who really have no choice.

Ultimately, those close to the city can catch buses, if not trains, the whole way, those in major suburbs along the train lines can use them - those a long way from the city more than often need to get a bus to a train interchange. In a city where a 25km trip from Parramatta to the CBD takes well over an hour on a bus or 25 mins on a train, we simply can't use buses the whole way.

This is why they built the T-ways into Blacktown, Parra and Liverpool - to get us to the trains! But now those people who rely on this particular form of transport provided a few years ago by the state government are now going to be slugged with increased fares.

And that's my problem, I don't mind a bit of swings and roundabouts, that always happens but they have effectively removed discounts worth hundreds of dollars for a significant minority of travellers - had they just removed quarterly train tickets or MyMultis there would be protests, yet that is effectively what they've done but they get away with it because we finally have a smartcard system.

Some would say Sydney Trains are revenue raising, I would argue it's simple laziness - unlike other cities, they couldn't be arsed to factor in multi-modal costs, and simply charge people the same old train/bus/ferry fares - while removing the over-riding MyMulti platform, which was created for the very reason that the Opal system now reintroduces.

Personally, I think people facing a 25-50% fare hike should be complaining, yes some (most, even) people will save a bit of money, but for a lot of people this is a huge cost increase.

That said,  I am of course happy we finally have a real system and there are pros and cons:

Good points:

Buses are cheaper in general
Those on singles/weeklies make a small saving
No major prepayment needed
You don't need to buy tickets
Off-peak fares available
Unlimited travel

Bad points:

Savings are minor and replace much larger ones
Penalty for switching modes (this is fair why, Gladys?)
No savings for those who don't work 5 days (sick day, anyone?)

The silver lining

The 8 trips thing can be easily manipulated - on Monday/Tuesday just hop on a city circle ride, or get a bus for one stop during your lunch (technically speaking you could spend Monday making a trip once an hour 8 times and only pay $15 for a week)

The bad news is, that for those who used to be on Quarterlies you'll barely break even on your old fare - a lot more effort for the same price (but the old monthly travellers do pretty well, based on my experience)

What is Q and A meant to be

biased presumably...

The ABC need to decide whether their flagship political chat show is a proper people's forum like the BBC's Question Time or a talking heads show, two weeks ago it was given over to authors from the Writers Festival, and tonight it was handed over to a group of 'wise elders' comprising:

Jane Goodall – Primatologist
Betty Churcher – Art educator
Peter Coleman – Conservative intellectual
Rosalie Kunoth-Monks – Central Australian Indigenous leader
Stuart Rees – Founder of the Sydney Peace Foundation

There hasn't even been a rationale presented for this anti-politician format - as much as I'm interested in Jane Goodall's experiences there is little to no public value in hearing the political views of selected individuals without any politicians to anchor the debate.

I can understand the concept, politician-free episodes can be much better for debate, and nobody misses the politicians spouting the same lines and avoiding every question, but the purpose of the show is for our representatives to answer questions. Very occasionally Question Time would run one of these formats, and they can work very well, particularly if they have a non-political topic like science or religion, but in general if there's current politics discussed the politicians need to be there.

My issue with the ABC is that, in their frequent 'non-politician' Q and As the topics are the standard political questions, but with a bunch of pointless people with their own pointless views answering the questions. I don't even want to start on the views of these people and the typical accusations of bias. I would find a 'balanced' panel completely redundant in these cases, they aren't there as specialists in the field and so the exercise is, in my view, boring, wasteful and indulgent, that's before we even point out the obvious accusations of bias.

Tonight, and last time (and many times before) there were political questions, such as attacking the government over their environmental record (one example from tonight) - inviting such questions to a panel of hand-picked commentators with no links to Parliament is clearly open to bias. Effectively the ABC grant a free-kick to whichever side they wish, typically regarded as 'the left', but by excluding the main parties and simply picking sympathetic commentators they avoid any objective measure of bias. This is why such shows, funded by the taxpayer as a form of political public service, should be stopped.

It's plausible that the ABC think that these shows offer a break from 'Punch and Judy' politics of Australia, and create a more civil dinner table type of experience, but somehow I doubt anyone genuinely believes that, and if they do, they're mistaken. Selecting 'wise elders' based on the views of some ABC staff is unlikely to create a more popular edition and only serves to provide ammunition to their critics, and crucially, it turns the show into a talking heads show, which is a deviation from the aim of providing public political discourse. If the ABC wish to make a dinner table show, stacked with their own choice of public figures, then they should make one and stop allowing a political debate show to be taken over by random groups of 'commentators'.

As an aside, yes some commentators might be of 'the right', and I do like some of the views presented, but the point is that it's a political discussion without any elected politicians, allowing the show to be hijacked by whatever views the ABC wish to present, these could be right, left or Martian for all I care, it ain't their job to pick who answers the questions, it's a medium for the government and opposition. It's a taxpayer funded political debate show, it needs to get politicians engaging with the people, not writers and activists.

If the ABC wish to keep these formats, I suggest they alter the name and clearly announce 'non-political chat show night' each time they do this.

How not to live off 80k

I don't really understand people who are hopeless with money, but then I don't understand a lot of people (like Greens voters)

Jenni Ryall is a News writer on a 12 week course to stop being a financial disaster - stop getting taxis everywhere, kick the $10 a day coffee habit etc etc - this week's lesson is (extremely crude) budgeting, or at least a cash flow statement

Everyone needs a budget, doesn't have to be written down, but it helps - my concern with Jenni's article is that she thinks 'Jim's' fictional budget below is a way of 'dominating life'
So, on a post-tax income of 60k (which is roughly an above average salary of 80k) 'Jim' has 1k in assets at the end of the year - quite possibly to be used for the 'yay-no-debt' party

Now, if you were doing this off a 40k salary, which is just above min wage, then that would be a reasonable result, particularly if you were working towards a pay rise, but 80k is a decent salary to most Australians, it's more than about 80% of all ozzies earn and therefore may represent the peak earning capacity of a lot of people (source) - Jim is buggered if he loses his job (is he a journalist too??), probably needs debt to go on a holiday and is likely facing work til he's 70 (or 80 at the current rate of change) and will be reliant on his minimum super contributions and will probably rely on the pension (but then again...YOLO!)

Not fun in my view, it always amazes me the amount of 30-somethings that simply piss money up the wall, mostly in the form of rent - why is Jim spending over 25k of a single income on rent? Jim likes 3 bedrooms to himself? My whole house would get less than that on the rental market

Maybe he's a sole breadwinner of a family of 4, maybe, but still, 25k is about the yearly cost of interest on a $500k mortgage at current rates - even with the current market, get your own unit with a 3 or 400k mortgage and you're not only saving on your expenses, you're building an asset with excellent growth prospects - why are you surrending more than you need to someone else's income stream?

Secondly, this guy spends over $7000 on a car loan, which could have a 3 or 5 year term and you would hope, therefore, was a new car, and yet he spends $1000 on maintenance per year

Want to know how much I spent on maintaining my 13 year old car last year? - $1300, that was for a major scheduled work, obviously as the car gets older I am exposed to greater likely costs, but such costs are weighed against the utility of the vehicle and the savings I get from not needing to buy a car (which is basically a huge expense, not a store of wealth)

Now while petrol is obviously varied on circumstances, for some reason this guy pays over $2500 on insurance and CTP, more than 50% what I paid last year, so it must be a nice car, that apparently is out of warranty and breaks down a fair bit (Alfa??), he's spending about 15% of his income just on owning the car, the petrol on top of that takes it to over 20%

Combine with the rent, the two basic items of his shelter and car cost him 62% of his income - this is a moderately high income earner and we haven't even got to food yet...

'Transport' bizarrely is again nearly $2k, this is possibly related to Jenni's taxis, or could be the train/bus/tram, but again, the obvious question is raised that why would you spend so much on a car when other forms of transport cost you so much?

So we're now left with about 35% of Jim's income to pay for stuff that isn't related to going from A to B or keeping a roof over his head - food is pretty reasonable, in fact most of his other costs are pretty good - even the clothing budget, probably because he's giving over half of his income to his landlord and the bank

The major exception is entertainment costs - Jenni apparently spends 25% of her income on this, Jim spends $125 every week and this is only 10% so god knows what she is doing

To be honest this is a reasonable figure to work with, budgeting shouldn't be about cutting back on the enjoyable parts of life - maybe try limiting yourself to $100 a week, but really, the rent and car costs should be the red flags

Likewise, the $7 a day coffee habit and $100 in bank fees are simply waste, drop them

If Jim was to spend $7000 on a used car this year (not great, but remember he has no money, so deal with it) next year he would instantly have $7000 to invest, along with savings from using the cheap work coffee and kicking pointless fees he'd be close to 10k a year surplus with minimal fuss - he could then save for a deposit, invest in property, cut his rent expenses substantially and start increasing equity

Alternatively, do what my single mates do and share a rental - only a sole-income family man would need to pay that much himself, instant 15k saving right there - he could even buy the unit, let it out to another 2 people and let them pay his mortgage...

The truth is, you really only need about 30k or 40k to 'live' - I think that's where the poverty line was drawn in Australia last time I checked, but a lot of 'wealthy' people spend so much on flash cars, eating out and general crap that the lowly shop floor workers are actually worth more - I happened to see my boss' savings target recently, and I'm worth many times more (he's older, we're both DINKs) - simply because the gap between my income and expenses is so much bigger than his, despite him earning maybe 30% more than me

As for this daft series, the fact that the whole purpose is to get you to spend $36 on a 12-week frugality course should ring alarm bells, creating wealth really is quite easy:

If you really are hopeless - put your payslip into 3 (or more accounts), set your budget and your savings goals, then put the money for your bills and essentials in one, 'fun' money in the other, and a set amount in the other as savings - treat that last amount as if you don't even have it, live off the reduced income and it does the work for you

On tonight's panel...?

Finally, Media Watch has a pop at the left, hitting both the ABC and Fairfax in one show

Yay!

Would it be curmudgeonly of me to point out that it's rather convenient that this sudden change in editorial line happened just after the election? In the interests of fairness I will give Barry credit for attacking the other side, but it is also a fair point that there have been at least half a dozen attacks on Murdoch vs one on the ABC/Fairfax - so 'needs improvement' but getting there perhaps

Incidentally I couldn't really care less if an ABC show photo-shopped a News Limited journo into having sex with a dog, but to me it's clear that this sort of 'joke' (which was only amusing if you revel in seeing your opponents mocked) is evidence of a left-wing mentality, the Chaser are well to the left and I don't think that's disputed, and strictly speaking there's nothing wrong with them leaning in their comedy (outside an election special on a state-funded broadcaster, I should add), they can hide behind the line that some people won't like certain jokes if they want, although I'd disagree that it was actually satire

Their continued promotion by the ABC when they aren't particularly popular any more, however, says quite a lot about the management and culture at the organisation

But onto my main point tonight - following on from a reasonable Media Watch, we were introduced to the Q&A panel - featuring no government or opposition spokesmen (normally a good thing), or even journalists:

Clive Palmer - ok, definitely independent
Nick Xenophon - can fairly be described as a centrist
Larissa Waters (Greens) - because it's not like they get on with the main parties regularly anyway?
David Williamson - a playwright critical of Murdoch
Rebecca Huntley - a research director
and...
Mark Latham - former federal Labor leader

Hmm, worrying...

First point - Latham is hardly independent, he's not a member of the opposition, and he likes writing bad things about his former colleagues, but he is very much a Labor man

'Playwright' always rings alarm bells, David Williamson went on to confirm my suspicions by admitting he was a "leftie" and harping on about socialism and Australia's Gini coefficient (which is significantly better than America's, David)

You never know, Rebecca Huntley might research economics, but alas no, even her bio lists her as "[formerly] involved in ALP politics, working for numerous federal politicians. She was a member of the National Committee of Emily’s List and the ALP’s federal policy committee"

So, unlikely to see much liberal/conservative viewpoints being bandied around there, with a Green thrown in and Xenophon a self-confessed centrist that left any pro-market, pro-business views pretty much to the affable, eccentric Palmer (and maybe Latham as he is at least an economic rationalist)

In what world is this balanced? We have just changed to a Liberal government with a clear majority and Q&A has three panelists who are openly left wing and hostile to the new government, another who is a former Labor leader and essentially no serious voices from the economic right

I just don't understand how this can pass for balance, for starters even if you trot out the letter-of-the-law political party rule, it's odd that the Greens are formally represented as everyone else is either independent or a micro-party, the Greens are regularly featured with the main parties and were part of a coalition government mere months ago

Secondly, two others are former ALP members, and the other effectively admitted being a lifelong ALP voter (or Green, maybe), only one of the remaining two could be considered to have links to the Liberals leaving a four to one balance if you're using any sort of common sense

Sorry but saying 'they're all independent of parties' (except the Greens obviously) just doesn't wash, it's blatant - there was criticism of Murdoch, free markets and Tony Abbott and much support of socialism without any reply - there were no rebuttals from the right (as the sole champion, Clive can say what he likes and avoided any such argument)

Whatever, I, as always, wish to leave it up to the market to decide...not that it really helps...

Gittins: Labor's problems are all in our minds

I'm not going to waste too much time commenting on Ross Gittins' strange view that we have an unconscious bias that Liberals are better at running the economy

The whole story is based on the poll question 'who is better at managing the economy?' The standout point for me was this:

There was a time during the term of the Hawke-Keating government when the economy was doing well and Labor was ahead on this question. But such times are the exception. Normally, Labor judges its success just by the extent to which it has narrowed the gap with the Libs.

So we all love the Libs, except when Labor actually do run it well, the concept of Occam's razor springs to mind. In the 41 years since Whitlam came to power there have been three periods of Labor government (cumulatively longer than Liberals) - Whitlam, which ended in a constitutional crisis, the well-regarded Hawke-Keating era which lasted about 13 years, and the Rudd-Gillard period which wasn't quite so successful

It couldn't just be that people actually hold conscious opinions on a government's performance? Likewise the fact that Liberals, who favour free markets and appeal to 'battlers', and Labor, who favour trade unions, are judged differently on the economy, is not surprising. My economics text book did not exactly regard trade unions as good for markets, but no no, it's because the Libs are the 'bosses', not the workers (never mind that Labor abandoned most 'workers' for welfare recipients and hippies before Howard)

Gittins also claims that the budget and boat people crises are 'over' - first I'd point out that it's hardly unreasonable for one party to play on two of their key strengths - border control and the economy, much as Labor will soon play on IR and public services, Labor had plenty of crises for when they were last in opposition, such as the evil inhuman border control policy - and yet in power the screaming lefties went away and the new government actually supported Liberal policy (no doubt they'll be back now Tony's in), both sides are guilty of hypocrisy when they are on the easier side of parliament, it's called a point of difference and is hardly indicative of unconscious love of 'the bosses'

Secondly, the crises not over, but surprisingly enough, when there's a new government you tend to give them a little bit of a chance (say, at least a week...) before jumping down their throats and demanding the boats stop now - ultimately there's only two choices for government and it would be rather silly to demand a change before they are sworn in...

I'd agree 'crisis' is hyperbole, but that's politics, which I'm fairly certain we could find from Labor, ultimately while we may not be in Weimar Germany the Australian people do not like the idea of spending more than they earn, they also don't like being lied to constantly and having the government fail to deliver their promises time after time (this hilariously is also the fault of our unconscious bias again), the British and Europeans were complacent about their huge levels of debt for decades (I'd never heard of a government running a surplus until I came to Australia), and look where that ended up

In short, weak drivel from Ross that appeals to the far left

I'd also make the point that this is clearly apologetic to Labor, it's simply an opinion with little empirical evidence (if any?) and therefore it's as biased as the Telegraph's daily attacks on Labor, which cause such a problem for the ABC and Labor

Yet, you don't hear people complaining much about it - I know Fairfax is biased, great, that's why I don't read it, rather than trying to censor it or running ads trying to get it to say what I want

It wasn't the Tele that won it

But don't tell Paul Barry that, in his latest epistle he provides a mock-up of the famous Sun headline from 1992 (again)

Now, aside from the issue that Barry has now twice used a 20-year old story from another country to beat Murdoch with, which suggests an obsession rather than contemporary media analysis, the idea that we'll never know if the Murdoch papers won it is a fantasy

The Telegraph, who according to Barry, are the worst of the Murdoch press only 'won' 4 seats in NSW, they may yet gain another 3 in unconfirmed results - while they've taken 2 (out of 4) in Tasmania, 3 in Victoria and potentially only one from Queensland (which has the second naughtiest Murdoch paper)

They could've won without NSW, although it would've been pretty strange to not pick up anything in the nation's biggest state - in fact the swing against Labour was below the national average, at a meagre 2.99%

The states where Labor really crashed were Victoria, the only state which had a Fairfax paper actually support it (not that you would know that if you listened to Barry), Tasmania and South Australia, all traditional Labor strongholds

Any simple analysis would show that the impact of Murdoch's papers was limited at best, in fact there seems to have been a negative correlation - with the Labor supporting Age creating the biggest mainland swing, and the single paper state of Queensland barely losing a seat

This is, to be honest, extremely poor from the ABC - while you might be able to attempt to justify Barry's weekly commentary on the bias of a populist daily tabloid as a fair cop, but boring, the suggestion that the Telegraph had a significant impact on the federal result just doesn't stack up with the facts, it's lazy and quite clearly biased

Arguably it's evidence of ABC 'group-think', where they decide that people must surely agree with them and Murdoch and his tabloids are trashing the awesome Labor government - no need to actually review their assertion that the Tele could've won it when three other states had bigger results

They also don't seem to have been able to stop the woeful Western Sydney Liberal candidate Jayme Diaz providing Labor with one of their only swings towards them, odd that...

For the sake of balance Barry also mentioned an anti-Murdoch 'GetUp' ad that went 'huge' on social media (the importance of which is contestable, and another weird ABC obsession) that the commercial broadcasters refused to air

I'm sure they refuse to run all kinds of things, but GetUp say that this is an outrageous breach of their free speech (why?) and Barry again twists the story to suit himself, saying that the non-Murdoch channels don't want to make an enemy, his view, not anyone else's

It couldn't just be that they felt it was in their commercial interests not to run the ad? It couldn't just be that commercial networks aren't a platform for free speech that they can actually use their own networks to act in their own interests? It couldn't be that Fairfax also refused to accept it as a paid ad?

Arguably there is a media story in this case - the commercial networks (and Fairfax) once again not running a far-left political ad*, but it's very convenient that the Media Watch subject matter was Murdoch, after a whole episode..about Murdoch

My thanks to Andrew Bolt for the screen grab of the dummy front page, he has effectively written the same article as me and I probably just should've saved time and read that before making my own post - but as an aside he points out that 6 (of 10, I think) have been focused on News corp - we should start making those graphs that Barry uses every week to judge the Tele

From memory, I think the others have only focused on vested commercial interests in tabloid television and beating up 'shock jocks' - how many have focused on Fairfax or the ABC...or are they just that good?

*The ad was a strange one, featuring a man criticising the Courier Mail's editorial stance against Labor and using it to clean up his dog's mess, saying that we're all entitled to our opinions, you know free speech and all, but then saying it's not on for Murdoch to put one in his papers

It doesn't make a lot of sense - to me, the ad seems to imply you must receive the Courier Mail and it must provide objective 'news' - yet in reality you choose to subscribe to it, does that man think it's some form of state funded newspaper he has to receive?

He's wasting his money on expensive doggy bags, difference is we don't have to with Media Watch...

Let's just rename it Murdoch Watch and be done with it

Another week, another full episode on News Ltd and the Daily Telegraph - I'm getting boring, but so is Paul Barry

This week it's makeup-gate - the story that a make up artist called Kevin Rudd rude on Facebook and this led to six articles in the Telegraph...cue investigation!

Was the Telegraph the only media outlet to cover the Make-up artist 'story' - absolutely not, but it was a convenient excuse to lay into the Daily Telegraph, rather than say, the Sydney Morning Herald

Fact is, everyone covered it, TV, radio, and all the papers, the story became part of the 'narrative' - that being the one that says Rudd is a vicious, nasty, little man

That is a narrative that has existed for several years - it's built on quotes and stories from his own colleagues, the leaks he was responsible for throughout the Gillard era and his often tetchy public displays

No doubt the right wing are going to hammer this narrative a lot more than Fairfax and the ABC but this is simply how 21st century 24hr sound bite political news works, it's cruel and a lot of the time bloody stupid - but the politicians' play it just as much as the media do, only Labour started whingeing about the 'hate media' when they suddenly lost favour

They also asked for this kind of debate, running negative, personal ads and refusing to engage in any meaningful policy debate (and I'm talking about both sides here) - the press need to fill pages every day, and they knows what sells

Yes, the Telegraph is biased, News Corp is biased - we know this, and you could pick up the Telegraph on any day of the year and find crap...it's a tabloid

But is it really a worthwhile pursuit providing a running commentary on a poorly written, populist newspaper every week?

Despite the howling from the left, it has no mandate to be impartial, unlike the ABC, it is simply a commercial enterprise seeking profit, governed by traditional libel laws and is entitled to preach its opinions to anyone willing to pay for them

When there is so much criticism of left-wing bias at the ABC, which is mandated to be impartial, shouldn't they be more worried about that than pointing out perfectly legal behaviour at commercial enterprises

Or does Paul Barry, who is writing a (possibly negative) book on the Murdoch Empire, just have an unhealthy obsession with Murdoch

The Labour/ABC narrative on the Murdoch conspiracy is just as odious as the beat-ups the Tele does on Rudd...but which is more interesting to the public debate?

And as an aside, what the hell is the failed media regulator from the UK - Labour MP Tom Watson, doing on Q & A?

Bolt and Blair on the 63%

It's doing the rounds...but does anyone care?

Selling ain't owning

Murdoch Haters Owned

When I first came to Australia I was told Andrew Bolt was a crazy shock jock and to avoid him and talkback radio - stick to the ABC for serious commentary they said

Presuming it would be like the BBC, a bit politically correct and alarmist on global warming, but the only serious broadcaster and fairly balanced, I sadly discovered the tv shows were invariably tilted to the left and the radio presenters were even worse - so I shifted to the 'popular' media

I'd say it's fairly clear who gets their sums right on how many papers Murdoch owns

Again, ownership is not the same as sales

Once again Media Watch fails to adhere to the ABC Charter

Somewhat hilariously Barry picked up (briefly) on Rudd's erroneous claim that Murdoch owns 70% of newspapers

It's 63%, he corrected, and helpfully added 'of sales' at the end of his statement - which means he is technically correct

But he did not pull up Rudd for ignoring that key point of difference between sales, and ownership of newspapers

He also didn't amend last week's entry which made the exact same mistake

But maybe he is listening to me (or more likely Andrew Bolt)

It was also sad to see that once again the show focused on the Telegraph and other Murdoch press, with essentially nothing on Fairfax - obvious headlines were shown, including the same one from last week (why?) and an analysis was done of how many supported Labour or Coalition

Note that no similar analysis was done for any other paper, despite Fairfax papers being clearly of a similar bent towards Labor (an analysis proving me wrong would be an even stronger point)

Likewise, out came the 1992 famous Sun Kinnock lightbulb front page - if you know some British political history you'll know that John Major won an unexpected victory and only the Sun called it, leading them to crow that they was 'wot won it'

They claim that, but many commentators take the view that they just pick winners (as they have picked every winner for decades) which is good for their commercial interests - both Kinnock and Brown were extremely unpopular, both were hated by the Sun, both lost - correlation or causation??

I personally hated them too, but I didn't read the Sun

But anyway, my point is it's a tad tenuous to bring out a 20 year old infamous front page from the UK

The stream of attacks on the Murdoch press is quite tiring, almost every episode of Media Watch under Barry has focused on right-wing media, or even praised the left-wing media

I repeat last week's point that this is a clear departure from the editorials of the more reasonable Holmes, and a contradiction of Barry's defence against Andrew Bolt's claim that he was another leftie host

Murdoch does not "control two thirds of Australia's newspapers"

Briefly I'd like to rebut the new (or old) host of Media Watch, Paul Barry's claim that Murdoch 'controls two thirds of newspapers' in Australia (Media Watch 5/8/13)

This is a common claim from the left, and it's a convenient little sleight of hand - while it's a true figure if you're talking about audience share it is not the same as 'controlling' the media

For example, if there were 1000 supermarkets, and Coles and Woolies owned 500 each, but Coles had 66% of the shoppers - how many supermarkets would they control?

50% each, clearly

In my hypothetical situation Coles have a bigger market share and therefore influence perhaps, but they are simply winning in an open contest (assuming equitable conditions of course), they don't 'control' the market any more than Woolies

It's the same for newspapers in Australia, News Corp have about two thirds of the circulation, but they only own about 33% of the newspapers - time for some real figures (3 year old data will have to suffice, sorry):

In Sydney there are two main dailies available - The Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) -

Readership:
Tele = 374,000
SMH = 207,000

In Melbourne it's The Herald Sun (News) vs The Age (Fairfax)

Herald = 515,000
Age = 197,000

(I'm discounting The Australian as Australia's only national daily as it has a fairly insignificant circulation, if you credit off the Fairfax national AFR as well then we're only talking 60,000 people nationally)

That's roughly 64% vs 36% in Sydney, and a ridiculous 72% vs 28% in Melbourne but these two papers are available to exactly the same audiences within each city - does Murdoch 'control' two thirds of the two major cities' newspapers? According to the logic of the ABC and many lefties he does, despite having the same number of publications and being on a level playing field as Fairfax, I've never seen a news retailer not selling the SMH along with the Tele

Winning audience share from your rival through the free market is not control, it's providing a product people want in a fair fight with another product - 'control' implies that News Corp own the majority of newspapers, thus limiting access to leftie opinions, but that's simply not true - people choose to buy News products over Fairfax, which is readily available to them (they own 33% of newspapers available and 11 of the top 25 circulating ones, while Fairfax own 10)

Yes, that provides News with the ability to influence two thirds of the audience, but that audience chooses to engage with that publication, the constant claim that News Corp 'controls' the printed press is merely a sook from the losing side

The truth is 'Murdoch' can speak to two thirds of people, and try to influence them, but there is no undue control on his part, clearly two media empires effectively owning every major print publication in the country is control and that should be looked at - but both companies need to be considered and the 'two thirds of newspapers' figure is complete bull designed to attack the 'Hate media' as Labor like to call them (except when they are backing them)

I encourage Paul Barry to correct this statement to at least say that they have 'two thirds of market share', or 'control a third of all newspapers', as they are in no way the same thing - it's a small distinction but an important one, as it implies an unduly gained influence rather than simply achieving more sales in a fair fight, and to be honest I'm pretty sure media people who use that figure know exactly what they're doing by using it

I'd also take this opportunity to express my dissatisfaction with the refreshed Media Watch since Jonathan Holmes left - under him I found it to be one of the few enjoyable ABC shows, occasionally I found a choice or two a little unbalanced, but in the main I found him objective and willing to take on all the media outlets

Conversely Paul Barry spent his first episode praising Julia Gillard and since then has almost exclusively attacked 2GB (and maybe some other right wing talkback stations) and News Corp over fairly small issues

If you watch this week's show, you'll see the criticism of News (with the false claim that riled me) followed by slathered praise for Fairfax's investigation into Labor corruption

Not a huge problem on it's own, aside from the one falsehood you could find this week's particular angle fair, but after weeks of nit-picking over right-wing radio and newspapers it's become somewhat obvious

Ultimately if there's a major story from 'the right', like cash for comment, then obviously it should be used, but in any given week you can easily pick on the Age or the AFR (The Australian have a whole section on it), or the ABC, not to mention Today Tonight or ACA for sheer nonsense or some other questionable issue just as much as you can find the racist guy who the shock jock humours - to delve through talkback radio calls or minor News ltd stories to the almost total exclusion of all others is blatant bias

I would've complained to the ABC but why bother, there's streams of this bias picked up daily and nothing ever gets done, and the website has no activity, so I use my own blog for the sake of posterity

Hopefully market forces will prevail and Paul will lose any viewers Holmes gained..

not that they mind if anyone's actually watching the ABC, but they've lost me

Source

Maths for dummies

It's the census everybody!!! Cue the BBC getting very excited!!!

Very interesting figures - I do love a population pyramid:



Don't you just love the kink in 1946?
















But the really interesting graph is this one:






 That's a huge increase in migrants - over 13% of the population of England and Wales were not born there - and the jump in the last 10 years is obvious

This isn't about race (although white British people are down to 80%), but immigration, these are people who are currently here who were not born here (excluding the Irish), not second or third generation immigrants of a different colour, a figure which is going to rise naturally - these are people who are coming here - effectively it means a hell of a lot of people are being let in at a very fast rate

You can see the figure is pretty static from 1970 to 1990 - rising from about 6% to 7.5% in thirty years, this indicates a fairly steady trickle of immigration, of course if you came here in 1970 you'd probably still be alive in 1990 and you'll still be counted

But In the last twenty years it has effectively doubled, and it's pretty safe to assume that the Labour years are pretty clearly the main factor even in the 90s

Maybe, as the BBC's Home Affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani (isn't that Mark Easton's job?) says it's 'globalisation', which may to some extent be true, but it's also evidence of a lax border control policy or deliberate opening of the floodgates - they've let in what now amounts to 5% of the population in the past ten years, or over quarter of a million people per year

Make of it what you will, it just recalls to mind those 'crazy' stories that Labour deliberately brought in migrants to increase their vote

But anyway, I just found that a pretty remarkable graph - globalisation..maybe, but if that trend continues in ten years we could be looking at every fifth person not being born here - is that a good idea for any (major) country?

My main point was actually supposed to be about this piece by Mark Easton - apparently

there has been a sudden and unexplained rise in the fertility rate over the past few years. Although the increase in the number of women of childbearing age is mainly due to migration over the past decade, they still represent only a small proportion of the total and cannot explain the significant rise in total fertility rate.

Unexplained? Really, I had to dig deeper into this, so I read his previous article from June



Absolutely massive spike after 2001 - coinciding with a massive spike in immigration

Coincidence? Apparently so

Like many people I suspect, my immediate thought was that higher fertility rates might be a consequence of higher immigrations levels. Apparently not.

He's thought the obvious, so is not being politically correct, do go on...

 Immigration has had an impact on the birth rate (the number of babies): foreign mothers now account for a quarter of all births. 

Let's establish this as a fact, it's a fairly well known figure - 25% of all births are to foreign born mothers, and yet didn't I just put up a graph that showed foreign born people are about 13% and only half of that were in the past decade?

 Immigration has not had any significant impact on the fertility rate (babies per mother): the big increase in immigration between 2001 and 2008 was from Eastern Europe, notably Poland, but women from the accession countries do not generally have more babies than British-born mothers. In fact, the fertility rate in Poland is significantly lower than the UK - 1.2 in 2003 and now just under 1.4. 

In Poland? This is where I started to smell the BS - the rate in Poland, not where they are, but where they've left - this is a massive assumption that it's predominantly a cultural issue, as with Asian and African immigrants having larger families

Surely you should be checking the rate of Polish immigrants who are here, surely at least check?? (and I'm completely ignoring that Eastern Europe is about half the immigration figures, the rest are stereotypical 'large family' places like India and Pakistan which isn't mentioned anywhere)

So I did some digging, and found some more obvious trains of thought in the Telegraph, after having skipped 300 results from the Daily Mail...

This again verifies the one in four figure, so we'll keep that stat

New figures show that the number of immigrants having babies has doubled since 2001, largely driven by an influx of Polish, Pakistani and Indian mothers.

Hang on, Polish? But the Polish hate babies more than we do, just look at Poland!!

This has now increased by at least eleven-fold to 23,000 last year, making Poland the top nationality for creating second-generation immigrants to the UK.
Women from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Somalia, Germany, South Africa, Lithuania and China have the next highest number of babies. 

 Even though India provides the highest number of immigrants, the Poles are breeding more? Odd

The proportion of foreign-born women of child-bearing age living in the UK has increased from 14 per cent to 18 per cent since 2007, giving them a substantial impact on the overall number of births.  

So 18% of the fertile are making 25% of the babies

So that means the remaining 82% 'natives' are only making 75% of the babies - what does that tell you about the fertility rate? (that's the maths for dummies)

Birth to UK mothers have also risen, with British-born women have an average of 1.89 children.
However, they are not keeping pace with the births of children to foreign women in the UK, who are giving birth to an average of 2.28 children. 

 So it has indeed risen, but not as much as was being quoted - higher fertility rates in immigrants accounts for about 25% of the increase in fertility

So Mark is technically right, immigration does not entirely account for the increase in births per woman, the group isn't large enough to have that much of an impact but there is clear evidence available that shows foreign-born women are having significantly more babies and that has put some upward pressure on the figure

Why didn't he include this data? It would only make his case stronger - while it accounts for some, it doesn't account for all of it - then you go on and blame Tony Blair for most of it, he's confirmed people's anecdotal evidence and preconceptions and he's found an interesting statistical investigation

Instead the widely-held belief is dismissed and he relies on non-relevant data from another country, which enrages people who either want their views confirmed or who hate flimsy use of figures, forcing them to go and find readily available data and allow them to call him and the BBC biased

If anything I find it lazy, he looks like he's being fed data from a third party who may have an agenda and gone 'this is interesting', the use of Poland's native fertility rate is obviously weak and should at least have been verified as being remotely relevant to the UK's Polish community, instead he just accepts the premise that more Eastern European immigration would in fact lower fertility rates, meaning the British are breeding even more - a simple check of the real figures tells you that's complete nonsense

There's not a figure in sight to back up these claims in the article, barring the use of the actual fertility rates the analysis is cooked up on assumptions and irrelevant facts, which is something you would normally be accusing the 'it's the immigrants!' brigade of doing

What winds me up even more is they are mostly right, Labour welfare policies did pay people to breed - they just seem to have dismissed a portion of the story for the sake of political correctness or being pro-immigration - it could've been interesting, instead, it's not only omitted that a key feature of this trend even exists, but denied it even happened

British Media discovers Prank calls, Hypocrisy

Just a quick note on this daft business of evil Australian DJs (it's late, excuse the poor flow)

We expat Poms have a rather unique insight into this strange case of a bog-standard prank call gone very wrong

You see, we get to know all about Australia's commercial radio stations, and the rank hypocrisy of the British press

The Mail has 'discovered' Kyle Sandilands (who is a controversial DJ who works for the same station) because of course, the two are linked  - dirty Aussies and their crass ways

Not that the left wing Fairfax press here haven't tried to get in digs at Alan Jones, but I digress

The prank was pretty tame, there were no abused children involved, nothing offensive was said, it was a standard Sydney morning radio show wind-up call, but shame on the Ozzies for shaming a nurse into so much anguish that she'd kill herself

But hang on, some Australians may have committed the crime originally but somehow I doubt the nurse would have been too upset by the very concept of being tricked, and was unlikely to be listening to 2day FM or picking up a Sydney daily

No, it was the rampant and vile British press, who are so obsessed with a pair of 30 year olds who managed to have sex that they camped outside her place of work, filled acres of newsprint and got the rather pedestrian prank-call global coverage

This is where my British instincts come in, because you just know the tabloids were having a field day - criticising the hospital, the staff, Australia...wondering if Diana is still alive...

and then of course she was found dead, and it's party time, with lashings of hypocrisy as the same press who flooded the world with such a moronic story turn it into a global epic as they point the finger at a pair of hapless DJs

I'm not sure the two DJs are the ones who have 'blood on their hands', if there is some sort of charge out of the inquest then surely the fault should lay on the ones who applied the pressure so relentlessly and drove a possibly fragile person to such extremes - and they wonder why we got Leveson (I disagree with limits on the press, but it's clear why Leveson happened)

If this had been some politician found with a rent-boy, who was then hounded for a week and found dead, would it be the politician's fault...?

Seen this?

Remember me?

Probably not, and this is not a return, only I've witnessed something very strange at the BBC

It's a comparison of global salaries - all well and good, and apparently the UK average salary is one of the world's highest, basically the same as the yanks in parity terms

Only, I'm perplexed, Americans I know generally feel they earn less when in the UK - and I know from experience our average salary of £24k is pretty dire

If you can buy say, a can of coke for $1 in the US, and your salary is 44k US, then it should be about 60p here, yet invariably they spend a dollar like we spend a pound (completely hypothetical coke price)

That makes Britain more expensive, not cheaper (or near equal) - a view backed up by the OECD figures, which state a $100 basket of goods will cost you $132 in the UK

So you earn £1996 a month, which buys you $3239 currency, but that's worth $2453 in parity terms

This seems reasonable - I worked at that pay level, and it won't buy you a house very quickly

Meanwhile Australia ranks quite low down the scale, at a meagre 2600 - so what they're saying is £2000 is worth 15% more than AU$5,500

I'm calling BS on this - having worked in both countries, I know the pay is much better in Oz, and I earnt slightly less than average, but it went a lot further

The Australian dollar is of course, worth less - but the OECD figures put it at costing $157 for $100 - even if I exclude the current exchange rate which is above parity, the average Aussie wage is $3500, including exchange rate it's more like $3600

If you don't agree with my calculations, even Wikipedia agrees with me - this article provides the average Australian salary and it's median PPP - which is stated as $44k US - divide by twelve and what do you get? - $3666

This puts the Ozzies very far in front - but incidentally this chart also disagrees with the official stats of the US government, which say a yank's median income is $45k - obviously parity doesn't come into it in the US so it's a pretty easy calculation - why this chart has taken $400 off the average I don't know

So I call BS on this whole thing - the British average wage is fifth in the world, ahead of all major European nations? While the Aussies, who can buy more US than their own currency, apparently fork out more than double what the yanks do? If you compare the UK and Australia, what they're saying is the pound is worth more than three Aussie dollars, while it may be undervalued at current rates, it's never 3 to 1

It's nonsense I tell you

Unless my economics is squiffy...

...But then I know 25k GBP is a pittance compared to 66k AUS

Anachronistic?

Much has been made of the long overdue plan to update the laws of succession, notably regarding sex and religion (or rather the religion of a consort)

'It's wonderful', they cry in this age of sexual equality - only isn't this egalitarianism rather shallow? Sure, sexism is bad, but the moment you start questioning why it needs to be a man over a woman, won't you start questioning why it's the first born

...or why from a particular womb?

They preach fairness but the whole concept of hereditary entitlement is inherently unfair - it is just as arbitrary as male precedence, so surely once we question one thing, shouldn't we be questioning the rest?

The Catholic thing was in fact probably the least arbitrary feature, it served a practical and strategic purpose until the start of the last century, whereas proper hereditary succession was thrown out the window when parliament invited foreign monarchs because the true heirs were deemed unsuitable - yet we lose one not the other, when both concepts are seriously out of step with society

I find this very odd, anyone with half a brain should see the logical steps here - that's why the monarchists should be opposing it, if their rationale is to keep one big anachronism they shouldn't let the peripheral anachronisms be altered, likewise any reformer should be pushing for real equality - otherwise they're just shallow and trendy twits

Just saying..

(There's also a little noticed rule about the monarch's permission that George III made up for his brothers, but that's hardly worth mentioning)

Do we need daddies?

In the aftermath of these riots-cum-looting, or general thuggishness, whichever you prefer, much has predictably been made of fatherless families

For example IDS has just said:

“We’ve been ambivalent about family structure in Britain for far too long.”

Of course, we all know this means single-parent families, predominantly single mothers, but are they really to blame?

Well, yes and no, I think

Undoubtedly the rise of the Vicky Pollard style teenage mother with her feckless brood is a problem - arguably if there were good hard-working fathers in those lives those children would be much better off (or alternate partner if you wish, I don't necessarily think it has to be a male, although generally it's going to be)

But this does not simply mean a single parent is worse, or a problem in itself

I come from a single parent family, did I go and out and rampage through the streets? I can't prove this here of course, but I'd like to think you believe me

You see it's all well and good to bang on about families and how bad people like me are, how I'm so much less likely to have a degree (masters) or a job (I do) or have a family (married), but the real issue is hidden in what I said earlier - 'good' and 'hard-working' - it is the stable environment that is vastly more important

I bet you we all know a single parent, and I bet, unless you roam around inner city ghettos that the kids are fairly standard, and likewise you may have right terrors born to 'proper' families

The statistics bear out of course, but they also bear out for black people - anybody want to suggest that's inherent to what they are rather than where they are?

You live in a place where young women are poorly educated, have little respect for themselves and are treated like dirt by feckless young men, who also have no respect for themselves or anything, then you are going to get social problems and out of control kids - even if you were to force marriage, and even fidelity, upon them, you are not addressing the root of the problem - the single mothers in question are a symptom, not the cause

So there's no need to worry about young Mrs Smith down the road, whose husband just buggered off with his secretary, producing the next gun-toting hoodlum

I do think welfare is misguided - we effectively encourage people to breed and be irresponsible, because we won't let anyone starve, but this just encourages dependency, ironically my mother never did, and never would, claim welfare

Ultimately this is about those willing, or able, to engage with society and play by the rules, and those who can't, or won't - a breakdown of respect, particularly for themselves, the individual family structure has little to do with that

So how could I ever say single parent families are to blame? I couldn't, and frankly anyone who says that is a dimwit, or just hateful

What I do say is a lot of these problems do happen to come from single-parent families, but what is needed is a stable and loving home, the culture that happens to create single mothers in deprived, inner-city areas rife with gangs is to blame - attacking the notion of single parenthood itself is, at best, just plain daft

It's for your own good

I will take this opportunity to point out that several of my comments on the Peter Hitchens blogs about the 'hacking scandal' are being censored

Literally all I did was point out to people Guido's interesting post obtained via the Information Commissioner's office regarding the press and recorded offences of 'blagging' - that's it, in fact I didn't even mention details, but advised people to seek out information on the blogs

Absolutely nothing libellous, offensive, rude etc nor is anything in Guido's chart, it's all freely available government information - yet it didn't make it through

When I made the comment (which is often found on the Hitchens blog from a variety of posters) that my posts were disappearing without notice, this too failed the mods - I deliberately kept it that brief because I was pretty confident it would happen, I don't know of a way to prove this, I'm not that tech-savvy and didn't bother taking a screenshot, but I am hopeful a couple of other people had the same problem

I am not outraged by this behaviour - I think it perfectly reasonable that a company choose not to publish harmful information about itself - that's the job of others - isn't it?

Not if you listen to Hitchens arguments, last week he was warning us of the big bad politicians and how they need to be held to account

All true, but as we've just seen - nobody is holding the press, who lie, cheat and flout the law, to account and I can see no condemnation of this behaviour from Hitchens - he seems to take a 'better the devil you know' approach, and seems to justify the culture of silence between the press as a necessary evil to maintain commercial success

If we criminalise the press, and take away a vast resource of information from them (the tabloids at least) then they will not have the power to scrutinise the government

But I'd like to know who is meant to scrutinise the press - controlled by a tiny elite, they have vast power themselves and arguably papers like the Mail have a detrimental effect on our society by reducing debate to that of childish name-calling and scaremongering, we need these publications and they need to be allowed to do what they want? It's all for your own good you see

Hitchens, supposedly a man of strong moral conviction (something I've always questioned seeing as he opts to work for probably the least moral paper of them all), is quite happy to allow the press the freedom to make up s h one t, so they can make money and scrutinise the politicians, but yet won't allow people on his own blog to scrutinise one of the most powerful and influential industries in our society? The press do not scrutinise themselves ('dog eat dog'), that would just bring chaos - so how exactly do the public bring newspapers to account? They can't, which is why this hacking scandal has been quietly kept away from the public for the best part of ten years

Nobody is denying that politicians are scum, but the media are also scum, and it can quite easily be shown that the law has been violated for decades to make grubby stories about royals and celebrities to line pockets 'hold the government to account', this is not a price we must pay - scrutiny of the press will not bring about a North Korean situation, in fact the British press is infamous for it's cut-throat behaviour, you don't find it in perfectly free countries like the US, Australia, Japan or Sweden, a few ethical rules, such as those that we are supposed to already have and don't enforce, would quite easily control them

The real truth behind this is that the press in Britain need to behave in this manner to be successful, not because nobody would pay them without their gossip/nonsense, but because competition is fierce - Britain has a huge amount of national dailies, all vying for a piece of a dwindling readership - they need to be shocking, and therefore their tactics verge on the desperate - if the Sun doesn't do it, the Mail, or the Express, or the Mirror will

Whereas, in Australia for example there is only one populist rag - the Telegraph (or it's local NI equivalent), then there are two 'high-brow' papers - one left, one right - all controlled by one of the two main media players

While we're on it, virtually nothing the press do scrutinises politicians anyway, 'investigative journalism' essentially means celebrity/royal sex scandals - in fact I am struggling to think of an example of illegal activities bringing us a story for the public good (eg expenses scandal, WMD) - public interest arguments easily override this anyway, the crux of Hitchens defence (which I regard as a squeal) is that they need to be able to generate revenue, but the revenue is fixed - they just compete for a share, and in doing so engage in a race to the bottom (declining moral standards eh?)

Proper rules would not stop scrutiny, I find that scenario incredibly hard to believe when our media is so powerful anyway - it would just rid us of a few silly newspapers that are, in essence, solely there to sell smut

Losing a few unpopular (intelligent) papers might be bad for decent opinion you might say, but there'll be no trashed murder victims either

I know I have posted a few times before regarding Hitchens, first I lost respect, then I came to see him as a troll, but now I'm struggling to even take a word he says seriously - this act of self-serving deflection and hiding behind supposed 'freedom of the press' and an Orwellian nightmare is pretty abhorrent

Actually why do I keep going back? Silly boy

An experiment

Two stories mildly piqued my interest this week, not in themselves so much, but because they both reminded me of Peter Hitchens

A man (I believe 'thug' is perfectly appropriate considering his frequent use of the term) in Bristol is let off a custodial sentence after stuffing ham into the shoes of worshippers at a Mosque in Bristol

The other story is about the scouts openly recruiting more gay members, a Christian organisation, which has irked some (in my view, I don't see why, it seems Christianity has to be represented publicly by Catholics and right wing bible bashers, many Christian groups tolerate homosexuality, the established church of England being one of them, and the scouts adhere to that church)

I have a theory that we may be seeing the scouts story, as it's one of those slightly off-the-beaten-track, Christian-beat up stories, but not the bloke who got let off

Of course, the drunken racist being let off is as good a case as any for his dislike of soft sentencing, as he showed last week, but I am curious as to whether we'll see it..and if we do see it it would be a delicious irony if it focuses on how an attack on Christians is never punished

But hey, I don't want to prejudge, it may be neither, so my apologies in advance to Hitchens Jnr if this week's article is a balanced piece of critical thinking - I simply wanted to put this down before it happened rather than just say 'I said so, honest' and I couldn't really leave it in the comments, could I?

rarghh!

Cyclists - don't you just hate them?

Apparently MPs are to discuss a bill about punishing cyclists for reckless cycling, or killing

To be honest, it seems a little frivolous as I don't think they are very likely to kill us directly, or even indirectly, very often

But what I really want to rant about is the defence of cyclists, who once again continue to believe the rules do not apply to them

They cite stats that say they don't kill anyone - is anyone claiming they do? Their main crimes are breaking road rules and causing distress to pedestrians, nothing so grand as killing - it's a few kilos of thin metal going at most 30 mph, it's not particularly lethal

In particular, Guardian columnist and cycling advocate Zoe Williams says she is exasperated by the references to red light-jumping whenever bikes are discussed.
She insists the practice largely stems from fear, not arrogance, due to the high number of cyclists killed each year by heavy goods vehicles turning left at junctions, and says ministers should concentrate on tackling such deaths if they really want to make the roads safer.

 In short, she doesn't care about the trivial issue of bikes jumping lights - does anyone seriously believe this has anything to do with heavy vehicles on left hand turns? To tell the truth I don't mind the left turn on red (an idea I support for cars) as long as it's not a pedestrian crossing, what about all the other times they jump reds? In my experience typically on straights

I make a note of cyclists I see in the city every day at work, I have so far noted one single cyclist that didn't break a road rule (nothing technical about lights or helmets, usually pavement surfers or light jumpers), the vast majority seem to drive on busy pavements at speed and expect you to move...I will snap soon

And guess what happened just yesterday? I was with my mother, who is fairly immobile these days thanks to a back problem and isn't that agile, crossing at a simple pedestrian light, no turns or anything, and this dickhead in lycra ploughs straight through the middle of us at full speed, nearly knocking her over - yes, the lights were very much red (she's not that slow) and cars were waiting, there was a group of people crossing and this guy didn't even look - I had already crossed so frankly he was lucky to not hit someone, wasn't like he even had a gap!

So, Zoe Williams, defend that one - still a minor issue? Should cars break reds if they have a gap? My answer would be licence bikes as they are becoming so numerous, I should be able to report this sort of person as he is far too fast for me to even kick, and any pleasant, law-abiding cyclist should have absolutely no reason to disagree with this simple rule that all other vehicles are subject to

She adds: "Can you imagine if every time we talked about cars people complained about drivers doing 80mph on the motorway?

This has got to be one of the most up-your-own-arse arguments I've ever heard - bikes jumping red lights is comparable to slight speeding?

Considering light-jumping is an offence for both vehicles why are we making this comparison? You jump a red in a car you will probably get in trouble, why is the same offence for bikes as trivial as doing an appropriate speed

And likewise - drivers can, and do, get punished for doing 80, bikes have no enforcement - get some actual rules being applied then maybe we'll start making crazy comparisons

Maybe I will vote 'yes' after all

Another No to AV campaign video, and now it's just getting silly

To be honest this sort of bullshit where they make up all sorts of nonsense to scare people is starting to wind me up

Firstly Alan B'stard makes a comeback in a ridiculously unrealistic political scenario - fairly clearly aimed at your average man in the street who doesn't do politics, but I was struck by the fact that the result was exactly the same as what we have now - a party who tear up their manifesto and do a deal with the Lib Dems to form government and have no accountability

...in what way is that different to what we have? They just tacked on 'because of AV', when FPTP has given us exactly the same situation

Then they end with the frankly offensive statement 'one person, one vote' - one of the main beefs of reformers like me is that we do not currently have 'one person, one vote' - more than half of voters cannot win and therefore do not even have a chance of being heard, for FPTP campaigners to somehow claim it is one person and one vote is downright lying (of course it technically is, and the film deliberately obscured the lines between voting for a government and a single MP)

What they really want is 'one Tory/Labour voting person, one vote...in a safe seat'

Anyway - Yes to AV! Out of spite