and pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space
The Telegraph apologises …
That’s unlikely to please Mr. Conroy or dampen his enthusiasm for ramming legislation though in just one week. Such haste is something that used to trouble young Conno … from 2006
All this and more at …
The ABC are quite concerned. There was even the suggestion that the photograph had been chosen to make Conroy look dopey. Short of wearing red underpants on his head how could he be made to look dopier than usual?
Truth is though Mr Conroy is trying to do exactly what every dictator does … muzzle his critics.
James Paterson writing in the Australian …
ALL politicians are self-interested. But few are as shameless as Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.
His proposed “media reforms” may be a thinly veiled response to a technologically driven changing media landscape, but we all know their real purpose: to punish and rein in the federal government’s critics in the media…
Conroy has been egged on by Labor backbenchers and the Greens for months about the evils of media companies such as News Limited, publisher of The Australian. Former Greens leader Bob Brown famously dubbed News as part of the “hate media” and called for licensing for newspaper proprietors. Current Greens leader Christine Milne called for a “fit and proper test” so the government could control who invested in the media.
In November 2011 Labor senator Doug Cameron said reporting in News Limited paper The Daily Telegraph that Kevin Rudd might challenge for leadership of the ALP amounted to a “threat to democracy”. Of course, when Rudd did challenge less than six months later, Cameron was among his number-crunchers.
Steve Gibbons, another Labor backbencher, even called for individual journalists to receive fines to improve the “fairness of our media”.
Conroy has finally delivered in spades for the most deranged critics of the media.
Breakfast on the front verandah. A glorious day. We have been in the grip of a heat wave and it has finally broken. Last night I slept under the covers. This morning the world is made new.
Fifi McGee, the foxiest Fox Terrier in the world, is racing around like a puppy. Every Galah, Cockatoo and Corella is celebrating raucously.
The view from my breakfast table.
As I ate breakfast a family of Black-faced Cuckoo-shrikes worked their way along that avenue of trees having their breakfast too. They are very fond of caterpillars. Red-rumped Parrots have been flashing past, the males like flying jewels. Welcome Swallows have been passing in large flocks, their migration must be just getting underway.
If I walk around the house, the view to the east is across the vineyard, across a permanent creek where I have seen platypus the last couple of days, to a reserve. The trees there are River Red Gums and Grey Box, a little further up the slope there are some beautiful Yellow Gums. White-browed Woodswallows have been hanging around there all summer and you can always find the resident Brown Treecreepers and their friends. The regular Swamp Wallabies have been joined this year by a mob of Eastern Grey Kangaroos.
Finally it feels like autumn, at last a day to pick grapes …
Just one problem, no grapes.
It has been very dry this summer. I have ground water but it is too salty for irrigation. Last week there was a small crop, not quite ready. This week there is no crop at all. The birds have stripped the lot.
When I was a kid it was quite often the case that an Irishman, a Scotsman and an Englishman went into a pub where various stereotypic scenarios led to a punchline. Better a punchline than a punch.
I recall being told the one about the kids at Bondi being menaced by a shark, a man racing into the water and fighting the shark with his bare hands and saving the kids. A passing reporter races up and interviews our intrepid hero who says something like “Cor blimey, guvnor, anyone woulda done it” thereby revealing his cockney origins.
The headline read “Pommy bastard beats into kids pet”.
What would happen these days? Well the pom would get the sack for a start, when the video goes viral, for being on sickleave from his job in Merthyr Tydfil. What, he was Welsh, you say. Well far to many Welsh people here in Australia. Not on a 457 visa I hope. What about his press secretary.
I digress, the reporter in the New Australia would probably get to keep his job, he’d have more sense than to cause offense to visiting heroes in our roxonised society, he’d play a straight bat (Aussie reporters will learn to do that, no need to worry that the art is dying in our cricketers) he would rush in his good news story. The editor would give thanks, something he could report today without falling foul of Conroy’s latest straight jacket.
What are we coming to? Conroy, you will recall wanted to filter the internet, I guess it would slow it all down enough to warrant fibre to the home. Now it’s a press commissar to licence reporters. All because those newspapers that earn a living selling papers and advertising have had the temerity to inform the community that the ALP have cocked up everything they’ve touched, broken every promise that they’ve made whilst led by a backstabbing, lying virago with a very shady past and a treasurer who thinks a surplus is a minus number, and a tax is a saving.
So my message in response is Get Your Hands OFF Freedom of Speech. And get them off my super, as well.
As for our other Welsh would be hero, the shark was a harmless variety and sick, probably dying, the children were in no danger whatever, Sir, you were not only defrauding your employers but attempting to defraud us too. I will be writing to the RSPCA, Hugh Wirth knows what to do with people who molest our sea creatures.
Let me declare a conflict of interest … I’m a vegetarian. But not a proselytising vego. Where the rain falls you can feed me on just 10% of the arable land required to feed people on meat. Great. But you can’t grow cabbages in the desert. So far as feeding people goes the rangelands can only be used for grazing animals. Australia is mostly desert.
The unabridged version of this talk can be found <HERE>.
ABC headline “Canberra comes to life with 3D mapping“.
It’d take more than that.
It was a cold and stormy night and the captain said “Gather round, me hearties, and I’ll tell ye a tale … It was a cold and stormy night and the captain said … ”
… and another fourteen <HERE>.
A tax on email, please don’t tell Conroy.
The guy leaves, . . . but, he is curious . . . So he goes back into the bar.
The guy leaves, but finds it very interesting, so he decides to try it one more time.
The robot leans in real close and says, “Tell me, you people still happy with Gillard?”
bobmcgee 