Why the Long Face?

Sep 27, 2012 | Australian Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Media Values, OzPol Values, Values

Why the Long Face?

Joining the Elite

How do you think Australia’s economy is going, compared to the rest of the world?
Sir Roger wonders because some rainbow-lovers say it’s magnificent and some shrill hurricane chasers say we’re going to hell in a handbasket and doom is upon us.

Sir Roger had his servan staff do some forensic research. They discovered that only the following 11 countries (i.e. the top roughly 6%) have AAA ratings with stable or positive outlooks with all three “big” ratings agencies (Fitch, Moody’s, Standard and Poors):

Australia
Canada
Denmark
Finland
Norway
Singapore
Sweden
Switzerland
Germany
Luxembourg
Netherlands

This is nice…isn’t it? That’s an elite group! Even the UK and US aren’t in it.

Shouldn’t we be grateful and count our blessings, even celebrate?

So if we are doing so well, if the economy is so excellent and apparently we’ve really “never had it so good”, why are so many people (all right I mean Jolly Joe and Tony the Tool and all the Liberal Premiers) trying to convince us how badly the economy is being managed, how tough life is, how bad we feel, and how much we’re all struggling?

Remember it’s been 5 years now and they can no longer lay the wreaths at Costello’s door. Maybe they hope no-one will actually look at the facts.

Or did Sir Roger miss something?

You’re aware that a AAA rating is only about the money and in a “two-tiered economy” that may not mean a lot to the people on the lower tier (not being Andrew, Gina or Clive). But there is another list called the UN Human Development Index. It rates countries for Life Expectancy/Health, Education and Standard of Living.

Here are the top few countries (corrected for “inequality”):

Norway
Australia
Sweden
Netherlands
Iceland
Ireland
Germany
Denmark
Switzerland
Slovenia
Finland
Canada
New Zealand would be in the top ten (it is #5 in the uncorrected index)

So surely it can’t get much better than this? I mean, if we’re miserable and pessimistic and afraid of the future in this environment, when would we EVER be happy and appreciative and optimistic?

Sir Roger thinks it’s not the facts that are at play but the clash of perceptual “frames” being manufactured by each side, the optimists and pessimists, that is directing the narrative and the perception of how well we’re doing.

What do you think?

Is Labor Finished?

Jan 2, 2012 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, OzPol Values, Values

Is Labor Finished?

“A Realm of Despicably Effortless Incompetence”

Sir Roger Migently is not angry. He is over it.
According to Friday’s ABC 7.30 Report:

“ The Government is pushing ahead with its demand that dozens of dentists repay $20 million claimed under Medicare for treating people with chronic diseases.

Here’s how it is: Few people can afford dental service, not even preventive.

Just to open your mouth for a dentist will set you back over $70. To have any work done will cost you a lot more.

People who have low-paying jobs or none at all, especially if they have, for example, parental responsibilities, simply can’t afford to go to a private dentist.

They can go to the Dental Hospital (if they happen to live in a capital city) and wait for two or three years in some cases to complete a series of consultations.

Meanwhile, people with missing teeth can lose jobs, miss promotions or, if unemployed, find it extremely difficult to find employment. This is especially serious for people whose work involves standing up in front of people, or managing them: trainers, coaches, teachers, actors, etc. etc. etc.

What can they do?

Until some time ago if you had rotting or broken teeth you could go to your GP and make a case that your dental condition was life-threatening – which it can be because, for example, of gum disease which can be linked to heart disease. Your GP could create a Patient Management Plan which included dental work.

Dentists could, with this Plan, provide their services under Medicare. The problem was that they could claim only one item at a time. Therefore some dentists, if they had to do two extractions in a sitting, chose to space them over more than one date. They weren’t claiming or being paid for work they were not doing.

And even then, if a prosthesis was needed – false teeth – only the prosthetist’s services were covered. The false teeth themselves could cost $2000, which is a lot for an unemployed person.

Older (especially pre-fluoride), less-well-paid Australians often have dreadful dentition. This scheme was the only possible way to stay in the employment game, not to mention to cling onto some sort of quality of life, self-esteem and respect.

It was, frankly a crappy scheme put together by the Coalition years ago. It was, in conscience, the least they could do. And they did the very least they could.

Now the Labor Party thinks even that was too much and wants to junk it.

And on top of that they are punishing dentists with fines for making it possible for that scheme to work.

The most likely reason Health Minister Plibersek has taken this action is as part of a larger strategy to claw back outgoings so that Treasurer Swan can announce his surplus in 2012. This surplus is supposed to prove his economic management credentials (and to poke his tongue out at Fatty Joe Hockey who said Labor would “never deliver a surplus”). But that Labor might win the next election, surplus or not, is a vain hope.

For Sir Roger, this action is the last straw.

With this there is no policy area remaining in which Labor can claim moral or political superiority over the coalition.

On every important issue Labor is in a panicked race to the ethics-free bottom to appease narrow-minded, ignorant, cashed-up bogans who are already, not rusted-on, but welded-on to the coalition.

Gillard today announces a tax-benefit bribe to low-income families with teenage children.

Labor has been in power for three and a half years. They could have done this years ago. Why didn’t they?

They’re in panic.

Do you think immediately, as I did, of Gillard and Abbott (not to mention almost their entire front benches) when you read this from the final chapter of Kevin Dutton’s Flipnosis?

“ If experience teaches us anything, it’s this:
behind the façade of assiduous, fumbling accomplishment there shimmers a realm of despicably effortless incompetence. An imperishable array of faux-pas, cock-ups and howlers that clunks into mortal existence at the whim of the cognitively challenged.”

So who is left to vote for? Who is left with the moral authority to manage a country for the welfare of its people? Not the Coalition ptui! ptui! who lost their moral compass years ago – so who is left who might keep them both honest?

Bugger.

If Thy News of the World Offend Thee…

Jul 9, 2011 | Australian Values, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Legal, Media Values, Values

If Thy News of the World Offend Thee…

…Pluck it out, and cast it from thee.

– Mark 9, 47

News of the World

You know … everyone knows … Rupert Murdoch is an evil genius. And this latest move is certainly worthy of his deep-seated amorality. If Murdoch believes in anything he believes in two things: nothing and money.

His latest move is pure evil genius at his best, perfectly amoral and perfectly greedy.

The “red-top” News of the World was a lightning rod for all that is awful about Murdoch’s evil empire, his willingness not simply to condone – even apparently (at least to Sir Roger) to encourage – unethical journalism (as long as there is money in it) and unethical business practice (if there is money in it), but also to ignore the certainty of the toxic and socially destructive effects his work brings to the world. If there is money in it (see, for example, Fox News and Roger Ailes).

Is Murdoch personally responsible for the harm and hurt he brings to the world? After all, he’s just a businessman and not personally involved in the day to day journalistic decisions of his staff.

If there is one thing Sir Roger has learned in his long years it is this: the nature of an organisation, the culture, the ethical sense, the attitudes, the mood, that pervade and really influence and direct the behaviour of all the people who work within it, spring from just one source and that is its leader.

Everything in an organisation is a reflection of who – and what – the leader is. In a school, that’s the Principal. In a company, it’s the boss. And the News of the World with all its foulness, dishonesty, greed, inhumanity and deceit is a direct reflection of Murdoch. It’s inescapable because who he is as a man influences every part of what and whom he leads.

News of the World had become a huge and easy target for attacking the Murdoch empire generally. So what Murdoch has done is to remove the target. Now there is nothing to shoot at. News of the World had become a floodlit monument to all the real reasons why Murdoch and his megacorp would not be fit and proper controllers of a huge and influential satellite television company.

“What do you mean? What newspaper? I don’t see any so-called ‘News of the World‘.

No NoW, no NoW staff. Do they keep the documents? Or shred them (you know, for commercial-in-confidence reasons)? Can they be sued? For example, by Milly Dowler’s parents or any number of celebrities and politicians?

Murdoch has sacked hundreds (presumably) of staff at NoW. Not too much sympathy there for people who were willing to sell their souls for a shiny penny and the privilege of shitting into the same sewer as the Great Hero.

But he hasn’t sacked the one person he ought to have: the ex-Editor – in the big seat when much of the worst phone-tapping was going on – who is now Chief Executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks.

He can’t fire her, of course, or release her to the wolves (unless there’s money in it) because she is, like the now arrested and out-on-bail Coulson, another magnificent product of the Murdoch School of Business and Journalistic Ethics, the arsepaper-previously-known-as-News-of-the-World.

Murdoch has done all this not out of ethics or integrity or even shame, or even to protect the “good name” of his companies. It is to try to protect his attempt to obtain control of BSkyB and if people get hurt? Too bad.

As we know, but just to remind ourselves, the row over the News of the World was re-ignited this week when it was revealed that it had paid people to hack into the voicemail of 13-year-old Milly Dowler, who was murdered in 2002.

How must Louise Casey, Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses, feel?

Last Sunday, 3 July, under a bellowing, finger-wagging News of the World article [IN DEFENCE OF DIGNITY – opposite a picture of a sexy girl showing not quite so much dignity as breast] moralistically slamming “ruthless lawyers” for berating murder victims’ families “in the wake of the Milly Dowler trial”, “the nightmare ordeal faced by thousands of witnesses and innocent victims of crime” and “the shameful treatment of Bob and Sally Dowler”, she wrote in NoW:

“ Many of us felt such compassion for the brave family of Milly Dowler and anger at the way they were treated in court.
Sadly for me, although I was shocked and appalled, I wasn’t surprised.
When I started working for the rights of victims I thought I was unshockable. But what I have found over the last year has made my jaw drop.
Like most people I assumed that families who, like the Dowlers, have had their lives ripped apart by criminals, would get all the help they need….
What I discovered is they are often not given the support, care or consideration they deserve. Many are still treated as if they are an “inconvenience”, and this can make their grief worse…..
…They deserve to be treated with humanity, dignity and most of all a bit of respect.
So when my report comes out about the treatment of families like these, I ask that you be shocked too…

The next day, 4 July, the story broke in the Guardian that Scotland Yard had discovered Milly Dowler’s voicemail had been hacked by journalists and private investigators of the newspaper Louise Casey had so helpfully and passionately contributed to. They had deleted messages – potential evidence – to free up space for more juicy messages. The deletions misled family and friends into thinking that Milly was still alive.

We bet Louise Casey’s jaw really did drop when she saw that. They probably had to give her smelling salts to bring her round. And a bucket for her shame.

The worst that can happen to Murdoch is probably much too little and now almost too late, for the wrinkled old caricature of (or perhaps inspiration for) Emperor Palpatine, as retribution for the global damage he has done to civil society, let alone the personal grief he has caused during his foul, oh-so-long (and, to an Australian, deeply embarrassing) career. It would be easy to wish there really were a hell for him to be consigned to, “into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched”. Wikipedia says he’s Catholic, but he probably thinks god works for him.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Oh, I dunno, about $US8 Billion?

Late Breaking:

The Guardian newspaper is now also reporting an executive from News International – News Corp’s UK wing – has deleted four or five years worth of emails between staff and their bosses. Might that be illegal? Given the police investigation? Perverting the course of justice (well, British law, anyway, which increasingly is an ass)?

And Brooks told angry staff on Friday, “Yes, we’re in a very bad moment but we will continue to invest in journalism.”

Her logical error is that to “continue” to do something you must already have been doing it.

STOP PRESS:

Alison Frankel on the Reuters website says,

“ …Rupert Murdoch’s soon-to-be shuttered tabloid may not be obliged to retain documents that could be relevant to civil and criminal claims against the newspaper — even in cases that are already underway. That could mean that dozens of sports, media, and political celebrities who claim News of the World hacked into their telephone accounts won’t be able to find out exactly what the tabloid knew and how it got the information.

If News of the World is to be liquidated, [British media law star Mark] Stephens told Reuters, it

“ is a stroke of genius — perhaps evil genius.”

Ah, validation is so satisfying…

Education and Life

Jul 6, 2011 | Arts, Australian Values, Cultural Values, Economic Values, Lifestyle & Life, Values

Education and Life

Be Normal and Fit In

Sir Roger’s close confidante writes:

My mother used to ask me if I wouldn’t prefer to work in a bank. In those days it was a safe occupation – safe as a bank, literally. A job for life with almost guaranteed promotion. I don’t think she was joking.

Both her brothers – my uncles – worked in banks and eventually became bank managers.

She married a doctor. His job was secure as long as people got sick or had babies.

Her father was an Anglican minister. He’d always have a job as long as there was a god – or as long as people believed there was.

I think my mother wanted me to be safe. She worried about my creative, artistic, unworldly temperament. If I relied on it, it might not lead to stability and security. The bank was safe if unexciting and the school system was the ideal training for future decades of boredom and repetition.

And that’s how parents tend to think.

First we want our children to be safe.

Second we want them to do well and succeed.

Third we want them to be normal and fit in.

And we want them to find someone ‘nice’ to settle down with and raise a family (for the most part).

We encourage our children to be reasonable and more or less ordinary; to be ‘realistic’. That’s the way it works, that’s the way things are, that’s the recipe for survival and success.

Mediocrity.

And that’s what schools are exceptional at producing.

Nothing important or worthwhile that has ever been achieved in the world has been achieved by reasonable, realistic, mediocre people. They have been achieved by people prepared to be unreasonable, to see beyond the realistic to the possibilities and to fight to achieve them.

And that’s who our children are before we school them.

Indeed, replied Sir Roger, schools are not only exceptional at producing these results. That is their primary function and the original purpose of the compulsory education system in Prussia to which all modern education more or less owes its tradition. Obedient hardworking bureaucrats, obedient unquestioning factory workers. Today’s office slaves.

Bruce Petty once somewhere said (or drew) something close to,

“ Having reproduced the species, efforts are made to have it employable as cheaply as possible. Through persistence and determination many survive these deformative years and go on to be average.”

Communities Thank Pokie Addicts

Apr 28, 2011 | Australian Values, Corruption, Cultural Values, Economic Values, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, OzPol Values, USPol, Values

Communities Thank Pokie Addicts

You look comfortable under your newspaper . . .

Right around Australia – which is, you know, NSW and a couple of other fairly unimportant (albeit it occasionally charmingly old-fashioned) bits – Community Leaders are in panic over the impending loss of all essential local services due to proposed restrictions on the spending behaviour of poker machine addicts. Particularly in rural areas. The most panic-stricken are the Managers of rural drinking festivals – “pubs”, “RSLs”, “Bowlos” and “Leagues clubs” in the local dialect.

These managers claim that the sky will fall and the earth be swallowed up as earthquakes of doom and the tsunami of proposed poker machine gambling legislation simultaneously devour, desertify and drown their villages.

The playing fields will turn to dust, the cultural centres to rubble, and the cows will stop producing milk.

Country music will no longer be heard. Women will no longer know that they ought to stand by their man. Men will not know when their dog has died.

This is why these beacons of social cohesion, these massifs of Aussie common sense and basic good old Australian values, have gathered together with one voice and with one purpose.

This week they have been seen around the “rule’n’rege’nel” towns of Australia, in its dusty back streets and forlorn parks.

Hundreds of good old Aussie boys in RSL badges and footy jumpers have been talking to down-and-outers throughout the land.

One by one they have approached the homeless pokie addicts who for so many years have taken their life savings, their pension money, newstart allowance, their wife’s money and the money they have embezzled from local businesses, and poured it into the poker machines of the happy-to-oblige no-questions-asked local RSLs, footie clubs and pubs.

“No, don’t bother to get up,” they say to their depressed, broken, often drunken, and emaciated fellow-citizens.

“You look too comfortable down there under your newspaper in your shit, piss and vomit.

“We just want to say thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you! It is only because of you that we are able to maintain the wonderful community services that our establishments provide with a small percentage of the huge profits that we make; thanks to you.

“We’re sorry to hear about your wife and kids and how they’ve left you. We’re sorry to hear you lost your house and your job.

“But make no mistake, you are the real pillars of our community. Without your addiction to our bright, shiny and excitingly noisy machines our towns would be nothing.

“Without you, how would our townsfolk ever hear mediocre, has-been talent scraping the last few dollars off their careers singing Slim Dusty covers? Where would they learn to do line dancing? How would the old folk spend their last days if your gambling addiction wasn’t funding the perfect manicures of their bowling greens?

“We honour your sacrifice (again, sorry about the wife, kids, house and job).

“In fact at our next board meeting the Committee will discuss naming our poker machines after all the pokie addicts who have given our town so much. So much money.

“You are more than welcome at our clubs and pubs on pension day (or if, you know, one of your estranged kids comes across a little money and forgets to hide it from you) to keep up your important work for the community (but please have a bit of a wash first, okay?)”

And as they return to their comfortable houses on the hill, they smile contentedly over a thoughtful job well done, slide into their leather recliners with a Johnny Blue, scowl at that bastard Wilkie on the news, put on the Céline Dion CD, ponder the pros and cons of a future career in politics . . .

. . . and thank god for the pokie addicts.