Yellow bins

We're used to  wheelie bins of various colours, for recycling, green waste and general waste.   Actually, the colour coding doesn't seem to be consistent across different municipalities, but perhaps that's another issue.   But, around here, we have a few all-yellow bins  in our shopping strips.

Looking more carefully, and we noticed that these are located outside newsagents and are lockable.    We saw the other night that they were being used to provide a secure place for after-hours deliveries of magazines.

Reviews of diners

I was fascinated by Annabel Crabbe's piece in the Fairfax media a little while back that said that shared on-line reservation sites such as dimmi.com.au/ which provide central booking services for restaurants also allow restaurants to post comments on diners who use the service!   I couldn't actually find this facility on dimmi, but I guess it is in fact there somewhere.

So, we might all end up with ratings as to how we rate as diners!   What an interesting thought.   The reason we got a lousy table at restaurant "A" last night was because we only left a stingy tip at restaurant "B" the week before!





It presumably only applies if a person uses dimmi to make the reservation, although if the restaurant has signed up for this as a way of providing an on-line reservation service, I guess there's little choice.  Just the same, as with accommodation, I prefer to deal directly with the establishment if I can, which in the case of restaurants, generally involves a phone call rather than the use of an on-line booking service.  Nevertheless, it may well be that this is the way of the future:  if Trip Advisor can provide reviews of just about everything's that travel-related, what's so different about this sort of feed-back?

Publicity

Reading the local Serbian language newspaper, we were interested to see a photo of Julie Bishop, and an advertisement to the general effect that the Australia government was monitoring how it could assist in the flood relief efforts in the Balkans.

But, wait, what's the advertisement immediately below?  Oh, it's in support of the appeal to pay Captain Dragan's legal costs!   Captain Dragan is, to say the least, "controversial" (see undated but probably a little out of date report here).

This is hardly a cause that the Australian Government would be expected to support!  I'm assured that the placement would have raised a few smiles amongst the readership!

The ANZAC tradition

It appears a lot of money is to be spent on commemorating the centenary of the ANZAC landing next year.  However, the amount involved has raised eyebrows, for example in this ABC report.

However, in academia, apparently the issue goes a lot deeper than the money.   The matter is the subject of an article in the April 2014 issue of Quadrant (Mervyn F Bendle, The Military Historians' War on the Anzac Legend).   Bendle's article identifies a group of historians, including (strangely?) some at the Australian Defence Force Academy, who have have described the tradition in such terms as "Anglo-Celtic ...Anzac mythology [and] military fable".   There seems to be quite an overlap between these people and those behind the Honest History website.

Bendle particularly takes to task the views put forward in recent books by Prof Joan Beaumont (Broken Australia:   Australians in the Great War) and James Brown (Anzac's Long Shadow:  The Cost of our National Obsession), but along the way mentions a number of other historians  who have, in one way or another, taken issue with a number of the traditional and popular views of Australia's military history.




Let me say at the outset that I haven't carefully read the books that Bendle mentions, but I was taken by Bendle's colourful description of them as contributions to "the campaign of denigration of what is seen as a 'festival of mythology'".   Bendle quotes Brown as stating, "This year an Anzac orgy begins.  A commemorative program that would make the pharaohs envious".    Brown is an ex-Army officer and an academic at the Australian Defence Force Academy.   Bendle describes Brown's view of the Digger tradition  "as a sort of cultural cancer within the military, promoting mythical ideas about the capabilities of Australian soldiers, and giving them ideas above their station."   Hmm, a the risk of drawing a conclusion here, it sounds as though Brown thinks the tradition pays insufficient respect to the dignity that ought to be afforded to military officers as trained at the Academy.

Bendle notes that another historian in this category is Peter Stanley (author of Bad Characters, Sex, Crime, Mutiny and the Australian Imperial Fire, and who is quoted in the ABC report linked above), who includes in his criticism of the Anzac tradition the fact that it "unfairly favours old Anglo-Celtic families who [have] direct connections with those who served in and lived through the Great War", thus discriminatorily excluding "non-Anglo-Celtic Australians".

Joan Beaumont (these days also a Canberra academic) is said to have a wider range of issues with the tradition.  Summarised, her views appear to be that the tradition insufficiently reflects the role of the women on the home front (such as, having actually to read in letters from the front about the miseries), as well as obscuring the memory of the 1917 general strike.  She sees issues of the war years as leading to Australia in the 1920s as polarised between volunteers and shirkers, conscriptionists and anti-conscriptionists, Protestants and Catholics, workers and bosses and radicals and reactionaries.

Perhaps indeed history is multi-faceted, but the thought crossed my mind that some of these views seem to be in a similar category to an American historian writing about the effect that Paul Revere's ride had on his horse!
   
I notice, however, that the Weekend Australian  is having none of this doubting!   In the issue of 19-20 April, there was both an article by Peter Cochrane, referring to Anzac Day having been "reborn" as an appreciation of the trauma suffered not only by those who were directly involved but also by later generations in a variety of ways. And in the review section of that issue, an extract from Patsy Adam-Smith's 1978 work, The Anzacs, was published (although perhaps this isn't entirely unconnected with the fact that the book itself is being republished).

Accommodation in Canberra

This post is a bit belated, but when we were in Canberra for the Australia Day long weekend, we once again stayed at the Quality Inn in the Dickson precinct.    The main appeal is that this location is on the same side of Canberra as the St Sava Monastery.   Even though the hotel doesn't look much from outside, it's very satisfactory, although a power fault of some sort one morning meant there was no hot water and the lifts weren't operating (we did get a bit of a discount off that night's accommodation).    But even though it's ultimately owned by the CFMEU, News Corp papers are free for the taking along with the Fairfax papers, at the reception desk.  

As to the ownership, I did pause to think about this, but then decided that I've never previously considered that as an issue when deciding where to stay (I wonder if we've ever stayed at a property owned by the mafia?)  Thus if the place ticks most of the other boxes, why should I change my approach now?   Anyway, all the electrical leads are "tagged".  Perhaps I ought to be re-assured by that?

In fact, my employer's clients are mostly in the corporate sector, yet the offices are in a building owned by Cbus.  So, if they're not worried about issues such as this, why should I be?

Dickson itself is sometimes promoted as a good place to eat. I think has more to do with quantity of restaurants rather than quality, and Asian restaurants of one variety or another are very well represented.    There's also a Peruvian restaurant, but we contented ourselves with looking at it from the outside.

Also in Canberra for the weekend were a number of bike riders.   I don't think they were an "outlaw" gang, but they were noisy (and intimidating), just the same!   We saw them arrive in groups of 15 - 20, but I was just finishing my visit to the National Archives when they all arrived at the nearby carpark - hundreds of them.   The Archives staff member who joined us watching them arrive kindly pointed out that there was a side exit, so a couple of us were able to leave without swimming against the tide of all the bikes.

1st March: developments in the print media

The first day of March:   summer has officially ended and we're into autumn, The Age's Saturday and Sunday editions have joined the weekday editions in becoming tabloids and at the newsagent a new Saturday paper was on display, called The Saturday Paper.

Apparently the format of a newspaper is deeply symbolic for journalists, but I haven't quite grasped what the significance of the change at the Age is so far as mere readers are concerned.  Of course, in days past, you bought a tabloid at the newspaper stand at the station because it was easier to read in the train, but in this era of iPods and the absence of newsstands (and, dare I say, trains often so crowded that it's hard to read anything!), that's not a consideration. And, anyway, the Herald which you always read going home was broadsheet.   So I'm in a state of bemusement.

I had a pang of conscience after leaving the newsagent without buying The Saturday Paper.  The newsagent told me it came from the same stable as The Monthly, so that wasn't exactly a great recommendation.  But, maybe in the interests of supporting journalistic diversity, I ought to buy a copy just to try it out.........we'll see.  (Edit:  I see that the launch has attracted the attention of the ABC).

Olympic Sports

Well, the Winter Olympics are over.    It's interesting that, every time the normal Olympic Games, or the Winter Olympic Games, occur, we often end up watching sports that we just don't bother about the rest of the time.

Yes, they're usually fast-moving and entertaining, but so often the rules and scoring systems are just a mystery!

And just how do people start off in sports like bobsledding, curling and so on?  Perhaps these sports are encouraged in Nordic countries, yet we find Australians participating at an elite level in events that we rarely hear about and for which there would seem to be few, if any, facilities here.
















True, some of the skiing and bobsledding events are indeed truly amazing, and the ice hockey is fast and furious, and, yes, these sports are not often televised at other times.   However, even if they were, would we actually watch them?

I guess it doesn't matter if the "pull" of these sports, at Olympic standards, is that we know we're watching them at the "elite" level, and perhaps that in itself is enough!
 

Retuning

It was 7 February, and SBS was showing "no signal".   I then remembered that somewhere I had read that further changes of the some of the TV channel frequencies was occurring.    In fact, it was an advertisement in the local paper that I had read.  If it had been mentioned on SBS - the channel that, at least so far as we were concerned, was affected - then we'd missed it. [Edit - seems that this is in fact what had occurred, or perhaps we watch at the wrong times.]

The challenge then was to do the retuning.   I scrolled through the menu, and tried "update".   After this had finished, still no SBS (even though I got a report that 7 channels had been found - must see if we really do have anything new).  Only when I set it to "install" was SBS again available.

The Bridge (2)

I bought the January issue of the local newsletter after I posting my initial comments about the disappearance of Lorne's iconic Swing Bridge. This contained some more information about the bridge's demise.

It seems that the bridge was closed (we are told, for safety reasons) last March. The planning process was then said to be “in motion”, but at least one resident claims to have heard nothing. Then in the space of 5 hours, supposedly without any notice at all, the bridge was demolished in November. As the letter writer says, “No farewell to a piece of Lorne history, no consultation yet again with the people who use and love it – just gone”.

Hardest hit, it seems, was the previous operator of the cafe on the bank of the river. No-one could get to him over the winter months, and he departed. Some have seen it as unfair that a new operator arrived just before Christmas.

The old sign re-emerges

The recent demolition of a building nearby has revealed an old advertising sign.  


However, its appearance is likely to be short-lived as a block of studio apartments is to be erected on the site.

Rupert

We had seen the 7.30 segment dealing with David Williamson's play Rupert, so when we saw the play at MTC, we had a general idea of what to expect.  In the interview with Leigh Sales, Williamson made no secret of his dislike of Rupert Murdoch, so I guess it wasn't surprising that the ABC saw fit to give the play a plug!

Obviously to compress events covering a (very busy) lifetime into a little over two hours requires that the play move at a fast pace, and doubtless there has been much simplification.   The actors (with the exception of the "old" and "young" Murdochs) change roles repeatedly, often before your eyes.  Yes, Murdoch comes across as quite driven, but in a way, Dean O'Shea's performance portrays him, if not as likeable, then as somewhat captivating.  In fact, Sir Frank Packer and his sons (Clyde and Kerry), and Bob Hawke (although just a cameo appearance) fare worse at Williamson's hands than Murdoch.  In one review the point was made that Williamson leaves it to the audience to make up their own mind about Murdoch, but in the Age,  Rebecca Harkins-Cross  accuses Williamson of pulling his punches!    No doubt there's no love lost at Fairfax for Murdoch, but this seems an odd sort of comment.  Does the reviewer really have more information or is she suggesting that Williamson ought to have dug deeper (or made something up)?  

From 7.30

As I've said, it's fast-moving, so a pre-requisite to appreciating it is to have at least a basic knowledge of Murdoch's life.   But it's good to see Williamson breaking out from his familiar style, and the full house at the performance we attended appeared to like what they saw.

Liveability

I see that the Economist has decided that Melbourne is the world's most "liveable" city.  Well, I don't disagree that it's quite pleasant living in Melbourne, but let's not become complacent.   Melbourne isn't perfect.   Dare we mention, for example, public transport?  As one post on Trip Advisor points out, with a train frequency of 30 minutes in the evening on many lines, how can Melbourne gain this title?  Evening tram frequencies on many routes aren't much better.  And, when one does arrive, have the assessors ever tried to squeeze on an over-crowded tram after a night football game has finished?  An airport rail link would help some of us avoid that peak-time congestion on the freeway, too.  And don't even mention the Metro tunnel (compare the progress being made on London's Crossrail project).

By the way, note that there's a down-side to being a liveable city:   some companies use surveys such as this to determine the amount of "hardship allowance" paid to expatriates asked to relocate to the cities concerned.  Hence, Melbourne might find it more challenging to attract expatriates because they might like to trade a little "liveability" for a slightly better  allowance!

News Corp and Fairfax

The Australian has been irritating me for the last week or so:    it has managed to include an article referring in one way or another to Pamela Williams' book, Killing Fairfax, just about every day.

I don't doubt that the book is interesting, and there certainly seems to be a story to be told, but I really am over the constant harping on it.



Linked to this, the Australian has also been speculating that the Age wants to drop weekday print editions.    There was a report about this in May, and it featured again in the "Media" section this week (it's probably on-line, but I couldn't find it, but since it's behind the paywall anyway, perhaps it doesn't matter -- or was it pulled?).  An article reporting that Fairfax strongly denied that there are plans to wind down the Age's print editions in the near future was prominently published the next day, apparently after Fairfax "embarked on a PR offensive" ( see http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/fairfax-boss-denies-plans-to-stop-the-presses/story-fn91v9q3-1226687781989.)   (again, sorry about the paywall).

I'm no great fan of Fairfax, but all this seems to be over-the-top and leads me to question News Corp's motives.

Surveys

I've had a couple of surveys recently.  One was web-based (the request to participate being by email) as a follow up to the car purchase, and other was a phone call.  The phone call was automated and basically started off seeking voting intentions but moved on to the asylum seekers and the "pink batts" issues.

I don't normally respond to surveys of any sort, but in each case I was prepared to make an exception.   In the case of the car purchase survey, I felt that some sort of feedback (positive and negative) was appropriate.  In the case of the voting intentions survey, I was slightly re-assured by the fact that it was automated, and, as we read so much about polls regarding voting intentions, I thought it might be interesting to participate (even though there was no indication whether this particular one was being conducted on behalf of the media, a political party or someone else).


But in each case, after a few preliminary questions, the survey descended into questions that, to my mind, were quite intrusive.   For example, the car survey sought information about income, and the voting intentions survey sought quite detailed information along the lines about who in the household makes decisions about matters such as the purchase of insulation.

However, neither gave an option of, "decline to comment, move on to the next question"!   Needless to say, I drew the line at this type of question.   I think that the voting intention survey may nevertheless have recorded my responses up to the point where I hung up. On the other hand, the car purchase survey never reached a point where I could push the "submit" button, so they missed out on the responses to even the basic questions (as was witnessed by the fact that we received a "follow up" email a week or so later, reminding us that we had not responded).

I guess the people who design these surveys think they know what they're doing - but my own view is that the results they obtain are likely to be representative only of people who are prepared to give out a lot of personal information - and if that's a cross-section of society, then I for one would be very surprised.

The Age's readership

An article in the Sunday Age a little while back referred to a survey of bicycle accidents.  Since it relied on self-selected responses, it's conceivable that there may be issues regarding how representative the survey was.    But I was fascinated by the paragraph that read -
"The accidents in both data sets tended to be in Melbourne's inner north.  It is not known whether those in the reader-generated set come from that area because of higher cycling rates, higher accident rates, or a bias of Age readers likely to live in the area".  (Underlining added)

Hmmm, is not this area is Mr Brandt's heartland?   Interesting that the Age goes a little way towards suggesting that there may be an element of correlation between its readership and Mr B's supporter base!

Southbank

There are many occasion when I don't agree with Bruce Guthrie, but recently in the Sunday Age he addressed the issue of the speed at which many (but certainly not all) cyclists travel along Southbank Promenade.  The article's heading concerned a different matter and there was a bit of anti-Doyle rant (both of which I will pass over), but he stated  that there's a bike speed limit of 10 kph for cyclists along this strip and that it seems to be regularly exceeded.  

Looking across the river when eating at Southgate in the evening

At times, we eat at the outside tables next to the Promenade, and I have certainly thought to myself that the mix of heavy pedestrian traffic and bikes travelling at speeds of way more than 10 kph in this area is surely a recipe for trouble.

Buying a Car (again) - and the power of the media

We recently went through the process of buying a car.   There are a lot of models to choose from in the category we were looking at, and the biggest issue was to reduce the number of possibilities to a manageable "short list".  Several models didn't make it to the "short list" for reasons that might be considered quite trivial.   And then the final decision (for us) turned on quite small details. 

VW was one of the brands we considered.    However, in such a competitive market, the report in the Age today (on the front page),  had it appeared earlier, would have eliminated this brand from our thinking ("eliminated"?  The expressions "ejected" and " totally expelled" also come to mind!), just because of the doubts that it raises.  This is in spite of the fact that not a lot of evidence is put forward by the Age:  there has been no final verdict in the case before the Coroner, and although some other instances of power loss are mentioned, only one other specific case is described (potentially, of course, more may emerge).  It's also interesting that a couple of other brands are stated to have cases where vehicles have gone "limp".

1 April

At first, I didn't get it - a full page newspaper advertisement by the "Australian Bureau of MotorWays" stating that lanes on highways are being reserved on a busy day for a particular brand of cars?   Ahh, but it's 1 April, isn't it?!!

So .... what was that all about?

I was at home during the afternoon when the latest leadership issue within the Labor Party was occurring.  In spite of knowing that nothing was to happen until the caucus meeting at 4.30, I turned the TV on to the news channel.    Isn't amazing how you can be drawn into the issue?

The media at work

A lot of the coverage in the lead up to the vote was journalists interviewing other journalists, recapitulating as to what had happened and speculating on what might happen.  But really the only news was that the clock was ticking.  It was like watching paint dry!

And the outcome - no change!

 I did my best to keep out of range of the TV, by doing some trimming in the garden and working on some minutes on the computer - but I still found myself drifting past the TV intermittently!    And then the whole issue fizzled out!    I promised myself that "next time" I'd be more disciplined and use my time more productively!

The Age as a tabloid

I asked the newsagent as I was buying my (broadsheet) newspaper whether he was selling more copies of the Age now that it had gone tabloid - oops, sorry, "compact".   Somewhat to my surprise, he told me that, although it was only early on the first morning, yes, he had sold a few more.   Why this might be so eludes me, but apparently this is consistent with the research as cited by Jonathon Green.

Jonathon Green says that the research looked at everything from the average arm-reach of female readers to commuting habits of non-newspaper consuming youth. Well, maybe.....  However, I still find it hard to believe that there are potential buyers of newspapers out there who make their decision based on the format.   It's a bit like choosing a meal in a restaurant according to the colour of the plate on which it is served.

The last weekday broadsheet issue

But even if there's a potential for an increase in sales,  I can't help but think the real reason for the change may well have been tucked away in Bruce Guthrie's piece.   He says that it's about cost cutting:   "....by changing formats Fairfax can print the Melbourne and Sydney papers at regional printing plants, allowing it to scrap expensive Melbourne and Sydney facilities and save tens of millions of dollars each year...".   Now this really does seem to have a ring of credibility about it!

Green's comments about the broadsheet being traditionally linked to "quality journalism" are interesting, although he points out that the real reason for the broadsheet format was that it was needed for newspapers that carried large volumes of classified advertising - no longer an issue for the weekday editions of the Age.

My personal take is that it's been a pity that the reverse hasn't applied:   maintaining the Age as a broadsheet until now does not seem to have preserved the quality of the journalism as cost cutting has taken its toll.