More Australians switched off ABC politically correct propaganda in 2014

People are bored of the sermons, the half-truths, and carefully filtered messages. Who wants to be told what to think?

The ABC lost nearly 4% of its audience last year. Australians are tuning out the $1.1 billion ABC public broadcaster, and it has nothing to do with the small 5% efficiency cuts. The fall in popularity occured before the cuts. The three commercial TV channels in Australia all did much better at maintaining their popularity — despite suffering larger cuts to their budgets.

The ABC share is down to 10.08 per cent of 16 – 54 year olds. Nearly 90% of working age Australians are paying for the ABC but not watching much.  The losses in the over-55 age group, traditionally the ABC stronghold, were almost as large as the younger groups.

Is the ABC biased towards Green politics?

Christine Milne leader of  The Greens, at a rally outside Parliament House. Photo: Daily Telegraph.

“Only” 40% of ABC journalists vote Green.

The Australian, last week: Older viewers abandon the ABC

THE ABC was the worst performing television broadcaster last year, losing 3.95 per cent of group audience across all the channels before the government announced budget cuts.

In a sign the public broadcaster has become out of touch with key groups, the ABC even suffered a 3.80 per cent audience decline in prime time for the ­uncontested older demographic of viewers aged over-55, which is largely shunned by the commercial networks.

The Daily Telegraph: Their ABC? Viewers turned off aunty in 2014

The figures from ratings body OzTAM show the ABC’s main channel suffered the largest drop in audience share of the main networks, falling from 11 per cent in 2013 to 10.08 per cent last year in the 16-54 age group.

The ABC as a whole lost audience at about twice the rate of the Seven, Nine and Ten networks, and about three times the rate against their main channels.

9.1 out of 10 based on 113 ratings

186 comments to More Australians switched off ABC politically correct propaganda in 2014

  • #
    the Griss

    I used manual channel programming to “skip” all ABC and SBS channels.(And a few others)

    I don’t even see them if I channel surf. 🙂

    240

    • #
      James Bradley

      Griss,

      Sure you can surf with a flat screen, but you can’t catch a tube.

      240

      • #
        the Griss

        I have an old 36″ tube in the back room..

        Can’t lift it, so I certainly wouldn’t want to try and catch it. 🙂

        120

        • #
          Greg Cavanagh

          I’m still tubing. 🙂
          None of that new fangled flat thingy for me.

          70

          • #
            Annie

            We still had a tubey thingy in England but gave it away before moving back over here. We would still have it otherwise. Some lucky person in North Yorkshire has it!

            Flat screens only here…

            40

      • #
        LevelGaze

        A very wise old man once told me three things to avoid in life – flat beer, flat roofs, flat women.
        Didn’t mention flat screens, and I personally love them.

        50

    • #
      Dennis

      Me too Griss

      50

    • #
      albert

      I didn’t switch off the ABC in 2014, I did it years earlier

      330

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        My view is that most news these days is mostly heavy propganda, so i ususally read alt news sources around the globe to try and put the picture together myself.

        Addiotnally, I find most “news” can be summed up with one question that is asked too frequently – “how do you feel?”

        Feelings arent truth, but you would think based on this nonsense that “news” is based on emotion, not fact.

        As such, we are a nation of intellectual pygmies.

        350

        • #
          Streetcred

          By ‘surfing’ the international blogs and news sites, one can be ‘informed’ (pre-warned) in Australia at least two days before the local lamestreammedia pick up on it … particularly the newspapers.

          120

      • #
        aussieguy

        I stopped watching ABC on TV when I was a teen in high school…I recall they used to air “Captain Planet and the Planeteers”. Essentially, it was eco-propaganda disguised as a cartoon. The theme was the same over and over again. Big, evil corporations polluting the Earth. Mythical messiah powered from five rings worn by 5 teenagers, will help the planet. You should join their cult by calling yourself a “Planeteer”! /sarc

        Over time, it got boring. There’s only so many times one can say: “Humans bad. Planet good”. When I finally got access to the Internet at home, I found out who created the damn show. The idea came from Ted Turner. Founder of CNN. Rich and powerful supporter of eco-nuts. (Current net worth of over US$2 billion as of Jan 2015).

        I went to the ABC website twice last year, as someone sent me links.

        One was when Leigh Sales (7:30 Report) grilled Bill Shorten on what his economic policy was.
        (He’s got nothing! How can you be an alternative Prime Minister if you don’t have a fiscal policy for this nation?)

        And the other was Emma Alberici (Lateline) who took on that representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir. The guy refused to answer questions, because he knew it would reveal their group’s intentions. (This group is officially BANNED in other countries. For some reason they are not banned in Australia.)

        …Two rare moments where ABC appeased the Right. (Who happened to be the side that wants to cut ABC’s budget!)


        I don’t see the point of state sponsored television. Sooner or later, someone with an agenda will take hold of it and promote their own nonsense. Often, its against the people who want to be informed, NOT indoctrinated… This is what has happened to ABC and SBS. SBS is more subtle, while ABC is more bleeding obvious.

        SBS used to promote integration of immigrants to Australian society via their English courses. This was in the 1980s, when my mother received a booklet and would tune in each evening to follow along with the broadcast. (Chinese to English course).

        Now they’re about illegal immigrants, everyone else’s culture but Australian culture, endless indigenous-related stories, and re-airing of Al Jazeera (English) stories. Unless you’re a sports fan (Dakar Rally, Tour de France, English Premiere League, etc) and can’t afford pay TV; you shouldn’t even bother with SBS. Even then, one is bound to find someone will illegally share the broadcast through P2P networks like Torrent, etc.


        Regardless, when media “goes Left”, it doesn’t last. The general public doesn’t align with Left leaning principles (if you can call them principles!). Its mainly because they are bordering on delusional and utopian. This “Fantasy thinking” just doesn’t click with anyone else but indoctrinated university students of “soft science” and useless degrees.

        Commercial TV is smart enough not to lean too far, as they depend on the market. You know what they say: “You just went full Leftie, never go full Leftie. You go full Leftie, you go home empty handed.” ( In reference to this => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6WHBO_Qc-Q )

        ABC and SBS can end up quickly out of touch, as taxpayers have no choice but to continue funding their BS. As seen in this particular case, they have no clue until people start walking away.

        That’s actually a good thing! Because if no one watches ABC, they will be forced to change OR end up having their existence questioned! ie: Why do we need ABC when no one watches it any more? Why not use that money for another school or hospital? Or heaven forbid, pay down our debt so we can lower that AUD$11 billion in interest we’re paying each year. (Its the interest that will economically enslave our children.)

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    • #
      Krudd Gillard of the Commondebt of Australia

      If you ever again want to experience what it is like watching the ABC just water board yourself in the lavatory for a few seconds.

      80

    • #
      Bulldust

      Thought I’d jump in here. As you guys are generally old farts and fartettes (myself included) I thought you might be interested in streaming TV. There really is no reason to watch traditional programmed TV anymore. Many shows are on Youtube (think all the comedy panel shows for instance, like QI, 8 out of 10 cats, etc and much more of course) and most TV channels offer a streaming service which will mutate into a paid service in the next year. ABC has iView, channels 7-10 and Foxtel are all morphing towards IPVoD (internet video on demand). You may have seen all the advertising for Stan, Presto, Netflix (coming in March, but diminished service in Oz until their contracted shows are freed up from Foxtel) and so on.

      Many people use P2P to download (pirate) content of course, because they hate paying Murdoch/Telstra monopoly rents for GoT (Game of Thrones… tell me you knew that, please), but the government is getting the ISPs to come up with a code of conduct to warn you when you do that … yes, even iiNet will have to get on board.

      Never mind, the next wave is KODI (used to known as XBMC). Set this up (needs a small amount of technieness) and you can pretty much watch any program, live channel, sport, series or film either live or on demand. Only restriction is the bandwidth and the quality of the source. Google is your friend here. You need add-ons to get KODI cranked up – personal favourites are 1Channel, Phoenix and Genesis. Essentially this is to streaming video what P2P and TPB (The Pirate Bay) was to downloading.

      Programmed TV is the way of the past … most of the younger generation in North America streams their content, with Netflix being the preferred provider. Nothing to stop Aussies using a VPN and accessing US Netflix … should cost US$15 a month at most (all up). It is also perfectly legal. Depending on the quality of the VPN and your bandwidth, results may vary. For streaming content I would recommend a decent ADSL2+ connection or better (i.e. NBN). ADSL2+ will probably struggle if more than one person streams at a time … assuming a decent resolution such as 720p.

      One advantage of streaming is that you can use tablets, iPads, smartphones, PCs, laptops or TVs (assuming a smart dongle or connection to one of the aforementioned devices), as long as they are connected to your wifi. The only reason to watch regular TV is probably live sport events – and even that could be done through KODI as long as someone is providing a feed.

      70

      • #
        Robert

        Netflix for streaming only is $7.99 plus some tax I think, I pay for it using PayPal. I put an antenna on the roof a few years back for local programming as we have some “classic” channels like MeTV, Antenna TV, and a few others that play a lot of old stuff like the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Abbot and Costello Show, etc.

        Commercials are the thing I really loathe about the television, hence NetFlix for the bulk of my viewing. Hulu has some good lineups too, but Hulu Plus still has commercials unlike NetFlix so I only do the one subscription. Also a LOT of the things I would want to watch on Hulu are not available other than through the computer so if you have a smart tv that can do Hulu your lineup will be restricted even with the subscription.

        20

      • #
        Chris, Hervey Bay.

        Ok, I have just found out how wonderful the ABC service is to Australians living overseas.

        Right now, I’m back in Philadelphia and would like to see some Live, streaming news covering the Queensland State elections tonight. I think that this coverage would qualify as being a newsworthy event.

        I try to log into ABC24 and get this BS,

        Under its program licensing agreements, ABC iview is provided geo-blocked to Australia, which means that programs cannot be played on iview outside of Australia.

        So, I scratch around the ABC web site looking for some streaming news service, NOTHING. Unless I’m blind and missed the link.

        So, off I go to check 7,9,10, and again, I drew a blank. NO streaming news service out of Australia.

        At least I can’t find one. Maybe someone can help me out with a simple URL.

        When I’m home in Hervey Bay, I can choose any number of streaming news services to see what is going on in Philadelphia.

        I guess I’ll find out who the Premier of Queensland is,, once I get back home in April. (and it will be after the first)

        BTW, It’s Bloody cold, where is the Global Warming ?????

        50

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Makes sense … Streaming TV, instead of Screaming TV.

        30

  • #
    James Bradley

    The ABC is deluded in believing ‘It’s Our ABC’, and it’s staff has serious psychological issues in beliving it is balanced.

    750

    • #
      Kevin Lohse

      Well if nobody wants to watch it, as far as ABC is concerned it IS their ABC. We have similar problems with the deluded BBC, Mummy of them all. BTW. Will you please take Natalie Bennett back? A joke’s a joke, but this one goes too far.

      561

      • #

        Kevin,
        Natalie Bennett is the Tory Party’s secret weapon. That is why David Cameron threatened to pull out the leaders debates in the forthcoming General Election if the Greens were not included. They take votes from both the LibDems and Labour. Problem is that Natalie Bennett, like all the Greens, cannot stand a cross-examination of the policies. That is why she got skewered by Andrew Neil a couple of weeks ago.

        150

        • #
          Bulldust

          It would be fun to see someone like that run a country and let it be a lesson for all…

          Oh wait, we already saw the effects of communism.

          70

        • #
          Annie

          Thanks for that link Kevin. NB was absolutely skewered by AN wasn’t she? A brilliant interview…a pity it won’t be seen by more of what my mother calls “The Great British Public”!

          20

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        I was going to ask who Natalie Bennett was, but Owen Morgan @ comment 11 answered me.

        Still, we’ve lumbered you with Germaine Greer, Rolf Harris, Lewandowsky (even if he wasn’t born here) and Natalie Bennett.
        Revenge for Bodyline.

        230

    • #
      Dennis

      The only independent broadcaster they now brag. Remind me, what world do those fools live in?

      240

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      “Our ABC”; as in belonging to them?

      40

  • #
    Eric Worrall

    It’s the same delusional arrogance as Obama’s claim to speak for people who didn’t vote for him. The ABC think they are the “voice of the people”, even if people don’t want to watch their TV service.

    450

    • #
      albert

      Obama speaks for the people LOL LOL LOL LOL. I’m sure ‘the people’ wanted him to protect the US Ambassador surrounded by hostile Arabs on Sept 11, 2012. Does Sept 11 mean anything to Obama ?

      190

      • #
        Bobl

        Yes, it’s risable, a bit like saying Christine Milne cares about people. Obama is one very partisan man, possibly with a racial leaning (based on voting trends and statements about criminals who would be “Just like his own son if he had one”).

        How could such a person ever speak for middle aged white male conservatives who want keystone passed? Only the Parliament (congress I suppose) really speaks for the people (assuming the party politics can be put aside). Somehow his failure to recognise the primacy of the citizens representatives is arrogant and rude, offensive to the majority of citizens who put the congress there.

        My disclaimer to the spooks, I bear no ill toward the USA at all, love the people there particularly in the midwest. While I don’t agree with your President’s arrogance and methods, or for that matter the principle of giving a single individual such unbridled power over the elected citizens representatives or any power to legislate at all (not very democratic, in fact it’s almost totalitarian). I do think the world needs a strong stable USA which seems to be far from what we have – what is it now? 17 Trillion in debt? The fall of the USA and it’s slide into nanny stateism and lefty PC culture is a big risk for the whole world, it’s worrying to me, perhaps even more so than Australia’s slide to banana republic status.

        250

        • #
          Spetzer86

          Good news! Keystone passed the Senate. So there’s that. Still might get vetoed, but we’ll see. Theoretically, the President doesn’t have tremendous power. Obama just isn’t much of a theorist.

          Won’t speculate about whether Obama’s hypothetical son would be a criminal.

          Looks like we’re sitting at a little over $18 trillion in debt. http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/ Still giving money away for special projects.

          USA unfunded liabilities may be over $205 trillion. When those come due some interesting things are going to start happening.

          70

          • #
            Robert

            Not “theoretically” it is per the Constitution and the separation of powers between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches.

            The problem is the presidents began setting the precedent of using Executive Orders and other means of circumventing the limits on their powers and congress never did anything about it. Obama should have been impeached, but then we’d have Biden as CiC which is not an improvement by any stretch. The other aspect of it is if he was impeached everyone would start crying racism which is the only reason Obama was elected in the first place. If the man was white he’d have been hung out to dry long ago.

            30

        • #
          Streetcred

          KeystoneXL passed the Senate yesterday. Let’s see what the dictator-in-chief does now.

          70

      • #
        Leonard Lane

        Albert, Obama has a very skewed world view. First his father was an anti-colonial, anti west, communist and Muslim. And his mother was a radical leftist favoring Cuba and the Soviet Union. He was raised mostly in Hawaii and Indonesia as well in mainland America.
        I believe he adopted his mother,s views, and more so his father’s views. Then, his grandparents took over bringing him up and there was an “uncle” in there somewhere who taught him other things that were way out of step with most America. I think he is amoral and many think he is a narcissist.
        He has never worked, he has never even led a scout troop, he says he worked as a “community organized” which to many people connotes leftist and agitator. He knows nothing of working and scrimping to get by, he knows nothing of leadership, he knows nothing about how tough times can be. He has skimmed by all his live and then all of a sudden he is President. It is to our great shame that he was re-elected. He panders to enough people to get about half the vote and campaigns on mostly bogus beliefs but lots of promising something for nothing to get another small percentage to be elected. And many of his vital records, grades etc. have been sealed. So we will probably never know much more about this man than we do now. He didn’t lead us to a slow national decline, he led us over a cliff.

        100

        • #
          Robert

          I disagree, he didn’t lead us anywhere, he pushed us there. If he’d have led us that would imply he went over the cliff too.

          50

    • #

      Eric
      The people at the ABC know our minds better than we do. They are enlightened people, not blinkered by normal human biases. They are trying to educate people into this truth. Simply because they have never met you does not refute the contention that you suffer from the delusion that you know your own mind better than they do.
      It is on the same lines as the Soviet Politburo, who knew will of the masses.

      240

  • #

    Sure, the ABC seems biased against the ruling party. It seems to have some kind of editorial vendetta against the PM. Now. Just wait til Labor gets in though—everything’ll balance out.

    But you people will never admit the ABC is fair, will you?

    2051

    • #
      Kevin Lohse

      V-E-R-Y good.

      151

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Not bad.

        “Yes, we are currently carpet bombing the backsides of them, but once there is a change of government, we will stop, and it will all balance out.”

        Brad should apply for a PR job at the Pentagon. He would fit right in.

        220

    • #
      Jaymez

      The problem is that the bias isn’t against the ruling party, it is definitely against the conservatives. Paul Murray demonstrates this exceptionally well in terms of the more general main stream media bias against the conservatives in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcEcvbH4dJg&feature=youtu.be

      Yesterday the current Labor opposition leader in Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk didn’t know the GST rate of 10% which it has been since 1 July 2001. Can you imagine the field day if it had been Campbell Newman, or Tony Abbott who had not known that? The media would have torn them apart as they did that young Liberal Candidate who couldn’t name the 4 point plan for stopping the boats before the Federal election.

      What about when Kevin Rudd lost the election to Tony Abbott, after being re-installed? It wasn’t during the campaign that the ABC and other MSM came out and told the public how unbalanced Rudd was and how difficult he was to deal with. But once he was gone they were all claiming they knew. So what about their responsibility to inform the public? Perhaps if they had, the Coalition would control the Senate now and could have had their many pieces of legislation passed and they would be looking like a much stronger, functioning government. You can bet they would be printing any dirt they could get on Tony Abbott if he had acted as irrationally as Rudd.

      There are just so many examples of bias – too many to list.

      571

      • #
        Dennis

        I still smile when I remember former PM Gillard telling a journalist about Australia having retained its “three gold stars” credit rating. A few days later she attempted to correct her ignorance and mumbled about AAA rating.

        330

        • #
          James Bradley

          Dennis,

          The old Triple Credit rating in the Thriving Economy trick.

          David Koch and a number of other finacial journalists were running the ‘Abootts crazy, the economy is great we have a AAA credit rating’ line.

          They just didn’t get it – a Triple A credit rating is the Valued Customer Card a finace company sends you when they think you can still afford bigger repayments on a much larger loan.

          With bond rates down to about 2.5% for 10 years at the moment the push is on for the government to borrow more, we are already paying 1 billion dollars a month in interest now as a result of Labor/Green fiscal incompetence.

          Prediction:

          If the LNP get rolled in QLD election this weekend the first thing the incoming Labor Governemnt will do is borrow more money to increase thesocialist welfare support base.

          If the LNP gets rolled in the federal election the first thing the Labor/Green Government will do is borrow more money to pay to resettle illegal refugees and increase the socialist welfare support base.

          410

      • #
        Bulldust

        Interesting – there was an ABC article with comments that talked of the GST gaffe. One of the ABC fanbois or girls immediately jumped to Annastacia Palaszczuk’s defense saying it was a torrid campaign, distractions etc… and anyway Campbell Newman said the unemployment rate was 6.1% when it was actually 6.6% (according to the commentator).

        So I went to the ABS web site … what do you know? The QLD seasonally trend adjusted unemployment rate for Dec 2014 was 6.1% exactly as Newman said.

        A) The commentator was wrong in fact.
        B) The commentator was wrong to compare the GST (fixed since before 1 July 2000, went through an election campaign and all that) to a monthly moving target that of ABS stats.

        For the life of me I can’t find the article anymore. Probably got removed because of too many embarrassing leftie comments. Those lefties never let the facts get in the way of a good narrative, eh?

        130

        • #
          Bulldust

          That should read seasonally adjusted – omit trend as it is misleading. And yes, the “trend unemployment rate” was 6.6%. I am sure the commentator never thought to actually look at both rates, or even one rate for that matter. They probably just parroted the comment from The guardian or Annastacia Palaszczuk.

          70

    • #
      manalive

      Sure the ABC has been known to annoy a Labor government (Bob Hawke for instance) because of perceived bias but if Labor governments are ever criticised by the ABC it’s because they are not ‘left’ enough.

      350

      • #

        if Labor governments are ever criticised by the ABC it’s because they are not ‘left’ enough.

        When the ABC criticises the right, guess what, haters? It’s also for not being ‘left’ enough.

        How fair and balanced does it have to be to satisfy you people?!

        840

        • #
          Dennis

          ABC is well balanced, they have Labor on one side and Greens on the other.

          690

        • #
          the Griss

          chuckle 😉

          You are making me read all your posts twice Brad, trying to see what you are actually saying. 🙂

          I think several people missed it in comment #4.

          240

        • #
          albert

          The ABC 7.30 Report interviewed Queensland corruption Commissioner Tony Fitzgerald who was totally anti LNP Government with NO anti Labor comments. He did not mention that the recent Flood Inquiry did not use a retired Judge from another State as is normal practice, he also made wild assertions that should land him in Court. There’s an election in Queensland on Saturday and the ABC has clearly chosen their side to support
          http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4170096.htm

          161

          • #
            Streetcred

            Fitzgerald is just so irrelevant, he’s never really got over the fact that his ‘Inquiry’ was completed a few decades ago.

            50

        • #
          James Bradley

          James Dibble would be turning in his… sorry, be back in a moment…

          Yep, just googled him to make sure.

          … would be turning in his grave at the way the ABC has turned into a voice for socialism, anti-semitism and sedition.

          50

        • #
          Willy

          Brad, your website : “Climate science isn’t nearly as complex as, say, whatever you study; we’ve only got one hypothesis (AGW) so far. Any attempt to introduce a second idea is automatically contrarian, i.e. unsound.”

          A fact is only a fact, until it is disproven.

          20

          • #
            the Griss

            Willy.. you need to realise that most of what Brad says is very “tongue-in-cheek”

            If you remember that, you will see what he is saying 🙂

            30

      • #
        Maverick

        Brad in 4.3.1 –

        When the ABC criticises the right, guess what, haters? It’s also for not being ‘left’ enough.

        You have got it one Brad – the ABC is biased to the left. If they were funded commercially to be biased to the left then fine, just like Fox is funded commercially to be biased to the right. Commercial organisations should have full right to freedoms of thought, freedoms of speech and freedoms of choice and if that manifests itself in bias who cares.

        The problem is that Australian taxpayers are funding the ABC out of control left bias, and it is completely against their charter.

        Can you just imagine the result if the ABC had to rely on advertisers to pay big money for ads in the middle of Tony Jones parading a gaggle of ranting feminist lesbians with their face full of metal telling us in an hypocrisy so thick how white Christian males are the reason … [SNIP lets not get into those details on a science blog. We get the message. – Jo]

        The channel would last about a day because people that enjoy that sort bewildering nonsense, don’t buy cars or go on boat tours on the Rhine. They smoke dope in their hovels and shower every four days to lower their carbon footprint (or so they say).

        30

    • #
      el gordo

      You have a lovely touch Brad, keep up the good work.

      90

    • #
      red breast

      Of course the ABC are fair and balanced. They criticized the opposition relentlessly before the last election. To provide balance they now criticize the Government.

      230

      • #
        red breast

        And now on my facebook page, (unsolicited – do they PAY facebook for this?), an ABC news story with a very unflattering photo of our PM with the heading “Abbott declares himself a good captain”. What’s more alarming is the comments that follow; “The lying king”, and “putting the n in cuts” etc and these are some of the mild ones.
        Don’t ever try to convince me that this is balanced let alone respectful. It is an organised, orchestrated destructive campaign.

        110

      • #
        Eric of Finland

        How identical the situation appears to be in Oz compared to Finland. We have YLE, you have ABC. Both have left / green bias. Both tout the rights, not responsibilities. Both criticize the opposition – until Greens and the leftist parties get there.

        They vote for Greens, use every possibility to educate the people, they believe they are right, and anyone disagreeing will be a denier, a homophobic, misogynic, uneducated, old, christian conservative stupid redneck meat-eater racist with a huge carbon footprint on the kitchen floor. With warts.

        Where as they are peace loving, ecofriendly, equality centered, educated good-looking young women, with a diet.

        I can’t take it no more. I’ve got enough of this religion of (green) peace.

        40

  • #
    Jaymez

    The ABC can’t tell they have a left wing bias if everyone they hire and everyone they associate with is from the left. In that May 2012 survey you highlight where ABC journalists indicated their voting intention, it is informative to see how that compares with the voting intention of the public in general.

    So how does the ABC journalist voting intentions compare to the public’s voting intention at the time? The Newspoll on May 17- 19 revealed the public primary voting intention was just 9% Greens (vs 41.2% for ABC), 31% Labor (vs 32.4% Labor), 46% Coalition (vs 14.7% for ABC) and 14% Other (vs 14.8% for ABC).

    So the ABC staff are far left when compared to the real world. Therefore it is likely that if the present stories which mainly support Labor, they probably see that as them attempting to be middle of the road centre!

    It is also interesting to look at the close relationship between left wing parties and ABC news and politics journalists and executives. This list may be a little out of date regarding their current positions and I am sure I have missed some so please add any I missed:

    Stephen Paul “Steve” Cannane is a news journalist and current affairs reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He currently presents The Drum on ABC News 24 and is a reporter on Lateline. In 1993 he stood as the Labor candidate for the seat of Warringah and failed. This fact has been wiped from his ABC and Wikipedia profiles.

    Juanita Phillips is a journalist and news presenter with the ABC employed as week-night presenter of ABC News in New South Wales and evening presenter for ABC News 24 bulletins as well as regular The Drum panellist. Her partner is Greg Combet who retired from parliament before the last election after a long career with the ALP.

    Maxine McKew, began her career as a cadet on This Day Tonight at the ABC’s Brisbane office in 1975. She then worked on the ABC’s flagship current affairs programs, Nationwide, and AM and PM, later moving onto the 7.30 Report. She then joined the ALP and won John Howard’s seat of Bennelong in federal Parliament for the Labor Party, only to lose it in 2010. Her partner is staunch unionist and former ALP National Secretary Bob Hogg

    Frank McGuire was an award-winning journalist for the ABC, and is currently the Labor state Parliament member for the seat of Broadmeadows.

    Mike Bailey, a former ABC weatherman who ran against Joe Hockey in the seat of North Sydney in the 2007 election for the ALP and lost.

    Deborah O’Neill, once worked for the ABC, O’Neill in 2010 won preselection for the seat of Robertson for the ALP and won.

    David Hill, ran in the 1998 election for the ALP in the federal NSW seat of Hughes, after he stepped down from his role as Managing Director of the ABC.

    Leon Bignell, ex-ABC sports reporter and now a minister in the SA Labor government.

    Bob Carr, former Labor Premier of NSW and was recently federal foreign minister for the ALP, once worked for the ABC as a current affairs journalist.

    Mary Delahunty,was a gold Walkey Award-winning news journalist for the ABC, appearing on Four Corners ( a show I still watch occasionally when it is about overseas matters) and the 7.30 Report before becoming chief newsreader for the ABC in Victoria. She was elected as ALP member to the seat of Northcote in the Victorian Legislative Assembly at a 1998 by-election. She was minister for education, 1999-2002, minister for the arts 1999-2006, minister for women’s affairs 2002-2006 and minister for planning 2002-2005. Delahunty did not contest her seat at the 2006 state election.

    John Bowler, Formerly of the ABC and now proprietor of The Golden Mail. In 2001 he was elected as the ALP Member for Eyre in the WA Parliament. He is currently the Independent member for Kalgoorlie.

    Bob Debus, Energy Minister and Attorney General in the Carr Government who was an ABC broadcaster, Executive Producer of the ABC’s Department of Radio Talks and Documentaries in the 1970s.

    Clare Martin, The ALP’s former chief minister in the Northern Territory was the morning presenter on ABC 666 Canberra in the 1980s before becoming media adviser to chief minister Rosemary Follett in the first ACT government in 1989. She later moved to Darwin where she returned to the ABC and was at one stage presenter of The 7.30 Report.

    Malarndirri McCarthy, Northern Territory Labor MLA for Arnhem and one of the first Indigenous women in an Australian Parliament. Barbara was an ABC news presenter in Sydney and Darwin and a contributing reporter to the ABC series Blackout.

    Neville Oliver, the former head of sport at the ABC failed when he ran as Labor’s candidate in the Tasmanian lower house seat of Franklin in 1998 but in 2002 he achieved his goal by replacing Fran Bladel.

    Diana Warnock, long time ABC radio personality and subsequent Labor politician for Perth in the WA Parliament from 1993 until retiring in 2001.

    Ian Baker, the former ABC news chief of staff in Victoria was Agriculture Minister in the Kirner Government.

    Alan Carpenter, 7.30 Report presenter to WA Labor Premier.

    And here are some of the ABC staff who went on to be Labor staffers:

    Mark Bannerman was a journalist for 30 years, working on several programs for the ABC, such as AM, PM, The World Today and Background Briefing. He also worked as an adviser to the-then Labor minister for industry, technology and commerce Senator John Button.

    Barrie Cassidy is the current host of Insiders on the ABC; he was Bob Hawke’s press secretary from 1986 to 1991.

    Kerry O’Brien is the former host of the 7.30 Report on the ABC and the present host of the current affairs show Four Corners. He worked as the press secretary for Labor’s Gough Whitlam.

    Jeremi Moule, worked for ABC news then later became a minder for the ALP.

    Christopher “Chris” Uhlmann has had a varied career in ABC political journalism. In January 2015, Uhlmann was appointed in a newly created position as ABC News political editor. Uhlmann is married to Labor member of the Australian House of Representatives Gai Brodtmann.

    Russell Skelton is head of the ABC’s fact check unit. He is also Virginia Trioli’s husband. Before he was appointed the ABC fact checker head he was a Fairfax journalist and made these tweets while Labor was still in power:

    “Abbott’s extremism on display,” Skelton commented on a retweet of a story on asylum-seeker policy.
    “No statesman, no style,” he added to a retweet of a report of remarks by the Prime Minister on Mr Abbott.
    In others retweets Mr Skelton described the Opposition Leader as “a shameless opportunist” and “a liability”.
    He dismissed Senator Joyce as “a dense, opportunistic carpetbagger”, called Mr Morrison “the LP’s one trick pony”, and accused Mr Reith of “rewriting history”.
    Mr Skelton described Barnaby Joyce in tweets as “super snide”, a “dense, opportunistic carpetbagger” and “Bananaby” while referring to Joe Hockey as “not the sharpest pencil in the box”.
    The ABC told us the fact-checking unit will assess political statements ahead of the federal election and rule on their accuracy. There would surely be no bias by Skelton!

    Virginia Trioli while working at The Age before moving to the ABC Trioli was president of The Age’s chapter of the union, the Australian Journalists Association (now the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance).

    I’m sure this isn’t an exhaustive list, it’s just those I recall over the years having some lefty connections. There are bound to be more.

    It is funny that the person most identified as a conservative journalist in Australia, Andrew Bolt, spent a number of years as a Labor staffer, yet left wing voters think he is far right!

    This is a good video about media left wing bias and double standards by Paul Murray referring to the fuss about the silly move by Tony Abbott to give Prince Phillip a Knighthood. He compares the medias reaction to that, compared to decisions by Labor Prime Ministers which ended up wasting billions of dollars and killing people!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcEcvbH4dJg&feature=youtu.be

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      Andrew

      Yep, this. Against all that they have 0.3% of one station staffed by Vanstone.

      Can the “balanced” proponents point to a single issue where the ALPBC has supported a conservative position or criticised the ALP from the right? Ever?

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      Robber

      It’s not my ABC. They used to report the facts on news and current affairs, now their leftist opinions pervade everything they do. Shame, shame, shame.

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      redress

      Excellent example of media left wing bias here…….. It could not be MORE obvious!!!!!

      “”The Guardian’s treatment of Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten, same facts – two vastly different angles””

      http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2015/01/the-guardians-treatment-of-tony-abbott-and-bill-shorten-same-facts-two-vastly-different-angles.html

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    • #
      TdeF

      Great list. Amazing.

      Along with Andrew Bolt, you would have to add the former dedicated Marxist Keith Windschuttle as someone who changed sides, as do a lot of people when the realise the caring party is not.
      Keith changed his views totally when his best friend was shot for no reason by dedicated communist monster Pol Pot. Thereafter as a skilled insider and professional historian, Windschuttle made life very hard for the extreme left (led by high priest of La Trobe Robert Manne) who were busy rewriting Australian history, specifically about aborigines. “The fabrication of Aboriginal history” is an amazing work contrasting documented fact with outright fiction.

      Robert Manne and Tim Flannery are the two success stories of La Trobe University. Facts seem to mean little to either.

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        Ken Stewart

        Currently reading Windshuttle’s 1st Volume. I find the resemblance between the aboriginal history debate and the global warming debate very interesting.

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          OriginalSteve

          Let me guess…the left specializes in “victim” language?

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            TdeF

            Also the same ‘denier’ language as in the “Stolen Generations”. Andrew Bolt has for a decade demanded someone supply the names of even ten ‘stolen’ children, but the Political Left cannot but talk of tens of thousands and deniers. As for slave markets for aborigines, that was admitted fiction become accepted fact and the ‘blackbirding’. Now no one dares intervene in serious social disorder for fear of being brought to account for reasonable, lawful and necessary intervention to save aboriginal children at risk. As with illegal entry boat people and Global Warming and Israel and Ebola, the caring Left does not care at all. It is all about seeming to care. The Greens’ manifesto in England make Marx seem like a democrat.

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          beowulf

          It’s a good read Ken. Don’t you just love the bit where he checked the references of supposed events in the thesis of some darling of the hand-wringers and found those references didn’t even exist – in multiple instances.

          And if I recall she had been given the big thumbs-up by Henry Reynolds, the demi-god of Australian aboriginal history. Wonder how his references stack up? Peer review at its best.

          Her work has probably been cited many times since by other students and researchers, without checking its veracity.

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            TdeF

            A fascinating part was where in public debate, Windshuttle asked Reynolds directly why he had taken the word ‘not’ out of the statement by Tasmanian Governor Phillip when forming the Black Line across Tasmania. Phillip was desperate to save the aboriginals and see that they did NOT die out, from influenza largely. There was no answer from Reynolds. He had reversed the facts to suit his narrative of murder. This was something about which Governor Phillip was terrified, so Phillip kept his journals with him even when he became Governor of Jamaica. One word can change history.

            So with other pet Green subjects, the attempt to obfuscate and confuse and change facts, to intimidate and argue from authority. There is no sudden run away global warming. There never was, given the error bars. Nothing needed to be done and probably nothing could be done anyway. Man and governments are not in control of the planet’s temperature any more than an ant in a mountain range.

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            Ken Stewart

            I have always been fascinated by history. My father self published a pretty good book about exploration of the Burnett district, disproving long accepted ideas about where a particular explorer (HS Russell) went, by physically following routes from original diaries. So anyone checking original “data” gets my full support. Hence my reality checking re global warming in any of its evolving terms.

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    • #
      Ken Stewart

      On the other hand, a small group of regional radio presenters (in Queensland anyway) have supported LNP. For example, Meech Philpott from Radio Tropical North (Mackay) recently missed out on LNP pre-selection for Mirani. No longer on air- on leave? resigned?
      After Early Morning Country (music) and local Breakfast and Rural Report, I usually listen to community radio except for Country Hour. It’s unbearable agony over the Xmas break when local radio is replaced by crap from Brisbane (some from Townsville or Toowoomba). I still watch TV News but not 7.30 and very rarely 4 Corners. Some drama and (some) comedy too. I’ve gone back to reading!

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      RB

      It is much worse than that. The uncle of an ABC personality (who has none but still has worked for the ABC for nearly 2 decades) is a neighbour. He didn’t like a trucking company driving down our road to the highway. Next thing I see is a long news story on rogue trucking companies with this one, about as far from Melbourne as you can get in country Victoria, is used as an example on ABC Victoria evening news. What sealed it as an attack rather than journalism was the final 20s of the report was a closeup of the side of a truck with the companies logo on the side.

      The Karma part is that the stressed out company took more risks. Eventually, one B-double clipped my trees and flipped, stopping about 50m short of ploughing through his house.

      Ironic that the ABC is a play thing of privileged few.

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      Unmentionable

      Can you please now post the list of former ABC employees who were elected to Lib-Nat seats?

      I have a hazy recollection of Barnaby as a reporter on This Day Tonight, during the 1970’s. /sarc

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    Jeff Todd

    The BBC in the UK is the same; greenies with a sense of entitlement. They also do not realise that if we cannot afford to pay for electric, we ditch the TV and are spared a TV tax. A broadcaster psushing the greenie line is like a turkey voting for Christmas.

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    bemused

    I find it strange and amusing when people fiercely argue (even amongst friends I know) that the ABC provides ‘balance’ over the biased commercial stations.

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      Dennis

      I have no faith in many MSM news and current affairs and ABC, they all present the climate change propaganda regularly, they all follow the obviously spin doctor engineered AbbottAbbottAbbott relentless negativity and they all provide obvious paid advertising as news. The pride in profession, the competition to be first to “report the facts” and professional presentation by voice or writing has gone downhill since the 1970s and today is hovering not far above the bottom.

      Apologies to the professional minority of Australian journalists.

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        TdeF

        I have the same problem with the ABC Science people, as they suggested, when I wrote to them asking why they were so sure the 50% increase in CO2 over 100 years was man made. It seemed pretty obvious that it wasn’t. Without this, man made Global Warming is not true. The response was belittling while phrased as helpful. No one dare question their beliefs. Galileo would have been crucified with this lot in charge.

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      PeterPetrum

      I hardly ever watch the news on any TV station, but from what I have seen it would appear that the commercial stations are almost equally biased as is the ABC. I stand to be corrected!

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        bemused

        I hardly watch TV at all, as I consider it utter rubbish; however, there seems to be this view amongst many that all commercial TV stations are to the far right (Murdoch controlled et al) and evil, and the only foil against this evil is the ABC (and SBS to a lesser extent). From the little that do I see of commercial TV, just about everyone that gets air time (the morning shows at the like), they all seem pretty much of the Left, like their compatriots in cinema, theatre etc. One morning, unfortunately, I watched and listened in awe as Andrew O’Keefe gave his rant as a global warming worrier, he would have done the ABC proud.

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  • #
    Diogenes

    I haven’t checked the radio ratings – but even there, there appears to be a huge switch off.

    Very very few of my students listen to triple J.

    I am old ABC listener from wayback , some of my earliest memories are of listening to the bookreading on the 3LO breakfast program in the 60’s(usually Thomas the Tank Engine or Wind in the Willows or Winnie the Pooh) and the light classics program that was on in the afternoon (when I visited my grandma), and the schools’ music programs in primary school that introduced students to classical music ( after 50 years I still remember us belting out “Behold the Lord High Executioner” in Miss Nowacki’s 3rd class).

    In my teens the radio was welded to either 2FC or 2BL. When Classic FM was started my radio was welded to ClassicFM.

    That was until 2 years ago I had had enough… the breakfast & drive presenters started playing too much “world” music (off key and sounding they were bemoaning the loss of what made them men) and it became formulaic – with swoon, love it or leave it (usually hated it – I am still trying to get some godawful version of the Pearlfishers duet out of head) & honestly if I hear “Gift to be Simple” or “Howdown” once more I will spit – as for that Australian noise they call “music” – then they moved Maggot Throsbey to lunchtime, so instead of getting Guy Noble playing decent music as I am trying to recharge after teaching a double year 8 , 9 or 10 class, I have to listen to boring lefty plonker waffling on at length about how wonderful they are, and how stupid the rest of us are. As a result, in the car I now have my ipod loaded with music I like, and at luchtime I tune in to tunein & depending on mood listen to specialist Baroque, early music stations Mozart, or Handel stations, or maybe even the odd “generalist” classic station

    They lost me on the weekends when they moved Graham Abbott to Sunday lunchtime, I want music with my lunch, not a music lesson (don’t get me wrong – I love Graham – but prefer him on a Saturday – not yammering when I am eating, and the request programs started getting boring because it was – “I would like you to play 33mins 3sec because it reminds me of the time I was in an exhibition featuring “…” in this divine little gallery in on my last trip to Tuscany” , and I say that even though I could listen to the host Marion Arnold reading the phone book (she and Damian Beaumont 🙂 ) As for Saturday afternoons – way way way too much talk – I have done my chores in the morning and in the afternoon, I want to settle back with a book, or work on the model railway & listen to music goddam it !

    Classic FM could now be shut down, and I would not miss it at all.

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      Glen Michel

      Agree Diogenes.ABC fm rarely plays works from the past- seemingly full of dissonant modern Australian works that torture both mind and soul.I guess I’m an old school”classicist”.I really get off with a belly full of beer and some Bach,or whatever.

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      James

      Well said, Diogenes.

      Throsby should be booted out, back to RN, and music again be heard in her daylight robbery of one hour.

      Then there was the Saturday night “new” music with Earth Hour promoter ‘Jules’ Day. Was there ever one piece of music ever worth being played twice? Probably not. At least the program received the chop, but the pining for the knob twiddlers and sliders was pitiful to hear, as if something talented and important had been lost.

      Now, Christopher Lawrence’s program is morphing into an interview session, with performers needlessly questioned about trivia and Lawrence keen to display his recent knowledge of matters musical.

      Certainly USB sticks have been a saviour and now mainly 18thC rules in the vehicles.

      (And I’m over the late Peter Sculthorpe. Enough is enough. Oh, and the repetitive ileum twisting motifs of Ross Edwards, too.)

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      MudCrab

      Very very few of my students listen to triple J.

      Triple J has effectively become, and sadly has been for years, ‘Your Parent’s Radio Station’.

      While constantly telling everyone who can listen they are cutting edge and the friend of new and uncoming bands, I finally gave up completely on them about 10 years ago when their feature album of the week was the new release from Grinspoon.

      Hang on… Grinspoon… Dead Cat… I was in High School!!

      I realised at that moment that I had not brought a CD from any new bands in about two years, for the simple fact I hadn’t heard any.

      Triple J, in it’s current format, is actually destructive to local music. It tries to be all things to all people and ends up being none of them. If the ABC was honest about local music they would denationalise Triple J so that state based broadcasters could promote state based bands that listeners could then actually physically go out and see play on the weekend.

      Then again, community radio actually does a FAR better job of that, at least in South Oz, so if the powers were REALLY honest about promoting Australian music, they would cut Triple J completely and transfer the money to community broadcasters.

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    • #
      Allen Ford

      If it’s quality music you want, forget their ABC, and switch to 4MBS FM 103.5 Brisbane, Fine Music FM 102.5 Sydney, Artsound FM 90.3 Canberra, 3MBS FM 103.5 Melbourne or 5MBS FM 99.9 Adelaide. If you cannot receive the FM signal, they all stream on the internet, so no excuse no matter where you are!

      None of these stations is publicly funded, but community stations supported by their listeners and donors, with some, limited commercial sponsorship.

      00

  • #
    Diogenes

    I haven’t checked the radio ratings – but even there, there appears to be a huge switch off.

    Very very few of my students listen to triple J.

    I am old ABC listener from wayback , some of my earliest memories are of listening to the bookreading on the 3LO breakfast program in the 60’s(usually Thomas the Tank Engine or Wind in the Willows or Winnie the Pooh) and the light classics program that was on in the afternoon (when I visited my grandma), and the schools’ music programs in primary school that introduced students to classical music ( after 50 years I still remember us belting out “Behold the Lord High Executioner” in Miss Nowacki’s 3rd class).

    In my teens the radio was welded to either 2FC or 2BL. When Classic FM was started my radio was welded to ClassicFM.

    That was until 2 years ago I had had enough… the breakfast & drive presenters started playing too much “world” music (off key and sounding they were bemoaning the loss of what made them men) and it became formulaic – with swoon, love it or leave it (usually hated it – I am still trying to get some godawful version of the Pearlfishers duet out of head) & honestly if I hear “Gift to be Simple” or “Howdown” once more I will spit – as for that Australian noise they call “music” – then they moved Maggot Throsbey to lunchtime, so instead of getting Guy Noble playing decent music as I am trying to recharge after teaching a double year 8 , 9 or 10 class, I have to listen to boring lefty plonker waffling on at length about how wonderful they are, and how stupid the rest of us are. As a result, in the car I now have my ipod loaded with music I like, and at luchtime I tune in to tunein & depending on mood listen to specialist Baroque, early music stations Mozart, or Handel stations, or maybe even the odd “generalist” classic station

    They lost me on the weekends when they moved Graham Abbott to Sunday lunchtime, I want music with my lunch, not a music lesson (don’t get me wrong – I love Graham – but prefer him on a Saturday – not yammering when I am eating, and the request programs started getting boring because it was – “I would like you to play 33mins 3sec because it reminds me of the time I was in an exhibition featuring “…” in this divine little gallery in on my last trip to Tuscany” , and I say that even though I could listen to the host Marion Arnold reading the phone book (she and Damian Beaumont 🙂 ) As for Saturday afternoons – way way way too much talk – I have done my chores in the morning and in the afternoon, I want to settle back with a book, or work on the model railway & listen to music goddam it !

    Classic FM could now be shut down, and I would not miss it at all.

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      Peter Carabot

      Their ABC is on the radio? Still?

      50

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      redress

      Even on Triple J there is bias? [SARC]

      The recent Triple J top 100 ballot had until the last week or so, Taylor Swift leading as best singer/song for 2014.
      Guess what… Taylor Swift was removed from the ballot and an Australian act won, to much flag waving and yelling.

      Why???? Could it be that Taylor Swift is a country music singer??? Cant have that on Triple J!!!!!

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        If you get the chance, watch the reaction of Lorde, getting a Grammy award. Her face was all, WTF???? Classic Kiwiana.

        30

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      OriginalSteve

      At least the Russians openly admit their “news” is heavily controlled…Australia however lives in a delusional state….

      [Snip. Sorry too OT for this blog – Jo] i have yet to take any large state or corporate news service seriously….

      30

  • #
    KinkyKeith

    The irrelevance of the Public State Owned Broadcasting media; Tripple ABC.

    If the ABCCC doesn’t feel embarrassed about what it puts over as news then maybe I can deal with the consequences for what follows

    On another topic, written last night in a melancholy mood: You may choose not to continue:
    ——————————-

    WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS SITE

    Before you read this you must be w=aware that this mAy be a repeat OF AN EMOTIONALLY/Chemically INDUCED STATE :
    Background CHECK:

    http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/man-made-adjustments-turn-cooling-in-paraguay-south-america-to-warming/#comment-1672194

    People I have met:

    ROM: Read this thread to find out what was in store for somebody born 76 years ago and who now at 76 writes a most extraordinary

    perspective on life and who started out as a wheat farmer and writes more sensible stuff than most professors!: Run down the thread

    http://joannenova.com.au/2014/12/weekend-unthreaded-60/#comment-1647818

    And Roy Hogue from the west coast of the USA who went to Vietnam and found good people there: Thanks Roy, Where else but this site

    could you get an exchange like this:

    http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/where-did-that-el-nino-go-wiped-out-by-unprecedented-cool-shift/#comment-1151708

    Sheri; from the USA who I picture somewhere in the woods of that country

    And my dad:

    http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/weekend-unthreaded-47/#comment-1559172

    And Bernd, Whose comments refer to origins:

    http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/weekend-unthreaded-62/#comment-1664928

    And the German Reality so much like the Vietnamese reality:

    http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/weekend-unthreaded-62/#comment-1664545

    and to what is best for society:

    http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/weekend-unthreaded-47/#comment-1559164

    http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/climate-grief-believers-mourning-its-denial-and-anger-but-it-sure-isnt-science/#comment-1674213

    ————————
    The most off-putting icon goes to OLAF, forget the full bladder bit look at the FACE!
    http://joannenova.com.au/2013/08/global-methane-emissions-driven-by-soviet-leaks-volcanoes-and-el-ninos-not-cows/#comment-1303808

    The Griss: really into it! Prolific Rereke Whakaaro and AndyG55, Who If I remember rightly may be caught one day admiring a

    “back burn” just above the Murdering Gulley sewer farm? And this very tactful comment: http://joannenova.com.au/2013/08/global-methane-

    emissions-driven-by-soviet-leaks-volcanoes-and-el-ninos-not-cows/#comment-1303844

    Jaymez, And Tony whose understanding of POWER production is extraordinary.

    Yonnie, who has written many brilliant comments but as a tease this one?:

    http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/climate-grief-believers-mourning-its-denial-and-anger-but-it-sure-isnt-science/#comment-1674154 Huh?

    Manfred, Backslider, tom0mason, Greg Cavanagh, Dariusz, and so many others People of science and humanity who want something

    better for all.

    and Jorge: http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/climate-grief-believers-mourning-its-denial-and-anger-but-it-sure-isnt-science/#comment-1674063

    And where else could you get a contributor with a name like T O N !

    nova.com.au/2015/01/climate-grief-believers-mourning-its-denial-and-anger-but-it-sure-isnt-science/#comment-1674281

    And this idiot who sounds a bit like ARNIE SCHWArZErNEGER:

    http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/where-did-that-el-nino-go-wiped-out-by-unprecedented-cool-shift/#comment-1150567

    And weirdest of all the transformation from my original form as MFJ to KK:

    http://joannenova.com.au/2011/10/unthreaded-oct-22-2011/#comment-622658

    This is one weird blog!

    Thank you Jo!

    KK

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    • #
      Peter C

      Thanks Keith,

      I sometimes go back and look at the old blogs, and the comments. And I wonder what happened to some of the old characters.

      Memory Vault particularly comes to mind, so does John Brookes (a better class of troll than the current crop, did he change his mind?)

      But I never suspected that some might have had a sex change and come back as with a new name and avatar (is that what they are?)

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      • #
        KinkyKeith

        Ha

        My great grandmother was born in Newcastle in 1853.

        Weird stuff.

        The thing I have been most taken by is the amazing perspective and depth of experience of people writing here.

        MV from up QLD way has not posted for a while but always had his own view of things.

        I have an image of him looking out over the ocean up there and relaxing in a well deserved retirement,

        KK

        20

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          the Griss

          I have seen MV’s moniker on another forum recently. (sorry, it was in passing)

          He is still around somewhere.

          WISH he would come back ! 🙂

          40

        • #
          ROM

          Thank you K.Keith for your very kind words

          I do not expect people here, particularly the denizens who fortunately are an independent thinking and damn smart lot, to agree with me but if I can make our posters and lurkers think then I have accomplished something good.

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    • #
      • #
        Peter C

        How do,you manage to book mark or search for old comments<span .

        Your quick reply there makes me think that you have some clever way.

        10

        • #
          KinkyKeith

          Hi Peter

          If you google say “jonova then the name of the writer you are looking for and a key word or two” you will come up with a few options.

          You have to pick one and scroll through it – a bit of work but can be done. ; there may be ways that are better but it works.

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          • #
            Peter C

            Thanks KK,

            It is a lot better that what I have been doing, which is to start at JoNova Home, then try s few posts to see if I can remember which one, then scroll through trying to find the comment.

            Much better your way.

            10

    • #
      Yonniestone

      KK you left yourself off your list when talking about brilliance, I’m lost for words for you mentioning me.

      My comment you linked was a subtle joke that fell short about John F. Hultquist’s #14 line “his brain should be studied to try to explain how so much bs can fit into such a small container.”
      I then imagined his brain as the shape of Italy from the old joke ‘Why is Italy shaped like a boot?, because you couldn’t fit so much sh$t into a shoe.’
      I didn’t elaborate then because Italians might get offended but now it’s out there so sorry to any Italians, I really like your food.

      40

  • #
    Owen Morgan

    Britain’s green party leader, Natalie Bennett, suffered a live-on-the-gogglebox meltdown, the other day, on the beebyanka, strangely enough, when she was grilled by Andrew Neil. Here’s a link:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dFn8RIXOBE .

    It’s so unusual for the BBC to give any kind of greenie anything other than a very easy ride, customarily accompanied by a chorus in full agreement. Neil is one of the tiny handful of prominent BBC interviewers remaining with either the skill, or the integrity (both, in his case), to put a politician through the mincer like this.

    You’ll notice that Natalie is an Aussie, presumably Australia’s revenge for Jeeelia.

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      Bobl

      Oooh, cringeworthy doesn’t cut it, this interview was seriously scary with regards to the green parties race to send the west back to the caves. They would kill millions and completely impoverish a whole country. This interview should be mandatory viewing for all voters.

      Lord Monckton, if you are lurking here, this interview is perfect fodder to demonstrate just how looney the Green/Labour grasp of economics is, with the Tories not far behind. UKIP should be publishing this interview on their home page saying, is this disaster what you really want?

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      • #
        clive

        I had the misfortune to catch the debate yesterday with Cambell Newman and Anna2.When She had no idea what the GST rate was,I did a double take!I have seen more Intellegence in a Brick.What is worse,plenty of Low Lifes will Vote for her.

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    George McFly......I'm your density

    I had been watching and listening to the ABC since the late 60’s and over the last 2-3 years have stopped both. Previously I would not have missed the evening news for anything but now couldn’t care less about it (apart from the sport!)

    Their extreme green/left bias is revolting.

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    TdeF

    ‘Our’ ABC and Fairfax are almost the same. Their journalists have given up reporting the news and now seek to make it. ‘The Age’ is a tragic case, from Australia’s most respected newspaper with a loyal and very conservative readership to a trashy, thin tabloid which attacks its own readership. They gave up reporting news and became a private newspaper for the staff to express their hatred of the Victoria Police, any conservative government and any views held dear by their Green group think. Sometimes the front page was entirely content free. The fact that the newspaper is disappearing, like the ABC, seems irrelevant to the staff who seem to have the career views of suicide bombers, all for the cause. The refusal to allow their new major shareholder and investor Gina Rhinehart to have even a board seat was absurd, quoting the need to sign an editorial non interference document which was not signed by anyone else on the board. The Age is run by the journalists for the journalists and the Greens.

    Similarly with the ABC who were an essential part of organizing the attempted assault and aboriginal riot on the now Prime Minister on Australia Day three years ago. He was ‘rescued’ by Julia Gillard as she clearly knew all about it and it was all going wrong. The Sydney Morning Herald even ran with an amazing cartoon of Abbott punching an aboriginal elder, so they were primed too. The original question used to create the riot came from the Canberra ABC. Everyone was in on the planning the riot, but only one person admitted it and escaped to the UK.

    So the ABC staff are going to follow the Fairfax journalists and grind ‘their’ business into the ground using the approved suicide bomber model. General Manager Mark Scott was only upset when the public found out he earned twice as much as the heads of the armed forces. Yes, and they threatened to cut the ABC children’s favorite Peppa Pig, without telling anyone Peppa is a BBC import and has overstayed her 457 visa.

    Greens, Fairfax and the ABC are the same thing. The Greens have their own media at public expense and they have made carbon dioxide, the stuff of life, synonymous with the word ‘pollution’, so stop breathing!

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      Konrad

      The Australia day riot was indeed shameful, and their ALPBC definitely colluded with Labor to bring it about. Their “reporter”, repeatedly asked Tony Abbott her question, desperate for the sound bite they needed. She thought she got it, and rushed to phone the Labor staffer who had asked the press galley to wait for a briefing as they were trying to leave the house. And who was it that was caught on camera receiving a phone call then informing the aboriginal protesters? A union organiser.

      But the way it blew up in Julia’s face was delightful. The sound bite didn’t say what they claimed, so their ALPBC had to correct their initial “reports”. But even better, we got to see the mendacious bovine bundled shoeless into the back of a com-car like a sorry sack of socialist baggage 😉

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        TdeF

        The ‘rescue’ was indeed amazing. Abbott was amazed too. There was absolutely no need to rescue him and it was not the job of the security services to do so, unless someone knew more than was said about the whole purpose of this one off inaugural only partly complete instant award ceremony in the open “Glass House” at the old Parliament house only 150 metres from the outdoor Aboriginal Embassy encampment during their 40 years celebrations. No security at all, except for the police who could not believe the situation and did a great job locking the doors and shielding everyone against people, some carrying spears. Julia’s man even had to call the aboriginal group to get them to riot!

        It was all fabricated for one purpose, to see if Abbott could really box as in his Rhodes scholarship sport and against an aboriginal, destroying him politically. The ABC fingerprints were all over it. Even the aboriginal leaders later said they had been manipulated by Labor and in one hour destroyed 40 years of hard work. What the ABC and Labor do not realise is that unlike Mark Latham, a smart and proficient boxer never uses his fists and certainly never punches a wall anymore than a pianist would. That was all an ABC fantasy too. It was our own Watergate, organized by Julia’s dirty tricks team and the work of a whole group to organize, including some in the ABC and Fairfax. Unlike Nixon, the two journalists who raised questions about Julia was fired, after direct calls from Julia to the Managing director. The ABC said nothing.

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          TdeF

          Sorry, were fired. Milne and Michael Smith. Michael resigned and still operates his blog, determined to see Julia brought to justice for the crimes of her early career which saw her forced to resign from the legal partnership, never to work as a lawyer again. According to the ABC, none of this happened and Julia is innocent, despite the recent findings of the Royal Commission. According to the ABC, she was exonerated. They are on a different planet, a cooler, better place.

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    Farmer Gez

    The ABC attracts the inner city “smart folk” and panders to that audience. The callers to ABC radio are mostly in agreement with the leftish meme that prevails. Any commercial broadcaster would sound the alarm bells if their audience was so concentrated in one demographic. Commercial advertising as part of ABC funding is a must. If you don’t care how you are funded, you don’t care what you broadcast or who listens.

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    • #

      The champagne socialists (CS) make up a big part of the ABC support team. Then there are the mob with whom Andrew Bolt ran afoul (because we can’t hurt anybody’s feelings nowadays) who find a disproportionate voice on the ABC. Then there are the arts luvvies who are incapable of rubbing two rational thoughts together but they pander to the CS for their favours on the off chance that they’d buy one of their painful excretions at an astronomical price. Last, but probably least are the supporters who support the ABC because it’s Australian; regardless of what it does.

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    Rereke Whakaaro

    I have often thought that the ABC logo looked a lot like an IUD.

    So imagine my surprise when I looked at the photo of Christine Milne, with that particular slogan.

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    • #

      Aha! It’s History time ….. but Rereke, I’m sure you know this.

      I have often thought that the ABC logo looked a lot like an IUD.

      That ABC logo is a (now stlised) Lissajous Figure.

      It dates from the origins of TV, when the (very basic) images were shown on a Cathode Ray Oscilliscope (CRO) and the CRT (T for Tube) is the main vacuum tube culminating in the screen, which is what all those pre flat screen TV tubes were.

      I first saw a Lissajous figure during my RAAF training, one of the first time they let us trainees near an instrument like a CRO.

      That ABC logo is (basically) a sine wave.

      Now when you first see a sine wave on a CRO, it’s a cool thing, the actual image of what we were told about in theory.

      So, a Lissajous figure is the image on the CRO screen of a sine wave, only with the frequency of the signal now shown on two of the axes.

      The signal on the horizontal is sinusoidal in nature, and to get a Lissajous figure, you have a harmonic of that frequency on the vertical as well.

      In the case of the ABC, they used a 1:3 ratio to show that curve.

      Originally, that ABC logo was (much) less stylised and actually rotated, as it did on the CRO, and with some careful knob twiddling, you could get it to (almost) stop, depending upon the quality of the CRO.

      TV Theory was just so interesting, especially the scaling up of an electron tube from the basic diode all the way through to the very complex Cathode Ray Tube used for TV screens, and how the image was basically a beam, or in the case of colour TV, three beams focused on a phosphorescent screen, the beams starting at the top left (as you look at it from your side) and then scrolling across the screen in a line, and then down to a second line, and so on up to 625 lines (PAL) painted at the rate of 50 times a second.

      Now imagine how complex the CRT is.

      Tony.

      Link to Lissajous Figure

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      • #

        Umm, moderators, I have no idea why my comment above is in Moderation. I’ve looked at all the words and they seem OK to me.

        Tony.
        [It wasn’t in moderation, as far as I can tell. I didn’t need to release it.] Fly

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        TdeF

        Yes, in a Lissajous figure the vertical is a sine wave as is the horizontal. It was used in tuning. The ratio of the number of peaks gives the ratio of the frequencies and an exact ratio and stationary figure means the ratio is precise. The ABC is 3:1. Musical octaves are based on 2:1, half the frequency for an octave down.

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        • #

          I played a little with CRO’s while at school and Uni.

          IIRC, we had one in the physics lab in school; “dual trace” but one could do the X-Y to see “Lissy” from two sine waves. It was all so many year ago. My upper school science teachers were scientists. BSc at least so they had some idea on how to engage extra-curricular excitement in the physical sciences.

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        tom0mason

        Tony

        Just one thing for those not in the know and googling gives too many results –
        CRO is a Cathode Ray Oscilloscope.
        A piece of electronic test equipment used to view electronic waveforms on.
        The display is no unlike an early TV but on single color and only one line across the screen per input channel..

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscilloscope

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      KinkyKeith

      Would she need one.

      Vinegar, not mothers milk, comes to mind.

      KK

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    William Astley

    The public television stations have removed critical thinking, logic, reason, from their programming which unsurprisingly has lead to the public stations advocating and supporting policies that are irrational, subversive (if one defines policies that destroy jobs and the economy as subversive and/or the result in significant damage to the environment, such as the mandated conversion of food to biofuel in the EU for example or the tripling of electrical power costs, Germany with minimum reduction in CO2) as subversive.

    Policy that is devoid of logic and reason is madness, not in the public’s best interest.
    The first process in solving a problem is determining what is and what is not a problem and then if there is a problem determine what does and does not work to solve the problem in question. They have skipped the first step and the second step and not surprisingly are advocating a solution, to a non problem which is a scam, rather than a solution.

    When logic and reason is applied the problem and the solution changes.

    http://www.amazon.com/Break-Through-Environmentalism-Politics-Possibility/dp/0618658254/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=
    Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility

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    Graeme No.3

    I blame Walt Disney for the left wingers “thought” patterns.

    They went through their early life being bombarded with “When you wish upon a star” and now believe that if you wish hard enough then something will come true. Indeed a greenie I know told me just that about the hydrogen economy – trying to bring in energy density, costs etc. was a waste of time…she wasn’t hearing let alone comprehending… it was all “if we wish for something hard enough, then it will happen”.

    GOVERNMENT HEALTH WARNING – TonyfromOz – skip the next paragraph as it may cause apoplexy.

    And that is how they operate; someone comes up with some attractive if monumentally stupid idea, and it becomes the talk of the skinny soya latte set. “Wind is free” therefore we can shut down all conventional power stations because we will have a cheap and reliable supply. They believe, therefore “it is”. The greenhouse effect exists regardless of the laws of thermodynamics (which they’ve probably never heard of). The Government can spend whatever it likes because unicorns will leave big bags of money at the bottom of the garden.

    So they think that it is just a matter of convincing as many people as possible to “BELIEVE” and all those who won’t are not needed and can be ignored. Thus they preach only to the converted, just like The Age, The Guardian, the SMH etc. and any inconvenient facts are ignored or denied.

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    Turtle of WA

    Why don’t we index the funding to the viewership? That what we are now doing – %5 cut, %4 drop in viewers.

    If less people use a service, it stands to reason that less money should be spent on it.

    Of course, a %100 percent cut to both would be best.

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    • #
      Ken Stewart

      Half in fun, I sometimes suggest to people that taxation should be 50% voluntary, that is, half of my tax the government gets to spend, but I choose which areas to give the other half to- health, schools, defence, aged care, for example, and of course the ABC. Most people don’t care.

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        clive

        There are Lots of people who care Ken,It’s just that our Pollies just Ignore Us.This MUST change our we are Toast!

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    el gordo

    Roger Colman (a market man) amazingly got a run in Crikey…reckon it needs to be privatised to take the heat out of their bias.

    ‘If this is a prime issue, and it should be, the ABC should be privatised — it’s the only fair way to solve the problem of the ABC’s bias image. Bias is an unresolvable issue for the ABC and, because we all pay for it, we have a right to complain. If privatised, the debate about bias is largely neutralised.’

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    Spencer Ross de Vere

    And Abbott does nothing about this. Australians are made to pay for a service which has been captured by leftists for the purpose of furthering THEIR extreme agenda. Why hasn’t Abbott done anything to correct this ? Why is the ABC not forced to live up to its charter?

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      TdeF

      Abbott is not a dictator. Even his modest 5% efficiency demand was met with mass sackings and political damage and accusations of liar, where the ABC hardly mentioned the “there will be no carbon tax in a government I lead” when in fact it was a primary Green condition for leadership. The Carbon tax is gone. The mining tax is gone and a lot of the Green taxes are going but SA, Vic and Tasmania are pushing hard to bring back big spending and damn the future, just like Greece. Can we get two desalination plants, one in case the other one is used?

      So Abbott will bide his time. The ABC calculate that they can influence public opinion and millions do listen and read what is said. They could not more obviously attack this government if they tried. Boat smuggler’s web site, burned hands, Manus death while they ignored the 1200 deaths under their favorite Green government.

      No, he will move slowly and steadily and whittle down the opposition. The core problem though is that while he controls a massive majority in the democratically elected house of Representatives, the 6 year terms of the Senate mean control by the Tasmanian and South Australian Green senators who represent 1/10th of the number of people of other senators but have an equal vote. Even Paul Keating called them unrepresentative swill. It is a silly system meant only to protect state rights in Federation. No one really voted for Union heavy Stephen Conroy whose near useless $65Bn NBN helped bankrupt the place.

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      • #

        I wrote a blog article on how reverting function of the Senate to one of the house of review, representing the States; and not the parties.

        A “subliminal” issue is the seating; with government and opposition facing each other across the trenches. If instead the Senators are seated in groups by State, even with a “party representative” instead of State representatives in the chamber, States-based seating disrupts the perception of “us and them”.

        As to representative elections; the worst thing is the “above the line” voting option. It invites apathy. And dubious preference deals.

        Instead, voters should be allowed to vote for any number of senators on the ballot paper to fill vacant positions; with no implied preferences.

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    Dennis

    By the way ABC The Drum continues not to post comments that provide a detailed reasoned contrary opinion or facts to those presented by The Drum article writers. Their ABC is not interested in balance.

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      OriginalSteve

      Its not just teh ABC that suffers from terminal Leftism – anoth pet hate of Socialists is legally armed ( i.e. firearms ) citizens.

      When The Project ran an article on gun control, watching the presenters talk about it was like it was something a dog had left behind they had stepped in.

      It took me ages to realise why sport is so popular in Oz – its because you dont have to be overly intelligent to play it. Likewise, the tv show in question pitches to similar lower intelleigence younger audience. As such, the old story – get ’em young – applies. The problem with the younger generation is they dont have the historical knowledge of how the world really works. My uncle escaped from communism, and can tell you some stories….

      As such, these shows implement the Left agenda, and unless we educate the younger generatuion and seriously challenge them in terms of history and what works and what doesnt, they will be canon fodder for the Left.

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      Dennis, I want copies of those comments. If the ABC won’t publish polite criticism I will. Please…

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        Dennis

        Hi Jo, unfortunately I wrote the comment early one recent morning from notes in my head, it was regarding penalty rates for overtime that The Drum article covered and I replied that while I agree that the Coalition’s Work Choices legislation needed some adjustment the main thrust was fair and reasonable when considering the future. That since the Industrial Age ended for developed nations in the late 1990s and the Information technology Age commenced the way people work for a living is changing, the employer with employees who are paid a wage or salary with other benefits such as holiday leave pay provisions will change to self employed contractors making their own provisions and being paid an hourly rate for their time.

        I referred readers to a book written in the late 1990s by two British stockbrokers, The Sovereign Individual. From memory, as my copy was borrowed by a friend and it has not yet been returned to me,
        the economic revolution and how to survive and even to prosper from it.

        My concern is for younger working age people and even younger children who will join the workforce over time. Since Whitlam Labor signed the UN Lima Agreement around 1975 that agreed to transfer manufacturing know how and jobs to developing countries, and with no objections from the union movement, apparently, Australians have never been properly informed of the changes underway, the end days for manufacturing industry. Importantly, how to prepare for the new economy and labour market.

        Labor and the union movement campaigned against Work Choices and against contract labour and their expensive advertising was, to say the least, deceptive, blatantly dishonest and misleading. Penalty rates for weekends and public holidays should in my opinion be dropped in favour of fair hourly rates of pay that average out the fluctuations that the different working hour penalty rates provide for. Those sovereign individuals would be self employed contractors.

        And noting that a fixed hourly rate should allow for the contractors to make provisions for benefits or spend the lot if that is what they want to do. For employees the employer provides for four weeks holidays but keeps the money until the employee takes the leave.

        There is concern about Australian businesses using foreign labour in other countries, call centres for example, businesses such as banks using offshore contract labour another. Unless Australians can compete the jobs will continue to be lost. Australians were not done a favour when Labor changed from Work Choices to Fair Work industrial relations legislation and turned back the clock to before the Keating Labor IR legislation that was created in recognition of the damage union power was doing to the economy and related national prosperity in short and longer terms.

        When I read David Archibald’s Twilight Of Abundance, why life in the 21st century will be nasty, brutish, and short I immediately recalled The Sovereign Individual and the economic revolution we are in. And I thought about how difficult life is becoming for people now and into the future.

        Is it not time to face the truth and to be honest with the young people?

        Too many politicians seem not to think beyond the existing electoral term while others on the left appear determined to create their kind of controlled by them world.

        Thank you Jo, this is not what I posted at The Drum but it is similar.

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    MacSual

    I have enjoyed my time here,at times it has been quite cathartic,but I realise that too much time is wasted on blogs,a bit of light fun but in the end quite pointless,the world will do as it does re-climate nature in all its glory and terror and govts will do what the highest bidder wants.
    As a Christian I have certain beliefs I also have a very real testimony that God lives and that His Son Jesus Christ was born of a virgin and died on the cross and rose from the dead,and that He atoned for men’s sins.
    Science believes in certain absolutes,I can tell you that those absolutes are finite,when this world ends new laws will come forth.

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      MacSual

      Oops,sorry, Jo thanks for the chance to post on your blog,good luck for the future and let’s hope you get that bloggie thingo,cheers.

      It isn’t science that will change peoples minds re climate change but common sense and nature that will.

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    Rick Will

    Nothing to do with ABC but an interesting article from NoTrickZone. Professor Piers Forster concedes sceptics are right but their reasoning is wrong. The story is here:
    http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Models-Don-t-Over-Predict-Warming/story.xhtml?story_id=131007CIR3GJ

    You see the models are right but the weather is chaotic and 15 years off-trend is due to that chaos – in Forster’s words:
    “The ocean just fluctuates and changes from time to time and that is quite unpredictable, so it can give significant 15-year counter-trends,” Forster said. For that reason, some 15-year intervals can lag behind the measured temperature trends, he said.

    So the models can be wrong for a long time but are still right!!!

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      manalive

      Summarising that study: just because the global temperature hasn’t gone up for 15 18 years doesn’t mean that human-caused CO2 emissions were not and still are the overwhelming cause of the warming after 1950 because there were periods before when the GT was stationary — which is, of course, circular reasoning or begging the question; it’s contagious amongst warmists.
      The study authors also make the remarkable prediction that just because the GT has been is stasis for 15 18 years doesn’t mean that warming will not resume at some future time — well butter me on both sides.

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    Retired now

    I wonder how long it will be before we get an Aussie online news service that gives us news rather than leftie drivel and self aggrandisement of journalists? I understand New Zealand is putting together a completely different model of online info, called FREED. I note on Whaleoil.co.nz that Freed have interviewed for journalist staff and I imagine that developing a whole new financial and online model that isn’t linked to current MSM would take a bit of time.

    I really appreciate what you do here Jo but there are times when I wish I could get similar critique over a much wider topic area.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Don’t get too excited. Freed might be independent of Government funding, but the Journalists in New Zealand all know each other, and groupthink gathers around the beer at the barbeque.

      They are not advertising for any researchers, more to the pity, so they won’t be doing any in-depth longitudinal stuff, at least, not for a while.

      It all comes down to who they appoint to the Editorial staff, and if they see benefit in context as well as content.

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    Whenever you talk of reducing the ABC they wheel out the rural news etc as reasons to treasure it. So let them keep giving us updates on the latest livestock yardings and just ditch all the lame manboy humourists and teachy convent girl CA presenters. The latter are what cost the money.

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      James

      The header shed radio was running on ABC SA Country Hour the other midday; the star feature was some low-info teenager who had composed a “carbon” song giving advice to farmers on how to avoid the Warmists’ Armageddon. It was as if another Mozart manuscript had been discovered by the convent girl (but she’s probably never heard of Mozart).

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    MudCrab

    The ABC share is down to 10.08 per cent of 16 – 54 year olds.

    Curious if that is 10.08% of the total viewers, or out of all protential viewers.

    I put it to you that there is a significant percent of people who, despite owning a lovely not flat screen, do not watch Free to Air.

    My TV viewing is so casual that I once had to ask someone if they had shut off the anologue signal yet, as opposed to say, just switching on my (non digital) TV and finding out.

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    liberator

    I don’t listen to the radio – if I want music I have my own selection and I can play what I want when I want. Don’t watch FTA TV anymore. If there’s something I want to watch on FTA it’s PVR’d and again watched when I want to watch not when they want me to watch and I skip the adds. And if its something that not screened on FTA down under then its channel torrent for me. I’ve stopped watching and listening to the NEWS because they only tell you what they want to tell you and from their POV – and not just the facts thanks very much. NASA and NOAA said it was the hottest year ever. Counter argument came back from elsewhere saying no it wasn’t based on their data it may have been tied equal to another year but we can’t be sure because of the error in the measurements – any one see that reported in the MSM? Not that I know of because its not sensationalist enough now is it?

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    Safetyguy66

    The ABC is not biased toward green politics, it is 100% green politics. It is the communications arm of the Australian Greens, the UN and WWF, nothing more. News on ABC is no longer a presentation of factual stories, it is a political diatribe of left/green nonsense. Somewhere in the back offices are a handful of green power brokers directing the vast majority of the ABC’s content. Its no wonder their audience is reducing to the same size as the group they represent, somewhere between 1 and 3% of normal people. Otherwise known as bizarre fringe elements such as Christine Milne.

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    MudCrab

    When you do meet an ABC viewer their mindset can be very disturbing.

    A month or so ago I found myself on the same bus as a few of them. To their credit they were happy, mostly polite and sociable, easily starting up a conversation with some other passengers. The main couple were proud to say how they had just been listening to Robin Williams on Radio National (or whatever) and how the funding cuts were a deliberate attempt to keep people dumb.

    Then, having confessed to be a Greenie, and proudly talked about her younger years hitchhiking across Africa (which was wonderful, as the 3rd World people would give you anything you needed), and how their Indian neighbours were too thick to fill their recycling bins properly (they are a warrior caste you understand, can’t be taught new ideas), the ‘lead’ woman brought up as fact that Fairy Penguins were no longer found in South Australian as the ocean has become too hot, instead all relocating to the cooler waters around Tasmania. She had heard it on Radio National.

    It Was Fact!

    Actually she wasn’t sure.

    Actually she didn’t know if it was true.

    Actually maybe someone should look into that.

    I am sitting there listening to this woman and her friends and literally heard her change her claim from Hard Fact to I Have No Idea within the space of 40 words! (but you can’t sack poor Robin Williams from the ABC or no one will get educated.)

    Fortunately about then the bus got to my stop and I fled.

    ABC doesn’t exist to inform and educate. It exists to reassure the smug.

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      Victor Ramirez

      He whose name must not be spoken is such a complete waste of space. The ABC should be able to find a much better science communicator from the cohort of Aussie-accented scientists out there in the real world…

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    pat

    reminder: Essential claimed last November:

    “The most trusted media by a wide margin were ABC TV news and current affairs (69% a lot/some trust), SBS TV news and current affairs (66%) and ABC radio news and current affairs (62%).
    The least trusted were internet blogs (22%) and commercial radio talkback programs (33%).”
    http://essentialvision.com.au/trust-in-media-7

    i would say this says more about the extremely poor quality of commercial free-to-air TV, commercial radio & cable TV than it does about whether ABC deserves the public’s trust, which certainly doesn’t translate into audience numbers anyway, as far as ABC is concerned.

    as for lack of trust in internet blogs, i guess that depends on what websites u choose to visit.

    however, how can worthwhile blogs compete with the relentless CAGW propaganda being put out by the ABC, via so many platforms, which are superfluous in the age of the Internet? there should be one ABC TV station, with a degree of State content; one national radio station, plus local radio stations around the country, which can provide essential information (if they would drop the propaganda and do their job according to their charter).
    all the rest should be scrapped.

    no topic gets more space/air time, without any opposing data/opinions being presented than CAGW. it took a minute to link to all the following either on or from ABC science homepage:

    ABC Science: Explore Environment and Nature
    (3 out of 4 top stories)
    Extreme La Nina events set to increase
    Cold climate animals may suffer as world heats up
    Humans push planet beyond boundaries towards ‘danger zone’

    Clicking from the Science page to More stories & Climate Change stories, brings up the following & much, much more:

    Doomsday Clock moves closer to midnight
    Rate of recent sea level rise greater than previously thought
    Melting ice, rising temps seen in Arctic
    Greenhouse gases highest in 800,000 years: IPCC
    Global warming costs the economy
    Recent sea level rise ‘unusual’
    Southern Hemisphere ocean warming ‘underestimated’
    Global warming: oceans hide the heat
    Global warming ‘pause’ cherry picks the facts
    Global warming ‘pause’ explained
    Antarctic sea-level surge linked to icesheet loss
    Global warming ‘hiatus’ heat is hiding in Atlantic Ocean
    Atlantic warming kicks up record Pacific trade winds
    Rainfall decline in south-west Australia linked to climate change
    NASA launches satellite to monitor Earth’s CO2
    Emperor penguin numbers to slide as Antarctica warms

    from Dr. Karl’s homepage:
    Killer heat waves
    Global warming costs the economy
    Global warming: oceans hide the heat
    Global warming ‘pause’ cherry picks the facts
    Global warming ‘pause’ explained

    and, for those “fortunate” enough to have missed the “earth doctor” on ABC Overnights this week, ABC decides to link to it again:

    AUDIO: 29 Jan: ABC Local: Latest Climate Change Report
    This week the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology released climate change projections for the rest of this century If they are correct what does it mean for us all? Can we ‘future proof’ our towns and cities? Trevor Chappell spoke to Dr Reese Halter, who is a Conservation biologist and Overnights’ “Earth Doctor”.
    http://www.abc.net.au/overnights/stories/s4170732.htm?site=melbourne

    give thanx for the internet and the truly amazing documentaries, including many from as far back as 70, 80 years ago, fascinating lectures, alternative news sources, investigative reporting, blogs, music, etc that it ennables one to access.

    the more people realise the full scope of what is available – and how easy it is to stream it thru their TV – the quicker the demise of the MSM.

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    Victor Ramirez

    I grew up in an ABC household and would be scolded for venturing to turn the dial on the box to the only other channel (regional commercial). Now, all my siblings and even my parents rarely watch or listen to the ABC. I now only use it for child minding via ABC2 and for the odd RN show. Although, I will watch the ABC election coverage and may tune into Patricia Kavales now that she’s doing drive on RN. It will be interesting to see whether they try to claim balance by having an ex-newscorp editor hosting a radio show.

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    JB

    I gave watching commercial TV decades ago when ads were inserted at random throughout Swan Lake. (Yes that’s how long ago.) ABC and SBS were the only channels tuned in. SBS was deleted when they started interrupting programs with ads. That left only the ABC to watch. Then one Saturday night the ABC deemed it more important to broadast the Hopman Cup instead of the scheduled programs. Why? They had two other channels, ABC2 and ABC3 to broadcast tennis. I switched off TV altogether then. That was about 4 years ago. Haven’t missed it at all. Tried Foxtel briefly about 12 years ago and then cancelled. Have they managed to get their program/ adverts/ promos sound levels the same yet? Now my home is TV free, the only screen being the computer. If ABC TV is as biassed as their website then no wonder people are protesting.

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    pat

    Borenstein brings more propaganda to the other ABC!

    2 pages: 29 Jan: ABC America: AP: Seth Borenstein: Poll Shows Giant Gap Between What Public, Scientists Think
    The American public and U.S. scientists are light-years apart on science issues. And 98 percent of surveyed scientists say it’s a problem that we don’t know what they’re talking about.
    Scientists are far less worried about genetically modified food, pesticide use and nuclear power than is the general public, according to matching polls of both the general public and the country’s largest general science organization. Scientists were more certain that global warming is caused by man, evolution is real, overpopulation is a danger and mandatory vaccination against childhood diseases is needed.
    In eight of 13 science-oriented issues, there was a 20-percentage-point or higher gap separating the opinions of the public and members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, according to survey work by the Pew Research Center. The gaps didn’t correlate to any liberal-conservative split; the scientists at times take more traditionally conservative views and at times more liberal…
    Eighty-seven percent of scientists said global warming is mostly due to human activity, while only half of the public did. The figures for scientists are slightly different than past academic studies because of wording of the question and the fact that AAAS members include many specialties, but they tell the same essential story, said Pew associate director Cary Funk.
    What to do about climate change is another issue. Nearly two-thirds of scientists favored building more nuclear power plants, but only 45 percent of the public did. But more of the public favored offshore drilling for oil and fracking than scientists did.
    More than four out of five scientists thought the growing world population will be a major problem, but just less than three out of five members of the public did…
    “On the whole, as compared to most members of the public, scientists are likely drawing from a larger scientific knowledge base — and thinking more scientifically — about each of these issues,” George Mason University communications professor Edward Maibach said in an email. “Therefore, their views appear to be more in line with a completely dispassionate reading of the risks versus the benefits.”…
    “Science is about facts; science is not about values,” (AAAS CEO Alan) Leshner said. “Policies are made on facts and values and we want to make sure that the accurate, non-distorted facts are brought in to any kind of discussion.”…
    (LINKS to Pew, AAAS, Science Mag)
    http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/poll-shows-giant-gap-public-scientists-28583862

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    pat

    ABC will allow “Earth Dr” Reese Halter to claim British Conservatives gave our PM the “wildest tongue-lashing” over coal, but ABC will never report the following:

    29 Jan: CarbonBrief: Mat Hope: Coal returns as (UK’s) most-used fuel for electricity generation, new government statistics show
    At the same time, low-carbon electricity generation fell slightly as two nuclear power reactors were unexpectedly taken offline and wind speeds slowed.
    The data shows the UK’s continued reliance on the most carbon-intensive fuel source for its power, and the energy system’s sensitivity to international fuel-price volatility…
    Coal use increases
    Gas was the most used fuel for electricity generation during the third quarter of 2014, bucking a long-term trend. But, in November, coal generation overtook gas generation for the first time in five months…
    So DECC’s latest data shows the UK is becoming gradually more energy efficient, but continues to rely on coal, the most polluting energy source, to provide the largest share of its electricity…
    http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/01/coal-returns-as-most-used-fuel-for-electricity-generation-new-government-statistics-show/

    and how long have people using common sense said what Gillis now reports from the CAGW-infested WRI? will ABC report this?

    28 Jan: NYT: Justin Gillis: New Report Urges Western Governments to Reconsider Reliance on Biofuels
    Western governments have made a wrong turn in energy policy by supporting the large-scale conversion of plants into fuel and should reconsider that strategy, according to a new report from a prominent environmental think tank.
    Turning plant matter into liquid fuel or electricity is so inefficient that the approach is unlikely ever to supply a substantial fraction of global energy demand, the report found. It added that continuing to pursue this strategy — which has already led to billions of dollars of investment — is likely to use up vast tracts of fertile land that could be devoted to helping feed the world’s growing population…
    “I would say that many of the claims for biofuels have been dramatically exaggerated,” said Andrew Steer, president of the World Resources Institute, a global research organization based in Washington that is publishing the report. “There are other, more effective routes to get to a low-carbon world.”…
    The report, which was made available to The New York Times in advance of its Thursday morning release, cites numerous examples of what it describes as misguided approaches to fighting global warming.
    For instance, under mandates adopted by Congress during the George W. Bush administration and supported by the Obama administration, as much as 30 percent to 40 percent of the American corn crop is being turned into fuel for cars each year, displacing about 6 percent of the nation’s demand for gasoline.
    Several studies have found that the policy has helped drive up global food prices, has worsened some types of air pollution and has done relatively little to reduce overall emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas primarily responsible for global warming.
    In Europe, burning wood pellets to displace coal has become a fundamental strategy in the power industry, driven by extensive subsidies and mandates, particularly in the United Kingdom. Millions of tons of pellets are being produced in the United States and shipped to Europe…
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/science/new-report-urges-western-governments-to-reconsider-reliance-on-biofuels.html?_r=0

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    pat

    when will ABC properly inform the public that nuclear (& fracking) are considered part & parcel of the CAGW low-carbon future in US and UK, for example?

    28 Jan: Financial Times: Jim Pickard: Hinkley Point nuclear deal faces fresh delay
    The UK’s parliamentary watchdog has abandoned plans to scrutinise the Hinkley Point C nuclear project after predicting that a deal over state support would not be struck before May’s general election…
    EDF’s potential partners in Hinkley Point are China General Nuclear Power Corp, China National Nuclear Corp, France’s Areva, Saudi Electric and several pension funds.
    The Chinese energy companies, which are rivals, have been at odds over their precise share of the project…
    Another delay has been the wait for the UK government to verify the final details of state subsidies and a separate infrastructure investment guarantee…
    The Department of Energy and Climate Change refused to be drawn on the timing of any deal, saying it was a matter for the company. “EDF still expects the power station to come online around 2023,” it said…
    The company will be pressed by investors about progress on the scheme at its full-year results event on February 12…
    Two other UK nuclear projects are being pursued…
    All of the schemes hope to get access to government subsidies designed to boost low carbon energy via “contracts for difference” which, in effect, give a guaranteed price for the electricity generated by the reactors.
    In the deal struck with the government, EDF is due to get £92.50 per megawatt hour for 35 years.
    But concern is growing over whether this offers good value for money for taxpayers, given the recent slump in oil prices…
    http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/12dc82ea-a6df-11e4-9c4d-00144feab7de.html#axzz3QH4EOq3W

    Tele’s Lean on the “planetary boundaries” nonsense, with ABC darling, Will Steffen, given the take-home quote:

    28 Jan: UK Telegraph: Humanity is ending its Goldlilocks geological era
    In the space of one lifetime, human interference is bringing the conditions of the Holocene – the only ones in which we know we can flourish – to an end, writes Geoffrey Lean
    It has been a Goldilocks geological era. The last 11,700 years have not been too hot, or too cold, too wet or too dry and have witnessed an earth well provided with freshwater and a great array of biomes and life. They have provided almost a planetary ceasefire after a long history of abrupt swings between very much more hostile hot and cold conditions.
    So it is not surprising that it has been in the Holocene (the term comes from the Greek words for “whole” and “new”) that human civilisation was born, grew and spread. We entered it as a few hunter-gatherers, but have now grown so dominant that scientists believe that we are ourselves bringing the Goldilocks era to an end, with unknown – but deeply worrying – consequences…
    Now a new paper in the journal Science – much discussed at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week – has fleshed out what is happening, and warned that – as a result – the world could cease to become a “safe operating space” for humanity. The paper – by 18 leading scientists from 17 universities and scientific institutions in 11 countries – warns: “The human enterprise has grown so dramatically since the mid-20th century that the relatively stable, 11,700 year long Holocene epoch – the only state of the planet that we know for certain can support contemporary human societies – is now being destabilised.”…
    But perhaps the greatest surprise to the scientists has been the pace of what is taking place. “Almost all graphs show the same pattern”, says lead author Professor Will Steffen of Stockholm and the Australian National universities. “The most dramatic shifts have occurred since 1950.
    “It is difficult to overestimate the scale and speed of change. In a single lifetime humanity has become a planetary-scale geological force. This is a new phenomenon and indicates that humanity has a new responsibility at a global scale.” Indeed so.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/earth/11373430/Humanity-is-ending-its-Goldlilocks-geological-era.html

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    Andrew S

    “sermons, the half-truths, and carefully filtered messages” <- exactly. It drives me nuts. These days I rarely listen. But when I do – breifley – wonder – whats on abc radio right now…
    .
    . … its inevitably ALWAYS left wing trendies talking about one of the abc's six pet topics. So I swear at the radio and turn it off again. Years ago I used to like ABC radio. But its unlistenable now. Its someone's abc but it's not definately mine nor any of the people I know.

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    Renato

    The drop could also be due to the ABC losing access to all BBC programs excluding Doctor Who. All those programs are now on Foxtel’s BBC First channel.

    The only program I still watch on our ABC is Doctor Who, though I’m getting a bit sick of it as the Doctor’s companion, Clara Oswald, seems to be an anti-anything military type, who reminds me a lot of greenie British female I once dated.
    Regards.

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    Richo

    I’m one of the 4% who have switched off the AlpBC because I’m feed up with their blatant lies, bias and lack of balance. The news on the commercial TV and radio channels aren’t much better ie The Project. Also, the local newspaper and commercial radio station are all owned by Faux Fact. So I have been mainly getting news from The Australian. I’m seriously considering getting a FOXTEL subscription.

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      Peter C

      Not sure where that comes from el Gordo.

      If the prediction is correct England is due for a return to Little Ice Age conditions within a few years. We will know for sure when the Thames freezes over in winter and they hold an ice fair.

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    pat

    remember this vote…which was about the fact the climate has always changed. amazingly, WaPo (only on a blog) gives a pretty accurate account, unlike most MSM, which twisted it so that it seemed like Republicans were admitting to CAGW:

    21 Jan: WaPo “The Fix” Blog: Philip Bump: Jim Inhofe flips the script on Democratic climate-change-is-a-hoax vote
    The United States Senate voted Wednesday to agree that climate change “is real and not a hoax.” That was it, the full extent of the amendment to the Senate’s slow-moving Keystone XL pipeline bill. Final tally: 98 to 1.
    This was one of two traps set up by Democrats to get their opponents on the record as disputing the authenticity of human-caused global warming, ***a phenomenon nearly universally accepted by the scientific community. But it didn’t go as expected.
    Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) co-sponsored the amendment with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who introduced it. Inhofe can claim credit as a primary inspiration for the amendment, having literally written a book called, “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.” But Inhofe joined Whitehouse and urged its passage…
    When offered the chance to speak on the amendment, Inhofe — did we detect a twinkle in his eye? — explained his unexpected argument. The climate changes all the time, he said, citing both scientific and “Biblical evidence.” There was a hoax: the idea that man was responsible. Such a position was “arrogant,” in his formulation, the idea that people could affect the mechanisms that controlled the globe. With that distinction drawn — the climate changes, and that change isn’t a hoax, even if the role of humans is — the vote was held…
    It was a nifty, if insincere, bit of politics. There’s no question that a vote against a flat statement that climate change is real could have been problematic for candidates down the road — especially for those various Republican senators quietly preparing for the big election in 2016. With Inhofe’s re-framing the question, the Democrats, ***trying to engineer a gotcha moment, ended up empty-handed on the vote, with neither the satisfaction of nailing down opposition to scientific consensus and without a point of leverage for future discussions of addressing the warming planet…
    Update: Two later votes on amendments linking humans to climate change were rejected…
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/01/21/jim-inhofe-flips-the-script-on-democratic-climate-change-is-a-hoax-vote/

    ABC, on the other hand, made it seem Inhofe was the only Republican rejecting CC was man made, and included the dishonest responses of Dem Senators, Barbara Boxer and Brian Schatz, suggesting it was somehow a victory and an acknowledgement of CAGW, plus brought in Obama, Labor and Greens, and the 2014 was the hottest year in modern history claim (whatever that means):

    22 Jan: ABC: Climate change is real, US Senate agrees; Republican Senator rejects it is man-made
    In a surprise move, US Senate Republicans have joined Democrats on the record acknowledging that climate change is real…
    Mr Inhofe, however, strongly rejected any suggestion that human activity was responsible for climate change…
    “This is a small victory but an important one,” Senator Barbara Boxer, top Democrat on the Senate’s environmental panel, told reporters.
    “It means that there’s a softening of the attitude of the deniers. They’re losing ground in the face of public opinion.”
    Senator Brian Schatz, who introduced the failed measure with the most direct attribution of climate change to human activity, said Wednesday’s progress “exceeded my expectations”.
    “There is an emerging bipartisan group of people who believe that climate change is real and caused by humans and solvable,” he said…
    During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, president Barack Obama chided Republicans for refusing to acknowledge scientific conclusions that human activity is impacting the climate.
    In Australia, Labor and the Greens have pressured the Government to do more to combat climate change, in light of a new report showing 2014 as the hottest year in modern history
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-22/us-senate-says-climate-change-is-real/6034680

    Australian taxpayers pay for this type of biased reporting? why?

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    ROM

    Right through this blog post commentary runs the constant theme that at first glance comes across in the commentary as a vast collection of left wing socialistic organisations ranging from left of center organisations to the rabid despotic communistic slanted green organisations as holding all the cards for a political power grab of indefinite length.

    Included in this collection according to our commentary, are large sections of the media with the ranting left spiralling ABC and it’s anti right bigotry which like the OOJAH Bird , the ABC is running in ever tighter left spiralling circles which are likely to lead to it spiralling out of publicly funded existence into a rapid reversal into a commercial right turning un-spiralling existence if it wants to survive for any lengthy period into the future ,

    [ I also stopped listening to the ABC almost completely about a decade ago. and I and my wife are supposed to be the ABC’s own and owned demographic ]

    Other prominent left /socialistic groups in our society are nearly all of the university academia and it’s very useful and largely ignorant idiots in the student body, most of the bureacracy, most of the indigenous mob in northern Australia, nearly all the unions plus their membership and their very large and growing wealth from their involvement in the Super Annuation system, and never forgetting the Greens of every shade from very pale green to a deep spectrum fluorescing red whose only working part is it’s left propaganda arm.

    And of course the center left Labor Party.

    Which doesn’t leave much of the rest of the mostly disorganised Australian citizenship to vote for the right leaning parties.

    For the right wing parties , the Liberals and the Nationals, the rural vote is almost of no consequence any more with only about 5% of the supposedly very conservative Australians now engaged in rural production.
    The small country towns are slowly dying.
    The large regional centers today better reflect the big cities in most aspects than rural and regional Australia.
    Small business is taking a hiding from both sides of politics.
    Big business has no real ethics or morals and will fund the party it believes it will get the most concessions from and it’s not at all fussy which party that will be.

    So how come that there is generally only a few percent difference in the voting numbers that put in power a government or conversely unseat a government of the left as in Labor or do likewise to the right as in the LNP?

    How come with all these various left wing, socialistic bodies which everybody is posting about above, some of which are actual government organisations themselves are unable to elect a radical left government or even elect a center left Labor party without the help and votes of the rabid, unworldly sometimes mentally deranged and despotic far left Greens?

    How come that the center right parties as in the Liberals and Nationals with all those highly organised center left ranging through to rabid socialistic despotic left green / communistic organisations ranged against them can get elected to government purely on their own volition without any substantial help from any other right orientated political party of any substance ?

    For all of the supposed power and influence of the left and for all the supposed influence of the left’s running dogs in the media and in the unions and in bureaucracy and in academia they sure are making a hash of their supposed influence with the voters.

    [ Labelling somebody or some organisation such as the media as the “running dogs” of capitalism and etc was one of communism’s ultimate insults as it implies that the running dogs are under the control of the political apparatus but are unleashed so as to make it appear they are independent and therefore are lying and hypocritical and grossly dishonest and are working behind the scenes for and on behalf of their political controllers so as to destroy the legitimate government ie ; the communist party in those times .
    Now it is the opposite side of politics, the right wing of politics that are bearing the brunt of the attacks of the left wing media “running dogs” of the rabid left political organisations.
    ]

    To answer some of my own questions above;

    To the left it is all politics and power and political vaporware in the form of vast amounts of talk and propaganda most of which is completely dishonest to say the least. And none of which has much of benefit or substance to it but it sounds impressive and therefore influences people.

    Take a look at that list of organisations above that are highly supportive of the left and you will see what I mean.
    All of them are all talk and dishonest propaganda with little of societal use and substance emanating from them.

    The right of politics seems to consist of people who do things and create things such as engineers and farmers and small business people trying to build a business for themselves and their families and their future.
    Unfortunately those who are the right in Australian politics are usually far to busy on their own affairs , unlike most of the left who seem to be moistly on the govermental teat, to actually organise to counter the left’s propaganda.

    So I guess in the end it comes down to that rather famous quote;

    You can fool all of the people some the time.

    You can fool some of the people all the time.

    But you can’t fool all the people all the time
    ________________

    And be grateful, very grateful

    When I came out of the voting precinct at the last Victorian election a couple of months ago there was something missing that we see at quite a lot of elections on the news media from around the world.

    And the missing items

    Where were those uniformed guards and thugs and their semi automatic weapons at the ready at our polling booths ?.
    Where in fact were the cops?

    Nowhere?
    They were not wanted.
    They were not needed.

    May it ever remain so here in the Lucky Country.

    And if they are ever needed when we have an election;; God help this nation.

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    cedarhill

    Not only the broadcasters. Liberal media across the globe are finding folks just don’t want to be sullied with the drooling lies of the babbling liars. For example, imagine calling terrorists “insurgents” and “freedom fighters” while showing pictures of heads being sawed off with rusty butcher knives. Another example is the world wide shunning of the Left’s movie-entertainment propaganda machine along with their howling at the moon, nutter attacks on a film like American Sniper.

    Once trust is lost, as in a marriage, it rarely is regained. There will always be the lingering stench of bias.

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      el gordo

      Thanks for that Gary, at least the dams will be full. Sadly under regional cooling we will have to handle endless dry as a bone El Nino, the moth balled desal plants might be resurrected.

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    Dariusz

    Looking at media I could never come across an impartial observer. Murdoch and fairfax know that. A leftie will never buy the Australian and vice versa, and this is why they decided to divide the market. Murdoch will look after the right and the other guy will look after the left.
    Their ABC is like a slow unloved younger brother that vies vainly for attention. The trouble is that he grew into an uncontrolled prat that is addicted to his sugar rush like the GW crap and a parade of nobodies with a blame chip on their shoulder.

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    Pete of Perth

    I stopped listening to abc radio when This Sporting Life ended.

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    William Astley

    In reply to:

    Gary Meyers
    January 30, 2015 at 11:51 pm
    Here is a bunch of tripe for you!
    http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2015/01/28/new-climate-change-projections-for-australia/

    The warmists keep turning out the propaganda. Extreme AGW is part of the liberal dogma. The liberals enthusiastically advocate policies (dogma) that does not work, to address problems that do not exist as they have created a support system that shelters their inner circle of decision makers and their public followers from reality (change).

    The liberal/warmists starting point for policy/issue discussion/formation is name calling. The liberal/warmists have shutdown critical discussion (formal debate where logical pillars that do not support an assertion must be acknowledged/addressed) in the public broadcasting system, in many newspapers, in many media outlets, which has unintentional consequences.

    The warmists/liberals have isolated their decision makers and their friends from very basic facts (the fact that there is cyclic warming and cooling in the paleo record same regions that have warmed in the last 150 years, past consequences of uncontrolled deficit spending, logical implications of no warming for last 18 years, observations that indicate the green scams do not work such as a tripling of Germany electrical power costs and new German coal plant construction, logical implications of no warming of the tropical troposphere at 8km, logical implications of past correlation of solar magnetic cycle changes with cyclic warming and cooling, logical implications of the recent sudden and abrupt change to the solar magnetic cycle and so on).

    ‘Public’ broadcasting is part of the reason why the liberals enthusiastically advocate spending trillions of dollars on green scams that do not work, to reduce a gas that is essential for life on this planet, when the planet is about to significantly cool, at a time when the developed world has run out deficit money (GDP) to spending on everything.

    It appears a great portion of the population cannot imagining global cooling, believes global cooling is scientifically impossible. It is not surprising as the warmists have anchored our thought in their paradigm that no one has noticed the climate is now changing. I am curious how the warmists will react/attempt to explain away in your face Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle cooling (Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle cooling of course follows Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle warming).

    It was interesting to hear the tennis announcers discuss the exceptional cool days (spring and fall temperatures) during the cloudy/rainy days at the Australian tennis open championship.

    For some unexplained reason, starting in 2012, some climate forcing mechanism changed (the whatever changed, caused the cooling of the Southern Ocean, and caused an increase in cloud cover in the summer in the Arctic which explains the unexplained sudden recovery of Arctic sea ice), to cause the highest coverage of sea ice (all months of the year), in the Antarctic, due to the cooling Southern ocean.
    http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
    http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2015/anomnight.1.29.2015.gif

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    “Above all, it was that preachy and holier than thou tone that really began to grate. They’d all met people like that and they all know what hypocrites or maniacs they’ve always turned out to be. They watched ABC, the other ABC, NBC and BBC incessantly screaming a none too subtle message at them for years and after a while, they reached for the TV remote with its mute button. No amount of repackaging of the message will get around that mute button once it’s been pressed and lads and lassies, it’s been pressed.”

    https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/i%e2%80%99m-not-a-scientist-but-%e2%80%a6/

    Pointman

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    Unmentionable

    The climate stuff-ups and chronic loss of objective cred is not the only reason though. There’s the on-going veering off into vastly over-represented perversion views, habits and what can only be called a deviate lifestyle choices and culture. That might all have something to do with the gAyBC’s steady loss of audience. I find it difficult to distinguish between SBS and ABC these days as they keep swapping the same dodgy talking-heads each few months.

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