Last year I noted that Sydney community radio station 2NSB had collapsed due to financial problems. I’m pleased to be able to report that a dedicated group of people have managed to save the station, and are in the process of making it a viable station once again.
John Southgate, one of the people responsible for this rebuilding has written in with the following update:
Sydney North Shore’s FM99.3 has been operating successfully since February 2010 with a new board of directors and in August 2010 is ready to recruit a permanent station manager. Details of the position can be found on the station web site at FM993.com.au or through SEEK at seek.com.au.
Thanks John, that’s great news. Best of luck with finding a suitable manager.
I’ve received a number off odd emails over the last week, the oddest of all was, oddly enough, sent to the old Editorial Echoes email address. Among this bunch of odd emails, there was one with a sensible question which probably deserves a wider audience for its answer.
The question was about why the current poll, which I said would be reset on a weekly basis until the election, has not been reset yet. It’s a good question…the simple answer is that between ten straight days of 5am-ish starts, recovering from the flu and a myriad of other projects, it simply fell by the way side. I remember it on Wednesday, by which time it would have been pointless to reset it…so the poll can run until Friday night now.
As for the interviews with local candidates…I haven’t sent out any requests yet, and I won’t be sending any. The reasons above are the main reason for this, although I should note that one of the lovely symptoms of that wonderful flu was that I lost most of my hearing for a week or so. I wasn’t able to get around to conducting interviews over the last couple of weeks, and I won’t have time this week.
To the person who was upset by this in said email, I’m sorry…I’d love to vote again as well, but alas it’s not going to happen.
Speaking of elections, on election night my attention will be split between the election and the Sydney Swans V Western Bulldogs AFL game. I do intend on blogging about the election through the night, however it won’t be as thorough and as regularly updated as it was for the last federal election…until full time in the AFL anyway!
I start work rather early in the morning on election day, and again the day after that, so with the election day blog posts which will need to be written on the Friday night, plus the election coverage, I dare say that I’m going to have an election weekend in which I get very very little sleep. I can only hope that the result will make it worthwhile.
Starting from 6:30pm I’ll be running live commentary on the Leaders Debate between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. Please refresh the page to see the updates as they appear, probably every minute or so.
6:30: Welcome to the live coverage. I’ll be watching the Debate on Seven, with Nine on a separate monitor so that I can keep an eye on both the “worm” and the “polliegraph”. Those will get a mention, but they won’t be my main focus as the speeches and pronouncements of the two leaders are more important than what the Seven and Nine studio audiences think.
6:35: A neat and concise opening statement from Julia Gillard. Pretty much what I expected…too many plans to spend money without enough details on her plan to reduce the deficit though for my mind.
6:39: Tony Abbott reannounced pretty much all of his policies to date. While he was talking about his policies, both the Nine Worm and the Seven Polliegraph were quite positive…just as much as for Julia. They both took a dive when he started attacking Labor and Julia Gillard…more so among women than among men.
6:41: Already people are asleep in my lounge room.
6:42: Julia Gillard claims to have sensible ideas on immigration and climate change. Strangely she is still talking about East Timor though…
6:43: Tony Abbott receives a positive reaction to his immigration policies which don’t utilise East Timor. A more lukewarm response to his climate change policy.
6:48: The basis of Julia’s statement about her courage is that she seems to think it’s a good idea to push ideas through even if they’re unpopular. Apparently the people will thank her later. Some public servants cried tears of joys after one of her plans was implemented.
6:50: I disagree with the government funding parental leave, but the reaction to Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme seems to be quite positive.
6:52: Tony Abbott seems to accept that immigration needs to be reduced to remain sustainable, and seems to have a sensible sounding plan for it. It was interesting to see him accept that past levels were probably too high.
6:55: Julia Gillard claims that they’ve already reduced the immigration numbers and closed a number of “rorts” introduced under the Howard government. She completely dodges Tony Abbott’s question of why she didn’t announce the details of her migration figures until now…strangely the off-topic waffle won over both the Seven and Nine audiences.
6:56: Julia just lied about East Timor being open to a dialogue about taking our asylum seekers. Just because one person there is open to it, doesn’t mean that the country (whose parliament voted against it) is open to it.
6:57: Julia will “take the time to get it done” on the asylum seeker policies. So how many more people have to die at sea while she dithers?
6:58: Tony says that there will never be an immigration processing centre in East Timor and that Nauru is the best option. He’s right, and the audiences seem to like it.
6:59: ABC’s Chris Uhlmann asks a stupid question of Tony Abbott about it being true that most of the people who went to Nauru eventually came to Australia anyway. Your point Chris? The legitimate ones were allowed through and the dodgy ones were sent back…what’s your problem with this Chris?
7:01: Julia doesn’t like Nauru because of its deadlocked government. She completely ignores the fact, which Tony mentions, that both sides of politics over there want to take our asylum seekers.
7:03: Julia believes that her stimulus plans saved the economy from a “deep recession”. As much as I disagree with her…how do we measure this without access to a parallel universe? Julia doesn’t want to answer the question of whether she will pour more money in to the economy if we have a double-dip recession.
7:06: Tony believes that the policies of the Howard government had more to do with the health of the economy than the Rudd/Gillard/Swan stimulus, which he rightly calls “rushed”. He also, rightly based on the deficit, claims that the economy is harder for the government to help out if it needs further help now, thanks to the Rudd/Gillard/Swan stimulus.
7:07: Tony wants to bring government debt and deficit under control, to help reduce pressure on the rest of the economy. He also rules out strange plans such as GroceryWatch to try and artificially reduce grocery prices.
7:08: Julia correctly points out that Tony’s proposed increase of the corporate tax rate would increase the cost of living, not reduce it….but then she mentions a bunch of her socialist plans which would have the same effect. She almost nailed Tony, but then completely missed her chance.
7:11: Interesting reaction to Julia talking about climate change on the Seven Polliegraph. Men hate it, women are slightly in favour of it. The Nine Worm is fairly neutral.
7:12: Worm and Polliegraph like Tony saying that the “citizen’s assembly” on climate change, proposed by Julia Gillard, is a bad idea and a waste of time when we already have a parliament to decide these things.
7:14: Tony dodges a question about his proposed corporate tax increase and instead rambles about how he will deliver “stability”…and then drifts on to WorkChoices being dead.
7:17: Julia still believes that Tony is lying about WorkChoices being dead. Seven’s Female audience seems to agree. Male audience not so sure about it.
7:18: Julia likes her workplace reforms and the audiences seems to be more-or-less in favour of it.
7:19: Tony re-iterates that he will work within the workplace legislation set down by the Labor government. Audience not quite as friendly to this as they were to Julia.
7:21: The topic of Julia’s ascension to the top comes up. The audience doesn’t like this. The way she took over is still a sore point among most people by the looks of it. Women seem to be a bit happier about it if Seven’s Polliegraph is to be believed. I didn’t like it…but I accept that it is within the gift of the majority party to change Prime Minister if it wants to do so.
7:22: Tony mentions that the government has gone from bad to worse since Julia took over. Strangely, this attack is highly favourable among the audiences, unlike the one near the start of the debate.
7:23: Massive surge in support for Tony’s support of the military and following their advice on what we should do in places like Afghanistan.
7:25: Similarly strong support for Julia’s similar policy. What neither leader mentioned is that the Coalition want to urgently upgrade some military equipment to help save some lives. If I were Tony, I would have said that straight away and make Julia commit to it too.
7:28: Julia pledges to cut the corporate tax rate, and continue to spend money (“invest” to use her word) on infrastructure such as the $43 billion dollar National Broadband Network. She still wants to bring the budget in to surplus by 2013, but still no details on where this money will come from to do this. Audiences seem to like it though.
7:31: Tony again pledges to cut the deficit, cut spending etc. Tony then delves in to the speech which he gave on the day that Julia called the election. Audiences: Males favourable, females unfavourable, overall neutral to srat with, but they were fairly favourable by the end of it.
7:32: Julia won the audiences for my mind…but Tony came out ahead for me, but only just. There were far too many missed chances and points by both leaders, but Tony came out with more credibility for me.
From what I saw, Men were more inclined to support Tony, and women were more inclined to support Julia. Where’s the ABS statistic on the ratio of men and women in the country?? That could be the stat which will decide this election.
7:34: 53% to 47% overall in favour of Julia according to Seven. Males favoured Tony and Females favoured Julia.
7:36: Nine claim that women were more in favour of both parties, and men were more sceptical of both.
7:38: I couldn’t tell the difference between the pink and blue lines on Nine on the black and white monitor, but women were definitely different on Nine to what I saw on Seven. They were happier with Tony, much happier, than Seven’s women were.
7:43: Nine are running through the highlights at the moment. I’ve got it on the large colour screen, so I’m waiting on the overall result from their audience.
7:45: Nine’s audience gives the victory to Julia by a margin of 63% – 37%.
7:47: Julia also wins Nine’s audience demographics. Female: 66% – 34%. Male: 61% – 39%
Summary: Despite the Nine and Seven audiences, I still give this one to Tony, but only slightly. In my view he had more substance and a better plan for the country, but this is clearly going to be a tough election for him. There’s a long way to go in this campaign for both sides, and whilst I think Tony would make a better Prime Minister, I fear that Julia has the upper hand with the voters at the moment.
I’m constantly amazed by this. I go away for a while and people keep visiting the blog. The numbers drop off a bit, but there is still a steady stream of visitors. I suppose it’s nice to know that somebody other than me finds this blog interesting.
I’ve been away for far too long for me to try and catch up on everything that I’ve missed. Mostly of late I have been working, sleeping, and using the remaining time to try and avoid having to do much of anything. Nights at work like the last couple do give me a greater incentive to want some downtime, but the guilt of neglecting this blog never goes away, nor does the insatiable urge to fill the blog with content. In one of my fleeting thoughts the other day, I equated it to the The Eagles’ “Hotel California” from which “You can checkout any time you like but you can never leave”.
This was all reinforced for me this weekend when I bumped in to an old friend at a service station (maybe “bumped” is the wrong word here…I’m always nervous about using it and other “collision” words in sentences involving motor vehicles) and the first question they asked was about this blog…followed by a comment about how they enjoy reading it.
I also found out overnight that I work with a person who used to listen to my calls to Clive Robertson when he was doing the overnight shift on 2UE, 2CC and the rest of the network in 2007 and 2008. This world just seems to be comprised of circles…lots and lots of circles.
Anyway, no promises, no guarantees, but I’m still here and will still write things. It’s nice to know that you’re still out there watching the repeats of my old posts while you wait patiently for new ones.
Yes I’ve been absent…I’ll explain later when I’m not so tired. I just have a couple things which I want to publish quickly before I have a nap, and then I’ll be able to spend a bit more time later explaining both my absence and that announcement that I was supposed to make a few weeks ago.
Do you know what I think the most annoying aspect of being human is? No? Well I’ll tell you…the need to sleep.
I came to a few realisations last night which have been a long time coming, and I’m rather glad about it because it means that my goals and direction in at least the short to medium term, are now much clearer and more realistic. Alas I can’t explain it here right now because certain formal processes need to be initiated first but I intend on making an announcement on Monday or Tuesday.
Alas between that and my need to sleep, I didn’t actually get any of my three planned tasks (including the promised blog post) done last night…and for the record I’m now existing on about 15 hours of sleep since 8am Tuesday.
I’m working all day today, so I’ll see how I go tonight…assuming that I don’t just crash out after work, that is.
I thought I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but it looks like I only posted the link on Facebook.
Lord Christopher Monckton is in Canberra today and will be appearing at the National Press Club between 3pm and 5pm, courtesy of the New South Wales Farmers Federation, presenting a lecture entitled “Why a Royal Commission must urgently review climate change science”.
Update: Sorry, it’s sold out. End update
The cost is $20 per head and afternoon tea and light refreshments will be available. I honestly don’t know if there are any spots left, however if there are any left, I expect that they will go quickly. The people to call in order to book are the New South Wales Farmers Federation on 1300 794 000. I’ll give them a call myself after 9am to check if there are any spots left, and update this post accordingly.
I’ll be there, and I’m still trying to arrange a short interview with Lord Monckton. Somewhere along the line there was a communication breakdown regarding this, so I’m making a last ditch effort to arrange this today. Hopefully I can get this off the ground because I would love to interview Lord Monckton; I have some questions to which I would very much like to hear his answers and, above all else, would like to make short audio interviews a more regular feature of this blog…having Lord Monckton as the first would be an honour and a privilege. Update: Not locked in, but a window of opportunity has been provided. Many thanks to the organisers for their prompt reply this morning. End update
Anyhoo, more details about today’s lecture can be found here, and if you’re attending then I look forward to seeing you. Feel free to come up for a chat.
I couldn’t sleep last night (which is half the reason I was able to spend so much time tracking the Las Vegas shooting story’s coverage) and wrote a few blog articles in scheduled form. Unfortunately WordPress (the software which runs this blog) seems to have changed the way scheduled posts work in its latest update and is now capable of missing schedules.
That Rush Limbaugh update was supposed to appear around 7am. It didn’t, but somehow the later story about tracking the Vegas shooting did appear on-schedule. More annoyingly, WordPress then refused to publish the Limbaugh story which meant I had to go and play with the database to make it appear.
If I wasn’t so used to random bugs appearing in new versions of WordPress, my paranoid nature would be convinced that the WordPress developers were trying to censor us right-wingers!
Update: Ugh, there goes another one missing its schedule. I’m really unimpressed now. End Update
Further Update: WordPress have released an update (version 2.9.1) in the last hour or so which allegedly fixes this bug and a few others. I’ve updated…now we wait and see. End Update
Physically I’m here, but I think my brain is elsewhere as I am still very tired. Thank you to Maritz who held the fort for a little bit longer than was arranged, Maritz will be back on Monday with her weekly column if all goes to plan.
That is the first time that I have been completely off the radar for quite some time as I did not take my laptop with me to Melbourne, and I am continuing to live without a mobile phone. I even forgot to take a watch with me, so my sense of time was non-existent. More on that later, as that topic will take a while to to write.
I’m just going to pluck the quickest blog post off my list of things to write, and publish that for you. I’ll be back later today with more items of interest.
It looks like Maritz pre-empted me, but she is right, I will be away tomorrow and Wednesday. Maritz will use the opportunity to catch up on some of her weekly columns which have been absent for a while.
I still have a few things to post before I leave, so I’m not gone just yet. I trust that you will enjoy Maritz’s company while I’m gone.
I’m still here, I just need a break every now and then, recently more so than usual.
I don’t like concerning y’all with my absences (if I want to use the word, I’ll use it), so I apologise if I did concern any of you, and I also thank you for your concern.
I’m back, although I do expect things to be a bit quiet around here for a while.
Regular readers may notice a few minor changes to the site over the next 24 hours due to the Melbourne Cup. Melbourne Cup day is generally this blog’s busiest day of the year, mainly due to people searching for this year’s results and landing on the results of previous years. These temporary changes should make life easier for the mass influx, and make the large increase in traffic a bit more worthwhile for me.
In related news, yes, I’m behind, again…and it looks like Maritz has submitted a column and has written some rather confusing Melbourne Cup tip. I’m waiting for a clarification before publishing the column.
And with that, I’m back. The whole catching up on sleep and getting my energy back thing has been a limited success, but I am now back to being able to put my thoughts in to writing without having to spend a week working out how to word it, so we’ll call it a success.
I’ve got a lot to get through, and seeing as blog posts with multiple short stories in them seem to be the flavour of the trimester on about half the blogs I read, and it’s convenient in this case, I’ll bite and run such a post here.
***
Sleep? Hmmm, well it’s 3:32am as I type this and I last finished sleeping at 8am yesterday. You do the math. That said, in the last few nights I have had dreams where I:
1. Was in a repeat episode of Third Watch. Nobody could be bothered attending to the emergencies as they all knew that the people survived the episode, so why bother risking injury doing the stunts again?
2. I plunged to my death in a taxi, on a wet night where the left half of the road had been washed away. A very vivid and disturbing dream.
3. KXNT’s Alan Stock was elected as Chairman of the Nevada Action Committee, although what this actually achieved is beyond me, because the only thing he was required to do as part of this job was take five minutes out of his show each morning to read the KXNT phone number over and over and over and over and over (we’ll come back to this in five minutes when he’s done with the phone number)
***
Speaking of KXNT, their traffic bed (the music they play under their traffic reports) is one of the bits of music which I managed to get stuck in my head this week. I also managed to get the First Option Mortgage jingle stuck in my head for three excruciating hours, and get it stuck in somebody else’s head simply by mentioning it on Facebook. Apparently it’s called “ear worm”. I also had another song stuck in my head, but I dare not try to remember what it was lest it happen again.
***
Frasier and Seinfeld repeats at 7:30pm and 8pm weeknights respectively on Go! Channel Nine receive my perpetual thanks for this.
***
There was some Bollywood movie on SBS Two the other night. I watched ten minutes of it near the beginning during which time the married couple managed to patch up their differences, and the wife declared that she didn’t really care about her husband’s flaws anyway. How they could drag that about the next three hours is beyond me, and I’m glad that I didn’t stick around to find out. The ten minutes was good for a laugh though.
***
Cisco have calculated (which is probably code for “guessed”) that the average broadband Internet user downloads 11.4 gigabytes per month. I average 20-25GB per month and will probably start doubling that in the not-to-distant future if one of my household projects gets off the ground.
***
Facebook have decided to preserve the accounts of deceased members, minus status updates and other “sensitive data”. This intrigues me as I have often thought about what would happen to this site and my other online data if I were to cease existing for whatever reason. I would like to keep it all online permanently, but am yet to find a viable solution. The National Library’s PANDORA project archives the essence of this site, but seems to have a lot of broken links and missing data, which is hardly surprising given the sheer size of this site (6.97GB and growing). Preserving this site is a work in progress…I suppose I’ll just have to stick around for long enough to ensure that it happens.
Anyway, if and when I shuffle off this mortal coil, I’m happy for my Facebook account to be preserved as some sort of shrine, but I don’t want anything to be removed from it. How does one go about sharing this wish with Facebook. One’s will?
***
Speaking of the dead, Yahoo have finally killed off Geocities. I’m glad that I was reminded of this imminent death the other day, as I had one page on there which I needed to save. I’ll republish it on here at some stage.
***
Monash Drive has been removed the ACT “National Capital Plan”. The proposed road had been slated to run along the foot of Mount Ainslie behind Hackett, Ainslie and Campbell, roughly in-line with the already cleared sections which the high voltage power lines use. Politically, the road was never going to happen, which is a pity because it could have reduced a lot of congestion, especially in the years ahead.
***
We’ve been following Barack Obama’s approval ratings here for some months now using the figures from Rasmussen, who had the polling figures closest to the outcome of last year’s election. That said, the other polls are interesting as well, especially when you consider that in the Gallup poll, Obama has recorded the worst third quarter of an elected president in recorded history. A nine point drop in his approval rating in the space of three months.
***
The White House have declared war on FOX News, claiming that they’re not a news organisation. The White House clearly can’t tell the difference between news programming and opinion programming, even when it’s pointed out to them. Funnily enough though, the other networks have defended FOX. Late last week, White House officials tried to ban FOX from a White House Press Pool interview session, but the other networks wouldn’t have a bar of it, quite clearly telling the White House that “if Fox can’t be a part of this, then none of us will interview your chap”. It worked, and the White House backed down, for now.
Here’s the point. FOX out-rate every other cable news network consistently, partially because of their news programming, and partially because of their opinion programming. People want to watch it. The White House don’t like the opinion programming as it is often critical of the Obama administration, unlike others such as MSNBC whose opinion programming often favours the Obama administration. The other networks know that if they let the White House exclude FOX, then they are all trapped in an unwritten “do as we say, or we cut your access” agreement. It is an attack not only on FOX, but on every other network, on freedom of the press, and on freedom of speech.
Glenn Beck, on one of FOX’s opinion shows, put together a rather amusing piece on the War On FOX which had me in hysterics when I first watched it.
One wonders if people would have voted for Obama’s “new era of bi-partisanship” if they had known that “bi-partisan” is defined as “the other side will do as we say, therefore we all agree”.
***
The ANZ Bank have a new logo, and a TV ad which looks strangely familiar…I’ve seen the whole “life juggled above head, but we can make it easier” ad before, I just can’t remember where. Anyway, the logo, is it just me, or does it look like somebody chucking a tantrum after being kept in line for an hour?
***
Channel Seven have announced their new digital channel, to be called “7TWO”, on (you guessed it) channel 72. I’m not in the least bit surprised that regional affiliate Prime aren’t putting it to air straight away, I mean Prime own the “6″ channels in digital TV land, and it would look rather silly have 7TWO on channel 62. I suspect that Prime are working on their own branding of the new station…PRIMExtra perhaps?
***
RIP Don Lane, one of the great entertainers, who passed away at the age of 75.
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Remember when the Large Hadron Collider was about to be turned on for the first time and people were afraid the world was going to end? It amazed me how many people who believed that, were subsequently placated when it was turned on, broke down, and the world didn’t end. The whole cause for concern was for when it would finally reach the actual colliding stage, which it never did.
733-KXNT, 733-5968, 733-KXNT, 733-5968 (Alan’s still going…)
***
Clive Robertson filled in for Tim Webster on 2UE and 2CC’s afternoon show yesterday. What a relief! Tim Webster, as much as like him personally, has bored me to death of late…I can not listen to his show any more, I just can’t. Tim is much better suited to a news-based show than the lifestyle-amalgam show that he is now presenting. Clive, however, suits the format perfectly, and is brilliant afternoon entertainment.
Memo to 2UE for next year’s lineup: Breakfast with Mike Jeffreys, Mornings with Stuart Bocking, Afternoons with Clive Robertson, Drive with John Stanley, Nights with The Two Murrays, Overnights with Jim Ball.
***
And now at 6:18 it’s time for KXNT’s traffic and weather together on the eights, here’s Tate South (finally, Alan’s morning Chairman task is finished, which means that I can wrap up this blog post).
***
There was an ad on TV last night for that boat from Victoria to Tasmania and back, in which they advertised the rate for taking your car with you as being an “each way” rate (eg. “x dollars each way”). Sorry, but does that mean it’s the return rate (you can travel each way for this amount) or the one way rate (each way costs x dollars)?
***
Congratulations to Chris Matlock, KXNT’s Radiostar competition winner for this year. I listened to the entries of the 20 finalists when I was last in Deniliquin, and Chris was my favourite from the start, so I was very pleased to see him win. Chris will have his own show soon, apparently, and will start off co-hosting with Ciara Turns on “Sundays with Ciara” on Sunday, November 8 between 10am and 1pm. That will either be 4am-7am or 5am-8am Monday, November 9 in Canberra, depending on whether daylight saving has ended in the US by then.
***
And finally, Lord Christopher Monckton spent much of the latter part of last week and the start of this week outlining the issues with the proposed Copenhagen climate change treaty which, don’t forget, is designed to stop a warming which hasn’t happened in about the last decade. The main points:
1. The setting up of a world government, with binding power over all countries.
2. Some peculiar scheme to send all the money from the western countries to the developing countries, to pay for some supposed “climate debt”.
Glenn Beck interviewed his lordship last week, which makes for very interesting and enlightening listening.
Part one:
If you ever needed proof that the whole global warming thing has everything to do with social change, and nothing to do with climate change, you now have it.
I’ll be back in a few days. Right now, despite having a growing list of things that I would like to write about, I just can’t manage to get started, so I’m not going to try for a few days. Columns from contributors are also suspended until further notice.
Your “Jerk of the Week” submission
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd
Why should this person be the “Jerk of the Week”?
For copying his media strategy from the White House, declaring News Limited newspaper “The Australian” to be a “right-wing” publication with a determined agenda to oppose the government, the day after the White House declared war on FOX News. It’s nice to know that the Bamster and Krudd are both unable to tell the difference between opinion pieces and news reporting.
Your Name (Optional)
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd’s Jerk Of The Week airs at 6:09pm Thursday on Newsradio 840 KXNT in Las Vegas (12:09pm Friday in Canberra), but you already knew that.
The ANZ Bank have a new logo, and a TV ad which looks strangely familiar…I’ve seen the whole “life juggled above head, but we can make it easier” ad before, I just can’t remember where. Anyway, the logo, is it just me, or does it look like somebody chucking a tantrum after being kept in line for an hour?