Equal Opportunity and Nanny Statism

I've been, er, busy. And have moved overseas. Anyway...

On the face of it "Equal Opportunity" sounds like A Good Thing. When you apply for a job, it shouldn't matter whether you are blind, deaf, white, black, Irish, Chinese, homosexual, Jewish, Muslim or Sikh. Your ability to do the job is the only thing that matters. From this, I would have thought that the information about your ethnic/racial background, disability status, religion (or lack thereof) and sexual orientation would be completely irrelevant.

In Britain, it's not.

I recently (yesterday) applied for a position with a public institution (a university) where at the end of the application form it had a page labelled "Equal opportunities application monitoring". This page proceeded to ask my gender (irrelevant), nationality (irrelevant - I'd already confirmed my right to work in the UK previously in the application), cultural background (irrelevant for this position*), whether I consider myself to have a disability (irrelevant), religion I affiliate with (irrelevant*), sexual orientation (irrelevant), if I'm related to any member of the University (relevant), criminal activity (irrelevant for this position**) and whether I'd worked for the university previously.

My response to those - which I didn't write down - was to ask why is is information then collected, and why does it matter? If it really is "equal opportunities" then the only pieces of information where I could see some relevance was whether I had a relative in or had previously worked for the university - I would guess to prevent any unfair advantages through the interview and candidate review process.

Of course, I forgot. I'm in Britain. There's a reason that it gets labelled the nanny state.

It's not the first time I've noticed this theme - the cameras are the obvious ones, but it's also the news. Currently there's a "credit crunch" going on, and the overriding theme from people seems to be that it's the governments' fault, and that the government should be the white knight to protect them from all the ridiculous decisions they've made in their lives. Example: a "documentary" called "The Cost of the Credit Crunch", where you were shown a range of sob stories where people have made decisions that weren't financially wise, and one and all they blamed the government. Exactly what the government is meant to do when you don't read a contract properly and only use the company you're dealing with's lawyers, I'm not sure. Or when you overreach on the number of products you've ordered and paid for and suddenly your debtors don't, won't, can't pay up.

I'm not denying it that there's people are doing it hard nor is it the case that I don't feel sorry for them (sometimes, to be honest), but there's a culture here to blameshift, and to try avoiding any personal responsibility. Of course, perhaps it's that these documentaries have the same amount of credibility as TodayTonight, A Current Affair and newspapers... or pretty much 90% of media in Australia.

* There would be some cultural backgrounds that would prevent a person from undertaking some roles. There are also some religious backgrounds that would prevent a person from fulfilling a role properly - say, a Catholic in an abortion clinic. Which reminds me of the new legislation in Victoria - discussed at Hoyden About Town and An Onymous Lefty.

** Mind you, perhaps if I had record for fraud, libel (which is possibly a civil offence?) or stealing equipment from my work offices...

Pwnt

You, News Ltd, have been pwnt.

As of now, they haven't even tried to print/post a correction.


Kate McCulloch is an opponent of a Muslim school in Camden, Sydney, and was labelled/claimed to be the new Pauline Hanson. Not only did Hanson hang up when contacted (she doesn't want much to do with this? Surprise...), but McCulloch has also been slapped down after claiming:

The Macarthurs will be proud of us...

Yeah, good one. As Wah and VTAY have also mentioned, racist.

Budgeting pain...

So, the new federal budget is out, and there's obviously a lot of people doing it tough in the community.

I've been fairly critical of the media in previous posts, and this case wouldn't be an exception.

Choice quote:

Their combined income of more than $150,000 is quickly swallowed by the cost of raising two children, an average-sized mortgage, running a financial planning business and meeting car payments and private school fees.

"Average-sized" mortgage. Like what, over $200,000? More than $400,000?

Running a financial planning business... so they "only" pay themselves $150,000p.a.? Does that mean the business isn't going that well? Are they blaming the government for that too?

As for car payments:

They would have been hit with the luxury car tax, which jumped to 33 per cent for $57,000-plus cars, had they delayed buying a 4WD.

What kind of 4WD, and why do they need one? Do they really go out and use it (bush), or is it for carting the kids' friends around?

The article says nowhere what private school the kids are attending. Should I take it to mean he's going to Prince Alfred College, and she's at St Peter's (two of the most expensive schools in Adelaide)? Or are they going to some of the "cheaper" ones?

It seems to me that they expect the government to support them through their lifestyle choices, which they say are bad by complaining how much it costs, but do it anyway. And further, the lack of detail on exactly why they're "doing it tough" implies to me that the article is simply a beat-up for the Liberal party, because they're having trouble finding something relevant to complain about.

Remember, every baby is created equal. Of course, some are more equal than others.

Did you know Brendan Nelson's a doctor?

Update: Somebody's thinking of the children. I'm thinking along the lines of Senator Conroy not actually knowing what he's talking about, and some muppet from his department sent him out to face the media under-prepared.

And two: Ross Gittens gets stuck in.

Priority Media

It's a question that needs to be asked in Australia: where is the quality going? On Woolly Days Derek Barry has an(other) excellent post on whether any of Australia's main media outlets actually care about the quality of what they presented. Last night on Media Watch on the ABC host Jonathan Holmes covered the same story, and it included interviews with Roy Greenslade (Media Columnist, The Guardian), Mike van Niekerk (Editor-in-Chief Online, Fairfax Media) and Eric Beecher (Publisher, Crikey & Business Spectator).

A comment by Mike van Niekerk comparing printed and electronic media caught my ear:

Mike van Niekerk: I think they speak to different audiences. They are slightly different audiences. In fact I can tell you that the percentage of people that read both the print edition and the online edition is roughly about 25%.

Jonathan Holmes: The concern I guess would be though, if your web pages are the look of the future, if you like, the developing medium. And the newspaper is the one that's on the way down. If that's the case, does that mean that quality journalism is on the way down? Does that mean that funding the Canberra bureaus and the foreign bureaus and doing the investigative journalism is on the way down?

Mike van Niekerk: You know if that were to be the case, that would be the time that I would get out of this business because that would take all the fun out of it for me.

Well, that makes me feel better - until I was confronted by this image when I went to the "AdelaideNow" (The Advertiser/The Sunday Mail) website today:
The media in Adelaide is saturated enough with AFL news as it is (they love their Australian Rules here a little too much - to the point that it's disturbing), but former stars' bust-ups take precedent over 10,000 dead in Burma? Large picture of Grant Hackett's "belly"? Side note: he's just swum 10km, for crying out loud. Give over.

But that's a News Limited source. What about Fairfax and the Sydney Morning Herald?

Wayne, Scarlett, Kylie, Tom, Gazza, Sophie, Tom. The Burma story is only saying whether there's any Australian casualties, the article on Keating is just reviewing a column of his from the SMH, 'Road rage' is from reading a police media release and the 'Dungeon children' is reproducing international stories. If there's quality journalism there, it's difficult to see. Saying that the printed and electronic media customers are too different doesn't mean that there shouldn't be easily accessible stories with real substance. Those five stories about people in the entertainment industry take the width of the entire web page?

So, er, where/what is the money (that van Niekerk says they're still making) going to?

And just for laughs, what's the Guardian's (from England) website look like?

Hmmm. So,
1. Are Australia electronic media consumers that much more celebrity and sport-focussed than the print consumers?
2. Do the Australian media outlets expect them to have that orientation or judge stories by the number of clicks on each, then pander to those tastes?
3. Do the Australian media realise that serious journalism can be presented on their websites, too?

Media and the Chinese

Would anyone really be surprised about this happening, after all the Chinese Ambassador has said? I almost wonder why he hasn't been told to front up at The Lodge and asked to explain him(them)self(ves).

In the meantime, what's with The Australian full-stop? Have they had feelings on inadequacy, and started drifting further right in response to them telling themselves that because the Labor Party won, we're going left. That's evil, obviously. Can't have and dissent of opinion. For example, a reasonable suggestion on a News Ltd's "blogger"'s entry treated very weirdly.

Ok, it's a bit of a draw to compare the two. But really. The opinion pieces posted on the website seem that they're raging, raging against the dying of the... er, light. Yeah. 'Cos obviously, with all this loving, caring, LEFT-leaning crazy 2020 summit stuff, someone's got to "provide balance".

And I haven't posted for a while. Sorry Soupie.

On the news tonight

There won't be anything newsworthy. Oh, it'll be what people are interested in - or rather, what people get told to be interested in, but it won't really be news. A bit like the new segment on the afternoon show on Triple J - "That's not news!" (Oh, and Dools and Linda are currently my favourite duo on teh J's.)

Despite the occasional loopy articles (Scientologists saying psychiatry r bad), ABC Unleashed usually has something of interest, in this case Antony Loewenstein's Spot the news story. And the premise asks a question that I don't know (especially locally-based) news outlets could answer with any justification other than "er...": why is incest worthy of more news time than a casual (but not very well judged) salute/wave, and more newsworthy than the US government approving torture, saying laws don't apply to (their) interrogators? Australia happily went along with them to a couple of random sorties into that bastion of savagery, the Middle East, and now this? Did we know what we were involved in?

It's not just a problem here, the US has it's issues too. Of course, everyone remembers Hillary Clinton breaking down crying. The only related piece of analysis worth anything was Jon Stewart giving a serve to the media's coverage of it - a raised eyebrow and a "wtf" expression.

The Piping Shrike's latest is not exactly real news, but at least it's real analysis. As are the daily updates from Woolly Days. In South Australia, there's The Advertiser, The Australian, the... no, wait. That's it for mainstream circulation. Both papers are owned by the same crowd - News Limited. Fantastic diversity, right there (I will say that I hear the editors of the papers do have a fair bit of autonomy - of course, News Ltd could just keeping sacking people until they find the ones they want, but that's another conspiracy theory). The quality of The Advertiser is negligible. The Sunday edition, The Sunday Mail, is like Woman's Day but for $1.80 (or whatever it is), and once a week.

The Australian as the only national broadsheet lays claim to be higher class, but a few in the blogosphere and a few responders to the op-ed pieces have had issues with their lack of education in statistics when reporting political opinion polls, and a lack of a left eye when covering politics in general. Trying to appear that they create balance by having Phillip Adams write a column once a week doesn't really cut it when Janet Albrechtson, Greg Sheridan and Dennis Shanahan are on the other side of the coin - although, Shanahan is at his best when discussing internal workings and performances of the one of the major parties, and not comparing between them.

Not saying he's biased or anything. Just... it feels like he allows his viewpoint to colour the article more than it should. The less said about Albrechtson's attempts, the better...

So for more analysis on the non-internet side, people need to rely on SBS and the ABC. For a couple of (mostly, in SBS's case) publicy-funded broadcasters, I'm not sure why they don't upload their documentaries and news stories to their websites. I could understand it if it's not an in-house production, but when it is? Being able to watch Dateline and The Cutting Edge when I want would be fantastic - and leave off the need to buy a $500 hard disk tv recorder. Hey, even The Chaser's War on Everything was available on their website (although the video quality was fairly average).

But I guess this is too advanced for us: if we're not at least 10 years behind every other 'first world' country, then we need to go backwards!

/me sighs

Oh, and bongs and other drug paraphernalia are now banned in SA. Obviously, burning hose pipes and alfoil are much safer options.

Giving geeks a voice

But then, do we have to? Maybe the only relevant argument to the obvious point of this entry is that there's a bit of geek in all of us; hence we're all geeks about something - and everyone should have a voice!

Or should they. Reading some of the comments on this story, it's hard to see how "shoot the dirty buggers" has merit (note: I am passing no judgement on the stories' subjects, there's been enough of that already). Or the reporters constantly providing new angles into the story - do we really have to? Or is that even the same thing?

...Probably not.

The actual point to this entry is that on a forum I frequent, a couple of people have recorded a few lines from each of us and uploaded it (to a file-sharing site) for others to hear our voices. For a few of us, considering the international nature of the forum, it's the first time.

What is interesting, though, is that after a decent period of online interaction (3? 4 years) people talk the way you expect them to talk, but don't always sound the way you expect them to sound.

...most people in real life are almost just as you picture them after knowing them online for a number of years.

(A certain someone should be chuffed I'm quoting them.) I guess the point is that online, despite some people creating a facade or different persona to amuse/compensate for themselves, you will still get a stream of words, mostly unedited from the mind to the page.

And that's all kinds of cool.

On life and loving personal freedom...

Somehow this is the best way the NSW Education Minister could think of to increase attendance.

So, for the count: they're fingerprinting minors; they called parents stupid for refusing to allow their kids to be fingerprinted (with exemption notes); and then the students weren't "allowed" to leave the room until their fingerprint had been taken, regardless of afore-mentioned note.

Equally disturbingly: the NSW government planned and implemented something like this with little to no media coverage. I don't watch Channel 7/Bubblegum news every night, but I do read web news sites, and quite a few blogs where something like this would have been mentioned, so I was wondering how this got past all that until I read to the end of the article:

The process had also never been formally announced by Mr Della Bosca nor the Iemma Government, he said.

O RLY. This story has even been buried on news.com.au; I saw the article in The Ostrayhun:

The school children may as well get used to it. Within a decade, having your implanted ID chip, or biometric data, scanned every time you enter a school, train station, shopping mall or night club will be standard, every day stuff.

Brilliant. Can't wait for it.

An Education Department spokeswoman said inquiries would be made about the scheme.

I would damn well hope so.

Meanwhile, a more important issue: most Australians unable to fix their computer. Get some skillz, nubs.