The ever excellent Martin Kettle of The Guardian writes about how predictions of Blair's demise are vastly overstated. As he points out, the comparisons to the end of the Thatcher era are not valid. Labour does have, and always has had, an amazing capacity for self destruction with those on the left of the party seemingly happier in opposition than actually trying to put into place practical measures to improve the public sectors. I, for one, hope that Blair stays on for the rest of his term - Labour will miss him when he's gone!

Wahey! It's St fucking Patricks day! Hurrah. The manufacturers of green felt must be beside themselves with glee this time every year as everyman and his dog seems to have an uncontrollable urge to go out and buy one of these:
Yes, the obligatory big green hat.

Why do people go so crazy over a day that inevitably means squeezing into some ultra shit Irish pub, listening to Clannad, doing the riverdance and drinking pints of black gunk?

I see the yearly parade in New York has gone smoothly - what a delightful man John Dunleavy is eh? The Irish-American community seemed to have no qualms about funding an organisation that was blowing up & maiming innocent people left, right and centre but let a few gay boys mince along with the parade - No fucking way!

Happy St Patricks Day!

;)

Right, enough is enough. We've had dance versions of Nirvana, Blur and Leo fucking Sayer. But now those dance music lumanaries Chicane have decided to out wank their tepid Bryan Adams shite (Don't Give Up) by getting perma-tanned Welsh crooner Tom Jones to join them for a new tune called 'Stoned in Love'. No wonder the kids today prefer the Artic Monkeys.

Interesting story in today's Guardian.

The whole freedom of speech thing is a red herring - what democracy or country has ever truly allowed free speech? Societies have moral boundaries that are decided upon by their peoples and enforced (sometimes) by the law of the land. The lecturer in this case is peddling a racist and sexist ideology but should he be sacked for this? It's not an easy question to answer and everytime I think I know what should happen I have doubts (yes, it's a rare occasion where I simply cannot decide.)

One thing I can give a definitive opinion on however is Wholewheat Spaghetti. NO NEED. Any food stuff that needs cooking twice it's stated cooking time to even begin to approach being edible deserves to be treated with derision. Back to white pasta for me....Embrace those bad carbs :)

Check out the link on the right hand side of this page to Who Cares What I Think? Go visit this blog to read the warblings of a good friend of mine. Nice snappy name he chose for his URL eh?

Wesbite of the day:

Go See Schapelle

ha ha ha ha

Yeah, so I watched part of the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony last night. It was clearly directed by a failed interpretive dance teacher who had taken a little too much acid when she was a sixties hippy. A flying tram? A giant thong with Koala bears? WTF? Next you know they'll getting players from some unknown sport in Australia to carry the batons into the stadium....ah! They did, did they?

I never find these things remotely interesting or entertaining - what's the point in celebrating unity when these games are all about people trying to beat other people? Bollocks to 'we're all in this together' I hope that every country bar England loses and is slain under the mighty sword of St George. For me the commonwealth games were purely set up so that England could rub the commonwealth nation's faces in it again. The thinking must have been 'we own your countries and humiliate you on a day to day basis but that's not enough! Let's set up some kind of competition where we can really show Tonga who is boss! Let's call it the commonwealth games!'

All well and good of course but the English clearly did not predict that decades later little ol'Australia would have a sporting academy that would be the envy of a Commnist country in the old Eastern European bloc and would be spending the entire GDP of Tonga just to win gold in the 4 x100m Swimming Relay. Well good luck to them that's what I say. Swimming! p'ah! it's all about the Lawn Bowls clearly (which no doubt the bloody bruce and sheilas will win as well).

Yeah, so I decided to move my blog from here as some of my English references were falling on deaf ears in the overwhelmingly Antip world of inthemix. I hope to have somewhat of a longer stay here and will start trying to blog at least once a day. I kick things off with a fairly substantial rant about media regulation.

Thrilling.

Australia is a funny country sometimes. While the government tries to extend the private commerical sphere into it's health and education sectors as much as possible it seems utterly unwilling to contemplate that it's media sector could do with some good old fashioned competition as well. Yesterday, Helen Coonan announced the Government's proposed changes to media laws. If you are Rupert Murdoch or James Packer, you'll be smiling today as the net has been lifted on you increasing your domination of the country's media outlets. If you are a consumer (yes, they do exist in Australia apparently) then you've got at least another decade of overpriced Pay-TV, lack of digital services and shocking lack of choice to come. Hurrah!

The proposed regulations will prevent commercial channels (7,9,10) from multi-channeling thus killing off in one foul swoop any chance of any meaningful competition to Foxtel (which by the way is now charging over $70 a month for it's 'big' value package.) Don't you remember in the heady days of the Eighties when governments all over the world were telling us that it was in our interests that the utilty companies were sold off so that competition could start and prices would be lower. They loved that doctrine when it meant selling off national assets to their mates for the price of a pint of beer but they don't seem to like applying such principles to sectors that their mates already own.

The UK has Freeview which for free provides it's viewers with 40 odd channels including additional channels from the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV. This has stimulated growth in the UK and BSkyB has responded with more competitive deals and more innovative products. See John - captialism can work! Digital uptake in the UK has now easily surpassed the 50% mark. Don't expect that to happen anytime soon down under where we'll still be watcing analogue TV when man finally lands on Mars.

Australia has 1000 sporting events on it's anti-siphoning list. I couldn't name 1000 sporting events - could you?!?!!? I mean does this include the annual Crab racing event in Wagga Wagga?? Well thank god though eh? I mean who can possibly beat Channel 9's tremendous coverage of Wimbledon? As if we need to see prime time highlights of a tournament that is being played as we are asleep dreaming of Anna Kournakovia! Bugger that, I'd rather get up at 4am in the morning to try and catch a glimpse of the world's blue ribbon tennis event. Same for the Winter Olympics, I'm forever grateful to Channel 7 for NOT bringing me live coverage of the event and giving the presenting role to some thick blonde bimbo from that challenging travel program, The Great Outdoors. Apparently, the events on the list are now going to be 'use it or lose it events' which means that if the commerical channels do not broadcast at least half of any any one event then Pay TV can bid to broadcast them. I think such a rule should be applied retrospectively and the only sport left on Free TV should be that strange one with the funny shaped ball and the men in tight shorts and sleeveless tops.

I could go on but I won't, it was all too predictable anyway. The icing on the cake has to be that the Government is going to require broadcasters over IPTV to require a license. This means that Australia is up there with the likes of China in it's desire to regulate the media.

P'ah! I can tell you to see that there is no end in sight to the long, dark tunnel that is Australian television. When is the BBC launching it's on demand player again?