Cutting the MSM apron strings

Do you occasionally have moments of sudden, brilliant insight? When you’re sober, I mean. Moments when the truth about a previously unexamined part of your life becomes stunningly clear and you see a new future opening up before you?

Well tough luck if you don’t, because I do. I had another one today. This wasn’t quite as life-changing as a few previous ones like the I-should-pack-up-and-leave-Sydney or the I-should accept-that-job moments but in its own modest way it’s overturned a lifetime of custom and practice. You see, I’ve decided to ditch mainstream media.

Let me explain.

Certain habits in my family go back a long way. One is the 7 pm ABC news bulletin. The wireless version was kind of a defining part of the evening in my childhood and I know from family mythology that the practice dates back at least to the Second World War. Once television arrived the nightly ABC News was a seven day a week ritual.

Same with the Fairfax newspapers. The local newsagent delivered the Sydney Morning Herald every morning and dad came home with the Sydney Sun each week night. Once I grew to a man’s estate I did the same, after switching to the Telegraph for a while in a show of youthful rebellion only to be repelled at the rancid populist muck it publishes every day. Lying in bed with the Sun-Herald while the rest of the family went to church was one of the great pleasures of my adolescence.

Since those days in the long distant past, my days have been unconsciously anchored by two things (the Sun vanished many years ago): getting the Herald in the morning and watching the ABC News at night. Oh sure, a few years ago I realised that I had got to page 34 of the Sun Herald before I actually paused to read anything, and vowed never again to buy a Sunday newspaper, but the other six days a week I was hooked. I was so addicted I resented the fact that no newspapers were published on Christmas Day.

Since I became an internet news junkie, however, things have changed. These days I catch up on the news via Google Reader while I shave. I noticed that the nightly ABC News resembled nothing so much as a talking head reading highlights of the first few pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, which in turn did little more than regurgitate stuff I had already read online. Even so, I couldn’t break the habits of a lifetime until today, when one tiny event caused that moment of startling clarity that I mentioned at the beginning.

I went to buy my Herald as usual and was charged $1 over the normal price. Fairfax started this nice little earner a few years ago: they publish all the Saturday classifieds and extra supplements on a Friday before a long weekend and charge Saturday prices; then on Saturday you have to buy the same hefty bundle of crap a second time for the same inflated price. Walking back to my car to get my extra buck I remembered all the times lately I chucked the paper out before I even read it and I kept on walking. And since I have now discarded that part of the day devoted to reading the newspaper it just seems natural to ditch the nightly news as well. If nothing else, it will be good for my blood pressure not to have to watch Our ABC showing endless stories about Alexander Downer and Sophie bleedin’ Scott telling us about the latest medical miracle.

That’s at least an hour a day of my life reclaimed. It’s like the day I realised it was cool to swap my briefs for boxers … I feel so liberated.

Organ donors?

No posts lately. Too much work. Marking … bah!

But some things are too good not to share.

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

Some people … honestly

There are some people on all sides of politics who do their cause no good whatsoever by the style of their contributions to public policy discussions. They react to code words or phrases with an outpouring of emotion and hyperbole, drowning out any rational discussion in the process.

The ABC is a good example. Several times I have written that ABC TV (which is far from being the whole organisation) should be sold and the ABC should be revitalised with a new charter. Very little informed discussion followed because the conversation was immediately overwhelmed with cries of outrage that anyone should want to privatise the ABC … which of course had never been suggested.

Something similar happened on my own blog when I mused about the personal qualities of gun nuts. Instantly, commenters descended in righteous fury to explain that there were no links at all between gun regulation and the incidence of crime, which while untrue had nothing whatsoever to do with my post.

There was another example recently when a few journalists played the old, old game of ’something’s in the budget cos the government refuses to deny it’. This time the subject of the speculation was the so-called carer’s bonus (quickly joined by the ’senior’s bonus’). No matter that no decision had been made and it was all a media beat-up; the moral indignation flew thick and fast. Rudd was a low-life bastard totally lacking in compassion and if he didn’t change his mind they’d never vote for him again, ran the more emotional outbursts.

Now we have the non-story that the government wants to change the law to let employers read your emails!!! Once again, this has set off reflexive hair trigger explosions of outrage all over the place. Here, for example:

All you need to know about the ridiculous proposition that employers should be able to access employees’ emails is summed up in this tagline - “Gillard: All Workers are Possible Terrorists”.

Is there any limit to the absurdity of intrusions into privacy and civil liberties in the name of national security?

What’s absurd is the suggestion that employers being able to supervise what their employees do in the employer’s time with the employer’s equipment is a breach of civil liberties or infringes a worker’s privacy. There’s more here:

‘Yep, just another BS excuse to slowly but surely restrict our freedom’ runs one comment.

‘Once centuries-old freedoms are lost it will be all but impossible to ever reclaim them. Freedoms were not handed to the people by the goodwill of politicians and governments. They were the product of long difficult evolution and struggle’ starts another.

A third argues ‘I see little difference between this & opening our letter mail & reading it to see if we are “unsavoury”.’

All this bluster and bloviation without anyone being aware of what the government is actually proposing and without any apparent understanding of the existing legal principles. Nor is there any attempt made to develop a reasoned argument why it is wrong for employers to read workers’ emails; there’s just this over-the-top response of “OMG look what the bastards are doing now what is our world coming to I don’t know where it will all end.” It’s like some people just can’t wait to explode into righteous indignation about something.

Of course employers have the right to read workers’ emails. Of course they have the right to monitor workers’ internet use. Out of abundance of concern for privacy the law says employers have to inform workers that they intend to do this but even that seems unwarranted. Employees use email and the internet to conduct the business of their employer - that’s why they have access. It’s entirely legitimate for employers to monitor the use of email and the internet as part of normal supervisory tasks. Supervising employees’ use of the internet is no more a breach of privacy than checking that no petty cash is missing or that workers aren’t using the photocopier to run off the local footie club’s newsletter.

Sensible constructive consideration of public affairs is not fostered by this emotive, reflexive style of commentary. Taking a deep breath, doing a little research and trying to write a logical case in support of one’s point of view usually leads to much more constructive discussion. There’s enough ill-informed ranting on blogs like Bolt’s and Blair’s without everyone else joining in.

China to boycott Olympics

The Chinese government has announced that it will boycott the 2008 Olympic Games.

“We are sick of the faux outrage being expressed by those who have invaded and occupied Iraq and destroyed the lives of its people,” said* a spokesperson for the Chinese government. “Concern for human rights comes oddly from the mouths of those who think nothing of murdering people from 10,000 metres or forcing millions from their homes.”

The Chinese authorities said the games facilities would still be there for anyone who wanted to use them. “Just don’t expect us to provide any help,” the spokesperson said. “We thought Western countries were serious about making a distinction between Olympic games and political games but obviously we were too naive.”

The Australian Olympic Committee expressed its outrage at the decision. “How can we win gold medals with our spiffy new hi-tech swimsuits while chanting ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi’ in a strictly non-political way if there’s no water in the pool?” asked a spokesperson. “The Chinese government should be ashamed of itself by injecting politics into this joyous, carefree, strictly amateur gathering of a lot of kids who only want to have fun.”

* Reporters gasped and applauded when the spokesperson spoke in English. “Chinese person does us great honour to learn our language,” said one of the Australian media pack.

Corporate ethics

You might have seen this story in last Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald:

A PRIVATE school principal sacked for defrauding $2 million in government funding in a failed bid to save his school from closure says he is not alone in rorting the controversial Commonwealth funding scheme.

“It does go on quite a lot,” Lyn Mazey told the Herald yesterday, a day after 120 students at the Lakeside Christian College secondary campus in Tweed Heads learnt it would close on April 11 because of unpaid debts of more than $5.5 million.

At first I thought this information about other schools doing it was in the nature of a confession; that Mazey was finally getting it all off his chest to try to make up for his guilt. But as I read on, it became clear that he wasn’t trying to do that at all. He was, in fact, explaining why he didn’t think he had actually, personally, done anything that was, you know, like wrong or anything. We see in the quote above the first leg of his self-justification, one that will be familiar to anybody who deals with small children: “But everybody else does it”.

Mazey went on in fact to give such a textbook display of contemporary corporate ethical logic that I’ve saved the article for future use as a case study. After trotting out the line about the other boys doing it too, he brought out excuse number 2:

He admitted to “overstating” enrolments for at least three years in a row and said the Federal Government had not audited his school since it opened.

“In 16 years I was there, we never got audited,” Mr Mazey said. “There needs to be a regular auditing process.”

There, you see? It was the fault of the government for placing him in a position of moral hazard (did I mention this was a religious school?). The stupid government gave him all this money and never even checked to see if he was telling the truth. I mean what normal god-fearing principal wouldn’t take advantage of such an opportunity to tell a few fibs and wangle an extra million or two out of the pockets of his fellow citizens … oh wait, no, he wasn’t getting money from fellow Australians, it was money belonging to ‘the government’. It’s a well-known fact that government money is grown in large hydroponic factories in Belconnen and taking the odd million doesn’t actually hurt real people or anything.

And finally, if you weren’t convinced by his defence so far, he’s got this killer argument:

Mr Mazey stressed he had gained no personal benefit. “In hindsight, I wouldn’t do it again, but the school wouldn’t have survived,” he said. “I think it is a tremendous pity after I put in 16 years to build the school from nothing, only to see it closing.

“I ruined my career through doing it and it is something I have to live with.”

You know, I’m tearing up just thinking about the sacrifices that this wonderful man has made. All for no personal benefit. Well apart I guess from the status of being headmaster of a well-respected college, and being called ’sir’ by hundreds of kids, and invited to Rotary meetings, and fawned upon by staff hoping for a pay rise, and presumably enjoying a competitive salary package with associated benefits, and potentially a launching pad for a headmastership at a larger and more prestigious school … apart from those few trivialities he got no benefits from his work at the school at all. I don’t think he deserves to be prosecuted, I reckon he should get a medal for self-sacrifice in the cause of education.

Unfortunately, this mentality is typical of the ethical standards that are widespread amongst Australian managers. It’s OK to do something if others are doing it too; if people fail to be suspicious enough to check up on you all the time it’s their own fault if you rip them off; and personal benefits are only wrong if they take the form of large lumps of cash which you misappropriate for your own use.

Head of Christian Schools Australia, to his great credit, corrected Mazey’s self-serving snivelling:

“This is not the fault of the Commonwealth,” Mr O’Doherty said. “He has done the wrong thing, and it has led to a bad outcome. He is responsible and accountable.”

Responsible and accountable? Gosh, you don’t hear words like those associated with Australian managers very often.

Actions and attitudes like Mazey’s create a predictable response over time: more audits, more regulations, more supervision, more complex procedures. His ethics are the ethics of the immature school playground, leaving no room for adult behaviour governed by independent moral principles. Fortunately not all managers share his rudimentary ethical standards, but sadly, many do.