EDM's Holiday Reading Once Again

Well, it's that time of the year again. Where I bid farewell for the year and provide some holiday reading for you all.

I can announce that 2013 will be bringing some changes to Nah Seriously, some of which have occurred already regarding formatting and the like. The plan though is to narrow down my subject matter a bit more into current affairs / politics and maybe even create another blog for some of my sporting writing. I'll do some thinking over the break anyway and come up with an appropriately cunning plan.

A strange old year 2012 has been on so many fronts though. I'm a little tired and jaded from the experience to be honest with so much frustrating me and causing angst. I've certainly noticed that I'm more and more switching off the mainstream media as my source of news and opinion and I'm thinking that's only going to become more prominent in 2013. Twitter has certainly added to that movement as I've been able to access more independent news sources such as New Matilda, The Global Mail and The Conversation.

Anyway, traditionally I provide a list of articles/stories for your holiday reading that I've put together throughout the year. However, this year is different and the below list is merely articles/stories from the last few weeks and even days. They should be quite topical then so here's hoping they engage you and provoke some thoughts/feelings as you too stop living life to a timetable and enjoy a break from the normal day-to-day.

So first up we have Jon Stewart on The Daily Show and the now infamous Fox News US Election moments "that will live forever".

One for the music fans and those who enjoy writing about music is this guy who must have spent an inordinate amount of time compiling the 500 worst reviews in Rolling Stone magazine.

In line with my recent post on the AFL Draft being a lottery and putting too much pressure on 17 year old kids, comes this republishing of an article by The Age's Emma Quayle on the very first AFL Draft held in 1986.

Another one from The Age is this article from Martin Flanagan that sheds some light on the experience of a grandfather of a premature birth. Flanagan is more known for his football writing but I must say I'm reading more and more of his other writing, including this one about Gough Whitlam and this one about Christopher Hitchens.

Getting political now, there's this piece in The Atlantic on the confusion and complexity of what is currently happening in Egypt. And domestically there's this blog post on the Ashby conspiracy if you don't mind a few choice words and colourful language.

There's plenty of other political articles and posts I could list here but given the year we've had both nationally and in Queensland I think we could all do with a bit of a cold shower and a nice lie-down.

Moving on to the media then, I've got Ben Eltham's take on 2012 in New Matilda here and this study of the bias of carbon price reporting from The Conversation here.

It's probably too late already but here's a great piece in The Sydney Morning Herald on the materialism of Xmas and our 'trashing of the planet for a talking piggy bank'. Very thought provoking.

And a change of pace comes from here then and a little op-ed from John Birmingham about his daughter's primary school upon her graduation to high school. One for some my family members who are teachers and hopefully enjoying a long break after a long year.

So there it is my friends. EDM's Holiday Reading for Xmas 2012.

I'll be back in 2013 I can assure you but I must say I'm looking forward to a break myself and a bit of a rejig of things here on Nah Seriously in the new year.

Til then my friends,

EDM.

Not Even A Week In Politics

Politics. It has no relation to morals, as Machiavelli once said. Ain’t that the truth.

So this week, and its only Wednesday mind you, we’ve already seen a tsunami (always wanted to say that) of ‘politics’, politicking and political scandal. And that’s not even with Parliament sitting in either Canberra or Brisbane. Both have wrapped up for the year but that hasn’t ended anything.

Number 1 would have to be the Slipper/Ashby affair. No-one has come out of it smelling roses including the likes of former Howard Minister Mal Brough and current Queensland Minister Mark McArdle. But in the end you’d have to say Ashby lost the battle but he did win the war.

As Margot Saville points out here, Justice Rares found the sexual harassment complaint was always vexatious and was made with the sole purpose of discrediting Slipper and bringing him down. “For the predominant purpose of causing a significant public, reputation and political damage to Mr Slipper” in his own words. It certainly achieved that.

But now Ashby’s reputation is also in tatters given his patsy role and he’s been handed a hefty court costs bill. Brough and McArdle have been outed as the brains behind it as well which is quite Machiavellian given Brough has been preselected by the LNP to take on Slipper at the next election. With a choice of those two, expect a massive increase in the amount of donkey votes in the seat of Fisher.

The Government itself does have some ammunition to fire back at the Opposition over the whole sorry ordeal but it’s got to be careful given it appointed Slipper to be Speaker of House in the first place and backed him in numerous motions in Parliament. Its settlement deal with Ashby of $50,000 might also be a source of some embarrassment.

Moving on, next we have Premier Newman’s backflip on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Now I’m all for the backflip as it will mean life will get just a little bit easier for thousands of Queenslanders living with a disability and their families and carers.

But what a backflip its been. In July, the Premier said categorically that Queensland could not afford the scheme until at least 2014 and he revelled in the faux stoush with the Prime Minister at COAG. And he continued to claim that Queensland just couldn’t afford to contribute to the NDIS and called for the Commonwealth to fund it entirely. He even alluded to it having the potential to make Queensland the “Spain of Australia”.

Come early December though, after a few months of horrendous media coverage as his Government lurched from one crisis to another, all of a sudden the Premier could find some money and Queensland will now contribute nearly $900 million over four years to roll out the NDIS in this State.

So not just a backflip, but a close to $1 billion backflip. And if that sort of money can be found so easily in the face of just a few months of bad polling, imagine what else is sitting under the couch cushions waiting to be retrieved. Me thinks the budget situation and the hysterical talk of ‘debt’ might be a little overstated. But hey, that’s just me.

And finally, we have the Abbott Slush Fund affair. Now many of you probably haven’t heard of this one as it’s struggled to get any traction in the mainstream media. Basically, former Fairfax journalist Margo Kingston nearly spat out her tea when watching Tony Abbott calling for the Prime Minister to come clean on the AWU slush fund issue because she remembers Abbott having some very serious questions raised about his very own involvement in a slush fund controversy.

Margo duly set about writing an article about it all before having all sorts of troubles getting anyone in the mainstream media to publish it. Along came Independent Australia and New Matilda who duly published and now there’s quite a campaign running asking the Australian Electoral Commission why it dropped an early 2000s investigation into Abbott’s conduct around the Australian’s for Honest Politics Slush Fund established to pursue Pauline Hanson for electoral fraud. You know, the case that put her in jail and all that.

The whole saga is better outlined by others here and here. Perhaps though it’s actually a case of some ‘good’ in politics as opposed to the two other examples above. Not from any politician or political party themselves, but from real people and citizen journalists who are working tirelessly to uncover an important issue that goes right to the character of our alternative Prime Minister.

But as I said, its only Wednesday. Who knows what else ‘politics’ will bring us before the week is out.

EDM.