good times bad times

Any interest I might have had in blogreporting today's various goings-on has been buried by having spent two and half episodes of Yes Prime Minister in the dentist's chair today, and the background sound of the Blues getting thumped as I type. They have obviously thrown the game so as to make Game 3 a spectacle. Oh shit, Maroons in again.

The concentrated dose of YPM - spoiled only by my having to keeep my yap wide open for the whole time - only served to reinforce what a brilliant show it was and how closely related to real life (accepting of course that bureaucracy and politics is real life). Ep 1 was about the speech at the National Arts Council when the annual budget was only being increased a little. Sir Humphrey lunches with the head of the Council and feeds him all the inside goss for his speech, which he can use to embarrass Hacker. Ep 2 was the proposal to abolish the Education Department. Lots of references to how badly children are now taught ( remembering this was 20 years ago) bore a startling relationship to contemporary culture wars.

Oh shit, Maroons in again, in the time it took to type that last para.

Today the online commentariat is all over the concentrated offensive that the government and its hired henchpersons (see yesterday's post) carried out on Beazley. Including some analysis of how opinion is now reproduced as news. Like this. Interesting also in view of Crikey's analysis today of the proposed changes to cross-media ownership, combined with current cost-cutting at the same media outlets which will all add up to less choice and much less 'quality' reporting.

I see the PM and his chief door bitch aren't happy with the Senate Committee's findings on the proposed legislation to make Australia disappear as a legitimate place where refugees can land. Where will we go, I wonder? And not for the first time - can we make the country disappear as somewhere we have to pay tax?

And on that note I direct those of you who may be interested to Catallaxy, where your libertarian proclivities can be tested.

Hmm, that was more than I was expecting. The wonders of aspirin. And I was wondering about the song title for the post - just grabbed one at random from Guitartabs - but I must look for a suitable topic for which I can use Master of Puppets.