15 March 2006

round round get around I get around

Well maybe not that much. But I caught up with an old - as in long-standing - friend today which is always a pleasure as I value his opinions immensely. Amongst many things, we discussed blog proprietorship and what it entails. I'd been thinking of doing a reflective piece about the several months of vvb so far, but I get the feeling I need to write and hone it (blue pen! blue pen!) over a period of time and then paste it to the blog.

Suffice to say that, for the moment, it's still very much a learning journey. I've learnt that you can't just spit venom about the stainless steel rodent every day if you wish to remain relatively sane. On the other hand, I feel that the more 'personal' pieces are pretty trite, unless you're really interested in models of cars I've owned, or home brewing. Or deceased cats.

I've been extremely chuffed to get comments from 'known' bloggers from the corner of the blogosphere I inhabit ideologically (although my blogroll reveals a somewhat broader view of how the world works than straight 'soft leftism'). Long-standing friend today revealed that he's been commenting anonymously on at least one other blog that I visit, so I've got to go back and see if I can pick him.

Here's another one. In my business I have often been told that we should be copying what Singapore does, given that Singapore has been so successful. I always reply that good ideas need to be transferable and Singapore, for all its similarities, is vastly different to Oz. In particular, the dominance of the People's Action Party (PAP) over parliament since 1959 enables a single-minded pursuit of economic strategies that we can never match (even under a 10 year Howard Government). The longevity of the PAP - by fair means and foul - has also resulted in cross-ownership of key infrastructure and institutions through Temasek Holdings, the Government's holding company that reinforces the adherence to economic policy and mechanisms. This extract from Asean Focus's monthly newsletter gives an accurate taste of how it works:

"That PAP will win is a forgone conclusion. No sane person will bet against the PAP winning office. The only questions are: (a) what will be the margin of victory, i.e., how many seats will the Opposition win and what will be the percentage of the popular vote captured by the PAP, and (b) will the Opposition be able to field enough candidates so that the PAP will not in effect 'win' on nomination day? In the last general election in 2001, the PAP won on nomination day when the Opposition contested in only one-third of the 84-seat Parliament. The so-called 'by-election' strategy was supposed to bring more Opposition members into Parliament but it did not work. Under this strategy, the Opposition purposely stood in less than half the seats in Parliament to ensure that the PAP would win power on nomination day. This was supposed to reassure Singaporean voters that the PAP would not be voted out of power even if the Opposition won all of its contested seats. The thinking was that the majority of Singaporeans still wanted the PAP to rule in order to ensure Singapore's economic prosperity and would not risk an 'accidental' Opposition win."

Finally, the proposal - quickly 'scotched' (yeah yeah) by the Rodent - to allow advertising on the ABC. I have to admit to more wishy-washyism here, albeit of a more (generic) conservative kind: I believe such a move would inevitably ruin what I like about the ABC. The PM's arguments that there's not enough advertising to go around bears some thinking about, but in its current guise the ABC's audience is very different from that of the commercial channels and, in some cases, more valuable (the 'A-B' demographic). What you'd get would be electronic versions of those glossy ad mags you get in the Australian and the AFR: luxury cars, outrageously expensive watches, investment advice and merchant banking (has anybody started dealing with Mac Bank since it went all retail?) holidays in exotic locations, expensive houses, and so on. Probably for a while, then as the viewer demographic changed in response, both viewership and the advertising would go downmarket. Once the ABC was more or less indistinguishable from the other channels, it'd be taken over. The power of money.

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