View From The Couch- 20/Mar/2016

Unfairfax

The press is in die back. They even make movies about it so it must be true. Fairfax has been making cuts to so many parts of their newspapers for so long we've lost perspective on this, yet it's a process that still continues on.  There are no say answers as of yet, but meds companies, interchangeable with news outlets have gone into decline as their business model got eaten alive by the internet.

And so we come to this week's news that Fairfax is thinking of cutting 120 jobs, and the journalists are striking.

Striking Fairfax Media journalists have branded the company's proposed editorial cuts "aggressive" and "unnecessary". 

On Thursday, Fairfax announced it would seek cost reductions equivalent to 120 full-time jobs from its newsrooms in response to difficult market conditions. 

As well as job cuts, the company has flagged the potential to save money through tightening contributor budgets and reducing travel costs and expenses. 

The announcement sparked a wildcat strike at Fairfax's operations in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth, Newcastle and Illawarra. 

On Friday there were protests outside the company's offices in Sydney and Melbourne.
"This came as a surprise. It was a fairly aggressive way of doing it in our opinion, and unnecessary," The Age journalist Simon Johanson said of the proposed cuts while at the Melbourne rally.

Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood said the cuts were necessary to sustain high-quality journalism, which is of course a bit like growth-through-cuts and may even be pursuing peace-through-war and ignorance-is-strength. You get the picture; in the absence of anything cogent to say the CEO falls back on a phrase that sounds more platitudinous than considered. It's even stranger because not so very long ago, a bunch of Fairfax editors were beating their chests to say how well they were transitioning to digital story-telling. 

The truth is, nobody wants to pay for anything that's 'content' now. It's been this way since the advent of the internet. It has gotten to the point that advertisers don't want to pay for advertising because of the internet, while subscribers represent a minority of people who want to consume. Whatever made commerce, commerce, has broken down when it comes to the business 'content'. At the end of the day it means fewer outlets, fewer journalists, fewer reports, less information to go on. 

As the pool of journalists shrinks, the diversity of ideas also diminishes. By diversity I don't mean, ethnic voices or more input from LGBTQ people, I mean the sheer ability to provide nuanced, mule-faceted understanding of complex social phenomena. With less analysis comes a less informed public which gives rise to ever more dumbed-down populists. The rise of Tony Abbott and Donald Trump  are symptomatic of the less informed public that has a very gross, unrefined understanding of issues; and all of this comes before whether journalists are fulfilling their obligation as the fourth estate. 

I mean, where else do bloggers get a reason to blog?

One Of Our Submarines

This business of procuring the next generation of submarines from somewhere has turned into a three way bid for the tender. The contestants are Japan, Germany and France. The French have boldly offered some political advice as well as technical advice.

Speaking to Australian journalists in Paris this week, the firm's chairman Herve Guillou​ and deputy chief executive Marie-Pierre de Bailliencourt​ said lithium ion battery technology was not yet sufficiently developed to use in submarines and doing so before it was perfected would be dangerous.

"We know that the technology today that is used is the same one used in cars and in cars they explode," Ms de Bailliencourt said. "The Australian people ask us for proven technologies and proven solutions … [that are] safe for the submariners, safe program-wise and safe cost-wise ... What I'm saying is there's no proven lithium ion technology today." 

The French bid leaders suggested the Japanese were being forced to use the more advanced lithium ion rather than conventional lead acid batteries because otherwise their boat would not be able to go far enough for the Australian navy's needs. 

But Ms de Bailliencourt and Mr Guillou said a partnership with France would also bring strategic benefits without the risk of becoming entangled in the historic enmities of north Asia. 

Choosing Japan for strategic reasons could mean Australia's being "dragged into a third country's own political affairs", for instance "if there's war between Japan and China because of the islands, because of commercial routes". 

Asked if she was suggesting Australia could be dragged into a war with China, she said: "I'm not suggesting anything. Make your own conclusions 

"We know about Japan and China. The history between the two countries is way from being done. We've absorbed the German-French wars. We've fought them ... We're lasting friends. But there's nothing that has been even started yet between China and Japan for reconciliation."

Talk about whacky and wild and totally self-serving. If it were true that Australia were at risk of being dragged into a conflict between Japan and China, it's not entirely clear how buying French submarine guarantees Australia gets to sit it out, given the current alliance arrangements.

I'm trying to remember the moment in history where the world feared the great French submarine fleet.

The role of the French submarine force in 1939 was to act in concert with the French fleet and with France's allies against the Axis powers, with particular responsibilities in the Mediterranean. It also operated in defence of France's overseas territories and colonial empire. This changed in 1940 with the fall of France and the signing of the armistice with Germany. 

One submarine had been sunk in action, and several others scuttled to prevent their capture; seven others, in British ports at the time of the armistice, became part of the Free French naval force (FNFL). The captured Aurore class boat Favorite was taken into German service as UF-2, a training ship. However the majority remained under the control of the Vichy government. 

Over the next two years 16 submarines were lost in Vichy service, mostly in clashes with British and Allied forces. 

In November 1942, with the invasion of Vichy territory by the Germans, many of the remaining vessels were scuttled, or captured by the Axis. Those that survived, or managed to escape, joined the FNFL; despite losses, and with replacement from allied navies, France ended the war with 20 submarines in service, having lost 50 boats from a variety of causes.[3]

That reads like the cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys really know what they're talking about when it comes to submarines. I'm sure the French are experts at underground warfare, but their cred on underwater is a lot lighter. 

Jokes aside... It's sort of odd that Australia has its own Australian Submarine Corporation, but Tony Abbott decided to go shopping overseas for a submarine fleet. It's worse than a vote of no-confidence, it is another nail in the coffin for killing off manufacturing in South Australia. It also reverses the many attempts to shore up high tech and heavy industry in South Australia.  You'd think the likes of Cory Bernardi would have something to say about this more than Safe Schools and Gay Marriage, but it's just another example of how Senators for the two major parties don't have to look after their constituents' interests. 

In the process Tony Abbott has insulted the current fleet of Collins class submarines and put South Australia's electorate squarely against the Coalition. The initial scuttlebutt of picking Japan as the source of the next submarines also flew right in the face of 'traditional Australian sensibilities' which is normally about hating on anything Japanese - which kind of reveals that Tony Abbott may not actually be so Australian to begin with. Then, backing down from the initial rush to go submarine shopping in Tokyo, the Coalition government under Malcolm Turnbull has embarked on this rather odd tendering process. 

Contrary to the amount of money it is all going to cost, the next generation of submarines for the RAN are not going to be world changers any more than the current Collins class submarines have changed any aspect of the balance power in the Pacific. As with the F-35, munitions manufacturers have a way of inflating the efficacy and benefit of arming up with expensive bits of gear. It's all a money sink. All of this discussion is symptomatic of a chaotic government. 

Quick Shot - 16/Feb/2015

Celebrating Freedom Of Expression

No, I'm not going to write about the poor person shot dead in Denmark. Instead I'm just going to point at the abject idiocy of finding in an audit that Sarah Ferguson was not respectful enough in her questioning the treasurer. It strains credulity but somehow, we have these things:

While acknowledging the Ferguson-Hockey interview was "compelling television", Ms Ryan finds: "I felt that the 'tone' of the questioning in this particular interview could have been interpreted by some viewers to be a potential breach of the ABC's impartiality guidelines." 

Ms Ryan singles out three points of the interview for criticism, starting with Ms Ferguson's first question to Mr Hockey. 

"Now, you've just delivered that budget," Ms Ferguson said. "It's a budget with a new tax, with levies, with co-payments. Is it liberating for a politician to decide election promises don't matter?

Ms Ryan found the question was factually correct but said its tone made the Treasurer seem "under attack".
"In my view, the language in Ferguson's first question was emotive," she found. "I also believe that the average viewer would consider that the Treasurer was not treated with sufficient respect by the interviewer." 

Ms Ferguson later told Mr Hockey that she had asked a "yes or no question". She then said: "I don't need to teach you, Treasurer, what a tax is. You know that a co-payment, a levy and a tax are all taxes by any other name."

I mean, really? Naturally the finding has been rejected by the ABC. Well, of course it would it's so clearly stupid. Ms. Ryan felt the tone could be interpreted by some viewers to be a potential breach of the ABC's impartiality guidelines? I mean really? She feels (not thinks, perhaps vaguely or even strongly, show won't say which) that maybe some minority in the audience-land watching might be doing some interpreting in such a way that it's not impartial? And that makes it a breach? Just how stupid is this auditor? 

If I said I was impartial and made a statement 'X' (fill it in any way you like, It's hypothetical), of course I can expect somebody out there in the readership to maybe interpret that statement to be not as impartial as I say it is; but the onus is on that person to argue that case. Sarah Ferguson is right to ask the Treasurer whether election promises don't matter, after he delivers a budget that completely flies in the face of the election promises. It's a legitimate question that at least 50% of the population would like to know. 

It's not the ABC's or Sarah Ferguson's or Emma Alberici's fault or problem that the government finds itself trying to squeeze a budget through which contravenes their own election promises. If the folks in government can't handle the questions that come from such  budget, let alone consequences of their actions, maybe they're in the wrong profession. It is most certainly not the job of the press to let this kind of thing go by to the keeper. We all know this; we all know how this works; anybody watching the interview would be watching on the basis that they understand this as a fundamental tenet of the position the press holds in our democracy. So Colleen Ryan has invented a straw man, not to beat down, but to wave around and say, "this straw man right here might have missed the context! The ABC is biased". 

I mean, "hullo". 

Drawing the kind of conclusion that this Colleen Ryan has drawn is so stupid it blows my mind that she was one the editor of a newspaper. But of course she was the editor of a Murdoch rag. Surprise! Ms Ryan, try this advice for size: one might feel that the act of the ABC audit itself could be interpreted by some observers to be an abject failure at reasoning. But of course there is a lot of stupidity going around at the moment. 

The government wants to muzzle the ABC because it asks blunt questions. Yet it says Freedom of Expression is an important thing in a democracy when a terrorist shoots a cartoonist or film maker. If they hold both positions, there's a lottos cognitive dissonance going on in this government and it's not helping the electorate at all. 

The Death Penalty Thing Over In Indonesia

As the execution looms for Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumuran, you get the feeling that Australia is inexorably being dragged into a weird orbit of Indonesian legalism. Indonesia for its part is arguing the death penalty as good deterrence and that the law is the law and if the punishment is not meted out, it discredits the whole legal system. Australia is trotting out all the emotional arguments about the death penalty and amazingly seems to have forgotten the reasoning behind its own end to capital punishment in Australia. 

Personally, I am against the death penalty so it goes without saying that I do not wish to see the two men executed. But it does embarrass me greatly when I watch the arguments put forward as reasons why mercy should be shown to these two men. Surely there is a deeper point of jurisprudence that is universal and appropriate to appeal to the Indonesian government. It strikes me as very odd that we only seem to have our own personal moral objections as something that should apply to Indonesia. It's a really bad argument, and is hardly likely to succeed. 

There's got to be a better argument to be mounted. 

Also, it seems rather ironic that the former lawyer  who fronted for big tobacco and James Hardie in the asbestos trials is now the foreign minister trying to stop the execution.