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URGENT ACTION NEEDED
Sydney Morning Herald editor Robert Whitehead:
Three decades of small thinking have brought us to a point where urgent action is needed. On Saturday we’ll start on the solutions, many straightforward, many far-sighted. We need a big plan ...
First step: hire a new editor.
Tim for editor. Slatts for his deputy. Bunyip to counsel young female reporters. Tex to compile the style book. What a team!
Posted by Mayor of Yarck on 2005 05 30 at 02:09 PM • permalinkThey need more than action… more than a big plan… they need… they need ... TEAMS! Yeah! An alpha team, and a beta team, and maybe a techie team to show the other teams how to turn on the word processors…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 30 at 02:37 PM • permalinkThis is a city rich in wealth but not ambition. We hope this new ambition will power Sydney’s Metropolitan Strategy, now being formulated, and also our leaders’ resolve, from both sides of politics, to invest in our future. In coming months we will use our blueprints for best practice to evaluate government responses.
Translation: “We’re ambitious to take your wealth from you as use it as we see fit…”
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 30 at 02:42 PM • permalinkOn Monday, Robert Whitehead writes:
“... urgent action is needed.”
So what does he propose? Waiting until Saturday, five days later, to actually do something. Quite the sense of urgency he has.
Posted by David Crawford on 2005 05 30 at 04:06 PM • permalinkMake Margo Managing Editor.
I dunno, the NYT tried that with little Pinch Sulzberger, and they just can’t get rid of the fool. Of course, Daddy owns the company there…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 30 at 05:56 PM • permalinkSydney simply needs to have these career politicians thrown out on their arse. But how to get rid of them? As with the inverse federal situation, with no effective opposition (or should that be creative opposition) there’s no real impetus to make any sudden moves and spook the electorate.
A Jeff Kennett type is needed. He or she won’t be in long. He or she will piss a lot of people off, but as with Jeff, things will get done. Nick Greiner (like Jeff, a man who actually knew how to run a business) almost did it, but fluffed his lines.
A testimony to Kennett’s efficacy is witnessing how long it has taken the succeeding Labor goverment to start grinding Victoria’s economy down again while pandering to the unions and the luvvies.
So the pattern goes: the evil capitalist conservatives do their reforms - which everyone hates but which generate great prosperity (while also bringing up the baseline wealth, as has been proven) - then get thrown out and followed up with the feel-good social conscience (Labor) party, which feeds for years off the fat generated by their predecessors. After years of throwing the money around to mates (arts councils, unions) it’s time to yell for the Evil Capitalist bastards to fix it up. And then…
[Jeff Kennett, Melbourne, Victoria, was an outspoken, brash, widely derided Liberal party leader who got voted in at a time when the Victorian economy was starting to make Cuba look good. He didn’t have a long tenure but he turned the state’s economy around, generating wealth and optimism where there was none before. He was seen as a head kicker but in reality is very decent person. When he got turfed out he went back to running a business. Sorry wronwright, it’s only boring local stuff, but it’s probably a familiar tale.]
Underscore — I believe that’s called the Swedish Model.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 30 at 06:20 PM • permalinkUnderscore, actually I thought your slant on it very interesting.
So the pattern goes: the evil capitalist conservatives do their reforms ... then get thrown out and followed up with the feel-good social conscience ... [then] it’s time to yell for the Evil Capitalist bastards to fix it up.
Apparently this stuff happens everywhere, whether in Ohio (except we seem to have liberal Republicans, starting with Taxing Taft and Vote Against Bolton Voinovich) or in Sydney.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 05 30 at 08:46 PM • permalinkThe SMH’s campaign won’t sell any more newspapers. It’s all about making inner city luvvies, the main readership, feel good about themselves feeling bad about everything else: the environment, traffic, pollution, urban planning, water usage,
globalisation, John Howard, asylum seekers, saying sorry to gay whales ... whatever turns you own.Meanwhile, they can look forward to the next issue of the SMH’s
(Sydney) Magazine,with its glossy (non-recyclable) pages of adverts for BMWs, Cartier watches, etc - essential adjuncts for your dedicated, inner-city doomsday watcher.Underscore — No socialist system survives without either a capitalist neighbor or a capitalist internal component to exploit.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 31 at 01:15 AM • permalinkRe #16
Sorry Mr Magoo, but the Sydney Magazine is quite recyclable. Use the following method:
1) rip it into approx 2cm squares
2) soak in a solution of chook poo in water (no more than 5% chook poo by volume)
3) extract the thoroughly saturated Sydney magazine remnants and use as mulchMy native garden never grew nearly as well before I started using the Sydney Magazine.
Best of all, our bandicoots still happily dig straight through it:)
Personally, I buy 50 lb bags of black platinum mulch. I’m not sure if they include any Sydney Morning Heralds, whether newspaper or magazines. I believe it made up mostly of old growth California redwoods which make a very fine mulch. Some teakwood also is added for a bit of color. Maybe I should ask my tree poacher, er, my mulch supplier.
Now my bathroom tissue on the other hand ...
Posted by wronwright on 2005 05 31 at 09:32 AM • permalinkwronwight — The approved (by You Know Who) mulch uses California redwood mixed with plantation grown South American teak that has displaced endangered native species…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 31 at 10:30 AM • permalink
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Sydney is a mess though, first step to reform is to get rid of the bloody Labor government here in NSW, just sack the lot and start over. Put the National Party in or something, god knows the Liberals acted like a pack of fools last state election.