Corporate Sydney

Previously on world class I have portrayed Sydney as a truly world-class city, but I did so in ignorance of the incredibly vibrant and creative corporate sector that is even now establishing itself, hive-like, at Macquarie Park. The electorate that so faithlessly rejected John Howard at the last Federal Election would surely have remained blue if only the workers resided near where they labour to improve on civic perfection.

Truly, the lunch breaks at my new daycare for adults provide prismatic insights into Sydney's collective personality, which fragments along the age-old lines of masters and servants. Fortunately for the servants, the recent notion of "contractor" provides good remuneration and little risk to one's creative mojo. Indeed, the workplace is really a place to discuss just how world-class the Australian rugby league team has become and other forms of sublimated masculinity. It is a place of rare beauty, and its efficiency is even rarer. One only hopes it is funded by foreign currency so that the weak dollar does not imperil the opportunity to consume world-class products.

Google AdSense

So one further comment on the Google AdSense fiasco. It seems we are not the first to be bitten by Google's world-class accountability to content providers. If anyone knows about a better ad provider, please tell us! It seems Mr Melbourne refuses to write if there's not some beer money in sight.

Spotted just up the road from my place:

I'd just like to say I'm not in anything with Ben Lee.

A free plug for an advertiser

One of our Google-selected sponsors (thanks Google, thanks sponsor) promises the following as their opening gambit:

MelbourneVenues.com.au is proud to offer a diverse selection of Melbourne's most unique and captivating venues.

Soak up the gothic atmosphere in a 19th-Century wine cellar, cruise the inner-city waterways aboard a refurbished Sydney Harbour Ferry, or drink in the views of the city, the river, the bay or Albert Park Lake at a choice of locales.

If that's not world class I don't know what is.

Peter Garrett is world class

There's no doubt the ex[*]-Midnight Oil frontman is the stuff of dreams and nightmares for many in the Australian polity. Similarly no-one can doubt that the Sydney Morning Herald's interviews furnish fewer insights than the average ladies magazines' coverage of a celebrity divorce.

In other news six athletes from Sierra Leone have sought asylum in Sydney from the Dame Edna-infested Commonwealth Games closing ceremony in Me!bourne.

[*] Everyone's an ex-<something> these days. I read that to mean either people aren't doing anything anymore or history is full.

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Apparently it is still not too late to catch a flight to Me!bourne for the Commonwealth Games, where it seems they have rounded up enough English-speaking foreigners for a few games of hockey and netball. If you're quick you just might catch a glimpse of the teflon suits, Tony Blair and John Howard, engaging in some mutually enjoyable backscratching.

Coonan achieves what the Victorian Right could not

As usual, the hard righties of the north show the southerners how it is done. Michael Kroger, ex member of the ABC board and sometime lofty chieftan of the anaemic Victorian blue-bloods, famously failed to correct the devious and covert bias of the "for all of us" national broadcaster, although he did manage to piss off a lot of lefties, so it wasn't all bad.

Compare with Coonan, however; not only is she in the business of doing business on a Government letterhead (around the time our mate Michael undertook the Herculean task of cleaning the A(ugean)BC stables), but she found time to both not fill two ABC board positions and eliminate the staff position! (Oh yes, and monkey around with the media laws, how could I forget.) Her logic is again of the John Howard school of the impeccable and infallible:

As the staff-elected director has been elected by staff rather than appointed, there have been claims that the position creates uncertainty about accountability.

If I were running a university philosophy department I would be madly sacking staff so I could afford to bestow honorary doctorates on both the PM and Ms Communications for such beautiful and original contributions to that staid old discipline.

Howard delivers the kiss of death to Melbourne

Melbourne's world class "news pictorial" the Herald Sun — coincidentally the most popular brand of toilet paper in the country — makes a lot out of one of John Howard's minor pronouncements at the Commonwealth Games this weekend. Our esteemed leader obviously misspoke, uttering "Sydney" when he meant his city of non-residence, Canberra, which is clearly so much more aggregated (bleached) than either of the others.

Some malcontent writing for The Australian has tried to intellectualise it, cataloguing some of Sydney's successes and claiming them to be failures. He obviously prefers the supine civic pride of Melbourne, and has a need to boost his self-esteem by siding with the public statements of the big boys.

While muttering about some Abbott-sanctioned cleansing of the gene pool, a nameless Trashograph hack took out the Dictionary of Cliche and did Sydney the disservice of attempting a defence. Being nowhere as keen as the Mexicans on the subliterate tabloids, we Sydneysiders really should retain our self-satisfaction through silence, as no-one has so far pretended to do more than pulling an opinion out of their arse. Heh, move along, nothing to see here...

The PM, a long-term Sydney resident, obviously prefers disaggregated urbanity over flying trams and community cohesion, and there are several million other Australians who have a similar unfamiliarity with the warm hand of friendship. We've got a world class police force up here that knows all about the plot, so what do we care for all this comparative nonsense? It is but the whine of those who don't yet know they have lost.

Those world class Commonwealth Games

Truly the gold diggers of Ballarat must be distant relatives of Sydneysiders, for they have seen the light.

There's just too much world-class activity at the moment, this country is really going off.

Mt Druitt, taking one for the team

Mr Melbourne, showing his beret-sympathiser credentials, clearly does not understand the grand Sydney tradition of taking one for the team. If he were to live here he'd comprehend just how much Sydney suffers in order to gift just one world-class locality to this great nation. Instead he is off drinking boutique microbrewed beer in some trendy bar in Richmond enjoying the products of our city's hard labour.

The people of Mt Druitt know just how important a rosy red sunset is to the people living on the coast and are therefore prepared for the minor inconveniences of a shorter life and longer commute to work. Once again, we work as a team to deliver on our world-class potential - some get all the benefits, and others pick up the tab, just as God intended. Mr Melbourne harbours some passe twentieth-century socialist agenda, wondering why the ALP cannot get it up anymore, while Sydney just gets on with it.

The new media laws have the potential to bring Uncle Rupert's world-class touch to every city in Australia, not just Brisbane and other unmentionables. Our beloved leader has already scotched the advertising-on-the-ABC line, using that clever politico-logical brain of his:

And there is an argument, of course, that there's a limited pool of advertising dollars and if they are spread further around then it makes the position of the commercial TV stations, well, it alters their position, because they don't get any public funding.

I could've sworn that the Feds were pumping dollars into propaganda at a rate that the ALP could never dream of; heck, my old mate Tony Abbott got $60 million for anti-abortion noise-making just for losing the RU486 "conscience" vote. One may also recall that Michael Duffy claimed:

It can even be argued that businesses have the right to reach the educated middle class through broadcast media, which the ABC's near-monopoly largely denies them. Fairfax and The Australian certainly suffer from being unable to advertise on 702 ABC Sydney or Channel Two. (Incidentally, under the existing legislation the ABC could run paid commercials now on its very successful website and its podcasting.)

in the truly world-class Sydney Morning Herald, no less. It is just so incredibly grandiose to be that concerned for Uncle Rupert's bottom line, and only a hard righty could see so far through all the left-wing bullshit surrounding any mention of the ABC.

So the short story is that the advertising budget in Australia is of a fixed size, even though the economy is growing, and that the ABC should not be allowed access to that budget as it might harm the export of AUD to those in more need of them than us. Everyone clear on that? Great!

Time to pay some attention to that meddling Simon Crean from Victoria... everyone knows Kim is doing us all a favour as the ALP leader, so just shut up and wear it. God this rightwing shtick wears thin.