Another APN newspaper gets it in the neck from ABC TV 's Media Watch

ABC TV Media Watch on 31 August 2009 featured an assessment of last Saturday's Tweed Daily News exploitative front page, which targeted a vulnerable person with a disability and allegedly resulted in that person's hospital admission.

Media Watch received no answer when it contacted Tweed Daily News with the usual invitation to supply justification.

What could the newspaper say? After all: by taking advantage of the confusion and distress of an ordinary person; by needlessly identifying him in a frontpage photograph and exposing him to condemnation, ridicule or gossip; by focussing on the supposed alarmed reaction of its female journalists; the newspaper was only obeying APN News & Media's Readers First guidelines which in practice pander to ignorance and dumb down the news.

With circulation figures and advertising income the principal drivers for this 'new' journalism, what better way to boost its supposed Saturday circulation of 10,000 sold papers than having a full monty on Page One.

The Media Watch presenter called the 120 year-old Tweed Daily News a wretched little rag.

Perhaps he should have also taken APN to task for the very flawed publication philosophy it has foisted on its editors, may of whom cannot always walk the frequently fine line between exploitative and ethical news reporting.

Daily Examiner editor leaves the building: don't slam the door on the way out

Because I could never look at Brendan Nelson's hair in the same way again......

.....after First Dog On the Moon's original foray into the subject of hair with a life of its own.
Here is the second and probably final cartoon concerning teh pate pelt from that tonsorial master writing in Crikey.

Click on image to enlarge

NSW minister for beds has resigned over a scandal between the sheets

John Della Bosca has resigned as health minister and leader of the legislative council after it was revealed the 53 year old had a six-month affair with a 26-year-old-woman.
News Limited publications have had a field day with their kiss-and-tell revelations. Leading the pack has been Sydney's Daily Terrible (aka The Daily Telegraph).

The 26-year-old woman provided a statement to The Daily Telegraph claiming Mr Della Bosca:

* STOPPED a security guard from checking her identity, and did not get her to sign the visitor's register, when he took her into his parliament office where they had s*x;

* MISSED a morning flight to the NSW regional city of Armidale for a hospital opening and meetings with health officials and spent the afternoon with her;

* BRAGGED about his affair to an Upper House colleague, who offered to employ the woman, because he believed people thought he was a "square"; and

* TOLD the woman he had the backing of caucus to replace Mr Rees, whom she said Della Bosca labelled a "freckle-faced Latham".

The woman said last night that Mr Della Bosca had repeatedly told her he loved her.

"I don't know how he managed to do his job when he spent so much time with me," she said. "There were times when John would cancel work to see me."

Their relationship only ended last month - she said at her behest - after Mr Della Bosca did not follow through on what the woman claims were repeated promises to leave his wife, the federal MP Belinda Neal.

Equal Pay Day, Australia 1 September 2009

Equal pay for equal work - still a global sick joke at the expense of women.

In Australia 40 years after the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission established the principle that women should receive equal pay for equal work and 10 years after establishment of the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999 (EOWW Act) the following conditions still exist.

· Women working full-time, year-round in Australia are paid only about 83 cents for every dollar earned by men.
· Lower wages mean less lifetime earnings for women giving them a lifetime of fewer choices.
· Some women in CEO and finance positions earn less than half of their male equivalents.
· The pay gap for women key management personnel is on average 28.3%, 11% higher than the national average gender pay gap.
· The average superannuation payout to a woman is projected to be $150,000: that’s half of the average payout to a man in 2010-11.
· The 17.3% gender pay gap is a national average that opens up to over 30% in some industry sectors.
· Pay inequity reveals systemic discrimination and continued under-valuation of women’s work.
· Equal pay for women can raise family income which means more money to spend on food, housing and childcare. Single mothers and working families lose thousands of dollars annually to the wage gap.
[ taken from http://www.equalpayday.com.au/]

* If current earning patterns continue, the average 25 year old male would earn $2.4 million over the next 40 years while the average 25 year old female would earn $1.5 million (AMP NATSEM (2009), “She works hard for the money”, Income and Wealth Report, Issue 22, p. 34 available at http://www.amp.com.au/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=bdb250665a6cc110VgnVCM1000002930410aRCRD
* Women are two and half times more likely to live in poverty in their old age than men — by 2019, on average, women will have half the amount of superannuation that men have (Queensland Government (2009), “Women and Superannuation”, Focus on Women, Office for Women, Information Paper 3) available at http://www.women.qld.gov.au/resources/focus-on-women/
* The pay gap starts from the moment women leave university, with female graduates earning on average $2,000 p/a less than male graduates ( GradStats 2008, Table 4, available at http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/content/view/full/24)
[taken from National Foundation for Australian Women]

"Many Australians believe women won equal pay in the 70s - but they are wrong," ACTU president Sharan Burrow.

Yes, you've come a long way but you still have a long way to go - and it's only taken an entire lifetime (from babe in arms to retirement) for women to achieve an average female wage rise from around 50 per cent of the average male wage to about 83 per cent of the average male wage. A mere 33 percentge points increase towards wage equality.

Cartoon from Google Images

Primary Schools for the 21st Century: NSW North Coast schools come up trumps in funding round

The Rudd Government's Education Revolution program is now in full swing and (despite contentious issues surrounding proposed publication of school league tables, teaching skills assessment and alleged bad planning/contractor rorting of the associated Round One building program) it is delivering results on the ground when it comes to funding for NSW North Coast primary schools.

In Round 2 P21 local primary schools are amongst the 3,716 Australian schools getting sometimes much needed cash injections for construction and refurbishment of major infrastructure, including libraries and multi-purpose halls.

Here are a few of those North Coast schools:

Albert Park Public School Lismore, Classroom facilities upgrade $150,000/New library $750,000
Alstonville Public School Alstonville, New hall/COLA $3,100,000
Ballina Public School Ballina, New hall/COLA $2,350,000.00
Bangalow Public School Bangalow, New hall/COLA $2,000,000
Banora Point Public School Banora Point, New class room facilities $3,000,000
Barkers Vale Public School Wadeville, New canteen $600,000/New COLA $300,000
Baryulgil Public School Baryulgil, New library $250,000
Bellingen Public School Bellingen, New hall/COLA $2,000,000
Bilambil Public School Bilambil, New classroom facilities $2,500,000
Boambee Public School Boambee, new administration facilities, $2,000,000
Bonalbo Central School Bonalbo, Hall/COLA upgrade $850,000
Bowraville Public School Bowraville, New library $250,000
Brunswick Heads Public School Brunswick Heads, New hall/COLA $2,000,000
Burringbar Public School Burringbar, New library $850,000
Byron Bay Public School Byron Bay New Library $3,000,000
Casino Public School Casino, New classroom/SPED facilities $3,000,000
Cabbage Tree Island Public School Cabbage Tree Island, New classroom $250,000
Coffs Harbour Public School Coffs Harbour, New hall/COLA $2,000,000
Coraki Public School Coraki, New library $900,000
Corindi Beach Public School Corindi Beach, New classroom facilities $850,000
Coutts Crossing Public School Coutts Crossing, New classroom facilities $850,000
Eltham Public School Eltham, New classroom facilities $907,000
Empire Vale Public School Empire Vale, New classroom facilities $907,000
Evans River Community School Evans Head, New classroom facilities $2,057,000
Iluka Public School Iluka, New library $900,000
Lismore Heights Public School Lismore Heights, New classroom facilities $2,057,000
Lismore Public School Lismore, Classroom facilities upgrade $800,00/New COLA $1,700,000
Palmers Island Public School Palmers Island, New classroom facilities $907,000
Rappville Public School Rappville, New administration facilities $370,000/New library $281,000
Southern Cross School Ballina East, New COLA $350,000/New library $2,200,000
St Andrew's Christian School Clarenza via Grafton, Construction of a COLA $250,000
St Carthage's Primary School Lismore, Construction of multi-purpose hall $3,000,000
St Joseph's Primary School Grafton South, Construction of Multi-Purpose Hall $1,200,000/ Refurbishment of administration $800,000
St Joseph's Primary School Woodburn, Construction of Library $850,000/Refurbishment of classrooms $2,150,000
Vistara Primary School Richmond Hill, Construction of library/Multipurpose hall facility $850,000
Wardell Public School Wardell, New classroom facilities $907,000
Wilson Park School Lismore, Classroom facilities upgrade $150,000/New COLA $100,000
Wollongbar Public School Wollongbar, Classroom facilities upgrade $1,700,000/New COLA $300,000
Woodenbong Central School Woodenbong, Library upgrade $600,000/New COLA $250,000

Full alphabetical list NSW primary schools receiving second round funding here.

National Wattle Day 1 September 2009

Wattle tree at night from Photography Tips

The first day of September has been National Wattle Day since 1992, but Australians has been celebrating the wattle somewhere around the country since as early as 1838 and 1899 and it became our national floral emblem in 1988.

There are at least 900 wattle species found on this continent and there is always a little wattle flowering somewhere.

World-wide it is probably the floral emblem to which the greatest number of people are allergic or to which they have developed a perfume sensitivity - according to hayfever and asthma suffers I know.

Some reports say about 5% of all Australian are sensitive to wattle pollen.

So happy Wattle Day everyone!

How to make money while living in Australia....

While wandering up and down the byways of cyberspace I've noticed a great many "how to" posts on various subjects.
For a bit of a chuckle I Googled the search term "how to grow money" and came up with 66,300 entries.
This set me wondering just how many queries this might represent, but Google Trends told me that not enough people asked that question for it to rate a graph.
Apparently the world knows that money doesn't actually grow on trees or under bushes.
However, when I Googled "how to make money" over 10 million entries turned up and Google Trends had recorded the main countries.
What was interesting is that while the world has been asking since at least 2004, Australians didn't really start asking Uncle Google about ways of making money until late 2006 to early 2007 and have been searching ever since - with Queenslanders heading the national list by a nose.
Are we all turning into backyard entrepreneurs or out chasing rainbows?
Are searchers mostly down on their luck junior merchant bankers and stockbrokers or frantic retirees watching superannuation funds disappear down the gurgler?
Is half of good old Oz now desperately seeking silver?
Or is everyone just out there surfing the web for fun?
What is very certain is the fact that the Australian rich list hasn't suddenly swollen with a crowd of names never heard of before - so I guess that nobody's really getting rich from all those "how to" web pages.