You won't read about this in the Age, allowing that you actually read the Age, rather than look to it as the distilled essence of feral opinion and the latest trends in groupthink, but the East-West Tunnel isn't anywhere near so unpopular as the newspaper's writers insist. While the paper has been filled with screeds underscored by the foundation belief that public transport is morally uplifting and should therefore be obligatory, genuine public meetings with real residents and bona fide officials have been taking place throughout Fitzroy, Collingwood and Kensington. For some reason the Age chooses not to report these gatherings, prefering as it does today, to focus on the ferals for whom the tunnel project must serve as a catalyst for mayhem until the next G20 confab or Right to Life rally. It might cost Age editors dinner party invitations were they to mention that those public meetings have generally accepted the view that property values and quality of life will each be improved if vehicular traffic moves beneath the inner city rather than through it.
Just up on the Age website
is this report and picture, one of several from today's protest. Unmentioned is that the the "injured" woman,
Kat Gallea,is a professional ratbag and
mainstay of the Socialist Party, specialising in movie reviews and
Marxist critiques of Fifty Shades of Grey.
No mention of the protesters' associations and sympathies figures in the Age report, which is hardly a surprise. After all, why would the paper wish to insult the soap-free demographic, the last market segment in which it exerts any influence whatsoever.
Several weeks Fairfax closed its slick consumer monthlies, Sydney and Melbourne magazines, which formerly paid the rent by carrying ads for flash watches, four-figure handbags and ridiculously expensive ladies shoes. Is it it any wonder those mags folded? Would anyone but an Age executive want anything to do with
these dingleberries? If they entered your shop the first call would be to turn out the store detectives.
UPDATE: How ridiculous is the Age these days?
This ridiculous.
What the Age doesn't seem to report is that the zoos overseas that had similar road developments nearby, reported ( according to the ABC no less) that they experienced NO disruptive effects during the construction or when the underpass is used
ReplyDeleteAnyone with spare cash should be buying up the rented hovels/squats on Alexandra Parade and nearby streets now. There's a killing to be made when the area becomes desirable -- after the traffic disappears. Demolish the rubbish down and build big.
ReplyDeleteI should benefit personally as the tunnel will take a lot of traffic that current goes along the bottom of my street in the eastern suburbs, making my area popular through better amenity and access to the west.
They really are grasping at pieces of dried grass aren't they, Prof? Those poor little zoo animals must not and will not be disturbed. Only over these protestors' broken and bruised bodies, it seems. Good to see that Kat is on the job there, severely injured in all innocence for furry little things.
ReplyDeleteEven more helpful of course is her comment on '50 Shades of Grey', which is about different not so-innocent furry things: 'bumping uglies' is the very crude term for it, I believe. She tells us 'this book, in spite of the hype, is not progressive in any way, shape or form'.
Goodness. And here's me grabbing quite the wrong end of the, umm, stick, about all of this, Prof. I thought the guy and his girlfriend were making quite good progress, but apparently not.
Had a read of the KG spiel on the Socialist Party website and couldn't help but notice the name of their latest campaign ; Fightback !
ReplyDeleteNow where have I seen that name before....
Good one prof. I notice from The Age's map that the tram already passes by less than 30m away from the elephants' enclosure, all day every day, whereas the temporary, mostly underground freeway construction work will be 300m away. No argument is too absurd for these drips.
ReplyDelete"You won't read about this in the Age"
ReplyDeleteThe only way to properly experience the Age is through brown eyes.
One eye per person...
So is the zoo a govt facility. If so and I was Napthine I would be telling them to shut up or shut down.
ReplyDeleteBut then I guess he doesn't seem to have enough gumption for that fight.
Typical though the first thing they do us raise a petition without any actual evidence there will even be a problem
Just about 99 percent of business closures are heard about by this non Age reader with some sort of sense of soulful empathetic regret. Business closes, goes off-shore, jobs lost etc. Eg. Geelong, Newcastle, all of South Australia etc. Usually sad news.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Age closes, it will be one of those champagne and caviar H'orderve moments; a relief [in my case Yellowglen and nachos].
How did the Age actually make enemies of much of outer suburban metropolitan Melbourne?
There will come a time, I humbly posit, when everyone who ever waived a flag for multiculturalism or privatization will be thought of as traitors of sorts.
Perhaps that's five minutes from now Prof?. Ps. I hear Australia Post is up for sale? 23 million share holders down to a few foreign investment companies to milk another market I suppose. Now how old fashioned is that? Just when internet buying is throwing postal services a fabulous growth potential lifeline.
Commonwealth Prof - it ain't what it used to be. Now why is that?
Remember the Age's campaign against dredging of shipping channels? Same sh*t, different day. The demise of the Age can't come too soon.
ReplyDeleteGee, do you think that there is a faint possibility that the fact that most of the pseudo-journalists employed at the Fauxfacts sheltered workshop, would rather be 'red' than 'read', could have something to do with the Fauxfacts share price being at the comically low level of 0.53 cents per share, rather than the News Limited share price of $17.96 this morning?
ReplyDeleteI know that this isn't really 'rocket science', but the Fauxfacts Board has yet to unravel the conundrum of just what is keeping their share price so catastrophically low.
Maybe it's 'global warming'?
Perhaps a great big tax would fix the Fauxfacts share price?
No progress at any cost!
ReplyDeleteOh dear! The Age turns jaundiced yellow, and its ink runs in the winter rain. And all 7 of its readers are dealt with in a rougher than usual manner. Sic transit gloria mundi.
ReplyDeleteMuch as it hurts me to take you to task, Bunyip old buddy, I do object to Americanisms. Our allies are now a fetid society run by shallow personalities with a love of money. So, can we eschew the word 'dingleberries'? Not a great sacrifice, because we have a good replacement, viz 'dag'. A dag is an accretion of fecal matter attached to the wool on a sheep's rump. Hence the phrase when getting a sheep to move at speed - "rattle them dags". The process of 'crutching' is the removal of wool (and daggy wool) from the rump, and the wigs (which catch grass seeds) from the face. Hence a man afflicted with dags needs crutching.
Unfortunately the Yankees would not understand that we have also inverted the meaning of dag. To describe someone as a 'real dag' is mild praise. And remember the Fred Dag tapes?
Besides, I suspect that dingleberries is a mis-spelling for dangleberries.
Cheers.
How ridiculous is The Age these days.
ReplyDeleteThis morning I had to fill in half an hour in Collins Street, waiting for an appointment. I decided to fill it in with a coffee in a place which had, perhaps quite understandly [seeing it was in an inner-Melbourne lane way] only The Age to read.
Front page. A full report on what a fool and a bogan Mr Wabbitt666 and his sidekick Mr Science Denier Hunt were.
And then there was the coup de tat: As an authority for the above proposition, the article cited no other than "the independent Climate Change Authority ..."
Seriously, I almost choked spluttering in amusement at the phrase. They seriously are beyond parody.
And then, on the way home in the car, what did I get:
An interview with that insufferable boor Steffen telling us all how serious it all is.
Hi Professor
ReplyDeleteThanks for the summary, it always eminently more readable when distilled through your erudite articulation. Like the March for the Babies the coppers are told to do nothing but give open slather to the feral element.