A Lot Of Tosh

IN THE current issue of The Spectator, not available online, columnist Neil Brown QC addresses the recent lecture by Fairfax’s Fifty Grand Vizier Greg Hywood, whose curious assertion it is that his newspapers’ declining sales are of no consequence whatsoever. While some might see Hywood’s remarks as confirming that Fairfax has entered the final of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of dying (acceptance: “I don’t want to struggle anymore”), Brown prefers to focus on the folly of surrendering news coverage to angry, aggrieved adolescents, many of whom are well into middle age. As any parent knows, it is folly to argue with a teenager. They change the subject, ignore logic and evidence, are never at fault, always know so much more than their unenlightened elders and, most annoying of all, cannot conduct a conversation without recourse to ad hom assaults. In a domestic setting the solution is straightforward: tell the little snot to pack his bags and get out, an approach that worked wonders when Young Master Bunyip was going through those difficult years.  In Melbourne, the populace has delivered much the same message to The Phage, which is no longer welcome in the homes of citizens who prefer not to be hectored and have their trust abused. Unfortunately, that has not entirely removed the aggravation, as the paper continues to linger on the front porch, screaming and whining and demanding to be re-admitted in order that the lecturing and sermonizing (and the financial support) might continue as before.

There is prime example of that racket in this morning’s edition of the Phage, which features a report by environmental editor Adam Morton on the great savings to be achieved by going ultra-green. His example is a $100 million “eco-village” to be built at Cape Paterson, which he reports has been given a wondrous endorsement by the author of a study “backed by a state government agency.” If Morton was just a little older, a bit more of a big boy and better able to embrace fact above sentiment, he would have noted that Victoria’s environmental bureaucracy was packed and stacked by the former Labor government and that many of its public utterances and private leaks should be taken as the voice of the now-Opposition.  While the absence of that background information is an unfortunate omission, it is small organic potatoes when judged against another, rather more important item of information missing from Morton’s handiwork.

The chap he quotes, the author of that government-backed study, is a gent called Anthony “Tosh” Szatow, whom a reader unaware of how The Phage these days prefers to report matters close to its green heart might assume to be an independent analyst. Szatow’s message, as transcribed by Morton, is certainly compelling:

The 220-house Cape Paterson proposal aims to be operationally carbon neutral. It promises a minimum 7.5-star rating, solar photovoltaic systems big enough to cover energy needs, high-efficiency lighting, heating and cooling, solar hot water, rainwater tanks and a fleet of electric vehicles.
According to a review by energy consultant Anthony Szatow, funded by government agency Sustainability Victoria, the carbon-neutral approach could save an owner more than seven years and $120,000 in mortgage payments compared with a new six-star house.
Savings on energy and water bills were expected to top $200,000 over 25 years.

So who is Tosh Szatow? Let the eco-village’s developers explain (emphasis added at the Billabong):

Anthony Szatow, known to most as Tosh, will be joining the Cape Paterson team on a full time basis from July 2011. For the last two years he has led the national intelligent grid project at CSIRO. The project aimed to understand the value proposition for local energy solutions Australia wide, and how that value could be most efficiently realised. His research has increasingly focussed on the role of business model innovation in reducing emissions and transforming the energy market. Originally attracted to the Cape Paterson project by the holistic approach to sustainability, he aims to help demonstrate the power of business model innovation as part of the development, with a view to making clean energy more affordable than the alternative. He hopes the project can set a new benchmark for best practice residential housing development and catalyse innovation across the property sector.

Worth noting, although The Age does not, is that the same project almost perished last year, when an independent study recommended against its approval on -- wait for it -- environmental grounds! That suggestion was ignored by Planning Minister Matthew Guy, who must have a blinding constellation of seven-star ratings floating before his wide, green eyes. One day, like Young Master Bunyip, Big Ted’s government may grow up and realise that it was elected to dispute and dismantle Labor wasteful enthusiasms, not endorse them in order to curry favour with a dying newspaper.

Especially a newspaper that presents as an independent voice a green careerist who crunches improbable numbers to assert that his full-time employer’s controversial project is – Surprise! Surprise! – a huge money-saver for the prospective home owners on whom its financial success depends. What’s next, the unquestioned echoing of Chris Scott’s appraisal that the Cats’ hold a mortage on the 2012 premiership? Without, of course, any mention that Scott is Geelong’s senior coach.

Given that he is trousering $50,000 a week to helm Fairfax, you might think Greg Hywood would feel obliged to do some house cleaning. Then again, with so much muck in the stable, perhaps no amount of cash can cover such heavy lifting. 

Best to brand such Mortonesque brochuresmanship as more of that “quality journalism” -- and then Hywood can go straight back to the pleasant business of gloating over his latest bank statement.

The Age's Sward Of Justice

MELBOURNE'S Occupists must be feeling most unloved these days, having been evicted from the City Square and finding themselves with no particular place to go. Treasury Gardens is mooted as one possible site on which to build a just society, albeit a small and stinky one, but the campers would be preaching only to the converted. As the original Occupists, the park's possums have long presumed the right to invade private property, keep residents awake and crap in their ceilings. As for public servants from the adjoining government offices, they need no convincing that wealth is to be left in a citizen's care only until the state can manufacture its next excuse for additional levies, taxes, fines and speed cameras.

But there is one place the Occupists are welcome  -- the patch of grass outside The Age office at the corner of Collins and Spencer streets. Best of all, the invitation to relocate is almost an official one, courtesy of senior investigative reporter Melissa Fyfe, who is all for it, as she explained to tweeting activist Perry Stalsis (who surely has the stomach for revolution):

Perry Stalsis: @melfyfe been trying to move #occupymelbourne to grass outside Age office, where we can be seen and reach commuters. Your thoughts
15 hours ago
in reply to @PerryStalsis1 ↑
Melissa Fyfe:@PerryStalsis1 a good idea, I would have thought. Do you think you can do it?11 hours ago

Blow off the Treasury Gardens, you anti-capitalist crusaders, and move to the Age's front door. As Fairfax shareholders can testify, your hosts share a no less pronounced aversion to the profit motive. And it is not as if Age journalists would be critical, not at all.With just one exception, they love you guys.

Melbournians would benefit as well. Could there be a better example of what the paper represents these days than a filthy, chaotic, noisy and incoherent mob of group-thinking public urinators taking up residence in The Age's front window?


(Thanks to tipster Spencer Collins for spotting the tweets and dashing off a very informative email)

A Real Money Saver

NEITHER Phage nor Silly is worth paying for, as we all know, but it is still interesting to see what is animating their feature supplements' writers and editors. How many fresh editions from Text will be reviewed this week, for example? If it is a normal Saturday, quite a lot, as the Phage seems to have such an affection for the imprint that one hopes the leftoid publishing house's editors and authors will always remember to flush. Should they fail to do so there is every chance the Sorbent will be fished out and given a five-star rating.

Or perhaps you are curious to know what young people are up to these days -- the sort of young people, which is to say almost all,  who generally do not read newspapers. Well the feature supplement always has quite a bit for those hip, non-reading kiddies, and studying the latest hot DJ's antics will make you wrinklies seem cool, very down with the youth. Your children will be most impressed late in the afternoon, when they have slept off the XTC binge of the night before, and you greet them with plimsols laced in the latest ghetto style.

And there is Leunig, always Leunig, whose ducks and curl-topped cliches will rekindle an interest in religion, most particularly Ecclesiastes 9:11

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,

nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise,

nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill;

but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Time and chance certainly happenth to Leunig, whose time was 40 years ago and whose chance it has been to luck into a gig at a newspaper where everyone professes to find him funny because everyone else says the same thing. Nobody really does, of course, and probably not even Leunig himself, whose biggest chuckles must come when the cheques arrive.

Anyway, all of the above can be yours without spending a cent. When you buy The Australian, simply ask the newsagent if you can take the Phage or Silly supplement as well. Not once in more than a year has the Professor's request been declined. As the newsagent said only yesterday, "Take it! It'll save me bundling it up to send back."

As the Occupists were fond of chanting -- the same Occupists hailed by Age sometime-editor Michael Short as belonging to "a valid and important movement" -- corporate greed sucks, man. So don't support it. Yo!