Dear Moron: Even if I were to lack the ‘wit, wisdom and nous’ to cut it as a serious commentator in most fora, fortunately I am posting on Catallaxy, so the requisite standards are much less challenging.

This post is just another misdirected and really quite pathetic Catallaxy beat-up.

Shut up you clown. You don’t have the wit, wisdom or nous to cut it here as a civil and serious commentator.

Futhermore your umbrage is like being flogged with a warm lettuce.

You fucking neanderthal. You completely missed the strategic reasons why the Japs do this.

“ABC GOOD, WHALING BAD”

Moron.

A subsidy on an already thriving industry is even worse than one to prop up an industry that couldn’t exist without subsidies.

At least you can make the argument that without the subsidy there wouldn’t be an industry in the 2nd case. In the case of the ABC, there are dozens of TV channels in Australia doing perfectly fine without any subsidies at all. It’s completely unnecessary.

Incidentally, speaking of books, Nick Cohen’s “What’s Left” is a must-read. Erudite and scathing.

As indeed is C. Northcote Parkinson’s Left Luggage (1967).

no “news & information”

Information (in no particular order of importance) = weather forecasts, fire and flood warnings, local emergency information and cricket.

“How long can you get such money from the government?”

If as I do, you look at the ABC as a political lobby group with a broadcasting network attached the way ahead is pretty clear. I have never heard a cogent argument in favour of maintaining its current form and funding and it’s not for want of searching.

Yesterday’s Landline program spent a good slab of its time slot pushing long discredited information about changes in climate both past and projected (by Ross Garnaut the emminent climate scientist but of course) If they were actually trying to rip the hearts out of our farming community families, they could scarcely have done a better job of it. ‘Pure bastardry’ is the term that comes to mind.

For my eight cents I would be more than delighted to see it scaled right back to a bare bones news and information service for metro but especially remote and regional areas. There must some kind of managerial/ editorial regime that can make a decent stab at political impartiality. He said hopefully.

That’s not the point, Chris. Taxing “because you can” is revenue raising without consideration for the consequences. They should tax where the distortions and negatives are minimized.