The Gravy Train Express

On completion of the October 27 purchase of Twitter, Elon Musk tweeted "the bird is free". Then he announced his plan to charge for the verification tick. He also declared "comedy is now legal" (referencing all the hilarious hate-speech previously banned on the platform). Then when people adopted his name for satirical purposes, he banned them. After first changing his bio to "Chief Twit", widespread criticism of Musk's actions saw him switch to "Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator", then apparently genuinely ask for feedback, only to flip to mocking the idea of people complaining about Twitter on Twitter. On October 30, Musk retweeted a trolling conspiracy "theory" that the hammer attack on 82-year-old Paul Pelosi (perpetrated by a MAGA nut hunting Nancy Pelosi) was actually a gay lover's quarrel. Musk deleted it - without apology or explanation - then three days later proclaimed that under his stewardship, Twitter's "m

(Written Wednesday, October 5.) On Friday September 30 , Australia reached an extraordinary new low in pandemic management. At the 'National Cabinet' meeting of Premiers, Chief Ministers and Prime Minister, mandatory 5-day Covid isolation for all but health & aged care workers was scrapped. Commencing October 14, any precautions will be left entirely to the individual - Covid-positive persons will be free to move about the community. Combined with Cabinet's previous decision to abandon mandated masking, this means the virus will deliberately be allowed to spread, unimpeded. The decision was unanimous - no leader at the table spoke in opposition. Bizarrely, the government has described dispensing with protections as "getting the balance right". In fact, five day isolation was already inadequate - as research published in The Lancet has highlighted, two-thirds of people are still infectious at that point. A quarter are still infectious at 7 days. Best medical pr

For the last few years, the Murdochs have been attempting to engineer an Australian Fox News followership via their Sky content, which notoriously shifts from regular news in the daytime to shock-jock alt-reality at night. The domestic ratings are poor, but online it has extremist appeal, particularly in an American market always hungry for loud right-wing hate (about 30% of traffic in 2021), and with YouTube advertising bringing in revenue, the content is being more and more tailored - US conspiracist Alex Jones has shared Sky After Dark clips, and the hosts play up to that by feeding back Inforwars/QAnon buzzwords and concepts. According to The Guardian, by last year it had tallied more YouTube views than any Australian news outlet - something in the 500 million range. It's helped to spread enmity and conspiracies centring on Covid, race, women, education, sex, the environment, and any politics slightly more progressive than Atilla the Hun. Last year, a deal with Austereo saw thi

The election is over. After 9 very long years, the Coalition has at last, mercifully, been removed. As many have noted, there's a general feeling of a nation breathing a sigh of relief. But while the most corrupt, inept, and malicious government in living memory is gone, the damage goes deep, and relief will very quickly need to give way to resolve, and action - on climate, ICAC, the social safety net, health, education, and even the restoration of a functional bureaucracy and state, a vast amount of work will need to be done. And the old donors haven't gone away - public pressure will need to remain high. There's a lot of damning detail to be shared about the dirty campaigning and old-media hysteria which surrounded this election. There was a worrying, frenzied tone to it this time - the use of smear and disinfo tactics imported from the US and UK was extensive. But covering all that is for another day. For now, here's a quick flashback to a telling episode that came f

  On Thursday morning, Scott Morrison did the rounds of the media... excluding the ABC. He then revealed he'd agreed to two more televised debates - to be hosted by Nine and Seven, the friendly neighbourhood Costello/Stokes outlets. In the past, the National Press Club has been the debate venue, and Labor has declared their interest in continuing that tradition. (Last election, the Liberals insisted on it.) The moderator at the Press Club is usually the president - and the president right now happens to be the ABC's Laura Tingle. Morrison hasn't directly responded to the invitation, but said today that three debates made "a good number", and "I've already done one". (For anyone who missed it, that was on Rupert's Sky.) The ABC has issued a separate invite for May 9, with their Sky-import, the not-overly-taxing David Speers as host. The Morrison camp has so far ignored that offer. (With Albanese only due out of Covid iso on Friday, and Labor's

On Thursday, April 14, the Fin Review ran both an opinion piece and an article based around Ipsos focus-group work which the Fin said showed undecided voters were leaning toward Scott Morrison. The paper described that voter-group's feeling as "better the devil you know". The Guardian's economics correspondent, Peter Hannam, noticed that no numbers were mentioned. When he contacted Ipsos to check, it turned out that two groups of voters had participated, with each group consisting of... five people. Yes - the work was indicative of the leanings of fully ten individuals. The journalist responsible for hyping this junk was Phil Coorey, who in recent years has been the AFR's contact-of-choice for leaks and briefings from the Prime Minister's Office, and who memorably penned the fawning "Woman Who Saved Australia" profile of Gladys Berejiklian just 5 months before her exit under a corruption cloud. The AFR was once a Fairfax publication. Then Malcolm T