Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

The collapse of ABC has seen government funds being spent on bailing out ABC, rather than being spent on establishing new centres, or improving the quality of existing ones. One man’s greed has impacted on hundreds of thousands of families across the country.

A combination of processing delays at the City of Sydney council and staffing issues at the state government run Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing (OLGR) make applying for a small bar licence unaffordable for many entrepreneurs. Changing the law simply wasn’t, and isn’t, enough.

Sob-stories about the unfair way that females are judged by their appearance globally have been all over the Australian press in the last couple of weeks, from the frumpy Scottish singer Susan Boyle’s rise to fame, to Veronica Lario’s objection to her husband’s selection of beautiful young women to the European Parliament.

It’s no wonder why employers are monitoring social networking sites and sacking workers for posting potentially threatening material to protect their company’s reputation. That’s why employees need to develop some common sense about using social networking services.

This is Halbbildung: it is not half-education but the denial of education. Each step in the dismantling of the system through which I was educated, each step in the process from education to Halbbildung, has been marked by the rhetoric of standards and testing. With the implementation of each review standards plunged further into the depths of Halbbildung. Good luck! Get all the private education for your kiddies that you can. It’s not going to make any difference.

Many of the postings on this site discuss problems and solutions. Much of these discussions are about radical change. This thread seeks to contextualise the broader discussions by outlining a model of five types of problem solving: doing nothing; bombing the bejesus out of it; throwing money at it; continuous improvement; and disruptive innovation.

"It's no wonder that Seeger remains such an inspiration to musicians of purpose and conscience around the world. He was a founding member of two highly influential folk groups: The Almanac Singers and The Weavers. Although blacklisted and hounded by the House Un-American Activities Committee in August of 1955, he became a figurehead of the Civil Rights movement, inspiring other folk singers to rise up with a national voice of potency"- David Sly

I am here to issue a national call to arms: and that is for the nation to bind together as one in a national campaign against unemployment. While government must take the lead, everyone has a part to play. And our end point is clear: to do whatever it takes at the global, national and local level to support local jobs and to help those who lose their jobs to retrain and to find a new job. (Kevin Rudd)

As to Hanson herself, you have to wonder at the cultural background that created the woman she was: women’s upbringing and enculturisation (and men’s), gender relations, and politics in general over the last couple of centuries and post ww2 in particular, perhaps against a sort of back drop of the sort of stuff that Prof Marilyn Lake discussed, concerning the Henry Lawson Bronzed Anzac / Pioneer myth and its sidelining of women...

Under pressure over the huge bonuses paid to executives of failing companies, the Government has finally announced it will take action. Mounting community outrage at huge payments to departing executives has led the Federal Government to announce an inquiry into the issue — but first it will pass law to give shareholders more power over payments.

Shouldn’t we be using the anti terror laws to control these thugs? We should make their clubs illegal and destroy the club houses. Anyone known to belong to an outlaw bikie gang should face the same penalties as those belonging to terrorist organisations. There is no difference – both use violence and terror to intimidate the rest of the population.

Kevin Rudd has certainly nailed his colours to the masthead with his article The Global Financial Crisis published in the February 2009 edition of The Monthly. As a plain language account of the dominance of neo-liberalism in Western political economy over the last thirty or so years it is exemplary.

Imagine a welfare scheme that gave minimum wage earners nothing, but handed out $11,000 a year to those on the top income tax rate. Surely if any political party ever suggested such a scheme they would be run out of parliament and have their doors kicked down by commercial current affairs programs. (Centre for Policy Development)

Powerful, yet well-behaved, Webdiarist Hamish Alcorn has been entertaining his friends and admirers in Another Place with the BBC’s Top 100 Books. He and others critiqued the list somewhat severely, as being Anglocentric, containing too much chick lit, and being repetitious. So Hamish (with a little help from his friends & admirers) devised the following.

So what of the other charities that have been helping to assist?  It's great to see that Sony has put out a fundraiser album (many top-flight musos donating tracks) with proceeds going to the Salvos.  So what about Vinnies?  Wesley Uniting?  Are the Christian church based charities being swept aside as Red Cross becomes the Walmart of charity?   I worry that we're putting too many eggs in the one basket.

"Alexandra was organized chaos with the high school and basketball courts acting as emergency refuge centers. Countless volunteers tried their best to assist with no power, high temperatures, wind, smoke and very limited information. Little did we know a lot of Victoria was in a similar condition and that the authorities information was way behind the conditions on the ground. "- "David"

You identified with the broken-hearted, with the wounded spirits, with the loss, the grieving and the terrible unprecedented trauma that is being experienced right now. I know there are people who will wake every morning believing that it was all a dream; that it did not happen. And then they will realise it was not a dream and they will cry and they will cry again. (Russell Broadbent)

As the punters get their pink slips one day, their credit card bills the next they are going to find it increasingly difficult to survive; the dole queues (across the globe) will grow and more and more people will be forced to deal with the government for their survival. And it won’t be pretty. After our initial sympathy for these victims wears off, they will become a nuisance to some and an embarrassment to others. Their numbers will grow as the black dog runs wild.

The most concerning part of the conversation was that this man was quite well spoken, and polite.  He gave his name, why he was upset with me and the threat.   I told him that I was sorry his son had died in Afghanistan. He then repeated his name, grievance and threat.    No swearwords or invective- had he been a foul-mouthed ranter I would be able to dismiss worries much more easily.

The finalists for Australian of the Year, and their biographies, appear below. What are Webdiarists’ views on the likely winner – and if none of the below appeals, who would you have nominated instead, and why?

'You've MADE it!' That's the message that's used to sell everything, from clothes to diets to holidays. You've made it, you're worth it – we want to shout to the rooftops that we are successful! But the moment of triumphalism is always short-lived, and always followed by a hollowness – the void that waits for the next purchase, the next triumph.

Today marks a milestone in Australian military history - the first award (following abolition of Imperial honours in 1991) of a Victoria Cross for Australia.

There is nothing like the prospect of a radical life change to concentrate the mind on things that really mater. So I want to identify, if I can, the most important thing that we discover in life. At least, it is the most important thing that I have discovered. I will share it with you, like a precious jewel, fit for this occasion. I refer to love. Love for one another. Love for our community. Love for others everywhere in the world. Love transcends even scholarship, cleverness and university degrees. It is greater than pride and wealth. It endures when worldly vanities fade.

Malthus was wrong as demographers well know. It’s well known that the projections Malthus made of the English population failed to unfold, and the steep upward curve of population plateaued and now actually creeps downward, not just in England but in many parts of the World.  We know perfectly well what the key factor is in causing that plateau, and it’s not affluence as such, it’s not telling the Catholics to shut up (Ireland and Italy have among the lowest fertility rates in the World), it’s not giving out free condoms and abortions, it’s not an authoritarian imposition of small families, and it has nothing to do with immigration. It’s teaching women to read.

Today, as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, we've been given a once in a lifetime opportunity to ensure that human rights are finally protected in Australia. (GetUp)

Forests pump salt back down into the ground. They retain water to minimise flooding and feed the water into the water-table over a much longer period of time, as well as through condensation contributing further to precipitation, thus pushing back desertification. They stop erosion and rebuild soil. They lock up millions of tons of carbon, provide habitat and corridors for creatures of foot and wing, deal with all manner of toxins in highly creative ways, and produce oxygen. They keep rivers alive.

When we swipe our card for a clothing purchase, we might think twice about the price, or the bill we’ll get at the end of the month, but we should really be thinking about what we don’t see when we pick up the end product. Could my weakness for new clothing purchases not only be costing me a pretty penny, but also be costing the environment a fortune?

Child care in Australia is in desperate need of an overhaul. The crisis that we are seeing with ABC Learning Centres is simply the tip of the iceberg. For years and years, we have seen the child-care sector in Australia being taken over by profiteers and being seen as an industry. Child care should be seen as an essential service. (Senator Hanson-Young)

Chinese Democracy will not be an instant classic ... . It’s Guns N’ Roses for the twenty-first century with all the rock you were missing but less of the sort of arrogance that led Axl Rose to release songs like the over-produced My World ...

The Aboriginal Housing Company was formed in the early 1970’s for the purpose of appropriating property for the purpose of providing affordable housing for the local indigenous community. The AHC gradually acquired the whole of what is now known as ‘the Block’, establishing a strong, family-centred community in the area by the early 1980’s. The 80’s also saw the rise of a hard drug culture in the area...