Kipp,

I'm not the way you think I am; but whatever I am, it is very easy for me to live with - much easier, I imagine, than being a reactionary like you who confuses constant critcism of other people's opinions with intelligent comment.

I don't now why you waste your time. Perhaps you hate everyone who doesn't agree with you.

I confess that I am with Frank Gol’s assessment. The choice of this article as a “best blog” is a curious match with the stated criteria:
“To be eligible for nomination, a post had to be from an Australian independent blog (that is, not an MSM offshoot), and had to make a substantial argument in its own right (ruling out the type of post that merely links to, and perhaps quotes from, some other source). From the list of nominations, the judges chose their “Top Forty” on the basis of style, originality, and argument; but we also tried to represent a wide variety of topics, styles and authors. A handful of posts were absolute stand-outs, but for the rest deciding was difficult: there were many, many excellent posts that we excluded with great reluctance.
The objective of Best Blog Posts is to showcase that talent and diversity, by gathering some of the year's finest blog writing in one forum.”
And it hardly enhances the status of the judging panel: “The panel of judges consisted of Ken Parish, Nicholas Gruen, Helen Dale and James Farrell, all Club Troppo contributors, and On Line Opinion chief editor Graham Young.”

GrahamY

Thanks for the information about how you chose this item.

So that's the method - but what about the quality, which was the point I raised?

Having had a look at the site, I agree with you that there's "a variety of standards" and my substantive point remains: this item is poor and lowers the standard of OLO. There are many much better items.

"One of the best blogs for 2007"? I mean, look at the item again. The man is arguing that the ABC should be sold off because he didn't like an item on the 7.30 Report. It would be just as inane for me to say sell off OLO because of this one silly piece of fluff.

Can we have something with a bit more substance please?

This is the weakest contribution I have seen on OLO.

The way to improve the ABC is not to sell it, but to fund it properly so they can produce quality shows and not be reduced to buying in cheap rubbish.

The commercial stations are appalling. Let's sell them. That will fix it. I presume that I fund the commercial stations indirectly, just like I fund the ABC, and I never watch them. Can I get my money back?

Mulligan

Is there anybody that thinks this was a genuinely well-written opinion piece? Whether you agree or disagree with the conclusion should be really beside the point - just recently I read a debate between two economists about privatising all education. I certainly disagreed with the one arguing the "for" case, but I had to admit he put the better argument forward, and the other debater did a fairly poor job of analysing the various problems with privatising education.
Quality isn't an entirely subjective judgement (hey, there's a whole new debate right there!).

I think it's a cute blog piece. The writing is witty, but it was thrashed out quickly. As it should have been - a good blog post should ignite briefly then fade away, leaving you with an impression you can file away and use again should the need arise.

Of course, you could drive a truck through the holes in the argument.

A lot of people love bagging out the authors on OLO. I don't dig that.