I open up this page on OLO and who pops up, none other than the man himself, Jamie Packer! With the message "They want my head for revealing this, Everyday Aussies are quitting their..."

I can only assume the rest is...jobs, to open up an environmental disaster called 'Barangaroo' and have the good folk of NSW pay for a sizable chunk of it!"

Shadow, you and I are birds of a feather, but we do not flock together.

"Obviously it went over your head." Obviously, of course it did. Me, with my two feet firmly planted on the ground in the real world, telling it like it is, see above, and you up there in the clouds drifting around reading the thoughts of Piers Akerman and Co with their powder puff politics. Getting wacked on the scone every so often as I fire off a little old double entendre's you can't see coming.

Tena koe hoa (greetings friend) Joe, I can only liken Trump to a fire cracker, those who lit the fuse now hope like hell that the bunger don't go off! We can only wait and see. In the game of political gamesmanship the Putin v's Trump fight will prove to be a no contest. Not that I'm any sort of Putin fan, but like Khrushchev was with Kennedy, just politically too savvy to be taken down by a political nobody such as Trump. Trump's best defense will prove to be the dummy spit.

hari tau hou, (Happy New Year)

p/s I am fortunate to have the worlds best teacher of the Maori language with me, but unfortunately she has the worlds worse student

Dear SM,

So you think that there's one New Matilda reader
born every minute? That would be fantastic and
prove my point - that so many people are dissatisfied
with the MSM and they're
going to places that do provide diverse views
on important issues.

"There's one born every minute..."
And one to knock 'em, and one to trim 'em!

Dearest Foxy,

NM ? Diverse views ? Gosh, really ?

Yesterday, The Australian carried a long article by William Galston, by no means a pro-Murdoch writer, with a long history as a philosopher on the Democrat side, and probably inspirer of The West Wing. Today, it carries a fairly long letter by Robert Manne in mealy-mouthed defence of Gillian Trigg and her attacks on human rights.

All media outlets have a slant one way or the other and most of us are sensible enough to know this from the first page. Most of us do too, and we easily realise this from the first posts. I don't think that any media - or OLO contributor - can be expected to be somehow 'neutral', whatever that might mean, but can be expected to have fairly strong views and to express them, as articulately as possible. Let that freedom of expression continue.

Love always,

Joe

“The problem of fake news isn’t solved by hoping for a referee but rather because we as participants, we as citizens, we as users of these services help each other,” he said. “The answer to bad speech is not censorship. The answer to bad speech is more speech. We have to exercise and spread the idea that critical thinking matters now more than ever, given the fact that lies seem to be getting very popular.”

- Edward Snowden

Hi AC,

“The answer to bad speech is not censorship. The answer to bad speech is more speech." Yes, indeed.

Is that the Edward Snowden currently in Putin's Russia ?

How's he going with that sort of philosophy there ?

Joe

Dear Joe,

As long as the news itself is presented accurately
and fairly, editorial and journalistic leanings
shouldn't matter. But there's also no point in
claiming snow-white impartiality for political
coverage (as SM tends to do) if it's not there.

No Australian media is monolithically biased
but neither are they wholly unbiased
in what they report and how they choose to report it.

As stated earlier - those of us who are torn between
the desert of mainstream media and the jungle of the
internet need a place where rational but diverse
views can be found on important issues. New Matilda
is such a place for me. Of course as stated earlier -
it would be difficult to agree with every view
expressed in the columns of NM - but it would be
equally difficult to disagree with them all.