Let’s Buggerup Rupert’s Firewall

Remember Buga-up? This crew used to alter billboards in very constructive ways.

I’m not sure if they’re still in operation – they should be.

I’ve always found subversion of the corporate world appealing, although never have I personally been involved in it.

Given the liberating effect of semi-retirement, and more time available these days, its appeal looms large.

Guerrilla tactics – asymmetric warfare – whatever label you care to apply, is almost always effective when it targets large unwieldy conventionally organised structures. It worked well for the Vietnamese forty years ago.

One structure that is begging to be buggered up is Rupert’s firewall. Given the crap that’s daily posted on the Fart of the Nation, it really deserves its comeuppance.

The irony in this is, of course, that said crap becomes free to browsers. I comfort myself with the thought that much of what is posted is so biased that it deserves to be held up as an example of the depths to which our print media in this country has descended.

The method is simple.

We would need seven bloggers – one for each day of the week. Each would buy a copy of TFOTN* on a different day. Blogger 1 would buy the Weekend edition, blogger 2, Monday’s, blogger 3 Tuesday’s and so on.

Each would post their daily list of stories. To give you an example, the weekend FOTN list would look something like this:

Page 1 – 2^nd June 2012

PM told: migrants or the mine – Dennis Shanahan and Joe Kelly

Secret ‘war’ with China uncovered – Brendan Nicholson

Bonita Mabo’s call to women – Greg Callaghan

Cabinet split as Crean lashes ‘hasty’cattle ban – Hedley Thomas

The list could be posted page by page. You then do a Google search with the whole title including the by-line. Try it with the list above.

The whole article (including pics) is available – no firewall. The firewall does operate if you link from a blog, but the Google search circumvents this.

So who out there wants to volunteer to be responsible for a day? I’ll do the weekend edition – I buy it for Phillip Adam’s article in the magazine anyway. Pick your day and let me know. You can then email the list of titles and by-lines and I'll post daily on this blog, or maybe set up a different website for the purpose.

Today’s front page is true to form, by the way – three out of four stories biased against the government.

It’s about time the monopoly power and bias of News Limited was targeted.

*The Fart of the Nation

Stop Go

In the last couple of days I've driven about 1000km on the Warrego highway.

I've also spent plenty of time parked on that same road behind traffic controllers. Working it out, the time involved was about two hours all up.

In other words, for two hours I was paid good money to sit on my backside. I think that's referred to as a loss of productivity.

The whole highway is under repair, and the damage is a consequence of exploding mine and exploration traffic which has well and truly buggered the road, most of it built across black soil country.

I've followed all manner of trucked machinery along this road, and actually watched the surface move and squirm under the massive tonnage of trucked dongas, drilling rigs, and all manner of gear heading for the Surat basin.

So who's paying for the repairs?

You and me - the Aussie taxpayer.

Our tax dollar is subsidizing the billion dollar earnings of the miners through making good the damage they do to local infrastructure.

It's about time the "user pays" principle was applied to these cowboys.