Australia's fortunes haven't exactly been soaring of late. Although we convincingly beat New Zealand in the Trans Tasman Rugby League Test, the Wallabies went down by a truly appaling margin to the All Blacks in the Rugby (Union) World Cup and our cricket team hasn't done well in it's opening T-20 game against South Africa. About the brightest spot for us,in fact, has been the well-deserved win by Casey Stoner in the 2011 MotoGP, which made him the world champion - a feat that matches the efforts of Aussie bike riders in years gone by.
So now we come to the true darkness that envelopes Australians now. First, there's the HD TV scam - a rip-off of gigantic proportions that results in inferior TV reception for many people, including the author. Of much more recent times though, there's that great big new tax that has just passed the final hurdle to become law at the start of the next financial year - the Carbon Tax. These 2 events have one thing in common, they were both authored by a Federal Government that has been in power for 4 years and is already at least 3 years beyond its use-by date.
The Great HD TV Scam
The advent of HD TV has certainly led to a huge increase in the number of so-called "free-to-air" TV channels, most of which are mere offshoots of existing networks so competition has not actually increased. The only thing that has really increased is the number of very old programs - sitcoms and dramas - some of which were quite dated when I was still a kid. This has certainly not led to an increase in viewing enjoyment so it seems the only thing that has changed is that there are now more media vehicles for advertising.
What were we supposed to get out of this? We were told that the signal quality would be better and would make a better viewing experience for all sorts of TV programs. We were also told that HD provided more bandwidth for more TV channels and some of us might've expected this to mean better quality programs from a variety of new players who would compete witht he established networks.
What did we actually get? Well, as already said, we got a wide range of resurrected programs from 20 and 30 years ago! Do we really want to see these repeats in better quality vision? If so, might we not have the right to expect that the better vision quality was actually achieved? There are many people I've spoken to who say that this has not been delivered, with many complaints about signal interference that causes loss of audio or loss of video, or both, or picture "freezing" and/or pixillation that renders each program unwatchable on far too many occasions.
It might work out better for folks in major capital cities but it doesn't seem to work that way for people in regional Australia who, yet again, have been forgotten in yet another ill-considered rush by an incompetent federal government that wants to be seen to be actually achieving something. If this is the standard by which they want to be measured, they have failed yet again and, in the process, forced every Australian to pay out a lot of money to convert their viewing from analog to HD digital TV.
I can see many retailers who will have benefitted from this, at a time when people aren't spending money because of the generally uncertain financial times in which we find ourselves these days. We might well have dodged a bullet with the Global Financial Crisis and might even be relatively well off in the event of the "double dip recession" that has been touted for a while now by some commentators. Little wonder that people don't want to spend money if they don't have to - but it also seems to explain why HD TV was given such a big green light by our government. It actually forced people to spend money that they didn't want to spend and who now have to revised their budgets and go without a few other things as a result.
A Short Note About The Ads
I'm given to understand that there are rules which say that TV stations can't make their ads more prominent than their programs. But they do so anyway. The volume used in programs is generally set lower than the volume of the ads, so that we get screamed at by the ads because we've had to increase the volume to hear the dialogue in the show we're watching. How is this not against the law?
For the benefit of advertisers, their agents and the commercial TV stations, here's a tip. When you put on an ad that really screams at us - like the Harvey Norman ads - people like me hit the mute button straight away and don't put the sound back on until the program starts again. You have, therefore, lost everything you were trying to achieve with every other ad that followed the Harvey Norman type ad!
Whatever happened to the quiet, clever, funny ads that we all loved to watch, some 20 years ago?
The Carbon Tax
What a brainstorm this was! Yet again, the feral government (pun intended) didn't think this through, much less did they have a mandate for it. There are many in the community who are self-funded early retirees who will receive none of the compensation on offer from the government. They access no federal services and so are outside of the loop for compensation. These retirees carefully considered their budget before taking early retirement, so that they wouldn't be a burden on the government welfare system and now they get kicked in the teeth for trying to do the right thing.
None of them could ever have envisioned this ill-conceived, ill-considered tax in the financial planning for their retirement, as those plans had to be made years ago, when there was no such tax - but there was a promise by Julia Gillard that she would not introduce this measure. So thanks once again to Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan for delivering us into evil rather than from it! I'm sure that you're very proud of yourselves for kicking your fellow Australians - people who've worked harder in their lives than either of you are ever likely to know, much less comprehend.
Many people who know me also know that I've been a staunch Liberal voter my whole life. They also know that I'm quite disenchanted by the idea of having Tony Abbott as our next Prime Minister because I don't think he has any more clues than the government that he will most certainly replace at the next election. Despite my lack of trust in Abbott, I will vote for him - mainly because there's no alternative, but also because of his promise to repeal this useless tax that will do nothing for the world's environment until all the bigger polluters take up the same challenge.
At a time when finances are so tight and the economy is far from strong, it has been foolhardy in the extreme to intoruduce this measure. The only thing it will do is further emasculate our industry, especially the all-important export industry that is essential to a balance of trade that encourages stable economies all over the world and especially with Australia's trading partners.
In absence of a mandate for this tax, the government should've put it to a referendum. Of course, they didn't want to do that because the history of referendums in Australia has always been "no". Thus, the hard-working Australian populace gets a tax foistered on them at a time when they really needed financial stability for their planning. Thus, even more money needs to be spent from budgets that were never designed to afford such an additional forced impost.
The sooner this highly destructive and incompetent government is removed, the better, though the damage will already have been done. I can but wonder whether the National Broadband Network will be any better than another massive white elephant that sucks even more of our hard-earned money from us, without our consent.
So now we come to the true darkness that envelopes Australians now. First, there's the HD TV scam - a rip-off of gigantic proportions that results in inferior TV reception for many people, including the author. Of much more recent times though, there's that great big new tax that has just passed the final hurdle to become law at the start of the next financial year - the Carbon Tax. These 2 events have one thing in common, they were both authored by a Federal Government that has been in power for 4 years and is already at least 3 years beyond its use-by date.
The Great HD TV Scam
The advent of HD TV has certainly led to a huge increase in the number of so-called "free-to-air" TV channels, most of which are mere offshoots of existing networks so competition has not actually increased. The only thing that has really increased is the number of very old programs - sitcoms and dramas - some of which were quite dated when I was still a kid. This has certainly not led to an increase in viewing enjoyment so it seems the only thing that has changed is that there are now more media vehicles for advertising.
What were we supposed to get out of this? We were told that the signal quality would be better and would make a better viewing experience for all sorts of TV programs. We were also told that HD provided more bandwidth for more TV channels and some of us might've expected this to mean better quality programs from a variety of new players who would compete witht he established networks.
What did we actually get? Well, as already said, we got a wide range of resurrected programs from 20 and 30 years ago! Do we really want to see these repeats in better quality vision? If so, might we not have the right to expect that the better vision quality was actually achieved? There are many people I've spoken to who say that this has not been delivered, with many complaints about signal interference that causes loss of audio or loss of video, or both, or picture "freezing" and/or pixillation that renders each program unwatchable on far too many occasions.
It might work out better for folks in major capital cities but it doesn't seem to work that way for people in regional Australia who, yet again, have been forgotten in yet another ill-considered rush by an incompetent federal government that wants to be seen to be actually achieving something. If this is the standard by which they want to be measured, they have failed yet again and, in the process, forced every Australian to pay out a lot of money to convert their viewing from analog to HD digital TV.
I can see many retailers who will have benefitted from this, at a time when people aren't spending money because of the generally uncertain financial times in which we find ourselves these days. We might well have dodged a bullet with the Global Financial Crisis and might even be relatively well off in the event of the "double dip recession" that has been touted for a while now by some commentators. Little wonder that people don't want to spend money if they don't have to - but it also seems to explain why HD TV was given such a big green light by our government. It actually forced people to spend money that they didn't want to spend and who now have to revised their budgets and go without a few other things as a result.
A Short Note About The Ads
I'm given to understand that there are rules which say that TV stations can't make their ads more prominent than their programs. But they do so anyway. The volume used in programs is generally set lower than the volume of the ads, so that we get screamed at by the ads because we've had to increase the volume to hear the dialogue in the show we're watching. How is this not against the law?
For the benefit of advertisers, their agents and the commercial TV stations, here's a tip. When you put on an ad that really screams at us - like the Harvey Norman ads - people like me hit the mute button straight away and don't put the sound back on until the program starts again. You have, therefore, lost everything you were trying to achieve with every other ad that followed the Harvey Norman type ad!
Whatever happened to the quiet, clever, funny ads that we all loved to watch, some 20 years ago?
The Carbon Tax
What a brainstorm this was! Yet again, the feral government (pun intended) didn't think this through, much less did they have a mandate for it. There are many in the community who are self-funded early retirees who will receive none of the compensation on offer from the government. They access no federal services and so are outside of the loop for compensation. These retirees carefully considered their budget before taking early retirement, so that they wouldn't be a burden on the government welfare system and now they get kicked in the teeth for trying to do the right thing.
None of them could ever have envisioned this ill-conceived, ill-considered tax in the financial planning for their retirement, as those plans had to be made years ago, when there was no such tax - but there was a promise by Julia Gillard that she would not introduce this measure. So thanks once again to Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan for delivering us into evil rather than from it! I'm sure that you're very proud of yourselves for kicking your fellow Australians - people who've worked harder in their lives than either of you are ever likely to know, much less comprehend.
Many people who know me also know that I've been a staunch Liberal voter my whole life. They also know that I'm quite disenchanted by the idea of having Tony Abbott as our next Prime Minister because I don't think he has any more clues than the government that he will most certainly replace at the next election. Despite my lack of trust in Abbott, I will vote for him - mainly because there's no alternative, but also because of his promise to repeal this useless tax that will do nothing for the world's environment until all the bigger polluters take up the same challenge.
At a time when finances are so tight and the economy is far from strong, it has been foolhardy in the extreme to intoruduce this measure. The only thing it will do is further emasculate our industry, especially the all-important export industry that is essential to a balance of trade that encourages stable economies all over the world and especially with Australia's trading partners.
In absence of a mandate for this tax, the government should've put it to a referendum. Of course, they didn't want to do that because the history of referendums in Australia has always been "no". Thus, the hard-working Australian populace gets a tax foistered on them at a time when they really needed financial stability for their planning. Thus, even more money needs to be spent from budgets that were never designed to afford such an additional forced impost.
The sooner this highly destructive and incompetent government is removed, the better, though the damage will already have been done. I can but wonder whether the National Broadband Network will be any better than another massive white elephant that sucks even more of our hard-earned money from us, without our consent.
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