MESKI: For some strange reason the wowsers who cause all the trouble aren’t at all hassled about violence. Which indicates to me the evil of religion per se. S-x in movies and books is far more uplifting (pun unintended) than sheer violence but it’s the s-x that attracts them and because they want it for themselves-to see how ‘disgusting’ it is before agitating their local member (no pun intended) to have it banned.

You work it out, I can’t.

Cheers

V.

@ACannon: Clockwork Orange is ok, because it’s got *violence*, and that makes it ok :^)

Years ago our next door neighbours dropped in for a drink. He was a psychiatrist and he was looking at my books and pulled out The Tears of the Nile, asking if all my books were about women? Genuinely puzzled I peered at it and said “That’s right Peter, it is the history of the river Nile! Doh!”

“Have another drink”, said my partner.

For a country as fecund as Oz we have an awful lot of people who faint at the thought of f/uck and sex and all that jazz.

See? That’s why they won’t name the game, they are afraid of narky peple getting all funny and philosophical about things. Much safer to think of some pretext or excuse and hope everyone goes away.

As I said, Australians always seem afraid of naming the game, in business and govt, they are used to making diversionary excuses. I’ve seen it here over and over again, and it annoys me just as much as it annoys you, SBH. Australians are afraid to be honest because 1) it reveals their true motives which can be used against them 2) they are worried about a debate or ‘big ideas’. Truth is the only casualty. There, I’ve explained it twice now, are you going to post the same question a third time so I can say it again? Maybe ask Barry Humphries next time? I’m only the messenger here.

But that aside, let’s see if my heuristic model is holding up. You think that because lots of bad things are being done we shouldn’t complain about any bad thing? is that the thrust of your last para?

AP is a Government Business Enterprise which is a patricular kind of thing created by parliament to be specifically and deliberately different from corporatised business. It is a Government agency and is wholly owned by and accountable to Government (that is, us). It’s an important distiction. It has “a comprehensive system of corporate governance practices designed to provide appropriate levels of disclosure and accountability.” and yet in this decision there was no disclosure.

Now I swear to Baal that that is my last word.

This is how Australians always explain what they did — they never name the real reason, they always point to some operational thing. I don’t know why they do this, they just do. Small target deflection type stuff I suppose so it minimises the potential for some unforeseen scandal including being accused of being moralistic or judgemental or something. Whereas you’ll note Americans aren’t afraid to cite ‘moral’ motivations for their actions both in business and govt. So, some customers were morally outraged and complained and they removed them then. Same difference. Who cares.

It is very problematic when a Government agency decides to restrict information and refuses to tell the citizenry why it did so.

ha ha, you’re joking, right? Do you have any idea how much you don’t know about what the govt is doing in policy all the time? There is extremely dodgy stuff going on all the time in govt involving much bigger decisions than this, and the decision-making is not democratic, and often hurts a lot of Australians. I don’t know where to begin, and at what tier of govt. As if I have to tell you, just read the daily papers, forgetting about crikey. Anyhow, AP is a corporatised business, it’s not ‘the govt’, its revenues simply flow to the govt. This is an important distinction, and the whole thing has nothing to do with Big Brother style censorship by the govt as much as a decision by a business unit to not carry certain titles that customers think are indecent. And which a ‘reasonable person’ under the law might also reasonably hold to be indecent by today’s standards. The works are freely available in other businesses for consumption. If it was my shop, I would make the executive command decision to choose what I wanted to stock also.

AP Banned a book that has been through a censorship process resulting in it being freely and publicly available. I speculate that you don’t like it because you think it’s indecent. That’s ok that’s your right.

My point, and you might want to apply some heuristic methodology to this, is that they didn’t say it was banned because it was ‘indecent’. they said it was removed because some customers complained. There is nothing in AP’s statement that says this was a business decision.

It is very problematic when a Government agency decides to restrict information and refuses to tell the citizenry why it did so.

Strike me not oh mighty one for failing to heed your word and bless all my oxen.

This would have to be one of the longest runs of comments on a non-issue on crikey yet — who will have the last word?

Where did I say ‘small’ business? See the problem I’m talking about re judgement and fallacious heuristics, seeing words that are not there?

I’ve actually worked in big government at managerial level and know far too much about how badly it runs as a matter of fact. Spoken with the odd Secretary. Know the deep pathology of public service middle management. I’ll contribute a few stories to crikey one day, perhaps.

AP banned a book based on their interpretation of ‘decency’, exercising their power of management discretion. You should see how the Americans define this sort of thing, Australia has a real problem deciding what is decent and why. Plus I think you should also consider the long history of censorship in Australia as a form of contextualisation instead of railing against this little now.

But as I said, there are about 1 trilion bigger and more important issues in the world, some of which I’m going away to fight now if you’ll permit me — most to do with the failings of government on more important matters. I stand by my original comments about the triviality of the issue.

Also as this was a decision made by a large government entity and applied across all Aust Post stores what’s the relevance of the “you’re uninformed because you haven’t run a small business” argument?

Next, You’ve never run or provided advice on how to run a government or government department so what makes you think you’re qualified to comment on how government runs? I bet you do though all the time but somehow others opinions you can write off because you assert, without any evidence I might add , that they’ve never run a business. Your characterisation of them sounds political rather than economic.

Last, this is about Australia Post ( a very large government business) deciding for no particular reason that their prepared to share, that they will ban something. You didn’t answer my previous question about what else you’d let be happy to let them ban. Don’t you think that if the government or one of its agencies decides something should be restricted in it’s distribution they should tell us why?