Shades of the News

So now we have one business, Nine, that operates across a wide spectrum of traditional, contemporary and emerging technical, media, entertainment and advertising platforms in Australia.

Increasingly we get the news content when and where we want and with most convenience to us. The coffee and breakfast are still tasty whether you are holding them next to a smart phone, laptop or newspaper.

The more significant issue facing each of us continues to be the validity and emphasis of what we are told and provided as information.

The lack of choice of providers in this regard is most pronounced with other aspects of daily life in countries with lesser options in expression and human rights. 

However, the consolidation of media players in societies with small populations like Australia can also negatively impact on popular opinions, communal thinking and the development of democratic trends.

Coverage of news in any country has always been a widespread and effective means of cultural and political control.
So called capitalist economies may seem to allow more diversity in news information, but what happens behind the ownership of the powerful media companies operating there can throw dark shadows.

Most news publications in Asian nations are owned and run by the political parties in power. It is an alien concept and practice to have so called independent news publications surviving and prospering. Previous such attempts like Asiaweek or in Asian editions of American and UK mouthpieces met the inevitable end of not being viable.

So what you read and digest in any form of media we come across has to be strongly tinged with a huge dose of caution and cynicism.

The current USA President is vocal on his stand against the output of media operators like CNN and the New York Times. Each of us also has a preference for what shade of journalism we support, often synchronised with our label of political thinking. 

We tend to get our already existing views of the world consolidated with what we like to be fed, whether on web sites or with our daily paper. 

This brings us next to deal with whether differences of opinion can be twisted to meddling with the so called truth or facts.

A fact is supported by untampered evidence while an untruth is not. An opinion need not be objective as it can be tampered by random experience and selective thought. News dished out to us can be facts, opinions or fake.

Whilst the journalistic profession can have serious concerns about integrity and expression while working for powerful enployers with much financial and political clout, let us remind overselves where the buck stops in news transmission.

If we do not buy it, news provided to us loses its meaning, relevance and capability.

#yongkevthoughts

What About Me?

*"Well, there's a little boy waiting at the counter of the corner shop
He's been waiting down there, waiting half the day,
They never ever see him from the top
He gets pushed around, knocked to the ground,
He gets to his feet and he says...What about me? It isn't fair."

Provoke an innocent heart and you can make him change the world.

When it sounds too good to be true, it usually is false.   Or you have not got the whole picture.

Pay rises are approved readily and faster by Parliamentarians for themselves   - anywhere in the so called democracies   - than for the lowest paid sectors of the voting population.  

Elections held are to empower individual politicians to ideally work for the interests of the people, but in reality, most elected individuals tend to use their term of legislative authority to empower their own interests.

The worst addiction is to pay in small regular increments and not knowing the true costs, with a willing smile, a momentary pleasure and not realising the impact of the train wreck heading your way.

Every generation enjoys its own opportunities and fights its specific battles  - the rewards, labels and opiates are also unique.

The basic recipe of business is to spend less and charge more.   So is the ability to accumulate personal wealth.

We do not always harness our full potential, more often than not we utilise our full vulnerability.

We are truly primates, for other human beings treat us truly like monkeys.  We can jump high loops for peanuts.   Get us into troops to hang around and we do misbehave.  The excessive chatter on media echoes those swinging on trees.  We need to hug and have skirmishes.   We can be both cruel and kind to each other.   Are we at times not different from our cousins?

Some people sure have persistence, especially when there is easy money involved.

The simple concept of Yin and Yang is that we use the darkness to shine.

I would rather deal with an obvious rogue with a simple mind than with an apparent charmer with a scheming intent.

In any dealing, do pay attention to what they do not tell you, rather than what they want to emphasise.

A life of less expectations and more moderation removes the clutter from the instinctive human condition.

There is no point bringing in more through the back door than what you throw out from the front.

Make someone wait for too long and he or she can dismantle your comfort zone.

Always keep a positive fire of passion burning within yourself to light your personal  journey.

Do realise that there are people and processes, more involved in creating more electronic, audio and paper footpaths, to raise their own egos than in resolving a situation.

When in doubt, ask.  When in excess, scale down.  When being brushed off, soldier on!

Why is there a practice of bestowing titles?

*"But you just take more than you give
More than you give...
Take a step back and see the little people
They might be young,but they're the ones that make the big people big..."

Research efforts can be skewed to produce pre-determined outcomes, especially to favour those funding it.

There is a manufactured tablet for any imagined and real human condition.

Some so called smart phone apps tend to make fools of their human users  - and make them convenient and unknowing addictive fools as well.  

The undying and unchanged rule of commerce is to get paying customers to come back continue paying for it  - and convince them of urges and needs they did not know existed, or really require.

In the end, you have to save yourself, not from yourself, despite your self, but from others.

The funnier the advertisement, the hollower the product or service,

The first self check when dealing with the wolves at your front door is not to let others take advantage of your human instincts.

The basic tenet of on-going subscriptions is to ensure the ready flow of funds to the circus organiser.

Change what is not good for you or what is negative for you will change you.

A magical experience is to have an unstructured day of unplanned delights.

Humans tend to make more than a buck from holding cock fights and pitting one against another.

In the search for fairness, human beings have travelled long distances, created complexity, misused options and caused havoc.   The concept is ideal but the implementation can be challenging.

Why do we spend more time on the mundane than on the truly meaningful?

Some warped and cheeky guy will subvert the use of every human invention.

The outstanding characteristic of written agreements is to make them untenable when required.

Make yourself seen if the others pretend not to see you.

They make an interim, apparently caring fuss of you when you marry not for love, but with lenders, get into a contract, sign up for a long term business commitment or will yourself into a cult.   

Your existence and humanity can be reduced after that.

Knowing the cause is better than dancing around with the distracting symptoms.

Each of us really can do with much less than we think, but contemporary society makes us reckon otherwise.

In the end, it may not really matter.   Each of us is just a speck in an unexplainable and changing universe, but we can leave a legacy in our own special way, as unique as a finger print or as an inspiring memory in the hearts of others.

*"Nobody's changed, nobody's been saved
And I'm feeling cold and alone
I guess I'm lucky, I smile a lot
But sometimes I wish for more, than I've got..."
 

*Copyright of lyrics to Moving Pictures, What About Me

Writing, Communicating and Chatting

I reckon most of us do not receive written personalised letters anymore, nor write any to socialise with others. Even exchanged love notes are in texted electronic messages. Maybe the grocery list is still handwritten.

So called snail mail has been sadly reduced to advertising pamphlets. Contemporary society has practically done away with the pleasures of beautiful handwriting and we are reduced to only being agile with our thumbs.

Elegant writing instruments have become more rare and inevitably redundant. We do not have to sit up properly to communicate - more often than not we are not poised in ergonomic body positions when using electronic screens. 

An increasing number of us are not fully aware of our environment when we text on smart phones walking across busy streets and when driving vehicles. A whole generation has lost the significance of spelling correctly and become infatuated wirh Emojis.

The variety of gadgets to communicate has evolved to portable devices that echo our need to be mobile and have access to our records anywhere we are in the physical world. This has hugely made us depend on wifi availability, a resource which is controlled by only a few players. We can be held captive in this manner when speech and writing are no longer free to be transmitted instantaneously.

Each of us no longer has the thrill of having a private diary buried under a tree or in a secret drawer. Every part of our daily life is recorded by third parties and leaves a trail, even when we electronically delete it.

The shift from use of feathered quills to thumb pressing to write has only taken a few hundred years. It can be both exciting and frightening to imagine the future in this respect. Our records cannot be burned as they are no longer on paper. Yet they can be tampered with, misused and interfered by parties having covert negative intentions, as they can be traced much more easily than with paper documents.

The keyboard still survives but the desktop, email, laptop and tablet are all inevitably headed to oblivion. What is next?

Reflect at how our residential post boxes, email addresses, instant messaging folders and social media inboxes can be saddled with junk stuff and file attachments. There is this dire risk of not having ever being satisfied with whatever capacity is made available.

There may also be no need to write much in the future. We leave verbal messages on phone apps and can ask robots for verbalised answers. 

Yet on the other hand, we do not need to speak on the phone as we can "chat" silently on provider websites that facilitate text conversation formats.

Analytics of our data and images in cyberspace can lead to a new form of political and social control.

Nothing good is free, we do realise there is a cost to be paid for the benefits of on line real time uploading of messages, photos and videos of what we are doing to anyone in another part of the world - provided both sender and recipient can pay for and have access to the new god of wifi.

#yongkevthoughts

Where To For Dinner?

The pork cutlets melted in my mouth this evening, especially with the luscious gravy served at Gambino's Corrimal NSW.

Such is the pleasure of finding a gem of an Italian restaurant in the neighbourhood. Add to this a most engaging customer relations lady who lifts up the conversation and makes us able to relax on a weekday night, particularly one with drizzling and persistent rain showers.

The quality of a suburb cannot be enhanced by too much vehicular traffic, the number of pedestrains and the presence of too many competing businesses. When one enjoys a group dinner, it is both the lovingly made culinary served and the level of meaningful conversation that make a delightful end to a mucky weather of a day.

I forget the cold as I fork into yummy marinated greens and potatoes on the side served with my mains. We do not have to walk far at all between the car and the restaurant. There is no limit on the amount of time we can linger at our table. We can all come home within 15 minutes, even if we do not really want to.

The way cities grow in some parts of the world's most populated areas means making it rare to experience such occasions savoured tonight. Just getting to the restaurant can be a challenge in logistics, even if it is supposed to feel hip. There may be issues and risks of personal safety navigating home after dinner. The restaurant may have two seating sessions, so either one dines too early or too late. There is an increasing trend amongst Asian outlets to accept cash only. The state of toilets in city restaurants can change one's mood for the worse. And then you have to locate your car in a multi storey park.

So you have your choice where you prefer to dine. 

#yongkevthoughts

NBN - or I shall Never Be Neutered

Now is the time......to get real concerned as to how the NBN is being implemented for ordinary Joe and Jane Citizen across our Great Southern Land.


If we already have a viable existing telecommunications system,  why replace it with something less to be desired?   Can all the public monies used to fund NBN be please better utilised for improving health services, public school education and other areas crying for help in an increasingly socially inequitable country?   And we have a Federal Australian Government which is facing serious issues of balancing the national budget, repaying off huge debts and currently significantly having a large loan interest liability.   Why add to another huge and costly undertaking?


After connecting to the NBN, my landline telephone broke down in services three times in six weeks.  In all my previous many years living in this beloved nation called Australia, I have never had any issues with my landline telephone connection, even with copper wire.   My previous landline phone has never gone dead, until post NBN.


NBN tells me over the phone to just deal with my chosen provider if I have any issues with the NBN installation, pre or post.   NBN cannot help.


The Federal Government talks up of the glories of having NBN, unnecessarily raising expectations in the minds of ordinary people like me.   It is indeed a most exciting time to be an Australian, to know the gap between political talk speak  or hype and the inability of NBN to engage with customers, deliver the technical quality in telecommunications as promised and understand deeply that NBN is not a poster boy for innovation that this country needs.


 My selected provider says a lot of things are subject to NBN control.  As a customer, I am left in the gutter, comparable to between a rock and a hard place.   Providers who deal with the public, like me, need the money plus business - and cannot afford to aggravate the NBN.   They dare not criticise the NBN, period.  


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I am not holding my breadth anymore. 


Speed connection with NBN is nothing better than pre-NBN days, unless I am willing to dish out an additional AUD 30 more per month to upscale my internet speed plans.


My provider tells me there are things that the way NBN does things has a shortfall, but they cannot be criticised, as NBN dishes out the parcel of revenue to eager outsourced providers and contractors  -  as every resident and citizen in continental Australia eventually will face the prospect of having to change over to this god-like entity called the NBN. 


Before I took up NBN connection, I had access to one of the best telecommunications services Australia can be proud of, even if I know other nations are now providing even better and have uplifted the game....but I was content.   The monster in the room is that every one knows that Australia is left behind in this perspective  - excuses are given that 
Australia has such a huge land mass and such a low population, which I recognise as well. 
So I call to the politicians and NBN to factor this constriction that Australia faces - and not promise glorious and better things with NBN installation.   WE are indeed a low population clinging on to a huge land mass.


Now with the NBN installation kicked in, this new arrangement has disenabled my existing back up battery with my landline, which I understand is critical in the event of an electrical supply shut off.    This back up battery is a significant element for the operation of home medical alarms, emergency call systems, fire alarm, emergency lift phones and monitored security alarm systems.


NBN does not tell the public why the back up battery has to be disenabled.  If customers, who have moved on to NBN connections, want to reinstall a back up battery, they have to bear the costs themselves for doing so.


The NBN arrives at your front door with no democratic choice given to you.  No one in person over the phone discusses with the resident about the impending  rollout or its implications.  The attitude from the NBN is "take it or leave it" - showing arrogance to prospective customers, which is rather jarring in a country that promotes human rights and political correctness in a big way, under our Westminster system of parliamentary democracy.   


Are we as commoners in Australia forced to install NBN?  I know that the Government has given NBN roll out targets, to cover more portions of this Great Southern Land.   I shudder when I see NBN advertisements on the media  - to me it just means NBN is way behind its agreed performance targets.


Strange looking men, contractors hired by NBN,  built an outside NBN box above my existing outside Telstra box   - they do not even talk to you and when approached, say nothing, know nothing and  keep their distance from us.      I heard that NBN has targets to achieve in covering specific  suburbs in their roll out  - and akin to war machines. act in surprising the local populace - and treat human beings with no rights at all in consultation, choice and being informed in a civilised way. 



The contractors sent by NBN to install an outside box broke a chunk of the piping between the existing Telstra box and the new external NBN box.  I phoned NBN and got no follow up.  I saw a contractor hanging outside my house by chance and he said he could do nothing.  He actually asked me to repair it myself....by going to the local Bunnings store.


Letters are sent by and written by NBN  in an unfriendly  manner and language.    I note an irritating feature of telecommunications companies in Australia is to spend huge on a budget of sending snail mail letters - and when I phone up NBN, I am placed on a "circuitous telephone and wait on the line" experience, which says so evidently that NBN does not really want to talk to me and listen to my queries.  


On a side note, Telstra still sends me hard copy letters by traditional post even if I owe them nothing and  I no longer use their services -  this has been going on for more than ten years, easy.   Many people I ask just chuck the hard copy letter they receive from NBN.   Perhaps Telstra has a generous budget to waste on printing and mailing.


After the external NBN box has been set up outside my house, I am barraged by these regular letters stating that the NBN network will replace my landline networks and that I need to get into an NBN plan before a stated due date -  otherwise all my accessible telecommunications will be switched off,  with no other option given to me as an Australian citizen.   NBN spells out that all landline phones, landline internet, EFTPOS and ATM services, fax machines and Teletypewriter devices, monitored security alarm systems, medical alarms and emergency call systems shall be switched off, if the customer does not take up NBN installation.


It is just the sub-standard way in which NBN carries out its installation process and then followed by the lack of delivery of viable service to the customer after installation - this is not on.   Throughout NBN does not communicate sufficiently with the customer.


The preamble promise by NBN in this written letter is that the NBN network is designed  to give Australians "access to fast and reliable landline phone and internet services".
This constantly sent NBN letter promises me four key things, which have not been fulfilled by the NBN post installation:

Faster downloads.


Fewer dropouts.


Better productivity.


A brighter future.