Mr Denmore has a cracker of a post regarding the financial press’ fawning coverage of the Abbott government winding back the future of financial advice (FOFA) reforms put in place by the previous government to protect personal investors against “shonks and salesmen masquerading as advisers”.
The financial media tends to serve the interests of the banks, brokers and intermediaries whose job it is to stick you into investments where neither the risks nor extortionate fees are ever explained in plain language.
[…]
This is about putting the interests of the thousands of Australians, many elderly and of limited means, second to the banks and retail funds.
What will the Abbott government do next to screw the voters and line the pockets of the plutocrats?
What news story/commentary/analysis has grabbed your attention lately?
As usual for media circus threads, please share your bouquets and brickbats for particular items in the mass media, or highlight cogent analysis or pointed twitterstorms etc in new media. Discuss any current sociopolitical issue (the theme of each edition is merely for discussion-starter purposes – all current news items are on topic!).
Categories: economics, ethics & philosophy, media, parties and factions
Media Circus: Budget 2014 Edition 
Hoyden About Town 
Someone was trying to start #Libspill speculation on Twitter yesterday. Doesn’t seem to have worked.
I am wondering if pressure from the Nationals over drought funding might start to get some leverage actually. If the Nationals fail now, when the people who vote for them desperately need them to succeed, things could get interesting.
Michael Bachelard, Indonesia correspondent for Fairfax Media, in the SMH: Investigation: ‘burned hands’ on the high seas
And this:
Just saw this on the Guardian website. Firstly, it is fucking awesome, secondly this is why it is so important that white western feminists sit down and shut up and let people sort out this stuff for themselves. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/06/alternative-to-circumcision-prevents-girls-suffering-kenya
Hmm Mindy I think you might have just illustrated some of the points made in “the feminism needs more practice ..” thread. As a white feminist who became aware of the FGM program in Victoria about 13 years ago – from an African born women of colour who was employed in the program through a local community health centre – I always tried to support the aims of the program. No doubt there were white feminist bureaucrats involved in the program, although the community education was done by African born women, and no doubt white women sometimes got it wrong and made mistakes. Women aren’t perfect, feminists aren’t perfect. We make mistakes, hopefully we learn from them. No doubt some white feminists are imperialists and racist but we aren’t all that way by definition.
It’s important to critique content – what people do and say – rather than criticise them for being who they are. Patriarchy will do that to feminists all the time, but we don’t have to. So I guess if there’s particular things that white feminists have said and done that you don’t like, fine. But for those like me who just generally tried to support the cause and be helpful, a blanket condemnation just sounds like more of the same old feminist blaming and infighting.
So Labor has held the seat of Griffith in the by-election – congratulations to new MP Terri Butler. It’s not going to make much difference to anything urgent though.
The Guardian: Spinmeisters desperately trying not to trip up on a footnote in election history
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Val, I’m not that happy about you scolding Mindy with a derail from the topic of politics and media analysis on this thread with a point that better belongs on another thread. It’s not that I particularly disagree with any of the specific points that you make, I just think you’ve chosen a poor time and place to insert those arguments. This is the same pattern I saw you follow several times over at LP with poor responses to you every single time. I find your choices extremely aggravating with respect to when you hold forth and how you frame your streams of objections to whatever it is that the rest of us are doing, and as a result it’s hard for me to feel any interest in engaging with you.
On LP I didn’t shut you down out of a (retrospectively misguided) sense of fair play, and as a result at least half a dozen of my favourite feminist commentors decided to leave that space in order to avoid you. I will not allow that to happen again on Hoyden – if it comes down to a choice of other commentors leaving or you, it is you whom I will let go.
Tigtog regarding feminist commentators leaving LP to avoid me, have you got evidence of this?
As I’ve said, I think we have to be able to deal with disagreement. I was responding to a point Mindy made about white feminists shutting up about FGM. If Mindy objects to what I’ve said or my tone, then I am happy to hear her points and respond to them.
Val, I haven’t got evidence that would satisfy you because it was from conversations in spaces where you don’t have access. You can choose to believe that I’m lying, if you wish.
Mindy’s points was also about WW shutting up in order to leave space for others to sort things out for themselves. So, in your account of your experience with a group of WOC working against FGM, did you insist on talking for them or did you stand back to offer background support while letting them speak for themselves? Because if what you did was the second thing, then Mindy wasn’t talking about you or WW like you, so why have you stuck your oar in?
Thanks TT. I think Val that if we sat downand discussed this we would find ourselves in furious agreement. The article discusses the community accepting what this woman was saying about FGM because she was one of them. That’s not to say WW can’t be allies or active supporters, just that we can’t run the agenda. Which we often try to do.
I should also add that TT has accurately reported conversations we were both involved in. /end threadjack
Comment copy-pasted to Otter Day Thread with my response [Mindy]
Comment moved to Otterday Thread [Mindy]