See you at the heritage boat festival

Grumpy Old Journo is taking a break this weekend to show his little boat at the Lake Macquarie Heritage Afloat festival. If you're near the Toronto waterfront on Saturday or Sunday, stroll over and have a chat.

"Peter Pan of Woy Woy" has been allotted a berth in Area D, No D17. If it's not there, you may see it out on the lake. It's quite distinctive, a 15ft dinghy with tan sails. The mains'l is a standing lug and the little mizzen a triangular sail out over the stern.

The festival itself is great fun, with plenty of entertainment and activities for all the family.

Check it out at http://www.heritageafloat.com.au/

A trillion just isn't what it used to be

All those trillions spinning around the G-20, with an extra $US1 trillion for the International Monetary Fund to help kickstart the world economy . The mind boggles at the magnitude of these sums.

But praise be they weren't the billions and trillions of yesteryear.

For at least the first half of the 20th Century, Australia followed what was then called the British system, in which a billion was a million millions and a trillion was a million billions.


America and France used a different numerical system in which a billion was a thousand millions and a trillion was a thousand [American] billions.

The dictionary entry – from a 1940 edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage – shows the old usages. However, I'm not sure an ordinary reader checking Fowler's definitions would be any the wiser.

When did Australia switch to the US usage? There doesn't seem to be much much specific evidence. My recollection – which may be imperfect – is there was no official ruling. Newspapers began to change in the mid to late 1960s, and by the start of the 1970s nearly all would have gone over to the US system.

The change was cemented in 1974 when Britain itself switched to the US numerical system for all practical purposes.

Wikipedia has a good description of how the different numerical systems evolved.

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News loses its heart, says journalists' union

Apropos of my recent posts about The Australian's summary retrenchment of its veteran columnist D.D. McNicoll, my union has led today's media e-bulletin to members with this item:

News loses its heart - The Alliance held national meetings with News Limited staff this week after the company made several long-serving journalists redundant. Staff called on the company to consult over any future redundancies, to first offer voluntary redundancies and to address the discriminatory nature of the redundancy formula for staff over 63 or working part-time. Staff also called for an end to individual contracts and for the company to consider flexible work options instead of redundancies. The Alliance will be taking these issues to management at first opportunity.

But times are tough, and newspapers have to cut costs. Here's what's happening on The West Australian, where I began my cadetship in 1957. It's the second item in the e-bulletin.

9-day fortnight at WAN - Staff at West Australian Newspapers are being asked to adopt a nine-day fortnight “to avoid more draconian methods of reducing labour costs”. Several other media organisations have adopted similar measures. If you feel you are being coerced into a pay cut or taking unwanted leave, please contact the Alliance.

As I note under my blog profile, I remain an honorary member of the Australian Journalists Association, now merged into the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance.

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Let's hope the Oz practises what it preaches

Wishful thinking, perhaps. But The Australian's second editorial today appears to signal a shift from a hard-right ideological stance to a more balanced, middle-of-the-road assessment of economic policy, the causes of the global financial crisis, and the best measures to try for recovery.

When I saw the heading and subheading (above), my first thought was: “Good God! The Oz is dumping on its own commentators.”

Not quite. But if the Oz follows its own advice, it will start giving a more balanced, unbiased coverage of economic issues than we've seen in the past. The full editorial [1] is worth reading, but here are selected passages:

AMONG all the pontificating about the G20 meeting, Barack Obama called for calm coverage of the event. Everybody at the G20 understood the need to kick-start the world economy and better regulate financial systems, he said, adding "there's a great desire to inject some conflict and some drama into the occasion". He was referring to press and politicians, economists and instant experts, including Australians, who seize on statistics to create a sense of disaster about the global financial crisis every chance they get. And he's right.

It is far too early for anybody to understand whether tax cuts or cash payments are the best way to kick-start consumer spending or what amount of money governments around the world need to borrow, or print, to recapitalise banks and expand employment programs. There are cases for all these options, but in the absence of evidence it is puerile for commentators and politicians to denounce whatever governments do, just because they can. There is certainly more sound than sense in the Opposition's strident warnings that the Rudd Government is racking up a dangerously large deficit, when much of the money is being spent to stimulate the economy in the worst economic crisis in 80 years.

It's time for politicians seeking to score political points to calm down and for commentators to stop seizing on reports from international agencies as infallible evidence in support of their ideas about each economic indicator. This unprecedented crisis makes predictions pointless . . .

The electorate's economic literacy is one of Australia's strengths, ensuring people are not seduced by snake-oil solutions. But the fact the voters understand the crisis is the very reason why they neither need nor want instant analysis, every hour on the hour.

The Australian's new stance flows from the overnight G20 agreement. If the G20 achieve nothing else, they may have steered the Oz into more balanced coverage. The world's leaders meeting in London will have done something worthwhile.

---oooOOOooo---

You might call it bias. I call it intellectual rigidity. Economics editor Ross Gittins is far kinder. He calls it “priors”.


Gittins, in a piece in The Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age on March 16 [2] , “The GFC and secret economists' business – Your guide to the ideology behind the global financial crisis”, explained:

LET ME let you into a little secret that will help you make more sense of the never-ending debate over the global financial crisis, what caused it and what should be done about it.

As all the professional participants in these debates understand but rarely acknowledge, whatever theory or empirical evidence they quote, the position they take gets back to their "priors" — their previously formed beliefs and values.

A few weeks earlier, he had offered this "tutorial" [3] to incoming Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey, explaining the economic debate.

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Save yourself time and money . . . here's the Time number Telstra doesn't tell you

My twice-a-year ritual. Wake on Sunday morning. Pick up wristwatch, reset time with second hand poised at 12 o'clock position. Ring Telstra's Time number. Listen until the voice says, “At the third stroke it will be precisely four-fortythree [or whatever].” Right on the third beep, push the watch's knob back in.

Then go around and reset all the other clocks. For me it's about a dozen – wall clocks, bedside radios, microwave oven, conventional oven, workshop, car, office, and a few others I'll remember later. Perhaps I have a time fetish.

Just make sure of the number you should ring – 1194.

We old timers usually remember 1194. When we can't, we worry about old-timer's disease. But perhaps some of you youngfellas don't know of it, because it's been years since I've been able to find it in a Telstra phone book.

The old Time number disappeared from Telstra directories about when they began to list many “Premium” services – almost all of them directing you to independent service providers which charged like wounded bulls.

Perhaps even Telstra became ashamed as it tried to increase revenue by steering its customers to rip-off merchants, because it now lists fewer “premium” services and some of the prices seem less outrageous.

The only Time number I can find in my phone book is under 190 premium services. It's 1900 911 481, charged at a flat 77c. Call it, and you hear an introduction explaining the charge before inviting you to press a number to proceed. Then it asks you to press a button for your region. For research purposes, I did so.

What's this! Surely this is the voice you hear when dial 1194?

So, it seems that if you call the premium number, you pay 77c to press a few buttons which switch you to a number you could have dialled yourself for the cost of a local call. *

Maybe this advice will be useful to some of our readers. In south-east Australia, daylight saving ends next Sunday, April 5, at 3am summer time. Clocks should be put back one hour. [1] , [2]

* NOTES: I seem to remember 1194 was charged as a local call, but since it's now not in the phone book, I haven't been able to check today. The only time the premium service would be useful would be to get exact time in another Australian state, and how often would that be? Also, don't forget you should have accurate time displayed at the bottom of your computer screen.

---oooOOOooo---

The idea for this post first came when this popped up in my inbox:

For anyone contemplating using the Sensis directory service number, 1234, DON'T!
Sensis, as you may or may not know, is a subsidiary of Telstra. The 1234 number is replacing the Telstra 12456 directory assistance number, but this time with outrageous costs attached:
40c to call the number, then
4c A SECOND!
By law, Telstra have to provide a FREE directory assistance number, because they are still majority owned by the government. They choose however not to pass this number on to
the public.
What's the free number? 1223
USE IT!

There's one problem. These claims are not all true. Perhaps they were once (the email may have been circulating since before the Australian Government sold its majority stake in 2007).

On the inside front cover of my phone book, Telstra clearly lists the three types of directory assistance service, the different phone numbers, and explains what they deliver and what they cost.

As it says, “It's your call.”

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A new face delivers the Strewth!

Perhaps I missed it, but I don't think so. I collected my Australian from the flower bed well before dawn this morning and pulled out the Media section. Scanned it quickly for any reference to the summary retrenchment of The Australian's veteran columnist, D.D. McNicoll. Nothing.

Turned back to the Strewth! column [1] . There's a new face in the logo (above). Instead of McNicoll, it's James Jeffrey, who normally writes the longer – to my mind, too long – Strewth! in The Weekend Australian. In this morning's column, there's still no mention of what happened to McNicoll.

In my previous post, I said that if Media did not publish something about McNicoll's sacking, it would damage the reputation of the newspaper and of the section.

I have no doubt that if McNicoll had worked for The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age, and his employer “disappeared” him as The Australian did, the Oz would have reported it with relish.

With relish? Yes indeed. The Australian keeps up a regular sneering and jeering at its rivals, to a level which seems just plain childish. It does more to diminish its own standing than it does damage to the SMH and the Age.

Today's Media section did run a prominent inside page lead on the sacking of Lachlan Colquhoun as editor of The Adelaide Review [2] , a story which may have been of less interest to most of the Oz's national readership.

And Amanda Meade's Media Diary [3] did run a short piece about the exit of Age columnist Sharon Gray, but without answering the obvious question – did she go because she wanted to, or was she another victim of the cost-cutting now decimating Australian newsrooms?

Amanda Meade also ran an amusing par about the comic strip character Brenda Starr's being retrenched, because, as her cigar-chomping boss B. Babbitt Bottomline said, “I can't afford to pay you any more.”

But of the departure of The Australian's iconic D.D. McNicoll, not a word [forgive my misuse of “iconic”, but you'll all know what I mean].

Strewth! Has the Australian sacked its veteran columnist?

No hint in yesterday's [Friday, March 27]Australian – yet it appears that as this Strewth! column was being printed, editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell had sacked its author and told him to leave the building immediately without clearing out his desk.

The sacking ends a remarkable father-and-son involvement in column writing which began in 1946. More of that later.

First public hint of D.D. McNicoll's sacking appeared in the backpage Diary of yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald, in the paragraph below. Somebody at the Oz, probably outraged by the treatment of McNicoll, had wasted no time in calling the Fairfax rival.

This morning I did a Google search and found that Crikey.com's editor, veteran journalist Jonathan Green, had posted this at 4.46 pm yesterday.

D.D. McNicoll sacked at The Australian?
An anonymous tip just sent to Crikey:
From an informed source: D.D. McNicoll sacked yesterday from The Australian. Told to leave the building immediately not even given time to clear out his desk. Today is his 60th birthday. Redundancy at News Ltd capped at 1 year. McNicoll has been there 35 years. They did not even spell his name correctly on the form he was told to sign.
Nice people
Morale not good

I'm posting this before I look closely at this morning's newspapers. If I find more information when I do, I'll come back and revise the post.

I'll also look closely at the Media section in Monday's Australian – will it carry a full and honest account of McNicoll's sacking, and will the section's editor and columnists have had to resist management pressure if they do so? If Media does not publish such an account, it will damage the reputation of the newspaper and of the section.

Now back to the father-and-son connection. D.D's father, David McNicoll, wrote this in his autobiography, Luck's A Fortune (Wildcat Press, 1979):

THE TOWN TALK COLUMN in the Sydney Daily Telegraph was the first regular front page column to appear in an Australian paper. It's a sobering thought, but I probably made as much public impact, and caused more controversy with that column than with any of my other labors in journalism over the years.
The column was the brain child of Frank Packer and editor Brian
Penton. They had seen many columns of various sorts over the years — political, comment, humorous. But Packer wanted a column of news — part gossip, part political, part exposures, part insertion of the scimitar. My style of writing appealed to them as right for the new project.
On returning to New York from South America I found a cable from Packer telling me of the proposal, and suggesting I study a few American techniques.

And a little further into the autobiography:

Back in Sydney, Brian Penton put me through a few dummy runs inside the paper, and subbed specimen columns for a few weeks. He was a brilliant writer of the concise, short sentence, and he drilled it into me. He was also the father of the Active Voice in the Daily Telegraph. Anyone who ever worked on the Telegraph knew all about the active voice; the passive was never allowed . . .
On February 8, 1946, the first Town Talk column appeared. The previous day, a young, virtually unknown artist had been sent to do a caricature of me.
His name was Les Tanner. He is today, without dispute, peerless as a caricaturist, and in the top ranks as a cartoonist. His depiction of my features gave me all the attraction of a gigolo turned pawnbroker who has just received some devastating news. The worst part was that the drawing was apparently incredibly like me, and people recognised me with a shudder as they passed me in the street.

Tanner later drew this caricature of himself holding the McNicoll caricature: