You love my puns! You know you do.
Do you ever feel like you’re living a dream because your surroundings are so ridiculous? Let me give you an example, ads. Yes, advertisements. Like Catherine Deveny has pointed out before, you can say the word ’sex’ on prime-time television, in education and even in religious class, but for some reason the word must be censored on a billboard. Go figure. Here’s some more stupidity…
Last week I was walking down Smith Street and noticed some stencils on the footpath. No big deal. Campaigns from selling Lily Allen’s debut album to plugging psychic hotlines have used this medium in Melbourne to advertise in the past. But if there’s one establishment that has a strong stance against graffiti, claiming that there is no distinction between so-called vandalism and so-called street art, it’s the government. And granted that it’s usually local or state government rather than federal, but I thought it was rather curious that nonetheless, the federal government had chosen stencil sprayed on the footpath to advertise their anti-drugs campaign. I understand that they’re trying to reach their target audience, an audience that mainstream media industries find almost impossible to reach, but I can’t help but smell a whiff of hypocrisy. Well, it might not stop the graffiti, but at least kids will stop taking ecstasy, right?
Before I step down from my soapbox, here’s another: I was walking home from work, right outside the commission flats in Collingwood, and noticed this advertisement…
Another great campaign, reaching the appropriate audience 
EDIT (at the risk of violating blogosphere ethics here, thought I’d edit this, rather than comment, so our audience (Charles?) can see another fine example of hypocrisy I snapped when in Hong Kong).
26th May 2009
Sim & Tris
The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has proposed a $43 billion plan to deliver high speed broadband internet to the majority of Australians. He intends to set up an organisation, the majority (51%) of which will be managed by the government over the next 8 years. The remaining 49% will be sold to the private sector.
Rudd’s $43bn plan to deliver fast internet, The Age
Kevin Rudd’s $43bn fast web gamble, The Australian
8th April 2009
Simon
Presidential candidate Barack Obama has been making headlines in the news and headway over there in the United States. He’s also been the talk of the town on the intertubes. That’s because Obama’s website is beautifully designed, using web standards alongside a nice clean interface. The logo for the campaign was designed by a group called Sender LLC, in conjunction with a design studio named mo/de. The web designers working for Obama’s campaign have reinvented this logo for various demographics by redesigning the identity for each application.
Speak Up has a fantastic article on the topic of the website and identity, which is well worth a read. Although the writer of the article claims that he is not endorsing Obama and his campaign, I’d like to take a stance… well, sort of like this.
By the way, I’m sick of the automated and unsolicited right-wing propaganda that seems to have flooded earlier posts on this blog alongside the casino spam. Perhaps this post is a reaction against that. Thank goodness for Wordpress and their lovely filtering software.
7th January 2008
Simon
I would like to bring to the attention of my fellow Simanticeans a worrying situation in Australia concerning so called ‘whistle blowing’ and the repercussions. I’m not sure if this has been in the media much in Australia, but it deserves to be.
Basically, former customs officer Allan Robert Kessing wrote a report in 2002 about the very poor state of security at the Sydney airport. After being ignored by the airport and not handed onto the government or any senior bodies outside the airport, the report was eventually leaked by an unnamed individual 30 months later. Mr. Kessing has therefore been charged and faces sentencing on the 14th of this month (June) for leaking a classified document. Although the problems he identified were later verified by a later report and led to radical changes in airport security in Australia, he faces a potential prison sentence rather than being thanked by Australia for making air travel safer.
For more info:
Listen to an interview with Allan Robert Kessing regarding this issue.
Read an article in The Age about this issue and the wider issue of the restraints on freedom of speach in Australia
10th June 2007
Tristan
“Hicks gets nine-month sentence”, The Age.
Just enough time to keep him away until after the federal election.
31st March 2007
Simon
