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Saturday July 7 2024, Paul Murray ‘How you’re voting for a militant Greens party without realising it & why that must change’.

Paul Murray starts us off with an article that is typical of the thoughtless rhetoric of his editorial column.

Murray’s position is one where he assumes everyone of his readers assumes the same subject position as him; wealthy, white, male, upper middle class and absolutely entitled. In this piece he assures us that representative democracy is broken because people forced to choose preferences as they vote are accidentally choosing things that don’t suit their interests.

Like the vile Greens party.

The unexpressed assumption of Murray’s argument is that the people of Australia are too stupid to understand their own political will, or the voting process. When this leads to increased seats for the Greens, that means we should change the democratic system to ensure more votes for the LNP.

There is no similar reflection that maybe the two major parties benefit from preferential voting, or discussion of what policy decisions actually reflect or work for the interests of Australia. Just a whole bunch of name calling and insinuation that if Greens are elected, then the system is broken.

Interestingly, exhibit one for the argument is Senator Payman, who really has nothing to do with the Greens but famously crossed the floor and voted against her party in support of Palestinians in Gaza. Payman was the target of Murray’s column last week, where she was lambasted for expressing a personal political opinion in federal parliament. With his typical hypocrisy, Murray derides Payman for actually using the House of Representatives for representing the views of many people of Australia… without ever reflecting whether doing so was the right thing to do, or whether it is morally and politically defensible. Instead of engaging with the substance of the actual issue, Murray instead assumes that democracy is broken because it represents the interests of ‘the left’.

The use of the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ is one of the most thought defying ways to argue about politics. As we can see from the current make up of Australian Parliament, it is rare for anyone’s political ideologies, policies or arguments to stack up as ‘left’ or ‘right”. Look at the Teal independents, who are economically conservative (supposedly right wing) but environmental activists and trying to eliminate corporate influence on politics (supposedly left wing). Look at the Labor Party itself, which is supposedly the ‘centre left’ party but which has protected the interests of the middle class, worked strongly against asylum seekers, willingly entered needless wars and supported the exploitation of gas and oil for the next 50 years. A truly left party would entertain ideas such as property being a form of theft, enforce high taxation for the exploitation of public/national resources, support a universal basic income, and seek to make essential aspects of life – education, health and housing – all publicly owned and run. We have nothing like that in the major parties, and so the moniker of ‘left’ is really just a stand in for other things.

Similarly the ‘right’ is used as a catch all to describe a unity of ideas that does not exist, and hide the deep ideological differences between a group of people to maintain unity. Those on the ‘right’ believe in personal freedom as a fundamental value, unless that person is a pregnant woman, and then the state should get to make decisions for her. They believe in economic freedom, but also generally work to ensure that the rich are protected from the poor. They love freedom of thought, as long as everyone believes in the same moral code. And they want a huge and empowered army, police force and judiciary to ensure that given all the freedom in the world, the people they set up for exploitation make the ‘right choices’. Look at the difference between George Christensen and Malcolm Turnbull and it’s clear that the moniker of ‘the right’ is used to disguise the differences between politicians and help them work together.

But using these monikers ‘left’ and ‘right’, as Murray does as part of his rhetorical strategy of ‘name calling’, does nothing but dumb down political debate. Instead of saying these ideas are from the ‘right’ or the ‘left’, an earnest debate would talk about the merits of the ideas themselves. Similarly, the ad hominem attack of suggesting democracy is broken if we vote for the Green begs the question of why? What’s so wrong with the Greens?

To return to the issue of Payman, her crossing of the floor in support of Gaza did honour a position held by many Australians. Yes, it was a position that the ALP had decided not to take – but it might be worth considering the idea that they are wrong, particularly given the recent UN ruling that the occupation of Gaza is illegal. Without getting into the details of the correctness of Payman’s position, it is an important thing for democracy that alternative viewpoints are aired and explored; without being dismissed because they are against party lines. This is a fundamental ‘liberal’ principle and generally a central platform of Murray’s ideological position… in fact he pursued this very argument vigorously a few weeks ago, when deriding Labor for not entertaining nuclear power.  Murray’s argument is that the ‘left is bad’, even when it acts like ‘the right’.

And on to the central thesis of this week’s editorial, that if people end up voting for the Greens, the system of representative voting is broken. In it Murray discusses statistics that show that if preferential selections were not enforced, the Greens would get far less of the vote. He of course omits to say that every candidate would get far less of the votes they currently get if this were the case… but Murray doesn’t really care about accuracy, fairness or equity.

He does not discuss why voting for the Greens is a mistake, or discuss any of their policies, or their relative merits in light of the problems that we face as a country or a society. Instead of just insinuating that the Greens are radical and dangerous, Murray could have talked about some of their policy positions. These include:

addressing climate change by replacing coal and gas with 100% renewable energy – and using investment in renewable and sustainable tech to drive economic growth.

Ensuring more democratic access for citizens to political processes

Providing free education and healthcare for life; funding this out of addressing corporate tax evasion

and yes, opposing genocide and invasions on principle.

You can find out more at the Greens’ website. But what I’d like to insist here is that these elements of the Greens platform are actually in the interest of most Australians. A vote for these ideas does not insinuate that democracy is broken – but rather that it works. And if Murray had any integrity at all, he’d be worrying about how to alter the democratic system to ensure more Greens seats in parliament, not less; as the Greens are one of the few parties that place the interests of the people in front of the interests of corporations, campaign financiers and lobbyists.

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12 Oct 2024 What’s wrong with the west?

This week Paul Murray is back onto one of his favourite topics… why anyone trying to make green and renewable energy is wrong headed and wasting YOUR money. In his latest editorial (Bowen’s plans are a complete waste of energy) Murray goes into great detail about all the reasons that pursuing green hydrogen is a waste of your money. While the details here are typically meaningless (there’s talk of a prominent funding body and scientist backing away from one of many Green Hydrogen projects), it allows Murray to return to one of his favourite refrains – we are sleepwalking into an energy supply crisis because of the current government’s insistence on moving to renewable and non carbon sources of energy production.

The err in Murray’s argument is that he never diligently responds to his own question. Why are governments around the world so reluctant to continue using fossil fuels as a source of energy? The answer is, of course, the clear and irrefutable evidence of climate change – and the scientific consensus that states quite unequivocally that the use of fossil fuels is fueling the increasing temperatures.

Interestingly Murray refused to acknowledge that the US has just seen the most severe week of hurricane activity in recorded history. This included the development of Hurricane Milton, which developed from a tropical low to a Stage 5 Hurricane (the worst) in under 12 hours – an unprecedented event. This incredible weather did not really feature anywhere in the West this weekend, and I can’t help but think that if Paul Murray was concerned about the health and wealth of West Australians, he might have actually discussed the issue of the increasing severity of weather – something which is universally attributed to the rise in ocean temperatures.

Hmm, maybe worth investing in some renewables?

As this graphic shows, the more costly Hurricanes we’ve seen so far have impacts that run into the hundreds of Billions of dollars. And the longer we keep buring fossil fuels for energy, the worse they are getting. That, I think, is the news that Paul Murray and the West are leaving unreported. That’s why even governments are trying to get away from fossil fuels. Because the profit of oil and gas today, leaves a huge public debt to pay in the future. (and the trauma, and the loss of life, and the destruction of entire ecosystems… but you know… it costs money too).

So I do understand that Green Hydrogen may not be the panacea that solves all our energy problems in one go, but boy if its considered feasible then it’s definitely worth investing in. And yes we should be having a debate, and scrutinising the best way to de-carbonise our energy supply. But the first thing that needs to be said about that is that WE CAN’T KEEP BURNING OIL AND GAS… so what else can we do before the world goes to hell.

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Sept 15 ‘Labor luck running out with snub of the Greens’

In this week’s installment of ‘how hypocritical can he get?’ Paul Murray decides to fire a warning shot over the Labor party’s bow by depicting the current conflict between the Greens and Labor over Housing Policy, Gaza and the CMFEU.

In the article Paul Murray gleefully recounts the issues that the Greens have been arguing with Labor about over the past two weeks. He points out, quite correctly, that Greens preferences are an important ingredient of any election win in next year’s polls.

The point of hypocrisy is the disingenuous messaging here. Elsewhere (see July 7, for example) Paul Murray has insisted that a vote for the Greens is akin to voting for the Monster Raving Loony Party… he has also implored Labor to detach themselves from their alliance, insisting that any Greens influence on Australian politics is likely to result in our sudden and immediate failure as a nation state.

The Monster Raving Loony Party is a real thing BTW

Q. So why is Murray so concerned that they want to question Labor’s stance on negative gearing, supporting Israel and criminalising unions?

A. He’s not. This is a two page article about people in parliament using parliament to argue about policy. That’s exactly what its for… the real reason for the article is buried in the middle of the piece, where he carefully outlines that the ‘pro-Labor voting patterns of the current teals’ could also prop up a Labor government. He issues a dire warning:

‘And on that basis, voters in the wealthy Perth seat of Curtin should vote for Kate Chaney. That’s a de facto Labor vote.’

oh no. how did this happen? I accidentally voted for Labor. I should have paid more attention to Paul Murray!

Murray goes on to quote a statement made by my PhD Supervisor Dr Ian Cook – who warned about the preference deals the Liberals made in the 2017 state election:

‘The Liberals risk losing supporters who think that One Nation is divisive and extremist, and One Nation risks being seen to support a Barnett government.’

Murray’s ploy here is to insist the same applies here… by supporting Labor, The Greens and Teals risk alienating their constituents, and through their association with The Greens and Teals, Labor also risks alienating their own. He goes as far as suggesting that because of these disagreements, Labor and the Greens should put each other last on preferences (‘on principle’). Ridiculous.

I, for one, am glad that the Greens (and Teals) are asking important questions of Labor about issues like housing affordability, Isreal’s continued war on Gaza and the criminalisation of the CMFEU. The fact of the matter is that on these issues the LNP is not a credible opposition because it supports and holds the same position as the Labor party.

The reason that people will preference Labor is simply that they remain better than the Liberals on the issues that actually matter to this country.

Of course, these issues are never discussed earnestly in ‘The West’, whose front page, and page 2 yesterday, was dominated by a story about 7West’s (the ownership company’s) employee Basil Zempilas ‘biting back at Labor insults’ as he preps for his LNP leadership run. As housing affordability becomes a forgotten dream, WA suffers from a skills and worker shortage, we are heading into the 13th hottest month on record in a row… the West chooses to focus its two opening pages on propping up a celebrity because they were criticised for being a phony.

‘Labor is uptight about Mr Zempilas, fearing his high-profile media background, including host of major events such as Telethon, will help in a future contest if he ever became Liberal leader’.

Impartial and inspired journalism at the West.

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July 27th 2024 – What’s wrong with the West

Paul Murray does something completely remarkable this week and presents some criticism of state political and social decisions that could almost be considered legitimate. While his take on the issues is rather typically unreasonable, biased and full of rhetorical trickery, I think its more important to cover something the story that the West ran on the front page and then again on pages 8-9: ‘”Revealed: United front on radical green laws; No positives in it for us’

In this piece the West Australian provides a platform for the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Business Council of Australia, National Farmers Federation, the Chamber of Minerals and Energy (WA) and the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies to vent their spleens about the potential problems further environmental regulation could produce for them and their members.

In the interests of balance, after 16 paragraphs of mineral and oil extractors complaining about this possibility, there is a single paragraph from the Australian Conservation Foundation stating ‘we need a national EPA to get the politics out of decision making, to be independent and make independent decisions on the facts to ensure nature is protected’. Doesn’t seem unreasonable.

But of particular concern, the article asserts, is ‘the looming threat of a Greens backed ‘climate trigger’ being shoe-horned into the environmental reforms. A climate trigger means all projects estimated to produce more than 100,000 tonnes of Greenhouse gas emissions a year would need a special exemption from the environment minister’.

This is presented to the reader as though such a requirement is an abhorrent incursion on business and industry in the state. Instead, let’s suggest that the emission of 100,000 tonnes of Greenhouse Gas PER YEAR is actually a significant public risk that needs to be addressed as an environmental threat.

For those not keeping up with science, or still maintaining a belief that climate change isn’t real, it’s worth pointing out that the last 12 months have been the hottest 12 months ever recorded . While the threat of climate change can seem vague and hard to define, this heat has accompanied a severe drying trend in Western Australia, as can be witnessed by this rainfall data from the past year:

In terms of what this data means to how we live, this lack of rainfall is threatening the ongoing viability of our Southern Forests. It’s also threatening the viability of farmland all over the southwest.

What annoys me about the West’s coverage of the issue is that there is really no attention given to the argument for regulating heavy carbon-emitting industries, even though there is clearly a public need to do so. Instead they insist, there is ‘nothing in it for us’.

More importantly, there is also no attention given to the intended outcome of Albanese’s environmental policies – that as a nation we should use the need to pivot to cleaner and greener industries and forms of production to stimulate jobs and economic growth. This is what we need to do. Not only because that’s the best way to create a more egalitarian economy, but also because the cost of greening industry and services is a lot cheaper than trying to irrigate our southwest because it doesn’t rain there anymore.

In short, there are a lot of positives in environmental regulation for ‘us’. But when the West says ‘there are no positives in it for us’, they really mean there’s nothing in it for the mining and gas businesses the West owns.

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What’s wrong with the West

The West Australian is Western Australia’s only state-wide newspaper, and really the only newspaper that covers the events of the state in any detail at all.

While I want to support public journalism in Western Australia, and subscribing to the West is really the only feasible way of doing this, the bias expressed by the West Australian is really hard to take.

Follow the money

The newspaper is owned by WA’s oligopoly media company, 7 West Media, who also own 40% of Channel 7 and affiliate stations and media companies (such as regional station GWN). But its worth noting that 7 West Media also owns Boral – WA’s largest producer of concrete. The Chairman of the Board at 7 West Media is a billionaire called Kerry Stokes, who owns another 40% of Channel 7 in his personal account. Kerry Stokes/7 West Media also own significant investments in mining equipment, industrial hire companies and mining/oil and gas (owners, for instance of WestTrac, Coates Hire and Australian Capital Equity).

TL;DR: 7 West Media’s ownership make the majority of their money from mining, gas and building/construction.

Editorial position

To say that the ‘vested interests’ of 7 West Media’s owners influence their editorial policy is an understatement. The paper, led by editorial columnist Paul Murray, is always pro-mining, always pro-big business, always against environmental regulations, or positive or progressive policies that might impact the smooth flow of mining and gas money into equipment and concrete revenues.

That ownership of these media is designed to influence the political timbre of WA should be clear. For a start, there is very little money in mass media these days, as can be seen by 7 West Media’s plummeting revenues. While the populist/tabloid stylings of editor Anthony DeCeglie are a clear attempt to sell more papers, there is no money in mass media. The profit of these companies does not come from the advertising that crowds the eyeballs of the 7West audience, but from the concrete and mining equipment it sells. The reason to have the paper? To keep the WA public feeling permissive and indebted towards the mining and gas industries that buy the concrete and use the equipment.

So, for the West Australian, climate change is a fiction, renewable energy is a scam and the Greens party (and lately Teal independents) are the largest threat that democracy has ever faced. The fact that these assertions are bald faced lies results in The West Australian often tying itself in knots in order to defend the interests of West Trac, Boral, and the numerous mining and gas companies and enterprises they have invested in.

If you’ve ever looked at mining interests being protected and supported throughout WA and thought ‘how do they get away with this?’ 7 West Media is how.

What to do?

I still subscribe to the West Australian because I believe in the importance of public journalism. The ABC is great but its state coverage could be better and there is space in the WA public for a commercial newspaper (I should mention, I also subscribe to the Guardian in order to protect good journalism; but their WA stuff is even more rare). I’ve actually taught a number of good people who work at The West, and am proud that they have produced some important work. I want to support that work.

At the same time, I am sick of the ridiculous rhetoric and nonsense that comes out of the West and am resolved to start to use this blog as a reservoir for countering some of the rubbish from the West. My loose plan is to pick the logical flaws and rhetorical abuses out of Paul Murray’s column each Saturday. No one reads this, so really it is just to make me feel better, but according to Jurgen Habermas at least, exposing the flaws in people’s arguments should undermine their power.

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Renovating the Kitchen

Just thought I’d chronicle my kitchen renovation experinece.

I decided to do our kitchen because the kitchen in the house we live in was pretty tired and some aspects of it – particularly the gas burners and cook top – needed to be replaced. We also needed more storage space.

Here’s the old kitchen:

yeah I didn’t manage to get a picture of it clean, sorry.

So, I have renovated kitchens before and I feel pretty comfortable with most of it – but obviously we wanted to keep costs and effort down so our basic ‘scope’ was contained by trying to keep the existing kitchen footprint basically in place.

There was a bit of disagreement about where to put the oven but I actually really enjoy having a mid-height oven – it’s really easy to use at a convenient height like this… but my partner felt that the bricks surrounding the oven wasted a lot of space. So essentially the remit was to keep everything more or less where it was but make it better.

I used Alpine Kitchen and Bathroom cabinetry in my last renovation and it was really good quality stuff. Only available in white but that’s fine, we figured we’d add some flair in other places. It also fit our layout pretty well, with one 10cm gap on the wall near the cupboard that would need to be built out – but otherwise it offered everything we wanted in cupboard options. Notably including lots of drawer cabinets – they work really well for pans and tupperware.

The other thing to think about with a project like this is timing… and particularly minimising the time your family has to do without a working kitchen. There are a lot of dependent relationships in building the cabinetry back in, too. So I devised a very simple plan for how I expected the workflow to go.

yes, i used a meal planner template for my kitchen reno. I’m comfortable with my masculinity.

The above details all the work needed to do up until the benchtop measure, which was the crucial point where the kitchen needed to be ‘finished’ enough to measure the benchtops. After the measure, there would be a two week lag on the kitchen being usable while they built the benchtops (and the sinks and taps were plumbed back in). So the whole thing meant about a month of living with a temporary kitchen that was spread between our dining room and back yard patio.

The schedule above included a few days before the benchtop measure in case things went wrong – and they did – but by fast-tracking some jobs and doing some concurrently, we were actually able to bring the measure forward by a day or two. That’s not to say everything went smoothly, far from it, but I was able to keep to the crucial steps of the schedule close enough that the project remained on time.

First step was removing the tiles and oven

Found that the house builder had used the cavity below the oven as a rubbish tip of sorts. Shame on you Dale Alcock!

At this point we could still use the kitchen in it’s entirety, we just moved the fridge out to the dining room.

Next was removing the existing cabinets and, sadly, the cook top.

This also contains my first start at plastering the wall behind the old oven. It looks rough because it is!

At this point we could still use the dishwasher – and the taps if necessary. So it wasn’t as bad as it looked. All cooking was now done either in the mircowave or on our camping stove out the back.

This sort of thing really challenged my partner’s OCD

The big ‘tipping point’ for the project was getting the electrics done. The electrics both couldn’t be done with old cabinets in and at the same time, the new cabinetry couldn’t be done until the electrics had been done. I had help from cousin Bruce for this part and it was a long and hot day of crawling around in the roof cavity but it got done.

The oven isn’t in because Retravision delivered me the wrong one! the block on the far wall is to help me hang the cupboards in line… the wood piece is a part of the old cabinetry.

The blue wall matches another ‘feature wall’ that we have in the adjoining room. It looks a bit striking from this angle but trust me that it looks ok from another angle.

At this point the cabinetry was ready to start being installed. This meant a few things… the dishwasher had to be disconnected so that the new cabinetry could be fitted around the water pipes (getting the pipes sealed off for the duration was horribly expensive). I also needed to start cutting out tiles around the base of the new cabinetry. I tried a few methods of doing this but settled on ‘just being careful’ with an angle grinder. A circular saw is not built for this purpose, apparently!

Putting the cabinets in wasn’t difficult in itself (although installing the high cabinets by yourself isn’t fun!) but the difficult part was getting them all to fit. One particular problem was that when I installed the cabinetry for a moment it appeared like I didn’t have enough room to fit the dishwasher back in. The solution was to chip away some plaster on the bricks at either end of the cabinetry, and shuffle everything down a little, which gave me about another 5cm of space.

phew.

None of these ‘little jobs’ were little but I managed to fit them in around the other ‘big items’ in my schedule. The cabinets were in enough to be measured when they needed to be and then I was able to finish the cabinets above the fridge and the small piece of filler for the 10cm gap next to the inbuilt cupboard in the time between measuring and benchtop install.

The joy at being able to use a sink and dishwasher again after a month…it’s indescribable.

There were a few potential pitfalls with the benchtop that are worth talking about. First, the sink I ordered from the Good Guys online never arrived in time. In fact, it wasn’t even dispatched until three weeks after we’d needed it. The Good Guys were awful through the whole process – I couldn’t speak to anyone ‘real’, and had to use their online ‘automated service’ (and I use that term loosely) to both inquire about the delays and then cancel my order… and the cancellation didn’t work. In the end I had to spend twice as much on a sink I could pick up that day from Sink Warehouse. The sink is fine, a little bigger than expected, but the experience with The Good Guys was terrible. I’m still waiting for my refund more than 2 months later. But the crucial point from a project management perspective is that the work couldn’t begin on the benchtops until the sink was here, and that meant that the sink was a crucial dependency for the project’s completion and we had to sink extra resources to overcome the delay in it’s delivery.

Another thing to watch was the cost of plumbing. I used to have a great plumber (Tony, thank you) who would always do great work at a reasonable quote. Tony has sadly retired and so I was flying blind. In the first instance, for the sealing off of the existing pipework, we hired a plumber from a friend of a friend’s company based on good word of mouth. The work, which took far less than an hour, cost more than a couple of hundred dollars. So when it came to re-installing the taps and sink, we got a few quotes. The difference between the high quote and low quote was $700! Now, the high quote presented as very professional but so did the low quote. So we went for the low quote and the guy did good work, very friendly and although he missed a couple of things in terms of quality control, I’m really glad that we did. Just saying, get quotes before signing on to a plumbing job.

The final parts of the renovation were the plastering and painting of the existing brickwork, the splashbacks and finishing off. Of these, it was only the plastering that bothered me. Plastering is a messy, tough and uncompromising job. You can make mistakes with it (and I did) but making mistakes means you take even more time doing a job that already takes a lot of prep and clean up. I don’t like it.

I did manage to consult my old man’s knowledge bank and was told to use plasterboard for larger areas, which I ended up doing. I also used cornice cement for the plastering of the brick (in place of mixing up my own plaster, which I did for the space around the oven). The cornice cement was just that bit easier to work with and so I used that to finish off around the gyprock (plasterboard) sections. As always though, with my plastering, much topping compound was still in use. To strengthen the ‘bare’ sections of plaster at brick face ends, I also used a fibreglass mesh. Of course, as with everything, I developed my expertise from watching YouTube videos.

The splashbacks took some time but once they were in, it was just a tiny bit more pretending to be an electrician and the job was finally done.

The fantasy being sold here is a clean kitchen. as if.

The final cost of the project would have been roughly $15550:

cabinetry $5000

appliances $1600

benchtops $7000

sink and tap $450

plumbing/electician costs $1300

tools, supplies and equipment $200

It would have been two weeks of solid work hours… but 10 days of that was ‘intense’ and the rest of those hours were spread over many weeks.

Best decisions:

buying myself new tools when I needed them.

I don’t own shares in Bunnings but I probably should. Their Ozito range of power tools is really good and really affordable. In this instance I had to buy a new angle grinder (I fried my old one, or Paul’s old one, when trying to cut through some structural steel – oops). On the other hand I chose to buy a new hand drill because my two old drills were giving up a bit… and the new drill was well worth it. All my power tools are Ozito at this point and all of it did well. I think I used every tool I have at some point here.

Probably most valuable player in tools was my old, blue handled chisel… used it for just about everything. But yeah, nothing beats a hammer drill when you need one as well.

Using plasterboard and cornice cement for plastering, instead of plaster. I wish I had used cornice cement initially, instead of buying 20 kg of lime and 20kg of cement and 100kg of white sand… which I then gave away to an artist when I only used about 2kgs of each of them.

Things I’d reconsider…

The benchtops. The benchtop company we used were fantastic and while it was expensive I think they were competitive (benchtops just cost a lot). We got ‘Da vinci smartstone’ which does look great and goes with the rather shabby floor we have… but I am finding that maintaining white benchtops is quite demanding.

This part of the floor

the very definition of cutting corners

The old oven wall brick extended further into the floor than the new cabinetry and so I had to either fill it in (like this) or pull up more tiles and replace them all with properly sized and cut new tiles. Partly because of sheer exhaustion and partly because I am thinking we will replace/overlay this flooring one day anyway, I took the easy option. But it hurts me everytime I look at it… and compounded by the accidental angle grinder stripe in front of the cabinet on the right… which again I just chose to live with rather than fix properly.

Big thanks to:

Hutchy for making the cuts on my filler pieces with his professional table saw set up.

the tilers working on the house across the road who made the cuts on the filler tiles in the picture above.

Bruce for helping with the electrics and being a general source of wisdom

Ian and dad for also having insight and opinion about renovations in general

the family and friends for putting up with the inconvenience with mostly good cheer.

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A rambling post about an economic paradox and excessive military spending

I’ve had the last 6 months off academia and haven’t been a great blogger in that time. Instead I’ve been parenting, renovating, exploring dreams and occasionally writing something strange, like the following post.

This post explores what I think is weird market behaviour when it comes to cost and value… drawing a very long bow I manage to tie it in with military spending on aircraft without ever once mentioning the F-35 (oops!)…

There’s a point in every enterprise where increasing the amount of money you are spending on a venture actually decreases the quality that you extract from that venture. This seems somewhat paradoxical – our economy is premised on the idea that if you spend more, then you get more, or, at least, better quality for your spend. But in all things there is a point where the sunk costs of a product/venture or enterprise start to actually decrease the quality being produced. The simplest version of this paradox is the price of fruit. Take buying apples. To a certain extent, spending more on apples suggests a better quality of apple – spend more and get sweeter, unblemished fruit because sorting practices mean that the sweeter, less blemished fruit goes into higher priced markets. However, the production of fruit is not always equal and the market itself is not stable. Fruit production is seasonal and the cost of good fruit varies significantly not simply based on quality but also on access. During the summer months, for instance, the cost of apples will skyrocket because the apples that are available have to be imported, transported and stored in order to make it to market. Conversely, in the autumn and winter, the price of apples drops – because there is, all of a sudden, a deluge of apples literally falling from orchard trees. That all makes sense right?

But what needs to be considered is that every stage that adds cost to importing apples also, marginally but inevitably, decreases the quality of those apples. On the other hand, the lack of need for import, transport, storage for locally produced apples means that those apples, when available, are that much fresher and – objectively – of higher quality than their imported counterparts. So for local apples, every aspect that decreases costs actually increases their quality. Now, because of the ‘proper’ functioning of the market, apples are available to many of us all year round, as is many fruit and vegetables, regardless of season. However, the quality of the apple is often inversely proportional to the price of the apple that you buy. Someone who buys some delicious in-local-season apples and pays 90c/kg for them will often get far better apples than someone who spends $6/kg on far fewer apples. There is probably a ‘real’ economic term for this but I’m calling this the Harper Paradox, which is actually named after my father, Greg Harper, who made such an art of bargain hunting for food staples that he is described with reverence by impoverished fruit sellers in Indonesia for his fierce negotiation over even the smallest detail.

The basic point here is that while bringing things to market invariably carries cost, the more cost that it takes to bring to market increases the commitment of the ‘producer’ to see the product make it to market. The existing investment means that corners might be cut, standards lowered and shortcomings overlooked because the product must be sold. The amount of investment in the product thereby increases the likelihood of shoddy, overpriced products making it to market. Hence the paradoxical nature of this event in the market.

The Harper Paradox writ large – the case of the AIM-54 Phoenix missile

While apples are apples, one of the best examples of the Harper paradox seems to be the AIM-54 Phoenix missile. The Phoenix was conceived in the darkest days of the Cold War when Russia’s concerns about their ‘sphere of influence’ were interpreted by the US as expansionist aggression.

The idea behind the missile’s development was that it would be used to strike down long range Russian bombers before they could launch their (potentially nuclear) weapons at the US mainland. In order to reach the Russian bombers far enough away from US interests, the Phoenix had a massive range – around 190km. In order to accomplish this range it needed to be quite huge to carry the necessary propellant – 4m long and weighing more than 400kgs. And in order to carry a missile this big, the US Navy had to develop an entirely new weapon’s platform, the F-14 Tomcat. And in order to get the Tomcat close enough to the launch point, the US Navy also needed to retrofit its existing Kitty Hawk and Enterprise class aircraft carriers, and develop new Nimitz class air craft carriers to launch the Tomcat.

So how much money was invested in the AIM-54 Phoenix program? Here’s a breakdown:

AIM-54 program itself: The development cost of the Pheonix is unknown – it was developed out of the ashes of the previous AAM-N-10 Eagle, which itself was abandoned before prototype stage. But discounting the development costs – the unit cost of one Phoenix missile alone was around US$500,000 and more than 5000 were produced – at a cost of US$2,500,000,000, or 25,000 PhD scholarships.

The F-14 program: The Phoenix was initially intended to be carried by the F-111B, a plane that was adapted from the other F-111s for the navy but which proved too heavy for carrier use. While the development cost of the F-111 program was around US$7 billion, only 2 F-111B’s were created. The F-111s generally cost around $15 million each, so we could put the cost of the failed F-111bs at a conservative $40 million, considering these were significantly re-engineered variants. The original cost of the F-14 program was estimated around US$26 billion in 1972 – accounting for 1973 F-14s built between 1969 and 1971. The unit cost moved between US$13 million- US$16million in that time. While that doesn’t seem a great deal more than the F-111B, it was still a lot of money in the 60s, when the average US income was around US$9400 or 1/1700 th of a F-14. Put another way – the funding for building F-14s in the three years 1969-1971 cost the average income of around
2,766,000 US citizens at the time.


And all this money meant that the sunk cost led to development oversights and the ‘rushing through’ of prototypes and projects. For instance, according to navy aviation historian Dennis Jenkins, the Navy skipped the prototype phase of the F-14’s development and went straight into production, in order to ensure that the project wouldn’t be cancelled by the incoming Nixon administration in 1969. While no-one is arguing that the F-14 is a failed platform, this is a prime example of where sunk cost forces producers to cut corners to ensure the delivery of a possibly lower quality product. The F-14 had significant limitations as a platform, lacking the automatically adjusted swing wings of the European developed Tornado, it also didn’t have radar equipment sophisticated enough to ensure it could distinguish between friends and foes, something that meant it really needed the support of a Hawkeye to ensure that it retained observational awareness while
firing its Phoenix missiles. Another interesting design feature was that while the aircraft could launch with 6 Phoenix missiles, it could not safely land with all 6 missiles still attached, meaning that the plane couldn’t actually carry the full consignment unless it was guaranteed to fire at least one Phoenix (at US$500,000 a pop).

But here is the kicker. The Phoenix itself, was never a really successful missile. In its 35 odd years of service, only three Phoenix missiles were fired in anger by the US Navy. All three of the missiles failed to hit their target. The waste of money in providing the development cost of the missile, and the airplanes to fire them – stretches out to infinity.

As I said, I’m not calling the F-14 a lemon, it was a decent plane with scary reputed capabilities – very fast, with an extremely long range interception capacity. Among other things, the F-14 starred in the 1985 film Top Gun, which was the most successful recruitment tool for the US navy of all time. It played a role, and served a purpose, even if that purpose was more in terms of spectacle and imagination than in actual outcomes delivered.


Conservatively, then, the development and implementation of the AIM-54 Phoenix missile cost around US$28.5 billion in US 1970s dollars, or the combined average income of 3 million Americans, and it delivered no actual value, never fired successfully. It is a paradigmatic example of the Harper Paradox – the more money invested in something, the less value it actually poses.


1 Jenkins, Dennis R. F/A-18 Hornet: A Navy Success Story. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. ISBN 0-07-134696-1.

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We need to talk about ‘Stranger Things’

I finished watching Stranger Things during the week, it was very enjoyable; even if the ending felt just a little downbeat. Max is a great character – eminently relatable – so it sucked to see her end up in such a bad way [sorry – SPOILERS!]. I loved the fact that a new generation has been turned on to Kate Bush. For those who want a little more Kate Bush fire, check out Cloudbusting and the far less renowned ‘Hounds of Love’ – equally timeless and fantastic songs.

I found a fox caught by dogs
He let me take him in my hands
His little heart, it beats so fast
And I’m ashamed of running away

I also liked the way the long-format TV on Netflix is playing on episode length, with the last three episodes essentially being feature movie length installments. That sort of ability to play with the ‘beats’ of a story is a really interesting innovation in long form TV and must be a boon for storytelling.

But, at the same time, there are elements of the ‘Netflixification’ of storytelling that I think really let Stranger Things down, in some ways. There remains a clear desire to appeal to literally everyone that sometimes undermines the actual impact of the story.

The thing I enjoyed most about Season Four was the way in which it managed to play with the ‘DnD is corrupting our kids’ trope, which was a real thing in the 80s.

not subtle, but well played nevertheless.

The series nostalgically confronted how social fears about kids using their imaginations (instead of just playing sport and watching TV) could lead to a moral panic on behalf of witless adults and cool kids made uncomfortable by difference. The showrunners did a decent job of highlighting that the geeks aren’t just ok – their ability to comprehend the danger of ‘Vecna’ and their ability to organise against that danger was clearly enabled by their ‘geeky’ behaviour. Moreover, the fear expressed towards the different created more problems than it solved. It’s a good message that is almost timeless.

But really, at a point where Elon Musk and Mike Cannon-Brookes are generally seen as superheroes by the zeitgeist, is it really that interesting to suggest ‘the geeks are alright? The whole series is nostalgic, and I get that, but it also tries to make that nostalgia relevant for a younger audience that didn’t experience the 80s. And it’s a lot less cutting edge to stand in 2022 celebrating geeks than it was back in the 80s.

But I get it, Netflix production is dominated by attracting large numbers of viewers and achieving cut through across broad segments of potential audience. Hallinan and Striphas talked about this in ‘The Netflix Prize and the production of algorithmic culture’. Netflix use their unbelievably large set of data points about what audiences do and don’t like to curate content (such as Stranger Things) that they know will draw in guaranteed audiences – and the very data driven business model means that a show that fails in this regard and loses viewers can be axed very quickly indeed. So, yeah, I get it – Stranger Things blends its horror with humour, its bellicosity with banality because it needs to hit those audience numbers. (I wrote about this phenomenon – the ‘norming’ created by algorithmic culture in my article ‘The big data public and its problems‘).

But pandering to audiences should never mean that you lose opportunities to tell your story. And in the case of Season 4 of Stranger Things, the showrunners lost me when they – repeatedly – featured ‘gun porn’, particularly in the last few episodes. By ‘gun porn’ I mean scenes and shots of protagonists ogling, praising and fondling guns.

like this scene:

I have the power because I hold the gun

and this one…

killing things… orgasmic

and this one…

This is for being a real jerk to Max!

Now the relationship between media depictions of violence and actual violence is long and complicated – ‘direct’ effects are unverifiable. However, I’m a huge believer that the norming of themes, formats and, well, norms is one area where we certainly do see effective media. One example of this is Laura Mulvey’s concept of the ‘Male Gaze’. The ‘Male Gaze’ is the privileging of the heterosexual masculine eye in the construction of media.

Male gaze much?

Mulvey argues that this construction has been so privileged and prominent in media production that it has become its own social meaning system – it ‘norms’ a way of looking (and displaying) that we all take for granted/agree upon/see as somewhat unproblematic. The dominance of the Male gaze means that it is now unproblematic for TikTokers and Insta Influencers to see displaying for the ‘male gaze’ as something intrinsically valuable, whereas earlier generations would have viewed this behaviour as somewhat problematic. In fact, the ‘male gaze’ has become so unproblematic that males that have also internalised this way of seeing and displaying themselves, although they often ‘hide’ the gaze behind some other display of ‘utility’ [the capitalist gaze being the real power behind the throne].

Thirsty? FWIW I do enjoy both of their content.

The important thing to recognise about this is that this way of viewing has become so broadly accepted that it effects people’s behaviour. While it’s difficult to prove a ‘media effects’ type of causality in cases like this, it’s also clear that media plays a prominent role in ‘norming’ particular social meanings, understandings and [therefore, necessarily] behaviours.

One thing that US media/film/TV production consistently does is ‘norm’ the veneration of guns as being just great. To return to Stranger Things – which we love because of its accessible take on alt/genre culture – in Season Four guns are used as plot devices to give people power, to solve otherwise intractable problems and to be a sort of ‘democratising force’ for good (allowing the physically disadvantaged to stand up to stronger foes). Just like the Male gaze, these messages about guns have become so unproblematically internalised by US audiences that they are used consistently by US storytellers in these ways. We all see it, understand it and – more or less – accept it. But in my case, not so much.

But with the way gun reform is going in the US, and with a nod of the head to the ‘moral panic/won’t anyone please think of the children’ vibe , I found the gun porn in Season Four of Stranger Things to be pretty gross. In my world, guns create problems – they are used by teenagers to shoot innocent protestors, commit armed robbery and shoot up schools. There are clearly a lot of ‘good’ uses for guns but I see a lot more evidence that they create more problems than they solve. Wouldn’t it be great if media started running storylines that reflected this – the presence of the gun makes everything more dangerous, more lethal, and allows a vigilante to overpower and control a situation where they would otherwise be powerless. And people without guns, working together, can overcome that villainy through using cooperation, courage and candour.

In the case of Stranger Things, Season Four, I think the showrunners missed a real opportunity to make the ‘lessons’ a little more relevant and less nostalgic by finding interesting ways to solve the problems the protagonists’ faced. To be fair, they clearly illustrated that it was only in the case of the Russian side story that a weapon proved to be effective (the flamethrower on the mindflayer). In every other instance – the shooting of Vecna, the use of the gun in the plane hijacking, the fight between Lucas and Jason – the guns were pretty much useless.

So, maybe the writers are trying to be subtle about that what really ‘helped’ was the teamwork, the creative thinking, the solidarity and the bravery of the protagonists. But they missed a chance to feature that in a more direct way. I mean, they were creative enough to suggest that the upside down was a symbiotic system of evil and that Eleven could piggyback through time and space on other people’s memories… so why not use this sort of storytelling license to come up with reasons and ways to defeat Vecna without going into gun porn? They managed to NOT use guns earlier in the series to fantastic effect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9CA4H4p6LU
I mean Vecna could have probably been beaten by eczema

I’m not one who argues that all media needs to be politically correct – it is completely understandable that these gun porn beats are placed in these contexts. It is also useful to acknowledge that this is how guns are thought about in US culture. But if you ask me, the show does betray the very essence of what is wrong with the way the US thinks about guns (that they are a solution, rather than a problem), and I also think the otherwise savvy show runners missed an opportunity to tell a far more interesting story about how evil actually creeps into our lives, and what it takes to defeat it.

And the reason that they make these decisions is because gun porn, and violence in general, play well in the US market, and so we have ‘gun gaze’.

All of these are used to kill people.
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What the media isn’t telling you about Scott Morrison

Ever wondered why the ‘mainstream media’ (MSM) has gone so easy on Scott Morrison and the LNP this election?

‘What’ you say? I thought they were remarkably even handed, he’s had some quite uncomfortable moments, and lost every debate!

Yes, MSM has gone incredibly soft on him (double entendre intended). In this post I’m going to talk first about some egregious corruption that should ensure that no one even thinks of voting LNP this election, and then cover why the media aren’t quite covering it that way.

First, here are some examples of issues where they have been kinder to the Morrison LNP than they were to the Gillard/Rudd Labor government. Much of this comes from the longer list at : https://www.mdavis.xyz/govlist/

A small sample of Morrison government corruption:

  • The Morrison government used $800m for paying for carparks and sports facilities (many of which didn’t even qualify for the funding) as a bribe for voters to win the last election.
    • The Morrison government responded by cutting funding to the national (fully indpendent) audit office that exposed this corruption.
    • Given the narrowness of the election win, this tax payer money can be understood to have directly ‘bought’ power for the LNP. Yet, this has never been mentioned in the media.
  • Implemented the ‘Robodebt’ system which cost more money than it recovered, mistakenly accused people of owing money and triggered a number of suicides.
    • For comparison, the death of two workers in Labor’s ‘Pink Bats’ scandal led to a Royal Commission and a strong finding against the Rudd government. The LNP even redirected $4m from the Child Sex Abuse Royal Commission to pink bats because those deaths were to be taken so seriously. While a senate committee has called for a Royal Commission into Robodebt, the Morrison government has refused to engage one – and the media is strangely silent on demanding one.
  • Paid almost $20m in incentives to encourage the sale of Port of Darwin to China, which Morrison now maintains that they had ‘no say’ over
  • Despite promising a Federal ICAC in the last election campaign, the Morrison LNP has failed to table a viable proposal for that ICAC and voted against proposals, insisting that any corruption investigation be overseen by government (as in, let them run their own investigation).
  • And well might this government fear an ICAC as they have repeatedly been implicated in shelling out money to their mates and supporters with no proper process literally dozens of times. Such as:
    • $450million on carbon capture and storage projects – none of which were successful, and almost all of which were subsequently cancelled.
    • $600m on new gas power plant that was not considered viable by the private sector.
    • $15.5m on fossil fuel research.
    • $39m to a naval boat manufacturer Austal for meeting key milestones when they DID NOT meet those milestones. However, Austal just happens to have donated $80,000 to the LNP that year (as opposed to a $1500 donation to the Labor party).
    • $25k to a US defense contractor blacklisted for bribery.
    • Paid a billionaire 10 times the market rate ($30m) for land valued at $3m a year later.
    • $50m to APA to develop new gas projects. APA just also happens to donate to the LNP.
    • $6.7m in Job Keeper to Harvey Norman, despite them quadrupling their profits during the pandemic. (Academics, musicians and artists got $0 from job keeper)
    • $18m on a ‘leadership program’ for young libs, awarded to a shady company with no prior experience, without a tender process.
    • Gave $10m of bushfire recovery money to a paper mill that wasn’t affected by the bushfires.
    • $200k to a National party media advisor to take photos and videos of bushfire recovery.
    • $423m to an inexperienced security provider ‘Paladin’ to supply Manus Island security via an illegitimate ‘limited tender’. The group had only $50,000 to their name when they ‘won’ the ‘limited tender’, so the government advanced them $10m to get started.
    • $385m (eventually $1.6B) for a Brisbane construction company with only $8 in assets at the time… but happened to be a LNP donor.
    • $443m to Great Barrier Reef foundation to ‘save the reef’ through developing business opportunities. This money was awarded without tender or applicaiton.
    • $2.2m on scientifically discredited ‘water fans’ as a solution to reef bleaching.
    • $100m loan to BHP and Rio Tinto – because they need the money.
  • While all this has been going on, the LNP has refused to legislate for transparency of political donations, loosened political donation laws and has increased the amount of government funding without proper tender process to $34billion per month.

So, considering all this, yes, the media IS going soft on Morrison’s government. And this is why…

Included in the campaign against accountability that the LNP has waged for the past 10 years, it has worked furiously to coddle the commercial media (Newscorp, Fairfax and Seven West) and undermine critical media and journalism.

In terms of coddling, ‘traditional’ media has been thrown into a crisis by the economics of search engines and social media – and long story short – the LNP government has raced to the aid of large media businesses. Note, not journalists (more about this below), but the billionaire business owners. The ‘News Media and Digital Platforms Bargaining Code’ could have offered rewards for insightful journalism that made a public contribution but, instead, it ended up guaranteeing some internet advertising revenue to the largest media companies in Australia – but not the ABC. This is the sort of legislation that is needed but the ‘shape’ of the legislation fits the issues described above – it favours the Murdoch press and big business. That has meant, in turn, that the entirety of the Australian commerical media has really opted NOT to go too hard on Morrison, who has been a great friend. I mean Morrison’s government even gave $345000 to News Corp to build a spelling bee website, there was no tender, no competitive process.

On the other hand, the LNP’s attack on critical journalism has been unprecedented. And I use that term pointedly. Unprecedented.

Like the unprecedented use of the AFP to raid ABC and Newscorp journalists who were collecting evidence of war crimes in Afghanistan and writing about increased state surveillance powers respectively. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-15/abc-raids-australian-federal-police-press-freedom/11309810

Like the unprecedented new laws

which mean Edward Snowden type leaks are punishable by up to 10 years of prison. No exemptions are made for anti-corruption leaks. If journalists report on anyone (including innocent bystanders) being killed accidentally or deliberately by security personnel, they will be jailed for up to 10 years.

The government has shown it means business on this by spending $2m trying to prosecute a whistleblower who leaked truthful information about corruption. It has also changed protest laws so that anyone who tries to object to the governments plans or policies will pretty much forfeit all their rights.

Like the unprecedented attack on the ABC, not just accusing it of not being on ‘Team Australia’ for making critical comments about war crimes, corruption and double dealing, but more importantly chronically defunding Australia’s most trusted source of news and information. The reason the ABC is so trusted is because it doesn’t replicate the cronyism and support that the Murdoch/commercial media does. For the same reason, the government thinks it is ‘left leaning’. No, it is the most objective and accurate source of news Australia has, and still the best source of honest journalists and journalistic training.

As I researched Australian’s media use during the pandemic, it became clear that Australians tend to turn to the ABC in times of crisis. Think of the pandemic, the bushfires, the floods. How reliant are we on the excellent journalism of the ABC at these times? And yet the Morrison and Abbott government defunded it to the tune of around $250 million dollars over the past 10 years. As a media scholar studying the proliferation of misinformation online, I can tell you that the quality journalism that the ABC offers has never been more crucial. So why defund it? Because it occasionally offers valid criticism of nepotism and corruption.

Finally, the Morrison government hasn’t just attacked critical voices in journalism, but also the training of critical thinkers (and journalists) in our universities. When considering how we could change university funding to encourage ‘job ready graduates’ the Morrison government ramped up the costs for training in journalism, critical thinking and anything else that challenged the ‘status quo’. For me, this is where the corruption becomes endemic – it is an attempt to ensure that not only does this government get away with it, but that future governments will too.

Don’t take my word on any of this, you can google any of these talking points and ‘do your own research’. At the same time check out https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/ and see how your local LNP member has voted on issues like a Federal ICAC and University funding just to check that I’m not smearing them. I’m not. This is what they are doing.

They are trying to destroy our democracy by making corruption endemic, and the media has been bought along for the ride.

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Statements (about what is going on at UWA Social Sciences) that are not rumours

What follows are statements of fact that are (at least as far as I know) are neither rumours, nor possibly defamatory on the basis of the fact that they are true.

If you believe that something said here is not a fact, please point it out in the comments and I’ll do my best to address it. Similarly, if you’d like to make more statements of fact (not rumours) about the UWA Social Sciences change proposal, please feel free to comment below and I will add any verifiable statements to the list.

FACT: The recent ‘restructure’ of social sciences at UWA losing at least five of Australia’s leading academics in their field. Prof Loretta Baldassar, Prof Petra Tschakert and Prof Farida Fozdar were made redundant, whereas Ass Prof Jeannette Taylor and Ass Prof Joanna Elfving-Hwang chose to leave. They are all recognised as being excellent in their field, are ‘top cites’ and have each attracted large amounts of research funding to the university. They are all women who asked reasonable questions about Amanda Davies and her ‘vision’ of the social sciences. They are all now leaving UWA.

FACT: While there was no clear argument in the proposal document about how the changes proposed would achieve their goals, Amanda Davies stated to me that ‘increased efficiency and teaching load’ for the school would be achieved by increasing the teaching load of Media and Communication. That is, increasing efficiency and teaching load is to be achieved by making one discipline teach more than the others.

FACT: The implicit justification provided in the proposal for the preservation of ARCH, GEOG, POLS and LING research time was that they were established or emerging areas of research strength. There was no reason given for why COMM and ASIA were not considered areas of emerging research strength, although these disciplines were clearly marginalised by the new ‘school vision’ ‘in which students learn to employ the scientific approach to examine, theorise and develop solutions to complex social challenges’. The only justification for making these latter disciplines ‘teaching focused’ was ‘to ensure adequate teaching resources are available for the School’s programs and enable the programs to be delivered sustainably’.

FACT: The COMM major is one of the most efficient majors in the university. It is not just ‘sustainable’ with a Teaching and Research staff but highly profitable. So the ‘sustainability’ of programs does not refer to the COMM program but, rather, to the sustainability of other programs in the school.

FACT: Despite COMM being among the most understaffed disciplines in the university the school of Social Science has repeatedly appointed staff to other discipline areas over the past 10 years. Notably the disciplines of GEOG and ARCH have made appointments, despite being at the lower end of the Staff Student Ratio (SSR) table.

FACT: GEOG and ARCH have held the Head of School position for the past 5 years. According to the proposal, which the FWC acknowledged clearly used ‘data that had proved to be incorrect’ for persuasive purposes, the GEOG reported SSR stands at 17 and ARCH at 13 students per staff member respectively. COMM is at 27 students per staff member.

FACT: When COMM lost one of only two Level Ds in 2019, they received no replacement position. Despite this being an ongoing position. Despite having one of the highest SSRs in the school.

FACT: When I asked HR to provide me with a list of appointed positions by the last three substantive Heads of School, HR claimed that they did not have this information.

FACT: In a meeting with Amanda Davies and Christina Lee (HR) just prior to the release of the proposal in July last year, Amanda Davies stated to me that Media and Communication ‘should be a cash cow’.

FACT: During the time considered by the proposal for total research funding by discipline, Media and Comms had the most junior staff in the school (on average), had lost their Level D without replacement and had their research funds frozen by the university because of ‘COVID contingencies’ that were not transparently applied to all staff equally (meaning some staff members were able to use their research funds and others of us were not, with no justification, or transparency around the decision).

FACT: When I contacted the then SDVC to point out that the inefficiencies of the school of Social Science was the result of inequitable appointments and resourcing within the School, he responded that he ‘didn’t see it that way’, without making any argument about why my argument was incorrect.