Spring blog cleaning « Alex Schlotzer

Tis Spring in Melbourne, and the rest of the southern hemisphere, and it’s time for spring cleaning, well of my blog at any rate; but I’ll get around to doing the RTL (real time life) stuff later. So this post is about a few things – to announce a couple of changes (not major ones) and to post a couple of quick rants about pet peeves, which are long over due.

I choose to start this post officially with the announcements, starting now (sorry Sandman but I like the choose to start this… line).

Announcement 1

The OzPoliCon08 tab will be replaced with the polls posted in this blog in a ta called Blog Polls, so that you can find the one you’re after more easily and quickly. However, OzPoliCon08 isn’t lost to readers, it will be in my blog roll where you can contribute to next year’s online Australian Politico Conference (OzPoliCon).

I hope to have these changes made over the next couple of days.

Announcement 2

The Your Rights at Work (which seems to be back into action), has launched, today, it’s Paid Maternity Leave – Put it in 2009’s Federal Budget campaign.

Kevin Rudd’s so-called razor gang is looking at budget items to cut from the 2009-10 Federal Budget, right now!

The prospect of another 30 years for paid maternity leave is looming very large. Since Tanner’s revelations of paid maternity leave biting the proverbial shelf dust, there has been a growing amount of pressure for paid maternity leave to be kept in the budget.

I urge readers, female and male, to support this very important and urgent campaign. It’s not the usual approach to campaigning so check it out.

Blogging Against Racism

Fortunately I haven’t been confronted with racism or racist attitudes of late. Perhaps it’s because at the moment I spend most of my time in my own little world working away. However, I know racism hasn’t suddenly disappeared, although I hope the election of Barack Obama convinces those people to shy or isolated to overcome accepted social norms to reject racism and racist attitudes and behaviour. And I can only hope that his victory will rub off here in Australia.

Well in the meantime I will just have to continue blogging against racism as well as talking out against racism.

Please help continue the education of people against racism and blog or comment when confronted by racism.

No Clean Feed Conroy!

The proposed mandatory censorship of the Internet in Australia is something I’m sure most people online (especially Australians) would be very concerned about.

It is a blatant myth to suggest the proposal from Senator Conroy will do that much to protect the innocent from the filth of the Internet. It is in reality just plain censorship, and decisions about content and access to content will be taken out of our hands.

There will be of course additional administrative costs imposed on Internet Service Providers which will ensnare small operators with red tape and favouring the massive telco’s (that already have too much network control). But with additional administrative costs to comply with government regulations, those costs will undoubtedly flow onto us the consumer.

Conroy’s Internet censorship is just that – censorship. Plain. And. Simple.