Sunday, December 30, 2012

Family Values



WHEN Christmas comes around one naturally thinks of families, more particularly what to buy them and how to put up with them. It’s a mug’s game, as every ounce of inspiration put toward the perfect gift will sure as eggs be answered with a present you did not want but over which you will feel obliged to emit squeals of delight. Socks and underpants are at least useful on formal occasions; the Collected Works of Noam Chomsky never. But one must smile all the same, because this is Christmas, hand over the keys to the cellar and feign delight as people who cannot tell if a vintage has turned to vinegar chuck down the good stuff and eat you out of house and home.

Ah, how sad it is! If only the Professor was a good leftist – like The Global Mail’s millionaire supremo Graeme Wood, for example – things would be so much more simple.

When the festive season began, the Wotif entrepreneur solved all his Yule dilemmas and Christmas catering quandaries by handing out lots and lots of discharge notices – think pink slips, not medical diagnoses -- to his staffers, those quality journalists who have made his site everything that it is and the $15 million in start-up cash so much smaller.

But family values were not forgotten. Amongst the few not pushed out the door was South American correspondent Nick Olle.


No doubt it is no more than a coincidence, but young Mr Olle is Graeme Wood’s stepson.
 



No doubt it is no more than a coincidence, but young Mr Olle is Graeme Wood’s stepson.

9 comments:

  1. Giving in-laws a job?
    Never!
    Like you Prof, I contacted RSI from shovelling roasted animals and vintage reds at the in-laws from dawn 'til dusk on Christmas Day.
    However, that is still a small price to pay for 364 days of peace.

    The Irish Lion

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  2. 'Attard bristles at questions about The Global Mail's financial viability: ''What's the hurry? We've got a solid five years' funding, during which time I reckon a bunch of hugely intelligent people will come up with a way to make money, with an operation as small as this, with no legacy to carry on our back.'''

    Five years = twelve months. The same math that brought you five years of ALP/Greens budgets.

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  3. The news that the Global Mail is in trouble is the best Christmas present I could have.

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  4. Very good to see you back, Prof. I hope you have a very good 2013.

    I'm having a few problems understanding what the, no doubt, quality "senior" journalist at your first link was saying in his second para: "Sacked staff have taken to Twitter to complain about their former website’s managerial competence with the discontent has been amplified by TGM’s website — which embarrassingly continues to display its departed journos’ tweets." I understand each word, but it lost me after "competence". Has anyone parsed this and understood what he's trying to say?

    Richard.

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  5. Cynics! The Global Mail is a great success. The comrades have completed their glorious 5 year economic plan in under a Year. Rejoice!

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  6. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.December 30, 2012 at 10:49 PM

    That bunch of 'hugely intelligent people' can now turn their talents to a chook raffle. My advice is: don't buy a ticket. It's way too hard for them to successfully manage.

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  7. Wow, pie in sky idealism hits invisible glass wall aka reality or the real world that the rest of us live in.
    Who would have thought that bad things could happen to such ideologically pure hacks
    & they says that there is no God..

    Whats the odds that these leftist rejecties have been succored by the ABC or some other thinker in residence like sheltered workshop.

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  8. Having an offspring working at The Global Mail with a bunch of Failfax and ALPBC discards is surely a form of child abuse?

    Won't someone think of the children?

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