Rex in the City

Melbournians were deeply insulted this morning, when flicking though their copy of Rupert’s Organ of Freedom to find that the much ballyhooed “National Newspaper”, had decided to stick the boot in to their fair city.

Opinion writer and apparent Queensland centric, but New South Wales resident historian Ross Fitzgerald has slammed Melbourne, comparing it to Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane, and implying its not a patch on Sydney. Australia’s international city.

He cites Travel and Leisure magazine as naming Sydney the world’s best city. A New York based magazine my friends, that’s right, how would they know, they don’t even live here.

Mr Fitzgerald goes to great lengths to provide evidence of Sydney’s pre-eminence, but did he consider the hook turn in his assessment? No. Did he consider that we have Andrew Bolt and they don’t?, No. Did he consider that future Prime Minister Bill Shorten comes from Melbourne? No. Did he consider that our forthcoming Commonwealth Games are going to be the most expensive ever? No. Did he consider that only Melbourne has fantastic gangland murder stories to tell? No.

It’s a weasley blinkered effort by Mr Fitzgerald, and his strong affinity with Queensland while writing this glowing report on Sydney stinks to high heaven. There’s a conspiracy here that clearly stretches all the way to New York, and the jealous and cynical assaults on Melbourne don’t stop there. The Footy finals might even go interstate, not that I’ll be watching mind you, but its important to know that they’re there, the crowd roaring in the distance while you attend to your home brewing.

There’s a conspiracy afoot, and Mr. Bracks needs to get to the bottom of it, otherwise I’ll be forced to vote for Mr. Costello. A Melbourne boy who’s sure to set things right.

In a shock admission today extreme right wing columnist Andrew Bolt suspects that the government has caved-in to greenie scare mongering.

This incredible development comes about because of a probing question put by The City to Mr Bolt on his personal feedback forum.

The City wanted to establish Mr. Bolt’s view on the recent announcement by the Government that "Climate Change is Inevitable" and that, "There is little doubt Australia will face some degree of climate change over the next 30 to 50 years”

Mr. Bolt you see wrote this on the 18th February:

Want to make a greenie boil? Just question their claims of global warming. It's not hard when so much of the evidence is paper thin.

and this on 25th March

Would you like to see how shaky is the science behind this global warming mania?

Looks like the evidence was thick enough and solid enough for the Government to believe it, but Professor Bolt needs more convincing, he suspects that the Government has fallen for global warming scaremongering.

He does create a little wriggle room for himself though. He says we have to be clear about how he defines the scare “It's the man-made global warming scare”.

So maybe he’s starting to accept that there is global warming. He just refuses to accept that it has anything to do with us.

It's time for me to start eating healthily.

So next time I'm at Macca's I'll be getting the Filet 'o'Fish.

Melbournians were shocked to learn today that their favourite newspaper The Herald Sun, the very same newspaper that stands up and fights on behalf of all Melbournians for the sake of protection of privacy, are themselves being sued for breach of privacy.

The Herald Sun it turns out has published photographs of Mrs Maria Korp, taken when she was lying in hospital in a persistent vegetative state, without obtaining her permission or the permission of her daughter.

We are gobsmacked to learn of the Herald Sun’s hypocrisy. Surely it must be an administrative error.

Mr Jim Robinson, the lawyer for Ms Korp and her daugher Ms De Gois has expressed concern about the distress felt by Ms De Gois regarding the possibility of her mothers feeding tube being removed, and that:

He asked for the media to keep its distance from Ms De Gois

What distance though? 1 metre, 5 metres. Provided the Herald Sun stays at about medium telephoto lens range, that ought to be respectful enough, don't you think?

Melbournian’s went about their daily business today with a horrible spine tingling sensation that they were being watched. And no wonder, because as Australia most popular newspaper points out, You are being watched.

It’s a voyeur’s paradise in Melbourne town, and according to The Herald Sun, you are being photographed more than 100 times per day, and that’s only if you’re average looking. What about if you’re a pretty young thing? Just imagine how much more scrutiny your going to get from lecherous security personnel who spend their entire days sizing up people, comparing them, and looking hour after hour for something suspicious. If you think their minds are not turning to sex then you don’t know Melbournians.

The Herald Sun knows Melbournians though, and more particularly The Herald Sun knows our Police and Security personnel and the lewd thoughts that go around in their heads.

Secret use by police, more worryingly by private security companies, for storing images on databases or for undisclosed purposes is a concern.

A concern is putting it mildly my friends. It’s disgusting! The Herald Sun rightly identifies that there needs to be some control. You can’t just have indiscriminate photographing of gorgeous young women without some control.

Evidence suggests there is insufficient watching of the watchers to ensure privacy isn't breached.

We agree with The Herald Sun on the importance of privacy, and naturally we can be confident that when The Herald Sun hired a helicopter, and photographed the private wedding ceremony of Lleyton Hewitt and Bec Cartwright with telephoto lenses , they’d cleared this action first with the privacy ombudsman. Or at a pinch, at least the first available sub-editor.

Australia’s most popular newspaper, The Herald Sun, today reports that tennis ace Lleyton Hewitt, and up-the-duff fiancée Bec Cartright, have treated their fans like scum for not inviting them to their wedding.

“Lleyton and Bec snub their fans” says the Herald Sun, “Security guards kept hundreds of fans at bay” says the Herald Sun again.

The Herald Sun, who was only able to obtain grainy images of the secure wedding, by hiring a helicopter and flying overhead, was outraged on behalf of Mr. Hewitt’s fans.

The Herald Sun, reports also that Ms Cartright looked “stunning in a white flowing gown”, and the bridesmaids “wore off-the-shoulder sunset rose, yellow and white floor-length dresses”. So that’s nice.

And that just shows the difference in attitude. Despite Mr. Hewitt’s disdainful, and unforgivable treatment of his fans, the Herald Sun proves that it truly is able to rise above the pettiness shown by Mr. Hewitt and his entourage, and a $1.5 Million dollar helicopter is the key to that generosity of spirit.

As part of The City’s never-ending quest for the spread of freedom and democracy, we are now requiring all our employees to prove their patriotism upon arriving at work each morning.

The City has hired a team of experienced shoelace inspectors to ensure that shoe knots are complying to our newly mandated standard. The Freedom Knot.


The freedom knot

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

(via Ian's shoelace site, via Jwalk)

Melbournians today were again shocked at the Brack’s government hypocrisy as reported in Australian favorite newspaper, The Herald Sun.

Mr. Bracks you’ll recall promised to be motherhood friendly and encourage women MPs and society in general to be supportive of breastfeeding.

But in an unprovoked attack on motherhood, Mr. Bracks has ensured that the sign on the door of the Parliament’s breastfeeding room shows the image of a bottle with teat, and not a pair of titties like you would expect.

What’s wrong with Mr. Bracks? Can’t stand the sight of milk engorged kazungas? Offended by free floating funbags? Crassed out by nourishing norks?

Why not Mr. Brack’s look to the classics for your solution. No one is offended by nudity when its art. A $35 Million dollar investment Mr. Bracks and the problem will be solved. Just nail it up on the door.

This good news comes in spite of the protestations of some people of THE LEFT, who believe that these animals are not entitled to come to this land and share in our bountiful harvest.

Fortunately in this case freedom and democracy has won out, and we shall soon get to hear the happy trumpeting of Scary, Posh and Sporty, the names by which they will soon be known once the Herald Sun has announced the results of their “name the elephants” competition.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Hanging Judge of City Road, Mr. Andrew Bolt continues to call for the sacking, and removal of Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, now that the very same Sheik Hilali, has himself called for the introduction of laws that allow the deportation of radical Mullahs.

Whatever will Mr. Bolt say? Will he argue that Sheik Hilali is being disingenuous. That he doesn’t believe what he’s saying now, and that his earlier statements are the true Hilali? Or will he apologise, and say that the Sheik once again seems to be doing the right thing. Firstly the selfless attempts to rescue Douglass Wood, and now these statements that the Australian describes as “some of the strongest public comments yet by a senior Islamic figure in Australia”.

My guess? Mr. Bolt will say nothing! That’s the trick when you’re a mouth on a stick. Simply spit it out then move on. The paper will be discarded in a day, and the article will disappear into the News Ltd archives in a month or two. It’s the same trick used by Tim Blair. Blog on regardless and let the post slide down until it drops off the page. The faster you blog, the less responsible you need to be for what you’ve said in the past.

It’s a beautiful system.

Update: Well I was wrong. Mr. Bolt did mention it. You can find his response located in the Bolt Forum.

Sheik Hilaly is not credible on this issue. He can called for jihad and praised
suicide bombers, jihadists, a terrorist organisation and more. Sure, he is in a
battle with Omran and wants us to side with him against his rival, but that does
not make Hilaly a remotely moderate man, in my view. He should instead be one of those whom he suggests we send packing.

Well there you have it. Be careful what you say in public, because you can never change your mind.

Someone sent me this meme. Apparently I get seven years of bad luck or things get worse in Togo if I don’t answer it.

If you’d just won 10 Million dollars, what would you do with it?

I’d convert it all to notes, and put it in a big vault. I’d then fall around in it giggling insanely, while throwing it up in the air.

What’s your favourite distraction for avoiding doing work?

No particular favourite. Almost anything will do.

What are your 3 favourite pieces of music.

None. It makes it more difficult to hear the voices in my head.

What would be your ideal job?

Amway salesperson. I like the idea of introducing all my friends to these wonderful products and making money off them.

If you could change anything about yourself, what would it be?

Nothing. It’s hard to improve on perfect.

If you could get even with someone, who would it be?

The fool who dreamed up this stupid meme idea, thus wasting thousands of hours a day with people writing them, and foisting on readers inane twaddle that purports to say something about the individual. Also the person who gave it the name ‘meme’ thus ruining a perfectly respectable word that used to mean something else entirely.

When I was a gangly adolescent, I refused to allow anyone to take photographs of me. I would bring my arm to my face, or duck under the table whenever photography threatened. I told them that it would ruin my future career as a spy. I think it was one of those gangly adolescent things.

Of course I never did become a spy. I would never get to weave an intricate web of deceit and lies quite like you can when employed on secret missions for the government. Sadly I had to settle for the next best thing, tabloid journalism.

Anyway, this Friday, at 9:25pm on My ABC you can park yourself in front of the telly, and vicariously experience what I would be doing, if I wasn’t parked in front of the telly watching Spooks.

Nothing gets up my goat more than smart-arse kids! There was a time when the little blighters were seen and not heard. When their elders would issue a rumbling growl, and the kiddies would scurry off to their bedroom, knowing that if there was any uppittyness then there would be trouble in River City.

Those were also the days when seniority counted. When if you worked in some organisation, or the government, the only way you’d ever get a promotion was when some old fogey who was higher up the hierarchy croaked. It might have been a stultifying arrangement sure, I grant that. But it was nice and predictable. The only thing you needed to concentrate on if you wanted to be a success was to outlive everyone else.

In those days you could derive comfort from the knowledge that there was a progression. A simple linear relationship between age and respect, but no more dear reader. Those days are gone.

In the latest horror story of tweenie arrogance. A ten year old Pakastani girl Arfa Karim Randhawa, has shirt-fronted the worlds richest man, 50 year old Mr. Bill Gates.

The grasping little tot, has apparently received her Microsoft Certification, and has fronted up at Mr. Gates office and demanded that he give her a job.

Moral blackmail is what it is. It takes a strong character, when some doe-eyed child asks if you’ll kick the footy with them, to say “bugger off”, so you can imagine the pressure that Mr. Gates must be under, being forced to confront this diminutive upstart, with the press hovering, microphones at the ready, just waiting for him to slip up.

That’s the good thing about age though, and Mr. Gates clearly kept his cool. Smiled indulgently at the precocious little pumpkin, and said he’d "certainly look into it", and was "most enlightened by the meeting". It’s later on of course that he gets even. A little bit of white-anting here, some sudden budget cuts there, and balance is eventually restored.

It’s a hard climb up that greasy pole, and the purpose of those underneath is to provide you with enough purchase so that you can safely take on that useless old bugger above. This is the way of the world folks. Respect it, and it’ll look after you.

via JWalk

I knew Mr Kerry Packer was a rotten hypocrite. That’s what loads ‘a loot allows you to do. I knew he was a rotten hypocrite way back when I used to watch Channel Nine. It was an infamous episode when Doug Mulray’s show, Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos was kicked off the air, by Mr. Packer because he couldn’t stand the sight of some other bloke’s bum going up and down. Presumably the bum was firmer, younger and more athletic than the Fat Man’s flabby arse, and so in a fit of moral equivalence he called up and said to “get that shit off the air”.

But Fat Kerry used to publish Australian Penthouse, and maybe still does, and so he wasn’t adverse to a bit of smut when it suited him. As long as it’s Kerry having the fun its alright, but when anyone else is getting their jollies, then The Right Reverend Kerry Packer steps up to the pulpit and starts preaching.

Of course as you know Reverend Packer has booted Shane Warne off the Channel Nine payroll because of his philanderings, but what I didn’t know is that Mr. Packer allegedly has indulged in philanderings himself.

This on top of employing former Hawke Government Minster, Graham Richardson who is alleged to have also availed himself of the services of professional stress relief.

It certainly has the horrible stench of hypocrisy. Either that, or as Mr. Packer nears the end of his usable shelf-life, and realises that he doesn’t have the “grunt” of old, and can’t have any more fun, he has decided that nobody else should have anymore fun either. Stand by for Channel Nine to become prude central.

And they say the terrorists won’t win. They won’t kill off our freedoms. I say fight terrorism - Watch Big Brother - support Channel Ten.

Tim Blair issues a provocation. "You are the President of the United States on September 11, 2001. How do you respond to the attacks of that day, and to the wider issues of North Korea, Iran, and Iraq?"

Date: September 11 – Time 9:15 am

“Wha? You’re joshin’! A plane’s run into the towers?.” Here Kids”, (tosses book to nearest sixth grader), “I’m off to save civilization”

“Get Me Condi on the line” (grabs phone), “Condi, what’s the deal?”….”Planes have hit the towers”, Uh Huh. Suspected Terrorists”, “ Ok Condi, here’s what you do. Shut down the Air System, get the Air-Force up and at em and do what ever you can to stop this thing in its tracks. Go to it girlfriend”

“Now get me the CIA chief Tenet” (grabs phone) “George, what have you got for me? Terrorists – yeah I know that – what kind?” (listens intently), “ OK Islamic terrorists, Just like you and Richard Clarke said huh?, This Al Qaeda crowd you think huh? Run by this Saudi Billionaire fellow, Bin Laden. Right. What about Iraq and Saddam? Not involved? Right just Bin Laden then."

"OK, George, firstly I want to say this. You blokes were right. President Clinton was also right to make these guys top priority. All I can say is we missed the ball on that one. It’s Mea Culpa, but no use getting hung up on that now. I’ll have to wear that hit. Now listen, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to stop any rich Saudis leaving the country. I don’t care who they are. I know these people, and I know that they’re all related to this Bin Laden fellow. We’re going to squeeze every drop if information out of them before we let them go. Also George, I need you to tell me where this Bin Laden is. We’re going to take him out……. Oh, and George… One more thing…. arrest Dad!”

“Now get me Secretary of State Powell on the line” (grabs phone) “ Colin, I’m afraid this means travel for you my friend. I know how you don’t like travel, but we’ve got to ride the wave of sympathy. We’ve got to use it. This is gold plated political capital we’ve got coming our way from all four corners of the world. We’re going to take the lead, and we’re going to mobilise world opinion to the cause of rooting out Islamic extremism… Oh, and Colin, get on to Sharon and tell him we’re in charge, and if he puts one finger wrong, if he does anything, anything at all without first running it by me, then all foreign aid and military aid to his country stops right now”

“Now get me Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld on the phone” (grabs phone) “Don…. You’re at the Pentagon and a plane hit it?…. Are you alright?…… You want to attack Saddam? Hang on Don, George tells me Saddam had nothing to do with it…..You still want to take out Saddam?, Don, I think you’re in shock mate, I’ll have to stand you down until your head’s a bit clearer, who’s your deputy? ......... Wolfowitz? No way Jose! I need someone who’s actually fought in a war as Acting Secretary of Defence, not some bloody latte sipping academic. Find someone and get back to me will you? We’re going after terrorists. That’s different from dictators Don. Sometimes they might be the same thing, but we’re not going to make sweeping assumptions here Don. We’re going by the facts”

“Now get me Vice President Cheney on the line” (grabs phone) “ Dick… you’re fired!…. Why?….Nothing personal Dick, but I think you’re a cruel, twisted and evil man, with a cruel twisted and evil looking mouth. The mouth’s a dead giveaway Dick, it says that you’re a fucken psycho, and we need cool heads around here in these times of crisis.

Date: September 11 – Time 9:45am

(President Rex, Looks at his watch. Thirty minutes have passed since first being informed of the terrible events in New York and Washington. The schoolchildren are happily reading among themselves. America might be under attack, but wisdom, foresight and truth will keep these beautiful little kids safe. A tear wells in Rex’s eye as he looks at the children and contemplates briefly those who have perished. It emboldens him and gives him the courage of his convictions. It gives him the impetus to lead from the front, as is the responsibility of the leader of the most advanced and imaginative nation on Earth.)

“Now get me Air Force One on the line” (grabs phone) “Captain Rodgers…. I want you to meet me at the tarmac, and set a course for New York. There’s people there that need saving”

Only five days after we learned that house prices were on the way down, house prices are now on the way up.

On July 4th The Age reported a warning by investment bank ABN AMRO that “the economy is facing a period where declining household wealth should be a significant and ongoing drag on growth as the massive bubble in house prices slowly deflates", and that “Australians will see their wealth decline for the first time since the last recession”

And now, only five days later, The Herald Sun, Australia’s favourite newspaper, reports that house prices are going to rebound, according to Australian Property Monitors director Louis Christopher. “A housing price recovery might be arriving sooner rather than later”, says Mr. Christopher.

So there you have it. We’ve been through the worst, and survived. The week just gone was horrific, our net wealth plummeted, but recovered in time for the weekend.

It’s a miracle, the invisible hand of the market. Don’t you love it?

There is little point in adding to the GigaJoules of human brain energy presently being directed toward the London Transport bombings, as to do so would make only a minute and inaudible contribution to the cacophany of opinion and speculation.

Christpher Hitchens though did offer his opinion this morning (transcript not yet published), and quite honestly he didn't sound drunk. From memory he made a few points, which deserve if nothing else, some consideration.

1. He said that this is a civil war between Muslims which the West just happens to be caught up in.

2. He criticised Tony Blair's speech (calling it pathetic I think) because Blair puts the wrong emphasis on the motives of the terrorists. He is of the view that Blair's emphasis, that they are trying "to cower us, to frighten us", is the wrong way to express it because it doesn't recognise that it is really a civil war occuring within Islam.

3. He suggest that the term War on Terror is a nonsense, and implies that the emphasis of the West's leaders needs to change to recognise that it is really this civil war.

I'll have to go and have another look at the transcript when it appears, but it's certainly an interesting argument, and one that may have significance on the whole WoT strategy if accepted at higher levels.

Update: Contrast these thoughtful, provocative and potentially very important ideas, with Tim Blair's contribution to the debate. Mr. Blair feels that true patriots must madly google in times of crisis, snorting amphetimines and knocking back bottles of Jack Daniels, while recieving his moment by moment blogging action through one eye, while the other multitasks between the Fox News and CNN. Its high octane patriotism for Mr. Blair, and when he gets a moment to catch a breather, the first thing he does is lash out at the nearest lefty's typo.

Gee, it's so good to know he's on the case.

We've only now been able to get it together enough, now that the hangover has subsided, to comment on the glorious victory of the City of London over the snide poseurs of Gaye Paree in the contest to host the Olympics.

The celebrations went on all night here in the City, because with so many Australians involved, it was really a victory for Australia.

The British can feel rightly proud that we are decended from them, and we hope they acknowledge their debt to us by continuing to talk about us in very glowing terms. And if not.... Well I wouldn't like to be in their shoes, let's put it that way.

Do you remember when credit card companies introduced award schemes to encourage you to whack all your expensive home entertainment gear onto plastic, and build up points for your trip to Bali?

Do you remember also that an unpleasant side effect of this was the awkward silence at the end of a delightful restaurant meal with your friends, when they’d all dutifully doled out the cash for their share of the bill, and you’d calmly gather it up, stash it in your wallet, and casually flick your plastic into the saucer and say, “I think I’ll just put it all on credit, you don’t mind do ya?”

They’d naturally give a dismissive wave of their hand and say, “Nah, go right ahead”, and give a slightly strangled laugh. Of course you just knew that when they climbed into their cars, safely out of earshot, just the couples together with no constraints, you knew exactly what they’d be talking about. You knew that she’d be in his ear. Nagging. “Why did you let Rex pay with his card Phil?”. “What’s wrong with you? You’re just hopeless, you should have grabbed it first”, and poor Phil, who’d always had an inferiority complex anyway would just feel smaller and more pathetic than he already was.

Well my friends. There’s good news aplenty in the pages of Rupert’s Organ of Freedom today. Word has it that Telstra has come up with an absolute cracker of a marketing plan to squeeze more revenue out of the mobile phone market. A market whose growth curve is tragically and horrifically curving, if not exactly southward, then certainly less northward than it has been.

The plan is delightful in its devilish simplicity. Telstra will give you a 5 cent per minute credit on your mobile for all incoming calls.

You’ve got it my friends. That little click you just heard is the sound of the light-bulb going on in your head.

Now you know your mission. Whenever anyone calls you, you’ve got to keep them talking. You’ve got to string that conversation out to those one-minute boundaries. I’m going to be contacting Telstra to see if they can make my mobile give a little cash-register “ka-ching” sound for each minute that I keep my callers on the line. And I’ve already programmed the most important TXT message into my phone. One that I'll be using to get in touch with my friends. Simple and to the point it says: “CALL ME NOW”.

Also, I’ll be making it clear to Phil that instead of just meeting me at the rubbity-dub on a Friday after work like we used to do, he needs to call me first on my mobile. I’m going to keep Phil on the phone, even as we converge on the pub from opposite ends of town, I’m going to keep him on the phone until he can convince me that he’s not bringing his wife.

It’s for his own good after all.

Prime Minister John Howard has suffered a drop in preferedness as a result of the Union campaign against IR changes.

Mr. Howard is less preferred than a while back, but is still preferred Prime Minister, because Mr. Beazley is even less preferred than Mr. Howard.

This leaves Mr. Howard in front in the preferred rankings, but with a dangerously reduced preference credit.

“I’d prefer to be more preferred than I am”, said Mr. Howard, “bit there’s still time to improve, and anyway they don’t even prefer Peter at all, so I don’t see the problem”

Today the City looks to the Herald Sun’s business columnist Terry McCrann for clues on how to invest your precious life savings.

We figure that Mr. McCrann being on a reputed $300,000 ought to have some clue on what's going on with the economy. So what we've done is to take some important excerpts from Mr. McCrann's article of last week, mixed them up in a random order, and done things like ended sentences in mid-flow, so as to both correctly summarise the information and retain Mr. McCrann's impeccable logic. Importantly also we've retained Mr. McCrann's jokes and even highlighted them so as to preserve the larfs.

If anybody had told me, or I had told you, that 12 months later our economy would have -- officially -- slowed to a walk, and to some, looking cheap.

Plus our current account deficit had yawned even deeper into the red, you would have been asking where exactly we teetered between a crisis and a full-blown disaster.

So as to the market, it's unlikely to be anywhere close to a repeat of 2004-05, which rocketed on the 'Perfect Calm' and the 'Perfect Storm

Two big messages come out of this, looking into the new financial year.

1. The impossibility of predicting the future -- even the relatively narrow and perhaps more rational world of the economy and investments.

The key problem is not so much, getting the 'big picture' wrong, but much more what might be termed the 'little pictures'. That's the individual bits that matter most to investors and people generally.

If the oil price goes to $US30 or indeed lower, absent somebody inventing the much desired trick of turning water into whine -- as in whining engines -- it will mean we are in or heading into a recession or serious slowdown.

There. I hope that's helped. Any financial success that you achieve from this advice must of course be attributed to Australia's favourite business columnist Madcap Terry McCrann. If you didn't quite follow it then we suggest ingesting some LSD and then reading Mr. McCrann's full piece. Good luck and happy investing.

75 year old American shareholder activist (and suspected terrorist) Evelyn Y. Davis took on the media’s Mr. Big at American media giant, News Corporation's shareholder’s meeting in Washington.

Mr. Murdoch, an American, was attending a short meeting to announce a special distribution of a whole lotta loot to his top executives, using the well documented shareholder wealth redistribution scheme known as stock options.

Granny Davis said to Mr. Murdoch

On the long-term incentive plan, I'm opposed to it because I don't believe in any stock options

But Mr. Murdoch’s family interests, with over 30 per cent control, marshalled their enormous resources and crushed the lone dissenting voice under an avalanch of tough love.

So once more, the powerful incentive device that is stock options, that rightly confuses the hell out of inexperiened mum and dad investors, and leaves the control in the hand of those who know what their doing is left pristine and free to do further good.

This is despite legendary investor, and traitor Warren Buffet who once roundly condemned stock options thus:

Options are a huge cost for many corporations and a huge benefit to executives. No wonder, then, that they have fought ferociously to avoid making a charge against their earnings. Without blushing, almost all C.E.O.'s have told their shareholders that options are cost-free.

Stock options, my friends are important because they INCENTIVISE company executives. If you don’t know what that word means, and you hear it being uttered by powerful people, then you can be sure that’s a good sign. It’s a sign that they know what they are talking about, and it’s a sign for you to call your stockbroker and go in LONG and go in hard.