Being an avid Radio National listener, I'm always pleased when both sides of any given issue are aired out of fairness to all parties concerned.

"The Australian’s George Megalogenis got it right when he predicted a “horror, handout budget”. The government will claim that it’s a tough budget because there have been cosmetic cuts to so-called “middle class welfare”. In fact, it will be another handout budget from a government addicted to buying votes.

I went along to see the latest in a long, long line of Paramount attempts to resurrect Roddenberry's franchise yesterday.

There's a fascinating Op-Ed in the SMH this morning, by none other than Peter Costello. He claims it's no skin off his nose if the owners of The Monthly don't want to publish a response from him to Rudd's anti-capitalism treatise. Clearly, it is. He's mightily miffed, makes disingenuous claims as to what Sally Warhaft, editor of The Monthly should have said in response to questions on the ABC's Q&A program in March, and even stoops to that favourite of Australian conservative politicians.....slagging the ABC.

He's quite right when he says:

"The Monthly is owned and financed by Morry Schwartz. He has done well out of the capitalist system and he uses his own money to publish the magazine. He has every right to decide what views he wants to publish. If he wants to criticise market capitalism then so be it. If he doesn't want a contrary view then so be it. It's his magazine."

Just as the H.R.Nicholls Society only publishes opinions from the right, because of who was integral to the formation of that elite group. John Stone, then a financial and economic consultant, Peter Costello, Barrister at Law, Barrie Purvis, industrial advocate, and Ray Evans, an executive with WMC Ltd. Costello is cheesed because he isn't being granted the same exposure as Rudd. Rudd is the PM and Warhaft stated she's welcome a response from Turnbull, Leader of the Opposition. Not Peter Costello, after all, who is he but a backbencher? Turnbull has not taken up the offer, if indeed one was made, but to claim the ABC is equally to blame for 'leftism' as it Schwartz's The Monthly in promoting partisanship is a weak-kneed claim without basis.

But it might still be true that there is interesting social and political criticism on the conservative side. You'll never know if you don't hear it. The ABC is big enough to air alternative opinions on Q&A. Strip out the alternative views on it, you are left with an electronic edition of The Monthly.

The flaw in that argument being that Aunty does not strip out alternative views, else Costello and buffoons like Greg Sheridan would not be offered time to express them. Shame, Peter Costello, Shame!

Who watches the Gruen Transfer on Wednesday nights?

I often wonder about the way technology has taken humanity to the stars - or low Earth orbit anyway - and how that technology seems to have been surrendered for lack of funding or interest on the part of politicians.

...establishing a Creative Commons License over the use of the phrase, "Stench Of Reality".

The following won't mean anything to anyone but me, however for reasons of my own, I have established a Creative Commons Licence applicable to any content which appears on this weblog. That licence - established under the Australian jurisdiction of Creative Commons is BY ATTRIBUTION only.

Stephen Bartholomeusz's column in Business Spectator this morning - Understanding Trujillo - provides some interesting counterpoint in the never-ending debate over just what 'racism' is, and how it ought to be defined.