all right

Occasionally adding corroborative details to add verisimilitude to otherwise bald and unconvincing,
but veridicous accounts
with careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination.

10 April, 2013

Some Sycophantic True Believers Will Believe Anything


UPDATE I:


UPDATE II:  I sent a complaint to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission:
The Australian Labor Party is publishing an advertisement online, and on Julia Gillard’s Facebook page, which is authorised by Sen. Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, which is deceptive and misleading in that it claims that “connecting to high-speed fibre broadband is free” under the “Gillard Labor Government”.  Even if the claim were designed to suggest only that the actual connection into a customer’s dwelling be free of additional cost, the advertisement is surely misleading; however, I submit that the advertisement seems to have been designed deliberately to give a false impression that the entire process of connecting to the broadband network might be free of any charge under the present government.
I shall, of course, publish any response. 

UPDATE III:  see Michael Smith’s “Stephen Conroy and the free connections, free handsets, free broadband – I’ve asked the ACCC for an opinion”. 

UPDATE IV (11 April):  see also Tim Blair’s “No Money Down”. (I posted details of Labor’s deceptive advertisement to Blair’s ’blog yesterday.)

UPDATE V (12 April):  see Andrew Bolt’s “Gillard pays for your NBN out of her own huge pocket”.  (I posted details of Labor’s deceptive advertisement to Bolt’s ’blog on Wednesday morning, but Bolt, like Blair, credits Michael Smith for spotting the ad.  Smith did reveal his source; he wrote, “I first saw this little promotional piece on a blog site – and frankly I thought it was a stitch-up”.)

UPDATE VI (9 May):  I received an e-mail today from Tim, the “Correspondence Officer” of the ACCC:
Thank you for your email of 10 April 2013 to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) about an advertisement published by the Australian Labor Party.  Your reference number for this matter is 446797.
We will not be investigating your complaint because it is unlikely that the Australian Labour [sic] Party’s actions would be considered to be in ‘trade or commerce’.
Most Australian consumer protection laws apply only to people or businesses when they are engaged in ‘trade or commerce’.  This means that a person must be carrying on commercial activities for the law to apply.  If a person or business is contributing to a debate about government policy or issues of interest to the community, they are unlikely to be engaged in ‘trade or commerce’.
Please see our website for more information about the ACCC.
I hope the above information is helpful.
I replied:
I thank you for your helpful response.
I now realise that I can make a deliberately deceptive claim for any commercial enterprise or service—such as, say, a national broadband network—as long as I ensure that the advertisement is published by a political party.
If I understand your advice correctly, I may not claim that my expensive bottles of tap-water lead to wealth and sexual success and cure cancer but, if I publish a political advertisement saying that my party’s preferred brands of bottled water will indubitably lead to wealth and sexual success and cure cancer, that’s perfectly fine.
Excellent.
I shall make a point of telling shonky pharmaceutical companies how to get around the “trade or commerce” provisions.  All they need to do is register political parties and then make advertisements which merely contribute “to a debate about government policy or issues of interest to the community”.

UPDATE VII (4 August):  on alleged reform for the funding of schools, it seems that true believers like simple arithmetic:


UPDATE VIII (9 August):  hmmm, still running with the NBN as a reason to re-elect a criminally incompetent government:

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you listen to the Coalition policy launch? They stated homes and businesses could upgrade to FTTH for $5000.

Ben said...

While I agree that it is somewhat misleading - it sounds like it is going to be a free service, it is technically correct. If you want -real- high speed fibre -connection-, you will have to pay for it. Otherwise you get their sub-par fraudband.

Their argument was that people that really need it can probably pay through the nose for it.

Deadman said...

I did listen to the Coalition’s policy launch. Perhaps you failed to notice that Julia Gillard is promoting the silly notion that her government’s national broadband—if it should ever be completed—will be connected for free—conveniently neglecting the cost of over $4000 for every single Australian, whether or not they subscribe to the NBN.
I’m also led to believe that, if you pay $160,000 for a new Mercedes Benz, you get free wheels and a free engine. Free wheels! Yay!
This post, sadly, is not concerned with the evils of the wicked Opposition (as discerning readers might tell from the post’s title); it addresses how some sycophantic true believers will believe anything—from “broadband connections will be free” to “anthropogenic global warming will doom us all!”—if shrieked by our pertinaciously mendaciloquent PM and her fawning goons.

Jazza said...

Don't waste your time on the lefties,as they obviously have been sent out in force to hose down any criticism of their "dear leader", however, the contributor here could well be one of the overblown PM's staff unit or the Pm's overblown media unit( both ways I am correct)Whichever, it is too much to hope they might learn some logic from your answer, but one can hope I'm wrong!

Dan said...

It's still not strictly correct though Deadman. I have been lead to believe that the NBN will run the cable to the veneer of your home, not run cables through your roof, walls or what have you. You will need to pay for the final few meters, unless of course you still use the bits of Telstra copper formerly used as the landline. If they exist.

Kind of runs against Conroy's claim that all copper must be banished to get maximum use out of the NBN.