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MonoAus
Nov 5, 2012

Don Dongington posted:

Given the state and reliability of their digital offerings, I'm still fairly convinced that Foxtel want you to buy their pay tv product and watch the programs they want you to when they want you to according to their schedule.

Also that last few times I lived with idiots who bought Foxtel, I found most of the time there was nothing good to watch other than the occasional Adultswim blocks on the cartoon network or whatever it was. Most of the rest was the same sort of trash I don't watch FTA for.

Have Foxtel for sport and can confirm there is nothing else worth watching at all. After the rugby season is over I think I'll be cancelling. And Stan after Twin Peaks is over because it's mostly poo poo too.

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Don Dongington
Sep 27, 2005

#ideasboom
College Slice

open24hours posted:

Of course they do, then you can't skip the ads. Foxtel is maybe worth it if you have young kids or are really into sport, but other than that it seems pretty useless. If you could get Fox Footy as a standalone thing the rest of the business would probably collapse.

ABC Kids is brilliant, and I would much much rather my kid watch that than whatever over-merchandised filth Foxtel chooses to air. Also that way he doesn't get bombarded with 400 junk food ads a day.

When I was a kid we only had poo poo like Cheeze TV and while I enjoyed the cartoons, the whole thing was cleverly laid out to make me want poo poo we didn't need, and eat foods that weren't in my best interests. I don't even wanna think about what it's like now we're in full blown late-stage capitalism territory. 15 minute blocks of BUY TOY punctuated with 5 minute add blocks of EAT SUGAR no doubt.

MiniSune
Sep 16, 2003

Smart like Dodo!
Have Foxtel Plat. Had it for 17 years.

For live sport it destroys everything else. The rest is all gravy. Not going to give it up any time soon.

If your too tight or poor, just get a mates Foxtel Go log in and use that. My best mate and father in law have done so for years without issue.

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007

Newscorp funding traitors!

JBP
Feb 16, 2017

You've got to know, to understand,
Baby, take me by my hand,
I'll lead you to the promised land.
With any luck CBS buying Ten will shake up streaming services on price and quality. I pity the people that work at Ten day to day though. They're going to get fired.

iajanus
Aug 17, 2004

NUMBER 1 QUEENSLAND SUPPORTER
MAROONS 2023 STATE OF ORIGIN CHAMPIONS FOR LIFE



MiniSune posted:

Have Foxtel Plat. Had it for 17 years.

For live sport it destroys everything else. The rest is all gravy. Not going to give it up any time soon.

If your too tight or poor, just get a mates Foxtel Go log in and use that. My best mate and father in law have done so for years without issue.

ditto. We farm out our Go logins to iajwife's family who can't afford it since it's a complete ripoff.

But the sport coverage is awesome. Just need them to get the EPL rights back and it'll be perfect. gently caress off 90% of the other channels, though.

the old ceremony
Aug 1, 2017

by FactsAreUseless
hold the loving phones i have just found out that the smallest rock-wallaby in australia is outrageously tiny. it only weighs one kilogram. it's called the monjon and science knows little of its ways

Amethyst
Mar 28, 2004

I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai


Can someone copy and paste this surprisingly good sounding article?

Knorth
Aug 19, 2014

Buglord
I want to learn about its ways :3:

open24hours
Jan 7, 2001

quote:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...474e2a8895808d2
Child care workers will be out on strike this Thursday and who can blame them? We pay them crap, and they know it.

Child care workers — those taking care of our screechy little darlings for up to eight hours a day — currently make around $21 an hour.

That is less than the unskilled person who wipes the table down after the avocado brunch on the weekend. It’s less than some people pay the teenage babysitter, or even their cleaner, for wiping out the toilet bowl.

How do we get away with it?

Because the vast majority of child care workers are women. And we don’t really value women, and especially not the work they do, in raising the next generation.

Wiping snotty noses, and changing stinking nappies. That is what we think child care is about, and we don’t put too high a price on it. How much do we really need to pay people whose responsibilities include the mashing of a banana with a fork?

Or else, breaking up a fight between Harper, the biter, and Finn, the sooky-la-la?

Or trying to find a parent — any parent — to pick up the kid that has come to child care with flaming pink-eye, touched up with Mummy’s foundation?

That can’t be worth more than $21 an hour, surely?

In fact, proper child care is skilled labour. You need a qualification to do it, and it costs money to get that qualification. It’s early days, but studies suggest that children who partake of good quality childcare, or early learning as we tag it now, get a leg-up, for life.

And yet we pay the workers practically nothing which is why some child care workers will walk off the job at 3pm on Thursday.

On one hand, I hope it creates chaos.

On the other, I know that the people most likely to be inconvenienced by the child care strike will be mothers, since I can’t really see Dad taking a half-day off to go get junior. That’s not how things work in Australia.

It will be women who will be forced to hustle. They’ll be the ones begging their bosses to leave early, or else they’ll be setting up car pools with friends and neighbours and relatives in a desperate effort to get the little ones home and fed and bathed and ready for bed.

And what is the point of the strike?

Workers want the government to agree to a 35 per cent pay increase, possibly by increasing subsidies to parents. And that is the worst idea in the world.

Government subsidies must not be increased. They must be stopped, and why?

Look, it should be obvious by now, but the more the government tips in, the more the fees rise. A year 10 economics student could have told you that was going to happen from the get-go, and now the data is right there in all the graphs.

Every time the government increases its subsidies, the fees go up.

Here’s how: Mums scream about the cost of child care, and who can blame them when it now costs $180 a day in Sydney, and almost as much in Melbourne.

The Federal government increases subsides to help with the cost, which prompts the child care centres to pump up its fees.

And where does the extra money go? Not to the predominately female workforce, no, no, no, and ho, ho, ho.

It goes to the ex-bankers, and the venture capitalists, and the businessmen that have moved into the child care industry in recent years.

And why wouldn’t they move in? There’s good money in child care, and even better: the government guarantees it.

An AMP-Natsem report in 2014 put it this way: “Government subsidies help to keep a lid on families’ out-of-pocket child care costs, but it is hard to escape the conclusion they have also helped drive up prices … The higher prices go, the more financial assistance families will require and so the cycle continues.”

What to do?

Well, in the old days, child care was never the government’s business. Nobody went to child care when I was a kid. If your Mum had to work — and that was pretty rare, since Mums in the 1970s with three kids under five generally did not work — you got looked after in the church hall, or else a neighbour stepped in, or grandma did.

Times have changed, and most Mums are today in the work force, which pushes up house prices, and means that everyone needs two cars, as well as child care.

The solutions are these:

a) We could go back to the old days, where one parent stays home to look after the kids (and you can bet your boots it will be Mum.)

b) We could scrap subsidies, and leave child care to the market, which will inevitably mean even lower wages, and poorer conditions, for the female workforce;

c) Or we can do now what we are obviously going to have to do in the near future, and treat child care like school, meaning the government funds it, and runs it, and the staff get properly paid, and the kids go for free, which is going to make some readers throw up their hands in despair — ‘Is there nothing that parents are today prepared to pay for themselves?’ – but believe me when I tell you it is ultimately going to be cheaper, because the system we’ve got now?

It is price gouging on steroids, and just like the old pop song, the only way is up.

She's right. Giving parents cash to buy childcare just encourages childcare providers to charge more.

Severing
Aug 26, 2017

open24hours posted:

She's right. Giving parents cash to buy childcare just encourages childcare providers to charge more.

It has for years and nothing ever changes. When I had kids in childcare every time the government announced a benefit rise the childcare centers all put their rates up to match. Greedy management are just pocketing all this income and like electricity the government needs to step in and sort it out.

Yet they don't step in and let it continue to our detriment. :australia:

iajanus
Aug 17, 2004

NUMBER 1 QUEENSLAND SUPPORTER
MAROONS 2023 STATE OF ORIGIN CHAMPIONS FOR LIFE



oh but the invisible hand of the market will solve this problem as it solved all the others like

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




MiniSune posted:

Have Foxtel Plat. Had it for 17 years.

For live sport it destroys everything else. The rest is all gravy. Not going to give it up any time soon.

If your too tight or poor, just get a mates Foxtel Go log in and use that. My best mate and father in law have done so for years without issue.

Well yeah that's pretty much Foxtel's entrie model. Force people who just want sports to pay for all the generic poo poo too.

Amethyst
Mar 28, 2004

I CANNOT HELP BUT MAKE THE DCSS THREAD A FETID SWAMP OF UNFUN POSTING
plz notice me trunk-senpai

open24hours posted:

She's right. Giving parents cash to buy childcare just encourages childcare providers to charge more.

Thanks

bigis
Jun 21, 2006

Don Dongington posted:

When I was a kid we only had poo poo like Cheeze TV and while I enjoyed the cartoons, the whole thing was cleverly laid out to make me want poo poo we didn't need, and eat foods that weren't in my best interests. I don't even wanna think about what it's like now we're in full blown late-stage capitalism territory. 15 minute blocks of BUY TOY punctuated with 5 minute add blocks of EAT SUGAR no doubt.

Why has a sugar tax gotten relatively little attention in Australia? Are there any parties that are considering this at a fed or state level?

open24hours
Jan 7, 2001

Sugar is so cheap and Australians are so rich that any tax would have to be obscenely large to make a difference. Also the sugar lobby are fairly powerful.

Recoome
Nov 9, 2013

Matter of fact, I'm salty now.
BIG SUGAR

Recoome
Nov 9, 2013

Matter of fact, I'm salty now.
Also I agree that a sugar tax or whatever won't really do much except disproportionally impact low-earning Australians.

Don Dongington
Sep 27, 2005

#ideasboom
College Slice

open24hours posted:

She's right. Giving parents cash to buy childcare just encourages childcare providers to charge more.


I like how she basically calls for socially funded childcare at the end, while acknowledging that a good number of their readers are will probably hate the idea because they're free market wankers.

After spending the entire article trying her hardest to sound like a piece of poo poo who hates children and big government.

What a twist!

the old ceremony
Aug 1, 2017

by FactsAreUseless
i talked to a baby boomer from bundaberg once

never again

hiddenmovement
Sep 29, 2011

"Most mornings I'll apologise in advance to my wife."

Don Dongington posted:

I don't even wanna think about what it's like now we're in full blown late-stage capitalism territory. 15 minute blocks of BUY TOY punctuated with 5 minute add blocks of EAT SUGAR no doubt.

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/To_sell_toys

Megillah Gorilla
Sep 22, 2003

If only all of life's problems could be solved by smoking a professor of ancient evil texts.



Bread Liar

Don Dongington posted:

Yeah a thread rule on not just brainlessly pasting News Ltd articles without editing out this horseshit would be good - but I'm pretty sure the D&D Mods would only dare to read this thread while several sheets to the wind.

How about a thread rule for all those loving worthless "Senpai pls notice me" posts.

"Wow, did you see that article in the paper today? Really makes you think"

"Four Corners was depressing tonight. That final segment was rough."

"I can't believe what Turnbull said on the radio today. Such bullshit."



Just loving spit it out :argh: Are some posters really so pathetic that they need even such a small level of validation of people replying to their empty post-bait?

Tokamak
Dec 22, 2004

Gorilla Salad posted:

Just loving spit it out :argh: Are some posters really so pathetic that they need even such a small level of validation of people replying to their empty post-bait?

I use this thread as my primary source for Australian news.

You Am I
May 20, 2001

Me @ your poasting

Gorilla Salad posted:

How about a thread rule for all those loving worthless "Senpai pls notice me" posts.

"Wow, did you see that article in the paper today? Really makes you think"

"Four Corners was depressing tonight. That final segment was rough."

"I can't believe what Turnbull said on the radio today. Such bullshit."



Just loving spit it out :argh: Are some posters really so pathetic that they need even such a small level of validation of people replying to their empty post-bait?

Yeah, I agree

BBJoey
Oct 31, 2012

Gorilla Salad posted:

How about a thread rule for all those loving worthless "Senpai pls notice me" posts.

"Wow, did you see that article in the paper today? Really makes you think"

"Four Corners was depressing tonight. That final segment was rough."

"I can't believe what Turnbull said on the radio today. Such bullshit."


Just loving spit it out :argh: Are some posters really so pathetic that they need even such a small level of validation of people replying to their empty post-bait?

nice meltdown

re piracy, i'm absolutely fine with companies being able to sue pirates, provided the penalties are comparable to the penalties for other forms of white collar crime (for example, a bank aiding and abetting terrorists); that is to say, the penalty should be less than the actual damage done.

Knorth
Aug 19, 2014

Buglord

the old ceremony posted:

i talked to a baby boomer from bundaberg once

never again

Aw :( I thought talking to my grandma was pleasant enough. We play mahjong sometimes

Zenithe
Feb 25, 2013

Ask not to whom the Anidavatar belongs; it belongs to thee.
With Peter Grace's Youtube channel getting deleted, I forgot that today was the day:

Far-right nationalists face court over dummy beheading, claim they're on 'political trial'

quote:

The trio are representing themselves in the hearing and have made several futile applications, including to have the charges thrown out and to have the Director of Public Prosecutions appear to give evidence about his decision to lay the charges.

:discourse:

LIVE AMMO COSPLAY
Feb 3, 2006

Foxtel is just as awful as regular television, I guess if you absolutely need reality tv 24/7 it would be worth it. I'm glad to have Netflix as an alternative, although even Australian Netflix is kind of light on content.

I mostly watch movies and it seems like Foxtel/tv/Netflix all show the same stuff outside of new releases. Frankly if I really like something a lot of the time I still buy a Bluray or DVD.

CrazyTolradi
Oct 2, 2011

It feels so good to be so bad.....at posting.

bigis posted:

Why has a sugar tax gotten relatively little attention in Australia? Are there any parties that are considering this at a fed or state level?
Because it's essentially a tax on the poor and the LNP are too busy screwing them in other ways at the moment?

BBJoey
Oct 31, 2012

lol after abbott's big 'where's shorten's documents??? what has he got to hide???' show this morning, shorten has just tabled them and told the lnp to gently caress off

imagine picking a fight against the australian labor party regarding a matter of procedure. jesus christ.

Doctor Spaceman
Jul 6, 2010

"Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."
Tobacco excise disproportionately hurts the poor too.

open24hours
Jan 7, 2001

There was an interesting article about that a few months ago. The rich, who are least affected by price increases, have been much more likely to quit smoking than the poor who are most affected by them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...f83b_story.html

Makes you wonder how much unnecessary harm expensive durries are doing to the poor.

MysticalMachineGun
Apr 5, 2005

BBJoey posted:

lol after abbott's big 'where's shorten's documents??? what has he got to hide???' show this morning, shorten has just tabled them and told the lnp to gently caress off

imagine picking a fight against the australian labor party regarding a matter of procedure. jesus christ.

noice

quote:

Bill Shorten tables his citizenship documentation

The Labor leader Bill Shorten has stood up after question time to table correspondence he received from the British government confirming that he had renounced his UK citizenship prior to his election to parliament in 2007.

Bill Shorten:

I offer this proof to the parliament today to put an end to baseless allegations, not reward them.

I strongly believe that MPs and Senators should not be to produce evidence to counter claims that are made completely without evidence. I repeat - MPs and Senators should not be forced to produce evidence to counter claims that are made completely without evidence.

No matter which party they are from.

This is our chance to draw a line in the sand. This must end.

In an age of Twitter trolls, baseless online conspiracies, this is a chance for our parliament to declare we’re bigger and better than this.


Just in case you haven’t followed all the twists and turns of the citizenship saga – Bill Shorten has been refusing to release his documentation for over a week on the basis the Australian parliament should not be turned into a star chamber.

His argument has been he shouldn’t have to cough up the documentary material because no-one has demonstrated he has an actual case to answer. It’s all just supposition, and why should the onus of proof be reversed?

The guidance has been the opposition leader didn’t want to put pressure on other parliamentarians to release private documents if they didn’t want to go down that path. Some Labor MPs have released documents when they’ve faced eligibility questions, others have not.

But today, Shorten has tabled his documents – a development which will put pressure on other MPs to do the same.

The Labor leader told the chamber just a few minutes ago, if he wanted to be elected as prime minister, there could not be any doubt about his eligibility to be in the parliament, even if that doubt is pushed by conspiracy theorists like the prime minister and the Member for Warringah.

Zenithe
Feb 25, 2013

Ask not to whom the Anidavatar belongs; it belongs to thee.
That's US though, and not even close to the amount of cigarettes in Australia.

We really should just ban them already.

Doctor Spaceman
Jul 6, 2010

"Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."

open24hours posted:

There was an interesting article about that a few months ago. The rich, who are least affected by price increases, have been much more likely to quit smoking than the poor who are most affected by them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...f83b_story.html

Makes you wonder how much unnecessary harm expensive durries are doing to the poor.

That was interesting, thanks.

I wonder if Australia faces the same situation, given our different approach to advertising and health care.

open24hours
Jan 7, 2001

Trends are similar here. http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/1-7-trends-in-the-prevalence-of-smoking-by-socioec

I don't think we should get rid of cigarette taxes, but I do think there is scope for some sort of prescription system for low income people who are willing to undertake some sort of quitting program (the difficulty would be ensuring it's a real course and not some JSA tier trash). Christ knows what people are doing to keep smoking. Probably living on chicken nuggets.

open24hours fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Sep 4, 2017

MysticalMachineGun
Apr 5, 2005

:laffo:

https://twitter.com/TheCalebBond/status/904301688042938369

Zenithe
Feb 25, 2013

Ask not to whom the Anidavatar belongs; it belongs to thee.
Day Fine, but for cigarette tax.

Megillah Gorilla
Sep 22, 2003

If only all of life's problems could be solved by smoking a professor of ancient evil texts.



Bread Liar

Zenithe posted:

That's US though, and not even close to the amount of cigarettes in Australia.

We really should just ban them already.

I was filing up at a servo last night and got to watch this guy have a loving meltdown when the bloke behind the counter asked him for ID.

Man, you can't pay for that sort of entertainment.

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Zenithe
Feb 25, 2013

Ask not to whom the Anidavatar belongs; it belongs to thee.

Gorilla Salad posted:

I was filing up at a servo last night and got to watch this guy have a loving meltdown when the bloke behind the counter asked him for ID.

Man, you can't pay for that sort of entertainment.

I worked last Friday, day of the exise rise, and goddamn that was a rough night.

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