Government junk mail, return to sender.
You know you are in trouble when people no are longer interested in hearing what you have to tell them. Take Barack Obama for example. Bazza decided to get on twitter to ask Americans to call, email, and tweet Congressional leaders to “keep the pressure on” lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling without those nasty spending cuts.
In less than 24 hours over 40,000 followers have unsubscribed. Many have accused him of spamming.
“Stop Gillard’s carbon tax,” is proposing a similar response here.
Feeling that spending $12 million of our money to persuade us that the big new tax is the greatest thing we could ever hope for is not enough, our Jules has decided to go for the personal touch. We are now going to pay another $4 million to get a mail out of government propaganda to convince us.
Some object strongly to junk mail however most of don’t really give a stuff about it, as some of it is quite informative. While the advertising budgets that finance it add marginally to the cost of the products and services advertised, we don’t actually pay for it unless we buy the product. If we were to buy an item seen in such mail, then it has provided a service and has been of benefit.
Government junk mail on the other hand comes at direct cost to us as taxpayers, is unsolicited, and for all but the apparatchiks of the ruling party, is unwelcome. We do not have the above choice as it applies to private enterprise junk; it comes out of taxpayer funds, which were given unwillingly but with a reasonable right of expectation that those funds would be put to better use than propagandizing us.
The originator of the idea of sending this back was John Izzard in Quadrant, who says:
From the Gillard government’s Hollowmen Department comes the latest spin, trickery, manipulation or stunt—call it what you may. Four million items of junk-mail are about to hit our letterboxes, compliments of Greg Combet, our Minister for Changing the Climate.
What can you do?
Send it back. …
We, the long suffering victims of the “progressive governments” that emerged out of the 2007 and 2010 federal elections, have had to sit back and watch a cascade of ideological failures in just about every reach of government action, policy and intervention. Rotten ideas that have ended in financial messes. Rotten ideas that have cost lives.
Now the country is set to embark upon the crazy notion that the world’s climate can be controlled from a room in Canberra. It can’t. But to try to convince a large chunk of the Australian public that it can, the “junk-mail drive” is coming to a letter box near you. Like any junk mail offer be very careful. Is it a truthful offer? Are you being told all of the facts? Beware of the promises! How many sets of STEAK-KNIVES do you get…free?
One way to protest to the Hollowmen of our government is to send the junk back to Greg Combet.
If it arrives in an envelope simply write RETURN TO SENDER and post it.
If it arrives as loose junk-mail, pop it into an envelope and address it to:
The Hon. Greg Combet Minister for Climate ChangeHouse of Representatives Parliament HouseCanberra ACT 2600
This won’t stop them, but it will let them know - “We’re not buying”.
Can't remember where I saw it now, but I recall that some greenie agency of the British government spent a few million on advertising to convince the washed masses of the need for their agency and carbon tax a couple of years ago.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't our governments just bite the bullet and go ahead and have an official Propaganda Ministry?
Oh, I forgot. We already have one. The Mainstream Media.
Interestingly here, "The Australian," which is Murdoch's flagship newspaper has raised serious questions about Labor and put the Greens under serious scrutiny. As expected, the result is that it has been branded as the hate media.
ReplyDeleteMost other outlets including some News Ltd ones are in the bag for big eco, and are thus, 'responsible' publications.
This however is an interesting campaign that is developing and seems to be attracting quite a bit of attention. I don't really know why something like this has not been thought of before, but good ideas are often so simple that we do the forehead slap with a "Why didn't I think of that."
What gets me, in days of olde, you had both left and right, or Tory and Whig, or whatever, newspapers. Soviet citizens knew what they were getting in Pravda and Tass and how to read between the lines to get the real news. With either system, you knew which way they leaned ahead of time and filtered accordingly.
ReplyDeleteNow the mainstream media is Socialists-R-Us, left of Karl Marx, and Green cheerleaders yet they huffily put their noses in the air and INSIST they're utterly objective, neutral and balanced, and blither about things like "journalistic integrity". Now that's an oxymoron bigger than "military intelligence", "civil servant", and "mandatory volunteerism" combined.The hell of it is, many of them genuinely believe they're totally fair and objective.
It's scary when the pricks can't even be honest with themselves!
The reality is that they don't really believe they are totally fair and objective.
ReplyDeleteThey just have such a low opinion of us that they think we will accept it if they say so.