Radio 3AW morning host Neil Mitchell is an interesting character.
He has abilities to describe and comment upon the shortcomings of the local Victorian community, our failing hospital and education systems, to bewail the losses in superannuation on air today with Tom Elliott (which are going to leave self-funded retirees with inadequate retirement incomes), yet manages to attack the very people who want to address these issues.
You might say he argues both sides of the question without being able to reconcile them, nor to see that change is essential if we are to repair these increasingly socially-devastating problems. His approach could be characterised as: ‘Politically, things are all right; it’s just that our services are falling apart.’
As he characterises most of the protesters in the City Square in Melbourne either as radical unionists or Greens, an intelligent woman calls in to let him know the gathering was clearly broader than this; but this was largely water off a duck’s back.
Prosper Australia (which says public funding for education, health, civil order and infrastructure can be vastly improved whilst we also abolish many taxes) was represented at “Occupy Melbourne”, and I can assure Neil that our members vote for the whole range of political parties. I think, however, he would find this hard to accept, because it’s simpler to filter everything into black and white.
As with Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones, the economy is not Neil Mitchell’s long suit.
Like his Sydney counterpart Alan Jones, from whom he attempts to distance himself, Neil likes to pigeon-hole groups who suggest it may be possible to change things for the better. More often than not, he sees them as trouble-makers, especially if their protests have an ‘edge’ to them.
As rent-seekers pillage the common wealth that is the economic rent of our land and natural resources, and the world consequently collapses into financial instability, Neil has a message for protesters: “Go home! You’re blocking the City Square and affecting adjoining businesses!”
Maybe, Neil. But you’re pandering to a constituency frightened by anything resembling change, and that won’t improve our hospitals, education system, law and order, infrastructure or social welfare, will it? We need a reformed economics to do that. No?
We must call the rip-off rentier 1% to account, and change the system. Oh, and Neil, that would lead to a genuine free enterprise system!
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“If anything is certain, it is that change is certain. The world we are planning for today will not exist in this form tomorrow.” – Philip Bayard Crosby
