The Power of Tweets, Alan Jones, and Interest Rates

The Wrinkle was lucky enough to be watching Q&A live when the shoe incident happened with John Howard during the week. It was certainly one of the better shows, the producers managed to get a fairly even balance between Johnny tragic's and those who think he should spend time behind bars. The telling sign was the even amount of hand clapping when opposite points were scored during the various questions.

Having never been in the studio audience I can't categorically say, but would assume that the twitter feeds shown on screen are also displayed to the studio audience. One of the tweets a few minutes before the incident was "someone throw a shoe at him" or similar. It obviously got the person in the front row thinking after remaining dissatisfied with half an answer from John.

Putting rudeness and disrespect to one side for a moment, it's certainly one of the most direct responses I've seen to a tweet, albeit a delayed one. A follow up tweet when a woman questioner was also obviously dissatisfied with John Howards answers a little later wasn't bad, "watch out she could be wearing high heels"

Regardless of whether you agree with John Howard's politics' you have to admire his steadfastness and ability to keep control on camera (even under fire) when he's obviously angry. Plus like him or not, he certainty takes a stand, and standing for something seems to be a lost art with the current leadership of both sides of the house. The middle of the road, focus group driven, politics currently on display leaves a lot to be desired.

The Wrinkle would like to change tack here and have a quick gripe of his own in relation to Alan Jones the radio shock jock. In particular, his shameful attempts to use his media influence to pervert the course of justice in relation to the soldiers about to stand trial for alleged crimes in Afghanistan. The Wrinkle certainly holds no view on their guilt or otherwise, but I believe we should all fight for everyone to receive as fair a trial as possible, regardless of which side you stand on.

Simply put, change the law, Alan Jones could never get away with this in a normal criminal case, he would automatically be in contempt of court, and brought to heel, the only reason he can mouth off like this is purely due to a legal technicality. It turns out the way the law is currently drafted a military court isn't deemed to be in place until the trial is actually convened, so technically a person can say whatever they like about a military case until this happens.

No one is above the law, and we have had pre-trial media guidelines in place for a long time now for very good reasons. Someone needs to put this clown back in his box.

One last point to finish on, rather than the government continually trying to "jawbone" the banks into only matching the changes in the Reserve Bank settings for interest rates, why not simply tie it to the government deposit guarantee. If a bank wants the marketing benefit of a government guarantee on its client's deposits, they must move in accord with the Reserve Bank as part of the deal. Works for me.

Have a good week.