Look, the standard of The West Australian, our state newspaper used to be a staple here at The Worst of Perth, but doesn’t really get much of a mention these days. Why that is is interesting. It’s not that it’s any less dire. Paul Murray is still droning out his pompous codswallop, Zoltan Kovacs is still writing the same piece virtually every week, ie “The state of grammar has changed since x date. Is this a bad thing? I don’t know…”, and even Pam “Hello dearies,” Cassselllas is still popping her head in just like she hadn’t retired. No, what has changed is the rest of the world. Even three years ago, it still actually mattered that The West was bad. People were passionate about it, because they relied on it . Now no-one cares. It doesn’t actually matter to anyone that The West would run a snivelling, embarrassing, cringeing plea to Oprah Winfrey as its front page lead. It’s front page fucking lead for god sake! And turn to page 10 for more! No-one turns a hair, and even the writer, Angela Pownall doesn’t even have the decency to be embarassed enough to have her byline removed. Why should she? No-one else gives a shit. The much maligned Paul Armstrong wouldn’t have sunk to this level. Even The Subiaco Post’s front page is caning The West this week.
The world has moved on as The West has stagnated. If you want journalism you have so many options, good and bad from around the world online.
The West should be ashamed that no-one cares enough to hate it anymore. Let’s not mention it again.
The Worst of Perth 
No surprises here…
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Well, if The West can’t change Oprah’s mind, what can we do?
We can be “furious”, we can bemoan the fact that (according to commenter Jack Lee) “Canberra stole money from WA and spitted on the faces of West Australians”, but unless we can get some sort of Oprah for Regions thing happening in Canberra we’ll just have to sit around on West Coast Highway remembering the salad days when Jacko came for a visit.
I can’t believe they didn’t run Megamouth (http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/7954186) on the cover. He’s on the front page of The West online.
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Also bearing in mind that this is not only about Oprah not coming, as if she made some kind of decision about it, but that Oprah didn’t ever consider coming, never would have and would be wasting everyone’s time if she did. This is inside cover material, not front page stuff.
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after running their Oprah story, trying desperately to drum up some parochial outrage and petition her to come here, they ran one of their polls asking whether the state government should kidnap Oprah and drag her kicking and screaming to enjoy the wine and fine food available in Margaret River, and 60% of respondents said they didn’t really give a shit
they are looking like right plonkers today. Odds on they will sheepishly dump teh campaign before the weekend
maybe they should concentrate on the meltdown in our hospital system and launch a reader’s competition entitled ‘where the fuck is Colin Barnett?’
anyone spotting the Premier anywhere near some public services gets to win one of six Holdens
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or a gurney of their choice in a public hospital
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Kind of answers its own question.
Amazingly I read (online from another source) today that circulation has increased.
If only they’d stop taking themselves seriously & accept their competition level.
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Crikey is currently doing an investigation into the inflated claims of newspaper circulation figures, after they got a leaked memo from The Age
They are creating an interactive map of Australia showing all the places where newspapers dump free surplus copies and claim them as circulation, so you never have to pay for a copy ever again
There are two locations currently listed where you can get Teh West for free: in the foyer of the WA Museum and at Muzz Buzz, Yokine. No doubt there will be more listed soon, theer will be plenty at the Unis and the airport
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The museum? Symbiotic relationship. They get more stats and more people would be tempted look in bafflement at megamouth.
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Lifted from Crikey re free papers and circulation figures
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How could Teh Worst possibly be used for educational purposes? Lining the guinea pig’s cage?
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The NT News does have at least one good troll though:
RE: P of Darwin…… Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
Posted by: Scott of Wulagi 10:23am today
Nice
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You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It’s just common sense.
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An online petition – the gold standard in irrelevance.
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It’s interesting how ‘not reading The West’ has moved from being a claim to intellectual superiority, to being a simple statement of unexceptional fact. It is of no relevance any longer, and deserves to be ignored.
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i have to admit to looking at the pictures though.
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It does have some redeeming features. The Crime Stoppers column is usually entertaining and as long as they continue to publish the Raymond X XXXXXXXXs, Graeme Campbells and thingo from Baldivises I will continue to flip exactly thus far.
And for the occasional glimpse of Rob Broadfield’s adipose wattles…
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I found the turnips conveyed the jouissance of the porcine semen very well. A playful dish and a pleasing end to another trough .
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and in much more smilier and happier news…
Robert Taylor is resigning from the West, his arsehole has asked “to see other people” and put in a request for some other part of his body to write copy for a change
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So my tweet was accurate. (Well only 199 out).
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And in Radio related News – Declan Kelly GM of 6PR has been given the boot – we await a similar fate for Messrs Beaumont & Sattler :-)
http://www.perthnow.com.au/entertainment/perth-confidential/declan-kelly-rumoured-to-have-been-moved-aside/comments-e6frg30l-1225925069191
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It’s official – Nurry back on Mornings and even scarier Gary Shannon may be teaming up in Afternoons with Tony Mac.
http://www.watoday.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/6pr-back-to-the-future-with-paul-murray-20101206-18mh5.html
I predict 6IX will outrate 6PR :-)
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Nurry and Shannon: they are like two particularly buoyant turds that just refuse to be flushed. Someone needs to push them round the bend with the brush
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And Beaumont to produce Millsy’s Breakfast show and do the odd on air shift – not doubt filling in for sick/holidaying people.
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this article seems to say:
‘Nurry – he’s crap but he’s still better than a woman.’
http://www.watoday.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/paul-murray-heads-up-6prs-new-regime-20101207-18nu5.html
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That joint is a useless hack carousel.
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Doesn’t the West have the highest advertising revenue of any paper in Australia so everyone should feel a little unusual and clammy that they have decided to run a story, any story. The fact is when Oprah hears the word “Perth” she also hears dueling banjos, tuned in the key of grotesque tourism event sycophancy. The fact is also that Perth and all its attachments is completely unsaleable if not totally unrepresentable in any aesthetic form, perhaps to the point of being the next world-wide infectious contagion. Perhitis (pronounced “bpite-us”) . The first symptoms are all colours look like a cheap LCD TV – just like this photo. Oprah knows this also. Only those with a mandate from above (TW) are licenced to represent Perth as a tree or a sunset or a summer day. Ever seen a selling novel with “Stirling Highway” in it? “Rivervale”? “Leederville”? Straight to remainders. This article in the West is nothing but Perth aestheto-implosion in all its dimensions. Let’s just hope some astronaut will see us from space again one day.
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I’m sure Stirling Highway was in Dave Warner’s City of Light. But yes, the so called attractions are bumpkin dreaming. truth is, Perth is not a tourist city. The things that are good about it are the living things, weather sea beaches, not having to have your car compulsorily inspected every year, blah blah. Nothing for anyone to actually come for a couple of days for.
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yes exactly that’s why surrender is in order but the West is truly seduced and fascinated by its own PR event image of Perth. The West should answer its own question. Why indeed isn’t Oprah coming to Perth? Oh too busy, it’s such a long way. The West believes all those excuses. That’s the horror.
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I read Dave Warner’s novel
as I recall the protagonist of the book went to the old Brewery Ale House, or maybe the Old Stirling, to see Dave Warner’s band perform
let’s all have a collective cringe
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And if you want pompous blowhards, then read The Guardian (UK not Geraldton) or vanity Fucking Fair not Paul Nurry. Their blowhards actually finished their degrees too.
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Excuse me, but I read the Guardian, and I am not pompous and nor do I wear horn-rimmed glasses. As a matter of fact, I listen to lots of heavy metal (some of it by artists of questionable ideological bent), I’m enthusiastically heterosexual, and I drink beer. Not the boutique stuff but. I also attend Murdoch, and not one of those hotbeds of radical intellectual leftism such as Curtin, UWA, Central TAFE, or Edith Cowan. I also read lots of self-help books. Thus, I am 100% behind the West’s campaign in bringing Oprah to Perth. If Oprah came to Perth, she would teach many more people how to help themselves, and once people learn to help themselves there will be less of a need for hospital beds and various other frivolous “social” services.
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I’m talking about the guardian to read teh pompous, not while being pompous.
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I still don’t get it. What’s so pompous about the Guardian? I find their arts and culture segments quite down-to-Earth and without the slightest hints of elitism. It makes the West’s commentary on anything cultural quite onanistically unretsrained in comparison.
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How many layers of irony deep are we now?
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Ball deep.
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I believe that once you get several layers of irony deep, much like the movie Inception, sarcasm slows to the point where it is indistinguishable from not giving a shit
“Are you being sarcastic, dude?”
“I don’t even know anymore.”
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And I won’t hear a bad word spoken of Marina Hyde. Swoon.
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…and do not anyone utter a bad word about Inside Cover. It’s quality investigative whistleblowin’ journalism at its finest.
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Pingback: First they came for the fart gas… | The Worst of Perth
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/17/3014378.htm
Bloody eastern states, stealing out boat people and immigration jobs. Canberra has screwed us over again! We’re just Australia’s reffo cow.
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At least The Voice had the decency to run a front page article of great concern to all. Apparently you can’t get Emu export on tap anywhere in Perth (or possibly just teh arrondissement) – it has Curtin hipsters up in arms!! Local hipsters want local irony in their beers, not some eastern seaboard swill.
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I read that yesterday while pausing for a moment at Dianella Plaza. I’m not sure those Curtin students (business, if I recall) were either hipsters or being ironic – they just seemed to like Export.
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Or possibly local stupidity, CB1.
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Pingback: No-one Cares Enough to Hate it Anymore « Wyrmlog
Brett at free Beer exposes the excruciatingly bad official promo for WA. If we wanted Oprah to immigrate here…
http://freebeer.com.au/2010/09/26/why-oprah-is-not-coming-to-western-australia/
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Tourism promotion is not about encouraging tourism: It is about developing another fucking self perpetuating bureaucracy to provide indecently large salaries for otherwise unemployable MBAs.
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Are you all really that surprised that Oprah isn’t coming to Perth? I’m not…Yes, it would have been wonderful and she could have had the priveledge of sampling this countries hidden beauties. Western Australia is, indeed, an absolutely incredible place BUT does anyone who ever visits the country EVER visit Western Australia???? I think not…. When our “country” plays host to any celebrity, whether it be a rock group or a talk show queen, they don’t visit “Australia”… they visit the Eastern States… And I know this because up till 8 yrs ago, I lived over there. I was brought up there and if anyone was to visit the “country”, you knew that they would be near you somewhere. No worries about tickets, cause they were all around you. WA is most definately the most beautiful, incredible and unappreciated place in the whole country. It’s just a pity that distance and cost is allways a supposed contributing factor. Yes, it would have been lovely for Oprah to visit WA, but not for tourism or an economy boost, but to simply sample the BEST Australia has to offer.
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Yes, it makes me sad to think Oprah might never see the Belltower, Cottesloe Beach, or Kings Park. Her loss.
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I think you may have missed the point Tammy. We don’t want Oprah and this site is called ‘The Wurst of Perth.’
This aint the 720 Facebook page.
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wanker
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Really, what’s BEST about WA ? name any one thing, please.
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Small population; but even that is about to be lost.
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Remember, you’re not in traffic, you are traffic. Everyone thinks the place they live should stay exactly as it was, 10 minutes after they arrived.
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and remember, avoid Loftus Street !
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I would have liked it to be as my next door neighbour described how it was for him in the early ’60s.
When he sold his house in the early ’70s to go to live out bush with his kids, he had to buy new locks for the doors (had never used the keys for the existing ones and so had lost them all), security screens all round and put doors on the garage before the real estate agent would even consider listing the joint.
No car keys either.
A good thing for them that they went out country, I reckon.
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Yep, that’s pretty much how it was, Rolly. Except that we didn’t lose our front door key because we just left it in the lock. Similarly, the car keys were always in the ignition, which was very convenient whenever I wanted to, ahem, borrow, the car. I reckon you’d like Japan.
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Indeed it is, Rolly, speaking of equitable distribution, as the new home of 170,000,000 or so Pakistanis, although Spain might not be too bad. I’m pleased to see the Pope banished to Norfolk Island, but as luck would have it, Koreans are still neighbours.
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white rocks veal with shavings of Manjimup truffle washed down with an Ashbrook semillon
I’m glad she didn’t come. She eats a lot I’m told
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Whose surprised?
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“WA is most definately the most beautiful, incredible and unappreciated place in the whole country.”
No argument there, but
“It’s just a pity that distance and cost is allways a supposed contributing factor.”
is one of the reasons that it remains so; though, sadly, the arrival of thousands of (soon-to-be) cashed-up bogans, is causing a rapid diminution of the those endearing qualities.
We need more money and development like Emmental needs more air bubbles. More equitable distribution of existing wealth, certainly, but more commercial and industrial activity designed to increase the wealth of the already-haves at the cost of environmental and social well-being we can do better without.
Since time immemorial the joys freedoms which nature so generously provides have been plundered by the strong and wealthy: Isn’t it about time that we evolved away from these primitive social ‘norms’?
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….joys and freedoms…..
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Kraft durch Freude
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Anything that is good about this state is balanced by the phenomenon that is Mandurah.
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I’m just glad she’s not bringing her extensive entourage here to Perth, because many of our pavements are just bricks on yellow sand with no mortaring or support or anything, and, y’know, fatties…
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