The view from Disneyland — you can see the Newscorpse bunkers from here

There have been two important speeches at the National Press Club in the past week or so. One of them got bucket loads of media coverage and has turned into a national story of gargantuan significance. EM covered it here.

The second NPC speech received some coverage, but there have been few ripples across the pond and the story has died. However, EM can’t let it go because it is a subject dear to our heart — Freedom of the Press.

Just two days after Two Punch delivered his wooden and self-wounding speech on Monday, perhaps fatally injuring his own prime ministership and his political party in the process, the chair of the Australian Press Council, Professor Julian Disney, gave an address to the gathered scribes and interested onlookers.

Disney’s speech won’t kill off the Press Council, but he is leaving soon anyway and his replacement has been announced, Professor David Weisbrot; so, in some ways, the address was a valedictory.

Julian Disney – out the door

David Weisbrot, into the hot seat

Disney also used the speech to make some thinly-veiled comments about the role of destabilisation and undermining of the Council’s authority by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorpse.

Dopey Dawkins gives atheists a bad name

I’ve been a Level 7 Atheist for as long as I can remember; the idea of “god” always seemed strange to me. I was fascinated by science as a boy growing up in early 60s England. I loved “outer space” and stories about the undersea world. My first brutal encounter with “the Scriptures” was at Prince Edward’s Infants in Sheffield. I drew a picture story of taking a “rocket ship” into space to meet up with God; it seemed logical to me – a child of Sputnik – that if Heaven was where the Bible said it was, somewhere “up there”, we should be able to visit the place.

My teacher, the twitchy Miss Gamble, took great umbrage at my insolence and ignorance. I was hauled to the front of the class and given “the slipper” across my buttocks. I had, it seems, offended both Church and State with my childish views of materialism and space travel.