☣ They avoid you.
☣ They don’t smile any more.
☣ They stop speaking up or contributing and they just agree with you and follow your instructions.
☣ They work to rule, such as starting and finishing right on time, or coming in late and leaving early.
☣ They avoid small talk and only speak when they have to discuss work.
☣ They miss deadlines, their productivity drops and they don’t seem to care.
☣ They take more sick days.
☣ They take a lot of personal calls.
☣ They take extra-long lunch breaks.
☣ They use more internet bandwidth.
☣ They only focus on the short term and are not interested in improvements or planning.
☣ Your customers tell you standards have dropped.

Oh, no, let me guess. You figured that by removing a timely and legitimate method for viewers to watch the show within a couple of hours of its US release, you would force a handful of extra punters to take out one of your lousy subscriptions?

Well here’s a slow, sad little golf clap for you, Foxtel.

What you’re actually doing by trying to shore up your monopoly is guaranteeing that a whole heap of viewers who ponied up good, honest money to watch that series by a method other than membership of your exclusive club are now more likely to sign up to channel Bit Torrent.

Each week I watch Q&A praying for an expert, begging for someone who knows what they’re talking about. And each week I get Joe Hildebrand accompanied by a flurry of tweets by the emotionally unstable. In fact Nick Osbaldiston and Jean-Paul Gagnon recently found in their research on Q&A that only 5 per cent of panellists since 2008 had a research background. Even in an entire show devoted to education issues, Professor Gonski sat in the shadows while Pyne and Garrett proffered glib inanities and vapid insults. No one learned anything.

Finding #1
U.S. forces, in many instances, used interrogation techniques on detainees that constitute torture. American personnel conducted an even larger number of interrogations that involved “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment. Both categories of actions violate U.S. laws and international treaties. Such conduct was directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation.

Finding #3
There is no firm or persuasive evidence that the widespread use of harsh interrogation techniques by U.S. forces produced significant information of value. There is substantial evidence that much of the information adduced from the use of such techniques was not useful or reliable.

There are certain commentators in the tabloid press whose stock in trade is to stoke the fires of social rejection against vulnerable individuals for no reason other than prejudice. They instigate witch hunts. That we tolerate these individuals and give them a platform in the 21st century is a poor reflection on our claim to civilisation.

Now is tha winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by dis sun of York;
And all tha cloudz dat lour’d upon our house
In tha deep bosom of tha ocean buried.
Now is our brows bound wit victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up fo’ monuments;
Our stern alarums chizzled ta merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches ta delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mountin barded steeds
To fright tha soulz of fearful adversaries,
Dude capers nimbly up in a ladyz chamber
To tha lascivious pleasin of a lute.

I went to cover the war… behind the crude but serious belief that you had to be able to look at anything, serious because I acted on it and went, crude because I didn’t know, it took the war to teach it, that you are as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything you do. The problem was that you didn’t always know what you were seeing until later, maybe years later, it just stayed stored there in your eyes…