I have some cumqquars that desperately need picking, i don't think i'm gona have the time to get them all this year, butbi want at least a bag. Besides that, probably vaccum and dust the house. So a pretty boring day ahead.

I'll have a stab at an answer. I think there's a range of reasons.

These magazines are produced by people will the skills, knowledge, resources, and contacts to produce a physical magazine. The southerly is produced by someone who was at the last indie paper to shut down here in Albany.

It's a side hustle. Get some advertisers to pay you to put their ad in a magazine at cafes and wherever else.

The online distribution just isn't relevant to these producers. They won't ever get any revenue from it. They're not interested in increasing their online readership. They don't know how to produce websites, because their skills and experience are in print.

In some ways, making their content available in a shareable way, like a blog post, makes it ripe for posting to facebook, which will ultimately reduce their readership.

Allowing you to see their production in a pdf viewer is a concession that allows you to show someone else some article you read at the cafe or whatever.

24! I have a choice of 4. I too am a little * cough * disillusioned with the candidates. They either think too big or too small and dont seem to understand the capabilities of a local government. Thankfully most understand that Australia's strength is our diverse peoples. Ok i do live in a very 'woke' area. I am proud of you for wanting to get involved in the local governmemt elections and i wish more people did.

We’re voting this year, too many nutjobs want power.

On a related note, even current members of mainstream parties hide their extreme beliefs. Nazis especially know their ideas aren't popular and won't always blurt them out like the ones in the article. The grapevine is important!

Example: Louise Black ran in 2024 as a Liberal Party candidate in Kingston Council, Victoria. https://aussie.zone/post/15409047

A lot of cookers are big on 'freedom' and 'liberty' rhetoric. I'm not against these concepts, and there are many valid complaints about our governments curtailing our liberties, but it's a centre point for many of the anti-vax 'freedom for me, not for thee' Freedom Movement oddballs.

Bah, these bloody pdfs, i'm gona have to email one of these papers one day and ask what the deal is with these. I'd love to be able to refer to papers like Post but they're done the same way.

I had a brief discussion with the Perth Voice editor when that site went down earlier this year, apparently they reached a maximum on memory they could store for that website? I don't really understand that explanation though. But if they're going offline like they have then maybe its too expensive for these papers to have their articles accessible in a more online friendly format. I don't know, as i say, i'm gona have to contact one of these people one of these days and understand the issue.

Nope, not any more.

We had an indie paper but it was pretty pathetic and the inevitable insolvency happened several years ago.

There is southerly magazine but its only published as a pdf.

I have an unrelated question, but since your an Albany local you may know of something. I's looking pretty hard while i's down there last to see if there was any independent journo's in Albany, that i could track and post their stuff on this community from time to time. I couldn't find any, just ABC and Stokes. Closest i could find was a Denmark paper that seems okay, formats not very link aggregator friendly though.

Do you know of anybody/organisations down Albany way that i can link to on here?

Yeah - you've touched on one of the reasons I'm so grumpy about it. A City councillor has a governance role.

They consider and set city policy and review and approve executive actions. There's not really any scope to be anti-woke or anti-anything really unless you squint really hard. The majority of the job is understanding the concerns of residents and balancing that against the advice of experts and the difficulties encountered by the executive.

It's not really a platform from whence to dispense your authoritarian demands.

DEI? Fucks sakes, do they have to import every little detail of their American culture war psycho dramas.

Whats the "dei" initiative they're all worked up about in Albany? They repaint the cannons at the memorial a "woke" colour? Not enough dead Whales on the beer cans? Too much windfarm noise?

Edit: insert word, dead

Yep, this has struck my mind as well.

Yeah i have a tinfoil hat theory that they are trying to do what they did in the US and try to rot local gov to then bring it into state and eventually federal.

When the Labor government previously attempted to change the laws in 2019 the debate got bogged down as Liberal upper-house MP Nick Goiran delivered an epic filibuster speech that ended up lasting 22 hours over multiple sitting days.

I had no idea filibusters were a thing in Australia, i hope thats been removed as a possible tactic, its such an anti-democratic use of Parliamentary time.

We were down in Pemberton, i think it was June, far out that place is so cold and wet. Didn't help that the place we were staying was a fairly run down cottage, shame because the other cottages in town that were well maintained looked awesome!

I think thats definitely the State Governments line of thinking, if i'm reading the quotes at the end of the article right.

I fully support that, because i've never understood why local democracy is treated as less of citizens responsibility than the State and Federal, but i don't know if it'll help drive better candidate selection. I suppose its one of yhose things you don't know until you try, so why not try.

How expensive would it be for compulsory voting in local elections? I find that the candidates for local elections can be lacklustre so maybe more people would be interested if there was a more rigorous process?

Its definitely a problem that has risen in our colourbond modernity. In other words, i blame the lowering levels of community participation for the fact many people don't know who they're voting for.

Edit: I also think many council areas have too many people in them. I haven't looked at it, but i bet number of councils has not matched population growth. So how is someone supposed to know a set of 5 or 6 candidates from upwards of 10,000 people in their area? Be lucky if you know one or two.

We shouldn't have local council elections, none of us know who TF these people are. Or we should have mandatory party affiliations in local council elections.

Be extra sure about the candidates thos year. Just found out one near my area has made himself look very reasonable, with reasonable sounding positioning around transparency in local government. And quite good signage, only to find out down the grapevine this guys an ex-One Nation candidate, so they're out there trying to hide their turd beliefs as well.

So "way" down south in Albany, we've had a bitterly cold and miserable winter. Yes, more so than usual.

It seems to have broken over the last week or so, but I'm very much looking forward to not feeling cold all day and night.

What a beautiful time of year.

Yeah, i like how they do these historical stories on Perth is OK! Tried to look for a bit more info on the State Library website, no bueno.

This looks really interesting as a snap shot of Perth culture over the years.

I wouldn't call it hot, but its nice not to have a jumper on. Actually drove with the windows down yesterday.

It's like 26 degrees max in Perth? You tried taking your jacket off?