Turtle pulling its head in

Dear loyal readers,

I'm pulling the Turtle's head in -- closing this site down -- for the following reasons:

Firstly, the ABC is coming under too much governmental and right-wing attack. See this article and all these. I would hate to do anything to give ammunition to these iconoclasts, ideologues and philistines who are out to privatise and destroy one of the world's greatest media institutions.

Secondly, my workload is too great and I'm consolidating. As Thoreau wrote, "Simplify! Simplify!" Any ABC-related material as it occurs will now be at my main blog, Wilson's Blogmanac. I invite you to subscribe to that for free.

Thirdly, since Turtles started, there has been a marked improvement as to the repetition of programs. Early on in this blog, I bemoaned the fact that Radio National programs were endlessly repeated, and I suggested that listeners would prefer something from the vaults rather than repeats of what we heard the day before. RN is trying, it seems. For example, at 5.30 AM we are getting some pretty good old British comedy such as 'My Word', 'The Goons' and my favourites, 'Just a Minute' and Sunday morning's 'I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue', which is a lot better than what we were getting before.

As a closing remark, I would hope that my criticisms over the past 20 months will not go unheeded. The ABC does need some attention in the matters I've raised. The standards of journalism and the use of our beautiful language have declined markedly over recent years, and if the ABC is to defend itself against te aforementioned enemies, it would do well to get its act together. Not a day passes without primary school errors being foisted upon Radio National listeners, and that simply is not good enough.

So, the time has come to leave this blog here as an archive, and I bid you happy travelling. Thank you for your supportive comments since I began 'Turtles All the Way Down'. I hope you enjoyed your time here, as I did.

Abundance and gratitude,

Pip Wilson

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