Why don't people address "substantive issues" ?

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New Mandala blog over at Australian National University seems to be a little old school as far as open discussion of issues is concerned.

The blog is no longer allowing posts by people who disagree with them, or very few at least. Seems like their advocacy of non-censorship applies to everyone but themselves.

Anyway, I continue to disagree with them. I will just make my posts to this blog instead and promise to be way more critical of their little ongoing charade.

Why not more "substantive issues" rather than the never-ending partisan game of ping pong we are bombarded with:

Thelma Norton: "I was kind of hoping for more discussion of the substantive issues …Connors op-ed had, I think, begun the kind of useful discussion that NM called for a while back. That’s an opportunity lost." (Source: Comment)

Me: I agree, but for that details must be addressed.

For instance, there is a UDD sponsored radio station in Bangkok, presumably for taxi drivers, that provides a big list of programmes that supposedly helped rural folk. Well, did they? The analyses that I’ve seen haven’t been very convincing and there doesn’t seem to be have been much local provincial media coverage on how these rural funds were used, whether they are siphoned off as favours for the locally politically connected. A couple of foreign media stories about rural folk does not really do the trick.

There are also agricultural support programmes that are never mentioned here with important questions like who actually gets them? Do local powerful middlemen get them? Do they really use up much of the budget?

Never a mention of Auditor General Jaruvan’s work, supposedly because this would mean violating one’s partisan position.

There is also the crucial issue of central bank independence and the conflict between the current finance minister and the central bank governor who has done a very good job at keeping Thailand’s financial sector sound, but whom of course takes loads of abuse from people who have no long-term perspective as far as the economy is concerned. In light of the current world economic crisis, the capital controls that the central bank was roundly abused for, almost seem presicient.

All of this requires much more mental effort than mindlessly joining the partisan chorus on either side. (Source: Comment)