In which the pond shamelessly abandons old favourites so that the Major, Jolly Joe and the dog botherer might roam wild and free ...

 

The pond can only do so much on a Monday, and was truly shocked, surprised and saddened that there was no room left at the inn for valiant stayers such as Moorice and the Oreo ... but something had to give, and in any case the Major offered a variation on Moorice, and provided much comedy relief, and that's essential on a Monday ...

You see, the pond has been vastly delighted and entertained by the way that the reptiles have been forced to give up on coal, and embrace gas, and yet still can't bear to let coal go, and the Major provided a perfect exemplar of this exquisite torture ...

As always, the Major was the only one to truly understand ...

Passing strange, but we have not yet done with the wonders of gas ...

Naturally the reptiles would put together a photo of two fiends from hell to frighten the readership, and now to the wondrous backflip from coal, with bonus approval of the Donald's climate science denialism

...

Ah indeed, it's those damned Parisians that forced the reptiles to embrace gas ... they had no choice ... but wait, now we come to the bit where the reptiles gaze fondly up each others arses to remind themselves that everything they say is true and quotable ... come on down, Major, show the hive mind at work, by drinking the bromancer kool-aid ...

And indeed the reptiles have reached a pragmatic solution, embracing gas, but still yearning for coal, while magically staying deep in the depths of the Donald's climate science denialism and hatred of climate science alarmists, with their wretched fake, or even faux, science ... and at this point, the pond has to ask, would not the Moorice be proud? 

If the pond had to drop him, then surely dropping him for the Major was the right and proper thing to do ...

And now, as we've been speaking of the Donald, why not a new pond favourite? Well that's to say a reptile favourite, and instead of going with the Oreo doing yet another tedious rant about comrade Dan and the like, surely it's better to keep up with the times?

Oh indeed, indeed, there is much cleverness on view ...

And now to admire the way that the Donald hung around with grifters, crooks, mobsters and criminals of the Don King kind ...

I

ndeed, indeed, and some might think that the Donald is a puppet of Putin, and while that's true, he's also a puppet for the Donald brand ...

But wait, the pond had promised to itself that it wouldn't use Jolly Joe as a cheap way to provide wriggle room for a few cartoons, not while we're ringside with Joe as he calls the shots ...

Besides, what need of cartoons, when the reptiles provide there own illustration, to help out as Jolly Joe yet again invokes the image of a fictional swing voter, with the sort of condescending sneer on his lips that might remind some of the old line about a cigar is a cigar (and how Jolly Joe loved his cigars) ...

The voters will love Barrett?

Former members of People of Praise and religious scholars have described an organization that appears to dominate some members’ everyday lives, in which so-called “heads”, or spiritual advisers, oversee major decisions. Married women count their husbands as their “heads” and members are expected to tithe 5% of their income to the organization.

According to a former member, Adrian Reimers, “all one’s decisions and dealings become the concern of one’s ‘head’, and in turn potentially become known to the leadership”.

Heidi Schlumpf, a national correspondent for National Catholic Reporter, called the group’s level of secrecy “concerning”.

Oh indeed, indeed ... the reptiles belong to a cult and so everybody else will love a cult, even one as really weird and wondrous as People of Praise. Complimentary women can't wait to join, and there's more reading at the Graudian here and here.

Sorry Oreo, sorry Moorice, but Jolly Joe has an advisory firm to plug and the pond has a few cartoons to slip in ...

And so to the bonus for the day, and sorry Oreo, sorry Moorice, no one can match the dog botherer for unmitigated loonery ...

As soon as a reptile writes a line about others being detached from reality, it's a sure sign they've slipped their moorings and headed far off to sea ... a bit like the Donald. As soon as he accuses someone of being a liar, or a crook, or heavily into drugs, you know it's projection, and that the Donald is a bald-faced liar, a crook, and has developed that peculiar sniffle from some kind of addiction ...

What's even funnier is when the dog botherer starts off by pretending that he only occasionally watches the ABC, when all the reptiles are addicted to the sport, and quite frankly probably would have nothing to write about if their ABC wasn't around ...

It's all the usual fun, but the pond is hoping, as we're deep in anal retentive territory, that stray readers won't mind the pond changing the subject entirely ...by drawing attention to Richard Cooke's piece in The Saturday Paper here which delivered a tremendous broadside at another pond favourite, and a reptile killer legend ...

…You might think these gossamer threads of bullshit would be swept away by subsequent events, that the bong-rip reasoning of “everyone dies, man” would look embarrassing after almost a million pandemic deaths. Wrong. Only an amateur columnist trips over trivialities such as real-world invalidation. Here, the lightweight divisional champion is The Australian’s Adam Creighton. Resoundingly wrong and out of his depth, it’s redundant to say Creighton has no experience in these complex areas, akin to saying a crayon has no experience driving a formula one car.

But rarely is such inexpertise combined with such conceit. On social media, as well as in his columns, Creighton has produced an unbroken skein of not only misinformation, but also misunderstanding about Covid-19, some sourced from crackpot international blogs. “Under 60, in good health? Crossing the road is more risky,” he inveighed in April, underestimating the virus’s risk by a factor of 35, according to economist John Quiggin’s calculations. Creighton later repeated the lie that the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attributed only 6 per cent of Covid-19 deaths to the virus itself – a false factoid originating with the QAnon conspiracy (which, characteristically, he claimed not to have heard of).

Creighton has been frequently schooled by economists and public health specialists but has learnt nothing. Replying to the columnist on Twitter, one of these economists, Chris Edmond, a professor of economics at the University of Melbourne, pointed out that “it takes … some awesome degree of self belief to think you know better than experts in not one but two disciplines”. In a sense, it is the belief itself that is the real service being provided. This style of commentary can’t be called “writing” or “thinking” in the traditional senses – it’s an industrial item, in the same category as seafood extender or filler foam, something to be extruded at volume. Research and consideration would only gum up the production line….

…When these people do occasionally endorse forms of fiscal harm, it’s under the most telling circumstances. In 2017, during France’s most recent presidential election, Creighton’s tune was very different. Mentioning en passant that the outside prospect of a Muslim winning one day was “not especially gratifying”, the columnist endorsed Marine Le Pen. His choice, he admitted, would plunge Europe into chaos – “a financial crisis that would make 2008 seem mild” – but it would be necessary to uncouple la République from international finance: “It would be the price to pay for longer-term prosperity.” That choice of dynamic tradeoff is indicative: lockdowns to save lives are fascism and destroying the economy; but actual fascism is great, and worth destroying the economy for.

There's much more - the pond stuck in that elision just so it could get in a few of the juicy bits - and if you don't read The Saturday Paper and yet are a devotee of the reptiles and especially Killer Creighton, why not give it a g?

The pond's only excuse for the detour? Well it's only fair to, as the dog botherer is about to speak of TDS, when in reality, all the reptiles are barking mad, and routinely howl at the moon ...

Actually, it was the Donald himself who said that we'd have to wait and see, and Jolly Joe himself said that the Donald was likely to spend years in litigation, but that's the sublime stupidity of the dog botherer. Apparently he doesn't actually read the lizard Oz, or much else, he's so glued to the ABC ...

And so to a long gobbet to get most of the dog botherer out of the way ...

Stray readers will note that the pond hasn't bothered to get into an argument with the dog botherer, and that deserves an explanation. You see, the dog botherer is attempting to be whimsical and hinting at a domestic life, and offering the suggestion that his better half is full of wisdom, unlike him...

Apparently your dog botherer is just your everyday common or garden reptile moronic fuckwit, incapable of seeing the light and doing something sensible, and who could argue with that?

And now as we've already done "woke", surely the time is right for "virtue-signallers" because when it comes to a moronic set of catch-all terms of abuse, the reptiles run on a very limited supply of gas ...

Oh yes, they could, as surely as the reptiles put a loon like the dog botherer to air ...

And now, having done with the dog botherer and the reptiles for the day, time to celebrate and praise people of praise, with the pond unable to resist a final cartoon, a genuine yearning a for new world ...

In which Dame Slap is banished to the 5 pm Sunday slot ...

 

 

 

 

Every so often, the pond decides to send a reptile to the corner, banish them to a slot, say late afternoon on a Sunday... perhaps for crimes of rampant stupidity and hypocrisy, or simply failing to recognise who and what they are.

 

This is always a likely fate for Dame Slap, an IPA shill and stooge, and a rampant hypocrite to boot, and her piece on her being an (alleged) feminist and being in thought spirit with Ruth Bader Ginsburg is about as low a form of trading off, and hypocritical duplicity as is likely to see at any time of day, any day of the week, in a reptile rag notorious for this sort of behaviour ...

 

Let us not forget that Dame Slap is an authoritarian, in love with all forms of authoritarian behaviour ...

 

That's it, that's Dame Slap ... now get on with your blather about teachable moments ...

 

Oh fucketty fuck, please, enough already. We all know that you're fine with pussy-grabbing, and that you donned the MAGA pussy-grabber's hat. Please, let's not have talk of feminism, let's just remember when you did it ...

 

And that's why your talk of Ginsburg and feminism really sticks in the craw, and sees you banished to a Sunday arvo slot ...

Here's your feminism in action ...

 

 

Do you think no one remembers what you wrote, and what you stood for, you IPA shill and stooge?

 

And so to the next stage, where we're supposed to forget all Dame Slap's endless blather about judicial activists ruining everything ...

And she still can't let it go ...

 

There was another one, way back in 2003, as recorded at the SMH here ...

...An opposing position was unveiled by Janet Albrechtsen in Wednesday's The Australian. She declared that the majority in this case have "hurled Australia down the path of wrongful birth . . . This was judicial activism at its most audacious".

The High Court had embarked on a "remarkable devaluation of human life". Thank God there are guardians like Alan Jones, John Howard and John Anderson to stand up and fill the moral void. And of course her legal hero, Dyson Heydon, wrote the most stirring of the minority judgements.

Where the Government's "Capital C Conservative" Justice Ian Callinan, sat in all this was most upsetting. He was firmly with the majority, largely because he found that was where the settled legal principle lay. How annoying.

But what of of Justice Heydon, who late last year made a speech that inflated the virtues of strict legalism in the course of denouncing the evils of judicial activism? The speech was thought at that time as his job application for the High Court vacancy created by Justice Mary Gaudron's departure.

Heydon decried judicial attempts to further "some political, moral or social program" and he denounced a tendency in judicial reasoning where there was "much talk of policy, interests and values". It is up to Parliament to change the law in a substantive way, not the judges. He has a glorious final flourishing swipe at judges who divine "community values". They were the "soigne, fastidious, civilised, cultured and cultivated patricians of the progressive judiciary, our philosopher kings and enlightened despots".

So it was with some amusement that we find Justice Heydon's thinking in the Melchior case shot through with moral and social values, carefully encased as they were in a fine coating of self-basting law. For instance we had this statement of fact as Justice Heydon grappled with the difficulty of accessing actual loss: "Many children, even well-behaved ones, cause their parents immense trouble, and ill-behaved ones cause even more trouble and very little joy."

Ah, Dyson Heydon... now there's a fine fellow for female company ...

Here, have a cartoon, it'll  help you get through the last gobbet ...

 

How handy it is to forget you donned the MAGA cap ...

Dame Slap talking of great listeners, while at the same time blathering on about sludgemakers and soupy offerings on social media?

Dame Slap a listener? Nope, Dame Slap is a MAGA cap wearer, and an IPA stooge and shill, and she doesn't listen to anyone outside her particular Heydon-esque, Donald-esque echo chamber ...

Meanwhile, in a galaxy not too far away ... with more immortal Rowe here ...

 

In which Polonius does his usual prattle, but the pond is troubled at the thought of our Gracie and the Angelic one going reptile rogue ...

 

 

 

 

The pond is usually sceptical about technical terms such as "anal retentive" ... Miriam-Webster has it as  "exhibiting or typifying personality traits (such as frugality and obstinacy) held to be psychological consequences of toilet training", and the wiki has it as "An anal retentive person is a person who pays such attention to detail that it becomes an obsession and may be an annoyance to others", but dismisses as pop psychology any link between potty training and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders ...

Yet how else to explain the anal-retentive obsessive-compulsive nature of prattling Polonius's fixation on the ABC?

 

The pond should here admit that it uses the ABC in moderation, and very rarely watches the 7.30 show, or The Drum, or pretty much anything else the ABC has to offer.

That's not to comment on the quality of the shows, or what they have to offer - how could the pond do it, not having watched? - so much as to suggest that there's life  outside the ABC, and in any case, it's wise to be moderate in consumption, and in assessment of the significance of the ABC in life, the world, and whatever ...

Yet all the reptiles are obsessed with the ABC. Haven't they got anything better to do? Is this what their lives revolve around? Judging by the anal retentive Polonius, riven by his obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD if you will),  they're like a pisspot stuck in a brewery, addicted and swilling it down to pass the time ...

 

Polonius quoting the Major? Polonius referencing the Bolter? Is there a technical term for reptiles being up each other,  so far up it's impossible to see daylight?

The pond  is just asking for a friend, because there's something deeply weird and wonderful about it all, and the reason why the pond wastes time reading the reptiles, when in reality it would probably be better off watching the ABC ...

 

Now it will be noted that the pond has entirely ignored what Polonius  has prattled about, (a) because it's an excessively familiar whine and moan, one the reptiles indulge in on an almost daily  basis, and (b) because it's the underlying psychological and emotional issues that bring out the pond's amateur Freud.

In this case, it's also because the pond has kept our Gracie to hand as a counter-balance, because the pond is fascinated by the way she has gone reptile rogue ...

What a weird juxtaposition it was ...

 

 

Was it just the pond,  or was our Gracie accusing prattling Polonius of shrieking?

 

To be fair, it's simply not possible for an anal-retentive obsessive-compulsive desiccated coconut to shriek,  so our Gracie couldn't have been having a go at Polonius, but she really sounded quite un-reptile ...

 

What? Not a word about the ABC? Talk of an actual pandemic? And peoples' lives, as if they somehow mattered? What is it with these weird Victorians and their mysterious ways?

 

But Gracie, Mad Max was shot in Victoria. And currently you're living in a state run in rampant communist fascist nanny state government Orwellian 1984 dictatorship style. And the ABC refuses to report on it, and apparently you can't see it. Or so the reptiles tell the pond, because they don't give a fig about dying so long as they can bunker down and let others fix the economy, or die trying ...

Don't you read the reptiles? What is this talk of lived experience? The reptiles live their lives endlessly wanking as they watch the naughty, wicked, dirty ABC ... shouldn't you be doing the same?

 

Oh that's mighty cruel, that talk of inaccurate, unrelenting and demeaning reptiles, and worse still a cheap shot at the bunker in Surry Hills. Look, you've lost the grand final, live with it, and please head off to a cave where you might, with the Major and Polonius, look at the Platonic ABC shadows flickering on the wall ... and in the meantime, remember, be not so proud, after all, it's Victoria that hosts the Bolter and the HUN ... and that's way worse than Mad Max.

And now, please allow the pond to pause for a moment with the immortal Rowe, with more pausing available here ...

 

 

And so to the bonus for the day, and for a moment, the pond almost thought that the Angelic one had gone rogue with our Gracie ...

 

 

A plea to give poor pollies a break, accompanied by a shot of comrade Dan putting on a mask?

It seemed like she'd been watching the ABC far too much for her own good ...

 

Oh come now, this is all most unreptile-like. Can we please begin to sound like a reptile ...

 

Say what? We're not living in a 1984 Orwellian commie fascist dictatorship? The curfews are temporary? It's not a nanny state of big government, as the dog botherer bleated yesterday, but governments caring about the lives of the citizenry, and anxious to avoid unnecessary deaths? But what of Killer Creighton's killing fields?

Please, let's watch less of the ABC, and please, let's do something to restore the Angelic one's status as a certified reptile lover of loons ... 

And sure enough, she jumped the shark and nuked the onion-muncher fridge ...

 

 

 

Sorry, that's First Dog here, the pond has no idea how the Dog snuck in ahead of the Angelic tone, ruining the mood before it had even begun ...

 

Good old Angelic one. Toss another knight on the barbie, she came through. She really didn't go rogue, she's still a dinkum reptile, she didn't do a Gracie, she just saved it all up for that line about the onion muncher being an old-fashioned unreconstructed Christian gentleman who lives in the real world ...

It made the pond's day, and that only left the infallible Pope to wrap it all up ...

 

In which the pond offers dog botherer shrieking, bromancer cannibalism and Lloydie triumphalist futurism ...

The pond must begin by humbly apologising to the NBN. 

Everything the pond said recently about its situation and condition was entirely wrong, and it was entirely appropriate for the NBN to strip the pond of its internet access privileges for a day. The pond understands, and unconditionally agrees, that this wasn't yet another casual fuck up, with dead people at the other end of the phone, it was what the pond deserved for its impudence.

But now privileges have been restored, mysteriously, magically and what better way to celebrate than with an interminable whinge, whine and moan from that master of whiners, the dog botherer ...

The pond should note that the reptiles themselves seemed to realise that it was a tedious outing, and so they put in illustrations to break it up a little ...

 

Hmmm, should the reptiles have put in a snap of Josh? Isn't the dog botherer saying that he's one of the head nannies in the nanny state? He certainly looks like a smug, self-satisfied nanny. 

Oh comrade Bill, where did you go, why must Josh now take the nanny state can? 

Now back to the whining and the moaning. There might be a global pandemic going down, but the dog botherer has much navel-gazing and fluff gathering to do ...

What a shocking illustration of the nanny state at work. Someone wearing a mask. Truly the pond almost fainted at the sight. Why on even closer inspection they were both wearing a mask. Will this oppression never end? Oh sure there might be a global pandemic going down, and Australia has escaped the worst of it, but stay, the dog botherer has much more navel-gazing and fluff-gathering to do ...

 

 

Indeed, indeed, leeches and bludgers and kill joys everywhere and none of them doing the useful work of the dog botherer, shouting at a television camera and pounding away at a keyboard and giving the world his blessed insights every week. 

 

Some might complain he never shuts up, but give it to him, when it comes to whining and moaning and being negative, he's indefatigable ... and if only he'd been in charge, why we might have had a new splendid war in Iraq or perhaps an astonishing Utegate, and wouldn't that have taught the virus a lesson quixstix ...

 

It does really stick in the reptile, and especially the dog botherer craw, that comrade Dan seems to be bringing the virus under control in Victoria, and elsewhere in the reptile pages there were a couple of dissenters ...

But they must wait their turn on the morrow. Today is dog botherer shrieking day, though at that uplifting talk of Ming the Merciless, the reptiles felt the need to insert an example of what they presumably thought was a lifter, meeting the great man in South Australia ... and the pond was so delighted, it had to break it out and make it loom large in the imagination ...

Ah humble lifter Ian Wilson, who started life eating coal on factory floor, and then through diligent work, became tar on highways and so made his fortune, and never looked back ...

Oh wait on a tic ...

Ian Bonython Cameron Wilson AM (2 May 1932 – 2 April 2013) was an Australian politician. He was a member of the Liberal Party and represented the Division of Sturt in federal parliament (1966–1969, 1972–1993). He held ministerial office in the Fraser Government from 1981 to 1983.
Wilson was born in Adelaide, South Australia, the son of Sir Keith Wilson, a prominent United Australia Party and Liberal Party politician. His mother, Elizabeth, (Lady Betty Wilson CBE), was a granddaughter of Sir John Langdon Bonython, owner of The Advertiser and a member of the first federal House of Representatives, and a great-granddaughter of Sir John Cox Bray, South Australia's first native-born premier.
Wilson was educated at St Peter's College and Adelaide University, where he graduated in law, and at Magdalen College, Oxford (S.A. Rhodes Scholar 1955), where he did a higher law degree. He was a solicitor and company director before entering politics. (and more at his wiki here).

Talk about silver spoons. Talk about Adelaide privilege. Could the reptiles have picked a more privileged croweater prat for their example of a lifter meeting Ming the Merciless?

By golly, it put the pond in a good mood, and it did the last dog botherer shriek and moan and whine in a canter ...

 

 

Should we have bombed the shit out of Iraq? Ah, but don't ask the dog botherer ... when it comes to ominous overeach, he knows all about it ... but is there anything more nauseating than an habitual overreacher suddenly discovering the error of his ways, and heading off to a street corner, or the Murdochian domain, to preach about his many, many overreaching sins?

And so to the bromancer, shunted into second spot, because nobody can moan, whine and shriek like the bromancer ...

 

What a splendid illustration to begin the bromancer, and handy too, in case some mug punter, some sucker and loser, is taken in by the occasional feeble efforts at both siderism that the bromancer occasionally indulges in ...

 

In short, and in essence, she is a loon of the bromancer kind, a fundamentalist Catholic loon ...dressed up under nonsense words of the "originalist" kind, which, for anyone wondering, means getting around in a horse-drawn buggy with a cunning exemption that allows you to use batteries and still claim that you're an originalist ...

As for that talk of being bound fully by Roe v. Wade, Barrett has already cleared the way by announcing that "stare decisis is a self-imposed constraint upon the Court's ability to overrule a precedent." She's also explained that overturning Roe v. Wade wouldn't mean ending abortion. It would just mean that the states could decide, and they'd end abortion, and all she was doing was driving around in a horse-drawn buggy, with a stare decisis battery ...

And we all know that there are many points to be won by executing a backflip in good style ...

 

 

Oh the pond had to break, it had to slip in a cartoon, it's the American way, and there's a lot more Xian bromancer to endure ...

 

Um, might the pond humbly propose an amendment: that's the grotesque state to which chairman Rupert Murdoch has helped reduce American politics and the court itself, and muh lud, might the pond now humbly submit Fox and Friends and indeed the bromancer himself, as evidence?

 

The pond has to admire the bromancer's both siderism cunning. Getting the craven Craven and Bob Carr to agree that the Supreme Court is partisan is as sublime a statement of the bleeding obvious that the pond knew it had to go another cartoon ...

 

By golly it's turning into a long march through the bromancer today ... especially when you have to swallow lines like "respected analyst Andrew Sullivan", such an absurd juxtaposition of words that the pond almost reached for another cartoon, but decided to get it done quickly ...

 

Indeed, indeed, hand the man another beer, it's the only way to forget ... because see how the bromancer, in his even-handed way, hints that Kavanaugh was a Catholic, and therefore entirely innocent, and yet Joe might well be a saucy rogue ... 

Oh it may or may not be true, though strangely the Republicans might verify it easily, and so might chairman Rupert, but they strangely decided not to go there ...

The pond has no idea why, though at one time, the pond was given to understand that pussy-grabbing was an entirely innocent sport, just as wandering into dressing rooms full of naked women was fun, and hanging around with Ghislaine Maxwell was fine - oh let's wish her well, the Donald wishes her well ... but now we must move on to the killer bromancer punchline that's supposed to wrap everything up ...

 

Will Senate Democrats impeach the gospel? Or will they send to the Supreme Court a delusional cannibal who wants to be a handmaiden to her patriarchal imaginary friend? What a triumph for complimentary women everywhere ...

Only someone trained by the Jesuits could think it was a killer punchline, but at least it puts the nonsensical, feeble attempts at both siderism attempted by the bromancer in its Catholic place ...

And so a few more cartoons before moving on to the bonus for the day ...

 

And so to the bonus for the day. The pond realises it's been a long and tedious march through the dog botherer's moaning and the bromancer's intrepid cannibalistic transubstantive Catholicism, but there is good news, because Lloydie is back ...

How the pond missed Lloydie. Sure, he's already saved the Amazon, and it's now looking in fine shape, but there's now work to be done at home, because Lloydie, along with his climate science denialism, has always been a first class suck, and now sucking on wondrous technological solutions is all the go ... as he joins the beefy Angus on a joyous carpet ride into the futurist future ...

 

Yes, yes, there are technological solutions everywhere, but it seems not enough to commit to being carbon neutral by 2050, or even 2060. 

The pond does appreciate Lloydie's attempt to elide over the coal situation, and his understanding that to mention gas might be considered indelicate by some, but let us have hope that something will work out somehow at some time in the future ... because it seems that the problem that never needed fixing must now be addressed.

But how to address it? The pond is glad you asked that rhetorical question, because the pond wanted to throw jaffas down the aisle when it read "The mega trend is undeniably for a lower-emissions future."

And you can join that mega trend. Oh yes, you can ...

 

By golly, the pond has to hand it to Lloydie. When it comes to mega trends and mega sucks, he has a full suite of endless clichés ... and they gush out like mega suet, as if he's been indulging with beefy Angus in a meat protein high, as the two climate science denialists come together to sort out the future with high tech ... because anything else would be a dull old slog, and really boring ...

Why there it is again ... the mega-trend, now with a hyphen, but nonetheless, part of a huge sustainability mega-trend which will define the 21st century.

But what is this alarmist talk of a planet bursting at the seams, and producing a profound calamity, at least as profound as the virus, which suggests that Liveris hasn't the first clue about genuine calamity, the calamity that climate scientists are predicting, or pretty much anything else, except that gas is pretty good, pretty good ...

Now the pond knows by this point that some stray pond readers will already be in a frothing, foaming frenzy, and keen to make some technical points, note the odd error, and the bloated stupidity and ostentatious technological futurism, but please, let us look to the future, and untried technologies as a great chance to speculate, because wind and solar on their own are just so dull and unimaginative ...

 

Lordy, lordy, it must be strange to live in the world of the reptiles. Only yesterday the pond was living in the Caterist's gaseous world, and the day before that, the pond was with the bromancer, shedding tears for coal, and seeing, as if an angel was descending from heaven bathed in golden rays, a vision for the wondrous deeds the black stuff might yet perform in the future ...if only dinkum clean Oz coal was allowed to do it ...

And indeed it turns out that they weren't far off the mark ...

 

Yes, coal and gas are the future, and yet innovation is the future, and yes, trust in beefy Angus. He might not have the first clue as to how those things ended up in the Lord Mayor's in tray, but he surely knows ways to overcome, better, faster, more cost-effective ... just make sure you put it all in a company with revolving door directorships so that all your mates can get in on the technological, grant-giving, government picks a winner act ...

Oh it's going to be a fine future, a future full of learning, a consistent part of our history, a set of challenges to be overcome and grants to be doled out ... 

They really know how to do it ... just like the fucking useless NBN ... a sure sign of where we're heading...