Wednesday, April 22, 2015

In which the pond enjoys the stench of hypocrisy in the morning ...


Of course David Pope nailed it all in one - and more excellent Popery here - but on we must plod in his dazzling footsteps.

What's this, a rising gorge and an incipient note of fresh floral nausea, with subtle herbaceous and grassy undertones?

Is the pond the only one who finds the nausea from the stench of the hypocrisy occasionally overpowering and overwhelming?

Especially when that sort of splash sits on the same digital page  with this splash:

It's all there in Veterans group use Anzac centenary to fire up over pension reforms, and it's always the same, the cheap rhetoric and the hollow pieties, followed by the cash grab and the penny pinching.

This time the irony's even richer, because having done the dirt, Abbott's headed off to Gallipoli to don the sackcloth and ashes and keen and moan about the diggers.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is under fire from groups representing military pensioners and war widows who say the government's proposed changes to veterans' payments threaten the quality of life and dignity in retirement of nearly 300,000 people who sacrificed for Australia. 
Mr Abbott, who is en route to Turkey for the Anzac centenary at Gallipoli, met with the leadership of the RSL last month but refused to back down on a decision to index payments to the rate of inflation rather than wages.
Veterans groups have been working behind the scenes since the budget but recent meetings between the Federation of Totally and Permanently Incapacitated Ex-Servicemen & Women (known as TPI), the Defence Force Welfare Association and the Alliance of Defence Service Organisations resolved to increase the pressure to coincide with Anzac Day and as Treasurer Joe Hockey finalises his second budget. 
"It's all very well to commemorate the fallen – and we support the centenary commemorations – but we have to fully support the living as well," TPI national vice-president Pat McCabe told Fairfax Media.
The TPI wrote to Mr Abbott this week, reminding him of the words of Prime Minister Billy Hughes who said in 1917: "We say to them, 'You go and fight and when you come back we will look after your welfare' ... we have entered into a bargain with the soldier, and we must keep it!" 
"It's that bargain they have broken," Ms McCabe said.

Billy Hughes, the greatest ratbag of all?

Oh well never mind, and the pond should perhaps declare an interest, having benefited as a child from Legacy, but there's nothing like the moment when the cash hits the road that the pond's infallible detector of sanctimonious bullshit springs into action.

The change is expected to save $65.1 million in 2017 but the cumulative effect will erode the value of veterans' pensions by more each year as time goes on. Legislation to facilitate the change has been introduced in the House of Representatives but is yet to be tested in a hostile Senate.

Enough already, before the pond has some kind of seizure.

And then there was this little joke from Rowe today, and more Rowe here:


Well yes, and the pond was especially moved to see this from the reptiles of Oz:


Oh no, they didn't go there, did they? Even the pond knows that to use an extreme weather event is likely to send the world's greatest climate scientists, the Bolter and the Pellists, into something of a frenzy:

...raindrops keep falling on his head. 
Sydney rainfall in the 24 hours to 9am yesterday: 119mm.

Oh they did, they did.

Do they have any idea of how ineffably stupid they sound?

Probably not, the lizard people are never big on science ... but hey, the pond is big enough to go there. Do they realise that California has had to use Star Trek technology and William Shatner to sort out its drought?  Or something like that ... you can see Bill on K5 news here, but the pond accepts no liability for any damage, to emotions or rationality ...

But as always, it's time to put away childish things, and think like adults, and perforce that means joining the reptiles of Oz on their lifelong learning lessons.

First up today is one of the world's most famous climate scientists:


Poor Moorice is in the grip of a deep funk:


Okay, time for a pause. Just how did we get from celebrating bullet trains in Communist Shanghai to deploring the state of Europe because of radical leftism and dangerous progressive thinking?

Could it be that the fascist charms of communist China work like the lustrous scent of myrrh and frankincense in Moorice's nostrils?

So it seems, but hey ho on we go, and the pond urges you to remember that this is Tony Abbott's business advisor speaking:


Yes, it's coal, coal, coal for Australia (and India) and hey let's freeze activist bank accounts, because hey that's how they do business in communist states, and now if only Tony would appoint me chief Kommissar, by golly, things would be different and better ...

But much as the pond would like to brood and dwell with Moorice, and perhaps reach for the stars, or at least land on the moon, there's other urgent advice pending.

The pond has often wondered what's the best way to negotiate with minorities. Start off by calling them moral gnats, dummies, doofuses, lowlifes, scumbags, losers or dropkicks, or some other pleasantry?

Silly pond, we should have turned to a master of negotiating ploys:


Pygmies! Oh why didn't the pond think of that.

Perhaps said with a sinister sneer and a curling of the lips and a tossing of ash from the cigarette holder while adjusting the cravat. Should one be carrying a white Persian cat, stroking it gently, while saying in velvet tones, 'now listen up, pygmies ...'

Is there any more of this invaluable wisdom to hand?


Yes, it's yet another bout of demonising the cross bench, and hit seems the certain way to charm  and woo them is to call them eccentric, perhaps craven, pygmies.

No wonder the Abbott government works so well, and negotiates so capably and with such consistent and excellent policies too ...

Could we please have another dose of sneering condescension from a tremendously wise sophisticate?

You have only to ask the reptiles, and as your anxious, routinely loss-making servants, they are only too anxious to please:


Yes, and if they make all that genuine commitment of time and intellectual effort before chancing their hand, no doubt they too can get to piss four million dollars against the wall on the likes of Bjorn Lomborg ...

There's just one question. If this is the sort of offensive, fuckwitted, pollywaffle condescension we can expect from a sniggering academic, laughing at pygmies, who's going to educate the useless tools that pass themselves off as educators?

(Below: yes Cathy Wilcox, the pond is up to the challenge, we do it every day with the reptiles, and more Wilcox here).


17 comments:

  1. Perhaps Mr Craven could have another course for University bosses? See 4 corners


    "(to Tony Stokes) There have been specific cases where marks have been adjusted after the teacher has given them in the nursing faculty?

    TONY STOKES, DR., SENIOR LECTURER, ECONOMICS, ACU: That was something we... was asked sometimes to occur. Um, I...

    LINTON BESSER: Tell me what happened on those occasions?

    TONY STOKES: Well, basically we said, "No. We're not doing it."

    LINTON BESSER: Dr Tony Stokes is an ACU senior lecturer in economics who has previously been asked to re-mark papers in nursing subjects. He concedes there is still pressure today to pass students.

    TONY STOKES: I am aware there may be still some areas where people are being called upon to justify the number of students they're failing.

    I had a colleague who was in the business school and he explained to me that he'd been told that he was expected to fail no more than, more than 10 per cent.

    LINTON BESSER: It was not until 2012 that the Australian Catholic University mandated the use of anti-plagiarism software to assist academics to identify cheats.

    SHARON HILLEGE: I was aware that anti-plagiarism software existed. I'm clearly not sure why it hadn't been implemented in the school where we were working. Certainly it wasn't there at the time.

    TONY STOKES: I know, even from my time as head of school, I was saying, "When can we get the plagiarism software? When can we get the plagiarism software?"

    "Oh, we're trying to pick out a good software that will work." Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'd been asking it, for it for years. Um, people in, in the faculty, ah, had been asking for it. But it was a long process.

    LINTON BESSER: But the point is that Turn It In and software platforms like that: they were commonplace at Australian university campuses in the period at which ACU did not have it?

    TONY STOKES: Yes.

    LINTON BESSER: The vice-chancellors of both ACU and UWS, Professor Greg Craven and Professor Barney Glover, also declined interview requests.

    In a statement, ACU said it "takes the matter of honesty very seriously: and that it "follows policies to investigate incidents and students are disciplined appropriately."

    Don't do as I do, Do as I say, eh Greg.

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  2. They tell me Julia Gillard was highly successful at negotiating with pygmies, DP.

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    Replies
    1. True enough, Anon, but she would rather not have had to. Ceterum censeo, the reptiles are out doing the undermining and groundwork necessary for liblab's forthcoming improvements to electoral laws.

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    2. Ah, the Central Scrutinizer. Thanks. Also took a listen to Watermelon in Easter Hay. Forgotten how fabulous. Anyone with half a musical brain agree's that Frank was THE genius of his craft....As are you the master of your craft DP. Guess that's why I love the Loon Pond.( and contributors).Thank you DP.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3cu8sDa90Y

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    3. Anyone who quotes Frank and provides such nice links is an honoured guest at the pond, but remember, brown shoes don't make it ... and if you call on any Liberal vegetable, the chances are good that the vegetable will respond to you ...

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  3. "Prestige of government?" "When Hawke or Howard murmured, the political world hushed in fear?"

    In which parallel universe did that happen?

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    Replies
    1. In that universe called "the good old days", according to the craven one.

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    2. "The past is a foreign country ..."

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  4. Oh my God! Thank you DP, and Stan for the additional reference.

    Greg Craven's a university vice-chancellor? Holy shit! At least V-Cs of that calibre help explain why the vice-chancellors caved in so comprehensively to the Pyne proposals, which were so clearly against the student and public interest.

    And Craven dares to bring up 'mandate' in his gripe against the Senate? Like when did Pyne seek a mandate for his "reforms" , or for that matter even mention them to the public prior to the election? That's the very point of the public revulsion of this government. They're doing the opposite of what they promised. They claimed to be on a 'Unity ticket' with Labor on education and the worst they'd do is fiddle around a bit with it after four years, not the seven years Labor had promised.

    If that boofhead cannot understand that, how on earth did he get to run a university? Does it work a bit like Maurice Newman? You know, where the connections you build up through the GPS Old Boy network save you from ever having to think about anything again.

    Of course the Senate voting system has allowed a few wackos to get up under the accidental distribution of preference deals. Lambie has about as much appeal as Pauline Hanson on most things. But at least she did not forget her origins in the services and has stood up firmly against defence services getting screwed over pay.

    Lazarus and Muir both seem fairly ordinary guys suddenly thrust into important legislative positions. But far from being 'unqualified' they have both taken their responsibilities very seriously and have trusted their judgement to try to reach a just outcome. You don't have to be a graduate to know when you or the people are being dudded. It is the lack of commitment to fairness or negotiation on the government's part that is the problem.

    I knew there were plenty of Newmans, with a Bart Simpson-like pride in their ignorance, dominating the business world. I am saddened that leaders in higher education are apparently cut with the same cloth.

    It has been a revelation to me, much as Henry Ergas doing Dr Strangelove was a few months back.

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    1. https://newmatilda.com/2015/04/21/vcs-go-missing-action-university-whistleblowers-speak-out-four-corners

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  5. What makes Craven's diatribe even worse is his definition of 'social death'. Who gives a shit about Melbourne ball games?

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    Replies
    1. Meh, just the usual Melbourne provincial mentality. Didn't bother reading the rest of his rant. Undoubtably at some point he told us all about the Paris end of Collins St.

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  6. I know I shouldn't quibble with Maurice Newman's 'facts', but as much as I enjoyed the Shanghai mag-lev, it certainly doesn't go to 'downtown', one still needs to get in a cab (or metro) from there. It's only when he mentioned 'fiscal responsibility' in the same article as praising the mag-lev that I couldn't let it go. There a billions of reasons why the mag-lev is known as the world's most expensive amusement park ride.

    Of course, there is some logic in blaming the likes of the greens/labor for Australia not having such great infrastructure, as they'd probably insist on crazy stuff like cost benefit analysis, environmental assessments and, god forbid, workers rights!

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  7. Craven? A pompous, pretentious popinjay.

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  8. Moorice is totally getting his script from IPA Central. And what is it with both Craven and Moorice and this everything going out the window shit?. Are these space cadets sharing notes?. Reading both these pieces makes me just go; How the fuck did these bozo's ever get to breath,let alone write?.

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  9. John Key, either an ornament to the office of PM, or an obnoxious turd. Either way, a true ANZAC mate.

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