The pond had to step into the day slowly, what with this opening ploy by the reptiles ...
What a good excuse to re-run a couple of vintage, but still fresh and relevant, Rowes ...
That gave the pond time to assess the rest of the reptile output for the day ...
Hmm, not much to see there ... it seems that the 'craven Craven' has discovered alliteration with 'Dictator Dan', bringing back fond memories of 'Diver Dan' ... but all that's needed of the craven Craven is there in his final par ...
What the flying fuck? How did Adolf and Winnie get into the argument? The pond supposes that's what happens when you take a cultural critic (what a thing to be, if there is such a thing?) armed with alliteration and a foggy sense of history to a gun fight ... the pond would prefer a Glock ...
As for Theo of the """ (couldn't be fagged, or was confounded when looking for a photo, said the mournful reptile), his final pars said it all too ...
Oh, he's just an unreconstructed gas and nuke man? Bet he and Joel are really good mates ... nothing to see there, just another old Labor loon signing up to the reptile crusade, and doubling down on gas in the hope of a royal Nuke flush ...
No, there was nothing for it, the pond had to attend to good old Henry the hole in the bucket man, having a fainting fit and urgently in need of a bottle of smelling salts ...
Oh he scored a cult master, they gave old Henry the cult master of the day, and the pond must say, a cult master in fine paranoid form ... though really the pond prefers the simple lines when it comes to cartooning ...
And there's the thing ... if the reptiles and our Henry had really wanted to bung on a do, they might have recalled a few other images than the vaguely paranoid one offered by the cult master, with a little bit of anti-clericalism of a generic kind thrown in as a bonus ... instead we got undiluted fearful Henry all in a tizz...
Unfortunately the pond must adopt the Peter Pan strategy ... because the French have to deal with their problems themselves, and the chance that our Henry will join with the pond in demanding that the government funding of all religious schools of whatever stripe be stopped immediately, henceforth and forthwith, would be like whistling in the secular wind ...
What a foolish hysterical futtock he is, doling out the fear, and fantasizing that he will become a martyr, and yet afraid to take the first obvious step against zealots down under ...
And so the pond moved on to nattering "Ned" and the sacked mind of Troy, if only because they were there ...
The pond is actually well over the dismissal and all the talk about it.
Best now to wait for the new movie version. Well if they can revive Rebecca, nothing's sacred, and it's been a long time since George Miller's company offered up the miniseries of The Dismissal. The pond's only precondition is that they get a good strong cast like that in The Trial of the Chicago 7.
Maybe we could get Sacha Baron Cohen to play the drunk Kerr? Turns out when he's not doing the easy stuff - baiting Rudy - he can actually act ... and he put on a fine turn as Abbie Hoffman, while the rest of the cast were just as strong.
Say what you will about Aaron Sorkin, and the pond often does at great length, he knows how to bung on a court room do, in much the same way that Cohen can spot a clown and a loon ripe for a takedown from a mile away ...
Yes, the pond knows what it would rather be watching than be stuck in a room with nattering "Ned" and ancient Troy, but the pond needs a stocking filler for the day, so away we go ...
Oh yes, God save the Queen, and did but love her as she was passing by, and so on and so forth, and what great spawn she produced, all heil King Chuck, or whomever, didn't some of them end up in Canada or wherever?
Meanwhile, the pond could do one last thing, one last stab at relevance, and hand out a watch to anyone who made it this far, or at least a Rowe cartoon about handing out watches, with more Rowe as always here ...
Nice try reptiles, with all that distraction, but maybe you should get a more timely watch than the ancient ticking of the dismissal ...
Deary me [sigh] here goes Holely Henry once again: "As Bernard Rougier .... shows in a book published earlier this year, "the territories conquered by Islamism" in France and its near neighbours have expanded steadily ..."
ReplyDeleteIs the git spouting about the so called "no-go areas" ? That have already been debunked ? You know, how only faithful Muslims can enter Birmingham now where Sharia Law reigns and not Her Maj. And how "real soon now" only faithful Muslims will be able to enter Lakemba and Broadmeadows.
But, butt Holely, then a bit later you go on to say: "Macron appears to have recognised these policy [religious toleration] failures, relying instead on tough-minded deterrence as the primary response. ... his government seems set to ban the Anti-Islamaphobia Collective along with up to 50 other Islamic organisations and "charities", close several mosques (including one whose imam welcomed the beheading of "a blasphemer"), deport a host of Islamists and strictly monitor Islamic schools."
What happened to the "territories conquered by Islam" ? No mention of them - so will the Muslims just be allowed to keep areas of France as Muslim territories subject only to Sharia Law ? Or has the Henry, senile old sod that he is, just completely forgotten the bullshvt he was peddling just a few paragraphs ago ?
And thanks for those Hebdo cartoons, DP; it's good to see that the Hebdoians produce cartoons that would have gotten them beheaded - or at least crucified - in Christian France not so very long ago. Have I mentioned that apart from Queensland and Western Australia, the 'common law offence of blasphemy' still applies in Australia and that in NSW and Tas, the criminal codes do include an offence of blasphemy. Ooooh, careful what you say or print in NSW, DP.
Some lovely little lies by Theofamous in that short segment: "Gas [by which I think he means 'natural' or 'fracked' gas] remains the only viable backup for renewables. It is cheaper and less impactful on the environment than the alternatives - especially batteries and hydrogen."
ReplyDeleteThese nongcompoops just can't ever seem to grasp that, at least for quite a time to come, batteries are not installed as a 'backup for renewables'. They exist as a grid manager and for short term evening out of the grid current. But how about hydrogen ? Just what is it that has convinced a truly knowledgeable chap like Theo that hydrogen is more expensive and impactful than "gas" - like say, the cost and impact of fracked gas that releases large amounts of that super greenhouse gas, methane; and not in a convenient way for capturing to release its hydrogen.
Maybe Theo should just try 'living in the twenties' and start reading stuff like this:
Hydrogen made by the electrolysis of water is now cost-competitive and gives us another building block for the low-carbon economy
https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/7/5/hydrogen-made-by-the-electrolysis-of-water-is-now-cost-competitive-and-gives-us-another-building-block-for-the-low-carbon-economy
But that would be parsec too far for a hoary old Labor factioneer, wouldn't it.
As usual, they have a very simplistic idea of how the system works. Well, how everything works really.
DeleteLike Abbott, Theo would think of think of a large building with smokestacks sending a fixed and unvarying supply of power over wires to a factory with a fixed and unvarying demand at the other end. The variability of renewables seems like an insoluble problem to them because they don't realise what a complex issue the matching of supply and demand already is.
Firming has proved to be less of a problem than was originally anticipated but, with high penetration of renewables, periods of abatement will require some management.
Ideally, really cheap power would be used to produce H2, for pumped hydro, desalination or any other process that can operate intermittently when the prices suit.
How very, very apposite. Chad (and Bef, CA, DW, Jie and whoever else), a fine piece of explanation taking the Phillips Curve as an analogy for the COVID versus economy "trade-off":
ReplyDeleteWhy do some find the economics/health trade-off so hard to get? Because it’s like the Phillips curve.
https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2020/10/why-do-some-find-economicshealth-trade.html
Failure to realise the complexity of real world problems. Was Baboons telling us yesterday we need political solutions not scientific ones?
Deletehttps://twitter.com/RichardAOB/status/1318691260442374144/photo/1
Befuddled - one way to get there - There is a column in today’s ‘Fin’ which they identify as coming from the Executive Director of the Institute FOR Public Affairs (my emphasis). As it happens, the incumbent did identify it as the Institute of Public Affairs. Perhaps the former Fairfaxians have been too focussed on Premier Gladys.
DeleteHis reason for writing - well, apart from the fact that he appears regularly on Friday’s editorial page, and very likely receives financial recompense for his contribution - was to tell us that ‘Maybe a majority of Victorians once supported Premier Daniel Andres and his management of COVID-19. Not any more.’
So, of course, for an organisation that supports ‘evidence-based public policy’, the Executive Director offers some, um, evidence. An opinion poll. One has to venture into the IPA website to find out a little more about that poll. It was done by an outfit called ‘Dynata’, drawing on what it calls a ‘first-party, commissioned, dataset.’
I think that is code for - ‘Dynata’ is one of those outfits that pop up in your inbox, inviting you to participate in marketing studies - sampling new products - for which you may receive the products from their client, or the chance to win cash prizes. You must be prepared to entrust them with a lot of information about you and your circumstances - all in the interests of our great free enterprise system, you understand. Its website does offer clients quick results.
Essentially, a self-selected sample.
So ‘Dynata’ put statements (not questions) to 1000 persons in its ‘first-party, commissioned, dataset’. We are not troubled with trivial details, such as - was there any combing and sifting of the dataset to identify particular demographics?
What we were told is ‘’When asked to respond to the statement “Daniel Andrews has mismanaged the government’s response to COVID-19 and should resign”, 41 per cent agreed, 41 per cent disagreed, and the rest were undecided.’
The Executive Director tells us that this shows that Victorians are now divided exactly down the middle. There were none of the expected errors implicit in even a truly random sample of a tad less than .02% of the population. Not a hint of coaching or bias in the wording of the statement (which included a consequent proposition). No doubt ‘Dynata’ sees a steady income from push -polling leading up to actual elections.
You cannot argue with evidence like that, in the same way as the great Roy Rene said ‘Ya don’t argue with mugs.’
Ah yes, John Roskam and his two great mates, James Paterson and Chris Berg of the infamous "75 radical ideas to transform Australia" that was so adored by Onion-Muncher Abbott. Don't hear all that much from Chris Berg nowadays, since he took up Blockchaining for RMIT, but Roskam and Paterson are still out there, still pushing their adolescent fantasies about "free" markets. Or "boys' own fantasy" as Mark Buckley put it ( https://johnmenadue.com/mark-buckley-meet-john-roskam-the-real-pm/ )
DeleteI liked this little passage from an SMH "profile" piece on Roskam by someone called Lucinda Schmidt:
Just don’t label Roskam – or the IPA – as “right-wing”. “If journalists describe the IPA as right wing, I email or ring them and ask them how is the IPA right wing?” he says. “Right wing is Pauline Hanson.”
Ok, so now we know, based on the indisputably scientific evidence provided by Roskam's deeply considered opinion, that there just isn't all that many "Right Wing" people in Australia. Millions in America, though.
But all that done and dusted, what did you think of applying the Phillip's Curve to the COVID-economy "trade-off" ?
NAIRU = Non Accelerating Infection Rate of Un-economy.
DeleteGB - I should have acknowledged your link to the discussion on the Phillips Curve, which I enjoyed, but always with the thought in the back of my mind that an even more fundamental problem with any of the 'versions' of the curve is that governments persuade themselves that they can manipulate unemployment and inflation with some degree of precision.
DeleteRight now, by the household measure, Australia is deflating, and I suspect the advisors at mid-level of Treasury and Reserve Bank spend a lot of time staring out the window. Cash money effectively has no investment value, and is, in that sense, worthless, so we get a federal government that claims to be 'free enterprise' running the equivalent of the old soviet '5 year plans'.
The only thing they haven't meddled with is the chocolate ration.