It's a close, competitive sport! Will FIFA's World Cup outdo the Olympics in terms of corruption, bigotry and general uselessness? On current evidence, FIFA is a strong performer, and might just have the right combination of hypocrisy and righteousness and wilful blindness to turn in a winning performance ...
Elsewhere the Musk-inspired Twitter meltdown continues apace ...
Sadly, the reptiles are intent on losing all relevance whatsoever, and so issues of the moment have been relegated to the back page so that the lizard Oz can indulge in its usual sports of climate science denialism and black bashing ...
It's with a deepening sense of regret that the pond now dives into the pages of the lizard Oz ... because as the reptiles wander off into the irrelevant distant void of darkness, so does the pond ...
Bjorn-again yet again? And yet so it is, and so it comes to pass ...
It's just blather as usual for the Bjorn-again one, but it did set the pond to wondering who else ran this drivel?
Bizarrely there was a pointer on this site ... no link, google if you must ...
And that pointer led to The Globe and Mail ...
So these days the reptiles have taken to running a four day old
"special to the Globe and Mail" bout of Bjorn blather, and without even the courtesy of using a snap of demonic Satanic windmills and sweet lovely brown coal power plants ...
What the fuck have smoggy conditions in Delhi got that Satanic windmills haven't?
Never mind, it's on with the tosh ...
The pond never bothers to argue with the Bjorn-again one, but instead prefers to slip in the odd cartoon ...
Now back to the blather, and of course it begins with "a study in Tanzania", without a link or a hint as to the credentials of said paper, and what's worse, the pond couldn't be bothered looking it up, because the pond knows where all this is heading, as predictable as a dunny door flapping in the wind ... the Bjorn-again mantra of pissing money against the wall on ill-defined research, a mantra that has now been going down for decades ...
At this point the pond feels the need to slip in an old infallible Pope ...
And so to the final bout of blather ... and yes, the Bjorn-again one comes up with his usual bit about how
"rich countries must invest much more in research and development on better green technologies, yadda yadda" ....
The pond suddenly felt deeply tired and ancient, and yet, check it out ... this was what the reptiles had on offer early on a Saturday morning ...
Elsewhere on the front page was a screeching from Dame Slap about the voice, and a pontification from the portentous nattering "Ned", but the pond decided it was right to ignore the Everest challenge, maybe hold "Ned" over for once ...
It was more titillating to run with the onion muncher, nestling cheek by jowl with the dog botherer .... because for once they were on opposite sides of the fence and these days the pond must take its pitiful pleasures where it can find them ...
It's the usual mendacious wander down a pathetically irrelevant memory lane, with the emphasis on me, my and I, as in
"I jointly chaired" ... and the snide reference to
"my successor" ...
But with the mad monk doing all the hard negative yards, at least the pond could avoid that aforementioned Dame Slap rant ...
That thumb of a nasty-looking Noel will come in handy as the pond notes the burgeoning great divide, but in the meantime, there's a few more gobbets of onion muncher navel-gazing to go ...
Okay, okay, a few distractions are in order ... beginning with a day old infallible Pope ...
The pond is beyond offering excuses ... anything to distract from the onion muncher in full featherless flight...
It's a bloody listicle and the relentless tedium machine is going to go through all his power points in an even more determined style than Homer Simpson in an 'all you can eat' restaurant ...
The pond can hear the shrieks and the howls coming down the line ... so here, have another break ... bet you wish you'd taken economics (or even worse done a unit in economics history like the pond) ...
Better to ask an economist than to ask an onion muncher, because lordy lordy, does he manage to go on and on and on ...
Enough already, and luckily there was only a short gobbet to go ...
The reptiles edited it? If the pond had had a red pencil to hand, there would have been bugger all left to contemplate...
But here's the thing ... there was a sweet irony in that juxtaposition, and that pitch for the "moderating" dog botherer beneath the mad monk's interminable screed ...
You see, the dog botherer has stayed true to Noel Pearson's mob, while the onion muncher has abandoned him, and so there's something deeply pitiful about the dog botherer's pleading.
That's why the pond has held over "Ned's" Everest challenge, just to witness two ratbags have at each other ... and nary a black voice in sight, or in the lizard Oz comments section ...
Here the pond must interrupt the dog botherer's bout of self-congratulation, followed by talk of chasms, to remind those still hanging in that there are other things happening in the world, apart from the reptiles' obsession with solving the "black problem", without bringing a black voice into the comments section ...
A robot joke, and with more Kudelka to hand
here ... but enough with talk of logarithms, it's back to the dog botherer grind, doing his best to take it up to Dame Slap and the onion muncher, still with nary a black voice in sight ...
It must be hard, and passing strange and weird for the dog botherer to find himself up against News Corp and the likes of Dame Slap and the onion muncher, but how much more fun are robot cartoons ...
Why would anyone expect the reptiles, especially guest onion muncher, to pay attention to past fuck-ups?
Nope, black bashing is a much finer sport, and the dog botherer finds himself in an odd situation ... somehow managing to quote the onion muncher, apparently unaware of being joined at the commentary hip to his latest outing ... with talk of "completing" it sounding like some Jesuit blathering about marriage ...
That was a long gobbet, but the pond makes no excuses, because it's run out of robo cartoons and so must plunge on ...
That's the best the dog botherer's got. He asked an economist and they came back with "efficiency dividend", followed by a half-hearted defence on the basis that it might work, it might not, but what ya gunna do? Gotta give it a go, gotta ignore the screeching of the likes of Dame Slap and the onion muncher ...
A passion against the voice from some quarters that is difficult to fathom? Poor dog botherer, lost in the wilderness outside the Murdochian land above the faraway tree, and apparently unaware that black bashing is up there with climate science denialism as the News Corp competition with FIFA ...
Still, after interrupting with a click bait commercial, the pond was now on the home doggie stretch ... and at last poor old Noel Pearson gets in a word, albeit only thanks to his dog fucking friend ...
Unarguable? Best we get on with it?
Sure, and next thing you know you'll get News Corp supporting you, and there'll be lots of positive coverage, and won't that be a dream, and it'll be home and hosed by Xmas ...
Yes, and there was Bjorn and there was the onion muncher and Dame Slap, and that's why the pond always turns to the Weekly Beast for handy reminders, and to the immortal Rowe for a closing cartoon ...
The Bjorn doesn't think very hard about his choice of words and phrases, does he? He refers to 'off grid' power for poor countries. I assume he has actually sauntered through the slums of African cities, or the favelas of the South American equivalents and the neighbourhoods of many names, not on the tourist track, in Asia. Yes - those places have electricity, but not on any kind of grid designed by electrical engineers. Supply so often is down to an entrepreneurial class, who string wires every which way to supply an often intermittent current, of dubious voltage, from diesel (some petrol!) generators, sometimes from illegal taps into the actual grid. Already, some of those entrepreneurs see rooftop solar as a better source for their little business, particularly as petroleum suppliers manipulate the supply of diesel so they can condition receivers to higher prices.
ReplyDeleteBut, yes, in Bjorn-world - benign rulers are giving high priority to spreading carefully-designed grids across the countryside, bringing untold joy and wonders to people, 24/7.
And here's a bit that shows him at his best: "Nearly 2.5 billion people continue to suffer from indoor air pollution, burning dirty fuels like wood and dung to cook and keep warm. Solar panels don't solve that problem because they are two weak to power clean stoves and heaters." Yeah, right, but I'd think that levels of "poverty" and being unable to afford solar panels might have a lot more to do with it because "solar panels" (plus batteries) do just fine in lots of places around the world. But they aren't cheap and they probably aren't government supported as they are in Australia.
DeleteSo why would one reckon that Bjorn-again would represent what is clearly a poverty and politics failure as a technology failure ? And why "2.5 billion" when the total population of Africa and South America is only about 1.8 billion ? Ok, well there is a lot of India that might apply to as well, but 2.5 billion ?
Telecommunications infrastructure is quite instructive if you want to look at transition. A lot of ex-soviet and post-colonial countries bypassed whole generations of technology when they modernised, going from electromechanical systems straight to digital ones using fibre or highly reliant on mobile transmission. This was both faster and cheaper than mucking around upgrading legacy architecture and having to overbuild in the end anyway (NBN anyone)
DeletePutting aside the nuts and bolts of how things are done, it shows a tendency in conservative thinking to assume things always happen gradually with some sort of long term objective. Clearly, this is not the case. Even if it took 60 or 70 years from the first mass produced cars to the retirement of the last horse-drawn bread cart, most of that transition occurred in a couple of decades. Oddly, the reptile readership will have been active participants in some pretty big technological changes - internet, smartphones, home solar (greed, not altruism, of course) - but I expect they will still be receptive to the "slowly and steady" narrative, so expect a lot more of that in the opinion section.
Whoever runs this website, they seem to have a plausible explanation for this mindset, in relation to Waleed Aly in this case.
https://capturedstates.substack.com/p/aly
"Waleed Aly is a conservative who sees his role as questioning and resisting everything new, especially anything that's big and society changing. To Aly, established traditions and structures must be protected. Major disruptors should be resisted and treated skeptically without bothering to examine their merits. Their newness is enough to condemn them."
And lastly, for those in Danistan, check out the responses to this twerp
https://twitter.com/jamesmassola/status/1588676998905241601?s=20&t=T19ZB2C3X2tDtj4yELSkhg
I have to say that I haven't wasted any of my lifetime on the likes of Aly (or his wife) and I don't intend to start now. I did watch The Project occasionally, but that was a very long time ago - and pre Aly.
DeleteHaven't read much of the Nein-Costello rags for quite a while now either.
So thanks for the links, Bef, but I'll very happily leave any response to you.
Befuddled - thank you for the links - most amusing. I half thought of adding observations on discussion in 'FinReview' (well, the Friday issue, which I still look at) but so much of that is now 'sponsored content' - in slabs of 6-8 pages - that it is difficult to find discussion by actual journalists, with bylines, to comb for examples. Yesterday, in farewelling Editor Paul Bailey, Stutchbury wrote of the 'Fin' evolving into a 'leading premium digital masthead', which I take to be code for 'ultimate advertorial'.
DeleteOh my, talking about India (and Western Australia), what can one say:
DeleteEntire state's power system on the brink as Indian loan to Aussie miner Griffin Coal turns toxic
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-06/power-on-the-brink-as-indian-coal-loan-turns-toxic/101612696
So, 2.5 billion continuing to suffer all over the world ...
This from the Boverer always annoys to buggary: "Add to this disastrous comparisons in education, employment and domestic violence, and you have hard data that defines our national shame. Contemporary Australians do not have to accept blame for this or to apologise but it is ours to help fix." Ok, so no, I do not accept personal blame for things done before I was even born or before I got old enough to have some understanding of what was going on, but just how far does this "I'm not to blame" syndrome go.
ReplyDeleteAt what stage do we have to accept blame for doing nothing to help fix it ? Or is it just that when it comes down to it, we're all just "humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God" - as the Constitution and the Muncher would have it - to fix it all up for us. An "Almighty God" that many indigenes and many migrants amongst many other of us citizens simply don't believe in.
And what about the 7.5 million or so Australian's who were born overseas ? Couldn't expect them to feel the least bit guilty for our failures, could we. But do they get a vote in the referendum too ? If so, why ?
Just a little light reading for you, Chad:
ReplyDeleteCan Labor provide cost-of-living relief without feeding inflation and interest rates? An expert panel responds
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/05/can-labor-provide-cost-of-living-relief-without-feeding-inflation-and-interest-rates-an-expert-panel-responds
Thanks GB - both Quiggin and 'the Kouk' are consistent. Quiggin has written over recent years that a seat on the Reserve Bank board should not be a reward for LNP faithful, and 'Kouk' has been steadfast in his criticism of the RBA monetary policy of near zero interest rate for several years. Unfortunately, being right does not mean that there is an obvious way to help people on low incomes (regardless of source of that income).
DeleteMy personal hope/wish is that this Federal government maintains a steady information campaign towards serious resource rent taxes, partially as a trade-off for the 'Stage 3' medicated chalice.
The observation has been made that the previous lot (Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison) just acted as a political party whereas the current lot are trying to act like a government. There is some truth in that, I think, but the main problem is that the current lot are only marginally more knowledgeable and competent than their predecessors.
DeleteSo many politicians maintain their ignorance even in the face of repeated failure.
One obvious point missed by the OzIdiots is that war changes things. I'd reckon that there weren't too many people waking up in Britain on 1 January 1940 saying "Well, this year is looking good, better than last year." But on 1 January 1946 I reckon a lot of Brits would be looking hopefully to the future. So with the war in Ukraine. When it is over (we won't consider the 'if') people will start looking for ways to deal with the crises that affect us, and because the war will have made so many things worse, we may take the crises more seriously.
ReplyDeleteThere's going to be a huge, and costly, job of rebuilding Ukraine into a functioning state.
Delete