This is the sort of headline that causes the pond much amusement ...
Puzzled?
It appeared in WaPo, and it reminded the pond of the parable of the wise men gravely contemplating the matter of an elephant.
WaPo gravely assured the world that leaders were puzzled, what with Greenland having universal health care and no hospital ships being available (though that could only be called "appears to have"), and yet the president - a narcissist horse's *rse in any sensible language - had talked of sending a hospital ship, and so, him being the president n'all, y'all, it must be gravely considered.
But it's just a momentary distraction, always with the Trumpstein files distraction, and who knows, perhaps yet another small step on the imperial way.
Next, bermb, bermb, berm Iran, and Nancy A. Youssef in The Atlantic, trying to decipher the runes, read the tea leaves, fossick through the entrails in What Would War With Iran Look Like? How the U.S. conducts any attack will depend on what goal Trump is trying to achieve.
What goal is he trying to achieve?
You might as well ask a toddler in a wild-eyed tantrum why he smashed up the agreement to eat his veggies and then insisted on a new agreement or he'd bermb his Lego.
Or tax the penguins ...
The pond frequently feels the same way in the company of the lizard Oz's hive mind.
There's no sense to it, it simply is ...
Oh sure there can be fun snipes...
... but ultimately it's impossible to make sense of any of it.
Why, for example, do they keep exhuming notable failures of the past, men who notoriously lacked the ticker?
Okay, it's sometimes women offering an EXCLUSIVE insight ... (archive link)
They had to go the "widow" route? That's her only claim to fame?
So she's just there to channel the man, and who needs the ghost of the steam-train lover to emerge from his grave to warn the world that One Nation is a pack of loons, except perhaps the reptiles, because the lizard Oz has long cultivated the sort of extreme right wing ideology that Barners and Pauline are now cashing in on ...
The latest example of this inclination to grave robbing is the EXCLUSIVE revival of Petey boy ... given the bizarre patented reptile double act treatment ...
On the "news" side, there's the EXCLUSIVE ...
No net debt to no net worth: Costello’s devastating economic warning
Former treasurer Peter Costello warns that the Albanese government has ‘softened up’ young Australians for tax hikes to fund unsustainable spending.
By Matthew Cranston
Five bloody eternal minutes echoing the current lizard Oz jihad ... and to get the double bunger treatment going, the source of the EXCLUSIVE was over on the extreme far right ...
Note the way that the rant starts with a classic Emilia collage, replete with snarling, grimacing Albo, and sinister Jimbo lurking on the right, though here the pond should be fair, because the reptiles immediately followed that first gobbet with a snap of Petey boy looking like a man just out of a Monty Python sketch ...
Sheesh, way more than enough already, and if you want to see rest of this ancient loon conducting his jihad, consult the intermittent archive.
There's nothing to learn from these ghosts, except the art of seeing dead people, while resting easy that there are more important matters than the economy for those with a sixth sense ...
What else (though the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way is usually a show stopper)?
Well the news of Mandelson's arrest eventually landed in reptile HQ:
It was old news to the pond, what with the pond waking the Beeb in a flap and the world service wondering why the Poms had a different way of doing things, and coming up with the notion that they loved a decent scandal, while at the same time trying to reassure listeners that there was no way the man formerly known as Prince could ever reach the throne, whether or not formally disbarred.
This isn't true. The pond recalls watching a documentary, Kind Hearts and Coronets, in which a convivial lad with a sense of grievance managed to remove a number of obstacles from his securing of his inheritance, and it was only a momentary memoir lapse that brought him undone.
What is true is that the reptiles have relentlessly mined the hapless Poms for scandal, while ignoring the many scandals surrounding King Donald and his minions...
John Hanscombe in The Echnida (sorry, newsletter, no link) had some thoughts on this ...
"I have learned with the deepest concern the news about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and suspicion of misconduct in public office," the King's statement read.
"What now follows is the full, fair and proper process by which this issue is investigated in the appropriate manner and by the appropriate authorities.
"In this, as I have said before, they have our full and wholehearted support and co-operation."
On the western side of the Atlantic, another head of state said this: "Well, you know, I'm the expert in a way because I've been totally exonerated. It's very nice. So I can actually speak about it very nicely," Donald Trump said. "I think it's a shame. I think it's very sad, I think it's so bad for the royal family. It's very, very sad. To me, it's a very sad thing. When I see that it's a very sad thing."
One head of state dignified and reassuring in a message that implied no one - not even his brother - was above the law. The other, as always, making the conversation about himself, proclaiming his innocence, and then saying the whole affair was sad.
Not bad. Sad.
The two responses brought into sharp focus the differences between the two political systems. In the UK, the head of state made clear the primacy of the rule of law. In the US, the head of state, a veteran of many run-ins with the law, claimed he'd been exonerated in the tawdry Epstein affair - a claim still contested because half the files haven't been released and those which have are heavily redacted.
Watching this play out and then witnessing Donald Trump's tantrum at the Supreme Court which had ruled he's overstepped his presidential powers with his Liberation Day tariffs, the constitutional monarchy seemed to be working while the American republican model did not.
Well yes, and even if it's a fair bet that the Poms will somehow keep the man formerly known as a Prince out of clink, it is fair to ask that obvious question, make that obvious point - why are the Poms in a flap and in a state of high anxiety while King Donald's court sails on regardless?
Ancient Troy was to hand to show how the reptiles routinely manage to ignore King Donald and his deeply corrupt and perverse court.
Take it away ancient Troy, show how it's done ...
Because the pond has done a screen cap, it's not easy to do a quick "find" for King Donald's name, but the pond can reassure readers that not once - nihil, nada - did the name "Trump" intrude on ancient Troy's thinking, odd because it's on almost any building you can look at, and might even be coming to the Gold Coast.
Did ancient Troy turn a blind eye to the behaviour of King Donald and his minions? Of course he did, but then the Murdochians have consistently turned a blind eye to King Donald's laddish cavortings ...
Instead ancient Troy kept his blind eye in working order ...
The risk is that this scandal metastasises, embroils others in the royal family and irreparably damages the British monarchy.
The survival instinct of the House of Windsor should not be underestimated. The British royal family has endured as monarchies across Europe have fallen, been executed or reduced their size and scope to remain standing. This is largely due to the wise rule of Elizabeth II. But now The Firm is challenged like never before.
Andrew’s utterly grotesque, likely illegal, behaviour is unlike anything the royals have faced. He had a long association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and is accused of having sex with under-age women, including committing sexual assault. The trove of Epstein’s emails and photos provides vital evidence. Yet Andrew lied about his relationship with Epstein and his involvement with younger women. That was evident in his interview with Emily Maitlis on the BBC’s Newsnight in November 2019. Much of what he said was false or misleading. Andrew has long had a reputation for being rude and arrogant, sustained by a culture of entitlement and a belief that he was above the law.
The response from King Charles III and his son, William, the Prince of Wales, has been reassuring. Their public statements disassociating themselves from him, offering sympathy to victims and co-operating with police are welcome. So was removing Andrew from public duties in May 2020 and stripping him of honours, titles and his peerage in October last year. “The law must take its course,” Charles said last week.
But they were not quick enough to condemn their discredited brother and uncle. Andrew’s connections to Epstein have been known for more than two decades. Andrew says he was introduced to Epstein in 1999 by Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein attended Andrew’s 40th birthday at Windsor Castle in 2000. The photo of the two of them walking through Central Park, New York was snapped in December 2010.
We don’t know what the King knew and when he knew it, or what Queen Elizabeth II knew and when she knew it. Charles and Elizabeth likely did not know the extent of what was going on but they or their staff must have been aware of the sexual assault accusations made by Virginia Giuffre more than a decade ago. If they knew even some of Andrew’s activities, what steps did they take in response?
Instead of King Donald, poor old King Chuck, the talking tampon, hugged the limelight with his sibling, King Charles III has been left wrestling with a new test after the arrest of Andrew, the latest in a series of shocks to mar his reign.
There is so much more we don’t know about royal finances, including revenue and expenditure of the ancient Duchy of Cornwall run by William and Duchy of Lancaster run by Charles.
Andrew was allowed use of the Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park under a 75-year lease with a “peppercorn” rent until he was evicted in February. This was not known when the lease was signed in 2003. The notion that Charles and William, his heir, can just “keep calm and carry on” is untenable. Not only must there be full co-operation with the investigation into Andrew – a commitment that has been given – but the King should also address the nation and his realms to completely repudiate Andrew and begin restoring trust in the royal family.
The UK government is reportedly preparing legislation to remove Andrew from the line of succession. This should have been done long ago. It requires all 14 Commonwealth countries to agree and likely pass their own laws to give it effect. When the order of succession was last changed in 2015, each state also had to enact the Succession to the Crown Act.
All of this underscores the continuing nonsense that Australia’s head of state needs no skills or abilities, or integrity and credibility, but only to be born into one family, observing one religion and living on the other side of the world. We can only live in hope that one day we will be a republic with a head of state who is one of us.
The pond decided to provide an intermittent archive link, so that ancient Troy's links could be checked in the archive, because the last line contained a doozy of a link...
It turned out that ancient Troy has always been a fervent republican ...
So bashing the talking tampon was easy game.
It smply wouldn't do to wonder why the Royals are compelled to show some semblance of decency while US repuglicans show not the slightest sense of shame ...
Oh sure the lizard Oz and the emeritus chairman purported to be republican, but there were backsliders, such as the bromancer, in a fit of Liz rapture a few years ago ...
Oh dear ... he did but see her passing by, and yet ...
We might not have known what she was thinking, but we did know that she was very loyal to the man formerly known as Prince, and no doubt helped him out when paying out an extravagant amount of loot to help conceal his perversions.
The pond would have liked to report on the bromancer's current state of mind, but he's been MIA since the 24th January, and so it's off to consort with energy jihad Jennie ...
Sure it's like donning an old, worn-out slipper, but what the heck ...
After that opening gobbet, the reptiles cunningly slipped in a snap designed to get Jennie even more carried away on her jihad ...
Ah, Malware's curse ...so naturally it's all the fault of renewables ...
There’s no end in sight to the rising cost of energy. Without the billions in taxpayer subsidies, the energy transition to renewables would have collapsed. Yet we’re kept in the dark about the extent of the whole-of-system costs from the public purse. Labor needs to be held to its promise of transparency and accountability.
Then there’s Snowy 2.0, our largest long-storage project, critical in the transition to renewables. In 2023, after a “reset”, its cost tripled, from $3.8bn to $12bn. This was to cover the project until completed but $12bn is now not enough. Further price shocks loom. As the black hole deepens, the greater the effort to keep the cost blowouts away from scrutiny.
Almost $600,000 was spent in legal proceedings to this end. It’s hard to understand why it’s taking nine months, until June, to finalise a new cost “reset”, while at the same time being assured Snowy 2.0 will be operational by December 2028. Perhaps they’re waiting to see the ANAO audit results in May? It’s assessing whether Snowy Hydro is “effectively managing contract performance to achieve value for money and to deliver the outcomes required of the project”. Experts estimate the cost of the project, with transmission, is now around $25bn.
It begs the question: Is Snowy 2.0 too big to fail? With alarm bells ringing, the shareholder ministers, Bowen and Senator Katy Gallagher, recently appointed the former secretary of Bowen’s department and the ex-AWU secretary as directors of Snowy Hydro Ltd. It’s wholly owned by the Australian government, after buying out the shares of NSW and Victoria for $6.2bn. Originally, Snowy 2.0 was to cost $2bn and be completed in 2021.
By the time of the 2024-25 budget it needed $7.1bn in financial support; $4.5bn in concessional loans and $2.6bn in equity, on top of an initial $1.38bn. Snowy 2.0 has been a costly debacle.
Usually the pond would slip in a note on the current state of climate change and climate science, but the pond has already gone on too long, and there's still a gobbet of Jennie's jihad to go after this snap of a mortal enemy, Senator Katy Gallagher speaks in Senate Estimates at Parliament House on February 10, 2026 in Canberra, Australia. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images
It was time to end with a rousing assault on renewables and yet again demand the nuking of the country to save the planet, even though there's no sign in the hive mind that climate change is actually happening...
The energy trajectory we’re on must change. Electricity demand will increase with population growth and the needs of new power-hungry industries such as data centres. This will coincide with the announced closure of most coal plants and with gas supply remaining uncertain. What then? What is Labor’s Plan B?
It’s the responsibility of governments to ensure reliable and affordable power. Growth in energy demand requires certainty of supply. That’s best achieved by adding emissions-free technologies such as small modular nuclear reactors to our future energy mix. It’s time to lift the nuclear ban and begin testing the market.
Jennie George is former ACTU president and Labor MP for Throsby.
The pond will now briefly pause to note Natasha gnashing her teeth at Barners ...
Wasn't this what the reptiles wanted?
Haven't they always been keen on rogue government interventions if it's done by the far right for the wrong reasons?
Sheesh, back in 2016, when the dirty deed was done by Tamworth's back scratching, log rolling shame, he was deputy PM and treasured reptile pet ...
The nation’s GP college has pointed out that any geographic restriction on Medicare provider numbers exposes rural communities to harm by flooding them with inexperienced doctors in regions that have the least capacity to educate and supervise them.
There is one outstanding success story, however, in rural medicine. That is the Rural Generalist training pathway, which has been oversubscribed and highly popular for several years now. It works by attracting GPs who want to work to a stimulating and interesting scope of practice, performing surgery and delivering babies. It’s successful because it operates on attraction, not coercion.
It’s fair to say Joyce’s record on coercive policy isn’t good. His insistence that the entire workforce of the nation’s chemical regulator, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinarian Medicine Authority, be shifted to Armidale, which occurred in 2019, resulted in only 15 public service employees moving and led to the governance demise of the entire organisation.
Perhaps Joyce can see no parallels here with his Medicare restriction plan. If so, his powers of self-reflection have deserted him, as well as his capacity to formulate anything resembling reasoned policy.
It's fair to say?
It was completely useless pork barreling, Armidale snout in trough.
I's all very well to push back against Tamworth's eternal shame now, but where were the reptiles when it mattered, when the disaster was unfolding?
MIA like the bromancer ...
And so to the final treat for the day for cultists - so many reptiles, so little time to wade through a vast hive mind - though the pond must report a feeling of disappointment, because the old biddy has arrived late on the scene, only to belatedly join in yesterday's Caterist jihad ... because there must always be a murmuration of like minds in the hive mind...
The old biddy got quite hysterical - this was a "we'll all be rooned by noon" rant for the ages ...
The net effect of the wrongful conduct that occurred on Victoria’s large infrastructure sites was to impose a cost on taxpayers of at least $15bn, which was essentially transferred either directly to the CFMEU or to interests connected with the union. The figure could even be higher, up to $30bn.
But again the pond was disappointed.
When the Caterist went on his jihad, the illustration of the demonic threat was quite fine ...
The reptiles stiffed Dame Groan with this portrait of the beast, Ex-CFMEU boss John Setka, right, outside Melbourne Magistrates Court in January. Picture: NewsWire / Josie Hayden
No chance to make a parrot joke?
It's a deplorable state of affairs when the Caterist makes for a more lively read:
She did have to concede that “it’s a deep concern to me that there was a rotten culture that took hold”. At the same time, an unidentified Victorian government spokesman made the astonishing claim that “here’s what this is really about: in Victoria, we pay workers properly and some people do not like that”.
In desperation, Allan revealed that she had sent a letter of concern about the conduct of the CFMEU to the state anti-corruption agency, knowing full well the matter was outside that body’s scope. Unsurprisingly, Allan has been keen for her lieutenants to step up to the plate. Police Minister Anthony Carbines made the remarkable claim that the chapter was “lots of florid ramblings … but not a lot of evidence”. One wonders whether he has read the document because it is packed with case studies and a very long appendix with instances of gross misconduct and criminal behaviour by the CFMEU.
Indeed, my only beef with it is that Watson is too kind in parts. He maintains that 99 per cent of CFMEU members are good people. This is a strange statement given the need for collective action and enforcement when extortion is the name of the game.
At a minimum, far too many CFMEU members were going along with activities they knew to be wrong.
Instead of the likes of Gatto, the reptiles offered up a suit ...Minister for Police Anthony Carbines. Picture: Josie Hayden
To be fair, Dame Groan studiously avoided the deep corruption in the building industry on the developer side, but what does it matter when an entire apartment block becomes unusable?
There was a great deal of strife on building sites in Victoria and a number of officials were able to enrich themselves inappropriately. It was the Hawke government that ordered the deregistration of the BLF. But the culture of the union never really disappeared.
One of the most disturbing stories relates to an Indigenous labour hire company, Marda Dandhi. One of the aims of the company was to provide jobs for Indigenous people, including those who had been in jail. The short of it is that the CFMEU was not having a bar of it and simply refused to sign an enterprise agreement with the company. Without an agreement, the company could not secure any work.
In fact, there was a directive given by the state infrastructure authority that all Big Build workers must be covered by CFMEU agreements, something Allan would have known and probably condoned.
The owners of Marda Dandhi raised their problems with Victorian minister Sonya Kilkenny four years ago, but didn’t receive a response. In all, 80 emails were sent to 15 Labor state politicians but the pleas for a fair deal went completely unanswered. The company was placed in receivership over two years ago.
The reptiles interrupted with an AV distraction, and the pond was pleased to see that Sky Noise Down Under was still the correct title ... Queensland Labor Senator Murray Watt has criticised the appointment of Stuart Wood to conduct an inquiry into CFMEU wrongdoing, according to Courier Mail columnist Des Houghton. “It’s a bit rich for Murray Watt to do this because he of course was chief of staff to Anna Bligh and director of policy in the premier’s department in Queensland during a period of great CFMEU troubles,” Mr Houghton told Sky News Australia. “At the same time, the Labor Party was only too happy to take funding from the CFMEU so Murray Watt’s own comments need some examination.”
And so to the final gobbet, and the news that the Queensland Olympics would be a disaster, as if the staging of any Olympics in recent times has been anything other than a financial disaster ...
The bottom line of this sorry saga is that the rationale for a well-considered infrastructure plan made necessary by high rates of population growth is quickly undermined when compliance with the law and moral norms is missing. Leaving aside the direct financial costs, the ultimate outcome is a large construction sector that is now less productive than it was 10 years ago, and much more expensive. And the impact is not confined to Victoria.
With Queensland due to host the Olympic Games in 2032, the outlook is bleak for the preparations without major changes to the way industrial relations are conducted.
What a marathon, what a journey of despair, what a relief to turn to the immortal Rowe to celebrate ...
We are all redheads now, we are all Spartacus, we are Tamworth's undying shame, we are reptiles ...
