From a Pyne to a Pearson ...

(Above: First Dog on the vexed subject of Christopher Pyne, more First Dog here).

The good news is that someone else was perturbed by Christopher Pyne's shameless plagiarising when he let loose this rhetorical flourish:

“I knew John Howard and I served John Howard and John Howard was a friend of mine. And you are no John Howard,” Pyne declared.

The pond first heard it on radio, and wondered if the acknowledgement had been cut off. But no, there was no acknowledgement of borrowing, pilfering or downright theft.

Here's what Pyne should have said:

"As Lloyd Bentsen said so memorably in another context, and I paraphrase him, being a humble pilferer who understands that acknowledged imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I knew John Howard and I served John Howard and John Howard was a friend of mine. And you are no John Howard."

That would have got him out of jail, as opposed to the jail of plagiarists, cheap vulgar minds, and shameless stealers into which he should be thrown.

If you want to see VP candidate Lloyd Bentsen smackdown Dan Quayle in 1988, head off to Crikey for the YouTube link to: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy”. (oh okay, here if you lurk outside the paywall).

It's about the only notable thing Bentsen did in politics, and even then the grave-robbing zombie Pyne won't let him rest.

Turns out Pyne has an excellent parrot mind, and can store someone else's excellent quote for recycling, but can't remember sending an email to a Slipper staffer shortly after he sent it. Oh wait, now he remembers it ...

EMMA ALBERICI: Christopher Pyne why did you say there was no contact with James Ashby when later it was found that you did send him an email later on the same night that you'd been drinking with him; an email that you've later said was innocuous. It in fact said, "You see only Australian Parliament House address". What did that mean?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That's exactly right. It's so boring.
EMMA ALBERICI: But what did it mean?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well in the conversation that night in the Speaker's office, which was for about 50 minutes and one beer was consumed, I was talking about the fact that I'm basically a technophobe and I can't handle more than one email address and I know that a lot of people have a lot of other email addresses and it's such a boring response. (here)

A self-admitted boring dumb technophobe! Well that's one way to get out of trouble, and about as clever as the smarmy dog ate my boring homework excuse, but it does remind the pond that technophobia is all the go in the Liberal party, along it seems with ignorance and pilfering.

Which is why you could have knocked the pond down with a feather - possibly a feather plucked from Tony Abbott's goose bum - at the news We will not cancel the NBN: Turnbull.

Does this mean that we can now start talking about Toniliar, having had to endure years of rhetorical abuse and nattering negativity about the NBN and the usefulness of broadband?

Everyone fond of the kool-aid will wonder what they've been drinking these past few years.

Of course when you read the detail of Malcolm Turnbull trying to sound like a cheapskate in the company of his boss luddite - fibre to the node, fibre to the home restricted to greenfield sites, and HFC where it's still hanging around in city areas - there exists a tremendous capacity for the Liberal opposition to fuck it up, penny pinching instead of vision-seeking, and creating cheap solutions which will need to be replaced within a few years.

As anyone who endures HFC knows, it was rolled out a decade ago, and never upgraded, even in high density locations, with the private sector, supposed to lead the way, hanging back and accepting that's what is simplest and easiest and cheapest for them was best for the customer.

Please allow the pond to quote Paul Budde, because shouting at a wall of stupidity is tiresome when done alone. Firstly on the life of HFC:

"Optus and Telstra did not see that potential going forward; the utilities don't believe copper HFC has a life beyond about eight years and investors are not prepared to invest in that technology.
"Why would you do it? And what are you going to do at the end of that time. In the US the cable network has been upgraded since the day it was built. More than 50 per cent of the population is connected to it. It's a different scenario.

And again please Mr. Budde:

Mr Budde said the Coalition must stop scare-mongering in relation to costs.
"We have now 40 ISPs with NBN products on the market for as low as $25 a month. How are consumers worst off? The average is more like $29 for a basic NBN [connected] product. That is very comparable with ADSL packages that are around now."

Putting Tony Abbott in charge of broadband and asking for a futurist vision is a bit like putting a Pellist in charge of the business of teaching the theory of evolution and climate science to high school students. Young people tend to be so far ahead of the game in understanding the paradigm shift that there'd be a riot in the classroom ...

As the first comment off the block declaimed, "There will be no NBN under a Government I lead!"

Every day in every way, federal politics is extraordinarily dispiriting these days. The only upside? What will the commentariat make of it? What will the myrmidon lackeys of Murdoch sing from the sheet? Oh yes, two legs Labor NBN bad, four legs, let's do it differently Liberal NBN good.

How might a futurist put it?

“To quote Christopher Pyne, who so sagely and cleverly opined in another context, I knew the NBN and I devised the NBN and a genuinely forward looking and visionary NBN was a friend of mine. And your newly discovered and belatedly announced NBN isn't much of an NBN, and damned sure if it's any friend of mine."

At last the mincing poodle serves a purpose, and please note, no offence to mincing poodles is intended ...

Naturally you won't find any of this NBN news in the Murdoch press. So what will you find?

Yawn, Pearson announcing the Messiah yet again. Abbott might even make good on his promise to turn water into wine, and roll back the seas so we can all reach safe haven. But will he find a way to deliver Malcolm Turnbull's vision of an NBN Mr Pearson?

It would be a gross misrepresentation to call Pearson a Little Lord Fauntleroy, so we'll settle for Little Sir Echo instead ... if only he'd go far away.

Just as innocent mincing poodles suffer, so Pearson manages to make man love seem like an unsavoury spectacle. Thank the lord for Justice Kirby providing an alternative role model ...

Meanwhile, the pond has been remiss in its duties of late, ignoring the commentariat, so to make amends we offer up The Australian's editorial Protecting freedom of speech (it's outside the paywall so you can suffer for free, o fabjous day, callooh, callay).

Clearly the rag is smarting at its recent activities in relation to the Slipper affair, and the editorial outburst indicates that where there's smoke there's likely a fire raging ...

The editor is on safe ground decrying public interest tests - Richard Ackland put it better and with more style in The obscure world of public interest - but what's interesting is the glib way the editorial dismisses "spurious claims" about "hate media" and newspapers conducting "regime change" without acknowledging the crusade that the HUN, The Daily Terror and The Australian have been on in recent years ... and most recently and most obviously in the Slipper affair.

There is of course not a single word about the Slipper matter - the foxes at faux news have gone to ground - so in the spirit of Christopher Pyne, can the pond just refresh the editorial's closing remarks, which originally ran:

If Senator Conroy and his colleagues want to keep a vestige of credibility, they will not leave an anti-democratic legacy destined for the political dustbin.

How about this instead?

If the editors of The Australian and the Daily Terror and their colleagues want to keep a vestige of credibility, they will not leave an anti-government and anti-Slipper legacy hanging in the air, but instead will come clean, co-operate with the courts and provide a full and frank confession of their involvement in the Slipper affair. The government might be heading for the political dustbin, but the new structure of News Ltd will shortly see their abuse of process and their relentless hate media regime change crusading serve as cage liner for cocky shit ...

In the pond's dreams of course. With petty pilfering of speeches by politicians going unremarked, who's going to pause for a minute and contemplate the greater crimes perpetrated by the media ...

(Below: and still this cartoon remains relevant).