How remarkable to see a genuine Tory strut boldly into the heart of darkness, and issue stern commandments as if good Queen Vic were still in place (Sri Lanka given deadline by David Cameron over war crime allegations).
Why Rudyard Kipling himself would be proud.
How tedious and predictable to see an ersatz, faux, imitation, forelock-tugging Tory toe the line and tug the forelock and hand over a couple of patrol boats, presumably on the basis that's far better people suffer in silence under an oppressive regime than dare to turn up on local shores saying they are genuine refugees (Sri Lanka given two patrol boats).
The issue of apparently systemic naval complicity in people smuggling has not deterred Australian co-operation with the Sri Lankan armed forces.
Four Sri Lankan navy members, including one senior officer who briefed Australia's border protection chief on counter-trafficking measures, have been charged with involvement in Sri Lanka's largest people-smuggling ring.
Uh huh.
Such a nakedly self-interested, grubby, sordid little cockerel.
But enough of Tory statesmen strutting the world stage, today is the day for a sugar fix of crony commentariat commentary.
And what better way to start than Miranda the Devine, berating former Chairman Rudd for being a snivelling weakling, and denouncing, for the umpteenth time, climate alarmists, though her favourite anti-alarmist is strangely no longer "Lord" Monckton, with the likes of "vegetarian environmentalist" and "Danish statistician" Bjorn Lomborg and Matt Ridley pressed into the breach instead.
Of course climate science has got it all wrong. There is absolutely no case for catastrophic climate change.
On the other hand, in case of catastrophic climate change, break glass, and reach for humanity as the solution, and while you're at it, dismiss centralised government, because let's face it, aid would have been much more effectively distributed in remote areas of the Philippines if left to locals doing what they could, and the very notion of other centralised governments around the world arranging more aid is transparently useless when a few Lions and Rotary clubs could have handled the job.
You see, that's the sort of innovative ways the species will find to surmount obstacles, not that there are any obstacles involving climate science, except that UN international conspiracy involving fat cat scientists and black helicopters.
Even if the world was to drastically cut carbon dioxide emissions any impact would only occur in 50-100 years.
The real way to help typhoon victims is to build them better houses. (here)
Yep, forget about taking any action.
Who cares what the world's like in fifty years time. We'll all be dead, and to hell with the Gen ZZZ'rs. Let them build better houses ...
And so the dissembling goes on. There isn't a problem, but if there is a problem, just build better houses.
Or perhaps just piss some money against the wall.
Peter van Onselen bells that cat:
It takes a lot to feel sympathy for a politician, but Environment Minister Greg Hunt deserves our sympathy. He is the political equivalent of the soldiers left behind during the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
They were promised reinforcements, but they never came. They were promised air support, it didn't happen.
Hunt is the last remaining advocate for spending billions of dollars on climate change and thinking it's worth doing. Prime Minister Tony Abbott doesn't think it is; he just has to honour the election commitment.
It's a case of throwing Hunt $3.2 billion to go away and play with his direct action model, whatever comes of it.
Hunt is expected to implement the Coalition's direct action plan without any cost blow-outs and without any support (Abbott has made it clear there will be no more money).
Agencies are being closed down, economists think emissions targets cannot be achieved via the Coalition's plans and there is little chance of the Coalition even considering the scheme Hunt first proposed, an ETS. (here)
Yep, there's a mole within News Corp, but it's a mole with an unerring capacity to get the details wrong.
You see, Hunt's entire political career has been built around putting a price on carbon. His university thesis was about doing that (reference to a tax on carbon was even in the title) and his reputation built during the Howard years was as a passionate advocate of climate change action.
Hang on, hang on is that the thesis which has its very own Twitter account here?
Which has a pointer to the actual thesis, on Scribd, here.
That's about industrial waste and its management, and that's what's given the gormless Hunt wriggle room in all his shameless dissembling, as when the hapless Chris Uhlmann tried to nail him with the obvious, blatant contradiction:
GREG HUNT: Well actually that was a 1990 undergraduate paper on zinc, cadmium and lead. It was exactly right in my judgment and it taught me the lesson that you need the right market mechanism for the right issue. The wrong market mechanism for electricity, for gas and for essential services is a tax. The right market mechanism is an incentives-based one.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Like emissions trading? (here)
Ah well, he got him with that one.
And at least the error-prone van Onselen manages a hit with this:
Having told journalists that he was prepared to stake his entire credibility as a politician on achieving the 5 per cent emissions reduction target by 2020, if Hunt wants a future (or a legacy) he has to make it happen.
But how? With a direct action scheme which would see the same department that (mis)managed the pink bats program managing a $3b plus slush fund? What could possibly go wrong with that scenario!
Indeed.
And now can we note that van Onselen was all for voting in this wretched mob of climate denialists now in government, trudging in the same News Corp path as the Bolter, the Devine, Akker Dakker, Kenny, Cater and the rest of the bunch...
... presumably so now he can point out the deep folly of their policies and the even deeper folly of voting for same, though the contradictions were well known, and the stupidities profoundly obvious before the country went to the polls ...
But the pond has a solution.
What we need in the deep north is better, stronger housing.
What better use for a $3b plush slush fund, to solve a problem that doesn't exist, but if it does, requires stronger housing ...
Yes, too long amongst the crony commentariat cawking and crowing like demented eye-plucking carrion birds amongst the lambs can send you barking mad ...
(Below: more Wilcox here)
Building stronger ships perhaps is to be recommended, too.
ReplyDeleteThe exciting, erudite and inspiring Joe Hockey has a message for “angry & extreme left-wing trolls”, ie., anyone who disagrees with him.
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/okuzg5j