Thanks to Graham Burke, it's crazies day at the pond, and lordy lordy, there's plenty of crazies to go round ...

It was the wording that caught the pond's eye.

Now the pond, by its very name, is dedicated to teh crazy.

After all, 'barking mad' and 'howling at the moon' are two favourites, and it's always a sure sign that someone's dropped the plot when it comes to having a rational discussion when they head off into the fields of personal abuse.

Come on down, Graham Burke, co-CEO of Village Roadshow, why not pen a helpful letter to big Mal?

Dear Malcolm. 
My company is not prepared to participate in the forum. As expressed to you previously these Q and A style formats are judged by the noise on the night and given the proposed venue I believe this will be weighted by the crazies. What is at stake here is the very future of Australian film production itself and it is too crucially important to Australia's economy and the fabric of our society to put at risk with what will be a miniscule group whose hidden agenda is theft of movies. 
Sincerely. 
Graham.

Crazies? Teh crazies?

And the agenda of some to purloin movies is hidden?

Now in the real world, it's Islamic fundamentalists that are crazy, barking mad and howling at the moon, when not doing despicable things.

So who are some of the crazies attending big Mal's forum?

At the event will be iiNet CEO David Buckingham, Telstra executive director Jane Van Beelen, Foxtel CEO Richard Freudenstein, APRA CEO Brett Cottle, Choice CEO Alan Kirkland and writer/producer Peter Duncan.

Ah yes, no doubt as good a bunch of crazies as big Mal could round up.

It was ZDNet and Josh Taylor that supplied Burke's correspondence in Village Roadshow no-show for online piracy forum.

And soon enough the story was spreading teh crazy, with the Graudian running Malcolm Turnbull's piracy forum criticised by Village Roadshow chief.

In that, Lenore Taylor made a few of the more obvious points, recycling big Mal:

In a recent blog on the issue Turnbull explained the difficulties with Burke’s plan for ISPs to slow down internet speeds for repeal illegal downloaders.  
“The ISPs would … point out many practical issues – cutting off or slowing down someone’s account will certainly mean they won’t be as whippy at file sharing as they used to be, but it may also mean they won’t be able to put their kids’ pictures on Facebook, work from home, take a university course online, let alone videoconference with a doctor. Given the central importance of connectivity to all of our lives, cutting off or degrading an internet connection is a big deal – which of course is why the content owners believe it would be such an effective sanction and disincentive to infringing copyright. And then what about family or workplace accounts where one person is doing the wrong thing and others are not?,” he wrote. 
“The content owners have said they simply do not want to sue individuals. As Village Roadshow’s Graham Burke said in this SMH article recently. It costs money and results in bad publicity for the copyright owners. To which of course the ISPs respond ‘And you think throttling back our customers’ internet access won’t be bad publicity for us?’” 
And he again linked the issue of illegal downloading to the business decisions of the content owners.

And so on.

Burke wants others to do the dirty work, which isn't surprising, since Burke routinely lines up to pocket generous subsidies from the Australian taxpayer to manufacture crap for the US and international markets.

The pond would rather pirate a garbage bin liner than most of the crap the Warners Roadshow alliance produces ...

The shakedown has got so bad that the pond was entranced to read of the ongoing efforts of the Disney studio to leech cash from the federal government. That prime doofus, Tony Burke, back in April 2013, committed some $21.6 million to lure 20,000 Leagues under the Sea: Captain Nemo to Australia, with a likely total outcome, thanks to other rorting, of a $40 million government spend.

Now that outing has sunk somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle, and it was IF, courtesy of Don Groves, that broke the story of the new project in Disney asks Oz government to dig deep:

While that project is stalled, with no director since David Fincher departed, Disney is now asking for that money to be applied to another film and the funding to be topped up to 30%.
 IF understands the film is Pirates of the Caribbean 5, which Disney has dated for July 7 2017. Johnny Depp is set to return to the follow-up to Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, entitled Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, alongside Christoph Waltz, Geoffrey Rush, Jack Davenport and, rumour has it, Keith Richards. 
Disney’s pitch to the government surfaced last week when the MEAA wrote to Arts Minister Senator George Brandis in support of Disney’s request and to press for a permanent increase to the location offset from 16.5% to 30%.


In the usual way, the story was picked up by the mainstream bludgers - in the leaning rather than lifting sense - with the Fairfaxians running Disney hopes to switch $21.6m federal cash from 20,000 Leagues to Pirates of the Caribbean 5.

The pond has absolutely no explanation as to why the federal government should be contemplating a generous 30% support of local spend on a heavily profitable franchise. It doesn't get a share of profits, it just gets the mumbo jumbo of the multiplier effect, and unions pleasing the grips and the gaffers and the rest of the services game ... to produce a piece of tired crap for the world market, and for benefit of a Hollywood franchise that was tired on its second outing ... thank the long absent lord nobody though of extending the Police Academy franchise by taking it down under.

Truly, at this level of shakedown - one that would astonish hard-working Mafia grafters - make work schemes have reached a Keynesian perfection:

“To dig holes in the ground or shoot Hollywood crap,” paid for out of savings, will increase, not only employment, but the real national dividend of useful goods and services. It is not reasonable, however, that a sensible community should be content to remain dependent on such fortuitous and often wasteful mitigations when once we understand the influences upon which effective demand depends, especially when the community can understand the astonishing benefits of laying down in front of the Hollywood graft machine and let it run over the community's representatives. (and some more Keynes here)

Oh okay, the pond changed that around a bit, but that's the problem with Burke talking about the crazies - it draws attention to other industry-related craziness.

And in all this, Australian films about matters Australian get lost, though this was the ostensible reason that the industry was given its tax breaks, and not so the likes of Baz Luhrmann could indulge in his fantasy of making the great American film based on the great American novel ... thanks to the Australian taxpayer.

Meanwhile, the pleading of that other foreign-owned entity, personned by reptiles at the lizard Oz, have moved beyond the poignant to the pathetic:

What? Still banging on, asking for help to improve? Debretts not enough for social skills and etiquette training? You know,  don't soil the carpet, take off your dung-clad shoes and walk in your socks?

What is it with alleged professionals daily pleading for help to fix a product they single-handedly, with reptile skill, made toxic as a brand? Turned a quite decent product into a steaming pile of expendable Hollywood crap (yes Bulgaria, it's all your fault, and now Burkie wants to turn Oz into the new Bulgaria).

Well the pond has already explained how tedious and boring it is to read, day after day, rabid ideological rants from the usual suspects - the pond having obtained its daily dose of news, gruesome as it is these days, elsewhere.

This sort of stuff from Greg "bromance" Sheridan:

All the problems? As in without exception? Which is to say all?

Stop right there, the pond has absolutely no further interest in reading on.

The pond is absolutely not curious to know more, because it's certain just to be another piece of Greg Sheridan craven forelock tugging and knob polishing, of the hagiographic kind. Sure enough:

Right about that time, the pond has to weigh up a crucial issue. Can it be bothered getting around the paywall to read a column it could write in its sleep?

Nope, with all this talk of crazies, sanity prevailed, and instead the pond headed off to read Michael Pascoe at Fairfax scribbling Australian newspapers dragging down News Corp, which recycled Crikey's story.

And the Graudian did the same, though with a new angle in the header, News Corp Australian leaked accounts show 1,000 jobs curt across mastheads, Major leak of confidential operating accounts reveal extent of losses with the Australian losing about $30m a year.

Yep, it's absolutely the wrong time to be running a pleading, begging pop-up, requesting cheap-arsed help - a hundred bucks to help fix a bottomless pit of rabid ideology and ratbaggery - as the truth about the state of News Corp down under breaks wide.

And then to do it not just one day, but to run the begging pop-up a couple of days in a row - is the rag so unloved that they couldn't turn up enough punters after a day of pop-ups on every click?

Never mind that the moment the newspaper business was hived off, it was likely that the reality of the business model would become more transparent, after years of hiding behind the skirts of the international business.

For a tasty sorbet dessert, the pond ordered up Fairfax's Kim Williams says poor News Corp figures are not his fault, in which Williams does his very best to imitate Pontius Pilate and ostentatiously washes his paws in fragrant scented waters of innocence:

The accounts, for the year to June 2013 as News Corp was splitting into two, showed revenue at The Australian fell 20.2 per cent to $107.6 million. 
Operating income for the broadsheet fell to a loss of $27 million. Melbourne's Herald Sun saw revenues fall 13.5 per cent to $249.6 million, while revenue at Sydney's Daily Telegraph dropped by 14.4 per cent to $160.4 million. 
The Herald Sun contributed operating income of $34.6 million to the group, down 40.5 per cent, while the Daily Telegraph's operating income fell 64.5 per cent to $8 million. 
Australian permanent staff numbers were slashed by 987 over the year to 8019. 
Kim Williams, who was chief executive at the time of the accounts, said: ''I've no doubt there will be a festival of vengeance against me. I have nothing to say.'' 
He added: ''What all print journalism companies are dealing with are completely immutable and unstoppable forces. And people who deny that is the case are clearly living in a different world than I am living in. 
''I haven't seen the Crikey piece. Apparently there's some suggestion that this is all my fault.'' He added: ''Obviously, I beg to differ.'' 
Mr Williams defended his decision to pay $30 million for the media business of ABC presenter Alan Kohler, which the figures show cost News Corp Australia $2.5 million despite its $3.5 million revenue. ''Here's one thing about purchase prices: people always have 100 per cent hindsight.'' Mr Williams announced his departure from News Corp in August last year, just months after News Corp split in two, and the time of these accounts. 
His successor, Julian Clarke, described the figures on Wednesday as ''14 months out of date, have been illegally circulated and are not from our statutory accounts. They do not reflect the current performance of the business''. 
He told staff in an email: ''We have continually emphasised our confidence in the future of our print and digital assets, driven by an experienced management team which has developed robust plans for the future. 
''We will be sharing details of these plans with you over the next few weeks and I look forward to working with you as we continue to build the business.'' 
The company declined to comment on whether its 2014 results were better, but veteran media analyst Mark McDonnell noted News Corp's recent results ''readily acknowledged that the Australian business continues to deteriorate''.

Well there's your problem right there - if the pond happened to be Graham Burke, we might even call it crazy.

Anybody still spruiking tree-killing print assets as a future business model is in dire trouble, even if it panders to the thinking of an old and out of touch foreigner ...

Sounds as if Holt street is in melt down mode. Or perhaps it's just the ongoing denialism. Twitter us some drivel:

More please (and quick, thanks to a reader check out the real Sharri Markson twitter feed at Sharri 2000, churs mitchal so angry with crackey he slam revolving door here. It might not last for long). 

The pond can't get enough of the twittering and the denials:

Twitter on my pretties.

But if everything is so hunky dory, why the spending of money to help the reptiles at the Oz improve? The pond has already provided the link to Debretts ...

How about yet another article explaining that it's all the fault of the ABC, Fairfax, Labor, Julia Gillard, and the greenies ...

Frankly, it's been so much crazy fun the pond tends to forget there's a real world out there, which rarely shows up in News Corp publications but can be reliably found in the cartoons of David Rowe, here:

Yes, there was poor old Mathias Cormann on Lateline trotted out to do Shylock with Budget a marathon not a sprint:

I don't think that anyone, none of us are robots. I'm not a robot, Joe Hockey is not a robot. We're human beings. Every now and then we don't get things quite right and the important thing is to just move on and re-focus on what actually is important and what matters....

If you prick us do we not bleed, if you give us petrol, do we not drive long distances, if you give us oil do you hear the gears change and the clutch crank as we wonder where the master salesman went?

It produced a response from Lenore Taylor at The Graudian:

That screeching sound is the government’s budget rhetoric doing a u-turn. 
Having spent the last three months insisting the budget emergency meant there would be dire consequences if the budget did not pass, it appears the government is now facing the reality that key budget policies may indeed not pass – despite its best negotiating efforts over the winter break. 
Lest anyone then try to assert that by the government’s own arguments we were facing some kind of emergency or crisis, the government has dramatically shifted its rhetoric, insisting there is in fact no crisis or emergency at all. (and the rest here).

Yes, there's humour to be found everywhere, but you won't find much of it in the wretchedly rabid News Corp papers.

This is the best the Currish Snail could come up with today:

But, but, but billy goats. He's just doing a Greg Hunt.

Who can forget the immortal Fairfax Greg Hunt uses Wikipedia research to dismiss links between climate change and bushfires (forced video at end of link)? Or the Graudian's Greg Hunt uses Wikipedia research to dismiss climate change-bushfire link ...

So the header was in error. It should have been written in Kiwi, which is to say Thuck as a Bruck, and failing that, surely it should have read Thuck as a Greg Hunt ...

But the PUPsters can provide a genuine laugh, thanks to David Pope. And as always more Pope here.