Once more with feeling, but please, don't mention climate science ...

The trouble with David Rowe is that he routinely gazumps what the pond was going to say - at great, tedious, verbose, repetitive sloganeering Abbotttian length - with a single image, and in this case - the pond - never ever having watched an episode of any cooking show - with a deeper awareness of popular culture (and more Rowe here).

But hey nonny no, on we go, because by way of a big slice of luck, the pond recently managed to get hold of the 1919 intergenerational theft report, which projected what might happen in the next twenty years or so.

Now because it was prepared for the government of that great charlatan and rogue, William Morris Hughes - you can do a Greg Hunt and ADB him here - it's suitably gloomy, and takes the view that Germany should be blamed for everything, and Japan blamed for daring to hint that the White Australia policy might be wrong.

But naturally it was sanguine about Australia's prospects, provided Billy himself stayed in charge.

Strangely however, it didn't foresee the bubble of the 1920s, or the great depression that followed, or the second world war, or much of anything else that actually mattered.

No doubt other intergenerational theft reports are equally myopic.

Now it might well be true that climate science is a fraud and a hoax and a conspiracy perpetrated by the United Nations as a covert way to introduce world government, aided by black helicopters. After all if Janet "Dame Slap" Albrechtsen endorses Lord Monckton, it must be so ...

And after all, we have in our midst some of the very greatest climate scientists in the known universe. There's the Bolter, Moorice Newman, Cardinal Pell before he went kitchen fittings hunting in Rome, Dame Slap herself, Akker Dakker, Miranda the Devine, Paul "magic water man" Sheehan, and all the reptiles of the lizard Oz, led by that noble investigator Graham Lloyd.

Why we're only missing Bjorn Lomborg and the lordish Monckton, though we have plenty of parrots to recycle their views ...

On the other hand, there's a slim chance these luminaries might be wrong, in which case the current report on intergenerational theft is as useless as projected spit on a projected griddle, with the funniest aspect of the matter the way the scientific luminaries ridicule computer modelling, then sit down and expect jolly Joe's statistical brew to be taken seriously ...

Not to worry young 'uns. The pond can make a couple of reliable projections of its own.

Before he can do much about anything, jolly Joe will turn from the world's most useless treasurer to more solid work as a feather duster, while the pond won't be around to see how his 'make work' scheme for bean counters and number crunchers worked out ... so good luck with that, and all the best and here, have a tasty David Pope cartoon (and more Pope here).

The pond was particularly startled by that threat of a slide night from the Danube cruise. Surely Pope realises that these days old fogies are likely to line up some kind of tablet and run through a slide show of a million digital images ...

Of course the reptiles were on hand to sing the siren song of fear.

Grey cloud on nation's horizon?

Is that a reference to jolly Joe? Or climate science?

Of course not, it's the dangers of that grey tablet full of satanic images taken by selfish old farts on their Danube cruise ...

Naturally the pond turned to the Oz editorialist for the official line, much as one did in the great days of Pravda:

Uh huh. What do you know, the Oz editorialist is up there with the Bolter when it comes to climate science. Just like the valuable diagnostic tool itself, the reptiles can't be bothered thinking about it.

And what's this? Even the reptiles spotted the nakedly partisan nature of the presentation? 

Do go on:

 Yes, well played, and not a word about climate science, which is, we understand, from the many eminent scientists employed by that eminent scientist Rupert Murdoch, so much malarkey.

Talk about all that Arctic ice! Where's your warming now, eh warmistas?

As for the rest?

Well Bernard Keane in Crikey (behind the paywall) had this little note:

The report also assumes annual GDP growth of 2.8% — slightly up from 2.7% in the 2010 IGR. Coming a day after we learned the economy managed just 0.5% growth in the December quarter, it reinforces the tension at the heart of the government’s fiscal stance. The government will be pumping tens of billions of dollars into the economy over the next three years and still expects below-trend growth for much of that period. Its remorseless insistence that it has inherited a budget disaster and that we are heading for a multitrillion-dollar debt under “Labor settings” is contradicted by its macroeconomically necessary deficit spending. 
Hockey was at pains in the report lock-up to emphasise his desire for a sensible debate about the long-term fiscal challenges the report discusses. Fair enough. That could start with greater clarity and honesty around the government’s current rhetoric about the budget.

And in the meantime, as part of the price of Abbott saving his skin, the government has splashed cash at the military, dropped its co-payment plan, and otherwise de-gutted its 2014 budgetary strategy, a strategy that was foolish from the get go, with such ineffable stupidities as proposing we could use the co-payment to indulge in medical research to benefit oldies suffering from disease, rather than using it to pay down debt ...

Clarity and honesty about the budget? Nope, all the pond sees is the pain of being a chicken little, projecting doom and gloom forty years into the future, and sssh, not a word about climate science.

Well at least it produced a joke:

After all, the only useful thing about scientific infrastructure is the way it can be used for extortion and blackmail. So there's your collegial and consensual way right there, in action ...

No wonder some are forced into whimsy:

(and more Leunig here).

Meanwhile, the Oz had words on another matter:

It would be hard to find a better example, if you wanted a classic example of how detached from reality the reptiles are ...

Progress on gender equity?

Was it only a few days ago that the pond was reading the PwC report on the gender pay gap, here?

Australia dropped six places to 15th position - the largest drop out of the 27 OECD countries measured - in an annual index that ranks female economic empowerment, Global head of PwC's People Business Jon Williams announced today. 
"Australia now sits right on the average, and trending to below the average, largely due to an increased gender pay gap and a small increase in female unemployment," Mr Williams said.

There's your progress in gender equity right there, and it's a bit like trying to spot a woman in Tony Abbott's cabinet ... and yet you won't find any hint of that Oz reality in reptile Oz la la land.

Instead you'll have to head off to SBS to read A new low, as gender pay gap hit 20-year high.

Meanwhile, thanks to the intergenerational theft report, the pond can wrap things up with a look at a more immediate future, thanks to Moir, and more Moir here.