(Above: brrm, brrm Mr Pope, and more Pope here).
Serious questions today: along with the worst federal government ever, and the worst PM ever, including Billy McMahon, has Australia got the worst cricket team ever?
And is there a deep conspiracy involving the duke- and dame-loving dual citizenship PM to put a hex on Australia's willow-wasting colonial lads?
And is Tony Burke the most foolish fop of all time?
And speaking of Mr Pope's notorious motorbike club, The Make-Laws Entitlement Club, what's this?
As thick as thieves, and the poodle the thickest of them all.
Even worse, there's a serious matter of aesthetics involved.
At least Bronnie went to the opera, but to make up a story about serious matters discussed with a rock promoter, Michael Chugg, who thought the conversation so important he couldn't much remember what was discussed, and all to attend a Robbie Williams concert ... talk about wretched middle-brow, beige, boring taste, compounded by the accepting of free tickets to Justin Bieber ...
Bieber ... encouraging his children to become Bieberbelievers?
Why that constitutes criminal cruelty to the young ... and yet at one time he was supposed to be in charge of the y'artz
No wonder the Terror had fun ...
The pond's much more approving of trips to Spain and Italy, first class.
If you're going to rort, then rort in style. Off to Barcelona and the marvels of Gaudi, take in the ruins of Rome ...
Could it get any more pathetic and risible? Of course it could ...
The Swiss bank accounts man pontificating about rorting and calling for bipartisan Swiss bank accounts? Pure comedy gold ...
As usual, Rowe brought the catastrophes together, and more Rowe here:
Delusional, though given recent events, the pond couldn't help sneaking off to that epic piece, How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?* *Kinda crazy. (But also maybe right?)
As always, the pond is standing by to help refurbish the conspiracy theory.
You see, after concealing the plane at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the conspirators cunningly trucked bits of the plane down to the Indian ocean, and dropped them in, knowing this would be the cream on the cake in terms of concealing the conspiracy ...
Never mind, so many loons, so little time, and sadly the pond's beat is the world of the reptiles, and wouldn't you know, there was a prime loon on the front page of the lizard Oz this day:
No, not Burkie up there on the right hand side, have a look at the loon on the left side.
It's coal, coal, coal for Australia!
The reptiles had to wheel out their top notch reporters to provide the coverage, with the bouffant one leading the way.
Actually it's beyond time for Australia's worst PM ever - the dual citizen that put a hex on its cricket team - got over his fixation on coal.
The Commonwealth Bank did ... they did the hard yakka and found the skink skunk (groans are allowed).
And it's not just about the greenies. It's about the changing times, but the luddite PM hasn't caught up with that, presumably not having read the AFR's Adani's Carmichael: highly probable it 'will not proceed', says analyst Tim Buckley:
....Mr Buckley believes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has empowered energy minister Piyush Goyal to transform the Indian power sector.
This includes a $250 billion foreign investment in renewable energy, a modern grid, tripling the amount of Indian coal produced and ending India's reliance on imported coal from Indonesia and Australia within a year or two.
"The combination of those three things means the high-cost supplier is going to be squeezed out, and in India the high-cost supplier of electricity is imported coal," he said.
As a result Mr Buckley believes India's imports of thermal coal will peak this year at about 192 million tonnes and follow China's imports into rapid decline, to zero by 2021.
Mr Buckley's forecasts are similar to that of top economist and Labor emissions trading scheme architect Ross Garnaut but they are far from the consensus, which is for continued growth in India's coal consumption and imports even as China's demand peaks and declines.
But if even partially true the forecasts would be bad news for Australia, which has seen thermal coal exports soar from about $4 billion a year in the early 2000s to a peak of $18 billion in 2012 and back to $12 billion in 2013.
Mr Buckley said the coal industry had misunderstood the scale of the transformation planned for the Indian power sector by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and energy minister Piyush Goyal, who said in May that he was confident India would not need to import any more thermal coal.
"Goyal has studied the Chinese electricity market for five years now, and he is trying to replicate exactly what the Chinese have done in an Indian context," he said. He said that Adani's capacity to fund the $10 billion Carmichael project itself had been drastically reduced by the conglomerate's restructure into four separate listed companies this year.
That meant Adani Enterprises – the coal mining and trading arm – was no longer vertically integrated with the power company and the mine would have to stack up on its own fundamentals.
The restructure makes a huge difference because external shareholders such as BlackRock and Fidelity would not be willing to fund an unviable project, Mr Buckley said.
"A year ago Adani Enterprises was a $10 billion company. Adani Enterprises could have funded this project a year ago and they didn't have to have recourse to minority shareholders," he said.
"If Adani Enterprises doesn't have the financial resources internally they have to go to external shareholders who can argue on the financial merits and you only have to look at Peabody Energy's share price to know that the financial markets are not going to be throwing money at Adani Enterprises."
Put more simply and elegantly, what a stupid man Tony Abbott is, and no wonder he presides over the worst Australian cricket team of all time ...
But enough, the pond always likes to provide a little grit in the meal, something to aid digestion, and whenever the oracular reptiles deliver up an editorial, the pond is there, patiently waiting.
Naturally the subject's climate science, and what to do about it, and naturally the only considered response the reptiles can imagine is a little chiding and a hand-wringing:
Okay, okay, boring as batshit, with a little skew and spin into the back pocket, but wait, the comedy spin comes in the final par, and being the reptiles, it's mighty fine:
Don't you love it?
Mr Obama's latest assault on coal-fired power stations is out of Tony Abbott's playbook ...
Because Tony Abbott's just so down on coal, he's sooh over it ...
Hmm, time for the pond to trot out a really significant infographic:
Well played Tony Burke ... there was some point to that Bieber concert after all ...
And what joy, now there's time for the pond to head off to Kazakhstan to sort out for good and all the perplexing mystery of the plane ... up there with the conspiracies at the heart of the dual citizen's reign...
Meanwhile, for a cleansing sorbet, Moir showing solidarity for the brothers, and more Moir here (presumably the Fairfaxians will get their galleries working again in due course):
Indeed. If lawful conduct is too hard, and the enterprise is a basket-case, and environmental protection is sabotage, and sabotage of the environment is good business, and community expectations are mutable, then just close the loupe-holes and carry on regardless: "Reconsidering the decision does not require revisiting the entire approval process," it said."
ReplyDeleteHow about Waleed Aly!
ReplyDelete"Opposition Leader Tony Abbott also said his aim was to achieve unity. ''We accept that millions of Australians' hopes and dreams are resting on constitutional recognition of indigenous people and the last thing I want to do is do anything other than welcome this report today,'' he said."
DeleteI'm guessing Abbott will be drawn to Trump, rather than to Fiorina.
ReplyDeleteBut, butt (as you would say) if the emissions from coal-fired power stations reduces, and is replaced by "the innovate catalyst for the shale-oil revolution", won't those reduced coal emissions be largely replaced by those from the gas?
ReplyDeleteFracking - changing the geopolitics of energy in america's favour? I think not.