Not enough attention has been paid to Cory's splendid suggestion, and why is that?
Well the Hunsters put it under VIC news, when it's Ossie, Ossie, oi, oi, news, of national, possibly international, certainly galactic interest ...
Mr Bernardi is reported as saying it is "probably not politically correct" to nominate Ms Rinehart for the award but says "she deserves the honour", and indeed Ms Rinehart does deserve the honour of Cory slobbering and slavering all over her like a Dobermann accidentally left off the leash ...
So much spittle, so much licking ...
Meanwhile, the pond's favourite country seems to have taken a view on chess.
Like Cory, the news of the grand mufti's (yes, the very name has the pond rolling jaffas in the aisles) fear and loathing of the game has travelled slowly, but has at last landed in the Graudian here.
Meanwhile, the second part of New Matilda's False Balance has landed here as a supplement to the first part, which can be found here.
The second part looks at the appalling and - it might be suggested, cowardly - coverage of fraudband, but as always, the venerable Pope said it all in a couple of cartoons ...
It whetted the pond's appetite for talk of the grand old nation-building days when politicians weren't afraid of big schemes ...
And luckily, as always on a Saturday, the weekend reptiles have a genuine visionary always ready to scribble about those wonderful times when it was great to be alive ...
Why absolutely, let us doddle towards senility with our very own prattling Polonius...
How the pond yearned for talk of nation-building schemes like the Snowy.
Now admittedly it started as a Labor idea, but were the Liberals afraid to take it on and complete the task? No, no, they imported cheap labour and got on with the job ...
Let us see how the visionary Polonius confronts the challenge ...
Strange.
Eerie. Almost weird.
The pond must have stumbled on to the wrong column.
There doesn't seem to be a jot or a tittle about the vision thingie, just a lot of blather about powerbrokers and factions and dumpings, and a variant on that old song, staying alive, with the lyrics now adjusted to that potent ballad, staying in power, staying in power ...
Perhaps it will get better in the second half, and we can get headlines like this one ...
You can Trove that one here, if in a Greg Hunt mood, and in these modern, digital, chess-loving times, surely Polonius will now move on to explain how nation-building needs more than fucked broadband ...
Good government?
Yes, apparently that must be guessed at, and not a single notion about what might constitute good government should be mentioned.
Oh dear, senility and nepotism all in one ... what with Menzies as witty and engaging grand-dad, and Anne Henderson demolishing the fiendish David Marr ... and so forth and so endlessly etc, as Polonius examines, like any inner Sydney elitist, the business of politics as an end in itself.
So that's how prattling Polonius disappears up his own fundament ...
If ever there was a prime example of political narcissism displaying a wondrous capacity for schismatic factionalism ...
It led the pond to decide on a brave exploration of bold budgetary issues.
You see, the reptiles clearly felt so strongly about certain issues, they were giving their opinions away for free, sans gold bar of paywall doom ...
No doubt, in conjunction with talk of constraining government spending on useless advertising in the lizard Oz, there would be a splendid, vicious assault on tax dodging companies of the kind who have recently been generating all the wrong sorts of headlines ...
Oh dear, if ever anyone wanted firm, clear evidence that the pond was as deluded as Cory, this is surely it ...
What's the bet that at some point, the reptiles will mention the onerous burden of company tax?
This sort of onerous burden ...
Yep, here it comes ...
Oh indeed, lower company taxes would deliver worthwhile reform ... because it's always possible to go lower than 0%.
What about a generous refund?
Well about this time, after a double dose of reptilian editorial, and Polonius on the vision thingie, the pond was in urgent need of a couple of old Popes as a sedative, and as always, there's a gallery of other Papal visions here ...
"... in 1861 the coalition was saved by the preferences of the Democratic Labor Party"
ReplyDeleteWell, that may be so - though Labor, unsurprisingly actually won a majority of votes overall, just as it did back in 1998 when Howard defeated Beazley - but it was really the leak of 93 preference votes from the Communist Party that saw Jim Killen (well known lover of Apartheid and other causes) elected, thus giving Menzies a two seat majority.
But I suppose we really can't expect The Prattler to acknowledge that his hero owed his success to communists, can we.
Ooops "... in 1961 ". Even Menzies didn't rule for a century :-)
DeleteIn all fairness, GrueBleen, a lot of the DLP policies did date from the Victorian Era!
ReplyDeletePoint well made and appreciatively taken GH. Now that I'm a bit more aware, Bob Saint Mary is a perfect example of a 'downstairs' Victorian.
DeleteI remember, from once listening to Santamaria's radio program, that he engaged in a chat with Menzies in which Robert Gordon asked B A what his (Menzies') worst mistakes as Prime Minister were. Santamaria named three (including Commonwealth Scholarships and opening up entrance to universities - and one other which I can't remember) to which Menzies (at least according to B A) replied "But they're the only three things I ever achieved".
So good to have supportive friends, isn't it.
That third mistake wouldn't have been trying to ban the Communist party would it, GB?
DeleteNo, Anony, Santamaria's thesis was about things Menzies had actually achieved - though he did 'outlaw' the Commos for a couple of years and they had to operate 'underground' for a while (not much of a problem, apparently). But Herbert Vere Evatt - who in 1948 achieved what Kevin Rudd would give his eye teeth, and maybe even sell his bum, for - ran a campaign that just achieved enough support to stop Menzies from actually being able to ban the Commos.
DeleteBut the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the Commonwealth Scholarships and the opening up of university entrance were part of the one achievement. So now there's two other things I have to try to remember ... or find some way of getting Google or Bing to divulge.
It wasn't Snowy Mountains, and it wasn't GM-Holden - they were both Benedict Chifley. And it wasn't ringing the Great Aussie Bight with nuclear fission power stations to desalinate water and pump it inland to transform the Great Aussie Desert into productive farmland (years and years before Ord River) because although Robert Gordon did want to do that, he never actually got it off the ground.
Nope, it would have to be something that simply wasn't radically capitalist free market enough for Santamaria and thus gained his disapproval. But then if you're Tones Yabbott and revere both Satamaria and Menzies, what are you going to do about them being at loggerheads like this ?
Ming did manage to get the reactionary banks on board to set up the Reserve Bank, which had much more fiscal intervention powers than the Commonwealth Bank and was less drastic than Chifley's nationalisation attempt.
DeleteHis lot also set up the domestic two-airline duopoly, which involved pretty serious protection of Ansett. But I don't think the free-marketers nor the leftists would regard it as a great achievement. Pragmatists would say it stopped a government monopoly and gave stability and high safety standards to the industry.
Santa had a holy vision of Vietnam established as the strong centre of South East Asian Roman Catholicism and expansion from that RC bastion into a converted conquered China to the greater glory of Rome, and Santa. Billions would have been grateful. A ponzi revelation of heaven on earth made manifest in a glorious agrarian socialist Roman Catholic Asia stretching forever into the cottage industrial future, and beyond.
DeleteMing invested in the Vietnam business insufficiently.
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/sydq.html
DeleteThe Reserve Bank would be a candidate, GD, except that I can't quite see what Santamaria would have objected to.
DeleteMenzies also started the Child Endowment payments; 5 bob per week which my father used to bank for me to collect when I grew up - which I duly did. I can imagine Santamaria objecting to that ... except that, as Anony below notes, Santamaria was a nutcase Catholic (is there any other kind ?) and so would most likely have approved anything that promoted the childbearing activities of duly wedded Catholic mums.
Also, the Colombo Plan was started in Menzies time, and that may be a candidate too.
Oh Anony, thank you, thank you, thank you for that (http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/sydq.html) !
DeleteIt is so sweet to have some confirmation of my slowly disintegrating memory ! Though the article doesn't confirm Menzies response about "the only three achievements I ever made".
Re the unis, we are definitely in Hegel territory ("Tragedy is the conflict between right and right"). Menzies was right to open them up, Santamaria was right that it couldn't be done anywhere near that quickly. But if not now, when ? (as the Jewish sage once asked).
Oh dear. Joe gets it unintentionally right first time.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v_2WjWd7ws&feature=youtu.be
Malware, fraudband, Another Bloody Con, Nick Ross...
ReplyDeletewhirlpool. Fighting the NBN FUD - Part 11.
p69. Frank Buijk
1. the outcome of the last Federal elections have been influenced by a Government Owned Enterprise; and
2. the influence occurred through the management of the ABC by Malcolm supporters; and
3. by the inappropriate use of Government funding for political purposes?
... The truth appears to be that Malcolm Turnbull supporters forced the ABC to biased views in regards to the NBN which in return informed the public inaccurate, partial and unfair. With that the last elections were influenced.
This parliament should be dissolved by the Governor-General.
p79. Renai LeMay
..The reality is that journalism has its historic roots in people distributing heavily biased propaganda pamphlets about political issues of the day in order to push certain causes, as well as pamphlets advertising various things. Eventually the two merged; some smart cookies saw a chance to make money through advertising, and journalism became a thing which allowed commercial operations (newspapers, and eventually television and radio) to thrive.
The reality is that journalism has its historic roots in people distributing heavily biased propaganda pamphlets about political issues of the day in order to push certain causes, as well as pamphlets advertising various things. Eventually the two merged; some smart cookies saw a chance to make money through advertising, and journalism became a thing which allowed commercial operations (newspapers, and eventually television and radio) to thrive. (blah, blah.., look at moi Malcayman)
p80. percher
> We are all just different pamphlets with different points of view.
Sorry Renai, but that is new age revisionist crap.
It may be that Politics and Economics (eg most of what our journalists write about) is highly subjective, but Science and Technology is something which isn't (or shouldn't be) subjective.
The whole point of Science is that it's core hypothesis are testable. Scientific thinkers strive to have an open mind and to be agnostic. If a theory fails a test, it is discarded.
It is the direct opposite of the world of spin that you have described.
Renai LeMay, as Lord Darlington noted, is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, especially copper and HFC
DeleteAs as I can make out James Franklin is a member of opus dei. He is also closely associated with the Campion College of which Miranda Devine is an honorary "fellow" - as are similar IPA and right-wing fellow travelers, including John Roskam
ReplyDeleteWell given that the item (if you are referring to the link from where I got confirmation of my Santamaria-Menzies story) is taken from Quadrant in 1999, I wouldn't be at all surprised. But a quickish search didn't bring out any Opus Dei contacts nor did it show any obvious association between The Devine, John Roskam and James Franklin with Campion College. Though, amusingly, one of the Campion Foundation directors is none other than Joseph De Bruyn, the National Secretary-Treasurer, Shop Distributive & Allied Employees’ Association.
DeleteBut I did get a bit of a kick reading the Quadrant extract, there was even a cameo appearance by Jack Mundey, and the following delightful quote (referring to UNSW Philosophy Dept: "A tutor was appointed in logic who thought logic played a reactionary role in maintaining bourgeois philosophical ideology." Now that I can see The Devine, Roskam and de Bruyn supporting wholeheartedly !
If, however, you have any links to information on Franklin, Devine, Roskam and their nefarious associations, I, for one, would be interested to read it.
All this obsessive crap about diversity in the Oscars makes me sick. It's all just a yankee jerk-off. Where are the films from France, Norway, India, China, Nigeria?
ReplyDeleteWhen they start featuring I might give a shit about millionaire black yank actors complaining.
Here's one that SHOULD win an oscar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYghjcv6-mI