Irresistible ... and the pond now has a hope that noodling nodal boxes will become useful in in some ways, given that copper 2 the home is going to be pretty useless ... as anybody outside the engineers who briefed Malware knew ...
Oh yes ... nothing like sharing the ownership of a boat to produce sharp headlines of the Malcolm Turnbull's mate JB Rousselot gets $165k NBN bonus despite $15 billion project blow out kind ...
But enough brooding. The pond is inclined to brooding, and not just about the NBN. There was the recent work done by Sydney Water in the neighbourhood to "fix services" that also led to much suffering.
Now the pond has been trained by Adelaide water back in the days when EandWS meant something, like water so hard there was no need for a mineral supplement, but even so it was pleasing to see how SW "fixed" things.
Where once had been pressure, now there's a trickle, so any problem regarding overuse has been nipped in the bud. Of course actual ordinary use is also fucked, but hey, as the oblivious Osgood observed in Billy Wilder's immortal film, "nobody's perfect" ... (that script is here in pdf form).
And while they were at it, they "fixed" the road too.
Where once there had been a relatively flat surface for the rat run, now there's a bumpy, corrugated multi-layered tar pit cunningly designed to produce Mad Max mayhem and motoring hell ...
It's a first world problem - well we don't have IEDs by the roadside, just left over SW machinery - but it works as a metaphor for lots of things ... like the reptiles thinking that publishing Paul "Ned" Kelly constitutes some kind of business model ... as if we can't all buy soporifics at the chemist.
The droning reached fever pitch today, such that the pond lapsed into a form of somnambulism ...
Bore people to tears with a ponderous pontificator and subscribers will clamour to come back for more ...
See, business model sorted.
Now the pond had a similar choice - encourage readership or drive people away to do useful things with their lives.
Naturally, being of really uniquely perverse, in an ABC announcer way and of a lemming nature, we supported the reptiles' push for people to get out and about and do something interesting... and so plunged into the dullard, mind-numbing tosh ...
Naturally, being of really uniquely perverse, in an ABC announcer way and of a lemming nature, we supported the reptiles' push for people to get out and about and do something interesting... and so plunged into the dullard, mind-numbing tosh ...
As usual, when confronted by this sort of meandering rambling, the pond hits a sticking point, a roadblock of the SW kind, and this time it came early.
What on earth does "cultural libertarianism" mean?
Was the ponderous one thinking of cultural liberalism?
How did he manage to drag in a term which elsewhere, and especially in an American context, has another meaning entirely ...
How did he manage to drag in a term which elsewhere, and especially in an American context, has another meaning entirely ...
Kevin Glass, policy director for the Franklin Center, calls the cultural libertarianism of today "warmed over 90s-style anti-politcal correctness in a new suit." Former Reason staffer Julian Sanchez, now at the Cato Institute, opined yesterday that "cultural libertarian is either redundant or just a dodgy way of saying 'I don't wanna talk about racism or sexism.'" If so-called cultural libertarians are just people who don't want censorship in the name of social justice, we already "have a perfectly good word for" that, noted Sanchez: civil libertarians.
Similar sentiment comes from writer Garry Reed, who explored cultural libertarianism this week at Examiner.com. Because classical liberalism is a philosophy that covers economic, political, and social realms, being a libertarian means "you're a philosophical libertarian, political libertarian, cultural libertarian, social libertarian, economic libertarian and libertarian in every other way possible," he writes. (And more here).
The pond can guess that "Ned" Kelly was dogwhistling about liberal/progressive attitudes to SSM and such like, but why use words in a meaningless way?
Words and concepts matter, and when used so carelessly, the blather about big themes turns into meaningless blather. With a bonus serve of Chicken Little. In a way so turgid and dull that naturally no one listens ...
Haven't been bored enough to go outside and lead a useful life yet? Then let's keep doing the chicken little dance ...
Okay, okay, "Ned" always purports a balance, but about this time, the pond felt the need to reach for a David Rowe cartoon ...
And more Rowe here. See Spot run and bark to the whistle indeed ... and don't the dog and the child look demonic ...
And so back to Ned ... who having for a moment noted a bit of prejudicial nonsense, suddenly goes into full-throated prejudicial hysteria ...
Actually what troubles a few people is locking up people in a meaningless gulag limbo for all eternity, as some kind of warning for any who might dare to follow. Even if they happen to be legitimate refugees ...
Of course it's very Roman ...
But it's also a disgrace ... as gulags are wont to be ...
And so for those who thought they couldn't get enough of the ponderously prattling one, here's that final after dinner mint ...
They might vote for economic management?
Whither then this headline this very day?
And there's the problem for the reptiles as they keep on banging on in support of the dries ...
The Liberal party, under Howard, Abbott and now Turnbull, have been consistently wet and produced all sorts of schemes to bribe the electorate, such that even now the campaign is being conducted as a choice between bribes ... and such that the Liberal government has done much to blow out the budget these past few years, but talk of raising revenue turns into a bleat about the red backs in the pockets of the rich ...
Well the pond can at least offer one way for punters to save money and prepare for any coming storm.
Avoid wasting money on pontificating blowhards, avoid forking out twenty five bucks to hear more Chicken Little-isms and get out into the sunshine. Might as well enjoy it while it's there ... and more Wilcox here ...
Boosting refugee intake would 'obviously require a reduction' in other migrant intakes? But didn't Ned say the two processes (skilled migrant program and humanitarian refugee intake) were completely separate processes?
ReplyDeleteThose tricky reptiles!
Well you see, Merc, that back around 18-20 years ago, the birth rate in Australia was only about 250,000. So to take up all those 440,000 jobs created last year we needed 190,000 well educated, well trained workers who speak, read and write good English. We can all see that, can't we ?
DeleteAnd we can all see what terrible things would happen to the Aussie economy if any of those jobs were left unoccupied - it would be a disaster, I tell you - or at least Kenny tells you.
As to the refugees, well they're uneducated and can't speak English and so just can't be trusted with being given a job. After all, there are no more Snowy Mountain Schemes to be built so there's just no work for them. We can all see that, can't we ?
Of course, back when Australia took 1.6 million refugee immigrants from Europe after WWII (1945 to 1960) who were unable to speak English, what did we do with them - especially when you consider that the Australian population was a huge 7 million in 1945 (of which very nearly 1 million were in military uniform - men and women - until demob).
But back then, we did this:
_____________________
Migrant reception and training centres
On arrival in Australia, many migrants went to migrant reception and training centres where they learned some English while they looked for a job. The Department of Immigration was responsible for the camps and kept records on camp administration and residents. The migrant reception and training centres were also known as Commonwealth Immigration Camps, migrant hostels, immigration dependants' holding centres, migrant accommodation, or migrant workers' hostels.
Australia's first migrant reception centre opened at Bonegilla, Victoria near Wodonga in December 1947. When the camp closed in 1971, some 300,000 migrants had spent time there.
By 1951, the government had established three migrant reception centres for non-English speaking displaced persons from Europe, and twenty holding centres, principally to house non-working dependants, when the pressure of arrival numbers on the reception centres was too great to keep families together. The purpose of reception and training centres was to:
provide for general medical examination and x-ray of migrants, issue of necessary clothing, payment of social service benefits, interview to determine employment potential, instruction in English and the Australian way of life generally.
The centres were located throughout Australia.
_____________________
Can't do that now though, can we. The lizards won't countenance it.
Ooops, that's Kelly tells you (but I suppose Kenny would tell you that too)
DeleteEither one, no doubt.
DeleteDP - they can't give it away even in the herpetarium. Daily Terror for free at Town Hall Station today. Photo evidence: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10154270647676579&id=534256578
ReplyDeleteExcellent link AB, can't even give it away with a free beer!
DeleteGood to see Gem is showing 'Rasputin - The Mad Monk'. The old Hammer version with Christopher Lee at his demonic best. A timely reminder.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLmZkVSrWWA
And here's the poster DP.
Deletehttps://horrorpediadotcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/rasputin-the-mad-monk.jpg
This one's better. It's a double feature with The Reptile! And they were even giving away free beards.
Deletehttps://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/11/b70-5736
The pond's been watching Max Ophuls' Letter from an Unknown Woman. Each day we shed a tear for uncaring pianists and reptiles lost in the valley of despair ...
DeleteWhy has the word 'populism' been hijacked by the right to mean a term of abuse? Isn't it what all politicians aspire to?
ReplyDelete"Populism is a political outlook or disposition that appeals to the interests and conceptions (such as hopes and fears) of the general population, especially when contrasting any new collective consciousness push against the prevailing status quo interests of any predominant political sector."
It's all down to Edmund Burke, Anony. Apart from his satirizing "atheistic rationalism", he also opposed that great act of populism, the French Revolution.
DeleteBut the main thing was his statement, as a British MP, that "...one man at least had dared to resist the desires of his constituents when his judgment assured him they were wrong".
So there you have it: MPs must resist the evil populism of representing their electorates and instead go for imposing their own ideas on their electorate.
It's all in the history books mate, you just have to read them.