As surely as Tuesday follows Monday most days of the week, the stereoscopic Caterist can be spotted in the lizard Oz ...
Explaining why the redistribution of wealth via taxpayer grants to people is a bad thing, except when it's a taxpayer grant to the Caterist pride and joy, the Menzies Research Centre ...
Explaining why the redistribution of wealth via taxpayer grants to people is a bad thing, except when it's a taxpayer grant to the Caterist pride and joy, the Menzies Research Centre ...
After all, there's redistributing wealth, and then there's a minor readjustment of wealth, and where's the harm in that?
And so to today's reading ...
Indeed, indeed. Whenever the pond feels like an inspirational role model for the Caterists, it turns to good old Ben's election pitch in 1949.
Ben lost handsomely, Ming the Merciless swept into power for a very long reign, and in due course, the Caterist Menzies Research Centre could be named in his honour and it could pillage taxpayer grants with wild abandon ...
Ben lost handsomely, Ming the Merciless swept into power for a very long reign, and in due course, the Caterist Menzies Research Centre could be named in his honour and it could pillage taxpayer grants with wild abandon ...
What's not to like about that taxpayer grant light on the hill?
And so to the second gobbet, because with the Caterists one gobbet of grants can never be enough, and 'entrepreneur' means knowing how to score a grant ...
Splendid stuff, the pond can never read enough abuse of hipsters emanating from a bunker which happens to be situated deep in Surry Hills, but it has to be said that the pond felt the need to amend the Caterist's last line ...
Contrary to the Caterist thesis, it falls to the Menzies Research Centre to save governments from wasting money on schools and education, and instead to the applying of funds where most urgently needed, the Menzies Research Centre.
How else are we to get bearded barista inner-city coffee shop jokes paid for indirectly by the taxpayer as they keep the jokester in the grant style to which he has clearly become accustomed?
Never mind, it gives the pond a chance to run a little burst by Mark Latham sneering at the "ology" student for his pretend affection for the great unwashed.
Remember taxi-driver arm-breaking Latham? They burned his ashes and sent them to type columns for the Daily Terror ... but back in the day ...
Remember taxi-driver arm-breaking Latham? They burned his ashes and sent them to type columns for the Daily Terror ... but back in the day ...
There's a lot more abuse of Caterists here, but it reminded the pond that it was likely to bump into the Caterist in inner Sydney, or perhaps watch in mesmerised fascination as the ponce knocked off a flute of the SSO champagne at twelve bucks the pop with the skill of an anaconda devouring a government grant ... while gazing out at the lights bouncing off the harbour water in the emerald city.
Ah such a sweet life, and with bonus barista jokes to plunder!
Ah such a sweet life, and with bonus barista jokes to plunder!
Never mind, after an extensive dégustation of Caterism, the pond always insists on a cartoon, and thankfully there is always David Pope on hand here ... let it stand as the pond's tribute to the Caterist and Menzies Research Centre contribution to global climate science ...
Sharri the Teenage Witch has a nasty smear article today claiming Tony Windsor was an abuser and a violent bully some 45 years ago. She offers no evidence, and Tony is seeking legal advice about it.
ReplyDeleteWhat a scum sucker she is. But it does means that Barking Barners is getting really scared.
Nicky C: "Kevin Rudd's clumsy response to a complex financial crisis was one of the most costly misjudgements of any Australian government since World War II. It wasn't just that it spent too much, but that so much of it was spent badly."
ReplyDeleteAnd tat, I take it, is a sample of the sophisticated economic analysis that our taxpayers' money buys us from the Menzies Research Centre every year.
He is such an adorbs little hustle-bunny, isn't he.
Besides, I can assure him that the cash handed down to us pensioners at the time most assuredy wasn't wasted.
Yes, Ken Henry was a compleat idjit for advising that economic turgor pressure be maintained, via supporting the velocity of money and via supporting employment, by targetting those economic sectors with greatest multipliers and greatest (un)employment potentials; especially as Australia went it alone in its counter-neoliberal obsession, along with those other G20 countries which met and agreed to prevent complete global economic collapse, no thanks to casino capitalism, with wanton promises of quasi-coordinated introductions and tapered withdrawals of circa 2% of GDP p.a. stimuli.
DeleteYeah, Ken 'Hairy Wombat' Henry was the proponent, Rudd (and the other three of 'the gang of four') was just the hand that signed the paper to implement Henry's prescription to ‘Go Hard, Go Early and Go to Households'.
DeleteBut credit where due, they did and saved us all much angst and anguish (and anger). But it just doesn't seem possible to explain to some that the 'go early' part couldn't have happened if they'd spent a year or so trying to find 'useful' work that was also 'shovel ready'. The GFC "Great Recession" would have struck Aus with full force if they'd waited.
But you can't tell that to the wingnuts of the world such as Cater who wanted, and still want, to treat the whole thing as some kind of morality play in which we all had to suffer for having been so profligate, or something. We all had to suffer a large bout of 'moral hazard' to cleanse our souls (and empty our bank accounts and super funds).
GB - off topic, but in case you don't trawl back through old threads, your comment about MAD on the last Polonius discussion reminded me of this old favourite:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs
For your delectation :-)
Ah, thank you FrankD. I have been a fan of Lehrer for quite a few decades now, and that was one of his great classics.
DeleteAnd hoping that you too look up past comments, I thought I'd return the complement with one of Lehrer's all time greats - from his That Was The Week That Was gig in 1964/5 as I expect you'd know, and still as true today as then - Pollution:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPrAuF2f_oI
But out of consideration for those afflicted with Catholic sympathies, I'll leave Vatican Rag for people to discover for themselves. :-)
Dunno where Billericay Nickie got "the top 9% pay 49% of the tax" from. (I suspect it involves placing the palm of his hand on his lower back and sliding it downwards, if you get my drift.)
ReplyDeleteThe most recent data available to plebs like me, who don't work in a building with a bust of Ming the Miserable cast from pig iron out the front, is from the ATO for 2014. According to them, the top 9% paid 43.4% of all income tax.
Robbery! Mr Morrison: give the poor darlings a tax cut! But don't mention the fact that the 9% earned 29.3% of all income.
Funny how the Nik-Niks of the world always leave out that last bit.
Then there's gst, excise, user-pays and numerous other measures making up somewhere north of 50% of all government revenue collection the burden of which again by design falls lightest on the top 10%... if at all.
DeleteThe return of the Senior Writer!
ReplyDeleteI know, there are some among us who simply knew that Sharri was clearly locked away working on the next Watergate scoop or some-such. And so it proved to be!
Unsupportable claims, and Windsor calling for the lawyer.
What will she pull out of her sleeve next??
So lets get the history right, here, Nick...
ReplyDelete1. 2009 - Wyong Grove gets its new hall.
2. Jun 2013 - Liberal Government announces Wyong Grove will close. Local community pissed off that their kids will be absorbed into a school five times the size of the one they signed up for.
3. May 2014 - Council lease site and convert it to community precinct, providing working, exhibition and performance space for local artists.
4. Jun 2014 - Hall (and other buildings) are near 100% occupancy, and now getting more use that it would have as a school hall, and provides a modest income stream to the council. Local community very chuffed.
5. Dec 2015 - Liberal government announce site will be sold. Local council makes representations to the government to acquire the land as a community benefit. Piccoli does not even reply, and site is sold to a developer. Locals pissed off again.
6. Consideration is given to compulsorily acquire the property but come to nought (Wyong council don't have the sort of money lying around to compensate the developer). There are no other mid-sized venues comparable in Wyong. Small scale theatre projects, for example, have the option of the 500 seat Art House theatre, which they would never fill and which is too expensive for nickle-and-dime operations*. Or they can go whistle.
So there is a story here, but its not what Nick thinks - its a predictable and oft repeated tale of private financial interests running roughshod over community amenity, which had (if not intentionally so) been greatly enhanced by the infrastructure spending under the BER.
Nothing's changed since the Enclosures Act.
But then, as a true Son of Thatcher, I'm sure Nick agrees that there is no such thing as society, just a collection of individuals. Rent-seeking twat.
*I say that as someone with a stake in one of those nickle-and-dime theatre operations (not in Wyong) - it is a recognised asset to the local artistic community and it is viable only because of the availability of relatively small, relatively cheap rehearsal and performance spaces (both of which have been saved from developers the the last five years by active local communities).
Right, that's the whole smoke-screen blown away.
DeleteMuch appreciated FrankD. These "opinionators" are so rarely held to any kind of torch - why does every note of your version ring intuitively true, and equally predictable.
Fark.
Thanks for the expanded event list and timeline FrankD.
DeleteBut yeah, you can read all about it in a more generalized sense, if you haven't already, under the rubric of "Tragedy of the Commons:
"The tragedy of the commons is an economic theory of a situation within a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting that resource through their collective action."
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
"We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys..."
Delete