The pond was in its usual state of rage this day ...
There was that dreadful man handing out end of year awards - who was Paul Sheehan, the pond seems to remember that distant name? - and giving one to the reptiles of Oz for the year's Most Unrelenting Attack ... (for those who missed the show, for the moment it's here).
And it's true that the reptiles were on the job again today ...
But what of other tireless workers toiling in the reptile vineyard of sour grapes, bigotry and hate?
Don't they deserve a little praise, and a few awards for their noble work?
Surely the reptiles have been just as assiduous on the matter of Safe Schools ... why didn't the urbane Urban picked up a Media Watch nod as well?
Surely the reptiles have been just as assiduous on the matter of Safe Schools ... why didn't the urbane Urban picked up a Media Watch nod as well?
Well played 'Becca, the ABC might not notice, but the pond honours your ceaseless work at making the world safe for angry old white men ...
And so to the lunch time reading, and the pond regrets that the pond has spoken sharply a number of times to the reptiles about breaching the pay wall...
Naturally the pond was interested in the thoughts of the world's leading climate science denialist ...
But the problem here is that serious breach...
Even worse, it seems that The Times used "about androids" rather than "of androids," an alarming lapse into actual English ... though perhaps it was just google trying to help out the reptiles because it offered the same help to them...
Never mind, the pond always likes to look at a future which doesn't involve climate science, and for that, Ridley's been the pond's favourite go-to man ...
Indeed, indeed. It occurs to the pond that there will be many more jobs in the future which will allow people who would otherwise be on welfare - their skills having been made redundant - to get new jobs screeching about people bludging away on welfare ...
And so on and so forth. You can see how this virtuous circle works. Give the androids all the jobs and when the useless luddites get revolting, put them on welfare, and set them to scribbling about appalling people living on welfare.
Sure, they might get the content wrong and fuck up - the skill set in the Terror tabloid isn't what it used to be - but make work must do what make work must ...
It doesn't seem to have struck Ridley that there might have to be a few make-work jobs like this devised so that there might be meaningful work for those with limited skills which are easily displaced by automation ...
But wait, if we pay close attention, the Ridster riddles many pleasant jobs for the lumpenproletariat ... serving their Ridster masters ...
But wait, if we pay close attention, the Ridster riddles many pleasant jobs for the lumpenproletariat ... serving their Ridster masters ...
Indeed, indeed. How foolish of all those angry old white males to get agitated and elect a Trump simply because they lost their jobs ... when they might have found work as yoga teachers or done time in a pet-grooming salon ...
Because everyone should be able to afford a decent luxury session for their pets in a pet-grooming salon...
So there's your future, angry old white men. Grooming pets in a pet-grooming salon ...
How out of touch can a well off indolent fuck-witted toffy Murdochian Tory get?
Why, as out of touch and as utopian and climate science ignoring as you like ...
Stupid fucking utopianist, but wasn't that the perfect statement of the life that Ridley hopes to lead, or possibly already does ...
"You cannot outsource maids."
Spoken grandly like the Donald.
Tough shit if you don't actually want to be a maid for a fuckwitted Ridley, but that's your futurist lot, angry old white men ...
Tough shit if you don't actually want to be a maid for a fuckwitted Ridley, but that's your futurist lot, angry old white men ...
The pond recommends you practise your curtsy and your civility and your servile submissive cowering posture ... because a plentiful, abundant supply of maids (and butlers and shoe polishers and silverware supervisors and sundry other lickspittle jobs) is in your future ...
Sadly Dean Swift wasn't granted access to the fountain of youth and so isn't around to send up his lordship's futurist dumb fuckwittery, but he would surely have made something about that line "Cheer up. Far from a mass of unemployed Morlocks living miserably poor lives, you can find happiness and contentment being Ridley's maid and giving his poodle a salon-quality beauty treatment ... before giving the right lickspittle shine to his lordly shoes..."
And now, because the pond tries to cover the full waterfront, it should be acknowledged that there is an automaton who already does much bold scribbling for the reptiles, and attention must be paid to these robotic scribbles ...
Oh dear, it's another of the Caterists' 'harden the fuck up' pieces ...
Indeed, Randian platitudes are the strict provenance of people who live off government grants, so get out of the way PwC, let a master tax bludger show you how it should be done ...
"That sort of stuff." Yes harden the fuck up PwC, with your idle chatter about "that sort of stuff".
Next thing you'll be showing some sympathy to useless blacks, tricky gays, women who refuse to be complimentary, and all "that yadda yadda sort of stuff."
You see profitable businesses benefit everyone, and there's only one better racket to be in ...
Profitable access to profitable federal government grants!
Now heed the master tax bludger's voice ...
And remember to add a chapter on how to get a tax grant to write up this sort of stuff ... it's easy to make up.
Please note that 2017 grants are coming along soon, and we need to know that the Caterists are being taken care of ...
How else will the pond get its "neo-socialist" dose of taxpayer funded gibberish each Tuesday?
And so to wrap things up, a futurist cartoon explaining all the futurist jobs available for everyone in the future ... though strangely, they left out the position of tax-grant welfarist bludger or Terrorist scribbler...
Oh well, with a little re-training, there's always maid work for the Caterists ...
Of course this cartoon might be a more immediately useful guide to futurists looking for suitable work (and more helpful cartoons can be found at NIB here)
Apart from his general level of fuckwittery, Mr Ridley can't even get his metaphors right. In H G Wells' "The Time Machine" it was the subterranean Morlocks who actually worked and kept things going, while the vacuous, pretty little Eloi did nothing useful at all, spending their lives playing in the sunshine, only dimly aware that they were actually the Morlocks' cattle.
ReplyDeleteIt's tempting to think of the Reptiles as being a form of Eloi - they're certainly empty-headed ad useless - but I don't think anyone would call them pretty, and aside form the Oreo, they're pretty well indigestible.
About the reptile mission in championing the cause of unbounded planetary wealth extraction by the gilded ruling rentier class..
ReplyDeleteRidley's reptile standard glossing of contemporary horrors "Let's stop being so paranoid about androids" has a certain NewsCorpse resonance. It could easily be reworked in the UK, or in Australia, or from anywhere in Ol' Rupe's empire from the reptile central standard file template into, say, "Let's stop being so paranoid about neoliberalism and the 0.1%," or a myriad of similar shlock, and with such remarkably little substitution.
From a sun-warmed rock in the front yard of the owners of the earth they barrack for the cause... Divert. Divide. Dominate.
The Caterist notion that "more profits means jobs" follows lowered business taxation lacks evidence other than for the tax advisor jobs for business and the consequently more enriched tax optional 1%.
ReplyDeleteIn fact the evidence for taxes, economies, and jobs runs either contrary or shows no correlation let alone causal connections.
Happy memories of Stuart Littlemore at the bottom of this page. Go to just before 9 minutes in to get some historical perspective on Caterism. But watch it all, if only to hear the word 'popinjay' deployed appropriately.
ReplyDeleteOh Nony, what a joy that was. 15 years ago, and not a single word rendered less potent than it was then. I highly recommend a viewing of the whole 12 minutes or so, but for those time poor Pondians, I couldn't resist noting down his closing notes for posterity.
DeleteNote as it's Littlemore, best rendered in as calm, measured and supercilious a voice as the reader can muster:
"The IPA has one song to sing on the ABC. They can't back any of it up with proof of bias, but we're all supposed to accept that assertion as true.
It isn't.
Yet the montonous propaganda from this tiny, tight coterie of otherwise negligible hypocrites, muddle-headed wombats and mercenaries achieves a phenomenal success, blanketing the opinion pages of the qualities, meritriciously demanding to be taken seriously. It's a great testamant to the power of money in our media. You have to admire their presumption don't you? Good night."
Each word rings so wonderfully true 15 years on, save perhaps the word "qualities" which I wager has not been used to describe The Australian in many a year. Conversely, the word "monotonous" is pretty much a byword at the same organ - good god - the dog botherer, dame slap ad infinitum. Mono. Mono. Mono.
The pond felt the urge to step outside and scratch the paintwork on the merchant banker's Merc!
DeleteHi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteThe 5th Viscount Ridley makes the common mistake that the Luddites destroyed the machines because it would make them redundant.
Prior to the 19th Century, clothworkers from the West Riding, cotton weavers from Lancashire and framework knitters from the Midlands were all skilled tradesmen, well paid generally and they jealously guarded the traditional privileges to which their expertise entitled them.
Weavers often worked from home and one might on a rainy day weave eight or nine yards of cloth. However on other days if the sun was out, he might just weave two yards before going cherry picking, work on a community dam, calve a cow, cut down some trees or go to watch a public hanging.
Even those that worked in workshops or ‘manufactories’ were paid enough that they could often extend the Sabbath into the Monday. So instead of working they would spend ‘Saint Monday’ in the Tavern or the cockfight.
The introduction of machines such as the gig-mill and the shearing frame stole the process of production from these skilled tradesmen. Wages and privileges decreased and the independent lifestyle they had previously led was lost.
Specialists were now often paid at rates appropriate to unskilled men. This was where the anger came from.
By 1811 the growing frustration and anger had transformed from shouting mobs and rabble rousers into well disciplined gangs led by masked men whose orders were implicitly obeyed.
“The rioters appear suddenly in armed parties, under regular commanders. The chief commander, be he whomsoever he may, is styled General Ludd”. The Mercury.
The renowned General Ludd was in reality just a nom de guerre used by the leaders of the ‘Army of the Redressers’ probably based on a story of a simpleton from Leicestershire.
http://modernnotion.com/ned-ludd-the-mythical-man-behind-the-luddite-movement-who-never-really-existed/
By 1812 Luddism in Yorkshire and Lancashire had forced many employers (in fear of their lives) to pull down their machines. Those that did not had their mills attacked at night by men with blackened faces wielding huge iron hammers called ‘Enochs’ -after the firm of blacksmiths that made them. The doors were smashed down and the frames and gig-mills were destroyed.
Thousands of troops were deployed, spies employed and whole villages often were ‘rigorously questioned’ but no arrests were made.
“Almost every creature of the lower order, both in town and country are on the Luddites side”, complained two London Magistrates who had been sent north by the Home Office.
For awhile it seemed the Luddites might provoke a national revolution but slowly the movements momentum failed and the working class ended up working in vast, depressing factories where they and their children would be exploited in demeaning and incessant labour.
Later, much later, Chartism and the Trade Union movement (not technology) would bring about hard won changes that would improve working conditions, pay, working hours and eventually holidays.
This is the disruptive effect of new technology on the work place and it is very likely to wreak major and uncomfortable changes throughout the western world. Dreary low paying service jobs, zero hour contracts, the working poor whose income is below the poverty line are already becoming commonplace in western economies.
Ridley glosses over the fact that without a major change to how the economic pie is distributed the future looks increasingly dystopian for the vast majority of people.
He makes a passing mention to the ‘radical’ idea of a ‘basic income” but that his thoughts are being reproduced in a publication that considers unemployment and poverty as a form of moral failing shows how hollow they are.
DiddyWrote
Hi Dorothy,
DeleteIn 1811 the Plain Silk Hands of Derby (an alliance of workers) appealed to the master-hosiers:
“As a body of ingenious artizans employed on materials of great value…we conceive ourselves entitled to a higher station in society: and that in point of emolument we ought to rank with mechanics of the first eminence …Hedged in by a combination act, we cannot say to you as a public body, that we demand an advance of wages, but we can say that JUSTICE DEMANDS that we should receive a remuneration for extra labour”
That is exactly the same anger that has propelled Trump to the US presidency.
Disruption.
DW
It always troubles the pond when someone actually talks actual history DW, when the important thing in these post-truth Trumpian truthiness times is to blather nonsense ...
DeleteMeanwhile this chilling video is 100% aligned with the alt-right flesh-eating ghouls, especially Bannon
ReplyDeletewww.facebook.com/TheAtlantic/videos/101548235257484
The white man was born to rule OK!