The pond was absolutely delighted and wildly excited to see pond favourite Caterist featured in last night's Media Watch, celebrated here for his astonishing insight into the parallels between climate science and scientific socialism ...
Of course in a typically ABC biased way - shame, ABC, shame - the host Paul Barry entirely missed the point...
Yes, Cater continued: There are certainly parallels. Marxism, according to Friedrich Engels, was scientific socialism.
For the record I am not a Communist, and I believe in free markets. But I reckon renewable energy is an essential part of the future. It surely is time The Australian got used to it.
Incidentally Barry also covered a reptile v reptile feud, with the fightin' and the fussin' here, the good cheer fuelled and financed by handsome parliamentary pensions, though the pond was reminded yet again that the production standards on certain Sky shows would make community television reel away in horror.
Stick three badly miked old grumblebum codgers in front of an excuse for a set and call it television? The pond would hesitate to call it radio ... but presumably the spend on the show is predicated on the audience reach, so it's lucky the three old stumblebums weren't dropped into the Domain to blather to a ficus, the grass, the sky and a stray pigeon ...
Never mind, at least the Caterists have been acknowledged, as they toil away diligently, and it reminded the pond of the need for a back to basics Tuesday ...
Yes, this week, as best the pond could decipher it, it seems that the collapse of the world, and the Australian, economy will be due to shameless CEOs spending time on gay marriage ...
That all seems clear enough - damn you gays for your SSM push, and damn you CEOs for your speaking out of turn and causing the Caterists immense pain and suffering and a tendency to Chicken Little-ism entirely unrelated to the havoc that the Donald and others might cause to the world economy ...
It seems that capitalism is deeply, inherently flawed, and has naturally selected all the wrong CEOs, which makes the pond wonder how soon it will be ... before the Caterist becomes completely converted to scientific socialism.
Well so much for creative destruction, and the old order giving way to the new, because the pond also noted that consummate irony in the Caterist line "the demand for governments to spend is incessant" ...
Will more ironies become apparent as the Caterist rails at useless government expenditure?
Now the pond is aware that gloom regularly descends on readers of the Caterists. How is it possible, they wonder, that a minor adept in the science of sociology - as certified by a minor UK university - gets to blather in the lizard Oz in this way ...
Why would anyone gratuitously link SSM to the collapse of the Australian economy and the suffering of the middle classes? If there's going to be catastrophism and a rapture, is this the real reason?
The pond thinks that the last Caterist line contains the hint of an explantation, that reference to the La La Land above the magic faraway tree where the occupants regularly go out to lunch ...
The piece was of course signed in the usual way ...
Speaking of incessant demands on government to spend, and give out grants, the pond noted this at the top of the Department of Finance grants page here with some alarm ...
14 working days, and yet the last time the Caterists went out to a decent lunch at La La Land was January 2016?
Now there's a catastrophe. Here we are, almost beyond March 2017, and details of any new grant must be provided within 14 working days after the funding agreement is signed, and the cash begins to flow ...
No wonder the middle class in Australia is numb with worry and anxiety.
Surely this cannot stand. Surely the Caterists should be given more funding so that they can lunch in style, while explaining how the demands on government are incessant, and fat cats dining at the government table will be the ruination of the economy ...
Let us hope that this matter is sorted, and the sooner the better - this is the sort of basic, common decency that might see the economy revive - and in the meantime, here's a Wilcox cartoon explaining the suffering of politicians and Caterists at the hands of deviant CEOs, and more Wilcox here ...
The only real difference between Schumpeter's end of capitalism and Marx's is that Schumpeter thought it would simply collapse from within unless constantly renewed and Marx thought it would be overthrown from without. From where we stand, Schumpeter is looking the better bet, given the evaporation of organised labour over the last 35 years and the melting of entrepreneurship in the face of corporatisation. Whether one labels what we are seeing with Schumpeter's "creative destruction" or Marx and Engel's "production devaluation cycle" is much of a muchness.
ReplyDeleteBut the Caterist agreeing with Schumpeter agreeing with Marx and Engels...Lordy, lordy, lordy, what would the sainted RG Menzies have said about that? It's only a matter of time before Nick decides he has to attack government support for socialist think-tanks like his own and disappears up his own fundament.