In which the pond does its Caterist duty ...

The pond thinks that on the whole, and on the voices, the barking mad Oreo is by far the favourite pond biscuit ... the upside is that the rage generates some interesting comments, and the pond learns much from them, which is just as well, because nothing can be learned from reading the reptiles.

In contrast to the Oreo stentato, the heavily taxpayer-subsidised Caterist is sotto voce, a dullard of the first dish water, suds overwhelmed by greasy residue ...

When approaching the Caterist, the pond likes to sprinkle alternatives to beguile the pigeons under the bamboo ...

Something like NBN mess: Blame laid squarely at Turnbull's feet ...

The current situation is a result of the change to the MTM with its totally unrealistic timetables (every premise in Australia to have at least 25Mb/s by the end of 2016) and unrealistic financials (peak funding to be $29 billion, now $46-49 billion). The original project was, of course, made more difficult by the unrelenting attacks on everything that NBN Co did in the 2009 to 2013 period. Statements were made by the then Shadow Minister that: two satellites were not needed as there was already plenty of satellite capacity, that the projected take-up rate was way too optimistic, that the ARPU projections were ridiculously high. He has proven to be wrong on every one of these issues as he was on the MTM costs and timing. He was equally wrong on his statements that the original FttP would have needed $94 billion in peak funding - where he got that number from I have no idea. Unfortunately, almost all of his pronouncements were treated as well-informed criticism by much of the media at the time.

And the reptiles of Oz also got an honourable mention:

I think significant parts of both the print media and radio played a major role in criticising the original NBN based on completely spurious “information”. By way of example, two amusing instances were: A national broadsheet saying that it was going to cost between $3000 and $6000 for every home in Australia to be re-wired for the NBN; and A well-known radio host saying we were wasting time and money laying fibre because a German research centre had just demonstrated a terabit per second link using “lasers”. It would be an interesting exercise to trawl back through a couple of newspapers in the 2010 to 2013 period and see what nonsense was written about the NBN.

Well no, not really, it's actually more fun to trawl through the lizards of Oz now, railing and raging at the way the NBN is a fucking useless disaster.

But after the fun, the pond must turn, with heavy heart and deep sigh, back to the Caterists ...

Sadly, not every day can be spent in Islamic bashing and climate science denialism, while pocketing handsome stipends from the taxpayer. There must also be time set aside for a decent bout of union bashing ...

The point is of course to do as good an impression of Marie Antoinette as might be managed by a dullard with a British accent. Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, you've never had it so good, thank heavens you live in the lucky country, and how sad it would be to pay any one anything more, when they should be grateful and bow and scrape and tug the forelock ...

Thank'ee squire for your benevolence ...

Of course reaching this benign state of complacent self-satisfaction and enormous self-regard is helped by having a nice little earner ...

But that's really the point of the hand-out, isn't it? We need someone on hand to keep the serfs in their place and limit their expectations. Lordy lordy, what if they all got the idea they could dip their unwashed, dirty paws in the taxpayers' purse?

After the pond finished rolling the Jaffas down the aisle - we're now looking forward to a grant from the Department of Finance in keeping with the egalitarian spirit - the pond was reminded of another line in D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo, which thanks to the good folk adelaide.edu, can be found in full here ...

Sometimes from the interior came a wind that seemed to her evil. Out of the silver paradisical freedom untamed, evil winds could come, cold, like a stone hatchet murdering you. The freedom, like everything else, had two sides to it. Sometimes a heavy, reptile-hostility came off the sombre land, something gruesome and infinitely repulsive. It frightened her as a reptile would frighten her if it wound its cold folds around her. For the past month now Australia had been giving her these horrors. It was as if the silvery freedom suddenly turned, and showed the scaly back of a reptile, and the horrible jaws.

Indeed, indeed, why does the pond always have nightmare dreams of scaly reptiles when reading the Caterists in the lizard of Oz?

Fortunately this week's chore is almost done ... so let's blame it all on the politics of resentment and envy politics, as if anyone should be envious of the Caterists' good fortune in being able to stick snout in trough, and enjoy the boondoggle ...

Indeed, indeed, the pond feels enormously empowered any time it reads the Caterists.

What was it that Bob Hawke once said in a moving speech delivered on 13th November 1984, and as luck would have it, available in full here? 

An excerpt, a finely flowery and exceptionally fair excerpt, if you please ...

And fairness for all ...

Once would have been enough for the pond's purposes, but it turned up a couple more times at the end of the speech (along with some twenty plus mentions of "fair", "unfair" and other fairly obvious uses yearning for a "fairer society") ...

The pond doesn't know how much the Caterist gets paid for writing his pieces for the lizard Oz, but even at a cent a word, it's too rich and handsome a price to pay - in all fairness - for such ripe horseshit ...

Shameless, useless, fairly foul horseshit, which probably wouldn't even serve as decent manure in a vegie garden ...

Why does he do it? Why does he bother? Ah, remember the boondoggle, recall the sweet smell of the ever so fair taxpayer cash sliding into the paw ...

Never mind, pond's duty is done, and now the pond must wait for the magic faraway tree to bring back the Oreo land to the top of the tree ...