In which the pond helps damage society ...

An unfortunate assignment today ... compare and contrast the Donald with the Creighton ...

Unfortunately it's a trick question. There's not much difference in substance or style between the moaning, whining Donald, and the moaning, whining, self-pitying, self-unaware Creighton ...

It would be just as easy to mount a story headed "Murdoch kills journalism", or "Journalists self-immolate by imagining their opinions are of interest to a paying public" ... but first a little context.

There you go, a wrap around form of advertising that's an insult to the eyes, down there with forced videos, and an option to share on Google + and Reddit, along with the chance to share on Facebook and Twitter ...

If these forces are damaging society, why do the reptiles of Oz embrace the beast?

And so to a bout of self-pity, in which, in the usual way, external forces are blamed, and self-reflection is pitifully deficient ... a reminder of that old Niemöller yarn, "First they came for Fairfax and I gloated, then they came for the reptiles of Oz, and I squealed ..."

Here's the trouble, and the difficulty. Somehow Creighton imagines his offering is of utility and importance.

But if the pond wanted to, it could head off to BuzzFeed News to read much the same sort of idle, self-serving stuff in A new tax on Facebook and Google could help save Australian journalism ... except that in that story the ABC is also amongst the guilty, doing down the noble Fairfaxians and the reptiles of Oz ...though that angle was a little tarnished by the accompanying stories of Hywood making out like a bandit by taking a salary package reported to be worth up to seven million in a year ...

Cry the pond a seven million a year river ... in much the same way that studio heavies bleating about their suffering always gives the pond a good horse laugh, having driven amongst some of the modest shacks to be found in the more modest suburbs of LA ...

Oh the suffering, oh the humanity, oh the horror ... or at least, oh the remarkable cash-splashing vulgarity ...

Back to the suffering Creighton, suffering with the suffering stars ...

It always amuses the pond when a flailing and failing monopolist starts crying about other monopolists ...

...but the pond will bite, because in the same digital edition, this story was placed behind the Oz paywall ...

The question arises. Why should the pond have to pay to access the thoughts of a Minister of the Crown?

Taylor has his own eponymous website here. The last opinion piece was posted in April 2016, the last speech in April 2017 about amazing volunteers, and the last media release a couple of days ago announcing that Pensioner Concession Cards were being restored ...because, you know, feather bedding and spreading the joy ...

Meanwhile Taylor, who is currently presiding over the disaster known as the Digital Transformation Agency - another of Malware's tar baby bright ideas - is off giving his thoughts to the taxpayer-subsidised Caterists, so that they might be reprinted behind a paywall by the reptiles of Oz ...

The only saving grace to this situation is that Taylor's thoughts are likely to be suited to a muddle-headed wombat and not worth the cost of paying for or ferreting out ...

Here's a tip to Creighton. He might have been better spending his energies digging up stories on the DTA - apparently these days they think that Australia Post will save them - and Taylor, who doesn't seem to have caught up with Creighton's moaning, instead blathering about delivering services with less time and effort ...

It's a marvel to read, all this high-flying, fly-blown rhetoric, from a government that has presided over a series of IT disasters, including, but not limited, to the use of robotic law enforcement and the last Census. Then there was a massive ATO meltdown at the end of last year, reported here ...

The latest public service IT failure comes after the Prime Minister's departing digital guru took a parting shot at the service's digital efforts, its "remarkable" over-dependence on outsourcing and a culture of "blame aversion". Paul Shetler said the history of the federal government digital failure underlines the need for the public service to train its own workers and end its reliance on expensive and wasteful private sector outsourcing.

Pigs will sooner fly than that one. The public service and politicians love outsourcing because it gives them someone else to blame. Census meltdown? Must be IBM ... and so on and on ...

Get things organised and produce useful digital interactions with government? Oh no, that's a customer thingie ...and no need for the government to waste its money ...

And then there's the final salt rubbed into the wound. A speech delivered to the taxpayer-funded Caterists at the MRC, reprinted behind a paywall by the lizards of Oz ...

And that's before the pond gets on to the national tragedy of the NBN, the high farce of the robo-debt machine, and sundry other epic failures which suggest that Taylor, rather than being a whizz kid at the heart of digital transformation, is at the heart of a series of digital disasters.

No doubt Creighton, if he ever bothered to look at the pond, would think all his paranoid fantasies had come to pass ...

Blogger after all was purchased by Google from Pyra Labs and is hosted by Google ...

But the pond's number of hits suggest that its hobby of reptile-watching could never be anything more than an indulgent hobby.

You see, when the reptiles decided to run as far to the climate-denialist, copper to the node loving right as they could under Major Mitchell, they did more harm to themselves, their business model, society, and the world at large than Google, Facebook, Twitter or the whole damn digital age or even Angus Taylor offering them the succour of his thoughts could manage ...

And with that, all the pond hopes for is that the Pope might continue to find a place in the digital sun and be rewarded for his efforts. Remember, while you can always find more papal encyclicals here, you can also follow Pope here ...