In which the pond suggests new career opportunities for the dog botherer ...

The reptiles are having a bad hair day, what with the unionists getting off and Cash's RC proving lamentable, so what better way to fill in the time that have another run at ABC bashing, done with the usual elegant wit and style of the dog botherer …

We keed, we keed, the dog botherer used the ploy of 'monkeys running the zoo' so the pond would feel comfortable calling the reptiles a bunch of loonatics slaving away in the Murdochian asylum …

Come to think of it, in terms of verbal wit, is it possible to get lower than a dog botherer? Why he makes even a pond for loons seem like an elegant sufficiency …

Now none of this is new. The reptiles, having tasted a bit of the Fifield blood, have been out on the killing fields for awhile now, feasting on ABC entrails, as noted by Christopher Warren in Crikey here …(paywall affected, only click on if you belong).

Warren noted that the reptile “EXCLUSIVE” was a "reheat of seven-month old figures on senior ABC salaries, consultancies and bonuses, first published in the ABC’s annual report way back in last October," only now turning up in a variety of reptile rags, because better late than never, and when on a crusade, the reptiles like to hunt in a pack ...

Being a lazy sort of vulture, naturally the dog botherer turned up to the party to feast on the carrion …

Now the ABC can look after itself, but it did remind the pond that way back in the year 2000, when Sydney was celebrating in a stadium worthy of immediate demolition, the pond worked for a government corporation and received a bonus …

The pond didn't really deserve it, but took it anyway - it's not just the Caterists that appreciate government cash in the paw.

Indeed as the pond remembered things, the notion of a bonus was pretty widespread, and it only took a nanosecond's digging to see how things were in the public service in the years 2011 and 2012 ...

Things have wobbled around since then, as noted in this August 2016 story for Fairfax by Markus Mannheim under the header 'Bonus pay needed' to motivate and retain best public servants: remuneration expert. (And then there were fitness bonuses, at SBS here).

The idea seemed to be that if you didn't want a dropkick reject from the private sector of the lowlife, gutter crawling dog botherer kind, you might have to match up to the private sector to get a better class of employee.

Of course the reptiles' indignation has got sweet bugger all to do with bonuses and employment strategies and such like, it's just another chance to call ABC staff monkeys and to kick them around, in the hope that Mitch will notice and take his stick to them again …

Partly that's resentment and envy, partly it's just in the nature of the aggrieved reptiles to be boofheads … and when it comes to boofheads, is there any bigger than the dog botherer?

As Warren noted:

Journalistically, it’s always fun to poke media bosses for their salaries and bonuses. But the ABC’s defence is that, according to an ABC spokesperson: “Remuneration rates for the ABC Leadership Team are benchmarked using an external, independent provider against market rates”. Bonuses, it says, are below market rates. 
Although News Corp doesn’t generally reveal salaries and bonuses paid to its Australian editors and executives, it is the largest media employer in Australia. That means its executive salaries (which often include bonuses) largely set the market.

Cheekily Warren suggested that the best way to lower ABC bonuses was for the reptiles to give up their own bonuses …

Well that's not going to sustain the dog botherer in his standard fit of pique and frothing, foaming rage …

Indeed, indeed.

Anyone capable of that level of turgid wit should be happy to call on his fellow reptiles to give up their bonuses so that the ABC can be made to suffer …so we won't get any more columns from right wing comedians (now there's a dog bothering oxymoron) or another bout of climate denialist hysteria or some uxorious hymn to the joys of coal as a partner ... 

It occurred to the pond that another trick might be to demand that people already in receipt of a salary should be made to scribble for the reptiles for free …

Take the oscillating fan … go on, take him ...

Now the story itself is woefully short, and must have been knocked off in a nanosecond over lunch, but at the end, note well the oscillating fan's positions ...

Yes, he turns up at two universities, bobs up on Sky, turns up on the ABC, and also regularly contributes to the lizard Oz, thereby adding to reptile costs …

The time has surely come when the oscillating fan, Dame Groan and others must be made to do pro bono work for the reptiles, as a way of teaching the ABC yet another lesson …

Why, if the pond's vision is realised, soon enough everyone in the ABC and the rest of the media could be working for the sheer pleasure of it, or worst case, for the occasional sniff of an oily rag … though we shouldn't think about getting too generous, and perhaps a thimble of chaff would do for an evening meal. The reptiles are used to chaff, and the dog botherer is a chaff-making machine ...

Of course there are other ways to make a good living, and the pond offers these cartoons for the way they evoke new career paths for aspiring reptiles …