In which the virtue-signalling dog botherer holds down the late arvo slot ...

The pond regrets having to slip the dog botherer into the late afternoon slot, especially as this world-famous climate scientist has much to say about the benefits of a scientific education, but better late than never, as the pond's grandma used to say …

What a huge relief.

The pond never quite understood where this came from - there's more at Junkee here - but at last it has a glimmer of understanding ...

Dearie me, better get back to the climate scientist …

And there you have it, from an intrepid climate scientist: climate change is a highly political dilemma, and nothing to do with the fundamentals, such as having a liveable planet.

Now around this point, the dog botherer usually goes into a more general rant.

For example, having started on education, he's really only got a few bees buzzing around in his head on that subject, and so he turns the bees to useful work in other areas. Naturally the bees will discover that any attention to any other form of human abuse is a dangerous drift away from the fundamentals …and these fundamentals can be anything you like, from bigotry to the benefits of slavery to SSM to whatever ...

The pond has always thought of the dog botherer as the most intrinsically dumb member of the reptile commentariat, a dog house short of a plank or two, and while it's always a closely run thing with the Caterist - after all, the dog botherer isn't involved in a defamation suit at the moment, and was never prosecuted for his war crimes - the level of simplistic analysis and catch phrases on parade in this outing reinforces the pond's opinion …

It's of a piece with that constant refrain about "virtue-signalling", surely the most abused and mindless phrase in the reptile lexicon.

What if anyone started abusing useless Xians and Islamics and such likes as "virtue-signallers"? What about Jesus and Muhammed and all the rest of them, all "virtue-signallers"?

What about the reptiles themselves, who daily rabbit on about the sorts of virtues they'd like signalled?

It's such a stupid way of conducting a debate …

Accusing others of virtue signalling encourages you to not interrogate your own beliefs. If you think people only disagree with you because they’re trying to show off how nice they are to their mates, why would you even consider that what’s obvious to you might actually be wrong? As well as being rude and stupid, virtue signalling gives people another mental shortcut to dogmatism. 
Finally, saying virtue signalling is hypocritical. It’s often used to try to show that the accuser is above virtue signalling and that their own arguments really are sincere. Of course, this is really just another example of virtue signalling! 
Dismissing other people’s false beliefs as virtue signalling means you won’t consider them properly and means they have every right to do the same to your beliefs, which as far as they’re concerned are also obviously false. Sometimes beliefs are honestly, sincerely held, however stupid they seem to you, and if there’s any value to debate at all it requires that we at least consider the possibility that we might be the stupid ones. (more here)

And now back to a final mindless bout of virtue-signalling, dog botherer style ...

Did somebody mention stadium plans? It's called virtue-signalling to question the plan to knock down a perfectly usable couple of stadia, while the government involved couldn't organise a motorway or a tram track to save its life?

Okay, now the pond feels no shame about dropping this useless dingbat in the late arvo slot.

Why didn't he just go off and work in a factory and do something useful, instead of trotting out this sort of crap on a regular basis as a way of making a living?

Here, have a cartoon or two as compensation for inhuman suffering. And yes, the pond means that as a form of virtue-signalling …