In which the pond goes searching for flakes and finds the bromancer and Jim lad ...

Okay, the pond will confess it watched Their ABC's Four Corners last night …

The pond must also confess to having known Justin Milne at one time, and always regarded him as a delusional flake and a bullshit artist, but really, the staggering conceit and monstrous stupidity behind Jetstream still occasionally catches the pond by surprise …

Here the pond must turn back the clock to Sandy Plunkett at the AFR in September …(currently outside the paywall here) ...

...Milne had been spruiking the project in breathy, vague and occasionally contradictory terms since July, describing it variously as a device, a big database; a big infrastructure project, and a modernisation process. He said it was "relatively simple"; "not rocket science" and yet akin to "flying a 747 and changing engines at the same time". 
 ...Several ABC outsiders who have known Milne for decades through his time in the domestic telecommunications sector with Ozemail, Microsoft and Telstra, say he has long had a driving ambition to leave a 21st century media-tech legacy in Australia. Perhaps it also reflects a creative bent – prior to Ozemail, where Milne became friends with former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull – Milne described himself as a film producer. 
But decades working in the industry does not necessarily make Milne a digital transformation master. His comments that JetStream would take years to produce anything concrete rang alarm bells for industry veterans. In a rapidly changing technology environment, this seems a bizarre approach to a large-scale tech strategy.

Well yes, and so on and so endlessly forth, and meanwhile on any given day, anyone who drops in on the ABC streaming of News24 on YouTube will find themselves usually in company with less than 500 fellow souls … worldwide …(for perversity's sake, the pond checked it out this very moment and tipped it from 499 to 500 - join the crowd, this moment it had leapt to a mighty 600+).

Oh and for a laugh, the pond should note that the ABC, having produced the disaster known as iView all on its own, has now taken to dropping some shows on to YouTube, including the vert same Four Corners report, and it had garnered just over three thousand views at this moment in time … (here).

Jetstream? That's an insult to Tiger Moths ...

Meanwhile, how wretched and unsuited for the job was Michelle Guthrie, as revealed in the yarn? How out of her depth and how delusional in her perception of herself … an agent for change? Is that what your average wrecking ball imagines itself to be?

But at the end of it came the real punchline.

The ABC blithely announced that on the night of the twelfth of November in the year of our Lordess, this would be the final Four Corners for the year …

That's right, they can't even afford to re-badge current affairs shows from other parts of the world, to fill in the Monday night slot during the summer sleep-in marathon.

Perforce the pond had to console itself with Media Watch's comedy section which, speaking of flakes, featured true-blue fair dinkum ScoMo … for those who missed the comedy stylings, do yourself a dinkum flavour and head off here …

In turn that reminded the pond that a friend had forwarded a link to a Saturday Paper story about the singular incompetence of ScoMo - and perhaps more - in his time at Tourism Australia. This might involve using up the free read for the month, but it's well worth it, for anyone still bored ...

Sure enough the Oz editorialist was wondering about the serving of flake and chips that we're being dished up …

Needs a clear agenda? The man's a snake oil salesman and a con artist, demonstrating on a daily basis that the old notion of the Peter Principle still has relevance in modern management jargon … (you don't need a 360 test to reveal the bleeding obvious) ...

But the pond knew all this wouldn't be enough to get it through the day, and so it turned to the reptiles for its daily dose of flakery …

There were likely prospects for pure, distilled essence of flakery …

Shiver the pond's timbers? Well to be sure Troy had scored a Krygsman, and therefore was deemed worth of cult status, so the pond dipped a toe in the water with Troy lad ...

And at that point the pond stopped reading. Why bother? Why look at yet another variation on a loose cannon?

Sure Media Watch had also looked at him last night, but only for the comedy and for the splendid sight of Joe Hildebrand copping a spray…two loons in splendid company. Need the pond and Troy lad make up a foursome?

No, it was time for the pond to turn serious, and observe closely the ongoing Trumpification of the bromancer, with ScoMo getting on board …

Remember the days when the reptiles were free traders, and deplored tariffs, and now suddenly the bromancer and ScoMo are keen to celebrate a return to the times that produced the great depression?

By golly, that has a certain Justin Milne delusional grandeur … not just fucking up the Tourist Board, but the entire planet …

A distinctive reading? The pond should have known. After all, truth isn't truth, and nobody can prove anything, and so on and so forth, and here, have a cartoon …

Issues around intellectual property? Is there a greater violator of copyright in the known world than YouTube?

No wonder the Chinese need to take lessons from the USA.

The pond should have known it would have been better off with Troy lad doing the arm-breaker ...

By golly, cleaning up ScoMo is a task as awesome as clearing out the Augean stables, but never fear for the bromancer, a man who has willingly mired himself in horseshit up to the elbows for longer than the pond can remember ...

Uh huh … talk about a column starting with pure farce and then degenerating into acronym gobbledegook …

When distilled essence of flakery happens, the pond likes to reach for an infallible Pope ...

Hmm, there's more infallible papery here, but the pond feels like having a word with the Pope. 

His tendency to flatter the dark one, the plod from the north, the crypto-fascist in the making, the populist with no popular following, with tender portraits in this style should be reviewed.

Everyone loves Darth Vader, so couldn't, shouldn't we see the genuinely sinister aspects of this new Inspector Gadget? Why, the Pope has been exceptionally kind and generous in his vision of the dark one ...

And now, because the pond can never have enough comedy, the pond thought it might do a Troy lad, and offer up the latest thoughts of our Jim ...

Yep, in the spirit of Troy lad, shiver me timbers, here comes Jim lad ...

“Jim,” he said, “you're the only one here that's worth anything, and you know I've been always good to you. Never a month but I've given you a silver fourpenny for yourself. And now you see, mate, I'm pretty low, and deserted by all; and Jim, you'll bring me one noggin of uranium, now, won't you, matey?” 

“The doctor—” I began. But he broke in cursing the doctor, in a feeble voice but heartily. “Doctors is all swabs,” he said; “and that doctor there, why, what do he know about uranium-loving men? I been in places hot as pitch, and mates dropping round with Yellow Cake fever, and the blessed land a-heaving like the sea with earthquakes of the Fukushima Daicchi or Three Mile Island kind —what do the doctor know of lands like that?—and I lived on uranium, I tell you. It's been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me; and if I'm not to have my uranium now I'm a poor old hulk on a lee shore, my blood'll be on you, Jim, and that doctor swab”; and he ran on again for a while with curses. “Look, Jim, how my fingers fidges,” he continued in the pleading tone. “I can't keep 'em still, not I. I haven't had a drop of uranium this blessed day. That doctor's a fool, I tell you. If I don't have a drain o' uranium, Jim, I'll have the horrors; I seen some on 'em already. I seen old ScoMo the coal-loving climate denialist in the corner there, behind you; as plain as print, I seen him; and if I get the horrors, I'm a man that has lived rough, and I'll raise Cain. Your doctor hisself said one glass wouldn't hurt me. I'll give you a golden guinea for a noggin of uranium, Jim.”

And so with apologies to Robbie - at least the pond has visited his grave - and with the original here, it's on with a noggin of uranium with Jim lad …

Why he's as bold as brass and offers a veritable Jetstream of solutions, and yet the pond can't help thinking there's a little treachery afoot here …a bit like old Silver himself, what with Jim lad's willingness to kill off coal, and spruik the nukes, and never mind renewable energy, and nary a thought that all this emissions nonsense is just pure theology, if not distilled ideology, as any reptile will line up to tell you every day of the week … just ask Dame Groan or Moorice ...

They can be located locally?

But where? 

Oh right, Shop 101A, Riverside Plaza, 131 Monaro Street Queanbeyan …that should work a treat …

And so before the laughter is exhausted, and the tears begin to flow, it's off to the Rowe for the day, with more Rowe here …