Poor old Cameron, didn't he sound glum, but wasn't Rosie terribly enthusiastic, though the pond thought that Australia and the EU were in negotiations for a free trade agreement, so if the point of leaving the EU was to revive the empire, it rather missed the point …
Why if the Poms had stayed in the EU, they could have had a free trade deal, and Australia would have shipped back the wool and the coal and scored steak knives from Sheffield and suits from Savile Row and saluted the flag …and sorry, it's just another early morning pond waking nightmare ...
Meanwhile, the reptiles attempted a bit of balance …
… but really it only eggs them on. Print the controversy is the reptile game …the pond had no time for the Plimer, coming as he did in the middle of a heat wave, and now there's another one coming, and the reptiles want to pretend they're balanced, as opposed to climate denialist dinkum clean Oz coal lovers?
Oi, oi, oi to that ...
Meanwhile, to borrow Colbert's game, the hunt for the Ramsay centre is starting to look like a search for the snark …
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Ramsay centre! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true."
Funny, the pond thought it was going to the 'Gong, but it seems it's going everywhere, anywhere and nowhere …
But enough of Snarks and Ramsay centres, it's on with the reading for the day …and it turns out that once again identity politics has reared its ugly head and ruined everything …
The complete meaninglessness of "quality of opportunity" made the pond hope that the chasing thereof would produce a matching amount of gibberish in the body of the work ...
At its best, this is a monumental lie, at its worst, just plain ignorant stupidity.
Back in the day in Tamworth, identity was centred on gender, sexuality, race, religion, and our ancestors. That was just the way it was … though it helped to belong to a white trash family to feel matters of identity a little more keenly, though not nearly as keenly as anyone gay, black, or otherwise different to the main herd…
Back in the day, the pond's father, on hearing the name Dragovic, would immediately have a visceral reaction. Wog eh? With all that implied in terms of identity attached ...
This was somewhat ironic, given the lowly status of Irish Catholics, but the notion that Australia has been free of tribes is one of the more remarkable ahistorical delusions currently being cultivated in reptile la la land …
By golly, the pond could spend hours around the kitchen table having a chat about the many sins and crimes of Oliver Cromwell, because the pond knew its tribe … a bloody useless tribe that brooded over events some four centuries old …
Maintain the rage!
And now suddenly new tribes come along and cast doubts on the old world order, and the reptiles are agitated about it? But there have always been tribes …
Sadly the pond began to realise that Denis - funny way to spell a first name, they'd note that in Tamworth in the old days - might be more a part of a problem than any kind of solution ...
Ah, the pond suddenly understands.
Dragovic is a member of the 'leets, and even worse, he's a specialist member of the 'leets, and a 'leet honorary senior fellow ...
That's how he can scribble nonsense about "the rise of identity politics", which is just another way of saying that instead of just following the mandates and rules of old white men shouting at clouds, there might be other ways of looking at the world …
Well it's a never no mind to the pond, but so long as fundamentalist Islamics or Catholics or angry Sydney Anglicans (with their complimentary women) think they can consign gays to hell with gay, carefree abandon, or designate women as wicked witches of the west, things are going to stay a little heated …
Those genies are out of the bottle and long gone …and as for that "chasing quality of opportunity" header? Yep, there in the text is the proposal that it's actually supposed to be about "equality of opportunity", albeit by different paths and means, presented in a way that purports to be even-handed, but really ends up being a plaintive cry for the good old days of the bigot …
And now for a little of the blame game …
There are possibly a few innocents amongst us who might have thought that the British had something to do with the current Brexit follies.
Not so … apparently it's all the fault of the dastardly Europeans, for failing to lie down and imitate a carpet or a door mat …
The pond had thought of reverting to yesterday's Oreo as a bit of filler, the sort of seafood extender that's needed to make a blog long and unreadable, but this effort was just so fucking weird that the Oreo and her fixation on globalism - while scribbling for a global corporate empire of the basest kind - had to take a back seat …
The main point seemed to be the chance it gave the subs to do a joke about Brussels sprouts ...
The real puzzle for the pond is why the Sexton wants to sound so clueless. Is it appropriate for a man of a certain age to imitate Alicia Silverstone?
But it's not the pond's job to explain the Irish border to the Sexton, or the way that frictionless borders facilitate trade and industry (and make the EU bliss for travellers).
No, the pond's job is to enjoy the Sexton explaining how it's all the EU's fault … as if anyone, even the British, should accept responsibility for David Cameron's existence. That one's on his parents ...
Indeed, indeed. Why not just abandon the EU altogether? Why not revert to the tribal nation states of yore? Why not just bung on a third world war …
It's all possible in the mindless blame gaming of the Sexton. Remember, next time you sign up for a deal, expect the other party to act like a piece of carpet, wipe your feet as your please, and leave any time you like, and all will be well …or not ...
And that brings the pond to a special lizard Oz editorial, but first a little nostalgia.
Back in the day, it used to be that every child in New South Wales had to do swimming lessons. It was the way it went, no excuses, no exemptions, government mandated and teacher and school led, and until you could swim across the pool and back, you kept being tortured …
The pond hated it, but it was considered part of being dinkum true blue Oz … suntanned lifesavers, the Australian crawl, and all that …
Not to be able to swim was about as unpatriotic as disliking Vegemite, lamingtons and scones …
And now this …
Dear sweet long absent lord, Ming the merciless would be rolling in his grave …
Gravely, fully aware of what it was saying, the pond must pronounce that the lizard Oz is unAustralian …anti-Menzies, anti the 1950s, anti bronzed lifesavers, anti beach, anti pool, anti the Australian dream of government-instructed swimmers, why perhaps even anti the Australian crawl ...
Finally the pond must do the set-up work for the Rowe cartoon of the day, involving a mystery as deep and as perplexing as the Marie Deare … or the drear Petie boy … a mystery that has haunted reptiles for years …
And so on and endlessly on, a bit like asking about the fate of the Cheshire cat …
Rowe seems to have discerned another move in the mystery, and the pond always pays attention to Rowe, with more Rowe mysteries solved here …
Dear sweet long absent lord, it's true …
… the country is truly fucked …
Which reptile was responsible for this dribble?
The oscillating fan?
The pond is sorry it asked … so many fools, so little time ...perhaps Mr Shepherd should have left the pond to drown in that swimming pool in Tamworth so long ago ...
Sexton quotes Yanis Varoufakis as saying about the EU: "It remains in the nature of the beast to treat the will of electorates as a nuisance that must somehow be negated."
ReplyDeleteGrueBleen quotes that lasting political hero Edmund Burke as saying to the electors of Bristol: "Your [elected] representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."
It seems that those dastardly Euros might just have taken on some learning from Britain. Hmmm ?? I wonder what Peter Costello would have to say about that.
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteThe Oz Editorialist is of course correct, it isn’t the role of national government to teach kids to swim.
Drowning kiddies just highlight the fact that drop kick parents aren’t doing their job.
The national government needs to direct the money where it can do some real good. Winning Olympic medals!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-22/rio-olympics-2016-how-much-does-a-medal-cost-taxpayer/7748946
That some of these elite swimmers might end up with mental health issues and self medicate with booze and pills is just a necessary cost of ensuring national pride.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/feb/17/olympic-swimming-loneliness-isolation-pressure-inner-demons
“What kind of a man would turn his daughter into an outboard motor?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
DiddyWrote
I thought most of the fairly recent drowning 'victims' were adults. Some trying to save kids though themselves not particularly adequate swimmers, and I guess all of them were kids themselves at some time or other.
DeleteMostly though, it seems to me, that the problem is adults who have no clues whatsoever on where and when it is safe to go swimming. But then I guess that some who get swept off rocks and drown apparently have no clues whatsoever as to where and when it is safe to go fishing.
Maybe we can just agree that some adults just have no clues whatsoever and that they frequently pass this affliction on to their offsprung.
Hi GB,
DeleteYes, far too many of this recent spate of drownings have been adults who have over-estimated their swimming ability and underestimated the power of the sea.
As Athol Furgard tells Spalding Gray in ‘Swimming to Cambodia’;
“Spalding! The sea's a lovely lady when you play in her. But if you play with her, she's a BITCH! Play in the sea, yes, but never play with her. You're lucky to be here! You're lucky to be ALIVE!”
DW
Sexton claims the EU has outgrown its original form as a trade agreement, which simply shows Sexton doesn't have a clue. The EU is in exactly the same form as its original, save for the entry of Croatia. He is presumably thinking about the European Community, or its predecessor the European Economic Community, and implies that it metastasized into its current form. In fact the EU only came into existence after the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon was signed, a deliberate expansion of the European remit by the members of the European Community, which Britain could have declined to ratify, but did not. Just as with other amendments to the original Treaty of Rome - deliberate decisions negotiated by member states, who consistently ratified those changes. It didn't outgrow anything, its remit was consciously expanded, by the UK as much as anyone else. Brussels hasn't seized power, power has been "elegated" (the opposite of "delegated") to it.
ReplyDeleteThe free movement of people, so much the sticking point in Brexit campaigning and the current negotiations, was something Britain signed up to (in various forms) in 1973, and repeatedly since, as it is a part of acquis communautaire that forms the basis for EU membership. The argument against a second Brexit referendum is that it is opinion-shopping, and creates uncertainty by creating a precedent whereby anyone at any point in the future can call another referendum). But the Euro-skeptics have had many opportunities to halt, or leave, the process; the one time they actually managed to get a plurality seems to be the only one that counts.
And Sexton is simply lying by omission in his Juncker quote (obvious copypasta from the London Torygraph) - for context, ratification of the Treaty for a Constitution for Europe was then running at 11 yes, 0 no, and Juncker's "we continue" was clearly in the sense of "if France knocks it back, we will need to rethink the detail, but the process of developing an EU constitution will continue" if you read the interview where he made it. And so it was - France, and then Netherlands voted no, Germany suspended it's ratification process (despite it having passed it legislature with almost unanimous support), and the process was suspended while a working group looked at what was so wrong with it that the French and Dutch voted no. It has never been put forward in its original or amended form, although several other member states ratified it after the process had been suspended.
Anyway, why shouldn't the EU be bloody-minded? Its England that wants the divorce, Europe has just named its price. Didn't anyone else think that was going to happen when the Brexit vote was on? 'Cos I sure as hell did.
FD: "Sexton doesn't have a clue."
DeleteAnd if he did, would he be touting for the Murdochrats ? But really, that says all that needs to be said about Sexton, surely.
"power has been 'elegated'"
Yes, it has. And is it of any relevance that the European Parliament is democratically elected every five years ?
"The free movement of people, ... was something Britain signed up to (in various forms) in 1973"
Ah but, at the same time it ended "free movement of people" to the UK from its colonial dominions such as Australia. I don't know about you but I recall that causing much anger and angst among we loyal colonials. I'm fairly sure I lost my 'right' to a British passport, or at least to untrammelled entry to the UK, back then (not that I was personally ever going to use it, but ...).
"The argument against a second Brexit referendum is that it is opinion-shopping"
Yeah, that's what the reptiles claim, but if that's the case, why do we have parliamentary elections every so many years (5 in the UK's case). Isn't that "opinion shopping" too ? Can't people just make up their minds once and for all who should be in parliament ? Why do they need to be asked repeatedly - just in case they've changed their minds, perhaps ?
Anyway, thanks for the informed commentary, FD: good for us, but totally wasted on the likes of Sexton, of course.