This will be the last pond post for a week. Not because of the defeat of the NSW Labor party. Any notion that this should involve some kind of mourning was swept aside by the news that Michael Daley intended to stand again for position of statistics bumbler in chief and resident hater of Chinese students with Ph.D.
No, that comedy will continue apace …
No, that comedy will continue apace …
Nor is it due to the gloom surrounding the Mueller report. The Donald, bless his socks, will remain a grifter, conman, and snake oil salesman, busy fucking the United States and the planet (oh and the middle east too), and the entertainment will go on …
Nor is it due to the tricky situation plucky Theresea finds herself in. This very morning the pond has been entertained by UK pollies burbling away in the Commons, without the first clue about how to get out of the pickle plucky Theresa has put them in …
Nor is it due to alienation from the reptiles. Why, this very day our unoriginal Adam scribbles yet again about the importance of dinkum clean true blue Oz coal. Why, it must have been a nanosecond since the pond last read a message like that in the lizard Oz …
No, it's the siren song of the socialists in the south that has called the pond to Melbourne. These wretches, with their weird addiction to a peculiar form of football, are a constant source of consternation to the the reptiles … and so the pond has succumbed to their pinko pervert charms (there's also a birthday party, but relax, there'll be a few socialists there).
But what to leave in place as a good sampling of what the pond's curating of the reptiles has to offer?
Well the pond could have gone with unoriginal Adam or with Dame Groan, doubling down with prattling Polonius, to diss on Ardern …
Well the pond could have gone with unoriginal Adam or with Dame Groan, doubling down with prattling Polonius, to diss on Ardern …
Such grace, such empathy in a difficult time. You can always rely on a generosity of spirit from Dame Groan, of a kind that the Marquis de Sade himself would envy …
But no, coal and mocking New Zealanders - there's nothing like a mass murder to produce clever mockery - must give way to Moorice.
Moorice might write a treatise on postage stamps, and he'd probably manage to find Gramsci's long march and the Nazis at the heart of the international conspiracy.
Moorice might write a treatise on postage stamps, and he'd probably manage to find Gramsci's long march and the Nazis at the heart of the international conspiracy.
Now here the pond must confess this isn't vintage Moorice. For a start, as the world's leading climate scientist, he should really have been writing about coal, but that was snaffled by our unoriginal Adam …
But be fair. Moorice is at least in full apocalyptic mode, and capitalism and business is doomed, doomed Moorice tells ya …
But be fair. Moorice is at least in full apocalyptic mode, and capitalism and business is doomed, doomed Moorice tells ya …
Ah, Gramsci's long march, with a clear and present breach of Godwin's Law by dragging the Nazis into the stew.
Apparently Moorice isn't particularly up on German history. German companies didn't fall meekly into line, they made out like bandits, and so did many American companies. Have a read of Henry Ford about the Jews, marvel at the way that IBM made a motza, recollect that diverse businesses from Hugo Boss to Mercedes did very well under the Nazis …
It turns out that the Nazis didn't mind a bit of privatisation (Greg Hunters go here), and it was only a short while ago that the Krispy Kreme mob decided to donate a token amount for conscience-salving purposes (Bloomberg here).
Of course there are all sorts of listicles about companies that did business with the Nazis, with many surviving and still doing deals ( wiki here). How about kind words for Adidas, Kodak, Bayer and Fanta? (listicle here).
Of course there are all sorts of listicles about companies that did business with the Nazis, with many surviving and still doing deals ( wiki here). How about kind words for Adidas, Kodak, Bayer and Fanta? (listicle here).
Cunning Moorice, he knows the pond is a sucker for Godwin's Law ...
Ah yes, from the Nazis to growing left-wing bias, but strangely no mention of Moorice's speciality, climate science …
- Secure and reliable energy supply
- Affordable energy supply
- Strong, internationally competitive economy
- Meet current and future absolute emission reduction targets. (here)
Say what, the long march and the Nazis have got to them? Well luckily they don't really mean it, but it does sound awfully like corporate social responsibility being used as the latest weapon of the anti-capitalists ...
Indeed, indeed, the world needs its champions ...
Oh yes, the stories will be told long into the night, or long into the Rowe, with more Rowe here …
And so a culling that the pond regretted the moment it had done it yesterday … poor Bella given the chop? Unthinkable, and so to remedy the matter the pond will revert and make way …
And so a culling that the pond regretted the moment it had done it yesterday … poor Bella given the chop? Unthinkable, and so to remedy the matter the pond will revert and make way …
Now first the pond must celebrate Bella's use of Orwell.
Orwellian has fallen out of fashion with the reptiles - instead we get a lot of blather about virtue signalling, which simply isn't good enough.
Orwellian has fallen out of fashion with the reptiles - instead we get a lot of blather about virtue signalling, which simply isn't good enough.
Now as the reptiles are supposed to be about free speech, it seems remiss not to have provided a link to the opposing argument - it wouldn't have been so hard, but the reptiles live in a bubble, and never provide links to the enemy, as in After Christchurch universities have a responsibility: abandon Ramsay.
Reimer hasn't been backward in coming forward before … Ramsay course offers stark choice to Australian Universities in 2018 and the same year Weaponising Learning …
He also tweets …
Naturally he also produced a howl of pain in Simon Haines To blame Rasmay for Christchurch atrocity is facile vilification.
But there's the white man's burden in a nutshell, as the persecution of poor hapless white people continues apace … and noble Bella is waiting to help with the shouldering of the burden ...
Um, did Bella strike a slightly odd note there? Western society is characterised by religious toleration, as demonstrated by blowing fifty people away …not to mention those 11 killed in a synagogue massacre, and so on and so forth …
And now for a little more sobbing about Peterson missing out on a junket ...
Well done Bella, once more the victims have been blamed, and it's all the fault of identitarianism, and the supremacy of white civilisation has got nothing to do with it. But at least we know climate science denialism, coal and tobacco's future is in safe hands with the support of the IPA …
And so to a final treat, because the pond simply couldn't overlook this one … and it provided a chance to catch up on Lloydie's climate science credentials …
Ah the Peruvian venture. Bit sticky, wot, wot … with suits and despair …
Never mind, Lloydie comes highly recommended
He (Lloydie) has been named by the Queensland One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts as one of the journalists who “show the courage to research the evidence” for climate change, alongside Alan Jones, News Corp and the Sky News commentator Andrew Bolt, and his colleague Chris Kenny at the Australian.
So what delighted the pond with this outing? Well it was the notion that thousands of dead fish provided no reason for doing anything much about the environment …
* And now to a significant prediction. Not only will Dominic Cummings predict an international pandemic in 2020, but the pond predicts with an absolutely unerring certainty that he will make that prediction, and that both he and the pond will be astonishingly, astoundingly correct, in a way that would make Houdini marvel. For those doubters who came back here to check on the pond's prediction of Dom's prediction, please now, a humble apology. There's far too much scepticism, cynicism and doubt in the world. When confronted with foresight of the most remarkable kind, please accept that you are an inferior member of the 'leet, and that the pond and Dom are peasant members of the illuminati.
Never mind, Lloydie comes highly recommended
He (Lloydie) has been named by the Queensland One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts as one of the journalists who “show the courage to research the evidence” for climate change, alongside Alan Jones, News Corp and the Sky News commentator Andrew Bolt, and his colleague Chris Kenny at the Australian.
So what delighted the pond with this outing? Well it was the notion that thousands of dead fish provided no reason for doing anything much about the environment …
Yes, it's always pleasing to read an environment editor who doesn't seem to give much of a flying fuck for the environment …
The pond wondered what would please Lloydie even more. Thousands of dead koalas, so he might write dismissively about the echo chamber mourning all those dead koalas? Would we need millions of 'roos, it being commonly judged that one dead koala is worth a thousand dead 'roos? As for a million fish, it's just business as usual …no need to worry, it's all in the best of hands.
Well here's hoping the quixotic venture to turn the Amazon into a haven for junketing westerners gives Lloydie the funds to help out with the Darling river …perhaps each time there's a fish kill, city dwellers could head west for an eco-tourism experience ...
Yes, it's all good, as our Lloydie dances on the grave of climate science, ever ready as he is to consider a counter view, which is that it's all a theological hoax or a religion or a cult. Why Malcolm Roberts might have been a genius with astonishing insights, if you keep an open mind and are open to counter views …
And so to the Pope cartoon of the day, with more Pope here …
Since DP is apparently off on one of those "family thing" furloughs, I thought I might post a bit of reading matter to fill in the time. This is another extract from Eric the Pinko's immortal classic, 'The Road To Wigan Pier'.
ReplyDeleteEric starts with thoughts arising from his stay in the sleazy, dirty, badly run and overcrowded boarding house and old and dirty un-refrigerated tripe shop owned and operated by husband and incapacitated wife, the Brookers:
But it is no use saying that people like the Brookers are just disgusting and trying to put them out of mind. For they exist in tens and hundreds of thousands; they are one of the characteristic by-products of the modern world. You cannot disregard them if you accept the civilisation that produced them.
For this is part at least of what industrialisation has done for us. Columbus sailed the Atlantic, the first steam engines tottered into motion, the British Squares stood firm under the French guns at Waterloo, the one-eyed scoundrels of the nineteenth century praised God and filled their pockets; and this is where it all led - to labyrinthine slums and dark back kitchens with sickly ageing people creeping round and round them like blackbeetles [ie cockroaches]. It is a kind of duty to see and smell such places now and again, especially smell them, lest you should forget that they exist; though perhaps it is better not to stay there too long.
The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. This was march but the weather had been terribly cold and everywhere there were mounds of blackened snow. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little slum houses running at right angles to the embankment.
At the back of one of the housed a young woman was kneeling on the stones , poking a stick up the leaden water-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her- her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever seen.
It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that 'It isn't the same for them as it would be for us,' and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her - understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe.
Oh wau, what an unstinting paen of praise for "Western Civilisation". Perhaps we could get the Ramsay folks to preach a classroom sermon about the wonder of it all.
As long as the heroine of that particular story knows her place, and doesn't try to break free from her 'dreadful destiny', GB, it will indeed be a wonderful sermon.
ReplyDeleteWhat is Moorice arguing - that businesses should act unethically? That they should exhibit no social responsibility? That social responsibility has no brand value? That approach pre-dates even the "robber barons" of the late 19th century, and takes us back to the good times when you could make toxic "food" for fun and profit, house your workers in slums to keep them on the hook, make them choose between adequate safety and a living wage (like paying them per ton of coal extracted and forcing them to choose whether to forego earnings by unproductive activity like erecting pit props), or simply enslave them, unashamedly. Good times, I guess...
ReplyDeleteBut I was more intrigued by the assumption behind Westacott's position, and Moorice's regurgitation of it, is that government should run like business. It's not argued, as such, just assumed. Of course, governments run by or like businesses have always been hugely successful (and nice to everyone).
In the final analysis, businesses measure one thing - money - and winning votes at an AGM requires only pandering to a few big players, the mum-and-dad investors being irrelevant. While that model probably is quite appealing to Moorice, no one would mistake it for democracy. Government is not one-dimensional, trading off obligation and aspiration, short- and long-term advantage (national or political), social good, financial good etc. It's just a whisker more difficult to balance the competing factors to deliver what the shareholders will regard as "good" performance.
Anyway, while Uncle Rupert may have been at the helm of NewsCorpse since Gutenberg "invented" movable type, Corporate Australia is hardly the model of stable leadership that Maurie and Jen would have you believe. I sampled 50 companies from the ASX 200 (the first 50 alphabetically, which should be pretty random). Mean tenure is distorted a bit by a few Menzies-length reigns, so I looked at median tenure as CEO - for the 50 I looked at, the median was 2.375 years. The median tenure of Prime Ministers during this wildly unstable period since 2007 was 2.25 years.
That means the typical CEO lasts a massive six weeks longer than the typical Prime Minister has during a period described as "shambolic". On the other hand, countries that have been run "stably" by JenMo's standards? Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Sudan, Belarus...sure, stability has really helped them to be economic and social world leaders. The longest serving head of an actual relatively-uncorrupted democracy is Angela Merkel.
I know, I know, the pond don't need no steenking facts....
My distinct impression, FD, is that you are taking Moorice and The Oreo way, way more seriously than they could ever justify. I always wonder just who they could possibly be writing to - who would ever take seriously a single word that they spout ? Other than the professional reptiles, of course.
DeleteIt'a a kinda basic question: are they preaching to the converted or do they seriously hope/believe that they are converting the preached to ? Or could they just not give a damn as long as they continue to be paid.
Who am I writing to? Like almost everyone on the wide, wide world of the web, myself, of course. I assume the Moorice and the Oreo are too, although getting paid for their troubles probably makes it sweeter.
DeleteUnbelievably, some people still talk about the Oz in terms of "...of course, I disagree with the stance quite often, but the quality of the journalism makes it worth reading." If those people read Dorothy's take-downs from time to time, they might be dissuaded from that peverse notion. But don't take my "serious" reponses as an indication that I take Mo & O seriously. I take them exactly as seriously as it amuses me to do so in the moment - I found rummaging around corporate bio's (and finding the have a similarly short shelf-life) more amusing than reading Moorice's article which had prompted the exercise.
I don't think it's a one size fits all though - I think the Bromancer, for instance, really believes what he writes, and thinks he's doing that "quality journalism". Dame Groan, probably, as well. Moorice, Polonius and Nattering Ned are just angry old men shouting at clouds, so who can tell? The Caterist, Dame Slap, the Oreo? I'm pretty sure for them, it's just about getting a paw in the till - "I can believe six impossible things before breakfast - as long as I get paid enough to do so".
I'm not sure that "pity" is the right word, but I feel some minor twinge of something from people like the Oreo - her employer will fold in a few more years, leaving her jobless in a market with nothing to set her apart from thousands of other Deliveroo writers and all the academic attractiveness of Andrew Wakefield.
I am visiting the Pond in the same way I check the fridge when I am bored - still no snacks!
ReplyDeleteAnywho - - - over at Crikey, Keane touches on a subject of projection when discussing Pauline Hanson. He quotes Richard Hofstadter “their enemy is on many counts the projection of the self”.
"That’s also an apt fit for Hanson: a serial complainant about misuse of welfare by various minorities, she has leached millions off taxpayers via the electoral funding system; accusing Muslims of perpetrating a “halal scam” on Australians while the party exploited its own candidates for profit; attacking Muslims as violent and unable to fit in while Ashby and a former One Nation senator brawl in Parliament House and smear blood on the walls; now, accusing others of conspiracies and foreign influence in response to her own party’s secret conspiracy to secure foreign support"
Well it's an apt description of almost anyone that scribbles opinion for Murdoch. Groupthink, Marxist indoctrination, identity politics and so on coming from a group that fall into lockstep behind the Master without any reference to fact, logic or ethics.
Hofstadter's essay is here: https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/5/
Page 5 reads like a checklist for our regular subjects.