In which the pond starts off with Polonius but ends up getting distracted and redacted ...

How about Polonius as an "other problem"? A guaranteed perfect distraction ...

The pond felt a deep sense of existential despair at the topic announced  in prattling Polonius's splash this weekend … and at the same time couldn't help taking it a little personally.

What constituted an increase in productivity for Polonius himself? Another column a week for the lizard Oz, so that even more trees might die and the full-to-overflowing intertubes groan under the weight of yet more digital detritus? Perhaps a second dog-laden media watch, with more boasting about how he had the idea before the ABC, amid numerous assaults on hapless cardigan-wearers?

Organise an extra soirée at the Sydney Institute so that the rich might congregate to congratulate themselves, and perhaps explain how the robotisation of their industry was proceeding apace, and they'd saved a motza by shipping more jobs overseas, and soon the lumpenproletariat would be reduced to assisting the robots and making do with regular servings of soylent green …

Put more simply, the pond couldn't imagine any meaningful way that Polonius was productive, unless a market had suddenly sprung up for ponderous verbiage and sententious, self-righteous, pompous moralising about how wrong it was to give the low-paid a break.

And if the pond couldn't imagine a productive Polonius, how would it be possible to increase that productivity? A blather count only measured dBAs of dismal pontificating, with bonus errant history lessons …

The pond couldn't sort the conundrum, but reading Polonius is regularly reminded of Mr Bumble the Beadle, as immortalised in Oliver Twist. It's not so much the lack of gruel or the cost of coffins ruining the business model, as the sheer ingratitude …

'Hard weather, Mr. Bumble,' said the matron. 
 'Hard, indeed, ma'am,' replied the beadle. 'Anti-porochial weather this, ma'am. We have given away, Mrs. Corney, we have given away a matter of twenty quartern loaves and a cheese and a half, this very blessed afternoon; and yet them paupers are not contented.' 
'Of course not. When would they be, Mr. Bumble?' said the matron, sipping her tea. 
'When, indeed, ma'am!' rejoined Mr. Bumble. 'Why here's one man that, in consideration of his wife and large family, has a quartern loaf and a good pound of cheese, full weight. Is he grateful, ma'am? Is he grateful? Not a copper farthing's worth of it! What does he do, ma'am, but ask for a few coals; if it's only a pocket handkerchief full, he says! Coals! What would he do with coals? Toast his cheese with 'em and then come back for more. That's the way with these people, ma'am; give 'em a apron full of coals to-day, and they'll come back for another, the day after to-morrow, as brazen as alabaster.' 
The matron expressed her entire concurrence in this intelligible simile; and the beadle went on. 
'I never,' said Mr. Bumble, 'see anything like the pitch it's got to. The day afore yesterday, a man—you have been a married woman, ma'am, and I may mention it to you—a man, with hardly a rag upon his back (here Mrs. Corney looked at the floor), goes to our overseer's door when he has got company coming to dinner; and says, he must be relieved, Mrs. Corney. As he wouldn't go away, and shocked the company very much, our overseer sent him out a pound of potatoes and half a pint of oatmeal. "My heart!" says the ungrateful villain, "what's the use of this to me? You might as well give me a pair of iron spectacles!" "Very good," says our overseer, taking 'em away again, "you won't get anything else here." "Then I'll die in the streets!" says the vagrant. "Oh no, you won't," says our overseer.' 
'Ha! ha! That was very good! So like Mr. Grannett, wasn't it?' interposed the matron. 
'Well, Mr. Bumble?' 'Well, ma'am,' rejoined the beadle, 'he went away; and he did die in the streets. There's a obstinate pauper for you!'

Blind, wilful obstinancy!! Now see if you can catch a resonance of the bumbling beadle to add to Polonius's Hamletian qualities …

Now call the pond naïve if you like, but if capacity to pay is what should determine wages, then the pond can see a glorious future for the rich, determining that they're simply incapable of paying any sort of wage, minimum or otherwise. There's nothing like a single worker trying to negotiate on which it might be possible to live with a multi-national giant of a company, happy to tell the idle poor that a robot could do their job better, and if they don't like it, have they thought of working for piece rates at Deliveroo …

Fancy those wretches expecting to work for a living, and as a result, score a wage on which they might be able to eke out a miserable existence, while doffing the lid and tugging the forelock to their betters ...

Ah the good old dignity of work. Wherever the pond goes, the pond is confronted by the dignity of work … poor wretches peddling as fast as they can, and getting as far advanced as a hamster working out on a wheel.

Of course it's different for Polonius. He feels immensely dignified scribbling furiously to explain to others the dignity of their work …

Somehow the pond imagined Polonius channeling the beadle, agitated at the "...perverse behaviour of the two paupers, who persisted in shivering, and complaining of the cold, in a manner which, Mr. Bumble declared, caused his teeth to chatter in his head, and made him feel quite uncomfortable; although he had a great-coat on. 
Having disposed of these evil-minded persons for the night, Mr. Bumble sat himself down in the Sydney Institute at which the coach stopped; and took a temperate dinner of steaks, oyster sauce, and porter. Putting a glass of hot gin-and-water on the chimney-piece, he drew his chair to the fire; and, with sundry moral reflections on the too-prevalent sin of discontent and complaining, composed himself to read the lizard Oz all over again.

Or perhaps composed himself another piece for the lizard Oz, offering sundry moral reflections on the too-preevlant sin of discontent and complaining, as if lessers somehow imagined they might stand on the same moral plane as their betters …

And there you have it. A living wage is not the answer …but there's no reason to reinvent the wheel and propose a decent day's pay for an honest day's work … all we need to do is head back to the future …

The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered—the poor people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round; a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work. 'Oho!' said the board, looking very knowing; 'we are the fellows to set this to rights; we'll stop it all, in no time.' So, they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they), of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. With this view, they contracted with the water-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and with a corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll of Sundays. They made a great many other wise and humane regulations, having reference to the ladies, which it is not necessary to repeat; kindly undertook to divorce poor married people, in consequence of the great expense of a suit in Doctors' Commons; and, instead of compelling a man to support his family, as they had theretofore done, took his family away from him, and made him a bachelor! There is no saying how many applicants for relief, under these last two heads, might have started up in all classes of society, if it had not been coupled with the workhouse; but the board were long-headed men, and had provided for this difficulty. The relief was inseparable from the workhouse and the gruel; and that frightened people. 

For the first six months after Oliver Twist was removed, the system was in full operation. It was rather expensive at first, in consequence of the increase in the undertaker's bill, and the necessity of taking in the clothes of all the paupers, which fluttered loosely on their wasted, shrunken forms, after a week or two's gruel. But the number of workhouse inmates got thin as well as the paupers; and the board were in ecstasies…

Exemplary stuff, and soon enough poor people will realise they've never had it so good, and will not dare to ask their betters for a living wage, and instead will be content at the increased work available in the soylent green sector of the economy … with the boom aided by the astonishing increase in productivity displayed by Polonius and the Sydney Institute, with a blather-led recovery producing great economic good fortune for beadles everywhere …

Now perhaps a few will wonder if the pond is being fair by frivolously invoking the Beadle, but what point any attempt to be serious? The pond was once made to read Edward Shann as part of an economic history unit and still has it on a shelf somewhere - now it can be found on Project Gutenberg here in the 1948 version.

The pond can't remember much of it, but not just for reasons of forgetfulness and senility. You see, after plodding through it, the lecturer told his class that while it was good for its time, much had happened since it was written, including but not limited to a great depression, a world war, and much changed expectations of government in economic matters, and only a fool would take it as a guide to current thinking in economics. The same lecturer would probably think only a fool would bring out the ancient Harvester case for recycling in the matter of wages determinations. And this berating of fools took place decades ago.

Since then the neoliberals have trotted out arcane nonsense of the trickle down kind (not just Donald-inspired displays of urine) and income inequality has risen to remarkable, no, astonishing levels. And yet Polonius expects anyone to take him seriously? Why calling him a beadle is being exceptionally kind ...

And now, as the pond has experienced something of an irony overload, with circuit-breakers sparking out all over the place, why not a little Dame Slap to make the weekend complete?

But before proceeding, the pond would like to insert this instructional manual.

Tucker Carlson is the object of the lesson, but it applies to all the works of the reptiles …

Yes, the pond has a taste for Vox's Carlos Maza's smack-downs, and he delivers Carlson a beauty. But the point he makes, about the idea of the hungry peasants in the village getting angry, but taking it out on almost anyone or everything except the real cause of their problems is relevant not just to Fox, but to the Murdochians down under. 

It's all about distraction -Carlson's a 100% Murdoch's bitch, and "I would be honoured if he would cane me the way I cane my workers," but the down under reptiles are into the same kind of SM.

And with that in mind, what's the latest distraction Dame Slap has to offer?

Yes, she wants you to get angry about universities and freedom of speech and all the usual nonsense the reptiles trot out when in urgent need of a distraction … because lordy lordy, is there a big federal election distraction coming up, or what … and is the need for distractions dialled up to eleven?

Remember - Dame Slap preening and posing as an opponent of illiberalism is a very close equivalent to Tucker Carlson deploring elites ...

Comparing a climate science denialist to Charles Darwin?  Perhaps Jesus Christ would have been even more on song, but it's rich enough, and to be expected of a lawyer, but it becomes an exceptionally rich offering as a distraction in a Dame Slap column ...

Donald Trump? Dame Slap has the cheek to quote Donald Trump? But we know his idea of free speech …

It is, after all, just a distraction ...

But some Anzacs did behave badly …and there is the question of what exactly happened at the Surafend massacre …

And we already know Dame Slap's approach to free speech …

These are legitimate questions any legitimate historian would want to explore, especially if it's in the interests of national mythology and officialdom to suppress the truth. 

But remember, we're not talking about free speech or liberal ideas here, we're talking distraction, anger, fear and loathing, the very stuff of the Murdochians ...

And so to a breather before the pond fulfils its last Sunday duty … but what a ripper distraction it is. 

The pond has long suggested that anyone interested in herpetology join the venerable Meade on a Friday in the Weekly Beast and can't resist clipping this example of the rewards to be reaped ...

And the dog botherer's response? A nicely worded apology, perhaps with a touch of humour, while acknowledging the error? Just kidding … you must have blown in from Mars if you thought that was coming ...

That's his acknowledgement, his apology for getting it wrong? Just asking for an unapologetic fuckwit …

And so to the final tour of duty, and only because the pond included a revealing snippet from the meritorious Merritt in yesterday's post ...

Yes, it's just more of the same, but there's those couple of revealing lines ...

A voluntary code full of feel-good fluff from a retired judge whom the reptiles would have once dismissed as being activist for getting involved in this sort of nonsense?

Never mind, on to the two big tells ...

There's the first tell … free speech actually allows people to call Lomborg infamous, especially when he is actually infamous …Google up "infamous Bjorn Lomborg" and you'll produce many infamous hits ...

And so to the second tell. Not only was French silly enough to trot out the IPA, he included the IPA agenda as an appendix. 

Others have dealt with this sort of nonsense at considered length, but because the pond is way over length it'll just settle for the log line to be found here at The Conversation - with a lot more…

We all know how this special pleading and distraction works. It's called the Tucker Carlson factor, or if you will, the art of the dial …