If only the pond could be so bold and brave, rather than cowering and quivering in place, with only The Mocker to hand to identify heretics, deviants and preverts …
Does it ever occur to this zealot - long suspected to be the cowardly dog botherer anonymously parading his spleen - that it might equally be said, "sadly, and to the detriment of all, the lizard Oz simply cannot let go of its agenda, even in a national emergency. The furious scribblers are far too busy wallowing in their ideological zealotry."
Of course we've seen portrait assemblies of deviants and heretics in other times …
But enough of smashing Godwin's Law, and more than enough of the Mocker, because the pond has had more than enough of ABC bashing from the reptiles, as they seek to prop up their flailing, failing business model, and besides, that was yesterday, and the pond has other bigger, fish to fry this day …
Yes, our hole in the bucket Henry has bravely stepped forward, abandoned his attempt to find straw to fix the bucket, and announced his willingness for all old people, himself including, to join Glenn Beck in dying for the young …
Even better, our Henry has been blessed by the cult master Lobbecke for his righteous willingness to die, or at least consign others to death, purely out of economic necessity and the survival of the fittest …
Hmm, there seems to be something of a double edge in that image …was that intended? Is there a little undermining going on here, in the manner of someone rushing off to L'Age? The pond needs interpretative help here … what does it mean? The dollar sign entwined with pirates or Nazis? Are we in the land of Totenkopf? Must there be another breach of Godwin's Law?
Never mind, let's get on with our Henry's sacrifice. No, please, you go first, the pond is happy to hang back a little, you go first ...
May sound hard-hearted? Geometric progression, moi? Tragic choices …?
No, you go first, the pond is happy to insist that you go first … and so on, and on, and on ...
Ah, dear sweet brave bold Henry. The pond is ever so pleased he's decided to step out of the tent, and may be gone for a little while.
No, you go first, the pond insists. The pond is happy to stay inside the tent, and cling to whatever warmth and sustenance it might find. Please, it's no trouble, you go first ...
Courage? Why dear sweet bold brave Henry, all the pond asks is that you go first …
And so to a Low cartoon the infallible Pope dug up and tweeted here … from The Bulletin, 13th February 1919 … (click on to enlarge)
What a ripper, and how the pond needed a little breathing space after our Henry's noble sacrifice, before moving on to the musings of Moorice …
Strange, once upon a time, Moorice was ever so keen to keep shovelling more and more of our dinkum pure clean Oz coal down Chinese throats, oi, oi, oi …
But it seems this is a time for sacrifice, and Moorice is now advising that we must never ever give the deviant, tricky and dangerous Chinese a single lump of our precious vital bodily fluids ...
Oh heck, this is a bit dull. If the infallible Pope can do a flashback to 1919, surely the pond can travel back in time to 2013 ...
The trouble is, of course, that the pond has set the new model Moorice running, and should really keep the motor firing for completists who can't get enough of Moorice's current thinking ...
There's no doubt that there are hints of the old Moorice there, but what of those who hunger for the genuine Moorice of 2013?
Should the pond stiff them, or should the pond continue on with its routine William Burroughs' inspired cut and paste, celebrating mugwump Moorice past and present? Okay, back into the time machine, and back to the future ...
Why, with this strategy, it's just another quick jump into the time machine, and we're back with current Moorice, and he's just a gobbet away from completion ...
Strange. The reptiles completely forgot to round out the piece with a list of Moorice's incomparable credentials …
As to his arguments, the pond can only marvel at his willingness to go first, and abandon all coal sales to China … because that'll learn 'em …
It goes without saying that back in the day, the reptiles were always willing to round off a Moorice piece by acknowledging his important work and deeds and advanced thoughts, all done in the name of the onion muncher ...
Oh well done Moorice, well played through the ages, and how pleased you must be to read the news, which even managed to break through all the talk of that virus ...
You have to hand it to Moorice and our Henry. There are many ways to fuck people and the planet, and they won't stop until somehow they manage to complete the job ...
And so to an immortal Rowe to wrap things up with a little wild swinging fun, with more immortal Rowe here ...
Unlike Hopper, the pond is not a big fan of Fragonard or The Swing, and isn't certain that Rowe needs to apologise, since the re-working is more fun than the original ...
Henry's problem? As Monbiot writes, "as the Trump, Johnson and Morrison governments flounder in the face of this pandemic. They are called upon to govern, but they know only that government is the enemy." https://www.monbiot.com/2020/03/22/prescription-for-disaster/
ReplyDeleteIt is now clear that in a crisis, it is governments that have the power and that the private sector has very little, just the opposite of what Henry has believed all his life.
:)³ Amen to that.
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/mar/27/robodebt-government-admits-it-will-be-forced-to-refund-550m-under-botched-scheme
The federal government has privately admitted it will be forced to refund more than 400,000 welfare debts worth about $550m that were wrongly issued to hundreds of thousands of Australians under the botched robodebt scheme.
Confidential government advice seen by the Guardian reveals for the first time the scope, size and impact on the vulnerable of the years-long robodebt debacle, including that the government expects to lose an upcoming class action against the income compliance program and intends to settle.
It can also be revealed that despite government assurances that all Centrelink resources have been diverted into processing a growing backlog of new dole claims thanks to the coronavirus crisis, Services Australia staff continue to chase Australians for payslips and bank statements in an effort to validate potentially unlawful welfare debts.
Centrelink: We will never give you money, and if we do, it's only so we can take it back.
Yeah, talk about Xi's repressive government, and then tell us all about CentreLink and Robodebt, and in particular about government involvement. Like how did Robodebt ever get past the 'crazy idea, let's all have a laugh' stage and why did the "democratically elected" government cover it up for so long.
DeleteAh yes, ‘if it could achieve two-thirds of the health objectives for one-third the cost’ - what a wonderful world it would be. No doubt Henry has drawn on his own research to give that clearly evidence-based proposition. What business would not leap at the chance of getting twice the benefit for a particular cost?
ReplyDeleteA scan across Limited News suggests that this is part of a group effort to promote a theme that economic recovery will require relaxation or removal of all that dreadful ‘red tape’ so that ‘private’ enterprise can set about large construction projects. untrammelled by considerations of land use planning, environmental quality, actual authorisation for the works, caution in financing - and all the other items in the IPA handbook.
The ‘bait’, as ever, is the cornucopia of benefits that will flow (trickle down) to everyone. The mythical ‘cost-benefit’ test.
Of more recent interest to Australians might be a paper by John Hoehn and Alan Randall, published in 1989 in ‘American Economic Review’.
Randall spent time in Australia around that time, looking at water management. He wrote several papers offering sound economic tools for for managing our water resources, but it is difficult to find any trace of them in the current ‘management’ of our freshwaters.
The Hoehn-Randall paper was titled ‘Too many proposals pass the benefit cost test’. While much of it is economics for economists, the authors did offer an intuitive explanation for what they were saying.
Essentially, when lobby groups propose a range of works to stimulate/restore an economy, they should be considered together, because many will interact, and the productive capacity of the economy is bounded. Too often proposals are ‘analysed’ individually, which assumes that the capacity, particularly for benefits, is unbounded.
I doubt that Henry’s two-thirds/one-third even rates as an intuition, but we will see much more of the proposal that maximum works with minimum constraints will be essential to our post viral future.
Other Anonymous
They really do love their simple minded arithmetic, don't they. This many bankruptcies and temporarily unemployed workers is just a huge negative compared with a few million deaths world-wide. Most of the deaths won't be here anyway so that's a total non sequitur.
DeleteAs Holely Henry expostulates: "But that scarcely means further moves, which are likely to impose even greater hardship, should be approved without ensuring the pain does not exceed the gain. And it is dangerous to underestimate just how great the pain could be."
Can't argue with that, can we.
Hi DP,
DeleteLobbecke’s image, lifeless in both subject matter and execution, is undoubtedly a sacrificial lemming signifier.
Such representations are meant by Trump’s minions to promote his new virus-induced message of “don’t let the dollar die - get back to work and risk your life for the sake of my economy”.
The Gasbag’s final line says it all in that he basically paraphrases Trump’s cry of “the cure will be worse than the disease”.
Then again, it could be that our insipid illustrator has seen the light and is cleverly undermining his master’s edict by sending a coded signal to vigilant anti-capitalists that the economy, like god, is now dead.
Oops! The above comment was not meant as a reply to OA's post but somehow ended up here. Anyway it's still pertinent I spose...
DeleteKez - very happy to have your contributions, wherever they may land, particularly as I just cannot divine all the arcane symbolism in a Lobbecke - so grateful for your interpretations.
DeleteOA
Yes, most entertainingly enlightening.
DeleteThe pond thinks it understands, Kez, hopes it comprehends, but still feels a little like it did when reciting the catechism in a Tamworth Catholic primary school ...
DeleteThe feeling is mutual DP - and I'm not even Catholic!
DeleteDP: "You have to hand it to Moorice and our Henry. There are many ways to fuck people and the planet, and they won't stop until somehow they manage to complete the job ..."
ReplyDeleteJust as well they are completely inept then, isn't it. Can anybody (OA ?) actually tell us what they've ever accomplished ? Other than disguising themselves as functioning human beings just enough for others to refrain from hunting them to death as vermin.
So we get this imitation 'tough love' stuff where the equation is that the misery of a million jobless clearly outweighs the premature death of tens of thousands of all ages (including young kids) and all genders. And you know, if all of the deaths come quickly so that COVID-19 fades into influenza-like insignificance in just abour a year, but the unemployment, and underemployment, goes on for a decade or more then they'll have been proved right, won't they.
So, is this what justifies the wingnut welfare that is showered upon them ?
My guess, and I don't know more than the wingnuts, is that the half-arsed to save the economy approach would lead to both more deaths AND a more prolonged and expensive hit to the economy - a lose lose for all concerned.
DeleteYeah, that's the thing, ennit. Because the "lockdown" has been ordered, then we can, more or less, see and estimate the so-called 'economic impact'. And if we hadn't, then we'd have had to try to work out what the impact on the economy would have been from a large number of premature deaths in a fairly short while.
DeleteAnd that's somewhat difficult to estimate, yes ? How much unemployment ? How many business failures, what would the social impact be. Etc. But very hard to believe that it would be zero - no impact whatsoever. But clearly the Henrys and Moorices of this world think that "the economy" and "a very large number of premature deaths" are completely disconnected and isolated from each other.
Have I ever mentioned the reptile/wingnut mental state of "high decoupling" ?
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI really must read these things before hitting publish.
DeleteThe false dichotomy is the main tool in the Merde-orc toolbox.
Having some compassion is one thing but not the only thing to consider. Managing the contagion will also manage the economic fallout because they not disconnected as you point out above.
Check the country by country charts. Which countries will be back to business first and what approach do they share?
https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
Mass media have long had their own definition of ‘economics’.
DeleteIn a modern version of boys crying ‘wolf’, for several years we have seen governments propose useful controls on public behaviour, to improve life for the majority. Examples - legislating for a deposit on beverage containers, limiting the opportunities for yobbos to be able to display aggression on the streets, although close to comatose drunk, at 3 AM, and, most recently - banning general use of ‘disposable’ plastic bags. In each case, the industry lobby group has made what it claims to be an ‘economic’ case to show that what is proposed will so impact their section of the economy that, with multiplier effects, will, inexorably bring the rest of the economy to its knees.
And - when that happens - thousands of jobless, shops in main streets boarded up, children begging for bread - be it on the heads of the government of the day.
The lobby groups have been gifted as much space as they can waste in print media to put this case (well, if nothing else it saves having to pay a journalist to write some filler) and it has had some success.
Take beverage container deposits as an example. Introduced in 1977 in South Australia, and a continuing success in every way, it took 40 years to overcome the mulish opposition of the beverage industry in NSW, and is a couple of years away still in Victoria.
None of the dreadful prognostications of industry lobbies, of nigh total economic collapse, has come to pass, but the technique still gets a run. The response to plastic bag controls followed the text book, with supposedly intelligent ‘economics’ or ‘business’ writers for certain media supporting suggestions that people would actually buy fewer groceries if denied ‘one-trip’ plastic bags, and that would affect the share price of Colesworths, which would reduce the dividends going to ‘mum and dad’ retirees - and so on.
None of that happened, ever. In the case of so-called ‘liquor lockdown laws’ (interesting choice of phrase, given our current circumstances) we have had medicos from the A and E sections of city hospitals displaying their pleasure at the much reduced admissions of people who had been punched at random in the street, but that counted for little as Premiers rolled over to the lobbies, and rolled-back the legislation.
So the method still works, with the active support of commercial media whose take on ‘cost-benefit’ in all such cases is that there is only cost. Never benefit. And we will see more of it.
Other Anonymous.
There was definitely container deposits in Victoria when I was a whippersnapper, I remember collecting them - and also collecting beer bottles to sell to the collecters (not very many wine bottles back in those benighted days). Then deposits disappeared, and then, yes, SA went alone in reintroducing them.
DeleteAnyway, there's quite a good discussion by Ezra Klein in Vox - an American context, of course, but it covers lots of universal matters:
https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/2020/3/27/21193879/coronavirus-covid-19-social-distancing-economy-recession-depression
The tl:dr version is:
"So let’s put this clearly: Comparing the cure and the disease is a false choice in both directions. If you let the disease rage, you don’t save the economy. But if you lock down the economy, you don’t cure the disease.
Extreme social distancing measures buy time. That’s time that needs to be used for four things: Bringing the disease’s reproduction rate down so the caseloads begin to fall. Surging health supply to handle the infections we already have, and currently expect. Massively expanding testing capacity so we can track the disease going forward. And passing enough support and stimulus measures so people can survive this period economically, not just epidemiologically.
If that’s done well, we could move toward a phase more like what we see in Taiwan: constant vigilance and large-scale testing, the reimposition of social distancing if cases get out of hand, but normalcy most of the time, for most of the population."
An excellent quote GB, and the pond had to resist recycling it when confronted by Dame Slap today ...
Delete"So we get this imitation 'tough love' stuff where the equation is that the misery of a million jobless clearly outweighs the premature death of tens of thousands of all ages (including young kids) and all genders."
DeleteLifters and leaners GB, lifters and leaners.
Having just finished reading today's Dame Slap harangue, I see what you mean DP. Truly pitiful, and made the worse for quoting Hitchens as some sort of "thinking" example for "independent minds". But then, she and Hitchens are very alike, non ?
DeleteSorry, wrong quote: "But clearly the Henrys and Moorices of this world think that "the economy" and "a very large number of premature deaths" are completely disconnected and isolated from each other."
DeleteL&L.
And we are all both of those things, Merc, in our various different times, places and circumstances.
DeleteHmmm: https://twitter.com/JuhanaIF/status/1242486856035512322
ReplyDelete