The pond thought it might start off its Sunday meditation with an infallible Pope, if only to add to the alarm on view in prattling Polonius …
No link to Australia? Well Polonius isn't your John Donne sort …
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe
is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as
well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine
owne were; any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
MEDITATION XVII
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne
Enough of that nonsense. There's no link to Australia, and let us have done with that doggerel.
Silly Donne, perhaps born a tad too early to realise it's all the fault of the ABC, because the ABC is to Polonius what Twitter is to the dog botherer …he can't stand it, yet he's strangely fascinated and compelled, and like any decent conspiracy theorist, everything that's wrong with the world emanates from this wicked brew of cardigan-wearing Satanists ...
How Polonius hates the ABC, how wrong in every way they are, how pleasant it is to live on a Polonial island, remote from everything, or perhaps float on a Polonial cloud, above the trouble and strife …how pleasant it is to do nothing, blessed by white privilege, and a 'leet lifestyle peddling influence for wealthy sponsors ...
There's nothing like adept Polonial cherry-picking is there? Of course he might have cherry-picked other reports or other data …
There's plenty more from 1996 here, and plenty more of a later date elsewhere …you know, Palm Island and the recent reptile beat-ups about those tricky, difficult, cash-splashing uppity blacks … but Polonius refuses to use a wiki … he just keeps carrying on about the ABC ...
Yet another reptile standing proudly by the Donald … and never mind that a media less mindless than Polonius isn't blaming the Donald for the pandemic, but for his administration's response, which has seen the United States soar to top of the world ma, look at me, top of the world ma, with perhaps only Boris and Bolsonaro deserving the chance to argue over who deserves the killer gold medal …
Never mind, no doubt Polonius feels good about himself, or does he? Can someone that bitter, sour and twisted ever feel good about themselves? Do they wonder if they might be due a stint in purgatory, alongside other Pellists? Who knows, and if only purgatory was a little more real than limbo …
Speaking of limbo, the pond must do a segue now, and shift to Dame Slap … because this day it's entirely wondrous, what with the Dame emulating Mother Teresa in her concern for the unemployed …
Now some might think that the notion that Dame Slap gives a fig or a toss about the unemployed is beyond the valley of the bizarre, what with her being the butch chairMAN of Gina's mob, but the pond has to sometimes remind stray readers that back in the day, Dame Slap donned the Mannish grab 'em by the pussy MAGA cap, and hasn't that worked out well for the unemployed … at least the ones left alive after the pandemic to seek employment ...
It's strange how eerily silent Dame Slap has been on the Donald and US matters in recent months … a bit like her ongoing silence about the way the UN was going to use climate science to introduce world government, when the pond calculates that in its usual bumbling way, the UN hasn't quite managed to fulfil that conspiracy theory, when really it should have got the job done by Xmas in 2009 …
But back to the unemployed, and Dame Slap's deep caring ...
Here the pond must abandon Dame Slap for a moment and head off to Crikey. As noted to a reader, the pond doesn't like to clip Crikey … the poor buggers have got enough issues without their best work turning up outside the paywall … but just this once the pond thought the exception to the rule was worthwhile, given Dame Slap was given an honourable mention ...
Yes, that's Dame Slap caring for the downtrodden and the hapless and the helpless … by acting as a lickspittle fellow-travelling stooge for the chairman …
But back to Dame Slap doing a Gina impression as she worries about the unemployed ...
Ah, it all becomes clear. Caring for the unemployed is just code for union-bashing, and a deep love of the role Gina's mob might play …
But as we're speaking of Dame Slap's day job as useful idiot, stooge and quisling, why not another excerpt from Crikey...
It's always worth keeping the IPA agenda in mind when reading Dame Slap, and when it's not acting as a propaganda machine for the IPA, the lizard Oz is always happy to act as a propaganda machine for the Chairman … and so to a last burst of Dame Slap crocodile tears … because you see, caring for the unemployed really means getting rid of regulations, so employers can screw employees more easily ...
And there you have it. A powerful IPA voice for the screwing of the unemployed, because who knows, should they happen to get employed, they should be ever so grateful and ever so humble, and not even bother with the KY jelly of regulations …and there's your powerful voice for the unemployed in a butch chairMANish gender fluid nutshell ...
Here have a celebratory Rowe cartoon, with more celebrating with the immortal Rowe here …
At least our Gracie doesn't bother with hypocrisy. She's there in the Surry Hills bunker, and nicely set, and so it's time to berate the bloody useless bludgers all around us, in timeless, time-honoured reptile fashion ...
Look at all those bludgers lined up with their paws held out for a little cash therein. Why the sight of them sickens the pond to its heart, and our Gracie wants to lash them into action, and by golly Killer Creighton's got nothing on our Gracie when she gets hold of a decent whip … (good old grandpa taught the pond how to wield a whip while up Tamworth way, and yet the pond is in awe of our Gracie's style) ...
Now that sort of rant surely deserves a graph, and by golly the reptiles obliged ...
Of course it's got three fifths of fuck all to do with what our Gracie's really on about, which is berating the useless bludgers from the safety of her Surry Hills bunker ...
Indeed, indeed, the only place for comfort is in the Surry Hills bunker. What we need is needy people in need, it's the only way forward. Make 'em desperate enough, and they'll soon stop talking about fair pay for a fair day's work, or regulations to avoid exploitation, or benefits, like holiday or sick pay, or annual leave, or all that other bloody nonsense ...
Our Gracie is the very epitome of a Python sketch, which, because she's not very good at comedy, the pond thought it might recycle …
'Gracie' Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.
'Karen' Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?
'Gracie' Jones: You're right there Obediah.
'Karen' Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?
MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
GC: A cup ' COLD tea.
EI: Without milk or sugar.
TJ: OR tea!
MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.
EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth… or pocket SloMo's squillions.
TJ: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, 'Money doesn't buy you happiness.'
EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.
GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
TJ: You were lucky to have a ROOM! We used to have to live in a corridor!
MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.
EI: Well when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.
GC: We were evicted from our hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!
TJ: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.
MP: Cardboard box?
TJ: Aye.
MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!
TJ: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, pocket SloMo's squillions, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'
MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya.
See if you can get a whiff of that in our Gracie's last gobbet ...
Oh aye, those vulgar young people livin' in luxury, not realising how lucky they are, what with working at Dame Slap's mill without any regulations or benefits, and somehow it's all the fault of the bloody cardigan wearers at the ABC … trust Polonius, he'll tell ya …
Now if we'd only left them without food or accommodation for a couple of months, they'd learn that licking tar and the Chairman's arse was the way forward ...
It's so easy to understand, the immortal Rowe had no trouble summarising the situation for our pleasure … so much suffering, life so hard on struggle street … what with suits costing a fortune these days ...
Here's a cherrypicked stat that might not appeal to the cherrypicking Polonius:
ReplyDelete"If we could just replicate the ratio of African Americans in prison (in the US) for Indigenous people, total prison numbers in Australia would fall by around 22%.
"When things would so greatly improve by only being as bad as the US, you know things are in a woeful state."
https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2020/jun/07/no-australia-is-not-the-us-our-shocking-racial-injustice-is-all-our-own
Wouldn't hold my breath waiting for some action to improve matters, Merc. The myth that Australia "is the most successful multi-cultural society in the world" is a hard-embedded myth of Australian politics of all persuasions in all states. Except for a few of them ungrateful boongs, of course.
DeleteI am totally disgusted about all the foofaraw about George Floyd that was only very slowly and reluctantly extended to the unthinkable possibility that we Aussies might actually be worse than the yanks.
But then we've only heard about the 'blacks'. If the numbers were included for native Americans (not forgetting native Canadians too) then the numbers for America (and Canada) might not look quite so good either.
Jericho’s single graph Sunday is very enlightening so say the least. But as GB says, the myth has been embedded so deeply, most don’t even question the myth.... for any minority....anywhere.
DeleteI doubt the graph will see the light of day anywhere, barring the Graudian.
Cheery Anon.
Thanks, GB and CA. I fear you are both correct: truth will struggle to see the light of day. Even the UK is in on the act now. Not surprising, given most of those 'hard-embedded myths' going supposedly to our 'nature' we actually share with the rest of the Anglosphere.
DeleteHere no racism, no racism here. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/07/ministers-face-backlash-over-suggestions-that-britain-is-not-racist
Oh wau, the ABC really is Prattling Polonius's Emmanuel Goldstein, isn't it. Only with Polonius it isn't a two minutes hate, it's an all day, every day hate. So take his bit in response to Stephanie March's comment on Antifa: "It's just that many members of minorities who have had their businesses looted and neighbourhoods destroyed because of violence in which Antifa played a role ...".
ReplyDeleteRight, so what role exactly did Antifa play ? Did members of Antifa (if you can characterise such a loose association as 'membership') personally engage in looting and destruction ? Based on what evidence ? Sure, Antifa people have engaged in physical conflict directly with far-Right goons - who are known to initiate such conflict regularly - but despite Trumpistan's claims, I simply do not remember any cases of genuine Antifa folks actually being lumbered for looting and destruction.
Can anybody quote some evidence to the contrary ? As far as I can tell, there were genuine protesters and there was destructive looters, and little, if any, cross membership. There's some reasonable discussion here:
https://www.startribune.com/a-look-at-the-antifa-movement-trump-is-blaming-for-violence/570931532/
But hey, actual facts have never entered a Polonius bleat before, so why should they now ?
Nor do facts bother Dame Slap: "Sally McManus and her delegation will have five seats at the table, despite representing barely 14% of Australians". So what ? The National Party hold 10 House of Rep seats (6.6%) despite only representing 4.5% of the voters. And much worse: the Liberal National (Qld) party holds 15.2% of the House of Reps seats with only 8.67% of the votes !
So what are you going to say about those anomalies, Slappy, or are you just indulging in identity politics again ?
But whoa, what's this ? "...the reforming governments of Bob hawke and John Howard. Australian knew that both leaders had their back."
Really ? So why did Hawke sell us out to a bunch of greedy neoliberals (who we're only just beginning to escape from) and Howard so much "had our back" that when he proposed his wonderful reforms, known as Work Choices, we Australians unceremoniously dumped his government out of office in a landslide and him out of his safe seat.
Hard not to feel a tad ambivalent about this though: "Employers need to have the confidence to employ more people without the trip wire of ridiculously complex system." Now if nearly anybody other than a paid hack of Gina's Institute of Paid Agitprop had said that, I might have got on board. But the fact is that it isn't only industrial law that has been accumulating mind-shredding complexity over the years; it's happened to all our laws and pretty soon, we might just have to have something done to unravel it. Just not by Gina, the IPA and Slappy.
And what can be said about our Katrina "Grace Collier" Kelly that the Pythons haven't already said ? Perhaps that, in the long run, the lucre that was wasted on the likes of Gracie is what bankrupted News Corp ? The data is out there, and the questions are being asked.
“Nor do facts bother Dame Slap: "Sally McManus and her delegation will have five seats at the table, despite representing barely 14% of Australians". So what ? The National Party hold 10 House of Rep seats (6.6%) despite only representing 4.5% of the voters. And much worse: the Liberal National (Qld) party holds 15.2% of the House of Reps seats with only 8.67% of the votes !”
DeleteRarely does such brutality show virtuous clarity......noice!
Cheery Anon.
Antifa, at least how the reptiles understand it, is a fictional construct to distract from the goons that infest the far right.
DeleteThe remarkable thing about the current protests is just how peaceful they are. There are always a lot of pent-up frustrations that may not relate directly to the reason for a protest but can get triggered anyway, however, that doesn't seem to be happening much in this case.
The conservatives have been rubbing their hands with glee at the prospects of some violence they can blame on the left, but the only obvious violence seems to have been perpetrated by the police - we call this irony children!
I think of it this way, Bef: I have heard little about Antifa from anyone other than right wing reactionaries. Is it a left wing thing? Wouldn't you expect the left wingers to be talking about it?
DeleteI think the first time I was ever consciously aware of the use of the word 'Antifa' was in a Trump tweet.
I thank Jersey Mike for his thought of yesterday, that ‘anonymice’ seem to be proliferating, and a monicker might make life a little simpler for readers.
ReplyDeleteI came to this site to make one specific comment, so did not see need to seek out a name. I was accepted as ‘Other Anonymous’. As others have found, although Dorothy serves us so well, there is valuable, frequently amusing, further discussion on some days, and this ‘mous’ has made more comments than he ever expected to.
In deference to Jersey Mike, and assuming that no other has taken this, I choose the name ‘Chadwick’, in homage to Sir Edwin Chadwick, who used the emerging practice of statistics to promote so many benefits to the poorer citizens of the UK, when every aspect of their health and welfare were under attack from the grandly named ‘Industrial Revolution’.
It is an assumption that all citizens of the USA are interested in baseball, and an extra association for Jersey Mike might be that Edwin Chadwick had a half-brother, Henry, who is credited with promoting baseball in the USA with his reporting on games, and innovations in scoring and presentation of results.
Chadwick
Hi Chadwick.
DeleteI've certainly enjoyed your contributions to date. You seem to have a very good background knowledge of government and academia which helps me understand (as far as you can) the odd bods and odd ideas that DP reports daily.
The reptiles certainly punish the numbers from time to time so channeling Sir Edwin might be a good idea.
Chadwick,
DeleteThank you for considering a well intentioned suggestion and acting on it. Sir Edwin
sounds like a righteous citizen and merits your tribute. Thanks pal.
I note that wikipedia says of Sir Edwin that: "A disciple of Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, he was most active between 1832 and 1854; after that he held minor positions, and his views were largely ignored."
DeleteYep, I reckon that makes him a fine exemplar for the loonpond. So welcome indeed.
Now all we need is for someone to build on his hugely successful life and career - he's a Companion of the Order now, ya know - and pick Abbott as their moniker. That would really establish us as a "both sides and whataboutery" order.
A great opener DP.......Pope truely is infallible!
ReplyDeleteAs for your link to Palm Island DP, I ended up down a deep hole and landed here. A grim and informative 500 page thesis by Joanne Watson on the Palm Island penal settlement from 1918 to 1994. An informative but grim read. Chapter 9 is quite relevant, with plenty of reference to the Murdoch machine going back decades. Polonius is in his right station.....amongst the vile haters and propagandists.
Just fuck off Polonius!! Fool!
https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:189965
Cheery Anon.
P.S. Just fuck off some more Polonius!
GrueBleen
ReplyDeleteJun 7, 2020, 2:20:00 PM
"Grue and bleen are examples of logical predicates coined by Nelson Goodman in Fact, Fiction, and Forecast to illustrate the "new riddle of induction" – a successor to Hume's original problem. These predicates are unusual because their application is time-dependent; many have tried to solve the new riddle on those terms, but Hilary Putnam and others have argued such time-dependency depends on the language adopted, and in some languages it is equally true for natural-sounding predicates such as "green."
For Goodman they illustrate the problem of projectible predicates and ultimately, which empirical generalizations are law-like and which are not.
Goodman's construction and use of grue and bleen illustrates how philosophers use simple examples in conceptual analysis.
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction
So GB, further research reveals that the word grue applies to things that are green before midnight on Dec. 31, 2049, and blue thereafter. So come New Years 2050 your new handle will be BleenGrue? I'll have to remember that so I won't get confused come the day.
Well spotted, JM. Should both I and the pond be still about - and if so, likely still reading the weekly sermon by Nullius Ned - then I will indeed be monikered as BleenGrue.
DeleteWell Mike, that riddle, a bit above my intellectual pay grade to be honest, was worth pursuing simply to make an empirical generalisation that GB is a bit of a gem and a great asset to the Pond.
DeleteDitto.....well spotted. Ms.Parker is a bit of a gem too, naturally.
Cheery Anon.