In which "Ned" promises extra sleep time without extra pay ...

 

 

The pond had planned to start this Sunday meditation with the dog botherer - apparently he's been helping in the matter of an indigenous voice - but stopped dead in its tracks at the words "endless climate catastrophism."

There's absolutely no need to drag climate science into the discussion, but the dog botherer can't help himself. A zealot and a tool, to the bitter end, and the pond thought fuck it, no, forget it ... he can get fucked, and that's the end of the matter.

It reminded the pond of a recent attempt at confusion and conflation noted by Marina Hyde in relation to another matter ...

...As for the business of politicising the approval of the vaccine in any way whatsoever in an era of festering anti-vax sentiment … that feels even more wildly unnecessary and counterproductive. In order for the vaccine to be effective, as many people as possible need to feel minded to take it, and anything that plays on divisions in our already grimly polarised era is crazily unhelpful. Trying to conscript the vaccine into the culture war is the last refuge of people who should really be denied all forms of refuge.
You would have to be a category-five idiot to cross the Brexit and Covid streams, so – inevitably – several government ministers did just that. A special mention for health secretary Matt Hancock, who completely wrongly said the approval had been so swift “because of Brexit”. A shoutout, too, to health minister Nadine Dorries, the imbecile’s imbecile, who claimed it was all “thanks to Brexit”. And a sarcastic handclap for the leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who informed the house: “Germany, France and other European countries haven’t managed to do the same thing. We have and we’re leaving. Draw your own conclusions … as I’m sure the British public will.”
Mmmm. I want to say there’s a fine line between national pride and national boastfulness that’s almost designed to get you a slap … But there isn’t. There’s a very thick, very heavy line between these two ways of acting. It’s both incredible and wearyingly credible that we contrived to end up on the wrong side of it.
And so it was that senior public health officials have had to devote airtime this week to correcting ministerial lies, and lies of implication, instead of focusing entirely on their brilliant news. June Raine, head of the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA), specifically took time to counter the health secretary’s claim that the MHRA had in any way benefited from Brexit. “We have been able to authorise the supply of this vaccine using provisions under European law,” she stressed, “which exist until 1 January.” No 10 was duly obliged to accept this, despite what its winged idiots were saying. I hope someone in the new, touchy-feely Downing Street rang up every offending minster and screamed: “You’re only supposed to dead-cat BAD NEWS, you absolute braindead amateurs!”
Given the sheer number of people who now lie dead around the globe from this virus, turning it into some attempt at one-upmanship against other nations – even in bungled jest – feels bizarre and distasteful. I mean, what we’re talking about here is something pretty much everyone is yearning for. Turning round to other countries, particularly poorer ones, and doing the political equivalent of “na-nana-naa-nah!”, is kind of a dick move. Furthermore, tough times lie ahead. A government that lies even about good news is, by nature, very bad news indeed. (The earlier bit at the Graudian here).

Well yes, it's a dick move, especially as it's a vaccine manufactured by US Pfizer in association with German company BioNTech, and the first doses are being packaged in Belgium for shipping to Britain ...

But you can see how that game plays out.

And that's how a columnist who sets off to talk about the need for an Aboriginal voice can sound like a totally witless, fuckwitted tool by beginning a column about an indigenous voice with a needless reference to "endless climate catastrophism", by nature a very bad columnist indeed.

It almost drove the pond to start scribbling about the latest flip flop from SloMo ...

 

 

Almost ... but there's going to be a lot more back-tracking and forgetting of the past come the 20th January and the US tune changes, and SloMo can be turned slowly on a spit, as we admire those photos of the coal in his parliamentary paw ....

Instead the pond settled for a cartoon ...

 

 

But what then was left for the pond to bore the socks off early Sunday readers and send them scurrying back to bed for a little extra sleep eye?

Of course ... it goes without saying ... release the nattering "Ned" ...

 

The pond could have led off with a joke about the coalition redefining its approach to sexual relationships, but instead the pond remembered that "Ned" had featured in that Crikey piece by Bernard Keane, behind the paywall here ...

News Corp likes to portray itself as a confident, dominant company — the US-controlled entity that bestrides Australia’s media landscape, that plays such an influential role in our politics, that shapes the national conversation, celebrates national heroes and vilifies national villains, all of its own choosing.
Beneath the facade, though, News Corp and its leaders have been badly rattled by two former prime ministers that it helped bring down.
There was always zero chance of the government — or Labor, if it was in power — calling a royal commission, a judicial inquiry, or even the most banal of bureaucratic reviews into the company, despite Kevin Rudd’s petition garnering more than half a million signatures.
Even when, unexpectedly, Malcolm Turnbull lent his support and his rhetoric to Rudd’s petition, it should have been nothing that a large, proud, confident company that believed in its own product couldn’t take in its stride and dismiss as the whining of two political losers.
Instead, the result has been fear and misjudgment at the highest levels of the company.
A key moment was when Malcolm Turnbull went after Paul Kelly on Q+A on 9 November. Turnbull monstered Kelly over his role in News Corp’s climate denialism, producing apoplexy from Kelly.
Kelly is the top of the tree at News Corp, the company’ senior Australian political journalist and eminence grise, whose bloviating pronouncements are handed down as akin to the word of God in The Australian.
So much did Turnbull’s attack eat away at Kelly that, a fortnight later, Kelly made a truly spectacular own-goal. In a piece defending the proposed theft of billions from Google and Facebook that strangely segued into a discussion of what Kelly called “an old and familiar story: the abuses of the Murdoch media, as advanced by Kevin Rudd, backed by Malcolm Turnbull”, he said this:
Rudd complains about News Corp supporting Coalition governments. But this is merely the working rule of established media. Centre-right newspapers back centre-right parties and centre-left newspapers papers back centre-left parties.
In saying this, Kelly placed on the record, from the most senior commentator in the company, that the policy was to support the Coalition. Not to promote centre-right policies or ideologies, but to support a party. Moreover, he portrayed that as perfectly normal and acceptable.
According to Kelly, The Australian, News Corp’s tabloids, its remaining regional papers and Sky News are in effect propagandists for the Coalition. That’s the “working rule”.
It was a statement of the obvious, of course, but not one that such an influential News Corp employee has ever before made. It confirms that the company is not a media company, but the media arm of the Coalition (in doing so, Kelly also confirmed that Turnbull was exactly right when he had said a few days before that News Corp and Scott Morrison were working as a team).

So "Ned" is just a Pravda-style hack down under, a propagandist, albeit a bloviator so tedious as to make the result worse than having to wade through endless reams of Soviet-era rhetoric ...

Having established that, let us turn to "Ned" in action, doing his duty ...

 

What does this begin to sound like, to read like?

Well there was also that Crikey conclusion about a recent internal meeting the reptiles held ...

...If the company feels the need to indoctrinate its own staff in an extended Two-Minute Hate of its critics, it’s an outfit deeply unnerved by criticism.
What that gathering looks like is nothing so much as the partyroom meetings political parties have when in Canberra — caucus and the joint partyroom, which are then reported on a no-names basis by party spokespeople. In those meetings, leaders gee up the troops, demonise their opponents and declare all is going well.
Which is entirely apt. As Turnbull correctly identified in his book earlier this year, News Corp is a foreign political party, not a media company.

We know that "Ned" is deeply unnerved by criticism ... and recently the pond ran a joking piece about how "Ned" faithfully reported everything that SloMo said, with a "Scott Morrison said" here and a "Scott Morrison thinks" there ...

Now note how this technique has been applied to Xian Porter ...

See "Ned" above, see "Ned" below, working as part of the team. See the trinitarian "Ned" acting as a loyal disciple, acting as bloviating God, acting as astute team coach

Oh there'll be much Porter sayeth, and much Porter smiteth and smoteth ... 

Let me be clear, the Porter hath said ... let us wonder and marvel at the Porter's method, let us contemplate the valve wireless as Porter seeketh to shift the dial, let us endure the cliché of Porter ensuring dialogue, let us celebrate Pooter outraged at the slice of meat obtained from the butcher ...

Oops, wrong story, let's get back to "Ned" doing his company Pravda thing ...

 

You know as soon as you read a line about "real world facts" that you're in company with bloviators deeply up themselves - is there such a thing as unreal world facts? Did "Ned" spent too much time in Bizarro world? - especially as the bottom line, as it always is, is devising new ways to screw the poor ... lowly paid workers who shouldn't get another cent ...

Of course ways of screwing workers is always dressed up with fancy lingo of the "productivity improvements" kind, as if in the year of a global pandemic, productivity is the problem, as opposed to getting, or desperately holding on to a job.

As for praising McManus for pointing to the deep cultural and institutional differences between the two nations, we have in fact one deep cultural and institutional similarity ...

 

 

But "Ned" has never wanted to admit that he belongs to an organisation which still, even as the US goes down the tubes, is right behind the Donald ...

And that reminds the pond of another Crikey story ... by David Hardaker ...behind the paywall of course and a little old now, but still, timeless in a way ...

Sky News is broadcast on Foxtel, the pay TV platform majority owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. As a broadcaster Foxtel must obey a code of practice which is developed by subscription television industry body the Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association (ASTRA).
ASTRA might sound like an umbrella group for a wider industry. In reality it appears to be little more than a front for Foxtel and Murdoch interests.
ASTRA’s chairman is Foxtel’s CEO Patrick Delaney. Foxtel provides the secretariat for ASTRA, and ASTRA’s board includes Foxtel’s chief communications officer Paul Edwards — a fact disclosed by Edwards when we spoke to him. There may be more Foxtel or Murdoch executives on the board but Edwards, speaking for ASTRA (from his Foxtel office), refused to provide Inq with any detail.
As we discovered, it is impossible to find any current information on ASTRA on the public record, despite it being a powerful body which has a charter to lobby the federal government on regulation and broadcast content.
The group’s website is several years out of date and provides little organisational detail. According to Edwards it had “not been ASTRA’s practice to disclose additional details of its membership or its board” on the site.
Certainly there is no disclosure of the dominance of Murdoch and Foxtel interests, particularly from 2016 when News Corp took 100% ownership of Sky News...
…It might appear that Sky can say whatever it likes, no matter how extreme or how false, under the guise of a commentator’s opinion.
In its coverage of the US elections, Sky appeared to be more Fox even than Fox TV. As the likelihood of a Trump win receded Sky’s commentators adopted discredited conspiracy explanations pushed by Trump and far-right US online sites, attacking the bona fides of the election outcome.
Examples included Alan Jones promoting a conspiracy theory about a computer glitch that allegedly took thousands of votes from Trump in Michigan, and comments from Miranda Devine promoting the Trump campaign’s baseless claims of electoral fraud.
At time of writing there was only one factual correction on Sky’s website, despite a torrent of false information. The correction was for comments made by Jones during a diatribe on face masks and COVID-19 lockdowns….
...The correction came more than two months after Jones’ broadcast — and you have to look hard to find it.

Well you'll never find any of that in the reptile commentary team, or in "Ned" ... but we shouldn't forget that one deep cultural and institutional similarity, because it seeps into everything he scribbles ...

 

And what's the go in the "real world" as distinct from the "imaginary world", apart from "real world facts"?

Change the award so that workers can work longer hours without getting overtime ... it's called sticking in the BOOT, giving a good BOOT kicking, getting in the BOOT to the head ...

 

 

You know, it wasn't so long ago that this story reared its ugly head ...

 

Did you see any of that in "Ned's" talk of a real world?

Did "Ned's" blather about greenfield agreements and alarm about double-dipping mention any of that?

What a servile, repugnant, bloviating propaganda hack he is, and truly,  "News Corp is a foreign political party, not a media company."

Anyone who made it through can now retreat for some well-earned Sunday napping ... hopefully without nightmares, though they'll never go away completely ...

 

 

 

Oh and here's another thing that "Ned" forgot to mention, though mentioning Orwell used to be a favourite reptile pasttime ...

 

And just a reminder for the dog botherer ... you can always find a Kudelka cartoon here ...