In which our Henry does his usual meandering, but everyone ends up with cash in the paw and having a great time ...

 

 

 

 

There's nothing else on a Friday for the pond but to spend time with pompous, portentous Henry, the hole in the bucket man who wears his book larnin' heavily ... 

Having allegedly defeated Facebook and the Google, it was only natural for the government to turn its attention to the wicked ways of universities, and their refusal to embrace clean, dinkum, pure Oz coal, which caused much trouble in their past, and their awful treatment of the Riddster, as if climate science denialism and creationism and heck, Sydney Anglican complimentary women all didn't deserve a home in higher learning ...

It turned out that our Henry had developed a case of the collywobbles when it came to the Riddster, so he quickly moved on to musing about medievalism, in the way that our Henry is wont to do ...

 

 

Dear sweet long absent lord. What a tedious, self indulgent old fart ... and it so happens that as well as a book on the English civil war, the pond has had an ancient textbook, by C. Warren Hollister, Medieval Europe A Short History, as its toilet reading and intends to inflict it on innocent stray readers ... or at least a little bit ...

 

 

 

 

Say what? The pond can hiss at our Henry and perhaps even pelt him with stones? 

 

What a splendid response to his wasting the pond's time each Friday with his pretentious pontificating ... but now we must get back to his whining and moaning ...

 

 

 

Luckily the pond hasn't been wasting its time on German universities, but it does know the solution for the treatment of dissenters and outsiders. Chemical castration! After all, it worked for Turing, and it might well work for academics ...

Some might think this a tad extreme, but what else to do when confronted by an extended bout of our Henry?

 

Why does the pond love Henry for all his flaws?

Well inevitably at some point we come to a billy goat buttism line that makes a nonsense of everything that he has scribbled up to that point, and so we came to ...

"...None of that implies that competition is a panacea, much less one that is easily implemented."

Quite so, though Henry's notion that the University of Sydney should sell off all its property and head off to Alice Springs so that it might hire the Riddster and practice climate science denialism and Todd River reef studies in peace will be a relief to those who struggle to survive on the fringes of what was once the suburb of Darlington ... 650 dwellings, shops, post office, town hall and some 2,000 citizens gone, so the wiki says, and still the monster marches on into Newtown and Camperdown ...

And now, as we're into distraction, what with sex in parliament all the go, it will be noted that the reptiles also led with universities this day ... what with all those frisky young things frolicking about in the quadrangle as the pond wanders by, what a way to duck what's been going down in Canberra ...

 

 

The story was cobbled together by simplistic Simon, so the pond could be assured that it was a faithful regurgitation of the deepest thinking of the government, because if nothing else, Simon makes a wonderful parrot ...

Is it wrong of the pond to note that everything our Henry scribbled would be in trouble if tied to a grant? The pond's own textbook toilet reading came from the street library, thrown away and picked up for free, and almost everything else in the y'artz is equally useless ...

But perhaps that's the entire point ... what use is meandering philosophical nonsense of the Henry kind when universities might be better employed coming up with a decent U joint for plumbers? And once discovered, it might be commercialised and corporatised, because who knows, when you score a Princeton University or Harvard Law School degree, you might end up with a Ted Cruz, or with the help of Standford and Yale Law School, a Josh Hawley ...

And they say a university degree works wonders for the rule of law ...

Yes, to be absolutely clear, we do not want or need international students in Australia because that business model is outmoded and unsustainable, and yet we do want and need international students in Australia, because what a great and sustainable model they represent ...

The reptiles themselves could take only so much of this Yes Minister blather, and seized the chance to insert a click bait video, so the pond decided it would cut that out, and run the next two gobbets together ...

 

Uh huh, corporatisation and monetisation ... and there's poor old Henry rabbiting on about medieval universities trying to make a quick buck by shifting towns ...

Did the dear old thing have the foggiest idea of what he was letting loose, a fine old Tudging of the university sector?

 

The pond is reminded, as it frequently is by the current government, of that great old TV show, and in this case, the lines ...

The Master of Ballie College: How might one set about persuading a Minister of the importance of Baillie College?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Oh, I don't know. Why don't you get him down here to a High Table dinner?
The Master of Ballie College: Is he of the intellectual caliber to understand our case?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Oh yes. Well, surely our case is intelligible to anyone with the intellectual caliber of of Winnie-the-Pooh.
The Master of Ballie College: Quite. And Hacker is of the intellectual caliber of Winnie-the-Pooh?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Oh yes. On his day.

And by golly so is our Tudge ... on his day ...

And so to a wrap up of the Facebook and Google affair ... and the pond couldn't help but notice this story in Crikey ... Diversity hit between the eyes as old media pockets about 90% of big tech cash (paywall affected) ...

 

All that fuss for chump change of 50 mill?

But why did the pond interrupt Crikey, when it usually leaves the smaller players alone? 

 

Well it wanted to set the scene for a glorious cartoon by the infallible Pope, which really says it all, and in the friendly form of G. Zilla and K. Kong ...

 

 

The pond will treasure that image for a long time to come, especially what with all the reptile and government talk about the importance of a Chairman Rupert style education system... and now for the rest of the Crikey piece, just to round things out ...

 

Yep, fucked again, and fucked in a right royal way ... but at least the pond can go on hating Chairman Rupert and his minions, and that right royal Zucker and his minions in equal measure ... and after that,  what can the pond do but join the immortal Rowe in saying "merde", with more "merde" moments available here ...

 

Fuck submarines, fuck universities, fuck climate science, fuck the planet, and suck up to the Chairman ... what a fucking great fucking and sucking time we're having ...