Say what? The reptiles want the evil empire to continue doing their wicked work, provided they just get some cash in the paw for feeding malicious, malign copy?
Oh never mind … it's no doubt wrong for the pond to want a monopoly on this sort of trade... but lordy lordy, did Facebook put a stick into the ants' nest, and what a scuttling and scurrying there's been.
What to say about the bouffant one, the barnacled Buncle and all the rest? Thank the long absent lord there was an infallible Pope to hand ...
Also thank the long absent lord that our Henry was to hand, rabbiting on about something else, as a distraction from this Facebook crisis which affects the pond not a whit or a non-Facebook using jot.
How lucky to have our Henry beavering away in his reliable hole in the bucket fixer way ... and without some sort of joint partnership on hand with the get Zucked empire, our Henry was sure to let all his impressive references flow ... with, what did some devotee call it, his emetic mind?
Ah indeed, rampant socialism ...
Well it's a reptile talking point the pond has found exceptionally tedious in the past, but today it's desperate times, with the Facebook ruckus all the go, so anything in a storm, even our Henry seeing pinko pervert socialists under the greenie bed ...
We've heard it all before of course, but at least our Henry dresses it up with a Latin reference. What an emetic mind ...
As for public health and safety, the pond has an image in mind that conjures up our Henry's way of doing things ...
Now on with the lecture, and if you don't mind, a dose of Kierkegaard (a prime loon if ever there was one), was exactly what the pond had in mind for a Friday morning ...
Not satisfied with all that talk of Kierkegaard? Then surely the reference to Tocqueville is pleasing, especially as our Henry has in the past shown a taste for the populist authoritarianism of the Donald. But enough of rich ironies, quick now, swallow a dose of Hobhouse ...
And so the pond has done its duty, but it really thinks our Henry missed the dire socialist greenie boat this day ... because beefy Angus is out and about on the prowl ...
Oh it gets richer by the day, the climate denialist lecturing big business about their derelict ways ...
Is this the very same beefy Angus who stirred the Climate Council to scribble in 2018 here ...
...Mr Taylor keeps saying Australia will meet its targets seven years ahead of schedule. He did it again on Radio National Breakfast this morning, but when pushed conceded he was only talking about the electricity market, not the whole economy.
“Angus Taylor is misleading the public. His government’s own published data clearly indicates Australia is not on track to meet its Paris commitments. Those commitments are economy-wide, not just for the electricity sector,” said the Climate Council’s acting CEO, Dr Martin Rice.
Mr Taylor was asked this morning to acknowledge that Australia’s greenhouse gas pollution levels are rising and he responded by saying, “from year to year, you see ups and downs.”
“The energy minister is using very slippery language. The fact is Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen for four years in a row,” said Dr Rice.
Mr Taylor claimed Australia was doing well internationally and that our past record was exemplary.
“Angus Taylor appears to be living in an alternative universe. If all countries were to adopt Australia’s current policies we would be on track for a world that’s 3 degrees warmer than the era prior to mass industrialisation. This would have disastrous consequences for billions of people,” said Dr Rice.
“Mr Taylor is out of touch, not just with the majority of Australians who want to see action on climate change, but with his Liberal colleagues at a state level. Yesterday he derailed an attempt by NSW Climate and Energy Minister Don Harwin to plot a national pathway to net zero emissions by 2050,” he said.
Why it is, it is, it's the beefy Angus at his best, with streaks of fat for easy cooking with gas, and if the pond went further back it could get a whiff of undiluted climate science denialism, as opposed to mere slipperiness, but do go on ...
What a bunch of wankers, and yet here we are ... suddenly we are all pinko greenie preverts. Whatever would our Henry have to say about this wicked government instructing businesses to toe the beefy Angus line?
Named and shamed? Will anyone be naming and shaming beefy Angus himself or his good friend and fearless coal loving leader?
By golly, the ironies each day mean that the pond has a full diet of iron, apparently necessary for healthy teeth and export around the world ...
Finally, the pond realised it should publish the reptile response to the vile behaviour of Facebook (have they tried giving up using it?) but rather than Penbo carrying on with his warm lettuce leaf assault, the pond decided to give the lizard Oz editorialist a go ...
Of course the pond only did this so it could reference a Graudian headline, which was distilled essence of comedy, derived from a tweet ...
Hadn't they heard? MySpace was once a perfectly viable space and an alternative to Facebook for those who cared, and then Chairman Rupert bought it, paid over the odds, fucked it over to make his money back, and fucked it completely. So much for MySpace ... so much for Chairman Rupert, fucking up another good thing in his greedy quest for more billions, while not having the first clue about the digital world.
But clearly the reptiles cared deeply about the Facebook ruckus - oh not the cash in the paw gone - because they devoted the front page of their tree killer edition to their shock, horror and indignation ...
The pond had to feign enough of an interest so it could make it through the final lizard Oz editorialist gobbet to get to an immortal Rowe ...
Yeah, yeah, whatever. So close to the money, and yet at the moment, so far ... still, it could have been a Ted Cruz day, but that's another rich story for folks elsewhere rushing for a holiday in Cancun, away from the great freeze and the virus ...
But enough cruising with Cruz, sorry reptiles, you're just padding needed so the pond can refer folk to more Rowe here and have a chortle with this outing ...
"Setting up your business Facebook page is free. At the end of the day, you can spend nothing at all on your Facebook page and have a great home base for your business". I wonder how long that will last in Australia? I'd say until a month before FB have to pay money to some businesses that are on FB.
ReplyDeleteTrying to make some sense of Holely Henry today and it's obvious that one of us - he or me - is sliding into terminal senility. Consider his viewpoint that: "COVID-19 is potentially lethal and relatively contagious, particularly when it first appeared, there were good reasons to fear the threats it posed."
ReplyDeleteOh, but all is hunky dory now then, nothing to fear now, is there. And so we all have joined Henry in understanding what the terms 'mutation, variant and strain' mean haven't we. (And if you haven't, look them up here: https://theconversation.com/whats-the-difference-between-mutations-variants-and-strains-a-guide-to-covid-terminology-154825 - and that's something you won't see on Facebook).
Here's Henry again: "There is, to begin with, a long-term rise in society's aversion to risk that is apparent not just in social behaviour but in the very words we use." Yep, that'd be it for sure; after all, back in the days of the 'Spanish flu' (so called) there were no masks, there was no 'distancing', crowds kept forming and coughing in each other's faces, restaurants and shops and sporting arenas and churches were all open and international travel was still freely on...wasn't it ?
And it only infected maybe 500 million (about 1/3rd of world's population) and killed maybe 50 million (+/- 25 million or so). And nobody gave a damn - no risk aversion back then, was there. Besides, the flu came just about at the end of WWI and there was absolutely no risk aversion whatsoever associated with that, was there. Why, all of the Aussie WWI soldiers were volunteers - didn't have to conscript anybody. But we had to conscript 'em for WWII (well, lots of them, anyway) and for the Vietnam War didn't we. So we can see the growing 'risk aversion' there, can't we.
And it all shows up in just how we use the word 'security' which Henry reckons "originally referred not to the absence of risk but to its stoical acceptance as an inescapable aspect of the human condition". And as Henry will tell you, if you care to ask him, taking steps to improve the status of humanity is just not right - it causes us to start misusing good, traditional words, like 'security'. Just ask decent parents: no way they want to cut back on the good old risks their kids are subject to; they wouldn't learn 'stoical acceptance' that way.
But then, I consider tuberculosis (TB) which kills about 1.5 million per annum. It has a vaccine that was created 100 years ago and hasn't been changed or improved since, and we do absolutely nothing to protect people and prevent them being infected - other that jabbing them with a none too effective vaccine. So maybe Henry is right after all, and 'stoical acceptance' is humanity's preferred way.
The title of the piece rather gives it away. Assessing risk, good governance and welfare (good god!) are all - - - socialism!
DeleteAfter years of eschewing any sort of expertise based on the idiotic assumptions that that the market will fix all things it becomes a bit hard for the wingnut to accept that a crisis requires planning and good governance.
Yeah, I guess that the belief that "the market will fix it" is just the incarnation of "stoical acceptance" when all is said and done.
DeleteThe holey one has taken a basket of goodies, and called for a dirigible balloon and sailed many hills away from reality today. It's that kind of Friday.
ReplyDeleteHis early ruminations in gobbet one about "security" and sneering at "experts" just bought memories back of the Onion Muncher's endless ten flag press conferences that yammered, and hammered, and yammered some more about the Islamic threat - which turned out not to be anything like what he and Dutton proposed it was.
No experts there, but lots of threats to security. Ahh, the febrile days of pre-COVID. I looks back with some joy at them now. The fact that the ACTUAL threat was from the raving alt-right, who popped over to NZ just as Tones was yammering, and made mass murder, has never entirely escaped me.
Onwards!
The Holely One is a bit ambivalent about 'experts' isn't he: there's the nameless ones that thee and me are too stupid not to obey, and then there's Henry's favourites: T Hobhouse, de Tocqueville, Phillip Roth, Kierkegaard, John Stuart Mill.
DeleteWell I'll grant Mill to some extent, but the others ? Who are they ?
Hi GB,
DeleteI used to think Sheridan was the pits, but Hank Ergas is the worst, the Great White Father from the Land of Cube, as the immortal philosopher Kookie would term him.
Just an aside, but after my father gave a lecture at Rutgers University on Belorussia
he and another panelist hit it off though disagreeing on many things.
They opted to tour Newark and NYC the next day, highlighting various sites and museums of the early 20th century Labor struggles.
The other panelist was Phillip Roth, he stopped in to our home and I shook his hand and chatted with him for a moment.
Unless I misunderstood your meaning or am being Mr. Thicky, why the "who are they" in reference to Roth?
His "Plot Against America" was well received though I wasn't impressed as I could see every plot device coming from a mile away.
GB, of DP's Bushrangers I enjoy your posts the most,though everyone here is
entertaining as what other blog sports such an erudite lot?
The many "I didn't know that" moments for me are reason enough for coming here, besides the wit of DP.
Thank you for those appreciative words, JM. I think we all get value from coming to the pond and not just from the neverending wit of DP.
DeleteAs to the "who are they", well apart from Hobhouse whom I'd never even heard of, I do know "of them" but I've never really bothered to actually know them. Roth's 'Goodbye Columbus' came out in 1959 when I was still in High School (my year 11) but I just never got into him. Nor Kierkegaard and not even de Tocqueville. So what I was really saying is "no matter how much they might impress Holely Henry, why should I have any interest in what they had to say".
Hope that clarifies.
Just to bring to notice that a labor politician is on our friendly Murdoch after dark program. Senator Kimberly Kitching. I have to ask why would she be appearing on this poisonous channel and especially on the Buda like frame of Paul Murray.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this will help you, ww:
DeleteSenator Kimberley Kitching – The fraudster and thief who takes federal parliament to a new low
https://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/2016/10/16/senator-kimberley-kitching-the-fraudster-and-thief-who-takes-federal-parliament-to-a-new-low/