Sunday, February 21, 2021

In which the pond does its duty by prattling Polonius, then gets down with Dame Slap and Lord Downer ...

 

 
 
Before beginning its Sunday meditation with prattling Polonius - so familiar it's worn as smooth as the Blarney stone - the pond would like to share some other moments from earlier in the week. 
 
There was the venerable Meade, celebrating Paul Fletcher and the tragedy of the North Shore mums here ...  and there was Marina Hyde ...

To be fair to the Graudian the pond will only sample a few pleasing lines, with the rest here ... (spoiler alert, the sampling includes the final par) ...

...Having failed to thrash out the issue in the thrashing yurt at various barefoot mogul retreats, Murdoch effectively instructed the Australian government to shake down the tech firms to pay publishers for the sharing of links, or stop allowing the practice. Yes, here he comes, Monty Burns-Unit, absolutely refusing to allow the trident to be prised from his claw by the Valley bros. This week, Google chucked him some undisclosed loose change just to shut him up, but Zuckerberg refused, turning off news sharing in Australia and removing most Australian media from its platform, as well as pages run by state health departments, charities and others. Alas, there is outcry, with the publishers seemingly not wanting the thing they said they wanted any more. It’s one of those fights where you’re rooting for the asteroid to end it.
Of course, Facebook is the galactic leader in PR crises. In the company’s short, unimaginably powerful existence, they have made so many monstrous cock-ups and on such grand scales that it seems reasonable to predict the full collapse of human civilisation will be immediately succeeded by a Facebook statement containing the words: “We know we have more work to do.” It’ll probably have been drafted by Nick Clegg, whose political endpoint was always going to be donning Earth’s last crew-necked sweater and doing comms for the apocalypse…
…The true tragedy, of course, is that these guys have so much in common. Rupert Murdoch recently received the Covid vaccination, which I read on Zuckerberg’s platform means he’s been injected with Bill Gates, a line of medical inquiry I hope to see enthusiastically taken up by anti-vax-adjacent Tucker Carlson on Murdoch’s own Fox News. Can people this ideologically similar really be so far apart? Let’s hope they can still put their differences aside to form some sort of Injustice League…
...One of several essays Zuckerberg instructed Losse to write in his voice was “Companies over countries”. She resigned without completing it, but not before having asked him if he could expand the slogan. “I think we are moving to a world in which we all become cells in a single organism,” came Mark’s mild reply, “where we can communicate automatically and can all work together seamlessly.” Wow. A vision of our future that has me immediately paging Morpheus. Was Murdoch … was Murdoch actually the blue pill all along?
 
Nope, the pond checked. There's only red pills, or perhaps an apple from a woman in a Disney film. 
 
And then there was First Dog here ...
 
 



 
Nice indeed, with the rest at the end of the link, and with all that, the pond felt refreshed enough to tackle Polonius's eternal, never ending complaint, his ceaseless petulant whining and moaning, usually if not always about the ABC ...



 

There you go ... if only the pond had its own weight in Dogecoin for the number of times Polonius has scribbled furiously about the ABC being a conservative-free zone. 

What a tedious drone he is, what a boring old fart, and yet at last he seems to have realised the real problem ... the ABC is full of women ... recalcitrant, difficult, perverse, uppity women, who dare to have a mind, when poor old Polonius can't even get a gig on The Insiders. How fair is that?

 


 

What can the pond say that it hasn't already said? Perhaps call him a pedantic, tedious old fart? Nope, been there, done that, for as many years as Polonius has moaned about the ABC.

What's worse, apparently Polonius is slow to read the news, even in a Murdochian publication here ...

Scott Morrison’s claim that no one in his office knew about the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins has been undermined by new text messages revealing his staffer was “mortified” by the story and had pledged to take action.
The text messages were exchanged between Ms Higgins and another Liberal staffer in April, 2019, after she had confided that she had been sexually assaulted but had got “jack-sh*t” support from the Liberal party.
Outraged, the man asked if he could take the matter to a friend who worked for the Prime Minister and ask for help on her behalf.
The man said he did so and on April 3, 2019, just 11 days after the alleged rape in Defence Minister Linda Reynolds’ office, he reported back to Ms Higgins what happened in a text message.
“Spoke to PMO (Prime Minister’s Office). He was mortified to hear about it and how things have been handled,” the text reads.
“He’s going to discuss with COS (Chief of Staff) — no one else. I flagged need for councillor (sic) and desire to be closer to home during election.”

But then we really know what it's all about. 

Polonius really doesn't care about the woman or her plight, Polonius doesn't care about a cover up, Polonius doesn't wonder why the news reached the PMO, and yet the man from marketing remained blissfully unaware, presumably operating the office on the basis of a "don't ask, don't tell" rule.

In reallity, Polonius is routinely hostile to anyone who dares to discuss Scotty from marketing's behaviour, and like the ancient masters of the Inquisition, is standing by to sniff out any form of heresy at the ABC, no matter how small ... because that's what he does, because he's a Baskerville hound who can only sniff the wind coming from one direction ...

 

 

Could it be that conservatives are as dour and as humourless as Polonius? The pond knows that he pretends to be a dog on occasions, but what he serves up there is sarcasm, rather than humour. Reading Polonius in all his ponderous, pontificating solemnity is a bit like stepping into a cow pat in a field out of Tamworth ... a bit of a stench, and really only funny back in silent movie days ...

And so to another delight, and this time the pond realised it must deal with Dame Slap, having slipped up last time, and with the reptiles putting her at the centre of a delightful trio of stories ...

 


 

 

What a line up, and then what a downer ...

 

 



Dame Slap does Lord Downer? Even Bill Leak had fun with Lord Downer ...

 


 

Those were the days ... but the reptiles promise it's only a six minute read, so how hard can that be?

 


Hmm, might be harder than the pond realised. Perhaps a cartoon as a reminder of the days that Lord Downer tried to pretend he was dinkum?


 

And now it's back to an apocalyptic vision from the Lord, one which suits Dame Slap's own taste for the apocalypse ...


 
 
Petrol head? The pond thought he was a stocking head ...
 
 



But hey ho, on we go ...



Why are Australians more fearful? 

Oh please Dame Slap, can the pond answer that one? 

Would it have to do with an ancient irrelevant loon announcing in a grumpy old man way ... "the collapse of the economy, massive social dislocation, depression, educational setbacks and the collapse of small businesses left, right and centre" (though that will be news to the plumber who turned up at the pond's house yesterday, announcing that his business has never been better, with a boom in renovations and building in the past year).

Or could it be that we have had stupid leaders doing stupid things, and not just Ted Cruze in Texas ...



Never mind, there's nothing like an irrelevant old failure pontificating away ...



Did anyone else note that blithe Downerism? The distortion of history whereby if your marble came up in the conscription ballot, never mind, it wasn't too bad, "you didn't have to go." 

You could have gone to jail or gone on the run again, or you could have a handily placed pater who would make sure your bone spurs got you off ...

As for leadership, yes, there's a cartoon for that ...



 

As for caring about human rights, there will be many who remember Lord Downer's contributions in many areas ...




 

And in the last gobbet, Lord Downer shows he still knows how to jump through the hoops, with his praise of Gladys (remember that triptych of yarns above, also featuring our Gladys),  and his talk of Little Australia ...

Why does the pond think the fear of Little Australia so funny? Well once upon a time Dame Slap was furiously in favour of Little Britain ...

 


 

Well we know how all that blather ended up, but the pond has done enough of a build-up, it's time for the final gobbet where these issues are canvassed in a Lord Downer and Dame Slap way ...

 


 

 Uh huh, shut down the borders, keep control, do a Brexit, and at the same time open up to the world, except for all those damned funny furriners in Europe ...

So it goes, and maybe a few pond readers would like a few more Lord Downer cartoons, just to remember the good times ...





17 comments:

  1. Polonius: "But not one prominent conservative on a high-rating mainstream outlet."

    After all this time Polonius still can't get it - put a "prominent conservative" onto a "high-rating mainstream outlet" and it very rapidly ceases to be high rating and is no longer "mainstream". Just take a good look at all those "mainstream high raters" on Sky After Dark, for instance.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Why are we so interested in Brexit? It's bloody hilarious!

    Because we don't suffer directly we can just sit back and enjoy some classic British comedy full of stock characters and obvious pratfalls. Upper class twats who succeed despite no talent at all (maybe giving speeches to drunken businessmen) and lower class Daily Mail readers who seem to think they deserve what they are getting.

    Dame Slap would be hilarious as well if the IPA most demented offerings were less likely to pop up as Government policy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There are some of us still around, Bef, who can remember back to January 1973 - when the UK formally joined the EEC (as it was called back then) - and Australia was betrayed: lost our automatic British passports and residencies and lost a whole bunch of trade agreements and arrangements. Not unlike our current runin with Xi Jinping in many ways.

      Well, we sorta hung in there - didn't actually become an independent nation until 3 March 1986 for instance - but many of us thought that "This is Britain and a bunch of poms, they'll find a way to screw it". And they took a while, but they're home now. And a lot of us are enjoying closely following the spectacle.

      Delete
  3. Here's just a small diversion that I found quite explanatory:

    Here’s Why Texas Power Stations Had to Be Shut Down
    https://jabberwocking.com/heres-why-texas-power-stations-had-to-be-shut-down/

    Couldn't possibly happen here, of course; we have giant batteries !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah GB, the US mainland has 3 "power" grids. The two major grids, the Eastern Interconnect and the Western Interconnect. But they are out of phase and cannot "interconnect".
      There have been attempts to build a National grid, but there are some folks who see it as a threat to coal (sound familiar?)
      https://www.invw.org/2020/08/20/who-killed-the-supergrid/
      BPB

      Delete
    2. Thanks for that, BPB - quite an insight into the USA's power supplies. As I was reading, I was wondering if it would get on to the "high voltage direct current" technology which is now becoming all the rage for unifying electricity grids, and indeed it did. And it was a clear view of the fact that any large and wealthy nation has quite a few 'deep states' and that just because Trump is gone, the union of clean beautiful coal lovers has not, and will not.

      Did raise the question of, if Texas had ever contemplated connecting into "the grid", would it have been the East or the West.

      Delete
    3. Thanks also BPB. It's a miracle anything is still functioning in the US post Trump.

      Delete
  4. After seeing Lord Downer on the ABC's The Drum last week, one thing is for sure, there has never been a long time between drinks for this pompous Upper Class Englishman wannabe.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, the downer Downer - he's a real Argus Tuft that one.

      Delete
  5. Hi Dorothy,

    “God forbid that Adelaide’s high-profile petrol head get a speeding ticket or, worse.”

    Shouldn’t that be “Adelaide’s high-profile Woodside Petrol head”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/10/witness-k-and-the-outrageous-spy-scandal-that-failed-to-shame-australia

    Slappy and Sandy don’t have much to say regarding Human Rights and International Law about Witness Knand Timor Leste.

    DiddyWrote

    ReplyDelete
  6. Surely he is not trying to prepare the way for another of the next generation to take their 'rightful' place in a South Australian seat? Could he ask another member of the family to make the sacrifices that Georgina had to make (sniff). After all - and we have it from the ever-reliable ABC - after she saw the usurper increase her margin in the ancestral seat - statement from the Liberal President, and sometime Premier -

    'Mr Olsen said he understood Ms Downer had now decided to leave the state for family reasons.

    "I understand that is the case based on family decision and circumstances that Georgina is perhaps in the short term going to sacrifice her career path for that of the family," he told ABC Radio Adelaide.'

    But thank you Dorothy for giving us the text of happy chats between the Dame and his Lordship. One for the archives, even if she is groping (?) around for subjects these days. Who next, we wonder.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I was wondering what Polonius would find funny, so I looked at the BBC's list of comedies http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170821-the-100-greatest-comedies-of-all-time, with a Polonial eye. I reckon he'd love #53 The Blues Brothers, and #11 The Big Lebowski. Waddya reckon?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I must have a very defunct sense of humour, Joe, because apart from the Blues Brothers, the only items on that list I can remember seeing are:
      M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970)
      Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks, 1974)
      Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979)
      Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

      And all are great classics of course. But why no Wizard of Oz ?

      Anyway, I did enjoy the Blues Bros, so I can't say I'd appreciate Polonius having that in common with me.

      Delete
    2. Indeed, the dude abides, and Polonius is a truly wondrous dude, and imagine if someone should happen to piss on the carpet at the Sydney Institute ... how the Polonial dude would sip on a White Russian, or a Caucasian if you will, and sort things out ...

      Delete
  8. Sorry to have been late today. I did but see Polonius' name passing by, and have been saving Sami Shah's piece from yesterday's Saturday paper, and have missed my cue entirely. But here it comes.

    Sami has been doing a stellar fill-in job for Gadfly, and has dropped a couple of lines regarding Polly that will never be forgotten once seen:

    "Who dogs the watchdog?
    It was flattering for this author to discover his mental diarrhoea is being read by Gerard Henderson, who writes a weekly column on the media for The Australian.

    If you haven’t read Gerard’s columns before, you’ve missed out on his laser focus and valuable insight, such as how many times Tom Ballard used the “F-word” in his now-cancelled ABC show. Or that one time someone dared criticise the alpha to Gerard’s beta, Donald Trump.

    Every column reads like the manifesto of a serial killer who lacks the conviction to actually carry out the killing he so desperately wants to commit. Which is entirely different from this column, which reads like the manifesto of a serial killer who only hunts other serial killers.

    Either way, being mentioned in Gerard’s column means your humble Gadfly has finally made it in Australian media and can now expect a pay rise from The Saturday Paper. "

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah, thanks. I had wondered who'd replaced Richard Ackland as Gadfly, but hadn't seen any mention.

      Delete
  9. Like all here, I visit the herpetarium with very low expectations.

    But seriously, the last 6 lines of Dame Slap's tag team with the hapless fop are among the most nakedly idiotic I've seen published.

    There is a world that Slappy imagines where coherent humans agree with the hapless fop on anything at all? Oh it's too rich. And too delicious.

    Now, where is his daughter being parachuted next? Voters are giddy with excitement.

    ReplyDelete

Comments older than two days are moderated and there will be a delay in publishing them.