In which Polonius returns for a meditative Sunday prattle, and Bjorn joins in to help fuck the planet in his usual way ...

 

After yesterday's exhaustive, exhausting trial by reptile, the pond promised itself respite this day by meditating with prattling Polonius ... a long and honourable pond Sunday tradition.

Not for the pond the chance to read Katharine Murphy's inflammatory, outrageous and upsetting tirade, Canberra's pale, stale and male tribe is missing the moment - as it did with Julia Gillard's misogyny speech ...

It's true that Polonius is pale, stale and male, but really what could the old codger make of this sort of incendiary rhetoric?

...This is a cultural and societal reckoning, not a political problem to be massaged with sporadic damage control.
Perhaps Morrison comprehends this intellectually. There was some evidence of that collective comprehension in Christian Porter’s high stakes framing of his situation on Wednesday. The deeply distressed attorney general (as my friend and sometime colleague Malcolm Farr put it pithily) linked his own fate to the global survival of liberal democracy; an innocent man invoking the shield of justice against the mob.
In that bit of overreach, perhaps, lies evidence that the government brains trust does understand, intellectually, that Morrison has washed up at a cultural crossroads.
But there’s no evidence the prime minister gets this viscerally.
If the prime minister got this viscerally, in his gut, in his soul, he’d find the capacity to lead rather than follow.
He wouldn’t trip over his feet or his words, as he’s done for much of the past three weeks.
Morrison would feel the weight of the moment, and exercise responsibility rather than expressing irritation at the persistence of the questioning.
Perhaps Morrison doesn’t entirely comprehend the moment he’s in because his phone is not lighting up with his female friends processing events in real time.
Perhaps I can share a couple of modest observations in the hope it helps the prime minister locate some stable ground beneath his feet.
Every woman I know is following the events of the past three weeks in politics very closely, which is unusual because women are often too busy juggling to do that.
Every woman I know is also bringing their own life experiences to the listening.
Every woman I know, regardless of how old they are, who they love, who they vote for, whether their profession is public-facing or whether their profession is caring for others, has had an experience in their life of a man not listening to them when they should have been heard.
These experiences can be trivial and transient – the normal irritations of getting on in a society that congratulates itself for being equal, but really isn’t.
But some women have endured searing experiences of being silenced – experiences that rupture their lives.
Every woman I know who has been sexually assaulted, and every woman I know who has loved another woman who has been sexually assaulted and tried to help them recover from that cruel violation, had one life before that incident, and another life after it.
In the life before, they suspected they might be vulnerable. In the life after, they knew they were vulnerable. These experiences are much more common than many people think.
The point of me laying this out so directly is simple: these experiences inform how many Australian women are listening to a government trying to dig its way out of what it imagines is a political crisis...

Oh dear, calm down, Ms Murphy, let Polonius handle the matter for you ... everyone knows it's all the fault of the ABC, and if you'd only realise that, how much calmer you'd be ...

 

 

Indeed, indeed, fancy that. Allegations sent to the PM's office, and yet the poor old A-G was absolutely clueless, despite the stunning ability of the coalition's ministers to share matters of some moment and sensitivity at lightning speed, and perhaps even step onto the front foot and devise a remotely credible response. No wonder it's all the ABC's fault ...

What's even worse is that Polonius was unable to delve back into the days of Ming the Merciless for inspiration. Instead he had to deal with the horde of ABC harridans all on his own ...

And so to conflate the current matter with the Pellist matter, not overlooking the general remark that the woman might well have been either (a) involved in a case of mistaken identity or (b) a fantasist or (c) a stooge plant, designed to give the ABC more fodder in its heartless crusade against reptiles, men, Scotty from marketing, and his hapless, innocent minions ...

 

Back in the pond's days, professional journalists were able to investigate and report, without everything being refracted through an ideological lens. 

It wasn't a question of belief or disbelief, it was simply a recognition that when there were things that were there that were worth a look, then a look was taken ... by politicians as well as journalists - as when say a complaint is lodged with the Prime Minister's office which might turn out to be a form of dynamite.

There are a variety of ways to respond, not all of them wise, good, or a solution to the problem - as here, when  both the PM and the subject of the complaint stuck their heads in the sand, and hoped it would go away, and then didn't know what to do when they extracted their heads from the sand (or their bums, whatever) and discovered it was still there, and had to be dealt with, out in the open, out on the parade ground in the noon-day sun ...

Now all the loyal reptiles, caught out by the inept mishandling of the matter, have been forced to fight a lengthy rearguard action, when really the pollies they're so vigorously defending might have been bold and brave, and tackled the issue head on before it gathered the sort of steam that once might have been found in the boiler of the LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard (enough to produce a record speed of 126 mph! The pond just flung in that metaphor for passing rail buffs).

Never mind, at last the pond is done with the matter, and the thoughts of the pale, stale, male stable at the lizard Oz, all showing the hive mind at work ... and can turn to a writer the pond had long ago banned, but in the current fuss, now seems like an eminently suitable Sunday distraction ...

 

 

 

It goes without saying that Bjorn is also male, pale and stale, and his yammering on about innovation as the fix is repetitive, tiresome and tiring ... but at least it's a change of topic ...

 

It is, of course, just more of the usual Bjorn blather.

Nowhere else in the world is attention paid to him in the way that the reptiles do ... as he regurgitates the same old same old:

(a) Fantastic figures are produced to evoke fantastic costs;

(b) Innovation is encouraged, but sadly any innovation in renewables is a complete waste of time, because there's innovation and then there's Bjorn-again innovation;

(c) It's not really a big problem anyway, at least if you use patented Bjorn figuring;

(d) Doing anything is going to hurt much more than doing nothing.

What's interesting in this is the lazy way that the reptiles go about their denialist business.

This piece turned up in the NY Post way back on 9th February under the heading Biden's climate 'fix' is fantastcially expensive and perfectly useless ...

Then it turned up on one denalist site on 10th February and on wattsupwiththat on 14th February.

How tired is it? 

Well it's a living ... helping fuck the planet is a decent, honest way to make a crust ... shall we travel back in time to hear the same song sung by the same singer?

Spot the cracked record syndrome?

Now back to today's outing, and at this point, the pond should note that the reptiles flung in an illustration showing delusional greenies and crusties failing to hear Bjorn's message ...

 

The pond might have responded with a few cartoons...

 

 

 

But forget the cartoons, because there was more Bjorn blather to deal with ...

And once again the pond was reminded that Bjorn is always big on what's wrong with current proposed and actual responses to the warming of the planet, and the fucking of the oceans and weather systems, but always comes up short when the talk turns to solutions.

With a wave of the hand, there's always Micawberish talk about how something will turn up ... nebulous, not defined, just something that will get the planet over the pound earned, pound spent dilemma ...

 

Take LA? For once, the pond is pleased to take LA, and in particular this 6th December story by Tony Barboza, L.A. began 2020 with a clean-air streak but ended with its worst smog in decades ...

A few samples as a contrast to the smug complacency offered up by Bjorn...

And so on, and on, and never mind Bjorn's delusional notion that all is well in LA ... 

 

There's more on the current state of things at the other end of the link, and meanwhile, all we have left of Bjorn's blather is a final par ...

"...we should spend tens of billions to innovate the price of green energy below fossil fuels"?

But how Bjorn, what's your solution? Why do you always end when you blather about effective and realistic ways, and all you can come up with is that we must innovate ...

Sorry, the planet might be fucked, but the pond can't look beyond that tiresome, fucked use of "innovate". It reminded the pond of a piece in Wired ...

Innovation has become the buzzword of the decade in the worlds of business and education. Politicians on both sides of the aisle, Fortune 500 companies, universities, and local school systems all agree that it is the key to the future. Like Miss America contestants wanting world peace, the term “innovation” has become the canned response of executives, politicians, and educators to the question, “What do we need to be successful?”

The overuse and generalization of the term “innovation” has led to a loss of understanding of what it is we need when we say we need more innovation. We lose sight of the specific skills and behavior needed to be innovative. The word has been overused to the point that national discussion has become circular, “to be innovative, we have to encourage innovation.”

Bjorn hasn't got the first clue as to what to innovate, what might be innovated, what solution might come from his mystical innovations. About all that's concrete is that it will involve billions and no doubt the Copenhagen Consensus Centre will be pleased to devise a consensus on how to piss the billions against the wall ...

Innovate? Bjorn's just kept scribbling the same stuck in a rut, stagnant, repetitive thoughts for decades, and the reptiles have kept on buying the con ...

Never mind, the Sunday meditation is done, and it's time to disinter a slightly old First Dog, which somehow managed to foresee the style of Bjorn's thinking before it hit the pages of the lizard Oz, with more First Dog here ...