The pond couldn't help but notice that the Sky News after dark mob were out and about on the weekend, yelling for freedumb.
They seemed to share Killer Creighton's deep Freudian fear of masks, and they were at one with the dog botherer's idea of being an Australian.
There's nothing like a little rioting and protesting to project the larrikin identity, and why not turn out in the hope of generating a superspreader event, and perhaps, who knows, hope against hope, manage to put others, and hospital staff, at risk.
Then you can do a Hillsong and wash your paws of the death of one of your flock, or be a conservative shock jock who, once admitted to hospital, entirely forget about previous vaccine and Covid denialism ...
But the Sky News mob went a little too far by punching a horsie. It''s one thing to spread the virus, and hope against hope, infect or perhaps even kill the odd human bean, but punching a horsie was a "they shoot horsies, don't they" step too far ...
Inevitably it was left to the Major this day to clean up the mess, and explain how a mob rioting against masks and in favour of the dog botherer's notion of being an Australian had nothing to do with his mob ...
The vaccine that saved Britain? Britain's saved? Who knew ...
Please, carry on regardless Major, there must be plenty of people to blame, anyone but Scotty from marketing and his useless mob of inept bunglers and blame shifters ...
Of course, of course, why didn't the pond think of public servants, rather than the Sky News after dark mob?
The pond has to admit the Major is always ahead of the game. They shoot public servants, don't they?
No one is held seriously responsible for how our nation is led? It's all the fault of public servants and the media?
Um, is there an actual PM in the land? One actually and seriously responsible for how our nation is led? Just asking the Major for a friend ...
And so Scotty from marketing, with a leap and a bound, escapes the Major's wrath yet again ... a miraculous performance, and a tribute to the wondrous magical thinking of that mysterious bird, the Major Mitchell ...
And so to someone more in tune with the proper reptile zeitgeist ...
Ah that's better, that's the way to start off a Caterist piece.
A shot of the fascist overlords trying to herd valiant larrikins, a healthy corrective to that dreadful meme that did the rounds on the weekend ...
And even worse, the bloody nag was called Tobruk. Perhaps the only worse name imaginable would have been Gallipoli ...
And there was comrade Dan with an easy jibe, "punching horses doesn't work against coronavirus" ...
Thank the long absent lord, the Caterist has left off predicting the movement of flood waters in quarries to mount a protest of his own ...
Ah yes, as the virus well knows, it's all the fault of commie socialist pinko preverts ... you know, like Gladys ... now, let's show the Major a thing or two, by railing at a global, cognitive elite.
Might the pond offer a tip? This railing is best done from the comfort of a think tank, perhaps one given a healthy cash in the paw grant on a regular basis by the federal government, always keen to pander to the 'leets ...
It goes without saying that the Caterist cognitive class has no aversion to risk. Show the Caterist a deluded cause, with a huge loss in court and a substantial damages payout, and the Caterist will plunge into the waters swirling in the quarry in an nanosecond, while shouting to the world "the actuarial risk of me having to actually pay out is always shrinking" ...
And there you go. Apparently the ning nong is sublimely unaware that he went to university, or so his wiki says ...
Cater was born in Billericay, Essex, and grew up in Hythe near Southampton. His parents were teachers. He graduated from the University of Exeter with an honours degree in sociology in 1980 and drove laundry vans for a year before joining the BBC as a trainee studio manager.
He went on to scribble moronic pieces about higher education encouraging abstract thought and prioritising theory over pragmatism, and the cognitive elite being often remote from practical reality, apparently unaware of his own comfortable existence as a well heeled executive director of a think tank ...
Sociology!?
Dammit, the wiki thought police cut out that last bit, but the pond thought it worth resuscitating ... because dammit, the pond refuses to admit that irony is dead in a post-Caterist age ...
And so to a welcome return as a bonus.
For a long time the pond has been wondering whatever happened to that reformed, recovering feminist, the Oreo ... and yet here she is, back again, as if she'd never gone away ...
Sadly the pond has to report that the reptiles seemed to have little confidence in the Oreo being of interest to anyone, and so had to start off with a video clip celebrating the deeds of Scotty from marketing ...
The pond neutralised that threat with a screen cap, excised another clip, and focused on pure essence of Oreo, and to the pond's dismay, discovered she was sounding like one of those cognitive 'leets the Caterist had warned the pond about ...
One of the pleasures of excising reptile illustrations is that servings of the Oreo can come in short chunks of meaty goodness ...
Excuse the pond. Was it only a few gobbets ago that the pond was reading the thoughts of the Caterist? Must the pond remind the Oreo of the company she's keeping?
And yet the Oreo blathers on about high immigrant areas as if she was Dame Groan reincarnated. How so? Does the Caterist have an explanation?
How could the pond forget? Of course, she's a reformed, recovering feminist who spent far too much time at university, and so is unaware that vaccines are an excuse for us all to be microchipped ... you can hear the story on Sky News after dark, the parrot will fill you in on all the latest...
And then the pond weakened. Taking so much Oreo so quickly gave the pond something of a sugar hit, and so it allowed in a truly feeble reptile illustration, the sort of meaningless junk visual you use when you really have nothing to offer ...
Indeed, indeed. Take whatever's on offer at the local clinic? After Scotty from marketing overpromised and under-delivered, why not help the hapless lad out, perhaps with a laying on of hands and a speaking in tongues about risks ...
What's that? It's true, the Oreo almost sounds like the world government, community minded, do gooder preaching, commie, socialist, pinko preverts the Caterist warned the pond about ...
Indeed, indeed, though she did leave out the arduous business of killing off the native inhabitants, fucking the reef and such like ...
But what an unholy, un-Caterist, un-Major, unhappy vision the Oreo has offered on her return.
Take the shot?! The whole point of reptile business, as the Major and the Caterist showed this day, is to take a shot at almost everyone and everything else, rather than offer a message about getting the shot ...
Avoid masks, show your larrikin spirit, defy authority, that's the message of the Sky News mob after dark.
The Oreo better realise this, and fast too, or they'll keep stuffing her text with video clips and snaps of surpassing banality...
And so to the celebratory Rowe of the day, with more Rowe celebrations here ...
Amen to that ... with a poster showing the pond's mood back amongst the reptiles on a Monday ...
"perhaps, who knows, hope against hope, manage to put others, and hospital staff, at risk"
ReplyDeleteApropos of which, here's an interesting post: "New Study: Why Do Trolls Troll?" by the redoutable Rebecca Watson.
https://skepchick.org/2021/07/new-study-why-do-trolls-troll/
How many "dark triad plus schadenfreude" people do you know ?
Just couldn't let this Maj. Mitch. mulch drift by: "Former Coalition prime minister John Howard in 2014 outlined what he thought was wrong with political leadership: politicians lacked the skills to advocate for change. Successful politicians needed to be able to persuade voters of the merits of their plans, he said."
ReplyDeleteAnd there we have it: quoted by an expert Lenin Medal hunter are the words of a politician who was an expert in not being able to persuade voters. Howard, re-elected in 2004 with an absolute majority in both houses, proposes his great leap forward for Australian workers - Workchoices - in 2005 and in December 2007 loses a landslide election (minus 22 house seats and minus 2 senate seats which broke the LNPs senate majority) and also loses his own ultra-safe seat.
Yep, there's a man who knows exactly what he's talking about re politicians and persuasion.
Tis a magnificent vision GB, well pointed out sir!
Delete"Excuse me, I'm looking for the opinions of a retired editor with zero credibility upon the opinions of a retired PM who failed to achieve a culture war victory, though did manage to go to a war illegally. Am I in the right place??
Yeah, vc, it's all just one of those 'reptile rules': 'if I never mention it again then it never really happened'. But the reptiles and wingnuts are desperate for a hero. Just look at the list since Menzies: Holt, Gorton, McMahon, Fraser, Howard, Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison. Not even notable enough to be a 'rogues' gallery', just a pile of pissants.
DeleteThen consider who Howard beat in his elections: Keating, Beasley, Beasley, Latham. Now that's one mighty achievement, isn't it ? And, as previously noted, the first time he has a popular opponent (Rudd), he's trounced and loses his own seat.
And that's the man that the wingnuts and reptiles want to hold up to us as the 'gold standard' of political leaders.
Cater: "The cognitive elite run governments throughout the developed work ..." Do we think he might actually have meant "developed world" ?
ReplyDeleteAnd also: "Yet today the curtailment of economic and social activity by government regulation is regarded as a proportionate response to increasing infections, even an increase as small as zero to one."
Well, apart from pointing out that governments have curtailed economic and social activity throughout the lifetime of the existence of governments, especially right-wing ones, and that an increase of zero isn't an increase at all, the Cater is perfectly well illustrating the failure of mathematics teaching - though in his case, British teaching not Australian. In short, Cater has absolutely no understanding or idea about 'exponential growth' and just how quickly an increase of 1 can become an increase of 1000 and then 10,000 and then ... and then the increase of 50,000 that the UK was experiencing recently.
For anybody who might be at all interested, you can look up the 'wheat grains on chessboard' development to see just how quickly - starting with just one but doubling on each square - one grain can become 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (2**64 - 1).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem
https://twitter.com/ByrneLuc/status/1396583831025635328
DeleteYes, after all these years, xkcd can still be very pointed and relevant.
DeleteIf, btw, you are at all interested in the 'how to teach reading' debate, I found this a very good summary:
https://www.readandspell.com/methods-for-teaching-reading#
Oh my, some "wisdom" from the Oreo: "...part of being a democratic citizen is learning the balance between rights and responsibilities." Yep, that's the art of being a fully developed reptile: preach goodness, but commit badness. Is that because they're all 'dark triad' people at heart ?
ReplyDeleteThe Cater tells us that ‘Since the Delta variant is estimated to be twice as infectious as earlier variants it will take double strength measures to wipe it out.’
ReplyDeleteAlas, that is not what the well established, thoroughly tested (and fundamentally very simple) equations demonstrate. Which does demonstrate why the Cater, and his ilk, continue to misunderstand how Covid, or any other pest, parasite or disease, spreads through a community of potential hosts, and trying to cite the UK ‘Telegraph’s Royal Family reporter doesn’t add any useful explanation.
As it happens, the Cater’s own comments, further down, on vaccination, suggest that, intuitively (if we can use that word with a practicing sociologist) he knows that it does not require whatever ‘double strength measures’ might be.
So - meander into ‘cognitive elite’. Yes, I went to the ‘Wiki’ to remind myself why ‘elite’ was being partitioned in a way that C Wright Mills saw no need for. The ‘Wiki’ offers the proverbial ‘recent study’ that “concluded that the elite individuals in society, specifically in American society, like CEOs, billionaires, judges, Senate and House members, are drawn largely from the intellectually talented, with many of them in the top 1% of education and ability”. Well, that study did predate the advent of Trump as President. One is tempted to add that an increasing number of Senate and House members come from the top 1% for ignorance and stupidity.
What the Cater does not offer this week is what he did not offer last week - an actual alternative. That one that is claimed to be less intrusive, but presumably ‘double strength’ in its effect, and good for the economy, and for the self-esteem of the citizens - but is also yet to be revealed. No doubt the details are still being brewed in the think tank which the Cater executively directs.
Perhaps next week, if we are good.
Talking about Covid and the Royal Family, Chad, how about this:
DeleteThe Queen had a lucky escape from Boris Johnson’s ‘sod it’ attitude to Covid
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/25/queen-had-lucky-escape-boris-johnson-sod-it-attitude-to-covid
And talking about the "intellectual elite" and "being in the top 1% of education and ability" reminds me of my own younger days when my IQ was measured at school as putting me almost in the top 2% of humanity. The top 2% were very definitely rated at 'genius' level. Now the world population back then was 2.77 billion, so 2% of that was about 55 million 'geniuses'. But where the bloody hell were they all ? Now I'm happy to concede that maybe 10 or 20 million were lost in Chinese or Indian backwoods villages and the world would never hear of them, but that still left about 30 million geniuses out somewhere else in the world.
Now, there should be 2% of 7.9 billion, so where exactly are all those 158 million present-day geniuses ? But it was right in my case; I never did anything even remotely genius-ish.
Ref. Boris and the Queen - isn't it interesting how those who claim to be 'conservative' in the British tradition show so little regard for their symbols. On which - no doubt it is news to our PM ('Scott Morrison' - thank you Shaun Micallef) that there are guidelines for use of the Australian flag, which are intended to promote respect from the punters. A copy of the 'Year Book of Australia' which I have just taken down from the shelf tells me 'It should always be flow aloft and free.' The guidelines do say 'It is improper to use (the flag) as a masking' - but I am sure the person who drafted that paragraph would not have imagined a PM - and absolutely NOT one of the 'Liberal' persuasion, would wear one as a mouth mask.
Delete'flown', of course. My error - have never found an error in any of my editions of 'Year Book of Australia'
DeleteOne of these days perhaps we should consider Glyn Davis's comments about "the flow of traditional public service work to consultants was eroding the expertise of government departments and diminishing the capacity of bureaucrats to properly learn from mistakes for the benefit of future program design".
DeleteHmm. Is that really true ? From what I had observed during the various times I was a Commonwealth Pubserv employee and later an ICT 'contractor' there's certainly more than just a soupcon of truth in that observation. But one wonders in which direction the cause<->effect chain runs. And whether the considerable use of expensive 'consultants' isn't just a way of re-politicising the Public Service - especially since replacing the Public Service Board by the namby-pamby Commission in 1987 (Hawke-Keating rides again).
GB - the 24 hour reptile cycle makes it a bit difficult to discuss the concept of bureaucrats being able to learn from mistakes.
DeleteA couple of generalisations - in my experience with the commonwealth, and states (read ‘and territories’) - people seemed to stay in much the same department at state level for most of their executive time. Perhaps a stint with one of the central agencies (PS Board) to improve their perspective, but generally people interested in roads tended to stay with the roads department, wires with wires - the states needing agencies to actually do stuff.
With commonwealth, it was uncommon to be dealing with the same executive level people through the duration of an entire program, if it ran for more than, say, 5 years. Sometimes the same people appeared around the table - but representing different agencies, as they worked their way up the snakes and ladders of promotion paths. I felt this reflected a general inclination towards ‘managerialism’ in the commonwealth - that the need was for ‘managers’, and a good manager could manage without having to know much about the nitty gritty of the issue. It was all about applying whatever managerial fad was in the business magazines - ‘bias to ‘yes’’, ‘sigma-something’.
State agencies were likely to have their own research divisions, and researchers were very much tied to specific agencies. Of more recent time, they also tended to be living corporate memory, of increasing value as all levels of government cut back on maintaining access to actual files, and - your area, I think - access to data originally held on mainframes.
The commonwealth had similar corporate memory, but in CSIRO, and policy agencies were uneasy about having ‘boffins’ at the table. That applied right up to the level of the Commonwealth/State ministerial councils for almost everything, which I saw develop through my time, but there, whoever fronted for CSIRO, did not speak unless invited to by the chair.
But the most peripatetic players were Ministers. I can recall only one Minister who was in a particular portfolio, did what Bernard Woolley would have called an ‘all right’ job, went out of government for a couple of terms, during which he realised what he could have accomplished, was sat right back in the same portfolio when his lot returned to the Treasury, and was then a remarkably progressive, and effective, operator (and, in a party that does not favour ‘progressive’)
What used to be the Westminster tradition of Ministers ‘having to go’ if they got something wrong, actually works against their being able to learn ‘on the job’.
So - I disagree with Glyn Davis - I don’t think it can be attributed to the use of consultants only; in many ways, since Federation, many Commonwealth agencies haven’t actually done stuff on the ground. That is not to say they should not exist - but that they need methods and structures for their particular circumstances. And an overbearing Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet is not a solution.
That's an interesting point about managing things, Chad. I recall from back when I was more involved that places like Harvard offered 2 year post-graduate courses - I think it was (and still is ?) the MBA degree - in which the idea was that a "manager" could manage anything without requiring any subject matter expertise or experience. As I recall, the course consisted of a lot of 'mini seminars' in which the selected seminarist would present to the class and then be taken apart by the assembled wunderkinders. And two years of that was considered quite sufficient for the MBA graduates to manage anything. And still is, I suspect.
DeleteYour point about 'managers' not seeing an effort through to conclusion is very important: in EDP/ITC there were many "project managers" who would come in, swagger around a bit, initiate some activities, and then move on to "better things". Thus indeed they never learned what a mess their "management" had left behind to surface a year or so down the track. And they never acquired any subject matter expertise, either.
I used to say - to a few like-minded cynics - the ITC shops would contract me to tell them how to set up their large-scale database project. They would then proceed to basically ignore what I'd told them, and then call to contract me to come and fix up the mess. It was a living, and it paid well.
And my concern about 'consultants' - having had to fix some of their messes - was that they are prime examples of not learning from experience because they are not closely connected to a project over its lifetime. But then they tell me that one of the hardest things for humans to grasp is how to learn from other people's mistakes without having to repeat them.
No, I don't think it's all down to 'consultants' - your point about Commonwealth agencies not having done stuff "on the ground" is also very germane - but the deal with many consultants is their very simple business plan:
1. find out what your customer wants you to tell him
2. tell him
3. bill him for heaps of moolah
4. repeat ad infinitum.
I'm loving all this schadenfreude!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely one of humanity's most enjoyable experiences, Merc.
Delete