In which the pond settles for a good groaning and a bad flu season ...

 

 

 

Thar she blows yet again, that cry of freedumb, freedumb. 

It makes the pond wonder whether Clive's cash in the reptile claw is the reason the lizard Oz's tree killer edition continues in circulation ... Clive must be paying his bills this time, and it must seem like reptile manna from heaven ...

Meanwhile, the digital edition decided it would feature the Swiss bank account man at the top of the page ...

 

 

Talk about a complete turn-off. 

How could the pond make anything out of the Swiss bank account man complaining of pampered clowns while performing in the centre ring for the Chairman, without the aid of his usual clown make-up?

And what was that lead story? Apparently it's about talking with clowns led by chief clown Boris ...

 Is it party time down under? Can the pond break its addiction to the right royal Boris blues?

 

 

 

 

Every day some fresh angle on the assorted sagas ... and we're holding talks with a walking, talking goose being fattened for the killing season?

And what's this, with the Bromancer gone, lost to the cause, and so nary a peep about the war on China, and the war on Russia all the go, suddenly the reptiles all in a tizz about AUKUS and the subs?

 

Egad sir, there's nothing for it but for the bromancer and nattering "Ned" to cut short their hols and rush back to repair the breach, resume the war on China - perhaps Easter now that Australia day is so close - and get those subs rolling, get those subs moving, steelhide ...

Sorry, the pond is a little giddy, because it spent an hour this morning scouring the reptile digital page, only to discover that gorgeous George had been cancelled, made invisible, disappeared, as if the Stasi had arrived in town, yet the brave lad was all over the place elsewhere ...

The plucky lad's bold face reminded the pond of yesterday's correspondence about Jeremy and the parrot, and brave Sky News (local Murdochian version), and that story in the Graudian ...

Sky News sought to justify misleading Covid commentary then-host Alan Jones put to air, saying it was balanced by coverage of the daily Covid press conferences, according to a letter sent to the broadcasting regulator...

Oh they are ever so cheeky, but if you head back to last November it gave the Bolter a splendid line ...

 

 

And speaking of cancel culture at its most devilish ...

Jones has been on a break after launching his streaming show late last year. The last full episode aired on 22 December, with the audience sliding from 116,000 views of the first episode on Facebook, down to 18,000 for the most recent.

And after all that, perhaps the pond should do some work, but what's this ...

 

Et tu Albo, scribbling behind the Chairman's paywall so that punters must fork out a shekel or two to discover your thoughts, when they might be better off buying a pack of gluten-free Djoker approved Oreos ... a brand appeal shared by the top minds in the country? Yes, if you looked up the pond in 2016 you could see it recorded ...

 

 

 

And as for Dame Groan's sudden reappearance, the switcheroo was surely designed to troll the pond. 

Wheel in Dame Slap on a Tuesday, and then send Dame Groan in to battle on a Wednesday Siberia, and thereby confuse the pond completely?

Never mind, at least the Groaning has finally come around like the witching hour or the shining ...

Infrastructure a big problem? 

Dammit, did the reptiles think the pond wasn't up to repeating itself? 

The reptiles repeat themselves all the time, and Dame Groan especially when it comes to pesky, difficult, smelly furriners (do they even use soap?), and so here's that groaning on infrastructure again, from the 15th March 2017, as found in a wind-maddened site ...

South Australia is effectively broke, but it can still manage to put together $550 million of taxpayer money to solve a problem that should never have occurred in the first place.
It’s an iron-clad political law that when an electorally sensitive issue emerges, politicians will always throw money at seeking a solution.
If the total power blackout of the state in September last year wasn’t embarrassing enough — and caused massive commercial damage to the few large industrial operations left in the state — the load-shedding that affected 90,00 households last month was the final straw.
Mind you, the South Australian government should never have allowed the coal-fired Northern power station to close. Its owners proposed a value-for-money deal to the state government that would have offered energy security to the state for many years as well as provide continued employment in two regional centres.
At that stage the hapless Energy Minister, Tom Koutsantonis, thought he knew better and could score a few political brownie points by turning the government’s back on coal. This was notwithstanding the astonishing hypocrisy associated with the state’s increased reliance on importing coal-fired power from Victoria.
Now the state government wants to have it both ways — spend taxpayer money on building a gas-fired power station as well as subsidise some large-scale storage, the latter which cannot be assumed to work and is likely to cost about $200/MW.
The gas-fired power station is unlikely to make money because it will simply be used for back-up and the minister may use emergency powers to force producers to come up with the gas. It doesn’t sound very free-market but that’s what desperate governments tend to do.
The state government also intends to use its monopsony power as purchaser of electricity to induce an additional entrant to the generation market, but it’s not clear the size of the purchase is sufficient to achieve this result...

Uh huh ... that's why the pond couldn't resist this clip ...

 

 

 

 

And now on with more talk of monopsony power, and, it goes without saying, pesky, difficult furriners, who are ruining everything, everywhere ...

 

The feds have nothing to do with large infrastructure projects? They just supervise?

Oh that's right, we're not getting the nuke subs, and if we did the defence department would nuke the price and we'd be picking them up from the two dollar store in time for the bromancer's return and the war on China to begin ...

The feds never have blow outs, no way, and the pond has a land above the faraway tree to sell to you at half price ...

Indeed, indeed, and apparently none of this has to do with competence, but rather the pesky furriners swarming all over the planet ...

 

By golly, by hook or by crook, she'll keep those bloody wogs out of the place before they ruin everything, everywhere ...

And now, because the pond has been overdoing the reptiles of late, a modest bonus featuring the thoughts of the lizard Oz editorialist ...

 

 

Desperately sad, thoughts and prayers and talk of the overall situation, "akin to the peak of a bad flu season" ...

What the flying in the face fuck? 

Well the pond will foreswear its usual picture of the overall situation with a picture of a pair of overalls, because luckily there's a cartoon to hand from Wilcox for that form of deeply wretched reptile bullshit ...

 

 

Of course the lizard Oz editorialist only said it to troll the pond (if the pond might be allowed to take it personally), as if the pond wouldn't repeat itself, but the pond is always ready to repeat Jim Stanford, the same way that the Nine rags lifted him from The Conversation ...

... The economy doesn’t work if people can’t work. So the first economic priority during a pandemic must be to keep people healthy enough to keep working, producing, delivering and buying. That some political and business leaders have, from the outset of COVID-19, consistently downplayed the economic costs of mass illness, reflects a narrow, distorted economic lens. We’re now seeing the result – one of the worst public policy failures in Australia’s history.
The Omicron variant is tearing through Australia’s workforce, from health care and child care, to agriculture and manufacturing, to transportation and logistics, to emergency services. The result is an unprecedented, and preventable, economic catastrophe.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s decision to relax COVID-19 restrictions in December has turned into both a health and economic disaster. On a typical day in normal times, between 3 per cent and 4 per cent of employed Australians miss work due to their own illness. Multiple reports from NSW indicate up to half of workers are now absent due to COVID-19: because they contracted it, were exposed to it, or must care for someone because of it (like children barred from child care). With infections still spreading, this will get worse in the days ahead.
Staffing shortages have left hospitals in chaos, supermarket shelves empty, supply chains paralysed. ANZ Bank data, for example, shows economic activity in Sydney has fallen to a level lower than the worst lockdowns. If relaxing health restrictions in December (as Omicron was already spreading) was motivated by a desire to boost the economy, this is an own-goal for the history books...

Or if you will, while living in reptile la la land ... "akin to the peak of a bad flu season" ...

And the pond wondered if we'd ever hear peak lying of the kind routinely practised by Boris and the mango Mussolini, and yet there were the reptiles, lying their tits off so they could save the bacon of liars and fools of the Domicron and strollout man kind ...

So here's a final gobbet celebrating a bad flu season ...

 

No regressive, kneejerk responses? 

How about no singular incompetence, and no fuckwitted stupidity of the "akin to the peak of a bad flu season" kind? 

How about having made some preparations of the most basic kind, how about some simple managerial competence, how about not repeating George's talking points ...

Yes, the reptiles thought they had disappeared him ... but waddya know, he thought it was just like the flu too, back in August 2021 ...

 

Oh yes, it's just like the flu, "akin to the peak of a bad flu season", and no doubt hospital workers and medical teams will be pleasantly relieved and surprised, and wonder why there's all this talk of code brown ...

 

 

What a contemptible bunch the reptiles are, living off the cry of freedumb, freedumb, and Clive's cash in the reptile claw ...