The pond absolutely denies that it hides out under a desk when heading to the reptiles each morning. At best (or worst) only a portion of the pond is under the desk ...
And so to another day with the reptiles, and as usual there's moral outrage at the top of the digital edition, with the bromancer leading the way ...
It was the same down below, with more uproar and outrage ...
Actually, reverting to a proper stance on Jerusalem showed some bravery in terms of the Israel lobby and the usual reflexive indignation of the reptiles ...
The pond has no issue with the move, and that's the end of that.
It's not anti-Semitic to note that Israel currently runs a form of apartheid and several gulags, and consistently gets away with a land-grabbing theocracy in a way that evokes memories of the mad mullahs of Iran and the killer sheiks of Saudi Arabia .. though contemplating all that did remind the pond that it would rather be elsewhere ...
For starters, today is Marina Hyde day, and she always produces a genuine bromancer-free doozy ...
If you’d told any of us this time a week ago that Jeremy Hunt would be chancellor – apparently in the German sense – then we’d have struggled to get our heads round it. I mean, he’s already died in two timelines (once in the 2019 leadership contest and once in the one earlier in the summer). In our new timeline, austerity is both still happening and about to happen all over again. The narrative threads of the current political crisis are now so completely nutso that you have to conclude the Conservative Cinematic Universe has officially entered its multiverse era. Only the true fanboys can explain it.
Of course, the key difference is that the long-term governing party is not on to a winner with this. Whereas Marvel have found a way to almost guarantee money from the notoriously unpredictable movie business, the Conservatives have managed to preside over a period from 2016 in which the UK economy contracted from being 90 % the size of Germany’s to now being just 70%. Eventually the sole remaining business in our economy will be the hipster trade in ironic In Liz We Truss mugs. I don’t know if this was forecast by any of Truss’s wingnut economists, but I guess it’s called growth? (Incidentally, speaking of Liz’s spirit economists and thinktank army, do now settle in for literally decades of them whining that the problem with their ideas was that they weren’t done properly, like communism or Brexit.)
Meanwhile, Westminster convention demands we style Jeremy Hunt as “a safe pair of hands”, even though he was health secretary at the time of a preparedness simulation into what would happen if the UK was hit by a pandemic, and failed to draw many of the necessary lessons. (If you’re watching the past three years on catch-up, I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but that does all turn out to be a bit of a pisser.) Primarily, this should put into perspective quite how unsafe all the rest of the hands are. Take the cabinet. This morning we learned from armed forces minister James Heappey that none of them even realised Truss’s mini-budget had the potential to backfire.
Or take Thérèse Coffey – the actual health secretary – who on Sunday admitted she has illegally shared her own supply of antibiotics with others, in an absolutely disgracefully deranged revelation she seems to have got away with simply because further disgracefully deranged things have happened after it. Has a senior minister blamed Coffey’s attempt to blow up years of public health messaging on “Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine” yet? – an increasingly gross reflex dodge that gets more distasteful as an excuse for any number of our domestic political failings every time they use it.
Of course, the key difference is that the long-term governing party is not on to a winner with this. Whereas Marvel have found a way to almost guarantee money from the notoriously unpredictable movie business, the Conservatives have managed to preside over a period from 2016 in which the UK economy contracted from being 90 % the size of Germany’s to now being just 70%. Eventually the sole remaining business in our economy will be the hipster trade in ironic In Liz We Truss mugs. I don’t know if this was forecast by any of Truss’s wingnut economists, but I guess it’s called growth? (Incidentally, speaking of Liz’s spirit economists and thinktank army, do now settle in for literally decades of them whining that the problem with their ideas was that they weren’t done properly, like communism or Brexit.)
Meanwhile, Westminster convention demands we style Jeremy Hunt as “a safe pair of hands”, even though he was health secretary at the time of a preparedness simulation into what would happen if the UK was hit by a pandemic, and failed to draw many of the necessary lessons. (If you’re watching the past three years on catch-up, I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but that does all turn out to be a bit of a pisser.) Primarily, this should put into perspective quite how unsafe all the rest of the hands are. Take the cabinet. This morning we learned from armed forces minister James Heappey that none of them even realised Truss’s mini-budget had the potential to backfire.
Or take Thérèse Coffey – the actual health secretary – who on Sunday admitted she has illegally shared her own supply of antibiotics with others, in an absolutely disgracefully deranged revelation she seems to have got away with simply because further disgracefully deranged things have happened after it. Has a senior minister blamed Coffey’s attempt to blow up years of public health messaging on “Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine” yet? – an increasingly gross reflex dodge that gets more distasteful as an excuse for any number of our domestic political failings every time they use it.
And then there was a cracking Crace, inter alia ...
...shortly before 7am, the junior defence minister was in the broadcast studios. It wasn’t a great success. First he told Sky News that everyone in the cabinet had signed off on Kamikwasi’s mini-budget. Are you seriously telling us that no one in government had any concerns, said Kay Burley. I could have understood if Kwarteng and Librium Liz had gone rogue and forgotten to tell you. But for all of you to sign it off with no OBR forecasts is an unprecedented level of dim.
Heappey nodded enthusiastically. It had been a huge honour to have participated in a decision that had cost the country more than £10bn and people with mortgages thousands of pounds each. He took the doctrine of collective irresponsibility immensely seriously.
By the time he made it round to the Today studios, Heappey could barely string a sentence together. Which bizarrely made him sound slightly more coherent and plausible. He did at least attempt some gravitas. Truss had made no secret of her desire to tank the economy. She had openly boasted of doing just that during the leadership hustings. So we should be congratulating her on a Mission Accomplished.
That just left the Prime Minister in Name Only a cabinet to get through. The end of the triple lock just another broken promise. Her shame was our shame. Her humiliation, our humiliation. The classic Trussterfuck. The People’s Republic of Trussia was dead. Long live the People’s Republic of Trussia.
Heappey nodded enthusiastically. It had been a huge honour to have participated in a decision that had cost the country more than £10bn and people with mortgages thousands of pounds each. He took the doctrine of collective irresponsibility immensely seriously.
By the time he made it round to the Today studios, Heappey could barely string a sentence together. Which bizarrely made him sound slightly more coherent and plausible. He did at least attempt some gravitas. Truss had made no secret of her desire to tank the economy. She had openly boasted of doing just that during the leadership hustings. So we should be congratulating her on a Mission Accomplished.
That just left the Prime Minister in Name Only a cabinet to get through. The end of the triple lock just another broken promise. Her shame was our shame. Her humiliation, our humiliation. The classic Trussterfuck. The People’s Republic of Trussia was dead. Long live the People’s Republic of Trussia.
The pond has left plenty of fun at the links, so there's no actual need to be here, but for those long suffering lovers of loonery who yearn for a reptile treat, the pond turned to Dame Slap a serve of the usual ...
"Miaow", as Robert said to Ghislaine, or perhaps "miaow miaow" as Ghislaine said to Robert, because Kelly being a woman and gay has nothing to do with anything.
If we're going to carry on like that, the pond might note that Dame Slap was born way back on 23.9.1966 (or so her wiki says), and has apparently been put out to pasture by the IPA, an epic form of discrimination no-one has talked about and which remains a deep mystery to the pond ...
It couldn't involve her chosen set of sexual and gender traits, could it, because a reference to being gay as a "trait" is down there with the barking mad fundamentalism of IPA types, and the rest of her ideology is pure, distilled essence of mango Mussolini loving, climate science denying loonery ...
Questions, always questions, but as usual the aged harridan was only getting started, blathering on in the usual way about identity politics and the suffering of older blokes in board rooms ...
To be sure, a 'to be sure' comes in exceptionally handy, especially when a discrimination diva inadvertently exposes what it's like to encounter a genuine discrimination diva gaily discriminating away ...
It triggered the pond, and sent it back to the good old days, as celebrated by Cam Wilson in Crikey ... (paywall)
"Miaow, miaow", and still the reptiles are still kicking the loser Deves' can down the road?
Never mind, back to the ranting Dame Slap for a final gobbet ...
But we've already had a full serve, and it was a remarkable feat by the ageing, aged loon not to mention the age of her orange Jesus, or jolly Joe's age, and meanwhile, the pond could only mourn more opportunities missed, of the kind celebrated by the infallible Pope this day ...
As always, there must be a bonus, and as always, when in desperate reptile circumstance and indignation about land-grabbing Israel in the reptile wind, the pond turned to nattering "Ned" to deliver a goodly dose of terminal boredom ...
This is the season for peak loon in the US ... and transparency isn't the answer ... nor the notion that the democratic process works, because that delivered the mango Mussolini and Brexit and the current crop of Tories, and all you're left with are amusing columnists and cartoonists ...
So maybe after all there is hope and a way out of the reptile storm.
But while "Ned" tries to take the pond's mind off the US and its many woes, still the cartoons keep coming, full of con artists, hustlers, mountebanks and frauds ...
He's going to make a motza out of that faux martyrdom, while the pond is still stuck with "Ned", wishing and hoping Xi would go away ...
What a relief. The cartoons have done their job.
It's early in the week for a cartoon-led recovery, and yet here the pond is, with just a gobbet of "Ned's" wishful thinking to go, and sssh, not a word about the chance of a MTG or a Herschel or any number of barking mad GOPsters at the helm come November ...
When autocrats want an example of how democracy is fucked, they only have to look at the recent events in the US, the coming election where assorted election deniers, supporters of the big lie, and devotees of Faux Noise are likely to be elected ... no thanks in small part to the workings of the Chairman's corporations ...
Luckily the pond these days is only here for the entertainment and the cartoons, and the chance to sign off with an immortal Rowe ... though it's hard to find much fun in the doings of terrorists, while Tuckyo Rose cheers them on ...
Dorothy - thank you for the tinctures of Marina Hyde and John Crace. They did have me trying to recall a time in my (reading) life when print publications in this country offered articles that conveyed useful information, written in a way that was just a pleasure to read. Mungo Wentworth MacCallum and Matt Price come to mind fairly readily, and I have good personal memories of when Keith Dunstan had a column in the 'Curious Snail' in the 50s. Would be pleased for other readers to remind us of others.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, as time goes on, I am too aware that the gap between that writing and the infantilism with trivial issues, that now constitutes 'communication' from the dominant media group in this country, widens steadily.
The only intellectual exercise is to wonder just how far back into infantilism the writers and presenters for Rupert can regress. Any time I think they have dropped to some kind of base, I access a 'Sky News' clip presented (so it says) by Ms Panahi - and I realise that she is taking that process to new depths. The entire country is the poorer for it.
I remember the regulars for 'Nation Review' back not so incredibly long ago, Chad:
ReplyDelete"Michael Leunig, Bob Ellis, Germaine Greer, Phillip Adams, Richard Beckett a.k.a. Sam Orr, Mungo MacCallum, John Hindle, Francis James, Patrick Cook, Morris Lurie, John Hepworth, Fred Flatow and Jenny Brown a.k.a. Zesta"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_Review
A few of them - especially Beckett as 'Sam Orr' - weren't too bad. It was an NR regular - name escapes my alzheimered memory now but he was an educator of, IIRC, jewish origin - who first, at least for me, stated that "For those who will not go on to study any higher mathematics, the school mathematics curriculum is too much, too soon. For those who will go on, it is too little too late." A comment that isn't just limited to mathematics but is most clearly demonstrated there.
GB - thank you particularly for reminder of Beckett as 'Sam Orr'. I treasure his book titled 'The Gourmet's Garden'. His section on the choko is just superb - ending with those wonderful sentences 'You'll never taste choko as it doesn't. The choko is one of nature's little jokes.'
DeleteAh, I also have many fond memories of the long-departed “Nation Review”, GB. I also rather miss the Fairfax-published “National Times”. While it often went a bit overboard with Sydney Eastern Suburbs wankery, it was a stark contrast to the sort of drivel produced by the modern Nine-Fairfax.
DeleteJust for you Chad - and anybody else who might be interested - the only song I know in which choko - in its American guise as mirliton - appears:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGWRV8BzjOI
So, Slappy can't find any nobility in Karvelas's act of "defending a principle". But what principle is that, exactly ? Oh, she means "it is okay to discriminate against different people" and all of the reptiles do it all of the time: "woke Green lefties"? Yair, give 'em nothing, take 'em nowhere.
ReplyDeleteHave I ever mentioned the reptile propensity for attribution driven projection ?
But Slappy is an expert: whenever you discover "discrimination" don't ever take any action to correct it because that's even worse discrimination. So all the advantages that "a precious few" of white CIS males (of any age) have, must be guaranteed to them in perpetuity, because if you favour females, or POCs or whatever, then that's just even worse discrimination because it's deliberate with malice aforethought, and not just the happy 'natural' discrimination that some privileged folks simply acquire from having been born of the right sex and gender and colour. And parentage.
So, she tells us: "...skills and experience are irrelevant for this role: executive search lists have become a women-only affair." So, not one single male has been appointed to any organisation anywhere in the world for the last, oh, 10 years at least, yes ? And Slappy knows this because of her own appointment to the Chairmanship of the IPA, and her subsequent rapid ejection from that position because of her clearly demonstrated lack of skills and experience. Well, at least we know why now, don't we.
I almost (though not quite) felt a slight twinge of sympathy for Dame Slap today. There was a real sense of desperation in her column, as though she realised what a stretch it was to use a few words of criticism of one ABC presenter, and an expression of support by another ABC presenter, as the basis for yet another few thousand words of ranting about discrimination, or the lack of discrimination, or the wrong sort of discrimination, or whatever the hell she was on about. The Dame seems rather tired - are all those years of confecting outrage finally getting to her? Is there a glimmer of understanding that she’s wasted so much of her time - and even more of the poor mugs who have been foolish enough to read her (ie, all of us..) or even worse, have taken her seriously? Or has her resentment at her ejection from the IPA -a tragedy to rival “Paradise Lost” - started to take its toll on her? Whatever the cause, her old bile and venom seems rather diluted.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I thought the criticism of Ms Kelly’s new venture was not that she herself was too old, but rather that it represented a missed opportunity to showcase some fresh talent. Surely the Dame would have welcomed the opportunity for a new ABC target?
Well you know that it's the 'Peter Principle' (enunciated by a white CIS male) that: "the tendency in most organizational hierarchies, such as that of a corporation, is for every employee to rise in the hierarchy through promotion until they reach a level of respective incompetence." And given that the majority of homo saps saps is somewhat less than the mean in competence, but there are many jobs and positions to fill, this happens regularly.
DeleteLike to Slappy, for instance.
Which gives me a segue into an item from BBC news yesterday. We have steady bleating through mouthpieces for employer organisations, contributing (probably at no cost) to the Flagship, that workers can expect more pay when they show more productivity.
ReplyDeleteThis item -
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20221014-the-productivity-paranoia-managers-cant-shake
demonstrates the fundamental problem with so many 'managerialists' - that they don't actually measure productivity. In stratified organisations - the most common ones - supervisors tend to gauge the time their underlings put into a task, but have little to no idea of how productive those people are at their tasks.
The article draws on those pariahs of management studies - people who observe what supposed 'managers' actually do with their time, rather than what said managers claim they do, when they set out their own work reports.
It also emphasizes how much the expectations of supervisors or managers are conditioned by seeing someone looking at a screen and tapping keys. I will not take bets on how few days it will be before another item is run up the mainmast telling workers that they cannot expect more money until they demonstrate more productivity. With the onus on them to demonstrate - not the much higher paid 'manager'.
Yes, "productivity" - one of those words that can be made to mean anything while generally meaning nothing, so it's very good to throw into the debate. My father was a bricklayer, so very easy to measure his 'productivity'; it was how many bricks he laid in a day. But even so, his 'productivity' wasn't solely down to him: it depended on the brickies labourers and how well they kept the flow of bricks and mortar up to him. If they fell down on the job, or had too many layers to service, then the layers 'productivity' was reduced.
DeleteBut I've spent most of a working lifetime working in offices - approximately 34 in the EDP/ICT industry - and I haven't got a clue as to what my 'productivity' was or how it could be measured. Who has ?
I see from the infonet that Dame Slap turned 56 last month. In light of today's confused rant on ageism cum A-B-Cism I can just imagine her singing this "old" Beatle ditty to herself. When I'm 64 was released when she was only eight months of age...so when the song itself turns 64 in June 2031 Slappy will also be 64. Spooky no?
ReplyDeleteWhen I get older, will I be here
Eight more years from now
Will I still be hyping up inciteful lines
Bashing Aunty, having a whine
If I'm still up the faraway tree
Sniping for News Corp
Will they still keep me
Will they scrap-heap me
When I'm sixty-four?
Neat, Kez - quite singable, in fact.
ReplyDeleteSeconded.
DeleteThirded.
DeleteCheers all :)
Delete