Sunday, October 30, 2022

In which the pond returns to the usual interminable rambling at the lizard Oz ...

 


So here's one place the pond won't be going this day ...







It was on the top of the digital page yesterday, and no doubt can be found today for anyone who can be fucked looking ...

This, on top of this request by the learned judge, not a day old, and forced to deal with a jury member who at the least should have been charged with contempt of court...






Higgins was ill-advised to speak after the trial was aborted, but what excuse does Dame Slap have to offer?

What a wretched and pathetic outing, of the kind you might expect from a jihadist ideologue without the slightest interest in a seemly response to a polite judicial request ... 

"Some respite from the intense glare of the media that has been pervasive in this trial"? 

Not in Planet Janet's world far above the faraway tree. Instead put her image at the top of the digital page, to help sell Dame Slap and the lizard Oz to the world ...

But is there another way? Well, if a classic doggy boy outing gets the punters excited, what are the odds of Lloydie of the Amazon setting the planet on fire?







The pond should probably have started with a bit of housekeeping, which is to say that in the pond's current situation, postings are likely to be a little erratic and later in the day, but one way or another, the mail must get through ...

This is the  lizard Oz crossing the Border,
Bringing the anti-woke rants, as ancient as a postal order,

Rants for the rich, rants at the poor,
The suffering small businessman at the corner, the uppity hussy next door.

Pulling up Polonius, a steady climb:
The gradient's against him but he's on Ming the merciless time.

Past festering Lloydie denialist and moorland "Ned" boulder
Shovelling white steam from innocent Oz coal over shoulder,

Snorting noisily as they pass
Noisy miles of wind-bent shameless arse.

Birds turn their heads as they approach,
Stare from bushes at the blank-faced Murdochian slow coaches.

Sheep-dogs cannot turn their course;
They slumber on with paws across.

In the farm "Ned" passes, no one wakes,
But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes... (apologies to W H Auden, the longer original here, and yes, the pond should leave this to experts in the field)


Well it'll be on with the gently shaking jug in due and proper course, but back to Lloydie, though everyone knows where this is heading, to Argentina, perhaps by way of Greece ...







What's all this wailing? Surely climate science is just the fever dream of religious zealots? Surely Lloydie can straighten all this out, in much the same way that he saved the Amazon ...








Some might think the planet is comprehensively fucked, but when climate science is just the fever dream of a few religious zealots, anything is possible ...  though of course the reptiles must embellish the gobbet with a shot of a coal-fired plant doing its best for the planet ...








Well Lloydie of the Amazon has never wavered, unless you call the spreading of FUD a form of wavering ...







There then, all's the best in the best of all possible worlds ... dinkum clean Oz coal is triumphant, the reptiles have won, nothing has been done or accomplished, Lloydie has done his bit, Chairman Xi has the matter in hand, and so the world can look forward to ever-increasing signs of Murdochian victory ...

There’s “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place” today, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) insisted in a new report, despite legally binding promises made at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference to prevent average temperatures rising by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Uncomfortable truth
“This report tells us in cold scientific terms what nature has been telling us all year, through deadly floods, storms and raging fires: we have to stop filling our atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and stop doing it fast,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP.
“We had our chance to make incremental changes, but that time is over. Only a root-and-branch transformation of our economies and societies can save us from accelerating climate disaster.”
Despite Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) promises made by governments in favour of reducing their carbon footprint, pledges made since the last climate summit in Glasgow in 2021 will lead to cuts of less than one per cent of projected 2030 greenhouse gas emissions, according to UNEP.
Paltry reductions
This is the equivalent of just 0.5 gigatonnes of CO2, UNEP calculated, adding that only a 45 per cent emissions reduction will limit global warming to 1.5C.
As it stands today, latest data indicates that the world is on track for a temperature rise of between 2.4C and 2.6C by the end of this century.
“In the best-case scenario, full implementation of unconditional NDCs and additional net-zero emissions commitments point to only a 1.8C increase, so there is hope. However, this scenario is not currently credible based on the discrepancy between current emissions, short-term NDC targets and long-term net-zero targets,” UNEP said. (more here)

Yep, and meanwhile the sociopathic Vlad the Terrible fucks over Ukraine, with the same spirit that the Murdochians routinely fuck over climate science. What glorious summers there will be for York and the planet ...

And so on to Polonius, who these days prefers to stay back in the times of Ming the Merciless ...









The pond suddenly thought less of the ANU, but leaving that aside, gorgeous George should have known he had no business writing about Ming the Merciless without first receiving full Polonial approval.

In the next gobbet, Polonius turns to Alex Antic, a genuine loon, without capturing the richness of flavour in the loonery, as could be observed here ... so spoiler alert, an early warning ...








That obligatory mention of "wokeness" is the loon cherry on the loon cake, because anyone who has bothered to read the bible will remember that Christ was fully woke ... though the wokeness can take odd forms ...









Sorry, that was early in the pond's return to reading Polonius. First time back with Polonius for awhile, and the immediate urge was to go elsewhere for a laugh ...

Now on with the Antics and the Malware ...







We've all been there before ...

REG: Right. You're in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Labor party are the fucking sopping wet liberal Ming the Merciless People's Front.
P.F.J.: Yeah...
JUDITH: Splitters.
P.F.J.: Splitters...
FRANCIS: And the Menzies Popular Terribly Wet People's Front.
P.F.J.: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
LORETTA: And the People's Front of the foaming wet Cinque Ports.
P.F.J.: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
REG: What?
LORETTA: The Polonial Front of Ming the Merciless devotees. Splitters.
REG: We're the Polonial Front of Ming the Merciless devotees!
LORETTA: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.
REG: People's Front! C-huh.
FRANCIS: Whatever happened to the Polonial Front, Reg?
REG: He's over there.
P.F.J.: Splitter! 

And so on and on ... and now in Polonius's own words, as assorted splitters, deviants, heretics and ne'er do well are sorted out ...





Talk about a completely vacuous and pointless piece, with a conclusion so self-evident, you have to wonder about Polonius's sanity. 

No one would know what a dead Norwegian Blue parrot thinks about today's Liberal party? Well d'uh, but does anyone know what Polonius thinks he's thinking today?

There's at least some fair evidence in all that introspection that Polonius isn't the brightest ball of bees' wax in the hive ...

And so to the Everest known as "Ned", and the pond only offers it so that those who feel the need for a climb can get a little work-out ...








Okay, the pond has said it many times before, but must say it again. This was the web version, found on the web, and the pond opened the web version, and what's the fucking point of that message?

Second, the pond has some budget cartoons left over thanks to the break, and so will use them up, beginning with an infallible Pope ...










It won't help with the climb, but it might lighten the "Ned" load ...










Okay, the reptiles threw in a Lobbecke, making the pond wonder whether the cult master was making a return, because the reptiles knew that struggling through a "Ned" outing couldn't be done without cartoon relief ...









And the pond was happy to match that with an immortal Rowe ...









And now back to "Ned", as always doing his Chicken Little impression ...








Indeed, there's nothing like leadership over empathy ...









Around this point in the saga, the pond always wonders if anyone pays attention to this portentous, sententious bore, issuing orders, advice and instructions in no particular order, all the time shouting that the sky is about to fall ...









Not the missing link ...









By golly, when the pond looked at that portrait, it was hard to tell if it was of a potato or of "Ned" ...











... and still with three gobbets to go!







Not to worry, it's all under control ... Dr Jim is in the clinic ...










Meanwhile back to "Ned" being given a headache by things like wages and taxes ...







And there's a line which sticks in the pond's craw. "Labor needs to break the psychology of easy spending that arose during the period - but the jury is out on whether it possesses the conviction to do the job."

That's the way it goes with "Ned" - Labor must, or Labor needs to, or blather about convictions, but the pond can't remember "Ned" carrying on like that when SloMo and his wretched band of rorters and spendthrifts were at the peak of their game ...

Where were the "musts" and "needs" when the gloom-laden sod saw the Liberals throwing the economy under the bus.

Here's part of a piece back on 17th December 2021 ... when it was all part of a changing world and the needs of the people and yadda yadda ...









And to make matters worse, here's "Ned" celebrating a foreign policy chenius ...










And so here we are, and it's left to others to try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again ...








What a tedious old bore he is, but there, a few will have climbed the Everest, and the pond can celebrate by catching up with an infallible Pope celebrating domitable Dom at his finest ...









18 comments:

  1. a Lobbecke - I had a good feeling about this day, as I prepared my coffee, and warmed-up the laptop. Thank you Dorothy.

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    1. Agreed Chadders...even the slight return of the Cultmaster is a thing of wonder...and today's effort displays all the weird pastichery we expect and admire in his work. His visual attempts at political commentary are as lumpen yet strangely fascinating as ever.

      That said I do like how Albo looks like a cross between Kevin Rudd and Hirohito while Chalmers has a faintly Richard Nixon profile with an inexplicable WC Fields schnozz and outsized Spock ears.

      Though I don't know what on earth these visages mean in regard to biting figurative satire I do get the allegorical trope meme of the Aussie flag being torn to shreds by the headwinds of inflation. Furthermore by depicting the PM and Treasurer attempting to secure the ravaged national signifier to a dead tree trunk I would like to think our crypto-bolshie Cultmaster is having a sly dig at the utter futility of capitalism...maybe?

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  2. "(apologies to W H Auden, the longer original here" Oh, I reckon WH would have approved, DP though pity we can't have it with the Britten ... but hang on:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmciuKsBOi0

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    1. Thanks for that link GB. I love hearing poets read their own work. Dylan Thomas reading Under Milkwood is another classic.

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    2. I notice on Lobbecke's twitter account that illustration scored exactly one like. For shame!
      https://mobile.twitter.com/hthtdraws/status/1586114264649314305?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

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    3. Oops. That was supposed to go with my reply to Chad re the Cultmaster. Trying to do comments here using my phone is new to me.

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  3. Oh dear, Lloydie: "The budget included $20bn in concessional loans to crisscross the nation with electric wires. This money ultimately must be recovered from electricity users." Well since virtually everybody in Australia is an "electricity user" that might be so. But then, in fact everything - including the outrageous profits of Santos and rewards to its "executives" and even the regular reptile handouts to Lloydie himself must be "recovered from electricity users" n'est ce pas ?

    As to "crisscross the nation", just how many electric wires do we expect to have in, say, the Lake Eyre region ? Besides, the joy of solar (and wind) is off-grid outback power units:
    "For the desert and outback homes, we offer special desert energy supply systems which provide a reliable supply of renewable, electric power. Offering solutions for a variety of markets, we offer outback power systems that are professionally designed to include advanced automated power."
    https://esolar.com.au/outback/
    (see also: https://www.offgridenergy.com.au/off-grid-power-systems/complete/)

    No nation crossing wires required there.

    So we come to the universal admission of failure: "Ten years ago they [fossil fuel energy] were 82 per cent." but "last year they were 82 per cent." Oh my, but then approximately 10 years ago the world population was just less than 7 billion, and now it is approximately 7.9 billion So, a population increase of around 900 million resulted in a reduction of fossil fuel generation of 1 percentage point. Pitifully small progress, it's true, but progress nonetheless.

    One of these days homo saps saps might just realise that allowing the human population to just go on increasing, stuffs everything.

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    1. Ooops "last year they were 81 per cent."

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    2. The thing is, money will be spent on electric wires even without a planned transition to renewables. It's just a case of why spend it on the "we are all fucked, let's burn some more fossil fuels" scenario when it can be spent catering to what is likely to happen.

      Even if, in another universe, the Dutton dream scenario of 80 small (not) modular reactors was realised the transmission architecture would have to be entirely different to the current arrangements. Things don't stay the same forever.

      If you skim through the executive summary of the IEA's report you also might come to a different conclusion to our jungle correspondent.

      https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2022/executive-summary

      Hardly good news for us or the planet, but also not that cheery for the long term future of the gas and coal industry. Someone with a better understanding of commodity markets than me might be able to explain but I would think that excessive increases in gas and coal prices mean that once marginal alternatives suddenly become viable. Solar and wind were already winning on cost so current conditions (chaos) just make transition a no-brainer.

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    3. "The increase in renewable electricity generation is sufficiently fast to outpace growth in total electricity generation, driving down the contribution of fossil fuels for power. "

      If the world population was 4 billion instead of just about 8 billion, it wouldn't matter quite so much. The world population in 1951 (back when Menzies was making record inflation) was just over 2.58 billion. By 2022 it was fractionally under 8 billion, an increase of about 5.4 billion in just one old-fashioned (3 score +10) human lifetime.

      How much fossil fuel mining, transporting, storing and burning does that account for ? Still, good to know that "renewables" are keeping pace, maybe.

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  4. A classic Polonius today. What could be less relevant, duller and more dispiriting than a theological dispute between competing sects of The One True Church of Ming? As was to be hoped, a tedious listing of dates and historical detail was complimented by a few stale puffs of outrage, dry as dust and completely lacking in passion. Well done, Gerry!

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  5. Now hang on a mo, Polonius states that: "...in invoking the name of 'God'* in this way, they have attributed to him attitudes not supported by many historical facts." Yeah, but then whose "attitudes" are actually "supported" by historical facts ? Not any of the reptiles, that's for sure.

    So, here we go: "Menzies and all those who have followed him ... valued the individual ahead of the collective and ... embraced free enterprise and supported freedom of speech, worship and association." Yeah, right, sure: now I lived, and came to voting age, under Menzies and he actually did none of those things. It was an era of censorship and repression where the "freedom of association" meant that if you associated with LGBTQ+ folks then pretty soon you'd be associating with criminals in prisons.

    Do the likes of Polonius (the prime running dog lackey of "conservatives") really believe that those of us who lived under the thoughtless 'right's' oppression can't actually remember it ? So: "For a man of his time, Menzies was both a liberal and a conservative." I think that should read Liberal (as in party member) and Conservative (as in anti-liberal). And then: "But the Menzies era was a long time ago." Yeah, right, it ended back in 1966 didn't it: all of 56 years ago - not even a traditional 3 score and 10.

    Also, as Polonius gaily informs us: "But no one knows what a person who died nearly half a century ago would think today. " Nobody ? So all those people who try to interpret the ideas and thoughts of historical figures - even those as recent as just "nearly a half-century ago" are basically just bullshitting us ? Especially Polonius and Holesome Henry ?

    But really, who cares what a wingnut r-soul like Menzies thought or believed - I for one have no idea what most people alive today (and especially reptiles) think or believe. Let us just be thankful that 2000 years of r-souls just like him are no longer with us.

    * well, Menzies is God, isn't he ?

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    1. GB and Anonymous - I would be quite happy to see the Polonies of this world bring our attention to the actual, documented, achievements of Menzies, particularly at a time when we are supposed to be all of a pother about inflation. Give Menzies credit for setting THE Australian record for inflation rates. From the September quarter 1951 to the June quarter 1952 he managed to keep Consumer Price Inflation above 20%, with the stellar accomplishment for December 1951 of 23.9%

      Oh - if you want averages, Menzies’ average for financial 1951-2 was 21.7%.

      So, yes, the party he gave us really does know about matters economic.

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    2. Menzies was PM the second time around for 17 consecutive years so some thing(s) must have happened some time(s) over that many years that he could claim credit for just by being there. The only things I can remember (being only a single digit number of years old in 1951) was opening up the universities by instituting the Commonwealth Scholarship (of which I was a happy holder once upon a time) and staging the first "credit squeeze we had to have" in 1961 and almost losing government except for Communist party preferences in Jim Killen's electorate.

      Oh, and "I did but see her passing by" and "I'd put an aitch".

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  6. Chris Kenny likes to play alarmist games. He asks the reader to put a day's 22000 solar panels end-to-end and visualize the 54 km of panels lining up every day. At least 220 panels will fit in a 20 foot shipping container, so no more than a hundred containers per day - 36525 per year which need 2 container ships per year. Our 1.2 million cars per year need 200 ships.

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    1. Oh pish tush, BB, you know that facts mean absolutely nothing to a Doggy Bov, especially if they involve more mathematics than just plus and minus.

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  7. So, the Noodled Neddy: "The irony, however, is that while Labor prides itself on being a government of adults that talks honestly to the people, it has yet to sort the plan or policies to meet the sweeping structural realignments that Australia needs." Both of which Neddles knows off the top of his head - plan and policies - but he's not going to tell those woke green lefties because then they'd fix up Australia's problems overnight and us voters would just love Labor forever.

    I mean Labor have had a whole 5 months since being elected - but not controlling the senate - so why haven't they fixed everything yet ? Surely just because the LNP held office for 9 full years and didn't fix anything - quite the opposite in fact - doesn't mean that Labor can take its time over the fixup. Because "Such omission is not adult behaviour." Oh no, of course not: just ask Mutt Dutt and he'll tell you. Along with Rare Angus, of course.

    After all, the LNP only had 9 years and couldn't fix a thing so it should just be a doddle for Labor. Oh sorry, the LNP did fix one thing: how to extort money from innocent citizens. It's called Robodebt. But enough, enough surely for one short lifetime even with a miniature Lobbecke for company.

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  8. A belated welcome back DP! I must say you really made up for lost time this weekend. A herculean effort and much appreciated. Hope you are recovering well.

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