In which the pond does extremely hard yards with a trifecta of the dog botherer, the bromancer and nattering "Ned" ....

 

Saturdays have begun to feel like the inn of the damned - at least if keeping company with reptiles is your choice, not bad Australian movies - and the pond has no desire to compound the problem by straying off into Dame Slap territory ...

 

The habit of certain people leaking like a sieve to the reptiles - and Dame Slap's obsessive compulsive desire to scribble about it - is no doubt rich fodder for Freudians in the house, but if you must, you can try this headline ...

And then you can ignore the Nine papers and head off to the Graudian to read Bruce Lehrmann asked friends ‘got any gear’ on day rape allegations reported, messages tendered in court reveal.

And that's as much as the pond will do for the Freudians, before turning to John Quiggin in The Conversation, and $18 million a job? The AUKUS subs plan will cost Australia way more than that .

Aside from the costing, which will surely blow out (if it ever gets started) in the massive way pork barreling always does, there was this ...

The case for such a massive investment in submarines has proved hard to make in a simple and convincing way. The “Red Alert” articles published this month by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age has helped to raise alarm about China. But the warning Australia could find itself at war with China in the next few years (over Taiwan) isn’t a persuasive argument for submarines that won’t be delivered until the 2030s.
Other questions have emerged.
In different ways, former prime ministers Paul Keating and Malcolm Turnbull have questioned the sense of a renewed alliance with the United Kingdom. The UK in a state of obvious decline, and Labour leader Keir Starmer, likely to be Britain’s next prime minister, has been noticeably lukewarm in his support for AUKUS, saying: “Whatever the merits of an Indo-Pacific tilt, maintaining security in Europe must remain our primary objective.”

And so on and so forth, and Michelle Grattan thought that the French clock lover might be on to something but shouldn't be so sharp-tongued, Keating could be right about AUKUS, but gratuitous insults are an ugly look, (you can find it in The Conversation) and even the oscillating fan had doubts ...

...while that warmongering toad, Peter Hartcher, continued to preen and primp and even played the "disloyalty" card ... so no link for him ...

And now it's on to the usual pack, because if not the inn of the damned, then certainly the hotel in The Shining, and even as NIMBYISM already begins to spread about which part of the country will turn into a nuclear waste dump, the dog botherer does a classic misread and gets all the cues wrong ... so obsessed is he with climate science, and nuking the country as the solution, even though there's nothing wrong with the climate in the dog botherer's alternative reality ...

Naturally the reptiles went with a dog botherer dreaming image to kick things off, an artist's impression of a small modular nuclear reactor, which is about all that can be offered ... an artist's impression ...

Once again the pond is left to wonder why the dog botherer cares about the emitting of greenhouse gases, since in his alternative reality world, climate science isn't a thing, but then the pond got distracted by an idyllic snap the reptiles inserted at this point...

In typical reptile fashion, there was nothing to identify the image or the source, so here you go ...

Yes, just another cheap-arsed offering from an image bank. What a wretched graphics department it's become ...

Now back to the dog botherer and no complaining, because the pond warned at the get go it would be a slog ...

Note the way that the dog botherer clings to a single costing, though anybody who cared could find alternative figures ... but as the dog botherer happened to mention Hinkley, mentioned here ...

Case study: Hinkley Nuclear Power Station, United Kingdom

When this project was first being promoted, the CEO of British energy company EDF Vincent de Rivaz predicted that the Hinkley C nuclear power station could be switched on in 2017. It is currently slated to open in June 2026, almost a decade late even if this extended deadline is met.

Around the same time, the UK government priced the project at 4 billion UK pounds. It is now expected to cost between £22bn and £23bn. 

The price for Hinkley’s electricity was fixed in a so-called “strike price” at £92 per megawatt-hour, rising with inflation. This won’t rise, even though the costs of building the project have gone up. However, that is still expensive energy when the latest offshore UK wind farms have agreed to strike prices of less than half that (around £40 per megawatt-hour).

Read more: BBC News 

Enough already, the pond expects correspondents to do a little of the hard yards as the dog botherer begins to wind down ...

And yet in the dog botherer world, climate science is an irrelevant fraud, and yet somehow he's obsessed with nuking the country ...

Meanwhile, a cartoon from Kudelka ...

To mix metaphors, that Godzilla put the cat among the pigeons, and it sent the bromancer off on a long listicle-laden howl, which added to the pond's Saturday woes ...

Oh sheesh, not our core national identity, with the curious over-ride, "in today's circumstances." Did the bromancer suddenly turn existential relativist?

Yep, already the pond is deeply bored, and we haven't even got on to the listicle or to the ominous braying of "Ned",  somewhere over the horizon but coming this way like a sub-destroying missile...

Oh fucketty fuck, at last the listicle, dubbed emerging AUKUS myths, and at this point some might feel the need for more Quiggin, 'Red Alert' is a paper tiger, or just tweeting, or perhaps re-tweeting about a real newspaper ...

And still defiant ...

But never mind all that, on with the listicle ...

Up against the bromancer and his listicle myths, it's easy to see why Twitter can become addictive ... while chasing that Quiggin tweet linking to a story in The Conversation, Progress in detection tech could render submarines useless by the 2050s. What does it mean for the AUKUS pact? , the pond came across this re-tweet ...

So it's true ... that pompous prat is a completely humourless self-important clod ... and completely clueless to boot ... but meanwhile onwards rolls the bromancer ... an intrepid sailor never home from the sea, a valiant wolf warrior hunter never home from the hill ...

And as for that talk of becoming obsolete? Everybody's building obsolete, so why not us? If everybody's putting useless trinkets at the bottom of their Xmas stockings, then we should stock up too (and make China richer while littering the planet) ...

Now anyone thinking that in the last par, the bromancer is admitting that he's completely clueless as to the cost, please remember that being clueless is an important part of the art of being an armchair admiral ...

So the coalition inflated the costs out of a sense of self-importance, yet even secondhand subs are bloody expensive? Even worse than the current used car market?

Never mind, the pond reached the end at last ...

Did the bromancer mention sovereignty? Fortunately there was an infallible Pope to hand addressing that issue from a serious newspaper with ambitions of breaking out of its local rag status ...

And so to "Ned", and the pond only does this because it's the pond's dooty, and because when anyone asks if there's anyone more pompous and asinine than a good Hartchering, the pond is always happy to offer a "Nedding" ... so much braying, and over so many gobbets ...

Here's the pond's theory. If it does the heavy lifting with "Ned" today, why tomorrow's Sunday meditation can be a doddle in the park.

Sure it might mean asking how things are going in the US ...

And so on and so forth, and what's this, Chairman Rupert backing a full on isolationist and Putin appeaser?

Well that should work out well ...

Speaking of luck, how goes it elsewhere in the US?

And there's your choice - Trump heavy with the man from Florida, or Trump extra heavy with the man from Florida - and least if if you happen to be Chairman Rupert and wanting your tax breaks and all the other GOP benefits, and all this will be coming to a head in 2024, and the reptiles down under remain oblivious ... and most oblivious of all is "Ned" ...

Talk about a deal, and all the pond worries about is whether they come with the Trucoat ...

[Jerry and an irate customer argue over a sealant that the customer had previously indicated he didn't want, after Jerry has gone off to pretend to talk to his boss] 

Jerry Lundegaard : Well, we've never done this before. But seeing as it's special circumstances and all, he says I can knock a hundred dollars off that Trucoat.

Irate Customer : [stunned that Jerry still intends to charge him for something he didn't order]  One hundred... You lied to me, Mr. Lundegaard. You're a bald-faced liar. A... fucking liar.

Irate Customer : [to his wife, frustrated]  Where's my goddamn checkbook? Let's get this over with.

Ah, "Ned's" got out his chequebook ...

Another classic fudge. Not just from the bromancer, but "Ned" too, guessing that maybe it's just all guesswork, though there's no guessing where things have been in the past ...

Australian governments have a long and generally dismal history of using defence procurement, and particularly naval procurement, as a form of industry policy.

Examples including the Collins-class submarines, Hobart-class air warfare destroyers and, most recently, the Hunter-class “Future Frigates”.

The stated goal is to build a defence-based manufacturing industry. But there is also a large element of old-fashioned pork-barrelling involved.

In particular, South Australia has nursed grievances over the shutdown of local car making, centred in the state, following the withdrawal of federal government subsidies. The closure of the Osborne Naval Shipyard in north Adelaide would be politically “courageous” for any government.

So the projects roll on, despite technical problems (the six Collins-class subs were plagued by problems with their noise signature, propulsion and combat systems) and cost overruns (the three Hobart destroyers cost $1.4 billion more than the $8 billion budgeted). The $35 billion plan for nine Hunter-class frigates may yet be abandoned given budget constraints. 

And so on and so forth, but the pond has been there before, and provided a link to the Quiggin, and still "Ned" natters on ...

Phew that's a relief, "Ned's" got our chequebook, and is splashing the cash in the US, and rest assured, there'll be no backsliding from Chairman Rupert's pick in a few years time ...

The pond can't say it's been fun, but there's a final gobbet before the immortal Rowe has a final word ...

Yes, indeedy do, the US has a long history as a European power, and that history has a DeSantis future to run ... and as for the Pacific, good luck with that ...

And so to the immortal Rowe of the day doing some poll dancing ...

It's all in the detail, 'Gong lovers ...