The pond spent yesterday salivating over the prospect of Chairman Rupert being forced to front the beak, and other stories surrounding the scandal that is Faux Noise ... not to mention all the other News Corp carry on ...
Get out your search engine of choice, and have at it.
Then a correspondent kindly provided a link to the venerable Meade yarn News Corp Australia publishes lottery promotions presented as news stories about winners, with the lede Media giant is paid for publishing the articles and receives a share of ticket sales through links on the page.
Then there's the latest kerfuffle over the deeply corrupt Clarence and the deeply corrupt Supreme Court ...
ProPublica seems to be on a real roll ... Billionaire Harlan Crow Bought Property From Clarence Thomas. The Justice Didn’t Disclose the Deal.
The transaction is the first known instance of money flowing from Crow to the Supreme Court justice. The sale netted the GOP megadonor two vacant lots and the house where Thomas’ mother was living.
Of course none of the fun reaches the pages of the lizard Oz, which is why some students complain that herpetology studies are deeply boring, and the pond can't deny it.
Where's the mango Mussolini suing his old lawyer, a matter which produced great laughter yesterday?
Instead the lizard Oz was featuring the mutton Dutton doing his now standard uppity, difficult black bashing ... with nary a Clarence in sight, where a bashing might have been to the point ...
What we need is a Marina Hyde, doing over the mutton Dutton the way she did over Keir Starmer ...
Is there anything lower than a politician using fear mongering about child abuse as a way of conflating and confusing a real problem with the issue of the voice?
Another existential question.
Why is the pond left to deal with a serve of desiccated coconut on a Friday?
Oh, the pond knows the answer, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die, but still, the pond can't help brooding sometimes at the unfairness of it all ...
Never mind, into the tedium likely to bore you to death rode the pond, pomposity to the right, verbosity to the left, and an array of snaps at the front ...
The pond will let the infallible Pope have the final word on that painful serve of gibberish, that testament to Liberalism and its rewards ...
What else? Well as usual the reptiles were thin on the ground, suggesting that the business model might be in trouble ...
Sure there's the Jennings, still on a war footing, but the presence of """ and the llizard Oz editorialist emphasised the paucity of the offerings, and reminded the pond of that Christopher Warren story in Crikey ... A billion here, a billion there: the News/Fox stumbles cost big bucks by any measure.
Sorry, paywall, but a sample ...
It includes a provision for the company’s best estimate of damages from continuing claims, including the most high-profile claim launched in 2019 by Prince Harry, in a major break, he now says, from the royal family’s reluctance to take the tabloids to court.
These most recent costs come on top of £133 million (A$248 million) reported over the past two years, and the £800 million (A$1.5 billion) earlier identified by Crikey in previous decades’ company reports.
Across its accounts, News Corp delicately refers to the scandal as “UK newspaper matters”. In its UK accounts, the hacking is politely termed “voicemail interception allegations” and police bribes as “inappropriate payments to public officials”. It breaks up the outgoings into the claimants’ legal fees and damages, its own costs (most of them for its own high-priced lawyers) and the costs of the management and standards committee set up in the wake of the scandal.
The names paid out are a who’s who of the UK, from the royal family down, all caught up in the story-gathering practices of phone hacking, police bribes and improper influence. The practices seem to go as far back as the 1990s, although were not publicly known until The Guardian broke the story in 2009. Two years later, the story exploded when it was revealed News of the World had hacked the phone of missing teenager Milly Dowler.
News is eager to draw a line under the claims, relying on last September’s deadline for cases in the current tranche of managed litigation. As a result, this year’s costs included both outgoings for the financial year ending July 3 2022 (about £47 million or A$88 million) and £53 million (A$99 million) provision for claims lodged shortly before the deadline.
The Sun, meanwhile, continues to fade. Back in 1992, it could brag that it changed elections (“It’s The Sun Wot Won It”). When the scandal broke just over a decade ago, it sold more than 3 million copies a day. In March 2020, when it last released circulation numbers, it sat at 1.2 million. The next year, the company accounts wrote the value of the masthead off to zero.
Now, best guess, it’s around 800,000, dropping behind the Daily Mail and falling. Like most tabloid papers, it hasn’t been able to transition to a digital subscriber base.
Of course Crikey has its own war with the Chairman, with a new twist in proceedings ... Lachlan Murdoch ‘morally and ethically’ culpable for January 6 Capitol riot, Crikey argues, with the lede In its updated defence against the media mogul, Private Media alleges that Lachlan Murdoch was directly involved in election fraud programming at Fox News. (Sorry, paywall)
Oh yes, we can all become black and live in a black paradise ...just look at the fun you can have ...
And with that, it's time to note that the Killer was also on hand this day with a story about that leak ...
There was some good news in it ...
At last a Killer moment worth celebrating ... and with that it's time for an immortal Rowe to wrap up proceedings ... with a reminder that there is more fun to be had in other lands ...
"As for the text, it will come as no surprise that the hole in the bucket man conflates and confuses being a member of the Liberal party with being a liberal and being a party to liberalism, which is a pile of tosh ..."
ReplyDeleteWhat a mischievous imp that Mister Menzies was! I'm sure he foresaw the trouble he'd cause by naming his party the Liberal Party of Australia.
And for all the hole in the bucket man's attempts to pull down the ALP and build up the Liberals, someone should remind him just how long each of the two major parties in Australian politics has been in existence.
DeleteAh, Henry - how better to discuss current issues than by writing a fan-letter to a conservative philosopher and politician who’s been dead since the end of the 18th century?
ReplyDeleteBut of course that’s Henry style - bolster your personal opinions by throwing in a bunch of quotes from a few reliable historical notables, and claim that those centuries-old comments and opinions represent Eternal Truths. Yes, we can learn a lot from history - but occasionally it may be worth discussing current issues on their own merits, rather than assuming you can settle the matter by citing the views of someone whose views were defined by the French and American revolutions and the management of the East India Company.
Still, it’s refreshing to learn that Henry now traces the foundation of “The West” to some nomadic tribes wandering around in the Middle East.
As for Cackling Claire, she clearly wins today’s “I’m not a Racist, But…” award. Yes, who wouldn’t want to be an Indigenous person, given how easy they have it? Bonus points for working in a dig at trans folk, too - well cackled, Claire!
Yes I was wondering what claims to power TG people have, Anon.
DeleteOur Henry telling us that a fundamental problem in our democracy is the existence of parties, reminds us of his strident campaigning, and subsequent appeal to the High Court, over the referendum that produced the Constitution Alteration (Senate Casual Vacancies) Act of 1977. The one that recognised, for the first time, political parties in our Constitution. Well, I am trying to remember his campaign, but it is lost in the mists of time. Does anyone else recall? No? Oh - looks like the accounts of the Henry's campaign then have all gone down the memory hole.
DeleteOur Holely Henry is a true 'Australian reptile', isn't he. Except that I don't think that he's ever encountered the word 'scab' - other than medically perhaps - in his long and fruitless life. If he had, he might just understand why "the union-based Left" insists on total unanimous conformity and not merely on a collective belief in privilege and capital. He may even have noticed that there are never any real 'conservative' scabs and that's why they can be a bit liberal even if they are really Liberal.
ReplyDeleteDoes Henry really think that if Menzies' creation - the very constrained Liberal Party - had had a serious moral, rational and ideological dispute such as the one leading to the DLP it would have survived at all ?
But ignoring all the actual realities is just the reptile way, isn't it.
Like his insistence on the primacy of 'Justice'. Now 'Justice' is not an objective fact of the universe, it is wholly and totally an emotional construct of human minds. And that's why we have many, many thousands of pages of definition of 'Justice' in fine detail in a myriad of different circumstances and screeds about the different beliefs as to what constitutes 'Justice' in the real human world.
But that's a dedicated, practiced reptile for us: just enough history to persuade the believers that he is a knowledgeable chap, and the use of a very vague term - 'Justice' - without any acknowledgement that it's a term that is very 'interpretable'. But that's also the reptile way too, isn't it: just use the word and pretend that everybody knows what it means and agrees with him.
BTW, DP (and anybody), if you do favour a little bit of beetroot, then try the Berenberg Balsamic Beetroot Relish; which despite the 'relish' description I use as jam (on a goodly dollop of butter on a fresh slice of mid-brown bread).
ReplyDeleteTasty.
I realise this is a serous allegation GB, but I recall some years ago that Beerenberg hosted an IPA function. I cannot find a reference to it on the intertubes, so maybe I’m wrong again, but just to be on the safe side, crack the lid and see if you get a whiff of corruption before you consume the contents.
DeleteOf course, this may just reflect my own pettiness that I never miss a chance to add another company to my boycott list.
There's a Single Speed Brewing Co that produces a Beerenberg beer, Bef, which is called an IPA, but that means India Pale Ale. Not related to the Relish Beerenberg as far as I can determine.
Deletehttps://untappd.com/b/1speed-brewing-company-beerenberg/4433487
Pretty sure it was the Institute for Paid Agitaprop, but the reference is lost in the mists of time. My memory also makes it easy to gaslight me nowadays - the internet has sort of become my memory.
DeleteJoin the club, mate, join the club.
DeleteThere are lies, damned lies and never-ending IPA lies:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-14/fact-check-checkmate-maori-voice-waitangi-tribunal/102217998
At first sight I thought that the pic of that bald-headed bloke in the middle of Henry’s screed might have been Larry David. What an appropriate placement that would have been for the co-creator of a show “about nothing”.
ReplyDelete