In which the pond discovers that the dog botherer is a bed wetter, while the Bjorn-again one serves stale breadcrumbs to the reptiles ...

 

The lizard Oz is looking particularly threadbare this weekend, with the digital edition cutting back on the top of the page ...

A double-barrelled effort by Dame Slap on the Lehrmann matter, including an alleged EXCLUSIVE, really meaning quoting an interested party in the matter, and the endearing use of "Bruce"? 

That was more than enough for a red card, but it also left the pond looking threadbare and tattered, though it did suggest that the reptile anxiety about being snubbed had subsided and turned into a one day wonder ... (yes, the immortal Rowe has again left uncle Elon's mad attic and is back home).

Thank the long absent lord for the dog botherer, for this day he's turned bed wetter.

Now the pond doesn't mean to abuse or offend the incontinent - the pond is of an age when an inconvenient trickle has to be taken as part of the rich comedy of life - but it seems the term of the week to describe the faint-hearted, the weak-kneed, or if you're from Tamworth and taking the piss, the gutless wonders ...

What would Noel make of this treachery by his old mate?

That link led to a story - never link to outside the reptile house, it's the reptile way - suggesting Noel's mob were ruining everything ...

Pearson happens to be right. Leeser is a particularly offensive kind of bed wetter and degutting the Voice would make the exercise just another bit of pandering, but we've been doing that kind of condescending indifference for a couple of centuries and where's the harm in a win for the noalition of onion munchers and potato heads?

And that's how the incontinent dog botherer came to wet his bed ...

Of course the call is coming from inside the dog botherer's house. 

There's vague talk of it being the fault of everybody, possibly even the kitchen sink, but no mention of the role that the lizard Oz and its cavalcade of reptiles has played, nor that of Sky after dark, nor the howling mob in the tabloids, always using fear mongering and angertainment to sell.

But the dog botherer knows better than to note this and thereby shit in his own nest, so bed wetting it must be ...

What's remarkable in all this is that the dog botherer doesn't seem to know he's got into bed with another bed wetter, though it's hard to miss that story ...

Will the dog botherer get around to it, or will he do his bed-wetting on his own?

Um, not according to Noel, who seems to think that Leeser and his fellow travellers are just a bunch of white anters ... (the pond apologises to black anters) ...

Calls to change the wording of the Indigenous voice amendment have been shot down by key Indigenous leaders of the government’s expert working groups, with Noel Pearson dismissing former human rights commissioner Mick Gooda on ABC radio as “foolish” and a “bedwetter” for suggesting an eleventh-hour alteration.

Guardian Australia understands the Albanese government doesn’t plan to amend the proposed constitutional amendment ahead of it being debated in parliament on Monday.

Some conservative critics of the voice want to remove the provision in the wording that empowers the body to speak to the executive government. The yes campaign wants the provision to stay – and is more concerned that the government might bow to critics and remove the wording. (Graudian)

The point of course is that if you can't speak to executive government, to keep the urological analogies going, you're just pissing in the wind, and a political gabfest is all that's left ...

Speaking of pissing into the wind ...

By this point, the pond was seriously confused. The dog botherer had started off urging a compromise on words to save the voice for the nation's sake, and then admits that compromise has not been their way?

What would a bed wetter do in such a situation? Why he'd add to the confusion by proposing his very own solution ...

Sounds like we're going to get a lot of wet beds before its all over ...

And so to the rest of the pack ...

Naturally prattling Polonius going full Trumper had to be saved for the pond's Sunday meditation, and the pond found it hard to muster any interest in blather about credentialism, or the evicted Sharma or the oscillating fan, and with the best will in the world, the Angelic one rabbiting on about a Catholic hospital in Canberra was too parochial, and would inevitably be tyke-infested ...

The pond wanted a world vision, and was astonished to discover that the Bjorn-again one had been tucked out of sight, no doubt to be paraded later in the weekend.

What the world needs right now is a climate science denialist in full flight ... after all ...

Oh Canada, oh Canada, off to save the reptiles and the planet by nuking them with SMRs ...

Plenty for a dinkum climate science denialist to sink his teeth into ...

What's that? Oh dear ...

So that's what happens to climate science denialists in their dotage. They turn into free traders, and then they quote reports without links, spraying around quotes such as "one study finds that trade makes us all 27% richer".

Yet when the pond went looking for the study, using that '27% richer' figure, all it found was the same yarn from the Bjorn-again one back on 6th April at some mob called Nation ...

6th April? Talk about stale bread.

Again there was no link ... just this ...

Trade lifts incomes as it allows a nation to specialise and produce effectively what it does best. A study found trade makes us all 27 per cent richer, meaning countries on average have incomes more than a quarter higher than in a world without trade.

It also lifts the world’s poor out of abject poverty. One of the most cited recent studies found the incomes of the poorest 20 per cent grow as fast as the average.

Look at the world’s two most populous nations, China and India. As China’s trade soared, incomes rose seven-fold and extreme poverty declined from 28 per cent to near-zero today.

India has experienced a similar if more muted, trajectory: When tariffs were reduced from a stifling 56 per cent in 1990 to six per cent in 2020, average incomes rose almost four-fold and extreme poverty declined from 22 per cent to 1.8 per cent. The same case in other fast-growing countries, such as South Korea, Chile and Vietnam. Prosperity from trade really is shared

Say what? The reptiles are just regurgitating stale old Bjorn-again link-free, evidence-free pap?

Who would have thunk it?

However the pond was pleasantly surprised to see that there has been a stunning rewrite.

Notice the astonishing variation in the wording from this tired old piece of ancient hackery ...

Little wonder, then, that achieving freer trade is one of the promises world leaders have signed up for with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030. Sadly, the world is failing on these promises. Leaders promised everything to everyone. Having 169 targets is like having none at all. We are at halftime for the SDGs but nowhere near halfway. 

... to this brand new, completely re-written, fresh as a daisy, piece of hackery ...

Two things will be noted in that gobbet. The pumping up of the volume on the wonders of the Bjorn-again consensus,  and the further referencing of a study without a link ... just the usual spray of 'statistics'.

Curiously that was how the ancient piece of hackery ended way back in April ...

The people hurt by free trade should be helped more by governments. But the significant surplus from freer trade not only provides a pot of money for it but also presents a big development opportunity to raise incomes and lift people out of poverty.

The new model also shows who bears the costs and demonstrates why rich countries have cooled most on trade. Because rich countries make up the larger part of the global economy, they gain 60 per cent of the $11 trillion. But they suffer more than 90 per cent of the costs. But while this validates some political concerns, it misses the larger picture: Rich countries gain $7 for every dollar of costs.

And it entirely neglects what an opportunity trade is for the poorer half of the world. Their costs are quite minimal, at $15 billion, but benefits run far beyond $1 trillion. For each dollar of loss, the economists find a phenomenal $95 of long-term benefits, increasing incomes and driving down poverty.

To improve the world, we can’t promise everything. We have to do the most efficient policies first, and more trade turns out to be one of the most amazing ways to deliver better lives and incomes.

There was a new ending for this month's hackery ...see the astonishing re-write ...

 

The pond was only kidding. Same as it ever was, and that's what happens to climate science denialists in their dotage, always willing to throw impressive figures around, without actually bothering to provide a source for the figures ...

Why do the reptiles persist in running this stale bread dressed up as fresh insights? The pond suspects it might be because it's offered up for free.

As for that 27% figure, oddly it led the pond to a wiki on free trade, and there it was, though in not quite the same context. or with the same meaning...

An overwhelming number of people internationally – both in developed and developing countries – support trade with other countries, but are more split when it comes to whether or not they believe trade creates jobs, increases wages, and decreases prices.[33] The median belief in advanced economies is that trade increases wages, with 31 percent of people believing it does, compared to 27 percent who believe it does not. There is a positive relationship of 0.66 between the average GDP growth rate for the years 2014 to 2017 and the percentage of people in a given country that say trade increases wages.[34] 

Ah, but there they have footnotes and links and you can head off via the link to make of them what you will ...

This new Bjorn-again look almost made the pond yearn for some good old-fashioned climate science denialism, which would have made the segue to this day's infallible Pope work a lot better ...