An exceptionally quiet, dull and tedious day at the lizard Oz, and so at the pond, and perhaps the world is the better for it, but the pond misses the squawking of the loons ...
The pond had expected the reptiles to come out all guns blazing in support of the master of NO, but there was simply no excuse provided by them to lead with an immortal Rowe, so the pond did it anyway ...
Perhaps even the reptiles realise that he's beyond a joke ... though the pond was touched by the tatt details ...
Such is life, always in the details, and that Neddism and the British flag and memories of black knights and purple dames struck a chord with the pond, as it looked at the day's lizard Oz offerings ...
John """ Abbot of the IPA and his war with the BOM, and even worse, a big snap of him with Jennifer Marohasy?
Nope, the pond has dedicated far too much time to climate science denialism ... not even Media Watch pretending that ACMA thrashing loon Rowan Dean with a warm lettuce leave meant something could change the pond's mind, though the pond will confess that Dean's celebration of an "astrometeorologist", aka humbug corporate astrologer, had slipped the pond's mind ...
As for simplistic "no conflict of interest here" Simon, he's a regular pass, as is Monsieur Dupont's musings on the war with China. The pond will allow no rivals to the bromancer.
That left the usual groaning, and a reminder of vile priests, and ancient Troy, and the pond wondered if it should break with tradition and embrace Troy, though it almost felt positively Graudian, as if the pond had stumbled across a Zoe Williams column headed The pledge of allegiance to the king is nonsense – and seems designed to incense everyone.
The reptiles going full Graudian? Well it was a novelty and so something to see ...
It seems to have escaped ancient Troy that elsewhere in the lizard Oz digital edition, the "Editor's Picks" had offered up this monstrous snap and bonus stupidity ...
It seemed both ancient Troy and Zoe had missed the point of the fun, because she too was rabbiting on about how silly it is ...
...This is why, had anyone asked me, I would have advised against inviting Britons to swear an oath of allegiance during the coronation ceremony. It will be known as the Homage of the People, either for hashtag purposes or for the annals of history, should anyone wish to mention it in the future, which I don’t think we will.
“I swear that I will pay true allegiance to your majesty,” we’re meant to say, “and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God.” Across the country, in pubs where people previously drank together in peace, on sofas where marriages rubbed along perfectly well, people will give voice to this absurd word salad; a great chorus will go up from those of us who have been silent for years.
No, I’m sorry, this is ridiculous. What does “true allegiance” even entail? How would it differ from false allegiance? According to which law? I mean, sure, I’m happy not to murder you or steal your stuff, if those are the kinds of laws you are talking about. If the successor is different from an heir, does this mean I’m swearing allegiance to someone who might hypothetically depose you? If so, do you have any concerns about the quality of my allegiance? Which god? This is nonsense!
The people who are in the middle of swearing the oath will be incensed. Nobody likes to be called ridiculous at the best of times, but it’s uniquely painful when you are mid-oath. There you are, suspending your disbelief, committing to the moment, and someone you thought you could trust – at least enough to share some salt and vinegar McCoy’s with – is trying to burst your bubble. There will be tears after this homage. There will be people who miss the bit where the crown goes on his head because they are too busy arguing – a once-in-a-lifetime moment, eclipsed for ever by discord.
But surely each can pay true allegiance in their own way?
The pond had hoped to vow "I swear that I will pay true allegiance to talking tampons, so help me god, and with god's help, may the tampon have heirs and successors, and be filthy rich to boot ..."
Meanwhile, Troy was trying his best to channel Zoe and sound very Graudian...
No, no, ancient Troy, did you just say you personally admire King Chuck?
How is it possible to admire a talking tampon? Has the full range of his fruitloop nuttery escaped you? (Warning, News Corp link).
It would have been much better if you'd slipped into Zoe's "don't care" column ...
...Republicanism, meanwhile, is a perfectly respectable creed with sound logical foundations – or at least it used to be respectable, before the fever of fake patriotism that either caused or was caused by Brexit. But that leaves a huge mulch of us who genuinely don’t care. Pollsters represent us in grey on their bar charts, as if there is something colourless and drab, maybe a bit depressed, about the “don’t care” position.
I find this weirdly insulting. I don’t care about Coachella, either, or Formula One, or the private lives of strangers. This is because I’m an adult, not a baby, and that is how I want to be represented on a bar chart, whatever the colour for “adult, not baby” is.
We are good for social cohesion, though, because we are very unreactive. Royalists and republicans get into scraps; they clash about their core position and have other, satellite arguments, about Prince Harry and Princess Michael of Kent and primogeniture and taxpayers’ money. I don’t think I have had an argument about the royal family since the 1980s, and even then I was just sharpening my blades for other, more important, arguments – about animal vivisection and whether or not feminists should shave their pits.
Well yes, shaving is much more to the point as an issue, and then ancient Troy had to ruin everything by being ageist ...
75? According to Chairman Rupert 92 is the new 50 ... and as for the wealth issue, can't we just leave that to cartoonists?
Even worse, the reptiles decided they had to work in a snap of the rag, as if all that monarchist carry on had just been a bad dream ...
What on earth has a snap of Patrick O'Brien at the Constitutional Convention got to do with anything?
So long ago, so forgotten though there's a pdf of a report on the proceedings here for anyone that cares (warning, direct download). Talk about an irrelevant wander down a useless memory lane ...
This was where that cunning rat, little Johnny, and the enormous stupidity and incompetence of Malware has left us, not to mention the reptiles and their devotion to Flinty and his specious nonsense, and now suddenly we should forget the treachery, and betrayal, and care? Put the pond in the 'don't care' column ...
And what then for the infallible Pope? What will he have to cartoon about?
Time to shine, beezle-nut oil, and can years of noble tradition just be flushed down the drain, and all the memories lost to time?
And so to the groaning, and the pond has absolutely no interest in it, but Dame Groan has her devotees and so it must be done ...
The pond will concede that the reptiles did their best to help with the angertainment by slipping in not just one, but two shots of the satanic beast himself in the first gobbet, but the pond felt itself more shaken than stirred ...
Meanwhile, Dame Groan is fine, no need to worry about her, and she's on the watch for bloody women off to play bridge or tennis or drink coffee or whatever else they do in Vaucluse and Toorak ...
And so to meet a few of the harridans causing all the fuss and the ruckus ... the usual suspects, possibly wanting to argue about the shaving of pits ...
Indeed, indeed, single parents are best served by working and serving as a role model - you too can get a job in a fast food outlet and enjoy all the benefits of child care while working ...
Sorry, a good groaning always leaves the pond a little light-headed, but luckily there's only a gobbet to go ... with a deep sighing and groaning about single mums, from a great and lofty height ...
Or perhaps they might end up offending Dame Groan, valiant supporter of the right for women to own shares in Santos, acquired from the pin money they put in the jar after a solid day serving hamburgers ...
And so to a closing cartoon, and having used up the Rowe and Pope of the day, and with the reptiles thinking Tuckyo is now a long-faded memory, why not turn to Tom Tomorrow for a reminder?
I'm sure Tones will be given a voice in The Australian before the month is out. After all it's natural that he should be suffering ego deprivation syndrome, having been dumped as leader and so denied a voice by his own party and then dumped by his electorate and so denied a voice even as a member of parliament, let alone PM, and being denied any chance of a comeback when he'd only had a voice to run the country where he gave all his cabinet ministers a voice via Credlin. So it was indeed a scandal that he was again denied a voice so that he could deny Australia's First People's a voice.
ReplyDeleteWell he's gotta do something to make himself as famous again as he was when he banned RU486 (aka mifepristone) doesn't he ? He'll never, ever get a say again unless he's famous, will he.
Delete"the pond, as it looked at the day's lizard Oz offerings ..." And here's one:
ReplyDeleteChrissie Foster: "The rape and sexual assault of children is a worldwide problem, especially in the Catholic Church, as other countries are discovering." Whatever could she mean ? Are the Catholics being naughty in China, India, Thailand, Russia, Indonesia ... ?
And otherwise, is that an actionable libel ?
There is hint of good news - pleasant change - in the accessible layout for this day’s Flagship. Specifically ‘No project safe from the axe: Coalition’. Given that National Deputy Gidget is zipping around the country crying the same message, perhaps it might have appealed to the Benson (who is still displayed with the smirking image), but currently it is carried by a Jess Malcolm.
ReplyDeleteMight I cite, again, a piece of alleged ‘infrastructure’, that displays Nationals’ agrarian kleptocracy at its unreasoned best. There is a proposal around here for a dam, which is supposed to boost horticultural industry. Essentially, it is to store - not capture, just store - up to 12 gigalitres, for the near-exclusive use of around 8 farm businesses. Initial cost was projected at $84 000 000. About a year ago, it became obvious that that was waaaaaay short of reality, so, just a couple of weeks before last year’s election, the Coalition ‘allotted’ another $168 000 000 to this project.
So - a quarter of a billion bucks to store - not capture, remember - store - 12 gigalitres. The annual draw off would be about half of that, based on historic rainfall records. An outlay of about $40 000 000 per useable gigalitre, to grow industrial tomatoes and capsicums. And these people talk about ‘business plans’.
As ever, the standard Nationals business plan is to get someone else - taxpayers elsewhere in the country - to pay for it. To those folk I say - you can feel good about never seeing this ‘project’ advance any further.
Store but not capture - how do they replace the annually consumed 6gl then ? Pipes ? Artificial channel to a reservoir that does capture ? But anyway, I like tomatoes and capsicums, though by "industrial tomatoes" do you mean they're destined for tomato sauce (which I also like) ? Or even just tomato soup ?
DeleteThere is not 12 gigalitres available for further allocation in the Severn River catchment, as part of the entire Murray Darling water budget. During earlier days with the Coalition in power in Canberra, various Nationals, from Barnaby down, were giving the wink that there might be a bit of, er, fiddling with that budget - but, of course, they were giving the wink all along the Murray Darling. One stated hint was that that 'useless' water for environmental purposes should be redirected to what they termed productive use. As we understand what the current Minister is saying, and writing, the corporation formed to set up the project (and keep governments at some arms length; even the dullest Nats could see that it was never going to fulfil its business plan) would have to buy most of that entitlement through brokers, in the market. Yes, the dam would effectively capture, but water that was otherwise supposed to go downstream, into the established market.
DeleteThe local council - essentially Nats. at coffee break - resolved to add some of the town water allocation to the total - apparently at no charge. This from a town that was trucking in its daily water from Warwick a couple of years ago - as seen on national television.
Happily we are entirely self-sufficient for water on our place.
Yes, what we call 'industrial' tomatoes go into cans as whole tomatoes, or are rendered down to sauce. The area already produces large quantities, on long-term contract to the processors. One of the largest producers of two years back has gone completely broke because he was buying water on the market, but at prices that meant he lost money on every tonne of tomatoes trucked out. He kept producing because, if you do not deliver on your contract in one year - you lose your place in the allocation queue next year, and have to hope you can get in on the end of that queue. The actual tomatoes are dreadful things. You would never contemplate slicing one for a fresh sandwich, and we suspect they are pressure-cooked by the processors. Certainly conventional cooking does not convert them into anything you would eat by choice.
The capsicums are different - almost all go to fresh markets. They are labour intensive, with about half of what is on the bushes at any one 'pick' being left on the ground, because having slight blemish, or actually fully-ripe, so don't transport well.
Tomatoes not good enough for soup then, only for tins or sauce. Yeah, capsicums would be a bit variable, and they are only suitable for 'fresh able' - unless someone can point me to capsicum sause or capsicum soup.
DeleteThe water thing has been running in one way or another for a long time now. From what I can gather the country folk are tending to be in two minds: one lot are just "let's not waste good water on the environment: while others seem to be seeing a 'merge' with the environment as a very good thing. But they still all - or at least most - still seem to vote for the old-fashioned Littleprouds of the world. Though at least Barnaby seems to be slowly fading out of awareness, thankfully.
Yes, your water self-sufficiency must be a great relief, all things considered.
In the early stages of developing the Murray Darling plan, extensive studies showed that the major economic benefit to towns along the rivers came from tourism, not primary production. Rusted-on Nats. responded by public burnings of those documents, and rhetoric at town meetings along the lines of 'Ya can't tell me that what someone does for fun is more important than what I do for a living.' I could readily agree with that - ya could not tell them where their real economic interests lay.
DeleteThe other aspect of environmental flows is that, in low seasons, if you have bought water from the market, and you live somewhere down the system, you need flow to carry your allocation to the intakes at your property. Well, nobody is likely to make a profit of their particular rural industry if they have to pay to have multi-megalitres carried down the system in road tankers.
Nats pollies, who claim to be qualified as accountants (Barnaby) or even, gasp, economists - Canavan - are actually old-style mercantilists of the kind that set Adam Smith off on his study of 'The Wealth of Nations'.
Oh, Barnaby and Canavan: now there's a couple of names to conjure with. The temptation is to apply a judgement that came from a once colleague of mine: "Have you ruled out stupidity ?" and it is tempting to see them in those terms. But really, it's just good old-fashioned self-interested greed that countenances no objections.
DeleteOur Dame’s proclivity towards Calvinism - as set out by John Calvin about half a millennium back, not the much more widely read philosopher for whom Bill Watterson was amanuensis - is never far away, is it?
ReplyDeleteSo she identifies ‘a real danger’ in loosening or abolishing the activity test for women - that some might leave their children to play tennis, have coffee or engage in other dissipations. Yep, that is a considerable ‘danger’ to our culture.
Of course, our Dame is ever consistent. A bit before Covid appeared, she emitted great groanings about trying to get a coffee in Melbourne on a weekend. Her extensive survey of why this was not readily available (as I recall, she spoke to the proprietor of one coffee dispensary - that counts as an extensive survey to reptile writers) brought up the information that it was all down to those dreadful weekend penalty rates, which were destroying the entire coffee’n’cupcake industry.
The groan for this day cites another ‘danger’ (keep the readers in fear and trembling - they really lap it up) - is that childcare centres are short of staff, and adds the accelerant ‘risk’ that fees will rise. It is all too dreadful to contemplate, and all arising out of indulgent women who might take the odd bit of exercise, or try to find a coffee, mayhap on a weekday.
Staff shortage - completely insoluble problem, because we must not consider allowing suitably qualified persons to come in as migrants. ’Tis a wonder she did not add that as a collateral ‘danger’.
This seems to be part of a cyclic theme with reptiles. Cory Bernardi traducing a student a few days back for saying that she was finding it difficult to survive. To Cory, this reeked of a sense of ‘entitlement’. Said the man who spent something like 4 years touring the world to compete in amateur rowing, sustained apparently by government funding to support various sports, topped-up from the family’s extensive holdings in the Adelaide pub/club scene. Then on, I think, Sunday night, Amanda Stoker was demonstrating that we need have no unemployment, because current job vacancies are around 430 000, long-term unemployed also total something over 400 000 - what could be simpler? Remove those Centrelink payments, and those unemployed will soon fill those vacancies. Next problem?
Possibly the Stoker still cannot figure out why the voters in Queensland - Queensland, mind you, did not deliver her enough votes for her to remain in the Senate, particularly after her outstanding performance in the time she had been nominated to fill a casual vacancy.
Thanks for that Chad, you've saved me from wasting time trying to think of something even vaguely worth saying.
DeleteBut anyway, on something more meaningful, you are familiar with 'Calvin and Hobbes and his daughter Bacon' ?
https://www.shellydurkee.com/2011/05/14/calvin-and-hobbes-and-his-daughter-bacon/
GB - thank you for introducing me to Bacon. Looking around, I see that she is not exclusive to Ms Durkee, although Ms D has an interesting reading list for one who seems to write a lot about God.
DeleteWhen I first encountered them (Calvin plus Bacon) back some few years ago now, it was on the site of the 'creators' - the brothers Heyerman at https://www.pantsareoverrated.com/comics/2021/02/ and the idea was they were kind of hoping somebody - or even maybe Watterson himself - would pick it up and run with it.
DeleteNo such luck - Watterson is a really hard act to follow - and Ms Durkee's site was the first that came up when I did a quick search and I didn't explore her reading list. Maybe I should have, just for the 'human interest'.
So, some 'ancient Troy' to enjoy: "Yet Welby believes this represents a modernisation of the ceremony because the King's subjects around the world will be able to watch and respond as one in real time." And so it is because he's quite right, we've never been able to do that before. So how many loyal subjects worldwide will be doing it ? I mean it's pretty much just us Aussies, Nzedders and Canadians that are true 'subjects' nowadays, isn't it ?
ReplyDelete