Tuesday, May 16, 2023

In which there's the bleating of the Groaner, and then the bickering of baristas ...

 


With a deep sigh, the pond realised that in its bleating about Monday, it completely forgot about the impending Tuesday, and the bleating of the groaner ... but lo, there she was at the top of the digital edition, along with the reptiles' darkest of bête noires, comrade Dan, and more carry-on and blather about Aboriginal art ...



 

There was simplistic Simon reporting the thoughts of Dan the man too, and more deeming that Deeming was of interest, but when the reptiles insisted that the pond READ THE LETTER, what could it do, but oblige?






That's it? That's all she wrote? The pond did like the "Dear Irrelevant" start to it, but as for the rest ... if that's the best the reptiles can do for a story, then they're doomed ... Four years after Disney windfall, is the Murdoch family ready to sell again?

Sorry, it's behind the Crikey paywall, but you get the drift ...The fall in the Murdoch dynasty's traditional media doesn't augur well for the family business, and the sharemarket seems to be losing patience too.

Better still ...

The sharemarket seems to be losing patience with the residual Murdoch companies. Since early February, shares in News Corp and Fox Corp have fallen about 15%, off the back of what’s been described as “erratic” decision-making — both corporate and personal. 
Lift the lid and the fall in their traditional media is worse. News Corp increasingly looks like a holding company for digital real estate assets — 61.5% of Australia’s REA Group, as well as Move in the US. (A sale of Move for US$3 billion fell through in February.) While News shares have gone down, REA Group has kept going up — another 10% in the past three months. 

Idle real estate dreaming set aside, the pond had no alternative but to get on with the groaning, even though Dame Groan groaning about immigration seems to be as tough a slog as Finnegan's Wake ...






The pond gets it. The pond yearns for the simple pleasures of the 1950s, when only the right sort of migrants were let in, though it seems these days the Ten-pound poms are still moaning and starring in TV shows ...

The pond understands that there might be trouble with housing, but Erwin Schrödinger gifted Kudelka with a solution ...







Okay, okay, it's just because the pond has heard this groaning so many times before ...






The pond gets it. Dame Slap is having yet another Alice moment, besieged and threatened by a pack of incoming ...






If only she could relax and enjoy the kerbside moment ...







Sorry, the pond finds it hard when all Dame Groan can offer is fear dressed up as analysis ...





Not to mention the garbos the pond sees of a morning. They look like shady foreign types ... though the pond is pleased that someone wants to take away the garbage ... because it hasn't noticed Dame Groan or the lizards of Oz volunteering for the gig ...

But the pond gets it, Dame Groan really wants to make sure nobody is left behind and everybody can afford shares in Santos ...








And as the marching band departs, so does the bleating, with a short final gobbet ...





Yea, stopping the boats good, no room for any bleeding heart crap here ...

And so to the search for a bonus ...






Sheesh, not a good line up. Just more ancient Troy, more on Aboriginal art, more on the Navy, and more on bloody migrants, breeding like rabbits, and making out on welfare like bandits ...

The pond became desperate and even tried the business section ...





Dammit, after the Caterist had explained all the good reasons for nuking the country yesterday, and still Bowen doesn't get it, and the liar from the Shire wanting to do a dance with PwC ... and that's it?

And that's how the pond ended up with lawyers fussing and feuding and fighting, in a most genteel way, even though the pond usually red cards anything to do with the voice ... and even as the reptiles had raised the spectre of the voice being used to veto mining ... because when you haven't got anything much, you've always got fear ...




Oh dear... he liked the barristers and baristas joke, what to say about lawyers and their desiccated coconut sensa huma ...

That noted, the pond did enjoy that snap of men in wigs, and thought for a moment it might be worth cutting out and sending to a southern GOP member, just to see the fainting at the sight of people putting on wigs ... a Dame Edna moment if you will ...

Then the reptiles did their best to ruin everything with a giant sized snap, immediately cut down to size ...







Sorry, you need to have a better mug to make the pond's giant size category ... and now on with more lawyerly argumentation and disputation ...


 



It sounds incredibly dreary when Wilcox has already established that everything's fine ...








Exactly. The pond once made a donation and helped stop a freeway outside the front door in its tracks. Another fine democratic moment ... as a listicle looms, but luckily there are only two propositions, and so in good faith, and with eloquence, the number shall be two ...






And at this point, the pond was won over, because the reptiles ran a very large shot of people not just in wigs, but in scarlet frocks, with a Santa Clause fringe on top...

Some might call them gowns, but frocks will do, and it's a sight that would terrify Ron DeSanctus, Guv. Abbott and the whole GOP ...







Now that's the sort of meaningless reptile snap, with meaningless reptile explanation attached, that the pond can get behind, and run large ...

What's it got to do with bickering baristas, or even feuding barristers? 

The pond doesn't have a clue, as befrocked and bewildered by the feuding baristas, the pond heads to the last gobbet ...





Well yes, but might the pond humbly propose to the good barista that if he'd just called the learned Hayes K.C. a tedious bleating barista much time could have been saved ... and if it would have helped shorten the whole thing, the pond might have even given up the splendid sight of judges in gowns ...

As the pond packed up for the day, the pond did wonder what had happened to old favourites. 

Where's Killer, or the bromancer or Lloydie of the Amazon on a slow day? Lloydie hasn't been seen or heard since the 19th of April, so it's almost a month, and meanwhile the BOM conspiracy marches on ...

The bromancer hasn't been sighted since 9th May when he talked of his gassing ... though to be fair, it was on 13th May that Killer reminded the pond of a spectre designed to send shudders through Dame Groan ...

The US problem should be a ­reminder to the new Labor government in Canberra not to repeat the mistakes of Rudd and Gillard years in rhetoric or policy.
Already, the number of known arrivals on boats to Australia, mainly from Sri Lanka, has leapt to 250 people since the federal election last year, after a long period of no arrivals at all.

Sheesh, Killer, keep up, they're coming by plane ... quick, talk to Dame Groan ...

Never mind, the pond has a deep faith that the bromancer and Lloydie of the Amazon will be baaack, like Johnny ...

As for what's been happening in the real world? Not a clue, though the infallible Pope did hint of some movement at the Thai station ...





19 comments:

  1. Joanna Pangapoulos describing Deeming’s removal as “hexpulsion”. Pesutto would certainly see Deeming as a curse. Perhaps a Freudian slip by JP. Chuckle.

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    1. Well a 'hex' is by way of being a witchy spell, and it's also the name for the numerical system based on 12 instead of 10, and there's also the 'colour codes':
      "Color-hex gives information about colors including color models (RGB,HSL,HSV and CMYK), Triadic colors, monochromatic colors and analogous colors calculated in color page."
      https://www.color-hex.com/

      And yes, it could just be another (lack of) subediting failure, so take your pick.

      Delete
  2. Touché Anony, in other words Deeming has been hex-spelled...

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  3. Often wondered why The Pond's choices, Gerard, Judith, Henry and Nick are so verbose ( thanks for those "last gobbet" interjections so I know the end is nigh). Is it because they are paid per word? To heck with the content, get the word count up.
    However, perhaps they're not writing for the money, it's the life style. There's a current vacancy for a News Reporter at Surry Hills.
    "What’s in it for you? Based in our lively Surry Hills office in Sydney, there’s an on-site gym, and plenty of restaurants, cafes and bars nearby to keep your work/life balance healthy."
    Oh dear, fancy sitting in The Shakespeare and encountering Gerard or Henry or Judith. Last gobbets please.

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    1. Talking about 'paid by the word', back in 1964 (I vaguely remember) I did a year of Science Russian at Melb. Uni. The lecturer was a Pole (Richard Zatorski by name), so according to some folks I knew, I spoke Russian (what little I could speak) with a Polish accent.

      But the point of the course was not to speak Russian, but to translate Russian scientific articles and papers and such. Which we could sorta do (I did pass the course). But then one day, our lecturer gave us a recent item to translate which everyone in the class had problems with. Then he explained: "The Russian scientists are paid by the word for their publications, so there's a lot of verbiage in that paper that really shouldn't be there." Oh ... 'paid by the word ...' it all made much more sense after that.

      Maybe there should be a U3A course in 'translating' reptile-ese ? A work of love, of course, no money in it.

      Delete
  4. As a former public servant who over the years drafted more items of dull, routine Ministerial correspondence than I wish to remember, I can only share your “that’s it?” to that letter Dictator Dan sought to hide from the crusading Reptiles, DP. It would take a David Flint or an Alan Jones to consider it “controversial”; I suspect the average punter’s reaction would be “meh”. Was it accompanied by frenzied Reptile commentary, or is that to come? Or is it possible even they realised it was too much of a damp squib to generate outrage? Hopefully it cost News a fortune in FOI costs to obtain it.

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    1. But they have David Flints and Alan Joneses by the dozen, Anony, it's no trouble for them at all.

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  5. So the Dame makes it clear - yet again - that she doesn’t like those damn foreigners. Who’d have guessed it? Given that “Ten Pound Poms” show seems to have revived memories of Whinging Poms (at least in the Grudian), perhaps we need an equivalent category of Whinging Economists? Nice sneer at Treasury economists, though - no doubt they lack the qualifications to secure cushy seats on company boards. I bet most of them could put a graph together, though…

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  6. The Dame doesn't use one of the strong arguments against immigration, that each immigrant increases emissions when they come here - our emissions per capita are among the highest in the world (Oi! Oi! OI!) so a person moving here will increase emissions overall. I reckon an argument like that is too close to "climate change affects everything" which is prohibited by the Oz Style Guide.
    Incidentally, has anyone started a book on the chances of Tanya Plibersek not standing at the next election?

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    1. And every single one of them breathes out litres of CO2 every day and night, too, thereby increasing the amount in close proximity to our native fauna.

      But Tanya ? That hadn't dawned on me at all, but now you bring it up I guess it's a distinct possibility - she isn't going to make it to be PM after all.

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  7. Oh, it is hard to maintain a cult when the object of veneration is fading away - as Dame Groan seems to be. The only part of her contribution for this day was to focus on the casual use of metaphors. While Achilles had just the one dubious heel, it seems a government can have several. The meaning usually associated with Achilles' mum is that she left him with a weak point that would lead to his downfall. Perhaps our Dame used this reference to support the Sky News meme that Mr Potato's speech last week had reinvigorated his side of politics, and set them up to march right back into government. Except that she has the current government needing to overcome its heel problems by getting on the front foot.

    She has students unable to cut the mustard, although we might take that, again, as invoking metaphor. I have borrowed from a BBC site interesting suggestion for the origin of that term - more interesting than the Dame's passing use of it -

    WHEN MUSTARD was one of the main crops in East Anglia, it was cut by hand with scythes, in the same way as corn. The crop could grow up to six feet high and this was very arduous work, requiring extremely sharp tools. When blunt they "would not cut the mustard". All this and everything else you could ever want to know about mustard can be found at the Mustard Museum in Norwich.

    Phil Pegum, Stretton, Cheshire (phil.pegum@bbc.co.uk)

    And special visas? My local federal member - and leader of the Nats - identified himself with a special agricultural visa, for the immediate benefit of Nats., back when he was supposedly in a position to deliver on that. Except he did not land one - count 'em, not one - holder of that visa category, in over 18 months of frenzied action, So Littleproud has taken up the Trump style in interviews - last week, in, yet again, criticising everything to do with the facility the Wagner family built at Wellcamp to process such workers, he said that, for all the expenditure, it had been occupied by less than 100 people. Actual number, during the Covid period of restriction, was 750, but - we know about Nats' arithmetic. Put a levy on producers for biosecurity, and expect your lamb roast to cost $1000 in no time at all.

    And the Dame is doing nothing to polish standards of numeracy in the Limited News/Sky/IPA/MRC lemniscate.

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    1. Oh, I started drafting a comment myself referencing Achille's famous heel, but got distracted, Chad, so you got in first. But I might as well post it here anyway:

      So off she goes on a reptile hexhunt, The Groany: "One of Labor's achilles heels is the surging rate of immigration. The numbers are truly staggering." Now this is exactly where the Holely Henry should interpolate with the information that Achilles only had one achilles heel, not "one of" many. And that actually getting to Achilles required some very accurate work with a spear. Do the wingnuts have either the spear or the skill to afflict Labor ?

      But really the question is whether Groany et al simply don't understand the meaning of "immigration" or whether they're just gratuitously lying again. Or both. A considerable portion of what Groany and the Reptiles is claiming as "immigration" is simply temporary residents (students, seasonal workers, backpackers etc) who are returning to Australia in numbers since the Covid lockout is well and truly over.

      Now Pondians, and indeed most normal minded Australians, understand that perfectly well and know that it has very little impact on whether or not we get a "Big Australia". And that is doubtless why:
      Guardian Essential poll: Labor maintains large lead over Coalition despite budget failing to impress voters
      https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/16/guardian-essential-poll-labor-maintains-large-lead-over-coalition-despite-budget-failing-to-impress-voters

      "the Ten-pound poms are still moaning and starring in TV shows ..." Pst, DP, they're whinging poms and apparently at least 1/4 of them whinged their way back to the UK. And maybe that's part of why the UK has been such a disaster ever since then - self-selected to be gormless and feckless (and oh what joy to bring those two words together again).

      Oh but hang on: "The real story is this: the number of permanent visas being granted is swamped by the number of temporary visas, which are uncapped. In any case, many of those who secure permanent visas already have temporary ones and are living here, so no net change there." Oh ok, it was just a typical reptile suck-in to get us all worked up about how soon there just won't be any living space left in Australia. Well done, Groany.

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  8. Now here's a little Groany something: "It [immigration numbers] must become deliberate government policy." Oh yeah, another Coalition failure that Labor will be blamed for. "Even the Reserve Bank has mentioned the inflation spurred by the high rates of immigration." It has ? When ? And why hasn't it been mentioned over the years of Coalition government: Australia's population was 23,111,782 in 2013 and was 26,177,413 in 2022: that is an increase of just over 3 million in 9 years, or 1/3rd of a million increase per year. So what happened to all of the inflation caused by that ? Continuing: "In turn, this [rates of immigration] could lead to further hike in interest rates." Not if we get rid of Phil Lowe, it won't

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  9. GB - we did have Jeff Kennett on 'Sky' - I think last night, but recently anyway - with his brain snap that what this country needs is for everyone, from age 20, to do a year or two of 'national service'. Could be in any of the armed services, or there could be other organisations set up for them to do useful work to build the nation. As ever, Jeff was making a lot of it up as he went along - one year or two? which service? - decisions, decisions - to be delegated to minions to sort out.

    His reason for putting this forward (although it seems to have caused not a ripple elsewhere in Reptile media) was not primarily to boost cannon fodder, nah - he put it along the lines of 'too many of our young people are absorbed in their social media, and other trivial diversions, and need a touch of character building.'

    Still - if our Dame is set nigh implacably against immigration - whichever metric she chooses - we may yet hear her singing from the Kennett hymn sheet. The Salvation Army becomes the Inflation Army.

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    1. I was one of the lucky ones, Chad: too young for the old Menzies' 3 month compulsory 'nasho' stint on turning 18, and too old for the Vietnam raffle. Thankfully.

      But as I recall, 3 months for every 18yo (except those relative few whose well-to-do daddies could arrange a lifetime deferment) was dropped because it was just way too costly for poor little Australia to afford. Now 2 years for every 18yo (except those many whose well-to-do daddies can arrange a lifetime deferment) is going to be even more costly by a large margin.

      But there was a period of some kind of 'nasho'in the US back in the Vetnam days, I seem to recall. I wonder how that worked (apart from promoting a lot of emigration to Canada at the time) - how much did that cost the USA every year ?

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    2. GB - almost nostalgia - I had my papers in for 'nasho' when the Mighty Ming had his panic election campaign. I had no regrets at all - was constructing a course at university that could not easily adapt to the demands of the military. I did rather rue the time I had put into school cadets on the understanding that that made it more likely that one could ease into a cushier designation for actual nasho. Oh, and around Brisbane the real battles of that time were on weekends, between bodgies and nashos; the two tribes being readily distinguished by their haircuts, even if the nashos were in civvies.

      Further observation on 'cadets' in a public high school - we regularly took home fully operational .303s for various reasons, and I don't recall a single mass shooting happening as a result. But, in the 50s, American gun culture was still a work in progress with the NRA. Perhaps Aussie lads were closer to that 'well regulated militia' that our cousins across the waters choose not to read out when they proclaim their 'second amendment rights.'

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    3. Fortunately, the secondary school of which I was one of about 180 or so foundation members was in the upper middle class Melbourne suburb of Brighton so no 'cadets' because we can't have everyone as an officer (not that I was ever 'upper' middle class - I was barely even 'middle class at all').

      And I do remember the street gangs and the 'bodgies' (plus their attendant 'widgies') and the 'long haired louts' that they picked fights with - not that I was one of either.

      Of course this was some time after the original 'pushes' (more a Sydney than a Melbourne phenomena, I believe) but we did have our 'wogs' (mainly Greek IIRC).

      Oh yes, all our glorious yesterdays.

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    4. And later came the Rockers and the Jazzers as well.

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  10. "Where's Killer, or the bromancer or Lloydie of the Amazon on a slow day?" And the 'orrible Oreo disappeared without trace. Didn't even have the Grace to give us a farewell post.

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