In which the pond does a few detours before settling down with the hole in the bucket man to gibber about Gibbon, with cackling Claire offering indulgences as a bonus ...

 

Sorry, the Robodebt saga will happen later in the day, and that thread is a thread for another time, and the pond doubts it will ever get is threads on, just as it rarely seeks out the company of twits ...

Meanwhile, every so often the pond is reminded by Crikey that there's a whole world out there that the pond misses out on because it spends its time with the fluff-gathering performed by the navel gazing reptiles at the lizard Oz.

Not the serious stuff of the Maeve McGregor kind, The pernicious long shadow of Scott Morrison (paywall), despite the tempting hook, The political reaction to Gladys Berejiklian’s fall from grace reveals something sinister about Morrison’s enduring legacy.

Sure it's good to read, but the pond always knew there was something deeply sinister and weird about the clap happy, Hillsong-started-by-a-pedophile-loving SloMo.

No, the pond was thinking of a lighter offering of the kind offered by Charlie Lewis in Peak AFR: in a single day paper launches ‘prestige’ watch fair and argues CEOs aren’t paid enough.

Of course Charlie went to print a little too early to catch the latest news about the AFR, which featured a racist cartoon, which the keen Matt Kean dubbed a throwback to the Jim Crow era of the deep south. (Graudian away).

Naturally Warren Mundine lined up to defend it, but he should have checked first with the onion muncher, who quickly rowed off into the distance. (The pond doesn't intend to show the ad, but for those who missed it, the ABC ran it here). 

Always phone home to the mothership Warren, and find out your marching orders.

The pond only ever visits the AFR to check on the latest Rowe, necessary now that Twitter is a strange land - himself in trouble back in June 2020 - but Lewis reminded the pond of what it was missing with this opening:

The Australian Financial Review occasionally wears the reputation of being a paper for people with names like Plutus P Moneyfellows, who wouldn’t feed what your family eats at Christmas to the hounds on their estate, who are so infuriated by the thought of baristas getting weekend penalty rates that their top hat simply flies off their head, landing in the caviar holder and comically splattering their dinner guests. There are days when this seems unfair. And then there are days like yesterday ...

Then he got stuck into it. There are copious links to justify his homework, but that's a reason you need to head off to Crikey. 

The pond will simply skim the rancid surface:

While Australia struggles with a cost of living crisis, as housing and childcare services slip from the grasp of normal people, support services are maxed out and supermarkets brace for increased shoplifting of basic food items, the AFR snorted the headline “Why CEOs should be paid more” into the back of its throat and hocked it into readers’ faces.Perhaps feeling that the bandaid was off, that same day the paper also announced it was launching “Australia’s first prestige watch fair”. Finally, a chance for people who somehow unaccountably sleep at night to spend the equivalent of a house deposit on something that tells you what time it is, and a chance to remind Australia that the Fin not only has a watch editor, but his name is Bani McSpedden and he’s of the view that such an event was not just necessary, but overdue. It called to mind a few of the paper’s other greatest hits:

• Former New South Wales housing minister Pru Goward using the organ to share her views on “harnessing” the poor, citing non-specific “social workers” who “despair” at the working class’ “appalling housework, neglect of their children and, notably, their sharp and unrepentant manner when told to lift their game”. Notably.
• James P Gorman, the Australian head of Morgan Stanley, telling the gathered luminaries at the Fin‘s business summit in Sydney to “get greedy when everybody else is scared … Right now, everybody’s scared — there are opportunities”, while outside, the city flooded.
• The piece marvelling at all the “new skills” CEOs were mastering, thanks to the COVID-19 lockdowns, including mowing the lawn.
• And the last time it argued (in an editorial) that CEOs deserve huge pay rises because they were so good for Australia. Bonus points for relying on PwC as an authority.

It's fair to say that the pond cacked itself, and it turned towards the Friday lizard Oz feeling uplifted. Perhaps at some future point there could be a postgraduate degree studying the AFR's patronising devotion to the worst of capitalism. And bonus points for Crikey for the fun ... and it's only by coincidence that a little later down the page cackling Claire will consider offering indulgences ...

Meanwhile, as the almost forgotten Colbert used to say, what had started as a top of the digital page feature had quickly dropped down the lizard Oz charts ... but the pond decided to go there, at least for the first bit of this IPA good news, nuke the country to save the planet, story ...

The pond decided it wouldn't get it involved, but did wonder what the mother ship might have to say, and sure enough, there was Jennifer Hiller in the WSJ on 18th April 2002 under the header Utilities Want to Convert Coal Plants to Nuclear; Skeptics Abound, scribbling furiously States and utilities are looking at placing small nuclear reactors at former coal plants, but the technology and economics remain unproven (sorry, the pond doesn't link to News Corp stories, what with paywalls and the rest).

Unproven? Say what? And in just a little over a year they've been proven and Captain Potato has taken up the running?

Luckily Hiller provided a couple of notes about Captain Potato's IPA brain spurt (so many emissions, so little time). There was this helpful note from Jennifer ...

U.S. utilities and startup firms are trying to convince lawmakers, regulators and customers that they can convert aging coal power plants to house small nuclear reactors, a so-far unproven way to deliver electricity.
The burgeoning idea would place fleets of small, modular nuclear reactors at or near former coal-fired power plants and is taking hold across the electricity industry. Utility companies see it as a way to repurpose coal plants they are set to retire and are joining with startups developing the reactors, looking to tap into billions of dollars in federal funding.
Following lobbying efforts by industry, lawmakers in more than a dozen states this year are considering legislation that would open the door to coal-to-nuclear conversions.
Dozens of small-modular-reactor developers globally are testing designs, and Russia has two SMRs producing electricity, though they took years longer to deliver than expected. There are no SMRs making electricity in the U.S., and none under construction. At the earliest, U.S. reactors could be available later this decade. Supporters say the smaller-scale reactors could prove cheaper and faster to build than their massive predecessors; skeptics say the effort is a gamble on a technology with unproven economics.
The sales pitch is that mini-nuclear reactors could tie into existing transmission lines and electric substations, while former coal-plant workers could retrain to operate small nuclear plants, saving jobs and the local tax base. Nuclear fission can generate energy without greenhouse-gas emissions, and unlike other technologies such as solar, it can do so 24 hours a day.
Even proponents concede it is far from certain that the smaller reactors can be built faster and cheaper than existing nuclear plants.
“For us that may be the most important question, and one that should be asked and discussed openly,” said Jeff Lyash, chief executive of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which oversees power generation for a large part of the mid-South....

And there was this, more hesitations and uncertainties, and in the mother ship of the Murdochian empire ...

...Doug Hunter, chief executive of Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, a consortium of mostly city-owned utilities in Western states, said microreactors would complement renewables. UAMPS is working with developer NuScale Power LLC to develop SMRs at the Idaho National Laboratory.
“We can have a lot more solar and wind in our portfolio, and then have the backup and reliability,” Mr. Hunter said.
Developers will have to navigate a complex licensing process at the U.S. government’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Most planned projects have delivery dates that begin later this decade, a timeline that misses many coal shutdowns. About 6% of the coal-fired generating capacity that was operating at the end of 2021 is expected to retire this year, around 12.6 gigawatts, according to the federal government.
“This is in many respects a false solution to climate change because it’s not ready yet,” said
Kerwin Olson, executive director at the Citizens Action Coalition in Indiana, a consumer watchdog group with concerns that customers, not companies, will bear the costs of proving up the economics and technology of new nuclear reactors.
Some SMRs would use light water as a coolant, a design used in existing U.S. nuclear-power plants, while others would use novel fuels or cooling systems involving gas, molten salt or liquid metal.
Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear-power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said projects would pose some level of risk to communities, and some say local opposition is a potential hurdle to new nuclear plants
U.S. customers have soured on building large, conventional plants. Just one large nuclear plant is under construction in the U.S.:
Southern Co. ’s expansion of its Vogtle facility in Georgia, more than five years delayed and billions of dollars over its initial projected cost. Nuclear power also generally has high maintenance costs and requires more security and workers than other kinds of power plants. Many plants are being closed or decommissioned as they face competition from lower-cost natural-gas plants, wind and solar, and unresolved questions about permanent waste storage...

Oh dear, did the WSJ just say that wind and solar is cheaper?

Never mind, as every pond reader knows, Friday is the chance for our Henry, the skilled repairer of holes in buckets, to display his erudition, and to show that when it comes to pompous portentousness, he's more than a match for nattering "Ned" ... and sure enough, he was the stand out competitor and top pick in this day's 'leet commentariat ...

A grumpy old man whining and moaning about grumpy old men? That's too meta level irony for the pond, a bit like fancying the Zuck amok over that rotting musky smell. 

And how could the meretricious Merritt match our Henry in concern for the love-corrupted Gladys? Would he mention Gibbon? Of course he wouldn't, the pond checked, he just bleated about poor Glad being done over for wanting to toss a few shekels the way of her lover's town ...how was she to know it was on the nose if they hadn't written it into the code?

Come on down, hole in bucket man, show the meretricious Merritt how it's done ...

Ah, a promising start, with an exceptional billy goat butt, which is to say that "to say that is not to condone Berejilian's reprehensible conduct" ...

And so to the important business of condoning, downplaying, deflecting and dissembling, and perhaps even a dash of Gibbon ... because it's in the genes, or in the air which the reptiles breath, or in the water in which the reptiles swim, as News Corp condemns ICAC and stands for corruption ...

Take a stand, hole in bucket man, if only for the sake of verbosity, pomposity and irrelevant historical justifications and rhetorical flourishes ...

Ah, a Latin flourish, a good start, a promising start, and look, a snap of much put upon and eternally suffering Glad.

Such a learned pontificator ... but what about the gibbering about Gibbon? Well there's plenty of gibbering to go before we get there ...

Splendid stuff, Roman law, mingled with Sir Lewis Namier, once the bane of the pond's economic history life. Just a mention of The Structure of Politics could send the pond screaming from the room, but for those in search of fun, why not J. H. Plumb on Sir Lewis Namier in the NYRB back in December 1964? (Yes, Plumb really does talk about the Jewish race but he also does say The major fault of Namier’s work springs from his attempt to analyze history as if it were static. And history that ignores change must fail).

But what joy that Gibbon came into it, because the pond immediately hied off to the relevant wiki to get a dose of Xian bashing, all thanks to our Henry:

Historian S. P. Foster says that Gibbon:

blamed the otherworldly preoccupations of Christianity for the decline of the Roman empire, heaped scorn and abuse on the church, and sneered at the entirety of monasticism as a dreary, superstition-ridden enterprise. The Decline and Fall compares Christianity invidiously with both the pagan religions of Rome and the religion of Islam.

Gibbon's work was originally published in sections, as was common for large works at the time. The first two volumes were well-received and widely praised, but with the publication of volume 3, Gibbon was attacked by some as a "paganist" because he argued that Christianity (or at least the abuse of it by some of the clergy and its followers) had hastened the fall of the Roman Empire, as seen in this extended quote from chapter 38, part VI of Volume 3:

As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear without surprise or scandal that the introduction, or at least the abuse of Christianity, had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire. The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity. Faith, zeal, curiosity, and more earthly passions of malice and ambition, kindled the flame of theological discord; the church, and even the state, were distracted by religious factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody and always implacable; the attention of the emperors was diverted from camps to synods; the Roman world was oppressed by a new species of tyranny; and the persecuted sects became the secret enemies of their country. Yet party-spirit, however pernicious or absurd, is a principle of union as well as of dissension. The bishops, from eighteen hundred pulpits, inculcated the duty of passive obedience to a lawful and orthodox sovereign; their frequent assemblies and perpetual correspondence maintained the communion of distant churches; and the benevolent temper of the Gospel was strengthened, though confirmed, by the spiritual alliance of the Catholics. The sacred indolence of the monks was devoutly embraced by a servile and effeminate age; but if superstition had not afforded a decent retreat, the same vices would have tempted the unworthy Romans to desert, from baser motives, the standard of the republic. Religious precepts are easily obeyed which indulge and sanctify the natural inclinations of their votaries; but the pure and genuine influence of Christianity may be traced in its beneficial, though imperfect, effects on the barbarian proselytes of the North. If the decline of the Roman empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, his victorious religion broke the violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors (chap. 38)

Ah that's not so bad, and just to show the pond's fair, Gibbon had a few words on other topics (footnotes at the wiki):

Criticism of Quran and Muhammad

Gibbon was critical of the Quran and Muhammad. He outlined in chapter 33 the widespread tale of the Seven Sleepers, and remarked "This popular tale, which Mahomet might learn when he drove his camels to the fairs of Syria, is introduced, as a divine revelation, into the Quran." His presentation of Muhammad's life again reflected his anti-Islamic views: "in his private conduct, Mahomet indulged the appetites of a man, and abused the claims of a prophet. A special revelation dispensed him from the laws which he had imposed on his nation: the female sex, without reserve, was abandoned to his desires; and this singular prerogative excited the envy, rather than the scandal, the veneration, rather than the envy, of the devout Mussulmans."

Views on Jews and charge of antisemitism

Gibbon has been accused of antisemitism. He has described the Jews as "a race of fanatics, whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only of the Roman government, but also of humankind."

Number of Christian martyrs

Gibbon challenged Church history by estimating far smaller numbers of Christian martyrs than had been traditionally accepted. The Church's version of its early history had rarely been questioned before. Gibbon, however, knew that modern Church writings were secondary sources, and he shunned them in favour of primary sources.

Meanwhile, the reptiles had decided to interrupt Henry's discourse with a very large snap ...

... and the pond almost nodded off, but summoned the strength to finish the last gobbet ...

Did our Henry just compare the love-corrupted Glad to a dog? Did she get a good beating? Just asking for a friend in urgent needs of funds for a little clay shooting ...

Meanwhile ...

And so to a bonus, courtesy of cackling Claire ... it won't take long and any stray reader can be guaranteed that they won't feel the better for it ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, are we all leftists now, all bashing big business, or perhaps all atheists, all invoking the deep corruption of the medieval church and the rort known as indulgences, practised even now as the church demands its weekly stipend in the tray, as a way to get beyond the pearly gates in some never never land above the Faraway tree?

Have at it, cackling Claire, smite big business ...

Wokewashing!

Cackling Claire had triggered the pond, whereby a cartoon sprang back to life at the mention of the word ...

By golly, if the pond keeps doing this every time it stumbles across a reptile mention of "woke", it could wear a bit thin ...

Luckily the reptiles flung in a snap for the next gobbet of big business bashing ...

Indeed, indeed, and as for News Corp, one of the most malevolent big business operations in recent decades!

Sorry, sound of crickets fast asleep, and so to the final short, redemptory gobbet ...

Did cackling Claire just spend all that time bashing big business, only to conclude that indulgences might actually work, and you might end up in heaven, or at least you could wash away some of your sins, and it would be money well spent?

Well the pond did warn it would be a waste of time, that's what happens when you indulge bubble-headed boobies, and speaking of a good washing, now to anticipate the apology ...