Stay, tremulously beating heart. How could the pond have mistaken yesterday for today? How could the pond have thought that our Henry would abandon the field, not fulfil his duties, not file a tedious screed?
Was it senility, or an attempt to distract and mislead in classic reptile style, or was it a desperate search for new opening lines - you see, there's a new wrinkle today, advising of our Henry's ongoing presence - or was it to make Dame Slap seem an acceptable substitute for the majestic musings of the imperious one?
No matter, but before turning to our Henry, doing a Thucydidean voyage across the reptile Styx, the pond would like to note a few recent readings, both in the Graudian.
There was splendid fun to be had reading Gary Shteyngart's Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson review – arrested development.
A sample just to prove the point ...
This wasn’t the first time I held Isaacson’s judgment in low regard. Vaccine sceptic Joe Rogan is “knowledgeable”. Musk’s humour – he took the “w” out of the Twitter sign in San Francisco because “tit” is so inherently funny – has “many levels”. Linda Yaccarino, Musk’s almost comically bumbling CEO of X-nee-Twitter is “wickedly smart”. The amount of time devoted to the points-of-view of Musk and his acolytes can’t help but distort the narrative in his favour, especially because Musk is the ultimate of unreliable narrators. “Elon didn’t just exaggerate, he made it up,” a former colleague tells us.
Highest on the list of things Musk won’t shut up about is Mars. “We need to get to Mars before I die.” “We got to give this a shot, or we’re stuck on earth forever.” The messianic part of the Muskiverse is his attempt to put 140m miles between himself and his father as he tries to turn humanity into a “multiplanetary civilization” even though we are having a hard enough time making it as a uniplanetary one. But Musk also knows what’s keeping us from reaching the lifeless faraway planet, and he’s not afraid of letting everyone know: “Unless the woke-mind virus … is stopped, civilisation will never become interplanetary.” There is a far more interesting book shadowing this one about the way our society has ceded its prerogatives to the Musks of the world. There’s a lot to be said for Musk’s tenacity, for example his ability to break through Nasa’s cost-plus bureaucracy. But is it worth it when your saviour turns out to be the world’s loudest crank?
The pond is relentlessly ignorant, so it had to look up the Graudian guide to Gary Shteyngart and found this ...
Gary Shteyngart is a Jewish American writer born in Leningrad in the former USSR. His novels include The Russian Debutante's Handbook (2002), Absurdistan (2006), and Super Sad True Love Story (2010). His other writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, and the New York Times.
Whatever, the pond held his review in high regard. Meanwhile, there's another regular Graudian feature always worth a read, especially when Graham Readfearn tackles the reptiles. So it came to pass in News Corp gasses up ‘green’ fossil fuels in a series on future energy – but does it pass the sniff test?
The pond simply doesn't have the time to note the many ways that the reptiles engage in deceptive and misleading practices, but Readfearn's opening line led to a rebuttal of an amusing kind ...
In a double-page spread in News Corp Australia’s metropolitan newspapers on Monday, readers were told how families loved cooking with gas, how gas had been officially stamped as “green” by the European Union and how coal had a future thanks to carbon capture and storage...
Enough already, the pond could sense how Readfearn was going to treat those lies ... and that's enough of an excuse for the pond to slip in the infallible Pope early ...
And now with the reading out of the way, the pond could turn to the lizard Oz to see what was happening this digital day ...
Of course The Price is Wrong would feature at the top of the page, and once again the Graudian came to the rescue with Unpacking five key claims from Jacinta Price’s National Press Club address on the voice.
The pond would have liked to have spent some time on the vacuous stupidity of The Price is Wrong on colonialism and matters of war, but was distracted by the need to hand out a red card to cackling Claire ...
Objective truth? In the lizard Oz? Surely she jests ... but it's good to see that tranny bashing remains the rage in reptile circles ...
Down below there were voices contending for attention ...
A mighty array, with Tom explaining to workers how squabbling over crumbs could only lead to High Court Qantas tears ...
Sad to say, the pond had to rule out garrulous Gemma for irrelevance - who cares if she once sacked a woman who later became a CEO?
More to the point, how could that trivia and Gemma growing old stand in the way of the majestic musings of the hole in the bucket man? Let trumpets blare, bells sound, cannons roar as if in a Tchaikovsky overture, our Henry is in his Friday home ...
What a relief that the completely shameless hole in the bucket man feels absolutely no guilt whatsoever, and is completely happy to give those pesky, difficult, uppity blacks what for ...
And so on to the lizard Oz editorialist ...
Indeed, indeed, and the pond can't wait for the first News Corp tertiary degree in climate science to be issued ...
And so to the bonus, but with the pond having ruled out cackling Claire and garrulous Gemma, that only left the meretricious Merritt ...
The pond usually leaves Merritt alone, but what the heck, they say that variety is the spice that makes Heinz baked beans taste different to SPC's (or is that the Australian ingredients?)...
Meanwhile, News Corp continues on its own way, peddling lies, misinformation, distractions and deceits, with this manure occasionally seasoned by pious blather about neglect of civics ... as if Chairman Rupert hasn't already done enough to undermine the entire country in the name of corporate greed.
And speaking of said corporates, the pond must close as usual with a Rowe for the day, but it might need a little explaining.
The pond finds it hard to imagine a pond reader who hasn't caught up with the joke - it even made its way to America - but for the record, this was a bit of a piece in the AFR ...
This year, Timbo spruiked his $150 million luxury anti-ageing brand, Saint Haven. It turns out Timbo is not just obsessed with staying young – a red flag in itself – but he’s building “cult-like” man caves, where he can rope in the rich to steam themselves and drink tequila.
Timbo, with all this chilling out in oxygen chambers and fiddling around with your oura ring, it’s no wonder Australia’s productivity is so low!
Fellow Rich Lister Harry Triguboff once called Timbo “the future”, while Morry Schwarz has been fingered as a mentor.
A few years ago, Timbo revealed that he first bought a St Kilda apartment for “180k” and then had “my boss at the time approach me to renovate it while he fronted the money”.
He fronted the money. The boss did. Golly it must be nice to have an employer who doesn’t think you’re a lazy arsehole, but rather reaches into their pocket to help out a young fella.
Timbo went on to say that he later “took out a $150,000 loan using the $34,000 from his grandfather”.
Of course! Because it’s a tale stitched into the fabric of the Australian dream. The lump sum inheritance, or the familial guarantor. The financial backstop that’s always there in every story, though never in the headline. They are the foundational facts that are glazed over in the origin stories of Australia’s over-levered property wunderkinds.
Now for the closing Rowe and a goodly likeness ...
You can find the inspiration here, with this note ...
Part of the power of this painting comes from the portrayal of Marie Antoinette as a wealthy, majestic queen surrounded by various trappings. Her right hand rests on the globe, expressing worldliness and global knowledge. Her left-hand floats delicately by her waist. This gives her the appearance that she, too, might be slightly floating within her voluminous skirts.
While a Henry column almost entirely free of high-falutin’’ quotations and references is much less entertaining than usual, it certainly makes his own views all that clearer. Everything would be fine if those uppity blacks - particularly their “elites” - simply got a decent-paying job, integrated into site society and shut the hell up.
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure what sort of “productive activity” Henry envisages Indigenous folk engaging in should they come to their senses and stop whinging. I’ll politely assume that he’s not envisaging any sort of Leopold II-type system of productive activity. Perhaps just a return to the good old days of working for rations for the likes of the Vestys?
I’m mildly shocked by Henry’s criticism of the effectiveness of the criminal justice system though. If the judiciary and constabulary were so keen to prosecute injustices against Aboriginal people, how come they did such a shithouse job of it? Still, some crimes were perpetrated against Aboriginal folk by their fellows (“witchcraft”!), so it all evens out in the end, doesn’t it, Henry?
"How could the pond have mistaken yesterday for today? How could the pond have thought that our Henry would abandon the field, not fulfil his duties, not file a tedious screed?"
ReplyDeleteAlbanese's Canberra Voice (TM) works in mysterious ways, DP. And we haven't even had the referendum yet!
Ooh, poor Gemma. There she is, still stuck scribbling away for the Lizard Oz, yet somebody she once sacked has now somehow ended up as a CEO! Well - she certainly couldn’t have achieved _that_ on her own merits then surely?
ReplyDeleteHolely Henry rides again: "...the [Yoorrook] report simply ignores analyses that show that high rates of indigenous imprisonment are very largely, if not entirely, explained by high rates of violent, repeated offending." So there we have it: them indigenes are just a bunch of savages that get bail far too easily. Never happens with us 'whiteys' does it: no, no bail for us.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Henry has ever considered why the British needed to found a prison colony in far away Australia ? Couldn't possibly be due to the high British crime rate and the overcrowded prison ships, could it ? And it was basically a fleet of prison ships that brought the colonists to Australia.
But I loved this bit: "...a system in which the colour of one's justice would be determined by the colour of one's skin." Yep, that's it, all them indigenes are darkies, and that's how we recognise them. So when somebody is "descending into paroxysms of fury", we just know they've got dark skin.
Yes at the time England was quite literally a shit-hole country.
DeleteAs the state of the River Thames at the time attests.
DeleteOh, today's Mr Ed: "...the education equivalents of Uber have started teaching skills-based courses and doing it faster and cheaper than universities." I wonder if Mr Ed is aware that Uber have never made a profit and nobody is quite sure just how much longer it will last ?
ReplyDelete"As of 2022, on net revenues of $31.87 billion, Uber posted a net loss of $9.14 billion. In 2021, Uber posted a lower net loss ($496 million), primary thanks to the business divestitures of various assets. Throughout its history, on an annual basis, Uber has never made a profit."
https://fourweekmba.com/is-uber-profitable/#:~
So, apparently "Uber succeeds by letting consumers buy direct from suppliers, putting the person with the big investment in the rationed taxi plate out of business." Yeah, sure, taxis are just disappearing everywhere. And universities, too. And Uber will begin making a profit any day now.
The meditating Merritt: "In Australia, unlike many other countries, voting is compulsory." Oh no it isn't: turning up on election day and getting your name checked off to show that you are still alive and living in Australia is compulsory, but voting itself isn't - one can simply leave the ballot forms blank. Which some number of Aussie citizens do at every "compulsory" election. One can even take the option of an early vote - very popular nowadays - and do that.
ReplyDeleteBut hey: "They need to keep in mind that in this country democracy and the rule of law are not optional." Well that is really so very pleasing to know, especially given that everybody's vote in Australia has exactly the same value, doesn't it. So if you live in Victoria - population about 6.7 million and elects 12 senators and 38 federal House of Reps members - your vote counts exactly the same as if you live in Tasmania - population about 571,000 and elects 12 senators and 5 federal House of Reps members.
So, Victoria: one House of Reps member per 176,315 citizens and Tasmania: one House of Reps member per 114,200 citizens. Yep, I think maybe we really do need to teach "civics".
GB great comments on how the murdoch press say what they please to bad if what they say is not true.
DeleteYesterday, for amusement, I referred to the sometime historian at Deakin University, William D Rubinstein, but passed him off as one who had more recently joined those asking what GrueBleen identified as the quite pointless question of ‘who’ wrote the plays and verse of Wm Shakespeare.
ReplyDeleteRubinstein’s most recent rant to ‘Quad Rant’ was set off by the Yoorrook Commission in Victoria, and, for this day, we find the Holely Henry attacking that same Commission from another salient, but - revelation - making few if any salient points.
If readers here will trust me, I will pick out a little of what Rubinstein says of ‘pre-contact Aboriginal society’ (on which he claims to be writing a book). I ask for trust, because I would not want any other reader to think that I was advocating their reading anything that appears in ‘Quad Rant’. I mention this only because I wonder if the Henry goes to ‘Quad Rant’ for inspiration when other sources are lacking.
Rubinstein - ‘Australia’s Aborigines were nomadic hunter-gatherers who did not grow crops or domesticate livestock for food, but journeyed in search of whatever food or sustenance could be found on this arid continent. ‘ Victoria was ‘arid’? More importantly, he gives clear impression that gathering food was an aimless activity. I can attest that, in the Northern Territory, groups had remarkable understanding of what foods would be at their best, in what places and times, over what was acknowledged as their territory. Some foods - such as bird’s eggs - were greatly abundant for short seasons, and groups had long established arrangements to gather amicably for harvest, and to transact all kinds of cultural activities, on shared territory.
Of course, white fellas had to show them a better way - even as, back in England, similar arrangements were being destroyed through acts of enclosure.
Rubinstein - ‘the size of every Aboriginal tribe had to be kept as low as possible, consistent with the survival of the tribe. Consequently, infanticide was universally practised throughout traditional Aboriginal society. It was estimated time and again by early white observers of Aboriginal life that around 30 to 35 per cent of all Aboriginal infants were deliberately murdered at birth,’ Yes - they had to live within the capacity of their land and its resources. But - Rubinstein ‘British occupation also brought with it real and immediate benefits to the Aborigines, in the suppression of infanticide, cannibalism and tribal wars, in bringing Western medicine and physicians in place of sorcery, in providing constant supplies of food and sustenance instead of seasonal famines,’
Yes - back in Britain, children under the age of 5, died off at such a rate, mainly due to water-borne disease, that many were not named immediately. Western medicine - through much of the 19th century was barely distinguishable from sorcery; the main skill of ‘leading doctors’ was their capacity to persuade patients that they, the doctors, understood which ‘humours’ were ascendent in their case.
Constant supplies of food - um - oh, of course, that settlement in Sydney was noted for its bakeries and pie-shops, while - bit of simple maths for Rubinstein - if your version of hunter-gatherer were true - 60 000 years of ‘seasonal famines’ would have cleared the land of Girtby of all those inconvenient natives, and not troubled the colonists to eliminate them in their own ways.
There is more from Rubinstein - but I trust the reader here can see where it was going.
It is distressing that this came from an academic, on the public purse, at a recognised Australian university. It would be depressing to think that the Henry was influenced by it.
It's kinda hard to be nomadic herdsmen when there's really nothing you can herd ... herds of kangaroos or koalas maybe ? Wombats ?
DeleteAnyway, some of the indigenes did get into 'farming 'after a fashion; eg
"The small fish, 'tarrapatt,' and others of similar description, are caught in a rivulet which runs into Lake Colangulac, near Camperdown, by damming it up with stones, and placing a basket in a gap in the dam. The women and children go up the stream and drive the fish down ... Eels are prized by the Aboriginal People as an article of food above all other fish. They are captured in great numbers by building stone barriers across rapid streams, and diverting the current through an opening into a funnel-mouthed basket pipe, three or four feet long, two inches in diameter, and closed at the lower end. When streams extend over marshes in time of flood, clay embankments two or three feet high, and sometimes three to four hundred yards in length, are built across them, and the current is confined to narrow openings in which the pipe baskets were placed...Lake Boloke is the most celebrated place in the Western District for the fine quality and abundance of its eels; and, when the autumn rains induce these fish to leave the lake and go down the river to the sea, the Aboriginal People gather there from great distances. Each tribe has allotted to it a portion of the stream, now known as Salt Creek; and the usual barrier is built by each family...For a month or two the banks of Salt Creek presented the appearance of a village all the way from Turreen Turreen, the outlet of the lake, to its junction with the Hopkins (Dawson, 1881, in the Report to Aboriginal Affairs Victoria)."
https://austhrutime.com/eel_harvesting.htm
Budj Bim anybody ?
Reminds me a little, GB, of those who pointed to Indigenous Australians' failure to use the wheel as "proof" of their barbaric nature.
DeleteThe likelihood that Australian terrain and livestock didn't exactly lend themselves to the use of carts was course irrelevant.
The fact that most of the Central American civilisations - which even the conquering Europeans admitted weren't exactly barbarians, though as pagans they had to be either converted or exterminated - also made minimal use of those round things was naturally never used as a point of comparison.
These black fellows wore few clothes by European standards, didn't till the fields, didn't have the benefits of fixed settlements (in the absence of brick and mortar dwellings, using particular sites continuously for thousands of years was obviously irrelevant), and couldn't conjure up imported rations of salt pork and weevilly flour to save themselves was - and still is - definitive proof that they were the most wretched, deprived people on the planet.
Thankfully, as Senator Price has pointed out, they eventually came to enjoy the benefits of the white man's civilisation.
Not to mention the absence of anything local to pull carts except humans - no horses or bullocks or camels or anything. But then, even in the heart of white man's civilisation, we didn't begin to domesticate horses until about 6000 years ago, and incidentally, we didn't start writing until about 5500 years ago and that most assuredly wasn't "white man's" civilisation when we did.
DeleteBut "civilisation" really took off after both of those things: domesticated horses and writing.
"Free Internet"? "Show Girls"?? How old is that snap of Don Weatherburn?
ReplyDeleteTo look at issues of more importance to most people, the Acting Chairman of the Productivity Commission has put out a research report that, he says, shows that ’95% of workers are getting pay rises broadly in line with productivity growth.’
ReplyDeleteThe Acting - one Alex Robson - is quoted as saying that ‘productivity growth remained the best and only way for governments to increase real wages, improve living standards and guarantee Australia’s future prosperity.’
That rather calls to mind the adage that - if you have a hammer in your hand, problems tend to look like nails. If you are a productivity commission - you say that growth in what you measure as ‘productivity’ is not just the best, but the ONLY way to make life secure and better.
I am taking quotes from the ‘Fin’ for this day. Perhaps a pennant will be run up somewhere on the Flagship for the weekend, or that sometime Productivity Commissioner Dame Groan will offer us - exclusive - filet de productivity through next week. That would be in keeping - nothing in the reporting in the ‘Fin’ from the Commission offered suggestions on what, specifically, governments might do to deliver productivity growth. The ‘Fin’ did pluck from a ‘research note’ by one Pat Bustamante, whose title is longer than his name, at Westpac Business Bank Senior Economist, a scatter of comments, such as, if there were no improvements in productivity, that would ‘reduce the attractiveness associated with hiring more labour.’
The attractiveness of hiring more labour, in most actual businesses, is settled by the question ‘If I hire more people could they bring in more income to the firm than I outlay to pay them?’ This used to be called ‘profit’, which I understood businesses were primarily about, but that was last century.
Bustamante went on to mouth some standard business lobby mantra ‘Productivity is usually supported by structural reform, greater competition and a larger capital stock to house the bigger population.’ Very difficult to find studies that show any of that unequivocally, but it probably gets a nod from ‘suits’.
It seems that, if you are in the business of commenting on productivity - it is sufficient to indulge in high-grade hand wringing, while saying how difficult it all is - and leave the solutions to someone else.
Hammers and nails indeed, Chad. But then, in this age of diminishing belief in "traditional religion" you've got to come up with something for the people to have faith in, don't you.
Delete