The pond misses out on a lot through its unseemly, frankly weird, devotion to the reptiles.
The pond misses opinion pieces like the one that revealed that gorgeous George Brandis is actually a spiritualist, dedicated to rappings on the table and transmissions through the void. It's quite possible that ectoplasm came out of his nostrils when he offered this up at the Nine rags ...
How else could gorgeous George know what Neville was thinking, except by way of communing with the dead, channeling Nev's thoughts in an ethereal way, what with Nev having been dead since 1999?
Of course the pond frequently communes with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, so it's entirely credible, and likely in the near future, the pond will reveal the identity of Jack the Ripper, and also establish his attitude to the Voice. Better yet, the pond has been communing with Ming the Merciless and discovered that in the after life he's rediscovered the socialism that led to the Snowy scheme and is now an enthusiastic, neigh ardent, supporter of the Voice. Ain't spiritualism grand, up there with Theosophy ...
Moving along, the pond woke this morning to news of the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Morocco and a devastating record flood in Libya.
So what's top of the lizard Oz?
The bromancer as usual perched off on the far right, and Geoff Chambers and Rhiannon Down offering possibly the most despicable, determinedly offensive headline of the year ...
Some days the contempt the pond feels for the contemptible reptiles is beyond measure, but then glancing down the page, it got worse ...
Would it be possible to make a successful TV show with the title The Price is Wrong?
There was no relief in the comments section ...
It was Dame Groan day and time for a groaning, but this time the pond had made preparations ... it had saved up an immortal Pope that the pond knew the Groaner would find incredibly funny, what with her devotion to Giggers everywhere ...
No? Never mind, on with the Groaning ...
As usual, the remnants of the lizard Oz graphics department slipped in a couple of snaps to illustrate the mind set, and the pond couldn't have done it better, what with one of them featuring the lying rodent from way back when ...
Well at least he won a stick of dynamite from the Nobel mob, which is more than the pond or Dame Groan has done.
The pond can't take any credit for finding it, because it was John Naughton in the Graudian who suggested a visit.
Deaton doesn't have much to do with the Groaning, but in a way he does, and spoiler alert, please allow the pond begin with his conclusion ...
Talk of sordidness and joylessness? You could see how that was going to go down with the determinedly sordid and joyless Groaner ...
Speaking of scribblers, and the grip of defunct economists, back to the Groaning ...
It all makes Dame Groan seem like a petulant spoiled share holding brat of a dismally ancient kind, and sure enough the final gobbet confirmed the pond's feelings on the matter ...
Perhaps one last Deaton item, this time on tax burdens and health care?
That's America, but does anyone doubt that with a good Groaning by the Groaner, all that's the worst of the American way might be transplanted here?
And so to a quick hit by an anonymous reptile hack speaking for the hive mind ...
It goes without saying that the one thing that the reptiles can't stand, beyond the facts, is being reminded of anything to do with facts, as opposed to rampant prejudices, bigotry and climate science denialism...
It sticks in the pond's craw to say it, what with the green plastic RMIT scourge not just in Swanston street, but everywhere in Melbourne, but if RMIT keeps getting up the nose of the lizard Oz anonymous hack and the reptile hive mind, they must be doing something right ...
As for the mutton Dutton being a fear-mongering racist, who could argue with that fact?
And never mind that apparently Aboriginal people are ahead of the queue at artistic events! Those bloody freebie junkies. When will suffering whites ever get a decent break, or perhaps even a student rush ticket?
And to to the bromancer. Sure the pond has gone on too long, but the bromancer must be heard ... because he's guaranteed to start off on one topic, then ramble on about pretty much anything or everything ...
As always, it's in the detail, and forget all that talk about planes without pilots. These are the sorts of pilots anyone would cherish ... provided you lived in Sky after dark la la land and are enjoying 20NO2 ...
Diversify trade, tell the truth?
Pretty mild stuff, as if people aren't aware of Chairman Xi's dictatorship.
The Bro seems to have settled a little from his heady days when he was hoping for all out war with China by Xmas, with headline after headline hoping, yearning for conflict ...
If we had a dollar - nay, 20 cents - for every time Dame Groan prescribed 'lower taxes, reduce government spending' as an economic solution, we'd all be enormously wealthy by now.
ReplyDeleteCommunity expectations is a ‘very ill-defined and woolly concept’. Setting aside the lazy added ‘very’ - things are either defined or not - community expectations are as fundamental as there being the means to travel from where you live to where you might be paid to work. The expectation that the natural waters around where you live are now so contaminated with shit that you risk serious illness, unto death for some conditions, just by being in contact with that water. Expectation that, when you walk outside where you live, you, and particularly your children, can breathe the air without needing regular boosts with some or other kind of ventilator/breathing aid.
ReplyDeleteThese expectations became prominent in the 19th century, but are still with us, drawing ever-higher proportions of the public purse as we continue to breed beyond the capacity of nature to keep the air and water fit for consumption in each parish, but otherwise be able to contribute to that ‘economy’ that is our way of getting food, clothing and, perhaps, shelter.
And tax reform? Mmm - that GST - Goods and SERVICES Tax. In particular, financial services. Far too few Australians are aware that the Acts with the long titles that J Winston Howard and Peter Costello delivered, simply exempt much of what are lumped as ‘financial services’ from the 10%. It is not a matter of adjusting the rate, but of actually applying some rate to the busy cycling of ‘money’ each day. Do I hear the cry of ‘disincentive’ to business? Looking at what the main banks charge as fees now for us to tap the keys that effect our money transfers, or to have one of those cards to tap on a gadget at the frothy coffee outlet - the concept should not be so strange, but any suggestion of applying such a tax will have the main banks ploughing a CEO’s bonus into advertising campaigns predicting the demise of civilization as we know it - and that will have the full approval of the Dames Groan and Slap, and ‘Ned’, and all the others who tell us that corporations should not put any of shareholders’ funds into ‘woke’ activities.
So we come to ‘other taxes often mentioned’. More accurately, other taxes to fiddle at the edges, because our Groaner seems to have missed all mention of resource rent taxes. If she wished to add to comparisons like ‘Australia’s company taxes are already high by international standards’ - she could remind us that Australia’s take in any form of resource rent is laughable by international standards. The maligned Qatar wrings about 30 times the resource tax out of its gas than Australia, for much the same tonnage sent to market.
But - ‘now we’re talking’ - about ‘reducing the tax burden’. Just look at what is happening to water quality (and, increasingly, to quantity of supply) in the UK, as the heirs to Boris flail about trying to pretend that all is for the best in that best of all Brexit worlds.
A little lingering factoid - even as the Industrial Revolution was a smudge of smoke on the skyline - most streams in the UK had runs of salmon. The right of the common people to catch and eat such was established partly in the several versions of Magna Carta. If you want to try for a wild-catch salmon in the UK now - be ready to pay the price of a medium motor car for the (private) rights to flick a fly over one of the near pristine streams, for a couple of weeks.
Afer that, what else remains to be said, Chad ? Only perhaps that the salmon in the streams were a result of Henry III's Charter of the Forest under the guidance of William Marshall - from whom the title 'marshall' derives. Related to, but distinct from John's Nobles' Magna Carta which was dragged out of lapsed obscurity by that very same 'Marshall', the Forest Charter came a short while after John had departed this vale.
DeleteBut anyway, you might enjoy Kohler's most recent NewDaily effort:
"In a speech in March 1993, the RBA’s then-governor Bernie Fraser said keeping inflation to an average of 2 to 3 per cent over a number of years “would be a good outcome”. It was a thought bubble, not an announcement."
https://thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2023/09/11/rba-inflation-target-kohler/
Oh, just how much of life is defined by casual "thought bubbles".
Among the things that amuse me about the current cohort who claim to be 'conservatives', is that they seldom recognise, let alone comment on - commonage - even though that was how much of the population (of what is now the UK, and many parts of Europe) used land for most of the time they have occupied it. Shouldn't a deep conservative - making the case that what served the people, as far back as we can find records for, is the natural 'legal' base for our society - be seeking to re-establish commonage? Or, at very least, resist further encroachments, such as one level of government applying its version of 'enclosure' to Australian beaches?
Delete- I meant to add - thank you for the link to Kohler. He is the only economic commentator my companion in life records from the TV. Even he was too kind to Lowe. During the time of virtually free money, I looked for at least one economic commentator, in any of the jurisdictions offering decimal point 'interest' rates, to observe that most humans (and many other animals, and, current thinking attributes this to some fungi and related micro-organisms), when tested, have an implicit discount rate with assets or resources. Does that mean that recent central bankers are not as - only word is 'smart' - as some fungi?
DeletePleasure, Chad. At least Kohler tries to apply some sense and reason to 'economics'. Hmm, some fungi being smarter than central bankers ? Yeah, definitely could be so.
Delete“A lot of people don’t pay income tax at all”. Is it possible that Dame Groan is a critic of those wealthy folk who organise their finances in such a way as to pay bugger-all tax. Who would have thought the Dame was such a progressive? Or could I possibly be mistaken, and it was just a good old groan about those lazy bludgers who can’t be bothered going out and getting a well-paid job? Hmmm - which could it be?
ReplyDeleteNaah, she's merely critical of us aged bludgers who just don't get enough income to have to pay income tax on it. We should stiffen up the sinews and get out there and earn more - and the income tax should be extended downwards to anything above zero income so that we can no longer escape our obligations.. Those wealthy folks who earn too much money to have to pay income tax on, well, they're just clever entrepreneurs who deserve their untaxed status.
DeleteDame Groan should have commented on the many 'private' taxes we pay, most notably the private health insurance tax, and what you might call the 'ideology' taxes, where we have lots of private companies in a market where the only justification for them is ideological - eg energy companies and transport. Then there are the taxes that companies should pay but don't - the carbon taxes, the mines rehabilitation taxes, and so on. I'm sure that there have been big thick books written on this.
ReplyDelete