The pond called off its cheap stunt of a faux strike if only for the pleasure of being able to red-card petulant Peta, on parade this day in the lizard Oz ...
As for that snap of the mutton Dutton next to The Price is Wrong, he's apparently unaware that he's just a temporary opposition leader, and the next opposition leader and the next PM of the country is standing right beside him ...
Not because Price is female. Nor because she is Indigenous. But because after a challenging time she is already leading a large part of the country on a new path.
Though it would be foolish to suggest her gender and background don’t add to her political attraction, Price is a liberal in the true sense of the word. Her biggest drawcard is encapsulating and championing a set of values that routinely is derided by progressives and often ignored by Liberals, too.
Failure in referendum will not leave a nation divided? Really? Luckily there was a Wilcox to hand ...
As for Jack the Insider doing climate, where's Lloydie of the Amazon when he's needed?
And as for distractions for correspondents interested in the funny old world of science, why not try Gideon Lewis-Kraus in The New Yorker?
They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work a Lie? (soft paywall) is a lengthy piece, way too long for the pond, but the nub of it is in the lede, Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino became famous for their research into why we bend the truth. Now they’ve both been accused of fabricating data.
And this can serve as a teaser ...
At the end of Simmons’s unpublished post, he writes, “An influential portion of our literature is effectively a made-up story of human-like creatures who are so malleable that virtually any intervention administered at one point in time can drastically change their behavior.” He adds that a “field cannot reward truth if it does not or cannot decipher it, so it rewards other things instead. Interestingness. Novelty. Speed. Impact. Fantasy. And it effectively punishes the opposite. Intuitive Findings. Incremental Progress. Care. Curiosity. Reality.”
Reality? Once again the pond has boxed itself into a corner, so it must turn to yesterday's news, and Killer's Letter from America ...
But at least it roused the pond's attention, and at least there's all the fun of a clown parade ...
Meanwhile, another comedy proceeds in another place, and thanks to its herpetology studies, the pond misses out on all the fun ...
With the snaps taken out, Killer's gobbets came in ever shorter, ever diminishing bursts ...
The hard-right Tump zealots have much to answer for? Just when will Chairman Rupert, Faux Noise and News Corps be called on to give an answer then?
There's plausible denial, and then there are massive settlements for defamatory incitement of the mob. Can you absolve your zealotry by denouncing your loyal viewers as zealots?
Here, have a celebration of all that the Chairman and his minions have helped to create ...
Meanwhile, the reptiles, and so the pond, have been ignoring events back in old blighty.
The pond trusts that everyone is keeping up. It's only a few days ago, but still it's fun to Marina handing out a hydeing in Congrats, Rishi: you’ve got a party so dreadful that Nigel Farage has turned you down. Just the opening par had the pond hooked ...
I’m still heavily sedated after the triumphant return of Liz Truss to the Conservative party conference, less than a calendar year after she caused an unfortunate lab accident involving the entire country. The spectacle is so absolutely mad that it has almost pushed through to the other side and become an impressive tale of resilience that you might use to inspire kids. “See that lady there, she fell off the horse, but she got right back on it like nothing happened.” But no. Sorry, I’m simply not quite there yet. Liz Truss is the human equivalent of honking out a joke about a terrorist attack while they’re still pulling bodies out of the rubble. She is a walking “too soon?”. The only place you should be seeing her this October is as a Halloween costume (foam cheese wedge not included).
And after the Tories tried to keep John Crace out, he managed to come up with RishGPT veers between dull and delusional in Tory conference speech, not to mention Saviour Suella rouses Tory faithful with speech full of bile.
Why did the pond like the latter? Well its web address was headed "Suella communes with the loons" ...it was like Crace was sending a secret message to the pond ... and what fun it all sounds like ...
Finally, in this grab bag, the pond now has a standing beef with the reptiles about the lizard Oz shunning of any news to do with the weather or the climate ...
It's just never at the top of the lizard Oz digital edition ... and Lloydie of the Amazon has taken another powder ...
So for a closer the pond thought it might bring in a WaPo yarn ...
And so it goes, and meanwhile ...
Given that the nosayers do not want to the voice of the Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islanders written into the Constitution so that they are listened to by governments, with Dutton and even Price herself claiming that this would create dissension and discord, it seems unlikely that the Coalition would elect Price as leader. Surely listening to Price would be divisive.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, listening to Sammy J sing “50 ways to leave Victoria”, raised the thought that Credlin, Albrechtsen, Bolt and others (Albrechtsen can take Kroger with her and Mckenzie could take Benson) could leave the state and Victoria would be the better for it. Perhaps the whole gang who are so unhappy that the ALP is in power could hive off to America or even England where they would feel more at home with the the orange duck and the “non-divisive” classes of the so-called “United” Kingdom.
But that's the way of things now, Anony: the right wingnuts know nothing else but "divisive" and the green-left-wokies simply don't know how to combat that. It's like that in the USA (Trump), in the UK (Johnson now Sunak) and in Australia (Dutton).
DeleteDoes anybody have any idea how to get out of this quicksand ?
The Bro (Greg) and others know what to do - nuke 'em (us, them, everyone, start again with a clean slate)! Perhaps if Dutton is successful as front man for News Corp in defeating the voice, he could initiate a referendum to emphasise our national unity post voice - rename Oz as the United States and Territories of Australia (USTA), a reflection of UK and USA. Can't get more united than that.
DeleteI am getting pretty cynical in my old age. AG.
Vintage Dame Slapping of the finest level:
ReplyDelete"... if the Liberal parliamentary party is smart".
Yes, yes indeed. Down here in Victoria, we wear that line on our summer t-shirts - it's been a fresh and relevant phrase for nigh on a decade and a half now....
But nothing happens. Guy comes, Guy goes, Guy comes. It's a fine recipe. And Canberra has sunk to Mutton Dutton at the top minding the chair until a leader with appeal turns up.
What a life to lead....
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteEvidently McCarthy gave a press conference soon after being ousted from his position as Speaker*.
Where most people would have felt mortified after such an ignominious defeat, Kevin spoke for over an hour boasting about how successful he had been.
Like Liz Truss who has rebounded onto the stage at the Tory Party Conference, you wonder if this is just simple shamelessness or something more intrinsic about the sort of people who are attracted to and successful in getting into politics.
These people appear to be incapable of admitting their defeats are in any way due to their own inadequacies . Dunning-Kruger but with even less self-reflection maybe. Either way there does appear to be a very large amount of sufferers in modern politics.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
W.B .Yeats
*This was purely due to what the Killer generously called a “reform” - allowing individual members to bring spill motions. A “reform” McCarthy was forced to enact by the crazies in his own party in order to get elected Speaker.
Meanwhile, the European Union has agreed on a process for sharing the load of informal immigrants and asylum seekers among member states; oh, and they are now working through the process of nine more countries wanting to join. You have take your hat off to them - with 27 current member states speaking almost as many different languages, they are actually showing the numbskulls of the UK how international cooperation is actually done, despite the most complex geographical, historical and political environment. It is slow and painstaking work, but it is working. Tells you all you need to know about the Brits, who look down on the continentals. AG.
DeleteM. Lewis-Kraus: "...some eminent behavioral scientists have come to regret their participation in the fantasy that kitschy modifications of individual behavior will repair the world." I wonder who they would be, it's always fun to read a mea culpa or two isn't it - especially if, as usual, the culpable ones still have no genuine understanding of what and where they went wrong. Or even any actual acceptance that they did go wrong.
ReplyDeleteBut then, I suppose a world inhabited by Bella d'Abreras is just going to be like that.
I confess to being fascinated - though being a full participant myself - by the way that, although apparently believing that 'climate change' is already upon us, nobody much is doing anything about it. They're just indulging in their (and my) usual lifestyle without any intent to change.
Perhaps the future is expressed by Asimov's 'Caves of Steel' - though he thought we'd have to be like that when there was only about 2.5 - 3 billion of us, not 8 billion and still growing uncontrollably.