The way that the world is currently turning, the pond is looking forward to a break. And the way the reptiles at the lizard Oz are currently turning, Saturnalia can't come soon enough ...
In relation to the Lehrmann matter, up there in the far right slot, it's remarkable how the reptiles have managed to gloss over a cool $130k for a year's rent - that's the figure mentioned in the Media Watch take down of the grubby Seven carry on - and ignore the obvious ...
And it had several media figures calling for Spotlight to be dropped from the list of nominees for the Walkley Awards Scoop of the Year, with former Walkley board member Mike Carlton tweeting:
It wasn’t a scoop. They bought it by paying Lehrmann’s rent. It was also a crap interview. - X, @MikeCarlton01, 29 November, 2023
Which Carlton went on to clarify in a second post, saying:
By "crap interview" I mean it failed to expose a number of Lehrmann's collisions with fact and truth. All in all, a 3rd rate, sensationalist wank.- X, @MikeCarlton01, 29 November, 2023
Ouch.
At the end of last year, we said we doubted if Lehrmann’s defamation actions would ever get to court because we didn’t believe he’d want to be cross examined for the first time and rerun the rape trial in a civil court with a lower standard of proof.
But he did go ahead and will have to wear the consequences.
And while it’s up to the judge to decide if Ten can prove that Higgins’s allegations on The Project were substantially true, we’re reminded of media law expert Michael Douglas’ comment to us last year:
Like Ben Roberts-Smith’s case, a claim by Mr Lehrmann could expose him to the real risk of coming out looking worse. - Email, Michael Douglas, UWA Law School, 11 December, 2023
Or, as another media lawyer quipped, suing could be like a man going back into the lion’s den to retrieve his hat.
Lehrmann may of course still win.
But it’s a reminder that taking action to protect your reputation does not come without risk.
On another matter, the pond knew by rote that the reptiles would be fine at the notion of locking someone up on the suspicion that they might commit a crime, though a nanosecond's self-awareness should have warned the reptiles that their criminal behaviour might then put them in a deserved position of peril ... if not locked up for their current crimes, then certainly locked up for what the pond knows will be in tomorrow's edition ...
Never mind, there was good news below the fold ...
How has the pond come to think of a groaning as good news?
Well in a peculiar way, it's a relief, predictable and as comfortable as old slippers or the sun still rising ...
There she was, old faithful, gushing like a geyser, and given the alternatives, the pond suddenly felt a weird affection ...
No need to do any work or do any thinking or making any comments - long made redundant by endless repetition - as Dame Groan embarked on another round of migrant bashing ...
Nope, no need to pay attention, let her Groan away, slip in a few cartoons, and she'd be right ...
The pond can't now recall the number of times Dame Bot has groaned about the need to cut back on pesky, difficult, uppity furriners - it's well beyond a zillion - but the pond can now seize the moment to run a stray immortal Rowe from a few days ago ...
Meanwhile, the lizard Oz editorialist can stand in for all the "hardheads" wanting to nuke the country ...
Luckily with the header featuring the "hardheads" out of the way - as if being a boofhead thug in the Swiss bank accounts man's style is a virtue - the pond can swallow the whole nuke the country thing in one bite ...
Yes, there was that immortal line "At this stage, the cost benefits are difficult to determine" but the reptiles won't give up on the SMR dream and the yearning to nuke the country ...
Meanwhile there doesn't seem to have been any advance on that story in the AFR about a month ago ...
There was a classic exchange at the bottom of that story ...
Municipal participants in the project were unnerved when the indicative wholesale cost of power from the Utah project jumped to $US89 per megawatt hour ($A137/MWh) from $US58/ MWh last January.
Mr Bowen said: “The opposition’s only energy policy is small modular reactors. Today, the most advanced prototype in the US has been cancelled. The LNP’s plan for energy security is just more hot air from Peter Dutton.”
Mr O’Brien responded: “Is Bowen arguing that wind power is dead because the world’s leading supplier Siemens is seeking a €15 billion [$25 billion] government bailout, or the days of solar are over because plans for the world’s largest solar plant, Sun Cable, has run into trouble, or that hydro should be ignored because Snowy 2.0 has doubled in price since Labor came to office?
“Such arguments would be as false as the line Labor is running against nuclear.”
NuScale has been developing the technology since 2000 but has experienced multiple setbacks and missed deadlines. Commercial deployment isn’t expected before 2030 in North America, pushing its likely availability in Australia out to the 2040s.
Longer term, the Liberal Party-aligned Blueprint Institute said in a report issued last month ago that SMRs could play a role in decarbonising the grid after 2040, and would likely help reduce costs.
Short term? Bung on a do, any old do will do, and nuking the country is a splendid do ... and should carry on right up to the election, and then you can pretend that Snowy 2.0 had nothing to do with Malware or the rest of the gang ...
Relax, dudes, it's all under control, no need to panic, climate science is on the right course, and so is the planet ...
And so to the lizard Oz's resident armchair general, the bromancer himself.
The pond wondered whether it should indulge his latest obscenity, but truth to tell, it's an excellent example of how the bromancer hasn't seen a killing field he doesn't like, provided he's not in it ...
What is he actually achieving? Well apart from reducing Gaza to rubble, rendering it uninhabitable, he's also got the neighbours a little agitated ...
The pond never thought it would agree with Edrogan on anything, but somehow, "butcher of Gaza" seems to fit the current circumstances ...
"Supremely entertaining. . . . Whatever Cohen writes about he writes about with brio.”
– Louis Menand, The New Yorker
“What a brilliant achievement! Like all Richard Cohen’s writing, Making History opens a dialogue with the reader—grave and witty, suave yet pointed, erudite yet engaging and full of energy. It has huge scope but never forfeits the telling detail. It is scholarly, lively, quotable, up-to-date, and fun.”
– Hilary Mantel, author of the bestselling Thomas Cromwell trilogy
"Sprawling and wildly ambitious, idiosyncratic and also consistently readable and engaging, Making History dives deep into the way history-driven scholars and artists — from Burns to Shakespeare to Herodotus — have shaped the collective memory of humankind."
– Douglas Brinkley, The Washington Post
“What a grand, illuminating, and fun book! Richard Cohen takes us on a learned tour through the cacophony of history and of the characters who’ve told the stories that shape us. To understand who we are, we have to understand who we’ve been—and, as Cohen amply demonstrates, who has formed those understandings.”
– Jon Meacham, author of American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House and Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
The pond always found Meacham a bit of a pompous bore and a droner to boot, but then there's the law of the striking clock, and so to the next few excerpts, which should eventually see the whole thing wrap up by Friday, just in time for the hole in the bucket man ...
Some might like to wait, collect the set, and read the chapter of bible follies in one go, but in any case, click on to enlarge ...
The Groany: "With the benefit of hindsight, the government made several missteps in the management of the immigration portfolio." Really ? Like "The Government" is just carrying on where "The Opposition" left off, because "Errors include sticking with migration targets set by the previous Coalition government...".
ReplyDeleteGroany is actually proclaiming that the "previous Coalition government" made "errors" ? Hucoodanode. We've been repeatedly told it was perfect.
The caption reads “Recent arrivals pictured at Sydney Airport” but there’s only one arrival. He’s on the left edge and heading for the taxis. The flowers aren’t for him. Lochloon’s groanigraghIT is too early and too late. There’s about a hundred multi-cultural replacement-type Australians there to welcome the arrivals Groaney instructed GIT to show. But too soon, their plane hasn’t landed yet. And too late, her job and her car and her friends and her airport are already long gone.
DeleteMr Ed: "The comparative costs of nuclear and renewables are a matter of conjecture." The conjecture being how the "hardheads" can keep on fooling people about the full on expenses - and the very long delivery timeframe - for nuclear. But surely the whole Murdoch media will do its very best to keep us all misinformed. And just who was it that said we shouldn't legislate to protect ourselves from "misinformation" ?
ReplyDeleteDorothy - seems John Keats had words for how you feel as you look over the, er - 'offerings'
ReplyDeletedrowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
and he was writing to a Nightingale, not to a murder of old, creaking crows. Selfishly, we readers might hope that you take that break, in the hope that you will return for us in the year that is to be. And, yes, I was tempted to do a little re-write, along the lines of emptying some dull opiate to the pond, but really the master had done it better.
The title says it all: Small nuclear reactors: a history of failure (by Jim Green, of Friends of the Earth).
ReplyDeleteOh they can join Carbon Capture and Storage as failures, then.
DeleteThe thing is, though, that there are many 'small nuclear reactors' around the world in effective working state day after day: in nuclear submarines for the US, Russia, China, France etc. So how come there's so many of those that work day in and day out, but nobody can otherwise put together a reliable 'small reactor' design and construction ?