In which the pond notes some matters, before taking up with the Caterist, another craven Craven, and the bro ...

 

Not on the pond's watch, Mr Coleman, not on the pond's watch.

Yes, the pond is going to start the week off on a querulous, awkward note because Josh Taylor produced this yarn in the Graudian, Price, speed and Elon Musk: why some Australians are ditching the NBN. In part ...

....Despite the NBN being only a few years past completion, between the end of June 2022 and the end of April 2024 the number of customers in the most common category of services declined by more than 65,000.
This category, also known as brownfields, covers 7.1m active NBN broadband services to homes and businesses that existed before the NBN was built and is a mix of fibre-to-the-premises-type connections as well as connections made under the Coalition’s revised plan that used existing copper and cable connections (which predated the NBN and was used mostly for pay TV).
The Coalition’s communications spokesman, David Coleman, said this month the decline was a “troubling sign” for the company and the government had questions to answer. But others blame the Coalition itself.
In February, the company’s outgoing chief executive, Stephen Rue, told Guardian Australia those shifting away from the NBN were largely customers on fibre-to-the-node – the Abbott-Turnbull-era technology that uses legacy copper phone lines, where speed and quality decreases the further away your home is from the node.“The main reason for that is service and a desire for faster speed … customers who are at the end of the FttN line ... they get 25 megabits per second, but they can’t experience a faster speed and obviously there are some copper lines that have unreliability,” he said.
NBN has embarked on a massive full-fibre upgrade to premises in the fibre-to-the-node “footprint” – effectively rebuilding most of the network to the type planned by the former Rudd Labor government in 2009 before changes made under the Coalition after 2013.
The company has projected that 5m premises will be upgraded by the end of 2025. Over 200,000 premises have already been upgraded in these parts of the network to improve speeds and to keep customers on board, but the effort has not yet halted the decline in customers.
Associate Prof Mark Gregory, of RMIT’s school of engineering, said the “copper debacle” was the cause of the company’s woes but more attention needed to be paid into what the company is offering to keep customers and how.
Cost seemed to be a major factor moving customers away, he said. “The current NBN charges are too high and this means that customers are looking for alternatives.”
Aiding customers hunting to reduce their internet bill are cut-price 5G home internet plans, which some retailers market at a lower cost to their own NBN plans. They are able to do this due to the lower cost in supplying internet over mobile, compared with the wholesale prices NBN charges.
This is reflected in recent financial statements from the two biggest retailers, Telstra and TPG. Both companies admit a customer decline in fixed-line services; TPG reported losing 109,000 NBN customers in its last financial results, while Telstra reported losing 58,000 in the first half of the 2023-2024 financial year...

Troubling, Mr Coleman, you're troubled, it's a troubling sign? 

Shouldn't you be saying Mission Accomplished ...

Yes, Mr Coleman, your mob, most notably Malware, but let's not forget the role News Corp and its minions played in it, demolished the NBN. 

There were plenty of warnings at the time how fibre could only stay competitive if it went directly to the home, and that there would be plenty of competition in due course, though few anticipated the extent that vulgar youth would seek to die by motor vehicle with head down, watching a 70mm movie on a postage stamp while crossing the road ... a disease which has now spread to the elderly, even the pond. 

As for Uncle Elon, solar flares and all, he's risen because the original plan abandoned the bush, and in some locales the only way to get any sort of connection is by satellite and the NBN satellite service is beyond risible...

So here we are Mr Coleman, here we are, take credit, be proud, mission accomplished, and within the lifetime of the pond ... but damned if the pond will forget those ancient wars, and those responsible for them, and the half-baked, multi monster that erupted from them, Malware in deed, thought and name ...

Meanwhile, the pond would like to hand out its newly created "woke" reptile of the week award ...

Splendid stuff, Natasha, woke in both the headline and then used as the very first word. 

You have won the pond's inaugural reptile "woke" of the week award ... wear it with pride ...

Pease don't take it personally Natasha, the fact that you're a fuckhead is a badge of honour in reptile la la land ...

Speaking of how Murdochians soil just about everything, the pond can't spend any time on it but Clive Irving in the Beast wrote a story about how WaPo publisher and CEO Will Lewis found himself contaminated ...(possible paywall).

The nub of it?

“Mr Lewis gave approval for the deletion of all emails from 2007 on 3 February 2011 (one week after the start of Operation Weeting) which deletions were completed on 8 February 2011, the day before NI [News International] met the MPs to discuss what data was available, and the Claimants contend that this was a deliberate plan by Mr Lewis… to prevent the MPs from obtaining evidence of phone-hacking, other unlawful activity and the cover-up that took place in 2007. The Claimants rely on the fact that Mr Lewis withheld from the police the fact that millions of emails had been deleted since 14 January 2011, for 6 months.”

The level of sordidness?

According to the claims statement, some emails were not deleted and were transferred to a laptop that became known as “the extraction laptop” where they were subject to further selective deletion. The document claims: “Later, in July 2011, the hard drive was found, together with another laptop, during a search by the MPs in a floor safe hidden under a vanity unit in the annexe to Rebekah Brooks’s office.”

These claims will not be tested in open court if the remaining litigants settle with NGN. The NGN lawyers have witness statements already made by the Murdoch executives cited, including Lewis, at a time when it seemed some of the cases would go to trial. Darren Elemes has also made a witness statement for the claimants.

A source with deep knowledge of the cases told me: “The claim documents are not the actual documents underlying the allegations. The real danger for NGN comes when there’s a trial because then the media can see it, the police can see it, the victims can see it.

“That’s the evidence. People will have given evidence on oath. And then the judge could say, as he did in the cases involving the Daily Mirror, I find the News Group witnesses were lying.”

Would criminal prosecutions follow?

A vanity unit? Oh the vanity ...

The sadness of it?

The latest claims reflect the fact that more than 200 journalists, executives, and private investigators have been deposed, filling in many of the gaps—but far from all of them—in the search for truth.

Hacking was a brainworm that poisoned British journalism over a long period. It was incubated in a Murdoch newsroom where it quickly became contagious. It spread widely, corrupting editors who saw in it an irresistible source of scoops that violated the privacy of many hundreds of people, high and low. And it is part of the malignant legacy of Rupert Murdoch and a tabloid newsroom culture that he uniquely created and oversaw.

It's a bit like the associates of orange Jesus ... everything and everybody that comes into contact with News Corp is soiled, contaminated, laid low ... a malignant legacy that endures ...

And speaking of contamination, it's time for the pond to soil itself ...

What, no Major Mitchell at the top far right of the digital edition, just the usual bromancer bromide?

Down below the fold the Major was still MIA ...

Ah, the Caterist ... as usual, News Corp isn't content fucking the NBN, and ruining the lives of those who did dirty deeds cheap for the Chairman Emeritus, they also want to fuck the planet ...

There's a profound irony here, not least the way that the Caterist's lobby group has received hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer dollars over the years, while the IPA has received oodles from Gina, and from others who have stayed under wraps...

But the reptiles insisted on demonising dastardly solar panels yet again, and certain rich folk swimming against the Gina and Caterist tide ...

The pond wanted to get those images out of the way, because all that left was the usual threadbare floodwaters in quarries whispering Caterist and his malicious mendacity ...

Why is the pond always reminded of that Moving Pictures' song, what about me, it isn't fair, the Caterist never gets enough, now he wants his share, can't you see, he just wants to fuck the planet, but these billionaires give to others more than they give to him ...

Enough already, you get the gist,  the whining and carping and the endless carrying on ...

So it's soft headed to care about the koala bears? Can anyone bear it? 

The pond is too tired to go through the usual counter-programming, like that story in The Graudian, 'The stakes could not be higher': world is on edge of climate abyss, UN warns ... or that story Brutal heatwaves and submerged cities: what a 3C world would look like, or tales of recent flash floods ...

Afghanistan – which had a relatively dry winter, making it more difficult for the soil to absorb rainfall – is highly vulnerable to climate change.

The nation, ravaged by four decades of war, is one of the world’s poorest and, according to scientists, one of the worst prepared to face the consequences of global warming.

The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said on Twitter/X that the floods were “a stark reminder of Afghanistan’s vulnerability to the climate crisis”.

“Both immediate aid and long term planning by the Taliban and international actors are needed.”

Planning? Forget it Jake, denialism is still the go in Caterist la la land. He's planning a planetary NBN...

The pond isn't going to bother listing the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Australian taxpayers have forked over to support the Caterist and his ilk at the Menzies Research Centre. 

All it will note is that for some reason the reptiles decided to leave out the tag revealing that he's still fellow travelling with the lobby group, and they're still after your money ...

Make a difference? Is that another way of saying fuck the planet? The pond wouldn't piss on the MRC if it was on fire ...

Yeah, yeah, break the taboo and all that, denialism dressed in drag, and the pond recommends Nuclear power makes no sense for Australia - but it's a useful diversion from real climate action ...

And so to a useless diversion, yet another craven Craven, not far fallen from the craven tree ...

The pond only offers this as a diversion, the long absent lord help us, because the bold and brave one turned out to be comically craven, as craven Cravens are wont to be.

First the pond must get the craven snaps out of the way ... all guaranteed cheap and designed not to cost what was once a graphics department more than a ha'penny ...

Now on with the comedy ... and the cravenness ...

You see? The craven Craven, or the reptiles, didn't have the courage of their convictions. They could be so bold as to mention "negre" because it's foreign and French and sounds arty, and never mind NPR We Don't SayThat ...

But they baulked at the "n" word. Now the pond can't write it, because google would ban the page, but what's stopping the craven Craven and the reptiles? They're allegedly their own masters, free libertarian spirits who would stop at nothing in their quest for freedumb. Except they didn't ... they deployed the dash, as if to disguise a good old-fashioned deployment of the humble asterisk ...

As for wearing evil homosexuality, there was a comical story the craven Craven might have mentioned, but of course he's too craven ...

It was left to others with an interest in the topic to take it up ...

Freedumb? Only freedumb for some, not freedumb for others ...

Sorry, the pond will leave the curious case of Christou to the link, because there's another classic bit of craven Craven looming ...

Oh it's bold and brave stuff, re-litigating the 1930s, and Lady Jane and all that jazz, but once again the reptiles baulk at the 'n' bit ...

What are we to do with a Craven so craven he can't even spell out the country joke, which last the pond checked still appeared in Shakspere, which is more than you can say for the "n" word in a reptile piece comically fulminating about censorship ...

And so to end with the bromancer simply because he's there and Major Mitchell seems to have gone MIA, at least when the pond was paying attention...

As usual with the bro, there was a lot of padding and distractions ... and for some inexplicable reason the bro is still haunted by the onion muncher ...

By golly, not that you can tell, but the OM is looking his age, and a bit like a boiled lobster at that ,,,

In passing please also note the usual cunning contrivance by what's left of the graphics department, the way that the Wong is downcast, while Captain Spud is allowed to pretend he's human.

Meanwhile, on another planet ...

The pond couldn't help but note that illustration in the Graudian ...

Of course there's more work to be done to render Gaza completely uninhabitable and open it up to real estate opportunities, but relax, the current Israeli government had good teachers in the matter of genocides and how to eradicate troublesome ghettoes, and just as in the old days, there was a Henry Ford to urge on the killing, so now we have the Murdochians and the bromancer ...

Meanwhile, as the cynical bromancer reduces it to the most tawdry form of domestic politics, on another planet ...

Hamas doing its black knight routine and Benji's mob doing their Dalek routine, and the long absent lord help the million plus civilians in the middle of it all, and all the bromancer can do is turn the carnage into cheap point scoring ...

Meanwhile, on another planet ...

Yes, the pond had to go the 'toon for fear that its profound contempt for the bromancer might be too much to bear ...

Meanwhile, on another planet ...

And with the help of the 'toonists the pond made it to the final bro gobbet, a more than usually contemptible offering from a thoroughly contemptible man ...

Once again no mention of the way that a fundamentalist Jewish assassin did his work, once again the distortions and lies, but then the pond noted how the entire mission of News Corp is to soil and to wreck, and Gaza is just a wrecked and ruined footnote in the wrecking of the planet ...

But at least there are laughs to be had, and it would be remiss not to note Kudelka in The Saturday Paper as a way to close out the day's offering ...