In which Lloydie of the Amazon and Dame Groan act as pond filler, a little spackle as it were ...

 

A thoughtful friend sent along this cover to the pond, thinking it might be a conversation starter ...

Undoubtedly droll, and from some kind of time warp... but as one is before the courts and the other also completely contemptible and disgraced, the pond was forced to move on to the reptiliana of the day ... and what grim pickings there were, with the Future Fund's fate producing grapes of reptile wrath ...

Down at the very bottom, those who clicked to enlarge, or with an eagle eye, might have looked past the Future Fund catastrophe to spot Lloydie of the Amazon team tagging to keep the nuke saga alive ... 

Apparently Lloydie's now so slack he needs help to turn in copy, but the pond thought the mighty duo might deliver an epic thrust, a nuking as it were, and so tuned in ...

Labor’s nuclear pact withdrawal ‘a catastrophic strategic mistake’, business wants future option
Business leaders urge the Albanese government to include nuclear as a future energy option, joining criticism of Labor’s withdrawal from an international nuclear collaboration.

Imagine the pond's disgust when Rosie and Gra Gra of the Amazon managed just a two minute read, or so the reptiles say, starting with A view from inside France’s Nogent-sur-Seine nuclear power plant in November. Picture: AFP

Inside the plant? In days past the pond would have called that an EXT WS.

What followed could kindly be described as a beat-up, a stirring of the pot until something interesting arrived ...

Business and industry leaders are urging the Albanese government to include nuclear as a future ­energy option, warning “we shouldn’t tie one arm behind our back”, as Labor’s withdrawal from an international collaboration on next generation nuclear power is labelled a “catastrophic strategic mistake”.
Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles defended the government’s decision to reject an invitation from the UK and US to join a new agreement to speed up the deployment of nuclear technology to help decarbonise industry and boost energy security, declaring Labor wouldn’t go down a civil nuclear industry path.
The major parties accused each other of being an “embarrassment” over their respective energy policies, after the UK was forced to correct a media release that stated Australia was “expected” to sign up to the Generation V International Forum.
Australia has been a member of the Gen IV pact since the Turnbull government joined up in 2016 and, through the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology ­Organisation, has worked on collaborations on generation four nuclear energy systems and research and development projects.
But government sources said because Gen V had a big focus on expanding the nuclear civil industry, it was becoming less relevant to Australia and the nation would not be a member.
Australia may be involved as an observer.
The man responsible for negotiating the nation’s entry into the Gen IV pact, Adi Paterson, said the withdrawal from the collaboration would be seen by allies as “an act of deep confusion”.
“It is a catastrophic strategic mistake. It is crazy and disappointing,” Dr Paterson, a former ANSTO chief executive, told The Australian.
“It means we don’t just have a ban (on nuclear power) in Australia today but in 12 to 20 years time. We are breaking collegiality with allies and friends on ideological grounds. This is not how to do soft diplomacy.”
Dr Paterson said Australia’s entry into Gen IV had been welcomed by both sides of politics, noting forum events had been held in Australia and ANSTO had made a valuable contribution with research on reactors and storage of nuclear material.

Ah, the good Dr Paterson ... he once helped nuke South Africa.

The main point of the whole thing seemed to be a chance to cut to the dog botherer in a cross promotional video clip blathering on in his usual way about climate zealots ...

Sky News host Chris Kenny discusses Australia’s position at the COP29 meeting in Baku and what the UK must think of their “little” renewable “zealot” from down under. “I think the UK knows renewables leave you short, that's why they're expanding nuclear,” Mr Kenny said. “How they must laugh at the earnest little renewables zealot from down under.”

Talk about a serve of stale bread and beer ...

Australia’s three leading big business and industry groups, the Business Council of Australia, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Australian Industry Group, all backed a technology agnostic approach to the country’s future energy mix.
“We don’t think there should be a legislative barrier to nuclear,” ACCI chief executive Andrew McKellar said.
“It shouldn’t be prohibited as part of the future energy mix, but if it was to be included it should be economically viable. It’s an outcome that should come from the market, not through some artificial stricture or action of government. From a business point of view, we don’t know what our circumstances will be in 10, 20 or 30 years … and we shouldn’t tie one arm behind our back.”
Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox said while nuclear doesn’t appear viable today, it may become so in the years ahead.
“Given how rapidly technology is evolving, it would be counterintuitive to simply rule it out as a future energy source,” he said.
BCA chief executive Bran Black noted the lobby group had consistently called for a technology-neutral approach to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
Peter Dutton and his MPs attempted to use question time to make the Albanese government look isolated on the issue.
Defending the government’s stance, Mr Marles said nuclear was the single most expensive form of electricity in the world today, would cost Australian households an extra $1200 in their bills and it wouldn’t come online for another two decades.
“Even then it’s only 4 per cent of the grid,” he said. “That’s what the ridiculous proposal that has been put forward by the Leader of the Opposition represents.”

That's it, that's all they managed? ...while nuclear doesn’t appear viable today, it may become so in the years ahead.

Credit where credit is due for that yarn about how much has been done, but much remains to be done ...

Ah Rosie's still an X'er, that says a lot ... apparently there's no blue sky in her life.

Meanwhile, the immortal Rowe joined the nuke debate ...

The pond did take a squiz at the other reptile offerings of the day ...

Nah, yeah, nah. Jack the insider taking on Fitzy, two tossers in search of a teacup? Pass. 

Petulant Peta, facilitator of a notoriously inept leader in a wayward government, taking a potshot at government? Ferget it, the pond's correspondents might mutiny. 

And between Eric and Judith, the pond would do its duty with the Groaning, but what a pity the reptiles aren't focussed on the United States at the moment.

Never mind Dr. Oz, the latest of the weird TV personalities with a taste for quack solutions and quack cures to be given the nod, it seems buyer's remorse has clicked in, in all sorts of places... (NY Post paywal)

Naturally the Beast was quick to gloat (paywall), and it reminded. the pond of a piece by David A. Graham for The Atlantic that was heavily laden with irony as Graham celebrated buyer's remorse ...Washington Is Shocked, Just shocked, I tell you. (archive link).

At a rally in Las Vegas in September, the reggaeton star Nicky Jam came onstage in a Make America Great Again hat and endorsed Donald Trump. “We need you. We need you back, right? We need you to be the president,” he said. But after a comedian at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden last month called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage,” the singer—whose father is Puerto Rican and who was raised partly on the island—had second thoughts.
“Never in my life did I think that a month later, a comedian was going to come to criticize my country and speak badly of my country, and therefore, I renounce any support for Donald Trump,” Nicky Jam said.
He had no right to be surprised. Trump himself had previously gone after Puerto Rico—he punished its leaders for criticizing him after Hurricane Maria, and sought to swap it for Greenland—but even if Nicky Jam had missed or forgotten that, he had to know who Trump was.
Nicky Jam was ahead of the curve. Since the election, Trump has moved swiftly to do things he’d said he’d do, and yet many people—especially his own supporters—seem stunned and dismayed. This is absurd. Surprise was perhaps merited in late 2016 and early 2017, when Trump was still an unknown quantity. But after four years as president, culminating in an attempt to erase an election he lost, Trump has demonstrated who he is. Somehow, the delusion of Trump à la carte—take the lib-owning, take the electoral wins, but pass on all of the unsavory stuff—persists.
In an article about how Trump’s transition is “shocking the Washington establishment,” Peter Baker of The New York Times writes: “Nine years after Mr. Trump began upsetting political norms, it may be easy to underestimate just how extraordinary all of this is.” He’s right that the aberrant nature of the picks may be overlooked, as I have warned, yet it is also true that the actual unpredictability of them is overestimated.
On K Street, Politico reports, health-care-industry lobbyists can’t believe that Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. They were “expecting a more conventional pick,” even though Trump emphasized Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda late in the campaign, and even though Kennedy said that Trump had promised him control of HHS. To be sure, Kennedy is a shocking and disturbing pick, as Benjamin Mazer and my colleague Yasmin Tayag have recently written for The Atlantic, but his nomination should not come as a surprise—especially for people whose entire business proposition is being highly paid to advise clients on how Washington actually works. (The influence peddlers reportedly hope that senators will block Kennedy. The fact that they’re still waiting for someone else to solve their problems is further evidence of how little they’ve learned, years into the Trump era.)
Meanwhile, the New York Post, a key pillar of Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media juggernaut, is similarly jittery about the Kennedy choice. Back when Kennedy was a thorn in President Joe Biden’s side, threatening to run against him in the Democratic primary, the Post’s editorial board was all too happy to elevate him. Now the board condemns his nomination and tells us that it came out of a meeting with him last year “thinking he’s nuts on a lot of fronts.” The columnist Michael Godwin, who beamed on November 9 that Trump’s victory “offers the promise of progress on so many fronts that it already feels like Morning in America again,” was back a week later to complain that “it’s not a close call to say” that Kennedy and Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general, are “unfit” for the roles.
The lobbyists and editorialists are in good company, or at least in some sort of company. On Capitol Hill, Republican senators say they are shocked by many of Trump’s Cabinet picks. Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who notoriously professed surprise when Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, is “shocked” at the Gaetz nomination. Gaetz’s House Republican colleagues are “stunned and disgusted.”
Reactions to Pete Hegseth’s nomination as secretary of defense are less vitriolic, if no less baffled. “Wow,” Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told NBC. “I’m just surprised, because the names that I’ve heard for secretary of defense have not included him.” Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was even blunter. “Who?” he said. “I just don’t know anything about him.”

And so on, and the pond was just shocked, shocked the pond tells ya, and speaking of RFK Jr. it was remiss of the pond not to run that now notorious snap ...

Everybody loved RFK Jr being made to eat humble pie, or at least a serve of crap. King Donald I really knows how to make his subjects suffer ... while pitiful Johnson looked like a lapdog wondering why he wasn't allowed a seat at the table, so he too could eat crap with RFK Jr....

What looks they were and thanks to BuzzFeed, the pond was treated to an alternative view of the scene, and a sign of baldness in the court of King Donald I, with lapdog Johnson still desperate to get into the picture ...

The baldness? There were a couple of variations to hand ...

 

That's what it's come to in America, hair watching as a national sport, and speaking of lapdogs at the court of King Donald I, Luckovich celebrated these lapdogs, though for some strange reason their ratings seem to have slumped (some are calling it the 17% solution, or perhaps the 38%):

Okay, okay, if you want those still staying strong, doing their best not to be supine lapdogs, head off to The Bulwark for stories such as Entering Our Crank Era... 

Yes, the brain worms are now running the show, and while it provokes despair in some, the pond is filled with delight, each day a new novelty item, each day a new crank hovering into view.

With great reluctance the pond must leave that cavalcade of clowns in their circus car and stay true to Dame Groan, though in the great scheme of epic groans, many will think this offering is in a minor key, or even a bit of ephemera, as passing as the movement of Petey boy from chairman of the board to a spot in the rearview mirror,  or from the airport floor ...

Dame Groan was in doom and gloom mood, but according to the reptiles she spent only three minutes of the hive mind reader's time announcing the end of the world: ‘May as well close it down’: This is the end of the Future Fund, It’s Jim Chalmers’ big chance to put his loopy ideas about ‘reinventing capitalism’ to become a ‘values-driven’ system into practice. Labor has never really liked the Future Fund because it’s a reminder of Peter Costello’s success.

The last thing Dame Groan needs is values ... and so the reptiles offered a snap of Satan and his helper as a starter for the groaning ...Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher hold a press conference about the final budget outcome in September. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

Such is the current state of the pond's perversity, neigh depravity, that the pond took an unholy delight in sipping from a fragrant cup of Dame Groan's tears ...

The Treasurer and the Finance Minister are changing the mandate of the Future Fund to “support national priorities”.
The mandate will be adjusted to fit in with the Labor government’s pet projects – housing, green projects and infrastructure.

Eek, not greenie projects, not anything to do with climate change and science and all that zealotry ...

Ah, the sweetness of salty tears, and so Dame Groan turned apocalyptic drama queen, but in very truncated form, with Dame Groan seeming to lose her mojo in all the despair ...

It may sound dramatic, but this is the end of the Future Fund. I’m pretty sure David Murray and Peter Costello, former chairs of the fund, will agree. The final outcome is only too clear.
Instead of the chair and the guardian focusing on getting the best returns for taxpayers, the ultimate owners of the fund, they will now be obliged to consider making investments in the preferred government areas.
The claim that “the fund will provide strong returns to the government’s balance sheet while supporting national priorities where it can” is of course a complete crock. If there were these strong returns currently available while supporting national priorities, then these investments would already be made.
But projects in these areas generally require government subsidies to make their economics work. Does it make any sense for the Future Fund to commit funds to projects which only proceed with government backing?
Strictly speaking, the subsidies should be netted out; otherwise, there is just a nonsensical circularity going on.
Take the National Broadband Network as a case in point – a substantial investment in infrastructure which is a preferred government area. Had the Future Fund invested in the NBN, massive losses would have had to be brought to book because the investment is a complete dud. It wouldn’t be able to sell its holdings because there would be no buyers.
When the industry super funds were approached to invest in ­social housing, only the chair of Cbus put his hand up, while the representatives of the other funds shuffled in their chairs. Everyone knows that investing in social housing won’t generate superior returns – it’s the nature of the ­investment. It should be undertaken on the government’s own balance sheet.
It’s not clear why Jim Chalmers, who presumably is leading this change in mandate for the Future Fund rather than the hapless ­Finance Minister, Katy Gallagher, believes this radical change is necessary.
After all, there is the Clean ­Energy Finance Corporation, the National Reconstruction Fund and Housing Australia. Perhaps it is his big chance to put his loopy ideas about “reinventing capitalism” to become a “values-driven” system into practice.
As for the idea that the chair of the Future Fund and the guardians were fully consulted about this change, well yes. It’s the government calling the shots; any objections would have been duly noted and then overlooked. But at least Chalmers and Gallagher have a sense of humour when they claim that “the government remains committed to the fund’s independence and commercial focus”.

At this point the reptiles interrupted to provide a snap of Petey boy smirking in his pork chop way, looking very chairman of the board ...Future Fund’s then chairman Peter Costello at Future Fund HQ in Melbourne in 2019. Picture: David Geraghty

Why that one? There were much better snaps of Petey boy in his prime to hand in the archive ... smirking away ...

Never mind, Dame Groan finished off her apocalyptic groaning in fine, albeit short form, style ... more a lap of the pool than a marathon

The fact is Labor has never ­really liked the Future Fund. It was testament to the success of our longest serving treasurer, Costello, who was able to achieve zero net government debt. Those were the days.
Using in part the proceeds of privatisation – note here the opposition of Anthony Albanese’s wing of the Labor Party to privatisation – the Future Fund has grown into an international powerhouse with a reputation for shrewd decision-making. It regularly receives ­exclusive invitations to participate in profitable deals.
A key here is the independence of the Future Fund from the government of the day: this has been critical to the building of the fund’s reputation.
The parties it deals with know that the chair and the guardians are driven by seeking the best returns, not taking orders from the government of the day.
The total value of the Future Fund currently sits around $230bn. Last financial year, the rate of return on assets was above 9 per cent. Its average rate of return over the fund’s life has been 8.3 per cent per annum. It has a wide spread of assets, both local and overseas, and the returns have beaten most other funds in the market. (I’m sure many readers of The Australian would have been more than happy to park their money in the Future Fund.)
It has been a huge success, decreasing the value of government net debt in a very substantial way. The Future Fund is the commonwealth’s largest single financial asset.
But Chalmers has other ideas. His world view is one in which investments are directed by the government to preferred areas, in part relieving the government of making its own investments. It’s a highway to poor outcomes as returns disappoint and some projects fail altogether.
It might make more sense to simply close the ­Future Fund, fold the assets into the government’s balance sheet and let the government spend like crazy until all the money’s gone. It’s not far off what is being proposed.

Indeed, indeed, but why not get the Future Fund to nuke the country, and thereby save the planet? 

Just a helpful suggestion to console Dame Groan in her drama queen despair...

Yes, this day the pond has largely been about nothing, but as the immortal Mr Pooter established, nothing has its charms ...

April 5.—Two shoulders of mutton arrived, Carrie having arranged with another butcher without consulting me. Gowing called, and fell over scraper coming in. Must get that scraper removed.
April 6.—Eggs for breakfast simply shocking; sent them back to Borset with my compliments, and he needn’t call any more for orders. Couldn’t find umbrella, and though it was pouring with rain, had to go without it. Sarah said Mr. Gowing must have took it by mistake last night, as there was a stick in the ‘all that didn’t belong to nobody. In the evening, hearing someone talking in a loud voice to the servant in the downstairs hall, I went out to see who it was, and was surprised to find it was Borset, the butterman, who was both drunk and offensive. Borset, on seeing me, said he would be hanged if he would ever serve City clerks any more—the game wasn’t worth the candle. I restrained my feelings, and quietly remarked that I thought it was possible for a city clerk to be a gentleman. He replied he was very glad to hear it, and wanted to know whether I had ever come across one, for he hadn’t. He left the house, slamming the door after him, which nearly broke the fanlight; and I heard him fall over the scraper, which made me feel glad I hadn’t removed it. When he had gone, I thought of a splendid answer I ought to have given him. However, I will keep it for another occasion.
April 7.—Being Saturday, I looked forward to being home early, and putting a few things straight; but two of our principals at the office were absent through illness, and I did not get home till seven. Found Borset waiting. He had been three times during the day to apologise for his conduct last night. He said he was unable to take his Bank Holiday last Monday, and took it last night instead. He begged me to accept his apology, and a pound of fresh butter. He seems, after all, a decent sort of fellow; so I gave him an order for some fresh eggs, with a request that on this occasion they should be fresh. I am afraid we shall have to get some new stair-carpets after all; our old ones are not quite wide enough to meet the paint on either side. Carrie suggests that we might ourselves broaden the paint. I will see if we can match the colour (dark chocolate) on Monday.
April 8, Sunday.—After Church, the Curate came back with us. I sent Carrie in to open front door, which we do not use except on special occasions. She could not get it open, and after all my display, I had to take the Curate (whose name, by-the-by, I did not catch,) round the side entrance. He caught his foot in the scraper, and tore the bottom of his trousers. Most annoying, as Carrie could not well offer to repair them on a Sunday. After dinner, went to sleep. Took a walk round the garden, and discovered a beautiful spot for sowing mustard-and-cress and radishes. Went to Church again in the evening: walked back with the Curate. Carrie noticed he had got on the same pair of trousers, only repaired. He wants me to take round the plate, which I think a great compliment.

November 21, Thursday.—Lloydie called and said we must nuke the country now, no time for dillydallying. Dame Groan dropped in her card, advising that there was absolutely no future. Wondered if we really should have her for dinner. She seems a decent sort of chap, if decidedly eccentric.

Must tell the reptiles to liven things up a little ...if there's an apocalypse coming it should be more lively than what Lloydie andDame Groan currently offer ...

And that left the pond the chance to close with the infallible Pope, though it seems that it's a little late to be contemplating the Ruddster as the carnival of clowns looms closer ...

Is there nothing that hair can't do?