The pond was startled to read this in Zadie Smith's essay for The New Yorker, The Art of the Impersonal Essay, In my experience, every kind of writing requires some kind of self-soothing Jedi mind trick, and, when it comes to essay composition, the rectangle is mine. (*archive link):
...Almost half the school was felled at the first hurdle, leaving after G.C.S.E.s, aged just sixteen. (For G.C.S.E.s, you usually studied about nine subjects; for A-levels, only three.) Those of us who survived struggled on, trying to jump through meritocracy’s narrowing hoops. If you couldn’t do maths and had trouble with the hard sciences, each hoop came with an essay topic attached. (I did English, History, and Theatre Studies.) The stakes were presented as not just high but existential. You had to produce a thousand effective words on the rise of the Chartists—or else! What did “else” mean? Never earning more than minimum wage, never getting out of your mum’s flat, never “making something of yourself.” My anxiety about all this was paralyzing me.
Then something happened. An English teacher took me aside and drew a rectangle on a piece of paper, placed a shooting arrow on each corner of the rectangle, plus one halfway along the horizontal top line, and a final arrow, in the same position, down below. “Six points,” this teacher said. “Going clockwise, first arrow is the introduction, last arrow is the conclusion. Got that?” I got that. He continued, “Second arrow is you basically developing whatever you said in the intro. Third arrow is you either developing the point further or playing devil’s advocate. Fourth arrow, you’re starting to see the finish line, so start winding down, start summarizing. Fifth arrow, you’re one step closer to finished, so repeat the earlier stuff but with variations. Sixth arrow, you’re on the home straight: you’ve reached the conclusion. Bob’s your uncle. That’s really all there is to it.” I had the sense I was being let into this overworked teacher’s inner sanctum, that he had drawn this little six-arrowed rectangle himself, upon his own exam papers, long ago. “Oh, and remember to put the title of the essay in that box. That’ll keep you focussed.”
I was seventeen when this priceless piece of advice came my way. I’m now almost fifty, and although I don’t often draw out the rectangle anymore, this charming and simple blueprint is buried deep in my cerebral cortex, lit up like the flux capacitor in “Back to the Future.” I still use it. Still think about it every time I sit down to write one of these things you are reading right now. I continue to admire its impersonal and ruthless forward thrust.
It must be an international conspiracy.
Long before Zadie was given the rectangles, the pond had also achieved enlightenment, in very much the same way.
The pond's history teacher at THS had outlined the art of the essay, as required for exams, and as a result, the pond came third in history in the state that fatal final year (there's always somebody better at rectangles), and thereby ruined any chance of a happy future.
But let's see if the methodology still works.
Introduction: The lizard Oz is a deeply reprehensible rag which purports to offer news, but only offers ideology, propaganda and substantial serves of BS.
Now to develop the point further:
Oh dear, the lead doesn't help the pond develop the argument much ...
The pond did experience cognitive dissonance, having woken up in time to hear the demented ramblings of a senile-sounding King Donald, which the BBC's News Hour tried to package so that its last listeners wouldn't go back to sleep.
And the night before the pond had watched John Oliver demolish Benji, Hamas supporter, summarised in The Graudian in John Oliver on Netanyahu: ‘Personally responsible for keeping this war going’, The Last Week Tonight host took aim at the controversial Israeli prime minister, his history of corruption and his role in the deaths of 65,000 Palestinians
The pond was reminded that Benji had helped fund Hamas and wanted it strong.
Moving along, the pond wasn't helped by this either ...
It's a stupidity and a nonsense, and it wasn't really the lizard Oz - it came from the WSJ - and all that did was reveal the way that the hive mind is infected in an Ophiocordyceps unilateralis way.
The proposal poses as much of a threat to Hollywood as it does to any other country, as hinted at by the terribly arty artwork ...
Never stand between a reptile and a visual cliché ...
The argument could however be developed with this offering ...
Hysterical alarmism, accompanied by an entirely misleading graph, with the alarmism given the "EXCLUSIVE" news treatment ...
The reptiles loved the misleading animated gif so much they repeated it at the top of the story ...
The pond reeled away, as stunned as any mullet, and looked over on the extreme far right to see if there was any way to develop the argument further ...
The pond could have developed the argument by spending time with a tired old bigot ranting at TG folk, but sometimes a line has to be drawn, and the bigot despatched to the archive cornfield:
Sure, there's a rich irony to be celebrated watching an alleged greenie be embraced by the hive mind, rabbiting on about identiarians like a barking mad member of the GOP, but 'nuff is more than 'nuff.
The pond decided the best way to develop the argument was to go with the old faithfuls ...
That story about solar panels swamping Sydney (well that's what the image suggested) was just a set-up for a familiar groaning ... reminding those outside the hive mind of the way that alleged "news" stories, beat-ups in the cause of reptile BS - really serve as background noise for a jolly good groaning about renewables and such like.
Go to it Dame, give us your groaning, and please, can we have terrifying windmills and Satanic solar panels surrounding the Beast himself as a reminder of what to fear ...
The header: Treasury’s net-zero modelling amounts to costly deception, We’re being asked to believe black is white. Given the immense new infrastructure need for the renewable energy rollout, this component alone will lead to soaring electricity prices.
The caption for the wretched collage, only notable because Emilia took a credit when the wiser course would have been to blame it on AI slop: The vast cost of the transition is a figure Chris Bowen doesn’t want to have broadcast. Picture-illustration: Emilia Tortorella
Dame Groan began with a dinkum bit of pandering, up there with what's required by King Donald ...
Most readers of The Australian are very aware of the limitations of economic modelling – OK, all modelling.
Okay, most lizard Oz readers no doubt enjoyed that kiss-assium, that simpering at the hive mind readership in the same way that minions pander to King Donald, do go on ...
It’s not really an exaggeration to say economic modellers undertake their role to make astrologers look good.
These days, there are two kinds of economic models: bad ones and very bad ones. The Treasury’s modelling of Australia’s net-zero transformation fits into the second category. It is the classic case of the tail wagging the dog, with the clear aim being to endorse the government’s harebrained climate policies. How any economist could argue that a raft of government-imposed costs and regulations will increase economic output is anyone’s guess. But that’s what the Treasury’s exercise concluded. Essentially, we are being asked to believe black is white.
As with all models, it’s essential to identify the key assumptions. There are two key ones in the Treasury’s model.
At this point the reptiles interrupted with the King himself in climate denialist action, a worthy partner to Dame Groan, President Donald Trump dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job” in the world during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday (September 23), doubling down on his scepticism of global environmental initiatives and multilateral institutions.
Note how pure, outright denialism is redressed as "scepticism", as the knowledge that she was walking in the same path as the King sent Dame Groan off in her usual fit of sceptical laughter ...
The first is “global mitigation action is assumed to be sufficient to ensure global temperatures (increases) are kept well below 2C by the end of the century”. The second is that there will be downward pressures on electricity prices arising from the further rollout of renewable energy.
This first assumption is critical. Because the rest of the world will be fully on board reducing emissions – pause for sceptical laughter here – the competitive playing field is level. If Australia doesn’t follow suit, then we will be hit with all sorts of economically damaging measures, such as carbon border adjustment tariffs – that’s the assumption, anyway. Having every country on board also means carbon leakage – emissions-intensive activities moving offshore – does not occur.
But the assumption that all nations will be competing on the same terms by decarbonising is simply wrong. But Treasury doesn’t bother to model the most realistic scenario, in which Australia has ambitious emissions reduction targets while most other countries are either not bothering or walking in the other direction.
(This sleight of hand was used by Treasury – most officials have been committed climate activists for some time – all those years ago when the impact of the Labor government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, also known as the carbon price, was modelled. The critical assumption then was there would be a global carbon price with an assumed value that would increase over time. The conclusion that any economic damage arising from the CPRS would be small was a direct consequence of this unfounded assumption.)
The reptiles then inserted a terrifying image of whale killing machines, wreaking havoc on the whales around Goulburn, with the caption ‘There’s no way there will be any offshore wind projects by 2035,’ says Judith Sloan. Picture: AFP
A random thought popped into the pond's head, which didn't help the pond develop its argument, but did please.
Did Hutton enjoy being in a hive mind intent on comprehensively stuffing the planet?
Bigots gunna do what bigots gotta do ...
Back to the ranting and the furious fulminating ...
The second assumption of Treasury’s modelling of the net-zero transformation is that wholesale electricity prices will fall in line with the modelling undertaken by the Australian Energy Market Commission – yes, that’s right, more dubious modelling. We are expected to believe that the further investment in firmed renewable energy – the firming side of thing is very vague – will lead to a 10 per cent fall in the wholesale price relative to the 10-year real historical average figure.
Let’s call this out for what it is: a complete guess. The fact is most of the low-hanging and accessible renewable energy sites have been taken and there’s no way there will be any offshore wind projects by 2035.
The wholesale price of electricity only makes up around one-third of the total price of electricity. The biggest contributing factor is infrastructure charges, which, in turn, are based on guaranteed returns on regulated assets such as transmission lines. Given the immense need for new infrastructure associated with the current and further rollout of renewable energy, this component alone will lead to soaring total electricity prices.
It’s not clear the Treasury boffins even realise this distinction, with the text of the report talking about wholesale prices one minute and conflating this with total electricity prices the next. The way these models work is that any reduction in input costs has a substantial economic benefit but, in this case, it’s not even clear that it’s possible to assume any such fall in the total price of electricity.
Overseas evidence is very clear on this matter: the higher the penetration of renewable energy within electricity grids, the higher are electricity prices. This finding comes from the International Energy Agency, which has a much better understanding of these matters than Treasury.
At this point the reptiles were so desperate for a visual illustration that they put up this entirely meaningless bit of slop, Treasury boffins don’t bother to model the ‘most realistic’ climate scenario’, in which Australia has ambitious emissions reduction targets but other countries aren’t on-board. Picture: Getty Images
WTF? Is that a picture of Treasury boffins in action? Does that somehow illuminate realistic climate scenarios?
On the other hand, it was pretty much true to the groaning ...
Turning now to the ridiculously concocted scenarios, with all reaching net zero by 2050. They are the Baseline Scenario, Disorderly Transition Scenario and Renewable Exports Upside Scenario. Translating this, we are talking current government policy, chaotic Coalition policy, and the energy superpower dream – green iron, critical minerals and the like.
Needless to say, Treasury takes a dim view of the Disorderly Transition Scenario – tut, tut – with “the economy projected to be up to a cumulative $2 trillion smaller by 2050, compared to orderly scenarios”.
Under the “bad” scenario, the cost of capital is higher, there is reduced access to technology, and the ability of businesses to plan is limited. We wouldn’t want that.
According to the commercially naive boffins in Treasury, “credible targets and policies are critical for investment certainty and growth”. No doubt, all businesses would welcome investment certainty and not just for energy investments. But this is not how the commercial world works: economic conditions vary, both locally and globally, interest rates fluctuate, consumer preferences change.
The notion that climate-related investments should – indeed, can – be preferenced in this way is absurd. After all, we live in a democracy and government policy is liable to adjustment with a change in the ruling party
Finally, on what the net-zero transition is going to cost, Treasury refrains from putting a figure on the total amount, including the required additional spending. Wading through the appendices of the report, we see the estimates of the carbon prices needed to achieve net zero. Reading from Table C.2, we learn that all the carbon prices that will need to apply by 2050 are around $300 per tonne of CO2-e, in 2023 dollars. When Julia Gillard introduced the CPRS, the carbon price was between $20 and $40.
These figures are central to any assessment of the true cost of the transition, the burden of which will be borne by households and businesses. It’s not surprising that they are tucked away in an appendix.
The bottom line is that Treasury’s modelling is essentially an exercise in deception, using implausible assumptions particularly in relation to global transition efforts. But even this trickery doesn’t fully disguise the vast cost of the transition, with carbon prices heading towards $300 at a minimum. It’s a figure Chris Bowen doesn’t want to have broadcast.
Others will want to argue with Dame Groan's figuring, calculations and deep-seated bias, but the pond is just relieved she didn't go the 'nuking the country' route this time.
This is how the reptiles work ... victims reduced to relishing small mercies.
Have a break, and if not a Kit-kat, then certainly not an emergency call with the immortal Rowe ...
On with the barely remembered essay format and the argument, and the pond could have selected ancient Troy for attention ...
Senior Writer
But ancient Troy, with his snaps of Harold Wilson, Gough, Ben Chifley, Attlee, Gordon Brown, and former chairman Rudd (not to mention Fisher) is just playing soft cop (spoiler alert, this is just the closer for ancient Troy's ponderous attempt to do a "Ned")...
...Among the many challenges facing Starmer are immigration and cost of living. Uncontrolled borders have caused fear and resentment, with many voters blaming new arrivals for increased crime and housing costs. Wages are stagnant in the UK. Cost of living remains a major issue. A deal with France to return unauthorised migrants has been stymied by the High Court.
The contrast with Labor in Australia could not be greater. Labor has not made any changes to the strong border protection regime it inherited. There is concern here over high migration levels, especially on housing, but not illegal immigrants. Further, real wages are growing in Australia. And Labor has kept its promises to expand health, education and childcare services.
The two labour parties have learnt from each other. They have dispatched MPs both ways and exchanged personnel to work on campaigns. Blair and Brown visited Australia in the 1980s and ’90s to learn from Hawke and Keating, which informed UK Labour’s return to power in 1997. Kevin Rudd and his team consulted UK Labour figures in 2006-07, which informed Labor’s return to power here in 2007.
Labor prime minister Andrew Fisher (1908-09; 1910-13; 1914-15), knew UK Labour founding fathers Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald. They visited Australia to study his government. Fisher later served as high commissioner to London, and died there in 1928. He was buried at Hampstead Cemetery. A large obelisk atop his grave was unveiled by MacDonald as a tribute.
Albanese – like Fisher a century ago – is regarded by British Labour as a pioneering centre-left leader.
That is why Albanese was invited to speak to the party’s conference in Liverpool. It underscored more than a century of collaboration between the parties.
Often Labor has looked to its British counterpart to show the way, but now UK Labour is looking Down Under.
The pond knew that all that was just camouflage, a soft cop feint, when what was needed was the bromancer playing tough, telephone book still handy after all these years, cop ...
The header:
PM’s fantasy tour leaves us on a road to nowhere, The sheer self-indulgence of Anthony Albanese’s speech to the British Labour conference is an indication of the calibre of his exotic holidays abroad.The caption: Prime Minster Anthony Albanese spruiking Australian produce in the UAE. Picture: Instagram
The pond will admit to having flinched, and looked away from the bromancer's raging bout of Xian fundamentalism ...(still to hand in Why Charlie Kirk’s service may mark a turning point for Christian revival in the US, Beyond the politics of his death, Charlie Kirk’s five-hour memorial service has ignited something extraordinary in America’s religious landscape for those who have a lead-lined stomach, needed to prevent upchucking).
The pond might have spent some time with the bromancer if he'd tried to tackle the thorny question of gun control, and whether Mormonism is Xian rather than a deviant heresy, and what to make of the MAGA-inclined Mormon massacre, Mormon Church Shooter’s MAGA Mom Shared Chilling Message Before Massacre, but the bromancer channeling his true love the onion muncher, and bashing up Labour and Labor will do fine.
Where ancient Troy spent a bit of time on the deep connections and historical ties between the two parties, the bromancer was personally affronted ...
If Britain’s Keir Starmer really needs Anthony Albanese and a free pack of Albo beers to revive his electoral fortunes, he is indeed in even worse shape than the British media, which judges his prime ministership terminal, suggests.
The sheer self-indulgence of Albanese’s speech to the British Labour conference, a speech that left no cliche undisturbed, no banality unuttered, no fatuous self-congratulation unexpressed – Labour chose democracy! (as if it might have chosen Stalinism) – is an indication of the calibre altogether of the Prime Minister’s exotic holidays abroad.
Distilled essence of raging rant, so much so that the reptiles interrupted immediately with a snap Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after he addressed delegates during the Labour Party conference at ACC Liverpool on September 28. Picture: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images
Oh that triumphalism, all that waving and smirking sent the bromancer right off ...
Incidentally, surely the party-political nature of Albanese’s speech breaches all kinds of basic standards for a prime minister overseas. Just imagine the core meltdown we’d be experiencing if Scott Morrison had gone to a US Republican Party convention and given a similarly party-political speech.
The Prime Ministerial Magical Mystery Tour was coming to take you away, and in the past couple of weeks it has proven either embarrassingly a failure, generally counter-productive, or at best somnolently neutral.
No one could plausibly claim that on any serious measure it advanced Australia’s national interests at all. It’s been a kind of fantasy tour, where the PM and his party brief the travelling media on a make-believe universe that bears no serious relationship to the physical world but can provide a kind of collective hallucination for the nation to take refuge in.
Increasingly, government, and politics generally, in Australia exists in the realm of make-believe and fantasy. Perhaps Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is the right Beatles reference.
It started, of course, with the monumental failures in the South Pacific – announcing a security agreement with Vanuatu, and then a defence alliance with Papua New Guinea – and having both these initiatives rejected by the relevant governments. If Morrison had done anything like that there would be Four Corners documentaries replete with sinister music running for the rest of time.
Then came a snap suggesting that Albo was some kind of dinkum cobber shouting rounds, Anthony Albanese has backed up his United Nations address by shouting rounds and pouring beers at a popular Aussie expat pub in New York City. Picture: Supplied / Nova Entertainment
No one could expect the bromancer to tolerate that sort of populism ...
... so he went off like a New Yorker shouting and sneering at a golf tournament ...
Then came days of utter nonsensical posturing in New York, which add up to absolutely nothing for Australia. The PM’s officials briefed breathlessly on Australia’s international leadership. This is a leadership without followership.
Did you see the canyons of empty seats in the UN hall as Albanese spoke? There looked to be fewer people there than when Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the gathering, and he was boycotted. No need to boycott Australia. No one would notice the difference, especially when we’re in leadership mode.
The insane Australian emissions reduction targets – plausibly 70 per cent by 2035? – were followed by nobody. Australia’s debates, especially debates among the elites, are drearily derivative and always a year or three out of date. They spring typically from a wide but not very deep familiarity with the pages of The New York Times and the Guardian, and the broadcasts of CNN.
Nothing new in any of it, just the usual insane capacity to ignore an over-heating planet, as the reptiles further enraged the bro with another snap, Albanese addresses UN General Assembly.
That reminder of infamous grandstanding had the desired effect, and set the bromancer back on his raging, ranting path ...
Reality broke through just for a moment a few weeks ago on the ABC evening news when Alan Kohler took a cursory look at the figures and concluded, quite accurately, that there was not a snowflake’s chance in hell of the world reaching net zero by 2050. Even Albanese’s partisan partners in Canada have greatly reduced their targets and abolished many of their climate change actions. As European consumers are hit with the huge extra costs of moving to unreliable and expensive energy sources, they too rebel, and governments adjust.
It’s not as if Albanese deploys fantasy to achieve international outcomes. It’s purely for domestic purposes. The government in Beijing on the other hand is masterly at mixing fantasy with reality in ways that advance its interests. Thus when Donald Trump first started imposing tariffs, Xi Jinping cast himself as the defender of free trade. Yet it is exactly Beijing’s massive use of non-tariff barriers that effectively destroyed the global trade system and guaranteed an American reaction.
On climate, Beijing now says it will reduce emissions from their peak by “up to” 7 per cent in the mid-2030s. Remember this is the same government that promised never to militarise the islands it built or occupied in the South China Sea.
But even on the basis of accepting Beijing’s word, how can it be heading to net zero when it’s opening dozens of new coal-fired power stations every year, and these will all run for decades? It has said it might reach peak emissions by 2030, but then again, it might not.
We don’t know what level of emissions that peak will be. China provides nearly a third of the world’s emissions, nearly three times the emissions of the US. It could increase those emissions by 20 per cent then reduce them by 7 per cent and still keep faith with the new announcement.
But this meaningless Chinese announcement was hailed as Beijing being responsible on climate change, even following Australia’s lead, while the US is irresponsible. Gimme a break.
Is the pond surprised? Well yes, whatever happened to the bromancer's favourite insult, "that's nuts"?
Now all he wants is a break, of the gimme kind?
Well the reptiles gave him a visual break, The moment Anthony Albanese first met Donald Trump in-person has been enshrined in an official White House photograph, with the two men standing alongside Jodie Haydon and Melania Trump.
At this point the bromancer's head sounded like it had exploded at that shocking sight.
Albanese has comprehensively mismanaged the relationship with the US, as is evident from his failure to have any substantial contact with President Trump during his sojourn in New York. Albanese’s officials brief the media that not having a meeting is actually a good thing because he wants a constructive and mature relationship with Trump.
How can the relationship be mature and constructive if there is no relationship at all? Now a meeting of PM and President is scheduled for October 20, a year after Trump’s election. But it hasn’t happened yet. Could it end up like the PNG defence alliance?
The PM’s official brief is that a Liberal/National government could not have done any better with Trump. It’s hard to imagine a Liberal government right now because the Liberals lost so badly, after the worst campaign in living memory.
But let’s try to stick to knowable facts.
Knowable facts? What he meant was his knowable opinions, derived from entirely unknowable deep and irrational, to the point of being rabid, hostility, leading to him even redeeming the irredeemable Malware ...
On everything we know, a Coalition government would likely have done much better with Trump. It would be spending much more on defence, would not have recognised a Palestinian state when no such state exists, it would be closer to Trump – perhaps only fractionally – on climate issues, none of its number would have insulted Trump in the past, and through normal conservative connections it would have all kinds of political lines into Trump.
Certainly Malcolm Turnbull and Morrison did much better with Trump Mark 1 than Albanese is doing this time. The Americans won’t abandon the alliance with us because of the force of history and their use for our geography. But Albanese has added absolutely no value to the relationship and seems to have no influence with Trump.
AUKUS seems to me to be in quite a lot of trouble. Tony Abbott has suggested we should look at taking on a retiring LA-class nuclear sub rather than a Virginia, as this would actually add to allied capability and remove Washington’s dilemma about losing three of its working subs.
This is an intriguing idea worthy of serious investigation.
But doing this would involve real action, whereas the Albanese government lives in the comfort of the fantasy universe, which makes no such awkward demands. Instead of attending to Australian defence, why not solve the Palestine issue, just as you would have solved it 40 years ago as an undergraduate.
This Prime Ministerial Magical Mystery Tour was one of the longest, and surely the most useless, in our history.
Poor bro, years to go, and possible defeat at the next election, and only the wisdom of the onion muncher to hand to help sort out the acids eating at his stomach.
The pond usually doesn't bother with reptile links, but for those wondering where the link at AUKUS seems to me to be in quite a lot of trouble led, it kept punters inside the hive mind in the usual way.
Beijing to Canberra: ‘Say no to AUKUS’
Beijing has seized on the rift between the Albanese government and Washington over defence spending to argue Australia should follow Paul Keating’s counsel and reject the pact.
Will Glasgow And so to the conclusion, and if the pond might self-assess, as was the fashion back in the day, the pond really failed to prove its point, because there was too much quoting of reptiles and not enough essay.
Even worse, the pond clearly understated the miasma of misinformation and delusion on view in the hive mind on a daily basis, so the introduction really didn't match the evidence, or the essay arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. Like when will the long absent lord rid the planet of this putrefying, putrescent pox which daily produces a fetid smell?
C-
And so to end by noting that even Albo's attempt to suck up to King Chuck carried no weight with the bromancer.
Sheesh, take a bath, water down the republic, and still no credit from the reptiles...
