The reptiles were still banging on about King Chuck and the pervert formerly known as Prince (to borrow a line from Colbear)...
‘It was disgusting. There was no pleasure in it’: The prince, the pedophile and a long fall from grace
Jeffrey Epstein had no fewer than 13 phone numbers for Prince Andrew, including the direct line to his computer’s modem.
Ye ancient cats and pilfering archaeological dogs, it turned out this 14 minute ramble was an edited extract from Prince Andrew: Epstein, Maxwell and the Palace by Nigel Cawthorne, first published in 2020.
2020! The reptiles are always up to date ...
And it began with one of those dreadful collages, now part of the hive mind's staple diet...
Pass, hard pass, and ditto a hard pass on the malignant Magnay...
The moment that pierced ‘Randy Andy’s’ royal bubble
Andrew becomes an outcast formerly known as prince
Confirmation of Andrew and Fergie’s two-faced behaviour inflamed palace concerns that his ongoing Epstein protests were no longer reliable.
By Jacquelin Magnay
While in a hard pass mood, the pond decided to pass on the usual bout of black bashing from the embittered blonde ...
Victoria’s treaty is radical and unaccountable separatism
It gives Indigenous Victorians their own governance system — and it’s ripe for abuse.
You need an acid-free stomach to be able to cope with that level of bile, and the pond had misplaced its supply of double strength Mylanta ...
The main reptile feature was the ongoing doing down of Susssan ... (not much strength in bonus "s's" these days)...
Nationals set to dump net zero at Sunday meeting in climate test for Sussan Ley and Coalition
The party will instead back a climate policy that links Australia’s emissions reductions with what is being achieved globally, raising the Coalition stakes for Sussan Ley.
By Greg Brown and Geoff Chambers
Just the body language in the lead snap said it all, with Little to be Proud of eyeing off the hapless chook for an Xmas feast ...
Geoff also chambered another round ...
With two parliamentary sitting weeks left until an extended Christmas break, the clock is ticking for the Opposition Leader.
By Geoff Chambers
Again the visual body language said it all, with the reptiles suggesting Susssan looked downcast and defeated, surrounded by a horde of animals fresh from Lord of the Flies and eager for a kill...
"Ned's" allegedly helpful response?
Consult as an alleged oracle the man who not only lost government in a spectacular way, but who also managed to misplace his seat in the process ...
Not helping "Ned", not helping at all.
If the little desiccated coconut is the answer to the question, best not ask it ...
The pond plunged in, only because it would surely help the lettuce in its struggle for victory, and because "Ned" could only manage a paltry five minutes, with no need to leave base camp and embark on his usual weekend Everest climb ...
The header: Howard tells Liberals: back Ley, drop net zero, forget Farage and Trump, In an exclusive interview, the former prime minister addresses the current traumas of the Liberal Party and how it can regain public trust.
The caption: John Howard says the Liberals must uphold their small government, pro-market, highly successful economic brand. Picture: Jane Dempster
Ye ancient cats and archaeological dogs, look at that prim and posed ponce.
On a whim the pond did an image search and discovered that particular polished snap was at least two years old and had turned up in all sorts of reptile yarns in earlier times, as far back as 2023, when other reptiles consulted the oracle...
The Bennelong bore got that wrong - King Donald's certainly unfit, but the lying rodent's thoughts were like a dunny door flapping in a gale - and so it was again today ...
In an exclusive interview dealing with the current traumas of the Liberal Party, the former prime minister repudiated flirtations with economic populism, rejected calls from conservatives for a new government-directed industry policy and said the Liberals must uphold their small government, pro-market, highly successful economic brand.
But the party’s second longest-serving leader has revealed his personal rejection of the net-zero concept as the party moves towards settling a final position in the next few weeks.
“I was surprised we embraced net zero,” Mr Howard said of the Morrison government decision.
“I am very sceptical of net zero, sceptical in the sense that it’s becoming increasingly clear we are not going to make it. But I am also sceptical about the desirability of it in a policy sense. I would not have embraced net zero in the first place. The thing that I find astonishing is that we are, in effect, burying some of the natural advantages that provenance has given us, cheap coal, cheap gas, massive reserves of easily recoverable uranium. I think it’s bizarre.”
Mr Howard’s comments follow the intervention earlier this week from former prime minister Scott Morrison, the architect of the 2021 net-zero policy, who said circumstances had changed since then and that net zero “at any cost on any rigid timetable” was ideology, not policy.
Sheesh, the liar from the Shire was also here to help? With a menorah discreetly featured in the b/g, as barking mad fundamentalists in the grip of the impending rapture are wont to do?Scott Morrison says net zero at any cost was ideology, not policy. Picture: John Feder
Another upside?
No need for the pond to say anything. Just watch them all keep digging that hole...
“She won a ballot,” he said. “I want Sussan Ley to succeed. She’s got to be given a go. I think talk about her leadership being at risk at the present time is just amateur hour.”
He praised Ms Ley’s statements on economic policy in which she has promised personal income tax cuts at the next election, significant reductions in government spending and has been prepared to put industrial relations back on the Liberal agenda – decisive steps the opposition under Peter Dutton was not prepared to take.
Mr Howard said the Liberals had been “spooked by industrial relations” since losing the 2007 election highlighted by WorkChoices.
“I like the sound of what she is saying on the economy,” he said of Ms Ley.
“The Liberal Party’s credentials are writ large in economic responsibility, economic reform and economic rationalism, whatever description you want.”
Criticising statements from the right of the party supporting a more interventionist government following the Labor policy lead, Mr Howard said: “Any suggestion the Liberal Party should embrace some kind of economic populism is madness.”
As a measure of the desperation, there came this fatuous caption, Sussan Ley’s statements on economic policy have won Mr Howard’s approval. Picture: Damian Shaw, for this depressing still ...
The pastie Hastie copped a serve, while the fear of Nigel making plans has been omnipresent these past few weeks in the hive mind...
But addressing Mr Hastie’s recent campaign lamenting the demise of the car industry and blaming both Liberal and Labor governments, Mr Howard said of Australian-made cars: “They were great cars, they were terrific. But their time has passed because we can no longer support them without massive government intervention.”
Mr Hastie has made the popular call for Australia to “make things” here. That raises the issue of competitiveness and it was the Abbott government that terminated subsidies to an uncompetitive industry, a step Tony Abbott saw as a major achievement.
Mr Howard urged caution, warning that ditching “a competitive approach to industry policy would be to overturn several decades of policy implementation”.
He called upon the Liberals to recognise the unique aspects of Australia’s political ethos and the flaws in attempting to transpose populist cultural ideas from America and Britain, currently a focus for some Liberals on the right of the party.
Mr Howard said: “My message to all the Liberal Party is that it must understand the folly of trying to embrace something that works in another country, close though that country may be to Australia. Our political culture is very different to that of America and it’s different to that of Great Britain. We should be very wary about this. As far as Donald Trump is concerned, we are a different political culture from the Americans. Neither Trump nor Kamala Harris would have been candidates for the presidency if they had had in the US a parliamentary system. Americans are more – how shall I put this? – they’re more politically gullible than Australians, they’re not as sceptical. I’ve search for a better way of saying this, but there isn’t one really.”
Just to make sure everyone understand Nige was irrelevant, the reptiles featured a snap of the hastie pastie's role model, The Coalition should steer clear of the tactics employed by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. Picture: Getty Images
The doddering irrelevance from the past proceeded to produce more meaningless gibberish, inspiring the lettuce to hang in until the New Year ...
Mr Howard backed the vision of the Liberal Party that he espoused as prime minister – embodying the classical liberal and conservative traditions – a framing recently endorsed by Angus Taylor and senator James Paterson.
Asked whether he felt this “two traditions” concept of the party was the right choice for the future, he said: “It hope it is and I think it should be.”
This view is under challenge. Mr Hastie who has leadership aspirations has been calling for greater change and wants an alternative approach, saying: “The Liberal Party is at a crossroads. The world has changed and we need to recognise it.” He said: “We are no longer living in the same world of the Howard, Abbott, Turnbull or Morrison years.”
Asked about this, Mr Howard said: “Obviously we are living in a different period. The Howard period was different from the Fraser period and the Fraser period was different to Menzies. The question is: how do you react? What has not changed from one era to the next is the need to balance the budget, the need for government to get out of the way, the futility of wasting money on subsidies and the stupidity of tariffs.”
He agreed that immigration was too high at present, but made it clear the Liberals must remain a strong pro-immigration party.
“I think Australia has benefited highly from migration and we will continue to do so,” he said. “But I think the expression multiculturalism should be exorcised from the language. I’ve never met a multicultural man or woman. I’ve met plenty of bicultural men and women.”
Mr Howard argued that the Liberals should be more aggressive in opposing the Labor Party’s fallback position of treaties with the indigenous peoples. The Victorian parliament has just authorised a treaty along with an indigenous democratically elected body and other states are involved in preliminary talks on related issues. Referring to the defeated voice referendum, Mr Howard said: “The public has really voted against the treaty. I think we should be mauling Labor to an inch of its political life on this issue. It’s really in defiance of what the public has said.”
Desperate stuff, and it was just as desperate over on the extreme far right ...
It seems that the new jihad regarding moo cows will run for some time ...
There’s an all-too-common sense of animosity or warfare when it comes to discussions about environmental ‘sustainability’, an all-or-nothing approach to setting and meeting targets and goals.
By Will Evans
CEO of Cattle Australia
The pond has already taken a look at this, and was bored to tears by all the mooing, so unmooved that it was yet another hard pass ...
And what's Polonius doing out early on a Saturday?
No need to gazump the pond's Sunday meditation.
Instead the pond decided to sup on the tears of the dog botherer ...
The pond had hoped to meet up with the bromancer, but the dog botherer crying in the wilderness for a tedious six minutes would have to do ...
The header: Power bills up, prosperity down, emissions soaring: The reality of Australia’s net-zero pursuit, From subsidising renewables to force coal out, to subsidising coal to keep it running, the nation has spent billions managing the energy transition, to little purpose.
The caption for that image of the demonic Satan's helper in one of those stupefyingly inept reptile collages, for which no human took a credit: Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella. Sources: Pexels and supplied
Again there was nothing for the pond to do, but sit back and listen to the whining, the crying, the Ginsbergian howling ...
In federal parliament this week, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen suggested the Coalition was out of touch when criticising the energy mess. Bowen said the Coalition’s willingness to promote nuclear energy as a reliable emissions-free alternative was all about appealing to Sky News viewers and One Nation voters (as if these cohorts are insignificant or unrepresentative).
Not so long ago the Labor Party and union movement would have seen it as their fundamental duty to ensure households and industry had continued access to reliable and affordable energy, to provide jobs and enhance our standard of living. Now they scoff at such mundane goals and prioritise UN emissions reduction targets such as net-zero emissions by 2050, a result that is impossible to achieve with current technology (according to the International Energy Agency).
No comparable country is on track to meet net zero. If by some stroke of ingenuity and at wicked expense Australia did manage to achieve this target, according to all the agreed facts and science it would have no discernible impact on the global climate.
So, what are we doing? And why are we doing it?
Sorry, can't think of a single reason ...
At this point, the reptiles slipped in another snap of the head priest in the Satanic cult of climate change, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen suggested the Coalition was out of touch when criticising the energy messPicture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
That set off another deluge of keening and wailing from the dog botherer, and an endless gushing of tears, for the supping thereon ...
With so much emotive opinion, political rhetoric and personal invective involved in this debate, let us just examine the facts as they now stand, facts that must be addressed by all governments, all political parties and all voters.
Until two decades ago, cheap and abundant energy was a clear comparative economic advantage for our nation.
In Ross Garnaut’s seminal work, a report to the Hawke Labor government in 1989 entitled Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy, he recognised the advantage we had in fuelling the economic transformation of our region.
Garnaut noted that early processing of our mineral resources required electrical and other energy, saying they were inputs that were “available in greater abundance and a lower cost in Australia than in Northeast Asia”. It would be laughable to spruik such an advantage today; we have exported our energy advantage along with our resources.
Back in those days Australia’s electricity prices were among the lowest in the developed world because we exploited our abundant and cheap coal and gas.
Now our power prices rank among the highest as we deliberately abandon coal (and to a lesser extent gas) in pursuit of a renewables-plus-storage model. Our energy advantage over Europe and Asia has disappeared; the US and Canada have electricity about half the cost of ours. We also refuse to use our uranium for nuclear energy. Instead, it fuels a nuclear renaissance across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Given the major inputs to industry are wages, materials and energy, we have surrendered a considerable advantage. More than 200,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Australia across the past two decades – the jobs and production (and emissions) have shifted offshore.
Australian residential electricity prices were substantially below the OECD average through the 1970s to the 2000s with costs falling and then flatlining until about 2010, when the renewable push began to escalate dramatically.
Electricity costs have grown considerably since then, although suppliers, governments and authorities like to make the billing and assessments so complex that it is difficult to compare like-for-like figures – suffice to say that in real terms average household electricity costs have virtually doubled from just over $1000 a year in 2000 to almost $2000 now.
We have gone close to doubling the cost of energy for households. This matters little to those with high disposable incomes, but for families working to a budget, those on fixed incomes and small businesses, the costs are onerous.
But these retail costs paid by consumers, business and industry are only part of the additional energy expenses we have imposed on ourselves. A report by the Centre for Independent Studies found that in the decade to 2023 the federal government paid subsidies to renewable energy suppliers totalling $29bn.
Of course we've heard all this a zillion times before, echoing around the hive mind chamber, and of course one of the features of the wailing is the way that past Liberal governments stuffed things up, The Snowy Hyrdo 2.0 scheme was announced by prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
As if the pond would give tuppence for the Utegate man blathering about Malware ...
Renewables projects such as the Snowy Hydro 2.0 scheme are directly funded by government. Snowy 2.0 was announced by prime minister Malcolm Turnbull as a $2bn project but it has blown out to $12bn and is expected to cost up to $20bn when transmission links are included.
There are at least $30bn worth of transmission line projects under way across 2500km to link renewable energy projects. That is about a quarter of what is required to meet the renewable grid goals, and these transmission investments operate under a guaranteed rate of return, feeding directly into power prices.
This, along with storage and firming costs, is why renewable energy leads to higher prices even when wholesale generation costs are low. Rooftop solar now accounts for more than 10 per cent of the NEM, after investments of more than $10bn by households and governments.
The federal government has allocated $17bn for green hydrogen projects and incentives, claiming Australia will lead the world in the “green hydrogen revolution”. A dozen or more projects have fallen over, even with the subsidies and incentives, costing state and federal governments millions of dollars as the technology remains uncommercial.
The on-again, off-again Sun Cable project that plans to send solar electricity from the Northern Territory to Singapore via an undersea cable is trying to access government subsidies. In South Australia, government grants also have been sunk as five of six proposed pumped-hydro projects have been scrapped, along with another in Queensland.
State and federal governments have provided subsidy packages of $2.4bn for the Whyalla steelworks, $600m for the Mount Isa copper smelter, $135m for Nyrstar’s Port Pirie smelter, with Tomago in NSW’s Hunter Valley seeking $1bn to keep going. In all these cases the operations face multiple challenges, but soaring energy costs top the list.
The reptiles seem determined to help Albo have a long run at the helm, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaking to workers at Tomago Aluminium. Picture: NewsWire/ Adam Yip
There came a final epic bleat, and the pond thought it might be best to collect all the tears and store them in the fridge overnight ...
Apart from subsidising renewables to force coal out, and subsidising coal to keep it going, state and federal governments have subsidised households to shield them temporarily from the escalating power prices their polices have caused. The federal rebate scheme runs until the end of this year at a cost of almost $5bn while the state cost-of-living packages in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania amount to a similar total.
As a result of all this spending, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have been cut by about 12 per cent since 2010 – from 602 million tonnes a year to 440Mt or a reduction of 162Mt a year. Across the same period global emissions have increased by about 15,000 million tonnes (or 15 gigatonnes) from 38Gt to 53Gt.
So, while we have up-ended our economy to cut greenhouse gases by 162Mt annually, the global increases have made up for that more than 90 times over.
On any rational or scientific analysis, our incredibly expensive and debilitating effort has made no perceptible difference to global carbon dioxide levels and therefore can have no discernible impact on the climate.
Whatever we think of global warming and energy options, we need to confront two unavoidable facts. Our efforts are costly and economically damaging, and they do nothing to alter the climate.
Real living standards have declined in Australia by 7 per cent since 2022, while across the same period the OECD average improvement in living standards has been 5 per cent. Across nine of the past 12 quarters, Australia’s GDP per capita has gone backwards – we have been in a per capita recession.
Draw your own conclusions. Make your own emotive or partisan claims. But these are the facts. And we cannot ignore them forever.
ReplyDeleteICYMI: McGibben on Bill Gates latest evil-doing Climate Gates
"Bill Gates hasn’t made sense on Climate since he teamed up with Bjorn Lomborg in 2009. This is just a restating of Bjorn’s book from this year about how we have a finite amount of money and we shouldn’t use it for climate."
There's a good reason that for the last 30 years Microsoft has been known as The Evil Empire.
J Winston Howard has a quaint turn of phrase these days. "we are, in effect, burying some of the natural advantages that provenance has given us, cheap coal, cheap gas, massive reserves of easily recoverable uranium. "
ReplyDeleteWhile readers should assume 'Ned' recorded/transcribed with care (as befits anything said by the great Winston, at any time) one might suspect 'provenance' could have been 'Providence', but the metaphor does get mangled when he refers to burying items that, in my experience, are already buried. Well, in the case of fossil fuels, do not even come about unless the precursor elements are buried, for a loooong time.