A day of bits and pieces, with Dame Groan in her usual pieces ...

 

Big mistake, cardigan wearers.

The pond is so used to listening to the Beeb nightly on what's allegedly a local news radio station that calling in the Beeb to act as scabs and strike-breakers only made the pond wonder when there might come a campaign to replace the  entire ABC with the Beeb.

What a refreshing diversion to be able to take in the Beeb's televisual news on News 24 without the usual local ambulance chasing.

Trust Jack the Insider to make the obvious jokes for the gloating reptiles ...

And so on ... 

Sadly, with the intermittent archive still acting kinda funny, the pond has had to resort to teaser trailers again... and the odd relieving 'toon:

This is a taste of petulant Peta, in the same state angst-ridden, existential brooding about the perils of Pauline as all the other reptiles:

It must be terrifying for the reptiles to discover that One Nation has assiduously read them and taken on board their migrant and Islamophobia, and their climate denialism and love of coal and lust to nuke the country, not to save the planet, just to nuke it ...

Unfortunately there's no way to drag in some alternative to the reptiles.

The best way to deal with them is simply to avoid them, but that's not in the pond's job description.

And that's why the pond ended up yet again with Dame Groan, turning in her usual dinkum groaning, and for once she had something to groan about, or at least the good citizens of Wodonga did, with the pond yesterday observing this at a petrol station in Wodonga, while indulging in a relaxing EV charge ...

Once again the old groaner sought to blame local pollies for the mindless excursions of mad king Donald, deep into adventurist excursions...

The header: Australia supply chain crisis: The worst is yet to come; For a country that produces as much food as we do, why on earth are we facing shortages of products like this?

The caption for Frank's astonishing work: Higher fuel costs feed into so many other prices that impact inflation. Artwork: Frank Ling

It was only a three minute groaning, but the pond was exceptionally pleased, because you don't see the sort of artwork offered up by Frank as the key illustration every day of the week.

What an astonishing image erupting from the bowels of a graphics department at the top of its game, and as for the caption advising that higher fuel costs impacted other costs, it was the sort of economics lesson that can only be called visonary.

It inspired Dame Groan to even greater, 'we'll all be rooned' heights ...

The release of the February CPI figures showed that annual headline inflation rose by 3.7 per cent while the trimmed mean figure was 3.3 per cent. On the face of them, it looked as through inflation was stabilising, albeit at an unacceptably high figure.
Both figures are essentially meaningless as they relate to a period before the conflict in the Middle East and the rapid escalation of the oil price, which is floating above and below the $US100 mark.
It’s not just the higher price of fuel per se but the fact that this price feeds into so many other prices that makes it important.
The Treasurer is canny enough to acknowledge that the February CPI figures are not indicative of what is to come. Addressing a large group of big business executives, he even talked about an inflation figure close to 7 per cent, with the impact of the current global uncertainty paralleling the global financial crisis.
What these past two weeks or so have demonstrated to people is the importance of hydrocarbons in our daily lives. It’s not just the price and availability of fuel at the servo; it goes well beyond this. Diesel is more important than petrol in enabling the farmers and regional communities to continue their productive activities, including getting foodstuffs to market.

The pond must confess to also being bowled over by the illustration for the AV distraction ... Australia's headline inflation figure has fallen from 3.8 per cent to 3.7 per cent.

Once upon a time it used to be illegal to reproduce images of currency, but the pond likes to walk on the wild side ...

This is a graphics department that's on fire, and it produced an incendiary groaning ...

The scarcity and escalating price of urea is of particular concern as farmers prepare for winter planting. For a nation that makes enough food to feed around 70 to 80 million people, it is more than passing strange that we don’t produce urea locally. We could, but the combined cost of energy (particularly gas) and labour has made urea’s production uneconomic compared with importing this essential fertiliser.
The price of oil feeds directly into construction costs, particularly through much more expensive PVC pipes.
This couldn’t be happening at a worse time.
There are also unexpected worries such as the shortage of helium – a by-product of gas processing – which is required for the operation of MRI machines. We can all live without party balloons; MRI machines are a different matter.
For all the discussion of the problems of supply chain blockages during Covid and the need to be better prepared in the future, it’s not clear anything material has been done. The Productivity Commission prepared a useful report, Vulnerable Supply Chains, that was released in 2021.
It turns out that businesses and people are inclined to underestimate the chance of adverse events occurring with substantial consequences. But we should expect the government to do a better job at this – to provide insurance where the actions of private businesses and individuals fail to do so.
The government should be able to identify critical and essential import supply chains and assess the adequacy of their risk management. Some of the tools include stockpiling, long-term contracts and diversification of supply. Support for local production may be justified in some instances.
The immediate economic future is highly uncertain and unlikely to be quickly resolved even if events in the Middle East calm down quickly. The damage to the large LNG plant in Qatar will take a long time to repair. The consequences for the global LNG market will be substantial, and Australia may be a net beneficiary.
We may need to use the surety of our LNG supplies – don’t even think about imposing an export levy that would be passed on to customers – to secure guaranteed supplies of fuel, urea and other items we may need.
With only a few weeks before the budget, Jim Chalmers is staying firm in his resolve to achieve several changes, including on spending restraint, taxation reform and productivity. If the Prime Minister stays true to form, his instinct will be to refrain from scaring the horses and apply a degree of pump-priming in the form of some cost-of-living measures.
It will be interesting to watch this conflict play out. Whatever happens, the immediate economic outlook looks grim as people deal with the high degree of uncertainty and higher living expenses.

The pond was pleased to be reminded of one of the key reasons for this folly ... with Crikey taking up the story (sorry paywall)

Murdoch’s Fox News has been the loudest global advocate of the Iran War over the past 23 days, so it came as no surprise over the weekend to read reports claiming that the 95 year old “chairman emeritus” of News Corp and Fox Corp had personally urged Donald Trump on multiple occasions to join Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempted regime change war of choice against Iran.

The piece referenced the AFR, which had picked up the original Bloomberg source ...

And so on, and these days it's getting tough to sort out who's the biggest war criminal ...

It's a day of bits and pieces, so the pond should note that the bouffant one was also on hand to distract from the real criminals ....

Sadly he could be swallowed in one gobbet gulp ... but at least he provided an excuse for another 'toon ...

Carry on bleating ...

Uh huh ...and not a single mention of that first refuge for scoundrels, the lizard Oz and Faux Noise.

But staying in the bouffant spirit, why not a full blown DIY campaign?

The pond decided to make only a token note of Allegra's attempt to pander to Dame Groan ...

Pitiful ... but the pond guesses that indies must do whatever it takes to score a mention in the hive mind.

The pond was pleased however when the bouffant one took the pond back to the grand days when the lizard Oz was known as the Catholic News Daily (before it became the Daily Zionist News) ...

Excellent stuff and it gave the old Pellists a chance to trot out a snap of their wretched hero, together with another ... Late cardinal George Pell. Picture: Getty Images; Mykola Bychok, who was appointed by Pope Francis as a cardinal in 2024. Picture: Jacquelin Magnay

The bouffant one then wrapped up proceedings ... ite in pace ...

Finally, instead of the reptiles sending in the bromancer to fix the middle east, or serve up "Ned" sighing at clouds, or even the emeritus chairman explaining how the current excursion was anything but a wondrous folly designed to ruin the world, the reptiles decided to advice on strategies for impending war.

Given the aged Emeritus Chairman's inclination to war mongering, perhaps it was wise and necessary way forward.

Carry on Mick ...

Of course none of this will help fix the main problem - the rogue country at the source of all the recent excursions, which also happens to ber busy internally falling apart, and arranging for planes to crash into fire trucks...and who mentions the Trumpstein files these days?

Mick eventually caught up on the way that the rogue imperial adventurer has helped Vlad the Sociopath out of a pickle by giving his budget an oil bonus of a most unseemly kind, but whatever ... the pond reckons it's a certainty that Mick won't include King Donald's ramshackle, rogue authoritarian country in his list of authoritarian countries threatening the world order ...

At worst apparently the mad king might be deemed to be pursuing "not a good strategy" ...

What to do? Bring back the bromancer so the world can be truly stuffed, and we'll have a war with China by Xmas!

Mick, in his strategising, did leave out one thing that ordinary Australians might do to make the world a safer place. Not a dime, not a red cent, to war mongers of the Murdochian kind.

And while we're at it, perhaps best to avoid giving the mad king a sharpie ...

And so to a few visual distractions to wrap things up ...think of them as ABC radio in drag ...