The pond likes to think of each Thursday at the lizard Oz as a miniature Xmas eve.
A few mice scuttle about, but it's a day that must be spent in anxious anticipation.
Only one sleep and Our Henry will come down the chimney to fill Xmas stockings with an abundance of philosophical, theological and historical goodies.
Until that moment, there's nothing to be done but wait with baited breath (preferably of the snail killer kind), and give minimal, modest attention to the scuttling mice.
Luckily that doesn't mean giving some squeakers in the house any space.
The pond personally supervised the placement of petulant Peta's contribution to the latest reptile jihad in the intermittent archive.
I’m booing on the inside because it’s my country too
By making welcomes and acknowledgments of country mandatory, the goodwill towards fellow Australians who weren’t always extended a fair go is evaporating fast.
She's booing on the inside?
Why not just do what other reptiles do, boo on the outside, boo night and day, and make the desire to join white Xian nationalists and neo-Nazis in their booing explicit?
What's even more insulting is the way the reptiles started with a snap of an indigenous veteran, with the clear implication that he needs a good booing too:
The levels and depths of racism, fear and loathing in the reptiles knows no bounds, but the pond doesn't have to go along with it ...
It's a measure of how mindless and moronic these jihads have become that none of the reptiles seemed interested in the perils of Pauline and Gina ...
Similarly the pond doesn't have to spend time with Jack (who also refused to fly with Pauline), especially as his approach involved asking an extremely silly question ...
The Musk and Altman feud: a legal stoush to determine the future of humanity or a power grab by some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world?
By Jack the Insider
Columnist
With full disrespect, if you must head off to the intermittent archive, why not make the journey for Matteo Wong in The Atlantic:
Sam Altman and Elon Musk Sure Dislike Each Other
The trial between the CEOs makes the AI boom seem sordid and small.
Or follow along with the testimony in such rags as the both siderest NY Times ...
Elon Musk, who split from OpenAI years after cofounding it as a nonprofit in 2015, said it was putting commercial interests over the public’s. A company lawyer said Mr. Musk had sued because he did not get his way.
There's a lot more fun to be found outside the lizard Oz when watching two criminals take to court to diss each other... (at least until Our Henry comes down the chimney with his bag of magical goodies).
The pond also decided that Saul wasn't up to snuff ...
Snowy 2.0 stands as a warning sign against more government control over our energy market. That journey is already going poorly and is likely to get worse.
By Saul Kavonic
Still taking potshots at Malware?
Never mind, the pond woke to news of a positive kind: Australia’s battery boom has doubled in a year – and is rewiring the energy grid (*intermittent archive link)
Even better, New study suggests majority of regional Australians back renewable energy transition.
Saul was on hand simply to play the grinch ...
There is a role for direct government support of energy investment, but mostly in carefully circumscribed situations involving clear national security or national interest considerations – and even then it must be applied transparently and sparingly.
Snowy 2.0 remains a stark reminder that greater government control over energy can make things worse for both consumers and taxpayers, not better.
Saul Kavonic is head of energy research at MST Marquee.
As previously noted, Saul has form and knows on which side his private sector consultancies are buttered by government ..
Saul has previously worked in the energy sector in commercial, research and government policy roles. He has worked in commercial and strategy roles at Woodside Energy, Australias largest oil and gas company, and was the principal analyst in Australasia for Wood Mackenzie, the worlds leading energy consultancy.
And for some reason the pond rarely pays attention to the squeaking of Geoff, as he chambered yet another predictable round ...
Anthony Albanese prepares to embrace Bill Shorten’s failed 2019 housing tax reforms as Australia faces soaring inflation and a looming recession.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor
Somewhere along the way it went wrong for Geoff, and towards the end of his piece, he had to pay attention to the men surrounding the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, and it wasn't all inflation roaring like a lion, it was a few pollies squeaking like mice ...
Angus Taylor struggled to take a fully formed and competitive economic policy manifesto to last year’s election. Ted O’Brien, the architect of Peter Dutton’s failed nuclear energy policy, failed to land a blow and resorted to calling Chalmers the “Candy Man” and whistling tunes from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Now there is Tim Wilson, the self-described “modern Liberal” who helped Scott Morrison attack Shorten’s tax policies and last year reclaimed the Melbourne seat of Goldstein from Climate 200-backed teal independent Zoe Daniel.
Wilson, who doesn’t lack self-confidence, hasn’t enjoyed a great start against Chalmers.
After a bizarre rendition of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire in the House of Representatives, Chalmers described Wilson as the “opposition’s karaoke clown”.
After making a bad mistake in citing the Coalition’s new $800m fuel supply policy as costing “around $80bn”, Wilson on Wednesday responded to criticism from Chalmers by releasing a musical playlist for the Treasurer. The list, more university politics than federal politics, hijacked lyrics from John Farnham, Carly Simon, Michael Jackson and others to mock Chalmers for failing to “take the pressure down”, being “so vain” and a “smooth criminal”, and making “money too tight (to mention)”.
Australians struggling to pay their bills and keep businesses open deserve an opposition Treasury spokesman who is focused on policy not playlists.
Oh dear, freedumb boy strikes again ...
...but what's this talk of Jimbo not facing much opposition?
How dare Geoff suggest that?
Dame Groan has provided consistent, stiff, rigorous opposition and she was at it again ...
The header: Treasurer faces inflation crisis ahead of budget as rate rise threatens households; A stark disconnect emerges between Treasury’s rosy budget claims and the harsh reality of approaching trillion-dollar debt alongside persistent inflationary pressures hitting households.
The caption for the snap, which surely is the best the reptiles have ever displayed of this surly, sulky, insupportably snarky rogue: Treasurer Jim Chalmers addresses the media during a news conference relating to the release of key inflation data. Picture: Liam Kidston/NewsWire
Dame Groan could only manage three minutes of "we'll all be rooned, the end is nigh" this day, and she managed with great skill to downplay the clear and present danger, a danger that looks like being around for months - the decision by King Donald and the mad mullahs to mutually blockade the strait of Hormuz and thereby hold the world to ransom while they face off and pose down.
Paying attention to that would entirely defeat Dame Groan's primary T-800 purpose.
Destroy Jimbo.
And so she spends her time bleating about the feds by following the most simpleton path to hand:
Any cursory look at the budget papers will confirm the facts that the fiscal position is deteriorating, particularly when off-budget spending is considered, and government debt is fast approaching one trillion dollars for the first time.
Mums and dads are too busy and hard-pressed to investigate these tall tales. But what is clear to them, part of their “lived experience” to use an overused term, is that prices are rising and that the monthly outlay on the mortgage has been going up this year.
The quarterly CPI figures for March this year point to annual headline inflation of 4.6 per cent, driven mainly by higher fuel prices. But higher fuel prices quickly flow into other prices.
Higher prices are only too obvious at the supermarket and meeting regular bills.
To be sure, the trimmed mean of the CPI, which excludes irregular and volatile items, was 3.3 per cent, but still well above the target of the Reserve Bank of 2.5 per cent. The trimmed mean has been 3 or above since July of last year.
And what of that crisis in the strait, and news of Hormuz that you can use? Dame Groan has got it covered:
This timing is important, because it’s clear that our inflationary woes truly pre-dated the conflict in the Middle East. The proof of this pudding was the fact that the cash rate has been adjusted upwards twice this year. The cash rate is currently 4.1 per cent.
Roll that one around on the tongue, and see how easily you can dismiss news Dame Groan can't uze ...
...it’s clear that our inflationary woes truly pre-dated the conflict in the Middle East
And not content with that Dame Groan hammered the point home ...
Had excessive inflation only emerged recently, after the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed, then the bank could afford to look through any headline inflation figures. Indeed, this would be regarded as best practice. It will likely be the strategy adopted by most central banks around the world.
It was all the odder then that the reptiles rolled out the Ughmann to complain about the way that the cost of fuel was fuelling inflation pressures...and something had to be done about the news no one can us
Sky News Political Contributor Chris Uhlmann says the government must find ways to “bring down” the cost of fuel in Australia to ease inflation pressures. Mr Uhlmann said 91 per cent of “all the energy consumed” in Australia every year is coal, oil, and gas. “41 per cent of that we now know is liquid fuels.”
Never mind that stunning illustration, feel Dame Groan's ongoing wrath ...
Of course, cranking up the cash rate, which feeds into higher mortgage and borrowing costs, will inevitably feed into slower economic growth. At this stage, consumer spending appears to be holding up reasonably well, but this may well be the lull before the storm.
The Monetary Policy Board will meet next week to consider what to do about the cash rate. The market expects another increase of 25 basis points, although the fact that the trimmed mean was essentially unchanged, even if the figure is too high, may weigh on the members’ thinking. Recall that last time, there was split decision.
Stagflation – rising unemployment accompanied by above-target inflation – is something everyone wants to avoid.
The following week is, of course the federal budget, Jim’s fifth. If he really understood the predicament, he would slash the growth of government spending to ease the inflationary pressures. His constant unconvincing denial that government spending has contributed to the inflation problem points to a likely failure to act in a sensible fashion, with possibly more cost-of-living measures.
Much will be made of the highly tentative plan to radically reduce spending on the NDIS, and these figures – assumptions, really – will be fed into the four years of the budget’s forward estimates.
They will make the fiscal position look better from its poor base – the NDIS has been the fastest growing item in the budget apart from interest payments – but whether the lower rates of spending growth ever come to pass is an unanswered question. Mind you, good job for trying, Mark Butler.
The political strategy of the budget will be to draw attention away from the bottom-line figures, particularly the headline cash balance, and to focus on some adjustments to various tax arrangements on capital.
They will be seriously oversold and entail high compliance costs, but many mums and dads (and younger folk) might get the impression that the government is doing something about housing, in particular.
For Albanese and Chalmers, this outcome itself would be regarded as a success even if there are lot of complaints. Let’s face it, most of these affected don’t vote Labor. It could also set up a tricky wedge for the Coalition.
While policy is definitely not a strong suit of the Albanese government, they are really good at politics.
Here's a thought - if King Donald doesn't manage to sort out the strait, Dame Groan will be able to chortle about the way we've all been 'rooned, without ever mentioning the reason why.
As if to celebrate the King, the reptiles went full meme in the news section ...
Oh sheesh ... do they have to pander to him?
So this is what full dementia, sundowner style looks like?
Well, in that spirit ...
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