In which the Brexit-loving Bromancer struts his stuff, and Dame Gran does her regular Tuesday groaning ...

 

This day the Australian Daily Zionist News was in full flight ...

As a coda, Col was on hand on the extreme far right to follow the Benji line ...

Trump’s peace deal leaves no winners except Tehran
Iran has long demonstrated it will never concede its uranium enrichment program regardless of military or economic pressure.
By Colin Rubenstein
Contributor
Colin Rubenstein is executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.

He would say that, wouldn't he?

Ironically a little further down the page came ...

LIVE Iran peace talks
Iran to let nuclear inspectors in, allowed to sell oil in dollars
JD Vance says IAEA inspectors may be back in Iran from as early as this week, the US clears the way for Tehran to sell oil in dollars, including to American buyers | FOLLOW LIVE
Staff writers and agencies.

Who knows what  might happen with a couch lover in charge?

One thing seems likely ... Benji misplayed his hand.

None of this had any interest for the pond, except for noting Geoff chambering another round with the need to "stop the Left’s false equivocation between antisemitism and Islamophobia".

Really? In recent times, for an atheist observing from the outside who prefers to be called conservative rather than leftist, they seem more than a fair match.

Perhaps Geoff has forgotten that back in 2019 it was an Australian who conducted a massacre in a Christchurch mosque with a body count of 51 dead, 89 injured, 40 by gunfire, a total which shades the Bondi massacre, not that this is a competition to be celebrated.

And when you consider the current ethnic cleansing being conducted by the current government of Israel, it seems like a dedicated attempt to match the behaviour of the mad mullahs towards their own people in Iran, not that this is a competition to be celebrated.

But more than enough already, because the pond watched live the teary farewell of Sir Keir, and knew that the reptiles would pay some attention.

It's truly remarkable to be able to chew through so many PMs in so few years, and then to have a blow in from the north take on the job with no preliminaries, and no desire to call an election to confirm his legitimacy, despite having abused Rishi Sunak for his failure on that score.

The reptiles called on the malignant Magnay to have several says ...

UK leadership race
Starmer resigns as British PM, Burnham set to run unopposed
Sir Keir will remain in the job until a new Labour leader is chosen, with Wes Streeting withdrawing from the contest and backing hot favourite Andy Burnham.
By Jacquelin Magnay

Keir was a dud prime minister but the country’s pain will only continue
Keir Starmer will be remembered as one of the worst British prime ministers in recent history but his resignation will usher in a period of tumult.
By Jacquelin Magnay
Europe Correspondent

That was all very well, and Magnay conformed to the reptile agenda, but the pond was of course compelled by the bromancer's take, a man with an almost infinite, Boris-like capacity for getting it wrong.

The header: Brexit gave Britain the freedom to succeed. It’s bad government that’s let it down; Countless faux experts claim that Brexit has cost Britain millions, billions, trillions. Name your figure. It’s complete eyewash.
The caption for a shameless liar who shamelessly misled the country, and how satisfying he should set the tone for this bromancer outing: Boris Johnson wears boxing gloves emblazoned with “Get Brexit Done”. Picture: Frank Augstein / AFP

The bromancer spent a bigly four minutes peddling assorted big lies, dancing on sundry graves by peddling hogwash about the benefits of Brexit.

Say what you will, when the bromancer is wildly in error, he sticks to his gun with the rigid stupidity that would have made him a dead cert as an advisor to Boris, or perhaps these days, Nige ...

The 10th anniversary of the Brexit vote – when Britain left the EU – celebrates one of the most joyous, hopeful events in the modern history of Western civilisation. It was, and is, a mark of national and democratic maturity. It’s one of the most brilliant and inspiring moments of real democracy, by which I mean not only a decision arrived at by a majority vote but a people determined to regain and keep control, to exercise self-determination and accept all the responsibility that goes with that.
Of course, there’s a paradox. Britain has been very badly governed for the past 10 years, as Keir Starmer’s defenestration richly demonstrates. As I wrote last weekend, it’s appallingly governed now. But Brexit means when British politics finally gets around to tackling its problems, its institutions have the national freedom to do so effectively.

One of the key problems is that the bromancer routinely talks to the wrong people, and he seems to be doing that in spades in his current trip to Old Blighty. 

The Moggster, long an irrelevance, will always take the time to talk to any passing colonial dropkick willing to listen, and so it came to pass with the bromancer's return to his spiritual home...

Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of the architects of Brexit and a senior minister in Boris Johnson’s government, does not remotely deny the failures of the last Conservative government. He lists them for me: too much Covid lockdown, too much legal immigration when people wanted it cut, too much illegal immigration, too much tax, not being conservative enough.
But he says of Johnson: “In Brexit, he delivered the most important constitutional reform in Britain in centuries. It was fundamentally important. It restored democratic control to parliament.”

All nonsense, drivel as pure as a heated English summer of course, and as a distraction, the reptiles slipped in a snap: Keir Starmer speaks to members of the media on the sidelines of the G7 summit. Picture: Isabel Infantes / Getty Images

The bromancer carried on like a pork chop just as the British government is trying to undo the Brexit damage and sidle up to the EU - what with mad King Donald on the loose - see the Beeb's A decade on from Brexit, the new PM has big calls to make on Europe

Europe might be a bit of a mess, but there isn't any joy across the Atlantic, as Keir discovered to his cost, but inevitably the bromancer wasn't having any of it ...

Countless faux experts claim that Brexit has cost Britain millions, billions, trillions. Name your figure. It’s complete eyewash. Folks who discount sovereignty and want Britain, as they want other nations, tightly bound in undemocratic rules of undemocratic internationalist Frankensteins such as the EU predicted instant economic collapse for Britain the minute it left the EU.
No such thing happened. All the claimed economic costs of Brexit are similarly fatuous.
Let’s subject the claims to the most elementary empirical test. How have comparable European economies such as France and Germany gone in the past 10 years? They had what the eurocrats would regard as the incomparable benefits of continued EU membership while Britain did not.
In fact, over the past 10 years, the French and German economies have fared worse than the British economy. Starmer, on most measures, is the most unpopular man to have been UK prime minister. Yet he was less unpopular than Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Germany and President Emmanuel Macron in France.

The pond realises that the bromancer has no head for figures, and so decided a little trolling wouldn't hurt, and so reverted to the Graudian's celebration of the tenth anniversary of the folly:

How Brexit has made Britain poorer – in charts
Forecasters were wrong about an immediate recession but right that we would be worse off outside the EU
Richard Partington Senior economics correspondent

There were many graphs and much data, including ...

There are none so deaf as those determined not to hear.

Strangely, looking at that graph was more appealing than looking at the interrupting snap of Jacob Rees-Mogg...

Rather than delve into the data, the bromancer preferred rhetoric of the bro kind:

So all these incomparable, unbearable, debilitating, self-inflicted, monstrous, illogical, populist, ruinous, self-destructive costs of Brexit have ended up with Britain amazingly doing better than France and Germany despite all their (substitute similar cliches, but positive) benefits of continuing EU membership.
Could the cause of success and failure over the past decade actually reside instead in the content of government policy?
Brexit didn’t guarantee good government, it provided the opportunity for good government. Some of that has come about for Britain, such as free trade agreements with the US, India and Australia. Freedom to manoeuvre on tariffs. A more flexible policy on artificial intelligence than the eurosclerotic behemoth could ever deliver.
But on the biggest things, of course, the British government is not delivering.

Dear sweet long absent lord of delusion, the free trade agreement with the US? The pond wants whatever the bromancer is on ...and hopes he doesn't do a search for the benefits, or it might depress him...

As for India and Australia, what a hoot. Freedom to manoeuvre with King Donald on tariffs? Good luck with that. And a chance to lie down and be screwed by AI? Wonders will never cease.

The reptiles next interrupted with a snap of a man who, having helped introduce the ruinous Brexit, is now making plans to ruin little England some more...Nigel Farage celebrates and poses for photographers at Brexit

The bromancer went on a big rhetorical jag, what with welfare wastrels and Covid, as if Boris didn't have anything to do with any of that ...

Famously, Andy Burnham just won a big victory for the Labour Party, and for himself, in the Makerfield by-election. On the same day, Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives took a House of Commons seat from the Scottish National Party, which was the Conservatives’ first big win under Badenoch. In yet another by-election, the SNP held a seat, with the Conservatives, not Labour or Reform, coming second. If Burnham actually believes some of the things he said in victory, Britain is in for years more of terrible government and deepening crisis. In courting popularity, Burnham is saying yes to everybody and promising everybody more goodies. But the simple reality is that Britain is broke.
Bizarrely, Burnham attributes this to 40 years of, allegedly, Thatcherism, neoliberalism, austerity, privatisation and deregulation. Frankly, that analysis is hallucinogenic.
More than half of all British households now receive more in welfare than they pay in tax. The welfare system is totally out of control. Far from being neoliberal, the budget is in vast, chronic deficit. In May, the government borrowed more than £23bn ($43.4bn), more than half of which was to service the interest on existing debt.
Under Covid lockdowns, the country squandered hundreds of billions of pounds. No one in politics opposed this and no one was prepared to tell the British people that at some stage it would all have to be paid back.

The reptiles decided to put up snaps of the two likely contenders, though really Kemi's party is working hard to be completely irrelevant ...Andy Burnham; Kemi Badenoch

 

The bromancer kept on resorting to the usual suspects ... uppity furriners, Covid and welfare wastrels, thereby suggesting a limited palate, but when you have a litany, best stick with it...

One reason for the huge immigration spike after Covid was that the government effectively thought the British people, or some millions of them anyway, had lost interest in working. There’s some empirical evidence for that dolorous reflection. Almost everyone you encounter working in London hotels and restaurants comes from overseas, while there are a million young Brits involved in neither employment nor education or training. That, surely, is social and policy failure.
The long and badly managed fallout of Covid, massive government expenditure, debt and transfer payments, net-zero policies producing the most expensive energy in the world – these are infinitely more the causes of Britain’s travails than the fictional “neoliberalism”, much less “austerity”, of Burnham’s imagination.
One aspect of the three by-elections was fascinating – the degree of tactical voting.
In Britain’s first-past-the-post system, if you vote for a candidate who doesn’t come first or second your vote is wasted. Under Australia’s preferential voting system you get a second chance.

Inevitably the Nige/Reform curious bromancer put in a good word for the habitual liar, who doesn't mind scoring the odd five million quid from a filthy rich donor, and then staying mum about it...
British voters are becoming adept at tactical voting. A habitual Liberal-Democrat voter might vote Labour to defeat the Conservative, a Conservative voter might vote Reform to defeat Labour. The demonisation of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK may well lead to tactical voting to keep it out in many electorates. (That may apply to One Nation in Australia.)
Overall it makes the next British election very hard to pick. More than ever before it will have the character of 650 by-elections.
Neo-liberalism is a ludicrously fictitious bogeyman. Brexit means any government has the policy power to fix the nation’s problems.
Will it have the courage, competence and grip to do so? That’s the question, just as it should be. The whole world can thank Brexit for that happy outcome.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

Thank Brexit, thank that fraud Boris? Only in the bromancer's alternative bizarro world ...

Why was the pond reminded of the current state of play down under?

Reform, One Nation, King Donald, peas in a bromancer pod.

On the deregulation front, the departure of the man responsible for inspiring the 2008 financial disaster was well down the page...and then it had to be borrowed from the WSJ ...

Obituary
Former US Fed chairman Alan Greenspan dies at 100
Alan Greenspan, a rock-star Fed chairman whose legacy was dimmed by the financial crisis, dies at age 100
The ‘maestro’ rivalled the US president for global influence. But his faith in financial markets’ ability to police themselves became an Achilles’ heel.
By Nick Timiraos

Bizarrely Dame Slap was also on the regulatory case. It's a few days old, but better noted than never ...

Why did KPMG behave so recklessly? ‘Because it could’
A disastrous 30-year-old law shielded accounting firms from liability, creating the toxic moral hazard behind the KPMG scandal.
By Janet Albrechtsen

Relax, it's all about being woke, what with unreconstructed greed passing as woke these days in the hive mind, but what better way could be found to introduce Dame Groan's regular Tuesday rant about us all being rooned by Xmas?

The header: Treasury was once the premier agency for economic counsel. Not any longer; Was Jim Chalmers the principal villain or was it the faulty advice provided by inexperienced, bungling Treasury officials?

There was no caption for the snap, but that's because everyone in the hive mind knows who these downcast/grim looking villains are ...

Dame Groan was in feisty form, ready for a full four minutes of abuse, and didn't get past the first sentence before she rolled out "fiasco":

It’s hard to know who to blame for the rolling budget fiasco. Was Jim Chalmers the principal villain or was it the faulty advice provided by inexperienced, bungling Treasury officials? Probably the answer is a bit of both.
Treasury would be fully aware that Labor doesn’t like small businesses, which are incapable of being unionised. There are no downsides to recommending measures that harm them, if only inadvertently. Labor also distrusts most small business owners. Are they just doing what they’re doing to rip off the tax system? Do they treat their workers in the same way as big business?
So, when Treasury officials recommended that the capital gains tax changes be broadened beyond housing to include all capital gains, including those made by small business owners, the Treasurer would have seen this as an attractive option. The addition to revenue would be very welcome and he could crow about reducing tax for working Australians – OK, by only $250 in over a year’s time.
Treasury’s effective dismissal of the additional compliance costs of the indexation method – 14 steps are required to calculate liabilities – is one thing. But its support for what will become one of the highest CGT rates in the world is another thing altogether.

How to sooth the hive mind after rolling out those disasters? Show a snap of Petey boy: Peter Costello arrives at the 30th Anniversary of the Howard Government. Picture: The Australian / Nadir Kinani

Dame Groan was ropeable at sundry students who'd failed to absorb her teaching:

I’ve said it before, but let’s be clear – this new proposed method of CGT calculation is not a reversion to the Keating method. There was no 30 per cent minimum tax, a very onerous burden, and averaging over five years was allowed then but not now.
One important issue that a genuine economist would have picked up is the suitability of the consumer price index as the factor to be used for indexation. In fact, it is completely unsuitable, with a much more defensible index being the long-term government bond rate. It was used in Wayne Swan’s ill-fated mining tax calculation, the one aspect of that tax that the government of the day got right.
What a CGT should be trying to capture is the surplus above the risk-adjusted return given the nature of small business activity. The preferred route at this stage would be to stick with the CGT discount method, both because of its incredibly low compliance costs and the fact it is widely understood. Its bias towards high-growth assets is a good thing; it’s not a defect.
Let’s not forget that the discount method was introduced after thorough investigation by the 1999 business tax review commissioned by treasurer Peter Costello and led by John Ralph, culminating in a report of several hundred pages. Those were the days. Labor fully supported the change.
Now if the 50 per cent discount was deemed to be too high, there was always the option of reducing it, say to 40 per cent or 35 per cent. In fact, this is one of the proposals that had been widely floated by the busy advocates of tax reform, including MP Allegra Spender.

Oh dear, not Allegra, that'll send Dame Groan right off: Allegra Spender. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

It might be worse ...

Thank the long absent lord, Dame Groan never worries about the big picture.

Instead she was so exasperated she had to resort to dot points:

What is likely to emerge is a hotchpotch of different arrangements, including the immensely bureaucratic (proposed) Innovative Business CGT Concession. Businesses that meet the criteria for this scheme will be able to stick to the 50 per cent discount on CGT, although there is a lifetime cap on the benefit achievable.
But check out the ludicrous list to qualify.

•  The company must be genuinely focused on developing one or more new or significantly improved innovations for commercialisation.
• The business relating to that innovation must have a high growth potential.
• The company must demonstrate that it has the potential to be able to successfully scale up that business.
• The company must demonstrate that it has the potential to be able to address a broader than local market, including global markets, through that business.
• The company must demonstrate that it has the potential to be able to have competitive advantages for that business.

Shocking stuff and Dame Groan was in despair...

Companies must meet these criteria when equity is first raised, but the assessment by the Australian Taxation Office of whether the tests are met does not occur until the capital gain is realised. If this is the lauded carve-out for start-ups, it’s a joke. In the meantime, other small businesses can just put up with the onerous and costly new CGT rules, even with the enhanced concessions.
Chalmers also would be wise just to drop the changes to the taxation of trusts, having been forced to back away from his bizarre attack on discretionary testamentary trusts. It is estimated that about 400,000 small businesses are set up as trusts and the imposition of a minimum 30 per cent tax will force many of them to the wall. This is made worse by the double taxing of bucket companies that often are set up by businesses in association with discretionary trusts.
As for the naive advice offered up in the budget papers that small businesses currently set up as trusts should simply restructure as companies, the cost of doing so is basically overlooked. The payment of stamp duty to state governments alone will make this route impossible for many small businesses.

Just to compound Dame Groan's grief, the reptiles insisted on a snap of the Cold Chisel man, Labor Party President Wayne Swan

Dammit, enough of that working class nonsense, let's hear it for those rich enough to be able to construct a trust to hide their wealth:

It’s worth noting that many discretionary trusts distribute funds to charities and not-for-profit organisations. This option will be effectively destroyed by a 30 per cent minimum tax, to be initially collected by the trustee and distributed to beneficiaries on a non-refundable basis.
There’s no obvious solution to making charities tax-exempt from trust distributions, although a way out may have been found in respect of realised capital gains.
One of the most depressing aspects of the past several weeks has been the obvious decline in the professional capacity of the Treasury to offer well-informed and economically sensible advice.
Once upon a time, Treasury was the premier agency for excellent economic counsel; not any longer. Mind you, if you head to Treasury’s website, you will learn about the Inclusion and Diversity Strategy 2023-2028, “where difference is celebrated and used to activate innovative ideas, policies and practices”.
It doesn’t extend to ensuring that Treasury officials are fully prepared to answer questions from senators. But evidently within Treasury, “diversity, wellbeing and integrity are embedded in a supportive culture that enables people to thrive”.
It’s just a pity there is not more focus on having the most capable and experienced people providing the highest quality advice to the benefit of all Australians.

Oh dear, the pond knows who that is, and what a pity Dame Groan didn't make it clearer: 

It’s just a pity there is not more focus on having the most capable and experienced people, like me, the most fair and experienced groaner in the land, providing the highest quality advice to the benefit of all Australians.

Fixed it.

The pond trusts that the usual suspects enjoyed this outing ... as David Rowe turned up to help celebrate the latest twist in the little England saga ...

Is there no end to entertaining circuses?