Friday 29th of March 2024

meanwhile at the monday night questions and no answers circus featuring joe the clown...

hockeyisms...

Then Daley took on Hockey's claim that he was delivering the biggest infrastructure program in Australian history.

"It certainly hasn't gone up," he said. "It's probably tailed off, at least in as a percentage of GDP."

Hockey said Daley was wrong. "For a start we put $1.5 billion into WestConnex in Sydney," he said.

Daley reminded him that the project predated the Abbott government. He said not a single new project approved in Hockey's first budget had received a green light from Infrastructure Australia.

Hockey deflected the accusation by saying Melbourne's East West Link had at least been subject to a cost benefit analysis by the Victorian government. He was reminded that the former Victorian government refused to release it in part because the numbers didn't stack up.

read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/joe-hockey-outclassed-on-qa-by-an-economist-20150316-1m0nrs.html

 

old programmatic specificity is what the program is about...

This sharp pin to the pointy end of the treasurer's recent problem - a communications deficit - came in response to Hockey's deployment of a word that deserved it's fate as prompt for a punch line: "disintermediating". 

It rightly reminded Jones of Ruddisms such as "programmatic specificity". But even as Hockey was channeling the worst verbal extremities of his one-time Sunrise foil, we were reminded in miniature of the bigger picture up for debate. Like Joe and Kevin, none of us are getting any younger - and sometimes the ageing process isn't pretty.

This was a Q&A nominally about our ageing population and the generation gap, coming off the release of Hockey's recent Intergenerational Report - Boomers, Brats and Budgets, as it might bluntly be summarised. But in pure political terms, it was a program mostly about an older, battle-scarred Joe - the job Joe's done, the job Joe needs to do. And the job Joe has convincing a budget-weary nation that he is up to doing a second time, the thing he muffed with honours (and plenty of help) on his first go round. 

None of these pressures have helped the treasurer maintain the Jovial Joe and Gentleman Joe personas by which most Australians first came to know him. Their replacements - Tetchy Joe, Cranky Joe, Woe-Is-Me-Joe and even Snarly Joe - were all on sporadic display on Q&A. 

No doubt it partly goes with the territory - geniality is not in the general job description - and it showed on Monday night. Second-generation Joe - Hockey 2.0 - is indeed more powerful than the original, but the new software has some kinks.

Joe scowls. Joe rebukes his fellow panellist, head of the Australian Council of Social Service, with a tone that makes "Cassandra" sound like he's telling Cassandra Goldie, "Listen here. Mate."

Joe dismisses an audience member with, "That's a bit of a cheap shot." Joe interrupts: "Sorry, sorry, hang on." Joe makes you scratch your head with oddities, such as his reference to "our beloved taxis". Our what?  Joe, architect of a budget built and then dismantled with the finesse of a stoned Jenga player, cheerfully advises: "The best thing you can do is have predictable policy." And this: "I'm always cautious about taking people's money off them."

That latter remark drew some jaundiced laughter from the audience, and made you think Joe 2.0 might occasionally like to quit while he's behind.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/joe-hockeys-deflating-moment-on-qa-you-sound-like-kevin-rudd-20150317-1m0o94.html#ixzz3UaU4SS2J

not a flat-earth theorist on the horizon...

On this site I have often been a vocal critic of the Q&A show, ABC, for good reasons. But I am criticised for doing so because "I have not watched the show in ages"... So let me not apologise. I do not watch the show when they invite antagonists with views that are not scientifically defendable. Invite Alan Jones once more and I will piss on the glass wall at the ABC in Ultimo, disguised as a dog. I may not reach as, due to my advanced age, I have a weak bladder and might piss on my shoes (or paws) instead. But I don't care. The gesture would have been notice though no-one would dare take Mr Leonisky seriously — or arrest him — as this would open a can of worms, thus connecting to this illustrious discreet small site. No media would mention us, because any mention would draw a massive crowd to read all what we've done for the last 14 years, and show the media for the hypocrites they are... 

 

So This is to congratulate Q&A for its show on sciences with five learned scientists on the panel and not a flat-earth theorist on the horizon... Apparently, Q&A has done similar shows before but when I look at the previous line-ups, I always see smart intelligent people of sciences being sent to the slaughter at the abattoirs of boofheads of the shock-jockstrap variety or to the prisons of forked-tongue politicians.

 

The only counterpoint of the sciences Q&A was when the scientists were asked about god... You know me, the rabid atheist. Though their answers were a bit too innofensive, I boiled. As Einstein said, himself an agnostic, in a letter that God was "a product of human weakness” and the Bible merely a collection of “primitive legends”. Goodo Albert...

 

 

see:

https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/04/albert-einstein-letter-ca...

 

See also:

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/26402

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/30311

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35070

 

Read from top.

 

See also: the letter from god einstein...