Dame Groan, the onion muncher and Our Henry all on a Friday? Are you not entertained? How could you possibly want more?

 

This Friday the pond's cup overflowed, with a host of pond favourites on hand in the lizard Oz, but there are some outrages the pond simply won't tolerate, such as Jack the dropkick's attempt to downplay Count Binface, when the real joke candidate is Nige ...

Why joke candidates rarely win
Maybe it’s the ADHD talking but I find joke candidates get boring quickly. Binface has and will go the same way.
By Jack the Insider

Columnist

It took Jack until his final few lines to admit it ...

What is sustainably amusing is that Reform party leader Farage has played into the hands of his opponents. Win, lose or draw in Clacton, he will be forever diminished, a walking testament to the political axiom: When they’re screaming at you, you might be on to something, but when they’re laughing at you, you’re done.

There you go Jack, one way or another a joke candidate will win, the only question being which one has trousered five million pounds and counting ...

But what was Jack doing, hanging around on a Friday like a bad smell, cluttering up the far right of the digital Oz and distracting from the main attractions?

Why, the reptiles were in full fear of Jacinta, in carry on Jacinta Jihad mode ...

The snap featured an astonishing bit of cascading animation ...sadly not caught in the intermittent archive ...

EXCLUSIVE
Jacinda unlimited: taxpayers foot $80k tickets bill for Ardern gabfest
Top government agencies spend $80,000 on Jacinda Ardern summit amid calls to cut costs
Passes to hear Jacinda Ardern speak sell for up to $4499, almost triple that of Taylor Swift VIP Australian tickets. Months after being told to slash spending, mandarins have splashed out.
By Elizabeth Pike

Outrageous, and how right to be punked and piked by Pike. How the reptiles fear and loathe Jacinta and her insidious, invidious smile.

Why, those wretched cardigan wearers should be spending that money on advertising public service jobs in the lizard Oz, and thereby help keep the raft of reptiles afloat.

How else can they sustain attacks on the government?

Yes, there was another EXCLUSIVE, full of suffering ...

EXCLUSIVE
Labor’s budget ‘fix’ for the young makes them the biggest victims
Young investors face thousands in extra tax under new CGT rules
Baby Boomers and Generation X escape the worst of Labor’s tax overhaul, as new modelling shows the storm coming for younger adults.
By Anthony Keane and Will Seitam

And that variant on a keening Keane was immediately followed by Dame Groan, sent right off yet again by talk of Jimbo...

Commentary by Judith Sloan
It’s simply a mess when toddlers are set free in the fiscal candy shop
The reality is that the budget changes were badly thought-out and badly executed.

Correspondents know the form. Dame Groan will explain - this time in just a three minute groan - how we'll all be rooned by Xmas.

The reptiles will likely have to hand an incredibly funny snap of a woman looking particularly silly in a vacant, open-mouthed sort of way and sure enough there was a victim to hand: Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson says ‘revenue has to come from somewhere’. Picture: John. Feder

The situation was so dire that Dame Groan immediately ran with dot points ...

Economists are always keen to point out the unintended consequences of policies, those effects unrelated to the main objectives of policies being considered. Yet when it comes to the potpourri of tax changes announced in the recent budget, it was never clear what the intended consequences were.

• Were they mainly about changing the distribution of home ownership away from investors?
• Were they about punishing investors to raise the tax burden on capital while (perhaps) lowering the tax burden on workers?
• Were they mainly about raising more dollars, as Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson admitted when she declared that “revenue has to come from somewhere.”

The reptiles quickly flung in an apocalyptic audio distraction:

The Money Puzzle
Why property investing will never be the same again

And Dame Groan didn't need that sort of prompting to go full end times "we'll all be rooned" ...

According to the budget ­papers, only 7500 extra homeowners are expected because of the tax changes. And 35,000 fewer homes will be constructed over a decade, the modelling says.
Pushing up the tax on capital will result in less investment, which is particularly a concern when it comes to start-ups and entrepreneurship. The carve-out from the CGT change now being proposed is a compliance-heavy joke, and the government probably knows this.

The reptiles helped out by a killer blow aimed directly at Jimbo ... (still no rebrand for Sky Noise down under?) ... Opposition Leader Angus Taylor reflects on his meeting with comedian Dave Hughes to discuss Labor’s taxes. “It was great to speak to Dave, and he is a great person who is very angry about the situation here in Victoria and the situation in Australia right now,” Mr Taylor told Sky News host Paul Murray. “I think he shares the view that so many Australians do that this country is heading in the wrong direction and they’re angry.”

If he's so bloody angry, why is the prize doofus smirking at the camera? 

And why is the beefy boofhead doing the same? 

And how could they afford to waste their time and their precious dollars on a chow down?

And how did a bloody drongo comedian become a bloody expert? 

If the pond wants anger, irritation and a groaning, it will always turn to the Dame ...

An extra $17bn-odd over a decade is handy but needs to be considered in the context of the disaster of the revenue loss from the botched excise hikes on tobacco products, the out-of-control home battery and FBT exemption for electric vehicles programs and the distinct possibility claimed savings on the NDIS will never fully eventuate.
So without knowing what the precise objectives of the budget changes were – now legislated apart from the trust changes – it’s a tricky exercise to talk about un­intended consequences. To be frank, most of them look un­intended, or at least perverse.
Consider the impact of the loss of negative gearing for existing properties and changes to the CGT rules on both the level of ­activity in the real estate market and property prices. For state governments with a heavy reliance on stamp duty and land tax – often their main source of revenue – this impact is dire.
Within NSW, the state most dependent on property taxes, there was a writedown of expected revenue from this source in the recent state budget, it’s likely to be too ­little.
Lower levels of activity in the real estate market really carve into this source of revenue – more so than prices – and we are seeing this in the number of houses being put up for sale and particularly for auction.

For some reason, the reptiles decided Dame Groan needed back up, and they still hadn't managed a rebrand for Sky Noise ... GXO Strategies director Cameron Milner warns bracket creep is quietly costing Australians hundreds of billions of dollars, arguing governments cannot tax their way out of excessive spending. “The bracket creep that goes on because of inflation is hundreds of billions of dollars,” Mr Milner told Sky News host Caleb Bond. “The answer to out-of-control spending isn’t out-of-control taxing. “That’s a problem for the economy.”

The pond decided it should help out with an infallible Pope ...

There, reptiles, fixed it for you ... as Dame Groan delivered a final crushing blow to Jimbo ...

It is estimated that only 30 per cent of houses are now being put up for auction, down from around 45 per cent last year. In turn, this means homes take longer to sell.
It’s not as if any of the states, except for Western Australia, are well-placed to face a major reduction in this own source of revenue. With several states facing potential ratings downgrades – think Victoria, Tasmania and possibly Queensland – their fiscal problems will only become more difficult.
Will Jim Chalmers lend those states a hand? That’s unlikely, at least in the short term. But if things become calamitous enough, the Treasurer may have no choice.
We also can’t be sure how the distributional consequences of Chalmers’ cauldron of changes will play out.
Because negative gearing is grandfathered, existing investors have a distinct advantage relative to younger folk who might have been keen to copy the investment strategies of their parents.
We should not assume, as Jim was caught out doing, that young people are not investors, including in cryptocurrency and ETFs.
One estimate puts this proportion at close to 30 per cent for those in their 30s.
They will be particularly punished by the change to the CGT. For those who have held assets for a long time – older people – the impact is relatively muted.
The reality is that the budget changes were badly thought-out and badly executed.
The preferred approach was to start modestly – say, by eliminating negative gearing for existing properties – and assess the impact of this change.
Other changes could have been added to the mix in time.
Sadly, Jim preferred to act like a toddler set free in candy store.

What an incredibly witty put down by the old biddy! What sparkling form the Groaner is in!

As for housing, Wilcox was also to hand ...

And if all that wasn't enough, the reptiles also had that preening narcissist, the onion muncher, out and about, seeking another home away from home after his time with Viktor Orbán ran out ...

The header: Officialdom’s latest change-by-stealth: renaming seat of Franklin; Quite apart from the fact that important symbolic decisions should not be rushed, there are two key problems with renaming the seat of Franklin.
The caption for the illustration taken from a museum and so reptile dirt cheap: A pencil sketch of Tongerlongeter by Thomas Bock (1832). Picture: Queen Victoria Museum.

It wouldn't be an onion muncher outing without starting with a bald-faced lie. 

It isn't a change-by-stealth.

There will be a public consultation, for what it's worth, not that the pond much minds, because Franklin was no great shakes, as a quick read of his bio in the ADB - with its talk of "petticoat domination" - and his futile death in a North-West expedition, also noted in his wiki, will suggest ...

The onion muncher avoided any discussion of this ancient colonial relic, or offer any argument as to why he should retain his name on a seat ...

One reason many Australians are uneasy about the direction of our country is officialdom’s rush to make key changes without meaningful public input, either from voters or their elected representatives.
For instance, when did any elected government make a formal decision to almost double Australia’s immigration intake, to fly three flags rather than one on all government buildings, or to begin all civic events with acknowledgments of “country”? The Australian people have never been asked for their views on any of these developments despite their immense significance for the future and how we see ourselves as a nation.
Effectively, these changes have been made by the administrative state and then treated as “done deals” that could be questioned only by cultural troglodytes. This sense that far-reaching change has been foisted on a public that’s been kept in the dark helps to explain the rise of conspiracy theories and increasing support for previously fringe political movements.
The latest example of officialdom’s tendency to push change-by-stealth that alters how we see ourselves as Australians is the sudden push to rename the Tasmanian federal electorate of Franklin, a Federation seat, so-called after an early governor, later the famed if ill-starred Arctic explorer, after the Aboriginal warrior Tongerlongeter. This change was announced on Wednesday, with the public given scarcely five working days to make submissions-in-response by midnight next Tuesday.

What a flagrant, blatant liar he is, what a tragedy a proud warrior has to end up in his company ... The Aboriginal warrior Tongerlongeter by Thomas Bock (1832).

Eventually the onion muncher noted that there'd be a day of consultation ...which put the onion muncher in odd company ...

...Faced with the violent dispossession of lands and people - with hundreds of Indigenous men murdered, and women and girls abducted - Dr Clements said Tongerlongeter led the most "effective frontier resistance campaign in Australian history".
Eventually, in 1831, his decimated tribe reached an armistice and was exiled to Flinders Island, along with many other Tasmanian Aboriginals, where Tongerlongeter again assumed a leadership role.
"This is a phenomenal individual, someone everybody can look up to - not just Aboriginals - but everyone as this is our shared history," Dr Clements said.
In its deliberations, the AEC essentially agreed.
"Tongerlongeter's leadership during the Black War, his role in defending Country, and his enduring significance in Tasmanian history provide strong grounds for recognising his contribution through the naming of an electorate," the AEC panel wrote.
However, the Liberal and Labor parties don't believe the seat should be renamed.
Both parties submitted to the AEC that Franklin, named after Sir John Franklin, a British polar explorer and early administrator of Van Dieman's Land, should be retained.
The Liberals argued keeping Franklin would "minimise voter confusion" while the Labor party submitted a change "lacks compelling justification" given its heritage of over a century of use.
Ms Collins confirmed to AAP Franklin remained her preferred title.
"I support the submission that the Labor Party made to the redistribution consultation process, including about a possible name change," she said.
Dr Clements said he was sympathetic to those viewpoints but the "chequered" history of the current namesake, who kept skeletal remains of Indigenous people, ought to be considered.
"To rename the electorate after this extraordinary resistance fighter, who has this unblemished and storied history, compared to someone like Sir John Franklin, it's wholly appropriate," he said. (here)

A fighter, frontier resistance? Please, none of that.

Nobody thought to consult the onion muncher ...

The Australian Electoral Commission will then hold one day of public consultation at the end of the month before finalising its decision.
Australians should indeed know more about Tongerlongeter and about what have become known as the “Black Wars” that took place in Tasmania in the 1820s. For the first decade or so after the establishment of the Tasmanian colony in 1804, while it largely remained a convict settlement and sealing station, relations between the settlers and the local Indigenous people were relatively peaceful. Indeed, another future warrior, Kickerterpoller, seems to have worked on a small farm owned by one of the colony’s first doctors, in one of the many instances of co-operation as well as conflict on the frontier of settlement. That changed once pastoral expansion pushed out beyond the Derwent Valley to settle what had previously been local peoples’ hunting grounds.
In Professor Henry Reynolds’ sympathetic and carefully researched account, Tongerlongeter was the main leader of the organised Aboriginal resistance, which was far more effective and sustained than anywhere else on the Australian frontier.
Exploiting Aboriginal peoples’ superior bushcraft and agility with spears and clubs, resistance steadily scaled up from the killing of isolated shepherds to raids on farmhouses that could readily be rushed while the defenders were reloading their weapons. By scouring contemporary records, Reynolds and his fellow researchers reckon that Tongerlongeter’s bands killed some 180 settlers and seriously wounded as many again. Understandably, this created uproar in a settler population then numbering scarcely 20,000.

The reptiles then flung in a snap of an ancient monument, Henry Reynolds.

Dear sweet long absent lord, is he still around? 

The pond had expected to be wearing a black armband in some kind of remembrance, what with the lying rodent and every other racist and his dog attacking Reynolds for his role in the history wars, only for the onion muncher now to deem him 'sympathetic', and capable of producing a carefully researched account.

What is it with these dingbats? Do they think a zapping, Men in Black style, means we forget everything?

The reptiles even had the cheek to link to a Reynolds' piece, naturally in the lizard Oz ...

Yes, that great betrayal was actually begun by the onion muncher...and to be fair, he stays true to that form ...

In response, governor George Arthur declared martial law and organised the infamous “black line”: a force of 2000 soldiers, police and settlers that tried to emu-bob much of the island in an attempt to kill or apprehend the warriors terrorising the settlement. While this was a comprehensive failure, bands of settlers inflicted even heavier casualties when they came upon Aboriginal camps.
One of the more brutal participants was John Batman, later a founder of the new Port Phillip settlement across Bass Strait, who records in his diary killing two wounded Aboriginal prisoners no longer able to accompany his party. In yet another of the paradoxes of those much harsher times, Batman did take some Aboriginal orphans into his family.
Eventually, with the Tasmanian Aboriginal population vastly reduced, by disease, by starvation due to the loss of hunting grounds, and by fighting – sometimes internal as well as with settlers – from some thousands to some hundreds, in a parley arranged by Kickerterpoller, Tongerlongeter led some 30 of his remaining armed warriors in a parade through Hobart to meet with the governor to settle the war. While Arthur had some good intentions, the subsequent two-decade exile to “safety” on Flinders Island resulted in the deaths of hundreds more Aboriginal people from sickness and despair. The tragedy continued on their return, with Truganini, then said to be the last of the Tasmanian Aboriginals, dying in 1876.

At this point the onion muncher - always the dimmest bulb in the racist, colonial, ten pound Pom house - seemed to realise he might have gone too far, so he flung in a billy goat butt, dressed up as a "there's no doubt" ...with a bonus "doubtless" ...only to ruin the effect, by flinging in another "butt" for the invaders ...

There’s no doubt that Tongerlongeter and his warriors should be remembered and honoured as doughty fighters for their peoples and for the way of life they knew and cherished. Doubtless, this will soon take place in the new galleries to be dedicated to “frontier wars” at the expanded Australian War Memorial. But provided they fought by the reasonable standards of their day, so too should the settlers who prosecuted what they also saw as an existential conflict.

Cue a snap of William Crowther.

Crowther?

There's the ADB version, and then there's the story ... Why is William Crowther, whose statue was toppled in Hobart, such a divisive figure?

Nothing like a little skull snatching to gladden the colonial "scientific" heart.

What's funny is that some might have residual memories of the onion muncher in his prime, parading about and pretending to be at one with indigenous folk.

He even dressed himself up as Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs... and then gutted $500 million from vital Indigenous community service programs in his first Budget, despite a pre-election commitment to maintain funding that targeted Closing the Gap activities.

You can't expect that sort of leopard to change its Crowther-like spots ...

Quite apart from the fact that important symbolic decisions should not be rushed, there are two key problems with renaming the seat of Franklin after Tongerlongeter. First, it’s against the AEC’s standard procedure, which is to preserve the names of seats that have existed since the time of Federation. Second, and much more important, if Batman has been retired as the name of a federal parliamentary seat because of his unsavoury personal conduct, isn’t it a double standard now to commemorate in this way Tongerlongeter, whose many casualties (understandably enough under the circumstances) included women and children?
Quite properly, the names of parliamentary seats these days acknowledge significant Aboriginal people who have “rendered outstanding service to Australia”, such as William Cooper, Vincent Lingiari, Neville Bonner and Truganini herself, as well as Bennelong. But if it’s really necessary to have an Indigenous name from Tasmania, what about relocating the seat of Truganini from the ACT to there and finding another Indigenous person to honour in Canberra?
As for lionising Tongerlongeter, what about erecting a statue to him, with an explanation of the tragedy that was inevitable in the clash of two then very different and mutually misunderstood cultures, perhaps to stand alongside the restored statue of premier William Crowther, as a reminder of our shared flawed humanity. Better that than posthumously recruiting him into the culture wars that are dividing and demoralising our nation.
Tony Abbott is the federal president of the Liberal Party. He served as Australia’s 28th prime minister.

What a gigantic dropkick, and if that's helping the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way get elected, then the pond will make a bet on Pauline ...

Sadly that meant that there was no way the pond could segue to the infallible Pope of the day ... 

Be real, comparing the onion muncher to Darth would be a defamation of that heroic galactic crusader, as C-3PALBO and his tin pot beeping sidekick face down his wrath...

Meanwhile, the Australian Daily Zionist News was at it again.

Those who want a warm up before tackling Our Henry - in astonishingly pompous and pretentious academic mode - could visit the intermittent archive to enjoy the meretricious Merritt ...

Islamophobia envoy wants power to tell pollies what to say
Special envoy pushing for religious motivation to be removed from terrorism’s definition
Australia’s Islamophobia envoy is championing political free speech but wants to create a commissioner who regulates what politicians can say. He can’t have it both ways.
By Chris Merritt
Legal Affairs Contributor

There was also a contribution from a certain Schwartz:

What the Royal Commission did not ask
The current malaise did not begin with antisemitism, and it did not happen overnight. It has been unfolding for decades.
By Steven Schwartz
Contributor

It goes without saying that the meretricious Merritt and the certain Schwartz are rank amateurs up against the hole in bucket man, who was in stupendous form ...

The header: Overpaid vice chancellors parade their ignorance; As if the facts about campus antisemitism were not bad enough, the world most highly paid vice-chancellors show no grasp of what academic freedom means or why it matters.
The caption for the standard snap designed to terrify the hive mind into submission: Pro-Palestine protesters gather at Melbourne University. Picture: Jason Edwards

Our Henry managed a full five minutes of rhetorical flight, dragging in all the requisite arcane references from medievalists and so on, and with the added bonus of shedding a specious tear for the Riddster ...

Rarely has the proposition that a fish rots from the head been more starkly confirmed than earlier this week, when the vice-chancellors of Australia’s most prestigious universities appeared before the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
There were the predictable claims of having been caught unprepared and struggling to respond: concessions cloaked in the sham humility of ritual self-criticism, whose purpose was to cast repeated failure as the inevitable imperfection of any large institution. Accompanying them were the equally predictable assurances of lessons learnt and improvements made.
None of it was remotely convincing. The Group of Eight’s performance has been so abject that not one of its members appears among the universities Greg Craven, in his report for Jillian Segal, identified as deserving special commendation for their response to antisemitism.
Yet that record understates the problem. The failures exposed by the commission’s hearings are merely symptomatic of something more fundamental, as the report of the Group of Eight’s Expert Advisory Committee on Combatting Antisemitism, released shortly before the hearings, makes abundantly clear. The report’s most revealing feature is not what it says about antisemitism but what it reveals about its authors’ profound misunderstanding of the very idea of academic freedom.
Explaining the concept’s history in full would take too long. What matters here is that it has always rested on two foundations: that universities govern themselves; and that the nature of that self-government, along with the obligations it entails, is determined by the university’s mission.

The pond understands that universities have problems. Just recently the pond read Stefan Collini's cry of pain in the LRB, Squadrons of Pigs, Stefan Collini on the university system. (*intermittent archive link).

But this is Our Henry, and so he makes it vindictive and personal, Vice-chancellors Mark Scott, Attila Brungs and Glyn Davis

And so to Our Henry parading his learning.

Want a little medievalism? Want arcane references? Want a serve of Weber, and a pretentious bit of Latin?

You've come to the right place ...

The Go8 itself defined that mission in 2018 as “the pursuit of truth, the advancement of learning and the acquisition, dissemination and preservation of knowledge for the common good”. Once that proposition is taken seriously, the implication is immediate. The maintenance of order on campus is not merely an administrative responsibility. It is a constitutive requirement of the university’s mission.
That understanding is as old as the university itself, embedded in the charters granted the ancient universities in the 13th century. When Wilhelm von Humboldt refounded the modern university on the premise that knowledge advances on an infinite frontier, he did not relax the demands of order – he intensified them. The unimpeded research, teaching and learning that are the substance of truth-seeking could flourish only in an environment that was, in his words, free from every form of disruption and leeres Geschwätz (“empty chatter”).
Max Weber put the point more firmly still. The university had to remain “the house of the intellect”, not “a nest for fanatical sects”, for a university that became the latter destroyed the open-minded inquiry and ongoing intellectual exchange on which its purpose depended. The university’s right to take all the measures it needed to insulate itself from those forces of chaos – thus ensuring the “tranquillitas scholarum” (scholarly peace) that made serious learning possible – was therefore an essential component of “academic freedom”.
Nothing in the Go8 report suggests the faintest appreciation of that tradition. For its authors, good order is merely a question of “wellbeing”, to be weighed against academic freedom rather than recognised as its indispensable condition. The report’s own language is unequivocal. It proposes to entrench “the duty to balance academic freedom against actual or potential harm”, and to strengthen “the duty to foster the wellbeing of staff and students”.

Then there came an AV distraction ... During the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, a Melbourne University student has broken down as she described having to strip herself of her Jewish identity to be safe on campus.

Our Henry kept on staying up his fundament ...

By reducing Humboldt’s tranquillitas scholarum and Weber’s “house of the intellect” to competing interests in a managerial balancing exercise, the report necessarily implies that some measure of harassment, intimidation and threat is compatible with the university’s mission. That trivialisation of a constitutive principle into a bureaucratic trade-off can only generate trivial remedies. Little wonder, then, that the report’s flagship recommendation is a one-word amendment to the Model Code set out in Robert French’s 2018 report on academic freedom.
Nor does the Go8 grasp the second obligation the university’s mission imposes. That mission does not merely bind university administrations; it places exacting obligations on academics too. The founding declaration of the American Association of University Professors, the canonical statement of academic freedom, made the logic explicit: because “there are no rights without corresponding duties”, the freedoms of academics “entail correlative obligations” – chief among them, the duty to “set forth justly, without suppression or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other investigators”.
Those correlative obligations distinguish academic freedom from ordinary freedom of expression. The distinction between them underpins Edward Shils’s 1967 report, which laid the intellectual foundations for the University of Chicago’s celebrated statement on academic freedom. As Shils observed, while “cranks and demagogues enjoy the right of freedom of expression”, academic freedom has never protected the right of scholars “to make arbitrary assertions without regard to the evidence, methodically and critically assessed”.
It is precisely that distinction Mark Scott recklessly obliterated when he declared: “We do not believe, nor understand, how our campus can be a place where people are less free to speak than they are in the wider world.” But universities are not the wider world. They are self-governing institutions constituted for a distinctive purpose, and academic freedom is the right to fulfil that purpose – not a licence to disregard the intellectual standards on which it relies.
Rather than being ancillary to the university’s purpose – as the Go8’s offhand recognition of the need for “balance” in teaching implies – holding academics rigorously to account for objectivity, seriousness and intellectual honesty is the means by which universities fulfil their social role of seeking the truth. Yet in a report of some 14,400 words on academic conduct, the word “truth” does not appear once, nor are the consequences of a commitment to truth-seeking accorded any weight in what is little more than a bureaucrat’s view of the world.

For no particular reason, the Riddster entered the scene... Drew Pavlou; Peter Ridd

Oh the suffering of climate science denialists, and devotees of Western Civilisation ... (the pond's Chinese-manufactured EV is remarkably efficient, getting around at a rate of 11kWh, way better than the 16kWh the pond's previous EV managed)...

Not that our universities have ignored these issues altogether. But their actions provide no comfort. The University of Queensland savaged Drew Pavlou for misconduct that pales beside the behaviour our elite institutions routinely tolerate from pro-Palestinian militants. James Cook University sacked Professor Peter Ridd for a breach of confidentiality far less serious than the doxxing of Jewish academics that the University of Sydney has brushed off with barely a murmur.
The inference is inescapable. Pavlou and Ridd paid the price for being on the wrong side. Calls, steeped in antisemitism, for Israel’s destruction are tolerated. So is unashamedly blending “research” with advocacy that celebrates Hamas. But peacefully opposing China’s murderous repression of dissidents, as Pavlou did, or questioning climate change orthodoxy, as Ridd did, are not.
The consequences of that approach are visible in the Go8’s response, if one can call it that, to the mayhem that has marred campuses since October 7, 2023: since then, intellectual confusion has become outright complicity. Flagrant outrages, such as the invasion of Professor Steven Prawer’s office at the University of Melbourne, have gone effectively unpunished; the rare disciplinary sanctions imposed have been far too trivial to deter; and – despite the Go8’s fine words – not a single academic has been disciplined for replacing teaching with antisemitic preaching.
If this is what taxpayers buy with the world’s highest academic salaries, they are paying Rolls-Royce prices for intellectual bankruptcy. And if the royal commission allows the scandal to continue, it will be a sure sign that the rot has spread far beyond the head.

Sssh, whatever you do, don't mention Gaza ...

And there you have it, and the pond thanks the long absent lord that Our Henry managed to avoid the urgent need to maintain a jihad on TG folk, not that there's anything wrong with cross-dressing, at least if you follow the immortal Rowe ...

The pond will treasure that image for a bigly time, what with that jam jar still in hand...

Now here's an Our Henry adjacent moment ...

Back with a succulent serve of reptile stew, at least if you can swallow the swishing Switzer and a Lowy institute rep ...

 

Back again, after a trip to Silverwater in search of a router (don't ask), only to discover that the Australian Daily Zionist News was at it again ...

Antisemitism inquiry
VCs in the dock: unis caught napping when hate came to campus
University vice-chancellors apologised for leaving Jewish students and staff exposed to antisemitic abuse on campus but refused to apologise for the concessions that ended pro-Palestine encampments.

Thank the long absent lord for the way the intermittent archive is currently working, because it could also take care of Jennifer, though it was the pond that had to send her there ... (does no one care about the lizard Oz?)

Royal Commission must mark clean break for our universities
Too many universities hid behind the veil of free speech and academic freedom as cover for tolerating the abhorrent.
By Jennifer Westacott
Columnist

That did give the pond an excuse to catch up with an old infallible Pope...

Continuing the winnowing, the pond, with some degree of joy, sent Sall's sally off to the cornfield, what with transphobia never the pond's flavour of the week ...

Sorry, Albo: We’re biological women, not culture warriors
Prime Minister has framed the issue as a ‘culture war’. Yet when a rally sign threatens a woman for defending her rights, that is not cultural debate.
By Sall Grover

How the reptiles love to bring in Giggling loons to conduct their culture wars.

Just to add that, some Rice was on the boil ...

DEFAMATION THREAT
Axed: Fury as nurse union pulls suicide article over ‘trans distress’
Nurses’ journal pulls suicide study over ‘trans distress’
Australia’s biggest nurses union retracted a journal article on transgender suicide research and accused its author of ‘hatred’. Now he’s threatening to sue.
By Stephen Rice 

According to the ABS back in 2024, About 0.9% of Australians 16 years and over are trans and gender diverse, including trans men, trans women and non-binary people.

And this is what preoccupies the fear mongers in the lizard Oz hive mind? 

Of course, because when the reptiles get their knickers in a knot and embark on a never-ending jihad, the fussing and the feuding and the fighting appears on a daily basis.

All that aside, is there anything happening by way of actual news? Some reptile on the extreme far right of the digital rag prepared to grapple with the world?

With all that winnowing away of reptile jihads, some might wonder, but fear not, the swishing Switzer was to hand to help ...

The header: Trump is now trapped in a conflict of his own making; Military power can destroy targets and even tyrants, but it cannot erase political realities.

The caption: The Strait of Hormuz and US President Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

Why did the pond bother? 

After all, the swishing Switzer could only manage a three minute read, but all the same the pond found it piquant.

Please, a little scene setting, with the pond heading way back to May 21 2026 , with Matt Gertz at MSNow ...

Trump and Fox News are trapped in a doom loop on Iran
The network’s flattery has deepened Trump’s unwillingness to back down.

Sound familiar? 

The swishing Switzer's blather about being 'trapped in a conflict of his own making' and 'doom loop' pretty well synch up...

President Donald Trump’s Iran war is a global strategic debacle and a domestic economic disaster that has taken his public support to new depths. With the president’s job approval hitting second-term lows, some Republicans are warning that he may hurt the party’s chances of retaining control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
But even as some MAGA pundits are sounding the alarm about the war and its political implications, Fox News’ coverage of the Iran war remains consistently glowing. Trump is depicted on the network as a steely-eyed negotiator who had “the courage, the wisdom, the fortitude to confront this Nazi-like regime,” in the words of one host. He now “holds the cards” against Iranian officials who are “grasping at straws,” a Fox correspondent said. On rare occasions when Fox hosts buck that narrative and express concern about the war’s impact on the country and the GOP, they quickly pivot back to the pro-war propaganda Trump craves.
In 2020, Fox’s executives and stars faced a network near-death experience due to a rare moment of honesty.
Fox’s lockstep promotion of Trump’s war reflects two crucial factors: The influence of current and former Fox hosts on the Trump administration, and the network’s desperate desire to hold on to its MAGA viewership at all costs. And because Trump’s own worldview is shaped by the network telling him that he’s engaged in a globally historic victory that just needs more time — and perhaps further escalation — the result is a doom loop without a clear exit.
In Trump’s first term, his obsessive consumption of Fox’s programming turned the network’s hosts and correspondents into prominent participants in national politics. That pattern has intensified in his second term: Trump has selected more than two dozen former Fox personalities to fill top roles in his administration, leaned on current Fox stars for counsel and seemingly ordered policy changes like the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to U.S. airports based on segments that caught his eye.
Network hosts like Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Brian Kilmeade have long supported military strikes against Iran, and over the first few months of the year, they repeatedly used their programs to urge Trump to take action. But since their predictions of a quick and easy resolution gave way to a quagmire, they have been unable to respond coherently. Instead, when not praising Trump for his bravery in starting the war, they suggest risky escalations they say will end it — from a special ops mission to seize Iran’s uranium to the targeted assassinations of more Iranian leaders.

So how's the Emeritus Chairman's favourite war, conducted by his favourite leader, holding up? Are the Faux Noise ratings a sufficient reward?

The swishing Switzer has his doubts ...

The first rule of war strategy is simple: don’t make your own position worse. Yet that is precisely what Donald Trump has achieved in the Strait of Hormuz.
Before Trump ordered the assassination of supreme leader Ali Khamenei on February 28, freedom of navigation through the world’s most strategically important energy choke point was largely intact. Today Trump is attempting to restore a status quo that his own intervention helped to destroy. In soccer parlance, it is an extraordinary own goal.
Since his decision to launch war in Iran, the campaign has lurched through four distinct phases. First came the US and Israeli strategic bombing campaign (February 28-April 8), which failed to alter Tehran’s behaviour. It was followed by the US-led naval blockade (April 13-June 17), which likewise fell short of its political objectives. Then, confronted by rising oil, gas and fertiliser prices, growing economic uncertainty and the prospect of Republican losses in November’s midterm elections, Trump abruptly changed course.
On June 17, he signed a memorandum of understanding that, by any reasonable measure, represented a remarkable retreat. Washington agreed to substantial financial concessions even though Iran had emerged from the conflict more hard line than before, retaining its uranium enrichment program, ballistic missiles and regional proxy network.

The reptiles interrupted with an AV distraction featuring one of those classic lizard Oz thumb framings ... Donald Trump says he’ll replace the levy with trade and investment deals as the US launched new strikes minutes before the blockade on Iranian ports began

The pond paused to remember Media Matters ...

Right-wing media figures castigate Fox News for pushing “blatant propaganda” on the war in Iran
Former Fox hosts and other right-wing media figures have called out the network for “cheerleading” Trump’s war
Written by Reed McMaster & Isabella Sherk
Published 04/06/26 

So how's that blatant propaganda and cheerleading worked out for the Emeritus Chairman?

Still the swishing Switzer couldn't get on board ...

The agreement proved short-lived. When Tehran asserted that it retained effective control over the Strait of Hormuz – a position it regards as central to its strategic leverage – Trump effectively abandoned the memorandum.
Now, frustrated by Iran’s defiance, the US President appears convinced that a campaign of tit-for-tat military retaliation can coerce Tehran into allowing commercial shipping to transit the Strait of Hormuz without Iranian permission.
That is a bold ambition. It’s also an unattainable one. Each step up the escalation ladder plays to Iran’s strengths, not America’s. Tehran repeatedly has demonstrated a willingness to absorb punishment in pursuit of political objectives it considers vital.
Trump’s Iran policy has now descended into a farce. Having declared that he, like the mullahs, would impose tolls on commercial traffic transiting the Strait of Hormuz, he flip-flopped overnight as if he never really meant to contradict his own administration’s objective to restore freedom of navigation through international waters. He is flailing about for a strategy.
Supporters of the Iran war may argue that the US is at last confronting the 47-year campaign the Islamic Republic has waged against its neighbours, America, the international community and, indeed, its own people.
But if that were the objective, the strategy so far has produced the opposite result. Iran’s leverage has increased, the credibility of US alliances has been tarnished, the risks to global energy markets have grown and the prospect of a wider economic downturn has become more acute.

It wouldn't be a lizard Oz yarn without a snap of boys splashing about, Boys play in the shallow waters of the Strait of Hormuz, as a plume of smoke rises from an explosion in the background. Picture: AP

On and on the swishing Switzer ranted, without mentioning the way that his kissing US cousins continue to host the most obnoxious members of King Donald's regime... so that they can do their hellfire, end of civilisation, war crimes in the offing routine

Quelle debacle ...

Only a fortnight or so ago, Trump declared that he had no desire to become a second Herbert Hoover, the US president (1929-33) whose economic policies are widely associated with the onset of the Depression. Today, however, his rhetoric increasingly echoes that of the late Republican senator Lindsey Graham, the last of the neo-cons, who never knew a war he did not support.
The reversal is remarkable. Having campaigned against America’s “forever wars”, Trump now appears determined to escalate the conflict with Iran, intensifying the air campaign and the naval pressure on the regime. Just one more heave, we are told, and the job will be done.
But does Iran yield to overwhelming pressure? The evidence so far suggests otherwise. Neither strategic bombing nor a naval blockade has persuaded Tehran to abandon what it regards as its vital interests. The argument that still greater pressure will somehow produce a different outcome is fanciful.
The mullahs represent a nasty, brutal Shia theocracy, but from their perspective they confront an existential threat.
Washington and Jerusalem have made little secret of their desire to see the regime blown up into smithereens. Under those circumstances, Iran’s leaders are prepared to endure extraordinary hardship before capitulating to Trump’s demands.
That is why Tehran is unlikely merely to survive this confrontation; it is seeking to exploit it. The regime’s objective is to emerge from the conflict with greater leverage, secure financial concessions to rebuild its economy and military capabilities, consolidate its influence over the Strait of Hormuz and strengthen what it sees as the foundations of a Pax Iranica across the Gulf. What a debacle.

Could this sort of yarn fail to mention the keenest of war mongers?A poster of Benjamin Netanyahu is paraded by mourners as they pay their respects to the late Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Picture: Getty Images

Well played poster boy Benji, as the swishing Switzer realised he might be treading in dangerous waters, so he reverted to "dear readers" syndrome ...

I don’t like this outcome any more than dear readers. However, the uncomfortable reality is that Trump has miscalculated spectacularly: the US and Israel have emerged from this campaign in a markedly weaker strategic position than they anticipated.
The belief that a revived strategy of tit-for-tat coercion will now succeed where strategic bombing and a naval blockade both failed is as implausible as the original bombing and blockade strategies.
Put simply, Iran cannot be bombed or bullied into abandoning its principal source of leverage.
The lesson is clear: military power can destroy targets and even tyrants; it cannot erase political realities. Until Trump fully recognises that distinction, he will remain trapped in a conflict of his own making, pursuing an objective that recedes further with every escalation.
Tom Switzer is presenter of the Switzerland YouTube podcast and a contributor to The Australian and Sky News Australia.

Well dear readers, that's got to be worth an immortal Rowe, celebrating the much-plugged movie of the moment, with a peril as dire as Circe or the Sirens or even a one-eyed mad Cyclops ...

For a bonus, AI has been in the news much of late, so the pond turned to Charles ...

The header: Australia should become a hub for training US frontier AI models; Should Beijing also take a lead in frontier AI research, the risks of war in Asia would grow considerably.

The credit for the collage which frankly shouldn't have been credited for the sake of failing reputations: Anthony Albanese’s speech showed Chinese President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump Australia was behind America’s efforts to push artificial intelligence. Artwork: Frank Ling

How silly of the pond not to realise. The entire point of AI is preparation for the coming war with China, which, in the absence of the bromancer, the pond still expects to happen by Xmas.

This means that we should roll over and get behind mad King Donald, because who wouldn't love to support such a model of clarity, a devotee of peace-making, not to mention the many exceptional talents behind US AI, from Sam Altman to Uncle Elon ...

Carry on Charles Lyons-Jones, sell the hive mind a fine bill of goods ...

Anthony Albanese’s speech at the University of Sydney on Wednesday helped position Australia as a key ally behind American efforts to push the frontier of artificial intelligence research but stopped short of providing AI giants such as Anthropic everything they asked for, including exemptions to Australian copyright law.
Casting aside the economic arguments against providing these exemptions, there is a strong national security case for Australia becoming a hub for the training of America’s frontier AI models, especially when you consider the logic behind Australia’s alliance with the US.
Australia chooses to be an ally of the US not solely for shared democratic values but also because the alliance grants privileged access to technologies that provide the military and intelligence community a major strategic advantage. AI is arguably the most transformative technology in human history. Maintaining privileged access needs to be understood as Australia’s top national security priority because of the profound vulnerabilities that could emerge without it.

Shared democratic values?

Sorry, the reptiles decided that it was better to slip in a snap of Albo, Mr Albanese has a strong national security case to support AI.

Charles kept on plugging away, keen to sell AI, security, Albo and the joys of getting into bed with mad King Donald and the tech bros ...

Take cyber security. According to leading-edge research, some frontier AI models can now outperform humans in some complex scientific tasks. For Australia’s national security agencies, that represents a huge challenge, as most government networks are secured by traditional cryptography now at risk from quantum computing.
The date that quantum computers can break these systems is known as Q-Day. To prepare, the Australian Signals Directorate has required government agencies to include post-quantum computing considerations in all new procurements since 2024, with the aim of transitioning all systems to post-quantum networks by 2030.
But with frontier AI models accelerating research and development in quantum computing, there is a significant risk that adversaries such as China could bring forward Q-Day and penetrate government networks before the transition has fully taken place.
Training frontier models domestically will offer Australia a safer transition to post-quantum computing than alternative pathways, as it will provide assurance of continued access to these powerful AI systems during a period of heightened risk.
The modern battlefield is another area where training frontier AI models can help Australia maintain a strategic advantage. America’s use of AI in targeting for missile strikes against Iran offered insight into a world where the most powerful military capabilities are augmented by frontier models. Positioning Australia to take advantage of any future applications of frontier AI in air, surface and subsurface warfare needs to be front of mind, particularly as AUKUS Pillar II gathers steam.

The reptiles needed a villain ... Xi’s military ambitions require Australia to address its AI vulnerabilities. Picture: Getty Images

But does this barbarian know how to do a proper looting?

In deep fear of one dictator, Charles kept on pandering to the Americans, currently being run by a mad King...

Asia’s rapidly deteriorating strategic environment further strengthens the case for Australia making use of its continental geography, vast natural resources and abundant energy to help America maintain a lead in frontier AI research.
China’s President Xi Jinping has instructed the People’s Liberation Army to ready itself for a successful invasion of Taiwan by 2027. The extent of involvement by Australia, as an American ally, in any Taiwan contingency will be largely determined by decisions taken in the White House. Complaining about this supposed lack of sovereignty will hardly change the reality of it. Given that warning time for a PLA invasion of Taiwan will begin from next year, there is little that can be done to increase Australia’s freedom of action in the near term.
What Australia can do immediately is improve its resilience, which is best done with American expertise. Currently, Australia’s AI capability is overly reliant on undersea cables that would be highly vulnerable in wartime. Xi’s military ambitions require Australia to address that vulnerability soon. Developing sovereign AI infrastructure for US-based firms, which own the most powerful frontier models, will go some way to bolstering Australia’s wartime resilience in the near to medium term.
Longer term, Australia will face greater risks if it doesn’t help America to shore up its advantage on AI’s frontier. Despite the US military’s successful deployment of AI during the Iran war, China remains well positioned to lead in integrating AI models into robotics and military technologies. Should Beijing also take a lead in frontier AI research, the risks of war in Asia would grow considerably as China could assume that its technological edge will enable success in an invasion of Taiwan.

There came a final visual plug ... Developing sovereign AI infrastructure for US-based firms – as Donald Trump wishes – will go some way to bolstering Australia’s wartime resilience. Picture: Getty Images

All that did was make the pond reach for another 'toon ...

Charles, who had only managed a feeble three minute read, spluttered out in a final gobbet designed to sell his bill of AI goods, because China ...

China’s intelligence services understand the importance of AI to the PLA. In April China’s most senior spy chief, Chen Yixin, wrote an influential article in the Communist Party’s theoretical journal arguing that “technological competition (had) entered its most intense, strenuous and critical period of close-quarters combat” with the US.
Chen’s article was emblematic of Beijing’s view that it is embroiled in a new cold war. To stop this new cold war turning hot, both China and the US will need to maintain a balance of threat. But unlike the previous Cold War, both sides will be competing in an environment where credibility as a great power will hinge on the ability to augment military and intelligence capabilities with frontier AI models.
Stability is far from assured in this volatile strategic environment. For Australia, the costs of developing a truly sovereign frontier AI capability will be prohibitive and the chances of success slim. That’s why the best contribution that could be made to global stability by Australia, as an ally of the US, would be to back American leadership at AI’s frontier.
Charles Lyons-Jones is a research fellow at the Lowy Institute.

That's the best that the Lowy Institute could rustle up?

That pathetic needy brand of wheedling and whining and fear mongering and bending the knee and tugging the forelock?

Let the immortal Rowe have a final word on that ...

So many fine cameos, though the immortal Rowe felt the need to identify one nonentity ...

There was something about this pair that struck a chord, or at least a jam jar ...

 

And now, may Pod save America, because God doesn't seem up to the job, not if Her nominees are any guide ...

No reptile stew today!

 

The pond regrets to advise that it is currently offline and so there will be no succulent reptile stew served today.

The pond’s router has died, a sudden and unexpected death, in the spirit of Miss Lindsey.

This post is being composed by a digital thumb hooked up to digital tar, which is to say iPhone hooked up to iPad, which is like trying to sound sensible while undergoing a root canal.

The pond’s router hopes that correspondents can find some other form of reptile gruel, while it heads off to find a replacement router, with a deep, seething resentment of Apple products bubbling away like mad Kind Donald’s demented brain.

In which the pond tastes all sorts of forbidden reptile fruit, but settles for ancient Troy doing Nige and Dame Groan doing those damned furrriners ...

 

There is no long absent lord offering sensible and thoughtful hope, because She would have taken mad King Donald together with his acolyte Miss Lindsey, and spared Sam Neill a little longer.

It's worth writing about what Neill gave the world, not so much Miss Lindsey, though the pond was irritated that it took two reptiles, Caroline Overington and Bianca Farmakis, to compose a tribute to Neill, Sam Neill, Jurassic Park actor and writer, dies aged 78, and yet these dimwits managed to omit any mention of one of his best roles, the short order chef in Death in Brunswick, where he and his Kiwi comedy mate John Clarke ran riot in a graveyard.

Always those bloody dinosaurs instead of Neill's rich sense of humour, which he shared with Clarke

Meanwhile, the madness of King Donald continues apace, with the latest example his Mafia type muscle move to impose a levy of 20% on goods moving through the Strait, thereby outdoing the mad Mullahs.

Sadly the reptiles of Oz don't have the bromancer around to tackle the latest sign of dementia.

With the greatest respect to Clive, he's simply not up to the job, as he offered the hive mind a statement of the bleeding obvious ...

Airstrikes alone will not deliver US victory in Mid-East

Iran still retains a range of asymmetric response options even as its conventional forces face attrition.
By Clive Williams

Not only did Clive offer a modest 3 minute read - where's "Ned" when he's needed? - he attempted to sound sensible, which is simply not playing the hive mind game...

Even worse, he was a little late to the party:

At the heart of the current flare-up lies a longstanding legal and strategic dispute over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has asserted particular security interests in the waterway and has used threats of access restrictions as a means of exerting pressure. The US and most maritime nations maintain the strait is subject to international rules guaranteeing unimpeded transit passage.
These divergent interpretations complicate any resolution.

It turned out that they're not divergent at all, what with mad King Donald being at one with the mad Mullahs on the need to impose a surcharge, the only divergence being on who will collect the loot ...

The rest of Clive is in the intermittent archive, but for a moment the pond could have sworn it was reading a piece scribbled for the both siderist NY Times ...

How about this?

The US has framed its operations as legitimate self-defence and a necessary step to protect freedom of navigation and civilian mariners. US officials argue Iran’s attacks on commercial vessels posed a direct threat to international maritime security.
Iran, by contrast, portrays its actions as legitimate responses to ongoing US and Israeli military pressure, economic sanctions and earlier strikes that damaged Iranian territory and infrastructure.

Yes, on the one hand, but on the other hand, and Clive carried on like this to his conclusion ...

...US strikes have concentrated on military assets linked to threats against shipping. American statements emphasise precision targeting and efforts to limit civilian harm. Iranian authorities have reported casualties and damage extending beyond purely military sites, although comprehensive independent assessments remain limited at this stage.
It is too early to evaluate the military effectiveness of the US strikes. They are likely to impose meaningful costs on Iranian naval and missile capabilities and may temporarily constrain further attacks on shipping. But past experience in the region indicates that airstrikes alone seldom resolve deeper political and security grievances. Iran retains a range of asymmetric response options, including proxy operations, cyber activities and renewed maritime harassment, even as its conventional forces face attrition.
For the US and its partners, prolonged military engagement also entails risks. Operations consume resources, heighten the chances of miscalculation and contribute to oil market volatility. Donald Trump has paired warnings of stronger action with suggestions that negotiations remain possible. Proponents view this as effective coercive diplomacy; critics argue it creates uncertainty about US objectives and risks undermining diplomatic credibility.
The most probable short-term trajectory is continued managed confrontation rather than outright victory or comprehensive peace. Iran is unlikely to extract major concessions solely through military pressure. The US and its allies can maintain pressure through strikes and sanctions but face practical and political limits.
Regional actors such as Gulf States and Israel continue to prioritise containment, while external powers including Russia and China seek regional influence through varying degrees of engagement with Tehran. The conflict exemplifies a security dilemma. Defensive measures by one side are often perceived as aggression by the other, perpetuating cycles of retaliation. US strikes may safeguard immediate interests but risk entrenching hostility. Iranian disruption may signal resolve but invites further isolation.
Neither side appears intent on a full-scale regional war. Yet the assumption that escalation can remain controlled has repeatedly proved dangerous. Once military action begins, domestic pressures, miscalculation and unintended consequences can rapidly narrow the space for diplomacy.
Stability in the Gulf cannot rest on military force alone. It will require credible mechanisms for maritime security, renewed diplomatic channels and progress on the longstanding disputes surrounding Iran’s nuclear activities, regional role and relationship with the US. Until those issues are addressed, each round of strikes and counterstrikes risks becoming the prelude to the next.
Clive Williams is a former defence intelligence officer.

The reptiles of Oz will miss the bromancer ... 

He knows how to celebrate the events of the day, with hopes of even bigger events to follow ...

That left ancient Troy, finally catching up with events in the UK ...

The header: Farage v Count Binface: the clash that perfectly sums up British politics; The intergalactic space warrior is now the anti-establishment candidate, not Nigel Farage.

The caption for the comedy duo, Count Binface and Nigel Farage

Ancient Troy spent a bigly four minutes on Nige and the bin man, though really he had nothing to say that hadn't been said by the cracking Crace in some fair style, in forays such as What a week for Daddy Nige and his dysfunctional Reform family:

...could it be that Nige is just the Messiah. We know he’s no Old Testament prophet because he doesn’t believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Otherwise he wouldn’t have complained about Sky News identifying one of his properties, having himself named hotels accommodating asylum seekers to his followers. Just for their information, naturally. The last thing he would want is for his supporters to protest outside.
Rather, Nige is the New Testament real deal. A man of compassion and tolerance. Someone sent down to Earth to fight for the poor and the oppressed. To round up the sinners who have erred and strayed from God’s ways like lost sheep.
Take Thursday’s Daily Mail, in which he said he was only practising “Christian forgiveness” in taking handouts from George Cottrell. He had looked deep into Posh George’s soul and seen someone who truly repented of offering to launder money for drug dealers. The fact that Posh was a multimillionaire prepared to bankroll Nige’s lifestyle never crossed his mind.

But the pond can Tootle only so much, and must deal its ancient Troy hand ...

Nothing could more perfectly sum up the state of British politics than the forthcoming by-election between far-right populist politician Nigel Farage and the satirical Count Binface – a comedic candidate who has contested previous elections with a garbage bin shaped helmet – in the seaside seat of Clacton, northeast of London.
Reform UK leader Farage has been dogged by parliamentary investigations into receiving a “gift” of £5m ($9.7m) from cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne, other gifts from convicted fraudster George Cottrell and not fully declaring property interests. He attacked The Times and The Sunday Times, and other media, for their investigations.
Rather than face the scrutiny that all MPs must and respond to these allegations, Farage resigned as an MP, insisting he’d done “nothing wrong”, and set up a phony standard: if re-elected that should be the end of the matter. It is straight from the Donald Trump playbook.
A by-election gives voters a chance to “stick two fingers up to the establishment”, Farage claims. But the stunt has backfired with his main opponent being a parody candidate wearing a garbage bin on his head. The Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green and Restore Britain parties have decided not to contest the August 13 by-election.
The contest between Farage and Binface has gripped British politics. It is more serious than it looks. Binface has been interviewed by leading political journalists. The odds of Binface winning Clacton have been slashed and his support is growing in the polls.

At least ancient Troy is talking up the bin man's chances, even if the reptiles insisted on showing Nige playing at being dinkum, Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage drinks a pint of beer, 2024. Picture: Carl Court / Getty Images

Such a faux, filthy rich, always smirking creep...

And so to wild hopes that the bin man might just have the chops to do it...

Farage, the architect of Brexit, is widely disliked and he didn’t win a majority of votes in the seat when elected two years ago. Labourites, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats would be delighted if Farage is defeated. Andy Burnham, likely the next Labour prime minister, said: “Count Binface, you are carrying the hopes of the nation.” Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch ridiculed Farage’s claim that it is the people versus the establishment. “Well, if he’s the establishment here, then in this context Binface may be the people,” she said.
Comedian, writer and broadcaster Jon Harvey is the creator of Count Binface, who claims to be an intergalactic space warrior from planet Sigma IX who came to Earth in 2017. He wears a silver space suit with cape and garbage bin head. It sounds preposterous and utterly ridiculous, which it is, but it is also very funny and Binface is getting more people interested in politics.
This will be the seventh electoral contest for the space warrior. He stood in the December 2019 and July 2024 general elections, two by-elections and the May 2021 and May 2024 London mayoral elections. He won more than 24,000 votes in each mayoral contest. He stood beside victors Boris Johnson and Burnham on election night as the results were announced and shook their hands.
Binface is touching a chord with voters who believe politicians, including Farage, have not delivered what they promised. He exists as a kind of protest vote. A pox on their houses candidate. Voting for Binface is not a wasted vote but a democratic right to turn up and cast a ballot in protest against the system.
Binface is one in a long history of satirical candidates contesting British elections. He does indeed have policies, albeit in the British comedic style of Monty Python, Blackadder and The Young Ones.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap of Andy, whom the pond's partner finds attractive because he's something of a thugby league man, Andy Burnham addresses supporters outside the Labour party campaign office in Makerfield. Picture: Oli Scarff / AFP

On with the bin man's sensible policies and promises ...

He wants to nationalise singer Adele, rename London Bridge after actor-writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge, ban loud snacks from theatres and promises to build at least one affordable house.

Say what, at last the pond could go back to the movies, currently filled with younglings scoffing greasy salted popcorn as loudly as their choppers can manage? 

But wait, there's much more ...

He wants to introduce a maximum voting age of 80, nationalise model railways, abolish video assistant referees in football, make cyclists who ignore road rules ride only unicycles, require people who use their speakerphones on public transport to watch the movie Cats every day for a year or be conscripted, and force water service managers to swim in rivers they pollute.
There is more: Provide free parking for electric vehicles between Vine Street and the Strand as it is in Monopoly; cap the price of a Flake ice-cream at 99p, a croissant at £1 and a Wigan kebab at £2; abolish auto renewal of online subscriptions; and move the hand dryer in the men’s toilet at the Crown & Treaty pub in Uxbridge to a more convenient location.
Farage’s Reform UK has been leading national polls. But with the electorate split, his party manages to attract only about 25 per cent nationwide support. Most Britons dislike Farage (62 per cent) and blame him for the post-Brexit mess. A recent YouGov poll found 73 per cent of Britons thought Farage was “sleazy” while 64 per cent said he was “untrustworthy” and 60 per cent said he had not been honest about his finances.

Say what, where's the bromancer when he's needed? What's this talk of a post-Brexit mess? That's not how the bromancer, and so the pond, remember it ...

It was a bloody triumph of reason ...

Brexit: Britons’ triumph of democratic reasoning
What a magnificent triumph of ­determined, peaceful, reasoned democracy the British people have pulled off.

That's more like it.

Of course the Brits could prosper outside the EU, and haven't they been doing a splendid job of prospering? Who has prospered more than Nige himself?

The pond reckons the bromancer's the lizard Oz's equivalent of the bin man, as the reptiles slipped in another snap of a has been, Keir Starmer. Picture: Carlos Jasso / Getty Images

And so to a final gobbet starring loser Nige, too clever for his obvious stupidity ...

Asked on radio last week what he offered the voters of Clacton, Binface said: “Well, I’m not Nigel Farage.”
Indeed. A decade ago, a majority of the voters in Clacton supported Brexit. But leaving the EU has had a significant adverse economic impact and many of the promised benefits, such as £350m a week more for the National Health Service, have not materialised. After David Cameron, five prime ministers have come and gone since Brexit – Theresa May (2016-19), Johnson (2019-22), Liz Truss (2022), Rishi Sunak (2022-24) and Keir Starmer (2024-26) – and next week it is likely Burnham will be the sixth to walk through the black door of 10 Downing Street.
The irony for Farage is that he too could be a casualty of this period of instability in British politics. An Ipsos poll found that more Britons preferred Binface to win Clacton than Farage. That is perhaps an unlikely outcome, but it shows how quickly politics can change. The intergalactic space warrior is now the anti-establishment candidate, not Farage.

On the upside, going with ancient Troy meant the pond could avoid yet another reptile rant about the budget ...

EXCLUSIVE
First-home buyers fall foul of Labor ‘fix’ as investors move in
Investors invade first-home buyer estates to avoid Labor tax penalty
Landlords are muscling into the one market where young Australians held the upper hand to avoid a $700 weekly penalty triggered by the budget tax changes.
By Anthony Keane and Noah Yim

The pond wanted to keep its powder dry. 

Surely Dame Groan would want to have a word, and it wouldn't be the fault of those muscly landlords, it'd be the doings of those damned, deeply wicked furrriners ...

And the pond could duck and weave around a shocking, shameful attempt to do down Tamworth's pride and joy ... (such is its eternal, ineradicable shame) ...

EXCLUSIVE
Joyce defection was ‘disgusting and his foibles will become clear’
In an extensive interview on how to manage One Nation, National Party federal president Andrew Fraser launches a blistering attack against Barnaby Joyce and his ‘disgusting’ defection.
By Rosie Lewis

The problem was that in his attack, this variant Fraser thought the man who had very little to be proud of had been given a raw deal ...

Funny that, Barners has been like that all along, as any Tamworth magpie would know, but it was only when he switched thugby league teams that the stench suddenly appeared ...

Never mind, the pond kept ducking ...

Australia’s anti-corruption commissions have gone too far
Who needs an anti-corruption commission to investigate scandals when they can create their own?
By Scott Prasser

It too was just a three minute read, but the pond switched off when it saw that Scott was a Connor Court man ...

...Who needs an anti-corruption commission to investigate scandals when they can create their own?
While these problems have since been addressed, it highlights that it is not easy operationalising these bodies in Westminster systems.
The South Australian ICAC had its powers so reduced in 2021 that its commissioner resigned in protest in 2024, leaving it to be our weakest anti-corruption body and of questionable value.
Some argue anti-corruption commissions serve a useful role and should be strengthened; others believe it has all gone too far and their collective cost and undermining of civil liberties are too great. Instead of strengthening trust in government, their reports and errant behaviour have undermined it. They are a “solution” that too often has become the problem. Nor can these bodies prevent poor politically driven policy decisions, as some naively expected, which are necessarily affected in a democracy by compromise, negotiation and govern­ments necessarily seeking votes.
Australia is the only Westminster democracy with anti-corruption commissions. Perhaps after observing how they have operated in this country, Britain, Canada and New Zealand have wisely eschewed their adoption.
Scott Prasser co-edited Australia’s Anti-Corruption Commissions: Strengthening Trust? (Connor Court, 2026).

Roll on Nige and his five million and various other crony gifts, Scott's got your back...

You know how to show off the Westminster system right proper, don't you Nige? 

All that glitters can be gold, and you're at one with your rorting, looting, epically grifting mate across the waters.

Let no one and no body, nor any one interested in dealing with corruption, get in the way of magpies with an eye on the glittering main prize ...

By golly, banana republics beckon for Scottie and his mates.

But wait, there's another important benefit in giving Scottie and his mates short shrift.

By clearing the decks, the pond created space for its most important Tuesday mission ... Dame Groan!

It's true that the old biddy was just blathering on about that aforementioned EXCLUSIVE, but the pond always needs the ancient duck to explain how we'll all be rooned long before Xmas arrives ...

The header: Labor’s housing ‘fix’ a case of bad policy made even worse; When the minister talks about fixing housing, what she should be saying is we’re going to stop meddling in the market.

The caption for that craftily uncredited collage, which really did make it seem that Clare and Jimbo were ruining a classic development by getting in the way: Housing Minister Clare O'Neil and Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

The aged Dame was clearly feeling her oats, because this day she embarked on an epic five minute groan ...

In the last week of parliament before the long winter break, Anthony Albanese took to quoting random regional real estate agents to tell us how well the housing market was going for first-home owners. Let’s face it, it was like quoting Al Capone on compliance with the law.
Discomfited by the information emerging about the slowing housing market – particularly falling house prices – the Albanese government is now keen to distance itself from responsibility for any adverse outcomes. You know the sort of thing: nothing to do with us, other factors beyond our control such as the Reserve Bank hiking interest rates.
This is an important topic because dwellings are the single largest source of household wealth by a country mile. Estimated at about $13 trillion, the wealth tied up in housing is greater than the combined wealth tied up in superannuation, shares and commercial property.
According to Housing Minister Clare O’Neil: “We’ve got a broken housing market. That’s why we are making real change for Australians.” It clearly doesn’t occur to her that government action – not just federal but also state and local – is the main culprit of our broken housing market.
It’s worth running through some of the government actions that have brought the housing market to its knees with a massive loss of affordability coupled with lower housing.
Housing prices as a ratio of household disposable income are currently one-third higher than they were pre-Covid.

Quick, a snap of the fiend who set the Groaner off, Anthony Albanese tours a future social and affordable housing development site in Belconnen, Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

Affordable housing? Not on Dame Groan's watch ...

The big picture is that every demand-side intervention is essentially counter-productive in helping people into home ownership. In the context of inflexible supply, all these policies do is drive up demand and therefore prices at certain price points. Think of the 5 per cent deposit scheme, the shared equity program, various state first-home buyer grants, concessions on stamp duties, and the list goes on.
While the recipients of these supports may regard themselves as lucky, they come at a cost to others in the housing market as well as to taxpayers. The net effect is almost certainly negative, but governments are always keen to be seen to be doing something – in this case, assisting first-home owners get into the market
Take the 5 per cent deposit scheme as an example. First-time home buyers can purchase a property with a 5 per cent deposit – some buyers have access to a lower figure – with the government picking up the tab for the lenders mortgage insurance. Buyers can bump up their borrowing, with the banks happy to play along knowing the government will meet any shortfall in the event of default.
The scheme was first introduced by the Morrison government but was targeted at those with the lowest incomes and at relatively low property prices. The Albanese government enlarged the scope of the scheme by removing the income limits, as well as increasing the locational maximum price points. It’s possible to buy a dwelling valued at up to $1.5m in parts of Sydney, for example. Those with permanent residence as well as Australian citizens are now eligible.
The scheme has proven very popular, even among those who could manage to assemble the normal 20 per cent deposit. More than 300,000 participants have taken out a loan under the scheme since 2020. It’s estimated 50,000 permanent residents are among the participants.
Unsurprisingly, the most recent cohort of participants has the highest incomes, even though it is the least in need.

Ah, the suffering of the rich, which thanks to her time at Santos, the Groaner knows all about, as the reptiles slipped in an AV distraction featuring another poor suffering reptile, the indigent dog botherer himself (still no Faux Noise rebrand?): Sky News host Chris Kenny says reports today highlight that rents in Sydney have skyrocketed over the past three months. Mr Kenny said median rents jumped by more than six per cent over that period. “There are many factors at play here, of course, but it’s hardly a surprise that you get this after increasing taxes on housing investment.”

Nothing like black rooftops to make the best of a Sydney summer.

Dame Groan stayed on the case.

So, what should be made of this scheme?
The first point to note is absent any growth in the supply of dwellings priced around the allowable price points, one clear effect is to increase the price of dwellings. The data confirms this effect.
The second point is the exposure this type of scheme creates for both the mortgage holders and the taxpayer. The reality is that a 95 per cent loan can be difficult to service and depends on circumstances not changing in a negative way. The loss of a job, for instance, could easily send a new homeowner to the wall given the lack of any cushion.
On the face of it, these loans have many similarities with the subprime mortgages that were being written at an alarming speed in the US leading up to the global financial crisis. It doesn’t bear thinking what taxpayers could be up for in the event of widespread default by participants in the 5 per cent scheme.
It’s not only the federal government that insists on meddling with the housing market. State governments have their own schemes, but the hypocrisy of their involvement is breathtaking.
As financial commentator Noel Whittaker has noted: “In 1976, taxes, fees and regulatory charges made up less than 10 per cent of the cost of a new house-and-land package. Today, depending on where you live, governments are taking somewhere between one-third and one-half of the total cost.”
It’s a case of give with one hand – first-home owner grants, concessions on stamp duty – while taking with the other in the form of exorbitant cost imposts on new builds. If O’Neil were serious about fixing the housing market, this would be a good place to start.
The fact is the combination of imposts and rapidly escalating construction costs spurred by the Labor government’s pro-union policies has increasingly priced more people out of the market for new dwellings.

Of course it's the unions, it almost goes without saying, but you can rely on the Groaner to say it.

You can also rely on Sydney developers to put together magnificent buildings which will last at least twenty years, with these environmentally sensitive projects featuring only barebones charges and incredibly modest fees, and what would Clare know about that? Clare O’Neil during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Shed a tear for Sydney developers along with Dame Groan ... she's got a slightly used harbour bridge to sell you ..

It is now at the point that high-rise apartments in many suburbs are unaffordable for the average new homeowner. In turn, more developers are finding the economics of new apartment blocks simply don’t add up.

Oh and spare a thought for how furriners are ruining everything, as they always do in Dame Groan's world ...

Did I mention the role that immigration has played in messing up the housing market?

What? No never, you never ever mention how those bloody furriners are making a mess of the entire country.

Please, mention it for the umpteenth, or is that the squillionth time, explaining how we'll all be rooned ...

For most of its time in office, the Albanese government has denied this link. Nothing to see, evidently – just a post-Covid surge followed by much lower net migration figures around 225,000 eventually. (The latest figure was just over 300,000.)
At last, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has conceded “we need to keep doing what we can to increase housing supply, and we need to make sure migration is tailored to what we can do there”. It has taken four years to get to this point.
Why the Treasurer would suddenly decide to up-end the taxation arrangements that applied to housing – negative gearing, capital gains tax, banning self-managed superannuation funds from buying leveraged property – when it was plain as day that supply was overwhelmingly the main game is anyone’s guess.
When O’Neil talks about fixing the housing market, what she should be saying is we are going to cease meddling in the market and see where that leads.
This is the preferred route to allow the market to operate in the context of much lower imposts on construction and much lower migrant intakes.
The budget measures are high risk and there is a real possibility the housing market will crash, at least in certain parts of the country. This would be a bad outcome in both political and policy terms.

Why on earth did the old groaner feel the need to equivocate. What's this blather about a "real possibility", and the down sizing to "certain parts of the country", and that speculative framing of a conditional future, "this would be"?

Dammit, we'll all be rooned by Xmas! No wouda or couda about it.

And there you have it, the pond has done its time with Dame Groan and can take a rest, courtesy Wilcox and the immortal Rowe, both remembering Miss Lindsey in their own way ...

It's a conspiracy, dammit, a fine and noble suck struck down in his prime ...