In which the pond wonders when the robots will replace the Caterists ...

The pond likes to think of time spent with the Caterists as an old reliable pleasure, as useful and as valuable as a Mardi Gras doubloon token, whatever the noble tradition behind it ...

This week the Caterists are calling on the innovative robots to do down the workers ...

No doubt the Caterists have all sorts of fancy futurist images in mind ...

But that's enough pandering to the gentleman reader.

The pond reckons that, as with all Caterist schemes, the bottom line will be the transfer of wealth from poor to rich, given that the poor can always get a job working as personal servants in gated communities, a kind of handmaiden's tale for both sexes ...

The pond imagines that the Caterists will tell a sombre tale of rogue unionists, completely unlike the nuanced way the rich use their scalpels to extract money from the poor:

And there right from the get go is a reliable pleasure - the Caterists invoking 18C like some hand-wringing cardigan wearer too weak-kneed to cope with the rough and tumble of the world.

The pond presumes that the Caterist is talking not of "fucking disgrace" - a term easily applied to the taxpayer-rorting ways of the Menzies Research Centre - but of personal threats against people going about their work.

Well if there's criminal intent involved, there are better ways than 18C to proceed, as Sydney Criminal Lawyers handily explained here ... but what's never surprising is the way the Caterists only ever concentrate on one side of the story.

The construction industry is a deeply corrupt and deeply corrupting industry, with its tentacles in both of the major parties, especially in Sydney and Melbourne. It's hard not to look at the behaviour of certain developers and builders and not resent the way they make out like bandits, with politicians as their willing pawns.

For every union official threatening to stop a concrete pour, there's some developer willing to drop a pot of money into the trough to score special treatment, and every so often a scandal erupts to show off the size of the trough.

Google up the Terror exploring the donation scandals surrounding Ray Williams; read the Fairfaxians here; keep it up and you might even be given a bond ...

Even the apparently legitimate activities involved in the building of a WestConnex is a tremendous boondoggle. 

This city-destroying build won't actually fix Sydney's transport issues, but when a project starts at $15.4 million, and quickly turns to a projected cost of c. $16.8 billion and then talk turns $29 billion, and maybe reaches $45 billion with ancillary building, you can bet there's a lot of competing snouts anxious to get into the trough, and not just for the handsome tolls facilitated by the government trying to cut off of rat runs to keep the rats paying (and don't get the pond started on the burgeoning developer opportunities provided by government in relation to the Sydney Metro line. Call it urban renewal and everything's sweet).

But there you go, the Caterists as usual have got the pond haring off into another direction, when we should be paying attention to the Caterists ...

Uh huh ...

Strange, what happened to the wool industry, as well as to the shearers? Did, as the Caterist so quaintly suggests, Chinamen and roustabouts and blackfellows become shearers? And how are the squatters going these days if they rely only on wool?

And who thinks bricks are as important as they once were in building structures, unless it's a wall across the Queensland border to keep the toads at bay in the north?

Even more alarming, what happens if the powers that be decide that the drivel written by the Caterists might just as easily be managed by a robot?

After all, the pond knows for a fact that some robots are deeper thinkers than your average Caterist ...

The pond suspects these comical illustrations of robot journalists - drawn for stories about robot journalists - were in fact drawn by robots - how else to explain the cliches and the pipe-smoking?

   

Does the Caterist have any insights into these terrifying prospects for the reptiles? 

Nope, in the Caterist dream world, he can just keep on trotting off to the Australian taxpayer for another grant ... 

Surely, the Caterist thinks,  no robot has the skills required for this sort of snout in trough boondoggle ... more than a match for any unionists doing themselves out of a job ...

But each time the pond listens to the Caterists drone on in their interminably fatuous sleep-inducing voice (surely designed to see The Drum panel replaced by robots), the pond is haunted by the thought of just how easily the Caterists could be replaced.

And then the real nightmare begins. If a Caterist is easily replicable, with the mindset boring, mechanical, predictable, monotonous and remarkably shallow, then these replicas will be easily replicated, and suddenly we'll be off with Kurt Vonnegut deep in Player Piano or perhaps some terrifying future where robotic Caterists are all around ... and then where will we all be, except maybe in a bad Alex Proyas' movie ...

And then the robotic Caterists turn really mean ...

In which the pudel produces a civil war and the reptiles go into a frenzy ...

The pond is struggling to keep up with all the latest reptile frolics.

There was yesterday's digital splash, with caring Caroline trying to remind us that it was all Comrade Bill's fault, even if everyone knew the onion muncher was the official leader of the opposition, and the dog botherer was out and about, shouting gloom from the rooftops ...

And then last night Media Watch had a spray at Akker 'white powder' Dakker,  Rowan the incredibly Mean, and Miranda the vitriolic Devine, here, about sordid columns the pond had done its best to ignore, suggesting that the London fire was the fault of the greenies.

Paul Barry seemed surprised by the baleful ignorance and vile bile of the trio, perhaps forgetting that the Devine once urged the hanging of greenies from nearby lamp posts, and understated his conclusion:

All in all, Dean, Devine and Akerman have excelled themselves. For cheap, nasty, tasteless political shots you really could not do much better.

That's it? How about "these rabid dogs should be put down, or at least neutered, their baying at the moon only being fit for a blog about loons."

And speaking of baying hounds, it was time to catch up with the dog botherer, as stale as yesterday's fish and chips wrappings ...

Indeed, indeed, because the onion muncher was such a rip-snorting success, though the pond has to admire the way that the dog botherer believes that he's somewhere in the mainstream, as opposed to being off in the barking mad fundie camp of onion munching faithful:

Naturally the reptiles couldn't resist making black hand jokes this day, while celebrating the modest, reticent way that the onion muncher helps keep unity afoot for the party with his regular radio appearances:

Meanwhile, the reptiles were in an uproar this day with all the turmoil ...

It's not as if they entirely forgot other issues ... the reptiles still remembered that they were the Catholic Boys' Daily and needed to maintain the rage ...

The pond blames Blaise's parents for many of his troubles ...they couldn't have been followers of the comic strip, could they? Look at the movie that produced!

... but whatever agitates Blaise, apart from gay marriage and all the usual, as a result the pond has seen him turn up regularly at MercatorNet, The Spectator and Centre for Independent Studies ...

Try as Blaise might, the pond refused to be distracted by him away from the main game of onion munching factional feuds and fusses ...resulting in total uproar and complete upheaval in the land, and complete chaos unleashed in the herpetarium ...

Oh that's a low blow. Not so much that the poodle should be in the Labor party but that the reptiles persist in watching Q and A and making it a top of the digital page story ...

But it allows the pond to turn to the cawing Crowe ...

What a pitiful cry, what a piteous bleat ...

Please, oh please, won't somebody do something ...

Does the cawing Crowe realise what he's saying? That the dog botherer is ugly, the onion muncher is ugly, and all the rest of the outraged conservatives are ugly ... or at least capable of ugly, appalling outrage ...

In times of trouble some turn to mother Mary for comfort, but what sayeth the Oz editorialist?

Oh dear that's not sounding good. Malware needs to make the onion muncher a team player? He needs to unite with the onion muncher?

Is there a T-shirt in the house?

Now there's probably someone out there marvelling at the state of agitation in the herpetarium, given the evidence that the reptiles get agitated month after month after month, while most everybody else goes about their daily business troubled by other issues than factional games ...

Clearly that subtle response required in January to deal with factional games failed, and so we come to the current exercises in the field ...

Dammit, pudel, you've started a civil war ...

Or did the civil war begin the day the onion muncher toppled Malware as leader of the opposition?

And so to the most favourite reptile game of all ... personal loyalties, betrayals, back stabbings and conspiracies ...

Indeed, indeed. Just how in control of his party is Malware? After all, he long ago had the devoted, unswerving, undying loyalty of the onion muncher ...

Here for that, as Lyons went in to a harrowing tale which moved the pond to tears ...

And that's where a fierce loathing of poofters has led the onion muncher and the Liberal party ... with the reptiles following along blindly demanding that somebody do something, apparently forgetting that the onion muncher stitched them up something shocking about a matter which should have, and could have, been resolved long ago, except for the bigotry of the fundamentalist onion muncher and the Catholic church ... 

And surely that's more than enough irony for the Catholic Boys' Daily this day ...(with more recent Wilcox here).

In which petulant Peta plays substitute and saves the Major and the pond ...

Bah humbug. Why resort to Chinese medicine (the shop front is on Parramatta Road for anyone interested) when the reptiles of Oz routinely tell the world what's wrong with it, and how they will fix it ... and no need for the world to ask what's wrong with it ...

That's the upside. The shocking, terrible downside is that the Major Mitchell was keeping a low profile this day. The Oreo returns, but then to be abandoned by the Major ...

Now the pond isn't that concerned. No doubt he's taking a little time off to finally find that Order of Lenin and pin it on Manning Clark, and besides, the reptiles have organised a tremendous replacement to talk about the media ...

Petulant Peta is just the person to explain to old school loser drop kick MPs - and their loser staff - how wandering around handing out pamphlets is so yesterday ...

It's just as well, because the media section begins to look desperately thin with the Major Mitchell off the scene.

Take a look at DD's EXCLUSIVE this day ...

Thompson has been feeding that line to the chooks for months. He was reported in the WaPo back on 3rd May here carrying on in the same way, where the NY Times' ad trading on the angle is still playing ...

The Donald has been good for business all round ... on April 4th, the NY Times returned the favour with CNN: CNN Had a Problem. Donald Trump Solved It.

Yep, they got the President they wanted ...he might screw the USA, but think of the ratings and the trees to be killed ...

So it was off to petulant Peta ...

Given her tremendous track record in government - what a stellar burst of governance it was - Peta is used to sorting out useless loser dropkick politicians still stuck in the analogue past ...

... somehow imagining that appearing in public will see huge crowds turn up, drawn by their magnetic personalities and dynamic nineteenth century copper and coal policies ...

But enough of the overture, enough of the prelude, it's on with the sermon ...

Oh dear ... there was the pond thinking that petulant Peta would be helping out the onion muncher, desperate to get into the twentieth century, but there she is helping out Malware with his hopeless, useless addiction to newfangled gadgets and gimmicks, whatever the hot things are ...

Stick to pamphlets Malware, and get out and about in company with sympatico friends ...

And now to the most crucial advice of all ...

Yes, Malware, you goose, it's the authentic message that counts, and you can be as slick as you like, but if the message stinks, you'll be sunk. Have you thought about bringing back knighthoods? It's a guaranteed BBQ stopper ... and it's certain to give you agnostic credibility on the street and in that newfangled intertubes thingie, which is after all ...

And now, it wouldn't be a good day without a Rowe to wrap it up, and more Rowe here ...

And now, say what you will about the Donald, he's not just good business for American newspapers and cable TV... he's keeping cartoonists chained to the drawing board 24/7...