After yesterday's epic Everest trudge, the pond wanted a quiet life.
It's true that there has been some low comedy, what with Nintendo delays Switch 2 preorders because of Trump tariffs.
The delay marks one of the most significant immediate responses from a major company regarding the concerns about Trump’s tariffs and their impact on business and consumer spending. Most electronics companies manufacture in Asia, home to some of the steepest hikes. Nintendo’s Switch 1 consoles were made in China and Vietnam, Reuters reported in 2019.
For those too lazy to click on the image and read the fine print, the header ran Keen renewables promoter, flop as energy minister, There is nothing that the left in Australia likes more than high-profile Liberals who turn on the institution that made them politically famous and the ID for the snap read, Matt Kean, chairman of the Climate Change Authority. Picture: ABC, and at the very bottom there was that eternally mysterious injunction, This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there
And here we are, and no King Donald tariffs or US trade or the US stock market game of a few ladders and any number of ginormous snakes...
Instead, just a genteel form of climate science denialism, courtesy Polonius, ready to dish it out on a rat in the denialist ranks.
The high-profile Kean is a former treasurer and energy and environment minister in the NSW Liberal-Nationals Coalition government.
Kean was the member for the relatively safe NSW seat of Hornsby from 2011 to 2024.
The words of Kean can be heard in a YouTube video put out by a group calling themselves Liberals Against Nuclear. Needless to say, this organisation has no formal or informal connection with the Liberal Party of Australia. It has a website but no office address.
Kean is quoted on YouTube by an anonymous woman as saying that nuclear power is a distraction that doesn’t stack up at the moment on practical or economic grounds. It is reasonable to assume he has no objection to being quoted in this advertisement, which is hostile to the Liberal Party under the leadership of Peter Dutton.
No surprise, really, since Kean was appointed by the Albanese Labor government as chairman of the Climate Change Authority in August 2024 shortly after he resigned from the NSW parliament.
The pond understands that the reptiles never provide links - once you've booked into the Hotel Hive Mind, you can never leave - but would it have been so hard to provide a link to Liberals Against Nuclear or to the ad that got up the Polonial nose? It's just 30 seconds long and hardly brilliant, and the pond would never have known about it, thanks be unto Polonius...
Instead the reptiles wandered back down a path that apparently internal Liberal polling has shown to be on the nose, hence the shift to gassing the country to save the planet.
Never mind, there are a few brave souls still keen to nuke the country, Liberal Senator Alex Antic spruiks the advantages of nuclear power particularly for South Australia. “Here in South Australia, we have 80 per cent of the country’s uranium; this is going to be a very good thing for South Australia,” Mr Antic told Sky News host Rowan Dean. “This has got to go ahead; nuclear power would be excellent for Australia – cheap, safe and effective.”
Channeling the dismal Dean, Polonius was keen to go ad hominem and dump on the rat in the ranks from a great height ...
Before he entered politics Kean was working in one of the big four accountancy firms, having studied business. Now he is a national figure with international contacts. He became well known initially for being a one-time Liberal minister who had public rows with former prime minister Scott Morrison and for opposing Dutton’s energy policies.
There was a profile in The Australian Financial Review by Paul Karp on March 21. Karp quoted from Kean’s supporters and critics but did not critique his record as NSW treasurer and energy minister. This was followed by a soft feature story in Good Weekend magazine on March 22 by Anne Hyland titled “Force of Nature”. Kean was photographed for the story staring into the distance, waist-deep in ferns. Really.
At least Hyland reported that Kean texted a journalist suggesting hostile questions that she could direct to Morrison during the 2022 election campaign.
However, the gist of the profile can be gauged by the penultimate sentence, which refers to the park’s towering trees. Namely: “As we admire them (the towering trees) in silence they stand tall like Kean, the chair of the Climate Change Authority.” By the way, Kean’s main job is at Wollemi Capital, which presents itself as “a specialist climate investor”.
Kean firmly and truly believes that renewables are the cheapest form of energy – solar, wind and hydro supported by batteries as back-up. He is completely dismissive of nuclear in the Australian energy market.
Well yes, it's not just because the keen Kean thinks so.
The CSIRO put out costings in December last year ...
Here’s why:
- Nuclear is not economically competitive with solar PV and wind and the total development time in Australia for large or small-scale nuclear is at least 15 years.
- Small modular reactors (SMRs) are potentially faster to build but are commercially immature at present.
- The total development lead time needed for nuclear means it cannot play a major role in electricity sector emission abatement, which is more urgent than abatement in other sectors.
Nor can it be doubted that there's something in the air.
Yesterday the pond linked to ‘Same shit, different year’: Australia records hottest 12 months and warmest March on record, ANU climate scientist says ‘everyone is getting fatigued these records keep falling – it’s now incredibly predictable’.
But the pond could just as easily have linked to Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer, Action urgently needed to save the conditions under which markets – and civilisation itself – can operate, says senior Allianz figure
Or to any number of other stories in the Graudian's climate coverage, which offers a bit more than the Bjorn-again one...
What do the reptiles do?
Trot out an aging lying rodent in conversation with the climate denialist dog botherer, Former prime minister John Howard discusses the need for nuclear power in Australia’s energy mix. “We have been advocating and wisely asserting the need for nuclear power as part of the mix,” Mr Howard told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “We are busily dismantling natural advantages that providence gave us with fossil fuels, uranium, natural, although Peter Dutton has a very good plan for natural gas and coal, of course.”
That's how pitiful it is ... no wonder this keen Kean did a bunk from rampant luddite stupidity.
Polonius was very careful not to step into actual science, he preferred some simple-minded sniping...
Blockbuster Video was a movie rental chain that went bankrupt in 2010. Whereas France has long relied on nuclear energy as its primary source of power and is planning new reactors. China has more than 20 reactors under construction. In the US, Silicon Valley tech companies are planning to build nuclear reactors to feed their power-hungry AI projects.
It would seem that Kean recycles a style of ridicule. Until recently, he compared any proposal to establish new coal-fired power plants with companies that were into Kodak cameras when iPhones had arrived. However, China has hit a 10-year high for the construction of new coal-fired power plants. It would seem that the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party did not get the joke.
It's back to clean, virginal, dinkum, decent, honest and pious Oz coal, coal, coal ... The life of the Eraring coal-fired power plant in NSW’s Hunter Valley has been extended. Picture: Origin Energy
Back to the ad hominem attacks, bringing in the boofy beefhead from down Goulburn way, famous for hating windmills ...
In February 2022, it was announced that the Eraring coal-fired power station in NSW would close in August 2025. Kean publicly backed the decision.
At the time Angus Taylor, the minister for industry and energy in the Morrison government, said he was “bitterly disappointed” with the decision, fearing that this would lead to energy shortages in NSW.
Taylor was correct, Kean was wrong.
In May 2024, the Minns Labor government in NSW did a deal with Origin Energy to keep Eraring open for an additional two years beyond August 2025.
This decision was made after new modelling showed NSW could face energy shortages if Eraring closed in 2025.
Recently it was announced that Origin Energy has opted out of a profit and loss sharing arrangement with the NSW government for the financial year 2025-26. This indicates that Origin Energy believes that Eraring will turn a profit for that year. Eraring is no Kodak – for which the people of NSW have much reason to be thankful.
Meanwhile, this year energy customers in NSW are destined to have higher energy price rises than in most other states. Asked on Sky News’ Credlin program on March 13 as to what was causing the price hike, Aidan Morrison, energy research director at the Centre for Independent Studies, blamed Kean. Morrison said NSW energy consumers were now seeing “the actual costs flow through from the renewables energy program … the big NSW electricity road map that Kean produced … when he was energy minister”.
Don’t expect Kean to acknowledge the failures of his own energy policies. He’s busy talking about himself to journalists and being photographed for magazines.
Don't expect Polonius to talk about the actual economics of nuclear energy in Australia; don't expect Polonius to talk about the advantages enjoyed by renewables; don't expect Polonius to ever contemplate the spectacle of climate science catastrophes in action.
Do expect Polonius to do his best to shoot the messengers. It's all he's got ...
And so to the Sunday bonus, and here the pond was torn. There was the dog botherer out and about in a state of perplexity ...
Social media influencers dumb down the election, Voters face a serious choice in perilous times – yet political debate has never been so frivolous.
The pond could have had some fun wondering if the dumbest blonde (stereotyping!) influencer on the full to overflowing intertubes could dumb down the election any more than the dummies of the lizard Oz, or in particular the exceedingly dumb dog botherer ...
Dame Slap was also out and about seeking attention...
An insiders’ guide to the radical left’s march through our institutions, This abuse of power and exploitation of young university students is committed by the same group of academics who rail against abusive power structures in our society – and taxpayers are stumping up for the hypocrisy.
But that was just another exercise in woke bashing, featuring a student who only dared to go by the name Amelia ...
The pond had only one choice ... the bromancer.
Some think of the bro as an expert in the killing fields, defence, the war on China by Xmas and so forth, but the bromancer can pretty much turn his hand to bashing anything ... and so it came to pass that he targeted the NDIS with one of his heat-seeking missiles...
For those too lazy to click on the risible, truly pathetic image, the header ran Our welfare addiction is killing Australia, It’s self-evidently a good thing to help genuinely disabled people. Australians don’t begrudge that. But the NDIS is perhaps the worst designed public policy initiative in Australian history.
The cheaply acquired dismal snap came from a stock footage library, so the reptiles could plunge in a verbal dagger ... Middle-class welfare is plunging Australia into unsustainable debt. Picture: iStock
Again there was that deeply mysterious injunction, This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there.
It should have said "take me to the bromancer so I can endure ten minutes (or so the reptiles clocked it) of him bashing minorities, the weak, and the suffering (and don't forget bludging students" ...
It was, in its own bro way, fully Trumpian ...
We pay much more, we expect much more, the state is much bigger, the budget is utterly unsustainable, and yet the state also fails to deliver results for the money, with many social indicators getting worse the more money is spent on them.
The same syndrome, only more virulent and destructive, afflicts the US and is part of the cause of the Donald Trump tariff explosion. Most west European nations are in a similar situation, sometimes even worse, and without some key US strengths, such as the role of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
Peter Costello, who as treasurer in the Howard government completely paid off Australian government debt in 2006, tells me: “We are a society – most Western industrial countries are in the same boat – living beyond our means. One of the things that traditionally gave us comfort in living beyond our means was the idea that the US would dig us out of a hole if we ever got into one, as they did in World War II. One of the messages out of the Trump administration is that they don’t feel the necessity to dig other people out of holes they’ve dug for themselves.”
Hang on, hang on, back in 2006, even Petey boy didn't make that claim.
There was still debt, there was still interest to pay, all he could claim was that in the moment, he'd managed to remove debt and lower interest payments for a single financial year ...
Now the Australian Government is debt free in net terms. We do not have to collect taxes to pay the Government’s interest bill. We are saving over $8 billion per annum in interest payments. (read the whole speech here if not terminally bored already).
The bromancer then did a "Ned" and called in others to help him fill his word count ...
In Frydenberg’s last budget the forecast was that by 2032 federal spending would reach 26.5 per cent of GDP. Jim Chalmers’ recent budget puts the 10-year forecast at 26.7 per cent. That’s probably too optimistic. Unless there’s another monumental, sustained commodity prices boom, we’re heading for ever increasing government deficit and debt. Ultimately, that’s unsustainable.
With that level of gloom, there had to be a villain, and here he was, Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: Emma Brasier
Who to target? As if you had any doubt, see how the bromancer takes aim at the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind (and some others beyond the biblical measure):
And that leaves out the urgent necessity to find 1 per cent more of GDP to take defence spending to 3 per cent, as the Trump administration rightly requests, and as almost every expert appointed by the Albanese government to officially guide defence policy has advised.
Almost unbelievable budget growth has come in the National Disability Insurance Scheme. In 2012-13 disability services cost the federal government $1.2bn. This year the NDIS will cost $49bn. By 2028-29 it’s forecast to cost $64bn. That figure itself is dubious and relies on keeping growth of the NDIS to 8 per cent a year, a heroic prediction.
It’s self-evidently a good thing to help genuinely disabled people. Australians don’t begrudge that. But the NDIS is perhaps the worst designed public policy initiative in Australian history. There are now more than 700,000 people on the NDIS. Some 13 per cent of boys aged five to seven are on the NDIS. This is not only financially disastrous. It’s a species of social madness.
It seems boys are the problem, Some 13 per cent of boys aged five to seven are on the NDIS. Picture: iStock
Damn you callow youth, time to learn to live on a diet of tar and hay ...
To repeat, helping genuinely disabled and certainly gravely disabled people is a worthy use of government money. But when you subsidise a particular syndrome, behaviour or identity you vastly expand the number of people who will claim those characteristics. The New York Times recently investigated the history of autism diagnoses. When the US federal government offered financial subsidies to states for educating autistic children, the number of autistic children skyrocketed.
Note how the piety was short-lived ...To repeat, helping genuinely disabled and certainly gravely disabled people is a worthy use of government money.
That billy goat butt repetition was immediately followed by a rival billy goat butt - butt they're all bludgers, malingerers, deviants, ne'er do wells, fakes and frauds, bunging on a do to live the life of Riley ...
But it’s still growing at breakneck speed. It now costs equivalent to 150 per cent of the whole Medicare budget.
One aim of the NDIS was to get disabled people back into the work force. Instead it needlessly medicalises many children, and few people on the NDIS for any length of time come off it.
Far from making any serious effort to control social spending, and especially transfer payments, the Albanese government has doubled down on such payments.
It's those bloody socialists, splashing the cash, The Albanese government has doubled down on NDIS payments. Picture: Jason Edwards/NewsWire
The bromancer decided to widen the attack by including in bludging university students ...
These are rank bribes that the government and the nation cannot afford. A classic is forgiving HECS debt for university graduates. Although many degrees are now of dubious workforce benefit, overall university graduates will be wealthier than non-graduates. That’s why they should pay something for their higher education.
Of course the bromancer didn't have to pay for his education as vulgar youff must do today ... instead he pissed away his time on university politics ...
"At campus we were dealing with young people … I had worn a beard continuously since the day I left school … I thought it was good politics. I thought that we shouldn’t hide or disguise our policies or principles but nor should we needlessly distance ourselves from students culturally. I urged fellow Democrat Club members to grow their hair a bit longer." (p.185)
Sheridan became close friends with Michael Danby (Vic ALP) and Michael Easson (NSW ALP). He met Danby at a special AUS conference in 1977.
"Michael [Danby] was a dedicated Labor man…Like me, he let student politics and other activities consume a lot of energy at the expense of his formal studies …" (pp. 193-94) (many more quotes here)
How the pond loathed student politicians, how the pond loathes the hypocrisy of those now dishing it out on vulgar youff ...
Forgiving HECS debt is especially unfair to those graduates who have paid their HECS debts in full. This is social spending of deep perversity. It penalises the thrifty, the honest, the hardworking.
It has nothing to do with promoting education. Having a HECS debt looks as though it’s just a way for governments to identify a specific group of voters to bribe. It would make as much sense to give $350 to every left-handed Liverpool supporter with red hair.
Very little social spending achieves any broader social objective than handing out money. In 2012-13 the federal government spent $12bn on schools. This has exploded to $31bn in 2024-25. Yet all the objective tests show that Australian school results have gone backwards in that time. Whatever the problem was, it wasn’t money.
Then it was back on to the main Trumpian theme, the handout mentality, and what an endless rant it was, finally landing on DOGE...
We’ve industrialised and bureaucratised family functions. But guess what? The industrial-bureaucratic state does a much worse job than families do when they’re given any kind of fighting chance.
Next year, Australian gross government debt will pass $1 trillion. Our states also have big levels of debt. International markets assume the commonwealth provides an implicit guarantee on states’ debts. Technically that’s not true but in reality it probably is.
Eslake makes a brutal forecast: “I’d be very surprised if in May and June there wasn’t a credit downgrade for some of the states. Victoria, Northern Territory and Tasmania, I’d say a downgrade is dead certain. Queensland highly likely. NSW likely. South Australia unlikely. Western Australia not likely at all.”
In 2024-25, the federal government will pay $24bn just to service its debt. That amount of money could almost take the defence budget from 2 per cent to 3 per cent of GDP or do a million other things.
But debt feeds on itself, becomes a spiral. A government borrows to pay interest on debt, then borrows to service that new debt, ad infinitum.
Australia is still in a relatively good position because John Howard and Costello paid off all the government debt and put money into the Future Fund. But our politics has been a conspiracy to kill good policy and prevent sound finance ever since Howard lost office in 2007.
The Howard government also produced pro-growth tax reform in the GST and significant welfare reform with Tony Abbott’s work for the dole. Once healthy people had to work for the dole, it became more attractive to work for money.
These policies were denounced as harsh. They were similar to policies pursued by Bill Clinton in the US and recently by Labour in Britain. More than anyone, they benefit the people who come off welfare. Sit-down money is a long-term killer. It kills the spirit and often kills the body.
Back to the main menu, and the bromancer pretending his bro buddy, his one true love, was the real deal ...
The Australian Democrats, once the main minor party in the Senate, had a slogan: “Keep the bastards honest”. The Senate’s minor parties today live by the reverse: Keep the bastards dishonest, under no circumstances let them implement their election platform if that involves fiscal restraint or taking away a single dollar from any constituency or progressive social cause.
One reason the West is in such diabolical strategic and cultural trouble is because most of our friends and allies are in an even worse social, cultural and fiscal position than we are. Federal government debt in the US is 100 per cent of GDP, normally a level that sets off panic alarm stations. US federal government spending has risen from 19 per cent of GDP before 2008 to 23 per cent today. Taxes are at 17 per cent. The US last had a budget surplus in 2001, under Clinton. Last year it spent $US7 trillion and had a deficit of $US2 trillion. In a time of full employment, it registered budget deficits near 6 per cent of GDP two years in a row.
US federal government debt is now more than $US36 trillion ($56.9 trillion). The biggest items of expenditure are social security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest payments on debt, defence, veterans’ benefits, education.
Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency have made immense noise and cut some whole federal departments. They may have cut $US150bn or more in government spending. Some of the cuts have been mad, such as Internal Revenue Service people who raise money or the whole of the US Agency for International Development, so the US was unable to respond effectively to the earthquake in Myanmar.
Why is it that the reptiles always end up there, ranting away in company with Uncle Leon? Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency have made immense noise and cut some whole federal departments. Picture: AP
At least that provides an opportunity for a cartoon ...
What's amazing is that the bromancer sounds like King Donald and DOGE aren't enough. There needs to be more cutting, except sweet defence spending ...
But even if you thought all these cuts good, DOGE has no real chance of making a long-term difference. Trump has said he won’t touch transfer payments, mostly called entitlements in the US. Although Trump, perversely, has favoured cutting defence spending, he recently signed a budget that, rightly in my view, increased the defence budget. Entitlements spending, debt servicing and defence are out of bounds for Musk. That means he’s operating across only about 15 per cent of US government spending.
Thank the long absent lord, it's only about punishing the poor ...
At this moment the pond had to call another halt ...
The brilliant British historian Niall Ferguson proposes what he calls “Ferguson’s law”: a great power that spends more on interest payments than on defence will not remain a great power for much longer. In 2024 the US, for the first time since World War II, crossed that threshold.
Brilliant? Only inn his own lunch time ...
Ferguson has argued that Britain’s fiscal position in the 1930s fed directly into the disastrous policies of appeasement.
China, Russia, Iran and North Korea don’t stint on military equipment. If, God forbid, there’s a military confrontation, you can’t meet missiles with social spending.
Even under Trump, perhaps especially under Trump, transfer payments in the US are rising faster than salary and wage income.
In Britain, government debt is just below 95 per cent of GDP. Nonetheless, Britain has made the decision to quickly increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP. It cut the aid budget to do it. It’s also trying to cut transfer payments. The welfare state in parts has become insidious and cruel.
The left-wing New Statesman magazine has run a series of pieces on how some welfare is too easy to get and has a debilitating effect on its recipients.
In Britain if you’re on sickness benefits you get much more money than if you’re on the dole, and effectively you can stay on sickness benefits forever. There’s no incentive to come off them. But what a sad and lousy life they offer.
Nearly four million Brits of working age are on health-related benefits. Some 60 per cent of new claims arise from “stress” and related ailments. The budget deficit is just on 2 per cent of GDP and interest payments on government debt cost nearly twice as much as the defence budget.
Just like Brexit, stiff the poor; just like King Donald, stiff the poor mug punters who thought he was their saviour ...
So fully Xian ... just as you could read in the bible, even if it made you liable ...
(Matthew 22:1-14)
And when one of them that sat at meat with him heard these things, he said unto him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.
Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. And another said, sorry lord, I've got a column to write for the lizard Oz pouring shit on the poor, the maimed and the halt.
So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper, especially that bastard wanking away in the lizard Oz.
The Parable of the Guests
(Luke 14:7-14)
And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief rooms; saying unto them, When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
Then said he also to him that bade him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; nor thy righteous reptile loons pounding away for the lizard Oz, lest they also bid thee again, and a recompence be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: And thou shalt be blessed; for the reptile dispensers of fear and loathing cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.
When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind?
None of that nonsense please, just bring on the bat and hope it goes bang...
The pond was reminded of the sad and sorry finish endured by the hard-working Boxer.
Life was easy for the pigs and no doubt for reptile hacks who's idea of hard work is pounding away at a keyboard, but it can be a bit tougher if you happen to a shearer, a farm worker, or a labourer ...or a Boxer (Project Gutenberg for the full text)
About half the animals on the farm rushed out to the knoll where the windmill stood. There lay Boxer, between the shafts of the cart, his neck stretched out, unable even to raise his head. His eyes were glazed, his sides matted with sweat. A thin stream of blood had trickled out of his mouth. Clover dropped to her knees at his side.
"Boxer!" she cried, "how are you?"
"It is my lung," said Boxer in a weak voice. "It does not matter. I think you will be able to finish the windmill without me. There is a pretty good store of stone accumulated. I had only another month to go in any case. To tell you the truth, I had been looking forward to my retirement. And perhaps, as Benjamin is growing old too, they will let him retire at the same time and be a companion to me."
"We must get help at once," said Clover. "Run, somebody, and tell Squealer what has happened."
All the other animals immediately raced back to the farmhouse to give Squealer the news. Only Clover remained, and Benjamin who lay down at Boxer's side, and, without speaking, kept the flies off him with his long tail. After about a quarter of an hour Squealer appeared, full of sympathy and concern. He said that Comrade Napoleon had learned with the very deepest distress of this misfortune to one of the most loyal workers on the farm, and was already making arrangements to send Boxer to be treated in the hospital at Willingdon. The animals felt a little uneasy at this. Except for Mollie and Snowball, no other animal had ever left the farm, and they did not like to think of their sick comrade in the hands of human beings. However, Squealer easily convinced them that the veterinary surgeon in Willingdon could treat Boxer's case more satisfactorily than could be done on the farm. And about half an hour later, when Boxer had somewhat recovered, he was with difficulty got on to his feet, and managed to limp back to his stall, where Clover and Benjamin had prepared a good bed of straw for him.
For the next two days Boxer remained in his stall. The pigs had sent out a large bottle of pink medicine which they had found in the medicine chest in the bathroom, and Clover administered it to Boxer twice a day after meals. In the evenings she lay in his stall and talked to him, while Benjamin kept the flies off him. Boxer professed not to be sorry for what had happened. If he made a good recovery, he might expect to live another three years, and he looked forward to the peaceful days that he would spend in the corner of the big pasture. It would be the first time that he had had leisure to study and improve his mind. He intended, he said, to devote the rest of his life to learning the remaining twenty-two letters of the alphabet.
However, Benjamin and Clover could only be with Boxer after working hours, and it was in the middle of the day when the van came to take him away. The animals were all at work weeding turnips under the supervision of a pig, when they were astonished to see Benjamin come galloping from the direction of the farm buildings, braying at the top of his voice. It was the first time that they had ever seen Benjamin excited—indeed, it was the first time that anyone had ever seen him gallop. "Quick, quick!" he shouted. "Come at once! They're taking Boxer away!" Without waiting for orders from the pig, the animals broke off work and raced back to the farm buildings. Sure enough, there in the yard was a large closed van, drawn by two horses, with lettering on its side and a sly-looking man in a low-crowned bowler hat sitting on the driver's seat. And Boxer's stall was empty.
The animals crowded round the van. "Good-bye, Boxer!" they chorused, "good-bye!"
"Fools! Fools!" shouted Benjamin, prancing round them and stamping the earth with his small hoofs. "Fools! Do you not see what is written on the side of that van?"
That gave the animals pause, and there was a hush. Muriel began to spell out the words. But Benjamin pushed her aside and in the midst of a deadly silence he read:
"'Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon. Dealer in Hides and Bone-Meal. Kennels Supplied.' Do you not understand what that means? They are taking Boxer to the knacker's!"
A cry of horror burst from all the animals. At this moment the man on the box whipped up his horses and the van moved out of the yard at a smart trot. All the animals followed, crying out at the tops of their voices. Clover forced her way to the front. The van began to gather speed. Clover tried to stir her stout limbs to a gallop, and achieved a canter. "Boxer!" she cried. "Boxer! Boxer! Boxer!" And just at this moment, as though he had heard the uproar outside, Boxer's face, with the white stripe down his nose, appeared at the small window at the back of the van.
"Boxer!" cried Clover in a terrible voice. "Boxer! Get out! Get out quickly! They're taking you to your death!"
All the animals took up the cry of "Get out, Boxer, get out!" But the van was already gathering speed and drawing away from them. It was uncertain whether Boxer had understood what Clover had said. But a moment later his face disappeared from the window and there was the sound of a tremendous drumming of hoofs inside the van. He was trying to kick his way out. The time had been when a few kicks from Boxer's hoofs would have smashed the van to matchwood. But alas! his strength had left him; and in a few moments the sound of drumming hoofs grew fainter and died away. In desperation the animals began appealing to the two horses which drew the van to stop. "Comrades, comrades!" they shouted. "Don't take your own brother to his death!" But the stupid brutes, too ignorant to realise what was happening, merely set back their ears and quickened their pace. Boxer's face did not reappear at the window. Too late, someone thought of racing ahead and shutting the five-barred gate; but in another moment the van was through it and rapidly disappearing down the road. Boxer was never seen again.
Three days later it was announced that he had died in the hospital at Willingdon, in spite of receiving every attention a horse could have. Squealer came to announce the news to the others. He had, he said, been present during Boxer's last hours.
"It was the most affecting sight I have ever seen!" said Squealer, lifting his trotter and wiping away a tear. "I was at his bedside at the very last. And at the end, almost too weak to speak, he whispered in my ear that his sole sorrow was to have passed on before the windmill was finished. 'Forward, comrades!' he whispered. 'Forward in the name of the Rebellion. Long live Animal Farm! Long live Comrade Napoleon! Napoleon is always right.' Those were his very last words, comrades."
The pond apologises for the long distraction, but what a relief to read a real writer, instead of the bromancer doing his own brand of Napoleon, and serving up a dubious main meal for those in need of a little Xian help ...
Off to the glue factory cries the bromancer ...anything to end this troublesome expense...
We’re better off only because of the legacy of the Howard government. The Albanese government has blown hundreds of billions of dollars of unexpected revenue, from historically high commodity prices, on social spending that is nearly impossible to reverse.
The OECD debt report argues governments should borrow only to fund productive infrastructure and investment. The Albanese government is borrowing to fund social spending. Government debt is rising faster than the economy is growing.
That must produce crisis eventually. We are paying an enormous cost for the wilful erosion of the family and the growing cynicism of the electorate. Generally voters recognise that governments spend too much. But they won’t countenance losing a dollar of government benefits themselves. The only time they believe anything positive a government says is when it’s shovelling money into voters’ pockets.
King Lear said it best: “That way madness lies.”
Thank the long absent lord he's finally shut up, with the pond thinking that actually madness lies in admiring the unthinking cruelty of the reptiles trapped in the hive mind...
Spend oodles of money on bombing the shit out of the world? Extra fine, super peachy keen. Spend money on the poor and the helpless? Nah, not really ...
