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 ...
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:
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?
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 ...
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:
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 ...
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...
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 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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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) ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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.
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 ..
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 ...
