In which there's only room for the bromancer and the Ughmann, and even that's way too much ...

 

Deflection and distraction are part of being a reptile.

The bromancer is a master of the art, and offered a classic example this weekend.

Rather than brood about King Donald - say with the headline "What Trump's behaviour, and his administration's actions - reveal about the mad far right in the disunited States" - he does a convenient shuffle, a step into easy turf ...

The header: What the Trump assassin’s manifesto reveals about the educated left is terrifying; Donald Trump’s physical bravery is beyond question. But Cole Allen’s manifesto reveals something deeply disturbing.

The caption for the opening snap? No need for a caption for that magnificent beast, shown in prime patriotic pose ...

In a way this heavily illustrated five minute magnum opus is an attempt by the bromancer to restore his far right credentials.

If anyone wanted to be terrified, they simply have to look at demented King Donald. But the bromancer is determined to be terrified by lefties.

Of late he's been a tad critical of King Donald, so it's time to balance the books ... beginning with sympathy for the victim.

Donald Trump has now endured and survived more assassination attempts than any previous president. Two involved gunfire – the most recent from Cole Allen at the White House Correspondents Association dinner – three involved guns. In one he was hit in the ear by a bullet millimetres from killing him. Another murder plot, linked to Iran, resulted in a criminal conviction.
This column has its criticisms of Trump, but no one can doubt his physical courage or sense of calm and control in threatening circumstances. However, that’s not the point. What do these assassination attempts say about the social and political divisions rending America today?

Not that much? It's a country saturated with guns and riven with violence, and the easiest solution is to mow someone down...

Rather than indulge in sophisticated analysis of social and political divisions, the bromancer turned to ... Jimmy Kimmel.

The pond is more a Colbert than a Kimmel man when it comes to comedy stylings, with Kimmel inclined to round out his monologues with many more miss than hit comedy sketches, but all the same, it's astonishing he's become such a figure of hate.

The bromancer joined the pile on ...

A few days before the latest shooting, ABC TV host Jimmy Kimmel ran a skit in which he “welcomed” Melania Trump who, he said, had “a glow like an expectant widow”.
Who jokes about widowhood for the wife of a president who has survived multiple assassination attempts? Kimmel wasn’t sacked, refused to apologise and laughed uproariously at his own wit and daring. Could Kimmel say that to any wife if he hadn’t thoroughly dehumanised her first? What effect do such words have on people such as Allen? Kimmel’s attitude is immensely widespread among the moralising liberal left who see themselves as vastly morally superior to Trump. Many liken Trump to Hitler, and you’d kill Hitler if you could, right?
After the US First Lady called for him to be sacked over a "light roast" of her and President Trump, the comedian has fired back.

What's funny about this? 

No, it's not that the reptiles turned Kimmel into their own form of clickbait, meaning that the bromancer didn't even have to bother to explain the how and the why of Kimmel firing back ...(you can avoid indulging the reptiles by going to Variety for that, or to Kimmel's YouTube channel)

Nor is it the bromancer's abject lack of a sensa huma. That's always been a constant.

What's funny is that the President of the United States, in the middle of sundry wars, is obsessed with a minor comedian, still managed to deploy a variation on the same routine in his welcome speech to King Chuck...

“[My mother] came to America at 19, met my incredible father, we loved him so much, we all loved him, we loved her, we loved him: Fred. And, they were married for 63 years,” Donald, 79, said during the live speech on Tuesday, April 28.
“And, uh, excuse me, if you don’t mind, that’s a record we won’t be able to match, darling,” the former reality star continued as he turned to Melania, 56. “I’m sorry, it’s just not going to work out that way. We’ll do well, but we’re not going to do that well.” (here)

Deeply weird, and Melania's look in response would make any straight man in a comedy act bow down in admiration.

Given King Donald's age, that has to be a joke about her pending widowhood, right?

Who jokes about widowhood for the wife of a president who has survived multiple assassination attempts? 

Only in bromancer land ...

Throw in the exquisite agony of the King trying to play handsies with his Queen, getting pushed aside, and then finally getting to clutch her hand so he could walk down the stairs, and it's a wonder that American satire struggles to cope. 

As for Krazy Karoline Leavitt...

Hours before Donald Trump was due to give his first address at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner as US president, his press secretary Karoline Leavitt promised it would be a night to remember.
“He is ready to rumble,” she said in an interview with Fox News.
“It’ll be funny. It’ll be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the room.” (here)

It's impossible to make this stuff up ...suffice to say, the guns, the violence, it exists at the most basis levels of speech ...

And after that detour, on with the bromancer...

Allen’s manifesto, posted to family and friends, is not the deranged, extravagant nuttiness of so many would-be assassins. It repeats mainstream left-liberal critiques of the Trump administration and of Trump as “pedophile, rapist and traitor”. These terms are grotesque. They arise from paranoid fantasies about Trump’s association with Jeffrey Epstein, immigration policies and military campaigns.

And yet as noted before, there are stories about King Donald's behaviour in company with Epstein, and a court in a civil action awarded damages for what, on the balance of probabilities, was a form of rape, and King Donald attempted to orchestrate a coup, remarkable for its banana republic incompetence, but still the sort of thing traitors do.

What's remarkable is that the bromancer wipes any thoughts of all that from the record, and blames the left, as bromancers are wont to do ...

That Allen’s language is so unremarkable is its most disturbing feature. There’s a growing acceptance of the legitimacy of political violence in the US on both left and right, but it’s much stronger on the left. A YouGov poll late last year showed 24 per cent of those who describe themselves as very liberal (with liberal meaning left of centre) say it’s fine to feel joy at the death of a public figure they disagree with. Only 4 per cent of conservatives agree.
Some 25 per cent of the very liberal think political violence is sometimes justified. Among the very conservative, 5 per cent hold that view. That’s a stark difference.
Importantly, a majority, across ideologies, oppose political violence. A big majority of Americans think political violence a major and growing problem.

The reptiles then interrupted with the victim of the bromancer's worst descriptor, "nutty" Cole Allen. Picture: CNN; Allen inside his hotel. Picture: AP

Now some be wondering about tales of rats infesting Gaza's tent camps, biting children and spreading disease, but you won't be hearing a peep from the bromancer ...

As the royal commission report on the terrorist killings at Bondi Beach reminds us, as do the stabbings of two Jewish men near a Golders Green synagogue in London, Western societies are experiencing a hateful, culturally ruinous crisis of resurgent antisemitism, the oldest hatred.
This is partly fuelled by broad Islamic traditions of antisemitism and, among a small but deadly minority, specifically Islamist hatreds of Jews and Israelis. This is less acute in the US partly because the proportionate size of America’s Muslim population is smaller than Europe’s.
Left-wing antisemitism, however, certainly among those who consider themselves very liberal, is surging in the US.
Charlie Kirk and America’s factories of hatred
Especially worrying is that antisemitism is stronger among the young and formally better educated. Approval of political violence is also stronger among the younger and better educated.
This is just further evidence of the pervasive crisis of Western universities, institutions that should inculcate reflection, wisdom, dialogue, empathy, but have instead in some measure become factories of hatred. In their exaggerated critique of Western tradition and history, they frequently invert good and evil.
The same cohort that justifies political violence seeks to censor conservative political views. Political violence is valued as a liberating form of speech, whereas conservative speech is demonised as “unsafe”, even bizarrely labelled as violence, and thus frequently banned.
The US is today divided over many issues and many identities.

The pond loved that sub-heading, and the way it managed to overlook the way that Kirk himself was a factory of hate, fear and far right loathing.

Cue Moira Donegan in The Graudian, Charlie Kirk's killing was a tragedy. But we must not re-write his life...

Inter alia ...

...such a description of reasoned, honest, good-faith debate is so inaccurate a description of what Charlie Kirk engaged in on college campuses – in his series of large, staged events where he “debated” untrained liberal undergraduates with cameras rolling – that it reads as willfully naive, if not outright dishonest. Charlie Kirk’s “debates” were aggressive, unequal, trolling affairs, in which he sought to provoke his interlocutors to distress, shouted them down and belittled them, spewed hateful rhetoric about queer and trans people, women, Black people, immigrants and Muslims, and selectively edited the ensuing footage to create maximally viral content in which his fans could witness him humiliating the liberals and leftists they perceived to be their enemies. This was not “debate”; it was not reasoned, good-faith discourse; it was not the kind of fair deliberation that democracy relies on. It was a mockery of those things.
If reasoned debate is a precondition of a liberal democracy, there are other preconditions as well. A state cannot be called democratic if it does not offer equal protection of the law – if not all of its citizens are awarded the same dignity by their government and the same vote, same rights of expression and same prerogatives before courts and elected officials in their attempts to influence its policies and navigate its laws. Civic equality – not just civil engagement – is central to the American experiment, too. It is not to excuse his murder to be honest that Kirk opposed that equality. Some historians and political scientists have argued that the United States did not become a democracy until the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the laws that intended to end de jure segregation and racist voter suppression. But Kirk opposed the Civil Rights Act, calling it a “huge mistake”. He endorsed the racist so-called “great replacement theory”, in which nefarious actors (usually cast as Jewish people) are seeking to “replace” America’s white population with immigrants, saying it was “well under way every day at our southern border”. On his podcast, he hosted a “slavery apologist” and a man who said that after women “got, you know, the right to vote – after that, it all went downhill”. Kirk himself once said that Black women – he named Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson – “do not have the brain power to be taken seriously”. He condemned Democrats for supposedly wanting to make the US “less white”, and claimed: “There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution.” (It is.) And yet Ezra Klein praised Kirk’s “moxie”. One wonders what such a euphemism is meant to obscure.
In the rush to canonize Kirk and revise his history, honest accountings of his life have not only become rare – they have also become dangerous. In the days since his death, journalists, media personalities and others who have not been sufficiently laudatory to Kirk in public have lost their jobs for telling the truth about his life. Matthew Dowd, a Republican political consultant, was fired from MSNBC after saying that Kirk had spoken “hateful words”. In Phoenix, a sports writer was fired for criticizing euphemistic accounts of Kirk’s beliefs. “‘Political differences’ are not the same thing as spewing hateful rhetoric on a daily basis,” he wrote in a social media post. Many of those eulogizing Kirk want to paint him as a champion of free speech, as a man who peddled in honest inquiry, uninhibited expression and the open exchange of ideas. This is a laughably inaccurate picture of the man’s work; it is in these punishments of those who oppose him that we can see a truer reflection of Kirk’s values.

Sorry, ,the pond just wanted a little balance before getting back to the assassin with a riveting illustration ...The U.S. District Court has released a new video showing Cole Allen shoot a U.S. Secret Service officer during his attempt to assassinate the President at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

At this point the bromancer finally decided to getting around to admitting assassination attempts are more the rule than the exception in the USA ...

It’s important to remember that there has always been an element of violence in US politics. In the 19th century two presidents were assassinated – Abraham Lincoln (killed 1865) and the little-remembered James Garfield (1881). In the 20th century two more presidents were assassinated – William McKinley (1901) and John Kennedy (1963). One presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy, was shot and killed in 1968.
Another, George Wallace, was shot and partially paralysed, though not killed, in 1972.
Three presidents (or ex-presidents) were shot but not fatally – Teddy Roosevelt (1912), Ronald Reagan (1981) and Trump (2024). Martin Luther King, a great civil rights leader and deeply Christian thinker, was murdered in 1968.
Charlie Kirk, also deeply Christian but centre right, was murdered last year.
Two specifically American dynamics are at work. One is the sheer ubiquity of guns and their increasing precision and lethality. In Australia, by contrast, an angry idiot throws a shoe at John Howard. No gun is available to tempt momentary rage.
Then there’s the passionate quality of American political conviction. America is a paradox. I’ve lived there four times. Each time neighbours embodied what Michael Gawenda memorably called “the great American friendliness”.

The reptiles reverted to Kirk, Charlie Kirk minutes before he was shot in September, 2025. Picture: Amy King

And the bromancer continued with his recanting ...

Barbecues, church services, welcome for a stranger, the obligation to be “neighbourly”, co-exist with both intentional and random gun violence unimaginable in Australia.
French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, as long ago as 1835 in Democracy in America, identified the singular American civilisational quality as individualism. This allows America to be, even today, the most innovative nation in the world, yet it also fuels the libertarian sense of me-and-my-gun.
As a youngster I delighted in reading Gone With the Wind. Only later did I realise it dishonestly justified the Ku Klux Klan, a racist, violent outfit that hated the freeing of African-American slaves. It also hated Jews and Catholics.
While America is divided today, it has been more divided in the past. The 1860s civil war was ultimately about slavery, and the determination of abolitionists to wipe slavery out. More than 700,000 soldiers died in that war, yet, incredibly, America subsequently came together and built the world’s most cohesive and powerful nation.

At this point, exhausted reptiles slipped in an audio distraction ...

Having just said that the United States became a cohesive nation, the bromancer decided to undercut himself by pointing to a lack of cohesion...

The US was divided in the Depression, even more so in the 1960s and 70s, the era of Vietnam and Watergate. No sooner had pundits finished writing their learned books about US decline than along came Reagan and it was morning in America once more. Under Reagan the US boomed, its society flourished, it unequivocally won the Cold War.
And of course Reagan set a tone of great civility and goodwill, of humour and good humour. The situation today is made much worse by the cyber activities of hostile states such as Russia, China and Iran, all of which are extremely active across social media with the purpose of exaggerating grievance and sowing division. Western intelligence believes the first emanation of the Black Lives Matter movement, which spawned wildly violent demonstrations, came from Russian intelligence. Similarly the algorithms of the net exaggerate and reward extremism.

At this point the bromancer slipped in a considerable admission of an even more considerable omission:

This column has not considered Trump’s own contribution to coarseness and incivility. It’s very great, very great indeed. He has rejoiced in the death of democratic opponents and consistently spoken in ugly, unreasonable, abusive and extreme terms. I’ve often written about this in the past.

But not today. Not when there's Kimmel, lefties and black people to bash.

When has a reptile gone wrong blaming it on black people?

The pond was reassured to be reminded yesterday by the venerable Meade in her Weekly Beast that the lizards of Oz had recently indulged in a jihad.

The pond wasn't being paranoid, the pond wasn't detached from observable reality. She too had observed the phenomenon ...

The Australian wasted no time publishing multiple opinion pieces calling for an end to welcome to country addresses after the widely criticised booing of Indigenous speakers on Anzac Day.
The newspaper has form for leaning into bringing an end to the tradition. During the voice referendum in 2023 the Oz clipped up a comment by the Indigenous scholar professor Marcia Langton and posted it widely on social media.
Janet Albrechtsen asked why Australia should be divided into “our land and your land”?
“Many Australians hate the mere fact they must sit through this kind of mandatory ceremony,” Albrechtsen wrote. “For many of us, the worst thing about WTC is that it stands between us and the footy.”
On Thursday the Sky News host Peta Credlin admitted she herself “boos on the inside”.
“Because your land is my land too and your country is my country just as much as it’s yours,” Credlin wrote. “After all, Credlins have been here for 172 years, worked hard to build this nation and have sent four generations to war to defend it, so being Australian is all we know.”
Louise Clegg, whom the Oz described as having “worked as a barrister specialising in employment law and public law”, said Indigenous Australians who had served should not be commemorated separately.
“But on Anzac Day that service is part of the same story, not a separate one,” she wrote. “The losses are equal. The grief is equal. The remembrance is shared.”
We wondered how many of the Oz’s readers know that Clegg is married to the leader of the opposition, Angus Taylor.
For the record, Taylor said the booing was “un-Australian” but also that welcome to country ceremonies were overused and devalued.

And so to a snap of difficult, uppity black people, balanced by difficult, uppity weird people ... The Black Lives Matter movement spawned violent demonstrations. Picture: Mark Ralston/AFP; Trump supporters stormed the US capitol building. Picture: Saul Loeb / AFP

 

At this point the bromancer wound down with a final gobbet ...

Both sides of US politics have contributed to the spread of political violence and the deepening of divisions, yet this is more structural, more organic, on the left. There are economic causes of division too, a sense in Generation Z that the American dream of home ownership and economic security is beyond their reach.
Similarly, regular politics has been unable to deal with inflation, crime and, previously under Joe Biden, uncontrolled illegal immigration. That failure provokes extreme responses.
But American history demonstrates fantastic capacity for rebound. Maybe we’re on the cusp of sustained violence; conflicting, street-fighting mobs. Maybe not. Whoever the next president is, Americans will want a calmer tone. One big social division is political addicts versus the rest, exhausted by partisan conflict.
In the long run, I still bet on America.

It's somehow all the fault of the left, but at the same time, the bromancer suggests a President with a calmer tone?

He might need plenty of lipstick ...

The pond will bet on the canker at the core ...

O Rose thou art sick. 
The invisible worm, 
That flies in the night 
In the howling storm: 

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

That worm is everywhere, from RFK's brain to golf...(please note the detail of the saw)

And so because the bromancer exhausted the pond and there's even more exhausting work to do, a few intermittent archive mentions ...

First up was garrulous Gemma's contribution to the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

The trauma we allow for everyone — except Aussie Jews
How can the Jewish community ‘get over’ the Holocaust when modern events mirror 1938?
By Gemma Tognini
Columnist

And because the pond isn't certain that the dog botherer will make the Sunday cut, here he is in the intermittent archive for his devoted followers...

I’m still not wrong about the voice, but I was wrong about Sam Mostyn
On Anzac Day, the Governor-General showed how to honour Indigenous culture without division. Then came the booing, revealing an uglier truth about post-voice Australia.
By Chris Kenny
Associate Editor (National Affairs)

Moving right along, the pond has the appalling task, the most onerous of duties, to point herpetological students towards the ugliest reptile in the aquarium... the Ughmann ...

The header: Chris Bowen says no one wants more fossil fuels. The rest of the world begs to differ; While Chris Bowen insists the world is moving beyond fossil fuels, other nations are quietly considering hydrocarbon expansion.

The caption for the image of Satan's little helper, a man loathed by the reptile jihadists: Chris Bowen may be displeased at the re-expansion of hydrocarbon energy that contradicts his public passion for renewables but his claim that no one is looking to increase fossil fuel supply is easily disproved, in Australia and around the globe. Image: Sean Callinan for The Australian

This is a 10 minute outing. The pond makes no apologies even though it's very familiar turf.

You see, the reptiles decided to give it "top of the world ma" status ...

And so the pond simply had to pay attention.

It is of course by a compleat climate science denialist, who has never found a way to doubt the wonders of fossil fuels. Nor has he ever wondered whether comprehensively f*cking the planet (*google bot approved) might be a matter of some mild concern. 

That's for the younglings who come after him to worry about.

Instead he wants to do a full peacock feather display, a full pantheon of praise for fossil fuels, a cornucopia of energy bliss ...

It was another rhetorical flourish full of the passionate intensity only a mind untroubled by doubt can muster. At a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra on April 13, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen was asked whether the global fuel shock from the third Gulf war might reshape talks at this year’s UN climate jamboree, where he has been given a newly minted role as head of negotiations.
“In all my discussions with my international colleagues, energy and climate, there isn’t one country in the world that said, ‘You know what this fuel crisis reminds us, is we need more fossil fuels’,” Bowen declared.
“That conversation is not being had anywhere around the world. In fact, countries around the world are saying this underpins and underlines the need to keep going with things like electrification and ensuring renewable energy is an important part of the mix going forward.”

The Ughmann couldn't let that stand, so he immediately turned to a German, and not just any German.

If the pond might interrupt with the Graudian ...  Germany’s climate U-turn is the worst possible response to the oil shock

Inter alia ...

The pond interrupted the bromancer far too much, and will try to limit interruptions going forward, but it was essential to establish the sort of company this fossil fool is determined to keep ...

Here let’s cede this space for a moment to include some thoughts from Katherina Reiche, Germany’s Economic Affairs and Energy Minister, published on April 7 in her country’s newspaper of record, Frankfurter Allgemeine.
“We are experiencing one of the most severe energy crises in history,” Reiche writes. “Since the start of the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, prices for oil, liquefied gas and diesel have surged to painful levels.
“This is placing a burden on consumers and businesses alike and is costing us economic growth that Germany urgently needs. Many are therefore calling for an immediate exit from oil and gas. The argument is that we simply need to expand wind and solar energy more quickly – and the problem would be solved.
“Well, it is not that simple.
“Let us look at the facts: Germany has a total energy demand of 2900 terawatt hours for electricity, heating, transport and industrial processes. Just under one-sixth of this is electricity, and more than half of that comes from renewable energy. However, the share of renewables in total energy consumption in 2025 was only just under one-fifth.
“For years, we have comforted ourselves with ambitious targets. Eighty per cent of electricity from renewables by 2030, climate neutrality by 2045 – fine figures that soothe our conscience. But while we clung to these targets, electricity prices exploded.

The reptiles doubled down with a snap of the Reich leader, German Economic Affairs and Energy Minister Katherina Reiche speaks during the German National Maritime Conference in Emden this week. Picture: Focke Strangmann/AFP

The fossil fool gave the German fossil fool the floor ...

“German households pay up to 37c per kilowatt hour – more than 9c above the EU average. Our industry is bleeding. Deindustrialisation is accelerating.
“Yes, wind and sun do not send a bill. But the overall system certainly does: (environmental levies), capacity reserves, grid reserves, redispatch costs, grid subsidies, subsidies to lower energy prices – all of this adds up to system costs of more than €36bn ($58.6bn) per year. That is €430 for every German citizen.
“We pay almost €3bn alone for curtailing wind turbines and solar plants because the grid cannot absorb their electricity. There is no other industry that receives guaranteed financing for more than 20 years and is even compensated when its product is not needed. This cannot continue.
“One fact has been suppressed for too long: an energy transition that ignores system costs will ruin the country it claims to save.”
Well, amen to all that.

Yes, amen to f*cking the planet, what could possibly go wrong.

At this point, the reptiles decided to throw in a couple of snaps.

Terrifying shots of hideous windmills, up against picturesque cows lolling in contented bliss in a field alongside a coal-fired power plant.

A wind farm near Zorbau, Germany, this week. Politicians have reopened debate on domestic gas exploration. Picture: Sean Gallup/Getty Images; Cows graze in a meadow as steam rises from cooling towers of the Niederaussem coal-fired power plants near Bergheim in Germany. Germany expanded coal-fired power production to offset reduces natural gas imports from Russia after he Ukraine war began. Picture: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

Has any reptile spent any time in the Hunter and Latrobe Valleys?

The Ughmann quickly moved on to the urgent need to flood the world with carbon dioxide. What could go wrong? 

Recall that Germany has long been the energy transition poster child, going hard and early on wind and solar. Bowen must have missed the memo, but Berlin began searching for more fossil fuel before the third Gulf war flared and the current crisis has quickened that quest.
Reiche has reopened debate on domestic gas exploration, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz concedes coal-fired power stations may have to stay on the grid for longer than planned.
Cast your eye beyond Germany and it quickly becomes clear Berlin is no outlier. Once you bother to look beyond governments’ words to their deeds, you see that energy security elbowed its way ahead of emissions cuts in many countries’ hierarchy of needs after the Ukraine war caused a global spike in gas prices.
The hunt is on for more hydrocarbons.

Quick, another distraction ...

After the fallout from the global pandemic, the spike in energy costs as Russia invaded Ukraine, and punishing U.S. tariffs, the war in the Middle East is ramping up the price of key raw materials once again and dealing a major blow to Europe's industrial heartland, where costs are higher than other regions. Diane To reports.

How the Ughmann loves those fossil fuels ... especially coal ...

The International Energy Agency says global coal demand rose to a new record high in 2025, with China leading the charge. The agency likes to headline that Beijing is building more wind and solar than any country in history, which is true, but China is also pouring concrete for more new coal-fired plants than the rest of the world combined.
Detailed plant-by-plant tracking by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and the Global Energy Monitor database shows China commissioned more than 50 new coal-fired power stations in 2025, the largest wave of completions in a decade. Those researchers expect a similar number of new plants to be completed this year and next as a post-Ukraine war surge of approvals works its way through construction.
China now burns about 56 per cent of the world’s coal but power is only part of the story. Nearly 400 million tonnes a year goes as feedstock for coal-to-liquids and coal-to-chemicals plants that make synthetic diesel, gasoline and petrochemicals.
China also is stepping up conventional oil and gas exploration at home and abroad. Chinese capital is powering a coal boom in Indonesia, with more than 40 off-grid coal-fired plants running nickel mining and smelting operations that feed its electric‑vehicle and battery supply chains.
Vietnam has just commissioned the Vung Ang II ultra‑supercritical coal-fired plant, one of six being built under the country’s official power plan.
India is opening new coalmines and targeting more than a billion tonnes of annual production by the end of the decade to feed new blast furnaces and power plants.
The Philippines, Japan and South Korea have all added new coal capacity since 2020, even as their governments talk up phase-down goals.

The unreformed seminarian went giddy at the vision splendid ...  Reuters energy editor Dmitry Zhdannikov said on Thursday (April 30) that an oil surge, caused by the ongoing war in Iran, will have a "massive" impact on consumers across the world, as "everything will become more expensive."

Oils ain't just oils, they're what fixes everything that ails the planet ...

Oil is central to every nation’s energy security and the scramble for new fields and more production is on worldwide.
In the US, the world’s largest oil producer, Donald Trump is urging companies to boost supply in response to the fuel crisis he spawned, and his Department of the Interior is rolling out an expansive new schedule of auctions for the right to drill for oil and gas in federal waters, which is badged as essential “to promote US energy security and affordability”.
No one better embodies the art of walking both sides of the street than Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who talks up climate leadership while ramping up oil and gas exports.
In November last year Carney signed a memorandum of understanding with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to build a pipeline to the Pacific Coast, aiming to expand the nation’s oil exports beyond the US market. He also has fast-tracked the Ksi Lisims LNG export terminal, with an eye on Asian gas markets.
After his recent visit to Australia, Carney went to Japan where he pledged that “Canada is in a position where we can double our LNG exports by the end of this decade, and double again by the end of the following decade”.
This should send a loud message to Canberra. Ottawa wants to lock up the same gas markets we depend on; if we do not supply them, it will.
In South America, Argentina is aiming to produce one million barrels of oil a day by 2027 by fracking its giant Vaca Muerta shale field. If it hits its targets it will make Argentina a net exporter of oil and gas, with the potential to generate $35bn to $37bn a year, as much as it makes from agricultural exports.
Brazil is aggressively expanding its oil exploration, even in the environmentally sensitive Amazon River mouth. State-run Petrobras started drilling just before Brazil played host to last year’s UN climate summit.
Riding the wave of soaring oil prices, Russia is cashing in by stepping up production. The world’s third largest oil producer is pumping more than 10 million barrels a day, and there is no shortage of buyers, collectively pouring hundreds of millions of euros a day into its coffers.
Across Africa, tens of billions of dollars are flowing into new oil and gas projects, with several dozen large gas and LNG developments in countries such as Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal and Mauritania already under construction or close to final approval.

Indeed, indeed, f*ck over the Arctic, and while we're at it, why not f*ck over the Antarctic, teach those bloody useless penguins a lesson as to what's more important in life... The Arctic LNG 2 above is a key project for the Kremlin and became a target of US sanctions because of the Ukraine war. Picture: Reuters

If Vlad the sociopath thinks it's right and good, that's more than enough for the Ughmann ...

Even the polar regions are in play. In the Arctic, Russia and China are expanding LNG projects, ports and shipping routes aimed at tapping offshore oil and gas and getting it to Asian markets, while analysts see their growing web of Antarctic research bases as positioning for future resource claims. Now throw in critical minerals and consider Trump’s deep interest in Greenland through the same lens.
This is an incomplete global survey but it does tend to suggest that Bowen’s assessment of where the world’s compass is pointing in the hunt for fuel security is, well, a tad wayward. Alas, his analysis doesn’t even pass muster at home, where there is bipartisan enthusiasm for hydrocarbon projects.

And so it was time to go domestic, bash Satan's little helper, and winkle out devotees of the fossil fuell lifestyle ... NSW Natural Resources Minister Courtney Houssos says the NSW government is planning ways to ensure “more gas production” is done. Mr Houssos told Sky News Australia that one of the requirements the Minns government is implementing is gas in NSW must be for “use here in Australia”. “For local mums and dads, for local households, for local businesses.”

Renewables? They don't have that pretty flare of fire. 

Completely useless, whereas Minns is the man, as is the wise LIV and writers' festival loving Malinauskas ...

This week Premier Chris Minns declared the NSW government would open new areas for gas exploration in the state for the first time in more than a decade, “taking decisive steps to secure the state’s energy supply for households and businesses”. As an incentive for prospectors the government has slashed the gas exploration licence application fee from $50,000 to $1000.
In Queensland the Crisafulli government has already extended the life of coal-fired power plants and now wants to unlock “the development of Australia’s first oilfield in 50 years at the Taroom Trough, to bolster the nation’s long-term fuel security”.
South Australia’s Peter Malinauskas knows the limits of a wind and solar-dependent grid better than most. In February he announced a new strategic gas reserve, in a “unique and unprecedented” deal under which Santos will supply enough gas each year from 2030 to power a city the size of Adelaide, locked in for a decade.
In the Northern Territory, Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro has championed the Beetaloo Basin as helping secure Australia’s energy future. Beetaloo Energy has just raised $66.3m to fast-track a pilot project, aiming for first gas sales by late 2026 and positioning the region as a new source of domestic and export supply.
Western Australia is the most gas-dependent economy in Australia, so it is hardly surprising that Premier Roger Cook led the charge to ensure the federal government did not impose a 25 per cent tax on gas exports, warning it would hurt the state and scare off the investment that keeps its lights, and mines, running.

After those celebrations the reptiles slipped in another AV distraction ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rules out higher gas tax on existing contracts in next month's budget. Mr Albanese claims the government is “working through details” to increase fuel reserves rather than implementing tax hikes. “We’re pursuing that because that is the right thing to do.”

By this point the pond had lapsed into a sullen resentment ...

This week Anthony Albanese chose WA to put a stake through the heart of the push for a gas tax. But it wasn’t done at the Premier’s behest. The Prime Minister has been engaged in shuttle diplomacy around the region bartering for liquid fuel with Australia’s hydrocarbon chips of gas and coal. He knows Australia wouldn’t have a gas industry if it had not been financed by those nations and they would have told him that their energy security depends on our reliability on price and supply.
This message has been underscored by the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong. She embarked on her own flying fuel mission this week that included having to go cap in hand to China to try to get it to meet the commercial obligations to this nation that it abandoned when the first shots were fired in Iran. To all but a privileged few, Beijing shut down fuel exports to preference its own supply. Surely this must make any foreign minister ponder her nation’s long-term security on the flight home.

The reptiles also became quicker with AV distractions ... Oil companies in China have begun direct talks with Australia’s jet fuel businesses. Foreign Minister Penny Wong met her Beijing counterpart for diplomatic negotiations on jet fuel sales yesterday. She says the talks were an early, but positive sign of co-operation and is praising China’s response to the nation’s fuel security needs. Australia currently has around 30 days of jet fuel.

How the Ughmann loves to dance on the corpse of climate science. 

There's nothing like f*cuking the planet to bring on a sense of the impending rapture in the unreformed seminarian. Once the planet is comprehensively stuffed, his god will swoop down and save the righteous ...

Japan’s Prime Minister will be in Canberra soon. Sanae Takaichi knows that energy resilience is essential to her nation’s survival and will seek assurances that we remain a reliable, predictable supplier. Australia is learning the hard way that fuel security is national security and we have left ourselves dangerously exposed.
Resources Minister Madeleine King also would have been a loud voice in cabinet urging caution on a gas tax. The West Australian is one of the few in Labor’s ranks who understands energy, and holding your nerve in this unhinged era of energy myopia takes courage.
In 2022, when King made the routine announcement of 10 new oil and gas sites for offshore exploration, she said: “Gas enables greater use of renewables domestically by providing energy security. Australian (liquefied natural gas) is also a force for regional energy security and helps our trading partners meet their own decarbonisation goals.”
An aghast journalist wrote that this boilerplate statement of the bleeding obvious sent “a shudder through the sprawling ecosystem of climate activists and scientists in Australia”.

Because the reptiles never want anyone to leave the hive mind - once you check in you can never leave - those interested can check that last quote in the Nine rags in Australia risks mangling the brake and accelerator on climate (*archive link)

They always disappoint, and that's why the Ughmann loves them ...

Resources Minister Madeleine King is considering activating the 'gas trigger' mechanism after an ACCC report forecasted a potential shortfall in the third quarter of the year. The report warns of a possible 12 petajoule shortfall, including a 10 petajoule deficit in July alone, which is roughly a 10 per cent shortfall on expected supply. The Minister has initiated a 30-day consultation period with gas companies to explore solutions. If not satisfied that shortages can be avoided, she has the power to redirect gas earmarked for export to remain onshore. The move could have implications for international trading partners.

And so to despatch climate science with yet another rhetorical flourish ...

This vast ecosystem of richly funded, self-aggrandising, moralising fanatics is responsible for stuffing Australia’s energy choices into the iron maiden of wind, solar and batteries and pretty much nothing else. This is the instrument of self-harm Germany is desperate to escape. The same ideologues are behind the push for a gas tax. It should be clear, even to a casual observer, that they see this as the pathway to shutting the industry down.
But others should know better. Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn has joined the ranks of those calling for a gas tax of between 15 per cent and 25 per cent. It would have been better if he apologised for his company’s role in manufacturing our current energy crisis.
Commonwealth Bank has made a big deal about its goal of ending finance for coal, oil and gas and been as good as its word. The bank’s loans to fossil fuels decreased by 92 per cent from 2018 to 2022, from $4bn to $267m. This performative display of morality has done real harm to this nation.

Time to turn the heat on the CBA ... Sky News Business Editor Ross Greenwood analyses the Commonwealth Bank’s profit and revenue over the past six months with profit and revenue both up six per cent.

Does the Ughmann care about the damage he's doing?

Of course not. He's a fanatic, and he's pleasing his masters in his own fanatical way, and that's enough for him, and to hell with the younglings and the planet ...

As a rule of thumb, this column is opposed to the federal government extracting another dollar from anyone because it will just get thrown on the giant money bonfire. But if more tax dollars must be tapped, then the Treasurer will find his mates at the cosseted, taxpayer-underwritten big four banks present far richer fields than coal, oil and gas.
In 2025 Commonwealth Bank cleared north of $10bn in profit, roughly four times Woodside’s take. If there are super profits to be milked then less harm would be done by slapping a big new tax on the banks than by mugging the companies that earn export dollars, support regional security and help keep the lights on.

More a whimper than a bang to end, that plea to keep the lights on, a message that might better directed to King Donald than to the banks...

And so, despite this battering, the pond carries on... on to a meditative Sunday, where the pond will do exactly the same all over again, this time with Polonius prattling about King Donald and climate jihad Jennie George doing the science ...

So much to look forward to if you lead a reptile life.

And speaking of the King, after those interminable tortures, what better way to end than with a comic?

Is comedy the only hope?

   

In which Our Henry brings lumps of Islamic coal, while other reptiles are noted in passing ...

 

The pond should have braced for it, should have expected it.

The release of that interim report set the alarm bells ringing in the Australian Daily Zionist News, and any number of reptiles lined up to have their say.

Geoff chambered a round in ...

COMMENTARY by Geoff Chambers
Anthony Albanese can’t whitewash security failures exposed by Bell report
When the government looks for job cuts or lower spending, it should not only quarantine the national security agencies, it should keep their spending trajectory at a higher rate.

This is where having functioning interim archive is such a relief to the pond ... because over on the extreme far right, others clamoured to join Geoff ...

The cardinal questions not answered in interim report
Virginia Bell’s report findings a step in the right direction, but little has changed
The good and decent of this country embraced the Jewish community in our grief. But the good and decent have never been the problem.
By Alex Ryvchin

The pond hasn't the slightest interest, not while ethnic cleansing goes on in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and fanatics espouse it. (YouTube)

But correspondents should feel free to browse, so long as the intermittent archive stays working ...

Horrors of Bondi Beach massacre must instruct fight against terrorism
Despite post-9/11 counter-terrorism successes, a security expert warns the ‘unfortunate reality’ that violent ideologies endure.
By Levi West

And now the pond has to turn to the main Friday feature, Our Henry.

The pond had suggested as a teaser that he might be considered some kind of Santa Claus, but you can bet the hole in bucket man is the kind of Santa that has copious amounts of coal in his sack ...

The header: UN resolution on slavery falsifies history by ignoring Islamic world’s role; The UN has passed a resolution branding slavery a uniquely Western crime despite Islamic nations transporting more slaves than crossed the Atlantic.

The caption: The UN resolution on slavery has sparked debate over historical interpretation. Picture: Getty Images

So nothing really has changed. We're back to bashing Islamics, as Our Henry spends a good five minutes explaining how slavery should be pinned on Islamics.

To do this, he used standard tricks of the trade.

Here's the opening set up:

That the African slave trade was a monstrosity, inflicting unspeakable cruelty on millions of innocent victims, is beyond dispute. 

Opening apologetic and caveat done, then comes the billy goat butt ...

But the resolution the UN General Assembly passed two weeks ago, marking the trade’s commemoration, is nothing less than an appalling falsification of history.

Then comes another concession ...

Formally, the resolution condemns the African slave trade as a whole. 

Then comes another billy goat butt ...

Substantively, every concrete reference targets the transatlantic trade, fixating on a “racialised capitalist system” and its purported Western antecedents. The cumulative effect is unmistakeable: to brand the trade a distinctively Western crime. 

Oh yes, Our Henry is full of indignation that anyone should attempt to pin transAtlantic slavery on the West, or perhaps any form of slavery, even though the bible provides handy guidance from as early as Leviticus ... 

44 Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.
45 Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.
46 And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour. (More KJV here)

For a bigger range of quotes, see the Skeptic's Annotated Bible, which has a convenient summary, What the Bible says about... slavery ...

Sorry, the pond always gets entranced by the things that you're liable to read in the bible. 

On with the hole in bucket man, righteously indignant ...

To sustain that impression, the resolution parades a sequence of decrees, starting with the papal bulls of 1452 and 1455, which it casts as the founding charters of the enslavement and “structural racism” that still unjustly impoverishes Africa, thereby grounding a claim to substantial reparations.
Yet, having been forensically specific about blame, the text turns conspicuously evasive when it confronts the forces that brought the Atlantic trade to an end. The Enlightenment, the abolitionist movements, and the Western legal and political campaigns that culminated in the trade’s eventual demise are, it appears, unmentionable.
While the offending decrees are named, dated and indicted, the tide of opposition to slavery, which gathered momentum in the 17th century, is dismissed as “certain legal challenges and judicial developments in the 18th century” that “questioned the legality and morality of chattel enslavement”.
That descent into vagueness reflects a deliberate strategy: to particularise the guilt while diluting the credit. Merely cataloguing the misrepresentations, confusions and factual errors this strategy produces would require far more space than is available here. What is especially striking, however, are the omissions.
It is, for example, intellectually dishonest to invoke the papal bulls of 1452 and 1455 while ignoring Pope Paul III’s bull of 1537, which denounced as an invention of the devil the idea that native peoples “should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service”, and affirmed “that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty”.
Paul III’s exhortations had limited immediate effect; so too did Cartwright’s Case (1569), which declared that England’s air was “too pure for slaves to dwell in”. What matters is what they reveal: an unceasing moral interrogation of slavery within the West itself – an interrogation that gave abolitionism the bedrock on which to build.

The pond should at this point note that for some strange reason the reptiles refused to provide Our Henry with historical snaps or illustrations, perhaps of devious Islamic overlords enslaving whole tribes (and yet there's a question to be asked about the likes of the Olympics movement, which condoned much enforced slavery in recent times. Is it Western or is it Islamic in origin?)

Our Henry's chagrin is inclined to purposeful selectivity:

Here, too, the resolution’s selectivity is purposeful. It allows it to avoid an obvious and crucial comparator: the long history of slavery under Islamic rule, which it ignores altogether. From the Arab conquests to the early 20th century, some 14 million black slaves were transported into the lands of Islam via the trans-Saharan, Red Sea and Indian Ocean routes, with nearly a million more carried beyond the East African coast. Add to these more than a million white slaves, and the total comfortably exceeds the 10 million to 12 million who landed in the Americas.

Now the pond isn't going to go into bat for the Islamic slave trade, or all the other slave trades from ancient times, or those rife in modern times. Economic/wage slavery is in an epidemic state, whether in the Arab gulf states or in the fields of American farmers.

But it's surely the last refuge of the desperate when you start toting the totals on the tape ... that's not a genocide, you've only got 30 million, what about my genocide with fifty million?

Perhaps Our Henry realised this wasn't quite the way forward, so he resorted to a more typical routine. Those bloody Islamics were heathens and barbarians ...

Yet the numbers are not what is most significant. The salient fact is the absence of any sustained doctrinal or institutional challenge to the morality and legality of the slave trade within the Islamic world – even where it starkly contradicted the Koranic prohibition on enslaving Muslims. As Bruce Hall shows in his study of Saharan and Sahelian slavery, by the 19th century – when the West was vigorously suppressing chattel slavery – the operative presumption among Maliki jurists was that black Africans, routinely described as “savages”, were enslavable by default, whatever their faith.
There were individuals who objected strenuously to chattel slavery, such as Syrian reformer Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1855-1902); but no Muslim opponent of slavery ever forged those concerns into a mass movement. Bernard Lewis’s verdict that “even the most radical Muslim modernists” fell well short of matching the fervour and effectiveness of Western abolitionists retains all its force.
It is therefore unsurprising that Islam’s leading theologians, far from championing abolition, actively resisted it – beginning with the infamous 1855 fatwa, issued with the full authority of Mecca’s Shaykh Jamal, which declared any prohibition of the slave trade “contrary to the holy law of Islam” and any official who attempted to enforce it “lawful to kill”.
Nor is it surprising that Saudi Arabia and Yemen abolished slavery only in 1962, the United Arab Emirates in 1964, Oman in 1970, and Mauritania – after repeated ineffectual measures – in 2007. Moreover, even where slavery was formally abolished, forms of vassalage have remained firmly in place: of the 10 countries with the highest incidence of “modern slavery”, eight are majority-Muslim.
But the resolution does not merely distort history by pretending Islamic slavery didn’t exist. It declares the slave trade “the greatest” crime against humanity ever committed. Although not explicitly stated, a central purpose of this travesty – which converts the horrors of the past into a “suffering Olympics” – is again transparent: to relativise the Holocaust.
It is frankly obscene to degrade moral evaluation into a body count, with medals of ignominy awarded by a show of hands. Yet even in so repulsive a spectacle, realities should have been allowed to intrude. Those realities are well known. Death rates in the Holocaust – whose unrelenting aim was the complete extermination of Jews – were close to or above 90 per cent. So complete was the indifference to fatalities that the German railways were paid whether the Jews being shipped by them lived or died during their transport – and the few who survived the journeys were killed, on average, within days of arrival.

Of course there's a sting in the tail here.

What's the point behind it all? Perhaps this is one indication...

...The Netherlands remains the only European country to have issued a formal apology for its role in slavery.
The resolution has come after the African ⁠Union last year set out to create a “unified vision” among its 55 ⁠member states about what reparations for slavery may look like.
It urges member states to engage in dialogue on reparations, including issuing formal apologies, returning stolen artefacts, providing financial compensation, and ensuring guarantees of non-repetition.
Despite the longstanding calls for reparations, there is also a growing backlash.
Several ⁠Western leaders have opposed even discussing the subject, with critics arguing that today’s states and institutions should not be held responsible for historical wrongs.
Both the EU and the US voiced concerns that the resolution could imply a hierarchy among crimes against humanity, ⁠treating some as more serious than others. (Al Jazeera, here)

Ah yes, what a nasty word: reparations.

No one likes that word, not if it means flinging a little cash from the coffers.

Perhaps Our Henry should have suggested that reparations should fall where they may ... but instead he tries the feeblest form of redemptions ...

In contrast, as investor Thomas Starke wrote to Captain James Westmore in 1700, “the whole benefit of the voyage lyes in your care of preserving negroes’ lives”. As a result, strenuous efforts were made to ensure slaves remained alive and saleable, including by granting handsome bonuses to captains for high survival rates and imposing stiff penalties for excess mortality.

Oh come on, one sensible economic rationalist doesn't make for a summer of slavery bliss, and Our Henry had to immediately offer an "although":

Although those efforts hardly eliminated the trade’s horrors, they did mean that by the late 18th century, death rates for black slaves on the “middle passage” had declined dramatically, to the point where they were only marginally greater than those for crews. To pretend otherwise is to erase the distinction between exploitation and extermination: for there was nothing in the slave trade even remotely comparable to the systematic mass murder at the heart of the Holocaust.
But to acknowledge those facts – which flatly contradict the assault on the standing of the Holocaust – might have eroded the overwhelming support the resolution secured. And the composition of that support says everything one needs to know about the resolution.

He does a nice job downplaying it, though some might think dragging in the Holocaust card is a bit like dragging in Adolf to win an argument, thereby provoking Godwin.

Is the only way to deal with atrocities to line them and rate them, and if you haven't got the right kill rate, you don't cut the mustard? 

And so to the final flourish:

Thus, every one of the 20 countries that have the highest incidence of modern slavery and forced labour cynically voted in its favour; so did all the authoritarian states that participated in the vote, with the exception of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; and, again with the exception of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, it received the active backing of every Muslim-majority country.
Yet that is not the real tragedy. Rather, it is that only three Western countries – the US, Israel and Argentina – had the decency to vote against the falsification of history, instead of abstaining, as Australia and the European Union did. Those three were willing to oppose this charade. Why weren’t we?

Um, perhaps because it's really is about keeping the loot, the ill-gotten gains? And the three cited are three rogue nations veering off into authoritarianism?

Perhaps this helps in reading Our Henry:

...The UK, one of the major powers involved in the transatlantic slave trade, said it recognised the untold harm and misery that had been caused to millions of people over many decades.
But its ambassador to the UN, James Kariuki, told the assembly in his speech that the resolution was problematic in terms of its wording and international law.
"No single set of atrocities should be regarded as more or less significant than another," he said.
The US's ambassador to the UN made similar points during his speech, saying his country "does not recognise a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred".
In addition, Dan Negrea said the US objected to the "cynical usage of historical wrongs as a leverage point to reallocate modern resources to people and nations who are distantly related to the historical victims". (Beeb)

There you go, off the hook ...

"No single set of atrocities should be regarded as more or less significant than another"

Way to go when it comes to fire bombing Dresden.

Yes, you won't find the Poms or the Yanks wanting to admit any guilt or loosen the Treasury purse strings, and that's not about pinning the Islamic tail on the slavery donkey, that's entirely self-centred ...

The pond blames Our Henry for taking umbrage when he could have served up King Donald ...

Once again the reptiles have failed to celebrate all that's really happening in the world ...

Did Jim and the pond suddenly get exposed to prosecution by showing that image. Relax, as the DOJ has explained, it's a selective form of persecution ...

The American justice system in full King Donald mode...

Compelling, captivating ...

And domestically the reptiles have refused to feature Gina at the top of the page, no matter how much she tries to garner attention ...

Speaking of the filthy, undiscerning rich, the pond perhaps should note one attempt at radical socialism which somehow crept into the rag ...

Culture of hierarchy a dim view from the cheap seats
A family’s night at the ballet turns into a wider debate about fairness, empty seats and who gets to access Australia’s cultural institutions.
By Alex Reszelska

This was a story of how a man and his daughter eyed off some empty seats at the ballet with a better view. 

The sort of people who might be expected to try to score a seat in Qantas first class because no one was using it, and couldn't understand why the trolley dolly stood in their way.

This was the end of the story ...

...I’ve lived in London. As a student, I spent many nights at the Royal Opera House. There, you can queue for returns. You can buy standing tickets for the price of a sandwich and a cup of coffee. And, yes, people move into empty seats after the interval. Not chaotically, not disrespectfully, but with a shared understanding: empty seats are a failure of access.
In Warsaw, where I grew up, Polish National Opera has always preserved one idea: young people belong here. Students aren’t an inconvenience, they’re seen as the future the society needs to invest in. There, you can buy last-minute “entry” tickets on a first-come, first-served basis about an hour before the performance. They’re typically 35 zloty (about $13) for unfilled seats, compared to regular tickets ranging from 90 to 350 zł.
And then there is Vienna, consistently ranked among the world’s most liveable cities, and home to the Vienna State Opera. Every night, hundreds of standing tickets are sold cheaply for as little as €12 ($20). Opera, in Vienna, London and Warsaw, is still elite art – but not exclusively for elites.
Australia tells a different story. We talk a lot about fairness, egalitarianism and giving everyone a go, but those values start to feel more like branding than lived reality.
Young people are increasingly locked out of housing and stable work. And now they are being locked out of culture – through pricing, policy and a creeping social logic that says: if you didn’t pay top dollar, know your place.
What unsettled me most that night wasn’t being asked to move. It was the reasoning behind it. Someone saw an empty seat not as an opportunity for someone else to experience beauty, but as an infringement on their own purchase. As if joy were finite. It’s hard not to ask: Is this the kind of society we think people fought for? My daughter kept returning to it: “I would want someone to sit there,” she said. “If I wasn’t using it.”
There is a kind of moral clarity in children that sees through adult justifications. So here is a question – not just for the Sydney Opera House, but for the NSW government and for the Arts Minister. What is the purpose of our cultural institutions? To preserve hierarchy, or to expand access? Because right now, we seem to be choosing to leave seats empty rather than let more people in.

What a sorry, shocking story, and how weird that the reptiles would run it. 

What next? Someone from the peasants' lounge attempting to gate crash the Chairman's Lounge?

Mind you, the pond is all for it, and all for storming the bastions of the privileged elites. 

The pond routinely snuck into better seats at half time at the SSO, and didn't get pinged for it once.

Perhaps it's the ballet?

All the pond wants is someone willing to go bail money should a radicalised pond get pinged by the management ...

And so to close with the lizard Oz editorialist's suggestion for fixing the current and future energy crisis.

Make a wholehearted effort to get further and further away from oil and and economies based on fossil fuels?

Not on your nervous nelly ...

They've never got it, ain't for the gittin' of it, and never will get it.

Their fixated devotion to fossil fuels is admirable, in a kind of heroic Don Quixote way.

And so to close with a reminder to Our Henry that these days there are more subtle ways to keep unruly people in their place ...

Meanwhile, it gets even darker in the land of Vlad the sociopath ...