Speaking of hand-wringing about a loss of diversity, as the pond's favourite monolithic Ozymandias is wont to do ...

The pond was startled to see that the reptiles of Oz felt so strongly about this story that they were giving it away for free ...

The pond particularly admired this attempt at being even-handed, an attempt at reptile balance by the reviewer:

Without her (Credlin) anchoring the narrative and Patrick’s analysis, it can read a bit like a familiar summary of events. Abbott is a bit more of a known quantity than his glittering, enigmatic sidekick. Conservative readers will baulk at Patrick’s thesis that Abbott was a poisonous mix of old-fashioned values and social awkwardness that put off the average punter, but he has produced a compelling study.

Attempt at balance done, Ferguson offers the bleeding obvious ...

Besides, revisiting Abbott’s comments on women’s role in society, or the time he was filmed biting into a raw onion, one can’t help but come around to Patrick’s way of thinking: Abbott was unable to lead modern Australia because, in outlook and values, he wasn’t a modern Australian. Even though he surfed, fought bushfires and walked like he’d just got off a horse, Abbott’s political consciousness and personal values stemmed from 1950s England, the country and era of his birth.

The piece had any number of splendid comments attached to it, but the pond particularly relished this one from David:

I like Tony Abbott but having come from the UK I think it is ridiculous to say he was culturally a 1950s Briton

Indeed, indeed. He was culturally a 1950s B. A. Santamaria man ... in love with Victorian copper and shocked by windmills ... He only knighted Phil the Greek to please Lizzie, and was absolutely uninterested in British values ...

...Like about a million other Australians, including Prime Minister Gillard, who also came to Australia as a child, I was born in Britain. As well as people, the British Isles have given Australia our language, our system of law and our parliamentary democracy. The conviction that an Englishman’s home is his castle and faith in British justice, no less than the understanding that Jack is as good as his master, have taken strong root in Australia. As my former teacher, Father Ed Campion, used to say of our country: the English made the laws, the Scots made the money, and the Irish made the songs! 
So when the plane bringing me back to Britain flew low up the Thames Valley and I saw for the first time as an adult Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, St Paul’s cathedral and the Tower of London, I had a sense of belonging, not because I was born here but because our culture was... (oh shush, please shush, why must you always make life hard for the pond as you rabbit on here).

And the pond was particularly pleased by this offering from one wit called Rowan ...

This book and others on Abbott are all very premature. Abbott is not dead yet and I am pleased that he continues demonstrate dignity after being dismissed by his own colleagues. His is a man of traditional values and one value that all Australians should aspire to have, especially some of our sports people, that is being gracious in defeat, Abbott displays in spades.

Yes, he might still rise from the political dead, and so each day the pond goes about with a garland of garlic, a little secular holy water, and a robust wooden garden stake shaped in the fashion of devil's horns ...

But the mention of Credlin led the pond to notice another presence in the weekend reptile rag ...

Well we can leave Charles Murray alone. Anybody who thinks there's nothing irrational about Donal Trump's appeal is by definition an irrational fool ...

The working class, and other classes might have legitimate grievances, but to think that Trump will do anything useful about them roams from the irrational to the delusional, a bit like thinking Trump offers a decent 401(k) plan for workers and never employs undocumented immigrants ...

Who is this wretch?

Opinions differ, but the delusional never die. They just turn up in reptile rags ...

Maybe not evil, maybe just fatuous ...

Never mind, it was the presence of Loughnane that inspired the pond to do one of its infamous cut-ups of the William Burroughs kind.

The pond had a left over piece of useless bromancer hysteria, and thought it would look mighty fine put up against Loughnane's musings.

But a warning. This is only for truly intrepid, hard-nosed pond readers, the kind who consistently ask to be thrown into the briar patch, and then, having been thrown, show every sign of enjoying it ...

First to Loughnane ...

And so to the left-over, stale, re-heated, hysterical bromancer ...

Now the ironies in Faux Noise's United States are multiple and vast.

But of course it's not just the ironies as they relate to the United States. Loughnane offers a splendid set of ironies as they relate to Tony Abbott, Peta Credlin, and the disaster that went down in Australia for a couple of years ...

Meanwhile, the bromancer moved on to doing his very best chicken little imitation, without once mentioning the way that Faux Noise and the bizarre behaviour of Rupert Murdoch's very own Roger Aisles has helped produce the astonishing situation the United States now finds itself in ...

And so to the Loughnane predictions.

The pond invites readers and elephants with long memories to check back in a couple of months and see how it all played out, as against Loughnane's guess as to what might happen ...

The pond offers only one prediction. Whatever the bromancer and the loughnane say, don't bet your house on it. Don't even use their numbers in the lotto.

And so to a final irony, and the twittering of a man whose various corporate activities have done much to assist in the ruination of the United States ...

This from a man who for weeks was twittering his support for Ben Carson ...

Well as we're speaking of 20th century drivers of politics, and people who have little resonance with those under 35, what to make of Chairman Rupert thinking it's a loss of diversity?

It's actually a loss of tree killer diversity, and The Independent has other plans ...

The simple fact is, there just aren’t enough people who are prepared to pay for printed news, especially during the week. With our circulations and advertising down, very substantially, the future of our print edition would inevitably be one of managing decline. 
I don’t want that to be our approach; and by being decisive about the switch to digital, I think we can go out on a high. Our last edition will be on Saturday 26 March. 
This newspaper’s journalism, with its unique integrity, intelligence, courage, wit and humanity, is reaching more hearts and minds than ever before. We are read by millions every day – but they are reading us digitally, through their mobiles, and via social networks. I know it is a hard thing to say here and now, but I want the message to go out loud and clear that even after we cease to print, in spirit and in impact this great newspaper will live on. 
We have huge, global ambitions for our website, backed by multimillion-pound investment from our owners, the Lebedev family. They have invested more than £60m in this great institution over six years. Having sold our stablemate title, i, they have the chance to fund the next chapter in our story. In plotting the next few years, it makes sense for them to invest that money in the digital product. To that end we are launching new bureaux across the world and a new subscription mobile app.

There's more here, and good luck to them - they'll need it, because the digital game is as tough as it gets - but at least they recognised the writing on the wall and did something about it ...

So long as chairman Rupert remains at the helm, with his attachment to print, and loss-making publications that offer irrelevant commentary of the lizard Oz kind noted above, wherein old fogies wonder where the under 35s have gone, News Corp will continue to struggle.

You only have to watch the young people attached to their screens as they wander like startled gazelles into the path of motor cars to see where print is heading ... road kill like the gazelles ...

But as their legacy, the old fogies will have helped leave behind a stricken United States ...