In which the pond spends time with a master of war, thanks to the reptiles of Oz ...

The pond likes to boast that it can read almost any reptile column, and discover rich ironies and much comedy ...

A discussion of the Labor party's socialist objectives doesn't seem like rich turf. After all, the pond has never been a socialist, and for that matter never been a Marxist, never been a member of the Labor party, the Liberal party, or the Nats, or the NCC, or the DLP, or the Dems or the Greens ... and would gladly walk a hundred mile detour to avoid the Trumpsters ...comforted by the thought that this might have meant a reluctance to support Joe McCarthy in other times ...

The pond isn't much of a joiner, and though once tempted by the Calathumpian Party, and Screaming Lord Sutch's officially raving loons, backed out at the last minute ...

There are some obvious alternatives for a lunch time read, peddled by pompous prats of the reptile kind ...

But this is such fuck-witted, obvious trolling, the jealous and the envious in search of a tall poppy so that they might exercise the syndrome, that the pond felt the strange call to heed the words of the war criminal Bleagh, as channelled by Troy ...

Now speaking of the bland on bland, the way it's worded at the moment, the dangerous socialist objective that shocks Troy so could mean anything to anyone.

It has a tidy exemption, "to the extent necessary", which allows anyone who feels the need to drive a private enterprise truck through it ...

Should we have a public health system and public schools? Well to the extent necessary. What about roads? Well to the extent Mike Baird and his interstate buddies can't privatise them? What about public rail? Well only to the extent necessary to have major real estate perch atop the stations.

Now about those health and school and welfare cuts, which we do with deep sadness and regret in this post-socialist age, rest assured it will all be only to the extent necessary ...

Didn't the privatised prisons experiment work out well in the United States (Mother Jones it here, it's long. Isn't it good they're bankrolling the Donald?).

But even so, the pond was getting desperate, until it struck the gold of that last par. 

Luke Foley has shrewd political judgment? The almost invisible Foley - he only turns up to talk about dish-lickers and trams - has done very little except sit on his arse and watch the smug Baird self-destruct, aided and abetted by News Corp.

Shrewd political judgment!? So that's what they call dropkicks these days in the Labor party.

With this nugget in hand, it was time to ferret through and sort out the rest of the iron pyrite in the quartz (yes, you can still do that out Hanging Rock way near Nundle) ...

It was time to go for gold ...

Surely it was about time to hear from a Labour moderniser, a man with shrewd political judgment ...

Come on down, spinning war criminal, and spin away ...

There, right at the end, it was everything that the pond had hoped for.

Given that the old objective is, by any objective standard watered down and meaningless, the notion that a new objective would need to be anything other than watered down and meaningless is to be richly treasured ...

Meanwhile, of course, in the UK, the party that Blair killed with his criminal stupidity and adventurism, made redundant and reduced to tatters, in its weakened condition allowed David Cameron to score a majority in his own right, and thereby set up the conditions for Brexit ... and is nowis being led by a socialist who not so long ago made a speech, which included, inter alia, this sort of thing ...

“We know how great this country could be, for all its people, with a new political and economic settlement. 
“With new forms of democratic public ownership, driven by investment in the technology and industries of the future, with decent jobs, education and housing for all with local services run by and for people not outsourced to faceless corporations. 
“That’s not backward-looking, it’s the very opposite. It’s the socialism of the 21st century.” (more at The Independent here).

And now, having fucked up and fucked over the Labour party, Bleagh turns up like a bad penny offering advice to Labor down under?

It filled the pond's daily dietary irony allowance in one large dollop.

Indeed, there's only one suitable response, and that's to turn to a Steve Bell cartoon ... and many more Bell cartoons here ...

Parties organised? How many balloons to go with the sexing up and the terminological inexactitudes?

By golly, that's such a good likeness, it made the pond peckish for a little more ...

And now, though the pond had intended to let the matter of Dylan pass, this is dedicated to Tony Bleagh and Luke Slattery ...

And for those who want a later acoustic version without the Dylan grit, and if only to prove that the pond is aware the 21st century exists, and that the song made it too, and the need for it remains undiminished, even if the delivery is a little diluted ...

The pond will follow your casket by the pale afternoon, metaphorically and poetically of course ...