In which the pond spends a traditional Tuesday with Caterist grant bludgers ...

Being deeply conservative, the pond rarely likes to head off the beaten track. The pond prefers a well-trodden path, no matter what word you like to use to describe the path...

Some might prefer the metaphor of a Tamworth dog returning to its vomit after a healthy munching of grass, but each Tuesday the pond loves to keep the company of a man living off government largesse. 

A grant bludger, an elite form of welfare bludging available to Canberra think tanks, and an exotic form of life which produces wondrous irony in almost every line the expert welfare bludger scribbles...

There are naturally many temptations and distractions to wander from the desire line, or if you will, the hag-path or hollow-way, the chare or the estrade ...

And so a mendacious fraud, who looted his business to prop up his party, in the service of fundamentalist Christian principles which severely damaged any number of families, departs the house, while other fundamentalist Christians line up to support bigotry ...

And as well as the pasty Hastie, there's always the Donald and the fond hope that at last they might be able to sort out Daesh in Mosul, repair a little of the vast damage done, and never mind the ethnic tensions after the battle's done ...

But the pond, being deeply conservative, is loyal, and let's face it, the Caterists need company, because their main skill in life is putting out the paw so that it might be filled with government cash. 

It's a rarefied skill ...

Even the google splash provides turf for rich irony.

The pond immediately thought of a counter-header. Thriving Department of Finance grants feeds a rising economy for Menzies Research Centre, followed by The Department of Finance grants to the Menzies Research Centre would barely rate a mention on the ABC. Full stop.

It's a small pleasure, but it's a pleasure that echoes through the text ...

Indeed, how tedious for anyone to care about dying miners. Who cares about a health crisis in women, oh sorry, a health "crisis" ... because even in the smallest ways, the Caterists love to cliche ...

The Caterist has the government cash in the paw, and is alright Jack, and never mind the climate.

So long as the government grants keep flowing, so will the climate denialism and the 'I'm alright Jack' attitude.

Good old Peter Sellers, and isn't it wonderful that a scribbler who mocks a taste for the cliche of red-faced, not more than a few pars later should move on from "crisis" to erupt with "running hot." 

The pond felt a chill of hot and cold tingles of pleasure running down the spine like a William Castle movie ...

And then came one of those sentences that the pond is always searching for in a Caterist text...

Or even the supposed amount of cash the person who is saying it scores from the Department of Finance as an in the paw grant ...

The pond couldn't resist, it's the proper, traditional, conservative thing to do on a Tuesday, as jolly as killing off a pine tree and sticking it in a tub, until the pine needles wither and turn brown ... (have you started counting the days yet?)

But even after the orgasmic moment, there are post-coital pleasures to be had from further Caterist dalliance ...

Indeed, indeed, and the natural constituency these days of Robert Menzies' party are grant bludgers with a head office in Canberra ...always keen to explain how the act of redistribution of wealth by way of grant is a folly, except in the case of the Menzies Research Centre, where it's absolutely fine and useful and highly moral ...  because, let's face it, who would want the MRC staff to have the adult experience of a shrinking economy ...

And then the Caterist came up with a final ecstatic ripper for the wrap-up ...

Actually, you wouldn't have to go back to Matthew's Gospel for a documented account of that principle in action ... not when the good Department of Finance feed the men and womenfolk of the MRC (remember women aren't women, when speaking of women always use the preferred form of "womenfolk" - speaking of a deep love of cliches, have you tried "herrenvolk" and "herrenrasse" lately? Apply for a government grant to offset the modest Godwin's Law swear jar costs.) 

The way the modern parable ends? "They all ate at the Menzies Research Centre, with the food supplied from the grant, and were satisfied, and had a jolly good time, and then the Caterist picked up twelve basketfuls of left over, hardly used pieces and took them home with him for an even better domestic evening."

"It's a sobering reminder of where a nation lands when it turns its back on the enterprising who know how to feed on government grant culture like a leech - standing on a hillside, confronting shortages, unaware that just over the hill is the Department of Finance waiting to answer their prayers with a grant miracle ..."

And then, just to wrap up the pond's traditional day, the pond loves to run a conservative cartoon by a man who goes by the godly name of Pope and is blessed with papal infallibility, and more infallible fun can be found here ...