In which the pond tries to distract the children from the spectre of nattering "Ned" ...

Now the pond has already spoken sharply to Dame Janet, dropping in from her planet to talk about Castro and hypocrisy, as if it isn't possible for anyone to recognise the flaws in a life-long dictator who ruled without any care for the rights of many Cubans ...

A good health system doesn't make up for it, nor does the sublime incomprehension and stupidity of American policies in relation to Cuba, begun by Eisenhower but then continued in a tone deaf, immortally foolish Bay of Pigs way by the Kennedy administration ...

That's the trouble with chatter about motes and hypocrisy and the huge logs some affect to wear.

Pragmatism could have gone a long way, but the fanatics of the B. A. Santamaria school of mortal religious combat with the Commie swine were never much into pragmatic policies ... (imagine what that might have produced in Vietnam, instead of brave war heroes like prattling Polonius).

All the same, the pond refuses to get into the business of defending a life-time dictator. The only virtue of a democracy with a reasonably clean voting system is that every four years or so there's a chance to vote the bastards out and hope the next set of bastards realises that there's an axe hanging over their heads, even if they go on clucking like an optimistic turkey heading off to Thanksgiving ...

The pond's punishment however is that it must now ignore prattling Polonius and instead suffer the prattling of other reptiles ...

This will guarantee the pond's hits dropping even lower, but then the whole point of the pond is to demonstrate the complete sense of futility, ennui and fatigue resulting from reading the reptiles, and to suggest that there are many better and more profitable ways of spending a life than helping keep the reptiles in business ...

What, for example, is the point of nattering "Ned" Kelly, except to produce a better class of cat-napping, a fatal micro sleep, or a deep somnambulistic trance even a hypnotist would envy?

You see, Polonius? You're not the only nattering prattler who can produce a sense of tedium and existential despair ..

Now readers of the pond would have already noted this morning that a furious Dame Groan pronounced the neutered ABCC a total joke and uttered the immortal line "Sorry, a win is not a win", and nattering Ned musing about the art of the deal reminded the pond that the Donald didn't actually write a line of his book about the art of the deal ...

Can we at least have a better hook to lure a couple of suckers into the store?

Oh yes, that's sure to beguile pond readers.

"...this dangerous parliament"...

Of course as soon as someone puts up a keep out sign, or perhaps even a barbed wire fence all around the grass, it's time to go over the top and charge at the chattering nattering Ned Seagoonish machine gunner ...

Now it's around this point that the pond usually apologises to any stray, unsuspecting reader who doesn't know about nattering Ned and his prolixity and tendency to portentous verbosity ...

The pond could have gone with the bouffant one, tackling the same difficult issues ...

But how much "much has been done, much remains to be done" nonsense can a possum bear?

Should the world have to endure the bouffant one going into Chance the gardener mode, with growth in the spring, but then we have the fall and the winter, and then there's the curse of summer, and the inevitable seasons of nature, but we're troubled by the seasons of the economy, and the plantings will be difficult, and life is a state of mind ...and it sure is an angry old white man's world in reptile la la land... stuffed with rice pudding between the ears, shortchanged by the lord and dumb as a jackass... and look at him now, as all the gobbledegook about tougher battles ahead mixes military, seasonal, and derailed trains in a metaphorical stew...

So sorry, the punishment, the suffering must continue unabated, and it's back to nattering Ned ...

Now look, the pond recognises that you may ask, as a puzzled reader, why you have to endure all this? 

Good question, and truth to tell there is no answer, except for the metaphysical one that blatherers must blather, and others must suffer as they read the blather. This is not a merit-based thing, this is not something to be sorted on a rational basis. This is something to be endured, an elemental power struggle to keep the eyelids apart and to stay awake.

But the pond is not without mercy. It recognises that the children in the back seat are extremely restless.

So it has arranged a game for the children to play - thanks, it has to be acknowledged, to Greg "the bromancer" Sheridan.

It's called, children, spot the enemies of democracy.

See if you can spot the enemies of democracy reducing the parliament of Australia to a farce. The pond has organised a few tweets to help you with the game ...

Did you win children? Did you spot the enemies of democracy?

Greg "the bromancer" Sheridan will be ever so pleased - he loves to spot the enemies of democracy, whom you may call 'unAustralian' if you like, the more the merrier - but now you must promise not to fidget, because the adults must continue on doing the hard yards with nattering Ned ...

Strange, children, not a word about the rate of developer rorting, possibly because there's no measurement of how much it has increased in the construction sector in recent years ...

There is a clue children ...

Oh we knew you'd love that picture of a tram, and that story is here ... and remember children a 70% blow-out in WestConnex in the billions - and counting in the billions - is just adjusting a few minor bottom line elements to produce a more accurate budgetary picture ... because when politicians loot, pillage, and piss money against the wall, it's all in a good cause and certainly not an inspiration for unions to ape ...

Yea verily, the pond has just returned from a visual inspection of the Molochian madness of the motor car tearing the west of Sydney apart ... the pond saw the best suburbs of its generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked veh-ickles, dragging themselves through the Bairdian streets at dawn looking for an angry fix and an eight lane motorway ... oh, and isn't that tram so cute? Surely worth that budget blow out, but such a pitifully small one in comparison ...

And now children, don't you worry, more cars, more roads, it's the way of the future, and besides, we must now return to a final gobbet of nattering Ned ...

And you see children, that's why the pond loves to read nattering Ned. You have to fossick through a lot of quartz, even the lovely pink stuff, around Bowling Alley Point if you want to score a trace of gold these days, but think of the magic of that line ...

"... the government finishes the week believing that Hinch has a lot to learn about consistency and application ..."

The government of course being a model of consistency and copper wire application ...

Well the pond started with prattling Polonius talking of hypocrisy, what better way to finish than with delusional talk of consistency and application?

And now children, it's with some distress that the pond realises at this very late stage that it has barely harboured a thought or spent a nanosecond's reflection on nattering Ned's insights.

Just finishing it is triumph enough, so instead perhaps we should return to the game of spotting the enemies of democracy ... and it seems Moir has another contender who knows how to use super glue... and more Moir here ...