In which the pond fulfils its mission to spread tedium, ennui and boredom through the land, thanks to the lizards of Oz and nattering Ned ...

The pond was delighted to discover - thanks to a kindly reader - that in these Trumpian times, the Phantom had taken a stand against brand exploitation ...

What would the dear old thing say about this sort of shameless, grubby money-making?

But enough of extremely on-topic, relevant conversations ...

For those who came in late to the story, a long time ago, on a lonely beach, with a skull in hand, the pond swore to reduce casual, accidental readers to an eye-glazed, cataclysmic, weary, soul-crushing numbness ...

The methodology was simple. Scan the pages of the lizard Oz, and then expose passers-by to the horror ...they'd think they were gaining insights, as the pond made out like a bandit flogging its X-ray specs ...

And so to this day's dose of radiating reptiles ... 

Well there's enough to produce drowsy eyelids ... airy nothings, such seething brains, shaping fantasies that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends ...

A foundation for western civilisation?

But what is western civilisation? 

Will little Johnny allow in sundry wogs of the European kind? The perfidious French, the difficult Spanish, the florid Italian, the useless Greeks? Does western civilisation cut out before or after Poland? Are the Ruskis allowed in, or should the sentimental Tchaikovsky and the vulgarity of St Petersburg be banished? Is the temperamental Slav now acceptable?

Or is it possible that British civilisation alone stands for western civilisation?

The pond had to put these questions on hold, because nattering "Ned" Kelly had done his ancient mariner trick, and the pond was fixated on the populist showdown on immigration ...

Immediately the reptiles offered up Dame Groan as some kind of evidence ...

Now don't get the pond wrong. The pond is as populist as Dame Groan, an inordinately popular reptile ...

There's ample evidence that immigration has been a disaster. It's fair to say that the country wouldn't have been cursed with either Dame Groan or the pond if more rigorous standards had been introduced in the early days ...

But the pond was more interested in nattering "Ned", no doubt determined to take down the populist Dame Groan ...

Yes, it was way past time for an afternoon nap, and by golly nattering "Ned" would show the way ...

Despite the best evidence of the populist Dame Groan, the pond wasn't entirely convinced by nattering "Ned" ...

After all there are many other rich targets, as shown by the hard-nosed Terrorists this day ...

Bloody whining ungrateful young people.

Get off the Terrorist lawn, you losers ...

Now if the ungrateful whining young people happened to have turned up in the last century or so, proving how useless immigration is, what a double-barrelled win that would be ...

But back to nattering "Ned" getting his knickers in a knot ...

Tell that to Dame Groan.

Come to think of it, won't someone tell the dissembling reptile nattering "Ned" that the Murdochian empire has been front and centre drumming up paranoia about furriners, wogs, Asians, Islamics, and any other minority available for demonisation and persecution ...

Heck, when the pond opens the digital pages of the lizard Oz, it can hear the banjos strumming ... when the dog whistling doesn't drown out the sound of the plucked strings ...

It's typical of the graceless curmudgeon "Ned" that even when attempting to celebrate immigration he should offer up a swipe at the "radical wing of the multicultural lobby" ... yet spares the radical wing of the Dame Groan onion-munching lobby ...

That's on a par with nattering "Ned's" bemusing response to anyone boasting of having a parent born overseas, or someone suggesting that they might prefer diversity to cash in the paw ...

In nattering "Ned's" world, somehow that's "elitist" ...

Here's the alternative reality.

It came most recently with the Daily Terror's front page witticism ...

But there are dozens of front Terrorist and Murdochian pages demonising Islamics, migrants, multiculturalism, diversity, boat people and all the rest of it, telling them to burger off, lest the floodgates open and they turn up here ...

Does Ned think he's going to switch off the flood of News Corp bigots? Apparently ... and apparently that marvellous multiculturalist, the mutton Dutton, is just the man to do it ...

The funny thing, of course, is that at exactly the same time that nattering "Ned" was attempting to sound a little even-handed, he was celebrating little Johnny's western civilisation thingie ...

Right at the moment, it seems a nebulous concept ...

An academic at the Chinese University? With the greatest respect, what on earth could he know about western civilisation?

Oh wait, that's in Hong Kong, where the British taught the heathen savages and the opium-soaked celestials about the glories of western civilisation ...

And it seems that one board member will be keen to elevate the status of onion munching as a sign of an elevated western civilisation. Well it's certainly better than potato eating ...

Oh wait... how did the Dutch get into western civilisation? Aren't they continental types? 

What's that you say? How silly of the pond ... of course, they brutalised Bali, took a decent stand against Indonesian sovereignty, and performed wonders in colonial Africa ...

Surely they deserve a place ...

Whatever happens we have got

The Maxim Gun, and they have not ...

We shot and hanged a few, and then

The rest became devoted men ... (The Modern Traveller, here)

And so to the infallible Pope's idea of one nation united under the reptiles - and nattering "Ned's" and little Johnny's and the onion munchers vision of western civilisation - with more papal japery here.