In which the pond observes a nattering "Ned" on the verge of an apocalyptic breakdown ...

The pond almost forgot to admire this Currish Snail front page, but it shows exactly how Chairman Rupert's team celebrates diversity in politics ... after all, the pond's own ginger beer, made to a patented Tamworth recipe, is famous around the land, or at least in several houses ...

It also helps the scene for yet another dose of nattering "Ned", handwringing, clucking, tut-tutting, and attempting a Chicken Little while impersonating an ancient mariner shouting at clouds to get off his lawn ....

Of course modernity can undermine ancient, nonsensical or useless values, and so when it came to the actual header, it had to be turned into a nonsensical plea ...

You see, if the pond must share its values with nattering "Ned", the Bolter, Dame Slap, Miranda the Devine, Akker Dakker, little Timmie Bleagh, Moorice, the onion muncher, Dame Groan, and the like, why then bring on undermining modernity ...

Stop right there.

Calling Malcolm Turnbull a progressive liberal is an abuse of language, concepts and understanding. At some point, he might have had liberal tendencies, but they're long gone, swept away by the taste for power and the desire to maintain a grasp of the ring ...he even ducked Mardi Gras, where once he preened and posed and pretended and paraded ...

At every opportunity to show progressive liberal attitudes, Malware has squibbed the challenge, and failed the test ...

And how did the onion muncher cop the label of muscular conservative, as opposed to failed fuckwit ... in much the same way that Kevin Rudd surely should be celebrated as an overbearing arrogant insufferable managerial nightmare rather than a nerdy populist ...

Of course we've had this parade of failures and flops many times before ... the pond experienced the pleasure of life under Holt, McMahon, the hapless John Gorton and the head prefect ...not to mention the bizarre behaviour of sundry Whitlam ministers ... but never felt the need to run around saying that the sky was falling and the rapture was due the following Sunday ...

When a reptile begins to drift into senility and ancient memories cloud the eyes and fuzz the brain, we're likely to end up with a line of the kind "Even in the 1950s people believed in God ..."

These days any number of Islamics believe in the very same Abrahamic god as other delusionals, and yet that's deemed to be a major problem ...

Representative government, in fact, can rarely deliver fast responses. Its character was formed in an age long before the motor car, aeroplane or electronic media, amid a culture of personal restraint, respect for authority and regard for institutions — all long since lost. 

Actually pops, do you mind if we call you daddy-o, are we talking about the personal restraint of Profumo or John F. Kennedy or Edward VII or Edward VIII?

How much respect for authority did you feel when conscripted to fight in Vietnam?

What's funny here is the way that nattering "Ned" talks of the public descending into disgust.

But the anger, the hysteria, the disgust emanates mainly from the screeching Murdochian media and its bilious commentariat. The disgust, the hate, the fear and the loathing that exudes from every Bolter pore is palpable.

The reasons are the usual ones - narcissist attention seeking, these days combined with the need to serve as click bait, rather than attract a passing shilling with a newspaper boy shouting the headlines ... but the one thing nattering "Ned" is never good at is introspection or reflection ...

Instead, it's the young, it's always the young ...

Representative government is slow, messy, riddled with compromise, drafting of bills, executive ­instruments and regulation, parliamentary debate, cross-party disputes and implementation by public servants. For many young people today the process seems alien and near hopeless.

Actually for many people, it's the traditional media that seems alien and hopeless, as the reptile commentariat is rewarded for sowing confusion and unhappiness ...

Our culture today is less forgiving. In the past people got upset, bitter and grumbled. But they didn’t take to social media, vote for Pauline Hanson, organise single issue protests, or say the prime minister had to be thrown out every three years.

How did young people get into it, when nattering "Ned" might have scribbled, with more validity ...

The Murdochracy today is less forgiving. In the past people got upset, bitter and grumbled. But they didn’t take to social media like bloggers Bolter, Miranda the Devine, Akker Dakker and little Timmie Bleagh, voted for rabid ratbags of the muscular dimwit onion munching kind, organised single issue protests against climate science, for coal, and against any liberal issue that happened to be passing, while arguing that the prime minister had to be thrown out every year or so, just to keep the bastard honest.

The world will always be a different world, and the pond understands that nattering "Ned" is now feeling fragile, but really, he should look around and see the world that the Murdochians, in their quest for profits and power, have wrought ...

There'll be more of it, along the lines that nattering "Ned" is just a classic victim ... a bit of stray roadkill, a forlorn waif caught up in the satanic mills of young modernists ...

Did the pond read that little line right? There's just a third rate Hanson here, but abroad there's a first rate Trump?

It seems brevity is also a lost art. Once upon a time, that sort of jeremiad could be put in much fewer words ...

The funny thing is that nattering "Ned" hints at Chairman Murdoch being the root cause of many problems, but never has the courage to stay it outright.

It is News Corp that organises Newspoll and publishes the results; it is News Corp that uses the polls in a shameless way to troll for interest and attention and cash in the paw, and also to drive and herd the pollies in the direction of its rabid fundamentalistm.

It is News Corp reptiles who talk endlessly of the "public", blaming this arbitrary abstract mass for an interest in fatuous celebrity and suggesting that the "public" lacks the infinite understanding and cosmic wisdom of the nattering "Neds" of the world.

Somewhere at some point in any reading of nattering "Ned", the pond mentally affects a Cockney accent, and says "Cor blimey, guv'nor what have you got up ya? The nail and screws causing you some froth and bubble?  Thought about hitting the frog and toad, or calming yourself down with a Benny Hill?"

No doubt some will think it wrong to mock gramps, but what else is there to do?

Not when there's even more agitation ... as nattering "Ned" does his very best young person impersonation, to explain how everything is alien and near hopeless ...

This is beyond the valley of any caricature the pond might attempt to muster.

This sort of hysteria is unhealthy, unsettling and disturbing. 

It suggests someone on the verge of a nervous breakdown, or with a deep fear of impending death.

If the medication prescribed by the pond fails to work, perhaps it's time to ...

With so much catastrophically wrong in the world, perhaps it's time for meditation, penance and reflection ...

Luckily the infallible Pope has a different reason to return to past ways, and the good old days, and what a good reason it is, with more time travel Pope available here ...