In which the pond endures nattering "Ned" and the dog botherer the way an Opus Dei devotee enjoys the cilice ... and gets distracted ...

This Saturday the reptiles are in a state of high agitation and alarm ...

Our Gracie, herself not above a taste of corporatist Murdochian welfare, is shocked at the way socialists, agricultural and/or rich, form queues for handouts.

The oscillating fan and Dame Groan are lathered in a state of turmoil and indignation ...

But what of people with gravitas? What in short, of nattering "Ned"?

Imagine that ...

Who'd have thought hip groover "Ned" was into, and as up to date, as the Rocky Horror Picture Show?

Time is fleeting

Madness takes its toll

It's just a jump to the left

And then a step to the left

With your left hand on your left hips

You bring your left knee in tight

But it's the pelvic thrust to the left

That really drives you insane

Let's do the leftist time warp again ...

Or some such thing. The pond isn't nearly as hip as nattering "Ned" ...

Let us begin the strange, seemingly endless, never-ending journey ... well if the reptiles and nattering "Ned" have reached 1975, surely attention should be paid. Or did they only reach 1973 and the stage show?

End-of-generation bonfire? The pond can't keep up with all the cultural references by nattering "Ned" ...

It's just like Ned to cite a prissy conservative of the woeful kind ...as he sobs and sighs in mock turtle style about the shift to the left, the surrender document, the onion muncher in exile, and all the usual talking points that have beset the reptiles this week ...

Years of scribbling, years of instructing the government, and for what? To have a millionaire Marxist in the lodge staging a 1917 coup?

Oh it's too much, and it might also be totally disconnected from reality, but that's why the pond loves reading the reptiles so ... though it has to be noted that reading nattering "Ned" is more a marathon, an endurance course, than a strict pleasure.

It's more the joy your average Opus Dei devotee might find in the cilice than the pleasure of licking an icecream, this never-ending journey through the Catholic Boys' Daily ...

Gird the loins, gather some stinging nettles - apparently Percy Grainger favoured a lacerating pine branch so that the blood might mark the snow under bare foot - and hey nonny no, on we go ...

Now the pond can sense that the attention span of gentlemen readers is waning, and the pond is ever attentive to the needs of gentlemen readers.

Why can't the lizards of Oz deliver a more interesting budget analysis? Like this one in the Terror ...

Say what?

Now there's the thinking man's budget analysis ... and even worse, she took a waltz down memory lane ...

What’s forgotten over the passage of time is that there were Howard government tax increases, even in that brutal 1996 Budget where Costello introduced the Superannuation Surcharge — effectively a tax — as a revenue measure to fix Labor’s $10.3 billion deficit. In the years after that, Howard used his Budgets to help him win elections, funnelling money to win votes in Western Sydney. Pork-barrelling shamelessly, and so successfully. And of course middle-class welfare, including the Family Tax Benefit A and B — now unable to be clawed back — ramped up heavily under the Howard government when the mining boom was in full swing. As Niki Savva pointed out yesterday, there was spending in the Howard 2001 Budget to counter being seen as mean and tricky.

Oh she eventually toed the reptile line after this dabbling in heresy, and deftly explained how this budget ticked all the right boxes, bashed the druggies and the Islamics, and those damned politically correct people ...

No. This is not Labor-lite. This is a Budget that will work, that takes lessons from the Howard era.

In short, what a splendid boondoggle it is, and the only ones to suffer the whining moaning bankers ... while poor old nattering "Ned" kept wailing about the way that the pinko perverts came out the winners, and the onion muncher had been abandoned ...

Say what?

...the banks will find little public sympathy. Executives, on monumental pay cheques living in $17 million mansions, have been disrespectful to customers. They’ve been quick to lift interest rates and ignored the RBA. They’ve made their own bed.

Oh yes ...

Oh dear, the pond quite missed the point. 

Back to the suffering of nattering Ned ...

There's more than a whiff of faint irony in this, seeing as how the reptiles were front and centre demanding tough budgets and celebrating the onion muncher and the wretchedly inept jolly Joe ... until the pair stumbled into the abyss and took the millionaire dreaming with them ...

There's also something profoundly heart-rending to see nattering "Ned's" plea for fairness, and won't someone think of the suffering of millionaires ... oh the inhumanity, oh the suffering ...

The pond was so transfixed, it simply couldn't get enough of reptile distress ... and luckily, along with all the other distressed reptiles, one hero stood out.

Who better than the dog botherer, nearly everyone's favourite pin-up ...

... to explain how the lefties and greenies had won and everything was ruined.

Right from the get go, the pond was sold.

What could be better than won't someone think of the millionaires.

Why surely won't someone think of the grandchildren is the clear winner.

Some might think this is about climate science and the whole damn thing ...

... but everyone, or at least every dog botherer, knows climate science is a fraud.

Is it any wonder why the lizards of Oz have difficulties with their business plan ...

Know where the pond stands on the budget?

Why there's reds under the bed, reds in the head, reds in the bread, reds in the shed, greenies creating dread, millionaires being bled, and climate science is dead ...

Now if only the dog botherer would start with a quote from George Orwell, the pond's day would be complete ...

Inured?

Oh surely not, surely everything is falling apart, surely it's all the fault of Labor and never you mind John Howard's epic boon-doggling and soon enough ...

It's a tricky thing really ... the only reason that the pond has any interest in the budget is the way it's caused reptiles of the rabid kind great distress ...

The dog botherer in particular is feeling the acuteness of complete irrelevance ...and oh tedious bliss, oh repetitious reptiles around the water cooler,  he delivers yet another kool aid invocation of the Rocky Horror Picture Show ...

How easily they're swept away by the sound-bite, but Akker Dakker was there long ago ...

Possibly the pond should have done a spoiler alert, or perhaps a trigger warning ...but really that applies to everything the pond looks at ...

Is there anything more pitiful than a grown dog botherer wailing and sighing?

Talk about despondent, talk about the suffering of the rich, talk about the implausible big fat lie that John Howard wasn't into shameless boondoggling that has trickled down the years ...

Curiously, after reading nattering "Ned" and the moaning dog botherer, the pond felt a smile returning, a lightness of step, a sense that the world might be going to hell in a climate science handbasket, but there were still pleasures to be found, if only in watching the agonies of the reptiles as they spilled their precious blood on the full to over-flowing intertubes ...

Never mind, the reptiles got the budget they deserved, and yet they refuse to be grateful, even though the Pope himself has identified many reasons to be pleased... with more papal insights here ...

Oh dear, yet another reference to cultural artefacts.

Was it this?

Or was it this? 

Or perhaps a bit of both? Whatever, that bloody hand's from a leftist or a greenie, that's for sure and certain ...