In which the pond seeks relief with nattering Ned ...and finds a few cartoons ...

Of late the reptiles of Oz have been getting the jitters about Theresa May, which is understandable.

After all, who knows what might happen to Chairman Rupert's Sky deal if the barbarians turn up at the gates ...

Throw in nattering "Ned" flapping about doing his Chicken Little impression, moaning, keening and wailing, and the pond is sold. What better way to relax and take a break from domestic reptile concerns and the war, than to toddle off to the old country with "Ned" at the helm ...

Nothing is certain in these times!

It reminded the pond of Macbeth, full of saucy doubts and fears, function smother'd in surmise, "nothing is but what is not."

Disturbing to think that nothing was certain in Shakespeare's times, or perhaps even in the original Thane of Cawdor's times,  and truth to tell, the pond really only wanted an opportunity to run a few British cartoons for a change of pace:

This cartoon and others herein by both Rowson and Bell are a click away at The Graudian here ... throw in the cartoons at The New Yorker here ... along with the much referenced Pope, Rowe, Moir et al, and the pond is only ever minutes away from fleeing existential angst, by heading back to the comfort of refreshing, redeeming chuckles...

Once restored, it's back to nattering "Ned", who uttered in that last gobbet the immortal line "all terrorism originates in a poisonous Islamist culture..."

Strange. The pond thought it passing fair to suggest that the invasion of Iraq was a step up from terrorism, into full war-mongering criminality, while the deployment of drones to rain down death from the skies also suggests that the average terrorist act can't match up to state-sponsored terror ...

Ah for the glorious certainties of the Murdochians back in the days when they thought they could bomb Iraq into a state of civilised democracy ...

What the pond loves about reading the alarmist catastrophist Catholic Boys' Daily is the free way that the likes of nattering "Ned" can talk of "demonic surprises."

It's a debasement of language, no doubt, but some of the synonyms evoke the wondrous mindset.

A Corbyn win would apparently be devilish, diabolic, diabolical, fiendish, satanic, Mephistophelian, hellish, infernal, evil, wicked, ungodly, unholy, and though rare, possibly cacodemonic...

Naturally in amongst all this, the digital age is invoked as the font of wickedness ... while all the pond can think is that it's likely time for another cartoon ...

The reptiles also felt the need to interrupt nattering "Ned" with a visual distraction.

The desire to substitute an image or a graph for the torrent of fearful "Ned" words must be overwhelming at times ...

Of course there are more up to date polls than that online - that's what happens in the digital age - with the UK Terror providing an overview as the gap narrows ...

The glorious triumphalism, the desire to hand out a sound thrashing, has taken a bit of a battering.

Something about "Ned's" last line in that gobbet - "Labour needs and deserves a thorough humiliation" - reminded the pond of its old Tamworth school principal.

It wasn't enough to gently suggest paths towards redemption and reform, it was necessary to offer total humiliation, preferably in front of a general assembly.

It also suggests that there's been only one guilty party in the UK in recent times, and so the teacher's pets might be overlooked, even if they've managed to steer the ship towards a Brexit set of rocks.

Has there been a bigger prat in recent times than David Cameron? Give Theresa May time and we might find out ...

The pond could feel the need for a cartoon humiliation ...

The reptiles again felt the need to interrupt "Ned", this time with a meaningless graphic, which in its bald form showed that Brexit remained a considerable issue ... who could have guessed it? Who could have imagined that the Tories split the country down the middle and tossed Scotland aside?

The pond felt no need to have an interactive experience.

After all, a cartoon is all that's needed to remind the pond that Britain is in the best of Brexit hands ...

Pig's bum indeed.

And now it pleases the pond to quote from an Economist editorial which sent nattering "Ned" into talk of bizarre dream worlds:

...The Tories would be much better than Labour. But they, too, would raise the drawbridge. Mrs May plans to leave the EU’s single market, once cherished by Tories as one of Margaret Thatcher’s greatest achievements. Worse, she insists on cutting net migration by nearly two-thirds. Brexit will make this grimly easier, since Britain will offer fewer and worse jobs. Even then, she will not meet the target without starving the economy of the skills it needs to prosper—something she ought to know, having missed it for six years as home secretary. 

Her illiberal instincts go beyond her suspicion of globally footloose “citizens of nowhere”. Like Mr Corbyn she proposes new rights for workers, without considering that it would make firms less likely to hire them in the first place. She wants to make it harder for foreign companies to buy British ones. Her woolly “industrial strategy” seems to involve picking favoured industries and firms, as when unspecified “support and assurances” were given to Nissan after the carmaker threatened to leave Britain after Brexit. She has even adopted Labour’s “Marxist” policy of energy-price caps. 

And though she is in a different class from Mr Corbyn, there are also doubts about her leadership. She wanted the election campaign to establish her as a “strong and stable” prime minister. It has done the opposite. In January we called her “Theresa Maybe” for her indecisiveness. Now the centrepiece of her manifesto, a plan to make the elderly pay more for social care, was reversed after just four days. Much else is vague: she leaves the door open to tax increases, without setting out a policy. She relies on a closed circle of advisers with an insular outlook and little sense of how the economy works. It does not bode well for the Brexit talks. A campaign meant to cement her authority feels like one in which she has been found out.

And so on and on here (wherein Crobyn also cops a bagging) ...

This is, in the end, where the Murdochians have led Britain, down the garden path of Brexit, in company with David Cameron,  Rebekah Brooks and the whole mad circus in recent years ...

In previous years, the Murdochians had joined the Blairites in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hasn't that worked out well, and in that unique way of scoring winning solutions, the Chairman and his Fox News chums anointed and bequeathed the Donald to the United States.

Is there any recognition of this in nattering "Ned"? Any abject apology for the way that the Chairman's mainstream media has made 4Chan seem like a civilised chat forum with rules about how to behave?

Nope, not the faintest flicker, not the slightest acknowledgement or admission that the catastrophe of Trumpism came about thanks to the catastrophic help of Fox News, Hannity, the departed but not missed Orally, and sundry other Fox chums determined to commit crimes against humanity ...

But if Trump is a fraud, and a phoney, what to make of his Murdochian boosters? Who will talk of one of the key sources of the American malaise? Will it be like the reptiles talking of terrorism, but refusing to name Saudi Arabia?

These matters call for strong debate, urgent discussion ... but sadly all the pond can offer is another cartoon ... 

Not to worry.

As always after time with nattering "Ned" at table in full dégustation, the pond reverts to more cartoons and a cleansing sorbet of Colbert ...