In which the pond endures nattering "Ned" so it can run a little referendum nostalgia ...

Point of order m'lud ...

The pond understands its mission statement - which is to bore the socks off any stray reader who happens to stop outside the wedding door and listen to the woeful tales of ancient mariner nattering "Ned" ...

But that use of 'plebiscites' to normalise a very large non-binding opinion poll stopped the pond in its tracks ...

As everybody except the reptiles of Oz knows, the plebiscites at the time were commonly referred to as referendums ...

This habit persisted in recent times in august bodies such as the National Archives here ...

Now this sort of carry-on led to the great prattling Polonius saga of confused identities and pedantic arguments, as outlined in Can you bear it? The confusion of Gerard Henderson ... which led the petulant prickly prune into all sorts pompous platitudes and righteous name-calling ...

Even the wiki for the 1916 referendum/plebiscite is headed Australian Referendum, 1916 (Conscription), at least until an anally-inclined wiki editor of the Polonial kind gets going ...

Now the pond understands why the reptiles persist ... it gives the current folly, a silly notion of consulting the people, some sort of gravitas and a seeming role in the seamless continuity in history ... as opposed to being just a bigoted bit of onion munching homophobia as politicians abandoned their responsibilities and duties ...

After all, sending someone off to marriage, to love and maybe occasionally obey (however that institution is construed, good or bad) isn't exactly the same as sending someone off to die in the Flanders mud for the Poms and the Frogs as they duked it out for world dominion with the Huns ...

Lawdy lawdy, just in those few opening lines, nattering "Ned" has provided an enormous distraction, and yet we've hardly begun ...

And nattering "Ned" has still to take on his unenviable Sisyphean task of explaining why a plebiscite on SSM was a bold stroke of ingenious policy-making, while a plebiscite about the republic is a deplorable, shocking, extravagant waste of time and money ...

Yes, there you go, the plebiscite policy proved to be a success, if you judge it by the simple-minded simplistic terms deployed by nattering "Ned." We won, they lost, nah nah, get over it ...

Of course once the gloating is over, there has to be a villain, and it's the Senate, which as everyone knows consists of unrepresentative swill, not elected by popular vote ...

Nothing at all to do with the reptiles, the Catholic fundamentalists and others swinging behind the homophobic onion muncher, deploying a desperate delaying strategy ...

Now as everyone knows, a plebiscite will be conducted with a fine sensibility and keen sense of restraint. Just look at our history to see how it's done ...

Of course it would only get better if it was by way of voluntary postal votes, as the fundamentalists got together to lobby their kind, and put out elevated, dignified pleas for the 'no' vote ...

Now it's a splendid measure of nattering "Ned's' encroaching senility that he still thinks that there's some utility  in the plebiscite idea ... perhaps it's because Billy Hughes failed ...

What a grand way to kill off SSM ... and then there's that messy, ugly, divisive plebiscite on the republic, a totally unnecessary idea drenched in vile chardonnay of the buttery, oaky kind ...

The pond was shattered at the talk of dedicated republicans pouring glasses of chardonnay. 

Aren't they allowed a hearty red? 

Perhaps a dry sherry in the club of choice?

Shouldn't the talk be of cosmopolitan elites with their sneering cosmopolitan bias?

Well all good things must come to an end, and so it is with nattering "Ned's" interminably long piece ...

By the end of it all, the pond was thoroughly confused, though this seems to be part of the noble tradition to which nattering "Ned" belongs ...

Ah well, it seems whichever way it goes, we'll lose dad, and by golly, quite a lot of dads were lost ...

The pond can't see quite the same amount of damage in saying they love someone else and heading off to matrimonial bliss or perhaps the divorce courts, or thinking it would be fun to swear allegiance to someone else than King Chuck III (off with his head, before he gets amongst the courtesans) ... but then the pond doesn't live in the same world as nattering "Ned", or sometimes, it seems, even on the same planet ...

And now, for the punters who made it this far, here's a couple more bits of memorabilia from the old days ...

The pond likes this one best of all, because of the shocking proposal to name Sydney Nietscheburg ...though it has to be said that Bernhardiburg might well be an improvement for Brisbane, and how many Tasmanians would complain about Kaisermania, it being the home of Erica herself?