In which the pond is excited by fig leafs and calls on our man Flint ...

All's quiet in reptile la la land, as we lose all our freedoms - oh, et tu gays with ball and chain jokes - as we learn belatedly from the lips of the chairman that print is struggling in this digital age.   

What an extraordinary insight, but how pleasing that the poodle has risen to the challenge and provided some light musical comedy relief ...

What fun for the twitterati, and how strange that print might be struggling in this digital age ...

But enough of the reptiles, because the pond was aware that this is the day things turnover at the top of the magical faraway tree known as the Spectator down under. Why is this becoming the pond's go to spot on a dull slow Friday?

Just look at what the cover offered ...

There were all the reptiles who once made the Murdoch rags glisten ... good old Flinty, spikey Brendan ...

Brendan was on his usual spikey roll ...

Hang on, hang on, what's all this dangerous space, free-wheeling nonsense? 

Can we just rewind that cartoon that the Speccie folk put on the front page?

Fig leafs in a cartoon that looks not a day older than 1953? 

Adam and Eve and Satan?

Fig leafs!? There's your dangerous free-wheeling space? Genesis and fig leafs?

We've been there before ...

If the sight of a male penis so excites you that you need a fig leaf, have you thought about just drawing it small? You know, David without the fig leaf ...

Or you could just go the full-blown antique satyr statue ...

Never mind, Brendan was on a real roll and spent some quality fig-leaf time with the onion muncher, member of the church that first rolled out the fig-leaf as a cure-all for unsafe statues and unsafe spaces ...

Alas it was 75/25 in drop kick onion muncher loser land for those afraid of the sight of an erect cock and in urgent need of a fig-leaf ... talking as we were of eyecrimes ... 

The best that can be said for this tosh is that it might later provide an excuse for a most excellent cartoon ...

Meanwhile, it's on to the main course ...

Yes, Flinty has, as usual, has got it all sorted, and for the life of the pond, can anyone explain why Flinty - brain surgeon, climate scientist, High Court judge, key advisor to the Queen - hasn't been put in charge via some kind of military coup of the kind fashionable at the moment?

It could have been much easier? Of course it could, if only they'd called on our man Flint, most excellent companion of parrots and queens ...

Indeed, indeed, the pond has always found that when confronted by legal matters of a fine kind or by common criminality, it's by far the best solution to avoid taking the matter to court ...

Do the proper thing and get in a dinkum digger Flinty handyman who can fix things with just a stocking and a bit of barbed wire fencing ...

Now the argument seems to run that what we needed was a bunch of originalists, who would apply a black letter reading of the law according to what was meant by those who wrote the Constitution, but there being no point in being originalist, what we need is to bung on a referendum, because let's face it the original writers of the Constitution didn't have the first clue ... and it's time for a change. All join in singing a chorus of "it's time ... for living and for Flinty" ...

Indeed, indeed, there'd be nothing like the spectacle of politicians judging the status of other politicians ... it's always been a tremendous sport in the past, and the sooner it's revived, the better for us all ...

And as for the Constitution, why it can be changed at the drop of a hat and everything fixed in a trice ... because originalism certainly doesn't mean being sticks in the mud ...

And with that, the pond moves a motion, not in the usual place, but in the usual way, that Flinty no longer be heard until he returns in the future with more exciting news of much change, as all originalists desire ...

And so to that spiffing cartoon, done by the most excellent Rowe, with more Goya-like cartoons of undiluted despair here ... 

Oh the detail, the detail ...look, there's the struggling Terror, littering the streets, and there in the shop window is the tastiest onion and potato Cornish pasty imaginable ... and fancy the bear getting his chest chair shaped into a fierce celebration of life and love ...