In which the pond trotted off in search of Xmas cheer and ended up sucking on all day Speccie humbugs ...

The pond is so over the reptiles' desire to bring down Malware ... it leaves the pond with absolutely nowhere to go ...

They keep promising this is the moment the man who rooned the NBN will be sent packing to his harbourside mansion, so it's lucky their promises aren't Xmas presents, or once again the pond would have been disappointed, as the mirage shimmered, then faded into the new year ...

Incidentally why is it that none of the reptiles ever ask these days what happened to Malware's pet project, the Digital Transformation Agency, now known as the Digitally Useless and Irrelevant Agency, blessed by a man who achieved fame in the 1990s as a web master for finance?

The pond has been assured it's a disaster area, ignored by all and sundry, impotent, toothless and useless ... yet all the reptiles do is scribble about the polls and yearn for Malware to go, if not this season, then certainly by next ...

Speaking of the season, the pond decided to celebrate the good cheer and joy by dropping in on the Spectator mob, a little late but better than ever ... and what a line up ...

First up was Noel Brown with this opening gambit ...

This year has certainly seen some milestones. First, there was the fall of Robert Mugabe. Here, I must make a confession: I should have killed him when I had the chance. I know this does not fit easily with the Christmas spirit, but I am sure there must be a principle of mediaeval law that says it is permissible to kill a tyrant. I should have done it then and there, but I stuffed it up, as usual, and foolishly let the opportunity pass… 

As leader of the Australian observer group in 1980, I was sent to darkest Africa to monitor the independence elections in the then Southern Rhodesia. During that perilous mission, we interviewed Mugabe in Salisbury for two hours on his plans for the infant Zimbabwe. We had bottles of Coca-Cola provided to refresh us, but Mugabe made do with idly spinning his unopened bottle around in a sort of Coke-roulette. I have often thought that if I had grabbed that bottle and given him a quick whack, I could have saved the world a lot of agony and particularly the poor Zimbabweans. Well I didn’t, and that was probably the worst mistake I made in my political career apart from voting for Billy McMahon as leader of the Liberal Party...

The pond once met Neil Brown and now bitterly regrets that it didn’t whack him over the head with a champagne bottle and thereby save the world and readers of the Spectator much unendurable misery …

 Of course the pond only says this as a joke. Political assassinations are a sign of western civilisation and democracy at its finest, and if only the pond had whacked Brown, it would now be celebrating a very festive season.

Brown then followed up with a Christine Keeler joke which is so pathetic and dire it’s unrepeatable, even on a low rent publication like the pond, and a meditation on Malware which concluded with this fine observation …

...Far worse was the behaviour of members of the house of representatives and the conduct that was both allowed and encouraged to take place in the public gallery. I am a curmudgeon as I am often told, but I was appalled at the appeals to base emotions, the applause for the crudest emotional point-scoring, the sneering at minority views, the waving of flags and banners, hugging and kissing like a lot of schoolgirls, and allowing the public gallery to be part of the debate and the reality show. It was a profound change from the detached manner in which parliaments as institutions have always conducted themselves. But then, in a regimented exercise to destroy marriage, why not damage another institution at the same time and get two prizes for the price of one in the ongoing war on the institutions? I am writing now to the Speaker to ask if all this is now approved: flags and banners, interjections, appeals to the public gallery, singing and dancing and all the rest of it and will it be tolerated for any cause taken up in the future? How about a debate on refugees or the republic with rival camps and their banners and hysteria in the public gallery? Merry Christmas! 

Like a lot of schoolgirls? On behalf of schoolgirls, who actually share affection, might the pond just observe that Brown might well and truly go and get fucked …

Is there anything worse than a fucking curmudgeon purporting to wish everyone a merry Christmas while mocking innocent schoolgirls?

Maybe Scrooge would accept it in the spirit it’s offered, but thank the long absent lord, the pond is able to offer it in the spirit She intended. Should have whacked the old bugger on the noggin and then there would be one less silly old angry Speccie fart shouting at clouds …

It has to be noted that reading the Speccie mob brings out the scatological in the pond ...but in the spirit that it's good to give as much as it is to receive, the pond will keep going...

So it was on to the Bolter ... who seemed to be attempting to be mellow, though the notion of a mellow Bolter is so bizarre that the pond had to check the amount of rum in the Xmas pudding ...

Naturally he was quick to revert to whining, moaning, whingeing mode ...

 … now we are in an age of mere seeming, with a booming industry in denouncing people in 140 characters or less – in proving our own goodness by simply vilifying someone else. Alexander once won trophies for Australia. Now his head is the trophy for Twitter moralists. 

To say nothing of the Spectator moralists, or the Bolter who has made a booming industry out of denouncing all sorts of people in thousands of characters or more ...though when the Bolter brings his family into proceedings, it’s always going to get weird and sometimes downright strange ...

More connections. My daughter tells me one of her friends accidentally stepped on the PH that marks the spot at the university where Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake in 1528, on a day so windy that it took six hours for the fire to burn hot enough to kill him. He was just 24. My daughter is excited because she loves traditions, and stepping on those letters means her friend is doomed to fail her exams unless she breaks the spell by running into the North Sea at dawn on May 1.

Hamilton? Wasn't he just another victim of the religious wars they used to play hard in the late medieval period …

Must we now add blatant pagan superstitions into the mix?

Being the Bolter of course, somehow the religious wars get dressed up as a matter of free speech ...

We here risk failing something else: the test of our commitment to the free speech for which Hamilton died, refusing to take back his criticisms of church corruption.

Uh huh, it's supposed to be about free speech? In reality it was a debate about theology and heresy and fix-ups and the buggers in power ...

At length, he was summoned before a council of bishops and clergy presided over by the archbishop. There were thirteen charges, seven based on the doctrines affirmed in Phillip Melancthon's Loci Communes, the first theological exposition of Martin Luther's scriptural study and teachings in 1521. On examination Hamilton maintained their truth, and the council condemned him as a heretic on all thirteen charges. Hamilton was seized, and, it is said, surrendered to the soldiery on an assurance that he would be restored to his friends without injury... However, the council convicted him, after a sham disputation with Friar Campbell, and handed him over to the secular power, to be burnt at the stake as a heretic, outside the front entrance to St Salvator's Chapel in St Andrews. The sentence was carried out on the same day to preclude any attempted rescue by friends. He burnt from noon to 6 PM. His last words were "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit"... (Greg Hunt it here)

It's a typical Bolter error, to think that medieval theologians and the religious had the same set of attitudes and issues as are going the rounds today.

But there's a reason for the historical error and the seeking of parallels ...

The Bolter always fancies himself and his friends as martyrs, sacrificial lambs, as opposed to News Corp bullies allowed to bellow at the top of their lungs...

...I can’t pretend Milo Yiannopoulos is Patrick Hamilton. He says he’s a Catholic, but I doubt his preoccupation is our straightest way to heaven. But we cannot pick and choose whose free speech we should defend, because where’s the credit in defending only the most agreeable? In this case, though, Milo was chosen for me. I watched the West Australian Premier, Mark McGowan, pompously and unfairly denounce Milo as someone who ‘defends paedophiles and associates with Nazis’, adding: ‘We shouldn’t have [him] delivering lectures and performances to West Australians.’ I am anti-social and not attracted to making a spectacle of myself – which makes my television and radio career astonishing to me – but I got so cross that I blurted out on air that I would travel to McGowan’s capital and be MC for Milo’s Perth show, just to make a point about free speech. Let McGowan stick that up his kilt. 
But maybe McGowan is just making more connections. After all, Perth is named after the city where some of the nearly 4,000 alleged ‘witches’ to be killed in Scotland were sentenced to death. But he shouldn’t try so hard to be a modern witch-burner. He’s actually from the Irish McGowans, and I thought the Irish had more respect for blarney. I fly to Perth hoping McGowan’s mobs are held back by McGowan’s police. I’m not cut out for any Patrick Hamilton stuff, but Virgin has let me into the chairman’s lounge which at least makes martyrdom more comfortable.

Fuck that's weird .... No not the bit about the bleeding obvious, about Milo defending paedophilia and consorting with neo-Nazis, which he's done, or even the Bolter pretending to be a shy anti-social modest flower ...

No, it's that martyr complex, it's that comparing what happened to Milo to witch-burning - clearly the Bolter's never experienced a little burn on the stove, let alone at the stake - and then to blather on in an ethnic way about the Irish and the Scots... it's just so Bolterish ...

But think of the upside... as a result of being ethnically fixated, the Bolter forgot to indulge in black bashing for Xmas.

As for that pathetic boast about Virgin's chairman's lounge - so class conscious, so needy, so greedy, so desperate - the pond couldn't resist a chortle celebrating all the mug punters who think the Bolter gives a flying fuck for their fate as they crowd in line to pick up a free HUN and board in cattle class ... and be grateful they're allowed to fly behind their betters ...

Next came Milo himself, but on a few occasions, even the Bolter had to gag at the smell and to hold his nose ...

Thank the long absent lord that the pond, even when holding its nose, won’t go there or descend to the level of gadfly Milo...

But what about Akker Dakker, the fat owl of the remove, following on after Milo and offering a set of Jolly notes?

The fat fraudulent coke-sniffing hypocrite opened with this ploy… 

‘Tis the season to be jolly,  Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la, Don we now our gay apparel … Oops, I don’t think Don will doing any fa-la-a-la-ing this Christmas, and as for gay apparel, no thanks. 

The pond almost said no thanks from the get go, but then the fat fraud then went on with a defence of Don Burke …

There seems little doubt in the minds of the posse of ABC and Fairfax feministas that the bloke who once seemed as genial as a garden gnome was actually not only a real Burke but also the greatest living threat to Australian women, with wandering hands and a line in sexually-charged language that would make a Tourette’s sufferer cop a plea of coprolalia. 

Pages have been written about the television garden show host’s alleged behaviour toward women but given the number of women in very senior hosting roles in television over the years, why have these allegations taken so long to surface? 

Sure, the television industry in Australia has been über-blokey, as has much of the media, but the outraged thundering does have a whiff of McCarthyism about it. 

Would that the ABC and Fairfax thunderers have devoted a fraction of their aggression toward the very real attacks on the economic and social structure of the nation instead of saving all their powder for a showman who is as relevant today as a video cassette. 

And then there was that usual offering of condescension from the coke-addled, fried brain …

The rapid decline in Western democracy is, I believe, dear ladies, of far greater concern than the historic activities of an alleged low-rent antipodean Harvey Weinstein – and as the father of two women in the media I do not dismiss your anger out of hand, I just question your priorities. 

Dear ladies? Fuck the horse you rode in on, you addled hate-mongering fat fraud …

Luckily TT had a cartoon ideally suited to Akker Dakker, with more TT to hand here ...

On and on Akker Dakker went...

The pond will leave out the smearing of refugees with charges of rape - the pond understands that there are people who've been employed by News Corp who have been charged with rape, to play the Akker Dakker game - and then there was some moaning and whining about the conservative sisterhood being reviled, but the pond decided to cut to the final outrageous outburst of outrage ...

... The politically correct blindness to real, very physical and very violent assault is of a part with the manner in which so many in the West are eager to grapple with the symbolic whilst ignoring the realities of the degradation of their society. 
The old allegory of the frog in the slowly boiling saucepan is self-evident but the West is sleep-walking into its suicidal end. 
Sex sells, as the gals from ABC and Fairfax well know, and no doubt the clicks kept coming but at the expense of the publicity which should have gone to the existential issues. 

Gals? Fuck you and the horse you rode in on you old sexist bigot and small-minded and possibly shrivelled prick ...

In Australia’s case, the foremost issue which should be attracting a Burkean level of alarm are the nation’s failed energy policies, state and federal. 
It makes absolutely no sense to export coal to supply cheap power to commercial competitors in China and India whilst forcing up the cost of electricity domestically such that our own industry is forced to either close or relocate abroad. 
The global warming argument doesn’t wash. That coal will be burnt overseas if not here and you and me and every other Australian will be the worse off because it is not being burnt here to supply consumers, domestic and industrial with the cheap power the nation needs to compete globally. Burke’s alleged wholly unsavoury backyard activities are totally put in the shade by the wilful acts of South Australia, Victoria, Queensland and the federal government to make our industry uncompetitive. 
Similarly, no spotlight has been focused on the spineless vice-chancellors of the major universities who have permitted ranting radical students to take over their campuses turning their institutions into putrid petri dishes of purulent socialism and virulent anti-Semitism. Free speech, once cherished by academics, is now disdained. Open discussion is closed. Students are protected from ideas that might challenge the Marxist orthodoxy. Trigger warnings, safe spaces, cotton wool to shield fragile minds from unpalatable and confronting truths. 

Is it any wonder the pond gets scatological and abusive? The plump owl positively begs for it, he wants the outrage, he wants to shit-stir like the coke-addled fraud he is ... (they say once you've sniffed it, you're never the same).

Gender politics taught by moustachioed brutes who bizarrely identify as women seem to have swept through arts faculties. Perhaps the militant homosexual movement with its indeterminate alphabetical sub-classes should visit a race track or a farm to get a clearer idea of what gender is. Form guides describe mature thoroughbreds as either g, m or h. That is they are geldings, mares or entire horses (uncastrated). The youngsters are c for colts or f for fillies until they turn four, according to my snouts at the track. Stallions are designated as such when they go to stand at stud. Humans could thus be m, f, or w – for whatever, given the generally low public interest in the arcane world of the gender-confused and there is always g, for those who so choose. Few events have been so distracting to the febrile political class over the last year as the issue misnamed as marriage equality. Nor has any other issue highlighted the appalling hypocrisy of the virtue signallers with the grubs from the Greens and Labor and the Leftist wing of the Liberals (all of whom opposed the notion of asking the Australian people as proposed by Tony Abbott) later claiming glory when the silly survey was completed by nearly 80 per cent of those eligible. Merry Christmas, Fa la la la La-La Land. 

The pond rammed that last rant together just to get through it quickly. What a fucking offensive fat fraud he is ...

But the thought that there would soon be surcease and relief ended when the pond realised there was still old Flinty to go ... lost somewhere back in the crusades ...

Trump cerebral, in the same way as the onion muncher?

To be sure it had the pond gaily rolling the jaffas down the aisle ...

Not just a pompous fool, but ineffably stupid ...

And now to invite stray innocent readers to contemplate a garbled Flinty history of the middle east, as weird and as warped as any fundamentalist Jew devoted to a theocratic state ...

The result? Sorry Palestinians, Say hello to life without end in your very own gulag ... there's no future, no hope, no mercy, no sympathy ...

Remember, Flinty's supposed to be a Xian, but you should know that really means he's a hard-nosed brutal fucker who'll screw you in your gulag as soon as look at you ...

It's as if the village idiot had been given a series of talking points and managed to spew them out in the garbled but mellifluous tones of a pompous prat ...

All said and done, being wished Merry Xmas by this crowd of abusers and haters and fear-mongers is like Satan dropping in for a round of Christmas Cracker pulling ... all bang, and fuck all by way of substance ... just a cheap-arsed party hat and a trinket in lieu of thought ... 

But in honour and memory of Akker Dakker somehow managing to drag coal and climate science into the celebrations, the pond riffled through its bag of old Popes and came up with this aged souvenir ...

Bah humbug, indeed, and that's more than enough of Xmas cheer ...