In which nobody does it better than Flinty ...

Truth to tell, the work of a Flinty is never done, as he plugs the hole in the dyke and holds back the barbarian hordes threatening our glorious future under noble King Chuck ...

  

How pleasing it was to see Flinty move from the Speccie to the top of the agenda-setting reptile opinion page.

Naturally the pond tossed every other matter aside to consider Flinty's noble thoughts ...

Actually, if the pond might be so bold, the last time Malware pushed for anything, it was a voluntary postal survey. The poor old AEC's blather about plebiscites here has all the relevance of a shag sitting on a rock some distance from the shore ...

Never mind, the last thing we need is anyone asking how people might generally feel about the issue. That's much too elitist.

Far better to pay attention to Flinty, a humble servant of the people, who regularly intuits the mood of the people, and therefore removes the need to ask them about anything. There's certainly no need to trouble them with tricky questions about their future under noble King Chuck ... with a bit of luck, he'll have an early heart attack and we can skip to the next more photogenic generation, and keep them in the manner to which they've become accustomed ...

The pond does applaud that snap of Malware at the top of the page, and Flinty's list of his many sins and thought crimes is exemplary - oh to lose the onion muncher and so soon and in his prime of knightly follies - though strangely Malware's ruining of the NBN rarely gets the mention it deserves ...

But after the litany comes the sort of thinking that the pond loves, the almost pornographic talk of a crowned republic ...

It's such a wonderful twisty path. You see, the point of talking of a crowned republic is to argue the utter irrelevance and uselessness of the royal entourage and their assorted minions, hangers on and corgis ...

A crowned republic is a form of constitutional monarchy where the monarch's role is ceremonial and all the royal prerogatives are prescribed by custom and law in such a way that the monarch has little or no discretion over governmental and constitutional issues. (Greg Hunt it here).

By this oxymoronic definition, royalty is about as useful as the appendix or perhaps adenoids ... yet somehow at the very same time, as if by transubstantial magic, they become an ancient and indispensable core institution, thanks to their complete uselessness and lack of relevance...

By doing absolutely nothing, they become an essential part of panem et circenses ...

Duas tantum res anxius optat, Panem et circenses.

A bit like Flinty himself. Where would the pond be without the completely useless Flinty?

It's thoroughly admirable stuff, ripe with paranoia, fear and loathing of the humbug kind.

The way Flinty can dress up this forelock tugging and scraping and bowing is exceptional. Nobody does it better, and somehow he always reminds the pond of the role that royalty and Anglo-Saxon attitudes played in Alice ...

There's nothing like a Flinty or perhaps a ham sandwich or a munch on hay, and nobody can scribble better than him ... and come to that, there's not many cartoonists who can match the Pope when it comes to an infallible insight into Malware, with more papal follies here ...