In which the pond finds something on its boots … genuine Caterist mud … or is that manure?

These days the pond's heart keeps sinking into the mud even before it begins to grapple with its reptile addiction …

It's a long, hard slog to get to the joy of a Rowe cartoon at the end of the daily journey.

As soon as the name "Emma Alberici" popped up, the pond knew the painful truth of that lizard Oz splash, "Alberici analysis backlash has life of its own."

Haven't the reptiles got anything better to do? Must they spend endless hours gnawing at the same old bone, desperate for a bit of juice?

Well there's no more tedious a fart arriving late on the scene than a Caterist, and sure enough …

… because, you know, the Caterists are full of authority and relevance … though at least he didn't try on the Major Mitchell routine about degrees and speaking Italian, given our Nick's own degree ...

It's not just the lizard Oz that's been obsessed, the reptiles at the AFR have also been carrying on, and so the pond decided it would approach the Caterist sideways, via a detour through assorted AFR correspondence … (no hot links, screen cap only)

Uh huh … please, another one ...

Oh dear… another sceptic. Are there any more?

Sorry Kaz, we're still in an automate, fewer people, less cost, more dividends phase … and while the pond appreciates that Henry Ford moment, it wasn't quite that clear-cut.

Is there another letter in the AFR house?

Oh dear, speaking of people living in glass houses and throwing stones, what was it the pond started talking about?

Being kind of absent-minded, and always unlucky, like many a punk, the pond clean forgot what it was going to go on about …

Ah, that's right, how silly of the pond, it almost forgot it was Caterist day … what a blessed relief a loss of memory can be ...

What a relief, it's not about Alberici, still caught in the reptile wars …

… it's actually about Netflix, and what sensible people would pay for content ...

Uh huh. Did anyone at News Corp check all this?

You see, the only thing keeping Foxtel in business is live sport, with both it and FTA paying more than the ABC could manage, explaining why the ABC vacated that field, and the only thing keeping the tree killer newspapers alive is the cross-subsidy from Fox and other successful elements of News Corp business, and the biggest threat of all to the old model is Netflix and other streaming services …

As the Caterists seem fixated on the price of content, please allow the pond a moment to go shopping … first at Netflix, and then at Foxtel ...

  

  

Say what? $111 a month for 12 months, usually $137 a month?

Who could afford these ridiculous prices?

What allows them to fork over such a generous stipend to the Murdochians? Is somebody shovelling taxpayer money down their throat?

Oh right, say no more.

Of course the pond cherry picked the Foxtel plans, just for fun, and in much the same way that the Caterist routinely rabbits on with sublime lack of authority about matters irrelevant …

Other barely profitable online publications?

Steady, this is dangerous turf, here ...

But that was then, when we were arguing about not so much that the lizard Oz routinely made a loss, but the size of the loss … Chris Mitchell admits The Australian has not been profitable since 2008 …

As for Goldman Sachs, the Caterist defending them is a bit like the Donald explaining how he was going to clean out the swamp …

Ah yes, the good old days of swamp draining, before Mr Donald went to Washington with Goldman Sachs ..

On the campaign trail, Trump unfailingly tarred Clinton as compromised by, and enmeshed with, Wall Street and its mega banks. Goldman Sachs had “total control” of her; she was in thrall to a “global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities”. (Graudian here)

Well we were talking about glass houses, anyone got any more Caterist stones?

A centre of national unity?

What, like Pravda, or perhaps Russia Today?

The Orwellian group think that on any other given day the reptiles would rail against?

What a stupid, silly man he is, and boring as well … and what a long hard slog it was to get to the Rowe, and truth to tell, sensible folk would have just headed off here a long time ago, but for what it's worth, and as the pond's only salvation …