In which the pond delivers a double hunger of Moorice groaning ...

The pond was ecstatic when the reptiles let Moorice out from behind the paywall for a ramble, but then it read the instructions …

Should anyone read the column? 

After all, when it comes to special interest groups, Moorice "dinkum clean Oz coal, oi, oi, oi" Newperson knows a thing or two…

And what if the dear old thing started off by talking about the 30th poll, when that birthday was yonks ago, ages and ages, and the next one just around the corner ...

Now before a Queenslander intrudes from the far north, let the pond say that it loves a fresh pineapple. It can't stand tinned pineapples, an abomination that southerners drop on to burgers and which invoke in the pond a flashback to the dreaded ancient times when tinned beetroot was perceived as a culinary delight in Tamworth …

If the government could deliver to the pond's door the fresh pineapple Moorice has promised on a weekly basis, it wouldn't compensate for the NBN, but it would be a start …

As for the rest, poor Moorice is getting closer and closer to 'mindless shouting at clouds' syndrome, easily spotted by the way that he runs through a listicle of complaints.

But doubtless he's just getting warmed up, and he'll get to the nub of the pineapple in the second gobbet, and go into Ancient Mariner mode, substituting an albatross for the pineapple, and foretelling doom, as he does on a weekly basis.

Indeed, indeed things are grim. The country is awash with debt, and yet the fiendish bankers are limiting credit, and if you can reconcile those two disasters, why you must be channelling Moorice …

Well the pond always welcomes  a doom-laden rant, though it's very disappointing that Moorice has abandoned his world-celebrated climate science and now makes only glancing references to the subject.

Truth to tell, the pond goes into its doomsayer mode at least twice a week, though whether this is due to acid reflux is sometimes hard to tell …

But the pond felt so disappointed in this Moorice outing, that it felt the need to add a bonus albatross, because Dame Groan was also out and about this day, and groaning away.

It's true her rant could be summarised in a couple of lines: bloody wogs, coming here with their uppity ways, and making things difficult for decent Anglo-Celts, because we wuz here first, and who cares about human rights, and the sooner that bloody Tim, whatever his funny second name is, gets lost the better the country will be, seeing as how turning him into a dinkum Australian, such a funny name, who could spell it or even say it, is going to be tricky, why don't they all just go away, so we can keep on groaning in our loveable Anglo-Celtic way …

Or some such thing. Of course Dame Groan in full grumpy mode is inimitable, so let her keyboard do the pounding and the thumping ...

Hmm, perhaps the pond's summary could stand, though it is indeed astonishing to discover that government departments try to put the best face on the ancient pork pies they serve up to the public …

In the pond;s day, whenever preparing reports, the first thing the pond started with was "this would be a great department if it wasn't for the constant, intrusive demands of the public, who generally are a pack of ning nongs" … the PR team loved it ...

Perhaps the Dame could crank it up a little … what with mocking bureaucrat speak (the pond is as fluent in it as it is in Esperanto) being very Eric Partridge, or perhaps even nineteenth century Punch...

By the end of it, the pond felt the need to burst into a vacuous song of the kind Malware keeps forgetting … I am, you are, we are Australian, or dammit, at least we're Anglo-Celtic, and none of those statistical shenanigans is going to alter that unalterable fact, and the sooner that Timmy, whatever his funny name is, realises it, the better for everyone, and it goes without saying, also for Dame Groan's acid reflux issue …

And now, relieved that the double bunger of grumpiness has done the trick, and everybody is really snarky and unhappy and agitated about the unfairness of everything, it's time to celebrate a country in even weirder shape …