Trust the immortal Rowe to hit the mark this morning, with more immortal Rowe here …
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Beholding all his own mischance,
Mute, with a glassy countenance—
She look'd down to Camelot.
It was the closing of the day:
She loos'd the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott. (more here, and let's not quibble about creek v stream)
You see, the pond woke groggy, battered and bruised, like a stunned mullet this morning ...after a hard-core night spent binge-watching Theresa May and the British parliament do their thing …
What a show, and it has to be said, what a performance. As the good ship Britanic took on water and began to list and sink, May and her small band performed admirably, and the deck chairs were shuffled about with a sense of British aplomb and style …
And what a cast … the whining Scots, the needy Welsh, the mad Northern Irelanders, and then stood Rees-Mogg, in sinister, angular style, with a lean and hungry look.
Why Shakespeare himself would struggle to conjure a greater villain …a perfect ponce, righteous and indignant …he clearly thinks too much, but only in the manner of a dangerous fundamentalist …
Why Shakespeare himself would struggle to conjure a greater villain …a perfect ponce, righteous and indignant …he clearly thinks too much, but only in the manner of a dangerous fundamentalist …
The pond had only one complaint. Being madly infatuated with the British Speaker, the pond had hoped for more one-liners, quips and put-downs, but that maddening British capacity for reserve meant that the baying herd sipped at May's rich blood as if politely dining with the Queen, and so the mighty Bercow only had a few lines …
Above all, the pond loves the way the meerkats bob up and down in a futile bid to attract the attention of the Speaker. So many meerkats standing, so many meerkats reluctantly sitting, so few given the Bercow nod …
Yet again, the pond was reminded of how its entire approach to politics had been ruined by reading at an early age the venerable Dean Swift, and his dissection of the camps that formed around the big and the little endians, with the pond learning early the fun that could be had arguing for the big end cause, before switching to the other side and insisting that the little end was the only way to cut the Brexit egg ...
As usual, their ABC seemed to miss the coverage so it was off to France 24, Euronews and the rest, because the pond refuses to indulge in anything to do with the Murdochian Foxtel, and refuses to pay for its pleasure, and no longer thinks the ABC worth checking out…
It's taken the pond some time to get down from its high, which is usually induced by watching some perfectly formed movie, and the thought of returning to the reptiles filled the pond with misery…but lo, look who sailed into view, and speaking of the perfidious French …
His present and your pains we thank you for.
When we have matched our rackets to these balls,
We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set
Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.
Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturbed
With chases.
Set to, our very own hole in the bucket Henry, such a mighty wrangler … blessed as you are by the Lobbecke of the day, and so given the reptile sign of elevated cult status ...
Ah, the pond immediately knew what had rubbed our Henry up the wrong way … you see, the hole in the bucket man has steadily turned Trumpian, and of course, Macron wasn't really having a semantic dispute about the meaning of a few words, he was waving a few coded flags at the Donald … and really, that's a form of Gallic impudence, up with which our Henry will simply not put …
Whack a few more pedantic tennis balls into the stand ...
Now it's wholly admirable the way our Henry allows women into his idea of the "nation", but he's also perfectly correct to ask what happens when male privilege is swept aside, and women assume some virtually automatic right, when everyone knows that they're difficult and uppity, and best kept in the kitchen, as they so famously and properly were back in 1882 …
By golly, the pond weeps tears of blood each time it hears of someone having a go at the angry Sydney Anglicans for their enthusiastic devotion to complimentary women, when after all they're only treasuring a rich legacy of memories, born of centuries of Calvinist endeavours, sacrifice and fundamentalist bigotry …
By golly, the pond weeps tears of blood each time it hears of someone having a go at the angry Sydney Anglicans for their enthusiastic devotion to complimentary women, when after all they're only treasuring a rich legacy of memories, born of centuries of Calvinist endeavours, sacrifice and fundamentalist bigotry …
And so to our Henry's last gobbet, which will reassure all who worry about the way that Britain is sinking under the waves of pesky furriners inundating its glorious shores ...
Good old Henry, with his yearning for ancestral soil. The pond hastens to add that it was him that introduced "blut und boden" into the conversation, and as the Welsh, the Irish, the Scottish and the English show how admirably a nation state can pull together, the pond went looking for another Friday treat …
At first it seemed obvious enough …
How long is it since the pond paid attention to petulant Peta, and it seems she's offering to help out the Victorians, when surely a half-priced telly is more than enough of a bribe? Still the pond decided to tip a toe in the water…
The pond had to stop right there. The notion that petulant Peta and the onion muncher had the measure of anyone was too richly comic for the pond to go on … oh they knew how to play the perfect political pincer, and how it must have hurt when they got into self-mutilation of their genitals …18th September 2013 to 15th September 2015 …barely a blip on the radar ...
Stick to half-price tellys is the pond's advice to the Victorians, though as election day looms, why not just make them free? If you're going to offer a bribe, why be half-hearted about it?
No, the pond had to look elsewhere for its jollies, and luckily the bromancer strode into the room, talking on a subject dear to the pond's heart …
Now the pond had only one reason to persist to the end with the bromancer, because it made a bet with itself that by the very end, the bromancer would be doing a Rees-Mogg or a Boris or a Nigel, and urging a crash through or crash out, hard Brexit, because when it comes to sailing around or into an iceberg, the bromancer is a Britanic sort of dude …
Why there's no way a bloody useless iceberg is going to get in the road of the SS Britanic ...
The pond hopes that our Henry is chastened … after all, if the Brexit vote now stands as the biggest democratic exercise in the nation's history, all the pond can think is ….some democratic chicken, some democratic neck …
Oh okay, the pond had another reason for tracking the bromancer … for too long it's ignored the Graudian cartoons available here …
Ah she still floats … but fear not for the Lady of Shalott …
A hit, a palpable double hit, and now back to the bromancer doing his own number on the fried shallots ...
By golly, for a moment there, the pond started to worry about its bet, with the bromancer blathering on about how both remainers and Brexiters and Endians would prefer to remain in the EU than go with May's deal.
To console itself, the pond turned to another cartoon, celebrating the man who helped construct the deal, then felt compelled to resign at the sight of the strange deal he'd constructed, and so consigned the pond to a late hours televisual binge …
And so back to the bromancer for a last gobbet, and surely he'll see sense and support a no deal hard Brexit, and give the pond a winning bet ...
Phew, the bromancer came through, as the pond knew he would, and even better, he offered up the quaint notion that a "no deal" Brexit would doubtless be temporary and its effects overstated …especially as, to quote the words he seems to have forgotten, the moment he wrote them, "it is only five minutes ago that the May government even began such a preparation …" for a no deal.
Not a clue, what a mess, what a cosmic fuck-up, and as usual, the Murdochians have played a role in it …
And so on and so endlessly forth, and down under the bromancer squeaks in unison as he runs up the mooring rope to join the good ship the SS Britanic …and now they all inherit the wind and the iceberg ...
And after all that, the pond knew it needed a distraction, a way to return home to its nation state and how better to do that than with a papal pleasure, with more Popery always to be found here …
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Foreign Editor of the Australian;
“However, having formally triggered its departure, it’s not clear that Britain could actually stay in the EU.”
Just one quick google search finds that;
“There is nothing in Article 50 formally to prevent a Member State from reversing its decision to withdraw in the course of the withdrawal negotiations.”
(The advice came from Sir David Edward KCMG, QC, PC, FRSE, a former Judge of the Court of Justice of the European Union and Professor Emeritus at the School of Law, University of Edinburgh; and Professor Derrick Wyatt QC, Emeritus Professor of Law, Oxford University, and also of Brick Court Chambers.)
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/brexit-how-does-article-50-work-2016-7?r=UK&IR=T
Even the simplest fact checking is beyond the capability of a hack such as Sheridan. Only in Murdoch’s sheltered workshop would he and fellow reptiles be in paid employment.
DiddyWrote
I'm not at all sure that the Bromancer and his ilk even grasp what the concept of "fact checking" actually is. I reckon they think it's just searching Trump's or Huckabee Sanders' tweets to see if they've already delivered all the "facts" of any case.
DeleteTalking about understanding of "fact checking" I came across a beutiful example over on Vox ( https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/15/18096899/trump-midterms-arizona-american-greatness )
DeleteIt contains a longiish quote from something calling itself "American Greatness" and it contains a gem (just a couple of lines apart) saying:
1. "Trump won the Electoral College while losing the popular vote by over two percent of the vote, something that had not been done in nearly 150 years."
2. "... the Democrats nominate someone as unacceptable to moderate voters as Hillary Clinton."
Just as well that there were all those immoderate voters to go for Hillary, and just enough moderate voters to elect Trump.
Hmmm. I wonder if 'American Greatness' has a staff exchange agreement with the Murdoch press. That's definitely something that would be at home with Fox or the reptiles (especially Peta)..
" let's not quibble about creek v stream"
ReplyDeleteOf course not DP, because there can be a stream in a creek. And even a discarded paddle, too.
But now, Henry: "Slaves, workers, immigrants, Jews, blacks, indigenous people, women -- all of them have moved ... into the nation's expanding circle of belonging."
But apart from coming last among unequals, surely women have "belonged" to the nation - or at least to the men in it - since time immemorial ? And still do. Since, after all:
"[women are] difficult and uppity, and best kept in the kitchen, as they so famously and properly were back in 1882 …" (Ernest Renan notwithstanding).