In which Polonius does his best Bertie impression ...

Freedom to speak?

But they never shut up, do they, they're always banging on about their freedom to speak being stifled, when they can never shut up about it, can they, a blather here, a rabbiting on there, a bit of navel-gathering fluff over yonder … yet it turns out that for some, the only time they get the real freedom to speak is when they leave the lizard Oz …

Yes, these days the pond mainly keeps up its reptile watch by reading the likes of the Graudian's Weekly Beast and what a Devine read it was this week …

But the pond can't kick its Polonial habit … where's the harm, just one hit a week, a short jab in the arm and then an oneiric, hallucinatory state kicks in …

Speaking of missing, a pointed missing, the pond was traumatised watching that farewell to Barrie Cassidy. Oh they dusted the moths off John Howard and dragged him out of the cupboard, and lined up a lot of others to offer tributes, but where was prattling Polonius?

Silenced and ignored, yet another example of the complete absence of right wing commentators on the ABC …yet Polonius delivered years of faithful service, harping and whining and moaning, going up against that fiendish David Marr in a jolly comedy routine, somehow thereby providing a splendid example of the intolerable abundance of right wing commentators on the ABC …

Ah, the best and the brightest, how the pond misses them, the bloated ones full of wind and speech …

Yes, where was Akker Dakker with his encomium …

But enough, it's just a once a week outing, so it's on with the pond's Polonial pleasure …

Now the pond takes Polonius's polonial point, but surely "do absolutely sweet bugger all" is an even better maxim, except perhaps make sure the fat cats get richer, while the talk of a budget surplus drifts into the sweet by and by …

But as ever, the pond was alert to the Delphic Oracle's casting of the runes …and the hidden meanings that were coming directly from the News Corp hive mind ...

Was Polonius suggesting that, in due course, all the current mob, and perhaps even Polonius himself, would develop a case of the Malcolm Fraser guilts and turn rampant leftie in their old age?

Do a John Hewson, so to speak, and discover within their crusted, rusted, warped, twisted and deviant old bodies, that there was a person aching to emerge and cry out …"I am not an animal, nor a even a lizard, but a human bean" or perhaps, "the lizard people and the hive mind had me in their weird embrace for decades, but now I'm free at last to speak?"

Phew, it shows how deluded the pond can get when away from the reptile coal face … but not our Lloydie …

Still Johnny one note, our Gra Gra of the environment, but wait, Polonius is remains hidden behind the arras, and he has more to say about the importance of doing sweet fuck all …

Oh how brave of Polonius to mention The Insiders. How sad they ignored him for the farewell show. An errant tear trickled down the pond's cheek.

It's surely understandable that the brave lad should hop into his time machine and drift back to May 19th, when that last show on June 9th committed such a monumental crime against the good Polonial self …

But hang on a mo, did the pond just detect in Polonius a little tic of the Donald kind?

...returning the budget to surplus (if possible) …

Why that bracket has all the signs of a quality Donald tweet, perhaps an epic Whale about the impossibility of a surplus …

How the pond yearned for a Colbert reading …what a meal he'd make of that aside, if possible … oh if only it were possible to get him to take an interest in Polonius ...

But if doing absolutely sweet fuck all is the new policy setting, if possible, oh if only doing absolutely nothing was possible, if possible, what will the reptiles get to yammer about, given that nothing seems to matter much, and we can all slouch around like alienated teenagers, slouched in front of a screen, when anything awkward can be shoved into parentheses, if possible?

Well the rag answered that one. When completely bereft of policies and pointlessly drifting in the meaningless policy sea, bring in a Bjorn and remember to berate the greenies …

  

Nota bene how the dog botherer has actually become disembodied, and has entered into the ethereal world of becoming a company …

The pond realises that the law insists, in its peculiar way, that a company is a person, but surely the notion that News Corp is some sort of monolithic entity, like that bloody great slab in the Kubrick film, is the very last point at which the hive mind takes over …

Still the pond felt justified in talking of the hive mind, when the dog botherer himself is in the grip of the News Company hive mind, with the company now a certified teacher …

So many mindless distractions, so many chances to do nothing (if possible), but as is the tradition, a final gobbet of Polonius … and as always, a history lesson ...

Say what? P.G. Wodehouse is to be the new reference? Our Polonius fancies himself as a new Bertie? (well, that's possible).

It seems we must abandon all coherent planning and policy initiatives, and perhaps just speak in tongues occasionally to divine what must be done, and Wodehouse is the way to go ...

Well, as Polonius hinted, that didn't work out so well …

  

Oh the pond just had to do a bit of history, sorting out those who prefer five year plans and those silly enough to talk on the radio about being a prisoner of the thousand year Reich …

There's more at the NY Times, here, and at The Gradian here, but what fun if Polonius now sees Jeeves and Wooster as the best way forward, and perhaps a guide to future policy making and the fine art of just governing …

And as the Poms have been mentioned, that eminds the pond that, as well as the Donald speaking with Whales,  there is much comedy to be had from the news of Boris slouching towards Brexit …

This bit of scribbling entranced the pond during the week, from the Graudian here …

While Brexit is still the driving force in British politics, it is no longer a living programme for government. The Tories are trapped between pressure to complete it at any cost – a force applied with wrecking relish by Nigel Farage – and some residual understanding that to do it on Farage’s terms would be a surrender to madness. It is the same old Ukip agenda that has harried the Tories for years. Half of the leadership candidates are following it like Norman Bates, bullied by his mother in Hitchcock’s Psycho. They say it is an irresistible force, but it is a kind of sinister, internal derangement. The Brexit they crave, one that unites party and nation without ruin or rancour, is already dead. 
That might not stop the next prime minister inflicting something called Brexit on the country, but it is getting harder. There is only so long that a government can parade a corpse and ask the public to admire it. Tories can dress it up in different costumes, stick a Boris-style wig on it, spray it with perfume, but the idea itself has started to putrefy. Its complexion has turned sallow.

The pond once watched Psycho, through clutched fingers and from the safety of the pond's mother's lap (such comfort to hide the face in a skirt)… what they imagined they were doing, dragging a child to a screening of the show is still something of a mystery.

But now the pond realises it was actually good preparation for the current reality. Do nothing or you'll end up in the swamp of actually doing something, do nothing and end up quoting an absolute twit of a novelist, whose chief skill was to invoke British twits, do nothing, and you too might end up with a prattling Polonius, a Boris, the Donald, a speaker in tongues, or even a prince of Whales …

Is it any wonder the pond gave the daily game away, especially now that the infallible Pope has been imprisoned behind a paywall and the immortal Rowe only turns up intermittently here … 

Still, beggars can't be choosers, and surely Polonius will accept this as a fine example of the benefits of astute forward planning and decisive policy-making …almost distilled essence of Polonius channeling Bertie ...