As if the reptiles could lure the pond away from nattering "Ned" with talk of the power of white supremacy and the joys and wonders of the Anglosphere!
Try selling history to today's vulgar youff. Try selling them the language of Shakspere ...
Try selling history to today's vulgar youff. Try selling them the language of Shakspere ...
Nay, or neigh if you will, what the pond wanted was a good dose of doubters, doomsters and gloomsters, and how better to get it than through a luscious serve of gloomy "Ned"?
Um, actually a little credit where credit is due, please. Let us not forget the role of the Chairman and his minions …and if we're speaking of the Queen, it was the Sun wot done it …
Fair dinkum, the pond could have sampled dozens more headlines put out by the dirty digger's mob, and yet here's our nattering "Ned" sobbing into his teacup about the state of things (let's hope he spiced it with a dash of gin and bitters).
But it's what the pond ordered. As it's "Ned", there's going to be endless sighing and many mock turtle tears, and so the pond must get on with it ...
Oh fucketty wildly deluded fuck, all this talk of Churchill is so tiresome and abundantly silly, when in reality the pond has an explanation which is much more to the point. It's all been devised by the dirty digger to make the English feel as good about themselves as Americans currently do (fuck the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh, who cares about them?)
It's all made clear in these celebrations of the joys and wonders of the Anglosphere …
It's all made clear in these celebrations of the joys and wonders of the Anglosphere …
Sure Putin's given the credit in that last cartoon, but fair dibs for the dirty digger.
Will any of this dawn on nattering "Ned" as he dons sackcloth and ashes and wrings his hands, and sheds tears and laments to the silent lord of the clouds? Not bloody likely …
Our "Ned's" more likely to keep wittering on about Churchill, apparently disinclined to remember that the moment the war was over, only a couple of months after the guns fell silent, the restless mob kicked Churchill out and gave the gig to Clement Attlee … (Greg Hunters go here).
Will any of this dawn on nattering "Ned" as he dons sackcloth and ashes and wrings his hands, and sheds tears and laments to the silent lord of the clouds? Not bloody likely …
Our "Ned's" more likely to keep wittering on about Churchill, apparently disinclined to remember that the moment the war was over, only a couple of months after the guns fell silent, the restless mob kicked Churchill out and gave the gig to Clement Attlee … (Greg Hunters go here).
Ah, such gloom. How the pond quenches its thirst on nattering "Ned's" tears. As for the waving of the magic wand?
But see how Boris keeps US cartoonists happy, in direct proportion to "Ned's" wailing ...
Actually, since "Ned" decided to use inverted commas and make it a quote, the pond should point out that even the Geelong Advertiser managed to get it right. Please, "Ned", not the exact and proper wording …
The pond thinks it might even be better if spelled "they call him Briton Trump", but no mind, American cartoonists are celebrating the special relationship and the new man at the helm of the dirty digger's beehive …
But wait, "Ned" is still only warming up, and is determined to get even gloomier ...
Why on earth is "Ned" worried about the Donald's military abilities? Why, he said he could wipe out 10 million people in 10 days, and take Afghanistan off all the world's maps …
That's terribly heartening, and as Morning Joe reminds the world at least once a day, in his early briefings, the Donald kept asking the military a compelling question about having and using nukes, one he repeated on air:
Why indeed? And now the world has another swamp monster that scrambled out of the primordial slime, with a simple desire to be king of the world …(top of the world ma, top of the world).
And so the prospects for galactic co-operation are vast ...
(More Graudian cartoons here, showing that British cartoonists love the Boris as much as the Americans).
And so to a final gobbet from nattering "Ned" and the astonishing claim that English exceptionalism, and an English quest for sovereignty and cultural assertion is ….legitimate.
Well, the pond did note that the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh and all the riff raff that have migrated to the country, can either (a) get fucked, or (b) fuck off where they came from ...
Well, the pond did note that the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh and all the riff raff that have migrated to the country, can either (a) get fucked, or (b) fuck off where they came from ...
Well good luck with all that, but here's the crucial distinction. America is at the moment a very bad reality TV show, while England is a very bad sitcom of the Little Britain kind …
Narrator: Britain, Britain, Britain. We've had running water for over ten years, we have a tunnel connecting us to Peru, and we invented the cat.
Or maybe there's a more general question to ask, as A. A. Gill once did:
Is it a particularly British trait to so utterly adore truly appalling men, from Tony Hancock through to Steptoe and Alf Garnett, Captain Mainwaring, Rigsby, Del Boy, Victor Meldrew and on to David Brent from The Office? The most deeply adored characters are all simply vile.
Thanks to the partner scoring a copy of The Monthly, the pond was able to read Malcolm Knox's Hellraiser How Israel Folau lit a fire under the culture wars.
Knox did his best to lather himself up into a culture war frenzy, talking of social media lighting up, hate speech, lurking divisions, the Devine warning of coercion and bloodshed, David Marr, angry Sydney Anglicans of the homophobic Archbishop kind (sack the teachers, sack the kids!), and Rorschach tests for culture warriors, and so on and so forth, until he eventually gave up and concluded:
By mid-winter, a Folau-fatigue had set in (though any Folau stories continued to draw big numbers on media websites).
Well the pond is beyond fatigued, and no longer draws big numbers, but if our Gracie has maintained the rage, why dammit, so will the pond ...
Say what?
Keep the workplace an idiot-free zone? But with the lizard Oz, that's completely impossible, and besides it's against the mission statement of maximum idiocy, maximum climate science denialism, and maximum celebration of the Anglosphere ...
Keep the workplace an idiot-free zone? But with the lizard Oz, that's completely impossible, and besides it's against the mission statement of maximum idiocy, maximum climate science denialism, and maximum celebration of the Anglosphere ...
Does anyone at the lizard Oz remember anything?
How to win Twitter featuring assorted loons, and the bald one himself? Why yes, the pond was rolling on the floor, laughing, but back to our Gracie ...
Now the pond has to say that our Gracie is right out of bounds here. There will be a culture war, there must be a culture war. As the Devine has said, there will be bloodshed …
The logical conclusion of this trajectory is a radical reordering of our society and institutions which only could be achieved by coercion and bloodshed. (See the Cristero War in Mexico in the 1920s, as immortalised in the Graham Greene novel The Power and The Glory and the Peter O’Toole movie For Greater Glory, for one historical example which ought to give pause to Christophobes among us.)
Indeed, indeed, and Knox promised deep forces rumbling on, which will "be with us long after one footballer's name has faded from memory."
And what's our Gracie offer? Jibber jabber about terms of employment!
Sheesh, what a killjoy. The pond has, of this date, forthwith, without delay or hesitation, determined that our Gracie must be cast out of the league of reptiles, banished into the wilderness, or perhaps sent to hellfire, to dwell there amongst the wicked …and learn that scribbling for the reptiles isn't about industrial relations, it's about fucking the planet, stuffing Britain and the United States, and perhaps wiping Afghanistan off the map, while dancing in the streets, celebrating the wonders of the Anglosphere, and waiting for the rapture to arrive! Please, more speaking in tongues of the biblical kind, less speaking like lawyers ...
The pond can offer no consolation to our Gracie's long suffering readers, but can at least offer a note from the infallible Pope, though there's no point linking to him now he's hidden behind a paywall …
Our steady Neddy: "Nations that have long admired Britain's profound stability, resilience, maturity and national judgement are shocked at the internal unravelling triggered by Brexit."
ReplyDeleteOk, Ned, I'll be bunny: name even one single nation that has "admired" Britain for quite a few decades by now. Not even good old Aussieland "admires" Britain and hasn't for many a long day. "Stability" ? Yeah, that was ended by Thatcher. "Resilience" ? A nation that has basically lost its manufacturing and automotive industry ? Why, even that once upon a time emblem of Britain, Rolls Royce motor cars, belongs to Germany now and there is no aeronautics industry left and the financial services industry will also go without the EU. "Maturity and national judgement" ? Oh sure, as exemplified by Tony Blair and his successors - and now, after Brown, Cameron and May, finally BloJo ?
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DeleteLiterally unbelievable isn't it. The type of tosh served up in the era of short back and sides.
DeleteMy headmaster at primary school liked to quote Vitai Lampada (it amuses me to wonder what have made of the Newbolt's domestic arrangements). Nonsense substituted for any real understanding of history.
Here we are in 2019 and the received wisdoms are different but just as detached from the facts. It seems people are just as willing to accept a simple falsehood rather than deal with a complex reality. It doesn't really take much reading to see how clueless the conservatives are in Australia or the UK, but there you have it - stability, resilience, maturity and national judgement!
"amuses me to wonder what [he would have] made of the Newbolt's domestic arrangements" I cannot construct a coherent sentence to save my life.
DeleteNow don't be like that, Bef: "short back and sides" is still my chosen coiffure on the two or maybe three times a year I need to be barbered. But it is an appallingly childish and stupid verse (not to dignify it by calling it a poem), isn't it.
DeleteAs to British 'domestic arrangements', well, as was said about a certain gentleman named Oscar Wilde: "I don't care what they do as long as they don't do it in public and frighten the horses."
But then, all things considered, was Vitai Lampada really any worse than that towering pile of steaming crap titled 'The Road to Mandalay' ?
Mine is short on the top as well!
DeleteMy point is that dear old Mr Smith would have thought that a pillar of society like Sir Henry would conform to social norms in every way, but the truth was more complex as it often is.
Well there ya go, I thought that public virtue and private vice was the accepted way: hence, do whatever you want so long as you don't show it in public.
DeleteSo pleasing to read your pieces on the rat race from Murdocracy.
ReplyDelete