In which Polonius prattles, and so does "Ned", and it's not much for a Sunday meditation, but it's all there is ...

Anxious thoughts can influence our behaviour, which is helpful at times.

For example, thinking 'I have to keep watching the ABC all the time to see if I can spot some trivial error or an opinion I disagree with' leads to you spotting the odd error, and confirms you in your megalomaniac sense that you're right about everything.

You might even end up thinking the Donald has a splendid track record on masks.

However, if that thought becomes obsessive (recurring), it can influence unhealthy patterns of behaviour that can cause difficulties in daily functioning.

Obsessively thinking 'I must keep watching the ABC to spot something or other' can lead to repeated, obsessive, non-stop watching, way beyond the time limits suggested by your iPad.

It can produce an anal retentiveness and neurotic twitch which might produce alarm when in the company of others. Even worse, it can lead to incessant scribbling about your tedious obsession in the pages of the lizard Oz, while somehow imagining in a delusional way, that there are thousands of like minds interested in your obsession.

For someone with the anxiety disorder known as obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), obsessions or compulsions (acts performed to alleviate the distress or neutralise the thought), or both, are present.

The good news is that some people with OCD have absolutely no shame about their need to carry out these compulsions. This failure to feel any shame, this implacable desire to inflict your tedious obsession on everyone else, can exacerbate the problem. The lack of shame and the lack of secrecy associated with with this form of OCD can lead to a delay in diagnosis and treatment. It can also result in social disability, such as children failing to attend school or adults locked into incessant viewing of, and commenting on, the ABC.

One recommended form of treatment is to watch commercial television and listen to commercial radio. After a year of this, the patient is likely to end up barking mad and howling at the moon, but at least it will be a different ailment to the notoriously difficult to cure, at least amongst reptiles, ABC OCD  …

(The pond thanks Beyond Blue for its understanding of Polonius's difficult mental health situation and the reason he prattles on so, though it might have mangled the analysis a little).

What a relief it is when Polonius can put aside his obsession with the ABC at least for a nanosecond, and turn his thoughts towards other matters …

Speaking of conspiracies, here's an idle thought. The reptiles, and indeed Polonius himself, have been making out like bandits with the palace letters.

Of course, in the manner of Polonius's prattle, shortly to follow, the point has been to celebrate the monarchy, denounce republicanism, heil Kerr, excoriate Whitlam and so on …

But why were the letters ever withheld? Why did it take a High Court case - not launched by the reptiles or their kin - to get the archive to make public material which surely should have been made to conform to the thirty year rule releasing government documents?

The very notion that the Governor-General might be able to pretend that any and all communications with the Queen should be kept private on whim, according to his or palace dictates, is a monstrous thing, a bit like pretending that the Donald's Twitter misspellings aren't a part of the presidency. They are, they're official documents, lovingly gathered and saved for posterity …

Seems clear enough … and yet the reptiles and Polonius never seem to get agitated about this cooking of the books and the correspondence, requiring a High Court action no less …

Instead Polonius prefers to start with his usual stroll down his crooked history lane (perhaps accompanied by a crooked cane and a crooked sixpence), without the faintest acknowledgment of the efforts of those who cleared the letters log jam ...

The scheduled date of 2027? 

In the world the pond knows, the archive usually operates under a thirty year rule, and this was unilaterally changed, on the queen's instructions, to 50 years.

It remains unclear what power the queen had to change and control conditions on access, if the documents belonged to Kerr, as it is claimed, and not the queen. (here)

Well yes, and so the High Court thought too, and good on Hocking for getting the letters released, even if all she's got from the reptiles is abuse, while the reptiles themselves have gorged on the letters she forced into the open ...

Hang on, hang on, Polonius, if the pond may be so bold. If it was an Australian problem, to be resolved in Australia, under the Australian constitution, why were the letters treated somehow as exceptional, something that could be withheld at the whim of a monarch in a foreign land (and anyone doubting it is foreign should, once air travel is resumed, attempt to get through the British gate)?

Of course Polonius has no interest in this, and instead prefers to celebrate the deeds and thoughts of the drunk ...

No conspiracy took place? Well below the pond has offered up the interminable thoughts of nattering "Ned", and as an act of kindness, the pond offers this as a spoiler …

...above all, it was Kerr’s deliberate strategy of acting by stealth and deceiving his prime minister because he believed a frank discussion with Whitlam would lead to his own recall that was ultimately responsible for the dismissal, with all its adverse consequences.

Now call it what you like, but stealth, deceit and acting in consort with others involved in the stealth and the deceit would usually past muster as a conspiracy conducted by conspirators.

But at least the chief conspirator could then spend his declining years drinking himself to death, while the country suffered under the head prefect, until he too had an attack of the guilts, and took to eccentric leftism as the path to redemption … 

So it goes, and so the pond must take a detour with the oscillating fan before getting to "Ned" and the original Troy on the same topic …

Why the fan as a bit of Troy and "Ned" coitus interruptus?

Well, the pond just loves a bit of both-siderism, which incidentally also serves as Donald boosterism, and besides, the reptiles gave the piece an illustration, a lesser one, not by the cult master, but an illustration all the same ...

Already the pond can see readers congratulating themselves for wasting precious minutes of diminishing lives to discover the astonishing insight that Hillary Clinton lost the election, and not only that, it's a fact!

Oh, and in every electorate, apparently there's a candidate known as Mr or Ms Informal … and they have their votes officially recorded, which is just as well, because we wouldn't want to confuse them with the votes for Mr or Ms Donkey …

Never mind, the oscillating fan is on a roll, and it's important when rolling to keep on talking up the Donald's chances … that's the nature of boosterism, done in best both siderism style ...

Yes, yes, keep on talking, and with a bit of luck, the United States will be blessed by an epic result, which will see the pond and cartoonists content for the next four years, celebrating a new era of stability and good governance in the United States …

Of course it's possible to think that the oscillating fan imagines he's around a camp fire telling scary stories that will terrify the liberal kids into staying awake the entire night, unable to check under the sleeping bag for the boogeyman (there's not much of a gap to the ground, and Freddy lurks under the grass) … so let's heighten the tension, crank up the nail-biting to the last minute, let's snatch Trumpian victory from the jaws of defeat, so the liberal nightmare can continue ...

Yes, it's not a prediction, but it's up for grabs and the Donald is in with a chance, and it's true that Kanye's campaign has started off in astonishingly good style ... coherent, organised, resolute, fixed and certain ...

… but what the pond likes even more is the considered "both-siderism" of the oscillating fan, the saucy doubts and fears whispered into the ears of the "anybody but Donald" camp.

The fan is keen to say that he's not making any predictions, knowing the dangers of being caught out down the track. 

But with a bit of luck, and with the continual white-anting, sniping and undermining, it might well be that the Donald gets another turn in the White House. And heck, why not a third term after that, and then with his body stuffed Mao-style, and put in place instead of that dreadful Lincoln statue, his family can keep on ruling, and we will have thousand year era for the Trumpian regime, up there … no, better than, hugely, bigly better ... than the Yamato dynasty, which the google machine assures the pond began around 660 BC …

Oh it's a splendid vision, and what a tragedy if all the best both-siderist visions, and saucy doubts and fears ended with that dreadful scene in the bunker in 1945 …

And now, as it usually does, the pond has gone to great pains to provide a Sunday bonus designed to send all but gluttons of punishment and trapped Melburnians out of the house in search of something to do.

Why, the pond might help produce some of the tidiest, cleanest garbage bins in the land, because why not? Got something better to do?

As noted, and even better for domestic chores, the piece covers the same ground as prattling Polonius, but being a combination of nattering "Ned" and the original Troy, it goes on at interminable, mind-numbing length.

The pond only offers it in the hope that Melburnians realise that they can do something else … weed the garden, whistle while staring vacantly into space, do a crossword puzzle, or in the very worst case scenario, compare what is scribbled below with what Polonius scribbled up above ...

Before it gets going, the pond must pause to wonder why there's no decent accompanying pictures, either for "Ned" and the original Troy, or for Polonius.

Look, there's a smiling Queen and there's an apparently sober Kerr, but surely he's best remembered as a happy drunk, a smiling drunk, a cheerful, joyous drunk …

If they couldn't rustle up an illustration by the cult master, surely they could have featured the Kerr as he's most fondly remembered ...

A clash of towering personalities?

Well that's one way to describe it, but does Malcolm Fraser being tall mean he's towering? Or does the Kerr looming over the jockey mean he's towering? And Gough towered too, but still and all, it's hard to see the drunk as a towering figure, or much of a personality.

Yes, but her Majesty's admirably considered position was that the colonials should not have access to correspondence which the High Court, at least, deemed was the right of colonials to read at the end of the thirty year period …

And why was that? Could it be that the palace did play an informal role? Could the absence of dissent be presumed to be consent? Might the palace have preferences, and preferred courses to be pursued? Might they have been so bold as to express them? Might the palace have taken a view on colonial politics?

The irony in this is that the lizard Oz has been a hot bed of monarchism, and at one time a home to Flinty, aargh me hearties, and the onion muncher, and other Menzies-lovers, loving her for all eternity if they did just but see her passing by …

The best that can be said about American citizen Rupert and his minions and Malware and his mob is that they too got rolled by the cunning little Johnny:

Mr Murdoch's intervention is seen by some No campaigners as counter-productive. One of the No campaign team, Sophie Panopoulos, said the House of Windsor had no power in Australia and added: "Australia's independence is more at threat from the House of Murdoch."

The media tycoon's intervention provoked a furious response from the Australian prime minister, John Howard.

"As an American citizen, Mr Murdoch should understand that this is a matter for Australians to determine," he said. "We don't need Americans coming here to tell us our constitution is no good and that we should throw it out in favour of a republic with the president chosen by politicians." (Graudian here in 1999)

We also probably don't need current lickspittle lackeys of the American Chairman doing their best to explain how right and proper and just and true was the palace's behaviour at the height of the crisis ...

Well no, the pond has done a screen capture, so it's impossible to follow the big brother instruction to 

"watch the video", but that tag "palace secrets finally exposed" is loaded language, which helps explain why the reptiles have had to do a duck imitation, and peddle underwater so furiously …

Well "furtive, secretive palace letters exposed by court order" doesn't sound quite as nice as Queen waves magisterial hand and does a colonial letter drop ...

It's comforting to be able to reduce everything to the guilt of the drunk…

Oh there's the passing guilt of the head prefect for being implacable, and the guilt of Whitlam for being incompetent and full of hubris, and an elected Prime Minister deprived of the right to serve his term by the machinations of the monarchical system …

But let us not have a word against the system itself, and the bizarrely frequent exchanges of letters, and the advice on offer, which would be noted, in any world, except that of the reptiles, as somewhat peculiar conduct, requiring, so it seems, the tag "palace secrets that must be hidden on a royal whim for fifty years" ...

Let's face it. The palace was and remains an astute player of political games. There could be only one winner here. 

Kerr wasn't about to throw himself under a bus - his communications with the palace were of an ingratiating and needy kind. Fraser was barking power mad, and likely to play the game to the bitter end. And Whitlam was the patsy, and the palace probably suspected it … and that patsy game has been played for a long time …

But why the elaborate efforts to the reptiles protect the Queen, the monarchy and hand-washing, and not because we're in a pandemic? The next gobbet suggests a reason …

In the end, the reptiles were happy to go along with the result, as indeed they were happy enough to go along with a wretched republican model that didn't satisfy anyone (except its opponents), and now they remain exceedingly happy that they can let the Queen and the palace and the monarchy off the hook, and just blame it all on the drunk … the convenient scapegoat …

Drunks have always come in handy …

So catch a blast, hapless Falstaff, feel the reptile wrath ...

Well, there's not much point doing a chairman Rupert, and fleeing to America to live in a Republic. And there's not much chance of following the royal spawn and fleeing to North America. And who would take an interest in Prince Chuck, except perhaps Freudians interested in mother fixations, or Prince Andrew, he of the wandering, groping paws?

No, the monarchy is off the hook, somehow Australia must bail out Brexit, but not at the hands of suffering British farmers - better that Australian farmers suffer - and the pond won't see an Australian republic in its lifetime, and so much for all that talk of an Australian solution to Australian issues …

Once a colonial, it seems, always a colonial.

How easy it would be to blame one man, but so many should join in a sharing of the blame ...

And most tragically of all, the man without the ticker ...