In which the pond insists on cramming three reptiles into a good old-fashioned Tamworth port ...

 

 

To think, just a week ago, the pond embarked on an unseemly, wretched festival of reptiles, as if there was something to celebrate in the reading of reptiles. Why, a festival of endless Tarkovsky films would have had more appeal.

Well this weekend, there'll be none of that nonsense. Each day a flock of reptiles will be packed in a suitcase (or as we say in the north west, a port) and shipped out, and heaven help any stray unfortunate who stumbles across the bulging monstrosity, and attempts to unlock it and read the contemptible contents.

Familiarity breeds contempt they say, and one guaranteed product of reptile scribbling is a flurry of contempt, and that's why the pond starts this Humpty Dumpty unfestival day with the dog botherer ...

 

It is of course a risible, paranoid header, but it does give a fair indication of what is to follow. There will be mentions of woke and virtue signalling, and beneath it all, the familiar bout of climate science denialism, though with coal no longer so woke in the world of the dog botherer, the new woke will have to be gas ...

Read it all before? Of course you have, but the art of moronic repetition is the one skill that the dog botherer has mastered ...

 

Ah, the danger within ... the pond hasn't heard that sort of hysterical rhetoric since the good old days of Uncle Joe, and red-baiting Joe ...

 

Of course these days it's the woke, virtue-signalling menace, which is vastly different to being menaced by an orange-headed fake-tanned gibbering twittering loon ... but on the upside, we no longer have to worry about generations of debt, now we have new reasons for paranoia ...

Perhaps the dog botherer could just eat a little more 'roo himself? Why didn't he do something useful and publish a 'roo recipe? The pond is partial to a 'roo stir fry, but it seems that the main meal the dog botherer wants to serve up is hysteria ... 

Strange then, that he didn't mention the poor old ugg boot patent matter - the United States is as skilled in such intellectual property matters as China - but never mind, on we go with the paranoia ... and sure enough, suddenly, instead of 'roo, we'll be doing the climate science denialist strut with a mourning for coal and a yearning for gas ...

This is the trouble of course. The reptiles do much navel-gazing and fluff-gathering, and contort themselves so that they can look up each other's sphincter, and so we have the dog botherer reading Dame Slap interviewing David Murray and finding the result illuminating, which is to say self-confirming, self-affirming, and self-righteous ...

 

Of all the words the dog botherer could use to illuminate his mad uncle down from the attic routine, surely "and her ilk" is the best ...

The Old English pronoun ilca is the predecessor of the modern noun ilk, but by way of a pronoun ilk that does not exist in most dialects of modern English. That ilk is synonymous with same, and persists in Scots where it's used in the phrase of that ilk,meaning "of the same place, territorial designation, or name." It is used chiefly in reference to the names of land-owning families and their eponymous estates, as in "the Guthries of that ilk," which means "the Guthries of Guthrie." Centuries ago a misunderstanding arose concerning the Scots phrase: it was interpreted as meaning "of that kind or sort," a usage that found its way into modern English. Ilk has been established in English with its current meaning and part of speech since the late 18th century. (Thanks Merriam-Webster).

Why stray off with the Guthries? 

Well the pond is so tired of talk of virtue signalling, and woke and all that cultural warfare bullshit, when a simple, old-fashioned, honest decent bout of climate science denialism is no longer available to the dog botherer, and he must resort to dog whistle words of that ilk ... but at least we've reached the end of the journey ...

Oh just fuck off with the climate science denialism, and take the AWU with you, and by the way, your refusal to embrace the war with China will be noted down, and used in further reptile proceedings ...

And so to a different front, this one opened up by Dame Slap ...

Tony Bleagh? Well the pond knew where this was going too, right from the get go. There'd be some tranny bashing, some Rowling worship, some culture wars stuff, and not a mention of why Tony Bleagh is such a contemptible, odious, failed and irrelevant wretch, routinely screeching away in search of relevance ...

And as Dame Slap won't mention it, let the pond begin by noting a few items, not least ...

 

Oh yes indeed, he makes poor old David Cameron look like a bumbling amateur lobbyist ...

By the way that quote came from a 2015 piece entitled Blair's eight years as Middle East peace envoy wasted?

Yes, they really did have a question mark at the end of the header, though current events surely make that question mark a really silly thing.

Back in 2015, Robert Fisk was more to the point with Blundering Tony Blair quits as Middle Pace envoy - only Israel will miss him ...

And now, as the middle east erupts, and the pond hasn't even noted the blunderer blundering into the Iraq war, and monumentally fucking up a country, what sort of shit do we get as a distraction?

 

Seeringly precise? Scorching? What a foolish fuckwitted fop ... and only someone as sublimely culture wars stupid as Dame Slap could swallow the bait ... but now, the pond mentioned that there'd likely be some tranny bashing, and Rowling worship, and here we go ...

Great literature? Here the pond should confess that long ago, long before Rowling turned tranny basher, the pond had a go at reading Rowling, and decided, in the manner of most airport literature, that she was unreadable. Infatuated young people around the pond urged the pond on, and the pond had a go, and even watched a few of the movies, but in the end, stumbled and came to a dead halt.

Successful yes, wildly so, but unreadable. Whenever the pond returns to the books circulating in its youth, it's reminded of similar phenomenons. Frank Richards turned out reams of words about Billy Bunter et al, and yet while he was remarkably successful at selling his product, and much as the pond loved him and his cast, only a devotee could wade through his words these days. 

Boys could never get enough of Captain W. E. Johns, and Spitties and all that stuff, and yet he's a terribly stilted writer.  Richmal Crompton's Just William books for a time held the pond, after a teacher, who fancied himself in musicals and G and S, did a reading, and yet ...  and as for girlie books, don't get the pond started on the mawkish My Friend Flicka ...

And to take a step up, the pond still loves the idea of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, and Toad of Toad Hall and poop-poop and all that, and yet as a stylist, Grahame veered between the execrable, the ponderous and the supremely British class conscious conservative ...

All of which is by way of predicting that at some time in the future people will put down their Rowlings and wonder what the fuck it was that charmed them ... because it sure ain't the way with words ...

Never mind, on we go ...

 

Yes, yes, the pond was expecting the usual bout of tranny bashing ... because that's what you turn to when wanting to make sure that "Tony Blair" and "middle east peace envoy" don't get used in the same sentence right now ... and right now is where our Dame Slap really nukes the fridge for the pond by scribbling about J. K. Rowling's "beautifully crafted words." No, they aren't, she churned them out, much as the pond was once made to do with milk in the butter churn, and as airport scribbles are wont to do, with a certain facility and flair, and the cash generated in turn generating a certain level of justification (if Coke sells, it must be good, rather than just a bunch of sugar bubbles) ...

 

Did anyone notice how Dame Slap jumped the Rowling shark? Rowling, Shriver, and then suddenly we're conflating and confusing them with Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dickens and Nabokov, and all so we won't mention "Tony Bleagh" and "Middle East peace envoy" in the same sentence, but instead must endure Bleagh blathering on about wokeness and political correctness ...

Meanwhile, if you happen to be a civilian in the middle east right now, keeping your head down is about the only strategy available to you ...

 

What a contemptible man. And naturally he's celebrated by the contemptible chairman of the IPA ...

And so to the inevitable concluding pond challenge. 

As a result of stuffing all the reptiles into portmanteau (that's why we speak of ports in Tamworth, and not a place for ships), there's always a bit of cramming, and one last Herculean feat required, and that's to make it all the way through a nattering "Ned" ...

My, my, that's an impressive photo ...with a credit to Gary Ramage

Did anyone else read The Weekly Beast news?

The last of the News Corp Australia staff photographers – who once numbered over 100 when print was king – are on their way out.
Sources say around eight newspaper photographers who work for the Geelong Advertiser, the NT News, the Hobart Mercury and regional Queensland mastheads the Townsville Bulletin, the Gold Coast Bulletin and the Cairns Post were called in to meetings with management this week and told their positions were being made redundant. They will be replaced by freelancers but they can buy their staff photography equipment at discounted prices and come back to work as outsourced labour.
The company has been moving towards a freelance model for photography for several years and last June let go its multiple Walkley-award winning chief photographer Gary Ramage. Ramage was the company’s only remaining staff photographer in Canberra after the departure of veteran photographer Ray Strange. In November, News Corp lost 16 photography positions as part of a round of 25 job cuts.
The move follows the merger of dozens of Rupert Murdoch’s regional newspapers with the state mastheads in the past 12 months. “This completes our rollout of the freelance model for our photography and the way it’s commissioned,” a News Corp spokesperson said.

Selling back the gear at discounted prices? How generous can you get?

Ubering right along with the Deliveroo model, how long before there's a freelance model for nattering "Ned"?

 

 

The pond should probably cut to the chase, because it's going to be a long bout of nattering from "Ned", and yet at heart it will all be about reconciling decades of blather with this ...

The pond doesn't purport to be an expert - it found that graph and much accompanying blather here - and now we must admire how "Ned" weaves a silk purse from a sow in debt up to its ears ... and it'll be a long-winded and tedious business ...

 

A unique experiment? Well that's one word for it, though Keynes and FDR and Joe Biden might have others ...

 

Yes, never mind where Josh and SloMo are heading, focus on Labor. It's the good old Dame Slap/Tony Bleagh/don't mention the Middle East strategy, and it means that "Ned" can spend a lot of time nattering about Labor and not so much about debt, deficit and graphs, though eventually he has to go there ...

 

Indeed, indeed, if we're going to match the GOP and really run up a stupendous deficit, we need those tax cuts ... and yet right at that moment, some bird dropped a worm in the ear of worrywart "Ned", and so the hang wringing and the Chicken Little clucking and circling began ... and yet strangely, the emphasis isn't on those ordaining the tax cuts, but on the Labor party, even though poor old Albo doesn't happen to be in government ...

 

See how easy, see how effortless it is, to turn on a dime? All those years whining about Swannie and the $52 billion stimulus and all that jazz, and now it's the essence of philosophical change ...

Naturally the embittered former chairman was on the case with a graph ...

Water off a duck's back to "Ned", blathering away about "strong economic logic" ...

 

Ah yes, audacious and easy... and all is forgiven and forgotten, much like talk of "Tony Bleagh ... Middle East peace envoy" can be erased,  by "Ned",  Dame Slap and the dog botherer, and others of that ilk ...

Poor old worrywart, he couldn't resist one last worry, as if he hadn't already erased the past enough, and yet the pond is ready for the rollercoaster that the immortal Rowe has offered up for a ride, with more rides here ...