Just a little, short, light relief in troubled times for parochial Sydney-siders...

 

 

A little light relief in these grim times for parochial Sydney-siders...

The pond couldn't but help noticing this in Crikey the other day ...

 

 

 

Is there a bigger fuckwit than James Morrow? Is there a better reason than him for the pond not to bother with the Terror anymore? 

The pond can't think of one ... even the Bolter isn't as big a mindless dipstick, panderer and arse licker ... and so nakedly stupid and obvious to boot. If he's their resident head kicker, then the Terror is in deep troouble ...

Still, the pond had to check, and went to the mother lode ... and found this ...

 

 

 

 

Grainy black and white photos, and a huge fashion crime with those glasses, but in those days everybody was doing it, and the pond appreciated a few of the comments left on the page about subscribing to the Terror ...

 

 

 

 

Of course the pond also appreciated that comment about public transport being favoured by Commies and terrorists, because it chimed in with current events in rain-sodden, thoroughly saturated and completely over it Sydney ...

 

 

 

 

Yes, DumDom blinked, and SloMo thought he was on an election winner, and think what it means when news.com.au runs a union line ...

 

 

 

Meanwhile, DumDom and his troops heaped on the comedy, as per the Graudian here ...

 

That reads like an episode of Yes, Minister, though the writers probably thought it might stretch credibility with the audience if they showed Jim Hacker nodding off to sleep in the middle of a bit of union bashing gone awry ...

And now, sticking with the Graudian for a moment, and back on that other matter, and this morning's reading, which always includes John Crace ... and it was clear that just when UK needed a Churchill, it had ended up with a mouse, as Keir Starmer and others demanded stronger action:

...It was clear that Russia had invaded Ukraine so what was stopping the UK government from imposing tougher sanctions now? Sequencing sanctions was all very well but surely the baseline response should have been to exclude Russia from financial mechanisms like Swift and to ban trading in Russian sovereign debt?
Labour’s Ben Bradshaw observed that the three individuals who had been sanctioned had all been put on a US sanctions list four years ago. So they were all old lags at this kind of thing and the new penalties imposed on them wouldn’t make the slightest difference. Surely there must be some others among the dozens of oligarchs close to Putin who were worthy of some kind of sanction?
Johnson hummed and hawed. He was fairly sure Roman Abramovich had been sanctioned. If only. As it turns out – Abramovich has never been sanctioned. Pity, as the thought of Chelsea being stripped of its assets and relegated to League Two could unite the entire country. All but 45,000 of it. And they don’t count. Besides, you had to remember that if you used up your sanctions all at once then you might not have any left for later. Then again, if you didn’t – as countless other MPs pointed out – you merely encouraged Putin to go for broke.
Caroline Lucas and Labour’s Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi cut to the chase. Was the prime minister sure that weak sanctions had nothing to do with Russian Tory party donors, oligarchs playing tennis with Tory ministers, appointing Russians to the House of Lords or Russian interference in UK elections? Absolutely not, the Suspect insisted. Perish the thought. One mustn’t get carried away by Russophobia. He only played tennis with the very nicest and very richest Russians. As you do. With that Johnson scarpered for the exit, wondering how he had managed to let himself be outflanked by the entire Commons.

And as for the essential Marina Hyde …

...My sole area of expertise – and it’s not even that, if we’re honest – is “the type of people who become newspaper columnists”. So take it from one who knows: Boris Johnson looks like he knows enough about the entire Russia-Ukraine subject to write two newspaper columns on it. Three, tops, if you count a rehash of his referendum campaign speech when he blamed the EU for Putin being forced to invade Ukraine last time round. I see Johnson has this morning “unveiled” some sanctions on five Russian banks and a grand total of three high net worth individuals. If Putin makes further incursions, he can expect a fixed penalty notice (overturned on appeal).
But back to last night in Moscow and Putin himself – the only megarich Russian who doesn’t get their cosmetic surgery done in London. His face is now so impassive that it must have had an entire Real Housewives franchise worth of work. To watch his Lebensraum speech was to be given the shivers, but also to be struck by the grotesque self-pity of it all. Why are strongmen like this? The age has been awash with such politicians, from Trump to Kim to Bolsonaro, with their endless, aggressively maudlin demands for respect. Putin feels like the world-war version of every guy you’ve ever trodden on eggshells around because “his bark’s worse than his bite” or “that way he’ll calm down quicker”, only to discover one day that it isn’t and he won’t. Further along the human centipede, these sentimental hardmen are assisted by media Haw Haws like Fox News’s Tucker Carlson or GB News’s Nigel Farage – guys with such an overwhelming yen for the respect they feel they themselves were denied at some key point in their lives that their deepest human empathy is reserved for a foreign authoritarian also not getting his due.

And so on and on, and no truer words scribbled ...

And now to end this light distraction with an interesting question, which perhaps might be updated to Vlad the impaler ...