In which the pond walks a crooked mile with nattering "Ned", Dame Slap and the bromancer ...

 

If the pond might offer its tuppence worth - thruppence if you insist, but never so low as a ha’penny or a brass farthing - the news that Boris is taking the country back to the nineteen century hasn’t come a moment too soon …

How else could vulgar youff understand the meaning in this, and Scrooge’s incredible generosity?

"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell 'em to bring it here, that I may give them the directions where to take it. Come back with the man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes, and I'll give you half-a-crown!”.

The pond would have gone a florin, no more, and to compound the problem of vulgar youff attempting to see the difference between a peck and a bushel, they simply wouldn’t understand the splendid advice offered by Micawber:

‘My other piece of advice, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and—and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!’

To make his example the more impressive, Mr. Micawber drank a glass of punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction, and whistled the College Hornpipe.

The pond will whistle the hornpipe with the reptiles anon, but must pause to note sadly that some have seen the recent attempts as a matter of comedy, as with Zoe Williams in the Graudian, in full here:

What we’re witnessing is the hard limit of “dead cat” politics meeting nostalgia. In the Lynton Crosby school, where you explode the national debate with loaded, combustible but ultimately meaningless policy announcements, there’s often an element of longing for the past. “Why can’t we go back to a time when men were men, women knew their place, criminals were locked up for ever and migrants migrated somewhere else? Here are the ideas for people who feel that way.” Schools mustn’t “pander” to transgender people; let’s put gunboats in the Channel and lock up the Royal National Lifeboat Institution; death to the “woke warriors” of the National Trust, etc. These announcements are known as “red meat”, which isn’t inaccurate, since there usually is an element of spitefulness that only someone accessing their inner hyena would enjoy.

Imperial measures, though; it’s more Spam than red meat, isn’t it? Nobody’s pulse is going to race at the idea of having to do complicated conversions in order to buy the right amount of stuff. It might create a tiny fillip of superiority, the thought of watching a 20-year-old try to figure out what a yard is. Good luck with that when you need help removing your sim card.

This is an ultimately silly notion, whose only redeeming feature is that it’s not of very high consequence, and that puts it squarely in Dad’s Army territory, of faffing, busywork and self-importance. But the only reason people feel affectionate towards this Dad’s Army sensibility is that it is meant to be funny. The “dead cat” school of messaging relies on nobody having any sense of humour. The politics of unkindness simply cannot survive contact with a joke; it melts, like throwing water on a witch. But at least we might finally be reaching the endgame, where they have run out of mean ideas that can’t be laughed at.

But damn it, there are three countries that still stick to the imperial system - the US, Liberia and Myanmar - and under Boris, the UK is rapidly joining Myanmar so there’s a shilling for your trouble, as the pond turns to the reptiles this day …

First up is nattering "Ned", offering the mutton Dutton his marching orders if he wishes to retain the backing of the reptiles - and sadly "Ned's" advise is a shilling short of a ten bob note because it's remarkably brief ...

Dammit, that's easy for "Ned" to scribble, but a makeover is going to be hard, what with the reptiles seeing a bonanza of hate and fear in the matter of climate science and energy prices:

Poor Cathy Wilcox, fancy thinking the reptiles would move towards the light withLuke ...

Sorry, not likely Ms Wilcox, there's always a climate science denying apocalypse pending at reptile HQ, as the pond returns to doing the hard yards with "Ned" ...

Phew, it's going to be a tall order, when the reptile business model relies on natural aggression, dismisses empathy as woke nonsense, and routinely indulges in fear and hate as role models for the mutton Dutton ... 

See how all that smooth and smarmy talk, delivered in the usual pompous, portentous way, turns to a startled horse neighing and rearing as "Ned" shies away from the trap of that talk of consensus politics ...

All the pond can say about that is good luck with that, because Dame Slap is on hand to show how to renovate the Liberal party. Ditch all that blather about being inclusive and indulge in a bit of black bashing.

Yesterday, it was the bromancer, today it's Dame Slap, as crooked a sixpence walking a crooked mile as the pond can imagine, and it seems that the reptiles have found their new pet bête noire ...

There you go, after all "Ned's" blather, what Dame Slap wants is some bashing of difficult, uppity blacks, and if that means bashing those fruitcakes who believe in imaginary friends for fellow travelling with devious heretic secularists bound for eternal hellfire, then it's all good ...

The pond must admit whenever it's confronted by Dame Slap these days, it reverts to the mystery of whether Dame Slap remains chairman (no chairperson here, here no chairperson of the IPA).  

As previously noted by the pond, on one part of the IPA site, she's listed as chairman, but on another there's an entirely different chairman, and yet the reptile listing for her is entirely silent on the matter ...

Not to worry, back to the black bashing ... because a couple of centuries of it is surely not enough for any reptile visiting planet Janet above the faraway tree ...

Meanwhile, in New Zealand ... but isn't it grand to see Dame Slap going toe to toe with the craven Craven. Surely the mutton Dutton is on a winner following Dame Slap's advice, and smoting and smiting all those difficult, uppity blacks and their naive fellow travellers ...

Sure Wilcox might celebrate and dance at the demise of dinosaurs ...

... but anyone can be a beastly boofhead, as Dame Slap routinely proves ...

And there we have it, both the bromancer and Dame Slap stamping hard on overreaching conservatives, and the mutton Dutton can follow, and division will tear the lands apart, and the reptiles will be happy and bask in the glory of their work ... and there'll be no more talk of makeovers or being inclusive or all the rest of "Ned's" trey trying to be a zac advice ...

Speaking of the bromancer, he too was out and about today, but there's little to report. The pond includes it just for the bromancer record ... it's probably only worth tuppence ha'penny ... certainly not a tanner or sixpenny bit ...

The pond will only say one thing about this ... not to do with China, the Pacific, or the whole damn thing, but rather the shock of seeing the reptiles having to print a snap of a new, actual foreign affairs minister. It must have torn at the heart of the bromancer to see it ...

Indeed, indeed, and it will be with some difficulty that we stop them marching forward with their base in Darwin ... a sterling example of how to do dud business in pursuit of a golden guinea or three ...

Meanwhile, back to the startling sight of an aggressive PM pointing his finger, in a way designed to terrify the reptile readership ...

The pond was shocked by this survey of the reptiles, and the way they overlooked crucial advice from the mother country, home of the colonial black bashing dream. 

After all, it seems that Lynton Crosby was mentioned in despatches in relation to weights, measures, coins and such like, and if it's good enough for Lynton, it's good enough for a pond proud of Australian political strategists ...

Let the real makeover begin ...

And so to the infallible Pope for the day ...

The pond doesn't mind that reference to the dancing man, though it only takes the pond back to the end of the second world war, when we really should be returning to Victorian England ...

But which vision will remain supreme? Mr. Potato Head ...

... or the Gravedigger ...

... or can the body politic and the reptiles embrace both, for the humble price of half a crown ...