Sssh, don't mention the coup, anything but the attempted coup, as the bromancer, the dog botherer and nattering "Ned" don the News Corp blinkers ...

 

Where is the domestic reptile bold and brave and saucy enough to scribble a piece about the coup attempted by the mango Mussolini and his tribe?

Sorry, nary a reptile in sight, all cowardly custards, all suave Macavity mystery cats doing their very best to disappear the Donald ... and Faux Noise ... and all that ...

There was a mention yesterday, with discreet use of inverted commas ...

Yes, those inverted commas came it handy, but the report was borrowed from AFP. 

Where is the gallant reptile knight ready to defend the plotters? Working for an American company, as they do, you'd think that the reptiles would have a keen interest, but no, they all fudged it ...

How did the bromancer occupy his time? That confidence vote feels like an eternity ago, yet suddenly the bromancer had a keen interest in Boris ...

As a correspondent has noted, why would anyone read the bromancer when they had a chance to read Marina Hyde dishing it out to Boris ... Ministers want Britain to be more like Netflix: debt-ridden and fast losing fans ...

She's so acerbic the pond can feel the fizzing as the fake clown wilts ...

I wonder which of Thursday’s developments will turn out to be more significant – Boris Johnson’s honkingly incoherent speech in Blackpool, or the same day’s news that Palantir is on track to become the underlying operating system for the entire NHS. This globally controversial black box of a company is already heavily embedded in the security, defence and intelligence sectors, as well as in mass surveillance and predictive policing. A number of sources confirm to the Financial Times that it’s now frontrunner to end up as the sole private firm the NHS would rely on for vital functions. “Once Palantir is in,” warned one person familiar with its expansion plans, “how are you going to remove them?” Anyway, prime minister: you were burbling something about tariffs on bananas … ?

“Sometimes the best way that government can help is simply to get out of the way,” gibbered Johnson yesterday, having absolutely refused to get out of the way when 41% of his own MPs asked him to do so earlier this week. “To do less or better, or simply not at all.” Admittedly, no one could question the PM’s commitment to doing nothing much at all, given how strikingly little he has achieved thus far, and how alarmingly nonexistent his ideas for tackling various crises seem to be. Despite his best efforts to look busy – now more than ever – Johnson hasn’t been. Yet the country has rolled on, after a fashion. One inference is that real power has increasingly migrated away from No 10 Downing Street. Maybe they should have a leaving do for it.

The link is there, and all those who continue on with the bromancer must accept that they are masochists ...

Oh heck, it's hard to resist another gobbet of someone with genuine hide ...

Away from the situation room where they make decisions about bananas, the government spends vast sums of money, but often ineffectively and frequently scandalously, from Covid cronyism to the effective write-off of furlough fraud. Multibillion contracts are quietly awarded, and influence is surreptitiously acquired. Newspaper proprietors such as Rupert Murdoch want working from home to end because it hits their circulation – so Johnson punts that “policy” about for a bit. Then there’ll be a speech about some other thing, which itself will become a casualty of a lost byelection or simply a lost train of thought.

The prime minister resembles little more than a sort of deranged front-of-house figure – radiating the mad bonhomie of a restaurant maitre d’ assuring diners that the kitchen is not on fire, even though they can see the smoke belching out of the door. Is it any wonder more and more people are sucked into conspiracism to explain it? I enjoyed the focus group member this week who concluded there must be a conspiracy, or someone more powerful controlling Boris Johnson behind the scenes, because “one man surely couldn’t be that daft”. Well now. It’s a yes and no, isn’t it? But were Family Fortunes to pose the timeworn question “who really runs Britain?” to its survey respondents, you’d imagine the answer “the government” would be in danger of slipping down the rankings.

Sorry, the pond must resist the temptation and return to the deranged thought bubbles of the bromancer ... radiating the mad bonhomie of a reptile who once interviewed Boris ...

Well the bromancer might think that the Speccie mob are brilliantly witty, but this is more than enough wit for the pond ...

Bizarrely, meanwhile, everything is required to aspire to emulate Netflix. Ministers started a few months ago, by claiming the profitable Channel 4 should be sold off to compete with the streaming service. By this week, the health service was being urged to upgrade from its supposedly Blockbuster-esque current state to something more befitting “the age of Netflix”. The British government appears to be the last entity to know that Netflix is built on eye-watering debt, is arguably an overall driver-down of quality and is losing subscribers fast. How can they not know any of this? How can they not care to know it? How long before the streams are further crossed and the right-to-buy pseudo-policy is hailed as the Netflix of housing?

How long, in fact, can the government’s alternative reality avoid contact with actual reality? On Wednesday, Johnson saluted our “robust and strong economy”, even as the OECD was publishing its latest forecast indicating the UK would have the slowest growth of any country in the developed world next year except Russia. Is this what you’d call a multiverse? Or a cultiverse? Either way, none of the big stuff ever gets fixed, and the way out is getting harder all the time.

Sorry, the pond has filibustered enough, and still the bromancer blathers on ...

Okay, a personal anecdote, but what a tedious excursion this is, and how bizarre that the bromancer should have ducked and weaved away from talk of that attempted coup ... what a strange mix of qualities, something akin to crossing the Tin Man with the cowardly lion ...

Thanks to Hyde, the pond made it to the end, though it felt throughout like it was on a hiding to nothing ...

Tragic really, and risible when it comes to the notion that somehow Covid is a left-wing virus involving in supporting left wing governments at the expense of right wing loons ...

So what about the dog botherer, always ready to proclaim how bold and brave and incisive he is? What's he got to say about the attempted coup?

Why sweet fuck all, and why is the pond surprised ...

Sheesh, the Labor party already in deep and dire trouble? Well the moment that the dog botherer begins by praising the new government, things are bloody grum ... (NZ spelling) ...

The pond has no doubt that the dog botherer will find the odd fly in the greasy slime of praise ... and so the pond carried on ...

Yes, yes, and we'll have two nuclear subs by Xmas ... the mutton Dutton did the deal ... and so to the fly in the ointment ...

You see? He over-reacted when the lizard Oz and the mutton Dutton made gooses of themselves ... and then had to soldier on, and dig themselves into an even deeper, remarkably stupid hole ...

And so to the final gobbet before the Herculean task of tackling "Ned's" Everest ...

The pond took it all as a sign of doom, and so was fully prepared for "Ned's" usual bout of ponderous, portentous, pompous blather ... and doing his usual drama queen, hysterical, Chicken Little routines ...

The pond made a momentous decision and decided to cut out all the reptile click bait videos inserted into "Ned's" piece, done by the reptiles with the cunning understanding that readers would be driven by "Ned's" interminable drivel to click on one, just for the pleasure of the distraction ....

As for "Ned" scribbling about the attempted coup, it goes without saying he's too much of a cowardly custard, and that blather about inflation suits his inflationary style ...

However the pond must note that throwaway illustration ... an attempt by the reptiles to return to the old days of the cult masters ...

Sure it means absolutely nothing, it's just a distraction, but the pond understands why ... because it takes a special form of grandiosity to announce that "the world is changing" and present it as some sort of meaningful insight ...

A double negative? Don't expect the reptiles not to confuse their readership ... and so to "Ned" borrowing the thoughts of others so he might dress in their plumage, like the aimless chook he is ...

The one advantage of deleting the click bait references is that some of "Ned's" gobbets are shorter, but the sense of an interminable journey and the constant question "are we there yet?" keeps bobbing into the pond's mind ... with "Ned" trying to lather things up by deploying words like "crucial question", and never mind the excruciating torment ...

Speaking of legacies, the infallible Pope was in good form this day ...

And then hallelujah, only two gobbets of "Ned" to go ...

In the end, the reptiles know that the way forward is to bore everyone shitless as they support bandits of the Boris and mango Mussolini kind ... with the mutton Dutton already dropping his kinder, gentler, more sensitive cop routine for an attempt at a bit of good old-fashioned head-kicking ... though perhaps next time he might kick the Labor government rather than his own head ...

There is comedy in all this, if anyone cares to find it, not least the notion that the reptiles give a flying fuck about living standards, having conspicuously ignored same for the entirety of the coalition government's time in power ...

And speaking of ignoring things, the pond was delighted by the immortal Rowe's reminder of another bit of policy long lost in the snowy wilderness ...