In which the pond wakes up grumpy and the unreal outcomes proposed by "Ned" and black bashing by Dame Slap don't help ...

 

The pond woke up to this news ...

Another Saudi Arabian woman has been sentenced to decades in prison by the kingdom’s terrorism court for using social media to “violate the public order”, according to court documents seen by a human rights group.
Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani was sentenced to 45 years in prison after a specialised criminal court convicted her of “using the internet to tear [Saudi Arabia’s] social fabric”, according to documents that were obtained and reviewed by Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), an organisation founded by Jamal Khashoggi.
Dawn shared its findings, which it said were verified by Saudi sources, with the Guardian.

The pond couldn't help but think of those lickspittle fellow-travelling golfers doing their best to golfwash the sordid Saudi Arabian regime. They might as well have sat in the court room to help with the sentencing. Naturally there's a sometime Australian involved, a blood-spattered shark, a choker who wants to choke on the rich taste of Saudi cash. 

Given that the pond spends its days tearing at the reptiles' social fabric, what a relief to be out of the way of the authoritarians in Saudi land, and their Lord Haw-Haw golfing companions ...

It put the pond in a bad mood, so that the very last thing the pond needed was a dose of nattering "Ned", but that's what the pond does each day ... put itself and others in harm's way ...

Right from the get go, that word salad set the pond right off.

What the fuck are "real outcomes"? Is there an alternative universe full of "unreal outcomes"?

Back in the day, no thanks to Mad magazine, the pond had a running gag with friends where we discussed the "overall picture" of the situation, which might require "real outcomes" ...

Yes, we need real world solutions, real world outcomes, and certainly not any surreal world outcomes, a real result for real issues ... and so on and so forth ... and so it goes ...

Why does the pond bother? Well that blather about Hawke and Keating provides a nice segue to an immortal Rowe ...

And with that in mind, the pond knew it could make it through the final gobbet of "Ned" handwringing, and sighing at the clouds and doing his usual Chicken Little impression, in a desperate search for unreal outcomes ...

What the fuck? "The progressive class is restless"? 

What on earth is a progressive class? Has "Ned" invented a new form of Marxism? What a useless goose he is, what a futtock, and yet there's a chance to throw in another cartoon ... this time an infallible Pope reminding the pond that there's no room at the inn when the rich have made a booking ...

That's how it used to work when it came to classes ... the rich and the rest ... and not a progressive in sight, just the usual rip-off ...

Heck, the pond is on a bit of a cartoon roll, why not another one before turning to Dame Slap?

But why did the pond start with "Ned", always an exercise in futility? Well there's slim pickings this day early on in the morning ... maybe it'll get better as the reptiles trickle out their click-bait fodder during the day ...

The baleful presence of Dame Slap reminded the pond of a note from a valued, esteemed correspondent, drawing attention to a report in The Graudian ...

Major sea-level rise from the melting of the Greenland ice cap is now inevitable, scientists have found, even if the fossil fuel burning that is driving the climate crisis were to end overnight.
The research shows the global heating to date will cause an absolute minimum sea-level rise of 27cm (10.6in) from Greenland alone as 110tn tonnes of ice melt. With continued carbon emissions, the melting of other ice caps and thermal expansion of the ocean, a multi-metre sea-level rise appears likely.
Billions of people live in coastal regions, making flooding due to rising sea levels one of the greatest long-term impacts of the climate crisis. If Greenland’s record melt year of 2012 becomes a routine occurrence later this century, as is possible, then the ice cap will deliver a “staggering” 78cm of sea-level rise, the scientists said.

And then there's been an ongoing bout of disaster porn from Pakistan with truly shocking images of devastation, with the pond realising it must do something about its YouTube addiction ...

Pakistan is not to blame for a climate crisis-fuelled disaster that has flooded much of the country, the prime minister has said, as he made a desperate plea for international help in what he said was the “toughest moment” in the nation’s history.
“We are suffering from it but it is not our fault at all,” Shehbaz Sharif told journalists on Tuesday afternoon at a press conference where his climate change minister referred to the flooding as a “climate catastrophe”.
“We are dealing with a situation I have not seen in my life,” Sharif said. “More than one million houses are damaged or destroyed. Seventy-two districts of Pakistan are in calamity and all four corners of Pakistan are underwater and more than 3,500km [2,175 miles] of roads have been washed away. Around one million animals have died.
“It is the toughest movement in the history of Pakistan. He has never seen such floods in his life … Now I say without fear, I have not seen such devastation in my life,” he said. “We request the international community to come and help us and stand by us at this hour.” The floods had caused up to $10bn (£8.5bn) in damage, he said, adding that there would be transparency on all assistance funds donated.
Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s climate change minister, said towns had become “oceans and rivers” but, due to climate heating, she expected the country to go straight into a drought in upcoming weeks. “We are on the front of unfolding climate catastrophe.” (Graudian, in typical Graudian grammatical style)

Whenever the next climate disaster turns up, the pond is suddenly triggered and sent back via the Wayback Machine to Dame Slap, scribbling on 28th October 2009 this immortal conspiracy theory, under the header Beware the UN's Copenhagen Plot ...

SHAME on us all: on us in the media and on our politicians. Despite thousands of news reports, interviews, analyses, critiques and commentaries from journalists, what has the inquiring, intellectually sceptical media told us about the potential details of a Copenhagen treaty? And despite countless speeches, addresses, interviews, doorstops, moralising sermons from government ministers, pleas from Canberra for an outcome at Copenhagen, opposition criticism of government policy, what have our elected representatives told us about the potential details of a Copenhagen treaty?
With just over 40 days until more than 15,000 officials, advisers, diplomats, activists and journalists from more than 190 countries attend the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, we know nothing. Nothing about a climate change treaty that the Rudd government is keen to sign and one that will bind this country for years to come.
Of course, there is no final treaty as yet. That is what they are hoping to finalise in Copenhagen. But there are 181 pages that make up the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change dated September 15, 2009: a rough draft of what could be signed in Copenhagen. And yet, not one member of the media or political class has bothered to inform us about its contents as an important clue to what may happen in Copenhagen. The shame of that state of affairs started to trickle in last week. 
Emails started arriving telling me about a speech given by Christopher Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, at Bethel University in St Paul, Minnesota, on October 14. Monckton talked about something that no one has talked about in the lead-up to Copenhagen: the text of the draft Copenhagen treaty.
Even after Monckton’s speech, most of the media has duly ignored the substance of what he said. You don’t need me to find his St Paul address on YouTube. Interviewed on Monday morning by Alan Jones on Sydney radio station 2GB, Monckton warned that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty was to set up a transnational government on a scale the world has never before seen. Listening to the interview, my teenage daughters asked me whether this was true.
So I read the draft treaty. The word government appears on page 18. Monckton says: “This is the first time I’ve ever seen any transnational treaty referring to a new body to be set up under that treaty as a government. But it’s the powers that are going to be given to this entirely unelected government that are so frightening.”
Monckton became aware of the extraordinary powers to be vested in this new world government only when a friend of his found an obscure UN website and hacked his way through several layers of complications before coming across a document that isn’t even called the draft treaty. It’s called a “note by the secretariat”. The moment he saw it, he went public and said: “Look, this is an outrage ... they have kept the sheer scope of this treaty quiet.”
Monckton says the aim of this new government is to have power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.
In a sense, countries that sign international treaties always cede powers to a UN body responsible for implementing the treaty obligations. But the difference is that we usually understand the details of the obligations and the power ceded.
Now read the 181-page draft treaty. It is impossible to fully understand the convoluted UN verbiage. Yet even those incomprehensible clauses point to some nasty surprises that no politician has told us about. For example, Monckton says the drafters want this new world government to have control over once free markets: the financial and trading markets of nation-states. “The sheer ambition of this new world government is enormous right from the start; that’s even before it starts accreting powers to itself in the way that these entities inevitably always do,” he says.
The reason for that power grab is clear enough from the draft treaty. Clause after complicated clause sets out the requirement that developed countries such as Australia pay their “adaptation debt” to developing countries. Clause 33 on page 39 says that by 2020 the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in developing countries must be at least $US67 billion ($73bn), or in the range of $US70bn to $US140bn a year.
How developed countries will pay is far from clear. The draft text sets out various alternatives, including Option 7 on page 135, which provides for “a (global) levy of 2 per cent on international financial market (monetary) transactions to Annex I Parties”. This means industrialised countries such as Australia, if we sign.
Monckton’s warning to Americans that “in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your President will sign your freedom, your democracy and your prosperity away forever” is colourful. But no more colourful than the language used by those who preach about the perils of climate change and the virtues of a hard-hitting Copenhagen treaty.
Put aside Monckton’s comments. Ask yourself this: why has our government failed to explain the possible text of a treaty it wants Australia to sign? There has been no address from any Rudd minister to explain the draft treaty. No 3000-word essay from the thoughtful PM. No speech in parliament. No interview. No press release. Nothing.
Presumably the hard-working Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has read the 181-page draft text. Presumably our central control and command PM has been briefed about the draft text. In Germany a few months ago, Kevin Rudd complained about the lack of “detailed programmatic specificity” going into the Copenhagen talks. Yet the draft text provides much detailed specificity about obligations on developed nations to transfer millions of dollars to developing countries under formulas to be set down by an unelected body. So why the silence? Are they hiding the details of this deal from us because most of the polls now suggest that action on climate change is becoming politically unpalatable?
And what explains the media’s failure to report and analyse the only source document that offers any idea of what may happen in Copenhagen? Ignorance? Laziness? Stubborn adherence to the orthodox government line that a deal in Copenhagen is critical? An obsession with the politics of climate change rather than policy?
At least we have heard from Monckton. He told Jones there had already been a million hits on the link to his St Paul address. “So the message in America is now out ... Now you know about it and you need to spread the word.”
Perhaps now our PM and our Climate Change Minister can spare a few moments to tell us about the details they know about but have so far chosen not to tell us about.

You can read some of the comments Dame Slap provoked at the WM if you like, but you could also take a hammer and hit yourself on the head for a few hours and produce much the same result ...

Dame Slap's paranoid scientific wisdom turned up the very same day in the WSJ under the header Has Anyone Read the Copenhagen Agreement? U.N. plans for a new 'government' are scary ... (no link, the pond never links to Murdoch rags)

We can only hope that world leaders will do nothing more than enjoy a pleasant bicycle ride around the charming streets of Copenhagen come December. For if they actually manage to wring out an agreement based on the current draft text of the Copenhagen climate-change treaty, the world is in for some nasty surprises. Draft text, you say? If you haven't heard about it, that's because none of our otherwise talkative political leaders have bothered to tell us what the drafters have already cobbled together for leaders to consider. And neither have the media.
Enter Lord Christopher Monckton. The former adviser to Margaret Thatcher gave an address at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month that made quite a splash. For the first time, the public heard about the 181 pages, dated Sept. 15, that comprise the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—a rough draft of what could be signed come December.
So far there have been more than a million hits on the YouTube post of his address. It deserves millions more because Lord Monckton warns that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty is to set up a transnational "government" on a scale the world has never before seen.
The "scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention" that starts on page 18 contains the provision for a "government." The aim is to give a new as yet unnamed U.N. body the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.
The reason for the power grab is clear enough: Clause after complicated clause of the draft treaty requires developed countries to pay an "adaptation debt" to developing countries to supposedly support climate change mitigation. Clause 33 on page 39 says that "by 2020 the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in developing countries must be [at least $67 billion] or [in the range of $70 billion to $140 billion per year]."
And how will developed countries be slugged to provide for this financial flow to the developing world? The draft text sets out various alternatives, including option seven on page 135, which provides for "a [global] levy of 2 per cent on international financial market [monetary] transactions to Annex I Parties." Annex 1 countries are industrialized countries, which include among others the U.S., Australia, Britain and Canada.
To be sure, countries that sign international treaties always cede powers to a U.N. body responsible for implementing treaty obligations. But the difference is that this treaty appears to have been subject to unusual attempts to conceal its convoluted contents. And apart from the difficulty of trying to decipher the U.N. verbiage, there are plenty of draft clauses described as "alternatives" and "options" that should raise the ire of free and democratic countries concerned about preserving their sovereignty.
Lord Monckton himself only became aware of the extraordinary powers to be vested in this new world government when a friend found an obscure U.N. Web site and searched through several layers of hyperlinks before discovering a document that isn't even called the draft "treaty." Instead, it's labelled a "Note by the Secretariat."
Interviewed by broadcaster Alan Jones on Sydney radio Monday, Lord Monckton said "this is the first time I've ever seen any transnational treaty referring to a new body to be set up under that treaty as a 'government.' But it's the powers that are going to be given to this entirely unelected government that are so frightening." He added: "The sheer ambition of this new world government is enormous right from the start—that's even before it starts accreting powers to itself in the way that these entities inevitably always do."
Critics have admonished Lord Monckton for his colorful language. He has certainly been vigorous. In his exposé of the draft Copenhagen treaty in St. Paul, he warned Americans that "in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy and your prosperity away forever." Yet his critics fail to deal with the substance of what he says.
Ask yourself this question: Given that our political leaders spend hundreds of hours talking about climate change and the need for a global consensus in Copenhagen, why have none of them talked openly about the details of this draft climate-change treaty? After all, the final treaty will bind signatories for years to come. What exactly are they hiding? Thanks to Lord Monckton we now know something of their plans.
Janos Pasztor, director of the Secretary-General's Climate Change Support Team, told reporters in New York Monday that with the U.S. Congress yet to pass a climate-change bill, a global climate-change treaty is now an unlikely outcome in Copenhagen. Let's hope he is right. And thank you, America.

Thank you Dame Slap. You've done more than your fair share to help fuck the planet, a bit like those golfers taking the cash in the paw, the blood money, and heading off for a pleasant stroll on the greens ...

Why this elaborate preamble? 

Well as soon as the pond read Dame Slap's headline Questioning Albo's voice isn't idiotic, racist or ideological, the pond knew at once there'd be yet another in an interminable series of black bashings, in which Dame Slap would be idiotic, racist and ideological ...

It's always in the form of a question, isn't it? Dame Slap's just asking, just inquiring, just carrying on in her usual ratbag way. You know, the questioner, the inquirer, the seeker after truth, the supplicant at the foot of Lord Monckton yearning for wisdom and insight ...

The only pleasure in it for the pond is to see Dame Slap go at the throat of the craven Craven. Is there anything more pleasing than to see two reptiles bite into flesh and spill blood? The pond is just asking of course ... it surely isn't mean-spirited to question the value of this sort of public reptile spectacle ...

Note the patented Dame Slap version of hysteria, that line about "fundamentally alters how we are governed", and think back to Dame Slap on climate science, and you can see why the pond is suffering from an overdose of Dame Slap exposure ... a mind-numbing fatigue.

These days the pond is content to revert to a safe position ... almost anything that happens on planet Janet should be expected to deliver unreal outcomes on any other planet ...

Amen to that, Professor ...

And ...

Janos Pasztor, director of the Secretary-General's Climate Change Support Team, told reporters in New York Monday that with the U.S. Congress yet to pass a climate-change bill, a global climate-change treaty is now an unlikely outcome in Copenhagen. Let's hope he is right. And thank you, America.

And that's how you do over a planet, while making sure that, in best racist way, an attempt to consult with the original residents of this country is transformed into a "radical change to our democracy", a splendid dogwhistle to racists, idiots and ideologues ...

What a relief it is to turn to parish pump issues and celebrate the ongoing greatness of the Dominator and his team ...

Of course it will produce laughter in Melbourne, but it's a great distraction from climate science and black bashing ... and it's producing some unreal outcomes ... 

And to end on a positive note, a thanks to all those who expressed some concern about the pond's situation. As always, and as with all the comments made each day to inform and advise the pond in its quest to tear at the reptiles' social fabric, much appreciated ...

In which the pond returns from going AWOL to find the Major MIA, but Dame Groan and the grave Sexton ready to stand in the breach...

 

A minor medical matter turned into a Major moment for the pond, forcing the pond to go AWOL yesterday.

This was a pity as the pond was looking forward to the Major explaining how freedom of speech and freedom for the media ran with a giant-sized media mogul beating up on a media minnow. 

Turned out that the pond needn't have worried because faced with a Major media issue the Major himself went missing in action.

Now the pond is doing Crikey hours to catch up, and speaking of Crikey ... and the keen Keane (paywall)

So we can take it as a “yes” that Anthony Albanese, Richard Marles and Penny Wong, as reported by Nine newspapers last week, met with Lachlan Murdoch and News Corp executives on Wednesday. While the office of Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was happy to confirm her non-participation, all we got from the prime minister, deputy prime minister and foreign minister was stony silence — despite repeated efforts to draw an answer.

Not getting an answer from the PMO is of course something we at Crikey are used to — we were persona non grata with Scott Morrison’s office as well, so maybe the old email filters and phone blocks are still in place. But the general silence is more interesting for what it says about Labor’s embarrassment about dealing with a company committed to supporting the Coalition at every turn — and which remains deeply antagonistic to even the unambitious climate action agenda Labor is pursuing.

As we noted last week, we don’t exactly know the purpose of the meeting, so Labor partisans can hold out hope it was some unprecedented laying down of the law from a Labor PM to the Murdochs. The rest of us, more cynical and jaded perhaps, can suspect that in new boss Albanese, we have someone with some traits in common with the old boss Scott Morrison — in particular, a hostility to transparency about which special interests may seek to influence policymakers and what deals might be being done to facilitate that.

But this goes beyond transparency, or the great bipartisan tradition of media moguls dictating policy (and even beyond Lachlan Murdoch’s lawsuit against Crikey).

News Corp is a threat to Australia, the US and the world. In the words of Malcolm Turnbull, it operates like a mafia gang, and “is an absolute threat to our democracy”. Joe Biden is said to have called Rupert Murdoch “the most dangerous man in the world”. The complicity of Fox News in the propagation of the Big Lie about the stolen 2020 election — a lie peddled on Australia’s Sky News as well — and the febrile atmosphere that led to the January 6 insurrection is a matter of public record in the United States.

So why are the three most senior figures in the ALP going to Lachlan Murdoch? Why are they normalising relations with a company that should be beyond the pale of any politician committed to democracy — and to the stability of the United States, which is crucial to Australia?

What’s that line about the standard you walk past is the standard you accept? That extends to walking in to visit a media mogul too.

Not that the pond missed anything else yesterday ...

Just a sampling... there was poor old Jim beating against the tide and down below were the Oreo and the Caterist doing the reptile thing, and suddenly the pond was glad to be MIA with the Major ...

As for the benefits of that meeting, the lizard Oz editorialist was standing by with sharpened quill ....

When will the ALP learn that the reptiles are not for changing? What they do is so heavily imbedded in their psyche that they could no more disavow the mango Mussolini than retreat from their love of ALP and union bashing ...

Speaking of which ...

There was the minor Milner from toad land, but then it's always been a place for rats in the ranks, and Albo might protest ...

... but here's the thing. It's not in the business model of the reptiles or rats in the ranks to chill, it's to be shit stirrers.

Long absent lord knows why George facilitates and enables them by lending his face to the commentary section ... guess it's the desire to be seen.

But the pond was surprised not to see the Groaner featured, but then after a little digging the groaning surfaced, and the pond realised at once there was no need for the Oreo and the Caterist ... not when the Groaner is in top form ...

What would have surprised - neigh, totally shocked - the pond is if the Groaner's piece had been headed "Talkfest likely to succeed ..."

The reptiles thought so highly of this groaning that they stashed it full of click bait videos, but all the pond could think of was people pissing into tents ...

By golly that haunted visage is something to see ...

Now back to Dame Groan pissing away, and the first of those carefully neutered click bait videos ...

No doubt this will fascinate expert devotees of the Groaner, but the pond was pleased to be reminded that the Groaner herself was now a member of the gig economy - the pond understands that the reptiles offer well over a penny a word, which is why she does go on - and so the Groaner is deeply enamoured of other giggers ...

Indeed, indeed, because Dame Groan getting up at ten to have coffee and pound out a feature for the reptiles is almost exactly like some poor bugger clambering on to a bike to deliver a coffee at 8 am on a chilly Sunday to some bludging hipster too fucking lazy to get out of bed ...

Meanwhile, here's a story the pond seemed to have missed, along with the reptiles ... 

Never mind, back for a final pissing in the tent ... and two more carefully neutered click bait videos ... and what do you know, Dame Groan just loves the gig economy ...

Whether the ALP thinks that doing a secretive meeting with the reptiles, busy bashing up a media minnow, will ever change the ways of the likes of the Oreo, Dame Groan and the Caterist must remain a mystery, or a chance to serve up an infallible Pope celebrating that culture of groaning ...

That's a passing fair imitation of Munch or perhaps the Groaner, but on with the bonus. 

The pond had originally planned to run the Major's piece, but as noted the cowardly custard Major went MIA, so the pond hastily turned to the grave Sexton for a bit of furriner bashing ...

Indeed, indeed, there's nothing like shipping furriners to countries like Rwanda, and it's astonishing that anyone in Britain should give a flying fuck about human rights. The long history of the empire suggested that this was a quintessential move for Tories ...

That said, it's possible to detect a whiff of white suffering in the heaving bosom of the grave Sexton ...

Of course the problem is all the fault of the perfidious French, as the grave Sexton sagely explains ...

Oh you filthy vile cheese eating surrender monkeys, with these damned furriners much preferring to fork out out squillions of pounds on heating bills, or perhaps do the solidarity thing with the locals, as per the Graudian ...

Skyrocketing energy prices mean almost one in four adults in the UK will not switch on the heating at all this winter, according to a poll, with opposition MPs describing the findings as a “national scandal”.

The survey of more than 2,000 UK adults found 23% would do without heating over the winter months. That figure was even higher for parents with children under the age of 18, with 27% saying they would be forced to leave the radiators cold.

About 70% said they would turn their heating on less, while 11% said they were considering taking out a loan to cover extra costs. That figure rose to 17% for those with children.

The poll was conducted before the regulator Ofgem announced the energy price cap would increase by 80% from October. The decision will take the average gas and electricity bill from £1,971 to £3,549 a year.

The Liberal Democrats, who commissioned the survey, called for further commitments by the incoming Tory prime minister, widely expected to be Liz Truss, to help struggling households.

“Families and pensioners across the country are making heartbreaking decisions because the government has failed to save them,” said the Lib Dem spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, Christine Jardine.

“It is a national scandal that parents are having to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children,” she said. “It shouldn’t be like this. Britain is on the brink of the worst cost of living crisis in a century and yet still Liz Truss and [rival leadership candidate] Rishi Sunak will not scrap the energy price rise.” (more at the Graudian)

There you go, children of empire. Head home to enjoy England's winter chill.

And so to a final squeak from the grave Sexton ...

Indeed, indeed, and never mind the large-scale population movements in ancient times because they were born to rule whites intent on a bit of plunder, and where's the harm in that?

And speaking of plunder, time to wrap up with an immortal Rowe, as the pond will do its best to return to usual hours, and Albo finds the fridge nicely full ...

In which the pond spends its Sunday meditation with the usual prattle of Polonius, a serve of the warrior bromancer, and a fully inauthentic time with Dame Slap ...

 

For once Polonius is prattling on about something other than the ABC - spoiler alert, he even references Chris Masters, as if Masters was contributing some insight or truth, without mentioning the ABC - and gasp, he even manages to reference Muriel's Wedding, proving that he's as up to date as 1994 ...

The pond had absolutely no dog in the fight, so it settled back for the ride ...

The pond doesn't mean to rain on Polonius's parade, but really, been there and done that ... 

It was still playing the last time the pond checked,  head off to the ABC's RN and you too can hear what Polonius was listening to back in May 2022, and the artwork's pretty much the same too ...

But the pond doesn't mean to rain on Polonius's parade, and besides we must get to him quoting Chris Masters, it's too deliciously ironic ...

Um, that'd be the Hamish McDonald talking about the matter on the ABC back in May, but a columnist must use the material to hand.

And so to Polonius desperately trying to pretend he hadn't actually listened to RN back in May, and talk of other sources, including the lizard Oz ...

Alas, that's the mention of Masters done and dusted and alas, that's the end of Polonius, and alas this must be the first in many a week that Polonius has failed to mention that there's not a single conservative commentator anyone to be seen, found or heard on the ABC ...

Would the pond have been better off spending quality time with the Killer and a raging mango Mussolini?

Regrettably the pond must leave the Donald there, lying his socks off, or lying through his teeth, or perhaps in the company of a Ukrainian woman with many projects on the boil, including the mango Mussolini, with the reptiles hastily rushing to his defence ... singing that old ballad, is that all there is ma?

Indeed, there was only an attempted coup and why the dispute over documents when the Donald had arranged the strictest security ...

Enough of the low comedy, the pond had to gird its loins and get ready to defend the country with  Generalfeldmarschall Bromancer.

Standing ready,  Generalfeldmarschall, and awaiting orders, and let's give them hell ... 

No fair-minded observer? Presumably the bromancer was saying that nattering "Ned" isn't really a fair-minded observer ...

Announcing the royal commission on Thursday, Albanese used the same standard formula – a full investigation was essential “to ensure that it can never, ever, happen again”. Yet this is already established – the scheme is abandoned, the class action is settled, the court had issued its judgment, the former Morrison government had apologised.

Yes, nothing to see here, just a sideshow, now back to the war with China ...

This is exceptionally serious stuff and the pond wishes it could pay full attention, but the pond is desperate to work in a reference to the Weekly Beast, and the gutless wonders at 9, and in particular the contemptible fellow-travelling of a Chip off a lesser block, more a grand mal than le grande ...

No link to the wretched hit job ... perhaps the pond could have dressed it up for the bromancer by comparing minnow Taiwan to authoritarian Xi's bullying ways, and Chip joining with Lachy to bully a press fingerling, but instead we must return to the military conflict in the South China sea likely to occur before Xmas ...

It would certainly be remiss of the pond not to acknowledge the splendid planning and foresight of beefy boofhead pure grain-fed windmill free Angus ... celebrated in the Graudian on 22nd April 2020 by Daniel Hurst ...

A most excellent vision, now carry on bromancing ...

What do we do about the ADF? Dare the pond suggest it's simple? Appoint the bromancer as chief strategist and deviser of listicles, namely the key tasks for a mission. If the pond might add a few words, it's amazing what you can do in an F-14 with bit of chaff, what the enemy doesn't know is your limit, time is your greatest adversary, it's not the plane, it's the pilot ... and any old sub is better than no sub at all ... and don't forget the missiles ...

In all this a fearless armchair warrior of the bromancer kind has to battle the cardigan-wearing nannies in the navy ... and please, don't forget to cancel the tanks. The pond has never once heard the bromancer on tanks, so this is a truly novel approach, full of forward-thinking strategies ... (some might say that the bromancer's line about never having used a tank since the Vietnam war is now up there with Polonius's noting that the ABC has no conservative commentators, but the pond will not accept that sort of cheap shot).

Only to two? Sheesh, this is going to be a long one, as the bromancer gets on to his special theme, those bloody subs ...

The Xian Democrats might rule in Beijing? So yesterday the Pellists were right, with 60-90 million Xians ready to dominate the 1.3 billion odd heretics ...

Phew what need of the bromancer's advice, when the Pellists are ready to take down Xi in the same way they took down the pagan Roman empire ... and to think there were all those historians Gibbon's notion that it was the Xians wot done it ...

Back to that interim sub, with the Collins class a rip roaring success and a splendid choice, with at least 1 in 6 always ready for active duty ...

The pond absolutely feels no pressure at all. With the bromancer as defender in chief, and all the reptiles dragooned into military service, the country is extremely safe ...

That said, the pond did face a monstrous choice for the bonus.

There was our Gracie railing at the toads - the pond loves a good rant at toads  - and yet the pond decided to abandon Gracie for Dame Slap ...

Look at what the pond was missing ...

It was a difficult decision, but the pond couldn't walk past Dame Slap's bid for attention, beginning with that headline proposing to put "true authenticity into focus."

That put Dame Slap firmly in the camp of airheads and bubble-headed boobys of the new age kind ...

Just what was "true authenticity". Was it a match for untrue inauthenticity? Or perhaps simply untrue authenticity? Or perhaps true inauthenticity?

Could it lead to authentic inauthenticity? Was there the possibility of tautological travel, in the sense of solutions to the conundrums arriving one after the other in rapid succession?

The pond thought that, just like in Dirty Harry, it's gotsa ta know ... (and relax, the reptiles got around to fixing that typo) ...

Yes, it's Meghan now, but let's face it, her skin's the wrong colour ...

Surely regarded as reactionary? 

No, surely it's just racist. Why else mention skin colour? What's the point, if not a racist point of the Xian white nationalist kind?

But that's Dame Slap at her oblivious best ... and never mind the idle monstrous stupidity of trading off on Markle to celebrate little Johnny ...

The pond realised at once the nature of the game. Spend some time on trashing Markle, as if the pond would get outraged at the trashing of a minor ersatz royal, and then spend endless time imagining a golden age featuring little Johnny, and never mind the Iraq war or sundry other acts of endless, mindless chutzpah and bastardry ...

Let's face it, what royal has any discernibly useful job, but the pond seems to recall that one of the endless acts of bastardry perpetrated by little Johnny was to kill off a republic so that we might retain the monarchy and all that colonial era stuff, so that women's magazines might be made safe for future generations with gossip about the royals, and minor attention seekers of the Markle kind ...

So little Johnny is actually not just a marker, but a perpetrator of the insufferable dross on hand today, but Dame Slap is too thick to realise it ...

Authenticity?

Ah shucks, how could the pond resist when it comes to Dame Slap preaching about authenticity?

Been to that inauthentic pussy-grabbing well a zillion times, and likely will go there again, because even Humpty Dumpty could tell you that's authentically stupid ...

But back to the current golden age bullshit, and never mind the Iraq war ... or the climate science denialism and inaction or all the rest of it ... or the fact that this terminally modest man has published yet another interminable volume ...

...the Liberal elder also flagged some of the divisive arguments conservatives will use against the constitutional referendum over a Voice to Parliament.
It was a reminder of Howard's ideological blind-spots - most pointedly, the glaring inconsistency of owning and celebrating the great achievements of Western civilisation but carrying none of the responsibility for the atrocities on which those achievements were built, because, simply, we weren't there.
And it was a reminder too that Howardism hasn't ended yet. (here)

But Johnny's got a book to flog, with an abundance of modesty, and Dame Slap is on hand to help him with an abundance of fawning ...

And there it became obvious, if it wasn't already. Dame Slap is just providing filler, guff to fill up the spaces between the reptiles' click bait videos, carefully neutered.

Who cares if Markle has a monstrous sense of entitlement? Isn't that the Tory way? Who cares about an alleged nursery fire?

Might not the pond have been better off reading Marina Hyde, in her usual fine form, as she zoomed past planet Janet to contemplate wearing a truss, because here's a sense of entitlement at work ...

"Cost of living” is an expression now used so frequently, including by those in positions of power, that it’s possible to end up forgetting how incredibly bleak those words are as a concept. (See also: “human resources”.) Maybe we should revitalise the cliche by calling it the “price of existing” crisis. It is, after all, a perfectly matter-of-fact way of suggesting that there is a point at which many may simply find it too expensive to endure. People generally make too much fuss about cliches, but – in one of the very richest countries in the world – this one does feel worth urgently denormalising.

So who’s going to do it? Liz Truss?! The light from even the stars we can see without telescopes can take years to reach us – sometimes thousands of years. On Tuesday Truss was in the West Midlands, with the public able to look at an emanation from her that read: “I will support businesses to get our economy firing on all cylinders – delivering growth and opportunity in the West Midlands and beyond.” How many years ago were these words beamed out? This morning the energy price cap hit £3,549. You sense West Midlands businesses – to whom the price cap doesn’t even apply – would like to know how on earth they’re supposed to afford to switch on the cylinders at all.

Back on planet Earth, Whitehall has drawn up plans for energy-intensive firms to power down this winter. The single swinging lightbulb in Liz Truss’s head seems to have flickered on overnight, resulting in an article for the Daily Mail in which she explains: “My immediate priority will be to put more money back in people’s pockets by cutting taxes.” The latest forecasts hazard that inflation will hit 18% in early 2023. The price cap prediction for April is currently at £6,823. Which would certainly change a lot of things, among them the working definition of the word “cap”. The political reality is that a Truss administration would have had to make a number of era-defining interventions by that point – and the no-handouts posturing will seem like a relic of a distant time.

Now that's how you talk about a monstrous sense of entitlement ... but the pond must return to the single swinging lightbulb in Dame Slap's head, where apparently little Johnny has taken up residence ...

And there have it, and the pond feels fully justified, because it's always fun to observe the scribbler of Nothing Much carrying on like a Duchess of Nothing Much about other duchesses of Nothing Much ... except when she's celebrating that authoritarian pussy-grabber full of much in the way of coups and secret documents ...

After that, what's left? Mindless padding and filler for a couple of click bait videos and a bit of book flogging ... surely. it must already be headed to the remainder shelves ...judging by the ads, it's already being marked down to half price.

And now, having padded and filled with the best nothing much on planet Janet, the pond can at last turn to an infallible Pope for relief ... after a serve of Dame Slap, the pond always has a hankering for a slice of cheese and a cup of tea ...