In which the pond challenges correspondents to say anything remotely interesting about nattering "Ned" and Dame Slap ...

 

 

Lordy, long absent lordy, the pond's correspondents were on fire yesterday - there must have been something alchemical produced in the mixing of a groaning and an onion munching ...

And they say vegetarians rulez. Offer the correspondents raw, red reptile meat, and it sets off a feeding frenzy or a fine bout of versifying ...

Sadly, today's reptile offerings are more likely to feel like a wet match trying to light a fuse to enliven a Tamworth bonfire night where tuppenny bungers and a box of sparklers were all the budget could afford ... 

Sometimes the pond feels embarrassed to lay the threadbare reptile offerings before discerning palates, when all that might be expected is a dent in the letterbox of life ... or perhaps a planet fucked by carbon.

No doubt everyone has already read the Graudian's Giant Antarctic iceberg 'hanging by a thread', say scientists,  while anyone who missed John Crace should really treat themselves to the eviscerating vitriol of Radon Liz romps home in a pyrrhic victory ...

...Then came the speech. If you can call it that. More a word salad. Imagine it. You’ve known for two months that you’re going to win. And all you’ve got to do is a five-minute acceptance speech. Just something anodyne and uncontroversial. Something that proves you’re at least semi-sentient. Yet all Truss could come up with was a mumbling monotone that would have been booed at a fringe meeting at a Tory party conference.
“I think we have shown the depth and breadth of talent in the Conservative party,” she began. Really? Are you mad? What it’s really shown is that the Tories are a spent force. And that they are scraping the barrel in their search for a new leader. What were the chances of finding someone worse than Johnson? Actually quite high, considering the diminishing gene pool.
Truss then went on an amnesiac’s tour of Boris highlights. “You are admired from Kyiv to Carlisle,” she said. Yup. And hated in Scotland and Northern Ireland. And actually in Carlisle, which has just elected a Labour council. There was an awkward few seconds’ pause as Truss waited for applause. Eventually a few Tories put her out of her misery and obliged.
The rest of the speech was even more pitiful. Some achievement. She was going to deliver. And deliver. And deliver. She had no idea what. Or indeed any comprehension she had been in the cabinet since 2014 and might have been expected to deliver in the intervening years. The clockwork ran down and Radon Liz slurred her way to a stop. There had been nothing about uniting the country. Nothing on the cost of living. Just a vague hope she might win the next election in 2024 if Labour refused to take part.
It could hardly have gone any worse. You could see panic in the eyes of some Tory MPs. They had somehow imagined that Truss might miraculously transform into the coherent, plausible leader they had been promised during the campaign. Yet here she was, flatlining before their eyes. If she lasts a year it will be a miracle. Then we’ll all be back in the QEII centre to anoint someone even worse. 

The pond wishes it had the time, energy and skill required to eviscerate reptiles in this way ... but still, there's something to be said in presenting them so that the pond's correspondents might have at them, degutting the innards and hanging them on a nearby handy pike ...

But how to do it when this was all to see in the commentary section?

The Queensland rat in the rank celebrating the ascension of the Iron Weathercock? (Not original, borrowed it from Katty Kay who borrowed it from someone else).

How could the pond waste anyone's time with the delusional thoughts of a rat in the ranks, invoking the memory of St Maggie?  The pond has already tasted the best with a Crace, why bother with a cracked Cameron? Already he's moved on to The Convict departs in a haze of self-delusion, playing the victim card to the last ...

The pond's only answer had to be a Rowson ...

 

And there's an end to it, as Humpty Dumpty might say ...and yes it was passing brave and foolhardy brave for Comrade Dan to claim a place in the commentary section, but the reptiles refused to acknowledge his presence with a thumb snap - he was Comrade """ Dan to them - while elsewhere in the front page of the digital edition it was "Exposed: Dodging and weaving Dan."

No, there's no joy to had in seeing comrade Dan flailing at reptile windmills ...

And that's how the pond landed on yet another outing by nattering "Ned", with the ensuing tedium certain to quieten the correspondents down by inducing lethargy and a dull, seething resentment best resolved by a pounding of the head in the outside dunny ...

Oh fucketty fuck, really? We're back with Colonel Fawcett in the Amazon jungle? An intrepid loon of the first water ...

There was once a copy of that book in the pond's home - who knows what a first edition might be worth these days:? - and the pond was entranced by that gigantic snake, but sadly "Ned" is a much smaller reptile ...

I mean, what a maroon. How could anyone scribble with a straight face about the "individual achievements" of the onion muncher, Malware and the liar from the Shire ... and yet he does ...

It's listening to the reptiles harping back to the old days of Hawke and Keating that always does in the Labor party's collective head ...

That's why it's left to a cartoonist to do a critique of current policies ...

But you won't find any of that in "Ned" - just the usual blather, though these days he's resorting to word salads more and more, trotting out things like "The ultimate test lies with the government."

So much for all that idle reptile chatter about the government getting out of the way, and letting the IPA and capitalism ride the climate denialist horse all the way to the apocalypse, with the ultimate test lying with heroic individuals and survivalists ...

It's a pity that "Ned" should have invoked industry-based superannuation, because the pond is about to hear more about that ... but as for talk of consensus, what shower did "Ned" come down in, at some ancient time long lost in the past ...

The constant attack has come from inside the reptile house ... because that's what's needed to protect Bert's very big pie ...

Never mind, there's just a final blather of idle memory lane gossip to go ...

Just what on earth does "path to real victory" mean, except perhaps a bit of lettuce in "Ned's" word salad. 

It's a bit like the salad dressing of "historic mission", invoking a delusional sense of grandeur and hubris, of the kind beloved by the reptiles with their idle chatter about western civilisation and 1066 and all that ... 

Why is it always left to the cartoonists to do the analysis, as in this infallible Pope?

Forget it Jake, it's just politics and governments and reptile wrecking balls ... and that brings the pond to a real reptile with a real mission, to wreck things and throw tantrums ...

Come on down from planet Janet Dame Slap and do your thing ...

The pond apologises in advance, or at least before tossing off two more gobbets, because of late Dame Slap has been much reduced in her subject matter ... if she's not bashing blacks, she's bashing industry superannuation and that's about it ...

Sure there's still some grand ironies to be had. Who else could open with "propagandists and social scientists have long known that if you repeat a falsehood loudly and long enough, people will come to believe it."

This from a climate science denying Lord Monckton devotee, inclined to the donning of MAGA caps celebrating the arrival of new and more tyrannous coup-loving loons ...

The pond will never get tired of that one, and truth to tell, it's about the only amusement to be found in this standard bout of industry super bashing ...

The pond almost regrets ruling out the Queensland rat in the rank, because then the pond could have run another Rowson ...

By golly he's demented, he's up there with the immortal Rowe.

There's something in the air in little England's politics at the moment that goes beyond the hysterical. 

There was James O'Brien ranting for over eight minutes about monstrous bullying cowards ... and all the pond could do was cower and try to cover its ears...

Okay, the pond has done its best to distract, but the price to pay is another gobbet of Dame Slap bashing industry unions ...

The pond has no dog in this fight, but it was at one point a member of a non-industry union which sucked up all the pond's contributions in the form of fees and expenses and yadda yadda, and the experience completely sucked ... yes, the pond's looking at you, CFS, but doesn't expect that you'll score a mention in Dame Slap's rant ...

Strange, the pond almost yearns for a bit of black bashing. When it comes to monomania, why not go the full monomaniacal hog?

But then the pond had had a gutful of that, and now has had more than had a gutful of this ...

And why are industry funds ballooning? Because private super is inclined to be a bloody rip off, and in comparison industry funds don't do so badly ... and that's the thing that really sticks in Dame Slap's craw ...

But the pond can't end on that petulant note, not when it has an immortal Rowe to hand celebrating the ascension of the Iron Weathercock, or "la Girouette de fer" if you will ..

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Here for French speakers or devotees of Google translate; here for immortal Rowe followers and moggy lovers...