In which there's an easy trainer climb for "Ned" specialists ...

 

Ever since the pond discovered that it's missing out on the likes of dashing Donner, turned Terror tabloid fodder, the paucity of the offerings available of late in the lizard Oz have soured the pond, turned it mean and nasty ...

The only good thing about Dame Slap's offering this day was its framing ...

Could there be any more appropriate companions, a better setting, than Covid causing brain disorders, Dame Slap causing brain disorders, and Vlad the very terrible sociopathic Impaler causing planetary disorders?

As for Dame Slap, the pond won't bother going there, yet again, because yet again, she did it. 

Remember the Judge's plea for media silence in relation to a certain matter?

Not on Planet Janet above the faraway tree. She managed yet again to introduce the matter into her piece ...

Forget the reminder about the cab-rank rule, she even had the temerity to quote the learned judge about the need to offer respite from the pervasive intense glare of the media, while continuing to blather about the trial and offer no respite at all ...

What a shocker she is, what a reprehensible ning nong, what a contemptible defier of the wishes of the court, and yet at least with her departure from the legal profession to turn ratbag Murdochian shock jock, there's something to be said for the hollowing out of the legal profession ...

But that left the pond in a dire situation. 

What else could the pond do than turn to nattering "Ned" and his celebration of the mutton Dutton's slow march through the institutions?

Luckily it was lightweight by "Ned's" usual Everest efforts and could be tossed off in four gobbets. 

It was still an interminable word salad, but at least it allowed the pond to remind stray readers they could always turn to Marina Hyde for a serve: Great news for the economy! Britain is now stable enough for Matt Hancock to eat genitals on I’m a Celeb.

Truly little England is where all the action is these days, and now it's doing a tour down under, as ageing rep actors were once wont to do ...

Appalling news for exotic animal genitalia, as it is revealed that former health secretary Matt Hancock will be going into the I’m a Celeb jungle. I know: it’s simultaneously the very last thing you want to see, and also ALL you want to see. To any Guardian readers prompted to email me with something along the lines of “actually I wouldn’t dream of seeing this”, do please take the following column as a thank you for your message, but also understand that it could be December before I am able to formally get back to you. I find that in November, I will mostly be watching Matt Hancock on I’m a Celebrity.

The details as we have them are thus: as the ITV series launches on Sunday night, Hancock will materialise in the Australian bush, having either arrived by air or simply passed through a haunted dunny. In terms of Matt’s long but remorseless journey towards being prime minister, this is probably his equivalent of Churchill’s stint in the second Boer war. That said, he has immediately lost the Tory whip. But maybe he’ll find something much more precious – himself.

A great opening in the usual "give a pollie a hiding" way, but is the Australian bush up to the task? 

Not likely ... as the pond turns from genuine comedy to the sublime tedium of portentous "Ned" brushing up that potato ...

Could it get any duller or more tedious as the portentous pompous blowhard goes about his airbrushing work?

The pond reverted back to that piece by Richard Scully in The Conversation, 2022: the year even right-leaning cartoonists had a gutful of Scott Morrison...

At the top of the piece was a cartoon by Warren Brown ...

Never mind that Scully resides at the pond's old alma mater, UNE, the pond is in a forgiving mood, and some of those tunes would be a fine accompaniment to "Ned's" natter ...

Even the reptiles realised they were backing a dud, and so threw in a number of clickbait videos as a distraction, carefully neutered by the pond ...

Well it's a view of history, albeit a particularly stupid one - second world war anyone?, rip off the Snowy scheme and take all the credit anyone? - and some might prefer to head off for the usual cracking Crace, this time joining the pile-on with Westminster in shock consensus: Door Matt Hancock is a prat.

There's a lot of fun to be had in the shock consensus, until - spoiler alert - you arrive at the pay off ...

...that wasn’t the end of the strange, almost magical, consensus. Because the biggest outbreak of agreement was around Door Matt Hancock. You couldn’t find anyone who didn’t think he was a complete prat. His vanity meets hubris in I’m a Celebrity.

Poor Matt. Delusional to the last. He wanted to connect with the real people, he said. And now was the time to do it. When the UK was still in complete chaos and no one would miss his valuable input as an MP. That much was true. It was a chance for the little people to hear about his fantastic new book, Pandemic Diaries.

The everyday story about a man promoted so far out of his depth he ended up killing loads of elderly Covid patients by sending them back to care homes. A man who paid the ultimate sacrifice just for daring to fall in love with someone else’s wife, leaving his own and being caught on CCTV snogging and groping like a teenager. A real life story of a man whose mid-life crisis led him to break the rules. He fought the law and the law won.

A man so needy he imagined the public might fall in love with him. A man so dim he couldn’t see he would end up being made to do the bushtucker trial night after night. A man destined to disappear into obscurity as he chokes on kangaroo scrotum. Westminster won’t miss him.

In short and in essence, there's a lot more sublime comedy elsewhere than watching nattering "Ned" attempt to scrub a dirt-laden potato and give it a sheen ...

So many memes, so little time ...

But at least it's clear why the reptiles flung in another click bait video as a distraction ...

What makes him different from the speaker in tongues to imaginary friends? Why surely it's the way he's a friend to potatoes and youngling memers everywhere ...

And lo, we've arrived at the last short gobbet. How hard was that? More like a gentle stroll up Mount Kosciuszko than the usual Everest ...

"Ned" has done his duty, and so has the pond.\, and rest assured the nausea will subside in time ...

As for the rest of the reptile offerings this day, the pond notes them, only so it can ignore them ...

There was Albo, once again pandering to the reptiles by appearing behind the Murdochian paywall, apparently under the delusion that he could make some headway with the kool-aid cult ...

But as the lizard Oz ed patiently explained, the cultists have organised a conference to sort things out ...

Oh dear, enough of that blather about a better, more caring society. It's tax cuts for the rich at ten reptile paces ... and a conference to blather about opening doors of reptile opportunity ...

Yes, yes, shame on the Melbourne Institute, because the other lizard Oz editorial gives a hint of the real reptile long march through the institutions ...

Governing from the middle ground? Mr Bolsonaro's economic achievements were impressive?

That's it? How the reptiles are devoted to autocrats of the mango Mussolini kind, fucking the Amazon and fucking the planet all in a honest day's denialism ... and as the pond types, still without the grace to speak, accepting the result, leaving the country in an agony of blocked roadways and chaos and talk of a coup ...

Hopefully it will all be sorted, but it takes unmitigated reptile gall to talk of building on a tinpot populist wannabe dictator's achievements...

But as usual the pond wants to end on a light note, and regrets that this Wilcox wasn't on hand to accompany the bromancer's bunging on of world war three, apparently much appreciated by the pond's correspondents ...