In which the pond prepares for the end of civilisation on the morrow ... with a dawning of hate, and possibly zombies ...

 

One of the things the pond has noticed about the Murdochian tabloids is that the opinion section is inclined to be lazy ...

On the 23rd there was Shannon Deery bleating in the HUN Australia Day is too divisive, and has proven completely incapable of being a day of unity – an acknowledgment of the past and a celebration of the future...

A quick change of date to the 24th and it became The Andrews government’s decision to quietly scrap the annual Australia Day parade shows just how toxic the change-the-date debate has become.

But the essential point was the same Shannon Deery: The lead-up to January 26 is again consumed by hate, and this day Deery still bestrode the opinion section like a colossus ...

The pond was deeply moved by the vision of a small child clutching an Oz flag, unaware of the all-consuming hate swirling around it ... and so it became HUN day at the pond ... though the pond had to step gingerly past the devastating news that a smack in the chops by anyone to anyone somehow exposed woke nonsense ...

The pond had understood that deploring any sort of violence to anyone was fully woke and almost Christ-like, so it was on with the swirling clouds of hate ... and as usual, the copious illustrations of a tabloid kind meant the pond had to do it tough, old style, and by the way, use the original unvarnished 23rd text, for whomsoever scribble a text shall find it untouched and unrevised on the pond ...

What a howl of pain, dare the pond say it almost a cry of pure, undiluted hatred, at the mystery that saw comrade Dan return to the throne to torture the reptiles ...

The Victorian government has scrapped Melbourne's Australia Day parade after two years of Covid cancellations. The Andrews government will instead mark the day with an event at Federation Square aimed at reflecting, respecting and celebrating. Victoria Opposition leader John Pesutto says the cancellation is deeply disappointing. A flag-raising ceremony will still go ahead at Government House, as will a gun salute at the Shrine of Remembrance.

Here we go again. It wouldn’t be January without the heated debate and division that precedes Australia Day.
It’s our annual reminder that we are nowhere near as united as we like to think we are. Aussie mateship goes only so far.
The Andrews government’s decision to quietly scrap the annual Australia Day parade shows just how toxic the change-the-date debate has become.
It’s a landmine for governments, who for years have either kicked the issue down the road or ignored it altogether.
The Premier is not one to shy away from controversy. Given the chance, he’s generally up for it.
Take the holy war that erupted around the resignation of two-day Essendon chief executive Andrew Thorburn last year.
Andrews was among the first to weigh in, labelling views promoted by Thorburn’s church as “absolutely appalling”.
It was an easy one for a Premier who seems to relish going head to head with the church.
He did so safe in the knowledge that a tad more than 40 per cent of Victorians still identify with a religion, and of those only 43 per cent are Christian.
His comments following the death of George Pell may have irked a minority, but he knew he’d have majority support.
It’s all about choosing your battles, and knowing which ones you can win.
Which is what makes the Australia Day debate so challenging for governments, and Andrews personally.
The state government’s position seems clear. It can’t change the date, but it can cancel Australia Day by proxy.

No panem et circenses, it was simply too much for a reptile to bear, and here the pond couldn't but help noting what the reptiles deemed a good time ... a riot of bread and circuses... a flock of sheep lined up clutching memories of the British empire, just as they do in flag-obsessed America ... note with what joy they wave the Union Jack, Brexiting, tax dodging British to their bootstraps ...(have you had your Marina Hyde fix for the day? How many divers will Rishi Sunak need to plumb the murky depths of Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs?)

No wonder Deery was aghast and bereft and in a rage of foaming, frothing hatred, fear and loathing for the monster who had produced this result ... and to make sure we knew who it was, the reptiles had lined up a snap of Satan himself ...

Just look at that evil stare, a hint of a malevolent smirk, with a diabolically cunning Machiavellian air about him, more than enough to convince any reader that the dreary Deery truly knew wot was wot...

Oh hapless Melburnians, how cruel the fate ... why compared to the emerald jewel of Sydney, you simply don't know how to party. 

It's well known that as soon as a dog is sighted pissing in the street, this marvellous city will put on a fireworks display to celebrate. 

And what do you get? Nada, zilch, nihil, nothing ...

What a tragic contrast ...

Official events in Melbourne this year are minimal.
There will be a 21-gun salute, a Royal Australian Air Force flyover, and a mini festival at Federation Square. Government House will also be open for tours.
By contrast, Sydney is fully embracing the day with a harbourside concert, fireworks and boat parade.
The cancellation of Melbourne’s street parade this year is the third successive time the event has been axed.
In 2021 it was done under the cover of Covid. Last year, there was no explanation offered.
This year, it was done with secrecy. No explanation was forthcoming.
It is the sort of thing we have become accustomed to in the eight years since the Andrews government came to power. A worrying lack of transparency has become the norm.
Acting Premier Jacinta Allan said last week that Australia Day was a challenging day for First Nations people.
“Celebrations are had across the state and are organised by different communities in different ways,” she said.
“It is appropriate that Australia Day events recognise that for some, in particular our First Nations people, it can be a really difficult and challenging day.
“It is also a day for communities to come together and reflect on what it is that makes our society strong and makes our community great, and how we can continue to build on that.
“That’s why there’s a range of appropriate Australia Day events that are held across the state that are supported by local communities, that are developed by local communities and reflect the community.
“I think that’s appropriate and we’ve seen now for the last few years the arrangements in and around the city reflect that.”
This contrasts starkly with Andrews’ personal views.
He has previously opposed changing the date of Australia Day.
In 2018 a motion to shift Australia Day from January 26 to May 9 – anniversary of the date the commonwealth parliament first met – was debated at the Victorian Labor Party’s annual conference.
“I don’t support changing the date,” Andrews said at the time.
“There is a debate going on now. What I can do is make my position very clear and I have.”
Last year Andrews said he was very keen to see the parade come back to Melbourne.
January 26 seems unlikely to remain our national day for much longer.
It is too divisive, and has proven completely incapable of being a day of unity – an acknowledgment of the past and celebration of the future.
Until it changes, governments will battle to unite people around these dual aims.
In his election victory speech last November, Andrews promised to govern for all Victorians “no matter how you voted, no matter your views and opinions”.
“Hope always defeats hate,” he said.
The lead-up to January 26 is again consumed by hate, and what feels like very little hope.

And who is this goose, raging at an absent comrade Dan, confused by quoting Jacinta, and completely at a loss? 

Shannon "Dreary" Deery is Herald Sun state politics editor.

Dear sweet long absent lord, guaranteed objective and straight from the hip, as opposed to the mouth, political reporting ... 

But wait, there's more, because the pond had only heard the name of Steve Price as a folk legend, a mythical beast, and yet, contrary to Deery, he seemed to think that all Victorians wanted to do was get on the turps, stagger about pissed as parrots in celebration of something or other, and then the fuzz couldn't throw them in the slammer ... and wouldn't you know it, it was all the fault of the fully woke ...

Decriminalising public drunkenness will be a nightmare and place police in an impossible position

Woke Victorian government plans to send people home to sober up, rather than locking them up, will be a drunken nightmare.

The pond was deeply moved ... how dare they deprive the citizenry of the chance of a death in the city slammer ...

You need to ask how arresting people in Victoria for being drunk in public ends up being an argument about race.
It has though.
Victoria police have been placed in an impossible position from November this year when nanny state laws kick in with the mad idea that drunks will be transported home to dry out, not jailed.
There is even a push to take boozed-up Victorians to a friend’s house or to a sobering up centre.
Naturally we all feel sorry for Tanya Day the Indigenous woman whose death has driven this so-called reform and for her family.
Reports from a coronial inquest into her death in 2019 revealed she had fallen asleep on a train headed to Melbourne from Bendigo.
She was taken off the train at Castlemaine and arrested for public drunkenness which would indicate someone had complained.
She was taken to the local police station and the coronial inquest was told her arrest for public drunkenness saw her hit her head at least five times in a holding cell.
Tanya died in hospital from a brain haemorrhage three weeks later.
Beyond tragic.
Fast forward and the Victorian government’s Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes has justified decriminalising public drunkenness around that case, indeed she said “the main reason” was to prevent drunks having to sober up in police cells.
Then the race card gets played.
Minister Symes claims: “We have Aboriginal people who are arrested for the sole offence of being drunk in public and that is causing immense trauma, and in some instances, we know this has resulted in people dying.”
Really! I can only presume we also have non-Aboriginal people arrested for the sole offence of being drunk in public, so why the distinction?
Ms Symes doesn’t tell us how many people have died or where and when but inserts an Indigenous issue with alcohol consumption as a reason for changing the law to allow anyone to get smashed on booze and put themselves and everyone else in danger without fear of arrest.
This is a nightmare for serving police. A drunken free-for-all.
Can nobody in Spring Street see what a danger this is for sober Victorians and what a dangerous risk for Victoria Police who might challenge a bunch of drunks who know the law?
It’s summer and outdoor drinking is a national hobby in Australia. Let’s take a group of non- Indigenous 22-year-old males who get smashed on the St Kilda foreshore and are abusive, loud, foul-mouthed and obnoxious.
They’ve gathered outside a couple of local restaurants or the Espy Hotel, and the owners have complained. Are police then expected under these new laws to turn up and gently persuade these drunks it’s time to go home? Or perhaps a chauffeur driven transfer to a friend’s place or to one of these so called sobering up centres, which I doubt even exist?
Our police are not nannies.
Attorney-General Symes claims a sobering up centre will be opened in the CBD so I suppose you could put it alongside the second heroin injecting facility in that Flinders Street building taxpayers paid for.
Real value for money.
And apparently there are already sobering up centres operating on a trial basis in some parts of the state, but she refused this week to discuss the results.
Police Association boss Wayne Gatt didn’t mince his words accusing the state government of having a cavalier approach to negligent and reckless reform.
He made the very real point that he believes it’s dangerous to take away the safety net police have now to manage drunk people in public (arrest) who don’t want a so-called health response to their boozing.
The Ambulance Union secretary Danny Hill is a supporter of the changes, calling sobering up facilities a good step.
I wonder how the crews on the road, as opposed to the staff at union HQ, will feel about loading up an ambulance with a bunch of drunks to drop them off at a sobering up centre?
It shouldn’t come as any surprise Hill supports anything the Andrews government does.
During the recent state election campaign, he called the Liberal Party a “virus” and said “I don’t ever want them near my members again”.
All this going soft on public drunkenness will do is encourage more people to get smashed and believe it is OK to stagger around boozed.
If you believed you were likely to be picked up by police for being drunk you’d be more likely to order an Uber, jump in a taxi or sober up before leaving a venue.
As it is, entertainment precincts like Chapel St with its three clubs with 24-hour licences spit these people out onto the street at dawn and what follows is often a horror show.
There’s rubbish from fast food, vomit from too much cheap grog and drug-affected patrons are becoming traffic hazards.
The idea that scrapping those laws will stop Indigenous people dying in jail and somehow that makes this a sensible reform is an insult.

Sheesh, they don't write 'em like that any more ... bloody woke nannies ruining everything, and the next thing you know they've cancelled Australia Day, when it's the right of everyone to get on the piss, and wave a flag ...

But as we're speaking of the race card, why not a cartoon to celebrate ...

The pond had only one ray of light in the darkness ... apparently it wasn't all the fault of George Soros, who is responsible for everything that goes wrong in the US, as revealed by the friends on Fox ...

...Largely spurred on by The New York Post—a fellow Murdoch media outlet—including an anti-Soros article alongside Klotz’s bruised face on its front cover Monday morning, the curvy couch trio has gone all-in on fear-mongering about the liberal philanthropist.
Towards the end of his Monday appearance on Fox & Friends, Klotz—holding up the Post cover—joked that he is “the least dangerous man in America” following the beating he took. Co-host Brian Kilmeade, who is no stranger to Soros conspiracies, quickly followed up by invoking the Post article’s claim that the billionaire is the “most dangerous man” in the nation.
“George Soros is as responsible as these guys,” Kilmeade exclaimed. “Because he is financing the, umm, make criminals first—great again, financing of all the DAs in every city in the country.”While Soros has reportedly spent upwards of $40 million to help elect dozens of district attorneys and prosecutors across the country, he hasn’t financed “all the DAs” in American cities.
The Fox & Friends crew was back at it on Tuesday morning. After discussing Klotz’s attack again and grousing about crime in New York City, co-host Steve Doocy once more invoked the Post’s article about “The Soros Web” and how the 92-year-old businessman had donated to local races.
“They did a big takeout on how George Soros has spent $40 million of his money trying to elect lefty DAs all over the country, backing prosecutors who won’t prosecute,” Doocy declared. “So far, he has got 75 prosecutors nationwide backed by Soros!”
Kilmeade, meanwhile, called on the Republican National Committee to dump money into district attorney races in order to counter Soros’ donations, adding that they could “run with these victims of crime” in order to be more “effective.” He then turned to podcaster and Intellectual Dark Web member Joe Rogan, playing a clip from Rogan’s show featuring him calling Soros an “evil person” and akin to a Batman villain.
“And it’s fucking terrifying that he donates money to a very progressive, very leftist— whether it’s a DA or whatever, politician, and then funds someone who’s even further left than them to go against them,” Rogan exclaimed. “And just keeps moving it along. So he’s playing like a global game. And that he enjoys doing it.”
Notably, Rogan’s guest was ex-CIA officer and Fox regular Mike Baker, who invoked a common antisemitic trope while criticizing Soros.
“He likes being the puppet master,” Baker told Rogan. “Right? He likes pulling strings, and he likes having that influence and that impact.”
Fox News deleted a Soros “Puppet Master” cartoon from its social media accounts in late 2021 after the Anti-Defamation League called the network out for contributing “to the normalization of antisemitism” by pushing the longstanding trope about Jewish power and manipulation.
While the network has previously stopped booking certain guests who peddled antisemitic conspiracy theories about Soros, prompting at least one to say Fox is beholden to the billionaire, Fox News has gone out of its way to allow its commentators and stars to dog whistle about the Jewish philanthropist.

More here, possible paywall, and it wouldn't surprise the pond if the reptiles discovered that comrade Dan was secretly Jewish and possibly in the possession of diabolical space lasers ...

And with those glimpses of Murdoch la la land done and dusted, it was time for the pond to relax and have a good time, and who better than the Speccie mob for company? They really know how to smell disaster in the air ...

So it's not comrade Dan that's marked the day for death, it's that deviant Albo ... and before going on any further, the pond realises that some might be asking who is delivering this lethal charge of deadly volts ...

It's easy, turn to the wiki for the news ... though the pond will only indulge in a sample ...

The Australian Monarchist League!

Now here it's easy to get confused with Flinty's mob, but this was the mob that got a mention for fellow travelling with Pauline and Deves as speakers and Erica as the campaign chairman ... as covered in the Graudian ... 

Benwell said the Monarchist League had a “friendly rivalry” with Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy, a separate anti-republican group headed by Prof David Flint. Benwell admitted ACM was the larger monarchist group in the 1999 referendum, but said the Monarchist League now had 53,000 members, with nearly half under the age of 40.

Benwell said supporters had spiked since the Queen’s death.

Flint said he would prefer to keep a “united front” with other monarchist groups, and claimed his group would be ready for a referendum if it came. But he doubted the government would follow through on its pledge.

Splitters! But relax, the pond resisted the urge to quote the Pythons on splitters, and they all love King Chuck, the talking tampon ...

Pauline, Deves, Flinty and vulgar youff are all on board, and it's all looking good ...

Ah to be sure, to be sure, it's not Soros behind Ten, it's the bloody Oirish ...

Meanwhile this lad does like to go on a lot, a festering morass of abuse and insults, as befits Australia Day ... but it does allow the pond to note that it still doesn't get the United States ...

What a class act, down there with the choker and the loser ... and meanwhile, back at the Speccie, there's more musical composing at work ...

What's even better, having delivered sundry sweeping assertions, the dear lad advises that he is wary of sweeping assertions ... so stand by for some grand, sweeping, assertions ...

What a weird conflation of history, events and general nonsense, far too rich for the pond ... though he really cranks into gear when he attributes mateship, larrikinism and disdain for authority to Phillip.

Back in the day, the pond can recall when it was the fiendish Oirish that were responsible for all that, but perhaps taking the Ten network to the edge of ruin has given them a sense of corporate responsibility ...

All that time studying with Russell Ward and his Australian Legend, bloody Commie and with a taste for wine, and designed to upset the folk at Quadrant ...

Ward’s objective in The Australian Legend was to trace the historical basis for the Australian “national mystique” and he found it in the disproportionate influence of the mores and manners of the outback proletariat over the rest of Australian society. The working-class attitudes of the convicts (whom Ward referred to as Australia’s “founding fathers”), the plebeian self-consciousness of the native-born (which Manning Clark might have been referring to when he spoke of “New World vulgarity”) and the fabled rebellious spirit of the Irish immigrants, all went “up the country” and coalesced in the ideal of the bushman ...

Not the bloody Oirish!

Oh you Commie swine, it was the Guv wot done it ...

Yes, they've been manipulated by fiendish dark forces, a diabolical conspiracy ... though the pond confesses that sometimes conspiracies don't turn out as predicted ...

Say what? Fox and friends will hear about this ...

Silk? Never heard of her, but how the pond would love to ramble on endlessly in a eulogy about the wonders and pleasures of being the pond ...

Meanwhile, the pond had thought of helping out by proposing that the day the nation was actually created should be celebrated as the day that Australia became Australia, as opposed to a bunch of bickering states, colonies and territories, with different rail gauges and snooty noses in the air from convict-free states of the crow eater kind, and all that jazz ...

But of course we already get a holiday that day, so what would be the point?

And besides, if you plug a fork into a power outlet, you'll get a load of volts and a different perspective ...

Ah yes, the race card, and speaking of race, there's just time for a celebration ...

And with a sense of relief and a huge sigh, that just leaves a gobbet to go ... with a nightmarish vision worthy of Nathanael West ...

“Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they’ve been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, war. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can’t titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing.”

“Only those who still have hope can benefit from tears. When they finish, they feel better. But to those without hope, whose anguish is basic and permanent, no good comes from crying. Nothing changes for them. They usually know this, but still can’t help crying.”

Splendid stuff, and yet not a patch on the tears that will be shed on the morrow, when the apocalypse arrives and zombies roam the streets in search of a party, and some woke loon suggests they lie down and sleep it off, instead of spending a night in the clink ...

Phew, what a great tirade, what a nightmare vision. Dare the pond suggest that the lad is wasted on the Speccie mob and that the Murdochian tabloids would benefit from a new voice?

As for the rest?

And so to a clip, and as the pond is from Tamworth, this one celebrates country music, which recently reached a peak in the town.

You can't sit in the emergency ward of the Tamworth hospital listening to Teen Angel and not be changed for life ...

Teen angel, can you hear me?

Teen angel, can you see me?

Are you somewhere up above?

And I am still your own true love?

Oh yes, you can't hear that and not be changed for life, though perhaps not for the better ... 

Now take it away Buster, croon a tune to sooth the pond's heart and prepare it for the end of civilisation on the morrow ...