In which the pond spends time in little England, before moving on to Roger of The Times ...

 

The pond just about gave up on the reptiles of the lizard Oz this day, pausing only to wonder what inspired the reptiles to change this header ...

Was it the whiny, needy, snowflakey tone of the original that prompted the change? Did they want to emphasise that the story was being written by a gross hypocrite and so 'gross hypocrisy' should be featured in the header?

Mysterious and inexplicable are the ways of the reptiles, and instead of trying to decipher it, the pond turned to the UK version of the Daily Terror for some light relief.

Everything about the story was a delight, beginning with the header By pandering to the woke for his Coronation, the King risks his own irrelevance.

Pandering, woke and the deeply relevant King Chuck risking irrelevance!

Then there was the name of the author, Petronella Wyatt...

The pond belatedly realises that Petronella came from the Greek, Petra, and meant Rock. It hadn't done well in the baby name stakes of late, but it turned out Petronella's nickname was 'Petsy', another delight, and even better between 2000 and 2004 she'd had an affair with Boris and her mum had dobbed her into the press, or so her wiki says.

Then came the opening thrust, the gambit if you will ...

My late father, the politician and boulevardier, Woodrow Wyatt, attended Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation in 1953. There were 8,251 guests, accommodated by the scaffolding built into Westminster Abbey, and they sat on velvet chairs, which you could buy afterwards. The profits went to covering the cost of an occasion that made the world wonder.

Forget the wondering world, note that word "bouevardier". Some might take it as referring to a cocktail, but it comes from a man who frequents the boulevards and so a man about town or a bon vivant, or a wealthy, fashionable socialite. Pure delight, and such a novel way to evoke larrikin rake, as sordid types down under are sometimes called.

The lad was married four times, and let a colourful life, covered at length in his wiki. He naturally berated Mandela, as one did at the time, and even helped out the chairman ...

In the mid-1980s he played a key role as Rupert Murdoch's fixer in brokering negotiations with the electricians' union, aiding News International to move to Wapping.

Gad sir well-played, and then back to the Rock, for a pitiful cry,  a plea for a relief from life wth the Tories, the storylines in that sitcom having worn a bit thin:

Life in Britain, 70 years on, is dreary and depressing, and we need something to gild and fresco it. A slimmed-down monarchy is just about palatable, but I can’t digest a slimmed down Coronation; I want a big fat one, replete with irrelevance, people in pantaloons, and an orgy of excess.

Pantaloons ..  an orgy of excess, just like Boris, and the fear of missing out ...

The Duke of Norfolk, whose family seem to have a right to the Coronation business, is supposed to be organising the event. There are tantrums already.
In 1952, every peer in Britain was invited. While it is not unreasonable to suppose that in 2023, this might be too costly, I hear that only peers who are members of the Government can expect an invitation.
In their desperation, those fearful of being excluded are becoming inventive. One of the proposals secretly put forward was to divert the royal procession through a scaffolded Westminster Hall, so that the Lords could pay their respects there. Norfolk has said no to this.
I suppose the lesson is that peers are nobodies these days. But if titles and the hereditary principle are no longer important, where does that leave the Monarchy itself? Kings are not dissimilar from Dukes and Earls; their main function is to be picaresque and uplifting. It’s a bit like the Catholic religion. There is no rational reason for monarchy, only spectacle and a leap of faith.

Gad sir, is there no place for the faithful and the picaresque? 

Some might think"picaresque" an attempt to remember "picturesque", but the definition is precise and useful, as it is of or relating to rogues and rascals, as in pertaining to, characteristic of, or characterized by a form of prose fiction, originally developed in Spain, in which the adventures of an engagingly roguish hero are described in a series of usually humorous or satiric episodes that often depict, in realistic detail, the everyday life of the common people. (or so the Dictionary says)

And as Catholicism had been evoked, at the risk of sounding like the infamous Mary I of England, so to a mourning for the loss of the Latin mass, or at least a splendidly arcane ritual of a similar kind ...

It is particularly disturbing that the Earl of Derby has not been asked to provide falcons, as his family have done since the 16th Century. These little things deprive people of their purpose in life.

An existential crisis, people deprived of their purpose in life, by a failure to heed the cry of the birds, and all the fault of the bloody woke ...

I concede that Charles faces a dilemma. He is the first social media monarch, but by pandering to the woke, as he did with the row centred around Lady Susan Hussey, he begins his own suicide note.
When I hear from friends close to the King that the Coronation will be a tribute to “yoof” and “diversity” - just the sort of people who cost poor Lady Susan her job - I cannot let out a rousing cheer.
The Coronation should be a shining mark to the whole camorra of professional doom-sayers, puritanical bores, and the cancel commentariat. The British Monarchy is not diverse and inclusive, and it never can be, being limited to one family.
The value of diamonds depends on a controlled and limited output. So does the value of the Monarchy, something it would do well to remember.

Well played Rock, and it reminded the pond of the value of the royalty and the talking tampon, King Chuck himself ...

There's something about royalty and attendant lords and ladies that tempts all sorts, not just the Rock of the ages. 

Not having any Rock to relieve them, Americans are particularly vulnerable. The Daily Beast is routinely full of it, and with Lady Anne Glenconner out and about to flog a book, the beasts led with Lady Anne Glenconner Knows Many Royal Secrets. Now She’s Telling All.

And The New Yorker went full hue and cry with Oldest Living Aristocratic Widow Tells All (possibly paywall affected)

The pond was lifted up, far away from its dreary, depressing life in the world of the reptiles, only to return with a thud.

First they were still banging on about Super ...

The beefy anti-windmill boofhead, as transcribed by simplistic 'here no conflict of interest' Simon,. and petulant Peta blathring on about socialism, as if to the manor born!?

Red carded the lot of them, and best just get the immortal Rowe out of the way early ...

... and while the pond was at it, the pond red-carded this unlikely pair, this peculiar reptile coupling..

The silly old French clock man took the bromancer bait, and went behind the reptile paywall to help them gee up some interest in their aged demographic, but it was a phoney war ... though perhaps a late-breaking infallible Pope could have helped ...

Now there's a sight to appeal to the bromancer, and but sadly in the pond's world, the French clock man was no match for a genuinely bemusing reptile offering, with ancient Troy deciding, in an astonishing EXCLUSIVE, that it was time to expose Whitlam's agenda for change.

Where was Troy when it mattered, in 1972? Make that a double red card, or sing along with ancient Troy that it's time for a change ...

But all this left the pond desperately short of material ... sure there was Charlie taking a cheap shot ...

That tweet with moving picture and sound was here, but that was yesterday and Coulter is so ancient Troy, which is to say so yesterday, though even she'd struggle to get back to 1972 ...

Meanwhile all the reptiles could offer was this mötley crüe ...

Poor Jack. The pond realises it had encouraged the reptiles to go the Dahl, but you're too late Jack, that was so yesterday, with Michelle Smith having covered the turf in The Conversation via Roald Dahl rewrites: rather than bowdlerising books on moral grounds we should help children to navigate history...

There were the usual comedy lowlights ...Donald Trump Jr. Gets Scathing Reminder Of His Father's 'Mental Competency'. But how many times can you say camera TV elephant?

There was nothing for it but to head to The Times in time for the anniversary ...

What astonishes the pond is the way that both the little Englander Murdochians and the lizards of Oz manage to ignore what Faux Noise and the GOP are up do, as if they weren't kissing cousins.

It was all there in Biden Went to Kyiv; DeSantis Went to Fox & Friends.

The pond regretted that it had wasted an infallible Pope, when it was all the more relevant today ...

And the pond would have been better off reading Cathy Young and getting to her closing par ...

Putin’s appearance before the federal assembly was accompanied by another mostly overlooked but remarkable bit of symbolism. On the same day, he issued a decree that awarded the honorary title of “Guards,” for “mass heroism and valor, endurance, and courage,” to the anti-aircraft missile brigade that supplied the Buk missile system that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-17. It is fitting way to mark the first anniversary of a war marked by a succession of war crimes.

Or perhaps ‘Putin’s Chef’ Leaks Grisly Corpse Photo in Public Betrayal of Kremlin.

So much for unity and modernity ... but the pond pressed on, ignoring Faux Noise,  the GOP,  MTG and the rest of the ratbags and their cheerleading complicity in war crimes ... as did Roger of The Times ...

A modernising device? What a peculiar use of the word "modern", as if only an improved killing machine might be "modern" and worth further modernising ...

Meanwhile, elsewhere, as above ...

...Then again, Putin’s Tuesday address was one big image problem. None of the expected horribles materialized: no announcement of a new round of mobilization, no formal declaration of war—let alone a call to a holy “people’s war” in which the entire population must make major sacrifice for victory—and no belligerent rhetoric with transparent allusions to a nuclear strike, as in Putin’s speech when announcing the “special operation” a year ago. (At the time, he warned that any country that dared to get in Russia’s way would see “such consequences as you have never before experienced in your history.”) Instead, there was tedium and copium: familiar talk about how the West had started the war and Russia was really trying to end it, about the evils of the supposed neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine, about the Kyiv Nazis’ atrocities against Russian-speaking people in Donbas, about the eternal anti-Russian perfidy of the West which had apparently plotted “to deprive Russia of these historical territories that are now called Ukraine” since the nineteenth century and the days of the Austro-Hungarian empire. There were also, as expected, references to Western decadence, only this time, instead of “parent number one and parent number two,” it was an alleged attempt to normalize pedophilia and promote the idea of a gender-neutral God.

On another Popular Politics program, expatriate Russian journalist Michael Naki argued that the most notable thing about Putin’s speech, at least its opening portion that dealt with the war, was how “whiny” and full of excuses it was: “He’s standing there like a schoolboy saying, ‘I’m not the bad guy, they’re the bad guys.’” This, Naki pointed out, is not the language of a leader who is winning. The only “wins” Putin was able to report were that the Russian economy had not contracted as much as experts had predicted despite the sanctions, and that the four Ukrainian regions annexed by Russia—the “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions—had “made their choice” in last fall’s fake referenda and were with Russia to stay. Oh, and also: the Sea of Azov was once again Russia’s internal sea. (Hurray?)

Of course, to listen to Putin, one would never know that the city of Kherson had been retaken by Ukraine a little over a month after its “forever union” with Russia; or that, even as Putin spoke, Russian forces were shelling the city, killing six people and wounding many more—people who, according to Russia, are citizens of the Russian Federation.

The pond reluctantly returned to Roger of The Times ...

It's almost as if Roger of The Times wanted to coach Vlad the Impaler on how to do better ... but then it must be awkward being a kissing cousin of Faux Noise, just as Kevin is now a kissing cousin with MTG, and will love her to death, no matter what she says or does ...

Next thing you know there have to be columns headed US secession is a great idea — for Russia ... and Mitt joined the wars ... yet still Kevin loves his secessionist Putin-lover so ...

It seems the way the Murdochians keep company with secessionists and Putin lovers is just so much water under the bridge to Roger of The Times ...

After all that talking of a modernising Vlad the Impaler intent on a bigger war footing, he doesn't believe it himself?

Well there's time wasted that the pond will never get back. Should have stayed in the shallows with the Rock ...

Never mind, Rowson joined a few recent threads together ... and you can stick your modernising where the re-writes don't shine ...