In which the pond begins with a hint of citronella, before celebrating Dame Slap, doing a bit of rent-seeking with the Caterist and becoming a puffer fish in approved Major style ...

In other news, Tories demanding impartiality, a tugging of the forelock by a lad born of a greengrocer, while appointing a Tory spiv to head an organisation requiring Tory impartiality...

But that's a story from a distant land, and this day the pond takes as its text Robert Frost's ...

They cannot look out far.

The cannot look in deep.

But when was that ever a bar

To any watch they keep? (in full here).

Whatever Frost's original intention, is there any better evocation of the reptiles slaving away in the house of Murdoch? 

They can't look too far, or they might spot those Tories in the Graudian, Pressure on BBC chair mounts over Gary Lineker suspension, and they can never look in deep, and today's offerings are particularly wretched and pathetic, so the pond thought it might start with a most excellent jolly jape amongst chums ...

You see while Petronella became an instant pond favourite - not least because of the way her name evoked fragrant hints of mozzarella, citronella, salmonella and the tarantella - she's hardly prolific, and saves her best efforts for witttering tweets. 

Recently she produced a stunning foray into Godwin's Law territory and the notion of Nazi socialism - a theme beloved of far right loons - and the question as to whether Nazis might be deemed fascist. 

It's all in the aptly named Poke's Daily Mail columnist Petronella Wyatt said ‘Nazis weren’t fascists’ and was schooled into next year, with many tweets ... but the pond took particular delight in this closer...

It was perfect, and the pond nodded off to sleep, only to be rudely woken up by Claire given front and centre billing ...

Oh Claire, Claire, that's an EXCLUSIVE? 

Nah, not really, because back in July 2012 Stephanie Bunbury was scribbling in what was then Fairfax Rewrites a blight on Blyton's legacy ... by golly ...

In the past couple of years, however, Blyton's publishers in Britain have endeavoured to wring yet more cream out of their cash cow by updating the texts. In 2010, they released the first 10 Famous Fives in the new ''timeless'' language. According to their research, they say, the books sound so dated that they appeal more to parents' nostalgia than to the children for whom they were written. ''These days,'' said Marlene Johnson, the managing director of Hachette's children's books division, earlier this year, ''you don't talk about jolly japes to kids''.

The adventures remained the same, Hachette insisted. There were no gratuitous 21st-century add-ons: no rescues achieved through the use of mobile phones, no snuggling in front of breakfast television; no question that Uncle Quentin was locking himself in his study in order to watch online porn. ''Sensitive revisions'' simply replaced Mother and Father with Mum and Dad, cut out words such as ''jolly'' and ''wizard'', eliminated gay fairgrounds and queer happenings where the words' modern meanings might be distracting or shocking and - now, this is jolly queer - replacing supposedly outmoded words, such as ditching ''peculiar'' for ''strange''.

There were some tweaks to fit modern sensibilities, too; Blyton's insistence on the obligations of girls to make sandwiches has gone the way of golliwogs and the sadistic Dame Slap in the Faraway Tree, who was reduced to reprimanding children as ''Dame Snap'' in an earlier round of Blyton reforms. George still wanted to be a boy - given that this is a major plot point in every Famous Five book, it would be difficult to excise - but less was made of the shortness of her hair.

Eek, a tranny in Enid, and you had to go back to 1943 to enjoy this sort of Dame Slap spin-off in all her Slappian glory ...

Talk about vintage. Meanwhile, in the Graudian, back in October 2014, Alison Flood, in Enid Blyton - not as good as she used to be, was also worried for Dame Slap ...

There’s no way in the world I think children should be slapped, but nor do I think they should be locked in cages, à la Hansel and Gretel, forced to sleep in a cupboard under the stairs, à la Harry Potter, and I’m not even going to get into Goodnight, Mister Tom. It’s a story. Dame Slap was a good character; Dame Snap, not so much. 

You see, Claire, without wishing to do down your EXCLUSIVE, the re-writes began way back before the intertubes, in the 1990s ...

Meanwhile, in a planet far removed from Claire's world, some serious book banning shit is going down, due in no small part to Ron DeSanctimonious (sorry, there's a WaPo paywall) ...

Well yes, it was summarised in the Daily Beast this way ...

Pro tip. Reading the reptiles aloud will make many people feel uncomfortable ...

And there, dear Petronella, is your quintessential definition of a man with fascist instincts, and if he bans like a duck,  chances are he's a fascist duck, what with Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools, with the resemblances between the Taliban and the GOP growing stronger by the day ...

But there is good news. Dame Slap still exists, and she continues her slapping ways in the lizard Oz, and evidently the reptiles realised that Monday had dropped off with the banishing of the Oreo, so there Dame Slap was handing out a slapping in the triptych of terror ...

Dame Slap followed that up by going to the top of the commentary pile ...

Start the debate over? In what alternative reptile universe?

She's bloody obsessed, and the pond notes the agitated way that she gets upset by talk of racist arguments, and yet ... can anyone explain Dame Slap's constant urge to slap down difficult, uppity, awkward, deplorable black people, without noting at least a tinge of, if not outright racism, then at least unhealthy blonde obsession?

She really had made an excellent attempt to become the Petronella down under, though perhaps more salmonella than citronella ...

Never mind, the pond is well over Dame Slap, and so had to turn to see who else was out and about this day ...

Oh dear, not the bromancer still blathering on about the subs, and Killer Creighon too, and yet the reptiles themselves had produced another EXCLUSIVE ...

Two hundred billion? Dear sweet long absent lord, but luckily the Caterist knew where to extract some budget savings ...

Ah yes, the price of a Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarine, and all to take care of rent-seekers.

But there's good news, because in deploring rent-seekers, the Caterist has announced that the Menzies Research Centre will no longer stick out its paw and demand government grants.

Astonishing, but that's the devotion of the Caterist to the onerous task of deploring rent seekers, grifters and hypocritical buffoons ...

Sorry, sorry, the pond got that wrong. The floodwaters in quarries whisperer and grifting government grant rent seeker will carry on business as usual, because you know, what happened in the Second Fleet in 1790 is a sterling example to grifters today ...

Yes, you can read the details of how to grift and rent seek here, and no need to go back to the Second Fleet to discover how it's done ...

And so on and on, it's a favourite pond sport, and the pond will likely run it until the cows come home to roost, as we come to the rent-seeking grifter's last gobbet for the day...

Yes, it will take far more political courage than is so far apparent for the Menzies Research Centre to keep snout out of trough and end the rorting ...

And so to the Major Mitchell, just because the pond would miss the squawking on a Monday from its favourite bird ...

Not bloody Gary Banks and super all over again.

But the pond didn't say it would be interesting, and in fact the galah that the pond's parents once cruelly kept in a cage had a wider range of interests, and a most excellent diverse set of squawks ... whereas the Major these days squawks by rote, when not imitating the grandiosity of a puffer fish ...

The pond realises that anyone who pondered over that Major set of figuring might wonder at the reference to the Major as puffer fish, but relax here it comes ...

There you go ... the Major as puffer fish, puffing himself and the reptiles of the lizard Oz up to a splendid size.

As for that wondrous line about the rag serving the interests of its proprietors, what to say about the delusional notion that it might be otherwise?

In all, the Major has done it again, with a fine serve of grandiosity, narcissism, and an infinite capacity to admire the fluff gathered from constant navel gazing ...

The pond was immediately swept away, back to Ed Pilkington in The Graudian, and ‘Lachlan’s in the mire’: Fox News case spells trouble for Murdoch heir ...

...Similar hard-headed, business-first logic has defined Murdoch’s approach to Trump. “Whether he loved Trump or loathed him, for Lachlan there was an overwhelming commercial logic in following the news cycle and in creating audiences where there was a gap in the market, on the right,” Manning writes.

The watchdog Media Matters for America has noted that the lock-tight relationship between Fox and Trump coincided with Lachlan’s rise within the family business. “Fox News’ transformation into an unchained pro-Trump propaganda outlet came as Lachlan Murdoch’s control over the network steadily increased,” it reported.

The hand of Lachlan can be seen behind the emergence of Tucker Carlson as Fox’s provocateur-in-chief. When Carlson has shocked even Fox sensibilities by suggesting that immigrants make America “dirtier” or by embracing the white supremacist “great replacement” theory, it was Murdoch who rushed to his defense.

Yet again this week Carlson pushed the limits of Fox credibility by airing security footage of the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol and distorting it to make the event seem like “peaceful chaos”. His latest escapade earned a rebuke from the Republican leader in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell, and denoted a level of hypocrisy given that Dominion documents were simultaneously exposing Carlson as having said in private that “I hate [Trump] passionately”.

“Lachlan has defended Tucker Carlson in the past, and this week’s January 6 effort suggests he continues to defend him,” Manning, speaking from Tasmania, told the Guardian. “The question is, will he do so in the future? I still believe that it is an iron law in the Murdoch empire that no one is indispensable, except at the vertex.”

Following his own formula, Manning sees Lachlan Murdoch as indispensable for as long as his father, who is 91, is alive and in the driving seat. “There is no question that Lachlan is the designated successor, and while Rupert is around his position is secure.”

But thereafter?

It's a much better, and more amusing read than the Major ... but at last the pond has reached the final gobbet of the day, so no need to worry about the thereafter for the moment ...

Years of prattle about climate and diversity? That's called projection because the reptiles are full of prattle, and not just Polonius, and if you want anything more than their prattle, you should look elsewhere, or turn to the immortal Rowe ... helping out the Caterist ...

It's always in the detail, and strangely you won't find the Major or the Caterist or pretty much any of the lizard Oz reptiles explaining what happened in this Second Fleet ...