In which the pond does a Tootle for a time, but eventually must join an unhinged Groan about migrants and an even more unhinged bromancer ranting about everything ...

 

The pond was driving along yesterday when suddenly up popped Miyuki Jokiranta, presenting A Silent Promise | The keeper of forgotten souls on RN. 

It was ostensibly a gloomy yarn about burying paupers out of sight at the Old Ballan Cemetery, but surprisingly cheery because of the work done by Alan Barr, the groundskeeper (no Willy jokes please).

Alan sounded just like one of the pond's many uncles - one of them was the undertaker to the small village in which he lived, and the pond used to sneak out to the back shed to check the extremely basic coffins he used to keep, handy for those who wanted a burial without the expense of a big Tamworth carry-on.

The reptiles keep blathering about ABC radio, but every so often the pond revives old habits, drops in for a listen and is pleasantly surprised. At least there'll be a space for the pond after the reptiles have driven the pond into the ground.

The pond had much the same response when listening to a show about a 90 year old duck recovering her singing past with her daughter, a BBC show 'The Brooklyn Cowgirl' - return of a country music star, featuring one 'Mimi Roman'.

Meanwhile, Tootling away off the reptile tracks. the pond also headed over to The Conversation to read Adam Simpson's Nuclear power makes no sense for Australia – but it’s a useful diversion from real climate action.

Simpson is well-advanced in his herpetology and Capt'n Spud studies, and produced this listicle, which, given the pond's dietary intake, sounded awesomely familiar:

...mounting scientific evidence, along with Australia’s international obligations to reduce emissions and people’s personal experience of extreme events such as the 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires, has made outright climate denial largely indefensible for a mainstream political party in this country.

This shift in the Australian electorate has required various shifts in strategy by those who deny either the science of climate change or the urgency of climate action. They have followed what I argue are the six stages of climate obstruction, moving from one stage to the next as the last proved untenable. The latest stage is active support for large-scale nuclear power.

Stage 1: climate change is not happening (arsonists cause bushfires, not climate change)

Stage 2: climate change is happening but is not human-induced (solar activity causes climate change, not humans)

Stage 3: Australia’s emissions are too small to make a difference, so why should we try?

Stage 4: climate change is happening and human-induced but there are other more pressing priorities (the “coal is good for humanity” argument)

Stage 5: nuclear small modular reactors are the only viable path to net zero (these reactors are an example of a “burgeoning nuclear industry” in the US)

Stage 6: if small nuclear reactors turn out not to be viable, large nuclear reactors are the only path to net zero.

There were hot links for each of the points, but only one led to lizard Oz (stage 5), and that was to Ted in his finest hour:

Sometimes it's good to down with the greatest hits and mammaries, the platters that splatter, before turning to today's reptiles chores.

in a similar vein, the pond couldn't help but notice that Will Hutton had slightly shifted away from his standard Graudian rant to discuss the slave trade ...

If you thought the empire profoundly shaped our industry, trade and financial institutions, with slavery an inherent part of the equation, helped turbocharge the Industrial Revolution and underwrote what was the world’s greatest navy for 150 years, think again. The contribution of the transatlantic trade in enslaved people to our economy was trumped by domestic brewing and sheep farming, opines the IEA. The tax “burden” of defending this barely profitable empire was not worth the candle. Instead, it was free-market economics that unleashed British economic growth – a truth that must be restated before Marxists and reparation-seeking ex-colonies start controlling the narrative.

It is a risible recasting of history that should have been ignored as self-serving ideological tosh. But enter the business and trade secretary and aspiring Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, who took it upon herself to endorse this IEA “research”. She told an audience of financial services bosses at a conference in London: “It worries me when I hear people talk about wealth and success in the UK as being down to colonialism or imperialism or white privilege or whatever.” If you believe any of this story about oppression and exploitation as the cause of British wealth, then the solutions to “our growth and productivity problem” will be even worse. It was “free markets and liberal institutions” that drove the Industrial Revolution and economic growth thereafter.

Except that, while they were certainly part of a cocktail of reasons for Britain’s rise to economic pre-eminence, they were only part. Recent historical research, blithely dismissed by author Kristian Niemietz, the IEA’s head of political economy, has increasingly uncovered a mountain of evidence that places ever more importance on empire, and slavery in particular, as important drivers of the Industrial Revolution and evolution of our economy.

And so on and at first the pond thought that Hutton was the one pulling the pond's leg, so absurd was the argument, but Hutton provided a link, and sure enough there it was... Kemi Badenoch: ‘UK’s wealth isn’t from white privilege and colonialism’ 

What to say, except perhaps to suggest that it seems that black is the new white, or perhaps white is the new black ...

Whatever, the pond has filibustered more than enough, and was wildly excited to see the reptiles had maintained the rage about the banning of Al Jazeera,  what with their constant talk of freedumb, the value of a free media, and the astonishing value of western civilisation...

See how their indignation was front and centre ...

Scanned the top of the digital page expecting a mention? Perhaps also expecting news of the orange Jesus?

Perhaps the pond's sense of irony is getting a touch heavy-handed, and leaden. 

What else to say when the actual stars were carry on regardless Cameron, ancient Troy adrift, and a hate-laden Josh returned to the fray, an ominous sign of a desire for future attention-seeking.

Then down below the pond knew the sort of sense of doom that a grass-eating Gazan or a missile-suffering Ukrainian might dismiss as small beer ...

It was Dame Groan day, offering her usual rant about pesky, difficult furriners. 

Frankly, while the pond appreciated picking up a gong for having endured a full zillion of these rants - apparently you get a prize as well as a medal when you do it a squillion times - the pond knew it would be interminable, tough going ... and so it proved...

The reptiles tried to distract with illustrations, but the pond knew that Dame Groan and Pauline were right. Migrants were responsible for inflation, migrants were the reason the pond's broadband dropped out for a day, migrants were the reason Telstra delayed the end of 3G for a couple more months, migrants just made a complete mess of everything ...

The pond was briefly startled at the notion that Dame Groan might have nothing to write about if it weren't for the way that migrants rooned everything, and so perhaps she should be grateful, but quickly banished the thought ...

Indeed, indeed, and just to confirm it, the pond dropped in on a 2023 Lowy Institute poll, and it was everything that Dame Groan had predicted ...

Following two years of closed borders during the pandemic, Australians appear to be shifting towards more openness and immigration. Seven in ten Australians (68%) say ‘Australia’s openness to people from all over the world is essential to who we are as a nation’, a 15-point increase from 2018. Fewer Australians (31%) now say ‘if Australia is too open to people from all over the world, we risk losing our identity as a nation’, a ten-point decline over the past four years.

There is a significant difference across generations on this question. Eight in ten Australians aged 18–44 (79%) see openness as essential to Australia’s identity, while this is a view held by 58% of Australians aged over 45.

The number of Australians calling for reduced immigration also appears to have declined over the course of the pandemic. When asked about restarting Australia’s immigration program now that borders have reopened, 46% say that the number of immigrants allowed into Australia should be ‘around the same as pre-Covid levels’. A third of Australians (33%) say immigration should be ‘lower than pre-Covid levels’, and 21% say ‘higher than pre-Covid levels’.

Yes, yes, the pond realises they hired migrants to help with the survey, and of course all those young pups should be taken off to the gravel pit and dealt with, it's the only way to end the bizarre notion that openness is essential to Australia's identity ...beware, they're coming south...

At this point the reptiles helpfully added a huge snap of Satan, in case you needed help noticing him speaking at a rally for women ...

Then it was on to the final gobbet ...

Indeed, indeed, and to the pond's eternal regret, the infallible Pope apparently didn't understand the way that migrants were roonin' everything ...no muesli bar for him ...

And so to the bonus, because there's always got to be a bonus, and the unravelling of the bromancer provides exactly the right sort of bizarre spectacle for which the lizard Oz, and so the pond, has justly become famous.

The bromancer has over the years turned increasingly hysterical and unhinged, and this day saw a truly fine effort ...

Indeed, indeed, if we see an ongoing genocide and an even greater slaughter of civilians and destruction of Gaza, it would result in an eruption of unreason ...

Oh okay, the bromancer was clearly scribbling before news broke of cunning Hamas offering a ceasefire, and the barking mad fundamentalist zealots on the other side want to keep up the slaughter ... best head off to the Graudian for that ...

The reptiles did their best to distract with a video clip and a couple of snaps designed to terrify their aged demographic ...

All this was really an excuse for the bro to get fully unhinged and flap wildly in the wind like a dunny door on the loose ...

You know, blather about widespread corruption and deep sickness and current madness, when really they should all be taken off to the gravel pit ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, not the master Quadranter himself. Who can forget his fine tribute, "That the DLP is the best Party for New Australians" ...? (sadly now lost in his papers, but living on at Connor Court).

Sorry, sorry, bloody furriners, ruining everything, and what would vulgar youff know about those ancient tribal wars. They should be pleased just to know that while you can take the DLP out of the political system, and turn it into a vexatious gnat, you can't take the DLP out of the bromancer ...

Meanwhile, the bromancer is excited at the way that the demonstrations will help return a con artist and a coup lover to power, though for some strange reason the pond had to again turn to the Graudian for news ...

Strange how this news has been disappeared and sent off to the cornfield by the reptiles ...but back to the bromancer having one of his classic nervous breakdowns ...

It's easy to see why the bromancer is a broken man. What a craven, gutless wonder. How easily he sold out his educational, intellectual and moral superiority for an utterly worthless piece of paper, a token of his abject humiliation ...

He could have dropped out and joined the military or headed off to a monastery, but instead he told lies to get ahead.

How he must have dreamed of a splendid future as a reward for his Judas-like intellectual treachery, and complete lack of morality and spine ...

Instead of a comfortable leather chair and a glass of dry sherry, and a position as supreme  Reichsmarschall, ready to lead valiant troops against the dastardly invading Chinese in the great Xmas war of December '24, here he was, a broken man, raging in impotent fury in the lizard Oz at all the Lilliputians who failed to understand his greatness and his astonishing insights... if only they too had an imaginary friend, and started their Sundays by drinking his blood and eating his flesh, if only they'd understood cannibalism as the way forward to a civilised world ... but then they say that self-contempt, self-loathing and a deep sense of guilt are signs of being a most excellent Catholic.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, please allow the bromancer to end with a doozy ... what you might call the 42 of everything in bro intellectual conspiracy la la land ...

If that bromancer outing counts as profoundly intellectual, it's probably about time for the pond to give up on any chance of any sign of intelligent life on earth, and instead watch out for dragons ... what with dragons being everywhere, and even infesting news of a surplus ...

Another full day of wild-eyed delirium at the pond, and this day it was almost clinical ...

Delirium is a clinical syndrome that usually develops in the elderly. It is characterized by an alteration of attention, consciousness, and cognition, with a reduced ability to focus, sustain or shift attention. It develops over a short period of time and fluctuates during the day.

On with the assorted genocides ... or if necessary, off to the gravel pit ...