The tragedy of "Ned", and an arc of darkness from the Ughmann ...

 

Thank the long absent lord that the venerable Meade returned to the Weekly Beast and fed the pond all sorts of titillations of the Murdochian kind in Antisemitism summit: John Howard says ‘God bless Sky News’ as Mark Dreyfus warns against partisanship.

She returned to the James feast (the pond has substituted archive links where handy):

A family at war
Earlier this week, while we were absorbing juicy details about the Murdoch family rift, the media mogul’s Australian editors were assiduously avoiding publishing anything about the story.
They were undoubtedly whispering about it as they met in Melbourne for an annual conference to discuss the upcoming federal election and the company’s priorities this year.
The Daily Telegraph’s editor, Ben English, travelled to Melbourne to meet his counterparts from the Australian, the Herald Sun, the Courier-Mail and news.com.au for the talkfest, leaving behind a disgruntled newsroom in the wake of the Cairo Cafe shame. English is said to be a favourite of Lachlan so is unlikely to face any consequences for the disastrous stunt, sources say.

Across two landmark articles, one in the US magazine the Atlantic and another in the New York Times, the dysfunctional family’s animosity towards each other was laid bare.

We didn’t hear a peep about it in the News Corp papers, apart from Andrew Bolt, who declared he was “disgusted” that James would “shop his resentments” and risk the disintegration of the Murdoch empire.

“Turning Murdoch outlets into clones of the ABC or Guardian would destroy their point of difference, and destroy the business,” the Sky News host wrote.

Assuring readers of his independence, Bolt added: “I should declare I did not warn Lachlan or his team I was writing this, and was not asked to.”

You see? The pond knew about the others, and quoted extensively from The Atlantic interview, but would never have known about that gigantic suck and colossal bore, the Bolter, so far up chairman Rupert's arse not a shred of daylight could be seen...

Then there was this moment ...

Too much is never enough
The election hasn’t even been called yet but we are being subjected to sit-down interviews with the alternative PM, Peter Dutton.
Both Nine’s 60 Minutes and Sky News Australia broadcast interviews with Dutton on Sunday, leading to a Sky News website almost entirely filled with stories and photographs of Dutton and his exclusive interview with Sky News Sunday Agenda.

And the venerable Meade provided the visual evidence ...

More please ...

And so on, but today the pond must devote itself to a couple of human tragedies, arcing out across the reptile sky like those spluttering carbon arc lamps you used to get in ancient 35mm projectors ...

It jumped out at the pond like a smack across the chops with a stale fish in a Python sketch ...

There it was, the reptiles gave it a huge splash, with a kind of twee pop-up gif so awful it was a relief to be able to freeze the frame ...

The moment the pond saw it yesterday, the pond knew that nobody or nothing that appeared in the extreme far right this morning could match it, and so it came to pass ...

Simpleton Simon in election mode? Nah. 

Brendan blathering in favour of hillbillies and JD? Nah, bet he's never been to Tamworth (the down under one). 

Polonius desperate to redeem King Donald? That's a Sunday meditation ...

Instead what we have could be called The Tragedy of Ned, or perhaps The Tragedy of Old Age, and the descent into a kind of Learian stupidity.

It happens to us all, it's happening to the pond, but it hit "Ned" particularly hard in this outing, a trip to the outer limits, a visit to the twilight zone...

The pond was reminded of the tragedy in action when the local street library unexpectedly disgorged a copy of "Ned's" 1984 book The Hawke Ascendancy, A definitive account of its Origins and Climax 1975-1983.

Back then "Ned" was a player, a man on the rise - the splash jacket boasted of another work, The Dismissal ... and his thumb bio showed he got out and about, that he'd worked around the traps ...

The pitch for the book on the rear cover was on the light side ...

That was then, and this is now, and the words of that Yeats poem hung heavy in the pond's ears ...

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

More prosaically, "Ned" probably flew over the seas, and landed in Britain amid a cavalcade of cackling loons, and tried to make some sense out of his taking of a junket ...

A warning, the reptiles rated it a12 minute read, and stuffed it full of distracting images and audio visual ramblings ...

Alas ...

Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? 

Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont

to set the table on a roar? Your studies of Bob and of Gough?

No one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chop-fall'n? 

If it must be done, it were best to do it now, in a sudden carefree rush of madness ...

‘It’s the culture, stupid’: How the West can be re-won, Rebuilding Western civilisation in an age of disruption and disunity was the main focus at the 2025 ARC meeting in London.

Or the tragedy of an aged junketeer past his prime. How far past?

Imagine beginning with "there is a new vibe."

Oh ancient mariner, not that ...

There is a new vibe for the renewal of Western civilisation. It intersects with politics, religion and public policy but it isn’t owned by any of them. More than 4000 people from more than 90 nations met in London this week to give tangible meaning to the vibe.

Almost immediately the reptiles interrupted with a reprise of that risible gif, that assembling of the loons...

This was the second London meeting of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, a unique organisational experiment founded in the belief that “a civilisational moment has arrived” – that the West will sink further into individual unhappiness and loss of conviction or find the keys to restoration and renewal.

Then came "Ned", trying to cope with the concept of "thought leaders"...

At ARC 2025, thought leaders shared powerful messages on courage, happiness, and unity. Jordan Peterson explored the values of self-sacrifice and co-operation, Arthur Brooks offered insights on cultivating lasting happiness, and Philippa Stroud inspired attendees with a call to face challenges with integrity and purpose.

ARC is based on the profound truth: politicians alone cannot solve problems of our age because they originate in cultural malaise and blunder. The frustration of the people and the ineptitude of the politicians go to deeper afflictions that must be addressed at source. No institution exists to do the job – hence ARC.

ARC’s chief executive, Baroness Philippa Stroud, sketched the scale of ambition: “Decline is not inevitable. Life can be a glorious adventure. We are at a crossroads when our nations must choose what ideas will animate our public life and philosophy in the years to come.

“The time has come for a better story; one that reconnects us with the original inspiration of our civilisation. We believe we can see families flourish, our economies grow, innovation accelerate, freedom established, a culture of responsibility restored and our civilisation set once again on the pursuit of the true, the good and the beautiful.”

The driving force behind ARC is the recognition that Western soci­eties are increasingly divided and diminished, plagued by a crisis of meaning, weakened by ineffective governments, suffering from a loss of trust in institutions and beset by a fracture between powerful elites and alienated publics. What makes ARC unique is that it seeks to tackle the malaise at the level of culture and is an international movement because the malaise transcends borders.

It is neither a political party nor a religious movement. But under Stroud’s guidance – where she opens the cultural lens wide – it evokes the foundational idea of liberal civilisation: humans made in God’s image.

Poor "Ned" tried to pretend he was down wit it and with vulgar youff, Gen Z celebrates body hair trend – 'I got radicalized'

That's no country for old men or aged hacks trying to hack their way through the wilderness of loons...

As a necessity ARC has no prescribed platform and issues no communiques. Its operational idea is that our future has been compromised by abandoning the things that once made us great and that served for decades and centuries as the lights guiding the West’s long succession of dynamic adaptations. But the model has malfunctioned. For young people, being “cool” today often equates with indifferent denigration of their own country’s democracy. The focus of ARC 2025 was the rebuilding agenda, to inspire within and across nations the campaign for civilisation renewal from the local school to the family dinner table to the national parliament. The opponent is secular progressivism.

For ARC, its flawed imprint is everywhere undermining life in the West – the legacy seen in narcissistic individualism; its substitution for religious norms; its suspicion of traditional families; its deployment of state power to advance its values; its compulsion to big government and higher taxes; its attachment to false education theory in schools; its promotion of climate catastrophe; its renewable ideology driving soaring energy prices; its hostility to resources development; its indifference to the collapse in fertility and the coming demographic crisis; its promotion of identity politics in an attack on liberal universalism; and its disdain for national symbols and patriotism.

The Donald Trump presidency is an opportunity and a danger for ARC – Trump will boost conservative confidence across much of the world but simultaneously trash some of the sacred conservative principles as he functions as a rebel ditching respect, prudence and global responsibility.

Oh no, not the aged SWOT routine, and just to emphasise how aged, two ning-nongs hovered into view...

Former prime ministers Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, among others, have expressed their support for the Jewish community amid troubling times in Australia. This came during a summit which brought together current and former political leaders, law enforcement chiefs, policymakers, legal experts, and Jewish community leaders. This video is from Sky News Australia's Anti-Semitism Summit, which is available to watch in full on-demand with a SkyNews.com.au Streaming Subscription.

Oh dear, while King Donald runs amok, the job at hand is to keep the balance, while using hand to jerk hard...

ARC met when the Trumpian revolution was in its dramatic early weeks.

In his opening address prominent ARC financial supporter Paul Marshall, whose British interests include GB News and The Spectator, said “We are not explicitly a political movement”, but the aim was to influence politics.

“We are not Trumpians”, Marshall declared, but added there was a lot in the Trump movement “that we agree with”. The task was to keep the balance.

The Australian contingent including former prime ministers Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, former treasurer Peter Costello and former deputy prime minister John Anderson, who serves on the main advisory body and is the key link to ARC central, were conspicuous in navigating that balance.

Outside the conference Abbott welcomed Trump’s “common sense” on energy, gender and woke “madness”, saying “the swamp does need to be drained” – but he criticised Trump on Ukraine, warning against “a surrender to vicious, naked aggression”, and said any refusal to provide security guarantees for Ukraine would constitute “a sellout”. Many delegates fear Trump will terminate the post-WW II age of Pax Americana and the global stability secured by the US-led alliance system. That would have profound consequences for Australia.

ARC functions as a movement united by many common beliefs yet containing significant differ­ences of opinion, testifying to the Trump-induced upheaval within conservative politics.

The pond had to forsake its usual supply of 'toons, because there were so many loons to hand, including Lloydie of the Amazon. 

Now it's clear why he's been so light on in his planet-fucking, he's a junketeer of the first water...

The Australian’s Environment Editor Graham Lloyd says the US claims societies around the world are being sold a “false promise” on renewable energy. US President Donald Trump's new Energy Secretary Chris Wright has backed the idea of Australia pursuing nuclear power during a remote address to the ARC conference in London. Mr Lloyd told Sky News host Steve Price that the debate on energy is going to “grow in currency”.

Like "Ned", he's been so long in the hive mind, so far away from the Amazon, there's simply no way out ... but the bigger tragedy belongs to "Ned", invoking Churchill ...

The situation might be likened to a tension between the Churchillian right and the Trumpian right – the former standing for tradition, the glory of the English-speaking heritage and a muscular outlook on the world, while the latter seeks to dismantle a perceived corrupt established order, claims to act in the people’s name while flouting democratic norms and retreating to a mindset of protection and national self-absorption.

During three days at ARC with 150 speakers and panellists, five central themes emerged – conservative momentum against net zero is gathering immense force led by Trump, spilling into Britain and bound to influence Australia; alarm that high debt levels in the West, conspicuously in the US, constitute a crushing burden eroding military strength and the ability of democracies to meet the challenge of the autocracies; the conviction that excessive state power fused with secular progressivism has weakened the bonds of community, family and society, undermined the optimal way to raise children, compromised the quality of education and contributed to a culture burdened by an advanced low fertility crisis; that the more progressive policies are, implemented by parties of the left or by deluded parties of the right (witness British Tories), the greater the public policy failure, community division and general unhappiness; and that the task for conservatives and liberals, working together, is to build an alternative credo, based on civilisational renewal and the best of our inheritance with policies tied to freedom, economic creativity, government restraint and personal responsibility.

In an age of disruption, omens were everything.

ARC conducted a debate on the proposition “that protection makes us poorer” – virtually a truism – and took a vote on the floor showing protection won over free trade 46-45 per cent. Here in a forum that champions economic freedom and markets. Did the 1000 delegates from Trump’s America deliver for protection?

Again King Donald interrupted ...

U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy for the Ukraine conflict met President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Thursday but there was no immediate word on whether their talks had helped smooth over an unprecedented wartime rift between the once firm allies, and key U.S. officials indicated that major frustrations remain. This report produced by Freddie Joyner.

Surely one little cartoon wouldn't hurt that much, wouldn't interrupt the "Ned" flow that much ...

Next up? That hapless loon, who did much to prepare for the coming of the beast ... come on down, aged irrelevance David Brooks ...

Veteran New York Times columnist David Brooks delivered a stellar speech – and provoked murmurs of protest. Brooks said contemporary America had created a caste system with elites far distant from the people. But there was no sign Trump was the answer.

Referring to Trump, JD Vance and Elon Musk, Brooks said: “They’re anti-left, they don’t have a positive, conservative vision for society, they just want to destroy the institutions that the left now dominates. I’m telling you as someone on the front row to what’s happening, do not hitch your wagon to that star.

“Elite narcissism causes them to eviscerate every belief system they touch. Conservatives believe in constitutional government – Donald Trump says: ‘I can fix this’. Conservatives believe in moral norms – they’re destroying moral norms. The other belief system that they are destroying is Judeo-Christian faith – based on service to the poor, to the immigrant and service to the stranger.”

Brooks enunciated a truth and a dilemma for ARC – Trump is not a conservative. How can an anti-conservative be a role model for a civilisation revival?

When I congratulated Brooks for his speech, he told me a lot of the people thanking him seemed to be Australians.

At that moment, the reptiles offered a visual feast beyond the valley of irony and parody,  The vibe shift began when Trump was re-elected. It’s now global. Artwork: Frank Ling

Oh Frank, Frank, that's not an illustration of a vibe shift. It's grotesque, but not in a good way ...

Perhaps drop a tab of acid next time before starting. You might get acid flashbacks of the kind that image induced in the pond ...

Could it get any loonier? Mais naturellement, Niall was on hand ...

Historian Niall Ferguson said the sense of a civilisation in “confusion and decline is pervasive” – the Enlightenment as a replacement for the religious Judeo-Christian foundations had failed. But Ferguson said he was more worried about actual war than the culture war.

He warned the axis of the four authoritarian powers – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – constituted a more daunting force now than the Axis powers of the 1930s. A potential world war III was closer than many people realised. Ferguson nominated a law: “Any great power that spends more on interest payments on its debt than on defence will not be great for long.”

And the US broke that law last year. On current projections, by 2049 the US will spend twice as much on interest payments as on defence. The debt burden sends “a signal of weakness”. The problem exists across the G7 countries.

Beyond this, Ferguson identified a cycle of decline – collapsed fertility in the West leading to an ageing population and deeper fiscal crisis; flatlining productivity entrenching economic weakness; educational degeneration; and, reinforcing ARC’s mission, Ferguson said since the 1980s Europe and the English-speaking world had staged a cultural departure moving further to self-expression and secular values against traditional values.

Ah collapsed fertility, the great displacement conspiracy, not enough people on the planet, and yet too many brown, or black, or somehow other and differently tinted ...

Pause for a moment of petrol panic, Trump’s potential tariffs on Canadian crude and China’s retaliatory tariffs on U.S. oil could disrupt global markets. With supply chains at risk, here’s what investors need to know about how these policies may impact the price of oil.

In short, never mind the climate crisis, it's the culturally stupid being stupid about the culture ...

He feared the cultural factor “may be the most profound reason why we are not all thriving” – a reference point to ARC’s core stance that political and economic outcomes are downstream of culture. In short, it’s the culture, stupid.

That leads directly to Costello’s interview with Vivek Ramaswamy, entrepreneur and aspiring Republican politician. Costello said as treasurer he had improved the bottom line by the equivalent of 2 per cent of GDP. But the US budget was in deficit to 6 per cent of GDP. He politely asked: how could Musk and Trump deliver their promised $US2 trillion savings?

Ramaswamy explained: it was no real problem, it would be no “great feat”. It was only a matter of getting spending back to US levels in 2019, that’s six years ago and before the pandemic. It was a “technical and a moral” issue. It was about eliminating waste, fraud and spending people never authorised, getting rid of the “nanny state”.

It sounds good and smaller government is needed. But these ambitions and figures belong to a fantasy world.

And there's the tragedy of "Ned". He knows he's surrounded by loons living in a fantasy world, but it's like the despair of old folks forced in to aged care homes and surrounded by people they neither like nor care for ... listening to them howl in pain in the wee hours as the end nears ...

Or like being forced to listen to and endure blustering, bullying bovver boys...Nigel Farage, who spoke at ARC, ‘presents as a poor man’s Trump’. Picture: Andrew Parsons / Parsons Media

Poor "Ned", and pity the poor mugs who come to to the pond for this outing...

It highlights the bizarre nature of Trump’s America – a cultural campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion and identity politics that will have immense traction next to wild claims about tariffs and spending cuts that suggest a major failure of realism.

Commentator and author Douglas Murray said the times should be branded “The Age of Reconstruction”, the purpose being “to put the civilisation back together”.

He warned of the West’s fatal mistake: that in seeking to absorb so many migrants it began to pretend it didn’t have a culture.

Murray directly addressed school education: “In New York state, where I spend much of my time, an average spend for a state school is now per pupil around $US35,000 a year.

“For that sum, kindergarten through to (year) 12, students finish with only about half of them attaining basic literacy and about half basic numeracy.

“Everybody who reveres TS Eliot reveres him in part because he told us and tells us still that a civilisation can be reclaimed even at the 11th hour.”

In writing of ARC, Stroud said: “We will know we have succeeded when we can send our children to school and know they are being taught the extraordinary story of our nations and will develop character, hope and a vision for the future. We have a rich inheritance of beauty in the arts, culture and architecture, whether in the music of Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Handel, the drama of Shakespeare, the poetry of Homer, Dante, Keats, Shelley, Blake or TS Eliot, the paintings of Michelangelo and da Vinci or the great cathedrals of Europe.”

He's kidding, right?

Sorry, the snap at that moment was of another loon, already covered by the pond, that classic narcissist always getting his mug in the shot, Commentator and author Douglas Murray warned of the West’s fatal mistake: that in seeking to absorb so many migrants it began to pretend it didn’t have a culture. Picture: Andrew Parsons / Parsons Media

The measure of "Ned's" tragedy? He thought this clown was "powerful" ...

One of the most powerful speeches came from Marshall, making clear that the conservative movement is pledged to fight the spirit and policy detail of the renewables-dominated energy transition. This is now a frontline struggle where Trump’s impact will be far-reaching.

With British Labour now in office and Trump withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, Marshall said there was an “emerging split between the continents” on net zero. He said Britain, leading the G20 on emission reductions, had got the trade-offs wrong. It was “wrecking our industrial base”, “impoverishing our people” and “destroying our ancient landscapes”.

“What I’m describing is a European problem, a Canadian problem and an Australian problem,” he said. “These countries have been infected by an ideological zeal which is leading us to sacrifice our economic prosperity and our people’s livelihoods all for the sake of making some fractional changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

Electricity costs for industrial users in Britain were now five times that of the US and seven times that of China. Germany was following Britain in “economic suicide”. Renewables were theoretical low cost but able to function only as part of an energy system balanced by other providers. Britain had enough gas reserves in the North Sea to cover 35 years of consumption yet the UK had refused to grant any new oil and gas licences. The message is manifest.

It seems anyone could get a go at this gig, even the Canavan caravan rolled into town, and naturally there were life-threatening, whale-killing renewables to hand ...

Nationals Senator Matt Canavan describes the net-zero goal as "sinister" and argues it has made life "harder and harsher" for Australians. “Obviously, I’ve been opposed to net-zero from the get-go,” Mr Canavan said. “It is a sinister goal because it hurts the poorest among us while giving benefit to the virtue signalling demands of the richest among us. “Ever since our political betters and elites promised this fantastical net-zero goal, people’s lives have been made a lot, lot worse. “Net-zero has made people’s lives harder and harsher and it hasn’t improved anything in the world either from an environmental perspective.”

"Ned" faithfully swallowed it all down, and regurgitated it as porridge for the hive mind reader:

The politicians pretend to be in control but they’re not. They trade in promises and predictions that cannot be delivered. This is the nature of the energy crisis and transition. Governments of all persuasions are gambling with their economies and the living standards of their peoples.

Australia won’t be exempt. The campaign against net zero is coming and will intensify.

Centre-right politics in Britain is badly fractured, split between the discredited Conservative Party, now led by a black woman, Kemi Badenoch, and Reform UK, a populist party surging since the 2024 election, headed by Nigel Farage. Both leaders spoke at ARC. While Farage presents as a poor man’s Trump, he operates within the British parliamentary system where the pose of a populist president is unavailable.

Badenoch, facing a daunting task to revive Tory fortunes, said of Britain that “we see so many social and economic challenges that we doubt ourselves”, while Farage assert­ed the Conservative Party was “not on the right” because it had delivered high taxes, illegal mig­rants and net zero enshrined in law.

Speaking on the theme of “Responsible Citizenship and the Social Fabric”, one of the strongest messages at ARC came from clinical social worker, author and parent guidance expert Erica Komisar, who made clear that parents are primarily responsible for the plight of today’s children.

In her longer conference paper, Komisar said the “tear in the social fabric” was undeniable.

She said: “We are raising children who are self-centred, self-focused and without the inclination or ability to take responsibility or to sacrifice for others. This change is occurring despite the research that shows how happiness is tied to the ability to give to others and giving to others is tied to happiness.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with a hideously large snap of US academic Erica Komisar.

She reminded the pond of Horace - that's how ancient this routine is.

"Our parents, worse than our grandparents, gave birth to us who are worse than they, and we shall in our turn bear offspring still more evil."

Or something like that ... you could put it another way ...

Carry on regardless ...

“Our children are affected in many ways from this shift towards self-centredness. Some are just less happy, more dissatisfied and more bored with their lives. Others are more obviously symptomatic, suffering from depression, anxiety, ADHD, suicidal thoughts, personality disorders and loneliness – all of which are on the rise.”

The culture is at the heart of the issue. Komisar quoted Pew Research that 18 per cent of 18 to 34-year-olds do not want to have children and only 45 per cent of young women in the poll want to have kids.

“They feel that having children is a burden which would require them to sacrifice time, money and personal freedom,” Komisar writes. “When they do have children many do not want to raise them themselves.

“The repercussions of three generations of self-centredness and a lack of empathy mean parents are modelling their selfishness to their children.”

Is there a Freudian in the house? Nah, just Sky News ...

Sky News host James Macpherson says young children accessing social media is a “parenting issue”. The Albanese government's proposed ban on children using social media raised concerns about its effectiveness. According to a report from the eSafety Commission, roughly 80 per cent of kids ages eight to 12 accessed social media services last year in breach of existing limits of most 13 year old age limits.

And so at last an end to the junket ...

The cultural transformation has seen men and women being taught that children were “an afterthought to their education, career and personal goals”. Komisar said: “If we place our ambition above those we love there is a price to pay.”

In her advice on parenting, Komisar said: “Prioritise your children over your work or any of your other pursuits.” She warned of the myth that women “can do it all at the same time”. The culture, however, cultivates the notion that the individual is more important than the family or community. The wider environment beyond the home is important – Komisar said it was best to raise children in “caring, faith-based communities which promote self-sacrifice, volunteerism and empathy”.

In conclusion she said: “It is only by changing ourselves that we can change the path for our children and that we can change the world.” Core point: again, it’s the culture, stupid.

That's the price you pay for a junket ...

Paul Kelly travelled to London as a guest of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.

Was it worth it "Ned"?

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

Meanwhile ...

It was almost too much to bear by now, but the Ughmann also went on the junket ... 

Talk about a parody of a parody ...

... and so came from the Ughmann echo chamber ...

The irony of progressives lecturing the right about echo chambers, If you want to know everything that’s wrong with the media elite, just read how it reported on London’s ARC conference. Self-parody, anyone?

It was another five minutes to add to the 12 already wasted, but for the sake of compleatness, and if only because of the truly desperate opening ...

There is an old parable about two pilgrims on separate journeys to Rome. The first meets a traveller walking out of the city and says: “Tell me what Rome is like.”

“What do you think Rome is like?” the traveller responds. “I think Rome will be full of ugliness, open sewers, poverty and violence,” the pilgrim says. “That is what Rome is like,” the traveller tells the pilgrim and they part.

Soon the second pilgrim meets the traveller on the path. “Tell me what Rome is like,” the second pilgrim asks. “What do you think it will be?” the traveller replies. “I think Rome will be full of glorious churches, wonders of art and beautiful people,” the pilgrim says. “That is what Rome is like,” the traveller tells the second pilgrim and they go their separate ways

Both pilgrims find the Rome they are looking for and know the traveller spoke the truth.

The story echoed this week ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, did it echo, like some Jaffa rolling down the aisle in a picture theatre ...

...as I attended the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London. The aim of this organisation is to rediscover all that is good in Western civilisation and encourage individuals to act to bring “flourishing and prosperity to their families, communities and nations”.

Keen to understand how this clearly reactionary gathering was being interpreted by the ruling regime’s media gate dog, I read The Guardian’s review of day one by its political sketch writer, John Crace.

Crace saw an “alt-right heaven”: “A gathering of some of the biggest names on the circuit. Douglas Murray. Jordan Peterson. Nigel Farage. Niall Ferguson. An echo chamber of self-referential congratulation. A place where people come to have their ideas confirmed, not challenged.”

It was a masterclass in unconscious self-parody. A reporter from the stagnant pond at the heart of “progressive” alt-Eden raging against groupthink.

Recall The Guardian is the paper where 338 journalists rebelled because the editor allowed columnist Suzanne Moore to write that she believed “biological sex to be real and that it’s not transphobic to understand basic science”. For this thought crime Moore was driven from her workplace by colleagues who masqueraded as journalists.

You can tell the cracking Crace got to him, but then the Ughmann has always been a thin-skinned, pompous, portentous, self-regarding humbug, a Polonius in training ...

That's why they inserted a snap of a bully and a reformed junkie ... Nigel Farage is interviewed by Jordan Peterson. Picture: Andrew Parsons / Parsons Media, I’m sure Crace witnessed many spirited exchanges in the Guardian’s herbal tea room as courageous reporters challenged the idea that – even though Moore was clearly a trans-exclusionary radical feminist bigot – she was entitled to her warped opinion.

For those who missed the cracking Crace, please see Nigel Farage, Jordan Peterson & co worship each other in alt-right heaven ...

It's a hoot, and it's easy to see why it reduced the Ughmann to a petulant sulking ...

To this can be added a coda ...

...The strangest response came from Boris Johnson. With Kemi Badenoch and other senior Tories strangely silent, the disgraced former prime minister popped up on X to offer his analysis. Trump was just doing his best to end the war. No one cared more about peace than the Donald. The US president had never meant for anyone to take him seriously about Ukraine starting the war or Zelenskyy’s popularity ratings. It was just his way of trying to get everyone round the table. His funny little ways. As with Boris, Trump could only be trusted to tell the truth half the time. The trick was trying to work out which half was which.

Boris ended his tweet by suggesting that Russia was desperate to have its assets unfrozen so it could hand them over to rebuild Ukraine. To think, Johnson used to consider himself Ukraine’s biggest ally. Right now, he sounded suspiciously as if he had morphed into another Kremlin sycophant. He will certainly be off Zelenskyy’s Christmas card list.

You might have half expected Johnson to have pitched up at the third and last day of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference at the ExCeL centre in London. He would have fitted right in. A deeply unserious man for deeply serious times. ARC seems to exist in its own ecosphere, cocooned from the real world. So much so, they seem to be a year behind the rest of us. None of them has realised that their man is now calling the shots on wokery from the White House. They prefer to be the victim. On the outside looking in.

Any discussion on the most important issues of the day, like the war in Ukraine, appeared to have been kept off the schedule. Just speaker after speaker congratulating themselves on saying the unsayable, apparently unaware that no one was stopping them saying anything. If you want to understand the importance of free speech, ask Alexei Navalny. Except you can’t.

But even all the endless complaints about political correctness came with a heavily sanitised air. No one was allowed to raise a voice of disagreement. Just endless self-congratulation. There weren’t many female speakers anyway, but those who were invited seemed happy to accept their role in the new world order was simply to produce more children. A man got a standing ovation for fathering 10 children. And how did Dougie Murray, a gay man, feel about Jordan Peterson describing homosexuality as a deviation?

This felt very much a day for the B-list speakers. First up was the deeply unpleasant Konstantin Kisin, who this week had suggested Rishi Sunak was not English on his Triggernometry podcast. Er… he was born in Southampton. Presumably Kisin thinks Kemi is also not English. But KK wasn’t here to repeat that line; he was just there to make a couple of mildly racist jokes and wallow in his own imagined brilliance. Onanism par excellence.

Then we had Toby Young. Or, as we should now call him, the anti-establishment Lord Young. I’m surprised some peers haven’t given up their titles in protest. He was there to wang on about free speech and how hard done by he has been. You can say what you like, Toby. Just don’t expect congratulations for it. He rather undermined his whole point by admitting there was a law protecting free speech after all.

Others came and went. Eric Weinstein suggested we should defy physics and live on the stars. Nice work if you can get it. The closest we had to a big name was Vivek Ramaswamy. Though we managed to get through the entire interview without him being asked why he had accepted Trump’s invitation to jointly head up “Doge” and his subsequent falling out with Elon Musk. At which point the last remaining particle of credibility ARC may have had left the conference centre. It had been that sort of a day.

What a hoot, and you can see why the Ughmann struggled, why he was so bitter and resentful, why he resorted to bilious bile ...

It's not easy to be an insect skewered to the wall...

But of course not. It is Crace and his comrades who have deemed free speech a “far-right” value and gaslit those who point to cancel culture as proof that a totalitarian heart beats in the bosom of the new ruling class.

Once the left raged against “The Man” and free speech was their totem. Now that The Guardian is the official gazette of “The They”, tolerance is a travesty.

It is no doubt a reflection of my own biases that saw a different gathering to Crace.

In London I saw more than 4000 people from 100 countries debating ideas. I saw them agree and disagree. There were conservatives, old-school liberals, free marketeers and protectionists. It will confuse the bigots at The Guardian to hear that these are very different people, as anyone not signed up to its orthodoxy is branded “far right”.

Among the revolutionaries was Ian Rowe, co-founder of Vertex Partnership Academies. He didn’t just talk about lifting people from poverty, he lived it.

Rowe built a high school in The Bronx in New York based on the archaic cardinal virtues of courage, justice, temperance and wisdom. The children in his care have thrived by learning to live with discipline and a moral code.

Others spoke of how a return to traditional teaching was redeeming education, after 30 years trapped in the billabong of experiential learning.

A lot of people at ARC put much store in faith, a sure sign that they are a baptismal font of truly dangerous ideas. Among them is the notion that “heterosexual, child-centred monogamy” is an ideal to aim at. There is no colour on a flag for this parade and never will be. But given every other sexual preference is celebrated, surely this one has a place in the rainbow. And the people pushing prams at ARC do not begrudge the life choices of others.

We heard from those who believed the family was the foundation stone of a healthy society. They want to protect children from the assault of the internet and the abuse of ubiquitous porn. They want boys to have role models who define their masculinity as being gentlemen.

We heard from Senegalese entrepreneur Magatte Wade, who said people in the nations of Africa want what the West once had, access to cheap, abundant energy. They crave the prosperity that comes with fossil fuel and do not want to be force-fed solar panels and windmills by self-righteous neocolonialists.

Oh FFS, must it come without any sensa huma, irony or self-awareness?

Yep, we're back in the land of those bloody "thought leaders" ... At ARC 2025, thought leaders shared powerful messages on courage, happiness, and unity. Jordan Peterson explored the values of self-sacrifice and cooperation, Arthur Brooks offered insights on cultivating lasting happiness, and Philippa Stroud inspired attendees with a call to face challenges with integrity and purpose.

If the pond might paraphrase Miller ...

..attention must be paid. These thought leaders, these lizard Oz hacks, must not to be allowed to fall into their graves like old dogs. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such hacks. You called them crazy... no, a lot of people think they've just lost their ... balance. 

But you don't have to be very smart to know what their trouble is. They're exhausted, they're out of their depth, it involves science and they didn't do much science in the seminary. A small hack can be just as exhausted as a great hack. He works for the Murdochians for who knows how many years, opens up unheard-of territories to their trademark, and now in his old age all they give him is a lousy junket, endlessly listening to the loons and regurgitating their pained cries...

And so to the wrap-up... full of valiant controversy, bristling with brilliant people arguing about who is the most brilliant...

We heard the uncomfortable truth about net zero from US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who described it as a “sinister goal”. “The aggressive pursuit of it … has not delivered any benefits but it’s delivered tremendous costs,” Wright said. The truth of that is written in the electricity bills of consumers in Australia, California, Britain and Germany.

One of the speakers was David Brooks, a conservative columnist from The New York Times. He described this job as “like being the chief rabbi in Mecca”.

Brooks noted that when what was right and wrong was arbitrated by what each individual felt then “we are outside the bounds of civilisation”. But, in front of an audience that included 1000 Americans, he took aim at Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

“They are not pro-conservative, they are anti-left,” Brooks said. “They don’t have a positive conservative vision for society; they just want to destroy the institutions that the left now dominates. And this means in the first place that they are astoundingly incompetent. I have a lot of sympathy with what drove people to vote for Trump, but I’m telling you, as someone who is on the front row to what is happening, do not hitch your wagon to that star.”

This was met with boos and applause and gave lie to The Guardian’s claim that this was a gathering where ideas were not being challenged.

We heard the pros and cons of artificial intelligence from those who saw it as a boon and a doom. All seemed to agree that there needed to be some human regulation of this new and potentially disturbing sentience.

All speakers realised we were living through epic times and all were reaching to find the words to describe it. Douglas Murray said we had endured modernism and the deconstruction that travelled with postmodernism. He hopes this is the age of reconstruction.

A course correction is well overdue.

In my lifetime the ill-titled “progressives” rose to capture the institutions of state, the academy, the bureaucracy and the media. And what did they build? They took a flawed city on the hill and turned it into Gomorrah. They made a wasteland and called it progress.

If a new Rome is to rise on the horizon it will not be made by politicians or the powerful. It will be built by responsible citizens, one brick at a time.

Oh FFS, a new Rome? 

How delusional they are ... roll on Sunday, when Polonius can come on down to do his prattle and the pond can indulge in more 'toons to accompany the verbiage...

Meanwhile....