In which the pond has a Killer time with our Henry and Dame Groan ...

 

It's dying embers of bitterness days at the lizard Oz, with the reptiles attempting one more climate bashing, what with talk of energy markets and the need to gas the country, and David Williamson turning up behind the paywall in a desperate attempt at relevance ...

The pond couldn't summon the slightest interest in Williamson, and could barely muster the strength to note the yarn about dining with insidious, devious Chinese ... and luckily the mushroom killings were right down the bottom, and being before the court, couldn't tempt the pond into its true crime fetish.

Over on the far right, the pond was astonished to see our Henry missing ...

The Oz editorialist turned up in our Henry's slot with the expected, predictable recommendation ... and the pond offers only the last two pars for the amusement of correspondents ...

As a paper, we are guided by the same set of principles that has motivated us for 60 years: a society of opportunity; a robust defence and national security agenda; a strong, productive economy that enhances living standards; labour market deregulation; and a strong but balanced immigration system.
We owe our allegiance to no party but rather to what is in the national interest. The choice facing the nation – one of great consequence – must be made against the backdrop of a dispiriting campaign characterised by short-term thinking and a paucity of vision from both sides. But in the key areas of defence, energy and the economy, the Coalition provides the best option for managing the demands of challenging and uncertain times.

The reptiles are guided by principles? Maybe the bouffant one found them hard to find in the blackberry bushes and thistles when writing up that Compass poll? 

They owe allegiance to no party? Garn, pull the other one.

It being a busy day, the pond could only note the astonishing contribution of Saul, proffering biblical vengeance for a failure to gas the country right here, right now...

We’re becoming a nation that can’t do things anymore
Exhibiting a unique level of cowardice, Labor has already shunted its signature gas policy following Greens pressure. The damage of the last few years may pale in comparison to what comes next.
By Saul Kavonic

Actually the damage from climate change might make Saul go pale, but if the pond wants a tirade in the morning - up there with the smell of napalm - it will always turn to Killer of the IPA ...

A second-rate elite is torching our nation’s prosperity, Australia has changed dramatically in the few years I was away, certainly more than any time in my lifetime, and I’m sure not for the best.

That oxymoronic notion of a second-rate elite was an attempt to disguise what was really up Killer's nose... pesky, difficult, uppity blacks, always getting in Killer's way ...

Right from the get go they were there to irritate the shit out of him ... Welcome to country during the AFL Gather Round welcome dinner at in Adelaide last month. Picture: Mark Brake/ Getty Images

The mystical command was no help, This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Sorry, the pond should have shown what so disturbed Killer ...an appalling picture's worth a thousand deeply appalled Killer words ...

Oh those bloody, in his face, uppity, difficult blacks, that snap sent Killer right off ...

After four years away, it first hit me how much Australia had changed when I landed in Sydney and had to sit through Qantas’s routine acknowledgment of country upon landing.
As seven of my great grandparents were born in Australia, and the other one in New Zealand, it grated on me. I can’t obtain a passport from any other country through lineage; as far as I’m concerned, I’m indigenous to Australia.
Leaving the airport a little later I saw a new sign, Welcome to Gamay, confirming that virtue-signalling had truly ramped up in my absence. Flicking on the ABC a little later I noticed the local news bulletin was for Dharug Country.
Australia’s embrace of woke ideology was even starker for me coming from the US, where for all the Democratic Party’s new-found zeal for extreme racial and sexual politics, a few things remained off limits in the interests of national unity. Joe Biden would never have addressed the nation in front of multiple flags and I never heard one welcome to country anywhere during the Biden administration, a practice that could also be applied in the US, with its numerous Native American nations.

It's not enough to steal the country for the likes of Killer, it's to send them off into the wilderness so they won't disturb Killer's serenity.

The reptiles then flung petulant Peta in to offer a little more black bashing, Sky News host Peta Credlin discusses how the Voice to Parliament and Welcome to Country are being pushed by Labor. “Peter Dutton, too, he hit back, have a listen,” Ms Credlin said. “Look at the whole debate this week about Welcome to Country, that News.com poll, 130,000 Australians … said no.”

Those bloody stomping black feet, no wonder Killer was in the mood to party with Bill ...

Indeed, in the US, veteran comedian Bill Maher, a long-time Democrat, regularly lampoons a practice seemingly unique to Australia, Canada and New Zealand. “Where they say, I’m standing on land that was stolen from the proud Indigenous people of the Chumash tribe,” Mr Maher joked in one of his monologues last year, “I say give it back or shut the f. k up.”
The same criticism could be levelled here, but it rarely is. The furore over the Anzac Day booing should’ve been an opportunity for the Coalition to decry the divisive ritual, which Australians have already indicated they overwhelmingly reject considering the voice referendum.

Indeed, indeed, talk about a chance to align yourself with a bunch of neo-Nazis, but for some perverse reason the Duttonator refused to act on Killer's sage black-bashing advice. 

Luckily there was more sage to come ...

If only Marcia Langton’s warning in this newspaper that welcomes to country would cease following a resounding no vote had actually come to pass!
Last week I happened on a trans rights protest in Melbourne, where maybe a few hundred masked, furious far-left agitators screamed abuse at police, who had even shut off Bourke St for their dummy spit. I can’t recall anything so feral in my time in Washington, which consistently votes 93 per cent Democrat.
Australia has changed dramatically in the few years I was away, certainly more than any time in my lifetime. The hubris of the political, media and academic classes has become so manifest.
Australians have endured the biggest decline in living standards since World War II, as consumer prices soared, exceeded only by the explosion in the cost of housing. Living standards have crashed for the typical family more than in any other OECD nation since 2022.

That home loan must be really be hurting Killer's finances, as more pesky blacks lined up for a booing, Bunurong elder Mark Brown was heckled as he delivered a welcome to country at an Anzac Day ceremony in Melbourne. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images

Speaking of dummy spits, if Killer doesn't like what he's found here, then might the pond channel Bill and Killer, and tell Killer to fuck off to where he likes it. 

You know, that's right, piss off and head back to the United States ...

Nah, he's too busy ranting away ...

Over the past few years the currency has steadily crashed against the US dollar, the pound and the euro, as the China-powered resource boom that’s greased government coffers for 20 years has begun its decline.
The old economic models would have heralded a boom for exports, but we don’t make anything anymore.
Victoria, once a manufacturing and cultural powerhouse, has become the epicentre of dysfunction. The state’s fiscal position is far worse now than in the Kirner years of the early 1990s, practically necessitating federal intervention at some point.
With barely any scrutiny, the Victorian parliament has recently made “severely ridiculing” sexual or racial groups a criminal offence, a law contrary to even the most de minimis notions of free speech and one guaranteed to become an arbitrary cudgel to destroy the lives of politically disfavoured individuals.
Yet despite all these signs of economic and cultural decline, voters have just endured the most uninspiring election campaign in memory. The only options are more of the same: more regulation, bigger government and a bipartisan dedication to net zero, which even Tony Blair has realised is economic madness.

Tony Bleagh? About all he's good for these days is a cracking Crace ... or getting The Conversation into a dither.  

It's hard when you can't cope with irrelevance, are still hooked on fossil fuel money, and turn into the David Williamson of British politics.

Time for another bout of black bashing with another AV distraction, Sky News host James Macpherson discusses the “overdone” Welcome to Country debate heating up in the country. “We are in the last week of the election campaign and a cultural issue, specifically Welcome to Country is back centre stage,” Mr Macpherson said. “Courtesy of those people who booed the Welcome to Country at Melbourne’s Anzac Day service last week.”

It's a measure of how difficult things have become for the reptiles that black bashing should now be their go-to strategy ... and so to a final burst of surly Killer resentfulness ...

The Coalition, supposedly the party of small government, didn’t have the courage to commit to indexing the income tax scales, something most other mature nations do; it also appears ashamed of reductions in spending proposed a decade ago that are far more necessary today.
Labor, unsatisfied with the extra billions bracket creep brings every year, is even trying to legislate a world-first tax on unrealised capital gains in superannuation that will ultimately see more money ploughed into housing. No wonder the number of bright young Australians leaving has been increasing, adding to the pool of a million-plus who live and work overseas and who are less and less likely to return, except perhaps at retirement.
Australia is on the road to becoming a pleasant place for rich people to retire on the beach.
Wrenching the country away from this path won’t be easy, but tearing apart an already fraying social fabric with hundreds of thousands of new immigrants every year is not the way to go.
It’s common to exaggerate Canberra’s influence but in two areas it wields huge power: taxation and immigration. Both have become excessive, and without a major reduction in each the nation’s steady decline will continue.
The second-rate people Donald Horne said run Australia are rapidly running out of luck.
In the 1980s Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, once said Australia was in danger of becoming the poor white trash of Asia. For decades we proved him wrong, rocketing up the global league tables for incomes and quality of life.
Unless our political system throws up some charismatic reforming leaders soon, capable of making tough decision, he’ll ultimately be proved right.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Really? Shouldn't that tag read "Killer is the chief bigot at the IPA"? 

Suppose not, suppose it's hard to pick a winner in that mob ...

And so to an immortal Rowe to celebrate the state of play ...

It's always in the detail, and the pond was delighted by this detail in the rigging...

And so to our Henry, because it wouldn't be Friday without him, although he's arriving rather late to the scene of one of the Cantaloupe Caligula's many stoushes...

The header: Donald Trump’s Ivy League rage is one more overreach, There are good reasons for pushing reform at America’s premier universities but Trump’s approach risks being counterproductive.

The caption: John Harvard Statue at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The mystical incantation, as a way of savouring the full experience: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

In essence, our Henry would love to do some bashing of the 'leets, but gets more and more agitated when he finds he's doing it in company with the mango Mussolini.

And having done that spoiler, time to plunge in ...

A strange thing happened when American universities reconvened in January. Suddenly, the protests that had made life hell for Jewish staff and students petered out.
The immediate cause is readily identified: university administrators finally toughened up. That partly reflects pressure from donors, large and small, who have voted with their dollars. But credit where credit is due. Had Donald Trump not been elected, this year would have been no better than last. Yet plenty of room for improvement remains.
Harvard, America’s oldest university, is a case in point. Yes, Alan Garber, its new president, has moved in the right direction, including by substantially strengthening the prohibitions on protests that “interfere with the normal activities of the university”. Additionally, the university has made it clear that protesters who vilify “Jewish and Israeli identities”, for instance by doxxing alleged Zionists, will be punished.
But as Larry Summers, the distinguished economist who was its president from 2001 to 2006, recently tweeted, “Harvard continues its failure to effectively address anti-Semitism”, with actions falling short of words. The report, released this week, of the university’s anti-Semitism taskforce convincingly backs Summers’ assessment.

Of course any support for Palestinians trapped in an ethnic cleansing hell isn't anti-Benji, it's anti-Semitic, and lines up anyone outrageous enough to speak out in the immediate deportation queue, so here's a visual distraction, Former president of Harvard Larry Summers.

Now here's our Henry in his "bashing Harvard" phase ...

To that extent, Harvard, as a major recipient of federal largesse, is in breach of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which provides that “no person shall be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance”.
The Trump administration was therefore well placed to scrutinise Harvard’s conduct and – once it had demonstrated that the university had been “deliberately indifferent” to breaches of Title VI – impose carefully crafted remedies.
Instead, on April 11, it shot off a letter demanding (among other things) that Harvard “reform and restructure” its governance to “reduce the power” of radical students, faculty and administrators, “hire a critical mass of new faculty” to achieve “viewpoint diversity” in “each department, field, or teaching unit”, and restructure or terminate academic programs the administration considers problematic.
Then, on April 14, when Harvard rejected those demands, which it understandably viewed as a de facto government takeover, the administration froze $US2.2bn ($3.43bn) in funding. Days later, the university filed suit, seeking an “order declaring unlawful and setting aside sweeping agency action taken in violation of Harvard’s constitutional rights and its rights guaranteed by statute and regulation”.
It is fair to note that the university was nowhere near as protective of constitutional rights in 2011, when the Obama administration mandated major changes that stripped the targets of sexual harassment complaints of due process. Far from rushing to court, Harvard immediately hired 50 additional “Title IX Resource Co-ordinators” to aggressively police sexual mores.
Described by Harvard history professor James Hankins as “the most politically active element in the university”, those newly empowered bureaucrats enforced political correctness, before “opening the doors to further radicalisation following the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020”.

And then came our Henry's very big billy goat butt ...

But the mere fact that Harvard’s howls of outrage – and those of its “progressive” allies – are tainted by hypocrisy scarcely means its suit is doomed to fail. On the contrary, it seems highly likely to succeed.
Even putting the constitutional issues aside, the Trump administration completely ignored the procedural requirements the government must follow before withholding funding for an alleged breach of Title VI – procedures the Supreme Court has referred to as “elaborate restrictions on agency enforcement”.

Suddenly our Henry realised he was in company with the orange Orangutan (how to defame apes), especially as the reptiles interrupted with a snap featuring MAGA caps President Donald Trump is handed an executive order to sign in the White House.

What an oopsie.

Our Henry is no Dame Slap cap wearer, and so he had to proceed carefully ...there had to be Harvard bashing, but it had to be measured...and feature our Henry's astonishing larnin', as if anyone needed to go to Harvard for any of that ...

Instead, taking Alice in Wonderland’s “sentence first, verdict afterwards” precept to heart, the Department of Justice launched the in-depth investigation it is required to undertake on April 11: that is, on the very day the White House issued the letter of demand that is supposed to embody that investigation’s findings.
Given that the Administrative Procedures Act directs courts to set aside any agency action that is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law”, it would be surprising were Harvard’s request for an order suspending the funding freeze refused.
Moreover, given the Supreme Court’s ruling that where, as here, “the government restricts speech, the government bears the burden of proving the constitutionality of its actions”, and that the government must also show that any remedial conditions it seeks to impose are “the least restrictive means of achieving a compelling (governmental) interest”, it is hard to believe the administration’s letter of demands will survive the court’s “strict scrutiny”.
The fact that the Supreme Court has, ever since its landmark decision in Dartmouth College (1819), consistently resisted attempts at turning private universities into “a machine entirely subservient to the will of government”, makes the administration’s prospects even dimmer.
That is a missed opportunity. After all, Harvard finished last out of 486 colleges and universities in the 2025 rankings of intellectual freedom compiled by the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, scoring a mark of “abysmal”. Nor is that an aberration: already by the end of the 1990s, conclude its leading historians, Morton and Phyllis Keller, Harvard was “no more (and possibly less) open to diversity of thought than at the height of the Cold War”.
As Nathan Pusey, one of its greatest presidents, had feared when he resigned in 1971, the university succumbed to the “guilt feelings (of) teachers and students” about Harvard’s relentless focus on achievements “which require the highest intellectual ability”. With Pusey gone, it encouraged (as did many of its peers) the spread of a politically driven “social justice” agenda as viscerally intolerant of alternative viewpoints as it was inconsistent with the intensely meritocratic orientation Pusey championed.

Inevitably the reptiles managed to drag in Sky Noise down under doing their own version of woke bashing, Sky News host James Morrow is joined by journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon to discuss how Harvard is now preparing to fight back against Donald Trump's efforts to make the university de-'wokeify' itself. “My response to this is fight, fight, fight. Keep fighting, Harvard,” Ms Ungar-Sargon told Sky News James Morrow. “Everything they do just reveals more and more clearly to the American people how morally corrupt they have become on so many fronts. “So President Trump effectively said to Harvard, you can have your $2 billion back... All you have to do is a bunch of extremely reasonable things like promise to stop importing people who hate America and hate the Jews, submit all of your professors to a plagiarism test, uphold the Civil Rights Act, which your funding depends on, to which Harvard simply said, no way, Jose.”

Well played Ms Ungar-Sargon, and forgive the pond's post-feminist confusion, did the reptiles mean Miss or Mrs?

And what's with the name, which wouldn't have lasted a second before producing a bullying session at the old Tamworth High? Why it sounds fully woke and fully diverse ...

Never mind, you've won this week's pond woke award, always a special prize ...

And so at last to our Henry's realisation that perhaps King Donald's blunderbuss might not be the best company to keep ...

And as the report of the university’s taskforce shows, it is precisely in those parts of the university where the “social justice” agenda now predominates – shaping faculty recruitment and student assessment – that hate-fuelled anti-Semitism has flourished.
Garber is trying to turn the page; but university leadership is no longer a matter of “tyranny tempered by assassination”, as Pusey’s equally great predecessor, James Conant, famously put it.
A rapier-like intervention by the federal government, done respecting the statutory requirements, could therefore have usefully brought the pressure needed for properly targeted reforms, setting an example for Australia to follow.
Instead, the Trump administration’s blunderbuss approach has galvanised opposition, both at Harvard and at other universities, making it far harder for reform to prevail. Should its demands be shredded by the courts, the obstacles to change will become even more formidable.
Of course, as he celebrates his term’s first 100 days, Trump may not really care. He too has galvanised his troops, seemingly fulfilling his promise to “reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical left and Marxist maniacs” by “taxing, fining and suing” them. But with fanaticism raging on both sides, it is America, whose higher education institutions have long been the envy of the world, that will ultimately pay the price.

Say what, did our Henry just disavow reptile spleen at Marxist maniacs, and gasp, perhaps idle talk of the long march of the left through the institutions?

This is the level of consternation King Donald has introduced to the world ...

And so finally to Dame Groan, doing an epic both siderist groaning in Election campaign delivers a bipartisan slide into appalling policy muddle, In this campaign, both sides of politics have given us a policy muddle rather than clear economic objectives

The reptiles clocked it at five minutes, which after our Henry's five and Killer's four made for a long day in the reptile trenches, and the pond briefly thought about sending Dame Groan off to a late arvo slot.

But the reptiles brutally allowed Dame Groan only one snap, featuring the Duttonator ...Opposition Leader Peter Dutton meets young locals during a visit to Agfest in the electorate of Lyons on Thursday. Picture: Getty Images

The Groaning followed, undisturbed by any distracting images ... and what a fine "pox on both their houses" rant it was ...

The quality of policy has sunk to new depths during this election campaign, notwithstanding the current global economic challenges. Both the government and opposition are responsible for this situation as the two parties seemingly battle for the wooden spoon in terms of policy prowess.
Last week, I mentioned three areas in which egregious mistakes are being made; namely the promotion of GP bulk billing and the funding of Urgent Care Clinics; legislation of penalty rates, and; “free” TAFE courses.
It’s worth adding some other items to this dismal list. Arguably one of the worst proposals by Labor is to forgive 20 per cent of the higher education loans that are currently outstanding. Let’s be clear here: this is a policy copied from the Biden administration although in that instance the implementation was stalled by the US Supreme Court.
Apart from enticing those who are advantaged from the debt write-off to vote Labor, this policy is without merit. It doesn’t influence behaviour because the education has already been undertaken. It increases government net debt by an estimated $16bn.
It is also one in the eye for those former students who have paid off their debt. In the future, graduates may be inclined to pay off as little as possible in the hope that the debt forgiveness trick will be repeated. The government’s stated rationale that “it recognises that many Australians are doing it tough and will take pressure off the costs that Australians have to budget for” will equally apply in the future.

The pond thought was really poor form to let Dame Groan rant away without any help, and hoped Wilcox might help provide some policy meat ...

Oh dear, that's no help, no help at all, though hopefully it's the last serve of that Trumpet baloney.

Perhaps it's best to emulate the reptiles; perhaps it's best just to let Dame Groan go on a long-winded rant, and let devoted Groan cultist correspondents make of it what they will ...

Take another example of poor, potentially dangerous policy – the option for virtually all first-home buyers to buy a home with only a 5 per cent deposit. The government – aka taxpayers – will effectively guarantee the other 15 per cent and relieve the purchaser of the requirement to take out lender’s mortgage insurance.
On the face of it, this looks like nationalised prime lending, an arrangement that led to the global financial crisis. At that time, too many home purchasers in the US had far too little collateral in their homes and ended up being unable to service their mortgages, particularly when the honeymoon rates ended. The providers of the loans operated on the basis of fancy financial techniques that ultimately unravelled.
Of course, in this case, it will be taxpayers who must cover any losses rather than private financial institutions. But given the size of the potential book, issues about financial stability arise. These issues will be of concern to both the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Reserve Bank.
The Prime Minister has claimed that there are no issues related to default, citing the very small number that have occurred thus far with the smaller-scale 5 per cent deposit schemes. But the point is that the default rates are highly cyclical, and when the market turns down there is worrying clustering of mortgagee non-payment.
There is the further concern that this scheme is simply adding to housing demand at a time when it is widely recognised that supply of homes is inadequate. It is entirely possible that the additional financial capacity that only having to stump up a 5 per cent deposit entails will be reflected in higher home prices as buyers compete to secure scarce properties.
The exemption for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles from Fringe Benefit Tax is another example of woeful policy. Designed to encourage the purchase of EVs and PIHVs – the latter is being phased out – this intervention is highly regressive, favouring those on higher incomes over others. It has also proven to be extremely expensive even though the net effect on the overall growth in the demand for EVs has been very sluggish.
The initial cost of the scheme was put at $56m; it is now estimated that the cost to the taxpayer is 10 times higher. The implied cost of abatement is between $1000 and $20,000 per tonne compared with a $75-per-tonne cap on the price of carbon imposed by the government’s own Safeguard Mechanism.
The PIHV option has proven to be particularly popular even though there is evidence that many drivers hardly bother to plug in their vehicles. Fuel costs are also often met by employers who benefit from having cars on novated leases.
In a no-yes-no switch, the Coalition has now decided to abandon this scheme should it win government. But don’t think I’m simply picking on Labor here: the Coalition has proposed several extremely ill-considered policies.
Take the reinstatement of the low- and middle-income tax offset for one year. Apart from the LMITO complicating the tax schedule and creating undesirable incentives, the more straightforward approach would have been to support the government’s modest income tax reductions or propose alternative ones. Indexation of the personal income tax scales would be welcome, but vague support when budgetary conditions permit does not constitute convincing policy.
Permitting tax deductibility of mortgage payments for purchases of new homes by first-home buyers is another example of inferior policy. Clearly, this arrangement would favour those on higher incomes for whom the deductibility is worth a great deal. Moreover, the proposal to phase out the scope to deduct mortgage payments after five years on the face of it looks politically implausible, as mortgage holders would face a huge jump in their monthly outgoings.
It is interesting to note here that when this scheme was introduced in the Netherlands, the pressures have been to broaden its coverage and to extend its duration. By contrast, in the US, the tax deductibility of mortgages has been restricted for nearly a decade in recognition of the disadvantages of the arrangement there. The golden rule of tax reform – to widen the base and reduce the rate – in part drove this change.
The Coalition has also thrown its support behind the government’s absurdly inefficient scheme to promote GP bulk billing in which it is predicted that close to $8bn will be spent to induce just over $800m in additional bulk-billed consultations. One might expect the Coalition to stand up for the proposition that only those on lower incomes and those with special needs should be able to see a GP free of charge. Co-payments are an important device to ensure people value the services GPs provide.
To sum up, it has been a bipartisan slide into appalling policy where the main guiding principle has been to entice voters to give the proposing party their first preference. Arguably, the cost-of-living pressures have made this worse as the competing parties strive to offer compensation to voters hit by higher costs. The fact that government spending has contributed significantly to the cost-of-living pressures is something that is simply ignored.
Had the Coalition spent less during the pandemic, and had Labor simply maintained the century’s average ratio of government spending to GDP during its term in office, then the rate of inflation would likely have peaked at a lower rate and returned to the annual target band of 2-3 per cent more quickly. We might then have been spared all this expensive, interfering policy muddle we are currently dealing with.

What a splendid "pox on both their houses" rant, in its own way an impeccable summation of reptile despair at the way that this five weeks has run ... but as the pond voted some time ago, it's all now but a dream, late arriving costings sublimely irrelevant and just one sleep to go ... and in a curious way, the infallible Pope seemed to hint at the Groaning with his Dorian Gray mirrors ...

And for now the pond must give up the Studebakers this day to note the way that there was an astonishing lack of political posters to be seen during the pond's entire trip through the north-west and New England.

It was as if the region expected a drunk with a mobile phone to saunter back into office, but then given the number of drunks with phones that the pond noted, this perhaps isn't altogether surprising.

The best - the only - collection of posters the pond saw was in the heart of Tamworth, guarded by a zealous troll who thought the pond was intent on taking them down ...

Yes, that desolation was in the heart of Tamworth. 

Oh sullen sky Tamworth, oh Tamworth ...