A toe in the water with a Heroic Homeric Our Henry outing? Sorry, no can do, but there's bigotry central and a Killer serve ...

 

The pond has safely landed, which is more than can be said for some unfortunates, but is still getting its proverbial horse manure together.

A lot has happened since the pond took a temporary leave of absence, but the pond takes the view briefly promoted in that Don Henley song The Boys of Summer:

Out on the road today, I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice inside my head said, “Don't look back, you can never look back”
I thought I knew what being a dedicated herpetology student was, what did I know?
Those days are gone forever, I should just let those reptile rantings go ...

Even with the chaos and anarchy of new surroundings, and even with the letting go, how could the pond miss the opportunity to be an Our Henry completist?

But when the pond went there, the cupboard was bare. No Henry in sight, he'd done a bunk and disappeared into the night.

Instead there was endless musings on the Haines tragedy, for which only the infallible Pope would serve ...

And the immortal Rowe had a thought for Murdochians and reptiles everywhere ...

The pond was pleased to discover that amidst the carnage, there was still room for an old-fashioned serve of bigotry ...

The pond is always astonished at the way that the lizard Oz can drag this sort of rhetoric out of dank darkness and into the view of the hive mind ...

Stop right there. 

Let's go back a little further than Magna Carta. 

The pond has been paying attention to the LRB (not the band), and became befuddled working out what or who was exactly a Briton or a Britain while reading Pablo Scheffer's Frightened Chicks ...

...It is into this society that the first of the ‘Angles or Saxons’ arrived. Though the events surrounding their appearance remain mysterious, Higham agrees with Bede and Gildas (and most modern scholars) that they were invited by the early British kings. One of the knottiest issues facing the rulers, he writes, was ‘how to both maintain social order and secure themselves against external attack, pending the return of imperial troops’. British society had been demilitarised for centuries, and many of its experienced soldiers had disappeared with the imperial forces. Equipping an army can’t have been easy at a time when farmers were struggling to get decent ploughs. Gildas thought the decision to task outsiders with the island’s defence was an act of ‘desperate and crude mental dullness’, but at the time it must have seemed uncontroversial: Romans had for many years been hiring barbarian foederati to protect the northern frontiers.

The archaeological record over the next century and a half shows Anglo-Saxon settlements spreading like inkblots across the British landscape, starting in the south-east (where the mercenaries may originally have been stationed as coastguards) then moving gradually north and west. By the late ninth century, the English kingdoms stretched from Exeter in the south-west to Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth in the north-east. (Like the Romans, the English didn’t make it to Strathclyde and the lands beyond the Forth, which remained culturally Celtic.) Two questions in particular have been the subject of debate. How did the incomers g0 from being a few small rebellious bands to a dominant cultural and economic force? And what happened to the Britons?

The traditional​ account follows Bede’s description of the Anglo-Saxons’ raising an army, massacring or displacing the natives and filling the empty land with Germanic farmers – what the historian David Dumville once described as a ‘cultural genocide following resisted invasion and colonisation’. Reading the early notices in the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, it’s hard to disagree. ‘In this year Ælle and his three sons, Cymen, Wlencing and Cissa, came with three ships to the land of Britain,’ the entry for 477 states, ‘and there killed many Britons and drove others in flight to the wood.’ By the time the annal was put to parchment in the ninth century the British had been rechristened wealas (foreigners), a term that was soon used to refer to slaves and which eventually provided the name for Wales, a Celtic stronghold beyond the grasp of the English kings. One of the more unflattering Old English riddles hinges on a double entendre about a wonfeax Wale – a dark-haired slave girl, or a dark-haired British woman – who has been feorran broht (brought from afar). That the woman in question is described as alien suggests that the perceived connection between the British and their old heartlands had been comprehensively severed.

Many Britons appear to have fled to Wales in the fifth and sixth centuries. Linguistic evidence shows that Latin speakers – the former elites – retreated west, where they fortified old settlements and reoccupied abandoned Roman forts. Welsh court poets began calling the lost lowland territory ‘Lloegyr’: a foreign land, inhabited by foreign people. Other Britons went to the Continent, establishing enclaves in Galicia and Brittany (where Celtic Breton is spoken to this day). Yet Higham persuasively rejects both the idea that the Anglo-Saxons had a large army and that the Britons were fully displaced. Drawing on archaeological and legal evidence, the picture he paints is of a steady trickle of small warbands crossing the North Sea, settling in fertile valleys, killing or expelling the local landowners and subjugating the peasants.

These first ‘Anglo-Saxons’ were far from homogeneous: analysis of DNA in early English graves shows they came from as far away as Norway and Gaul. And, at least initially, this was not a total conquest. Some areas remained under nominal British control as late as the seventh century. Parts of Hertfordshire, for instance, seem to have resisted English encroachment for decades, stubbornly remaining in their old Roman towns and worshipping their old Christian cults. The name of the small river Beane, which winds from Stevenage to Hertford, probably comes from a Brittonic word akin to the Welsh bychan (‘little’). Members of certain early royal lineages later claimed by the English had distinctly British names: Cerdic, the first king of Wessex, whom Alfred the Great claimed as an ancestor, and the Mercian kings Pybba and Penda. The name of Æthelwealh, the last independent king of Sussex in the seventh century, translates to ‘noble Briton’. It’s not known whether these men were part Celtic by descent, or simply named in an insular tradition. But Higham suggests that this was a time of ‘strong regional identities, some of which may have been more or less British’.

Subjugated islanders probably made up the majority of the population in the new English enclaves. They are almost invisible in the archaeological record, however, which is dominated by the free English farmers, or ceorls (churls), who ruled over them. Although in time the word ‘churl’ would carry distinctly unaristocratic associations, the richer among the early ceorls were served by enslaved cupbearers and commanded dependants known as hlafæta (loaf-eaters). Higham sees them as central to the spread of Englishness. It was through the ceorls, he argues, that the English language, customs and material culture became markers not just of ethnic identity but of social position. Over a number of generations, as the ceorls conquered and exploited more and more British-held lands (which in time cohered into the first Anglo-Saxon kingdoms), their mores came to be adopted by anyone seeking higher status.

What a mess, what a melting pot, what a multicultural storm of confusion, but as we were talking about historical amnesia, why not go there?

And so to the final serve of rancid bigotry, and waddya kno, he tried to revert by serving up a billy goat butt, dressed up in the form of a "yet" ...

The pond was reminded of another recent read, by a certain Brendan Nicholson, that caught the eye, and which evoked recent pond experiences in the area of medical care ... Before weighing into the immigration debate, spend a night in hospital (*intermittent archive)

It’s time for a serious reality check.

Anyone trying to weigh the so-called “immigration debate” should spend some time in an Australian hospital.

Immigration is being used cynically as a political wedge by those harking after a long-gone monoculture without regard for facts or practical consequences.

I recently spent several days in hospital where my experience before, during and after an operation demonstrated how deluded and dangerous this low-grade politics is. Any healthcare experience is a reminder that more than half the Australian population was born overseas or has at least one parent born overseas. My blood samples were taken days before by technicians of Nepalese and Indian heritage. The taxi driver who turned up at 5.40am to take me to hospital was a cheerful bloke from Delhi who took me straight to the correct entrance in a sprawl of medical facilities.

I was prepared for my operation by a nurse of Nepalese origin. Then I was put under by an alert anaesthetist from India who’d rung me in advance to check on a mistake I’d made in my paperwork.

The surgery was carried out by an excellent doctor of Pakistani origin, who explained carefully and clearly before the operation what would be done, and why. Over the next five days I was cared for by nurses whose families were from India, Nepal, the Philippines, Tibet and Ethiopia; a cosmopolitan mix of Muslims, Hindus, Christians and others, along with several we would once have classified as Anglo-Celtics.

If the politicians pushing the anti-immigration line could instantly send most of these people “home”, those of us connected to medical devices would have awakened to a largely still and silent building, sadly missing their skills and cheerful approach.

The anti-immigration lot will throw up their hands and say that of course they don’t mean to banish “those” immigrants. That’s not the point.

The reality is that with an ageing population and declining birthrate, cynically harking back to the White Australia era risks unleashing racism that can dishearten and discourage people that our workforce badly needs.

That lowest common denominator debate and the way it’s being delivered – basically blaming immigrants for everything – is highly offensive, unsophisticated and riddled with misinformation and contradictions.

Having a multicultural society brings great benefits and we’ll be in serious trouble if they all go “home”. Certainly, fix any rorts but leave the rest alone...

And so on, and well yes Brendan, but you can't stop bigots doing what bigots gotta do ...

While the pond won't be looking back at assorted reptile stews, now fetid and ruined by exposure to the noon day Tamworth sun, there are plenty of 'toons worth catching up with ... including the immortal Rowe, staying in the bigot spray moment ...

And so to Killer, and the pond apologises for the use of caps, but it's part of the readjustment and the returning ...as Killer headed into Mike Pence territory, the man the MAGA mob wanted to hang ...

The Mont Pelerin Society? Birds of a Hayekian feather flocking together, but as Killer mentioned potholes ...

And so on, and the trouble with a pothole analysis is that you're liable to end up in a pothole, but you hardly expect a mob of insular academics and lickspittle fellow travellers to get out on the back roads ... I Drove An Empty Two Lane Road Into Never Before Seen Indiana

The pond doesn't usually stick in an AV distraction in the middle of a reptile rant, but confessing to a letch for backroads decline and decay seemed appropriate, what with Killer infatuated with Killer buildings celebrating the killing fields ...

Good old Mike Pence ...

Sorry, the pond is incredibly distracted, and struggling to cope with this plunge back into the hive mind...

Big Pharma? That's genuine commerce?

They're just as much in bed with government as Uncle Leon is (and lordy lordy is he into government subsidies in a big way)

Lilly and U.S. government agree to expand access to obesity medicines to millions of Americans

Medicare beneficiaries with obesity or overweight will have access to  Zepbound and orforglipron, if approved, at $50 a month  

INDIANAPOLIS, Nov. 6, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) today announced an agreement with the U.S. government to expand access to its obesity medicines and reduce patient costs. The agreement builds on Lilly's longstanding commitment to finding solutions with policymakers that improve access to life-changing medicines. In 2020, Lilly partnered with the Trump Administration on a pilot program that paved the way for Lilly to be the first company to cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 per month. Lilly will now improve access to nearly 40 million Americans living with obesity on government insurance programs and millions more who pay out-of-pocket. Unlocking access to these medicines can be game-changing for Americans with obesity – a risk factor driving more than 200 associated diseases, including heart disease, strokes and certain types of cancers.

"Today marks a pivotal moment in U.S. health care policy and a defining milestone for Lilly, made possible through collaboration with the Trump Administration. As we expand access to obesity treatments for more Americans and advance one of the most innovative obesity pipelines, we remain focused on improving outcomes, strengthening the U.S. healthcare system, and contributing to the health of our nation for generations to come," said David A. Ricks, Lilly chair and CEO. "This agreement adds to our established commitment to affordability – from being the first company to cap insulin out-of-pocket costs at $35 per month to launching LillyDirect, an end-to-end digital healthcare experience."

The only tragedy is that the company couldn't manage to screw the Australian taxpayer and the federal government and type 2 diabetes sufferers, but no doubt they'll keep trying ...

And that brought the pond to the last Killer gobbet ...

That's more than enough Hayekian nonsense for early in the morning, especially as there's been a great betrayal and a few consequent 'toons ...

Speaking of the joys of public execution ...