In which it's another manic reptile Monday …in the middle of a dream, kissing the onion muncher by a crystal blue dinkum coal-laden stream ...

 

Alternative realities, alternative facts, alternative polls … is it any wonder that the pond is a devotee of the alternative bizarro world of the lizards of Oz?

What's more, alternative poll news apart, the photo features an astonishing feat of mystical levitation. 

See how SloMo makes the ball rise through the sheer power of his mind, something a Scientologist might drop 40k on trying to achieve while never actually meeting their inner Thetan …

And if SloMo can make a ball mystically hover in mid-air, why the bouffant one can also make a cake rise with hope … here no drooping soufflé, no drooping soufflé here, but a light on the summit ...

Numbers won't do it… what you need is the power to lift balls with your mind!

But enough of the pond trying to be relevant and keep up with alternative reality.

As usual, Monday is a top notch day for lizard Oz loonery, and so some careful curating was called for, and the pond makes no excuse for leading off with an old favourite … dashing Donners … with a clarion call that never tires from endless repetition …

You see? The poisonous neo-Marxists are even at work within the lizard Oz, converting what should have been a thumb photo of Donners into inverted commas! Is there no end to their tricks and mind games, and the endless march towards mindless quotation mark conformity of a Marxist kind?!

Western values need defending? Too soon after Christchurch? No, it's always a good time to get out the paranoia, and perhaps the Glock … or at least the Donner phallus, softening under the vile assault of wretched feminists, even as the noble lad seeks comfort from fellow travellers in the school of TG bashing ...

Unfairly privileged? Say what? Doesn't everyone get to shelter in a Catholic university and scribble furiously at anyone who is different, and routinely get published in the lizard Oz, while offering a rant so familiar that the leather now has the sheen of a well-worn codpiece ...

Odds bodkins, were you not entertained, and the pond offers for free its vast collection of Donners shouting at clouds as a suitable unit in the University of Kansas course on Angry White Males …

But much as the pond would like to linga longa with Donners, on a Monday there is a huge amount of pressure on space, and the pond must immediately move on to another favourite, the Major …

Yes, it's another offering for the University of Kansas's course on Angry White Males - that goes without saying - but really, how loyal of the Major to stick up for an old chum.

These days such loyalty is too often dissed, even as the onion muncher goes through hard times …

See how the Major tries to set things right … and at the Major's usual tedious length, because there's no point shouting in short bursts …

Yes, whatever your views on the onion muncher and the way he's spent the past few years relentlessly sniping, wrecking, undermining and totally fucking up the government and assorted matters like the NBN and a sensible response to global warming, what a splendid chap he is, with a remarkable attitude to climate science that simply calls to the Major like the siren song of a cuckoo ...

The pond loves to decipher the secret messages and the clues that the reptiles embed in their pieces.

The Major is a tad obvious and might have used a more subtle code, because there's no need for an Enigma machine here… the onion muncher is in deep shit, and in urgent need to special reptile pleading to save his bacon and his togs …

Plead on, Major, as only a loyal parrot can do … and remember, now is a good time to recycle anonymous snarky, bitchy comments, because there's nothing that elevates a piece more than nebulous reporting of anonymous back-stabbing ...

Ah, the ancient art of the reptile smear, perfected by the Major long ago when he went in search of an Order of Lenin medal … and when last mentioned, still hadn't managed to find it …

In a perverse way, Steggall should perhaps be pleased and proud to have attracted the Major's attention, loyally recycling anonymous smears and berating all and sundry associated with her. It means she really has got under the onion muncher's skin, and he really is in deep shit, and so the smearing must continue and must be widened to include all her fellow travellers ...

Odds bodkins, Major, keep up …there's some ancient news from China that's relevant here ...

There's more here, but just so the Major and the onion muncher might contemplate a little data ...

Things are changing in India too … A Future Without Fossil Fuels? (outside the NYRB paywall for the moment) … but the pond must find room for the last splutter of the Major ... 

The onion muncher is the candidate for working class Janes and Joes, while Steggall and Labor will take care of the rich?

Are you not entertained? Did not the pond promise you an outing in the bizarro world known as the lizard Oz?

Does the Major really think the notion that comrade Bill is for the rich will fly?

Never mind, we must move along, with the pond full of deep regret and remorse.

You see, even with the pond's careful curating of bizarro world, many are called, but not all are chosen, not even the pond's great favourites …

Why this day there was the Oreo displaying the astonishing empathy for which she is famous worldwide, and perhaps galactically, while the Caterist was calling out the Chinese government's green car gamble ...

If it turns out to be a slow Tuesday, the pond might well revert to these favourites - the pond never tires of the enormous stupidity of the Caterist, government cash in the paw and flood water in quarries expert - but it must find the room for an astonishing dog botherer meltdown ...

He could never demonstrate? But isn't he about to demonstrate?

Now this is probably a step to far for the amateur reptile handler, already tired by keeping company with Donners and the Major, but professionals will understand that Mondays can turn into something of a slog as the dog botherer reveals his inner dummy, his sheltering dodo ...

Clearly he's in a rage … but for a reason which will become clear only at the very end of this long and strange rant ...

The pond isn't much of a Freudian, but offers this sample range to diagnose what ails the dog botherer (more explication here) …

It's clear enough to the pond that we're dealing with projection, though it will allow that denial, displacement, regression and sublimation might also be involved.

Whatever, it's pretty fucking weird ...

Did the dog botherer just discover that there's a multitude of people who despise the Murdochians and look to the ABC for some sort of alternative?

Apparently, but after this gobbet we'll come to the real reason for the dog botherer's continuing discontent ...

Indeed, indeed, the polarisation of our media continues apace. The Murdochian-funded minnow is becoming increasingly entrenched ideologically, and even worse, its business plan looks pitifully short-sighted and fuckwitted …after all, how many copies of a rag can you give away for free at airports and sundry other places before you go broke?

But what's the real reason for this dog botherer outburst? Well again no Enigma Machine is required ...

Oh reptiles, did you have to add that footnote?

Did you have to remind the dog botherer and the world of his fatuous ignominy and wildly comic fame?

You're still apologising for the dog botherer being a foolish twit, deeply in love with twittering and wittering like a Donald?

Not that it stops the lad, because he just loves inviting the hate …

"Sigh"?

Is he suddenly a thirteen year old?

Well there was one classic exchange at the end of that ancient tweet. Freudians, please step up to the mark, and await the firing of the starter's gun …

Oh he probably meant it as irony, but remember what Freud said about regression …

Were you not entertained? Was it not worth hanging around for?

Well sadly, it means that David Rowe is at the bottom of the heap, but there's more Rowe here, and after wading through that lot, it at least reminds the pond that one cartoon can be worth a zillion reptile words …

And how thoughtful of Rowe to spare a moment which addresses both Donners' and Major Mitchell's deepest fears and inner desires …

In which the pond starts off with Polonius but ends up getting distracted and redacted ...

How about Polonius as an "other problem"? A guaranteed perfect distraction ...

The pond felt a deep sense of existential despair at the topic announced  in prattling Polonius's splash this weekend … and at the same time couldn't help taking it a little personally.

What constituted an increase in productivity for Polonius himself? Another column a week for the lizard Oz, so that even more trees might die and the full-to-overflowing intertubes groan under the weight of yet more digital detritus? Perhaps a second dog-laden media watch, with more boasting about how he had the idea before the ABC, amid numerous assaults on hapless cardigan-wearers?

Organise an extra soirée at the Sydney Institute so that the rich might congregate to congratulate themselves, and perhaps explain how the robotisation of their industry was proceeding apace, and they'd saved a motza by shipping more jobs overseas, and soon the lumpenproletariat would be reduced to assisting the robots and making do with regular servings of soylent green …

Put more simply, the pond couldn't imagine any meaningful way that Polonius was productive, unless a market had suddenly sprung up for ponderous verbiage and sententious, self-righteous, pompous moralising about how wrong it was to give the low-paid a break.

And if the pond couldn't imagine a productive Polonius, how would it be possible to increase that productivity? A blather count only measured dBAs of dismal pontificating, with bonus errant history lessons …

The pond couldn't sort the conundrum, but reading Polonius is regularly reminded of Mr Bumble the Beadle, as immortalised in Oliver Twist. It's not so much the lack of gruel or the cost of coffins ruining the business model, as the sheer ingratitude …

'Hard weather, Mr. Bumble,' said the matron. 
 'Hard, indeed, ma'am,' replied the beadle. 'Anti-porochial weather this, ma'am. We have given away, Mrs. Corney, we have given away a matter of twenty quartern loaves and a cheese and a half, this very blessed afternoon; and yet them paupers are not contented.' 
'Of course not. When would they be, Mr. Bumble?' said the matron, sipping her tea. 
'When, indeed, ma'am!' rejoined Mr. Bumble. 'Why here's one man that, in consideration of his wife and large family, has a quartern loaf and a good pound of cheese, full weight. Is he grateful, ma'am? Is he grateful? Not a copper farthing's worth of it! What does he do, ma'am, but ask for a few coals; if it's only a pocket handkerchief full, he says! Coals! What would he do with coals? Toast his cheese with 'em and then come back for more. That's the way with these people, ma'am; give 'em a apron full of coals to-day, and they'll come back for another, the day after to-morrow, as brazen as alabaster.' 
The matron expressed her entire concurrence in this intelligible simile; and the beadle went on. 
'I never,' said Mr. Bumble, 'see anything like the pitch it's got to. The day afore yesterday, a man—you have been a married woman, ma'am, and I may mention it to you—a man, with hardly a rag upon his back (here Mrs. Corney looked at the floor), goes to our overseer's door when he has got company coming to dinner; and says, he must be relieved, Mrs. Corney. As he wouldn't go away, and shocked the company very much, our overseer sent him out a pound of potatoes and half a pint of oatmeal. "My heart!" says the ungrateful villain, "what's the use of this to me? You might as well give me a pair of iron spectacles!" "Very good," says our overseer, taking 'em away again, "you won't get anything else here." "Then I'll die in the streets!" says the vagrant. "Oh no, you won't," says our overseer.' 
'Ha! ha! That was very good! So like Mr. Grannett, wasn't it?' interposed the matron. 
'Well, Mr. Bumble?' 'Well, ma'am,' rejoined the beadle, 'he went away; and he did die in the streets. There's a obstinate pauper for you!'

Blind, wilful obstinancy!! Now see if you can catch a resonance of the bumbling beadle to add to Polonius's Hamletian qualities …

Now call the pond naïve if you like, but if capacity to pay is what should determine wages, then the pond can see a glorious future for the rich, determining that they're simply incapable of paying any sort of wage, minimum or otherwise. There's nothing like a single worker trying to negotiate on which it might be possible to live with a multi-national giant of a company, happy to tell the idle poor that a robot could do their job better, and if they don't like it, have they thought of working for piece rates at Deliveroo …

Fancy those wretches expecting to work for a living, and as a result, score a wage on which they might be able to eke out a miserable existence, while doffing the lid and tugging the forelock to their betters ...

Ah the good old dignity of work. Wherever the pond goes, the pond is confronted by the dignity of work … poor wretches peddling as fast as they can, and getting as far advanced as a hamster working out on a wheel.

Of course it's different for Polonius. He feels immensely dignified scribbling furiously to explain to others the dignity of their work …

Somehow the pond imagined Polonius channeling the beadle, agitated at the "...perverse behaviour of the two paupers, who persisted in shivering, and complaining of the cold, in a manner which, Mr. Bumble declared, caused his teeth to chatter in his head, and made him feel quite uncomfortable; although he had a great-coat on. 
Having disposed of these evil-minded persons for the night, Mr. Bumble sat himself down in the Sydney Institute at which the coach stopped; and took a temperate dinner of steaks, oyster sauce, and porter. Putting a glass of hot gin-and-water on the chimney-piece, he drew his chair to the fire; and, with sundry moral reflections on the too-prevalent sin of discontent and complaining, composed himself to read the lizard Oz all over again.

Or perhaps composed himself another piece for the lizard Oz, offering sundry moral reflections on the too-preevlant sin of discontent and complaining, as if lessers somehow imagined they might stand on the same moral plane as their betters …

And there you have it. A living wage is not the answer …but there's no reason to reinvent the wheel and propose a decent day's pay for an honest day's work … all we need to do is head back to the future …

The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered—the poor people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round; a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work. 'Oho!' said the board, looking very knowing; 'we are the fellows to set this to rights; we'll stop it all, in no time.' So, they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they), of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. With this view, they contracted with the water-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and with a corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll of Sundays. They made a great many other wise and humane regulations, having reference to the ladies, which it is not necessary to repeat; kindly undertook to divorce poor married people, in consequence of the great expense of a suit in Doctors' Commons; and, instead of compelling a man to support his family, as they had theretofore done, took his family away from him, and made him a bachelor! There is no saying how many applicants for relief, under these last two heads, might have started up in all classes of society, if it had not been coupled with the workhouse; but the board were long-headed men, and had provided for this difficulty. The relief was inseparable from the workhouse and the gruel; and that frightened people. 

For the first six months after Oliver Twist was removed, the system was in full operation. It was rather expensive at first, in consequence of the increase in the undertaker's bill, and the necessity of taking in the clothes of all the paupers, which fluttered loosely on their wasted, shrunken forms, after a week or two's gruel. But the number of workhouse inmates got thin as well as the paupers; and the board were in ecstasies…

Exemplary stuff, and soon enough poor people will realise they've never had it so good, and will not dare to ask their betters for a living wage, and instead will be content at the increased work available in the soylent green sector of the economy … with the boom aided by the astonishing increase in productivity displayed by Polonius and the Sydney Institute, with a blather-led recovery producing great economic good fortune for beadles everywhere …

Now perhaps a few will wonder if the pond is being fair by frivolously invoking the Beadle, but what point any attempt to be serious? The pond was once made to read Edward Shann as part of an economic history unit and still has it on a shelf somewhere - now it can be found on Project Gutenberg here in the 1948 version.

The pond can't remember much of it, but not just for reasons of forgetfulness and senility. You see, after plodding through it, the lecturer told his class that while it was good for its time, much had happened since it was written, including but not limited to a great depression, a world war, and much changed expectations of government in economic matters, and only a fool would take it as a guide to current thinking in economics. The same lecturer would probably think only a fool would bring out the ancient Harvester case for recycling in the matter of wages determinations. And this berating of fools took place decades ago.

Since then the neoliberals have trotted out arcane nonsense of the trickle down kind (not just Donald-inspired displays of urine) and income inequality has risen to remarkable, no, astonishing levels. And yet Polonius expects anyone to take him seriously? Why calling him a beadle is being exceptionally kind ...

And now, as the pond has experienced something of an irony overload, with circuit-breakers sparking out all over the place, why not a little Dame Slap to make the weekend complete?

But before proceeding, the pond would like to insert this instructional manual.

Tucker Carlson is the object of the lesson, but it applies to all the works of the reptiles …

Yes, the pond has a taste for Vox's Carlos Maza's smack-downs, and he delivers Carlson a beauty. But the point he makes, about the idea of the hungry peasants in the village getting angry, but taking it out on almost anyone or everything except the real cause of their problems is relevant not just to Fox, but to the Murdochians down under. 

It's all about distraction -Carlson's a 100% Murdoch's bitch, and "I would be honoured if he would cane me the way I cane my workers," but the down under reptiles are into the same kind of SM.

And with that in mind, what's the latest distraction Dame Slap has to offer?

Yes, she wants you to get angry about universities and freedom of speech and all the usual nonsense the reptiles trot out when in urgent need of a distraction … because lordy lordy, is there a big federal election distraction coming up, or what … and is the need for distractions dialled up to eleven?

Remember - Dame Slap preening and posing as an opponent of illiberalism is a very close equivalent to Tucker Carlson deploring elites ...

Comparing a climate science denialist to Charles Darwin?  Perhaps Jesus Christ would have been even more on song, but it's rich enough, and to be expected of a lawyer, but it becomes an exceptionally rich offering as a distraction in a Dame Slap column ...

Donald Trump? Dame Slap has the cheek to quote Donald Trump? But we know his idea of free speech …

It is, after all, just a distraction ...

But some Anzacs did behave badly …and there is the question of what exactly happened at the Surafend massacre …

And we already know Dame Slap's approach to free speech …

These are legitimate questions any legitimate historian would want to explore, especially if it's in the interests of national mythology and officialdom to suppress the truth. 

But remember, we're not talking about free speech or liberal ideas here, we're talking distraction, anger, fear and loathing, the very stuff of the Murdochians ...

And so to a breather before the pond fulfils its last Sunday duty … but what a ripper distraction it is. 

The pond has long suggested that anyone interested in herpetology join the venerable Meade on a Friday in the Weekly Beast and can't resist clipping this example of the rewards to be reaped ...

And the dog botherer's response? A nicely worded apology, perhaps with a touch of humour, while acknowledging the error? Just kidding … you must have blown in from Mars if you thought that was coming ...

That's his acknowledgement, his apology for getting it wrong? Just asking for an unapologetic fuckwit …

And so to the final tour of duty, and only because the pond included a revealing snippet from the meritorious Merritt in yesterday's post ...

Yes, it's just more of the same, but there's those couple of revealing lines ...

A voluntary code full of feel-good fluff from a retired judge whom the reptiles would have once dismissed as being activist for getting involved in this sort of nonsense?

Never mind, on to the two big tells ...

There's the first tell … free speech actually allows people to call Lomborg infamous, especially when he is actually infamous …Google up "infamous Bjorn Lomborg" and you'll produce many infamous hits ...

And so to the second tell. Not only was French silly enough to trot out the IPA, he included the IPA agenda as an appendix. 

Others have dealt with this sort of nonsense at considered length, but because the pond is way over length it'll just settle for the log line to be found here at The Conversation - with a lot more…

We all know how this special pleading and distraction works. It's called the Tucker Carlson factor, or if you will, the art of the dial …

In which the pond revives its affection for whiter than white soap powder...

Too soon?

How long ago was it that a white supremacist blew away 50 in Christchurch?

Turns out it's never too soon for the reptiles, even if it involves a necrophiliac act of grave-robbing, digging up a book to peddle tribalism and racism …

As for the thesis, "white decline emboldens the Left", the last the pond checked Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and many others were white, and Australians of all stripes once embraced the White Australia policy, a policy that no doubt would have emboldened the likes of Herr Eric Kaufmann …

Yes, it's 'take a dip in the sewer known as the lizard Oz' time, and this time the pond recommends a number of pegs be affixed, before approaching the thinly-veiled white supremacist pose with a long-suffering nose …

Confronted with this sort of yearning for whiteness, the pond once upon a time would have trotted out an old racist ad promoting the virtues of soap …

… though actually it's not that ancient, is it?

But enough of that, actually the pond was charmed by the reptiles' recent alarm at a story coming from the land of the long white cloud …

Indeed, indeed, the key point is that there's nothing wrong with butchering Islamics, it's what good white people have always been inclined to do …

Here's the start of the story, before it went on to talk of rugby, and the pond fell asleep ...

Horsemen in Crusader gear? Well that's clearly celebrating people who lobby for and strive for change… say by cleansing the world of anyone who isn't white enough or Christian enough, and where's the harm in that? See how the pond has learned to think like a reptile?

And so back to the reptile sewer …

The cleverness here is to purport to offer an objective academic analysis, while in reality endorsing conservative and authoritarian responses as fair enough, a goodly explanation for existential insecurity and instability …

Somehow this talk of academic objectivity got tangled with another good laugh the pond had at another bout of reptile panic and alarm …

Good old urbane Urban, trudging away in the reptile educational coal mine, and thereby providing the pond with distilled essence of reptile comedy, because the notion of rigorous scientific research in the matter of climate science must surely be labelled a "reptilian fantasy" … not even the most gigantic prick could fuck up climate science the way the reptiles do on a daily basis …

But back to the reptile sewer. Too soon? Not for the reptiles …

Phew, this one is deep in the white supremacist stew, and so it makes it even funnier that the reptiles should have Dame Slap and the meritorious Merritt also out and about this day …

The irony of course is that Herr Kaufmann is an academic, and nobody has done anything to stop the march of his illiberal ideas, nor has anyone stopped the reptiles from this act of necrophiliac grave-digging, as open up the corpse to inspect the detritus of right white thinking …

Another irony is that these illiberal ideas have stolen a march on Dame Slap, prattling Polonius, nattering "Ned" and other members of the reptile crusade, if only because Herr Kaufmann is inclined to be prolix (please, remember, the pond has a goodly dose of German blut as it clings to ancient traditions, though the only German word the pond can reliably use is "scheisse").

Well the pond hopefully will get back to its standard reptile fare for a Sunday meditation, but before moving along, please allow the pond to pause and marvel at this meritorious Merrittism …

But, billy goat butt, Bjorn is infamous, a subsidy seeker and a cash in the paw man, a rent seeker and a climate science denialism panderer, and utterly shameless in his toadying, and therefore a fit subject for reptile worship …

...and since when has the IPA become an expert on free speech, as opposed to lavishly subsidised speech on the joys of devouring tobacco, the wonders of coal, and the benefits of climate science denialism?

But enough distractions, because there's still some hard yards to go. Perhaps a Brexit joke in honour of Dame Slap, just to keep the spirits up? With more spirit-enhancing Rowe here …

Oops, something seems to have happened to that white Crusader horse, but fear not, somehow the wogs and the darkies will be kept out of little Britain … and now back to the reptile sewer …

Note the splendid both-siderism, and the wondrous obscurantism of "what I term ethno-traditional nationalism". If only Herr Hitler had been alive to gain a more nuanced appreciation of the ways he might have expressed himself.

Apparently there is good on both sides, and it's all just a matter of a differing world view if you happen to get out on the street, don appropriate garb and chant "the Jews will not replace us."

As for "voluntary assimilation", please, call a spade a spade. In the pond's day, it was dubbed miscegenation and a weakening of the blut ties and the blut line, and what was wrong with that, apart from the odd world war? Oh there was much science in discerning the level of contamination. Why you could move past quadroon to octoroon or even hexadecaroon...

Meanwhile, it seems one noble crusader is in trouble yet again …

Does the onion muncher keep on giving, or what? And they're promising a Four Corners on the matter. Naturally the pond attributes it to a lack of whiteness in the ABC … which reminds the pond that there's still a gobbet to go in the reptile sewer…

What, no place for an enduring white atheist tradition? No place for a white Karl Marx tradition?

And where did the reptiles dig this up? Why are they giving it such a big push?

Well they might claim its copyright date is 2019, but it was out and about in Britain in October 2018, and being heavily pushed by Murdochian rags of The Times kind … but it fell to earth with a resounding thud, and failed to turn Herr Kaufmann into the new Jordan.

Reaction was so muted in fact that there were very few reviews to be found, though Kenan Malik noted it in The Graudian/Observer on 21st October 2018 here …

Malik made some obvious enough points …

Whiteshift is a hefty work crammed with data and graphs. The trouble with viewing the world primarily in demographic terms, though, is that, for all the facts and figures, it is easy to be blind to the social context. Consider Kaufmann’s discussion of 19th-century Irish immigration into Britain. The influx, Kaufmann writes, created a “cultural demography” that was “fertile soil for the growth of anti-Catholicism”. What this misses is that anti-Catholicism was well established long before Irish immigration. Its roots lie in 17th-century power struggles. Anti-Catholic bigotry was institutionalised in a series of laws enacted after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which denied Catholics jobs, votes and rights. It was shaped, too, by Britain’s annexation of Ireland. It’s not demography but that history of bigotry and occupation that helps make sense of the response to Irish immigration...

Well yes, the pond was taught to hate Cromwell, maintaining four centuries old rage, and Cromwell had little time for Catholics …

Catholicism is more than a religion, it is a political power. Therefore I'm led to believe there will be no peace in Ireland until the Catholic Church is crushed

… though with a little adjustment by the pond, he came closer to the truth with this …

Work hard, trust in imaginary friends, and keep your bowels open.

And there were a few mother points made by Malik worth quoting …

...Kaufmann wants to normalise attachment to “white identity”. Historically, such identity has been the means through which to promote racism. Today, many on the far right use it as a way of rebranding their bigotry.

The real problem, however, is not that the notion of white identity is racist but that it is meaningless. There is no singular set of interests shared by all whites. Those responsible for the marginalisation of the working class are also largely white – politicians, bureaucrats, bankers, company bosses. Kaufmann’s argument is, ironically, the mirror image of that of leftwing identitarians; both see whiteness as a homogenising label, one for a repository of privilege, the other for common interests. The idea of “white interests” obscures the real problems facing the working class. It transforms solidarity from a sense of commonality with those sharing my values and aspirations, though not necessarily my skin colour or culture, to an identity with those who do not share my political hopes, and may undermine my interests, but whose skin colour or cultural background is similar. There’s little dignity in that.

Well yes, but the real curiosity for the pond is why the reptiles dug up this book, and gave it space and prominence. There seems to be only one credible answer …

Hold fast Crusaders, stick to your white skin, and soon you too can regard anyone of colour as an enemy, just right for a Crusader dust-up (though a little help from a fugitive Chinese tycoon can still come in handy in the heat of battle).

And so to a Pope cartoon, if only because infinite papal wisdom is always on tap here …

By golly, is it too soon? 

The poodle's gone, the gatling's jammed, the red square runs white with white blood, the north shore crusader is feeling the heat, is it too soon to farewell the onion muncher with a cavalcade of Pope cartoons? Even if it is too soon, the reptiles have shown how it's never too soon ...