In which the Caterists deplore welfare but how about two cheers for a grants-based culture ...

Actually, if we read that splash, it possibly should be amended to read that the Daily Terror and the News Corp media hysterics take a heavy toll on recipients' dignity, as was clearly established last night on Media Watch here ..

It seems Buzz Lightyear and Chris Dore have much in common ...

But all this is taking the pond away from the joy of the Caterists and the mystery of the graphic in the google splash ...

Well that will become clear enough in due course ... even if we could rewrite that one to the Caterists aim to empower through the dignity of pocketing grants ...

Ah the old Marlboro metaphor. Strange, the pond thought the small government, libertarian Nick was all in favour of the mentally ill being allowed to buy their cigarettes over the counter for a modest stipend ...

Yes, that'd be the ones that would benefit from the much under-estimated, short-term therapeutic benefits of cigarettes. Better death than life in a mad house.

But enough of that deep concern for sending off the poor, the elderly and the mentally ill as quickly and as painfully as possible, because it's around this point that the pond always likes to suggest a better way to read a Caterist column.

It's a Tuesday ritual, like a reciting of the mass, and it never gets stale.

It's simple enough ... wherever you read "welfare", just insert "grant" ...

Here's an example ...

To put it in a language the Caterist may understand, the science is in on this one. 
Grants are the the new ­tobacco; they can have short-term therapeutic benefits (much underestimated, incidentally, in the case of cigarettes, but that's another bit of profoundly stupid Caterist pandering to big tobacco) but its long-term ­effects are pernicious. 
These grants eat away at self-esteem, damages physical and spiritual health, and become an addiction that some find ­impossible to kick. 
Grants' secondary effects ­damage the educational prospects of children and boosts the likelihood that they will become recipients themselves. Who doesn't like a grant to help with the pocket money?
The first duty of any provider of grants therefore should be to wean their customers off it. So it comes as a shock to discover that the federal Department of Finance — the peak body for ­do-gooders intent on cutting off bludgers and grants lovers — wants to make this poisonous substance easier to obtain.

It's also part of the pond's proud Caterist tradition to publish an example of the pernicious influence of the grants culture that is ruining this country ...

Think of it as a couple of Hail Marys and an Our Dept Finance Father ...

The pond used to publish years of them, but one is enough, because there's more Caterism waiting in the wings ... 

Yes, it’s not the size of government that matters but the pernicious tendency of bureaucracy to suppress the individual freedom of Caterists to blather on endlessly while making sure they score generous cash in the paw grants...

Oh there's time for one last play of the game ... think of it as a Kyrie Eleison for Caterists ...

Yes, the cost of the grants budget given to the Caterists at the Menzies Research Centre is overwhelming, with hapless citizens taxed to kick a cool $240k or so a year into the kitty ... 
The greatest moral imperative, however, is to remove the pernicious effects of a system that strips dignity, discourages and disempowers and encourages the Caterists to think they make the slightest jot or whit of sense while holding out their paw for the cash, a system that robs citizens and the Caterists of what Menzies defined as an essential freedom: “the freedom to seek and obtain greater reward for doing more”, as opposed to blathering on about welfare while hooked on the purest junk of all, a quarter of a million smackeroos a year in grants ...

It's a simple-minded enough refrain, and the pond will stop the day that the grants to a lobbying centre, designed to aid and facilitate the pumping out of prime blather, are stopped ...

Of course nothing will stop the addictive aspect of a Caterist puffing away like a cigarette or a cane toad explaining the fine distinction between welfare and grants ...

And so for a little visual relief from the grants culture, and as a break for the pond's misuse and abuse of admirable Fairfax cartoonists, the pond headed off to Twitter ...

Oh dear, the dreadful social media, always bypassing the reptile world view ...

In which the pond enjoys a bowl of mixed Moorices ...

At last the reptiles have come good.

It's like the good old days and a trip to the corner store - where are they now? blowing in the wind? - and the agonising over whether to get snakes, milk bottles, bananas, teeth or just go the mixed lollies ...

Well the pond's most favourite treat of all are the mixed Moorices, succulent, sugar-laden doses of discontent, grumpiness, paranoia, and barely concealed hysteria ...

And by golly there was a good one in the reptile bowl today ...

Talk about a feast. The pond's father preferred liquorice all sorts and there's a lot to be said for them too ...

The liquorice adds the sort of cathartic, emetic or bowel moving tang you can find in other Moorice stories ...

Back to today's most poignant part of a most moving general moan ...

Of course it becomes even more poignant if you google up Moorice speaking on such matters in the past ...

"...Milne's prescription for a vibrant Australian economy includes 'keeping the renewable energy target at 41,000 gigawatt-hours', 'stopping new coalmines', 'no coal-seam gas' and 'no new ports'. 'Jobs will come from green energy,' Milne assures us. She could have added, there are fairies at the bottom of her garden."

Well those are the words to use in the search, and they'll bring diligent readers to this treasure ...

And yet now we have Moorice bleating about coal seam gas like some greenie searching for fairies at the bottom of the garden ...

But that's the joy of Moorice and another reason he's part of a good mixed diet ...

And so to the final serve of the day ... careful, too many treats can upset the tummy ...

Frankly, if Moorice didn't exist, the pond would have to invent him ...

Now some might find this focus on an elderly gentleman who's clearly a little unhinged a tad unfair, a bit unsightly. In the old days mad uncles used to be stuffed in the attic and no more said about them.

But over the years, Moorice has generated an exceptional amount of attention and interest. 

That sampling of mixed nuts reminded the pond of one example with a salient header ...

You see? It's just a short hop and a jump from mad father-in-laws to mad uncles, and so the advice offered remains relevant ...

Never mind, as a result of Moorice coming down from the attic, the pond has completely forgotten about all the other issues swirling around on this exciting debate day, where the United States might chose to get a new engine, and the old engine in Australia chugs along faithfully ...

Happily there's always a Rowe to return the pond to the real world, and there's more Rowe here ...

That portrait somehow reminded the pond of another Victorian figure ... (and there's a whole collection of such portraits here) ...

In which the pond is flung into a post-Oreo crisis ...

Devastated, forlorn, stricken.

For yonks the pond has been accustomed on a Monday to kick back, have a cup of tea and enjoy an Oreo biscuit.

Today? Only a sinister silence.

Even worse,  it's been at least a day since the reptiles have run a story demonising Safe Schools ...

There doesn't seem to be a single story linking SSM and SS in a way which might undermine both.

What to do? Rummage through the tired old prejudices and the days old rotting stench of bigotry?

No, no, that way lies madness ... and anyway, the reptiles already know what a real fiasco involves ...

Besides how many times can the pond note that News Corp is at the heart of spreading the hate and the fear ... though in recent times, the campaign has suffered a few blows ...

Well it's any port in a Monday storm, and so the pond had to turn to the Catholic university for advice on how to move forward ...

Now it seems even they're wondering why we have so much hysteria ... and a plebiscite ...

Actually the man on the horseback was the onion muncher, and his plebiscite ploy was both a clever way of delaying, while also offering a hope that a backlash might produce a negative result.

And with News Corp and wayward Liberals and the ACL in full cry, who knows what might yet happen ...

Call  it the Latham option? Why not call it the onion-munching Abbott, Cory, gorgeous George, Kevin or Erica option?

But at least the pond was reassured that the Craven was still bleating and blithering on about the Royal Commission ... nearing four long years on, what substantive changes in child safety have the religions and institutions made?

Quite possibly a few, and quite possibly, the changes might have something to do with the national shaming they've experienced ...

Meanwhile, the pond didn't quite know what to make of this ...

Was it for the onion muncher's cleverness, or against it?

Now the pond can sense a certain worry here, what with the precedents. 

Why not throw in a poll on euthanasia reform at the same time? Could we add in Aboriginal recognition? What about capital punishment? Why not revive back yard abortions, and give everyone the right to vote to return to the 1950s where the onion muncher and the bromancer still comfortably live with John Howard just across the street?

Well what do you know, like minds?

And speaking of popular sentiment, there's only one more sleep to the big event, and in the meantime there's always more Rowe here ...

What if Rudy Giuliani likes to wear frocks? Let's have a vote on it ... 

...though there might be a way to stop cheap mockery ...but oh dear, what would the reptiles do? (and more Wilcox here).

In which the pond swills a beer with the Order of Lenin hunter ...

Each Monday the pond is intrigued by what fresh insight the major Mitchell can produce, and today it's the old saw that you need to be as pissed as a parrot to really understand societal trends ...

Ah the good old days of the picket fence, women behind the bar and men indulging in the swill ...

Or did he really mean to say that?

Never mind, it's equally fatuous. It's one of those ideological statements which could be matched by "delusional reptiles at lizard Oz have no empathy for great middle ground", and soon enough there could be a shouting match and then a bar room brawl to sort the matter out ...

No doubt the major Mitchell will deploy this as a rhetorical device, as a way of assuring everyone that he's a centrist rather than someone to the right of the mighty Khan.

But did the major Mitchell really say that journos need to spend more time in the pub, as opposed to say, spending more time with family, or spending more time contributing to society, or spending more time doing good and noble things?

Nope, thus far all that's really on view here - in a column which astutely avoids any actual examples of a genuine understanding of issues - is a simpering adulation of the Bolter, and a sense that this kind of simpering adulation might be best disguised by giving an honourable mention to the "diminutive" Burney ...

A couple of other feathers in the major Mitchell plumage were also on show - the obligatory paranoia about the ABC, as if the received reptile wisdom is somehow superior and the reptile bunker in no way comparable ... though there's every sign that the Oz kool aid is even more effective in its capacity for over-powering alternative views ...

And then there's the obsession with the Twittersphere and the young ... you don't have to be a Freudian or even have a couch to understand the festering resentment in those lines about young Lefty tyros being rewarded for sharp opinions and violently executed tweets.

This from a major Mitchell who was rewarded for sharp Order of Lenin hunting and violently executed headlines ...

It's not the "lefty" tag that's revealing. The real crime is "young."

It is of course classic 'old angry man shouts at clouds and younger people who might disagree with him' syndrome, a condition Mitchell has been displaying since given the freedom to be a "look at me, look at me" columnist ...

But did he really mention the pub as the source of enlightenment and wisdom?

Hey nonny no, chug it down and on we go ...

Yes, there's someone who's been getting on the piss far too regularly. 

Anyone who could scribble a line about the sheer brutality of the Left and the vile reaction to Christians in the same sex marriage debate must needs have drunk a bucketful to have forgotten the two thousand odd years of bigotry, bile and prejudice dumped on the homosexual community ...

Where was the pisspot major Mitchell when it came to the Turing effect?

So many lives destroyed by bigotry and hate, and yet the major Mitchell reserves the use of "vile" for supporters of SSM ...

And then came something even more tragic and pathetic ... the suggestion that the Bolter and other reptiles try walking a mile in another's shoes ...

So that's what a love of a good red and a good opera is all about? 

The one thing that the documentary featuring Burney and the Bolter established is that the Bolter is a classic urban ponce of the first water, the kind of beast that the reptiles routinely satirise as being out of touch and living in a sheltered space, with dogs for walkies, bonus clogs and memories of tulips ...

The pond confesses to having stopped watching at this point, but it was enough to suggest that it's unlikely you'll find the Bolter comfortable and at home down at the pub indulging in the swill of ideas and beer ...

And perhaps that's just as well, because the idea that you can sort things out at the bottom of a beer glass is one of the more fatuous nineteen fifties notion that apparently still bedevils old school journalists from Queensland ...

Thankfully those days in all their glory have gone ... 

... though the swillers still linger and since they've been evicted from the city, have helped sway the hate crime statistics in the inner west ...

Oh the wisdom of the crowds, the wisdom of the pubs ...

Well for that suggestion, there can be only one suitable reward ... with authentic, genuine documentation, extensively researched by a horde of Currish Snail reporters ...