Piers Akerman, Tim Blair, paying for Chairman Rupert's content, with bonus regular Piers Akerman rant about climate change? They've got to be dreaming

(Above: the end of the world according to Alex Proyas's Knowing,  when in fact it might just herald the end of Proyas's world as an A-list contending special effects director).

Pay Day, or no pay to play?

Oops. Just as a  politician should never call an inquiry without knowing the answer, perhaps Tim Blair shouldn't ask his punters for feedback without guiding them in the right direction.

News Ltd this week indicated that it may soon begin charging for online content. Fairfax is thinking along similar lines: Fairfax chief executive Brian McCarthy told The Sunday Age that charging for online access was essential if publishers were to maintain their newsroom staff. This might happen more rapidly than people expect. You all up for payin’?

Heck no siree Timbob Blair, we all surely ain't. Not even if ya threw in some tasty grits and a fresh roasted hog, ya hear me.

You see, the early results weren't exactly favorable. First up came a Scrooge demanding a convenient payment method, and fees in cents not dollars, on a per use basis rather than subscription.

Then came a "not a chance", with the coda "there's plenty of entertaining free stuff out there". 

It wasn't looking good - nine "nos", two "I'll get back to you" and one "maybe if its in cents". This was turning into the unreliable poll from hell, and the news was in that Blair might be better off going back to independent status if he wanted people to pay for his work. 

And by the time I checked back again, the tone was still overwhelmingly in the negative "tell 'em their dreaming" zone, despite one hoping it might get rid of leftard trolls. Without bothering about a detailed study of the maths, it was way over ninety per cent of some forty respondents who were outright negative, with most of the remainder ambivalent, and only a few suckers willing to stump up the cash for Chairman Rupert.

Most who bothered to articulate a response ended up in this zone:

Murdoch might proudly point to the success of the online subscription Wall Street Journal as evidence people will pay. But it is a captive market because the WSJ is required reading for many professionals. Can’t say that for The Telegraph or the SMH.

Which is fair enough, because if you then dropped in on Piers Akerman, you could have written the column yourself at far less cost than paying Chairman Rupert to pay Piers to scribble his standard anti Labor anti global warming diatribe. Rudd's hot air will put jobs on the line is the header, when perhaps it should have read Chairman Rupert's desire to gouge will put jobs on the line.

The only fascinating thing about it is the relentless automaton style of the writing. To paraphrase Captain McAlister in The Simpsons, "'Tis no man. 'Tis a remorseless writing machine."

The latest news to perk up the fat owl is that some sixty German scientists have written a letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel getting agitated about the myth of global warming. You can find a copy of the letter here - News Corp seems very reluctant to provide links that might take you away from their site - noting that the letter now includes the standard disclaimer that global warming has become a "pseudo religion." As soon as I hear that phrase, I think of Ian Plimer, and I guess we now know that Germany has its Ian Plimers in abundance.

Because of course it would be just as easy to say that sceptics have their own kind of "pseudo religion" and if science is just a matter of calling anybody you disagree with a "pseudo religionist", then I guess I'm fully qualified to become involved in scientific discourse.

What the fuck would you know about that you crackpot pseudo religionist? I rest my case.

Anyhoo, in his uual way, Akerman manages to transform these sixty Germans into a veritable legion of supporters. He assures us there are tens of thousands of independent scientists (as opposed to lick spittle scientists dependent on government hand outs and government jobs) who are fervently opposed to the flawed science on which the deviant and perverted Rudd government is operating.

But perhaps my favorite sentence is this one near the start of the rant:

Having successfully avoided legislating on the basis of religious beliefs for more than a century, the Rudd government is now going to introduce a new job-destroying scheme of wealth redistribution to win the votes of those who have succumbed to neo-Romantic Green hysteria.

WTF? The Rudd government has been around for more than a century. No wonder we've all succumbed to neo-romantic green hysteria, which admittedly is a refreshing change from neo-modernist, neo-surrealist and neo-expressionist hysteria.

And it seems the hapless fat owl of the remove can only see one way now to get rid of the preening obnoxious Rudd:

Mr Rudd, in particular, wishes to use his position on global warming as a stepping stone to a career in the international bureaucracy and has the support of numerous non-government organisations working against the interests of Australia, in the vain hope that a reduction in Australian living standards will miraculously lift poorer nations.

Eek, Chairman Rudd is going to run the UN and send black helicopters to spy on us.

Worse, Malcolm Turnbull simply won't listen to Akerman about the need to re-examine and change his opinions (because deep down Turnbull was a believer when he was in government, in the quasi religious way we expect of these perverted types). Not only is Turnbull on the nose, his climate change attitudes are also very pong worthy.

Oh it's a clarion call to arms, and it makes me issue a clarion call of my own. Can someone please put Akker Dakker behind a Murdochian paywall now, and if not now, by at least next Friday, when I will have to pay money to learn that the end of the world is nigh. 

Because I suspect I won't be forking over the cash, and so will be blissfully unaware when the deviant Chairman Rudd turns Australia into a movie as bad as Alex Proyas's Knowing.

Perhaps we could call it the Chairman Rupert's great fire wall of unknowing.