Barnaby Joyce, the boy from Danglemah, and a fine old squawking this Sunday on loon pond ...

(Above: screen cap of the Sunday Terror's splash).

It wouldn't be Sunday without the Sunday Telegraph, but sadly, as I do my bit to save the trees and help the planet in its emissions control, I only get the online copy.

And what a splendid way to start a splashy day than to be beguiled by an exclusive story on the 2BG groper's pain. Which of course was supposed to read '2GB', and got me wondering if it was web shorthand for something like 'too big a grope' groper's pain. After all, lol is for lollipops.

Never mind, we all do typos, it's just that some are more prominent and in the face than others.

Meanwhile, to other news, and it seems that Barnaby Joyce is all the rage.

Now it gives this site great pleasure to advise that the curator of loon pond shares many aspects of Barnaby's cultural heritage.

It seems Barnaby was born in Tamworth, and so was this humble scribe, and it seems in his youth he lived close by, and even got his primary schooling within the town with the golden guitar. According to the bio:

Barnaby grew up on a property at Danglemah, in the hills behind Tamworth.

Which is not quite true, since any local would say that the hills behind Tamworth take you through Endeavour park and back down Tintinhull way. It's a stretch to say that the parish of Danglemah lies in the hills behind Tamworth, even if it's in the county of Inglis, land district of Tamworth, when really it's more out Limbri/Walcha way, where the boys were always horrid, leastwise in my experience.

Sadly only Danglemah road gets a guernsey on google maps, but it seems that Barnaby's primary schooling immediately gave him the wrong impression about the ways of the world:

He was one of six children and, even at primary school, stated that he would one day get into politics. This determination grew from seeing the demise of the small towns around him and the effect this had on the people’s lives. (here for the rest of the official bio)

Because you see the small towns around Tamworth died not as the result of some vast international conspiracy, but because the likes of Tamworth (and Armidale) got bigger, and the motor car enabled people to commute for their shopping and their social lives and their education and their jobs, and so the shops and small traders in the hamlets in the vicinity simply found it impossible to compete with the new era of supermarkets, and discounting, and free and easy travel and available opportunities that come from having a little mass and size.

Yep, it was the country folks and their consumption habits that did in the small town stores - they didn't shop local - but try telling country folk they should give up their addiction to gas and to the motor car, and to a quick commute of say a 100k to the supermarket to pick up supplies. Sorry Manilla, goodbye Werris Creek, ho roo Dungowan.

That's small town geography 101, a bit like the way strips in the United States, driven by the motor car, have blighted and destroyed the downtown, main street hearts of so many once great looking cities.

Which makes the rhetoric on Barnaby's biography page (here) all the more poignant:

Barnaby was sent off to boarding school at Riverview in Sydney where he saw the other side of the coin; realising that what people don’t see, they rarely understand. This is the issue with people working in big business failing to understand the rights of people in small business or people in the cities failing to understand the life of people in the country. Barnaby believes the potential to enter into business is an essential freedom that can be lost by over regulation or over centralisation.

Because if you don't have a clue as to what happened in your rural neighbourhood, and you don't understand that it wasn't over regulation that drove centralisation into bigger hubs like Tamworth and Armidale, but consumers at work exercising their god-given, John Howard-approved right to choose, what prospect that you have the foggiest clue about how the rest of the world works?

Anyhoo, it seems that, just like the curator of loon pond, Barnaby went on to get a degree from the University of New England, situated in the picturesque town of Armidale, though in commerce, which perversely ignores the major disciplines of rural science and agricultural economics offered within its ivy towers, and still maintains a Roman Catholic faith developed from his early days within the Danglemah parish. (here).

This shared inheritance leads me to suspect that Barnaby might almost be as loony as the curator of loon pond. We certainly share a deep affection for him here on the pond, in much the same way as we once were devoted to some of the rough boys you can find in Maguires, or the Central (where the atmosphere is rustic), or the Tudor, or any other fine establishment which supports the noble art of getting legless. (here for some hotels in Tamworth).

Never mind. Everywhere Barnaby is on everyone's lips. Why there's Penbo doing a colour piece at The Punch, Australia's most rustic conversation, Barnaby knock knock knockin' on Kevin's door. And it's been left to dangle at the top of the page for all of Sunday, as the Murdoch minions respect the Sabbath according to Chairman Rupert's instructions. Penbo wraps up his piece thus, in response to a piece of rural comedy writing by Barnaby which referenced Captain Calamity's instructions on yoga:

I have no idea who Captain Calamity is or what his instructions are for yoga but in this age of saccharine political stage management, in a country blessed with a beautiful vernacular, Joyce may achieve what the strategists call cut-through, even when you’ve got no literal sense of what the guy is actually saying.

Sheesh, Penbo, Captain Calamity is a pirate, and he's got his own movie (Captain Calamity), as any fuel wold now after a matinee at the Capitol Theatre, before they tore it down in the middle of the night. And the bit about the Capt'n doing yoga is just a harmless bit of exaggerated shaggy dog storytelling, a colourful rhetorical expression along the lines of "ya drink ya bath water". Sheesh, these Adelaide chappies know nothing.

And if you want the full text of Barnaby's Captain Calamity press release clownery, you can trot off to Shadow Minister Barnaby Joyce, sublime or ridiculous? Wherein you will see that they didn't teach English proper-like, when Barnaby was learning how to balance the books, not like in the old days. Here's a sample:

Labor has gone on a spending bender and is now waiting for the fairy godmother to come and rub the red ink from the books.

Let’s get this right from the start. The Labor Party have not got a clue what money is worth. They have no respect for debt.

Currently, so the Australian people know, the debt they owe, to a range of countries such as China, the good people of Japan and the Middle East and everyone in between, amounts to $115.71 billion dollars.

I will bet you London to a brick that this debt is only going to go in one direction under the Labor Government and that is up.

Why is there no exit strategy to pay off the debt that they have lumbered Australia with?

A long range forecast for the Labor Party is a cacophony of confusion, with a range of excuses that it might be bad but it is not as bad as some countries.

Over time, the countries they are comparing us with will get worse and worse and worse, until we end up once more with the Labor Party saying that our financial position is preferable to that of certain South American dictatorships and collapsed Eastern European economies.

The good news is, if they wanted to, there is the capacity now to discontinue on the path they have us on.

That opportunity will disappear if they keep spending borrowed money the way they are spending it at the moment.

Please Wayne, stop the media releases. Your last one brought the house down.

Oh dear, mixed metaphors, confused grammar, and an endearing desire to use London to a brick as a way of proving rural authenticity. Good on ya dinkum cobber mate, but please, oh please, get a copywriter. There's authenticity, and there's playing the dinkum digger, and then there's rural clowning that once would have got you a job at Wirth's circus.

Well after that flurry of floozies, the Sunday Telegraph keeps on with the Barnaby fascination, and this time he claims to be a seer of Nostradamus capacity: Barnaby: I predicted the GFC.

The GFC? He called it, and he didn't make a killing? Oh the boys from Danglemah were always a worry.

But never mind, on to Barnaby's idea of a put down:

Mr Rudd's temper was proof he was "a selfish little boy who can speak Chinese. I'm so smart, just let me show you. I speak Mandarin. Well, woopdy doo, so do 1.3 billion Chinese," he said.

Well I guess it's cleverer than the rough boys who once infested Maguires, who'd invite anyone listening to step out the back so that they could sort things out. Come to think of it, a lot of them didn't bother with the tedious business of stepping out the back.

Meantime, technical point Mr. Speaker: shouldn't we be saying "oh whoopie doo"? And can we urge Barnaby to learn to speak proper English like all those other smart arse insular proper English speakers who never learned to speak another language because they're gob smackingly parochially proud to be iggerant? Or is that being Tamworth snobby?

In a wide-ranging interview over the course of a day at the beach with The Sunday Telegraph, Senator Joyce also expounded on everything from international affairs to "stupid" FM radio DJs Kyle and Jackie O.

He criticised Mr Henry for toeing the government line, saying Mr Stevens was "more honest" about the economy.

"The fearless public servant I don't think is what you'd call Ken Henry."

Well it might have been a wide-ranging day at the beach, but Barners didn't deliver quite the copy expected, and the story runs short. But I guess after stuffing up over Chinese investment, banking regulation, taxation, global finance, and speculating about the impending bankruptcy of the United States, and the Queensland government, he'd done enough good work for the week.

But if you have a taste for even more Barnaby, you can head off to the SMH, where Michelle Grattan delivers Bump on the head is least of Barnaby's problems:

Barnaby Joyce was walking wounded when he arrived at the shadow ministry meeting in Sydney on Friday. Reaching for his mobile phone alarm at 4am he'd fallen out of bed, hitting his head on the bedside table. It could be seen as a metaphor. The new Opposition frontbencher and finance spokesman had been bumping into a lot of things – mostly his own past – and he was under sustained attack from the Government.

Mostly his own past?

Well let's get it clear. He's not from Tamworth, he's from Danglemah (here), and please to remember that people from Tamworth are tremendously sophisticated, witty, ironic, satirical, and with a care free sardonic view of the world. It comes from having a big city world view, unlike the bumpkins and yokels from the nearby bush, and roughly - pretty roughly - akin to living in a Paris five and a half hours by motor car from anywhere.

As for people from Danglemah, Barnaby Joyce may speak for them, but too often in an incoherent, gibbering way reminiscent of the most glorious days of Pauline Hanson ...

That said, ain't it grand and exciting and wondrous and glorious that 2010 is likely to be the year of the Barnaby.

Oh, 2010 is going to be a fine year for loon pond, made all the better because you know when we get down to it, Barnaby and me, or is that I and Barnaby, or Barnaby and I, could almost be kissing cousins ...

Oh I feel faint. Quick, bring me a rum and milk, and don't spare the rum ...

(Below: yee haah).

And sob, the Capitol Theatre, Tamworth, where mah daddy screened Captain Calamity, before they came in the night and 'dozered it down, and it was rumored that the developers to blame were National Party types, back when they were called the Country party. What a grand old building it was, damn you, damn you all to hell you Country party haters of the y'artz. Now all you've got is that bloody hideous barn out on the road to Goonoo Goonoo, and it serves you right.