Miranda the Devine, Sydney redux, and a few sane people make a guest appearance at the pond ...

(Above: the good old days in George street, when scientology - the perfect soul healing neighbours of our time - did such a good job improving the streetscape. Unlike today's unsympathetic development, dominated as it is by Chinatown. But shush, not a word about the Haymarket and the cinema strip and the way it upsets Miranda the Devine by showing that fiendish blue green leftist plot Avatar).

It's hard being a commentariat columnist - confected rage is sometimes difficult to maintain - just as writing about the confected rage of commentariat columnists can sometimes get tedious. Meta reflexiveness of an uber kind is always neo torture.

Take Miranda the Devine - please someone, anyone, take Miranda the Devine - who, by way of wasting printer's ink and digital space, regurgitates herself in By George, this blight has to stop, for Sydney's sake.

It's just a re-cycling of Risk a trip down Filthy Avenue, this time padded out with thoughts from her readers, including Robert, Sheridan and Ian, and others lathered into foaming rage.

The irony? The Devine toys with a community solution involving increased taxes as a way of fixing Sydney's urban blight:

One of the most successful tools for urban regeneration has been so-called tax increment financing, a way for a local community to fund works by borrowing against future property taxes (or rates) which will increase as a result of the improvements.

Langley says it can bridge the gap between developer financing and government investment in infrastructure. It allows rates or taxes raised in a district to be quarantined and spent only there, rather than going into general council coffers. On behalf of the Property Council, he has briefed the Government, Opposition and city council to little effect.

Tremendous idea. So because the current state government and Sydney council are fizzers, you devise another alternate grey ghost council which can supervise the quarantined rates or taxes, which are diverted to a new shadowy body - "the local community" - to spend the money. An idea presented "on behalf of the Property Council".

Why not just sack the council and put the state government in charge? Oops, well that's a clanger. Guess we should just put the Property Council in the jockey's seat?

Another American initiative is for councils to give low-interest loans for home improvements. People see a neighbour putting on a new roof or painting and they want to do the same, so the streetscape improves.

Great. That'll work tremendously well in George street. I can see envious landlords rushing out into the street on an hourly basis to check what their neighbours are up to. It could result in the best Xmas decorations ever. Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours, with a little understanding, you can find the perfect blend. Neighbours, should be there for one another, that's when good neighbours become good friends.

So what else has she got?

In the end, though, Sydneysiders need to take ownership of their city, rather than wait for an urban messiah. The revival of any city is always driven by creative, community-minded citizens finally fed up with the squalor.

Sydney developers are creative, community-minded citizens finally fed up with the squalor their make out like bandits landlordism encourages? The average Joe Blow is going to be able to run up against a well heeled property developer without the help of unions bunging on a green ban. Oops, sorry, wash out my mouth, mentioned the unions. Better pass me the smelling salts, or better still, a nice gin and tonic.

You know, last time I was in Hell's Kitchen in New York, it made George street look positively gentrified. But when you're always lobbying for extremes, it's important not to let reality get in the way of a good rant and festering, rancid discontent.

Such slack-arsed blatant re-cycling of ideas maintains the rage but really does nothing to help find a cure to the current state government. Or the vultures in the state opposition, who currently are standing by, beaks dribbling, without offering anything except a low profile and platitudes ...

Indeed reading the cracked record that is the Devine's scribbles, I thought it was almost time that loon pond stepped outside the box, and acknowledged there was a real world beyond the foamings of the commentariat columnist, and the small world of the world's greatest city. Forget it Jake, it's only Sydney town.

Instead of wasting your time reading the Devine, you could, within the same confines in the very same rag, read Peter Cochrane's Act of God requires giant leap of faith. Cochrane takes a hearty, hefty swipe at the fuss surrounding Mary McKillop and the papist retreat into simple-minded superstition:

... today the church is working overtime to reinstate medievalism. I do not want the considerable worldly achievements of Mary MacKillop to be lost in such hocus-pocus. By all means honour her life and work, but the church should stop campaigning for the supernatural and put its time, money and effort into cancer research.

Or you might contemplate the astonishing pleasure and infinite satisfaction of reading Canon Dr Ray Cleary, chairman of the Melbourne Anglican Social Responsibilities Committe, slagging off Senator Conroy's proposed intertubes filter, in Protecting children online takes more than a filter.

Cleary does it in a measured way, and prefers to ask questions rather than deliver a hearty whacking of the kind we favour at loon pond, but he does understand the nature of the Conroy beast and its similarity to the kind of activities in China which have once again caused Google heartburn. After listing innocent ideas that might get caught up in the RC label, Cleary concludes:

Many, including myself, would argue that while the content mentioned above is not appropriate for children, it should not always be blocked, and may in fact serve a purpose in stimulating debate in a healthy democracy. It would be heavy-handed and retrogressive, therefore, to impose such a broad filter.

Senator Conroy heavy handed and retrogressive? Ah sing on soothsayer, your words are the balm of gilead to my ear, and possibly might even treat eczema and dry skin:

Federal Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy claims it is "just one part of a range of measures designed to make the internet a safer place". But questions remain. If there is to be a filter on selected subject matter such as child pornography what are the safety nets and accountability structures in place to prevent present and future governments censoring a range of political views, opinions and expressions that they find politically unacceptable or enabling them to track what individuals are looking at or accessing?

Conroy is right in suggesting we need a multi-pronged response to inappropriate material. I'm just not sure the filter should be one of those prongs.

Well it's hardly an example of Conroy filter rage - do Anglicans experience rage? at least not in UK sitcoms - but it stirs the pot nicely, in an under-stated, reasonable way.

You could - if you want a lively dissection of Melbourne v. Sydney, head off to Jack the Insider, one of the few reasons for The Australian to continue to exist, as he broods about how Melbourne puts Sydney in the shade.

After heading to Melbourne for a holiday over the break Jack has returned to advise that Melbourne currently has it all over Sydney in terms of inner city dynamics, a sense of style and assurance. As we did.

And when Jack wrote about Bob Carr, I wondered if in a later life we might be having sexual congress in one of the outer rings of hell, as soul partners are likely to do:

Ask yourself what the Carr Government built. Aside from a spaghetti bowl of tollways and a master class in political spin, I’d say not very much.

Oh yes, the demon Carr. Worse than the demon drink in what he did to Sydney, but Jack seems to have forgotten that Carr gave Sydney an Olympic park of Albert Speer-ian proportions (thank you lord, for the month's subscription to the Godwin Law swear jar).

Anyhoo, Jack's always acerbic and sharp, and up against the hysterical nonsensicalities of Miranda the Devine, reading him is like taking a cold shower, and then having a nice, barely sugared swig of lemon drink.

It made me wonder why I keep reading commentariat columnists and the answer is simple. It's tremendously pleasing to keep hitting yourself on the head with a hammer. After the ringing stops, you come to understand that it's okay to be as mad as a march hare. Others get paid handsomely to be a mad march hare in public on a regular basis, and you come to realise that being north by north west in private is also fine.

But just occasionally it's worth remembering that as well as Miranda the Devine, there are sensible people out there with sensible views.

Now pass me that cucumber sandwich and perhaps a nicely buttered scone. I'm feeling tremendously Anglican today, and to hell with the papists and their medievalism ...