Piers Akerman, Chairman Rupert and effete moral decline, and Gerard Henderson and Bronwyn Bishop lagging at the rear ...

(Above: moral decline. Mother of Chairman Rupert's favourite Fox money spinning family, bigger even than Glenn Beck, turns up on a Playboy cover. Children, hide your eyes).

It's official.

Gerard Henderson has written the dullest, most prattling Polonius column of Australia Day, with Human rights act slips down the list.

And in the process there's not one mention of John Howard. Not one! On Australia Day! Henderson thinks he's writing about a key political issue:

The first big Australian political story of the year has raised surprisingly little attention. This is likely to change when the civil liberties lobby realises that the Rudd Government appears to have junked the human rights agenda.

When it's the lobbyists for the "right to bet on the number of mentions of John Howard in a Gerard Henderson column on Australia Day" who are devastated and appalled.

Game's off, the ringer looks around and he's beaten by a blow, and curses the old snagger with the blue-bellied 'joe', and now all we can look forward to is a year of joyless dullardness. Yep, it's back to using the double headed penny for your gambling needs.

So for a little light hearted fun, we shifted across to Bronwyn Bishop and Blaming the elderly is a tired old argument, Kevin.

Bronnie, who was born way back in October 1942, waxes wrathful about the fiendish Chairman Rudd and his desire to blame old people for rising health costs.

But frankly she fails to fire, showing a kind of bland torpidity and earnestness worthy of Gerard Henderson. Gasp, is she showing her age? Is waxing lyrical about Slim Dusty and Maggie Beer a sign that the pace is getting to her?

Is it something in the water on Australia Day?

But there's always one commentariat columnist who delivers without fail.

Yep, it's Piers Akerman, and he doesn't seem to have been given a gong for his services to journalism this year, so it's only just and fair that he should attack those fiendish public servants who've been given a useless gong. Cull time servers from list of heroes, he rants, as he goes in search of the military as the only bravehearts deserving of a gong:

... there are those in the same stratospheric level whose occupation of that heady real estate reflects the position they hold within the bureaucracy, the military or the judiciary. The gong goes with the turf.

There are awards for outstanding public service, but really, in these days of a highly politicised public sector, spectacularly so in the case of Treasury what actually constitutes outstanding public service?

Service to the politics of the government of the day or service to the people the government is meant to be serving?

Indeed. And so Akker Dakker goes misty eyed at the warriors enduring the smell of fear, the sharp smell of spent munitions, the dusty hollow odour of explosives, and the taste of death and sweet relief of survival.

Ah these rhetorical armchair warriors sure have a way with words. But stay, it wouldn't do -to celebrate the military - without excoriating the others, the sycophants and spin-doctors and chattering chardonnay swillers who threaten to bring down the entire nation:

Dr Michael Evans, a Fellow at the Australian Defence College in Canberra, spoke of the anti-honour culture that has been prevalent in the West since the 1960s in a speech to the US Marine Corps University at Quantico, Virginia, in November, much of which has been reprinted in the current edition of Quadrant magazine. The military, he speculates is the last hold-out against the “tsunami of secularism and moral decline that has left us with a public culture dominated by effete celebrities and corporate media billionaires united by their lack of civic virtue”.

Ah that'd be the effete celebrities that dominate the public culture of the front page splash of the Daily Terror, which frankly would be all at sea if they didn't have their Lara Bingles, or a divorce or three by the likes of the Brad Pitts and Angelina Jolie, and what's that ... news that Bard and Jennifer might be getting back together again? Oh sweet joy this Australia Day.

But steady, it's only a screen cap. You'll have to trot off the to the Daily Terror for your fill of effete celebrities.

But what's this talk of media billionaires? Is the good Dr Evans suggesting that the Daily Terror might be lacking in civic virtue? Is he suggesting that corporate media billionaries, united by their lack of civic virtue, might include Chairman Rupert, whose rags regularly indulge in effete celebrity gutter crawling?

Is Piers Akerman experiencing an existential dilemma, working for the man who delivers a tsunami, a surfeit, an excessive excess of effete celebrities as a way of making billions .... when he should be out in the field, exulting in the smell of cordite and the whizz and whine of the bullet as it grazes the ear lobe of the mighty warrior?

Dear lord, don't tell me that Chairman Rupert, an exemplary corporate media billionaire, is part of a tsunami of secularism and moral decline, which has left us with the public culture of a Short Stack, who even now, right at this very moment, are preparing a 2010 tour?

Oh god, could Chairman Rupert and Short Stack, united in their degeneracy, bring down this proud country?

With Gerard Henderson's refusal to mention John Howard - on Australia Day! - the first sign and portent of the tsunami running rampant through this country.

Quick, back to the runes, back to Akker Dakker to see what gives:

Duty, honour and country would rank high in the values of those identified in today’s lists by a single initial.They would not waste much time worrying about identity, gender, race and class. Why would they? The courageous would find the preoccupations of the chattering classes to be as lacking in honour and irrelevant on the battlefield as they are to most ordinary Australians.

Phew, that's a relief. It's only the chattering classes, and their latte swilling, chardonnay gulping ways. All that talk about the degenerate tsunami known as Chairman Rupert was just a blind, until the real villains could be named and shamed.

You there, put down that filthy French wine, stub out that coffee. Degenerate perverts.

Well yesterday we voted Ross Cameron as Colonel Blimp of the week, but egad sirs and madames, we spoke too soon. Of course Akker Dakker is and will be first choice as antipodean Blimp, colonel first class, and to celebrate here's more David Low blimpness: