Ross Cameron and our very own Colonel Blimp fighting fit and raring to rumble in the jungle known as Parramatta ...

(Above: click on Colonel Blimp to get the full size of his opinions).

Why does the Sydney Morning Herald keep running drivel from Ross Cameron, the one time Liberal member for Parramatta?

Is it a way of testing that the punters are alive, and if they send in missives correcting the drivel, they must surely be doubly alive? Is it the Miranda the Devine factor in play? You know, if you put Gorgeous George in the ring, people will scream for blood and even pay good hard cash for the spectacle?

Or is it because this is the best they can do, by way of commentary? In which case surely the SMH and the country have gone to the dogs.

Here's the starting para for On top of the world in the country that won Lotto:

After sober reflection, it is my duty to inform you that Australia is the greatest country in history. Of the 192 members of the United Nations, the United States, with a 200-year head start and 14 times our numbers, takes line honours, but Australia wins on handicap. Donald Horne may be embarrassed about his Lucky Country epithet but he shouldn't be - Australia has won Lotto.

Sober reflection? So that's what a pissed as a parrot drunk boasting to the world on Australia Day sounds like?

No other nation in history has enjoyed a whole continent to itself - the only island-continent outside Antarctica. We have more land per person then any country except Greenland and Namibia.

Sure thing. So why don't you piss off and go live in Woop Woop? Instead of clinging to the coast like everybody else?

The five larger nations live with difficult neighbours. Our regional acquaintances are all our friends, affection sustained by a calming stretch of ocean.

In the past, our geography posed risks as wars raged from one end of Asia to the other.

Today Asian sharemarkets are booming and their middle classes exploding, with a rapacious appetite for the things we do best (resources, education, tourism, financial services and ingenuity). Email and aviation have reduced the problems of distance.

Email and aviation? Rapacious appetite? What is this man on, and can I have a double hit of it? Might he even have thought to mention the intertubes? Or has he only recently graduated from email 101? When it replaced the telegraph and the Queen's mail with the penny stamp and the shipping columns ...

The great blemish of our story is frontier killing of the first Australians and the subsequent failure to produce Aboriginal communities that work in a modern world. But it's not all failure. When the US was tearing itself apart in the civil rights movement, Australians voted 91 per cent to extend legal equality to Aborigines. Newer indigenous leaders like Noel Pearson furnish hope that there is a way forward.

Um, the referendum? Well not really, not even as a schoolboy summary of what it was all about. Perhaps you can refer to a reader's comments, or to Australian referendum, 1967 (Aboriginals).

Australia has never experienced a war on home soil.

Except when they bombed Darwin and blew up ships in Sydney. I guess the Eureka Stockade doesn't count as a war, so much as a skirmish, but thank god, it seems we're no longer counting the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on organised crime, the war on boat people or the war on former parliamentary loons who carry on like pork chops as regular kinds of wars.

All of our extended family members - the US, Britain, Canada, Ireland, South Africa and even New Zealand - have suffered significant civil wars.

Um, that civil war in New Zealand? Would that be the Māori trying to keep a slice of their country and keep the Treaty in play? (New Zealand land wars). Don't you need some kind of single polity to count as a civil war? (The New Zealand Wars)

And anyway didn't they end up with the vote for four Māori seats in 1867? When we got around to passing a referendum a century later whose significance and meaning is always misunderstood? Well I guess that's so much for Pemulwuy, guess he was just one of Quantrill's Raiders, lost on the wrong continent.

Our six states happily voted to bond in independent federation with the support of our colonial parent. The chronic over-achiever, Western Australia, got its nose out of joint in the 1930s but otherwise we have no history of secessionism. Elsewhere, accents fractionate people into place of origin but there is no change in inflection among the Australian-born from Perth to Parramatta.

Could it be that Cameron has never actually been to Perth or Adelaide? Or Victoria? Perhaps he could take the castle in Newcastle, and see what laughs he gets in Victoria speaking like a git from Parramatta. I know, I know, one word doesn't constitute an accent, but try living in Adelaide for twelve months, and not working on your vowels, you filthy bloody eastern staters.

But at least you non-Australian born people with the funny accents know where you stand. Speaking kinda funny. Kinda like furriners. Like Peter Sellers mebbe.

Australia has the highest population growth in the developed world. The 51st most populous nation has built the 14th biggest economy. Of the 13 larger economies, all but Canada have populations at least twice our size. Over the past 28 years, Australia's economy has grown faster than every larger OECD economy. We could easily make the top 10 in a generation.

Oh yes, take that India and China. Why soon the bantams will be crowing about how they beat the roosters at everything. But wait, it gets worse:

Australia has been honoured with more World Natural Heritage sites than any nation. In 1879 we opened the world's second national park and today 11.5 per cent of Australia is forever protected. The platypus surely wins most exotic animal, and the Great Barrier Reef easily wins the battle of the coral seas. We have abundant bird life and the most beautiful and intelligent parrots enrich our lives with 65 magical native species.

Words fail me. This kind of chest thumping could only be done by a gherkin who hasn't travelled much. Like taking a trip to the Grand Canyon. It's so beyond childish, I can't believe I read it, and even worse, am now writing about it. But wait, you haven't got the steak knives yet:

There few sports in which Australia does not excel. Even in the 2006 football World Cup, out of 196 national teams, we made the final 16. In the Olympic total medal count we placed fifth in Atlanta, fourth in Sydney and Athens and fifth in Beijing. The nations consistently beating us are the three Cold War superpowers. The Commonwealth Games might be accurately renamed "Australia versus the rest".

Jesus. Not to mention Montreal. And as if anyone in the world gives a flying fuck about the Commonwealth games, or the Commonwealth for that matter. What a mindless bantam. Next he'll be carrying on about how Australians are best in the world at AFL, a bit like the Americans conduct world championships in baseball and gridiron without worrying about the rest of the world.

Our traditions are shaped by an ethos that success entails duty. Australia gives a new home to 13,000 refugees each year which in raw numbers is second to the US and, per capita, easily the largest voluntary resettlement program.

WTF? This from a member of John Howard's government?

Eighty-five per cent of boat arrivals stay.

Double WTF squared or perhaps cube it by a surry with a fringe lunatic on top.

The BRW Rich 200 List is top-heavy with refugees and their children, indicating a culture of social mobility and merit promotion. We are prepared to give the new guy a go.

Oh yes, we give those Indians a go. And provided those new guys aren't too gay.

Our capitals routinely rank in the world's most liveable cities, we are the 10th tallest, with the fifth highest life expectancy. We've had two Miss Worlds, two Miss Universes, a dozen Nobel Laureates, several Booker Prize winners and Australians routinely feature at the Oscars. The global language is our first language and we are first cousins to the two centres of cultural influence globally - the US and Britain.

That's right bugger off China and take that Mandarin speaking Chairman Rudd with you while you're at it.

While we are pacific in temperament, we have not shirked the fight. In my view, Australia has been on the right side of history in every war.

Well that'd be a pretty dim view, you bloody Vietnam war lover. As for the Boer war, I guess that fighting for the Boer states' gold mines would seem eminently sensible to a government that obediently trotted off to Iraq, never mind the civilians.

But I guess it's not even the personal opinion, so much as the emphatic Colonel Blimp stupidity with which it's asserted that offends.

We have come to the defence of small nations being bullied by larger ones and liberated people from the imposition or continuation of brutal dictatorships. We could not have prevailed in either world war without the US but it was a late starter both times.

Oh that's a goody. Laughed so hard I almost went into convulsions. The US was a late starter, and sure they helped out, but really even if we couldn't have prevailed, we gave those Japanese and Germans a damn good licking, until the shirking malingerers in the US decided to get their act together? We got in first and gave 'em a damn good licking at Singapore?

Russia deserted in World War I and began in alliance with Germany in World War II. New Zealand lost faith before the Cold War finished. Australia could easily have decided those distant wars weren't ours, but our sense of justice meant we led from the front.

Lead from the front? Was that at Gallipoli, or Greece, or Crete, or in the massive victory we mounted in the Battle of the Coral Sea? And by the way you fickle, faith losing New Zealanders, no talk of Phar Lap please.

By golly, it's easy to spot an armchair Colonel Blimp, but even by Blimp's standards, Cameron's scribbles make a pretty rich brew:

Even if, in some mass panic or delusion, we elected an old-style Labor leftie or Green as prime minister, it is hard to see the Australian juggernaut being diverted. Nothing will dampen the exhilaration one feels at the end of a long flight, when the Qantas jet tilts over Sydney Harbour. We may wonder what blessing to humankind awaits this relaxed, open, welcoming and ingenious people. It may offend our innate modesty but there is a solid factual basis to suggest Australia is the most noble, happy and lucky mid-sized nation history has known.

Well actually how can I say this politely? It's the blithering idiocy of Cameron's posturing that offends my innate modesty.

Put it another way. Is he suffering from megalomania, a psychological condition characterised by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, omnipotence, and an obsession with grandiose and extravagant thoughts?

Let's not even worry about all the facts Cameron mangled or distorted in the process, when we should be worried about a little bit of balance.

Happy birthday.

Oh yes, indeed. Because somewhere in another column by someone else, but certainly not on view in the Herald today, you might find a sensible, coherent assessment of Australia's strengths and weaknesses, past and present foibles, and current opportunities, and even threats. But being a swot is too hard for those who can't be bothered swotting.

Rationality and coherence and Cameron are like a man boasting about how Australia has the biggest rabbit and cane toad population in the world. Is it true and does it matter?

Pity he left out one big plus. The right of members of parliament to have affairs. While rabbiting on about the importance of family. Oh, they do that in the United States too?

You mean Australia isn't a totally up itself kind of country with delusions of grandeur and scribbled follies of the most wretched kind? We're human just like other countries and we have jingoistic ratbags ready to cut a ribbon at the opening of Sydney Harbour Bridge or the drop of a hat or on invasion day?

Thank the lord for that. Meantime, at least he's provided me with an excellent reason to avoid buying the Herald on a Monday ... why even for free on the intertubes I feel like taking a shower.

Sure he's only stirring the possum, but is rampant stupidity the best way to stir a possum? I he was a blue heeler we could tell him to settle, but short of that, perhaps he should get back on his medication. But he surely did get the possums excited in the comments section. Now if we can only tease him back into the cage with a piece of fruit ...

(Below: more Colonel Blimp, the creation of cartoonist David Low. In the usual way, because he worked in Sydney on The Bulletin, before heading off to the UK to work on the Star, the Evening Standard an other papers, some like to think of him as Australian, but in the usual way, well known to New Zealanders, he was actually born in Dunedin and educated in Christchurch. Too bad Kiwis, and you thought you lived in gods's own. Take it up with Ross Cameron).