Tim Dick, fat cats, and time to call in the witch doctors ...

(Above: the Daily Terror strikes again).

There's been a lot of blather emanating from South Africa and elsewhere about the civilising implications of men chasing balls.

South Africans have hailed the way that people have come together across the racial barrier, and the nation's become united in a way last experienced during what we might now term the Morgan Freeman Invictus phase. Ah rugby, you're more than a chance for men to sniff bums without fear of reprisal.

Naturally, adopting the pond style, the Daily Terror is always to hand to lower the tone, with its splash featuring the story by Paul Kent, Evil spirits haunt Harry Kewell, says this witch doctor.

Amazingly Kent doesn't once refer to the dark continent in his celebration of witchcraft and mumbo jumbo - I guess that term has been patented by Piers Akerman and can only be deployed by Akker Dakker when scribbling furiously about the white man's burden (cf PM's speaker-chucker is woefully off target and sundry other nuanced, subtle scribbles).

Meanwhile, Akker Dakker has dragged fat cat public servants from out under the bed for a pounding, in Fat cats in bed with their Labor paymasters, while failing to mention that Liberal governments somehow make do with these same fat cats, though some might prefer tabby to ginger, or want an elegant T. S. Eliot stripe.

Instead, in what is a classic display of Akker Dakker logic, he has to do a back flip so he can land on all four paws:

Its not the mining sector which has driven the inflationary wage spiral, its

not even the well-fed but productive mining czar Clive Palmer, who has been so spitefully demonised by the Rudd Cabinet.

The real drivers of inflation are the growing number of public service fat cats who don’t contribute to the national wealth and whose votes are often vital to the return of the nation’s disastrously destructive Labor governments.

Oh dear, bring back the thirty six faceless men, as discussed in Red Fox exposed party's faceless men. Is this the best Akker Dakker can do for bogeymen this week? Fat cats battle well-fed billionaires to see who can drive the nation into the ground?

Meanwhile, it's grand news for devotees of eccentrics on the pond. It seems Tim Dick, he of the famous There's just no sound argument for being hooked on classics, has found his voice, and is once again making the National Times a vigorous part of the national debate.

A little while ago he was in a rage that a consultancy ranked the New Zealand city Auckland as the fourth most liveable metropolis in the world, ahead of Sydney in 1oth place. (Auckland's dull heart is the trouble). Dick frothed and foamed about the consultants preferring vapidity to vibrancy, elevating nice but dull cities with a good chance of the tedium sending you mad.

Dick was firm, in the way you expect of former New Zealanders who are therefore given a 'Chance' card to put the boot into NZ:

The NSW government was quick to praise Sydney's ranking, but it should mind the comparative company it keeps: one place up is Bern. According to Mercer, Adelaide is equal to San Francisco and Lyon beats London. If Goulburn were surveyed, NSW could score twice.

In fact, of Mercer's top 20, only four - Sydney, Amsterdam, Berlin and Melbourne - can claim decent-city status with a straight face, those to which you would want to move for work.

Who'da thunk it? Sydney a chance to live work and play.

Well that was a couple of weeks ago and today it seems Sydney is in a state of total dereliction and ruin, as Dick turns his mind to constitutional reform in When governments go bad, it's only fair to give the people a voice.

It seems that Dick is bitterly disappointed that the Governor Marie Bashir isn't moving to organise a coup:

Her comments yesterday confirm we should expect no Sir John Kerr-like dismissal moment from her, no matter how hard those on the bus and most of the rest of us might wish for it.

Dick spends the rest of his time trying to work out how to reduce the NSW government to the level of efficiency to be found in California, by introducing a reform button of the kind that saw Gray Davis recalled so that Arnie could preside over the decline and fall of government in that state.

Agitated by Barry O'Farrell's populist move to ask a panel of constitutional experts to see if a recall could work in NSW, Dick settles on 20% of those who voted at the last election as a sufficient number of people who've decided they made a blunder with their vote and want a second go.

The hurdle needs to be high enough to preserve stable government, but not so high as to render the mechanism unobtainable (40 per cent in British Columbia has proved too difficult, and the questionable recall of Gray Davis as governor of California shows its 12 per cent hurdle may be too low).

Yes, and the recall of Gray Davis has worked out tremendously well for California. Strange. Vote out one politician and another one steps in.

A government should have a period to prove itself at least competent, if not popular, without risk of early unjustified eviction, say the first 18 months of a four-year term. And there would be little point allowing a recall election close within the last month or two of the term.

Ah, so at last there'll be a good use of NAPLAN and school league tables. We can set a test for a government, say after the first 18 months, and if they fail basic literacy and maths tests, it's time for a recall.

But the window between the two would give voters a way to put a dying, woeful government out of our misery.

Well we'll see how long this talk lasts, and how long O'Farrell pursues this initiative once he gets into power next year.

My own vote? There should be a way to put woeful commentators babbling about woeful governments out of their misery. At least ones who think that Sydney is one of the world's most liveable cities, and the state government one of the world's worst governments.

Consistency please! At least when writing about Sydney as a liveable city, remember the wretched airport and the constant noise, the hopeless situation of the roads, and the dire state of public transport, and the futile, contradictory gestures which have seen almost a hundred million pissed against the wall on a metro that will never be. Golly, and we haven't got on to the schools sending students drowsy as they did even in my day with wretched heaters, or the wretched hospitals, or the sheer misery of a relentless round of expenses abusing maaates falling on their swords so regularly it induces a feeling of monotony rather than anger.

Why only last week we embarked on a tour that saw us go from Ken's and Peter's of Kensington to the picturesque sails of the Iguana nestling up north.

Ah NSW, what a splendid place to live.

We hardly dare note O'Farrell announcing the north west rail as a grand new initiative when it should have been built years ago. Yep, he should suit the state well.

Meanwhile, if NSW voters vote state Labor back into power in the next election, there should be no chance of a recall, no second chance.

Let them rot in misery ... or in paradise.

Who knows, you'd need to consult a witch doctor to work out the logic of a Dick.

(Below: can we recall the recall by having another recall?)