Christopher Pearson, redheads, good Queen Bess, and off with their bloody heads ...

(Above: red heads rulez. Oh no, is that a string of poils I see before me?)

We promised to avoid election blather as much as possible, but when you're dedicated to reading the runes, and the tea leaves and the I Ching and the chicken livers, and there's Christopher Pearson pretending to be Club Sensible, what's the odds blather will rear its ugly head?

Yep, it was just another political promise, easily made, and just as easily broken.

Club Sensible is of course a ruse, a misnomer for club raving ratbaggery, but what happens when you've said "I hate Julia Gillard and love Tony Abbott" over and over again, in as many variations as Bach might find in a lifetime of writing fine music, and then find yourself in need of another column?

Well you have to dress it up, of course, spin and weave like a crazed red back spider, with their eccentric webbing, throw in allusions, pad it out with pretentious attempts at insights which mean ... precisely nothing.

Here's a classic example from Pearson, as he scribbles an entirely predictable piece under the header Same old Labor under Gillard.

Her speech at the National Press Club on Thursday bore the hallmarks of revision. Clearly, it had first been intended as the legitimising address to follow a hasty coronation, There were echoes of another Welsh redhead, Elizabeth I, at Tilbury proclaiming that "she had but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but she had the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England too". On Thursday, our own Gloriana's message was that, despite her youthful flirtation with the Left and any other evidence to the contrary in her ministerial career, she was really a fiscal conservative.

Welsh? Well I guess being born in Greenwich palace in London as part of the Tudor line means any Australian can take whatever national heritage they like in the quest for hasty revisionism. But of course it's also another quaint way to work in the redhead angle. Sad to say, it's also another cheap way of working in a series of unsubtle japes about Good Queen Bess or Gloriana or dare we whisper it aside, the virgin queen, which might lead on to thoughts of the barren queen ...

Well if we end up in the fertile fields of Elizabethan England ... and a few new Shakespeares, instead of dozens of motley Pearsons, then viva redheads ...

But say on, we're not into cheap personality politics, we're in to deep analysis of policy:

The revelation last week that she considers herself "a bit of a footy head" and likes to curl up to watch television in a pair of ugg boots is as bold an appeal for the bogan vote as anything we saw from Mark Latham. But does it tell us anything more about the real Gillard and what she stands for than the proforma pearl necklaces she's taken to wearing in the past few weeks?

Oh shades of infamy and callow corrupt scribblers, is that the best you've got to offer? Pearl necklaces and ugg boats? And yet - it seems so long ago - weren't the commentariat raging about the cheap jibes about Abbott and his lycra-clad loutishness and his tendency to wear budgie smugglers? Don't do as I do, so as I say, or is that just do the do do, you dodo?

Come on, let's get down and dirty with some real policy matters:

I've written before about the deliberately grating vowels - somewhat softened of late along with her hairstyle in the pursuit of power - and an accent that bespeaks class antagonism. It's in marked contrast to her family's Welsh lilt or the speech of her classmates at Unley High School in Adelaide's leafy southern suburbs. It's an affectation assumed during her years in student politics but no doubt it helped her win preselection for a safe seat in Altona in outer-suburban Melbourne.

Uh huh. Yes, and arising from intimate acquaintance with Unley, I can confirm everybody spoke with the same rigorous inflection. Something akin to the pompous portentous affectations afflicting Pearson ... No one was allowed to speak differently, such was the unseemly power of commentariat commentators demanding a rigorous conformity of accents ...

What next, an analysis of Ben Chifley's career on the basis of his accent? Come on, we've had her in poils, and we've had her as good Queen Bess, what else can we do in the guise of analysis?

The notion of moving forward - or (heavens forfend!) moving backward if the Coalition were somehow to wrest control - is demeaning. It pretends modern government is as one-dimensional an exercise as pushing a toy train along a track. It casts Gillard in the role of a strict- though kindly - primary school teacher who knows what's best for us but can't quite take us into her confidence because we are, after all, just kids.

A strict, though kindly primary school teacher? Is there no end to the blather to be found emanating from Club Sensible? Surely this is the moment ripe to talk about platitudes:

Although Gillard often claims she's passionate about education and it was her most important portfolio, she seldom has anything to say on the subject that goes beyond "ladder of opportunity" platitudes.

Well I guess it takes the wielder of fearsome, awesome platitudes to spot a platitude, let alone a platypus.

I've looked in vain for any hint that she sees schooling as offering young people much more than job-readiness. If she thinks public education should guarantee that they're exposed to "the best that's been thought and said" in Western civilisation or any other, she's been hiding her light under a proverbial bushel.

What? A guide to the Latin mass, perhaps, or perhaps an introductory catechism explaining transubstantiation and the role of cannibalism in the Catholic church? Is that the light hiding under the proverbial platitudinous bushel? Thank the lord for atheists ...

Meanwhile, here's a thought on another matter. For some time now SBS has been relentlessly advertising Stuvdio, an arts-related cable channel its commercial arm has devised and is now running behind the Foxtel paywall for benefit of Fox and Telstra, and Chairman Rupert. Foxtel, incidentally, is run by Kim Williams, who has many connections into the Australian arts scene.

So there you go. The SBS paywall channel is in a position to shamelessly purloin programs which have already feasted richly on the taxpayers' teat, and shoves the programming behind the paywall, meaning that the two thirds of Australian taxpayers who don't subscribe can go whistle dixie. It did this by dumping an already operating arts channel, Ovation, which at the time wasn't pleased. (Opening for SBS arts channel as Ovation ousted).

It's a shocking abuse of taxpayers money (and did I mention that SBS also operates a World Movies channel behind the paywall, which because it's conveniently and inexcusably defined as narrowcast, doesn't even contribute to the generation of new Australian content as required of other drama channels).

Meanwhile, the broadcaster's multi-channel operations are ... and I'm being kind here ... simply pathetic ...

There's a stench emanating from SBS and its current operations and its management, and there's a shameful disregard for what's going on within the mainstream media, which in the usual way of things would attract the ire of commentariat columnists. Probably on the principle that SBS doesn't count, so why bother counting. Well you might consider $400 million over a triennial funding period as a sneeze, but I think it's more like flinging pepper on a pig's nose.

Oh and did I mention that Pearson still has a sinecure on the SBS board until 2011?

As that noble Elizabethan once said, "For, O, for, O the hobby-horse is forgot" when it comes to abuse of taxpayers dollars and taxpayer funded organisations and taxpayer dollars when the mates do a little deal for a nice little arts channel for the greater glory of Foxtel and Chairman Rupert ...

What was that about government money being deployed for proper purposes, and the righteous indignation of The Australian, and please no mealy mouthed fudging about Stuvdio being at arms length and a commercial venture designed to shore up SBS's revenue stream ...

How can they operate a couple of paywall channels and so signally fail at their job as deliverer of alternative and interesting content on their multi-channels?

Enough said, but if Labor gets back in, let's hope they have capacity to focus and the intestinal fortitude to take the axe to SBS ...

And now a relevant reading from Alice:

'Oh, don't bother me,' said the Duchess; 'I never could abide figures!' And with that she began nursing her child again, singing a sort of lullaby to it as she did so, and giving it a violent shake at the end of every line:

'Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.'

CHORUS.

(In which the cook and the baby joined):--

'Wow! wow! wow!'

While the Duchess sang the second verse of the song, she kept tossing the baby violently up and down, and the poor little thing howled so, that Alice could hardly hear the words:--

'I speak severely to my boy,
I beat him when he sneezes;
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!'

CHORUS.

'Wow! wow! wow!'

(Below: off with their bloody heads, or we'll end up with Tim Burton mashing up a classic).