And now before the ghost of christmas yet to come arrives, farewell to the ghosts of scribbling columnists past ...

Well it's time. After a year of plum pudding, it's time for the choicest raisins, sultanas and related fruits to celebrate.

There's no way the results can be altered by latecomers trying a mad dash in the few remaining days before the new year begins.

Silence please. A cliched drum roll to get things going, shift that follow spot to the centre of the stage, and judges bring forth your envelopes.

It almost goes without saying, so hotly contested, so highly prized are the loon pond 'award of awards for commentariat commentators', that to ensure the integrity of the proceedings the results have been stored this last week in a vat of boiling acid in the offices of KPMG, the results unknown to the contestants and the organisers, despite one recalcitrant hiring Jason Bourne to attempt to retrieve them for some WikiLeaks boasting.

Well on we go to the first category, a vital and compelling one, and the short list sees Peter Costello vying with Michael Costa and Mark Latham for recognition as the most potent former politicians currently contributing to the art of journalism.

The Smirk has turned into a steady Fairfax stayer, always ready for a snidely stupid line, but after fading from the limelight at The Australian, Michael Costa made a comeback as a major literary figure, scoring the front page of the Australian Literary Review, thus becoming a veritable Patrick White of former pollies. Yes, we know this leaves John Howard out in the cold, but he only scribbled a memoir, did a media blitz and dodged a shoe ...

As for Mark Latham, his incisive insights into journalism prepared him well for the role of a journalist:

Perversely, the only press gallery specialists who have survived are the so-called sketch writers, frustrated comedians who, more often than not, are as funny as a burning orphanage.

And the winner is ... Mark Latham, who with his funny coverage of the election campaign managed to turn it into a circus, while helping burn down the orphanage that was once known as Sixty Minutes.

Oh yes, we saved the best Xmas stamp for him. How surreal. And yes late breaking entry Kristy Sheridan, with Lost words: the death of meaning in language, if you can't see the surreal in the ordinary you shouldn't be scribbling about language. Disqualified! Try again next year for the awards.

Moving along, the next category belongs to practising politicians, and the judges decided to rule out Kevin Andrews, because he kept on writing about bicycles. There's simply no place - thanks to Miranda the Devine - for lycra clad louts in the modern world, and so Tony Abbot also bites the dust. Thanks be to the Devine.

That left Sophie Mirabella, and the judges found her cockatiel capacity for reciting slogans from her dear leader - "great big tax, awk" positively entrancing. But she had fierce competition throughout the year from Bronnie Bishop, herself a rather elegant cockatoo, with splendid plumage and with a wide ranging vocabulary - some eighty words - so that she could deal with climate change thus: "Don't talk to me about global warming, it's snowing in Britain, awk." At one point Barnaby Joyce was thought to be a shoo-in, always a dab hand with a reference to black stumps and tying kangaroos down, but he faded towards the end.

And the winner is ... Barnaby Joyce for linking Mark Arbib with Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.

Hang on, hang on, I see the stewards have come out in force and are swabbing the judges. It seems Barnaby's Tamworth connection is way too close to home, and he's been ruled out. Bronnie gets the nod, and so the mad aunt can continue the work of mad uncle Wilson "ironbar" Tuckey, clutching her well deserved loon pond award as she recites the talking points of dear leader. (Sadly Mr Tuckey's fitful blogging and petulant outbursts simply didn't score enough points through the year for either the active political or forcibly retired political category).

Next we move on to the most baleful grumpy scribbler for Fairfax award.

Tragically, the judges have decided that Miranda the Devine is not in line for this award, jumping ship as she did to join News Corp, and descending into tabloid hell, with no sign of rising again. While it would be fitting to reward a rat in the ranks - loons and rats unite and stand together forever - the judges looked elsewhere.

At first it seemed as if Gerard Henderson might get a gong, but there being no category for the dullest, most tedious scribbler doing the rounds - not even a special prize for the most able to sound like a prattling Polonius - the judges went on a desperate search. Chris Berg was considered, but he showed flashes of rationality, and while other Institute of Public Affairs types made appearances, they simply lacked consistency.

I'm afraid this is one where the punters and the critics have already guessed the result. Open the envelope and it's confirmed. With the Devine gone, Paul Sheehan is by far the grumpiest, most meretricious waste of space on view anywhere in Fairfax land, especially as the doings of Mark Latham are hidden from view behind the AFR paywall, except for the business elites who can afford to pay more for his special insights ...

Each Monday throughout the year Sheehan could be relied on to shriek and squawk about the sky falling in, and while the judges pretended it was a tough call, it was actually a lay down misère of misery. Give that man a commie star so he spends Xmas in fear.

But the mention of Miranda the Devine brings us to the special category of tabloid commentariat scribbling.

The Devine might have thought that moving back to her roots would mean she's a shoo-in for a gong, but let's face it, the Murdoch tabloids are the heart of ratbaggery. Indeed Andrew Bolt has had to be forcibly removed from the competition, and elevated to Olympus, and given a lifetime achievement award just to satisfy his monumental ego.

Last we heard Zeus was reduced to living in an outhouse, doing the washing for Bolt, but at least that saved the displaced god from listening to Bolt squawk "I'm right, I'm always right, I'm the bearer of 100% solid gold plated truth to the unwashed masses."

As part of getting the awards on a more even tilt, Tim Blair was also sent to Olympus, not for any achievements, but because someone has to hold the mirror up to the preening Bolt, and Blair always does an excellent job of it. Oh he's got his buddy's back, let's not ask what he does with it.

But that left only a few nominees, with the Devine up against the cunning old stager Piers 'Akker Dakker' Akerman, lovingly celebrated as the Billy Bunter, fat owl of the remove of tabloid scribblers.

And the envelope please, and sure enough the winner is Akker Dakker, the most relentless right wing writing machine to be found anywhere in the land. To say he's one eyed would be to slander the breadth and vision of cyclops, when truth to tell Akker Dakker would rather poke out his one eye than say anything in favour of a Leftie. The result means completely blind enraged scribbling, but hey it's a living, and like a broken clock, it's possible to agree with Akker Dakker twice a day, or when he writes about the NSW Labor government ...

The judges refused to nominate any one particular Akker Dakker piece. It was more like a one year and a lifetime award all rolled in to one, for singular dedicated prejudice and bile at least three times a week ... Give the man a red star so he spends the season in fear under the bed searching for a commie leftie can to kick.

Well our hearts go out to Ms Devine - her rage against greens and feminists and trendies will surely guide her safely to many stunning journalistic achievements in the next year.

Moving right along - we haven't got all day people, this isn't the AFI awards - the judges now shift to the elevated upper sphere of News Corp and the broadsheet The Australian.

Frankly it's impossible to count the many superior contributors to the rag, with the likes of Gary Johns (a sore loser in the ex-pollie contest) and Michael Costa and a host of in house punters ready to scribble at the drop of their master's hat how climate change happens all the time - look, it's snowing in Britain - and how the NBN is a waste of time and money, eek it's a mortal threat to Foxtel, and how there's only one shining beacon in the land, telling the truth and scooping the scoops and that's the journalists of The Australian, but in the end, it came down to a close tussle between Janet Albrechtsen and the anonymous writers of editorials for the rag and Latin-loving 'give that child a musical instrument' conservative Catholic scribbler Christopher Pearson.

Sadly David Burchell was ruled out by the judges on the grounds that the complete incomprehensibility, arcane historical references and opaque language on view in his columns simply indicated a vindictive desire on the part of the editors of The Australian to prove how remote and out of touch tertiary educated elites were with the western suburbs, and readers in general.

And the envelope please, and oh sweet joy, it's the editorialists, with their constant references to educated tertiary elites.

Well we don't know who to give the award to, so perhaps we'll just post it care of the editor in chief Chris Mitchell, and hope he doesn't sue the pond for defamation, in the usual way he likes to deal with tweets and tweeters and tertiary educated 'leets.

I know, I know, it's bitterly disappointing to the likes of Caroline Overington, and Dennis Shanahan and sundry other in-house hacks - how could the judges fail to mention in desptaches Henry Ergas's splendid imitation of desiccated coconut for the entire year - but let's face it, there's nothing like an anonymous writer winning, seeing as how The Australian routinely reviles and outs people for daring to scribble anonymous blogs ...

And now we come to perhaps the most prized crown of all, the special religious award for writing nonsense about religion and society. The judges ruled out Rachael Kohn, who is happy to talk to any passing loon about their metaphysical inclinations or rolfing or wicca or whatever else gets them through the day, on the grounds that this would open up the contest to all sorts of religionistas.

Next thing you know the Pellist heretics would be demanding a nomination, or the nepotic Jensenist heretics, or the Exclusive Brethren, or the scientologists, and then where would we be, but handing out a special award to Hillsong, or perhaps to media mad, there's 'signs of a satanist black mass on Mount Ainslie' Danny Nalliah of the Catch the Fire Ministries.

To narrow the field, the judges decided it should simply be a family feud, between veteran scribbler for The Age Barney Zwartz, who always manages to write queasy condescending back handed paeans of tolerance to unbelievers and dissidents bound for the flames of hellfire, and his partner Morag Zwartz.

Pass the envelope please, and oh what a tremendous win for women, Morag wins for her wonderful attack on the Victorian government's tourism campaign, more particularly a set of spots featuring a young woman with sapphic inclinations. They befouled the very concept of a civilised and decent society, and which offended in the most egregious way possible a couple of completely eccentric Victorians ... not for their aesthetic value, but for their vile sensuality, which made viewers hot to trot off to Hepburn for immersion in water and mud.

Give her the jingle bell award, which has bugger all to do with Christmas, but plenty to do with that heretic Santa and his sleigh and Xmas and singing the splendid hit from 1857 Jingle Bells ...

Finally the judges decided to indulge themselves by awarding a jury prize for the best contribution to the decline of editorial standards in the digital age. There were a few hot to trot contenders, none better than the punch drunk The Punch, home of many stars in the competition, like Bronnie and Sophie and Barners, and who can forget the lightweight babbling of the likes of bubble headed booby Tory Maguire, for at least five minutes after reading them ...

Despite intense lobbying, the majority of the simple minded judges decided that simply not paying for people to wank in public was a concept invented many years before by the blogging community, and so there wasn't sufficient reason to reward News Corp for heading back to the future.

Sure there's a nice tidy hypocrisy in News Corp CEO Hartigan's berating of bloggers as a pack of scum, and then showing how it's done by introducing a blog featuring a pack of 'scribble for free' ratbags, as capper to its ratbag bloggers Bolt and the aspirational, tragic, wannabe, lesser Bolt, Tim Blair, but despite the irony, most of the judges thought there were bigger fish to fry.

A few lobbied hard for Fairfax, but let's face it, the main paranoia there concerns declining market and profit share.

No, for true paranoia, mixed with a dash of schizophrenia as it spends most days abusing its AB demographic for their tertiary educated remoteness from the meaning of life, the judges decided that The Australian wins hands down as the paper most frequently certain to reference its brave start in life back in 1964 as a way of proving that it is right now but a shadow, a ghost of itself.

The judges made special mention of Paul Kelly's valiant role as the chief ghost in the machine, a man who routinely makes Gerard Henderson read like a bon vivant and wild eyed raging man about town ... even Henry Ergas hails him as the master of tedium, and who can argue with Henry, unless of course they have a business plan tediously proving that tedium is a viable way forward.

Yep, give them a big wreath of holly, which has as much to do with Christmas as a pine tree ... but a heck of a lot going for it if you're a lover of Xmas.

Naturally earlier in the evening, before the actual awards ceremony began, the judges also considered an international award, as a form of soft soap to the loons of the world, keen to confirm that antipodean loons are just a shadow of stout hearted internationalist loons keenly aware of the role of black helicopters in world affairs.

Their conclusion? It's all too hard. So many loons and so little time. Why at any one moment there's an American, often southern and frequently Christian, either mouthing off some demented conspiracy theory, or looking forward to the rapture. Indeed there's every evidence that a crazed conservative in America is about as crazed as the president of Iran, who is also a firm believer in the rapture ...

Confronted by this kind of abundance, the judges simply threw their hands in the air, and settled on the obvious choice, namely Sarah Palin. Yep, because she can see Russia, give her a star:

Yes, yes, of course the judges considered social networking, yes they considered Hal Colebatch, doing his best to make Australia famous in the American Spectator, yes they considered the whole host of loons available thanks to Fox News, but it seemed unadventurous to nominate Glenn Beck for his dedication to sheer astonishing loonacy and a wonderful bewildering range of demented conspiracy theories ... just as it seemed unimaginative to credit Rupert Murdoch for establishing a vast evil empire, when Darth Vader had managed that in a galaxy far far away ...

Instead the judges decided on an encouragement award, and looked to the future. They cited the way people in the United States are still talking about Palin as a potential presidential candidate, forcing pundits to contemplate the likes of Governor Haley Barbour as an alternative.

The judges singled out a remark by Sarah Palin in 2008 for her lifetime achievement award:

"You guys have heard some of the examples of where those dollars go," the fun Alaska governor said to the guys in the audience, acknowledging their media savvy about Congress members, who sometimes acquire public money for frivolous projects. "You've heard about the bridges. And some of these pet projects. They really don't make a whole lot of sense."

A troubled look crossed her face. "And sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good, things like ..." she grinned, shaking her head side to side, her voice rising to a facetious pitch "... fruit fly research in Paris, France." Feeling in tune with the guys in her audience, she added, "I kid you not." (Sarah Palin's latest swat at science).

From the point of view of the confident governor, who reportedly once remarked that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," contradicting 200 years of paleontology, you can see how spending public money to study fruit flies seems so dumb.

Yep, in one little parable, Palin manages to summarise the aim of the conservative commentariat, which is to dumb down the planet, using whatever tools there are to hand - religion, prejudice, fear, ignorance, hatred, stupidity - so that it's very hard to pick the difference between Farmer Jones, Napoleon the pig and Rupert Murdoch ...

Well played all, and may the new year bring fresh new assaults on reason and science and the arts and anything else that gets up the noses of the conservative herd mentality, which naturally features conservative herd bleating about the herd mentality of others ...

And so that brings us to the end of the pond's awards season, and looking forward to a couple of days of rest, because after all it's Xmas and even the most agile and tenacious of loon followers and fellow travellers must take a little rest every so often ...

Oh yes, there were many good writers and many insightful pieces scribbled through the year, good films, good books, good magazines, all intelligent, sensitive and reasonable, not hard to find if you like the New Yorker or the New York Review of Books, or dozens of other homes to calm, incisive, measured thinking, but that's not the business of the pond, not when the hounds are baying and the loons are squawking and the hunt, dear Watson, the hunt is on ...

And so a happy Xmas or Christmas if that's your choice, or happy holidays or even holy days, whatever lights your fire, and a jolly good new year to all, and now it's time for the judges to retire to enjoy a few oysters and crayfish, Australia's pride and joy.

What's that you say?

These you may eat, of all that are in the waters. Everything in the waters that has fins and scales, whether in the seas or in the rivers, you may eat. But anything in the seas or the rivers that has not fins and scales, of the swarming creatures in the waters and of the living creatures that are in the waters, is detestable to you. You shall regard them as detestable; you shall not eat any of their flesh, and you shall detest their carcasses. Everything in the waters that has not fins and scales is detestable to you.

Poor Xians, how they miss out on the good things in life. But isn't that the conservative way, to detest the joys of life?

(Below: and now for a little rampant jingoism).