Janet Albrechtsen, you've never had it so good, even if everything is so bad, and it's all your fault and btw here's a pamphlet on schizophrenia ...

(Above: yes, there's nothing like a little sol invictus as we reach the peak of the sun worship season).

Oh boy, or girl, or in between, as the stretched notion of gender may determine ...

It's always disturbing to discover someone you know has gone clap happy, got out the saffron robes, and entered a kind of harmonious ecstatic notion of eternal bliss within the universe ...

In the case of Tim Flannery, it sounded quite strange, and you can discover his discovery of Gaia, here on the Science Show with Robyn Williams. Flannery goes a little beyond William Golding in his latest book in his use of the word:

I was tempted in the book to simply give in and call it Earth System Science, because Gaia is earth system science and in many university departments around the world, as you'll know, Robyn, earth system science is a very respectable science. But as soon as you mention Gaia of course, the scepticism comes out. I didn't do that though, because I think there's a certain elegance to Gaia, to that word and the concept, and also because I think that within this century the concept of the strong Gaia will actually become physically manifest. I do think that the Gaia of the Ancient Greeks, where they believed the earth was effectively one whole and perfect living creature, that doesn't exist yet, but it will exist in future. That's why I wanted to keep that word.

Oh dear, mysticism calling science earth, mysticism calling interplanetary scientific voyager:

I beg to differ about life and the planet being separate. We're actually all one. Sure, the inside of it is a bit like the outside of a duck's egg or the chicken's egg, that's inert. The rest is transformed by life.

Robyn Williams: Of course Richard Dawkins says it's bullshit. Have you talked to him about it?

Tim Flannery: No, I haven't talked to Richard about it! I've read very carefully what he's read and I do quote him in the book. I think he is truly the great intellectual descendent of Darwin.

Robyn Williams: He is, yes. But he doesn't like Gaia.

There's plenty more, but naturally the Murdoch hacks fell about in fits of laughter. You can talk transubstantiation and Christopher Pearson and Catholicism and be given a handsome featured spotlight in the opinion pages, but talk mystic stuff, and suddenly a fierce and mocking and strident atheism smudges the pages.

Naturally the anonymous editorialist - when will he or she be outed - in The Australian was fiercely astringent, in Earth mother has no answer, while Tim Blair did his standard bit of chortling in Do not feel afraid, Gaia is with us - but don't expect anything comical from Blair about transubstantiation just yet ... First you have to understand the concept to be able to send it up, and with Blair that might take a little time ...

Here at the pond we were shattered that Flannery neglected our own favourite brand of mysticism - sun worship - which has been around from ancient Egypt through the Aztecs to the theosophical musings about the consciousness of the sun, and of course is actually the basis for Catholicism, or at least much of its symbolism, but the main point of the Williams' interview is the way that Flannery has turned optimistic, goaded on by an ant-like notion that the planet is on the verge of a kind of supra-consciousness ...

Instead of doom and gloom about climate change, Flannery has turned positive ...

And there have been other transformations over the break, leading me to immediately suspend drinking the water, until I discover what else they've added, apart from the fluoride (which as any Queenslander will tell you, gives you strong teeth and so provides aliens with a ready target for their emanating invisible controlling rays, so deadly they can penetrate even aluminium foil).

You see, the fierce Dame Slap aka Janet Albrechtsen has also joined the happiness club, and celebrates her coming out in Resolve to quit the whine club.

Naturally she does this by bashing the heads of her generation - the crappiest generation, whatever that generation might be - to a bloody pulp, for being indolent, ungrateful and whining, but hey that's just her happy style. There's nothing like the smell of napalm in a morning column to make Dame Slap happy ...

It seems she's discovered Louis C. K. and YouTube (Isn't YouTube just amazing!), and so has become a certified member of the new generation. By golly, next thing you know, she'll discover that you can download movies on the intertubes and there'll be no stopping her (oh okay sprung, that's a Louis C. K. joke you can catch here at UToob ...)

Forget about fencing off cohorts of different generations by a set range of birth years. Membership of the crappiest generation is a state of mind. You could be born in 1963, 1983 or 2003. But let's face it, the younger generation is more prone to carping, whingeing and claiming a sense of entitlement to technology and services than the older folk who lived without 1000 must-have songs stashed in a box smaller than a matchbox.

Uh huh. Well I guess it wouldn't be a new year without someone whingeing and whining about the younger generation. Why it seems it's scientific, as Liz Hannan explains in Not just seniors: Gen Y has empathy moments too that 60-somethings are more sensitive and empathetic than 20-somethings and 40-somethings.

Yes, you wretches, apologise, feel guilt and shame and feel utterly crappy. Then you'll be happy:

Here's the other thing about the crappiest generation. Once you recognise yourself as a member, surely just a bit of shame sets in. Maybe you start to look at things a little differently: focused more on the real world than the one you think you're entitled to just because you're, well, you.

Sheesh, Tim Flanney on oneness, and now Dame Slap on youness. Damn you youtubeness, damn you to hell.

Now before someone picks up a stone and starts throwing it at an overly well paid, overly indulged member of the commentariat preening on her fat perch, let's see how Dame Slap's kind of repentance pays out:

So you want the highest broadband speed promised by the Gillard government's grand National Broadband Network. Fair enough. But get ready to pay for it. And don't start whingeing if it's more than you need. Or more expensive than you imagined. Or it means you have to pay higher taxes to fund the ever-expanding business of government.

Yes, you can have your whinge and eat it too, in much the same way as Marie Antoinette ate cake (and don't get me started on Sofia Coppola and her wretched movie or we could be here all day).

You see it's a kind of back handed whining anti-whine that allows for many a splendid and moping whine:

Alas, generation E doesn't think much about trade-offs. The gimme-gimme-gimme generation thinks we can have it all. If we can't afford what we want right now, use credit to get it. If the government can't afford it right now, well, it can borrow more money. Tomorrow's another day. And tomorrow's problems are for tomorrow's generation. Of course, in the real world involuntary trade-offs will eventually strike the crappiest generation. If a government wants to cut spending, services are cut. Think education and health. Taxes are raised. Then the crappiest generation cries foul. Again.

Well you have to hand it to her. Dame Slap has in that one short paragraph summarised almost every Janet Albrechtsen column of the past ten years, wherein she's moped and moaned about the state of the world. Strange, however that this time she ignores the real villains, the trendy sophisticated inner west dwelling urban elites and their petty cocktail of coffee and chardonnay laden chattering.

You see, it's actually, in a kind of cosmic Tim Flannery supra-conscious way, the entire Gaia loving society that's at fault:

As easy as it is to point the finger at the Rudd and Gillard governments for throwing money around like there's no tomorrow, you have to ask: Is it them or is it us? Maybe we're to blame for government profligacy. Free home insulation? We loved it, until it all went awry. Subsidised solar panels? We loved that too, until it proved too expensive. Cash for clunkers? Bring it on. Except that it's a monumental waste of money. New school halls? Keep on building them for our precious little progeny. Except that we ended up paying through the nose because the money flowed too freely, even after any kind of stimulus was required.

Talk about a cosmic oneness.

Hang on, we're waiting for the judges on that one. Yes, it seems that Albrechtsen has scored a perfect ten for a rant that pretends it isn't a rant, a whine that distorts, abuses and confuses while pretending it isn't a whine ...

But still she isn't satisified. You see early in her piece she was keen to establish that all was well with the world, that we live healthier and wealthier, and every marker is up that should be up, and every marker that is down should be down, and the worst we have to complain about is the way the fast intertubes on the plane doesn't work, or perhaps the way that silly old Gerry Norman - incredibly dumb for the thirteenth richest man in Australia - thinks he can demand Australians be even more taxed.

And while the recent Labor governments will surely be remembered as truly old-fashioned, big spending, command and control governments - a world away from the Hawke-Keating legacy - let's not imagine the Howard government was so pure. The entitlement generation made sure of that. To be sure, Howard was a churning kind of spender on things such as middle-class welfare paid through the tax system. But we loved that too. We hand over money in taxes and we feel good getting it back as a disguised tax cut. So maybe it's our modern-day psyche of entitlement that drives governments to spend our money in ever more stupid ways.

Yes, yes, it's not just former chairman Rudd, or Gillard, but John Howard and the whole damn lot of them that's ruined, are ruining or will ruin Australia, except of course there's nothing to ruin, because ... well, because everything's just spiffing and wonderful, and the markers are up or down, and the plasma is running and Louis C. K's on YouTube (isn't it amazing), and we're better educated and better informed, so we can make better educated and informed whingeing and whining a decent way of life.

Good luck to the Gillard government if it tries to heed the recent advice of the outgoing head of the Families Department who counselled the government to cut back on the ballooning disability support schemes and try reining in welfare spending to families. Once we've got it, we won't give it up easily. Instead, we want more of it. Just like new technology.

Oh you greedy wretched consuming devouring members of captialism. What you need is some time walking around with a donkey and pots clanging on your side.

Get happy by being totally unhappy at the state of the world and the ignorant Gillard government ignoring the advice of Dame Slap ...

If you're a member of the crappiest generation, like me, then here's a new year's resolution for us: stop carping, stop whingeing, ease up on the endless sense of entitlement. Life is pretty damn good.

Next week from Janet Albrechtsen, I understand she's doing a column on how to cure schizophrenia, which is to say if life is pretty damn good, for god's sake ease up on the carping and the whingeing and the endless Murdoch-fed sense of entitlement which simultaneously manages to celebrate how spiffing everything is, while picking on disability support schemes and welfare spending ...

Does she have any idea what it's like to be poor in Australia? Not a fucking clue, not the merest hint of it ... Speaking of scientific empathy, as we were ...

Still it's too much to hope that as a member of the crappiest generation, she will as of this column stop carping and whingeing and displaying her endless sense of entitlement and her Dame Slap ways, especially with regard to the poor and the dispossessed ...

Not bloody likely. Not when an eternity of carping stretches before her and us.

For that we must dream on. It might be the new year, but we haven't reached Gaia heaven and supra consciousness just yet, whatever Tim Flannery might think ...

(Below: from Harold Macmillan to Janet Albrechtsen, "you've never had it so good" is always the go for the conservatives and the commentariat, seeing as how it's code for "we've never had it so good so shut up your whining and whingeing or we'll be forced to close the windows and miss out on all the fresh air just because you stinkpots are making a hubbub and noise and it's ruining our positive state of mind as we try to listen to the comedy stylings available on BBC radio on the Goon Show, or on the amazing UTube - mix and match to your period of choice".

And more on Harold Macmillan telling Britons in 1957 that they'd never had it so good, here at the BBC, and more on the origins of the phrase here. It wasn't bloody likely that Harold would have said we had it damned good.)