The Australian, and give me some more of that sweet sweet junk ...

(Above: Dilbert rarely hits these pages, but that's not to say he's not enjoyed. Original full cartoon and more Dilbert here).

It's impossible ...

How to give up that sweet Murdoch Lady Jane mainlined to the eyeball, producing a visceral hit?

As a result of running off the rails and frolicking in the meadows - no little Toot that's naughty, very naughty - we almost missed paying due and proper homage to the frothing, splenetic raging of Gary Johns against the pissant Europeans in European pissants, humbug hypocrisy.

Now to be fair Johns doesn't actually use the words cheese-eating surrender monkeys - such a lapse into good taste - but he's outraged - shocked and defiant - at the way all these bloody smart0-arse, know-all Europeans are sticking it to Australia.

What a bunch of pissants they are - the weak-kneed Germans and the hopeless Euro and the wretched Greeks, and the Belgians falling apart, and all the rest of the tossers. Let's not even mention those humbug, black helicopter flying UN officials, or those wretched EU bureaucrats. And as for those pommy bastards, say no more ... except perhaps cop that, you rotten pommy bastards (thanks be unto Bazza, the chunder wonder from down under).

Yes, it's only plucky little dinkum Orstralia, you bloody beaut, that stands between civilisation and chaos:

Australia helped write the human-rights rule book. Australia has among the cheapest and cleanest carbon sources in the world. Australia will not pretend to decarbonise its economy.

Yes, bugger me dead, we're all right jack, and sure we might produce a little carbon per capita, but we're not going to humbug anyone about it. We're going to save the world:

Australia's carbon production will drive consumption in the Third World, and in time developing countries' carbon footprint will grow and then, like ours, moderate when they have solved the needs of their people.

Yes, it's going to be a coal-led new world, produced by those oh so humble people, Aussie oi oi oi, the nation of diggers called a pissant nation of tossers by those decadent cheese-eating Europeans.

Go on, eat a Spanish cucumber, munch on some German bean sprouts, we double dares ya ...

Only in The Australian.

No need perhaps to wonder what happened to the soul of Colonel Blimp. He reincarnated, decided he wanted to live in the sun, and settled in Gary Johns' body ...

Meanwhile, if you want a different kind of cant, humbug and hypocrisy, you need only to look at The Australian, which manages to ignore the rantings of Gary Johns and dozens of others it's printed over the years, and its various editorial machinations in favour of Tony Abbott's understanding of the science of climate change, to announce that the rag was right all along, and only now has the Productivity Commission caught up.

Yep, it's all here in the anonymous editorialist's Report backs market system for cutting carbon, wherein you will find that the Productivity Commission's long awaited report merely "affirms the main principles The Australian has argued for years."

Except when the rag gives a free kick to Gary Johns, Lord Monckton and the like day after day, week after relentless week, year after eternally suffering long year ...

Yes, it seems that Tony Abbott must now revise his expensive Marxist Leninist plans for direct government action:

As The Australian has long recognised, it affirms that pricing carbon "generally will deliver any given amount of abatement at least cost".

Uh huh. So what better time to wheel in Henry Ergas brooding about Climate policy a burning issue, in which he argues, comprehensively and at length that the Productivity Report is irrelevant, government modelling is bunkum, and it's all a waste of time.

Oh it's a masterful example of FUD, and y0u might wonder how the anonymous editorialist copes with the sense of hypocrisy - or is it schizophrenia - when looking at The Australian's opinion pages.

It seems the only proper way to read The Australian is to ignore all the hysterical, relentless commentary regularly and routinely published in relation to climate change and the science thereof, and settle instead for the anon edit's opinions and insights as a true guide to what the paper is thinking.

In which case feel entirely free to ignore Janet Albrechtsen rabbiting on in her usual way in Mind the gap on climate, in which she complains about how few people are taking up carbon offsets for airline tickets.

Which reminds me of the time we purchased green electricity only to discover that the buggers in charge had entirely ignored the remit, and used the cash in paw for other purposes.

Never mind, Dame Slap sees the refusal of well-heeled flyers to take up the carbon offset as a devastating insight in to belief in climate science.

Uh huh. So if you thought climate change was actually happening, and Australia setting an example to the world by being amongst the heavyweights in a per capita carbon lifestyle, that she'd be supporting a market-based mechanism.

But of course that would mean you'd be forgetting Dame Slap's consorting with Ian Plimer, as in A tale of two worlds, a tragic story of humbug hypocritical city slickers making life tough for country folk.

As for the actual science?

Climate change is undoubtedly one of the most perplexing issues of our time. You don’t need a long list of degrees in science to feel that something is awry with the current climate – the climate of debate, that is.

Yep, to quote The Australian's anon editorialist, for a long time, as the commentators in The Australian's opinion pages have long recognised and affirmed, the notion of human-affected climate change is entirely open to doubt, and so there's no point doing anything about anything.

And so to Dame Slap's sad tale, which once again involves those evil city slicker humbugs, no doubt in a wide ranging conspiracy with scientists intent on defrauding the world so they can live off their socialist grants:

In the space of a day and a night, a tale unfolded of the gaping disconnect between the inner city moralisers and those whose livelihoods will be most harmed by policies concocted with the best of intentions by city dwellers aimed at addressing climate change.

Well I don't know about you, but I sense a gaping disconnect between the anon editorialist's pissant humbug self-congratulatory pious hypocrisies as he or she patiently explains how The Australian called a market based carbon trading scheme all along, and the constant ranting in the commentary pages by climate change denialists, given far too much space to air views which are as scientifically informed as a piece by Gary Johns.

Which is to say all spittle and bugger all substance ...

Dame Slap was doing the dance with Pilmer back in 2009.

What's changed? Nothing much. You see it's only the hippies that care:

To make things clear for the political class, most people are saying no to spending less than $2 to apparently help the environment when they fly. Unless you're travelling through the rich hippie town of Byron Bay, where you'll find the highest uptake of those saying yes to buying carbon offsets.

Note that very clever - oh okay it's not so clever - modifier?

"To apparently help the environment."

Apparently? She'd have to say that, wouldn't she, seeing as how there's nothing wrong with the environment. According to her ...

And then, having established that only the hippies care, the old canards are trotted out:

Outside Canberra, most Australians recognise that a carbon tax is nothing more than a symbolic, emotionally charged policy that will hurt our economy when most other countries are not taxing carbon.

Shouldn't that have read Outside Canberra and Friday's editorial by the anonymous editorialist for The Australian?

Memo to self: must have another go at detoxing, must endure the sweats and the shakes, must give up this addiction to Gary Johns, Dame Slap and the anon editorialist.

Oh but it's so sweet, such a hit to the head, such a heart-kicker, such bliss, such poop ...

And now a reading from the book of Toad. Perhaps the Toad will offer guidance:

The Toad never answered a word, or budged from his seat in the road; so they went to see what was the matter with him. They found him in a sort of a trance, a happy smile on his face, his eyes still fixed on the dusty wake of their destroyer. At intervals he was still heard to murmur "Poop-poop!"

The Rat shook him by the shoulder. "Are you coming to help us, Toad?" he demanded sternly.

"Glorious, stirring sight!" murmured Toad, never offering to move. "The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here to-day - in next week to-morrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped - always somebody else's horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!"

Oh no Toad. Reading Dame Slap and Gary Johns and good ol' Henry is bliss, trance and smile inducing? Oh poop poop.

(Below: indeed).