News Corp, Jack the insider and blood on the wattle redux ...

(Above: a couple of screen caps featuring stories on international sites, which might send you off to The Punch for their antipodean equivalents, featuring a most dubious owner wanting to revive memories of Robert Maxwell. It's the pond's sad duty to tell you you're dreaming. Please explain why you'd be so silly).

What's most astonished the pond is the way The Punch, that famously punch drunk Murdoch blog, has relentlessly pursued The News of the World scandal as it continues to grow on a daily basis.

It's been truly heroic, a 'without fear or favour or bias' pursuit as admirable as a pack of hounds racing after a recalcitrant fox.

Why only today there's Daniela Elser going Gaga over Gaga (Pop princess Lady Gaga's no Material Girl) and who can forget yesterday's penetrating, insightful piece by Tory Shepherd, Coffee enemas are not your friend.

By demonstrating the essential frivolity of UK tabloidism, there's a meta-reflexive post modernism critique at work containing a stunning indictment of tabloid News of the World culture.

Oh alright, enough of the heavy handed irony. It's carbon tax all the way at The Punch, like a robo bunny with a heavy duty battery, plus the usual mindless frivolities and nary a bleat about the Murdoch follies which have entranced every other website around the world. I guess in Murdoch land anal examinations are undertaken with extreme reluctance, rather like coffee enemas ...

Over at The Australian, the story's much the same. Oh sure, there were a few window-dressing attempts at balance, but the keynote speech was set for today by Janet Albrechtsen's simpering attempt to impersonate Pauline Hanson in Please explain, Prime Minister.

It's more of the same - you could explain to Albrechtsen climate change science for a thousand years and likely enough end up in the next ice age wondering where all the coal supplies have gone, just when they might come in handy - and she rehearses all the current talking points of the commentariat, and so the piece is beyond measure completely tedious and totally repetitive ... which helps the repetitions of the pond, as it repeats the repetitions of the repetitive Dame Slap.

It's left to the likes of Peter van Onselen to maintain a more balanced approach (Coalition not fooling anyone with tax confusion), a header which is neatly flipped on its head by the simple expedient of reading Albrechtsen, since clearly the opposition is fooling that Pauline Hanson clone, Janet Albrechtsen, and most everyone else scribbling for the Murdoch press, especially the tabloids, now in full hysterical cry.

It took Jack the Insider to notice the gathering climate of loonacy, encouraged by the baying hounds, and the particular case of the Queensland gentleman who proposed a call to arms to jolly Joe Hockey (Sure, some of the people are revolting):

... there’s no denying there exists in some of the loopier crannies of the nation, a group of dark mutterers who believe in world government, Zionist banking cabals and Heiner Affair conspiracies. Some of them think Prince Phillip runs the show; others, the mummified corpse of Elvis. These people need to be handled with care, if not round the clock surveillance.

Uh huh.

Of course it's Piers "Akker Dakker" Akerman who for years has been muttering about the giant conspiracy that is the Heiner Affair, in the platform provided by the Sydney Daily Telegraph, proving if nothing else that the Daily Telegraph is one of the loopier crannies of the nation. (Here he is Jack, ranting away in Heiner Affair Shadows Bryce, and there are dozens more examples. I know, I know, it's always awkward drawing attention to the mad uncle in the attic, but how come no one does it at News Corp?)

As for the other conspiracies, just try reading the comments on any random Tim Blair or Andrew Bolt piece on their blogs, or come to think of it, these days on The Punch. Worse still, try reading Blair or Bolt, and notice the way they slip in mentions of almost any Tea Party crank delusion doing the rounds, and you'll easily spot the people who need to be handled with care, if not round the clock surveillance.

Jack goes on to suggest everyone settle down and resort to the ballot box:

Yet, it is the fundamental duty of all parliamentarians regardless of stripe or hue, to promote our democratic institutions and not pick away at the stitching of the fabric of our nation for narrow political gain. None of us want blood on the wattle, least of all the Liberal Party because if there is an ugly or violent incident, many people in this country will blame the Liberal Party and in many respects it would not be drawing too long a bow.

Fair enough Jack, but how's this for a re-write?

Yet, it is the fundamental duty of all parliamentarians regardless of stripe or hue, to promote our democratic institutions and not pick away at the stitching of the fabric of our nation for narrow political gain. None of us want blood on the wattle, least of all the Murdoch press because if there is an ugly or violent incident, many people in this country will blame the Murdoch press and in many respects it would not be drawing too long a bow.

You see Jack when you spend too much time inside an echo chamber and all you can hear is the din of hysterically repetitive voices, you tend to go a little gaga and go as mad as hell and open windows and shout how you're not going to take it any more, even coffee enemas.

Running a piece by Peter van Onselen doesn't get you out of jail or into balance, especially when the scales are tilted by the heavyweight featured opinion likes - more to the point Dr. No dislikes - of Akker Dakker, Dame Slap and Miranda the Devine.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world where reporters maintain a keen interest in the doings of News Corp, it seems that kindly chairman Rupert might actually be done on the matter of the BSkyB bid (Rupert Murdoch facing BSkyB defeat as parties unite in call to drop takeover). Or he might sell off all his newspapers to keep it alive. Whatever, it's a pain that's going to bounce around all the corners of the empire for some time to come ...

But if you want to read this sort of story, better to head off to The Guardian than waste your time dropping in on The Punch to learn the finer details of how to be a Sydney-sider and go gaga ...

Meanwhile, Jack's talk of blood on the wattle made me quite nostalgic for Henry Lawson - my grandfather was a mechanic's institute, bush ballads kind of man, and so grew up on rhyming poems:

Our parents toil'd to make a home –
Hard grubbin 'twas an' clearin' –
They wasn't crowded much with lords
When they was pioneering.
But now that we have made the land
A garden full of promise,
Old Greed must crook 'is dirty hand
And come ter take it from us.

So we must fly a rebel flag,
As others did before us,
And we must sing a rebel song
And join in rebel chorus.
We'll make the tyrants feel the sting
O' those that they would throttle;
They needn't say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle!

The full poem is available here at an old ozemail address, which made me suddenly nostalgic for big Mal. Come back big Mal, all is forgiven, but before you rush off to his blog to see what he thinks of Dr. No's current bout of negativity, as celebrated by the collective might of News Corp, his last blog entry was Korea's Broadband - An Overview and Implications for Australia on June 23rd.

Oh dear and just as Old Greed must crook 'is dirty hand and come ter take it from us.

Well while we're on the lefty routine, here's a closer from Billy Bragg, who once reminded the audience he loved to fly business class, and who can object to that.

Thanks to a correspondent, the pond has been made aware it owes an apology to all Liverpool Football Club followers with the suggestion that Britain might actually take to buying a new model Sun on Sunday paper, when the old Sun is still under a strict interdiction, as explained in Don't Buy The Sun.

Yep, it seems scousers don't buy the Sun, but I'm also instructed to write that sensible people don't follow Liverpool FC, not when they have so many other better clubs to follow, like Tottenham Hotspur. Presumably this will mean something to someone.

But enough, who can chivvy a band of people united in their refusal to buy a Murdoch rag, whatever the motivation, and truth to tell, it reads like a pretty strong motivation. And unlike Gerard Henderson, the pond never has a trouble with economic boycotts. If you don't like the product, don't buy it, or perhaps pray for a paywall so you might never have to read Janet Albrectsen again ...

Take it away Billy, filmed live in the dressing room at Garforth Academy during the Garforth Festival, Yorkshire, as found here on Vimeo: