And now for something completely different, a mixed bag of Friday stereotypes ...

(Above: Martin Rowson, here).

Once again the British parliament provided a fine spectacle on ABC News 24, with the meerkat bobbing of questioners, David Cameron in fine form, and speaker John Bercow showing how it's done with wit and flair.

Sheesh, an entire evening wasted on this new addiction. Must go cold turkey, must go ...

The display was in stark contrast to the routine din and rustic sounds to be heard in the Australian parliament, which oftentime hits the ears like the braying of donkeys, and sees question time banished to the early hours of the morning on TV.

That said, sadly not one MP mentioned the crucial role of Amy Winehouse in the riots, and so not one of them is qualified to write a column for The Australian.

Now all that's left on the matter of the riots is to acknowledge Paul Sheehan's intimate understanding of the riots because he was called a 'foreign cunt' in the streets of London by a white skinny English beggar (Widespread policy failures have bred a feral British underclass).

If this is a qualification, then any Australian woman walking the streets of Sydney, especially late at night or walking past a building site or wanting a quiet drink, will have tremendous insight into the next set of riots at Cronulla, though perhaps only from the limited understanding of a 'domestic cunt' ...

Sheehan, in his usual ineffable way, was rabbiting on about the feral British underclass, so it was strange to read Stereotype of the underclass does not apply in today's Fairfax rag. (warning - forced play video and pop ups).

Ah well, to mangle John Ford, as Sheehan knows when drumming up a frothing, foaming frenzy about socialism and the welfare state, between stereotypes and facts, always print the stereotypes ...

Astonishingly, it was left to David Aaronovitch, escaping The Times' paywall for a brief moment of sunlight down under, to make the obvious point at the start of Violent young men will always be around:

Politically committed people of very different beliefs can take exactly the same events and discover in them a precise vindication of their own original worldview. And so it has been this week.

Yep, another Amy Winehouse denier.

Moving right along, it would be tempting to pause and graze at Kevin Donnelly's ongoing campaign in favour of funding scientological and other religious schools, whether Islamic or the Exclusive Brethren or similar fundamentalist creationist Christian, in The more school options, the better it is for all of us:

Much of the cultural-left’s attack on non-government schools portrays such schools as only serving the top end of town and representative of an inflexible and inequitable class based society.

Well the pond doesn't want to get lumped in with the "cultural-left", whatever that might mean in Donnelly's fevered mind, but I can't see how a school option devoted to creationism, scientology or even to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster will be better for all of us.

Nor how the federal government shovelling money down scientology or Exclusive Brethren schools will improve school students' grasp of reality ...

But then Donnelly always has a wonderful capacity in any discussion of the school funding system to discover a precise vindication of his original world view, as well as the ongoing need to prop up the Catholic school system, never mind any collateral damage to the minds of the young.

Speaking of world views, it was poignant on a Friday to see Ron Boswell assiduously beavering away to confirm a red green watermelon Australian conspiracy involving Julia Gillard, the Socialist Forum of long ago, and current deviant, despicable greenies (The real Julia is true to her socialist forum past).

In a sublime attribution of authorship, Boswell blames Gillard for being on an editorial committee responsible for the publication of The Greening of the Red, a recipe for left-wing totalitarian control ...

Boswell presents the policies proposed by "the author" (author presumably unknown) as exactly the same as Gillard's, and has a fainting fit:

These are the economic prescriptions advocated by Gillard and her socialist chums. They were ridiculous then, as they are ridiculous now.

No doubt it plays well to the chooks in Boswell's back yard, always ready to be fed a rich mix of wheat and corn and never mind the chaff, but it's funny to look at the actual Julia doing the rounds these days, a timid conservative willing to contemplate the Malaysian solution, ready to ignore gay marriage and ready to toe the Tea Party line in relation to a budget surplus, such that even Dennis 'the tie' Shanahan somehow manages to berate her for economic rigidity in Perils for PM in hanging on to surplus.

That's right, 'the tie' is in a rage about rigidity (who knows what he thinks about the rigidity of Angela Shanahan).

It seems it's a scandal that the Labor government has constantly blathered on about a surplus in 2012-13, when what is needed is flexibility:

It is perfectly reasonable, desirable, for a government to be prepared to shift on economic targets as world conditions shift and budgets have to adjust. In another climate such a shift could be achieved reasonably and with limited backlash.

Lordy, lordy, wash out my mouth, or can I call the lad fiscally irresponsible, in a way that's certain to see the Australian economy collapse by 5 pm next Friday.

Why as any reader of Paul Sheehan, follower of housewife Michele Bachmann's domestic budgeting policies, knows, without a balanced budget, we face immediate ruin ...

On the upside, could Dennis Shanahan's suggestion we need to be flexible in the matter of housewife budgeting see him drummed out of the antipodean Tea Party for life? Or is it just another gotcha, and when we see the Labor party fail to deliver said surplus, they can be then be pummelled around the head for following the policies of the ancient student Socialist Forum?

Paging Mr. Boswell, paging Mr. Boswell, there's a spendthrift in the house ...

Meanwhile, if you're looking for a career in Australian politics, quick, look under the bed and burn all the copies of any youthful follies where you might have written about some youthful passion - say about embarking on a career as a Catholic priest - because Ron Boswell is on the prowl and he's coming to get you ...

What's that Mr. Shanahan?

It is perfectly reasonable, desirable, for a person to be prepared to shift on personal views and ideologies and theologies as world conditions shift and views have to adjust to changed reality. In another climate such a shift could be achieved reasonably and with limited backlash.

Not when Ron 'nail the watermelon' Boswell is on the prowl but you have to admire the way he's dredged up an ancient document and turned it into a description of the policies of the current government ...

Meanwhile, one unanswered question. Throughout the debate in the UK parliament last night, Nick Clegg once again cut the most extraordinarily glum, sad-looking, inert, po-faced figure ...

Now it's revealed to the pond that this is his normal posture, such that he's even earned his own tumblr site dedicated to Nick Clegg Looking Sad.

Cheer up Nick, you'll be the leader (or maybe not) of a very minor party come next election ...

And now, since we keep forgetting to draw attention to some actual interesting and/or amusing reading, anyone who's ever suffered through an earnest article by David Brooks will find much to amuse in H. Allen Orr's review of his book The Social Animal, to be found in The New York Review of Books under the header Fooled by Science, and happily outside the paywall.

The pond could cheerfully quote the whole review, which is a smackdown of the most refined kind. Like this footnote:

Some of Brooks's scientific findings are also crushingly banal. On their first date, Rob checks out Julia's curves and Brooks dutifully reports that studies show that men's eyes are drawn to the curve of women's breasts. Anyone who needs science to tell them that men like women's breasts may need to get out more often.

And this blast:

...one sometimes wonders if, in Brooks’s world, contentment is permanently closed to carpenters, musicians, and waitresses. Is the ultimate goal of education specifically and of public policy generally to direct such people into allegedly more meaningful occupations, ones that take place inside office cubicles? It sometimes seems that Brooks’s vision of the good life stretches all the way from Westchester to the Hamptons. In any case, it’s hard to imagine a world more tedious than one wholly populated by Harolds and Ericas. Indeed, Brooks’s characters are so dull that he may have unwittingly written a book that turns readers off to the very American dream he hopes to celebrate.

And so on. The NYRB arrived late by way of post at the pond, but a joy delayed is a joy felt all the more keenly ... and all the more so, if in an earlier life you'd suffered through Brooks' short form version of the book for The New Yorker, Social Animal, where this was the illustration:

Did someone mention crushing banality?

Lordy lordy a feast of British MPs, Paul Sheehan accurately described by a London beggar, and David Brooks smack down time, and the weekend nigh.

Can life get any better than this Mr. Boswell?

And so to Samuel Johnson gazumping David Brooks by a couple of centuries:

Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden exchange meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.
Samuel Johnson, Rasselas