Gerard Henderson helps induce a touch of the Jeffrey Bernards ...

(Above: we went looking for a Catch-22 cartoon, but thought this one would do, as it explains so much of Gerard Henderson's anxiety for, and rage about, the future).

In the manner of the immortal Jeffrey Bernard, Ms. Parker is unwell.

Sadly this means that any stray reader will have to deconstruct Gerard Henderson's Now more than ever, tax and red tape are an economic deathtrap more fully by themselves. Beware, death traps, perhaps even bear traps and Bear Grylls, along with the imminent destruction of western civilisation as we know it, are involved.

But we could at least offer a starting point.

By parsing this:

There was considerable media excitement following the leak of a letter written by the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, to Gillard supporting the Australian government's carbon tax policy. This was just one of the many improper and unprofessional interventions by British politicians and diplomats in the Australian domestic debate in recent years. Just imagine what the same journalists would have said if, say, George Bush had written to Rudd with gratuitous advice on climate change policy.

You might easily end up with this:

There was considerable media excitement following the leak of a letter written by the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, to Gillard supporting the Australian government's carbon tax policy. This was just one of the many improper and unprofessional interventions by British politicians and diplomats in the Australian domestic debate in recent years. Just imagine what Gerard Henderson wouldn't have said if, say, George Bush had written to John Howad inviting him to join in two gratuitous post-colonial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Better still, imagine what Gerard Henderson might have said when George Bush turned up in Sydney to sign The Sydney APEC Leaders' Declaration on Climate Change, Energy Security and Clean Development in 2007. The unnerving cheek of politicians roaming the globe making declarations in other people's backyards.

And if you want to deconstruct Henderson's climate change expert of the week, Professor Murry Salby, you might be better off heading over to Deltoid, and his piece Murry Salby and conservation of mass.

Salby believes the science isn't settled, a line which sent Henderson into a fantasia of rapture.

If there was any visible irony in this follow-up line by Henderson, it was hard to discern:

Labor is being cheered on by members of the industrial relations club, who favour highly regulated labour markets, along with government-funded academics and scientists who comprise the carbon tax club. What these groups have in common is that virtually none of their members has ever had to run a business or pay wages.

Strange, and there we were thinking that Salby might have had some clout because of his research as a government-funded academic at a government-funded university, rather than on the basis of his ability to run a business or pay wages.

But the Henderson line could be a great new way to assess and peer review science.

If a paper is submitted, and a government funded scientist is involved, then he should be drummed out of the club forthwith, without so much as a by your leave.

If they attempt to make it back into the club, they should be forced to admit they haven't run a business or paid wages, and instead have actually focussed on scientific research.

This will allow their research and findings to be dismissed out of hand as the work of insensitive, uncaring hacks. Only people who run a business or pay wages - say employing youths at the minimum wage flipping burgers - live in the real world and have a real insight into science, really. The rest live in fantasy land, and probably belong to clubs in which Groucho Marx has accepted membership ...

The rest of Henderson's piece is an urgent plea for leadership of the country to be handed over forthwith to Tony Abbott before Julia Gillard and the Labor party ruin the country, so he can delay the carbon tax and deregulate the labour market.

Bring back Work Choices, and the sooner the better, we hear you chant, at one and in unison with Gerard Henderson, so that retail workers can stem the tide of internet shopping and return a rosy billion dollar glow to the pallid cheeks of Hardly Normal!

Oh dear, now we realise why we were feeling so Jeffrey Bernard. Reading Gerard Henderson will compound anything, even the minimum wage or government scientists, and turn it into a compounding sense of doom.

Well on that note, and still feeling Bernardish, it's time to leave with a Yossarian rant from Catch-22, which turned up on Andrew Sullivan:

Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did he ever create pain? ... Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain! [to warn us of danger] Why couldn't He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that. Why couldn't He? ... What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering. ...

Amen to that, but could we join in the raillery, by adding to Yossarian's complaint? Phelgm, tooth decay, and the logic on view in Gerard Henderson's columns ...

(Below: and here's a nostalgic snap of, from left to right, Bruce Bernard, Terry Jones and Jeffrey Bernard, c. 1956, taken by John Deakin, and found here).