The Australian, and an exclusive exclusive which is exclusively unoriginal to the pond ...

A breaking pond exclusive.

Notwithstanding Robert Manne, The Australian continues to hate everything about the federal Labor government, and makes sure everyone knows it. And now on to a breaking exclusive, where for the very first time in at least a day, we learn that The Australian really hates the idea of the NBN, which truly should be part of the Murdoch empire.

And now to other pond exclusives, which are naturally exclusively exclusive, in much the same way as an Australian hack getting a negative comment about the NBN is exclusive to that rag.

To any keen student of Stockholm Syndrome, or perhaps mere sycophancy, yesterday's piece Robert Manne throws truth overboard by editor at large for The Australian, Paul Kelly, is a delight.

Kelly scribbles a hugely defensive - to the point of paranoia - defence of The Australian against Robert Manne's Quarterly essay, from within the bunker, and concludes grandly:

There is another possibility beyond the realm of Manne's mind -- that The Australian has struck an effective balance of strong editorial independence within a global corporation headed by a strong chief executive committed to newspapers.

Indeed, and sssh, no mention of the News of the World.

In the grand old days of The Times, before Murdoch ran the brand into the ground, then hid it behind a paywall, Manne and his essay would have been dismissed with lofty hauteur, while The New York Times might have reacted with a kind of nervous liberal jellyfish introspection as it wondered whether it might have done things better.

It's typical that The Australian would don the knuckledusters to see who can be the biggest bullying thuggish ape at the party, and according to Margaret Simons over at Crikey, we can expect an even bigger street brawl down in the gutter on the weekend as The Weekend Australian wheels out its biggest guns to do over Manne. (The Oz playing the Manne: why it's a barracker and a bully).

I suppose you have to swallow the notion that up against Manne the likes of Graham Lloyd, Michael Stutchbury, Greg Sheridan and Chris Kenny are big guns, as opposed to pop guns full of the standard cork we expect from The Australian, but does the rag have any idea how its defensive posturing and unseemly willingness to indulge in a brawl says so much about its current notion of news and opinion?

Naturally the Cut and Paste section set the insolent tone by sneeringly dismissingMargaret Simons as a 'former gardening correspondent', under the header Silencing dissent: How a brave intellectual was bullied by those monsters at The Australian.

Simon's final Mother Earth column in The Weekend Australian, February 3, 2001:

HAPPY gardening, everyone. May your compost always rot and your garden be full of worms.

It's good to see The Australian get right down there at the level of adolescent humour to be found in a student newspaper. Never play the idea, always play the compost and the worms.

Here at the pond, we have of course struck an effective balance between commentary and loonacy, and played an significant role in the fight against the Napoleonic plague currently ruining Europe. We expect Herr Napoleon - and Herr Hitler in due course - to discover that Moscow in winter remains bitterly cold.

And they try to tell us climate change is happening! Stuff and nonsense, and shortly we'll be running a series of columns by our visiting expert, Lord Sponckton of East Cheam, as a way of demolishing such idle speculation. (In the meantime, please feel free to read Christopher Monckton's piece Mr Rudd, your misguided warming policies are killing millions, as published by that caring, considerate rag The Australian. Better still, why not google his lordship and see the doting coverage the doting Oz gave him on his tours of the antipodes).

Meanwhile, you can find the lizard Oz harping away at its pet themes - the NBN, the Labor government, yada yada - as if Manne had made no observations at all, as in the "exclusive" by Annabel Hepworth, at the top of the digital heap for the moment, with Kevin Rudd guru Joshua Gans slams NBN monopoly as deal 'will harm consumers'. No need to actually read the piece when the header neatly summarises the entire thrust of the piece.

Naturally there's also room for Gary Johns railing against the Greens in Greens would turn asylum policy into auction, as if somehow the Greens have been responsible for the debacle of refugee policies in the past decade, when it would be handy if both the Liberal and Labor parties accepted all the accolades ...

Meanwhile, the anonymous editorialist at The Australian, seemingly oblivious to the news that SA Premier Mike Rann has agreed to hand over the reins to Jay Weatherill on October 20 (Adelaide Now), has fired off a firm editorial on the matter of a key indigenous report:

For too long, Labor politicians, with the notable exception of federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, have benefited from the indigenous vote without truly addressing the complex issues of the communities. It is time for Mr Rann to act.

Actually it's almost time for Mr Rann to go - unless his 'expire by' date has been extended - but if he wants to sort out indigenous affairs within the state within the month, as demanded by the anon edit, well all the pond can say is good luck with that ...

Meanwhile, in a splendid development, it seems students have now become consumers, as explained in The Oz's Common Room in Brave new Whitlamite world:

Whatever happens over the next five years, more students in the system will likely mean more work for university staff without a commensurate increase in cash either from Canberra or student consumers.

I swear that back in the days of brave new Whitlamites, students weren't consumers. Hey, they weren't even clients, nor even customers, clientele, purchasers, users, window shoppers or tyre kickers ...

Well we could go on all day cutting and pasting the very best of the lizard Oz - we haven't even got on to the squawks of consternation surrounding the toothless enquiry into the media which will soon disappear into the bureaucratic void - been there, done that sort of thing - but we began to yearn for some rich red meat in the diet, or perhaps that's genuine fruitiness in a nice yeasty raisin toast (fruit loaf if you're weird).

Come on down professional catastrophist, yeasty Paul Sheehan, now working overtime on a Thursday, with Throw out cheating Greece before the rot cripples rest of the world.

Throw them out? The pond says kick them off the bloody planet!

Sheehan never gets around to explaining whether throwing Greece out should come after cheating Wall street is thrown out, or cheating banks, or cheating Ireland, or cheating Iceland, or cheating Spain, or cheating Italy, or cheating Royal Bank of Scotland or cheating Enron or cheating politicians ... but you can always rely on him to show a dismal grasp of the dismal science.

Greece may be far away, it may be a small economy, but it is dragging down the value of your superannuation because its problems are a drag on the global sharemarket.

Damn those pesky Greeks, they ruined Australia by coming here in bucket loads in the fifties, and now they're ruining Australia again, unlike Wall street, which is done such an ever so clever job of keeping the world economy ticking over, especially since 2008.

Well at least it provides relief from Sheehan's standard explanation of why the English economy is stuffed, which always seems to involve the dole bludging Celts.

Has there ever been a columnist for any major rag in the country so full of simmering vituperative ethnic stereotypes?

You know, where a discussion of the economy can somehow drag in a couple of drug cheats?

Ever since the high point for modern Greece, the 2004 Olympics in Athens, it has become increasingly clear that the country was living on borrowed time and borrowed money, a state of collective delusion. Even Greece's two biggest Olympic stars, two medal-winning sprinters, turned out to be drug cheats. They even staged a fake accident to avoid a doping test.

Hang on, now the pond gets it.

The Tour de France stands as a sickening example of the complete collective delusion of Europe.

Hang on, hang on, didn't American Lance Armstrong win the damn thing time after time? What's that you say? Lance Armstrong confronts accuser Tyler Hamilton ...?

Sheesh, now the pond gets it. The whole world is living on borrowed time and borrowed money, in a state of collective delusion.

Thank the lord, we have the steadying hand of Paul Sheehan as virtual columnist of the exchequer to explain the intricate link between drug cheats in sport and the balancing of budgets ...

Speaking of the chancellor of the exchequer, did you hear the one about the Bullingdon Club, George Osborne, Natalie Rowe, the Sunday Mirror, the News of the World, phone hacking, whips, chains and handcuffs, lines of cocaine, Andy Coulson, David Cameron, and righteous editorials?

Ah hah, we knew the cuffs and coke would get you in ...

It's never too late to catch up with Editor helped chancellor manipulate news at PM, or if you like pictures with your line of powder, why not head off to Lateline, and British chancellor mired in phone hacking scandal ...

Thanks to the intrepid commentary of Paul Sheehan, promoted right up to Field Marshall Grumpy, we take the story as further evidence the entire world is delusional and living on borrowed time.

The solution? Take your credit card to a restaurant tonight and have an apocalyptic end of world meal on credit, and wash it down with a nice red ...

(Below: guess which one is Paul Sheehan).