News Ltd, Woolworths, and plucking the sheeple in every way that can be imagined ...

In the good old days, the genuine old-fashioned conservative abhorred poker machines.

The pond fondly remembers sipping a cocktail while contemplating the brown murk they call the river Yarra, deep in the heart of Toorak - there is no deeper conservative pond - when the talk turned to poker machines.

No one in a room full of Toorak princesses and potentates would admit to having played one in their lifetime. Victoria was a clean skin, and while the poor folk headed north to get a fix, there was a deep concern that the lumpenproletariat would have their hard earned wages - oh you hard working noble yeoman - stripped from them by a frivolous, meaningless activity that only a cockroach could appreciate.

Well that was then. These days the cockroaches are everywhere, and the rugger boofheads can't wait to ravage the pockets, ravage and loot and pillage to prop up their empires, and where are the noble conservatives ready to stand in their path?

You can always measure the effectiveness of a proposed measure by the yowling and the howling and the resistance of special interest and lobby groups, and so it is with the plain packaging of cigarettes, and so it is with asking people to nominate their limit with poker machines.

And where are the churches and the caring conservative forces currently led by Tony Abbott?

Right up your fundament, and ready to serve any lobby group in their unholy lust for power ... as if the boofheads need any more cash, and as if training the young to be footballing professional thuggees is any life for anyone outside the Pacific islands and country folk, where football, like boxing in the old days, provides a path to riches and recognition ...

Naturally 'is your News Limited' has been front and centre, as recorded by Stephen Mayne in News Ltd, Clubs and NRL v imaginary AFL anti-pokies campaign, and what a sordid sight it is, culminating in this Mayne question:

The question remains: why do these cashed-up athletes on huge six-figure packages need to be associated with targeting problem gamblers in the country with the highest gambling rates on earth?

The other question remains: where are the caring (in some cases allegedly Christian) conservatives? Have they all turned feral libertarian?

The funniest, or the most tragic, or perhaps the most pathetic, or invisible or overlooked scandal behind the current campaign against poker machine reform is the role Woolworths plays.

Not only does the big W dominate the liquor business, it joined in a joint venture with Bruce Mathieson, via ALH, and became the poker machine market leader with some 12,000 machines, or 6% of the 200,000 operating in the country. And they're always scheming to get more pubs and more one armed bandits.

Mayne is one of the few to care or write about the way Woolies ravages the shoppers, the farmers, the drunks, the gamblers, and anyone else it can fleece, as you can find in Record Woolies profits but what about the damage?

Woolworths has the mindset and the ethics of a gigantic, overbearing, market devouring Visigoth (oh okay, the Visigoths were probably more caring).

There's more honour and decency in on-line piracy, where the leeches are expected to do a bit of community seeding, and one to one at that ...

As for the rhetoric about struggling clubs and pubs, the Adelaide Advertiser did an interesting case study of Woolworths in South Australia, and tracked the company - and competitor Coles - in relation to machines in the field, pubs owned, profits made, and came to an obvious conclusion:

The Australian Hotels Association, leading a $20 million mass advertising campaign against reforms to limit problem gambling, counts the supermarket giants as members and includes Woolworths representatives on its executive.

The revelations have led to calls for the supermarkets to reveal how much they are spending on the "it's un-Australian" campaign to stop the introduction of technology forcing punters to declare how much they are prepared to lose. (Woolworths revealed to own more pokies than the Adelaide Casino).

Like all humbug rip-off ratbaggery, patriotism is the last refuge for scoundrels and for what should be dubbed the "it's un-Woolies to hinder Woolies' right to rip off the mug punters how it will and for as much as it likes and can get away with" campaign.

Every so often, a few punters get agitated about the way the supermarket giants fuck over local farmers. The latest came with the news that a Cowra farmer was thinking about ploughing his beetroot crop back into the soil because Aldi had embarked on a price cutting war for own-brand tins of beetroot with Woolies and Coles (We ain't beet yet: saviour comes to the rescue in vegetable price war).

In a futile gesture, Dick Smith stepped in, and proposed that if the retail ogres wouldn't come to the party, then he'd start selling beetroot in Flight Centre and Dymocks bookstores.

Right, and here at the pond, we're selling tickets on a daily basis to the Mad Hatter's tea party ... but only at participating Stereo 8, LP and VHS retail stores ...

The cozy supermarket duopoly has been pillaging the retail environment for years, with more than a few ironies along the way, as noted by Richard Farmer in Woolworths' ACDC wine brain fade, where the liquored up part of the empire launched a range of wines given names like Back In Black Shiraz, Highway to Hell Cabernet Sauvignon, and You Should Me All Night Long Moscato.

Bon Scott died of acute alcohol poisoning, and at that moment, the pond stopped listening because the band has never been the same since. (yes, you can keep your Back in Black where the sun don't shine).

As for the mug punters who've helped destroy petrol retailing in Australia because they think they're getting some kind of discount, and the mug punters who think that they might actually get a one way Fly Buy ticket to Melbourne ... after twenty years of purchasing products with a generous margin ... don't get the pond started.

Why not just read stories like Big Groceries and Big Petrol meet Big Airline ... or just read any of the Crikey stories on Woolies, including Mayne's How big media omits Woolworths from damaging pokies yarns.

The pond chooses to do most of its shopping at the local family supermarket up the road. A tad more expensive, but cheerful, personalised service, without the sense that as a consumer you're stepping into a retail operation run with the sensitivity of a caged egg farmer.

Naturally this will be dismissed as inner west elitism, but there was a time when being conservative actually meant caring about community ... instead of finding ever grander ways of looting, pillaging, ravaging and fucking said community over in every position and product line imaginable....

But if that's your taste, feel free to support Woolworths and poker machines run rampant throughout the land. The retail giants need all the sheeple it can get if it's to maintain the pace at the shearing sheds ...

Meanwhile, a couple of brief notices for splendid work. Who can cavil at the splendid effort by Niki Savva in The Australian under the header Kevin Rudd a golden opportunity for Labor?

Is that golden opportunity as in golden goose?

According to Savva, the Labor party should rush to elect Rudd its leader and then with an election-winning lead rush off to a general election, right here, right now. Along the way there will be an opportunity to show principled politics and ethical leadership at its finest:

Rudd could immediately void the deal with Andrew Wilkie on poker machines, which he signed personally with Gillard and which he threatens will cost his support if it is not implemented by May next year. It is causing Labor marginal seat holders considerable grief, and any issue that can unite Hawks and Magpies, Eddie McGuire and Jeff Kennett in a war against the government should be feared greatly.

Yep, there it is again. Big media highlighting the role of Woolies and Mathieson in the poker machine wars.

There's much more nonsense in the Savva piece, and except for the way that it carries Savva's byline, you'd swear it had been crafted by an intern in Tony Abbott's office with an hour or two to fill.

Labor needs a better story and better storytellers, Savva concludes grandly, but if that's the case, then damn sure The Australian needs better journalists with a better capacity for considered political analysis ...

And finally, just a note that our very own prattling Polonius spends an entire column proving that Australia conducts its foreign policy, independent of the United States of America.

Apparently, according to Gerard "what's that behind the arras" Henderson, this proud independence started with Bert Evatt and the Australian left, and Australia has been proudly independent ever since, especially in the matter of Israel and Palestine, where it has proudly and independently come to the conclusion that it totally and completely agrees with the United States and its current policies. Always has done, always will, but in a proudly independent way.

Henderson himself proudly produces an independent analysis that concludes that we should proudly stand, in an independent way, totally behind the United States in the matter of Israel and Palestine.

You can read it all here in Australia has always had its own opinion on Israel policy, but the piece has a maximum pond hysterical Spinal Tap laughter rating of eleven out of ten, so approach with caution ...

(Below: ah the good old days when Australia had its own opinion on the Vietnam war, just like it has its own opinion on the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan, and so on and so forth, until the cows come home and are cut up and sold really cheap as chups under their home brand label. Now what was that country that actually had its own opinion on nuclear weapons crossing its territory? Could it be those plucky New Zealand warriors?)