And now for a flock of memories and Friday layabouts ...

(Above: more First Dog here).

The idea of balance in the media takes a battering on a daily basis.

Take Phillip Adams, please someone take him. Adams is routinely held up as the the pivot around which leftism swings at Radio National, and the shining star of lefties in The Australian, which is bit like saying a pompous bore like Paul Kelly (the scribbling editor all too often at large, not the singer) is a shining star for sensible conservatism (he and David Brooks could do a waltz together).

What brought this on? Could the pond have made the mistake of listening to the insufferable, smug Adams drone on with Elizabeth Farrelly about the wonders of urban density and big cities, while explaining how he routinely hundreds of kilometres from his rural eerie each day, to produce his radio program and so to help listeners marvel at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas.

Practical working ideas? Waiter, bring me that lettuce leaf, I feel like giving my brain a flogging with Adams' dangerous ideas ... the first of which seems to be don't do as I say in my self-satisifed way, do as I decree ...

And so a couple of hours a day of Radio National during the week become a dead zone suffering from urban blight and Adams' sense of self-importance.

Meanwhile, over at The Punch Barnaby Joyce has discovered an astonishing statistic, as recorded in An unaffordable tax beyond all regional doubt:

Another poll released the other day showed that one out of every two Australians think that minority government has been bad for Australia.

Uh huh. Does it follow that one out of every two Australians - some fifty per cent - think that minority government has been good for Australia? Phew, that's a relief, because the way the opinion polls have been going lately, the federal government's polling is down the sewer and far out to sea, 29% at last count, and here's good old Barners offering them comfort that his poll can only produce one in two, or a good old fifty fifty split ...

Perhaps the Labor party could hire Barners as a pollster guru?

The rest of Barners' piece is a standard rant about how the carbon tax will produce economic ruin all over regional Australia, given a special heart-wrenching twist:

What sort of solace is that to the coalminer in the Hunter valley who must tell his wife and kids that they have to move to western Queensland to keep a job? They probably would like to stay in the Hunter where their family, friends and home are.

So much for Liberal blather about flexibility and mobility in the labor market, and the need for individual contracts to ensure people will go where the jobs are ...

Meanwhile, that prime goose Dennis 'see my flashy tie' Shanahan has suddenly turned into a psychic, with Kevin Rudd sets out conditions for return to leadership.

A more sensible header would have been Dennis Shanahan sets out the sorts of conditions he thinks Kevin Rudd should set out when explaining the conditions for his return to leadership, even allowing that setting conditions for a return to leadership isn't high on anyone's minds, except perhaps Dennis Shanahan, Kevin Rudd and Phillip Adams.

Never mind, here are the conditions Shanahan, channeling Rudd, thinks Rudd should set out:

It is clear Rudd's motives and objectives can be summarised thus: he wants to be vindicated and to prove the "faceless men" wrong; as Foreign Minister he wants to underline his competence and success; he wants to return to the leadership; he does not want to launch a "leadership challenge"; he wants Labor MPs to come to him so that he is drafted back to the leadership; he would want guarantees that he's not going to be undermined by his cabinet colleagues and; finally, based on the management of his support within the party and public appearances, he would only want to be Labor leader again if there was a prospect of beating Tony Abbott.

Unfortunately, this omits several important conditions, including a hike in tooth fairy payments, a generous serving of hot cross buns and dark chocolate easter bunnies at Easter, and an exceptionally generous full to overflowing Xmas stocking under the environmentally sound Xmas tree this year ...

Yep, it's another day of arid, mindless, fetid, meaningless speculation in The Australian, with all your favourite chums contributing, including Henry Ergas with Billions will be wasted painting pork barrel green.

Ergas is most upset at the notion that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation will pick green energy winners, and along the way he invokes the multi-function polis. Ah memories ... the polis.

Ergas pins the blame for that adventure on the Hawke government, but it was in fact Hajime Tamura, then Japanese Minister for International Trade and Industry, who proposed the idea to Senator John Button, who then ran with it, up and down the east coast from the Gold Coast to Melbourne, before settling on Adelaide. In the day, there was more than a hint of racism in some of the objections mounted to the vision, but for the rest you can find an excellent summary in Paul Parker's The Multi-Function Polis 1987-97 (in pdf form).

But where is this leading us, apart from a stroll down memory lane, and nostalgia for some of the wilder, more desperate gestures by John Bannon?

Well it turns out that Tony Abbott's climate change strategy is very much about government picking winners, not that you'll find any mention of that in the Ergas' piece. Abbott plans to boondoggle industry with billions as a way to reduce emissions, and good luck with that.

It seems this sort of direct action, routinely reviled in the pages of The Australian, and attributed to Labor, is never mentioned by the conservative commentariat. Hush now darling, don't speak of it, you'll only scare the children.

Over at the NBN loving anonymous editorialist - love the fibre, hate the fibre - there seems to be a slow dawning light in Taxpayers in the dark on solar, which wraps up thusly:

... in rejecting the carbon tax, Mr Abbott has committed himself to "direct action" to cut carbon, even though the Productivity Commission calculates that a tonne of carbon saved through renewable energy and abatement measures costs at least 10 times more than pricing carbon. The prospect of disruptions to power supplies should prompt a rethink.

A re-think? From the nattering Dr No naboob of negativism? What, call it a price rather than a filthy, evil, vile tax set to bankrupt the nation?

Well there you go, there's the pond's hearty chuckle to start the day.

Apart from all the wild talk of oaths rendered in blood, and the difficulties of arranging a double dissolution (Abbott's gory pledge would be a legal bloodbath), and tearing apart the new structure, the reality is that direct action strategies by government - we have Henry Ergas's word for it - will be inefficient and expensive ...

Meanwhile, Barners can stomp up and down the countryside announcing the impending apocalypse, but the pond is willing to take bets that the real apocalypse might well involve Tony Abbott and his fevered blood oath and the way he's proposing to splash the cash to achieve an objective deep in his heart he doesn't believe in.

Not that you can expect to read an extended analysis of his folly in the opinion pages of the Murdoch rags any time soon ... not when you can babble on at length about the pre-conditions to be demanded by Kevin Rudd for his return, as channeled by his imaginary friend ...

(Below: oh dear, here).