The Australian, Christopher Pearson and get that suit and the lipstick and the heavy duty polish ready ...

(Above: for this you pay money? Christopher Pearson at the top of the opinion pages and a cheeky subbie persuading us that Pearson really called Tony Abbott opportunistic?)

At last the reason for The Australian's brown out - black out if you will - stands revealed.

As recorded in Oops, it seems there were a few glitches in the implementation of the new interface, with a fair bit of down time, what we used to call dead air in the good old days of community radio.

And what a bland, empty result followed when they got the site back up, devoid of gravitas and weight, full of space and white and subdued colours in the modern web style, bland to the point of vacuity, and with an endless scroll that inevitably leads you to Arts, Life & Style at the very bottom of the page ...

Oh and it does auto refresh of the page , just like Fairfax ...

And at the very top, a dreaded reminder that the digital subscription commences October 24th.

There's any number of metaphors that come to mind. Like you can dress a pig in a suit, but it still snorts, or you can put lipstick on a pig and call it Cheryl, but it's still a pig, or you can polish a turd, but it takes a lot of polish, and all you end up with is a highly polished turd ... (you got that one wrong, headmaster in The History Boys, saying you can't polish a turd).

And so on and so forth, and let's not even get down to the ones that used to do the rounds in the good old days in Tamworth ... but the point is, this sort of clean, bland, vacuous front of house isn't particularly inviting, unless you're heading downmarket to the world of tabloids ...

If you head off to the future of journalism site that accompanies the re-visioning, or the heavy polishing, you'll see that the new look is part of an astonishing vision for the future, with an infovideo, and infographics, and infoarticles and infointerviews and infoprofiles, and infotwaddle, and all this from a newspaper that had the cheek to cavil at the Greens using the word "meaningful" ...

Speaking of meaning, The Australian has added some great new functionality on the site, including five and ten minute news digests, but really can we ever be satisfied with the news until we get down to the 30 second news digest of the kind and quality you get on the train with Mx?

It turns out you can even share your views on the changes with the paper, with the rag loving to hear the feedback and promising to give all suggestions careful consideration. Now that's what we call intertubes interactivity ...

Well here's a thought. When you head off to the future of journalism (some future at The Times), and get to the bit about digital subscriptions, the FAQs tell you to head back to the home page, and click 'subscribe' at the bottom of the page. Or call customer service by telephone, or perhaps get out that trusty carrier pigeon ...

Return to the home page, scroll down to the very bottom of the page in search of "subscribe" and you find one very small tab in a bar of tabs at the bottom ... for home delivery offers.

No doubt it will all become clearer this coming Monday, when the paywall clangs shut, but at that point the pond gave up,

A kindly, thoughtful reader has suggested a bold strategy, which is to take up any free trial digital subscription you might find, and then leave after the trial, thereby shattering the dreams, hopes and delusions of News Ltd.

But what if, in that time, they succeed in brainwashing you, and you start to enjoy the read and the world view, and next thing you know, you're click on 'renew' like some kind of drudge in an Orwellian 1984, handing over the weekly tithing like a family trapped in the Ponzi scheme of beige envelopes deployed by the Catholic church?

We keed, we keed, but speaking of suits and lipstick, it has to be noted that nothing has changed, with Christopher "make Simon Crean PM" Pearson still at the top of the Saturday opinion page, and delivering the usual round of Tony Abbott cheerleading and blather in Global recession the last nail in the carbon tax coffin.

In a tiresomely predictable way, Pearson makes any number of splendid predictions, ringed with precautionary wriggle room, including the news that there will be a global recession by the middle of next year, Julia Gillard has six weeks to go, former chairman Rudd is the only realistic replacement, and the Labor party must rush to the polls now - right now - to minimise the losses.

Yep it's Pearson in Chairman Abbott is my hero mode, singing with gusto all the talking points, and all the negative nattering, this week in bring back former Chairman Rudd mode. Meaning Christopher Pearson and Phillip Adams are at one. Think about that!

Sorry, Mr. Simon 'safe pair of hands' Crean, your fifteen minutes of fame in the Pearson sun is gone, done and dusted. Please hand in your rooster feathers at the revolving door, on your way out ...

The Pearson fantasy life gets even richer as he helpfully trawls through suggestions for a new treasurer ... brushing past Chris Bowen and Bill Shorten to propose Greg Combet as a contender ...

Of course it's an important part of Christopher "Rudd Redux" Pearson's strategy that the former Chairman must immediately junk the proposal to price carbon (remember never to call it a price, always call it a tax), and even better, that red-headed harridan would immediately vacate her seat if she lost, and so the world would be rid of the wicked bogan witch ...

And so on and on, right down to the notion that once Abbott is in office, the remaining rump of Labor members will act as quislings, roll over and do whatever Tony Abbott wants to do in relation to killing off the pricing of carbon.

It's such a rich, indulgent, splendid vision, with reams of speculation (yes, there's more, much more, and bonus steak knives with it), and absolutely no substance ...

It seems a profound tragedy that the pond must say farewell to Pearson, who is surely one of the more reliably eccentric tribe squawking on the waters of the pond, so slavish, so giving, so yearning, so servile, so hopeful, so grovelling, so sycophantic and fawning, so cringing in the presence of his master ... a role model for lap dogs when you think about it ...

But farewell Pearson we must, because it's one thing to read drivel for free, and another matter to propose that people must pay to read drivel ...

Who knows, we might discover an upside as we say farewell:

The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours

Thank you History Boys, we'll bear that in mind, but the image of Pearson's hand reaching out towards ours is so alarming and startling, permit the pond to lurch off into the digital darkness, away from the Murdoch light, with a slightly queasy feeling and a hint of dyspeptic nausea ...

Now were you live with The Guardian at the News Corporation annual shareholder meeting? Watching Rupert Murdoch in cohorts with a Saudi billionaire to shut down debate and sustain the current management?

That's right, chairman Rupert arm in arm with a billionaire from one of the most repressive countries doing the rounds in a middle east full of repression ...

Waiter, this might be a glass house, but please bring me some stones for dessert ...

(Below: peas in a pod).