And now let's hear it for the whingers and the whiners ...

(Above: but not too sorry).

It almost goes without saying that the pond is into wild ideas, and sometimes the wild ideas become reality.

In times past, the pond has often asked intimate acquaintances not unfamiliar with the art of sexual harassment to take the pond on an international junket.

Why not? How else can you be sexually harassed in exotic and attractive locales?

Now it should be understood that this is in no way a reflection on or commentary about the Slipper-Ashby matter currently before the courts, and noted in Ashby asked for trip with Slipper.

That would be improper, impolite, perhaps even injudicious, though it seems that even The Australian is thinking again this morning, as it runs with this header Exposed: James Ashby's double-dealing (behind the paywall, but you know how to google):

James Ashby actively encouraged Peter Slipper to resign from the Liberal National Party before the MP accepted the Speaker's role last year, but the media adviser continued to moonlight for the LNP despite Mr Slipper's fear that the party "was out to destroy him".

So let's just leave it there, and moving right along, now seems the right time to have a giant whinge about the whingers whingeing about the whingers.

In the spirit of the times, you can then have a gigantic whinge about the pond whinging about the whingers and the whiners whinging about the whingers whining.

If you want to get yourself into training for the event, why not read Caroline Wilson's Whinge, whinge, whinge Australia (warning, Olympic content within). It's a first class whinge about whingers, a gold medal effort, completely devoid of content, as we'd expect of any classy whinge.

Naturally The Australian, home to a first class team of whingers whining about everything, gets into the seasonal spirit of things, thanks to Judith Sloan's World-class whining defies reality on costs.

Please do not whinge and whine that this is behind the paywall, if you don't know how to be a google bludger, you deserve to whine.

In a prototypical dinkum Aussie way whiner Sloan awards the gold medal to whinging Poms, and in the process proves she has the nuance and understanding of an antipodean elephant:

With the Olympic Games about to begin in London, it looks as though the Poms have taken an early lead in the gold medal tally, winning top spot for whingeing.
Too many people, too much traffic, too many anti-aircraft missile devices on top of buildings, not enough pay for immigration officers and train drivers - the list of complaints goes on and on.

Actually in her usual superficial way, Sloan entirely misses the point.

The poor old Poms are in the grip of the longest double-dip recession for fifty years. Now you might expect The Guardian to brood about this, and whine about the austerity-mad George Osborne, and it does in pieces like George Osborne is no strategist, says former Tory chief whip, and The Treasury needs a new team to stop this slide back into recession.

But even The Sun has noticed, and if you can dig past the bikini girls and the fashion parades and the soccer, you might come to Sack 'work experience Chancellor' UK slump longest on record, which is blessed with one of the quaintest graphics the pond has seen in a long time:

It's only taken a couple of years for the ideologically impaired Conservative Lib Dem alliance made in hell to completely stuff the economy, so why wouldn't you have a whinge?

But before anyone down under chortles at the Poms and their gloomy smiley, and truncated vegetation, consider that the pond is tipping that within a year of an Abbott government getting to run the show, the whingers and the whiners who thought they'd found the Messiah will be out in force pronouncing him and his team a flock of naughty boys and girls. (Okay Bronwyn Bishop as a girl is a stretch). It'll be whinger and whiner heaven, and make the current whining look like kindergarten training.

Truth to tell, running a story about whingers and whiners is the easiest way to get a column together, which is why the pond is whinging and whining about the whinges and whiners whinging about the whiners this morning.

It's also the easiest way for dumb politicians to make a stand. Show us how it's done Boris!

Yep, there's Boris Johnson demanding Londoners stop whining about the Olympics, as you can read in Boris tells Londoners to 'stop whining' as Olympic chaos continues. Boris even invented a term - an advanced case of Olympo-funk to describe the condition:

"Cut out the whining. And as for you whingers, put a sock in it, fast", said the Mayor as he moaned about the whingers.

Bugger that for a joke. The pond has been whining about the Sydney Olympics ever since they and Bob Carr helped the infrastructure of the city into the mess in which it remains. The pond will stop the whining about the Olympics when you pry it from my cold dead hands. (The winner is ... white elephants).

I know, I know, the pond swore it wasn't going to mention the London Olympics again. Have a moan and a whine about it at your leisure.

The art of the whinge is deeply embedded in Australian journalism, and is notably present every day in Murdoch publications.

Take this splash for a story in today's rag:

The Greens have exposed themselves as just another political party?

This is an insight, this is an opinion piece? Matthew can see clearly now? Now that the rain has gone? Couldn't he just karaoke the Johnny Nash/Jimmy Cliff hit?

What a premise on which to base a whinge. Who on earth ever imagined that the Greens weren't a political party?

Come on Mr. Franklin, astonish us with another insight.

What's that you say, politicians and political parties lie and dissemble? Give that man a pink elephant for insights right up there with Wittgenstein.

When you see this sort of idle cant, this sort of feeble attempt to maintain the rage and have a whinge about the Greens, The Australian in bed with Paul Howes and the NSW Right, you can skip immediately to something else.

But be careful where you leap, because anywhere in The Australian, you can shift from the frying pan to the fire.

You might land, for example, on this piece by Peter Van Onselen:

This is the perfect, double play whine. Gillard can be criticised for rejecting a levy, since the memory of the epic whinging and moaning and whining about the Queensland flood levy is now long in the past (oh the good old days of PM Julia Gillard's flood levy runs into rough water).

On the other hand, if Gillard had danced to the tune of the whinging, whining, moaning Liberal state premiers, doing their 'more gruel' routine, and gone along with a levy, Van Onsolen would have been perfectly poised to bemoan and whine about another wasted opportunity by Gillard, pronouncing that her decision to prop up the state governments was yet another poor one.

Rule one: Gillard can't do anything right. Rule two: whine endlessly about it.

You can see how whinging "gotcha" journalism works perfectly as a binary system right up there with computing, and it almost goes without saying that right at the top of the food chain, there are two perfect whingers.

Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt.

Day in, day out, all they do is whinge, and they get paid very handsomely for it. Bolt for example is still in the middle of an epic whinge about blog moderation with his employer, and it's now reached the point of farcical trolling, as Bolt tries to restore relations with his Boltermaniacs, asking them for tips:

0 tips. Do you want freedom fries with that?

Oh okay, that screen snap was taken early, and there will be comments in due course - Boltermaniacs usually don't come out of their manly bear cave for a bit of breast-beating and whining before nine.

Now we could go technical here about the Bolter banning comments, and ending freedom of speech for his one-time faithful fanatics.

Is the Bolter doing just a first class dummy spit, as opposed to an epic whinge? But in the end it doesn't matter, because he's whinged endlessly about the dummy spit, explaining why he's hard done by, so using trinitarian theory, it's one and the same thing.

Bolt is an eternally long suffering whining dummy spitter, and lately in the grip of serious paranoia, which might be comical if you ever watched his flailing, failing television show, which does for ratings what even Video Hits couldn't manage. If you run a business as an ideology, don't expect to do good business.

So naturally this whinge caught the eye:

Hmm. The Labor and Green bans I understand, if not accept. But normally an Opposition is only too eager to explain and persuade.
Question: if the Liberals gag front-benchers who want to appear on my show when they are in Opposition, how accountable do they plan to be in Government?
This may be something for me to explore. I’m starting to feel uneasy.

He's starting to feel uneasy because they won't talk to him! Talk about a kindergarten dummy spit. Now all that's needed is a smily graphic.

You might think that's the Bolter being "fair and balanced", bleating and whining about being gagged by ... gasp, Liberals ... but in a ship that's listed so far to starboard, it's really just pure comedy gold.

Thank the absent lord, on a daily basis, whingers deliver comedy items of the first water, so the next time somebody has a whinge about whingers, make sure you send them a whinging, whining note of praise.

Remember each four years, whining and whinging reaches a kind of pinnacle of the art form ...

If you want to play, but feel you need a role model, need first class examples, or feel you need a little more training in the art, just keep reading the Murdoch press, and in no time at all, you'll be a first class whinger ...

They'll have you out of training wheels and whining about the Greens and Gillard in no time at all, and you might even begin to feel a little uneasy about Tony Abbott ...

(Below: and now since it's Friday, here's a little music by Alexander Mosolov. Mosolov got pounded by Stalin, but whenever the pond feels like doing a little Bolter and Murdoch iron foundry pounding, this is the music to do it with).