Oh it's a gloomy Monday, with a Hansonist Sheehan and a rough Mal Brough pineapple up your bum ...

Thanks to the free over the fence weekend AFR, the pond learned some interesting statistics.

Goldman Sachs estimates Australian will win 15 gold medals in London. Given direct federal funding of at least $589 million on the Olympic team over the past four years, that equates to a $39 million price tag for each gold, says James Connor from the University of NSW who has crunched the numbers. (outside the paywall here, perhaps because it also gets a run at BRW here).

The upside? Well if Australia wins fewer golds, they become even more rare and expensive. So each time you read about boil overs and palpable shell shocks and massive disappointments, just think how much more precious the gold medals won will become.

Oh and then there's this ...

Australian Sports Commission funding per athlete varies greatly according to the sport. The 47 swimmers in the Australian team have each been funded to the tune of $657,080 per athlete, while the 32 hockey players accounted for an impressive $708,676 each.

I know, I know, the pond wasn't going to mention the Olympics, but it's such a splendid example of "what do we want, small government, when do we want it, now", "two legs and East Germany and Russia and China bad", as opposed to "spare no expense, big government, four legs and East Germany and big government good", that the pond found it irresistible.

The pond calls on Campbell Newman to reject immediately any attempt by the Federal Government to fund Queensland Olympians. The state is broke, and there's simply no time for such fripperies.

Sadly the pond's Olympics ban means everybody and his dog has had a chance to chortle at the one day comet known as the Mittster, who briefly glowed in the London sky, and which led to a jolly old time on TV, as you can see in Romney Olympics: Joe Scarborough Laughs At Candidate's Gaffes in London.

And frankly this comedy gold is much more entertaining than the thought of attempting to read the puffed up poison of Paul Sheehan peddling The truth on refugees is worse than fiction.

Just reading the opening splash was enough to guarantee that the pond couldn't be bothered getting into the sewer of bile:

The viral email about Australia's generosity to refugees may be wrong in its details, but the truth is a story of government gullibility without end.

The truth is that this is yet another story of Paul Sheehan's eternally vicious way of kicking the refugee can down the street, right into the path of gullible Fairfax readers.

First he gets to recycle the errant viral email at great length, then he leads with his own figures, designed to shock, which proposes that people granted refugee status, earn a one-off package worth "up to" $9,850, and shock horror, education assistance up to $9,220, and so on and so forth.

This from a man who just recently boasted in My Plane My Way how he'd cruised around the world on a $30,840 a person twin share junket.

Hansonism will never leave the country, not so long as there's bloated indulged pompous prats like Paul Sheehan to stoke the fires of greed and envy and hatred and fear and loathing. What a poisonous key board he pounds.

Well played Fairfax, no doubt Gina thinks you're on the path to box office success at last. Just a final step ... you've got the tabloid mentality, now you just need the physical tabloid form.

Enough of Sheehan's Hansonism already, he's been peddling it for decades.

Instead the pond was pleased to discover that The Punch and The Drum were in fact peas in the very same pod.

Hare off to The Drum, and you could read John Lee scribbling Much to admire - and fear - about a rising China.

And then if fear and loathing of China had stirred you like a soy and honey sauce, you could head off to punch on at The Punch, where you could read John Lee scribbling China: The hidden dragon is no toothless tiger.

The prolific Lee had the grace to change the text for each outing, though the sentiments are much the same. What the repetition does suggest is that Australian online opinion sites are already as narrow as the shrinking world of newspapers.

These on line wannabe commentariat sites, which offer exposure as payment, the pea The Punch and the pea The Drum, are little more than echo chambers peddling much the same material about much the same set of issues.

Enough already, peas in a pod.

Speaking of Gina Rinehart, the pond remains fixated on the fortunes of the Ten network, supposedly the prime example of the way her skilled directorship will bring Fairfax out of the leftist shadows into the world of commercial reality.

The latest news - and here we have to confess to reading the Daily Terror - is that the Breakfast show, which imported a hapless right wing New Zealand stirrer and ratbag goose by the name of Paul Henry, is a disaster.

It's all there in Crisis: Is Ten's breakfast toast?, and since we started by wondering about the cost of gold medals, it seems right to close by wondering how much Ten pissed against the wall on this turkey.

The show started with 51,000 viewers back in February, has been averaging 40k, and sometimes hits 24k - while over at Seven, the breakfast average is around 400k and at Nine the breakfast show averages 300k.

Now the pond doesn't watch any breakfast television, but it's another reminder that Ten is a basket case at the moment.

If Gina is the future of Fairfax, and Jack Cowin gets them flipping burgers like Ten, get prepared for an obesity epidemic of bloated Paul Sheehan thinking. Would you like some refugee bashing fries and the Bolter with that?

Finally, the pond just has to note that the truly appalling, let's do it rough and tough with Mal Brough, copped the nod at the Queensland preselection round for Fisher, defeating several perfectly good candidates in the process.

The inept Brough, who personally organised the invasion of the Northern Territory to nil gain and much personal grandiose grand-standing, is poised to bring back his peculiar ideas of success to the Federal sphere.

At the press interview celebrating his success, the snake-oil dispensing Brough avoided any decent questioning in relation to the Ashby-Slipper matter, though even The Australian (behind the paywall) felt the need to make note of it. First there was this blather about trust:

"All that matters is that we regain the trust of the public here in Fisher. They deserve better than they've had," he said.

This from a man who lied, blatantly and nakedly, until he was forced to walk back from the lie regarding his role in the Slipper scandal.

Mr Brough received a standing ovation from party members and said he believed they understood his role in the Slipper scandal was to "help someone in need".
Court documents reveal Mr Brough had extensive contact with Mr Slipper's staffer James Ashby and colleagues in the weeks before Mr Ashby launched a sexual harassment claim against the then Speaker in April.

Help someone in need. Should we laugh or should we cry?

Remind us again, Phillip Coorey in Brough on road back to Canberra:

Mr Brough initially denied he had had any contact with Mr Slipper's chief accuser and former aide, James Ashby, but then admitted to at least three meetings. Subsequently, court documents have suggested Mr Brough had extensive involvement and frequent contact with Mr Ashby and with another of Mr Slipper's former aides, Karen Doane, as the case of alleged sexual harassment and Cabcharge rorting was formulated.

A proven liar.

Yep, in the contemptible Brough's Queensland, trust is the rough end of a pineapple up your bum.

It's going to be hard yards time enduring an Abbott government full of rogues and liars.

Now if someone could just slip the pond 500k for proper training, we promise to win gold, gold, gold for Australia at tiddlywinks ....

(Below: so if you've reached the end and landed here, you're probably depressed! On a Monday!

Never mind the pond belatedly presents another fruit of Gina Rinehart's splendid network Ten vision of ways forward for Australian television. Yep, it's the Bingle bump, episode seven, and now so deflated, the show turns up days late on pirate sites. Even the pirates don't care. But in a rough Brough Australia, suddenly Lara Bingle seems like a beacon of integrity).