Speaking, as we often do, of those who don't have a clue

Pardon the pond for a moment.

We just want to indulge in a little parochial pride and gloating and triumphant breast-beating.

It turns out that Sydney's public transport system is way ahead of Los Angeles, Sao Paulo and Johannesburg.

Pardon the sexist masculinist language, but suck it up losers.

Oh sure Sydney's the fourth-worst major city in the world for infrastructure and transport, and we're behind Mumbai - oh the joy of gridlock in Mumbai - or so they say in Transport and infrastructure better in Mumbai than Sydney, but hey, Sydney's not the ultimate loser. Just the penultimate ...

And wouldn't you know it, but the former chief of the RTA, one Ron Christie, who knows a bit about roads, advised that Bazza, Nick Greiner and his merry band of gormless dimwits had come up with solutions to the problems that are a throwback to the 1950s, a real set of LA-type solutions. Moving cars from one gridlock to another. Meaning in the end LA could end up beating Sydney ...

Turns out that the Liberal party has as much of a clue as the Labor party.

Will the last to leave, by car, of course, after ten hours in traffic jam gridlock, turn out the lights ... or why not just head off to Sydney's second airport in Canberra for a well-earned vacation.

Meanwhile, Q&A has proven once again that the main reason to watch is to catch a train wreck in motion (you can show your capacity for endurance or perhaps infinite masochism by watching here).

This time it was a Sophie Mirabella train wreck.

Mirabella started well by slagging off the cruel and heartless treatment of single mothers and their children.

Objectively the treatment dished out by the federal Labor government is a disgrace. As other panelists railed against the policy, and wretched Bill Shorten tried to defend "tough love", Mirabella decided to chime in.

The trouble is, as those around quickly pointed out to Mirabella, the Liberal opposition voted for the legislation, and the wretched Bill Shorten pointed out that the Labor party had actually adopted a cruel and unusual Liberal party policy.

Yep, his way out was to blame the Liberal party because in the usual way Labor acted like a a cruel pale ghost imitating the Liberals. While Mirabella simply didn't have a clue.

This is a particular disgrace for an opposition leader who disgracefully once said that abortion was the easy way out.

The reward for taking the allegedly harder way? Punishment, sticks, no carrots, cuffs to the head, a good caning, and off to mill ...

The look of Mirabella stumbling around was right up there with Mirabella's previous performance when a chappie next to her fainted. It shows why the show keeps inviting her back.

She's the train wreck that keeps on giving train wrecks, and amazingly in the future she might well be the Minister in charge of science ...

She said that we live in ridiculous times, about the only insight the gormless one has ever offered that made any sense ...

Neither the Labor party nor the Liberal party has a clue.

Truly federal politics is mystifying.

Why did it take four years for Fair Work Australia to launch a civil action against Craig Thomson? Does anyone have a pack of Epsom salts handy?
Why did Peter Slipper hang on for so long knowing what he'd texted? Did he think there was a way out?
Why did Tony Abbott head off to Indonesia to pretend he was a statesman and fail - once again - to mention, let alone discuss the one policy issue guaranteed to cause offence? Is being a statesman code for being a coward?

Why for that matter, would anyone waste their time reading Gerard Henderson?

So many mysteries, so little time.

Long after everybody has said it's time to move on, there he is still banging the drum in Short-sighted see hate at every turn.

It's yet another example of relativism at work (you can bone up on moral relativism here), and as usual the sturdy Henderson shows the way for faint-hearted, lily-livered, craven, cowardly, yellow streak a mile wide, pussies:

Last year I was called a ''piece of work'' by the Sydney University academic Simon Chapman. It took me a full eight seconds to recover.  

Yep, what a completely admirable piece of work he is. Harden up me hearties, abuse and glassings in pubs is what makes us proud to be Orstralian.

Anyhoo, it takes the unusually ponderous and platitudinous and pompous prattling Polonius an exceptionally long time and a war with Anne Summers and tedious explanations about how everyone in politics calls everyone else a liar and what's wrong with that sort of vigorous debate to arrive at this remarkable conclusion:

Gillard has suffered no greater abuse than that experienced by such predecessors as Fraser, Keating and Howard. Commentators who look at contemporary Australian politics and see wall-to-wall misogyny, diminish the very real achievements of Australian women in recent decades. 

Which is of course to entirely miss the point. Of course other politicians routinely cop abuse, have done so, and will do so but in the case of Gillard some of the abuse has been clearly sexist, in a way that no male politician would experience.

To point that out doesn't diminish the achievements of Australian women. To argue that way is beyond relativism into the valley of exceptional silliness.

Even Julie Bishop developed a glazed, far-away look when recently asked to mention examples of sexism she might have suffered and to defend Tony Abbott (masochism not sated, still a glutton for punishment, go here to Leigh Sales giving Julie Bishop a hard time, as women face off mano a mano).

What's the bet that the pompous Polonius would have stood under signs saying Ditch the Witch and Bob Brown's bitch, and was entirely unable to see them? Or if he could, to say that they were just the usual standard part of a vigorous political debate?

Come to think of it, Sophie Mirabella stood under those signs, and experienced a brief moment of myopia, or perhaps blindness. Poor Julie had to pretend that Tony Abbott was also as blind as a bat and couldn't see those extremely large signs.

And they wonder why people talk of hypocrisy and stupidity and lies that are as painfully obvious as when the pond pretended it hadn't stolen those lamingtons.

Oh it's simply too tedious, it's simply too painful, it's simply too silly.

Let's just add Gerard Henderson to those who don't have a clue.

And now since there's bugger all else happening (we use bugger in the sense that caused Bob Hawke to talk of silly old buggers when obviously he was thinking of a vigorous term for Gerard Henderson), let's turn to Stephen Fry for a little light relief.

Fry gets a few things wrong (no links, all caps):

He doesn't understand that former chairman Rudd is just as much a creepy Christian as Abbott, with a creepy Bob Katter-loving homophobic sister in the closet, but he does understand drama and spectacle in a way that piece of work Gerard Henderson doesn't. And that's the thing that's going to stick in conservative craws for a long, long time.

Gillard will go - all politicians must pass - but she delivered a spectacular barns-storming speech that will mark and scar Abbott for life.

Henderson can only dream of doing such a thing but Fry can celebrate it: