The pond goes into a utopian post-Costello and Gra Gra dream ...

(Above: yes if you were in Tokyo, all this could be yours. Thanks to the correspondent who sent it to the pond).

The pond is always compelled, amazed and astonished at what people, sometimes ostensibly sensible business people, think other people will pay for.

The pond has already noted that the Daily Terror seems to think that they're on a winner, and that people will rush to pay for the thoughts of yesterday man Peter Costello, snap 'em up like hot cross buns or Ultraman clocks.

Look, they tried it on yesterday with their prize snatch from Fairfax:

But what do you know, if you google up the line, it turns out that the HUN has splashed the very same piece on the full to overflowing intertubes without a thought of charging for it, so the pond could read Bill Shorten is just a guy who gets things done.

Don't ask why subbies keep changing the headers - it's what they do, even if it doesn't make sense or its clear they don't have a clue.

Even worse, it turns out that Costello, clearly a hack in the making, a reptile on the move, borrowed his opening line from Neil Mitchell, as you can confirm by heading off to the transcript for 21st June 2013 here on Bill Shorten's very own page.

21st June! In this fast-moving world,  that's not so much conducting an autopsy as digging the corpse out of the ground to confirm it smells.

The astonished Costello is amazed that Shorten did the rat, as if somehow the Liberal side was entirely rat-free.

Now you can waste your time reading Costello's rant - or you can join the current chairman in eating the wax out of your ear, or picking your nose, or simply having a quick power nap.

They're all free, life-affirming activities. 

There's nothing new to see, and most people will move along, just to avoid the sight Costello doing the old political baseball routine, asserting that only the Labor party is perfidious and treacherous.

You know, "policy vacuum", unfettered ability, no real loyalty, yadda yadda. And never mind if Costello had mustered the ticker, maybe the Liberals wouldn't have trotted off like lambs to the slaughter way back when.

Instead you get this kind of mournful nonsense:

The old school of politics, which I used to belong to, thought it was all about policy and ideas. In a ballot I always thought it was relevant to know what a candidate's policy commitments were because it indicated what they might do - where they wanted to take the country.

Oh it's pitiful, pathetic stuff, especially as it suggests that way back when Costello chickened because he didn't have a clue where he wanted to take the country in the post-Howard era.

That sort of old school blather reminds the pond when it used to get up at 4 am to lick kitchen floor clean with tongue before heading down to work to do a full 25 hours at factory.

Towards the end of the piece, it sounds like the pious Costello is contrasting his own loyalty to that of everybody in the Labor party, when in reality everybody knows he simply was a gormless goose who lacked the ticker. 

Whatever you think of the Ruddster, he'll never die wondering, whereas one thing's absolutely certain: Costello will.

How it must still stick in the craw to know that he could have had the crown, could have tried for the preciousss, but was stared down, and backed away, like one of the lesser chooks in the barnyard of political life.

Even then, he could have still stayed in the ring, been a contender:

You remember that? This ain't your night. My night! I coulda taken the Ruddster apart. So what happens, he gets the title shot outdoors in the ball park ... and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palookaville writing for Murdoch! You should have looked out for me a little bit. You was my brudder, little Johnny, you should've taken care of me a little so I wouldn't have to take dives for short-end Murdoch money.

You saw some money. You got a good parliamentary pension. You'll never have to work again.

You don't understand, I could have had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a Murdoch bum, which is what I am, let's face it ...  It was you, little Johnny!

Poor Petey, so he settled for being a show reptile at the HUN.

Now deep down the pond doesn't mind any of this. People should have a second life after politics. Horses for courses and paddocks with lush green Murdoch cash for tired, worn out old hacks who in other crueller eras have been sent to the glue factory.

Run wild, run free and scribble as much as you like.

No, what gets the pond is that anyone thinks anyone should pay for this - and frankly the notion of paying for the thoughts of Bill Shorten, freely available on his website, or Paul Howes or anyone else in the game is equally risible and preposterous.

We've got hundreds of politicians in all the states and the federal sphere blathering away about this, that and the other, and the gab fest is filling the intertubes to breaking point, and there's absolutely no need to pay to read the thoughts of a man that gave the game away, and worse, is dull, tedious, boring and predictable in his writing. 

At least with Mark Latham, you get a decent spray of crazy talk, which sometimes, if the wind is blowing north by north west, turns really sharp and incisive ... (sssh, don't mention that the Ruddster's plan might have seen ML entrenched in the leadership).

In fact it's hard to think of many conservative political hacks who turn member of the commentariat with any sort of style. 

There's an air of stuffiness and solemnity in the writing, which always cranks up the hypocrisy, as if only survivors of the Liberal party roulette wheel are entitled to write sanctimonious righteous tosh about loyalty - say Abbott scribbling with a straight face about his loyalty to Turnbull. 

Contrariwise, it seems it's impossible for anyone in the Labor party to scribble about loyalty with a straight face.

Oh okay, both sides manage each day and generally keep a straight face.

In that sense, each day is a political miracle, but that's their business, they're in a very special branch of showbusiness where the skill is selling the backtracking, changing paths, lying, being devious, is part of the game. 

Naturally both sides are always on hand to harp and point out the slippage.

It's really tedious when one side - Costello - pretends all the virtue is on his side, and all the rottenn-ess of Denmark is on the other. That's when you know you're in the company of a first class hypocrite.

But what's astonishingly tedious - almost in your face offensive - is why on earth anyone would expect anyone pay for the privilege ... that's roughly equivalent to slipping Petey boy a meal in the club so everyone can cheer about the way he shafted Bill Shorten in print ...

These days the relentless news cycle tends to consist of 24/7 of tedious repetitious, only enlivened in the tabloids by reporting of some fresh shock horror disaster. 

The way out isn't to recycle politicians like Costello or Gra Gra Richardson, taking a break from checking his Swiss bank accounts. That just maintains the long established, research-based conclusion that journalists are down there with politicians, used car salesmen and real estate agents.

You want cash for comment? 

Well about some nice fresh balanced comment from people without an axe to grind? Is it news that Costello dislikes Shorten and vice versa? Only in Murdoch la la land, where the humblest day of your life turns out to have been the most crossed fingers hypocritical day of your life ...

Oh I know, I know. It's completely hopeless, a useless utopian dream, but where's the harm in dreaming ...