The back flipping little endian is back in town ...

(Above: who is that boof head thug sitting at the back of the bus?)

It is, of course, a key skill in the dark art of politics to be able to turn on a dime.

To argue that white is black, and then triumphantly announce that black is indeed white. To prove conclusively that eating from the big end of the egg is a horror of conspicuous consumption, to celebrate the fiscal responsibility of eating from the small end of the egg, and then to sit down and pronounce delicious the yolk yanked from the big end of the egg ...

And so on and on, everyone knows these tales of political hypocrisy, everyone knows that Tony Abbott is an opportunist of the first water, who has assured the world he might be trusted if he's put a policy in print, but even then it's by no means certain.

And what of poodle Pyne?

Why it's like shooting fish in a barrel, as Crikey did yesterday by quoting from the coalition's most succulent egg yolk talk of Gonski:

Christopher Pyne, May 20: ''I think he [NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell] has been conned. I think NSW has signed up to a very bad deal ... Now that they have the opportunity to see the budget in all its black and whitedness [sic], it's quite clear that the government is cutting education for the next four years." Pyne, May 22: "But if NSW and the three Labor states are the only ones that have signed on we will certainly not be having ... a student resource standard model for four states and a socio-economic status model for the other four states." 
Pyne, July 3: "There is more chaos, and more confusion, from a Labor government that is reeling from constant change and uncertainty." 
Pyne, July 25: "Operating six different bilateral funding models is unworkable for any government in the long term, so we will work with the states and sector over 12 months to come up with a realistic and affordable alternative."

And so on and on, what with everybody now on a unity ticket and the Gonski conski now a Pyneski ...

The hold out states have an angle that gets them out of jail. Offer them a florin, perhaps even two and sixpence, see if you can hold them to one and threepence, and then they can bray about how they were only holding out for a better deal, and now they have one ...

But there's absolutely no excuse for Abbott or for Pyne, who have spent month after month denouncing Gonski.

And what of the commentariat, who valiantly stood in front, beside and behind them? Did they suddenly wake up in the morning and discover that the wasteful, useless, excessive, extravagant model of educational funding had suddenly become a useful policy they could embrace?

Where's Kevin Donnelly when he's needed?

It was left to Justine Ferrari to put the best gloss on it for the reptiles at the lizard Oz, and here's how she did it:

Tony Abbott unveiled his own PNG-style solution yesterday. 
As Kevin Rudd adapted one of the Coalition's policies for dealing with asylum-seekers turning up in boats, the Opposition Leader adopted the same basic position as Labor on school funding in an attempt to checkmate the federal government on the issue. 
Abbott's announcement was about politics, not policy; the school funding reforms were an electoral boon for Labor and the debate had become mired in the money, casting the Coalition as the bad guys withholding dollars from schoolchildren. (Opposition must firm up its funding scheme, behind the paywall because the piece is stupefyingly shallow)

Yes Abbott is only doing a PNG Ruddster to educationj, so that makes it alright then.

But here's the rub. The pond, and the world, has had to endure poodle Pyne smirking, and smugly grinning, and snidely deriding Gonski for many months, and no one told him to stop then, and now no one in the commentariat is putting pepper up his nose, smacking his bottom with a newspaper and telling him sternly to stop it, to go outside, before he drives us all mad with his scratching and his whining ...

Because the commentariat should suffer the same treatment, and perhaps should be made to do it, if not in the dog litter, then certainly on a newspaper out in the laundry ...

When the pond thinks of all the hours wasted, of the reams of digital ink pissed against the intertubes wall (it comes in boxes like paper), it's enough to bring back all those nightmares about destroying the NBN, until the better idea of wrecking it with copper came into tech lunkhead Abbott's peculiarly perverse brain.

Oh yes, here's how you do it, here's how you eat crow, here's how you suck it up, as shown by the editorialist at the lizard Oz:

TonyAbbott's attempt to neutralise education as an issue by committing the Coalition to Labor's funding reforms for four years was smart politics. At its core, the Gonski proposal was fair and sensible. 

Say what? Sensible? Smart politics? It's a fucking pathetic backflip of the worst kind ...

The Opposition Leader also made the right policy call in promising to dismantle the powers of the federal education minister to interfere in the management of individual schools. That has been a major sticking point with several states and also raised concerns in the non-government school sector. (Money can't buy school quality)

And as for that management bit, how dare any secular government insist that creationism has no place in science classes ...

And yet the editorialist continues to toe the old coalition line, that money can't buy school quality, apparently not realising that they've signed up to a unity ticket ...

It's days like these that the pond realises that to ask for consistency and coherence, rather than inchoate cheerleading, is simply too much to ask of the ideologues now installed at the lizard Oz.

Never mind, today you have other choices. There's the pompous Paul Kelly, carrying on his usual way, and Greg Sheridan assuring us all that the PNG solution is a quick political fix, which presumably is completely unlike the quick political fix of Abbott embracing the conski, and then there's iron man Chris Kenny having a go at Abbott for being too timid!

Happily today we can forget Kenny celebrating the backflipper, and chastising him from the iron man right and demanding blood - let there be blood -  in Abbott cautious, consultative and considerate, but intervention still rules (inside the paywall in the same way you need to store radioactive materials in a vitrified glass)

... because today true connoisseurs, true gourmets have a chance to ingest a Nick Cater fix.

Oh it starts in splendid fashion, with the clumsy header UK Labour luminary Maurice Glasman unimpressed by ALP's efforts, as Cater goes about the business of assisting the killer tobacco industry and its lickspittle supporters at the IPA:

Passing legislation designed to make cigarette packets look hideous is not what the Labor Party was put on earth to do, says Maurice Glasman, one of British Labour's leading thinkers. 
Over coffee, on a recent visit to Sydney, he looks at a packet with disdain before asking permission to light up.

No, no, we don't mind if you're a pathetic addicted junkie, hooked on the weed.

Feel free to light up, second thoughts, if you're packing a needle full of heroin, why not just shoot that up, while we sit and watch? Perhaps we could share needles, in much the same way that we'll be sharing your second hand smoke, you wretched self-serving junkie ... you Baron Glasman of Stoke Newington ...

As for the rest, it's completely predictable:

Armed with the results of 3000 face-to-face interviews, Glasman believes he has a handle on what middle Britain really cares about: old-fashioned, human values he feels modern progressives have treated with disdain.

Yes, the old-fashioned human values of being able to puff cigarette smoke in someone else's face, presumably because his puff is precious, being a Labor life peer in the House of Lords. A fucking Lord, lording it over the world ...

Now you might find something of an irony in Glasman and Cater sitting around, sipping on their coffees (let's hope the barista got the flavour just right), denouncing elites:

Trade unions, once the bridge between Labour and the working class, had been captured by the progressive elite they once kept in check.

This from a lordly Lord and a well-paid hack, given the approval of the Murdocracy, the very model of the modern form of Gilbert and Sullivan elites. And predictably having named these nameless elites, it goes from there:

Unfashionably, he sees religious communities as potential allies in the Labour cause. Glasman comes from a Jewish family but works closely with another leading Labour reformer, the Catholic Jon Cruddas. 
"We want to break the idea that we don't have things in common and try to establish areas where we do - wages, work, family and place," he says. "The common good is negotiated. It's not a progressive idea where you begin with the conclusion." 

This is deep Labor thinking? As opposed to gibberish? Why it's not a patch on "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the conclusion which is not a conclusive ending ..." Or whatever it was that Churchill said about the desert campaign.

But speaking of Churchill, surely there's room for a dash of jingoism:

He is not afraid of nationalism - or patriotism, as he prefers to call it. "There is a lot to be proud of about being English, great traditions. We kept liberty alive. Patriotism is just a concern for the country you live in, and the people you live with have a priority. And I'm with that, putting your own people first."

Oh yes, that's deep. In the good old days, it used to be fuck you Jack, I'm okay, I'm a life peer in the Lords ...

Above all, he sees Labour's task as restoring trust in institutions, including government. 
 "There's a massive disconnect; there has been a decline in trust." 

No really, could that be because politicians think its fine to blow second hand smoke into people's faces? Or is it merely because Tony Abbott does more backflips than an Olympic diver?

Now how about you piss on the locals, Glasman, in the proud way traditional English visitors manage in their colonialist offensive way, and have managed these past several centuries?

Unlike other oversees speakers, Glasman has no qualms about buying in to the local political debate. 
I mention the Australian Labor government's proud boast of managing to pass hundreds of pieces of legislation in defiance of a hung parliament. Glasman is unimpressed and comments that Blair and his successor Gordon Brown fell into the same trap. 
 "It's done us no favours. So we need to be less obsessed with legislation and more concerned with the quality and strength of democracy. Legislation in not the be-all and end-all of socialism. It's about relationships, it's about solidarity. It's about honest work."

That's right, piss on Julia Gillard, you stuck-up Lordish junkie Pom, and now why don't you just piss off home, and take that bloody Tony Abbott and Nick Cater with you ...

Get back to negotiating with the far-right English Defence League for a better English future, and halting all immigration and banning the right of free movement of labour, and while you're at it, have another read of Exclusive: the end of Blue Labour as you puff your way down under  ...

Oh dear, the pond is mad as hell today, and buggered if it's going to take it.

Perhaps the mood will pass ... perhaps a coffee will do the trick.

Or maybe just a simple backflip ... and an egg eaten from the little end ...

(Below: yes, we're living in it)