The Sydney Sunday Pond, coming at ya proudly independent, and fondue set in hand ...

Sheesh, just as the pond thought it had its re-branding spot on, hunky dory, a-ok, cooking with gas, on the ball, peachy keen and ready to teach the Fairfax mob a lesson for their new branding ... it was the pond's cheeky, probing question "Are You?" that made all the difference to the Fairfaxians' feeble effort ...

 ... along comes a correspondent to suggest that the slogan first did the rounds back when The Independent launched in the UK in 1986, and the Pond and the Fairfax mob might be guilty of plagiarism!

The bloody cheek, the sheer insufferable implausibility of such a proposal.

It's quite clear the pond and the Fairfax mob can be proudly independent, independent of whatever The Independent might conjure up. Even if the original did make it into the 125 lines in the Advertising Slogan Hall of Fame ...

Now let's see what astonishingly trivial beat up we can feature on the front page today?

Oh wait, that's the mendacious Murdochians doing a beat-up which brings the whole notion of newspapers into disrespect.

So what do the Fairfaxians do?

Why, they print a denial, after the gate has been opened and the horse has bolted, and the slur out there in the world:

Now the Ruddster might have deserved a take-down for the pompous way that he decided to pose as a statesman by suspending his campaign for a briefing on Syria.

But the Sunday Terror confirms that it is truly a vicious, vile rag, and after the election is done and dusted, the pond swears it will never touch a Murdoch product, not even as cocky liner.

There are plenty of precedents:

(more here)

Neither the statesman posing nor the take-down hold water for more than a nano-second.

Rudd cops a briefing on the situation on Syria?

Then what?

The Ruddster organises a unilateral bombing on Assad's presidential palace in Damascus, wave after wave of vengeful, munitions-laden F111s, brought out from mothballs for a momentous Maggie moment?

Or he and Abbott tug their respective forelocks and wait to be told what to think by the United States, or perhaps Rupert Murdoch ...?

The Ruddster had time for an entree, a meal and desserts with Annabel Crabb exploring French cuisine, and then a follow-up program celebrating Indian curries.

But the fuss did remind the pond of its particular dislike for Crabb's show. It's everything that's wrong with the modern ABC and modern "personalised" personality politics, with politicians hopping into bed with passing journalists in possession of a camera and prime time exposure ...

Who gives a flying fuck about what politicians cook or what they eat?

Crabb started life as an ambitious journalist on the move, and now she's little better than decorative pixie dust titillating the clap happy management with her humanising ways ...

But back to the Terror and the HUN. Here's what online readers copped:

(no links, screen caps, the pond is over linking to the mud in the gutter)

Sophistry mixed with mendacity and pedantry, intended to disguise the bloody viciousness of the effort, as the crawling creepy things listen to their master's voice and do his dirty business.

The point of course is in that bottom line - it's all about the damage the mendacious Murdochians can keep doing to Rudd in the west, by whatever scurrilous means possible, and what better than the Sunday Terror, which still has a presence in the west.

Did they bother to hold the presses to note how Tony Abbott failed to solve the world's problems before trotting off to share a menu and a pose with Annabel Crabb?

Of course not.

But if you wanted any confirmation why these days newspapers shouldn't be used in the toilet - too coarse, too vulgar and too soiled even before being torn into convenient sizes - and watch out for the red backs - then surely this is it.

As for the insufferably twee Annabel Crabb and her insufferable cooking show, there, see what you've done.

Look at you, look at what you've become. You call yourself a political commentator?

Call that a website?

You look like a prawn cocktail from the 1950s:

You see you can't be a respectable journalist and dress yourself up like this ...

... while being a craven facilitator and lickspittle humaniser of, and fellow traveller with, politicians anxious to get a free kick or a soft pass or an easy touch on your show.

Christopher bloody Pyne! Take a look at yourself, take a grip ...

It should be a matter of pride, it should at least be a matter of independence, which is where we came in, the proudly independent pond and the imitative Fairfaxians ...

But it does help to explain why the ABC is a vast reservoir of gormless, useless conservatism and ambulance chasing journalism, and why it is the very last place we can expect to find diligent investigative journalists, beavering away on matters like Ashbygate ...

Instead we get the relentless trivialisation of politics, and in this the ABC is as criminal as the Sunday Terror ....

Ah well, at least it means the proudly independent pond - are you? - feels free to publish the photo below, currently doing the Facebook rounds.

It features Garry Spencer, Liberal for Isaacs.

You really need to click on it to get the full size vision splendid, but congratulations to the photographer - we don't know who it is but we loves ya, yes we gives ya a big Marrickville mauler hug - for seizing on a perfect existential moment of time, which says everything and more about the wretched Australian press, the current political campaign, the useless Ruddster and the appalling Abbott, and above all Annabel Crabb and 1950s dreamings of picket fences and Swiss fondues ... (or was that the 1970s? It's the drugs, your honour, the drugs ...)

Never mind, talk about a field of dreams ...