(Above: the Bolter and Robert Manne ... as fresh as 2008. More First Dog here)
Now where were we?
Oh yes, Ten is stuffed - this last Sunday, its main channel was 10.1% to the ABC's 11.8%, and the network only had only a narrow win by counting in all its multichannels to get to 15.6% and a .5% lead over the bureaucrats.
Oh and the albatross around Ten's Sunday neck continued to do its job:
Insiders: 163,000 / 96,000 / 50,000
The Bolt Report: 115,000 / 68,000 (here)
Go albatross.
On the upside the Bolter at least cracked 100k, and loomed as a serious threat to Little Ted's Big Adventure, which struggled to reach 168,000, 5 city metro, on ABC2.
Damn you ABC, damn you and your children's programming to hell ... and damn you Barrie Cassiday, you deserve another thrashing from George Brandis ...
What else?
Well prattling Polonius has marked time this week, with a standard bit of stodge and alarmism about the fiendish, evil, devilish greenies and their deviant influence on the Labor party, as you can read in Future for Labor is hit and myth alongside Greens, if you've got absolutely nothing to do with your life and your time.
Hendo really is a one note Johnny, and he keeps banging the one drum with feverish monotony. Even the most dreary drummer introduces occasional variation into the drum kit, reaches for the triangle, gong, tom tom, cowbells and good old tubular bells.
Not Hendo, not when he can repeat himself endlessly. How many times has he conjured up this tired, predictable contrast between the inner-city and the 'burbs?
It would be foolish to predict that, under Shorten's leadership, Labor has no hope. Yet Shorten Labor clearly has serious policy difficulties. They mainly turn on the policy legacy of the Greens-Labor alliance: namely, carbon pricing and asylum seekers.
The latter issue presents obvious predicaments since it brings into play Labor's diverse base. There are the inner-city working professionals, many of whom are dependent (directly or indirectly) on government funding. Then there are those who live in the suburbs and regional areas, many of whom are in the private workforce or self-employed.
Now let's leave aside Hendo's inexcusable wording. Clearly he hasn't caught up on the memorandum from Liberal party HQ and Scott 'speaking in tongues, a spade is a spade' Morrison, and so he talks of asylum seekers, when really he should be speaking of "illegal maritime arrivals".
Frankly the use of "asylum seekers" almost makes Hendo sound like some craven, simple-minded greenie. Stiffen the sinews, remember the routine Hendo, keep that 'unlawful' chatter front and centre, and offer it up by way of vague generalisation and without any statistical or other evidence whatsoever. Remember, stereotyping is the way forward:
Myth two: people arriving in Australia by boat are fleeing persecution. Not necessarily so. The overwhelming majority of boats arriving in Australia unlawfully contain people who have made secondary movements. Many have travelled freely to Indonesia or Malaysia where they buy spaces on boats from people smugglers. Their immediate fear of persecution is no greater than that of established refugees waiting for placement in United Nations-run camps in Asia, Africa and elsewhere.
It ain't necessarily so! Secondary movements! Now there's a knock down argument. The filthy rich buggers are just a bunch of unlawfuls ...
When really everyone knows life is totally hunky dory in Sri Lanka, whatever those silly Canadians and their PM might think. Let that be a lesson to them, let them become "established refugees", because that's the sensible path for refugees, and let them not turn into these wretched desperate people, so desperate that they're willing to cross storm-tossed seas on leaky boats ...
Oops, sorry, the pond is starting to sound like one of those nasty, lofty, tedious, air-headed inner-city working professionals.
And just as Hendo always blathers on about them, how many times has the pond responded by noting that Hendo himself is one of them, beavering away in the heart of Sydney, and with his Sydney Institute entirely dependent on people wanting to yabber on endlessly about government ... with a bit of Captain Cook and twentieth century sex for variation ...
Move along folks, nothing new to see here.
For genuine shock, horror and exclusive outrage, we have to go Cater this morning, with the Nick in a total lather about outrageous news of the Australian War Memorial, as you can read in Word of God lives on unknown soldier's tomb in War Memorial, if you google to get around the paywall.
That bloody Brendan Nelson. He wasn't ever a true Liberal, was he?
It's hard to know what's more shocking - proposing ditching a reference to god, or replacing god with words taken from a Paul Keating speech.
The pond came all over flushed and fainting at the very thought of it.
The Australian War Memorial has abandoned a proposal to remove the words "known unto God" from the Tomb of the Australian Unknown Soldier after the personal intervention of Tony Abbott.
The memorial's governing council decided at its meeting in August to replace two inscriptions on the tomb at the Canberra memorial with words from a speech by Paul Keating.
The memorial's director, former Liberal Party leader Brendan Nelson, announced the changes in an unscripted National Press Club speech six weeks ago on a day when attention was focused on the swearing in of the new government.
And before you breathe easy fellow citizens, Dr Nelson continues to show an alarming respect for Paul Keating, an astonishing willingness to be bipartisan.
Sure he's backed down a little, but he's still fellow travelling. What an appalling wimp:
"The words 'known unto God' will remain precisely where they are and will not be touched."
The inscription at the southern end, however - "He symbolises all Australians who've died in war" - is on a bevelled edge of a stone surround to the grave that will be removed and replaced with identical stone bearing the words taken from Mr Keating's 1993 speech, with the new inscription reading: "He is one of them, and he is all of us."
Dr Nelson said the words from the speech were chosen after advice from a historian from the memorial. Before the change of heart, the reference to God was to have been replaced by these words from the opening of the speech: "We do not know this Australian's name, we never will."
Compromise has also been reached on a plan to display the full text of Mr Keating's speech on a brass plate inside the Hall of Memory where the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier lies. The plate will now be displayed outside the hall to the left of the entrance.
On and on Nelson rabbits:
Dr Nelson said his intention had been to give a sense of permanence to the key sentiments in Mr Keating's speech, which is already on display at Villers-Bretonneux in France.
"It was a towering eulogy and a great tribute not only to the unknown Australian soldier but to the Australian soldier," Dr Nelson told The Australian.
"Not only will it stand the test of time, it already has. On this occasion I think he did our nation proud. "But the end result is that 'known unto God" will remain precisely where it is. It will not be touched at all." Senator Ronaldson was not available for comment yesterday. It is understood the government's position on the compromise proposal has yet to be finalised.
Shocking. We'll hear more about this. Already the pond has adopted the guise of the Major from Fawlty Towers and penned several outraged letters to the editor, praising Nick Cater for performing a national service by drawing attention to the godless atheistic scheming and plotting of the lickspittle fellow travelling quisling Nelson.
Just think! What if we hadn't had Tony Abbott to right the ship, steer the course, save the day, re-form the square, un-jam the Gatling ...
Finally the pond would like to draw your attention to a bilious, retching, spewing piece by Alan Howe in Here are the questions Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger won't be asked.
Howe has an enormous chip on his shoulder, and what looks like a gigantic chunk of bile on his keyboard (google his name, perhaps with "journalist" attached, and you can have hours of reading pleasure - check out, for example, this effort recorded by Media Watch).
The piece is full of seething resentment, and Howe is clearly still brooding about past slights (why he was English and had worked at The Times for five years, how dare they ignore him) , and he hoes into The Guardian in fine style, never mind that right at this moment in England News Corp will yet again have its name dragged through the courts as a result of all sorts of bizarre activities approved from up on high ...
Happily you can always rely on the HUN for a good dose of sanctimonious, righteous, navel-gazing, self-esteeming claptrap, and Howe has done an exceptional job.
What most pleased the pond was Howe's opener, which no doubt he thought was a knock-down blow:
When asked once about the future of newspapers, the editor of London's The Guardian said it was beyond his control. He added that it was readers who would decide the fate of newspapers.
Readers have certainly decided the fate of his. Perhaps no modern editor has presided over such a vertiginous collapse in circulation as Alan Rusbridger, apparently a modest man and with much to be modest about.
He has edited The Guardian for 18 years and while his paper once showed signs of life, a decade-long lurch towards oblivion has seen it shed almost 52 per cent of its sales.
They really don't get it in Rupert la la land, do they. Here's Howe carrying on about tree-killer sales dropping, as if that's still the measure of anything, as remorselessly the world shifts to dropping hard copy and the delivery of everything online - save for those luddites who will treasure the newspaper experience in the way that some still treasure scratching LPs with a dropped needle ...
No wonder they maintain the rage about the NBN. They know something's up, but they're still not sure what it is ...
Howe is only trying to settle old scores, and he does it in such a naked, bitter way it's really only of interest for those who like to psychoanalyse the media, but it did remind the pond that Ken Auletta back at the start of the month had published a much more lengthy and interesting piece about The Guardian and Alan Rusbridger in The New Yorker, and you can read it here under the header Freedom of Information (outside the paywall for the moment).
Amongst other things, you'll find that The Guardian's online readership has tripled since 2009 and that two thirds of its online readers are now located outside the UK.
The Guardian has its troubles - covered by Auletta - but it is now a global brand, in much the same way as the Daily Mail, courtesy gossip and scandal, has become a huge presence on the intertubes.
That requires imagination.
What is most conspicuous about Howe's piece is the pile of lemons on view; what is most noticeable is a singular lack of imagination ...
Does the pond mind that The Guardian and other papers have been at the centre of the revelations of Edward Snowden, which have made life exceptionally tough for the United States and the Obama administration?
Not at all, not at all, and it's a much more interesting exercise in actual journalism than the efforts of the splenetic Alan Howe, or the ham-fisted spying beloved of the Murdoch empire...
(Below: and more David Rowe here).
Just as when I walk past the graffito in public places near where I live, I don't bother taking much notice of the graffito of Henderson, Cater and Howe. My peripheral vision may acknowledge that it is there, but otherwise their political activism is wasted upon me. However, the pond caused me to laugh out loud with reference to the words of Paul Keating being placed outside on the left side. I presume that when the Prime Minister and his minions enter the Hall of Memory, it will be all eyes right.
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