Fresh to you from the least trusted newspaper in Australia ...

(Above: with thanks to the graphic artist at Mama Mia, here).

As the season wound down, it was time to visit the least trusted newspaper in Australia, the Terror, and cop a seasonal message:

Say what? The man who routinely scribbles bile etched in acid and has done more to spread fear and loathing than any other columnists in the land, is now blathering on about a time for love and joy?

It is, as usual, a bizarre and garbled piece, and as usual Akker Dakker can't help taking a swipe at the luvvies, and at Buddhism, and at the persecution of Christians, but sssh, no mention of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by a consideration of the persecution of children as revealed by the ongoing Royal Commission:

It would be easy, as some have raced to do, to blame religion and particularly Christianity for the wretched life he has endured, but it would be wrong to do so. 
The message Christians share is one of hope, whether they are being persecuted in another country or brutalised by someone professing to be a Christian here.

Actually the message Akker Dakker routinely shares is one of hate the greenies, hate the lefties, hate the luvvies, hate, hate, hate, so when he talks of the message of peace and joy spreading through the world, all the pond can do is snicker.

... though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, 
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, 
I am no prophet - and here's no great matter; 
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, 
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 
And in short, I was afraid.

It turns out that Akker Dakker's bizarre hate speech has attracted the attention of Lenore Taylor, in a fine piece Attacks on the ABC expose News Corp's hidden agenda:

For weeks News Corp papers have been running a barrage of opinion pieces, often several on a single day, alleging a lack of diversity in the opinions available at the ABC. 
The generally agreed thesis advanced by these opinion writers – most of whom live in Sydney and Melbourne – is that too many ABC opinion-makers live in Sydney and Melbourne, and that this contributes to their “green-left” worldview.
This “green-left” worldview, News Corp writers contend, contributes to “biased” reporting and political interviewing on the ABC and infuses its wider programming as well, including – according to Piers Akerman at least – the “weird feminism” evident in Peppa Pig and the “left sludge” he hears when he tunes in the Triple J. (Does Akerman really tune into Triple J?)

Peppa Pig? Yep, shit don't get weirder than that. Even the New Zealanders had a great laugh, as you can read in Peppa Pig: propaganda tool for weird feminists.

Yep for a brief moment Akker Dakker achieved international fame as a paranoid clown right up there with the worst clowns at Fox News.

Sadly no one alerted the Daily Mail, usually so adept at sniffing out lefties and feminists, and they hailed the stage tour as Oinking good fun!, and if you want more Akker Dakker porcine pleasures, just google him and Peppa, and you'll see he was a seven day social media wonder.

Never mind, once a senile paranoid fool, so they say, always a senile paranoid fool, but it was just one of a number of grists in Taylor's mill:

Bias is, by definition, in the eye of the beholder, but to my eye it’s more evident when I tune in to, say, Ray Hadley and hear him ask “questions” like this one during a conversation with prime minister Tony Abbott about how to handle the Palmer United party when the new Senate sits from next July: 
 ... and you’re going to have to be even better than you were at the beginning of the election. You won’t be taking my advice and saying listen Clive, stick it up your jumper. You’ll have to be even more diplomatic than you were in Indonesia.” 
 Or this one, in a television interview with Abbott by Andrew Bolt: 
 The attacks on you are astonishing. Have they forced you to change your media strategy, which until a week or two ago was to say little and let your deeds speak for themselves?”

Well played Ms Taylor, but did you really listen to Ray Hadley and watch the Bolter, or sensibly just settle for the transcripts at the PM's site?

If the former, the pond fears for your mind and your soul, though we need brave hearts to report from the front line. Sadly, the pond has to confess to being a coward skulking in the bunker. We'd no more listen to Hadley or watch the Bolter than fly to a moon made of green cheese and feminist cartoon pigs ...

By story's end, Taylor had confessed to enjoying the five episodes of the ABC's music talent quest, Exhumed, a cheerful celebration of regionally based talent, which was studiously ignored by the Sydney and Melbourne based hacks in News Corp ...

So what other Xmas messages does the Terror have to offer? Yep, the Pellists are back at the top of the digital splash:

Unfortunately, Blessed are the grandparents is full of a suppurating, festering, mawkish sentimentality which presents grandparents as a covert source of propaganda and superstition:

A 2006 study found that grandparents who attend church regularly significantly increase the likelihood of a child becoming a regular churchgoer in adulthood. 
In the beautiful words of Pope Francis, grandparents and the elderly "are those who carry history, who carry doctrine, who carry the faith and give it to us as an inheritance. They are like a good vintage wine who have this strength from within to give us a noble heritage."

Indeed. The pond fondly remembers one grandmother as the carrier of peppermints rather than plonk, and as a singularly superstitious soul who regularly read tea leaves and explained how the hoot of an owl in the bush foretold of a death in the morning ... no wonder Pellist devotees of superstition and their own version of a Ponzi scheme loves the grannies ...

And if that wasn't enough, also top of the digital splash was the skulking Greg Hunt.

The pond was astonished to see the man come out of his cave, but then the presumption he would stay hidden contained within it a presumption he has a sense of shame.

Even the lizards at the reptile Oz were forced to note the covert way Minister Hunt announced approval for the Galilee Basin Clive Palmer project:

Environment Minister Greg Hunt's department published a notification on its website yesterday showing the environmental impact statement of Mr Palmer's Waratah Coal as "approved with conditions". Mr Hunt did not release a statement. 
While Mr Palmer sits in the House of Representatives as the sole representative of his Palmer United Party, he will yield significantly more influence next year, when his party could control the balance of power in the Senate. (here, paywall affected)

30 million tonnes of coal a year, yet Hunt didn't have the guts to front his approval, just dumped it on the website ... because he knows with a stroke of the pen, he's become the sell out king of the year, and perhaps there is a lingering sense of shame.

Yet here he is with more front than Melbourne Myers, rabbiting on just a few days later in the Terror:

It turns out that Hunt is a bear of very little brain, and the entirety of ALP Grinch steals families' Christmas bonus is about how the ALP has ruined everything, including Christmas.

How long does the new government expect to get away with this routine?

The pond looks forward to Hunt explaining how dumping 30 million tonnes of coal a year into the international market is going to be offset and redeemed by his new-fangled ERF.

Erf erf, as the performing seal said to the dolphin ... and keep looking for that notification on the department website. It might well arrive before the twelfth of never, or it might not.

Whenever the pond contemplates Hunt, who surely is still in the race with Christopher Pyne and Scott Morrison for the most flamboyantly and publicly inept minister of the first year in the Abbott government, words like stooge and sell-out come to mind first, but then on reflection, bear with little brain seems to cover it, especially if mentioned in tandem with a capacity for much huffing and puffing, and much jumping up and down in a bid to imply movement, when it's all about standing still.

Hunt will preside over the pissing of billions against the wall to solve the carbon matter, yet whatever is done domestically will be absolutely meaningless up against the efforts of Clive Palmer and the other coal miners, and yet Hunt has the cheek to call others grinches... and it'll be the taxpayers who will pay for Hunt's folly, and Abbott's willingness to gild the lily.

How is that the fault of the ALP? Please explain, Mr. Hunt, please explain ...

Is there any joy in this? Well at least the cartoonists had a fun time ...