Off to Islamgton with the Caterists, but with a stop at Kristina Keneally's station ...

(Above: sorry Mr Pope, shouldn't that be Team West? And more of the usually infallible Pope here).

A lighter moment before the pond gets to weightier bits, because it didn't take long ...

There was Amanda Vanstone brooding about the handbag hit squad yesterday, in a rich paranoid fantasy regarding the persecution of Tony Abbott should he have been charged with rape ... roughly equivalent to Vanstone brooding about herself being charged with offensive speculation, though presumably she could get off the charge by producing evidence that she has not, now and in the past, ever used a handbag.

And so it came about today that the Fairfaxians deployed the word again:

But here's the thing - if you actually read the story, lured on by the click bait trolling - the pond isn't going to encourage the vice with a link - this is what you cop:

"Every night we are in conflict with at least 8-20 guests, who all feel they are being unfairly refused. We explain the laws in detail, however this has little effect, and regularly turns to conflict, sometimes physical." 
Mr Fraser said some patrons also became aggressive when they were stopped from re-entering the venue after 1.30am to collect jackets, handbags or lost property. Security staff now spend their time arguing with partygoers and fetching belongings rather than focussing on their key role of spotting intoxication, he said.

So the report mentions handbags, but also jackets or other property ...

Is the header dumping the blame on metrosexual men with too much affinity to handbags?

Oh you get the point, the header was put together by a dickhead hit squad ballsing up at a click bait angle ...

Meanwhile, it's strange how the talk of Star Chambers in NSW has dissipated, but that's because the blowtorch has turned once again on the Labor party, and who can argue with that.

The profound stench of corruption on both sides of the aisle in NSW has seen the pond stay inside for the arrival of spring, and no doubt the rotting flesh will be exposed again today.

The behaviour of the Liberal party, and its response to the naked abuse of the law has been singularly inept and pathetic, but one of the reasons they keep on getting away with it is the previous behaviour of the Labor party.

There was Kristina Keneally yesterday, all dungeon and high indignation and outrage, and carrying on like a pork chop about how shocked she was, but it takes only a few seconds of googling to land on this page:

The rest of that story is here, including:

The new Premier, who was handed the job by Mr Tripodi and Mr Obeid whose Right faction supported her, even defended their record of service to NSW. 
"Both of those members have served as ministers in different cabinets and both of those people have served their communities well," Ms Keneally said. 
"Joe is a very popular local member in his community." 
Mr Rees sought a change to party rules at last months' state Labor conference to get rid of Mr Tripodi from cabinet. 
Mr Obeid hit back last night, accusing Mr Rees of lying to "slander" him and Mr Tripodi because it was convenient.

Truth to tell, back in the days of the coup in 2009, such stories were a dime a dozen. The pond reserves a particular contempt to the facilitators and the quislings, including but not limited to Bob Carr and Keneally ...

At the least, Keneally was a fool, but yesterday we had the full performance, the righteous indignation and the frothing and the foaming ...

Broadside? Is that what they call bad acting these days?

There's a lot more of the same in that Fairfax story, here, but sadly the Keneally performance just happened to hit the stage five years too late, and long after Keneally had scored her reward getting the gig as Premier (presumably aided by a peg on her nose).

But enough already, because as everyone knows the pond might as well be railing about the corruption endemic in the rum-based colony of New South Wales since the original Rum rebellion...

But with Sparkles due in the box today, please spare the pond talk of Star Chambers, at least while the parade of crooks, liars and dissemblers continues ...

But stay, the pond's always more interested in comedy, and today's the day when the Caterists come out to play, and who knows, the teddy bears might also be having a picnic ...

Yes, he's off to a flying start there, with idle commentariat chatter about the "harmony industry".

It's about that moment, of course, eyeballs assaulted by verbal abuse, that the pond feels inclined to get out the handbag and give the Caterist balls a good whacking, while shouting "so you don't like fucking harmony, you dickhead, so how's that feel, you useless lover of violence and anarchy".

A rough approximation of the pond responding to the Caterists:

Ah yes, the handbag hit squad in action again ...

Naturally the Caterists have to tread carefully when it comes to multiculturalism. After all, Cater himself is an import, and the country is currently being run by a ten pound Pom of uncertain provenance and origin...

Oh dear, it looks like the Daily Mail is finally sniffing around the birther story doing the rounds here ...

But back to the Caterists, and it turns out that it's just another outing for a little sporty Islamic bashing, as the top of the page confirms:

Indeed, though perhaps others might prefer a heading that says barring tedious Pommie prats, Australia is doing fine as a multicultural society, but then the pond doesn't mind giving offence, or taking a gate ...

Actually if you can be bothered getting around the paywall to read Barring jihadis Australia is doing fine as a multicultural society, there are some rewards because Cater clearly doesn't get it.

Sure he spends a goodly amount of time slagging off the usual suspects in the usual IPA way, including the Ethnic Communities' Council of NSW, because they piss a million dollars against the wall helping maintain the social fabric. What a boring goody two shoes thing to do ... while the Caterists produce typically harmonic terms, like calling them "rainbow nation warriors", without it seems, having caught up on the meaning of "rainbow" in recent years ...

But abuse of the harmony industry aside, and the Caterists peculiar desire to hand the job of social cohesion to ASIO - what planet does he come from, on which planet does he live? - things started to warm up with the Caterists defence of Team Australia:

When you’ve spent the morning listening in on jihadi chitter-chatter, the questions at a press club luncheon must sound relatively harmless. Even so, one sensed an inaudible splutter from Irvine when one young journalist piped up at the far end of the table. 

He sensed an inaudible splutter? Why that's fucking mystic and awesome, but it helps explain why ASIO is on top of the game, talking directly to Cater through the aluminium foil hat. Now do go on:

“The talk of Team Australia,” a reporter ventured, “was that divisive by Tony Abbott?” 
Irvine paused for a moment and looked at his inquisitor sternly. “I don’t think it was,” he replied. 
The concept of national identity seems to have been lost somewhere along the way when a member of the fourth estate imagines that to be a reasonable question. 
It wasn’t as if Abbott had said Team Manly Sea Eagles or Team Sancta Mater Ecclesia. Team Australia is surely the one we all support. It is an expression of common purpose, comradeship and national pride.

Which shows that Cater doesn't have the first clue, at least about the old Australia that he routinely purports to understand and celebrate.

For this Cater needs to undertake some urgent lessons in history - Peter Weir's Gallipoli would be a good starting point. In that film, any la di dah talk of team playing and national pride was mocked by the larrikin spirit and by the emphasis on mateship.

The last thing you wanted was to sound like a Pommie general blathering on about common purpose, comradeship and national pride. Where's the fucking mateship in that?

Tanberg caught that spirit when all the recent talk of Team Australia was the go

Yes, that's the spirit, shove it up those monocled prats ... and Wilcox did the same ...

And Moir came up with a tidy riff:

And only today Tanberg showed it was a joke that keeps on giving:

In fact the ABC's Talking Pictures segment took the riff to a logical comedy conclusion:

(That segment here, the usual cartoon suspects here)

The Caterists also show they have a tin ear by recycling Alan Jones:

Australians agreed by consent some time ago that a racially discriminatory immigration policy was morally indefensible. The content of a person’s character cannot be judged by their religion any more than it can by the colour of their skin. Yet there is a widespread sentiment that Islam, or to be precise the ideology of Islamism, stretches the multicultural project too far. 
“We’ve had the Catholics, the Protestants, they’ve all come here,” Alan Jones told his listeners on 2GB last week, “but suddenly here is a set of immigrants that hate us.” 

Well yes in the sense of a caliphate, but no in terms of the general behaviour on view in Australia, with very few exceptions, despite much recent persecution and haranguing and selective kicking of the dog.

As anyone who was around at the time would know, there was, in the good old days, plenty of hate between Catholics and Protestants, and via the DLP, it tore the Labor party apart - and in earlier times, during the conscription debates in the first world war, it tore the country apart, with Mannix demonised. (You can catch a whiff of the religious wars in the ADB's bio of Mannix here).

It's the business of the chattering classes - Cater is a classic mindless chatterer - to re-write history and to forget, but it's not so easy if you remember the feuds arising from mixed marriages (which is to say Protestant and Catholic), and the relentless war that affected promotion and position (various government departments were captured, whether by Masons or Catholic).

Catholic dogs sitting on logs, eating maggots out of frogs … (the good old days remembered here and as it was before being imported, in The Independent here)

Most of it's gone now, thank the long absent lord for secular lifestyles, but the notion that there was no hate to go around in the 1950s and 1960s is as silly as suggesting that there is no residual hate for gays, of a kind which might see certain closeted radio shock jocks prefer to stay in the closet ...

But back to Cater:

It is a reasonable point. No doubt Jones will be accused of stirring up trouble but, as is almost always the case, he is merely reflecting the sentiments of his audience, which is large. 
“What are we supposed to do about it?” Jones asked. “I’m getting a lot of text messages and emails saying discriminatory immigration policy.” 
 We may disagree with Jones, but he is at least confronting the issue, unlike his mealy-mouthed counterparts who consider the matter too inflammatory to discuss.

Well actually no, any number of people are discussing religious matters and Islamic fundamentalist, but they're generally doing so without the jihadist, paranoid tone of the Murdoch press.

The fear of the other and the different is always with us, but the pond does try to keep its fear of Catholic and Protestant fundamentalists like the Pell trucking company and the angry Sydney Anglicans under control, along with the fear associated with all the other barking mad religions such as Islamic caliphate fundamentalism (it has to be said that Scientology poses a particular challenge).

The way the Murdoch press and the shock jocks and the blatherers about Team Australia are going about it suggests they almost want some loon to blow up something in Australia, just to justify a crack down and persecution of minorities. "There, we told you so", you can almost imagine them saying, now give us another term in power ...

Cater demonstrates the perfect way to be divisive and promote disharmony and maintain the rage:

Even the government’s anti-terrorism laws are now being described as divisive by the bien-pensant. Goodness knows why. The infiltration of a doctrine of hate and savagery is as much a threat to Australia’s 500,000 Muslims as it is to everyone else. 
We are in this fight together, united in the defence of the common Australian values that reward production rather than predation. By a stroke of good fortune, Australia inherited the idea of liberty and the rule of law from its British settlers. These are civil rather than ethnic principles, however, and Australians are only too happy to share them.

Bien-pensant? Good fortune in that a pack of Pommie bastards showed us how it was done?

It's at that point that the pond is inclined to have a knee jerk reaction. Oh just fuck off back to England you Pommie bastard and take your snide smart arse jibes about the bien-pensant with you.

Oh okay who gives a fuck. There are loons all around and one more loon doesn't make much of a difference, but is it too much to ask the Caterists that they write a little less offensive gibberish, and instead do something for the harmony industry? It would help the pond's blood pressure for starters...

You  see, the point remains. You can't have it both ways - you can't piss on people promoting harmony from a great height, while sowing seeds of bile yourself. And you shouldn't blather about Team Australia and the need for a national identity, while showing profound ignorance about some of the implications of that national identity... or next thing you know you might end up in the Battle of Brisbane ...

And above all you can't head out into the wilds of Sydney pretending that there are dragons out there, and expect to be taken seriously.

Which leads us surely to the very last word on little Timmeh Bleagh, as penned by First Dog, and with more First Dog here: