Scary? What's happening to Bulga is scary ...

Indeed, indeed.

And where's the literacy?

Dear sweet long absent lord, Don Riddell, if he's still around, must be in the grip of a severe fainting fit ...

Heads would have rolled in the days when The Advertiser was a genuinely conservative rag, with a style guide and a pickle or two in the plum mouth for this sort of breach of the rules ...

Why in those days, when making comparisons, one never said "like" but always "such as" ...

But at least it explains why there are no jobs. Who'd want to employ grammar dunces?

Enough already, and now to get the pond under way for a bludging Monday for some, the pond would like to report on a shocking legal action.

It is understood the legal action was launched after Jones and Mr Buckingham did not accede to demands they each pay Mr Stoner a six-figure sum. 
In four broadcasts on radio 2GB in June, Jones attacked Mr Stoner as "dumb as a plank of wood" and accused him of describing a group of anti-coal seam gas protesters at Bentley on the NSW north coast, as "professional bludgers". 
Jones also labelled Mr Stoner a "gutless wonder" and an "intellectual incompetent". 
On August 29, Jones interviewed Mr Buckingham in relation to the Shenhua coal mine in the Liverpool Plains. 
Mr Buckingham said "the first thing Andrew Stoner did ... when he came into government was to facilitate one of the biggest coal mines in the heart of the Liverpool Plains, Shenhua". 
He accused Mr Stoner of "undermining his constituency, the farmers". 
They also discussed evidence before the Independent Commission Against Corruption about the former mining mogul Nathan Tinkler. 
ICAC heard allegations that in 2010 and 2011 then NSW Labor government ministers Eric Roozendaal and Joe Tripodi had taken steps to help Mr Tinkler secure approval for a coal loader in the Newcastle suburb of Mayfield. 
"Lots of money flowed from Nathan Tinkler and his interests to the National Party and after they got into government Andrew Stoner and [another Nationals MP] did the bidding of Nathan Tinkler," Mr Buckingham said. 
"They kept in train the process that Joe Tripodi and Eric Roozendaal set in place." 
In his statement of claim Mr Stoner says the broadcasts conveyed Mr Stoner was not fit to be NSW Nationals leader or Deputy Premier and that he favoured miners over the welfare of the community. It says Mr Buckingham had imputed that Mr Stoner "acted corruptly in promoting the coal interests of Nathan Tinkler as a payoff for donations to the [National] party". Mr Stoner says the imputations are false. 
However Mr Buckingham told Fairfax Media the legal action was "designed to try to intimidate the Greens and others from criticising the National Party's failure to stop coal mining on the best farming country in Australia" just weeks out from an election. 
Mr Stoner, who is not recontesting his seat of Oxley at the March 28 election, said the legal action "is being pursued by me through my lawyers as a private citizen, not as a member of the government, which I will cease to be prior to any court hearing".

Now it should be noted that the pond is merely reporting what the Sydney Morning Herald has reported here.

In no way can it be construed that the pond endorses any comparison of Mr Stoner to the dumbness of a plank of wood.

Besides, the pond is deeply concerned at any defamation action that might be undertaken by said plank, or perhaps planks in a class action concerned about idle abuse of planks. And who knows what action gutless wonders of the world might take? That's if they had any guts ...

Meanwhile, in other news from the Hunter Valley, the sweet little hamlet of Bulga is about to be devoured by a coal mine:

The NSW Planning Assessment Commission, an independent body set up to approve major developments, has advised the Baird government to consider “relocating” the entire village of Bulga and its 350 residents, in the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW, to make way for a coal mine. 
It’s the last stage of a five-year battle that has seen the NSW government work hand-in-glove with Rio Tinto to get its Mount-Thorley Warkworth Mine expansion approved. (New Matilda here).

Next up? The Liverpool plains ...

These days driving through the tragic remnants of the Hunter valley reminds the pond of that poem by Poe:

Over the Mountains 
Of the barren bleak brutalised Moon, 
Down the Valley of the coal-stained Shadow, 
Ride, boldly ride,” 
The shade replied, — 
“If you seek for Coaldorado!” (apologies to Poe, the real poem here).

It's a funny old world when the pond and the parrot run the same line of outrage ... and the party of the cockies actively conspires to destroy the land of the cockies ... along with the Liberal and the Labor parties, both in the thrall of coal ...

Meanwhile, the reptiles have gone quiet.

With winter approaching, and an autumnal glow sending them off to sleep on their hot rock, the action has shifted to beltway politics, and who better to lead the front page with that sort of beltway chatter than The Canberra Times?

The Fairfaxians chart what happens when a Prime Minister swears many times that he won't buckle, and then confronted by Jacqui Lambie and others, buckles like a Melbourne train line in the summer heat.

Uh huh. So where's the gotcha moment?

Well here it is:

"What we're advised is that the APS [Australian Public Service] data … was the most comparable data and that advice was provided by the Australian Public Service Commission, so we're relying upon that advice," he said. 
But The Canberra Times can reveal that the commission advised the government twice that it should not compare ADF pay rises coming from the either the ADF Remuneration Tribunal or bargaining processes with movements in median pay rates. 
It is also understood that the commission advised at least one minister's office in November and again before Wednesday's announcement that the picture was even more complex after ADF pay system was structurally reformed in 2007 and 2008, resulting in significant salary increase for many personnel.

There's more here, though naturally everyone's gone to water and there's more 'no comments' than the many 'climate scientists' on hand in Murdoch papers to explain climate science is crap.

But the pond is pleased that at least one paper has noted the contradictions and enormous stupidities involved in Abbott's half-baked back flip, and policy reversal.

Finally, the pond, as always obliged to tackle the strange world of the commentariat, notes that, as part of the propping up of the incompetent, back flipping Abbott, the right wing reptiles have begun a united assault on zinger Bill.

Now it should be noted pre-emptively that the pond can't stand zinger Bill - it might have something to do with the pond's tribal connections and Shorten's Melburnian right faction Catholic conservative PM assassin behaviour (read his profile by Jane Cadzow, Eyes on the prize: would-be PM Bill Shorten and you might garner a few clues as to why Shorten comes up short for the pond, and not just in the matter of height).

So he's an easy target, and that's why both the Bolter and Paul "magic water" Sheehan can be found blazing away this morning.

But this is equivalent to shooting a fish in a barrel, and is inordinately dull and predictable, so instead the pond was intrigued by this very scary top of the page effort by the reptiles:

Oh scary, very very scary.

But why are these greenies so scary?

That's right, the greenies work in the private sector, send their children to private schools, aren't short of a quid, and perhaps worst of all, drive Audis, as opposed to a decent Beamer or a Merc.

Why, they're wet Liberals, with bad taste in modestly expensive cars...

Talk about scary! Why they might even fall for big Mal.

Shockingly scary. They earn wads of cash, they're tertiary educated and a lot of them work in the private sector. Like wet Libs, with social consciences ...

No wonder the pond reeled away, startled and frightened.

Fancy having a social conscience.

Why it's better just to bulldoze Bulga with a cheery wave and a smile ...

So what's the funnies thing about this reptiles of Oz story? Well it's all told from the point of view of the Labor party.

But there are simpler reasons to explain why the Labor party is on the nose in the inner west of Sydney.

For years, it was assumed by the Labor party that the inner west would just sit still and cop it.  It was a fiefdom, and like all fiefdoms, it was treated at best with indifference, and worst with contempt.

Improve Newtown railway station so that the disadvantaged might be able to access the railway station platforms? Sure, it only took a couple of decades, and with Macdonaldtown and Stanmore downgraded as a bonus ...

And so on, since the pond has neither the time nor the lawyers to recount the looting and rorting of the council system by Labor party affiliated property developers ...

And the lawyers are easily deployed, as noted by the pond when recounting that story of CSG, in which prominent Sydney Labor party identities can be seen playing plum roles in the looting and the pillaging ...

Last time around, the greenies bizarrely ran an elderly white gentleman in the local area. This time they're running a much more suitably positioned candidate.

So the new seat will be a close run thing. But it's not because the new greenies are scary, it's because both the major parties are perceived as being useless. And that's a message that should be taken on board as much by the Liberal party, busy at the moment driving all the wets out of its midst ...

There are, for example, enough young people in the inner west intelligent enough to understand that at some point they will grow old.

And what's being offered to them?

Well if they want a tertiary education, it will be an oppressive debt that will haunt them for decades, and then at the end of the line, a working life into their seventies ...

Which just so happens to cue David Rowe's cartoon for the day, and more Rowe here.