In which the pond confesses to listening to the Bolter, does traffic flow research at Sydney airport, and joins the Terror in mourning the fate of all the rich westies who exploited a tax loophole ... because everyone's filthy rich in the Terror's western heartland and life is just so unfair ...

(Above: you might even call it a horse designed by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Bremer,  and more Moir here).

Time to 'fess up. Last night the pond did a very naughty, silly thing.

You see, the pond was doing its usual traffic flow research around Sydney airport, this time at peak pre-Easter 8 pm Thursday flow.

Incidentally, the results were exemplary and backed previous research, showing that replicability is no issue when it comes to the pond's findings.

Getting to and from the airport, without benefit of the likes of WestConnex, was easy. From O'Riordan Street on, it was hell in a handbasket, with near misses, advances by inches, much honking of horns, cars blocking intersections, much honking of horns, angry, desperate, hostile, sometimes vicious motorists ... and civilisation in ruins.

The pond felt a deep pity for taxi drivers forced to endure the system and the hapless punters trying to use the postage stamp-sized domestic free pick up space, though this didn't stop the pond from cutting off a few taxis, and sticking it to rival punters (hey, if you have to be a rat, be the king rat, and besides, the pond has a patented system for airport retrieval which will not be divulged here).

It was as good an example of a private sector business in charge of a public monopoly and not giving a flying fuck about its users as could be found anywhere in the world ...

But then came the naughty, silly thing. You see, for the first time in its motoring life, the pond hit the radio button that produced Steve Price and the Bolter inviting a flock of Christians to flock on to the air in praise of the lamb, and inter alia, since he's also a modest Messiah, the Bolter.

It was a love-in of the first water - one Christian even produced an old testament quote about those going to the left being profoundly dumb and those to the right being quite lordly, or words to that effect.

There was much talk of being nice and kind to people,  which was comical coming from two men who make their living out of braying as loudly as Father Brennan.

Oh sure, when some of the loons got deeply into miracles, the Bolter produced a most benign kind of agnosticism. You see, he really does want to believe, he does want to be converted, he's been to Israel a couple of times, and he found the little church on the hill so inspirational, almost miraculously miraculous ...

The tone was a little disrupted when an ad for Ben Fordham came on, and he started shouting at people and urging them to talk the abusive walk, and stand up or stand down, and bring it on, and bring your dukes with you, and an advertisement for a free visit to a crematorium, which suggested the sort of demographic the Bolter was pandering to ...

There was no mention of the way the Bolter makes his living in his day job, which is shouting at and abusing people, Fordham style, distilling and flogging essence of hate ... and naturally no mention that the Bolter and his employer had been done over that very day for yet another piece of defamation, as recorded in the ABC here and Fairfax here.

Of course it only took the pond a minute or two to find the full Bolter defamatory piece on the full to overflowing interubes - it was much loved in India - but never mind, Fairfax thoughtfully reprinted the key aspect of the defamation.

Never mind, naturally there was no mention that a born-again Christian might have contributed to the current woes in the middle west and elsewhere with a thoroughly useless crusade in Iraq in 2003, which resulted in a premature declaration of victory, and endless unintended consequences still spreading around the world ... though there was some talk about Islamics and their god, as if somehow the Abrahamic tradition had suddenly invented a different kind of Santa Claus and the Islamics hadn't cleverly shoved Jesus into the key text as a prophet...

Instead, it was all sweetness and Christian light, and by the time that splendid suck, the Bolter, had decamped with his fey agnosticism, the pond was still trapped in the mire of the airport.

But we've come up with a grand plan to sort it all out, Mike Baird. Give us a call - the solution should really appeal to your No Land Tax mob, and billions can flow into the private sector in a handsome boondoggle way ...

Meanwhile, as you'd expect this long weekend, the god botherers are out in force, and this time it's Simon Smart offering up some piety:

Asked to elaborate by host Tony Jones, Hitchens continued, "[It's dangerous] because it alters the whole of human behaviour and all our responsibilities. It turns the universe from meaningless chaos into a designed place in which there is justice and there is hope and therefore we all have the duty to discover the nature of that justice and work towards that hope." 
Hitchens was echoing C.S. Lewis who himself became, reluctantly at first, convinced that Jesus is in fact who he said he was – God in the flesh. Lewis once wrote that "Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important." In other words, if the event that 2 billion people across the globe celebrate this weekend didn't happen, the growing number of Australians who seem unconvinced are right to ignore it. But if it did, it's nothing less than the mysterious key that ultimately makes sense of all our struggles, longings, fears and hopes. (here at Fairfax).

Yep, never mind that in Kenya right at this very moment barking mad Islamics are busy turning the universe into meaningless chaos, while next week, there's good odds some crazed Christians will be doing the same in a 'legitimate' war, and meanwhile butter wouldn't melt in the Cheshire cat grin of the treacly Bolter's mouth ...

Instead the god botherers are now celebrating the way that religion is front and centre of the political debate.

Religion must really be important, what with crusaders v. Islamics featuring routinely in the news, and thousands of innocent bystanders butchered ... (yes, for its sins, the pond RN lapsed and listened to Andrew West and Tim Shah gloating about the resurgence of god in Rumours of God's death have been greatly exaggerated, when it might have been headed, Rumours of deaths at the hands of rabid fundie supporters of their god have been woefully under-estimated by religionistas who don't much mind, provided everyone's talking about religion and ignoring secularism).

It's a funny old world, no doubt about it, but every so often, the pond also steps back to admire a genuinely breath-taking act of secular insolence, and as usual these days, it's the Daily Terror wot done it.

The Terror has delivered a howl of pain, a cry of indignation and horror:

Hmm, so who should the Coalition target?

Who would be the right people to have a go at?

Let's read on to see if there are any clues:

Ah, the pond is starting to get it.

A tax loophole by the Howard-Costello government! Any attempt to remedy said loophole an outrageous bit of socialism!

It would be absolutely wrong to target the rich, those who can afford it, those who are living in clover!

Why, how far would a cool million get you these days? Talk about suffering!

Yep, there's absolutely only one way forward. Punish the poor and the weak and the helpless, those who can least afford any reduction in the pension, while rewarding the well off and the rich for exploiting a loophole.

There's knockdown fairness for you, as Humpty Dumpty might have said, in Murdoch Terror la la land.

And what always bemuses the pond is that you can still see silly old farts with a copy of the Terror in hand, wasting their pension money on a rag intending to do them harm ... save the money, you spendthrifts, you're going to need it sometime soon ...

Right now, it seems the Terror is agin everything. There's the fat owl of the remove, ponce and poseur, and self-confessed cocaine user, doing his thing:

 And there's Sally Loane joining in the chorus:

But it's Easter, a time to relax and take it easy and watch the shop assistants and restaurant workers work around the clock for nothing in this lucky land ... or soon enough, when they'll be grateful for a tip to keep them in their luxurious lifestyle. The pond always dreamed of marrying an affluent barista, rich beyond the pond's wildest dreams ...

So let's switch on a movie and take it easy.

What's that you say? The intertubes is broken, the fraudband is exposed, the Netflix effect is roughly equivalent to the Bourne dilemma ...?

So it seems if you head off to Fairfax here, but you know what, the pond is secretly, if perversely pleased, that everything the pond has scribbled over the years about fraudband now seems to be coming to pass ...

Oh sure, there's the rabid denialists who rabbit on about first world problems ... until they subscribe ...

Just don't come whining to the pond ... give big Mal a call instead ...

Finally, one of the blights of pond life is the presence of the local version of the Graudian, which means that these days the pond rarely remembers to look at life in Britain.

But it's easy to reach Bell and Rowson in the British version, and life is heating up in the far west, what with an election coming on, and Prince Charles' letters, and the cartoonists are as feisty as ever.

Ah Charlie, future king of Oz, always the pond darling.

Prince Charles 'burns 1.3 tons of carbon' in private helicopter after urging public to turn off lights for Earth Hour

What Prince Charles Has in Common With Hilary Clinton (currently outside the New Yorker paywall).

Here's the place to go, and here's a couple of reminder samples:

In