In which the east coast is alive with the wittering sounds of the twitterati ...

(Above: and the rest of that First Dog cartoon here).

So the reptile of Oz war on the Twitterati claimed its first victim, what with candidate Andrew Hastie picking up the chant and blathering about the "east coast twitterati" (AFR here), which, with the greatest respect, establishes him as a profoundly stupid echo chamber.

Of course we know where it's coming from: Canning byelection: Andrew Hastie rattled over 'local jibes', and the poor lad has had to take one for the PM.

Now the pond doesn't mind the east coast bit. It always brings a tear of nostalgia to the eye.

While living in Adelaide - after an early life in the Tamworth parochial mindset - the pond was astonished to discover bizarre talk of the east coast and how it ruined everything. And visits to Perth established that the east coast actually began in Adelaide, which formed a triangle of evil with Sydney and Melbourne. And then there are the other divisions, between Sydney and Melbourne, St. Kilda and Fitzroy, the mighty inner west which stops at Ashfield, and has nothing to do with big Mal's turf in the eastern suburbs where rich dragons live, and the threatening toad land to the north, and the dangers of anything below the Berrimah line ...

And so on and so forth, and yes, there's no reason for a federal politician not to exploit these arbitrary, meaningless and immensely stupid paranoias, because that's what conservative politicians with very little brain routinely do ...

But it was the luddite addition, with pike and twist, of twitterati to the standard "beware the east coasters" routine that marked out Hastie as an exceptional candidate for sharing a fizzy kool aid sherbet or two with the reptiles.

Naturally the twitterati jumped on the remark, and some took the chance to berate the parochialism of the joke:

Pundits noted that suddenly #eastcoasttwitterati was spawned and already the jokes were beginning to flow ...

Frankly the pond can't get enough of paranoid luddite stupidity, but there really should be an addition to that Liberal Party Policy Creation Matrix - "Read the reptiles of Oz, and soak up the latest shrill attack on the bête noire du jour, and if it happens to be Twitter, just roll with it."

When will the reptiles of Oz lose their fear of the intertubes and Twitter and such like things? Well, given they see it as the reason they have a failing business model, trying to sell dead trees to kids with eyeballs on mobile devices, it could take a long, long time. And being luddites, they don't seem to have heard of the fate of the original luddites or of King Canute ...

But enough of this, because it's the pond's duty to check out a reptile du jour, and today it's a pleasure to visit Niki Savva, who has clearly been deep in her kool aid cups, and today has a shocking hangover.

The occasion is a birthday party, but what a downer it seems to have been for poor Ms Savva. She spins a tale of relentless gloom and woe, which strangely and perversely, the pond found tremendously uplifting, engaging and energising - a most peculiar phenomenon when you consider that the Billistas will also benefit.

And what a ripper illustration too!

Oh dear, this is probably the wrong time to suggest a little zen to Mr Abbott, but the pond will do it anyway:

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. 
Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted! (and more zen for abbotts here).

How sweet it tasted, and how sweet the Savva read.

We can forgive her absurd claim that Abbott was a capable long serving cabinet minister with hints of competence during the Howard years, when really he was kept around as a vicious attack dog, so that any day of the week Howard could say "Arthur, unleash the hound".

Never mind, please, do go on. How goes it in the west, how breaks the dawn and the light?

Yep, according to Savva, the man peddling aged, hoary lines about the east coast is "so good" ...

Presumably this is because he had the wit to attach "twitterati" to the "fear the east coasters" tag, and make it fresh and new, and so set quite the right tone for the reptiles in their Surry Hills bunker on the east coast.

And how agreeable to learn what Julie Bishop was thinking and saying in cabinet on Monday, not that the pond regards cabinet solidarity as an issue, since the more leaking the better, the pond says ...

But please do go on. Is there any hope at all?

Well Ms Savva does produce a slagging off of the mediocrity of the Billistas - who can argue with that? - but there at the end comes the bitterest, saddest, more in sorrow and despair line of all...

 ... but their own inadequacies ...

Yep, Abbott wasn't much of a health minister, and not just for those who can remember back past the kool aid haze to women mounting a campaign to remove his veto.

Check out  this quick survey at The Conversation of a period of resolute do nothingness for a reminder of Abbott's days as a mediocre minister ... and don't forget the Hobart hospital affair ...

And then Peter principle kicked in, and he got promoted to a position where nattering negativity was never going to be enough ...

And so we come to that graph, found at Fairfax here, and all the current chortling that Greece - yes, Greece, the much put upon, routinely trotted out warning where we would all be if the Billistas were running the show - is doing better at growth than the empire of the King of the lizards:

Take that Canada, Japan, Brazil and New Zealand!

What's left, but a double bunger of Pope and Rowe, and you can catch more great Papal follies here - he really has to be Mad Max bizarre these days to capture the surreal world of Canberra - or row your boat down into the gutter with the immensely talented Rowe here.