When the delusional go in search of ongoing relevance ...

What's fascinating about the Comeback Kid, or if you will, the Northern Beaches Whiteanter, or perhaps the Bullshark of North Shore Blather, isn't the way the Fairfaxians pay, at every point, due respect to every sighting of the shark outside the net, swimming free and wild, as in Tony Abbott issues GST warning to Malcolm Turnbull (with forced video ) ...

It isn't even the sniping comments below the Fairfax piece, which are to be expected, since everyone knows that the Fairfaxians are satanists, or possibly anti-Christs and so are home to every form of wickedness and evil ...

It certainly isn't the actual text available at The Spectator, click baiting way with Abbott's coyly titled Australian diary ..., with verbiage of irreducible and highly defensive banality ...

This is what passes in Abbott land for wit, and the resemblance to former Chairman Rudd's sense of humour becomes more marked by the day:

Some months back, head of government duties meant that I had to decline an invitation to give the Thatcher lecture in London to commemorate one of Britain’s greatest ever prime ministers. Some weeks ago, noticing that I had more time on my hands, the organisers renewed their invitation. I was very pleased to accept.

Could it get even more pathetic, once past the obligatory defence of the London speech?

Indeed it could, name dropping and then pretending the Warringah Termite  has much in common with David Cameron:

While in Britain, I caught up with Sir Michael Hintze, perhaps the most successful Australian businessman in London; Alexander Downer, who’s hugely enjoying a second stint of public service; Rupert Murdoch, who arguably has had more impact on the wider world than any other living Australian; Tony Blair, by far British Labour’s most electorally successful prime minister; and Prime Minister David Cameron who’s still savouring his against-the-polls win in this year’s election, assisted by our very own strategist Lynton Crosby. 
In Australia, Cameron is mostly portrayed as the conservative who supports gay marriage and takes climate change seriously but his real strength has been successful social and economic reform. So far, his government has transformed education by, in effect, privatising public schools; tackled the culture of welfare by ensuring that people are always better off in work than out of it; and halved the deficit inherited from Labour. His election victory depended on the relentless campaign contrast of order under the conservatives versus chaos under Labour. Yet his government’s latest measure to rein in spending – reducing tax credits for the low income workers while increasing the minimum wage – has been rejected in the House of Lords. It shows how carefully even politically ascendant conservatives have to tread. 

Indeed, and what a splendid elision over gay marriage and climate science, and then came the subtle advice to Malware:

Prime Minister Cameron is looking forward to meeting his new Australian counterpart. As a potential reformer, Malcolm Turnbull has the advantage of being relatively unbound by previous commitments but still faces the problem of how to deal with the ‘no one can be worse off’ mindset that makes serious reform so hard. Changing the tax burden from income to spending makes sense but only if overall taxes become lower, simpler and fairer. The real challenge, in Australia as in Britain, is how responsibly to spend less on short-term consumption and more on long-term investment in infrastructure and national security. How, in short, can government best foster the economic growth that makes everything else so much easier? That always makes for a good conversation between conservative leaders.

Now all this is entertaining enough, if you don't mind grave-robbing and molesting corpses and other activities involving people who have yet to come to terms with their passing, but what was intriguing was that at the time the pond dropped in to spectate at The Spectator, there were just six comments at a site where you might have expected a few friendly types to lurk:

No doubt when the word is out, a few will try to rally around the flag ... perhaps Cory and Erica can get their staff to drop in some positive feedback.

But there's the rub.

A man struggling with his irrelevance shouldn't put himself through this kind of humiliation.

If that's the best he can get as a response at a locale where he might have expected a little tea and sympathy, better to slink into the night and wait a few years until the wounds are a little less raw for all concerned ...