Ground control to major Caterists ... put that subsidised helmet on ...

Oh those wags at the Daily Terror with their photoshop ...

The pond, being addicted to marching to a different tune with the reptile commentariat, naturally confused yesterday's sad news with Ziggy says NBN faces challenge meeting 2020 completion target ...

No, no, not that Ziggy, nuke the suburbs Ziggy ...

But enough of conservatives doing cartwheels over a man they once deplored as a drug-addled weirdo, pervert and freak, because it's time, in these caring Murdochian tax-free times, to think about serious issues ...

The pond was drawn to this outing at the rarely visited ABC ...

Indeed, indeed, and it probably shouldn't be controversial that people share a belief in Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy and pixie dust, but what happens to people not in the grip of a mass delusion? You mean Muslims and Christians sharing the same delusion shouldn't be controversial?

Never mind, here's the real rub ...

Comments for this story are no longer available. ABC policy is to delete comments on stories three months after they are published.

Which made this passing strange ...

First posted yesterday at 12:18pm ... updated yesterday at 1:26 pm ...

Never mind, you'd think someone used to 24 news and fuck-ups 24/7/12 would be trained to expect such things, but there's the reason the pond rarely visits the ABC... what's the point of producing a witty Gervais line thanks to a glass or three of kool aid, only to see it turn to dust in three months time?

Meanwhile, over at reptile HQ, the conspiracy theorists are on a roll ...

No matter how others might point out Good story about MH370 gets a bit hysterical, let nothing stand between a reptile and a click-baiting good conspiracy theory EXCLUSIVE ... even if no one really has much of a clue what actually happened ...

But enough, because what we need is some sensitive sharing and caring, and as always, the caring, sharing Gary Johns is on hand to show how it's done ...

Nothing to do with me, nothing to see here, not in my back yard PUHlease, but can we just make sure they're all put on contraceptives, because there's too much breeding going on here,  and by all the wrong people ...

And happily for the world, today is Caterist day, with the Caterists furiously concerned about bludgers yet again ...

Sssh, please note that research institutes that score substantial sums of cash in the paw from government are always excluded, because how else could said indigent institutes, saddled with useless reptile cast-offs, survive and provide a decent living for the wretches kicked from their Murdochian home (ah Mumble, is it sic transit, will academia provide or does an institute call?)

And so to How will Labor deal with Menzies Research Centre welfare?

Now apart from the usual knock knock jokes - Q: How will Labor deal with welfare? A: Give more taxpayer subsidised support to the Menzies Research Centre ...

... and apart from the usual recourse to Piketty ...

At the American Economic Association conference this week, economists Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman, and Thomas Piketty released their preliminary research that uses a new analysis of tax, survey, and national accounts data. That’s more accurate, they say, than just looking at tax data, which misses huge chunks of the actual income people bring home. 
The new analysis disputes previous findings that the bottom 90 percent of Americans have seen a slight decline in income since the late 1970s. Instead, the economists say, their income actually increased slightly, by 0.7 percent annually. But the data still corroborates the story of increasing inequality between most Americans and the richest. The incomes of the wealthiest 10 percent grew faster than everyone since 1980, they found. Worse, incomes for the top 1 percent grew about four times as fast as the bottom 90 percent in the same time period. 
The data revealed other disturbing trends as well. Until 1980, income for the bottom 90 percent grew at the same pace as the rest of the economy. But after that point, incomes slowed down while the economy kept growing.

And so on and so forth, and more here ... and here ...

... the pond had to face up to the grim prospect of actually reading the Caterists explain why it's important to make sure other less fortunate people deserve no taxpayer subsidy - remembering of course that subsidy of the Menzies Research Centre repays itself a thousand fold with wondrous insights ...

There are days when the pond can barely repress a yawn, especially when the recipient of an unfeasibly large government subsidy clucks in Chicken Little style about the unfeasibly large level of of government spending ... and this was one of those days ...

For what it's worth, here's the rest of the guff, with a pond proposal for a splendid competition:

And so to the competition.

Who can explain, in a hundred words or more - probably much more, if a fan of the Caterist style - why a generous taxpayer subsidy to the Menzies Research Centre isn't a form of welfare, but rather is a way of affording a Caterist the dignity of work?

Welfare, to use the old cliche, means changing the world one life at a time, and so hundreds of thousands directed to the Menzies Research Centre have changed one life, and provided the reptiles with a generous flow of lizard copy, and what joy there is in that ...

As for the rest, one thing is true ... it will be a long time before we see a different form of rhetoric appearing in the reptilian tree-killers as income inequality is maintained and heavily subsidised right wing think tanks blossom in the dust ...