In which the pond joins the dog botherer in a most excellent taxpayer funded junket ...

Talk about a bust and a bummer ...

First there's that click bait trolling notion that the dog botherer is turning out to do a Brutus for the ABC.

Then there's the story itself, though the pond has to admit it's a very familiar story, and if a socialist like George Orwell is good enough for a remarkable climate scientist like Andrew Hastie, then he's good enough for the pond ...

Yes, it's a familiar enough phenomenon, and this day it seems that the dog botherer has joined the junketeers in style, with only the thinnest connection to the ostensible point of his column, which supposedly features an intrepid dog botherer watching the ABC media watching the media, and - in a post-reflexive, post-ironic way - giving those media watching watchers a jolly good thrashing with a decent cane (a stick is allowed for those who can't afford a cane or a handsome, nicely oiled Christian Brothers supplied leather strap ...)

Instead, we score this sort of idle blather from a junket ...

Well you can see the anger and the bitterness and the tragedy of a failed, failing, flailing business model right there.

Why on earth would anyone want to spend money on digital products that sends the dog botherer zooming off to look down from the 46th floor. 

Hold on a tic, a sec, a heartbeat ...did he pay his own way? Who funded the delegation of Australian media types? Who put Greg Sheridan in charge?

Well you won't find any of that in the dog botherer's report, and you won't find the financial details in the Australian Embassy's bit of puffery here ...

And you have to dig around in the bowels of sundry reports in the lizard Oz to discover any mention of the way that group of senior editors was sponsored by the Australia Indonesia Institute ...

And the Australia Indonesia Institute is funded by ... the Australian government ... and one of the board members is ... Greg Sheridan ... foreign editor, The Australian newspaper ...

Yes, it's all here ... and little Timmeh Bleagh making a joke about being on the dole was the capper, a real zinger, since it would have been much cleverer if he'd made mention of the reptiles of Oz business plan, which in this instance is supping on the government teat and growing bloated on the milk ... no doubt to give them the Caterist strength to moan and whine about big wasteful government.

But speaking of little Timmie - oh the pond knows it's a hot day in March thanks to the Timmeh v. Timmie feud - which is why we've used both forms to assuage the rival parties - teh Timmeh is in fine form this day ...

Yes, it's all the fault of the Democrats, and not the barking mad supporters of Trump that infest little Timmeh's comments section in droves, strident echoes of their barking mad American equivalents, the brave, bold lad having encouraged sundry forms of loonacy for many a year ...

But stay, it wouldn't be a proper tour of duty if we didn't finish off the dog botherer, cut off in the middle of his prime junket ...

Oh the pond apologises, it was a complete waste of time and a complete waste of taxpayer money.

Agile, innovative, disruption, most exciting time, yadda yadda, pivot, feedback loop, dog botherer and other Murdochians not getting the attention  they deservesin Indonesia ...

Did we mention the ambassador? Fine chap, damn fine man, jolly good fellow, harumph, harumph ...

And yet here's a journalist - supposedly scribbling for a leading newspaper and turning up on a key television platform - musing about how to reach word of mouth ...

It shows just how distant, alienated, remote and navel fluff gazing wretched the reptiles have become ...

It's worse than a bunker, it's like they're living in some remote mountain eerie and only come down every so often to stroll amongst common people and wonder what strange tongue they're speaking ...

Thankfully there's an artist's impression of that mountain retreat, not so much the 46th floor, as the 46th mountain, where reptiles might gather together and piss taxpayers' money against the wall on a handsome junket, while wondering what word of mouth the common animal herd might be speaking ...

Actually, it's word of mouth is about junkets and hypocrisy and the difficulty of picking the farmers from the pigs when it comes to spending taxpayers' money ... (what's the bet that final banquet at the farm came from a government-funded institute?)

Oh okay, the pond only flung in little Timmeh and teh Donald so we could run a Rowe cartoon, and more excellent Rowe here.