In which the pond springs to attention for Moorice ...

The reptiles have been in fine form of late, seizing on any passing ethnic to help spread FUD, presumably on the basis that leftists are sensitive to ethnicity and no-one would dare call out a bunch of barking mad fundamentalist Xians when they discover they're Chinese ... except that a few stories down, the reptiles shot this notion in the foot ...

Sorry, Chinese Xians good, nationalist Chinese bad ...

Meanwhile, the Oz editorialist seems to have been at a loss for words ...

For want of a better word? 

How about "many Australians have already expressed an opinion - in a totally useless and very expensive survey - by filling out forms, at least when they haven't been scattered to the wind by the postie or the local hound ..."

Sheesh, and there was the pond thinking you needed to swallow a dictionary to be an Oz editorialist.

Meanwhile, the Terrorists seem to have adopted the same strategy sensitivity with the Islamics embarking on a jihad ... crusade if you will ...

But this is hardly news. Anyone with the slightest interest in reptiles knows that barking mad fundamentalist Catholics of the Devine kind have a lot in common with barking mad Islamic fundamentalists, and that allegedly agnostic types like the Bolter have exactly the same kind of fanaticism that a jihad warrior requires ...

There were a couple of excellent examples out and about in the Terror today ...

Just as the terrorist or a fundie jihadist requires the oxygen of newspaper publicity to pander to the narcissist ego, so does the arm-breaker and the Donald ... and as for Caroline Marcus, why she'd be perfectly at home chanting bigotry in some temple somewhere ...

But while all this is fun, the pond has urgent business elsewhere. 

Whenever Moorice speaks, the pond jumps to attention, clears the decks and sweeps detritus aside ... and it's hard to imagine bigger detritus than the arm-breaker and Marcus ...

Oh okay, the pond can pause to commend Caroline Overington ...

Sorry, after Media Watch last night, wouldn't it have been better to scribble a confessional "Hideous assault on Rebel Wilson"? 

We keed, we keed, and besides, Moorice has spoken and attention must be paid ...it's carrot-planting season ...

Excellent, Moorice is back, and he's scribbling about his first love, and the topic he's internationally famous for, as one of the greatest, if not the actual greatest, climate scientist to have ever walked the earth ...

Now this plunged the pond into a fainting fit. 

No doubt this was a local conspiracy of fraudulent climate scientists lurking in the BOM, and the keen-eyed Moorice had scored a palpable hit, but did an argument about a few suspect readings undermine the work of climate scientists and observations conducted around the world, and empirical evidence painstakingly collected by an army of scientists?

Wouldn't tinfoil hat paranoia demand that an international conspiracy be involved, perhaps even a cunning plan by the United Nations to use climate science to introduce world government?

The pond is glad you asked that, because naturally Moorice quickly leapt from the local to the world stage ...

Indeed, indeed, one way or another, the truth will out and the international conspiracy, conducted on a vast and astonishing scale, will be revealed by the intrepid Moorice, doing what comes naturally to the world's greatest climate scientist...

And now, urgent business having been conducted, please allow the pond to revert to the Oz editorialist ...

One of the most piquant things about the current very expensive and thoroughly useless postal survey - for want of a better word, an expression of opinion rather than a vote - which might have been done by a pollster for vastly less expensive, or done by parliamentarians doing what they're paid to do, which is legislate - is the way that members of the government have berated the government for urging expressers of opinion (in other contexts, known as voters) to buy a pig in a poke, because, you know, religious freedoms ...

In short, these members of the government are saying that the government is incompetent ... now see how the lightly tripping Oz editorialist dances and skips around a deeply entrenched bigotry ...

Indeed, indeed ... now note how the reptiles quickly move from this to moaning "won't someone think of the bigoted fundamentalist Catholics and Islamics?" 

And celebrating the noble work of the onion muncher and little Johnny ...

(More David here).

As usual, the Oz editorialist manages to perform the feat with a singularly nauseating kind of self-congratulation ...

It holds a strong predisposition towards personal liberty and responsibility?

The pond can sense the Oz editorialist building to a hoppy toad billy goat butt of a very big butt kind ...

"We cannot endorse such a proposal sight unseen."

And so the fundamentalist Oz editorialist joins the fundamentalist Jihadists and the fundamentalist Catholics, in calling for a "no" vote, or at the least abstaining ...

It's finally become clear, and the excuse, pace the singular incompetence of Malware, in the process berating the government for incompetence and double-dealing, in the same way that members of the government have berated the government for incompetence and double-dealing ...

And every day the pond wonders how it ended up down the rabbit hole with Alice and a bunch of loony, repulsive negative reptiles ...

The pond can't imagine how anyone slightly interested in a "yes" vote can reconcile this with supporting the reptiles as they thrash around in search of a sustainable business model, which involves, it turns out, coal, climate denialism, a fucked broadband, and siding with fundamentalist Catholics and Islamics ...

Is there a solution? Well Wilcox came up with a few ideas, with more Wilcox here ...