In which the humble foot soldier Caterists go on their mercenary way ...

To say that the pond was outraged by Crikey's talk of a holy war is an understatement ...

Even worse, there was only one crusader, the Major Mitchell himself, featured, alongside sundry shots of infidel victims ...

But what of the foot soldiers, the Landsknechte armed with their pikes, who turn up - for a shameless quid - to join battle, week in week out ...

Why aren't these mercenaries given their due?

Why isn't there a photo of the Caterists in that splash?

If anyone is going to feature in Australian journalism's most distasteful freak show, surely someone should have a kind word for a Caterist, along with a snap?

No! I am not the Major Mitchell nor was meant to be; 
Am an attendant lord, one that will do 
To swell a progress, scribble a column, start a scene or two, 
Advise the chairman; no doubt, an easy tool, 
Deferential, glad to be of use, 
Politic, cautious, and meticulous; 
No, actually as tedious as all get out;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; 
More than that, in stupidity quite profuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— 
Almost, at times, the Fool. 
I grow old ... I grow old ... 
And Caterists shall wear the bottoms of their trousers rolled.

Surely anyone worthy of a T. S. Eliot poem should have attention paid?

It doesn't actually matter what the foot soldier says or does. He'll turn up and bash away at the Labor party and pocket his taxpayer grant and all will be right amongst the crusaders ...

Indeed, indeed, what is wrong with getting people off Department of Finance grants and on to doing something more useful than joining the reptiles in their crusades?

Now it's true that the Caterists would rather keep on pocketing the grants rather than trying to solve the riddle and do something useful for the world, and it's worth bearing this in mind when attempting to plough through the latest Caterist exercise in straw dogs and tedium ...

Of course you won't find one word about the destructive effects of alcohol ... just jokes about funny fags ... but that's because the Caterists are shameless fuckwits of the mercenary kind, and always ready to blather on about dole junkies, while themselves addicted to certain kinds of intoxicating substances ...

By golly, that's addictive stuff, more intoxicating than crack cocaine ...

Now please don't mention that it's the business of panderers and fools to apologise for the alcohol industry and the owners of casinos and the suppliers of poker machines and horse racing with its churn of nags and all the other aberrant forms of rip-off that are legal ... the pond has heard it all before ...

The chances of getting an addict off Department of Finance grants is less than zero ... and no amount of mollycoddling is going to work ...

Now it's true that outsourcing funding of the Menzies Research Centre to the Department of Finance has robbed it of its dignity, and the power to control its corporate life, or better or worse ...

But that's why the pond hopes that Crikey pays due and proper attention to the suffering of the average mercenary foot soldier beavering away on the crusades, but every so often likely to stick his pike up his own malicious, nicely funded butt ...

And now, just to feel better, because things could be a lot worse, a few cartoons, with more TT here ...