The pond speaks with a strong Australian accent about foreign voices ...

Stone the flaming crows and those pesky bloody lizards, it goes without saying that the pond only speaks with a bloody strong Australian accent.

You won't find any of that English-Spanish muck, but you'll find plenty of brine.

Gor blimey, there's no limeys here, or furriners, or dangerous imports like rabbits or abbotts or sparrows, always farting at the crack of dawn.

That's why the pond was so inspired by Tony Abbott's splendid remark:

We believe in a strong, home-grown policy. We believe in strong local candidates. That’s what you’ll always see from the Coalition under my leadership. We will always speak with a strong Australian accent.

Yep, you can catch it here, where even the News Ltd hack couldn't resist pointing out in a dot point that Abbott was born in the UK.

The remarks attracted the ire of one Aidan Wilson, who purported to be a linguist, and who bemoaned the notion that a person's accent might be considered in any relevant to their ability to govern (Abbott voices his opinion on accents and politics).

Clearly Mr Wilson utterly fails to understand the crucial role that infantile, childish, puerile, immature, petulant, contemptuous, contemptible flag-waving jingoism of the most parochial kind can play in federal politics in Australia.  (We would have thrown in adolescent, but frankly tween talk is a little too old for this kind of discourse ...)

It's the sort of peevish, capricious, incoherent cheap shot that reveals the essence of Abbott's bigotry, and naturally it won't be mentioned by anyone in the commentariat.

Still, it was inspirational, because the pond immediately realised that Andrew Bolt spoke with a Nederlands accent, while simpering along to his favourite operas and sipping on cheeky reds which amuse him with their presumption.

And the Murdoch press is run and owned by a man who speaks with a strong American accent, who wouldn't stand for a moment all this blather about home-grown policies, not when you can exchange your Australian citizenship for a bundle of cash.

But since the pond is now in full flight Abbottian xenophobia and paranoia mode, it has to be said that it's remarkable how full The Australian is of foreign - and even worse, British - voices.

Take Brendan O'Neill - come on ladies and gentlemen, someone must want him, he is for sale at hammer fall, and we'll accept any bids, will someone start me at sixpence - and his latest outburst in the lizard Oz, Catholic-bashers cavalier about facts (tucked behind the paywall so you can start saving your sixpences)

The pond has always looked at Brendan O'Neill with passing astonishment. Depending on the forum, he presents as a Marxist - as you can discover if you can be bothered reading Why it's now safe to say I love Marx.

But it's a most peculiar love, the love that really shouldn't bother scribbling its name:

As a Marxist, I should be delighted by Karl’s coming back to life, right? Actually, the frenzied fad for all things Marxist makes me uncomfortable. Because what it really points to is the hollowing out of Marxism, the transformation of Marxism from a genuinely revolutionary, rattling ideology which enthused millions of angry, often armed people into something so safe that the chattering classes can muse over it as they consume their muesli and their morning paper. The reason Marxism can become mainstream, the reason it can be tweeted about and turned into a t-shirt for middle-class yoof to wear, is because the thing which once made it so terrifying to the rulers of society and to all “decent” people has now disappeared: that is, the organised proletariat and the prospect of their carrying out a revolution.

Yes, he really is a tortured and confused and incoherent lad, with a serious case of envy (usually of people who can afford muesli).

When he's not presenting as a muesli-hating Marxist, scribbling furiously in morning papers about the readers of morning papers, he likes to present as an atheistic libertarian.

Except he spends an unseemly amount of time defending religion, and the Catholic church in particular,  writing such tosh as The Secular Inquisition. Again the holy texts are infused, saturated, with nostalgia for a never-was golden age:

The contemporary pope-hunting springs from a secularist movement which feels incapable of asserting a sense of purpose or meaning in any positive, human-centred way – as the great atheists of old such as Marx or Darwin might have done – and which instead can only assert itself negatively, in contrast to the ‘evil’ of religion, by posturing against the alleged wickedness of institutionalised faith. It is the inner emptiness, directionless and soullessness of contemporary secularism – in contrast to earlier, Enlightened and more positive secular movements – which has given birth to the bizarre clamour for the pope’s head.

This is, in the case of Darwin, meaningless gibberish of an ahistorical kind, and as for Marx, the pond has never felt much nostalgia for the outcome in the real world of his thought bubbles.

As for O'Neill himself, his rants are of course perversity for the sake of perversity, disagreeableness for the sake of being disagreeable, splenetic because O'Neill clearly has a troublesome spleen.

The pond takes a simpler view, which is that when you hear conservative thoughts expressed in a conservative way by a conservative voice which delights and enthrals conservatives, chances are you've come across a conservative. Or a duck. Or a conservative duck. Or Brendan O'Neill.

O"Neill specialises in what the pond loves to think of as "yes, but" arguments. In his latest outing, here's how it works - happily we get the opening par free as a hook:

This week, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny apologised to women who had been institutionalised in Magdalene laundries. He described these Catholic, nun-run institutions, in which 10,000 girls and women did unpaid labour between 1922 and 1996, as "a dark part of our history". 
 There's no doubt the laundries were unpleasant, filled with "fallen women" or petty criminals, who were made to wash sheets and do other laborious tasks for local businesses.

So there's the yes. Okay fallen dissolute corrupt criminal women were used as slave labour by the Catholic church ...

The billy goat "but" routine fills up the rest of the column. But it wasn't so bad, but it's been misrepresented, but the muesli-eaters are just out to abuse the church.

Because it turns out in O'Neill's world, the women were astonishingly happy.

Where once there was much talk of the Magdalene girls being slaves, the report found 35 per cent of women stayed in the laundries for less than three months and 60 per cent stayed less than a year. Many entered voluntarily.

Does this sound like a Marxist getting agitated about the exploitation of the proletariat?

Or more like a southern plantation owner remarking on how happy his slaves were working for board and bread?

Maybe the women were just lumpenproletariat, incapable of reaching the sublime level of class consciousness O'Neill routinely and miraculously reaches.

O'Neill next turns his attention to downplaying the level of child abuse in the church - lowering the statistics, or saying reliable statistics don't exist, before turning out this rousing conclusion:

Catholicism's shrill critics care little for trifling things such as "reliable statistics". 
They're more interested in painting as horrendous a picture of the church as possible, however impressionistic their daubing may be. 
We can only hope that the royal commission into Catholic child abuse in Australia will drum up some reliable statistics - though if the Irish, British and American experiences are anything to go by, even that probably won't quash the metropolitan elite's view of the Catholic Church as the most foul institution on earth. 
 If you point any of this out, as I did to The Independent about the "10,000 rapes", you risk being accused of apologism. 
 Objectivity and cool-headedness are frowned on by those who are really interested only in shrilly depicting the Catholic Church as a sordid rape factory. 
Which is ironic because Catholic-bashers frequently accuse the Catholic religion of promoting a childish narrative of good and evil that is immune to factual evidence, yet they do precisely the same.

Which is more than ironic because anyone interested in objectivity and cool-headedness wouldn't shrilly fling around words like shrilly, or "the metropolitan elite" or talk of a childish narrative of good and evil, when in fact O'Neill is always childishly posing a singular narrative - brave-hearted bold good and decent Brendan O'Neill risking charges to apologism to tackle deviant corrupt shrill metropolitan elites.

It's the most childish narrative of all, so tired and repeated so lamely and so often, without a hint of introspection or self-understanding, and O'Neill trots it out all the time, polishing and embellishing it, and in the process, becoming one of the ABC's pet conservatives, as well as The Australian's, and nobody much cares, because really it's just another shrill squawking conservative voice saying all the usual conservative things, pretending to diss religious institutions, and capitalist institutions, while spending an inordinate amount of time and space defending them.

If the Vatican ever goes looking for an English correspondent, surely they should consider O'Neill.

Meanwhile, speaking of confused Marxists, the pond caught an item by Guy Rundle about a crisis in the SWP in Britain, The End Of An Era For The Left?, and then spent an amazed, bemused and astonished couple of hours trawling through all the material that's been put up on the intertubes in the last few months.

You can easily gather it together by googling, but How Not to Handle a Rape Allegation: the Case of the SWP will give you plenty of links to key materials, and the story is still festering and bubbling along.

It's not just scientology that's a cult, and despite, or perhaps because of the seriousness of the subject, the pond was reminded of all the talk of splitters and schismatics in Life of Brian, but more importantly, the way that women are expected to make the revolutionary coffee while the revolutionary comrades go about their revolutionary business. And if physical or mental abuse comes with the coffee, why that's just part of breaking a few eggs in the cause of the revolution.

But hey, our subject today is foreign voices, so let's instead end with this fine spray by Guy Rundle at Geert Wilders.

The pond oscillates between a desire to ignore Wilders altogether - in the way that the mainstream media has taken to ignoring Lord Monckton, ten years too lat - or embarking on a rant.

No need now, not after Rundle's rant. It came by way of email, and it might be behind the Crikey paywall, but you should be able to find it here, and it's a ripper:

Our land isn’t Geert by sea. 
Every day in every way, Geert Wilders’ essential stupidity comes more clearly into view. Is it possible that News Limited is regretting its shameless boosterism of the man? His latest brilliant wheeze to convince us that Australia will be ‘Islamised’ by its 2% Muslim population is to call on the Anzac spirit.
“I believe Islam and freedom are incompatible, and I think we should be awake to this terrible ideology … and we lost track of what we really are and what we should be and what our grandparents, also in Australia with the Anzacs, what they fought and died for, to liberate Europe.”  Great choice. Take an event that most Australians see as meaningful because it expresses the futility and waste of war and the perfidy of the British, and try and sell it as a defensive attack in Islam. Forget the fact that the Ottoman empire was fighting on the side of Europe, i.e. Austria-Hungary and Germany, where some of your great-grandparents are from. Ignore the general Australian consensus that the Turks had never done anything to us, that the day symbolises the moment at which we stopped thinking of ourselves as an appendage of Europe, to be deployed at the behest of the English, and instead assume we could see no higher purpose worth dying for. 
Disregard the way in which Gallipoli has drawn us closer to Turkey and enhanced our understanding of the role it played in Turkish history. Don’t mention that the Turkish commander who kicked our arses was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the great secular moderniser of Turkey. Or that thousands of Australians meet and commemorate together with Turks every year at Gallipoli cove. Or that Anzac Parade in Canberra hosts the Ataturk memorial, with his extraordinary words of reconciliation: 
 “There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”

And Rundle's only just getting warmed up!

Throw in some bonus abuse of the Bolter'sand Wilders' heritage, and then an invitation to appear on Sterren Dansen, and there's one foreign voice sent packing.

Now to conclude, the pond must alert Mr. Abbott of a serious problem in relation to Australian accents. There are foreign deviants at work, attempting to undermine everything he stands for.

Double agents, involved in tricky business and passing off, industrial secrets and our precious voices seized, imitated and turned against us. Possibly in call centres, possibly in people you might meet on the street.

It undermines the whole Abbott project!

Yes, people are being trained to speak like the Tasmanian Devil, like a Warner Bros cartoon voiced by Mel Blanc and others, and if that isn't to your taste, why you can be trained to sound like Kylie, or Steve, or Thorpey or Mad Mel, or Tina or Natalie or Eric.

How will we know who to trust?

Is an Australian accent a genuine Australian accent? Is it safe? Oh for the love of the long absent lord, has the Liberal party been infiltrated by foreigners pretending to speak with an Australian accent? Is it safe?

Are actual native speakers betraying us at this very moment? And for very reasonable rates ...

Is this where Pommy bastards, like the ever so nice Mr. Abbott, learn their Australian accent?

The empty canvas ... saved by that nattering elitist of the chattering classes, Maurice Newman ...

(Above: how the pond occasionally feels. Show me the money!)


Sometimes the pond wakes in the middle of the night with an anxiety attack, uncertain about what tomorrow will bring.

Will there be someone, anyone, ready to step up to the plate, to hit the mark, to deliver the goods that deserve a place in these august pages?

Or will the pond be confronted by the horror that novelist Alberto Moravia once described as The Empty Canvas?

I know, I know, it's a silly neurosis. When has the long absent lord failed to provide, when has She fallen short, when has that ceaseless cornucopia known as the opinion pages of The Australian frefusd to deliver?

Come on down, Maurice Newman, hit us with your best shot:

What a most excellent and beguiling notion, and never mind the demeaning apostrophes.

A former chair of the ABC, which surely qualifies as some kind of intellectually elite position, lecturing us, or hectoring us about the lecturing and the hectoring we constantly endure from intellectual elites.

For those who came down in the last shower, Newman is a member of the stockbroking and investment banking elite. He was chair of the ASX, he was managing director and executive chair of Deutsche Bank Asia Pacific, and he has been an epic adviser to Australian governments, as well as serving as Chancellor of Macquarie University.

The pond can barely begin to cover and chart all of his elitist skills, so you can revert to his wiki here for more leet insights. He's the insider's insider, he's the elitist's preferred elitist, he is, to put it mildly, the quintessential elitist, an elitist of the very finest water.

So the use of the word "elites" began to sound like a dazzling example of reflexive post-modernist irony, as good as any doing the rounds, and the pond was immediately beguiled.

What for example were the odds that George Orwell would get a run?

Sure enough, if you click on All animals are equal, but some want to tell us what you can say, you get an Orwellian bazinga in the opening par.

Now of course first of all you'll have to get around The Australian's paywall - one of the features of being lectured to or hectored by, or badgered up hill and down dale, by the hectoring, lecturing, badgering intellectual elites that frequent the pages of the rag is that you have to pay to be abused. 

Fork over that gold bar, or the entrance is barred by a digital door bitch of fearsome appearance.

For free you get this blithe post-modernist, post-ironic assertion:

By deciding on allegory, George Orwell disarmingly presented his morality tale in a way that would most resonate with his readers. Orwell believed that people often see in abstract what they fail to grasp in the real world.

Which is an outrage when you think of it, because Newman starts off his column with a couple of choice pars from Animal Farm featuring that famous pig Napoleon. And yet here he is already asserting readers don't have a clue, though the header proposed that he was one of us, and fiendish others were telling us what we might or might not say.

Which is supremely funny, because it's really a short odds bet that Orwell, a life-long socialist and a disliker of bankers, and above all, a disliker of the jargon-inclined, people who throw around words like "intellectual elites" like a kind of shorthand confetti, would have hated Newman's column. 

After all, if the pond may be Orwellian for a moment, he noted in one essay, Politics and the English language, that 

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.

The pond absolutely refuses to follow Orwell's injunction, because the surest sign of a blatherer of wind, a man wanting to make Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt sound truthful, is the use of "intellectual elites" or "elites", most usually deployed by a member of said "elites".

Sure enough, with Newman, Orwell is merely an excuse for a rant, a rant of the most predictable kind, one that's been doing the rounds long before Colonel Blimp cartoons made mockery of it.

Here's that quote in full:

Like it or not, we are accustomed to being lectured to, or hectored, by intellectual elites. Our children are conditioned to believe their country's history is dark. It is commonplace to have iconic anniversaries such as Australia Day and Anzac Day demeaned as celebrations of violence.

Because of course Australia was terra nullius and was peacefully possessed by the peace-loving British, without any fuss at all, and Australia is a peace-loving nation, which has nonetheless managed to front up to almost any war doing the rounds in the last century or so. Got a Boer to bash? Mounting a crusade against mad Mullash? Give us a call.

But do go on, hit us with every verbal cliche and stereotype you can manage:

We are urged to celebrate diversity through multiculturalism but must repress feelings of outrage when recent arrivals show contempt for our way of life. We are often reminded that Christianity, the flag and the monarchy are cultural relics. Businessmen are portrayed as class enemies, to be reined in by more regulations and stiffer penalties. The green movement is lauded as our saviour for whom the rest of us must be reined in. The list is endless, but the narrative is consistent. Our values and traditions are sadly wanting and barely worth defending. 

Where to start with that list of sullen outrage? What would Orwell make of a phrase like "contempt for our way of life"? What would he make of the notion of a British flag in the Australian flag? What would he say about Prince Chuckie, the talking tampon, being culturally relevant to Australia today, as he steps up to the throne?

What would he make of Newman using him to defend values he routinely mocked? Would he be contemptuous of Newman's slack way of phrase-making? Is Newman's invocation of "class enemies" right up there as one of Orwell's well-worn phrases and lumps of verbal refuse?

But do go on:

As in Animal Farm, on multiple fronts, these shortcomings are driven home by so-called progressive intellectuals who manipulate the language to denigrate the established order and to present the utopia they would impose on us.

Yes you can laugh now, because in his day, Orwell would have been called a progressive intellectual. He would have resisted the charge but there's any number of examples of the Newmans of the day harumphing about his socialist ways.

But let's not stop there. Let the full flow of verbiage resound throughout the land:

Little wonder that in a recent Lowy Institute poll, 60 per cent of Australians are now indifferent to democracy while only 39 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds believe democracy is preferable to other forms of government. 
 One of the remaining obstacles to the full realisation of the intelligentsia's utopian dream is obedience. If critics can be controlled through propaganda and having the law narrowly define what speech is legal, we will arrive at their promised land more quickly. 

Ah, the intelligentsia and their utopian dream and their propaganda ways. Why odds on, they'll be Stalinists or Nazis or fascists in disguise, and they'll attack noble democrats, like shock jocks and rabid right wing ratbag demagogues:

As the concerted attacks last year on Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt illustrate, progress is being made. Indeed, so ferocious was the furore over Jones's insensitive remarks, that a broadcaster with a lesser following would have been shut down by opponents who don't even listen to him. The findings against Bolt were straight out of Orwell. It is a reminder that if laws are created to limit freedom of expression, they will be used.

What's straight out of Orwell is the notion that you can defend a journalist for being woefully inaccurate, and a shock jock for routinely being offensive. It was of course the chief defect of the Weimar republic that it tolerated the likes of Maurice Newman explaining how Adolf Hitler should be listened to because he had interesting points about the Jews to make.

Oops, okay, okay, here's ten shekels for the Godwin's Law swear jar, but that's really the half the point isn't it.

When confronted by this rhetorical humbuggery, which obscures the issues and covers up what actually happened in relation to Jones and Bolt and their egregious and offensive errors, the inclination is to join in the game, and be merely abusive.

Because no, the findings against Bolt weren't straight out of Orwell, they were straight out based on the reality that he'd fucked up in terms of facts. And no amount of Orwellian double-speak should be allowed to obscure that fact.

But let's not stand in the way of Newman ranting on and on and on and on:

Determined to increase its control over the media and using the News of the World controversy as a pretext, the federal government established the Finkelstein inquiry into the media's codes of practice. The inquiry found that regulation of Australia's news media was inconsistent, fragmented and ineffective, in part, the consequence of technological change. But it was also based on the Press Council's lament that it can't do its job properly. This begs the question of how wide its remit should be? 
 Finkelstein seemed concerned by the public's loss of trust in the media. But neither he nor any future regulator can effectively deal with this. When editors and journalists do not report fairly, cover up the truth, or advocate values at odds with their market, it is unsurprising that audiences switch off. Clearly there is a large unsatisfied demand for balance and truth and, sooner or later, this will be recognised by proprietors, investors and better journalist schools. In the meantime the internet will be the default, not government. 

So things are fucked in the media world - see the Murdoch press for abundant examples, and your only choice is to switch off, or start a blog on the intertubes?

It's an amazingly childish analysis for someone who can rightly claim a prestigious place in Australia's intellectual elites.

Running through the piece is a kind of hysterical paranoia about the government:

A key Finkelstein recommendation was to replace self-regulation with a government authority. This confidence in government suggests that freedom of speech was not paramount in his deliberations. 
 The government's determination to control our lives did not stop at a media inquiry. The draft Human Rights and Anti-discrimination Bill 2012 seeks to further restrict our freedoms. While softened somewhat following strong criticisms, including from eminent retired judges, the reverse onus of proof remains, along with an expansion of victimhood. 

Ah victimhood, another evocative word and a first class Orwellian deployment, along with the notion of the guvmint restricting our freedoms.

But truth to tell right at this minute, there is no sign at all that the guvmint is intent on restricting the right of Maurice Newman and his shock jock and demagogue buddies to rant and rail interminably, assaulting whomever they like and then moaning when the assaulted don the pathetic garbs of victimhood.

It's just so unfair. Why Newman and Bolt and Jones are the only ones entitled to victimhood, they're the ones being persecuted.

What, we were wrong? Oh stop being such whining pussies, stop donning the garb of victimhood which rightly belongs to us.

But wait, we haven't yet collected all the best examples of Orwellian language that infest Newman's piece:

The government says it never intended to restrict free speech, but the fact is, while it preaches liberty, it is about coercion. The bill is an ambit claim. We may ask, to whom is the government appealing? Since when has limiting our basic freedoms been advocated in an election campaign? 
There is no popular groundswell. The government is responding to the collectivist instincts of those intellectuals who hold liberty in low regard. It isn't so long ago that an academic floated the idea that we "suspend democracy" to silence climate change sceptics. Authoritarian government appeals to these people. 

There's a few classics there. Some might love the collectivist instincts of those intellectuals who hold liberty in low regard - it really is a ripper - but the pond really treasures Authoritarian government appeals to these people.

These people! Why that's a close cousin to you people.

But who are these people? Why at that point you must just flutter your hands in the air, and say, you people, with an exasperated sight. You see, in the end, it's everybody, it's all you bloody useless people, it's the abjectly hopeless GP.

All the while, the public has been detached from the consequences of the government's actions, accepting, somewhat gullibly, the well-meaning intent of minority protection without appreciating the erosion of its own rights. 

Yes, you see, it's the public, the entire bunch of yobbos and bogans and ne'er do wells, the useless bludgers who don't have a clue.

Hapless drifters and losers. They don't seem to understand that Alan Jones inciting them to riot on Cronulla beach is in dire peril!

What they need is strong leadership, a firm hand, someone astute enough to recognise their leader-less ways.

What they need is Maurice Newman ... or perhaps Alan Jones, or Andrew Bolt or Gina Rinehart ... or Napoleon.

Yes the only way to resist the guvmint and the intellectual elites is to rise up and appoint a fearless leader, one who will take charge of everything and ensure our freedom to follow them.

Perhaps we could all sit in admiring silence at an assembly and listen to their sound advice, but without any tedious debate, hedging, finessing or disagreement. After all:

What it should know is that ceding freedom is never temporary. It simply leads to regular Sunday-morning assemblies, but without the debate. Far fetched? Believe that at your peril.

Yes, and if you have a bone to pick with Mr. Newman, don't expect access to The Australian or to the Murdoch press or to commercial radio or television.

Start your own blog, it's the only way.

Or wear in solemn silence Newman's ritual abuse of Orwell, such that the poor lad must revolve in his grave at least every other day.

Far fetched? Believe that at your peril, because look, the sky is falling in, quick run, run to the hills.

Oh and by the way, Squirrel!

And to think the pond was worried about an empty canvas, a blank page. Why Newman could fill it for days, for years ... and we haven't even mentioned climate science or wind farms or the herd mentality of the hopeless public ...

(Below: so here's a couple of images for the paywall folk. The first one is nicely Orwellian, don't you think).

Ya gotta laugh ... especially if Scott Stephens, Christine Milne, Dennis Jensen, Janet Albrechtsen and Kevin Andrews are providing the comedy material ...

You have to laugh.

Okay, okay, you don't actually have to laugh, but in Tamworth, it was an existentially rich saying, one that encapsulated the comic absurdity of the world. (Of course the menfolk would then burrow their noses in the froth of a schooner and be ga ga within the hour. You have to laugh).

Anyway, the pond's been laughing.  There's the ABC - and by extension Media Watch - getting excited about that tweeting twitterer Scott Stephens unloading on Julia Gillard and then, twittering twit that he is, apologising for any gender implications in his condescending portrait of Gillard as a condescending primary school teacher (you can see that storm in a teacup here).

Jonathan Holmes looked very grave and sounded very gravelly as he went into anguish over the ABC's strict editorial policies:

Twitter users are mostly highly opinionated, and blandness doesn’t get you followers. 
But many ABC staffers may now decide that it’s safer to stay off Twitter altogether – and that, in my view, would be a pity.

Problem solved Mr. Holmes.

What you do - the very next night - if you're Scott Stephens - is turn up on Radio National, with Waleed Ali as the host, and you discuss politics up hill and down dale, dumping on anyone you feel like, not even with a thin "religious and ethic"s veil to disguise the personal opinions of the very same Scott Stephens, with Ali joining in the tub-thumping as if he's a born again Elmer Gantry. It was a veritable verbal twitter storm ...

Don't believe the pond? Have a listen here at Political ideology lost to so called 'Personality Politics', as radio is lost to personality pundits.

Now the pond knows why it happens, journalists talking to journalists, in-house opinion-makers blathering to in-house opinion-makers about the issues of the day.

It's a lot easier and a lot cheaper to get an in-house player to turn up and shoot from the lip and the hip than get an outsider to turn up. It's the Mark Scott school of clap-happy economics.

What on earth does Jonathan Holmes make of it? Second thoughts, he probably doesn't care, because blandness on the radio doesn't get you listeners, and most people on the ABC seem to be highly opinionated.

Oh dear, how did the spirit of Gerard Henderson get into the mix?

Well while we're channeling him - oh guru, is it a Catholic or an Anglican hell in the afterlife - how about the rich irony of Christine Milne announcing that she wasn't going to add to the instability of the federal government, which the Labor party was producing every day because they were a total disaster and a disgrace and in the pocket of big mining and the absolute ruination of the environment, right at this very minute, and they were simply irresponsible and impossible to work with, and she was tearing up the agreement and walking away because, well because they'd torn up the agreement and walked away ... and ...

By the end of it, the one thought that kept coming to mind, and it's terribly unfair to focus on the reedy whining sound of a voice, but Christine Milne is no Bob Brown, avuncular and gruff and caring, and it's no wonder the Greens are suddenly terrified about losing their balance of power in the Senate, let alone their lower house Melbourne seat.

Will this little outburst of petulant spite help their situation?

Well there's a logical conundrum at the height of it, what we might call the Jonathan Holmes' impenetrable imponderability.

If the government's so bad, so inept, so awful, so deep in the pockets of deep mining, such a disaster for the country and the environment, why don't the Greens walk away, right this minute, and force an election, right here, right now?

Well because the latest riff is simply, nakedly, patently, insufferable a form of grand-standing and political hypocrisy, and it's just spit on a griddle, a way to feed the media for a couple of days, and remind the world that the Greens aren't Labor, even if Labor has spent an unseemly amount of time kow-towing to them.

Immediately a figure came to mind. That pathetic tosser and betrayer of every English liberal's dreaming, Nick Clegg, surely the most pathetic, fawning, self-serving politician to stalk the earth ... until Christine Milne made her bid ...

Naturally there was an abundance of folks on hand in the media to point out the self-serving and hypocritical nature of the announcement, such that what Milne fancied as a Labor bashing fest quickly turned into a Greens bashing fest. (Cue Simon Benson in the Terror furiously scribbling Labor too slow to kick out the kooks).

Her outburst brought the premiership of Tony Abbott that little bit closer, which is great news for the pond, because well, what fun we'll have, as we slip into a new morass of mediocrity, and because well... ya gotta laugh ...

Poor old Wayne Swan even mentioned how finance ministers would be pleased to lose their right arm. Cue the ABC running the Monty Python black knight sketch.

Oh yes, they'll be laughing on the other side of their faces come September when the crusading Abbott slices off their funding arm.

But ya gotta laugh. It's the Tamworth way.

That's why you'll probably cop a huge giggle out of Dr Dennis  "let me drink some cola to prove climate change is a fraud" Jensen - raging about Obliterating billions in the afterburners of the JSF.

It's all the federal Labor government's fault of course, unless it's Defence. On and on he rants about the epic failure of the acquisition.

Do you see anything in the piece about how John Howard and his government sucked up to the US government big time and ordered a bunch of the aerial dogs? Do you find any of these immortal lines?

... John Howard also had a far less public meeting to attend. Just around the corner from the White House at the Willard Hotel, the Prime Minister sat down with representatives of the giant US military plane maker, Lockheed Martin. The meeting was top secret. John Howard was about to launch Australia on its biggest ever defence acquisition program - a $16 billion gamble. The Washington meeting rocked large sections of the Australian military. It was the first of many decisions which seemed to bypass the normally intensive investigations that governments put themselves through when making multi-billion dollar defence acquisitions. At the Willard Hotel, John Howard committed Australia to the development of the joint strike fighter, the JSF 35 to replace a plane which had been defending Australia for the past three decades, the F-111. 

Well you can find it in a transcript of a Four Corners program from October 2007 here, along with this quaint comment:

PROFESSOR HUGH WHITE, DEPUTY SECRETARY, DEFENCE 1995 - 2000: Our capacity to negotiate with the sellers on the terms of the deal, price, delivery, quality, all of that, were, you know, completely swept aside. And I think that was a serious tactical error in the way in which we managed the process, leaving aside the question as to whether we wouldn’t in the long run prefer to go for a different aircraft.

Tactical error? Is that defence speak for gigantic strategic cock-up?

And it's all the fault of that sweet bonny lad, little honest as the day is long Johnnie Howard?

You have to admire the stupendous gall of Jensen, who makes the Jensens of Sydney seem like amiable dodderers.

Memo to self: must drink more cola to make a point about tendering matters and disprove climate science.

Of course a few readers made note of what Jensen wouldn't or couldn't say. But when you're at the Madhatter's tea party, why do expect sense from the Mad Hatter?

Memo to self. Soon enough loons like Jensen might well be in power.

The biggest joke of all? Here's Jensen's self-serving bio for the Punchers:

(Dr. Jensen) continues to make major contributions in the areas of defence and science, especially with regards to the Joint Strike Fighter debate, climate change ...

There's more, but you catch the drift. Delusional and up himself, and all in one blow.

Never mind, ya just gotta laugh. Laugh and laugh until ya cacks yaself. Because what else is there to do?

But wait, there's more, because today is Dame Slap day in the lizard Oz.

Happily Abbott's critics are the ones out of touch is behind the paywall, and all you get for free is this pitiful opening blush of sentimentality

Often, the truly important things about people are rarely known. That is especially the case of those in the public eye. With daily dissections of public figures by apparently curious journalists, we imagine we surely have their measure. Usually we don't. But it takes an honest mind and a good heart to admit that.  

What follows is a flush of hagiography which amounts to little more than Tony Abbott being a spiffing, wonderful chappie, and anyone who dares to criticise him or his policies is mean-spirited and lazy.

Yep, criticism is lazy, while prostate worship of Abbott is intellectually nimble and quick, like a quick brown fox covering all the keys on the keyboard.

The way this is slipped through to the keeper? You see, Tony Abbott has discovered that a TG person is a person, and that is such an astonishing insight, that Albecthesen almost faints as she keens at the humanity of it all.

The entire column is wretchedly cloying and sticky - like getting caught in heavily chewed chewing gum - and somehow it all revolves around the way Abbott wrote a kindly review of a book about cricket and other matters by Cate McGregor, yet somehow the review was shockingly, shamefully ignored:

McGregor, well known in Canberra media circles, particularly among press gallery journalists, was interviewed on ABC radio and television. Yet the curiosity of our intrepid ABC journalists did not extend beyond the author's change of sexual identity. Journalists normally so keen to marry the political with the personal did not mention that the nation's alternative prime minister had published a compassionate and caring tribute to a friend in need.

Uh huh. The pond - standard disclaimer, the pond has a number of intimate TG friends - isn't quite sure why McGregor is in need of pity or compassion, because it implies the move wasn't really in keeping with personal sexual identity.

But what's more wondrous is the way Dame Slap thrashes the media yet again - the ABC naturally - while at the same doing a Uriah Heep routine on behalf of Abbott:

Late last year amid the cut and thrust of politics, when he was being wrongly assailed for misogyny, the alternative prime minister took time to pen a tribute in The Spectator to his friend's book and to his friend. There was no fanfare, no strategic overtures to favoured journalists to report Abbott's heartfelt review. Just a low-key and touching review headed "Tradition meets change".

So the review's meant to be low key, with no strategic overtures, out of the spotlight - well getting yourself published in The Spectator will guarantee that - and yet at the same time, the media and lazy intellectuals were supposed to be dancing in the street, and setting off fireworks because Abbott had written a treacly, soft, indulgent review of a friend's book. And somehow the fact that the friend is TG is supposed to make all the difference to the humanity of it all.

That's fucked in the head, the pond's most intimate TG friend said over a yoghurt this morning, but you've gotta laugh.

It's a complete conflation of everything, and nothing to do with lazy Abbott policies like damming the country and heading north. It shows how desperate things are getting. It's not enough to trot out the daughters and Margie and the chief of staff or any other woman in sight, or Christopher Pearson, now TG people have to be wheeled out and paraded about as testament to Abbott's deep humanity and infinite compassion and understanding ...

So is there anything on view, apart from laughter?

Well for a moment the pond's heart began to thump a little harder. You see Kevin "let's teach that bloody Haneef a lesson" Andrews punched on with this header:

It seemed like a tantalising dream - The less you see and hear of people like me, the better.

How true, how insightful, how caring - almost as compassionate as an invisible Tony Abbott review - but of course it wasn't a dream, it was the usual nightmare.

You see Andrews had to go into print with a photo attached to explain how people like him shouldn't go into print. And next week, he'll back in print to remind the world how people like him shouldn't be out and about all the time. The more he tells us this, the more we see and hear from him, and the world goes to hell in a handbasket.

The target of Andrews' rant about personality politics is Kevin Rudd, so it must have taken a herculean feat by Andrews to ignore the other personality politics practitioner in the attached picture, one jolly Joe Hockey.

When really the Punch team could have run this snap for illustrative purposes:

The trouble of course is that Andrews isn't the sharpest spoon in the drawer, and sometimes sounds like he's a sheep short of a barbecue, and he proves that with his resounding conclusion:

The late President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, once remarked that “It is not true that only the unfeeling cynic, the vain, the brash and the vulgar can succeed in politics.” “Such people, it is true, are drawn to politics, but in the end decorum and good taste will always count for more,” he said. 

Havel? The man, the absent lord bless him, who made a career out of mixing the theatre, literature and poetry with politics? A man for whom rebellion and defiance were much more important than decorum and good taste?

And Andrews, implicitly, as a man with decorum and good taste? Tell that to Haneef ...

I believe he was correct. In the end, competence and common sense are more useful tools for our political leaders than seeking celebrity status and endless commentary. Sometimes less is more.

Competence and common sense? Ya gotta laugh. Tell that to Haneef ...

But it explains why Tony Abbott has put aside the budgie smugglers and these days poses as a statesman and a visionary, and we're all supposed to put aside vestigial memories of years of nattering negativity and mindless stunts at tea party rallies. You know, sensitive ditching of witches ...

Buried in Andrews curious tirade about Rudd - as if no one in the Liberal party indulged in personality politics, with Dame Slap advising us today to worship our kindly compassionate caring leader - come unto him oh TG folk - is logical incoherence, mixed with verbal diarrhoea.

Which is, if you want one, the unifying theme for the day, and why you've got to laugh.

As surely as medievalists thought the sun revolved around the earth, Andrews will be back in The Punch sometime soon blathering on about cycling, and wondering why he was so kind to Lance Armstrong back in the day ... instead of following his own advice, which is that politicians should act like Cheshire cats and disappear up their smile, or if that's not to hand, their fundament ...

The logical end of Andrews' strange notion is that the Liberal party would be run by a bunch of faceless, anonymous, virtually invisible men. Oh wait, it is. Maybe he's on to something after all ...

Yep, you've gotta laugh, because otherwise we'd be fucked.

Wait a second, we are fucked, caught by the short and curlies, gotcha coming and going and every which way, and not even a chimp in sight to save us.

Thank the absent lord that despite the politicians there are worse countries in the world, and all the talk of confected disasters - short of a meteor shower or climate science - is just a snow job by people who want to keep or get their fingers on the wheels of power.

Oh well, you've gotta laugh ...

Hendo, papal infallibility, sneering secularists, and a host of theological cards ...

(Above: British PM William Gladstone taking a swing at the tree of papal infallibility, watched by Mr. Punch, per a cartoon in The Punch).


The pond was quite tickled by the insight, quite astonished, and all the more so that it came from Gerard Henderson.

When it comes to comment, silence is preferable to defensive paranoia.

Here it is in its original context, in Papal pundits should repent of unforgivable ignorance, as Hendo finishes off in the usual Hendo way with the ABC, that bastion of liberal cardigan-wearers (because you know, it's so much more sensible to be a conservative cilice-wearing Catholic or a mad Mullah):

On 702 ABC Sydney, Linda Mottram suggested the Catholic Church would be a better place if it embraced a liberal agenda. She also accused Benedict XVI of being ''divisive'' because, as Pope, he upheld traditional teaching. This overlooks the fact that he is the Bishop of Rome, not the head of the Rationalist Society. Moreover, members of the Anglican, Jewish and Orthodox faiths do not regard Benedict XVI as being divisive. Quite the contrary. When it comes to comment, silence is preferable to ignorance.

Oh wait, the pond got the quote quite wrong.

It's actually when it comes to comment, silence is preferable to ignorance, and everybody should shut the fuck up, because I'm the only one who knows anything and everything about everything under the sun, and everyone else should just listen in silent awe, while I yabber on endlessly in an opinionated way, you ignorant mob of swine herders and cackling geese, and no, I'm not up myself, I'm just cosmically wonderful.

Never mind that it would only take a second to find Anglicans who regard Benedict XVI as having been divisive, especially when he made the ploy, the feint, of inviting Anglicans back into the fold. Oh there were a bunch of angry Anglicans roaming about saying "sola scriptura", and dozens of stories along the lines of More Anglicans leave Church of England for Rome.

There was even an Australian angle, as the Catholics did their white-anting down under, as you can read in Pope establishes Australian ordinariate for former Anglicans.

As for Jews, there was a similar fuss when the Pope brought back into the fold bishops from the rebellious Society of St. Pius X, one of whom was Bishop Richard Williamson, a Holocaust denier. It got so hot in the kitchen that the Vatican had to declare Williamson would have to make an absolutely unequivocal statement distancing himself from his previous position on the Shoah if he wanted to make it back into the fold.

And things didn't proceed too smoothly with the Islamics, what with the Pope reverting to a 1391 text expressing the views of Byzantine emperor Manuel 11 Paleologus:

Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached. (wiki it here)

Now the pond doesn't much mind or care as the fundamentalists bicker amongst themselves, but can such matters all be swept under the carpet with a sniff of Hendo's nose and "quite the contrary"?

Quite the contrary, and it's possible to sniff Mark Latham circling with a view to yet another easy kill.

What's even more disarming is yet another convincing example of Henderson's complete lack of humour.

This came when he decided to tackle Peter FitzSimons on the matter of papal amiability.

Now FitzSimons is an amiable boofhead of the rugger bugger kind, who fancies himself as a comedian when he usually comes across as a twit. Here was his criminal crime:

Meanwhile, Fitzphile Frank Hewins poses an interesting question: ''When a man is elected pope, according to Catholics, he becomes infallible, so what happens when he resigns? Does he lose his infallibility? Do we have two people who are infallible? What if they disagree on something? Whose infallibility is strongest?'' And how many angels are there on the head of a pin, finally? Discuss.

It's a joke, and just below it is a shaggy crow story, about dead crows on the road, with an even more appalling punchline:

''When crows eat roadkill, they always set up a lookout crow in a nearby tree to warn of impending danger. But while the lookout crow could warn the other crows by saying 'Cah', he had not yet learnt to call out 'Truck!'''  (here)

Ye ancient cats and dogs, Fitzy calls it the joke of the week, but you couldn't even sell that one to Australasian Post.

So how does Henderson react? Why he draws himself up to his full height of pompous Polonius prattling to deliver a death blow to Fitzy and his reader:

The fact is that there can only be one Pope and he only claims infallibility on rare occasions - the last such occurrence took place in 1950.

Yep, that's Hendo's knockdown sensa huma for you.

The fact is that at times there have been several Popes claiming the throne, and the claim of any kind of infallibility, directly delivered by god to pope is a laughable absurdity, quaintly claimed in desperate theological times in the 1869 Vatican council.

There's more than enough jibber jabber on the subject at the Catholic Encyclopaedia, where you find out why Hendo routinely sounds like a pompous twit who considers himself inerrant when compared to the swill in the rest of the media:

It is only in connection with doctrinal authority as such that, practically speaking, this question of infallibility arises; that is to say, when we speak of the Church's infallibility we mean, at least primarily and principally, what is sometimes called active as distinguished from passive infallibility. We mean in other words that the Church is infallible in her objective definitive teaching regarding faith and morals, not that believers are infallible in their subjective interpretation of her teaching. (here)

And so on and so forth. The point is that it's jabberwocky, yet there's  poor old Hendo with his vorpal blade snicker-snacking and galumphing at the sneering secularists.

Oh there's a whole nest of these vipers - there's Geoffrey Robertson (on the ABC), FitzSimons (on the ABC's The Drum), Julian Morrow, Peter van Onselen, and Janine Perrett all outraging and shocking Hendo.

No one had any idea what they were talking about.

Which makes it hard when really you have to ask what on earth Hendo is talking about:

Commentators on Catholicism should understand that, according to Catholic teaching, the Pope is affected by the fall and, consequently, is a potential sinner. He's not divine. 

The fall?

Ah sinners, and mocking recalcitrant sneering ABC secularists, that's The Fall. Take it away Catholic Encyclopaedia:

Original sin may be taken to mean: (1) the sin that Adam committed; (2) a consequence of this first sin, the hereditary stain with which we are born on account of our origin or descent from Adam. (there's lots more jibber jabber here)

Yep, it seems Hendo is a true believer in the story of Adam, and of the fall into original sin, and who knows, might even believe in a young earth, and a garden of eden somewhere back around 4004 BC.

Of course these days, the church tries to skirt around the old testament and the story of Adam and the arrival of original sin - it's "a story" that the people of the god of the old testament (a polite way of saying dumb Jews) couldn't grasp the ultimate meaning of,  and it needs a little finessing:

The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.

And there's a lot more jibber jabber about the fall of the angels and the rise of Satan in the Catholic catechism, as you can read here if you've got nothing meaningful to do with your life.

The point of course is that it's supremely hard not to sneer at the notion of Adam and Eve being dug out of the ground yet again, and by Hendo of all people.

He talks about people talking complete nonsense, yet he doesn't seem to mind if he strays into complete nonsense himself.

It's entirely understandable that many in the media are ignorant of the finer points of Catholic theology. A heck of a lot of Catholics are too, hence the keen desire amongst Catholics to use condoms and other forms of contraception, rather than Vatican roulette.

Heck, even Hendo doesn't have a clue. He dates the first Vatican council to 1870, when the Catholic Encyclopaedia dates the opening of the council to 8th December 1869 (actually proceedings got under way 2nd December 1869, and then the head honcho kicked the bucket and things staggered on through most of 1870, but since we're dealing with pedantry, let's do the pedantic thing. Is there a Mark Latham in the house? More at the Catholic encyclopaedia here).

The point of course is that any claim of human infallibility on any subject is entirely fanciful and silly, and if speaking of invincible ignorance in the media, it wouldn't hurt to look at the invincible ignorance of the Catholic church, which set the idea of papal infallibility in motion. (Which helps explain why having made such a monumental error, the Catholic church has subsequently been reluctant to deploy the conceit).

At heart, what's even more astonishing and painful is the reality that Hendo is a shameless elitist.

Well it's not that astonishing, since he clearly owes his allegiance to the Catholic church.

But his entire piece is about how bumbling ignorant journalists should shut the fuck up, and stop talking about the church. Which might equally apply to him, as he delivers up this sort of nonsense:

As anyone who has an awareness of Christian theology understands, the doctrine of papal infallibility does not mean that the Pope is always right, still less divine.

Catholic = Christian. Let's edit that one right away:

As anyone who has an awareness of Catholic theology understands, the doctrine of papal infallibility does not mean that the Pope is always right, still less divine.

Indeed. It's astonishing how many ways that the Pope and acolytes like Hendo get it wrong.

You see Hendo says that the last time the pope was infallible was in 1950, when he delivered the Munificentissimus Dei.

Yet each time the pope anoints a new saint - and this pope has been a fierce believer in that superstition - he's acting in an infallible way, asserting infallibly that the canonized are in heaven with god. And what of the argument about the Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, issued in 1994, and held to be infallible under the ordinary magisterium?

Faced with all this jibber jabber, it's no wonder that the likes of Fitzy are reduced to jokes about counting the number of angels you can fit on the head of a pin (no, the answer isn't 42, but you could argue for 84 as likely being twice as close).

You see,  anyone can take a view, and anyone should be able to speak, and if they get the finer points of Catholic theology wrong, why in the end they're no worse than Hendo blathering on about a mythical Adam and Eve.

As for William Gladstone, just what did that sneering mocking secularist say in his pamphlet of 1874, back in the day when sneering secularists were pamphleteers?

He described the Catholic Church as "an Asian monarchy: nothing but one giddy height of despotism, and one dead level of religious subservience". He further claimed that the Pope wanted to destroy the rule of law and replace it with arbitrary tyranny, and then to hide these "crimes against liberty beneath a suffocating cloud of incense". (here).

Yep, no wonder Hendo loves it.

The result of all this fuss? The pond is left this week with an image of an intellectual giant, assailed by a gigantic pack of sneering, mocking liberal secularist cards.

Now where can that image have come from?

Yet another day with Paul Sheehan, prophet of doom ...

For weeks now, the pond has been waiting for generally grumpy Paul Sheehan to turn his attention towards the strange alliance of Pastor Danny and Lord Monckton (remember Screaming Lord Sutch before you complain about the honorary title).

After all, Sheehan was in the vanguard of publicists and promoters of his Lordship, most notably with the epic Ten anti-anti-commandments and Lord Monckton's verbal bombs. Though some might also offer up Facts conveniently brushed over by the global warming fanatics, or Ten debates the greens didn't want to have.

Inevitably week after week, the pond has been disappointed, which says a lot about the delusional state of mind of the pond.

In Tamworth, after a munch on the grass, it was expected that a dog would return to its vomit, but Sheehan never returns, never looks back. He's all Buzz Lightyear and "no retreat, no surrender".

Magic water? No retreat, no surrender. (But an honourable mention by the Possum in Paul Sheehan and the magic water debacle).

It's important to remember this modus operandi whenever you come across any Sheehan column, because his methodology is simple. It's basically old testament, old-style thundering prophet of doom and gloom.

After the doom and the gloom, and the darkness and the catastrophe, then, perhaps only in the distance, on the horizon, there's a glimmer of light, a hope, a saviour to lead us to salvation ... perhaps Lord Monckton, perhaps Tony Abbott, whichever saviour's the flavour of the month.

You see, it's important to remember that Sheehan has the intellectual rigour and consistency of a damp sponge trapped on the sea floor and blowing which ever way the current is running, and there's a first class example on view in today's digital rag, We'll reap what we deserve.

Even the header gets the prophetic apocalyptic tone right, it being a reference to Galatians 6:7 - Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

This is of course nonsense because Sheehan sowed his Monckton column, and so far he and we have reaped nothing except silly distortions and misinformation. Oh wait ...

Silly pond. As Proverbs 26:11 has it, as a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

So here we are, nothing to do with Tamworth, but with the pond returning to yet another dire Paul Sheehan column.

Yes indeed, yea verily, 2 Peter 2:22, What the true proverb says has happened to them: "The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire." (we thought we'd give the ESV version a run, see how it feels under the hood).

Okay, to turn to today's text at last:

The issue that dwarfs all others is the fundamental soundness of the eastern food basin, where 40 per cent of Australia's food is grown. That food basin is no longer fundamentally sound. It is stressed, though still sound, but not fundamentally sound. 

Should have been quoting Chance the Gardener.

It's still sound, but not fundamentally sound?

What a ripper.

So here's the rest of the Sheehan methodology. Cluck and sound the alarums about mining and coal seam gas, like the very best Greenie. Explain how southern Australia is on the verge of ruination and damnation.

You might think the next logical step would be to explain how to preserve the environment, how important it is to maintain control over said mining and coal seam gas extraction, how government should assist in the treasuring and preserving of the agricultural lands of the south.

After all it's stressed, but sound, and might even be made fundamentally sound, if it wasn't stressed.

No, the next step is to rant about how Cubbie station has been sold to the Chinese, and blame it all on the Queenslanders.

It should have been bought by government and shut down, it's all the fault of Peter Beattie and Bob Carr.

But hang on, hang on, Cubbie is an epic example of what we might do to the north. Build up big agricultural endeavours ...

Sorry, clearly you're not getting the picture.

Cubbie, which is in the north, is a classic example of how the north has ruined the south

It evokes the essence of a land ruined by water and soil depletion ...

Yes, we're in a wilderness, a landscape rapidly approaching its end point, a future which makes Mad Max's vision seem like kindergarten.

Is there any solution, any solution at all, crieth the prophet in the wilderness?

I recently reminded Carr of his Cubbie project when he launched a new book by Michael Mobbs, the owner of a famous sustainable house in Chippendale.
The book, Sustainable Food, addresses what people should do to buttress themselves against any future food price shock. 
He recommends a return to backyard vegetable gardens and communal street gardens like the ones he has been successfully operating in his home and along his street, Myrtle Street, Chippendale. ''Why is it important to farm in the city?'' he asks. ''Because soon we may have no choice.'' That may seem unduly bleak ...

Seem unduly bleak? No it doesn't, it seems unduly Sheehan.

Here's the prophet, explaining how things are so dire that the pond must now convert the front and back yards to a veggie garden, and perhaps have a dribble of meat every first day of the month.

Of course it's a nice idea, but is the merchant banker down the road going to join the pond in the communal garden idea? What about that tragic attempt by some neighbours up the road that drowned in indifference, and cat and dog piss?

Can Paul Sheehan mention how many hours he spends in his own garden and how much he's cut off his veggie shopping bill?

Sounds like hard work.

Easier to write a column about it.

No, what we need is a prophet who will lead us out of this wilderness. What we need is an explanation of how we should ruin the north in the way we've ruined the south:

 ...but Australia is going to have to do something about expanding its food production capacity, because too much reliance has been put on a system under too much stress. 

Oh you can see where this is heading, you can feel that Sheldon bazinga rushing to the surface like a gusher:

This gives the Coalition's idea of creating a new food bowl in northern Australia a new perspective, because at the rate NSW and Queensland are going, more food will have to be imported from overseas as domestic supplies become both more scarce and more expensive. 
If all this does not become an election issue, we will reap what we deserve. 

Yes, the whole piece, the entirety, is dedicated without thought and without consideration and without intelligence to consigning the south of Australia to mining and fracking and to becoming an existentially doomed wilderness, incapable of growing food, incapable of anything but sheltering survivalists surviving, living on dollops of food delivered from the north.

We must give up the south as a bad job, ruined by unthinking careless humanity and head north.

Or we're all doomed. And don't worry if you're trampled on by unthinking, careless humanity rushing north to cash in on the latest government boondoggle.

Vote Tony Abbott, Bob Katter, agrarian socialism - but only for the north - or we're all doomed.

Now sensible people might attempt to argue with Sheehan, but any attempt is futile. Try arguing with the average biblical prophet.

Those who see but see not and hear but hear not are incapable of understanding or thinking through the logic of their argument. (we just wanted to work in the near biblical there are none so blind as those who cannot see)

What Sheehan does here is mount a classic series of Green-like arguments, while routinely dissing the greens in his Monckton mood, and then randomly proposing the only solution to his prophet-like predictions of doom is to join the fearless leader in the long march north ...

Yes one day the polar bears are growing and frolicking in the wilderness when Sheehan's in his Monckton mood, and the next day, southern Australia lies in ruin, with only home gardens and the north between it and starvation.

The bonus good news? Currently there is no mining in the north, and by golly if we chop down all the rain forests, why we can have an amazing, almost Amazonian, set of crops.

Take it away Ephesians 4:29-32

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear ... (or should that be to those who fear?)

And you paid money for the hard copy pleasure, to learn what is bleeding obvious each time he scribbles, which is that Sheehan is a loon, right out there and up there with Bob Katter and Barnaby -'Barners' to his Tamworth mates - Joyce ...

In your dreams, here endeth the lesson, but for this week only, because next week there will be another bout of incoherent rambling, illogical, inconsistent, but above all, always fearful ...

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, or why do we get Kevin Rudd when we want Aretha Franklin ...

Every day, and often in every way, the pond is startled at the way that illiteracy stalks the land, and what's more, in media which should know better.

Take this header - go on, take it, and with a bit of luck you'll be able to shove it where the sun doesn't shine, as Tamworth wags and wits were wont to say:

Now the story itself, People in the public eye deserve more self-respect, is a plaintive plea for people like the Duchess of Cambridge and Chrissie Swan to be given space and privacy, and never mind that the scribbler works for the HUN (oh okay post modern post irony posturing still has its place).

Now, now, hey hey, you clicked on the link, and you discovered that the header has been changed, to People in the public eye deserve more respect.

Too late. The pond was so shocked and horrified and disturbed, it pickled the original header, and it's now preserved in digital aspic, one more bit of detritus filling the full to overflowing intertubes.

Now there's nothing wrong with the theme, because the pond gives huge amounts of privacy and respect to the Royal Family, except maybe bonnie Prince Charley, when Chuckie, aka the talking tampon, gets to writing angry letters to government about the many bees in his bonnet.

And the pond has paid absolutely no attention to Chrissie Swan, despite Swan's best endeavours to make a media meal out of her fifteen minutes of fame.

But all that said, how on earth did the original header see the light of day?

When Ms O'Brien is saying this ...

I’m not saying we should just leave celebrities alone totally, but allowing them to have a bit more dignity wouldn’t be a bad thing for all of us.

Really the hastily revised header should have read People in the public eye deserve more respect and a bit more dignity, not too much because we wouldn't want them to be too dignified and up themselves, but a bit more, or at least as much as allows the HUN and The Punch to put together a barely literate tabloid perspective on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, people in the public eye or the HUN can go to work on their self-respect by themselves or with their chosen therapist.

Sheesh, every day in every way the pond is visually assaulted by people who fail to give it the self-respect it deserves.

And another thing.

What on earth prompted the editors of The Drum to run a "think" piece by Warren Reed where thinking is only conspicuous by its absence?

Reed purports to be writing with an intelligence officer's understanding of the fuss over the matter of Prisoner X, Zygier publicity presents common interest for Israel and Australia.

(Above: that's the latest story? It's been up for days, since February 15th as the ABC stays asleep at the wheel)

Reed opens with this gambit:

It is in the interests of both the Australian and Israeli governments to do what they can to minimise the fallout from the case of Prisoner X, Ben Zygier, writes Warren Reed.

Minimise the fall out? At no point does Reed manage to flat out say it's flat out wrong for the Israeli government and its minion spies to misuse fraudulently Australian passports, obtained illegally and used in the past by people involved in actual assassinations.

Instead we get this kind of sob stuff:

An overwhelming majority of men and women who work in spy services like Mossad are just like people in the street. They're paying off mortgages, educating their kids and they all have their own ethical and moral standards like we do... 

When they're not topping an enemy of the state in best Jason Bourne style using false Australian passports...

And then it's back to that punchline:

... When two governments find themselves lumbered with something like this it is clearly in the interests of both to work out how to minimise the fall-out.

Lumbered with it? Like they had nothing to do with it?

Minimise the fall-out? Like send up a smokescreen?

How about stopping the illegal trade in Australian passports? How about the Australian government stopping acting like a shlemiel, a schlimzel, a schmendrik, a schmuck, and start acting like a mentsch towards Israel's knuckle-draggers?

Dear sweet absent lord, even the Kiwis can walk taller in the matter of telling the Israeli government mis-use of passports is a no-no. All Reed can offer is a string of excuses about how it's all too hard.

And if you think that's where the kvetching ends, think again, because wouldn't you know, along comes Israel with another serve of chutzpah.

Cop this:

Israel has denied making secret compensation payments to the Melbourne family of Ben Zygier over his 2010 death in a maximum-security prison, amid claims he was about to give evidence on the use of fake Australian passports by intelligence agency Mossad. 
Israeli television station Channel 2 reported that no payment would be made unless negligence could be proven in Mr Zygier's alleged suicide, which occurred while the 34-year-old was under 24-hour surveillance in a ''suicide-proof'' cell. (here)

24 hour surveillance in a "suicide-proof" cell, and yet he's dead by suicide, and there's no negligence, and no compensation to his family?

And now they don't even look after their own and instead sneak out stories denying compensation?

Enough already ... what a corrupt and disheartening state its become under its current crop of raving ratbag right wing warlords.

And now, to end on a lighter note, the Ruddster is continuing his campaign to woo voters, this time by scribbling Therese's triumphs and my failures balance out for the Sunday Terror.

It contains what the pond is assured by experts can be called 2MI, or TMI, or more forcefully, TMFFI, which is to say too much family fucking information.

The pond turned to acronyms after being inspired by the Ruddster's sage advice:

So the principle is pretty basic guys (yes it is the MALE gender I'm primarily addressing here). It's the JDSU principle. Just Don't Screw Up guys.

JFW.

Can the pond humbly suggest a variation? JDSLTFFCR guys, or just don't sound like the fucking former chairman Rudd, guys

But do go on with the sage advice:

Don't go to the footy on your anniversary and DON'T buy a slightly ragged bunch of flowers from the local supermarket on your way home from work on the afternoon of her birthday (hint, she shops there too and will know within a 5c margin how much of a cheapskate you've really been). Because if you do guys, the marital equivalent of the cordial relationship that exists between North and South Korea awaits you. 

Uh huh. Well there's as stereotypical and as mercenary a vision of relationships as any the pond has seen in recent times, with bonus shouting caps thrown in.

Should the pond now burn the roast as punishment? Perhaps bung on a frosty silence? Go into a gigantic sulk?

Perhaps the most nauseating moment came with this:

As I said, keeping our family close is still a work in progress. 
But our kids have now become our closest and best friends. 
Sure, our family has been lucky because Therese's success has offset her husband's failure, so it is easier for us to have the kids travel home to Brisbane.

Never mind the family stuff - everybody gets soppy and sentimental sometimes - the big news is that the Ruddster's a failure.

Thank the absent lord he's not beavering away trying to get himself back into the highest office in the land. Who'd want an abject failure, a nattering narcissist, in the top job?

But is he a failure? As poor buggers on the pension understand the concept ...

Even if Therese kicked him out on his ear right here, right now, for writing such a maudlin, pathetic column, he's a former PM with a substantial parliamentary super package, and right at the moment, he's hauling in a base pay of $190,550 (quick, check out your salary, super, travel allowance and other entitlements and allowances here).

Does he have even the remotest idea how clunky he sounds? How forced, how superficial, how tedious?

And then we cop this as a closer:

... our experience is that all families in this crazy modern world of ours are going through the same sort of pressures in trying to hold it all together. 
And it is important for our individual and collective sanity that we do.

Actually in this crazy modern world, whacky and zany as it is, a kind of mad, mad, mad world, just like that old movie, the only thing that's affected the pond's individual and collective sanity in recent times has been the reading of the Ruddster's remarks.

Somehow the Ruddster thinks this sort of family jibber jabber will earn him some kind of respect, as opposed to being tagged as a narcissist.

All it suggests to the pond is an abundance of self-respect, dressed up as humble sackcloth and ashes failure, a pose right up or down there with Dickens' Uriah Heep.

Lordy lordy it's depressing, trapped between the Ruddster racing all over the country like a rampaging failure, while that epic failure, Tony Abbott is waiting in the wings to deliver his own "dam the north or be damned to ye" version of Heepish failure.

Uh oh. That was supposed to be the up ending.

Oh well, better luck next time, and may you have all the self-respect the world can heap on you ...

(Below: for those who came in late, a couple of portraits of Uriah Heep).