Miranda Devine, pilots, bureaucrats, climate change, and damn you Neutral Bay post office, damn you to hell ...

When in doubt, the pettifogging commentariat columnist will invariably swim to a couple of safe waves for a little body surfing fun. And what provides a safer ride than bureaucrats and academics?

Here's Miranda the Devine trying to land a couple of blows in Pettyfogging bureaucracy is just creeping totalitarianism.

First a pedantic note. We prefer the correct spelling of pettifogger, though you might call that a petty or trival matter. But it's one of our favorite words, and if you want a little background on it, go here.

Meantime, let's not get too pettifogging or pedantic about the notion that bureaucracy is creeping totalitarianism. Sure it's a mindlessly stupid notion, but when have we ever expected anything else from the Devine in her ceaseless search for black and white simplifications and trollumnist provocations.

Perhaps you might worry about the implications for those legendary mandarins of Britain who devised the best form of bureaucracy in the world - even better than the Chinese - and a sitcom to match, Yes Minister (and sequel) - and exported their love of the queue to India and China, so that even today the fetish for the rubber stamp beats deep in the heart of the post-colonial world.

Next thing you know you'll turn into Che Guevara and deliver a rant about how the British introduced the world to totalitarianism via their bowler hatted bureaucracy.

Silly you. The Devine needs logic like a fish needs a bicycle or Kafka needs more paranoia.

On to business. Here's one of the fish she has to fry:

The great shining symbol of bureaucratism's triumph over freedom is, of course, the carbon pollution reduction scheme, and its elaborate bureaucratic apparatus, which brooks no dissent.

The CSIRO economist Clive Spash, for instance, reportedly has claimed CSIRO management suppressed his research criticising emission trading schemes. Spash said he was not allowed to publish his paper, The Brave New World of Carbon Trading, because it commented on "policies", as if no CSIRO scientist had ever done such a thing.

The totalitarian threat of bureaucratism is nowhere as clear as in the climate change industry's creeping assaults on liberty.

On another day of course the Devine would have been railing about Spash and his heretical support of the notion of climate change, no doubt calling him a pettifogging academic with a carbon bee in his bonnet.

Well thanks to the intertubes, if you're interested in what Spash thinks and has to say, you can race off here to his personal website, where indeed you might decide that he is part of the climate change industry, and therefore part of the creeping assault on our liberty, provided you can adopt the Devine's paranoid posturing. And if you want the story that started the ball rolling, you can go here.

Either way you'll emerge more reliably informed on the issue than a mindless assertion about creeping totalitarianism.

But what provoked the Devine? Here you'll pardon me if I indulge in a little Freudian detective work.

If we start at the beginning, it's immediately clear that there are no clues in the opening pars, which reference a number of recent aircraft 'events' involving pilot error, and are designed to provide the gloss of some contemporary relevance to the column.

Such incidents may become commonplace as aircraft become more complex and the once-very busy pilot brain becomes underutilised. Put highly trained, intelligent humans in jobs where they have to stare at computers for hours and act only if something goes wrong, and the brain will find something else to do - sleep, daydream or plunge into a fugue. Cash-strapped airlines are solving this problem by employing pilots who are less skilled and cheaper.

The effects of excessive automatism on pilots are a example of what happens to human ingenuity, resourcefulness and independent thought when it is rendered surplus to requirement in a bureaucracy.

Say what? Well just as Saddam Hussein called on the mother of all wars, surely that has to rate as the mother of all illogical segues. Pilots in the private sector as an indicator of government bureaucracy's dead hand? But wait, you get a set of steak knives segue with that:

The spread of brain-dead supplicants to the state has grown with the rise of the bureaucratic class, which reached its zenith when the former Queensland bureaucrat and chief jargon generator Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister.

He may be a perfectly fine human being but he believes in one thing - that systems and processes can solve any problem, that if you have enough meetings, summits, talkfests, reviews, studies, probes, resolutions and facilitations, preferably with some connection to a United Nations body, solutions will miraculously occur without hard decisions being made.

Oh yes, it's Robo Rudd, and instead of his dullard jargon talk fest stuff, how much simpler to blow things and people up in the wonderful new world of robot wars and clinical drone strikes. Direct action, not paperwork!

But the Devine is not yet done with head blarney speaking barnstorming pilot of the country, Chairman Air Commodore Rudd, doing his damnedest to ruin Biggles' reputation (no, we're not talking dogs here, we're talking the fighter pilot air ace):

As Rudd's disintegrating policy on asylum seekers demonstrates, this approach rarely works.

His 2020 Summit, stacked with whiteboards and McKinseyite facilitators, was a prime example of bureaucracy syndrome, with much talking and nothing happening.

Bureaucratism obfuscates with jargon that is impossible to understand, making your mind behave like a skittish colt. You finally give up and turn away with a sense of failure, suspecting that if you had tried harder you might have reached the golden truth. Only there is no golden truth. It is all dense verbiage, with no reason to exist except itself.

Now you might have forgotten that we're on a Freudian detective hunt, but the cunning private dick will begin to sense that the mother of all ranters is heading towards a serious issue here. Talk of golden truth is getting us closer to the heart of darkness and despair, even if we've had to wade through a thicket or two of dense verbiage with no reason to exist except itself and the column that must be written:

Bureaucratism operates by adding layers of complexity to a problem so that much time and effort can be spent on assembling the architecture of that complexity and then solving the problems created by that architecture. You become so caught up in solving the human resources issues or occupational health and safety concerns or constructing risk analysis that the original problem is rendered meaningless.

Take the consultant called in recently to define the "strategy and objectives" of a big metropolitan rail network project. He told me he was stuck with senior management who thought safety was their first priority, "ahead of moving an ever-increasing number of people across the network". He told them the only safe train network is one that has no trains.

Oh indeed, and the only safe plane in which to fly is one that has no pilots. And won't it be great - thanks to this consultant - that train travel in NSW will become ever more problematic as safety is downgraded as we look towards bulk sardine shipping of human cargo. That should work a treat - right up until the next Granville or Waterfall train disaster.

Unless of course you think of being stuck on a train without air conditioning and unopenable windows on a 36 degree centigrade day for a half hour is a tad burdensome (Rees apologises for train breakdowns).

Okay, but we understand that the Devine and her pet consultant most likely don't catch trains or any other form of public transport, and therefore haven't experienced the joys of loonatic bus drivers hurling their vehicles around like former Renault F1 driver Nelson Piquet Jr. looking for the best wall available.

So where are we really heading? Well we start to get tantalizingly close about now:

The Institute of Public Affairs showed recently that state bureaucracies were growing at a rate of 8 per cent a year, as expressed by the cost of state public sector workers. The number of state public servants nationwide has grown from 972,000 in 2000 to 1.2 million last year. They all need something to do, and the results can be seen in the dozens of small ways our lives are burdened with bureaucratism every day.

And then out it comes, the real reason for the inchoate linking of random events in a rant against encroaching bureaucrats, which lacks the charm of the Devine's rant against bicyclists but still has a sense of personal passion about it:

Try getting a passport renewed at Neutral Bay post office. They will have you back and forward retaking photographs to eliminate a shadow or the hint of teeth. Any deviation and your application can be spiked. You cannot collect the application form from the post office. You must download it from the internet and print it out. But woe betide you if the margins are a millimetre too wide. You will be running back and forward to the printer for days. It is like being lost in a Kafka play. There must be people who enjoy such useless activity.

Yes, the Devine has been involved in an incident in the Neutral Bay post office, of extravagant proportions, and as a result of those wretched recalcitrant bureaucrats, we have to suffer her inanity. Because it's payback time:

The main problem with pettyfogging bureaucracy is that it puts immense power in the hands of people who are constitutionally unfit for it. It is evident from early years in the school playground that some people are destined to be paper shufflers. But give them power and they become drunk with it, wielding it not only unwisely but unjustly.

Well you know the main problem with pettifogging journalists and fading mainstream media is that it puts immense power in the hands of people who are constitutionally unfit for it, and consequently deliver an endless stream of tosh, verbiage and blather. This tendency is notable from the earliest years at school where the retards and nerds always run the school magazine, and then when given the power of a newspaper column, they become drunk with it, wielding it not only unwisely and unjustly, but with pernicious personal pleasure, especially when paying back whoever offended them in the Neutral Bay post office.

Wouldn't it have been easier just to make a formal complaint in quadruplicate?

No, no, you simpletons, getting stuck on a train isn't a safety issue, not compared with the problem of getting a passport at a post office, which presages the end of western civilization as we know it:

It may be tempting to think of over-bureaucratisation as a benign, though annoying, malaise that will pass quickly. But one of its strongest early opponents, the US president Ronald Reagan, argued it was as much a threat to liberty as communism. As his biographer Steven Hayward recently told ABC radio's Counterpoint, Reagan believed bureaucratic government, ''undermines self-rule and consent of the governed''.

Governments in Australia, the US and Europe "don't have secret police or concentration camps but they do behave arbitrarily and sometimes … even lawlessly, and are not very accountable to voters. So even in our two-party systems in Western democracies we are governed in some important respects like a one-party state."

You see what you've done, hapless employee(s) of Neutral Bay post office. You've undermined the very foundations of democracy, and taken us deep into the heart of British-inspired totalitarianism. Can the secret police or concentration camps be far away?

What's that you say? Under the Howard government ASIO has expanded relentlessly from a 1000 in 2005 to 1800 employees and growing (ASIO can't be bothered: less accountable, less productive), and razor wire around camps proliferated?

No, they're not stories to be covered, not when there's the Neutral Bay post office to be taken to task in a rambling rant which manages at the end to drag climate change into the mix.

Bizarre, and perhaps this is the conclusive proof there's an urgent need for therapy.

Now if Ms Devine would fill out this form in triplicate, we'd consider allowing her to join the queue for emergency treatment in a public hospital ... once they manage to deal with the train passengers crowding in with heat exhaustion ...

Meantime, just give her the bloody passport renewal. Before the world collapses!

(Below: and a couple more cartoons, and while the Brazilian Wax caper has diddly-squat to do with pettifogging, what the hell Archie, tojours gai).

Peter Costello, and still the prattling Pontius carries on

(Above: here).

It was the worst of times ... and it was the worst of times.

Because there he is in the National Times, the mast below the mast providing a retirement home for one time politicians.

Yep, that prattling ponce Peter Costello is at it again in Be firm and clear: no access by boat.

You'd think it enough that this bold entrepreneur, this strident supporter of free markets, has been flung a sinecure on a government body, a guardian angel who created the body, then made sure it was tainted by having a retiring politician stick his snout into the board trough. A quango mango super duper bureaucrat. Is there any government board now safe from politicians seeking a cushy cushion on which to park their rear?

But no, forget the gig handed to Costello on a silver platter, he's back, musing and meditating in his usual pompous way, and you have to ask, why didn't Chairman Rudd put a commercial in confidence clause into the Future Fund deal, so that we'd be spared the prattling.

Any bit of precious guano dropping from the quill of Peter Costello, which might affect the Future Fund, the government, indeed the whole Australian economy would thereby be sequestered, so we could be spared this kind of line:

The most humane way to assist asylum seekers make claims in Australia would be to use Qantas to airlift claimants from Sri Lanka or Iraq or Afghanistan direct to Christmas Island. That way no one would have to board a boat and everyone would get their asylum claim dealt with in an Australian territory.

But I have never heard anyone argue for this. It is almost as if the refugee advocates believe there should be a little bit of hardship in the process - the risk of a long voyage on a rickety boat - but not too much. Not as much as detention and assessment in Indonesia or Nauru.

Sheesh, if that's the best he can offer the debate, I'd be happy to offer him a one way Qantas ticket to Afghanistan where he can prattle on in the marketplace at a dollar the humbug word.

And then there's the obligatory washing of the hands, Pontius Pilate style.

Critics of the Howard government complained that its policy was too harsh, inhumane and brutal. If only the government were more welcoming, they suggested, the whole problem could be managed. The claims were of course nonsense - the kind of claims only people with no responsibility for the outcome could make from their comfortable vantage points.

If the government were more welcoming, more people would set out on the boat journey - and put their lives at risk in the process.

And what kind of comfortable vantage point might that be? The dozen or so board meetings in a year while holding out the paw for the comfortable stipend?

And then the defensiveness rises to a shriek:

We do know that in October 2001 a boat - given the name SIEV X - sank killing more than 350 people. No one knows for sure but it was probably in Indonesian waters at the time. There was an enormous effort to blame the Howard government for that event. The playwright Hannie Rayson even wrote a play designed to show how ministers in that government had connived in the tragic deaths. This unfortunate loss of life was taken as a great opportunity to vilify the Coalition.

Vilify, or ask for a sensible coherent explanation?

On 20 February 2002, the Australian Senate Select Committee inquiring into ‘A Certain Maritime Incident’ met for the first time. Its primary task was to investigate the children overboard affair, however its terms of reference also included investigating “operational procedures observed by the Royal Australian Navy and by relevant Commonwealth agencies to ensure the safety of asylum seekers on vessels entering or attempting to enter Australian waters”.

The committee investigated the SIEV-X sinking, and concluded that "... it [is] extraordinary that a major human disaster could occur in the vicinity of a theatre of intensive Australian operations and remain undetected until three days after the event, without any concern being raised within intelligence and decision making circles." While no government department was found to be to blame for the tragedy, the Committee was surprised that there had been no internal investigations into any systemic problems which could have allowed the Australian government to prevent it from occurring. (here)

Never mind. Why not make Sieve X sound just like a current matter?

It will be interesting to see whether the playwrights and journalists go to the same lengths to impugn the motives of the Rudd Government and blame ministers in this government for the most recent deaths off the Cocos Islands. I doubt they will - nor should they. It was a foul slur then, and it would be a foul slur now to suggest that any Australian minister would connive in such a tragedy.

No, it was simpler to connive in the locking up of women, children and anyone else the coalition didn't like behind razor wire, and then bring in private firms to dole out the punishment.

Then as you'd expect of our Pontius Pilate, after the handwashing, you throw away the bowl of water.

No Australian minister would welcome having to deal with this issue. There is no easy or soft solution. The public has an instinctive understanding of that. The object must be to dissuade people from attempting to reach Australia by unauthorised boats. To do so the Government must be firm and clear - clear enough for those contemplating a journey to understand it and clear enough to those who would transport them to understand it. Ambiguity in policy on this issue will be very dangerous.

Who'd have thought that Malcolm Fraser would be amongst the few to call this kind of dog whistling, bird calling, humbug ratbaggery for what it really is? (audio here).

Yep, Costello stirring the pot, sinking in the knife, while apparently delivering pious platitudes worthy of Chairman Rudd himself. Perhaps that's why Costello got the gig. Birds of a nest-lining feather ... but as Costello keeps skewering Rudd, perhaps in time he'll realize he's offered a cuckoo safe haven in the upper echelons of the public sector old chaps' club. And what a comfortable home that is for a fierce private sector buccaneer flying the skull and bones flag of twaddle.

(Below: more Nicholson cartoons here).

Greg Craven, and a flurry of exorcising clever, witty, funny musings about the evils of atheists

Sometimes you just have to pay homage to brighter minds:

Greg Craven, he of the dullard mind, in A plague of atheists has descended, and Catholics are the target:

At the bottom, of course, lies hate. I am not quite clear why our modern crop of atheists hates Christians, as opposed to ignoring or even politely dismissing them, but they very clearly do. There is nothing clever, witty or funny about hate.

Followed by Daryl, with a sharper axe, first out of the blocks in the comments section:

"There is nothing clever, witty or funny about hate."

Ironic that this statement follows a dozen paragraphs of attempted cleverness, wit, humour and most definite hate, all directed at atheists.

So what's got Greg Craven, incidentally vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, and therefore hardly an innocent bystander, so worked up?

Well it seems the Catholic church is under siege, prompted by a secularist left wing media that's in a feral frenzy when it comes to the Church:

In an average week of atheistic bigotry in the Melbourne media, we can expect to learn that Catholics endorse child molestation, hate all other religions, would re-introduce the crusades and the auto de fe at the slightest opportunity, despise women, wish to persecute homosexuals, greedily divert public moneys for their own religious purposes, subvert public health care, brainwash children, and are masterminding the spread of the cane toad across northern Australia.

Outrageous! Especially when the church is so kind about poofters, providing they leave their pillow biting at the door, and especially welcoming of women, provided they don't expect to have any direct access to god, save through the portals opened by kindly caring men (can the silly floozies ever be forgiven for leading men astray and taking them out of the garden of eden by presenting them with an apple full of snake toxin? Not likely, at least when they keep on their carnal corrupting ways).

Never mind. Let's turn to the first rate wit you can expect from a Catholic wag:

Attacking Christians is not really clever, witty or funny.

From time immemorial, this world has been troubled by plagues. From bogong moths in Canberra to frogs in biblical Egypt, unwelcome and unlovely creatures have the awkward habit of turning up in bulk.

Just now, we are facing one of our largest and least appealing infestations. Somewhat in advance of summer's blowflies, we are beset by atheists. Worse, they are not traditional atheists. These tended to be quiet blokes called Algie with ancillary interests in nudist ceramics, who were perfectly happy as long as you pretended to accept a pamphlet in Flinders Lane.

By golly that's funny, that's hilarious, as sophisticated and cunning as me going in search of dung beetle metaphors for Christians. Blowflies! And by golly the flies are indeed out and about in the heartland, sending innocent tourists into a back-slapping frenzy. If only we could dispose of those blowflies called Algie in such an easy way, and without leaving the compressed guts squashed on to the white shirt or fragile blouse.

Why am I reminded of Christians as being like a sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, especially when they speak with the tongues of men but have not charity?

No, the new hobby atheist is as brash, noisy and confident as a cheap electric kettle.

Ah, that's why. God, pardon me while I take time out to guffaw. Hah, cheap electric kettle. That's so damn witty and clever. Like a cow farting methane joke directed at greenies.

So now for the paranoid bit:

They want everyone to know that they have not found God, and that no one else should. Their particular target seems to be Catholics. On the surface, this is odd, as there are plenty of other religious targets just waiting to be saved from a vengeful, non-existent deity. Smaller herds, such as the Christadelphians or the Salvation Army, might seem more manageable.

Well actually the Catholics manage that job pretty well themselves - attacking other religions - especially in the recent attempt to lump every other church into the same pedophile racket (was it only in October we were writing about the worthy Silvano Tomasi?)

... the Catholic Church has two incomparable advantages as an object of the wrath of proselytising atheists. First, it is the biggie. Taking out the Catholics is the equivalent of nuking the Pentagon. Guerilla bands of Baptists and Pentecostals can be liquidated at leisure.

Oh dear, that paranoia is growing into quite a substantial malignant tumor. Atheists on the march. But hey, let's remember how it's done when it comes to demolishing the other faiths:

Second, the Catholics have the undeniable advantage that they do still demonstrably believe in something. Attacking some of the more swinging Christian denominations might mean upsetting people who believe a good deal less than the average atheist.

Way to go Catholics. That'll teach those wretched half baked half hearted incompetent nincompoop bubble headed boobies in other faiths about demonstrably not believing in something and perhaps even fellow traveling with the atheist secularists. Yep all you bloody splinter Christian groups are just a pile of irritating blather.

Mind you, the appeals of atheism as a diverting pastime are not immediately obvious to those of us who are on relatively easy terms with God. Why would anyone get so excited about the misconceptions of third parties as to the existence of a fourth party in which they themselves do not believe?

But, but, but. If you're on relatively easy terms with god, why would you give a flying fuck about the buzzing of blowflies? A simple 'shoo fly' would surely suffice. There must be something that sticks in the craw, something that gets a third party agitated about the beliefs of fourth parties that don't have anything to do with the rights of the original parties, which we all know are some kind of pari passu pro rata distribution deal with god.

The answer is twofold. First, the great advantage of designer atheism is that you get to think of yourself as immensely clever. After all, you are at least much brighter than all those dumb-asses who believe in a supreme being, such as Sister Perpetua down the road, Thomas Aquinas, Isaac Newton and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. So satisfying.

Oh would that be the Isaac Newton deemed a heretic, who favored the Eastern Orthodox view, and who might well have been an antitrinitarian, and - gasp - even a Rosicrucian. (here) Not to mention becoming a dedicated alchemist. And who might best be described as a deist, who managed to resist the charm of the last sacrament on his death bed!

Oops, there I go, feeling immensely clever and superior for having taken a few seconds to re-confirm what I knew about Isaac Newtown before shooting my mouth off like a hopeless gherkin. And what do you know. It's so bloody satisfying.

The second factor has to do with wit. For some reason, contemporary Australian atheism seems to consider itself terribly funny. Its proponents only have to wheel out one of the age-old religious libels to lose control of their bladders. To outsiders, of course, it is a bit like watching a giggling incontinent drunk at a party. This is not to say that believers - and perhaps especially Catholics - do not get seriously irritated by atheists. They do, but not because atheists are fearfully clever or Wildely funny.

Oh gosh, must be time to wheel out an old religious libel. Take it away Ambrose Bierce:

Trinity, n. In the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches, three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one. Subordinate deities of the polytheistic faith, such as devils and angels, are not dowered with the power of combination, and must urge individually their clames to adoration and propitiation. The Trinity is one of the most sublime mysteries of our holy religion. In rejecting it because it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of theological fundamentals. In religion we believe only what we do not understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as a part of the latter.

Oh dear, that must really irritate.

When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything equal to it.

Sorry Oscar, that's so Wildely unfunny we have to move along.

How about some bitterness and bile?

Frankly, the prime reason the average believer finds the common or garden atheist as appealing as a holiday in Birchip is because they consign them to that sorry category of individuals who spend their lives loudly congratulating themselves on their own intelligence without noticing that no one else is joining the chorus. Thus, as a Catholic, I do not normally sense in some tabloid atheist the presence of a supreme discerning intellect. I simply place him or her in much the same pitiable bin of intellectual vulgarians as the chartered accountant who cannot see the art in Picasso, the redneck who cannot admit of indigenous culture, and the pissant who cannot see the difference between Yeats and Bob Ellis.

Yep, there's bitterness and there's bile there in abundance. What a pity that pitiable retard Picasso fancied himself an atheist, thereby surely putting himself in the ranks of accountants when it came to understanding his own art.

It is not deep perception we encounter here, but a critical failure of imaginative capacity. It is a bit like the old joke: how many atheists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None - no matter what they do, they just can't see the light.

Oh that's so clever and so witty, and really it's not the same as wheeling out an old religious libel is it? But seeing as that's where we're heading, how about we wheel out some other light bulb jokes?

Q: How many charismatics does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One, since his/her hands are in the air anyway. (or: One to change the bulb and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness, or: Three, one to cast it out and two to catch it when it falls!)

Q: How many Calvinists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. God has predestined when the lights will be on. (Calvinists do not change light bulbs. They simply read the instructions and pray the light bulb will be one that has been chosen to be changed.)

Q: How many neo-orthodox does it take to change a bulb?
A: No one knows. They can't tell the difference between light and darkness.

Q: How many Amish does it take to change a light bulb?
A: "What's a light bulb?"

Q: How many youth pastors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Youth pastors aren't around long enough for a light bulb to burn out.

Q: How many Anglo-Catholics does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. They always use candles instead.

Q: How many Brethren does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Change?????

Q: How many Baptists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: The whole congregation needs to vote on it!

Q: How many conservative Anglicans does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Three. One to change it and two to storm out in protest if the person changing it is a woman!

Q: How many United Methodists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: This statement was issued: "We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey you have found that a light bulb works for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship with your light bulb (or light source, or non-dark resource), and present it next month at our annual light bulb Sunday service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, three-way, long-life, and tinted--all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence."

Oops, I see I got quite distracted there for a moment. Back to a final message from our sponsor:

The second wearying thing about the new atheism is that it is not new at all. It is so banally derivative of every piece of hate mail ever sent to God that I am amazed Satan has yet to sue for copyright infringement. No old chestnut is too ripe, rotten or sodden, especially when it comes to the Catholics as accredited suppliers of what apparently is the Christian equivalent of methamphetamine.

Time for an exorcism. Done in the old style. That bloody satan is getting uppity again, and the plagues are all around us. Where's bloody Max von Sydow when he's needed!

And hasn't Greg Craven done well. At time of writing over a hundred comments for the possum poking the stick at the satanists. Such a clever, witty shit stirrer.

Me? Just another day in loon pond, with surely Greg Craven as an exemplar of all that's of the finest water when it comes to comical writing of a loonatc kind ....

(Below: some handy warning signs, as noted here).

Janet Albrechtsen, Jason Wilson, and if you make me laugh enough, maybe I'll keep reading

Over at New Matilda, Jason Wilson gets very upset with the squawking of commentariat columnists, and even goes so far as to dub these fine feathered loons as 'trollumnists'.

Now everything Jason writes in "If I Make You Angry Enough, Maybe You'll Keep Reading" is fair enough and true enough, except that he somehow seems to think it's a new phenomenon, when the reality is that the likes of Miranda the Devine have been trolling their trade for many years, even before the intertubes.

But the formula's the same as the one he analyses in detail - polarizing, extreme, dividing the world up into camps, and hurling abuse. Which these days you can get for free in any number of forums as 'letters to the editor' become the mass of indignation and outraged howls that makeup the full to overflowing intertubes.

Her (the Devine's) work is intellectually, morally and politically barren, but importantly, it gets a reaction, with social media and blogs pointing traffic in her direction with each lazy, offensive column she issues forth. I'm one of the worst offenders, regularly, exasperatedly linking to her work when I read it. It only recently occured to me, as one of my own comments cascaded out through friends on Twitter, that however incrementally, I was increasing the size of her audience.

It's not just Fairfax, of course — in News Limited's broadsheet, The Australian, for trollumnists like Janet Albrechtsen or David Burchell, one regularly gets the sense that the content of any particular piece is far less important than axe-griding, and the blunt provocation that gets the bloggers fuming and the tweets ricocheting around the tubes.

Unfortunately Jason takes it all too seriously and wonders if old media realize how much damage they're doing to the brand while in pursuit of short term hits and easily observed statistics showing that attention is being paid on the intertubes.

What he misses is the therapy value. Look at a Devine column, and it's hard not to reel away thinking "thank the lord, I'm not as mad as her", or "I might have a bee in my bonnet, but did you see the size of that bumble bee buzzing around in Miranda the Devine's brain today", or "I might be a loon without any understanding of the world, but they pay Miranda the Devine to write this stuff?"

There's also the humor. What would we do without a loon writing how Sydney motorists are terrified of cyclists, or wondering how the plasticity of the brain is leading to the decline and fall of western civilization (when Devine herself for example exemplifies that decline, not least for watching Ladette to Lady).

Sure it's masochist and perverse to take pleasure in the ramblings and musings of trollumnists - such a nice word, I'm sure to borrow it often - but if you're willing to do hot wax in an SM session, then reading a column by Janet Albrechtsen is nothing, nothing I tells ya.

Which is why you can turn to Janet Albrechtsen's latest column with tremendous good cheer and chortling as she writes about Seeing through hoax of the century.

The clear implication in her ramble is that climate change is the hoax of the century. Even bigger and better than the last hoax:

Perhaps we are wising up to modern day millenarianism where end-of-the-world cults - those who have the most to gain from their fear mongering - preach calamity. Remember Y2K? The cult back then comprised computer experts. They predicted disaster. Planes would fall from the skies. People would be caught in halting elevators. Chaos would descend on anything that relied on a computer, from financial markets to utilities. Governments duly prepared for disaster with the BBC reporting that global preparations for the millennium bug were estimated to have cost more than $US300 billion. All for nought. Nothing happened. It was, as James Taranto wrote in The Wall Street Journal, the hoax of the century.

Nothing happened? Would any of that have anything to do with the elaborate precautions that were taken? No, nothing would have happened if they hadn't spent a cent? Well only a fool would say that. There were computer related issues that could have caused disruption and inconvenience. Would these events have been as extreme and dire as those predicted by panic merchants? As likely not, but is there any matching basis for calling it the hoax of the century? Only by loons who understood nothing about the technical issues, and determined to grind an axe.

Sure there were nutty extremists and survivalists and end of century millenarians who got on to the show biz circuit - in much the same way as Albrechtsen routinely predicts liberal secularists will shortly bring about the end of the world - but the noise just obscured some house keeping that needed to be tended to, in much the same way as the wise back up their data, and so do the fools after their first hard drive crash removes everything that was digitally precious to them.

If you want an intelligent look at the Y2K issue, you go elsewhere - for example to this wiki under the header Year 2000 problem - which summarises issues, and provides pro and con arguments regarding the seriousness of the issues. But of course this is an old riff, regularly deployed by commentariat columnists (who can forget Malcolm Colless's uproarious and comical Heating beat-up has echoes of Y2K as the bees keep buzzing in the bottle?)

Albrechtsen's style is to sample a couple of voices that confirm her world view - which might best be summarized as cynical paranoid right - and go at it hell for leather:

Maurice Newman, who was chairman of the federal government’s Y2K committee told The Australian last week that “in pressing the urgency for compliance, the committee members relied heavily on confirmatory bias. Most of this came from so-called experts who had much to gain from creating a sense of alarm. The consequence of widespread inaction was claimed to result in chaos and systemic failure. As there was no alternative authoritative voice, this became perceived wisdom and was certainly believed by the committee. As such the Y2K phenomenon took on a life of its own.”

Of course whatever your viewpoint on Y2K, one event in the field of computing is no guide to the logic, rationality or credibility of a theory in another area, such as the arena of climate change science.

Would scruples of logic stop Albrechtsen delivering illogical abuse? Of course not:

Deja vu? Preparing for the deluge of rising sea levels, we were treated to footage last week from parliamentary question time starring Julia Gillard and her gumboots. Appropriately she was followed on ABC1 by Bananas in Pyjamas. Could man-made climate change turn out to be the greatest hoax of the present century? Certainly, ordinary people are beginning to ask questions.

Gillard, gum boots, kids' V, and ordinary people asking questions? Yep it's as incoherent and inchoate as rambling on about a Halloween freak show with bonus vegetarianism, 'roo eating and the carbon dixoide in champagne thrown in for good measure (forget the gas in soda, forget the hot air exhaled by Albrechtsen, forget the disloyalty to Australian wines by evoking a foreign cheese eating brew when our own sparkling wines have been carefully manufactured to reduce the amount of fine beading bubbles, or so they tell me after I've knocked off the fifth glass of cold duck).

Now how to respond? Well according to Jason, you might get angry, but me, I laugh, and I laugh. Talk about a chortle. I mean, Bananas in Pyjamas?

When I finish reading Albrechtsen, I usually click over to a nice Christian tract about the impending arrival of the Rapture or the certainty of creationism, and then I begin to wonder if Christianity is the greatest hoax of the present century (and every other century). Certainly ordinary people who watch Bananas in Pyjamas are beginning to ask questions.

And there are other treasures:

Viewers of the 7pm News on ABC1 were told by a Richard Branson lookalike - complete with longish wavy grey hair, beard and crisp white shirt - that the township of Byron Bay would be completely flooded by rising sea levels. His expertise? He is a resident of Byron Bay.

Even if the following bit was omitted by the editor:

Readers of The Australian were told by Janet Albrechtsen lookalike - complete with longish relatively straight blonde hair, post modernist spectacles, and crisp clothing which might range from a tie to a strange neck rug - that climate change is the hoax of the century. Her expertise? She is a columnist for The Australian.

There's plenty more juicy tidbits, but you get the drift. Would you turn to Janet Albrechtsen to get an understanding of climate change science? Not if you're sensible. But if you want to read an exuberant bit of trolling, she's unfailingly reliable:

Increasingly, the road to Copenhagen resembles a suburban street on Halloween with the number of climate change freak shows and stunts reaching a nadir in recent weeks. Nicholas Stern says we should turn vegetarian in order to combat climate change. If you must eat meat, eat kangaroos, says Ross Garnaut, because marsupials emit negligible amounts of methane. And that champagne you drank on Melbourne Cup day? Scientists scolded us with a report that a 750ml bottle of bubbly could produce 100 million bubbles, releasing five litres of carbon dioxide.

Deja vu? Eerie. Did I forget to mention that's how she opened her nice uncombative column before going on to cherry pick a little science to show she's really quite informed about the issues?

What to do? Well have a nice 'roo fillet and wash it down with a glass of bubbly, or head off to work feeling refreshed.

Should you write a response rebutting all Albrechtsen's standard points culled from the usual suspects about climate change? (This time Nils-Axel Mörner gets a guernsey in the rotating pantheon of sceptics).

Well only if you like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer, as if that somehow would make any kind of difference. Once you see a header shrieking hoax of the century, and carried on reading, you know that you're in the world of shit-stirring provocation, hastily cobbled together on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to stir the pot and arrive at no truth or insight whatsoever.

And that is the charm of the commentariat trollumnist. It's always deja vu all over again, and if you get agitated this week, then surely you're an all day sucker and you've bitten back in October in Beware the UN's Copenhagen Plot, wherein climate change was going to lead to world government, or her peddling of the same soup back in July 2008 under the header Apocalypse Soon?, wherein the Garnaut Report was the villain, or any of the dozens of other references you get if you google up Albrecthsen and climate change - though when I went looking for my personal favorite, wherein she embraced Ian Plimer, the intertubes seemed to have lost the file. Strange, a file that big and important should be lost, but hey, we move on. (Oh wait, here it is, at a new address, A tale of two worlds).

You see, it'd be like trotting off to Cardinal Pell in the expectation of a sensible consideration of the relative virtue of the Catholic church up against any other form of belief or non-belief.

All you're ever going to cop is the ranting of a true believer, so with Albrechtsen you have three choices: the sensible one is not to read her, thereby doing your blood pressure and your humor the world of good; the irrational one is to read her, and get enraged, and write off indignant comments to her column, as if expecting somehow that logic might sway her into the path of rationality, thereby confirming you're as delusional as she is; and the third one is to read her, chortle away as she peddles the same old snake oil, and then after a cleansing laugh go about your business with not a care in the world, nor a momentary pause for bizarre thought that this is the strange way some shit-stirrers make a living.

The only harm you might do? Well a click to read is harmless - it's free and causes Chairman Rupert no end of heartburn, pain and financial loss, and soon enough he'll be after you to get the value of Albrechtsen behind a paywall. No, it's if you've paid money for a hard copy of the paper to read Albrechtsen, thereby delaying the moment at which Chairman Rupert will put her behind a paywall ...

So I urge you to join the campaign to put Albrechtsen behind a paywall by not buying The Australian. And if you're feeling a little snarky, despite all the chortling, never ever click on an advertisement carried online by the Murdoch press. But remember that might delay the moment that Albrechtsen is put behind a paywall ...

Damned if you do, and damned if you don't, but remember some day you too can be in a Chairman Rupert social community and be friends with Dame Slap a Lot (aka Janet A), and all for a measly fifty quid a year or so ...

Speaking of paywalls, it seems the first pirates who've breached old media paywalls are already being sent to prison, or so Simon Dumenco tells me here.

Gerard Henderson, a steady stayer and let a thousand fields bloom with happy migrants

How did the big betting plunge go?

Sadly I missed out, only by a length, but enough to spoil the day.

What's that you say, the monstrosity known as the Melbourne Cup has yet to run?

Well here in the heartland we keep a sense of priority, an awareness of more important and significant competitions.

And there's Gerard Henderson in The Sydney Morning Herald proving yet again that the tried and true stayer is always the most reliable competitor, with Big is beautiful in a land that thrives on foreign affairs.

First mention of John Howard in the column: 4th paragraph

Number of mentions of John Howard in column: five.

Yep, all I needed was the first mention to fall in the third paragraph, and it was off to the Bahamas with me. Well that's the way it goes, such is life as that reprobate Ned Kelly might say, but it does give a clue to the kind of competitor you need for the other cup - nothing flash, but tried and true, dull repetitious plodding, a lifting and lowering of hooves until you hit the finish line.

Henderson also offers a bonus for the wild card gamblers willing to stake everything on the pace of a pair of blowflies racing up the window pane, by throwing in three mentions of Bob Menzies, and for diehard leftists who refuse to gamble on the right, even manages to weave Arthur - two wongs don't make a white - Calwell into his opening narrative. As well as Ben Chifley and Doc Evatt, as if a history of the nineteen fifties is a safe guide to the journey Australia will be on by twenty fifty.

The theme for the week? How immigration is a good thing, and how beneficial it will be to have thirty five million in the country.

Well good luck with selling that proposition to the heartland.

At a time when the NSW Labor government couldn't organise a chook raffle, let alone public infrastructure, the notion that millions more will be embedded in the landscape without seriously impacting both the landscape and infrastructure is an interesting proposition, but the mantra of growth has always been deeply rooted in certain economic savant psyches.

Henderson admits to one minor tremor, regarding the availability of housin

This can best be resolved by opening up more land for development, easing development restrictions and reducing the power of public sector unions over transport. Greater competition in transport should increase supply.

This is such transparent nonsense that Henderson immediately veers off into an attack on the Greens for their fear of greater numbers affecting the land in ways that will exceed what we've already achieved in the Murray Darling basin.

It would at least have been more honest if Henderson had said that in places like Sydney we need to pack people into smaller areas - like rats in high development housing - and that all areas, like the folks squawking away on the North Shore about the sanctity of their luxury, will feel the heat. Instead of trying to provide endless rolling quarter acre blocks of suburban housing, apartment living New York style will be the way it will go.

And the notion that making public transport "competitive" will solve current problems is so fanciful that I've taken to wandering around Harry Potter style pointing a wand, and saying "Abracadabra competition hocus pocus", and things are transformed right before my eyes.

But if Henderson falls at the first hurdle - stayers shouldn't try the jumps - by declaring population growth is a good thing, and it will make us all the richer, by not bothering to examine the implications or how this might be managed, he's in good company. Every politician in the country ducks and weaves the issue, understandable as they are currently failing so dismally at handling the current patterns of urban growth. Nathan Rees as a futurist? Surrealist more like it.

But Henderson does at least make one remark that will get him in trouble with the commentariat columnist brigade, and which you should try out by ringing in to a shock jock when the opportunity presents itself. Here's what you say:

The overwhelming majority of migrants are bright, hard working and make a positive contribution to society and the economy. Ethnic crime is relatively low and ethnic intermarriage relatively high.

Said by a John Howard lover who earlier in his column notes that John Howard ran a high non-discriminatory immigration program during his time in office.

Score one for the prattling Polonious, but see if you get out of talkback land skin intact without being flayed alive, as the hysteria mounts over a few boat people.


Now, with a blithe wave of the hands, the winner of the infrastructure cup for NSW is ...

A Little Housekeeping, but never fear, the loons are always everywhere

Off to the heartland briefly, to ensure maintenance of credibility with the likes of Barnaby Joyce (points finger to temple and waves it in loon-like circular motion in the style of Virginia Trioli), and to check that National Party policy continues to favor digging up Australia and shipping it offshore to the highest bidder, so that all that will be left in the end will be a giant quarry, at which point Australia will move en masse as boat people to Nauru, and dwell amongst the guano.

And speaking of boat people, no need to fear that you will be left loonless.

Why you only have to head over to the squawking of Paul Sheehan, who in his header assumes a god-like omniscience and potent presumption about everything in Migration: the true story.

Nothing so modest as Migration, the Paul Sheehan view.

No, it's the true story, and so begins the first bold bare-faced lie. I guess after Miranda the Devine's runaway hit with so many comments about keeping cyclists off the road because they terrify motorists, especially those driving Hummers, that Sheehan just had to keep stirring the pot by poking a stick at the boat people. Why it's the end of western civilization as we know it, and by Friday at the latest.

What a fine display of xenophobia is on view, and if that's not enough to slake your thirst for loonacy, why not head off to tired, hapless, wretched David Burchell banging the same drum in Middle-class angst a luxury we can't afford.

So many loons, so little time.

And tomorrow, Melbourne cup day, likely as not you'll have the latest results for the regular Gerard Henderson tipping competition, with the odds being that he's certain to celebrate a horse race by musing just how good it was in the old John Howard days.

Can life get any sweeter or better?

Meantime, loon pond will resume its regular dance with the squawking loons when a swift varnish of heartland credibility has been applied as a veneer to the cheap chardonnay sipping half inch chipboard within.

Andrew Colley, piracy, the Hollywood machine, and copyright as a moveable feast

It's impossible to count the ways the intertubes has facilitated piracy, or just common disregard of intellectual property rights.

What's the likely odds, for example, that The Paunch, Chairman Rupert's entry into the field of blogging, has contacted the owners of the rights to The Young Ones, and obtained the right to run a clip from the show as a way of introducing their Punch on: Open thread for this second day of November in the good lord's year 2009, seeing as how it's a show which first aired in 1984? Lordy, the owners don't even need the 'house of mouse' extension to argue their rights.

Sure The Paunch has just embedded a link to YouTube, but that's no excuse in the eyes of the law, and in any case, what's the chance that the supplier to YouTube obtained a clearance, including The Paunch as a legitimate third party user?

Is the YouTube user name NotinterestedThanks an indication? Perhaps there's something in the accompanying commentary on The Paunch that justifies the usage? You know, like fair comment, or a review of the show in which case the clip might be illustrative of a point?

On this day in 1936 Benito Mussolini mentioned the “Berlin/Rome axis” in a speech, a term which would be used to describe the “Axis powers” led by German, Italy and Japan in WWII.

Well not sure you could call that a sufficient reason or excuse to run Alexei Sayle doing his Mussolini routine, as opposed to just another blatant, casual rip off of someone else's property rights. In this case that notorious, infidel the BBC which is ruining everything for everyone, or at least Chairman Rupert and son James.

Guess the question of ancillary rights has to keep floating in the ether, and the notion that Chairman Rupert and his minions support the free and easy treatment of intellectual property rights will have to keep swinging in the breeze with it.

Meantime, Chairman Rupert and his minions froth and fume about the abuse of their content, and secondary linking by the likes of The Huffington Post as a betrayal of their rights.

The reality? These days none of the big institutions rigorously check for rights and obtain appropriate clearances. Journalists hop on to the intertubes, garner what they need, and go with the story. Only when they're doing a story for a hard copy format do they pause, and either resort to in house facilities or a rights-cleared supplier. On line, they're part of the anarchy.

Which makes it all the funnier - in a post modernist ironic sense - when you read an article like Andrew Colley's Hollywood attacks piracy as ISPs ignore safe harbour.

No doubt inspired by the loss and suffering of Chairman Rupert's noble Twentieth Century Fox, Colley sees it as perfectly logical for the major Hollywood studios to single out and beat up iiNet in court:

There's a strong argument that the Australian internet industry knowingly left the studios with no choice but to bring what they knew would be an unpopular case against an ISP.

No choice? And no choice to beat up iiNet, as opposed to say Telstra or Optus, that might have a little more cash and a little more grunt if it came to a showdown in court?

Well if you believe that, no doubt you go around on a daily basis pulling the other one. But Colley thinks that singling out iiNet is just the way it goes:

It may be unfortunate that iiNet drew the short straw, but it's clear the legal planets that bought the trial to being have been lining up for a long time.

It's hard to see how the Internet Industry Association could not have seen it coming, and equally difficult to see how AFACT had any choice left.

Unfortunate? No choice left? It's all down to choice? Well can I have the chocolate topped doughnut with jam in the middle? And a dash of Alexei Sayle on the side?

Here's how Colley earlier in his piece poo poohed conspiracy theorists:

The fact that iiNet has been singled out has prompted plenty of dark conspiracy theories on the internet, and observers around the world are keeping a close eye on the case.

In fact, the internet community's collective bile duct has been working overtime to generate hundreds of shrill Tweets and forum posts that barely stop short of calling for war against Hollywood.

"Do we sue carmakers for road accidents?' is typical of the intuitive logic of the backlash.

For bearers of this logic, a negative outcome for iiNet would be such an egregious miscarriage of justice that CBS Interactive technology journalist Liam Tung went so far as to compare the case with Arthur Miller's fictionalised account of the Salem witchcraft trials in The Crucible, inspired by McCarthyism in the 1950s.

Well in my experience of playground bullying, the way the clever bully works is to pick out someone not their size, someone conveniently smallish - not so small that it looks utterly cowardly - and then sets out to give them a good thrashing, knowing that the chance of any kick back has been minimized. And everybody else stands quietly by, and watches the fight.

Meantime, Colley takes this logic to a point of quintessential absurdity:

But if that's the case why are the likes of Telstra and Optus quietly standing by and letting iiNet go it alone?

What? They should confess that they too are lawbreakers, providing carriage and safe haven to pirates, and so should be enjoined in court with iiNet so they can stand solid together, loudly proclaiming their innocence in a bold love-in worthy of the summer of love in Haight Ashbury?

Well whenever I read an article like this, I'm immediately inclined to download a bit of intellectual property belonging to someone else, or I dream of toddling off to the video store to rip a movie.

In this fantasy, I always prefer to rip Twentieth Century Fox material, because of course I only use the material for time slippage purposes and then I destroy the copy, not circulating it to any third party.

And you know what? Strange how dreams can come true ...

I keed, I keed. In neither case does the piracy necessarily involve bit torrent, because these days in the virtual and the physical worlds, there are so many ways to pirate copyright material that they're impossible to tally. Which is why there are so many high quality Blu-ray movies now available online, the pearl having been dislodged from the allegedly impregnable security protected oyster.

The studios are pursuing the grail of bit torrent as the solution to all their woes, which is a bit like pursuing Moby Dick as a way of ending nightmares about white whales. Because these days pirates are making money out of alternative ways of distributing product that if the studios had half a clue would have been turned into their own money-making models.

As usual, the studios are out of date and out of touch, and the hordes have already moved on.

And when Colley writes that it's difficult to see how AFACT had any choice left, that's when I begin to see red, because at the heart of all this nonsense is the advice given by lawyers, and when you seek the advice of lawyers in this context, you get stupid advice. Resulting in juicy legal fees and expensive court cases.

The kind of advice that saw the studios introduce regional zoning in an attempt to protect the old territorial tiered releasing structure.

And all that meant is that in countries like Australia, the Chinese supplied multi zone players, and Americans were cut off from international product. Sure you might get the irritation of a rights protected player on a computer demanding that you change the region coding on the player, but then you just use another player on the computer.

So what's been accomplished? The market flowed another way, and all the studios had as a result of their attempts to restrict their customers is a residual sense of irritation that they should try to halt purchasing product from Amazon in the US (where was Bob Carr when this was going down? Why does the Australian publishing industry think it should imitate American studios?)

Remember the grand old days of macrovision on VHS tapes? Now easily circumvented by video stabilizing devices, legally purchased, but who cares?

Do the studios really believe that they'll achieve victory, whatever that might be or mean, even if they have a win in the iiNet case?

Well you can believe that if you like, but I'd no more believe it than believe that The Punch obtains appropriate clearances for all the third party material deployed on its site.

It was awhile ago that I took a look at the heartwarming tale of Jim and Bob, as enunciated on a Fox dvd (here), and as the days pass, the evidence mounts that the studios still don't have a clue about how to deal with or trust their customer base, so long accustomed have they been to the sheep placidly lining up in a queue to be shorn.

Well if they locked up all the internet breachers of intellectual property rights, there wouldn't be an online user who could stay out of jail. And Chairman Rupert and his minions would also find themselves in the lock up. Poignant, but true ...

(Below: will the coarsely dressed working class looking Jim ruin his social gathering by running a pirate video, or will nice looking Bob? You guess, but first put yourself into the mental idiocy of the team who thought putting this kind of nonsense on a DVD would beguile customers into the straight and narrow.

And below that, an xkcd cartoon. More xkcd here).

Peter Costello, Piers Akerman, Christopher Pearson, and the joys of jam on the snout

(Above: the Cayman Islands' Future Fund. Thought about a career yet? First learn to bloviate about about the evils of jobs for the boys, the benefits of small government, and the virtues of life in the hard edged private sector. Then go here to apply for a job and work for Government).

With the news that Peter Costello is to take a Future Fund job - here - and no doubt help that great new organisation discover tax breaks even further afield than the Cayman Islands - here - it's time to remember just how deeply embedded a love of socialism and government perks is in the Australian psyche.

The prize prat, and of course chief exhibit, is Costello himself. For all his sanctimonious humbug about free enteprise and the glories of the private sector, he has as politician managed to set up an institution which now provides him with a job, on a board with the curious title "Board of Guardians".

Peter Costello as a Guardian? Only in a bad science fiction movie - call it Time Guardian if you really want a bad Australian movie.

Silly Malcolm Turnbull had to attempt to put some spin on the move:

Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull says the appointment of Mr Costello exposes hypocrisy on the part of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Mr Turnbull says Mr Costello set up the Future Fund and is a very appropriate guardian for it.

But he has told Channel 10 Mr Rudd's decision contradicts his claim that neo-liberal free-market extremism practiced by the Liberal Party had done enormous economic harm.

"So here he is appointing the number one neo-liberal free market extremist to the board of the Future Fund," he said.

"It's a good appointment but it does show what nonsense Mr Rudd has been speaking about the economy."

Um, Malcolm, Chairman Rudd's humbug is as nothing compared to the humbug of Costello, neo-liberal freemarket extremist heading off to preside over public funds as a bureacrat, taking the easy parachute option rather than risk a hard fall to earth in the private sector.

No doubt the Labor party apparatchiks are hoping for a similar soft landing should they ever get turfed out, and then line up cap in hand for largesse from a new government, so they too can do a Brendan Nelson or a Costello.

Yep, not all pigs with their snouts in the trough are in Animal Farm, nor all of the hypocrites. Most of them end up sojourning in Canberra for a brief time, until the nest is well feathered.

And how has the Future Fund helped out the Australian economy by showing an ethical eye to the world?

Australia's $60 billion Future Fund is sending money to the Cayman Islands to try to minimise its tax bill.

In the past year, the fund has opened five subsidiaries in the Caribbean tax haven, with which Australia does not have a tax treaty or information exchange program.

At the same the Prime Minister has been part of the global push to crack down on the use of such tax shelters.

The investments were revealed in the fund's annual report, tabled yesterday in Parliament by the Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner.

The fund does not deny that it uses its subsidiaries to minimise its taxes. These would be due to foreign governments as the fund does not pay tax to the Australian Government.

''The fund seeks to maximise after tax returns,'' notes to the annual report says.

Memo to all Australians. Make sure you maximise your after tax returns, or put it another way pay the buggers as little as you can. What's good for the gander is surely good for the goose.

In the land of the rort, everything's a rort.

Well being a guardian to that kind of funny buggers stuff should be right up bureaucrat public servant humbug hypocrite Costello's alley.

Oh by the way according to the last annual report, there were seven guardians in toto - how many angels can you fit on a board - and total remuneration of the Board of Guardians (as opposed to employees' wages and salaries) was listed as $742,000, for wages, salaries, and superannuation. Oh give me some of the hard hitting neo liberal free enterprise private sector jam baby. (here for the report in large pdf file format).

Meantime, in other news, Piers Akerman reveals himself to be yet again in favor of socialized medicine. (Health Minister Nicola Roxon must go).

It seems Nicola Roxon isn't shoving taxpayer money down the throats of medical specialists fast enough, in what Akker Dakker perceives as a class war, and the result will affect people trapped in the public system, unable to afford the benefits on offer in the private system.

Is it time then for Akker Dakker to come out in favor of socialized medicine, and urge greater payments to doctors through the public system, as well as greater expenditure not just on his favorite themes, cataract removal and hip replacement - his readership has a large old fart demographic - but also the scandalous state of dental care available for those too poor to access private dentists?

It so happens that I'm in favor of socialist medicine, but when I read the cant of Akerman, why am I reminded so forcibly of Peter Costello?

And just to round out those who'd like to tip their snout in the trough, here's a few words from that stern culture warrior Christopher Pearson.

Recently that balding man of short memory Peter Garrett announced he wanted to bury the culture wars of the past, and even set up a Facebook site so that we could all help shape the nation's official cultural policy (Advance Australia Facebook).

Pearson didn't need to jump on to Facebook. He had a number of initiatives just waiting for government money, all listed in A Pair of crucial cultural priorities.

Egged on by Noel Pearson, the list included money for Aboriginal education, and preservation of Aboriginal languages, and Aboriginal painting, and Aboriginal songmen. And then from the other Pearson there was money for choirs and music and literature.

Nothing wrong with any of that, you takes your culture as you like it, and you lobby government to get some funding heading its way, and it so happens I don't mind a little government funding for the yartz, but when I read Pearson, why am I so forcibly reminded of Peter Costello?

Just remember, the next time you bump into one of those dry as dust free marketplace private sector blowhards - often found posturing as a politician or a commentariat columnist - that you need to check their snout.

You might just happen to find plenty of government jam on it, or about to be on it, or planned to be on it, or the snout begging for just a little more gruel with jam and brown sugar to be discreetly spread on it ...

(Below: and proving we can switch metaphors, remember Chuck Jones' great Chow Hound, and not forgetting the gravy? Oh we never forget the gravy).

Marina Hyde, Tom Davis, Paul Haggis, and why the pleasure of sideshow cults must continue

(Above: Church of Scientology spokesperson Tommy Davis taking a hike when the questions about volcanoes and things get too slippery slope).

Once upon a time, a volcano stood for something. Who can forget the glory days of scientology, when George street in Sydney boasted a classy, aesthetically pleasing volcano, which at night would shoot off sparks like a hyper-active brain of a Tom Cruise kind:

By golly it was tasteful, and a shining example of the value-add that religion can contribute to an urban setting (and there's more happy snaps of scientology buildings here, just follow the links).

Now, judging by Davis's behavior, volcanoes are something to be ashamed of, but try tucking away a volcano underneath the bed.

Now what's worse it seems even characters from leftie liberal rags like The Guardian are having a go at this deeply religious organisation, with columns syndicated all over the place because The Sydney Morning Herald can't be bothered to devise its own coverage. Yep, there's Marina Hyde offering up light Sunday reading under the header in the SMH National Times (we reprint anything we can find) brand Mad Scientologists caught in a web of their own making.

Hyde makes some astonishing claims, including that L. Ron Hubbard was a sixth-rate science fiction writer, when any reader/viewer of Battlefield Earth would know that he was in fact a fifth rate science fiction writer, somewhere below Isaac Asimov but certainly above a self-publishing author with a thousand copies of his tome under the bed. Only just above, but hey he did make money from his craft, before deciding religion-making was a better cash cow.

Hyde references Paul Haggis's recent break with his church, and it seems we must pay attention to Haggis, perhaps because he won a couple of Oscars as a result of Crash, which I always thought was as reprehensible as any other third rate piece of Californian emotionalist tripe.

But in a canny career move Haggis has caught a lot of attention, and rather than just read Hyde on Haggis, you can read Haggis on Haggis and Scientology by going here, with the full text of his resignation letter.

You can also find a handy link to the news that in France the church has been convicted of fraud, here, along with the handy information that the U.S. State Department has criticized some European countries for labeling Scientology a cult or sect and enacting laws to restrict its activities.

Only in America would freedom of religion be seen as more important than protecting fools from being parted from their money. (Never give a sucker a break must be written into the bill of rights somewhere).

Naturally the LA Times took a different view of Haggis's outrage, with Patrick Goldstein comparing Haggis's outrage to the jottings of blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo and Trumbo's habit of firing off letters (yet without once mentioning that Trumbo's most execrable crime came when he got off the blacklist with the help of Otto Preminger and received a credit for writing Exodus. For that he got credit? Bring back the black list).

The quote deployed by Goldstein to link Trumbo and Haggis is an extremely long bow, you can find it here, but he's right about one thing, and that's the way scientology caters to and exploits the fragile egos and shattered souls of the entertainment business (after all, if you constantly appear in mission impossible movies, pretending to be other people in alternate worlds, where's the harm in a volcano spouting truth and justice).

But back to Hyde, and the things she says, blaming the intertubes for the downfall of scientology!

Now I'm terrified. If the age of scientology is over, who will we have to mock, who will we have to snigger and laugh at?

Fortunately she provides some clues:

But when I think of Mel Gibson building his $US42 million church compound in Malibu, telling interviewers that his then wife would go to hell because she was Church of England … I can't find him any less barking than Tom Cruise.

Yes, when in doubt, there's always Mel Gibson, and his Hearst Castle folly (more slightly antiquated pictures here):

Those pictures come from a site dedicated to watching SSPX by a dedicated bunch of SSPX watchers determined to expose the schismatics (here). Now the Pope wants to bring Anglicans back into the fold, at least the ones that don't like women and homosexuals. Now there's a cult ...

But back to Hyde. Somehow she makes an enormous leap, and thinks that others should be held to account:

Scientologists should be forced to justify their doctrinal lunacies - the only sadness is that other religions are apparently exempt from having to do the same. Imagine a Bashir-type interviewing some cardinal. ''So, you're saying that by some magic the communion wafer actually becomes the flesh of a man who died 2000 years ago, a man who we might categorise as an imaginary friend who can hear the things you're thinking in your head? And when you've done that, do you mind going over the birth control stuff?''

Perhaps she could come to the antipodes to expose the heresies of Pellism and Jensenism.

Because if Haggis thinks the church of scientology is homophobic, he should catch a whiff of the fear and loathing emanating from the luddites of Sydney.

Back to Hyde for the wrap up:

What a shame that we see rather fewer of these exchanges, however amusing and useful a sideshow Scientology may be.

An amusing, useful sideshow? Is that what's happened to the once proud Thetan Xenu loving or fearing volcano fanciers? And now all we have left for an amusing and useful circus are the longer running cults that have been peddling their wares for thousands of years?

Suddenly it's a bleak Sunday, looking out on this awful existential void.

I know, time for some comedy stylings. First a bit of Woody Allen:

"I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens."

"I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me."

"To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."

"I don't believe in afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear."

"Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends."

"I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown."

"How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?"

"If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank."

Then a few from left field:

"I do not believe in God because I do not believe in Mother Goose."
(Clarence Darrow)

"Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."
(Don Hirschberg)

"Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat."

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
(Henry Louis Mencken)

And then to the grand daddy of them all, Ambrose Bierce, whose Devil's Dictionary you can find here, but in many other places on the intertubes, so loved is he, and who remains essential reading for all teenagers in search of joyous chortling cynicism as a comfort for the rest of their lives:

"Abstainer, n. Weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure."

"Baptism, n. A sacred rite of such efficacy that he who finds himself in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever. It is performed with water in two ways -- by immersion, or plunging, and by aspersion, or sprinkling."

"Bigot, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain."

"Christian, n. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin."

"Christian, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbors."

"Convent, n. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the vice of idleness."

"Destiny, n. Tyrant's authority for crime, and a fool's excuse for failure."

"Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

"Heathen, n. A benighten creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel."

"Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity"

"Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does."

"Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."

"Prelate, n. A church officer having a superior degree of holiness and a fat preferment. One of Heaven's aristocracy. A gentleman of God."

"Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."

"Reverence: the spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man."

"Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited."

"Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based."

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."

Phew, that's a relief. For a minute there Hyde had me going. No volcanoes?

There'll always be volcanoes, and loon pond full to overflowing like the intertubes ...

UPDATE: eek, and Miriam Hyde's article has already garnered some comments, including true believers. One day loon pond will encompass the world ...

(Below: Ambrose Bierce, still the best guardian against cultism available. Take a sip daily, or as needed).