And who can say or tell which was which ...

(Above: we've used it before and we'll use it again, found here at How a Labor leader snapped).

Thanks to the free copy of the Australian Financial Review thrown over the fence on a Saturday - yes, they're so desperate to paper the house they'd pay for the petrol so a hapless peón can deliver sad memories of a slow coffee over an ink-laden tree killer - the pond's attention was drawn to a piece by Mark Latham, entitled The sure-footed Mr Bolt.

As you can tell by the title it's a suck piece, in which Mr. Latham has lunch with Mr. Bolt and then proceeds to suck up to him at length and in excruciating adjectival detail.

Thanks to the wonders of the intertubes, you don't actually need a throwaway tree killer to enjoy the piece, you can simply head off here.

And while enjoying talk of cafes and coffee, why not also imbibe David Ramli's page two effort on the tree killer, uploaded at slow speed for your reading pleasure under the header Melbourne cafe patrons lap up free wi-fi.

Yes, these days you don't have to head off to The Australian for a bit of NBN, fast broadband bashing. Rimli does the usual trick of talking to a few people, who casually advise him they don't need the speeds being promised by the NBN.

No doubt Rimli could have done the same a couple of decades ago when astute, forward-looking business people could explain how they didn't need new fangled things like the internet - provided they could just do a bit of emailing over the modem, they'd be happy.

Rimli was probably around to record the thoughts of quill users confronted by fountain pens and biros too.

Anyhoo, it's worth remarking just how fucked the piece is as a simpleton exercise in FUD, and a reminder once again of a phenomenon recently noted by Bernard Keane in Crikey under the header AFR's opposition to NBN infects journalism:

Once upon a time you used to be able to distinguish The Australian Financial Review from The Australian because it was only at the latter that its editorial stances infected its journalism; the AFR, for example, is editorially opposed to the NBN, but its coverage was always far more neutral than that to be found in The Oz, which has conducted a mostly fiction-based campaign against it for years. Things however may be changing under the not-so-new régime of Michael Stutchbury.

In Keane's story, Ramli was a key offender with another story, and the only upside, the only comfort to be taken from this latest outing is that the AFR is doomed.

It never got how to be digital - hence its current confusion regarding its paywall and its pricing and its giveaways - and it better shape up, or ship out, because NBN-bashing aside, there's a whole new world coming, and they aren't on it ...

But hang on, hang on, the pond didn't throw the useless rag back over the fence, or use it for cocky litter, because it also contained that wondrous piece by Latham on Bolt that we started talking about ...

In a nutshell? Wankers of the world unite, and why not enjoy a good lunch in the process.

The pair have a fine old time nattering over a spiffy meal at a nice cafe on Toorak road in South Yarra. As you do ...

Oh it's a terribly intense conversation. It turns out that they both distrust the excessive use of authority (did anyone ask Latham's colleagues?) And consistency is important. It seems consistently being wrong is better than being inconsistently correct. The ABC is of course a competitive outrage, as Bolt explains over his small bottle of beer (well he's not a lush is he).

It's a state-controlled mouthpiece for the left, Bolt explains, noting that notorious leftie Peter Reith and a host of IPA Chris Berg types are continually given a perch to promote their commie pinko pervert thoughts.

Of course they're not killing Bolt, they're ruining Fairfax!

Naturally Latham would like to see the Bolter in parliament, because he sounds just like a Federal minister with his grasp of detail and his attention to intrusive boat people, greedy welfare blacks, climate change, and the freedom to express dingbat thought bubbles on whatever culture war comes to mind.

Oh he's acutely original is the Bolter, fresh in his comedy material, and with an underlying calmness, refusing to rant when careful debating needs to be accumulated.

Eyes glazing yet?

Other topics include Bolt's persecution and martyrdom at the hands of Balmain basket-weavers, and the cruel way the media treated him, and Bolt's good-hearted libertarianism, and the pair's shared loathing for Tim Flanney and climate science, all given a nice salad dressing thanks to Latham's willing way with lavish adjectives, but let's just settle for this par:

When I think of the Dutch, I think of the Protestant work ethic, a breed forever on duty, in the manner of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. Bolt could easily slip into the role of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, leading his company of loyal libertarians into conflict against Balmain’s basket weavers, global warmists and refugee lobbyists.

Still with us? Didn't feel the need to rush off to the toilet, or dig a bucket out of the laundry?

Well while having a go at the basket-weavers, here's the most crucial set of ideas to emerge from the lick-spittling and the gratuitous sounds of sucking up:

A La Bouffe Bar & Bistro

268 Toorak Road, South Yarra, Victoria
1 Prawns with pea mousse, tomato marmalade and orange sauce
1 Prawn and lobster ravioli
1 Eye fillet wrapped in prosciutto
1 Pave béarnaise
1 Kronenbourg beer
1 Stella Artois beer
1 bottle Badoit mineral water
1 Cafe latte
1 Cappuccino

Total: $190.90

Now that's not a shabby way to make a living. The biggest question is who drank the latte and who drank the cappucino. Either way, it's obvious that neither are purists, that both are in fact close-kissing cousins of Balmain basket weavers.

The frothy milk factor sorts out the purist espresso drinker - or maybe at a stretch macchiatto - from the common or garden herd of idle chattering class elitists who live indolent Balmain lives. (And don't get the pond started on the subject of mochas - if you want to drink chocolate, drink chocolate. Next thing you know you'll be sipping a Gloria Jeans coffee).

And how pleasing to see that they shared a Badoit mineral water, the water of gourmets and seen throughout the cheese-eating land of French restaurants.

The beers should also meet with the approval of the chattering elites. It's true a Stella Artois is a little suspect, some would contend this Belgian beer is now a little too vulgar and widespread, but the Kronenbourg - shipped from its brewery in Strasbourg France no doubt - is a mischievous tribute to what was once a Free Imperial City in the Holy Roman Empire.

Thank god there was no need to talk about how VB tastes like soap, and Australians simply can't make beer (they can't make cars either, where would we be without the Europeans and the Japanese?)

Other deep thoughts arise. Who ate the prawns, with their clever pea mousse, tomato marmalade and orange sauce? Who preferred the prawn and lobster ravioli? Who settled for the eye fillet wrapped in prosciutto (very rare one trusts) and who boldly marched into the Pave béarnaise?

Was it a pavé of venison or de boeuf? No need to worry. All was well:

French food has a reputation for being served in finely crafted portions, too small for the ravenous Australian appetite. At A La Bouffe there was no need for dessert as our beef mains were perfectly cooked and filling.

Boeuf for the buffs at the bouffe ready to bash the judges and their judicial over-reach for giving the Bolter such a hard time, when all he was doing was getting his facts wrong in a noble cause.

Now some might immediately think of that fine Marco Ferreri film La Grande Bouffe - where four friends gather to eat themselves to death because of an existential sickness - but the pond was immediately reminded of a recurring theme of late, George Orwell's Animal Farm, and its climactic get together, and the speech by Farmer Pilkington:

He would end his remarks, he said, by emphasising once again the friendly feelings that subsisted, and ought to subsist, between Animal Farm and its neighbours. Between pigs and human beings there was not, and there need not be, any clash of interests whatever. Their struggles and their difficulties were one. Was not the labour problem the same everywhere? Here it became apparent that Mr. Pilkington was about to spring some carefully prepared witticism on the company, but for a moment he was too overcome by amusement to be able to utter it. After much choking, during which his various chins turned purple, he managed to get it out: "If you have your lower animals to contend with," he said, "we have our lower classes!" This BON MOT set the table in a roar; and Mr. Pilkington once again congratulated the pigs on the low rations, the long working hours, and the general absence of pampering which he had observed on Animal Farm.

Only one more thing would have made the image of Latham and Bolt shovelling beer and French food down their throats complete.

That would have been the news that Bolt composed his urgent cry on the need for Australians and Olympians to lift their productivity ... after sitting around with Latham in a bistro having a whinge about the world before rushing off to deliver yet another parasitical column for the HUN, or perhaps an entirely useless TV program full of commentary for the Ten network ... about the ways the animals on the farm aren't productive enough and are pampered too much.

The one certainty of course is that the Bolter's tribe of readers will never have the first clue what Bolt gets up to when he turns up in the Fairfax press, or how he sounds in his self-pitying opera-and wine-loving moments in a Fairfax profile like 'I don't have to fear insulting people ...'

The Bolter tribe never visit Fairfax or the ABC for fear that they might lose their libertarian souls and be swept up into a gigantic tribalist collectivist thought machine where everybody thinks the same. It's so much more free-thinking to think exactly like Andrew Bolt ... why even Mark Latham does ...

You might also think some of the Bolter's readers don't have the first clue about populism and the rewards on offer for its finer fear-mongering practitioners, and so they find it hard to imagine how there could be such a coming together of like minds, such as Latham and Bolt in a French bistro.

Latham seems somehow to imagine he isn't fawning:

Often in politics the most intriguing associations are forged on the anvil of conflict. Perhaps this comes from the repeated experience of hurling one’s best barbs at an opponent, only to see him stand sure-footed and return fire with a warrior’s certainty. Think of it as respect. Not the kind of fawning respect one might offer a close colleague or friend, but the mutual respect one finds in a worthy adversary.

Respect!?

Waiter, you can bring me that bucket now.

And so to end with a mangled version of Orwell:

Two voices urgently discussing matters of state and important crucial issues like climate science and judicial over-reach and the persecution of Bolt, and they were remarkably alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the diners. The creatures outside the restaurant window of the A La Bouffe Bar and Bistro at 268 Toorak Road, South Yarra looked from Bolt to Latham, and from Latham to Bolt, and from Bolt to Latham; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Sorry George, here's your original. Gee it comes in handy:

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Now there's a writer with insight ... no job for him at the AFR.

Straighten up George, the NBN is killing us ... we have to give Mark Latham away for free, and just for starters he costs us a couple of hundred for the posh food.

Couldn't he and the Bolter do it over a pie and chips, like the dinkum Aussies they pretend to be?

(Below: glory be, found here).

Sign the pond up for a lifetime membership of the 'sneerocracy' club so that sneering at Brendan O'Neill is more than a fringe benefit ...

(Above: an artistic impression of Brendan O'Neill)

Brendan O'Neill is a first class twittering twit when it comes to twittering about twitterers.

And he's painful to read.

The pond has no idea how and why he ended up with such a giant sized chip on his shoulder, but a lifetime of work by a professional woodchopper wouldn't get rid of it. It's tougher than ironbark (please continue the debate about the toughest gum to chop in rural forums) .

Not to worry, that should get the pond recognition as a credentialed, paid up member of the "sneerocracy".

O'Neill is a big fan of the dissembling "I'm no fan ... but" routine, the classic trick of apologists who want to have a bet each way, but in the end want to come out on the right side.

The opening pars of 'Romneyshambles': the wrath of the sneerocracy shows the art at its finest:

I'm not a fan of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and there is no doubt that like many other aspiring political leaders today, he is a doofus in the diplomacy department, seemingly suffering from a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease.

But how shambolic has his current world tour really been? Has it really been a "Romneyshambles", as first Twitter and now the world media have described it? Has his globetrotting to promote himself as the US president-in-waiting been a "disaster tour", in which Romney has "messed up badly"?

There it is, in all its glory. I'm not a fan of Mitt Romney, but ... I'm just a fan of Mitt Romney.

Win-win, so who blame - if not the Mittster - for the failings of his European and middle eastern tour?

This is where you have to seek an alternative villain. It might have been easy to accept the mantra of personal responsibility - lord how conservatives love that mantra - and accept it was all Romney's own work that he occasionally made a fool of himself, but then there'd be no way for O'Neill to get him off the hook.

Cue yet another version of "it's all the fault of the fancy pants, smarty pants, urban elite" and give them yet another sneering, sniggering name:

I'm not so sure that it has. Rather, what we are witnessing in the global branding of Romney's tour as "Romneyshambles" is the power of a new political clique - let's call it the sneerocracy - to make or break an individual's reputation.

But what if your clique game is to sneer at the sneerocracy? Does that turn you into a supersneerocrat?

Based in the modern-day battleground that is Twitter, armed with their 140-character grenades of snide commentary, and with vast swathes of the media at their beck and call, this sneerocracy is more able to set the agenda than ever before. And it has been primarily responsible for institutionalising the idea that Romney is a hapless, hopeless mess of a politician.

It does, it does. How else could you come up with the utterly bizarre notion that an newly formed and sworn in posse of sneerocrats are primarily responsible for Romney being hapless and hopeless in Europe, and that the sneerocrats are the agenda-setters. As opposed to the blathering Romney setting it for them ...

"It's all their fault" constitutes analysis? Sound like a ten year old to you? It's all your fault, smarty pants, nah nah.

And then O'Neill, to maintain some superficial connection to reality and credibility, has to do his own version of the sneerocracy ... by sneering:

He has certainly committed his fair share of what the media calls "gaffes". During his stopover in Britain he questioned whether Brits are really ready to host the Olympics. "There are a few things that are disconcerting", he said, such as "the stories about the private security firm [for the Games] not having enough people".

And so on and on, because then O'Neill has to painfully trawl back over the sundry Romney gaffes, like any average sneerocrat reliving the moment.

There's Boris Johnson firing up the crowds, and there's Romney forgetting the name of Ed Milibrand (as if one grey politician forgetting the name of another grey politician is somehow an excuse), and if that's not enough he even goes back to 2007 to throw in another charge, that Romney once nominated L. Ron Hubbard's Battleship Earth as his favourite novel.

Turns out the Bible is the Mittster's favourite book, as you can read about here, which produced this wonderful entry into the sneerocracy hall of fame:

Everything about the book is bad. Just a few sentences into the first page, you're confronted by this sentence: "Terl could not have produced a more profound effect had he thrown a meat-girl naked into the middle of the room." (A clothed meat-girl apparently gets a big yawn.) Hubbard's soundtrack for the book, when played, either attracts mice or repels dogs, or both. The movie, which starred John Travolta, is what therapists show to the producers of Ishtar and Glitter to help them feel good.

Now O'Neill is right about one thing. Someone who thinks the Book of Mormon contains the truth is ripe for a science fiction, and on the scale of things liking Hubbard is a lesser crime (but why oh why would a Mormon cite the Bible as his favourite book over the book of Mormon, with its improved and enhanced version of Christ in god's own America and the promise of a personal planet?)

But that reminds the pond of another problem with O'Neill. He's resolutely humourless, sincere and earnest. It's all to do with that larger than life chip on the shoulder, a man who sounds like he wants to live in Texas, except for some strange monstrous injustice which sees him live in London:

Clearly the opinion-forming classes long for another Bush, for another unenlightened hick they can laugh at and define themselves against, and they hope Romney will be the man to fill Bush's (cowboy) boots.
But how bad are Romney's gaffes, really, on a scale of 1 to 10? I would say only about a 3. Possibly a 4. Some of them aren't even gaffes at all.

Yep, at this moment, O'Neill dispenses with the 'billy goat butt" routine, and abandons any pretence he doesn't have any time for Romney, to the point that it begins to sound like a classic bout of man love - not that there's anything wrong with that, unless you happen to live in the Romneyverse.

And naturally O'Neill presents the best case for his fandom by lashing out at all around him, because it's their fault. Nah, nah, losers.

So it's fine to forget Milibrand's name, and it's great to love a trashy novel, and then we get on to the real sideshow:

The most striking thing about the Romney gaffe debate is the role played by the Twitterati. The Twitter mentality - mock things in 140 characters or less in order to get laughs and retweets - is now leaking from the internet into the mainstream media and into political parlance itself.

Never mind that the most striking thing about the Romney gaffes were that they were so simple and obvious and easy to avoid, if Romney hadn't been intent on big noting himself about the role he played in staging the games in Salt Lake City. Apparently that bit of hubris is all the fault of the twitterers.

And so we come to O'Neill, the cracked shellac whirling at a relentless 78 rpm over the same tired broken old groove. You guessed, it's the elitist groove:

What we can see here is the increasing influence of small groups of time-rich, ideas-lite, constantly tweeting individuals, of the sneerocracy, whose hive mentality can lead to people's reputations being trashed in a matter of minutes.

As thick as ironbark. As classic a case of the diagnostician suffering from the disease and not realising it. (Yes Spiked is full of cliquey twittering twits, here).

Make sure you take a good stone to sharpen the axe when confronted by ironbark.

Does O'Neill seriously believe that this little burst of twittering has trashed Romney's reputation? If so, some reputation ....

On and on he hacks away at the elites with his little tomahawk:

A bit like an army of ants speedily devouring an apple before moving on just as quickly to something else, this Twitterati launches "twitch hunts" against people it doesn't like, such as newspaper columnists who say silly things, and it partakes in a mass form of unofficial rebranding of its least favourite politicians' personalities, so that someone like Romney is now universally known as "Romneyshambles".

Was there a simple alternative solution that would have saved Romney and so saved us from O'Neill's invective?

Like not saying and doing stupid things? Sorry that would be inordinately complex and difficult for O'Neill to contemplate, it's so much easier to get agitated about the sideshow:

That serious newspapers and even the Democratic Party have "seized on Romneyshambles" suggests we're witnessing the Twitterisation of the media and of politics itself, the consolidation of an increasingly shallow, shrill, utterly unserious form of political debate, which is actually not very political, nor much of a debate.

Well yes, because if we were to look at O'Neill's contribution to the debate, surely it would have to be considered increasingly shallow, remarkably shrill and utterly unserious, though that's not to stop it being incredibly solemn and silly at the same time.

The poor lad's all atwitter about twitter and doesn't realise that the result is just more twittering.

The end result is that, yes, Romney looks bad, as his political standing is dented by the sneerocracy.

Actually Romney looks bad, because everything that happened could have so easily been avoided. That's what you expect of a politician. Not to answer the question asked, but to answer the question you want to ask. How is London going in its preparations? Fine, looking forward to it, next please ...

You can only amplify something if it's provided in the first place. No signal, no noise.

But his critics look worse, being so devoid of a serious alternative to Romney's outlook that they must instead seize upon his every alleged gaffe in order to say in the manner of a 10-year-old child: "Ha ha, loser."

Which brings us back to that incredible chip on the solemn O'Neill's shoulder. The incessant chatter about elites, the talk of alleged gaffes when earlier in the piece he'd already given up the game and acknowledged that Romney had committed actual gaffes, before he started to discount them and throw them out the door with a fifty per cent off sale.

By the end you almost feel like a ten year old again, having read O'Neill's tosh, and wasted time with it, and feeling the urge to shout out "what a loser you are, you dropkick, think about what you're writing and saying, think for just a nano second without going into your usual frothing and foaming routine about the 'leets".

And send me a lifetime membership of the sneerocrat club, so any time I can make use of its services any time I make the mistake of reading another of your columns.

And now for those who've cut the cable, or don't watch the pay TV they pay for, here's a couple of catch-up doses of Jon Stewart sneering at Romney.

Warning, he uses more than 140 characters.

But he's funny, which is more than you can say for the spotted gum brushbox world of hardwood O'Neill ... (and while you're at it, why not follow on with a dose of Lewis Black sneering at campaign ads, here, which you won't find in O'Neill's blockhead view of the American universe).

(Below: finally, let's hear it for a man who knew how to sneer in style, and long before Twitter. George Sanders' Memoirs of a Professional Cad is now hard to find, but you can still catch him doing the acerbic, haughty drama critic routine in All About Eve. He'd have made mince meat of O'Neill:

I'm Addison DeWitt. I'm nobody's fool, least of all yours, Mr. O'Neill.

More DeWitt quotes here).

We're doomed, we're poor, we're hopeless, we're useless, or so the Bolter tells us in another uplifting paranoid sermon ...

While the pond is maintaining its rigorous anti-Olympics stance - the Nine Network could be using a team of boofhead football commentators to call sports they know nothing about for all the pond cared - even the pond has noticed some unseemly gloating from the Poms, not least this little bit of bashing by the so-called liberal Guardian, in Australia left wishing its Olympic athletes cried tears of gold.

Yes even the namby pamby effete ponces at the Guardian aren't above getting into the gutter and delivering a few kicks to the groin like an English soccer thug on the prowl in Europe.

The pond farts in their general direction, but what's more alarming is the way the sternest, stoutest members of the commentariat in Australia have fallen to pieces.

There's Andrew "the bolter" Bolt having an unseemly hysterical dummy spit in World beaten - We must lift our game to compete, not just at the Olympics (may be paywall affected).

The Bolter uses the moment to turn himself into a hectoring Scout leader, or a righteous gauleiter:

Better get used to these Olympic tears, people. Unless, of course, we work harder.
No, not the athletes. All of us.

Oh dear. The tears, the tears that wash away the world and hope and joy and bliss and ...

It's everyone's fault, the centre won't hold, mere anarchy and Aussie tears are loosed upon the world, the British are stomping towards Bethlehem, the Chinese are on the march, and we're doomed, doomed, I tells ya:

Money, you see, buys medals. Dan Johnson, an economics professor at Colorado College, even has a formula - one gold medal for every extra $5000 in GDP per person.
And we've been rich. Even now, were eleventh in the world in GDP per person, says Forbes.

Yes, we must earn more, produce, boost productivity, head down mine for twenty five hours a day, work to the formula, fix up the GDP. In the GDP lies hope and joy and salvation.

We've been rich, rich I tells ya, but now we're poor, poor as church mice, and struggling on the world stage, and it's all the fault of bludging workers and their productivity, and nothing to do with the Bolter who churns out a ginormous amount of crap on a daily basis.

It was about this point that the pond felt like donning a Daniel Craig disguise, picking up the Bolter and slapping him in a manly Bondian way on both cheeks - several times - and then delivering this bon mot:

Harden the fuck up Mr Bolt.

Well it would have saved the world the Bolter ranting on and on:

How else could we pay for our new sports stadia, our Australian Institute of Sport?
That's what's kept us in the hunt.

In fact, in recent Games, we've done even better than usual in per capita gold medals - third in Athens, fourth in Beijing.

But, of course, the sheer size and collective wealth of some countries will tell on the actual podium. Witness the United States and Russia.

Oh the world is pressing down on us, crushing us, destroying us. The sheer overbearing size and wealth and weight is killing us, sucking us dry.

It seems everyone is a threat, everyone is doing us down. And then there's the wicked celestials, the ominous orientals:

...Witness the rise of China.

Ah, yes. The rise of China, and its 1.3 billion people.

In Sydney, Australia finished fourth in the overall medal count. China came third.

In Athens, Australia finished fourth. China came second.

In Beijing, Australia finished fifth. China came first.

And in London? China leads, and we're slipping fast.

Slipping fast!! We're doomed, doomed I tells ya. Walk out into the street and look around you. Notice how all the people are in tears, their clothes torn and bedraggled, their faces covered in ash and cheesecloth?

What are we to do, up against these fiendish orientals?

Again, count the dollars. China's economic growth has transformed it. Half a century ago, some 40 million Chinese died in Mao's man-made famine. Today, the country is buying mines and farms in Australia, selling us everything from cars to the shirts on our backs.

They're buying farms in Australia, buying mines, they're making Gina Rinehart and Twiggy Forrest and Clive Palmer filthy rich, and those filthy miners are making life hard for all of us,including Wayne "Born to run" Swanee.

And Clive Palmer likes The Seekers! We're ruined.

Oh wait a tic, billionaires and Gina Rinehart good, so maybe Chinese good after all.

Let's just wind that one back.

Today, the country is making my patroness Gina exceptionally wealthy, so what's wrong with digging up the country and shipping it to China and in return them selling us good quality goods from cars to the shirts on our backs.

That's right Mr Bolt, harden the fuck up.

Now, in the pool of the London Games it is buying the swimming medals we once thought ours, reportedly paying the two Australian coaches of its swimming team a $250,000 bonus for each gold medal.

Swimming! The Australian crawl! Richmond "Dick" Cavill! Ruined!

Australian coaches! Traitors, double dealers, apostates, back-stabbers, betrayers, deceivers, defectors, deserters, double-crossers, fifth columnists, informers, Judas lovers, miscreants, quislings, renegade snakes in the grass, turncoats selling out for the easy quid and the cheap dollar and the filthy renminbi.

How could Aussies use drugs to win? Oh wait, what's that, she passed the drug test? For all we know, she did it fair and square?

Never mind, let's keep trying to lather up a frenzy.

Same story with booming Brazil. In Beijing, it could finally afford to win more gold medals than it scraped together from all the Olympics before Montreal.

Oh no, not the Brazilians. Et tu Brazilians, thrusting yet another dagger into the bleeding tear-sodden heart of Australia.

Yes, money and even size is still not everything.

No, no, stupidity and banal cliches to end a silly column are still way more important.

At which point the pond felt again that urge to slap the Bolter on both cheeks, hard ...

Harden the fuck up Mr Bolt, it's only a game, and not the end of the known bloody universe. You win some and you lose some, and that's the way it goes.

The man really is a paranoid dunderhead of the first water. And to think he started off doing sports for The Age. These days you wouldn't allow him to carry a bucket for Adam Sandler in The Waterboy.

Every so often the pond likes to pit one Murdoch kool aid cultist against another, so come on down David Penberthy with Expect more demands for Olympic cash after Magnussen defeat:

The chief thing I would question is the assumption at the centre of this demand -- namely, that sport is so intrinsic to our national identity that the prospect of failure is too hideous to contemplate.

I don't know about you but I still managed to get out of bed yesterday morning and go to work despite the fact Magnussen had failed in the pool. I don't feel physically sick recalling the apparent humiliation of Montreal, where our failure to perform created the impetus for the establishment of the Australian Institute of Sport, and is still held up in sporting circles as a "never again" moment.

More pertinently, given that there is always a finite amount of public money that can be spent, I reckon it's pretty interesting that we have come up with an unchallenged model by which able-bodied sportspeople can play at the highest level, and travel the world doing so, but we still haven't got a solution to fund the care of people with disabilities so they can simply live their lives with dignity.

Oh splendidly said Mr Penberthy. How do you like your martini? Shaken or stirred?

"Do I look like I give a damn?'

Oh Mr Penberthy, let's throw in an a large thin slice of lemon peel and we can dance and laugh long into the night, and ponder the complete, utter mystery of that goose Andrew Bolt...

Henceforth to be known as the quivering, jelly marshmallow GDP 'crap on for crap's sake' man. (and more than you ever need to know about how to make a Bond martini and say shaken, not stirred here).

(Below: make ranting an Olympic sport! Then it'd be gold, gold, gold for Australia, the Bolter and the Parrot).

Are you ready for a hanging, because the pond's in virtual lynch mob mode, and Christine Satchell and Tory Maguire are ripe for the hanging ...

(Above: a salivating tabloid's dream).

For a moment there, the pond thought that Dr Christine Satchell, from the University of Melbourne, had been trolled.

After all, the Daily Terror has form as a troll, and a headline like How 'the nanny state' turned Aussies into hooligans is exactly the sort of thing you'd find up one of their darker and sillier alley ways, with baseball bats at the ready.

But no, there it is, the justification for the header in this quote:

“We live in nanny state where everything is controlled and you can't do anything without getting in trouble,” Dr Christine Satchell, a senior research fellow in computing and information systems at the University of Melbourne, said.

“So it's hard for us as Australians to be in a space with no rules.”

The quote doesn't reach quite the same conclusion as the header - reading it, you could think hapless Australians might roam the wild west of the intertubes just aimlessly getting themselves into trouble - but it shows the folly of academics talking to tabloids, and expecting anything sensible as an outcome.

There isn't a credible shred of evidence in the article which backs up the notion that the nanny state has turned Australians into online hooligans. And there's nothing but assertions that backs up this contention by Satchell:

People tend towards “hooliganism” when they’re allowed unmoderated and unfettered access to a publishing system, a senior IT researcher says.

And Australians tend to behave worse than most because we are not used to having so much freedom.

It simply doesn't make sense.

Satchell needs to get out more. Does she have any evidence that nanny-state Australians are any worse than wild-eyed American libertarians fiercely opposed to a nanny state ... when it comes to dropping fetid comments and outrageous aggressive remarks on a site like YouTube?

You don't have to look far to get an answer. YouTube is remarkably unmoderated, both in the content uploaded to it, and the comments made on the content. Partly it's just the logistics involved in monitoring what's now a vast site, full of nooks and crannies, and that's why copyright and naughty product keeps turning up like a bad penny.

If it's taken down, it just pops up somewhere else, and the comments just keep growing like mushrooms in cow manure.

Race and religion are two guaranteed ways to set off a bout of virtual hatred and abuse.

If you can stand a dip in a cesspool, take a look at the comments on a typical video labelled Racist Americans which is already heading to 250k in hits. The comments come from all over the place, of course, but you won't notice the hooligan nanny staters doing any better at the art form than "born to spill bile" United States rednecks.

And if you want to make yourself mentally ill, why not take a tour of the white pride neo-Nazi site Stormfront, proudly based in the United States (with handy outreach forums for ratbags in Australia).

The pond's not going to relay here the abuse of blacks, Jews, Muslims, other non-whites, or the Hitler love that saturates the site - be careful when you handle toxic waste - but can Satchell explain how her thesis explains the way the nanny state turns citizens of the United States into mad as march hare hooligan neo-Nazis?

Satchell gets herself listed in the Find an Expert pages of the University of Melbourne, but what the pond wants to know is whether she's done a statistical breakdown of the hooligans to be found on 4chan (take care, you've been warned) and their countries of origin.

We can argue about many aspects of a site like 4chan, but what we can't dispute is that it started in the bedroom of a 15 year old New York student (in honour of the artwork of that nanny state Japan). You can wiki about it here, and you'll see the site has been in all sorts of trouble over the years, but please remember it's as virtual American as a slice of virtual apple-pie.

No doubt a few Democrats will be pleased that Satchell has determined the United States is a nanny state and that explains 4chan, but that cuts no ice with the pond.

What Satchell was probably heading towards saying was this:

Dr Satchell said users should be encouraged to moderate themselves rather than relying on police and real world laws...
"... users are savvy and capable of defining what is acceptable and what is unacceptable,” Dr Satchell said.
“At the end of the day it's about building a culture about what is acceptable and unacceptable. While Twitter is largely unpoliced, it's not as bas as it's made out to be, I'm impressed by how well the unpoliced Twitter world behaves."

Who's to argue? It's the business of sites to moderate content and users, and users who provide self-regulation make the best communities. There are some pirate sites that are inordinately polite, though occasionally there'll be a flame war if someone fails to fulfil basic technical standards.

It's like any system. Self-regulation is best (unless it happens to be the pond confronted by a bar of dark chocolate), and it's best to keep the cops at arms length at all times (the pond likes to think of this as the four "p's" - police, psychiatrists, priests and prison wardens are best avoided).

And yes the current policing proposals by the federal Labor government are an outrageous over-reach, and likely to be ineffectual, not to say Orwellian in appalling ways. And yes life would generally be better if we didn't have virtual NSW and Victorian coppers tromping through the virtual world with virtual tasers.

Satchell uses the generally polite and regulated Slashdot as an example - they've spent a fair amount of time thinking through a system of peer moderation - but in the process she's committed a basic faux pas and offered a tabloid the sort of nonsensical headline they love.

Snort. Nanny state turns Aussies into hooligans. Snort and guffaw.

There seems to be some sort of libertarian disease doing the rounds at the moment, because Tory Maguire has also produced a bizarre headline, namely The online world doesn't need real-world police.

Her solution?

That's a merely rhetorical or delusional or comical answer, or or all three, and so way too trinitarian for the pond.

Maguire is agitated that the Pom cops (no need to moderate calling a Pom a Pom) busted a teenager for taunting a sports star via social media.

Now undoubtedly this is tough turf for freedom-loving News Ltd journos, since in the past it's been Pom journos busted for cracking mobile phones to dig up the dirt on sporting stars.

And where's the harm in that sort of vigorous law-breaking journalism? People want to know all the filth, and it's the journos that need to give it to 'em, and who needs real world cops standing in the way?

Like Satchell, Maguire is into moderation in a big way:

There are two options for dealing with a Twitter bully. Block and forget, or call them out and set your fans on them. Daley executed the second manoeuvre with a double pike.

Actually there are several other ways, and some involve the laws of defamation. There's no reason that anyone on Twitter should think they can defame, or otherwise break real-world laws simply because they have a magic social media shield in their sweaty texting, twittering paw.

And if you're a teenager suffering from suicide-inducing cyber-bullying, call on someone sympathetic, in authority and with power to do something about it.

For that matter, no one should think they can escape real-world laws relating to child pornography (and don't lead with that Tasmanian nonsense about how adult porn sets you on the slippery slope to child porn - you can't go to adult sites and get child porn, you have to hunt it out in its underground haunts, and often pay for the pleasure, and if the cops use your credit card details to bust you, good luck to them)

Anyhoo, it ends up with Maguire quoting this blood-curdling quote approvingly:

Then the more sophisticated elements of the Internet hate machine went into overdrive—smelling blood, the ambulance-chasers of the meme world and the snarkistas had a new victim. Now @Rileyy_69 was the meme. Videos of him were mashed up and set to music, (here and here), his stupider utterances were Photoshopped onto his more gormless photos, and the tweets of abuse just kept on coming: from other teenagers looking for a fights (digital and real), from lovesick teen girls who felt their beau had been attacked, and from plenty of responsible adults.

There must be something in the kool-aid they drink at News Ltd which makes them think that an Internet Hate Machine Going Into Overdrive is somehow a Most Excellent Thing.

As opposed to mindless vile bullying of the kind displayed in the original attack on the athlete in question. And as opposed to the viral bullying some hapless teenagers (and adults) suffer.

Maguire's right into it:

See, the internet has its own lynch mobs to kick down virtual doors in the middle of the night - it doesn’t need Bobbies to do its work for it.

Dear sweet absent lord, lynch mobs kicking down virtual doors in the middle of the night is the way forward in the virtual world?

What's the odds Maguire thought Kristallnacht showed the way forward for Germany?

The pond immediately felt the need to run the lyrics to Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit, with a twist of lemon:

News Corp blogs bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Lynch mobs are good?

Says it all about News Corp's culture really. The baying hounds that frequent blogs like Blair's and Bolt's are trained to turn and wheel on virtual enemies like trained sparrows (how's that for a viral mixing of metaphors), and the tabloids routinely indulge in feral attacks on the hate figure of the day (woe betide a Victorian police commissioner who gets in their sights), and the paranoid Australian daily lashes out and attacks everyone and everything outside the castle (as monitored and determined by the in-house thought police).

The whole company is a kind of lynch mob in action, virtual and real ...

Who'd have thought that News Ltd could make the pond sound truly conservative?

A virtual lynching can be just as ugly as a real one - because in some cases it can lead to the same sort of ugly result, death by suicide or by assault. The intertubes is already littered with stories of tragic virtual misbehaviour and the consequences.

The pond's as attracted to intellectual property abuse as much as the next person, and the empowering capacity for abuse that anonymity allows, but really, you can push things too far.

And indulging and celebrating virtual lynch mobs in action is that step too far ... because it's likely to produce a strange and bitter crop.

So there you have it. The pond as typical bleeding heart liberal.

Be nice ... or else we'll send you over to News Ltd for a bloody grand lynching. Or maybe Aunty Jack can rip your bloody arms orff, reared and trained as she was by the nanny state and the cardigan wearers at the ABC ...

(Below: okay done South Park, may as well do The Simpsons).

So what does the Bingle bump have to do with David Evans, Fairfax and climate science? The pond patiently explains ...

Here we go, here we go, here we go.

A temperate bit of scientific discourse gets loose and runs like a hare in Fairfax under a calm decorous refined header?

You've got to be dreaming. The ratty header Climate change science is a load of hot air and warmists are wrong gives the game away.

As soon as anyone frames the debate with that sort of language - serious sceptics versus deviant warmists - you know you're in the company of a player worthy of a spot on the pond.

Once upon a time, Evans turned up in Fairfax by way of proxy. You could find Paul Sheehan enraptured back in 2011 here:

Because this subject has attracted such religiosity, I am drawn to rigorous technicians and sceptics like David Evans, who used to work for the CSIRO and now runs his own consultancy. He has a sophisticated grasp of computer modelling and loves to challenge the more zealous claims made within the climate debate.

Uh huh, that'd be because Evans isn't a zealot, and isn't inclined to zealous claims. He's inclined to sophisticated language like hot air, and warmists, and for all we know, bunk and bunkum, in honour of Henry Ford.

Actually Evans is a familiar figure around the traps, routinely repeating things on which he's been challenged.

To cherry pick just one - Evans himself loves to cherry pick - in this latest piece for Fairfax piece he asserts once again that data in relation to oceans prior to 2003 is useless.

And here's a response to that claim on Skeptical Science: David Evans: All at Sea about Ocean Warming and Sea Level Rise.

This is a classic cherry-pick by Evans. Some of what he outlines about the collection of ocean heat content data is correct, as is detailed in this SkS post, however he gets critical issues entirely wrong. There is perhaps a clear reason that Evans wishes to dismiss data prior to 2003, and it's shown in the figure below from the NODC, and based upon Levitus (2012) - the oceans have undergone considerable warming since 1955.

Figure 2 -Global OHC for the upper 2000 meters of oceans (NODC)

If one wanted to hide from this inconvenient truth, summarily dismissing the data before 2003 would be a simple way to accomplish this. Finally, the claims that the data before 2003 are "almost worthless" is simply not true. For example, Church (2011) showed that the sea-level budget (which depends on ocean temperature data) can be closed as far back as 1972.

Never mind. There are better qualified people to engage in the debate, hopefully using less extreme, more temperate language than loon-pond qualifying language such as "warmists" and "hot air".

The real question is why Evans has suddenly turned up on Fairfax, and with a fine flourish of credentials and a resounding set of initials, as in Dr David M. W. Evans, with seemingly impeccable government credentials and no mention that he might be a controversial, contentious figure?

The pond has been around long enough to realise that a paranoid is someone in full possession of the facts.

Evans would usually be more at home in the world of The Australian and the outer fringes of the climate madness campaign (0r perhaps on a bad hair day, in The Punch, or The Drum - where he scored three pieces back in the day - or the Daily Terror).

Evans provides reliable fodder for people willing to engage in a debate as he goes about the business of peddling FUD about warmists - you can find another example in David Evans' Understanding of the Climate Goes Cold.

But why Fairfax? Why now at this moment in time? Since Evans has been buzzing around like a gadfly for yonks ...

Well the paranoid conspiracist says 2 + 2 equals 4, or Gina Rinehart + Jack Cowin. It's an irresistible theory to the pond, though no doubt the Fairfax editorial team might have an alternative feeble excuse.

Like we only want to debate the controversy (a 101 guide to debating the controversy can be found here).

Now it might be that Fairfax is only wishing to stir the debate, continue the controversy, maintain the rage, and tomorrow they will be publishing a richly detailed refutation and thoughtful rebuttal of the thoughts of Evans (in a tone which doesn't once mention warmists and denialists).

But why are they emulating the tricks of The Australian, which has always relied on the logic that says you can write a legitimate scientific story about creationism and intelligent design ... because it just keeps the scientific debate with the theory of evolution going?

Teach the controversy is such an old routine.

If only the pond was a subscriber to Fairfax, so it would be possible to demand a refund.

After all the sort of tosh peddled by Evans is freely sloshing around the full to overflowing intertubes - if you can be bothered, google will overload your in-tray in a trice. Why would you pay for another re-hashing? Why would Fairfax pay?

So is there are any good news coming from the world of Gina Rinehart?

Well yes there is. It turns out that this week Being Lara Bingle shed 300,000 viewers, dropping to 463,000 under the weight of the Olympics. And not just the Olympics, but also up against Seven's Once Upon A Time. (thanks to mUmBRELLA here)

The pond shared the deep concern of one of the commenters:

It is hard to imagine that people are deserting such challenging, stimulating, and aspirational television like this. What is the world coming to ...

Ten is now a disaster zone. Breakfast hopeless, evenings useless, new programming with the depth of a paper towel, Lachlan Murdoch's reign the beginning of a death spiral, and the board which contains Rinehart hopelessly out of its depth.

Remember the good old days of Rinehart to Corbett: fix share price or quit? Ten's share price is now more than 80% below its peak in 2004, and its market capitalisation is a joke (go on Roger Montgomery, dump on them here).

Now you might think that as a proud supporter of the Bingle bump, the pond is having its cake and eating it and the choc chip topping too, but that would be to assume that the pond actually watches the show, as opposed to skimming through an avi file to capture a few samples ...

Truth to tell, Bingle is to television what David Evans is to climate science, and Fairfax had better watch out it doesn't experience a sudden Evans bump.

Which will keep them down in the cellars with the level of profit currently being managed by Ten and The Australian ...

(Below: yes you've guessed it, this is really a chance to run a few images from the latest Bingle outing, with the hope that David Evans might hereafter be co-joined with Bingle in Google image search for all eternity. As always we turn to the obligatory exploitative piece at show's end with the cheering news that there's only one episode to go. Thanks be unto Gina Rinehart, saviour of Ten and now ... Fairfax ... and quite possibly warmists full of hot air).

The pond goes musical, with Campbell Newman in a cameo as a faulty flautist ...

(Above: spot the musical genius).

Unlike you, the pond doesn't go to Germany for musical inspiration.

Beethoven? Wagner? No hoper German drop-kicks. And you can take Brahms and shove him while you're at it.

The same for Italy. Don't go flaunting your Puccini in the pond's face. We don't go to Italy for musical inspiration. Let the French keep Ravel and Bizet, and the Spanish can make do with Rodrigo ...

Okay, enough you can see where this is heading. That silly goose Clive Palmer:

"Unlike the treasurer I don't go to the United States for inspiration," Mr Palmer said, adding he preferred the Australian band Redgum. (here)

That's the trouble with being musically illiterate. There are any number of reasons Clive might have presented, and any number of strategies he could have adopted, to slag off Wayne Swan's hero Bruce Springsteen, not least the way a multi-millionaire with a taste for lavish living poses as a defender of the poor and the helpless, and the way a tamely liberal lyricist indulges in stadium rock (Springsteen is aware of the contradictions, but hey).

All Clive had to do was read the excellent and lengthy profile of Springsteen by David Remnick that currently graces The New Yorker under the header We Are Alive, Bruce Springsteen at sixty-two (quick, outside the paywall at the time of writing).

He might then have been able to contrast Jon Landau conjuring up an early formative image of the Boss:

Last Thursday, at the Harvard Square Theatre, I saw my rock ’n’ roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time. . . . He is a rock ’n’ roll punk, a Latin street poet, a ballet dancer, an actor, a joker, bar band leader, hot-shit rhythm guitar player, extraordinary singer, and a truly great rock ’n’ roll composer.

With a later view:

Some detected in all this the stink of sanctimony. In 1985, James Wolcott, a punk and New Wave enthusiast, found himself weary of Springsteen’s “cornball” sincerity and the level of praise accorded him by the “city-slick Establishment.” “Piety has begun to collect around Springsteen’s curly head like mist around a mountaintop,” Wolcott wrote in Vanity Fair. “The mountain can’t be blamed for the mist, but still—the reverence is getting awfully thick.” For Tom Carson, the problem was insufficient radicalism—the fact that Springsteen remained, at heart, conventionally liberal. Springsteen “thought rock and roll was basically wholesome,” Carson wrote in L.A. Weekly. “It was an alternative, an escape—but not a rebellion, either as a route to forbidden sexual or social fruit, or, by extension, as a rejection of conventional society. To him, rock redeemed conventional society.”

There you go Clive. Remember The New Yorker can be your friend.

Of course Clive could have just won it by saying he had better dress sense than the rooster.

Oh dear. We loves ya Swannie, you'd fit right in at the West Tamworth Leagues Club.

Next time Clive, remember, you don't have to resort to cheap nationalist jibes when discussing music, surely the most international language ever devised (well it makes Esperanto look pretty useless).

And what's this about preferring Redgum? Have you ever heard a Redgum album right the way through, right to the very end?

Is that the best politically orientated folk band you could conjure up when caught on the spot? You do realise that singer-songwriter John Schumann has been fronting his own band since 2005, and that he's a gormless, Flinders University radical philosopher Prof Brian Medlin trained, Democrat orientated Adelaide muso who particularly despised your hero Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the man for whom you once fronted as a media adviser. (These days, Schumann is tamer than the Boss, plays to the troops, and works in PR).

Wouldn't it have been more sensible, given your demographic, just to mention country music? Oops, sorry, the Boss took Hank Williams and Elvis Presley as particular inspirations.

Never mind, just mention Kasey Chambers, and show you're big enough to love a labret piercing. A rousing rendition of Am I Not Pretty Enough would sock that rooster Swan out of the number one oval in Tamworth.

Yes Clive, the pond is available and offers a cultural consultancy service for beleaguered billionaires. Drop us a note. Whatever you do, don't enter the Fairfax competition to link politicians to pop stars (forced video at end of link), and don't pay attention to jolly Joe Hockey (here) because he doesn't have a clue either:

The Shadow Treasurer told reporters in Sydney today that he saw music as entertainment and that he was inspired by people such as former leaders Robert Menzies, Teddy Roosevelt and John Howard.
"It says everything about this government that it is guided by the principles of a rock singer," Mr Hockey said.

You see Clive, that's the stupid condescension of a complete dickhead, or a man who was born to be a used car salesman.

You take your inspirations where you find them, and if ever jolly Joe wanted to prove he simply doesn't get life, music or the whole damn thing, he did it in that one regrettable outburst.

When he was fucking in his youth, did jolly Joe do it to the sounds of Robert Menzies droning on, or to a decent bit of rock 'n roll? Ming the merciless? Heck that's way too square for me and Maynard, whacko the diddleoh, completely uncool, living in squaresville.

Let's not begin to wonder if jolly Joe ever had a sex life, or did it to the sounds of Lawrence Welk or Percy Faith or Mantovani or Ray Conniff or Perry Como or - gasp - Liberace, because that would be verging on the defamatory.

A man who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either (Einstein), and a man who places no trust in music isn't to be trusted at all.

Mere entertainment? Wash out your mouth Jolly Joe.

On the other hand, Stephen Conroy can admit to liking ABBA, so anything's possible in politics.

Moving right along, on the subject of music, the pond was entranced to read in Crikey the similarity between a Counting Crows song, Accidentally In Love, and the Campbell Newman campaign jingle.

If you find the Crikey piece here is behind the paywall, why not head off to The Pedantic Nerd here, because it's the Nerd who made the connection, and has put up what looks to be a pretty damning and conclusive comparison on YouTube.

Now all we need to discover is whether the campaign bothered to obtain the rights from Counting Crows or if it's another blatant example of intellectual property theft by a party which allegedly is a pillar of propriety when upholding the rights of unscrupulous evil multi-national American combines - yes Sony that's you (sssh, not a word to Clive Palmer, he'll be as mad as hell).

The Nerd has set off a social media firestorm, and there must be answers.

If poor old Men at Work can get done over in the most cynical way by Larrikin Music Publishing for a minor flute riff here (that still sticks in the craw of this crow), then having a go at Campbell Newman is looking and sounding like a lay down misere.

If his campaign didn't clear the rights - my name is Campbell Newman and I authorised this message - then the pond proposes that Counting Crows be awarded fifty per cent of Newman's earnings for the time he's premier of Queensland (and perhaps a 1% surcharge on Clive Palmer's fortune purely because he doesn't have a clue).

The pond particularly commends the Nerd for the illustration he chose for Campbell Newman. That's not pedantry, that's poetry:

Lordy, lordy, the Iberia of the dark Australian north is hotting up. That's the second day in a row the pond has had to think of Campbell Newman and it's just not fair.

Let's move right along, and give a brief mention to the splendid work of Tony Abbott's sister Christine Forster, who has decided to run for Sydney City Council:

''I have this mental image of Clover Moore wanting people to be riding around the centre of Sydney with baguettes in their front baskets,'' Ms Forster, a first-time Liberal candidate for council, said. (here)

Now that's how to win over inner city residents. Call them bike-riding baguette lovers!

Talk about a chip off the old block. Forster presents an incredibly confused mix of policy mayhem:

''But what is the impact on the bakery down the street of the fact that people can no longer pull up in their cars outside that bakery and buy a baguette?''
With the cycleways network one of the few contentious topics in next month's elections, Ms Forster is certain bike paths are an issue. But she is less certain what should be done about them.
''Our policy is we like bikes, but we don't hate cars,'' she said, talking for the first time since she was endorsed by the party.

I hate to break it to Forster, but even in the old days before the bike path, cruising up and trying to score a park near the Bourke Street bakery and buying a baguette or any of their other delicious goodies was nigh impossible. As any member of the inner city elitists club could tell you.

It turns out that Forster has only recently moved into the area, and actually might like bikes and baguettes:

The Bourke Street bike path near her home was ''a great asset to the community'' and she would not to seek to rip up any existing bike paths, but Ms Forster said a review of their economic impact was needed.

So we'll review its economic impact and then we'll keep it? And piss more cash against the bike-laden pavement?

''Surry Hills is a quiet residential suburb, it's not a thriving business metropolis,'' she said. ''I'm not sure that bike paths are the answer in the CBD.''

Actually the reason that Surry Hills is a quiet residential suburb these days is because of a variety of interventions, involving one way streets, road closures, and a determined effort by various parties to keep cars out of the precinct by shovelling them on to Cleveland, Crown and the Eastern distributor. Back in the day, Bourke street was a nightmare rat run.

Clover Moore is ripe for the plucking - the implementation of the Bourke street cycleway was botched, and that's just for starters - but Forster is going to have to get a clearer message out and about if she wants to replace her. It's really hard to sound like a cross between the Daily Terror's Miranda the Devine - loving cars - and a sensible person who somehow thinks loving bicycles and baguettes means hating cars.

The pond has just the right branding available for her if she's looking for an old school totem and emblem. Not the Rolling Stones - as The New Yorker noted, they turned into their very own cover band. Bob Dylan's still solid, and Steve Earle is coming down under again, but really given her demographic, the pond suggests Patti Smith, winning by an easy musical canter from the likes of Anni DiFranco.

Oh and jolly Joe, is it so hard to acknowledge that the Boss delivers musical pleasure to many, including the pond? What a grinch, what a grind, what a sourpuss, what a dodo.

Go do something useful and steal Xmas ...

(Below: one thing the City of Sydney website does do well for local historians is a pictorial archive of the old city, here. Type in your search term and away you go. In descending order, 342-344 Bourke Street, 10th October 1927, 146-150 Bourke street, 10 June 1916, and 150-152 Bourke Street 17 December 1923 experiencing the joys of urban renewal. No baguette sipping hipsters or trees back then, but plenty of bicycles).

The complete perversity of reading Sophie Mirabella ...

(Above: how Goya would have painted Mal Brough if he'd been around to do it?)

The pond is always pleased when reference is made to the y'arts.

If nothing else, a tour around an art gallery or museum is a reminder of the preening ponces who've presided over assorted publics, and subsequently been able to afford the price of a pandering portrait.

This is a pleasing result that seems completely unknown to Professor Ian Murray, who dignifies himself with the title of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Latrobe University.

Murray doesn't seem to be aware that the humanities might actually include the arts, and that the history of the arts is an excellent way into all kinds of concepts about the world.

Gone, it seems, are the days when a gallery could promote a riot, and even student protests - worn down by the need to moonlight on other jobs - are muted.

Murray, who published an epic pile of academic twaddle in The Age recently, under the header No 'barbarians', just faculty fine-tuning, managed some fine gems and bon mots, including this one:

A cut in subject numbers - we plan to retain more than most arts faculties - will not necessarily limit diversity and choice.

Yes, less is more, and cuts increase options, and La Trobe is like the magic pudding, ya just keeps cutting and you end up with greater diversity and choice.

Naturally there were more than a few to see through this facade of humbuggery, including Anthony White, who offered up Renewing the arts: diverse or devalued? to The Drum, prompting a distinct lack of interest in the comments section.

So no doubt in the future, an amusing comparison of Goya's portrait of Charles 111 of Spain to the pettifogging delusions of grandeur displayed by Mal Brough will be lost. Thanks Prof Murray ...

Moving right along, how extraordinary to see Sophie Mirabella at it again in the punch-drunk Punch with Australians won't warm to the carbon tax.

What a pity Chairman Rupert's so tight he won't turf out the redback spiders, and find a little loose change in the purse so that The Punch could pay for some decent content, instead of providing a daily dose of offal and pamphleteering from politicians.

The last time that Mirabella came to the pond's attention, she was recoiling from Simon Sheikh as if he had a touch of the pox or the scurvy.

There was a great to-do at the time, as you can find walking down memory lane in Sophie Mirabella the butt of Twitter jokes after GetUp! director's Q&A collapse.

Some thought Mirabella was hard done by - the natural reaction of any politician seeing a human being in a parlous condition is to flinch and do nothing - think of the refugees - but truth to tell, it was Sheikh who was hard done by, if only because he was seated next to Mirabella. (And Greg Combet did help to restore the image of politicians).

But enough of the easy snidery, let's get on to the substantive matters raised in her piece:

Where the fuck did that come from? Quick throw up another image:

Back to our regular programming, and the thoughts of Sophie Mirabella.

It seems, after a detailed five second reading of her piece, that the carbon tax is deeply unpopular, Tony Abbott is deeply popular, it is deeply likely that there are hidden costs to the tax, and it is deeply likely the unpopular tax will produce deeply unpopular perverse outcomes.

These perverse outcomes will not include Alexander Downer perversely donning stockings again.

The one thought bubble that stuck? Sophie Mirabella perversely seems to love the word "perverse", because not content with using it once to explain how perversely the carbon tax will add to the likelihood of illegal dumping, she uses it to describe her trips across Australia to find perverse outcomes.

And then she perversely uses the word again to wrap things up:

The polls show what is being reflected in the community, that Australians will not “warm” to this tax because they can see how futile and perverse it is.

Let's ignore the hideous pun. It takes real gall and class to make a pun about climate science, and the impact it might have on billions, if indeed the world is warming.

The real futility and perversity is reading Mirabella in the hope that she has more to offer by way of insight than Tony Abbott and four legs good, carbon tax "baaaad".

Will we, for example, instead of copping endless bouts of nattering negativity from Mirabella, ever hear her thoughts on the current state of climate science, and what Mirabella proposes the Liberal party do about it?

The repetition of the word "perverse" perversely provokes the notion that Mirabella is a bumble bee or a sheep capable only of a few simple concepts repeated endlessly, by rote.

Actually grappling with policy and issues seems entirely beyond her and yet there's every chance she'll end up a Minister in an Abbott government. The absent lord better reappear soon to provide spiritual comfort to the hapless bureaucrats at her whim and call.

This sort of simple political pandering by The Punch is interminable, and it gives politicians, in the guise of engagement, a free kick.

Here we have the publication of a political pamphlet which could have been best left on the politician's website, safely out of reach of most readers, or given an outing in question time and reported only by the mighty Wangaratta Chronicle as the thoughts of the local member.

Ah the mighty Wang, and to think that John "Black Jack" McEwen once held the seat of Indi. A Governor General (Sir Isaac Isaacs also held the seat), a giant protectionist, and now the electorate gets the services of a gnat ...

But the real point is this. Routinely, and often on alternate days, depending which way the wind is blowing, The Punch looks like a garbage bin for media hacks spinning both the Liberal and the Labor party.

Talk about dumping which should be illegal ...

Oh sure, they get a flurry of comments at the bottom of these pieces, which always breaks down mindlessly along name-calling party lines, but at what cost to their journalistic pride and integrity?

How can anyone take their thoughts seriously when it's mingled with the addle-brained, simple-minded posturing of a Mirabella?

Never mind, speaking of simple-minded posturing, a few readers have privately expressed their concern that the pond remains deeply and perversely infatuated with the Lara Bingle bump.

And so to a confession. The pond enjoys gaming and spoofing Google images.

It's a childish thing, completely irredeemable, but if you type in the right search words, you might on a given day end up with the sort of motley collection of images sampled below - Clive Palmer draped in a lei jostling up against Bingle, the Sydney Anglicans and composer Maurice Ravel.

Now if that's not a mind fuck right up there with reading Sophie Mirabella, what is?