The pond coughs gasps and splutters with the IPA, Patrick Carlyon, Fiona Phillips and soccer thugs ...

(Above: found here and while you're at it, why not see how climate change and smoking denialism go hand in hand here).


So many things to fill the pond to overflowing, so little time.

There is, for example, the recent High Court decision to allow the plain packaging of cigarettes without splashing any cash at big tobacco.

Naturally this has brought out all sorts of loons, wringing their hands in anguish about the nanny state.

Never mind that as soon as you mention the nanny state, you lose the argument, you hopeless nannies.

As if anyone should give a flying fuck about an industry which has lied to, cheated and killed its customers in abundance, even after it knew it was peddling a deadly killer (and if you grew up in a working class family, as the pond did, you'd see your nearest and dearest, your close and distant family and friends, ushered to meet the grim reaper in unimaginably painful ways).

The best news? Those serial spreaders of FUD, the Institute of Public Affairs, have copped a pie in the face, along with the pie that landed in the moosh of their clients in the tobacco industry.

Remember the sort of idle chatter you could find in press releases like Plain packaging may require up to $3.4 million taxpayer gift annually to big tobacco and film companies:

"IPA calculations show that the taxpayer compensation could amount to as much as $357 million to film companies annually, and $3 billion for tobacco companies annually because of these laws".

IPA calculations! What cackling geese. Why they're as bad as the industries they take their dollar from. Whenever Chris Berg tries to sound sensible, he should remember he's working in little better than a verbal brothel.

Naturally the Murdoch press is out and about too, with Patrick Carlyon wringing his hands for the HUN and The Punch in Big bad tobacco is actually a pretty soft target.

Carlyon's argument is a pretty soft one, running the usual slippery slope routine beloved of HUNsters (it comes in handy for gay marriage too).

Carlyon gets off to a flying start by mocking anyone who's ever lost a family member, continues on by celebrating the vices of humanity, then concocts some kool humour about how smoking never made anyone drive a Commodore into a pole, or was involved in rape.

It's so profoundly idiotic, it makes your average village idiot akin to Plato.

But there's no stopping Carlyon, so off he goes, seemingly demanding action on alcohol and fast food, only to explain how we love our grog and our KFC, and how wrong it would be to do anything about it.

Well there's one relief. If they ever do lay-offs at the HUN, and Carlyon draws a short straw, he should be able to pick up a jim dandy job at the IPA.

This is about the first time the federal government has had a win in yonks, so good luck to them. Will anyone ever be so bold as to snatch the marijuana market out of the hands of crims and put it in ugly plain packets, rampant with health warnings and doled out by bureaucrats? There'll come a time, but it'll be a time coming.

Happily it's a bumper day for bleats at The Punch, and the pond was beguiled by Fiona Phillips' poignant story that leads off Steal digital content and you steal a nation's prosperity:

When I was about six years old, I bought my first album: ABBA. It was the one which featured Agnetha, Frida, Benny and Bjorn in a vintage car on the cover.
Before I engaged in the transaction, my mother advised me that the purchase was going to require all my “big money”. That is, all my 20 and 50 cent pieces. A big deal when you only received 20 cents a week in pocket money.
My mother offered me an alternative: my best friend’s mother (who owned the album) could make me a tape instead. No, I responded. I didn’t want a tape. I wanted to buy the album. In making that decision, I was placing a value on ABBA’s music. And although I did not realise it at the time, that was my first interaction with economics and copyright.

Ah, it brings a tear to the eye of the pond. A six year old aware of intellectual property rights, and willing to stump up for the real deal, instead of a sordid pirated tape.

And if you share that tear, has the pond got just the pack of cigarettes to sort out that persistent cough that's been troubling you ...

After starting off in such a ripper way, Phillips gets better and better, as she broods about a report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers on the Economic Contribution of Australia's Copyright Industries (oh let's cap the words because they're so Significant).

Strangely she doesn't bother providing a link to the report (you can get it as a ppt here).

Possibly that's because the first page of the report would tell you that it was prepared by PwC for the Australian Copyright Council, and the next thing you know you'd be noting that the disingenuous Phillips is the executive director of the Australian Copyright Council, and the next thing you know you'd be looking up the ACC, and discovering it's funded by the Australia Council nee the Australian Government (more about it here).

Yes, it's part of that grand bureaucratic poo bah circle of quangos and mangoes celebrating the work of government funding:

The report shows that copyright industries make a significant contribution to the Australian economy. For example, in 2011 copyright industries generated AUD$93.2 billion which is equivalent to 6.6 percent of GDP and employed more than 900,000 people or 8 per cent of Australia’s workforce.

Splendid stuff. The pond has spent plenty of time in the salt mine of economic multipliers and reports justifying the expenditure of government money on the arts, and who's to argue with a bit of pork barreling.

Where things stick in the craw is the crazy notion that somehow all this constitutes an industry run on the lines of the United States model. It brings Phillips to tears again:

Children may no longer go to a record shop to purchase their first album in the way I did all those years ago, but I hope they will long be able to experience the thrill of using their own hard earned cash to buy content from their favourite artist.

Here's the thing. Let's take feature film and high end television production as an example. This "industry" operates courtesy of extensive government funding, delivered via the agency Screen Australia.

The funding is delivered in a way that sees extensive losses. If you were to run a company on the same basis, it would fold within the year.

The punters who line up to pay for an Australian feature film have already paid for a substantial part of the financing of said Australian feature film via their taxes (the amount of pre-sales and other finance available internationally to run into Australian budgets has dropped off in recent years, forcing the proportion of government funding to go higher).

So when someone gets gooey eyed about the "creative industries", and the "copyright industries", and the native film "industry" they're actually celebrating government funding.

Of course, copyright industries are not purely quantifiable in economic terms. They make a huge contribution to Australian culture. The grin on my face when I emerged from watching The Sapphires on the weekend is testament to that.

Put it another way. The grin on Phillips' face was available because The Sapphires was substantially funded by the Australian federal government.

This funding will continue on the basis of its cultural benefits, not on some guff about the quantifiable economic benefits in terms of sales and industry.

That's the way it's been since the revival kicked off in the nineteen seventies. Phillips harks back to the days of Barry McKenzie and Picnic at Hanging Rock, but in those days the industry was supported by several funding bodies which turned into the Australian Film Commission and then by tax breaks under the 10B/10BA tax schemes.

And where once there was an indie model for authors and musicians, these days a lot more government funding is doled out in this area by the Australia Council, supporting people in producing product which would be unsustainable using conventional commercial models. Let's not even get into a discussion of the funding of symphony orchestras, the opera, the ballet and other high end cultural outings.

Inevitably the comments below the fold didn't address the nub of the argument, as opposed to righteous anger and sounding off about how a little downloading is okay and how the United States rips off Australian purchasers (don't get the pond started on the failed and now utterly irrelevant region coding for DVDs, and other US attempts to corral and treat consumers with contempt, now reciprocated with a vengeance by consumers).

And that's the danger for naive government bodies trying to explain the benefits of Australian cultural productions by rabbiting on about how they're important industries being harmed by theft.

The key losers are the dominant US studios and record companies and book publishers, and who gives a toss or sheds a tear of them? After all, the now dominant US book publishers made their initial fortunes by ripping off blind the likes of Charles Dickens (and how that stuck in Dickens' craw).

Here's the real intellectual theft.

The pond has already helped fund films like The Sapphires, and now will have to stump up at the cinema door, sending a measly portion back to the government funder ... after the exhibitors, the distributors - most of them in the Australian market U.S. owned or dominated - and all the other sharks in the supply chain have punched the ticket.

With the government investor also punching its ticket to claw back a portion of revenue, that leaves most of the creative team on the production with a modest smell of three fifths of fuck all.

Sad to say, nine out of ten Australian productions never get near a cooee of a profit.

No amount of gobbledegook and PwC reports will alter this fundamental transaction, nor will ACC arguments about the importance of the copyright industries sound like anything but an apology for the rorting and supply issues of complacent international industry giants ...

Who's going to cry a river because that complacency has seen music, film and lately books get themselves into serious trouble.

Next time Phillips should try writing a piece with the header Stop government funding and you stop Australians enjoying the cultural works the government funds, and leave her garbled confused tales, mingling the plight of retailing with production financing mechanisms, to United States snake oil peddlers.

And don't worry about the good old USA. It's already made out like a bandit thanks to the onerous free trade agreement completely mucked up by the Howard government.

Ditto Phillips' tales of commerciality versus actual returns, and completely useless comparisons to Singapore (a city state for the love of the absent lord) and Canada should be given a rest.

Canada's home grown cultural scene is even more dependent on government subsidy for its production and arts sector, while spending lavishly so that the local industry can be ravished by runaway Hollywood productions heading north for the tax breaks.

As does Australia, though the high dollar has made it hard to stay in the game.

How anyone could sob into their coffee about the benefits of Baz Lurhmann making a quintessential story about the United States, The Great Gatsby, with tax breaks rumoured to be worth over $A 40 million, is beyond the pond (here - it gets even more secretive furtive when it comes to the tax break given to X Men Origins, here).

It's just another boondoggle, and you can bet while the studios bank the tax breaks, they also keep the profits.

And while we're at it, please, no more sorry tales about six year olds forking out hard earned cash for ABBA. Sheesh, it was Reg Grundy who made the film about ABBA down under, and lordy how he's eked out a miserable existence in the Bahamas ever since ...

And now for something completely different, because a follower of Python does what a Python must do. Here's an Egyptian soccer riot:

Here's an English soccer riot:

And here's an English footballer moaning 'Football has lost touch with reality': Owen won't take children to matches.

And here - for post-modern, ironic juxtaposition is an Australian soccer brawl, as recorded in 'Just not acceptable': brawl breaks out between rival football fans.

By golly, it's a miracle the brawlers found someone to brawl with. Talk about desolation angels.

Why was the pond swamped by an image of Paul Hogan drawing a flare and saying 'that's not a riot, this is a riot'.

Brawl? Yes Australian soccer can't manage a decent riot, or beat the Scots in a 'friendly' (Socceroos lose 3-1 to Scotland).

The pond proudly boasts of never having attended a soccer match or a horse race at any time anywhere ...ever. Please don't ask why, but please allow the pond a little pleasure at the strange sights sport can sometimes provide.

No doubt the sporting industries would benefit from a bunch of twaddle by Fiona Phillips about how a nation's prosperity is entwined with its sporting prowess ... as if we haven't had enough of all that this past month.

Paul Ryan, epic flip flopper between Ayn Rand, Thomas Aquinas and a hard place ...

(Above: doing the face book rounds).

Confronted by the international conspiracy involving Optus and the Singapore government and the pond's broadband, the pond has avoided tackling the serious issues of the day.

Two spring to mind, starting with the federal Labor government flip flopping its way into John Howard land on the matter of refugees, herded and hounded by Dr. No. That way lies frenzy and madness

And the other is the matter of Paul Ryan, and Ayn Rand. That way lies comedy and madness.

Now the pond, perversely, furtively, almost hopes that Ryan and Romney win.

Instead of the barely cobbled together, partly functioning Obama administration, there's a good chance that social and religious and financial zealotry, a bizarre combination of ideology and theology, could work together to end the United States empire even more quickly than currently imagined.

Ryan is of course a flip flopper on the matter of Ayn Rand, in much the same way as the Labor party is a flip flopper when it comes to ethics. His early addiction was notorious:

Early in his Congressional career, Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin representative and presumptive Republican vice-presidential nominee, would give out copies of Ayn Rand’s book “Atlas Shrugged” as Christmas presents. He described the novelist of heroic capitalism as “the reason I got into public service.” (Atlas Spurned)

Then, when her atheism caused a little heat for the Catholic conservative (along with other Rand policy positions Ryan presumably hadn't noticed or realised before), he did a runner:

... when his embrace of Rand drew fire from Catholic leaders, Mr. Ryan reversed course with a speed that would make his running mate, Mitt Romney, proud. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he told National Review earlier this year. “Give me Thomas Aquinas.” He claimed that his austere budget was motivated by the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, which holds that issues should be handled at the most local level possible, rather than Rand’s anti-government views.

From Ayn Rand to Thomas Aquinas in a leap and a bound. And suddenly subsidiarity becomes a justification for the political philosophy of "I'm alright Jack, screw you. Especially if you're poor".

Perhaps nobody told Ryan that subsidiarity is dangerously European, and a key part of EU law!

The trouble with flip flopping on ideas is that it gets you into trouble with all sorts of people, as explained by Ann Friedman in Paul Ryan Is Your Annoying Libertarian Ex-Boyfriend:

In the dating world, an infatuation with Ayn Rand is a red flag. You might not see it right away: Your date is probably conventionally attractive, decidedly wealthy, and doesn’t really talk politics. But then you get back to his apartment, set your bag down on his glass-topped coffee table, give his bookshelf the once-over — and find it lined with Ayn Rand.

Actually it might get worse. You might find Thomas Aquinas shoulder to shoulder with Rand, along with some Catholic texts explaining that condoms are evil, contraception is morally wrong, and having premarital sex will see you in purgatory for a squillion years:

You think back to your conversation at the bar: He treated flirtation like a conquest, a rationally self-interested sexual manifest destiny. He had some dumb pickup-artist questions and maybe a questionable accessory (a cravat? a fedora? a weird pinky ring?) but you overlooked these things, because he was quite charming.
But that dog-eared copy of Atlas Shrugged tells you everything you need to know. He sees himself as an objective iconoclast. He's unapologetically selfish, because it's only rational, he says. Sure, he grew up with money but he worked to get where he is today. He’s all about individual responsibility but he just isn’t, metaphorically, into wearing protection.
This is the part where you collect your shoes and bag and GTFO.

Ryan is the sort of strange possum likely to send all sorts of people into a satirical meltdown. Here's Jason Linkins getting seriously agitated in Paul Ryan, Capitol Hill's Most 'Serious' Man:

Ryan also has charts. And graphs. Which would be enough to make him serious without any of the other stuff. (And they're not charts about carbon emissions and surface temperatures, which could threaten one's serious credentials in Washington by branding one an earthy crusader.)

Yep, Ryan's a serious economist, a serious philosopher and a serial flip-flopper, yet another Beltway insider who's made a living out of pretending not to be a Beltway insider. (After his degree, he began his working career for a couple of senators, earned a little more as a speechwriter, then won his way into the House of Reps in 1998 and has been there ever since, as his wiki tells you here).

Naturally as the pond is inclined to be very superficial, it was immediately attracted to the news that in 1988 Ryan had been deemed by classmates the biggest brown-noser, and that this had immediately set off a Wiki Edit War (Paul Ryan, 'Brown Noser'? The Wikipedia Edit Wars Begin for Romney's Running Mate - naturally Colbert has been involved in bumping this war up a few notches).

(Some defenders have noted he was also voted prom king, but that's what likely happens when you're a top of the class brown noser).

And there have been other wars to revive, not least Ayn Rand herself and Ryan's allegedly temporary infatuation. Not only did she name herself after a typewriter, and ruined her health with heavy smoking, she then cynically bludged off Social Security and Medicare:

As Pryor said, "Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out" without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn "despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently... She didn't feel that an individual should take help."
But alas she did and said it was wrong for everyone else to do so. Apart from the strong implication that those who take the help are morally weak, it is also a philosophic point that such help dulls the will to work, to save and government assistance is said to dull the entrepreneurial spirit.
In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest. (Ayn Rand and the VIP-DIPers)

The pond could ramble on about Ryan and Rand for hours, but enough already. The point is made, with the rise of Ryan offering pure comedy gold for party-goers everywhere.

The end result might be the ruination of the poor and the middle class in the United States, the end of the American empire, and as it falls, possibly the ruination of the world, but every conservative loves a good catastrophe, followed by the rapture, and the pond is just doing what comes naturally after reading so many in the conservative commentariat.

Eek, up there in the sky, says Chicken Little, it's Paul Ryan, and he doesn't even begin to understand the contradictions in himself and his philosophies (and you too can read Ayn Rand vs. the pope, the two contradictory philosophies warring for Paul Ryan's soul).

Take it away General Aladeen:

Why are you guys so anti-dictators? Imagine if America was a dictatorship. You could let 1% of the people have all the nation's wealth. You could help your rich friends get richer by cutting their taxes. And bailing them out when they gamble and lose. You could ignore the needs of the poor for health care and education. Your media would appear free, but would secretly be controlled by one person and his family. You could wiretap phones. You could torture foreign prisoners. You could have rigged elections. You could lie about why you go to war. You could fill your prisons with one particular racial group, and no one would complain. You could use the media to scare the people into supporting policies that are against their interests.

And you could become an ardent follower of an émigré second-rate fiction writer still fighting the Russian revolution in her head, or switch to a Catholic medieval philosopher - absent lord help us, a Dominican - and draw up a tax plan which takes even more from the poor and gives even more to the rich, and call it Catholic and become a successful politician.

Only in America, where choice guarantees you both a chocolate and a cinnamon doughnut, and lots of flour and bloated thinking ...

Or perhaps only in Australia too, because we have Paul Sheehan getting terribly excited in an onanistic way in Game on as Romney picks Fox News champion for his sidekick:

It will be class war, tooth and claw, veiled by Obama's charisma.
Never underestimate the capacity of an electorate to sense what is false and what is true about politicians. Authenticity is the electric currency in politics. Ryan has it. The American public, queasy about the nation's growing debt mountain and stubbornly high unemployment rate, may be receptive to daring alternatives to printing money and government debt.
Romney, in his choice of Ryan, has made a lacklustre 2012 presidential campaign exciting.

What a boofhead, dropkick old curmudgeon he is. And Fairfax wonders why its circulation is dropping ... but they don't even offer a bonus doughnut for the pain involved in reading Sheehan ...

(Below: and since we mentioned dating, this has also been doing the face book rounds. Is there a spoof magazine for politicians, mentioning 101 troubling political philosophies?)

The pond goes populist with Gina, Pete and Dame Slap ...

(Above: more Nicholson here).

The excellent news for the Ten network is that Everybody Dance Now struggled to reach a totally dire 304,000 viewers. (mUmBRELLA).

It made Ita Buttrose's excellent proposal for Fairfax even more compelling, as explained in Crikey's Ita Buttrose to Fairfax: put Gina Rinehart on the board. (inside the paywall, where it should stay)

Yes, put Gina on the board of Fairfax, because Ten is doing so spiffingly well, and everybody is mean to poor Gina and she'd make such a difference, she's so media savvy.

It's grand to see Crikey joining in with Ita to support a much abused, hapless billionaire.

Unfortunately Buttrose didn't come up with a masterstroke move to support the need for Gina to take charge of Fairfax, so here's the pond's suggestion.

She could replace Paul Sheehan with Sarah Murdoch. There'll be no talk of nepotism, and it could be the first step in a grand alliance which would see all newsprint in the shadow of the Murdochs.

And it would stop the level of snidery to be found in a story like Axe hovers over dance show after soft debut:

Pity the person who has to tell Ten's chairman Lachlan Murdoch that his wife's show is a flop.

Pity the person who has to tell Gina Rinehart that during her stint on the board Ten has become a relentless flop machine.

Maybe Puberty Blues will pull it out of its current death dive, but you have to get to that version of the shire via The Shire.

Wouldn't the offer of a free lobotomy to the frontal lobe be more attractive?

Now for a little nostalgia:

Happily Fairfax still goes about the business of publishing the sideline thoughts of the irrelevant, while the real world heedlessly marches on, and who better to lead the way than wacky, zany Peter "the smirk" Costello, who discovers today that the coalition is full of wacky, zany people with wacky, zany ideas (and one of them is even called "Wacka").

You could read it all in Coalition must beware wacky ideas on foreign investment, or you could take that offer of a free lobotomy.

It's always fun to see the pompous and the irrelevant do an "in my day, young pups" routine, in this case Costello yearning for the good old days when he spoke sternly to Shell about Woodside.

The smirk attempts to dampen down rabid rural speculation about the Chinese buying up land and perhaps landing in Darwin by Friday (tell the world Barners, warn the world), and chides National Party Senator John "Wacka" Williams for proposing that the ombudsman be given power to force supermarkets to increase prices. You know, good old Soviet-style advanced economic thinking. (Wacky Wacka went hard at it in Nationals senator calls for a small business and farming ombudsman).

The result? The peculiar sight of Costello chiding the coalition for populism:

The Coalition has committed to a ''root and branch'' review of competition policy. This will be another showdown between rational economics and rural populism.

The elephant in the room is that Tony Abbott has led a shamelessly populist strategy for years, full of snake oil pitches on all kinds of subjects, with wild-cat Nationals and crazy-eyed Liberals peddling their pet nostrums, with every so often - as when Malcolm Turnbull noted the truth in relation to electricity prices - someone catching up with the shadow emperor's clothes and pointing to Abbott's economic incoherence when required to do anything other than say no.

Costello, master fudger and practiser of the art of avoidance and confrontation - he never did have the ticker - takes out his ire on the Nationals, and the Coalition, but the reality is that this sort of luddite nonsense has been a feature of Abbott's reign.

Will the smirk ever call out the Abbott? In your dreams. He couldn't call out John Howard, and you know what they say about smirking Cheshire cats ...

Meanwhile, Janet "Dame Slap" Albrechtsen has discovered that the Olympics are tarnished, as she explains at length in Old ruling gods of Mount Olympus should make way for the new. (inside the Oz paywall).

She has her eye on John Coates and Kevan Gosper, and the perks and the junkets, and the gravy train, and the sleek limos and the cocktails.

Why she starts to sound like a Bolshevik leading the charge against the Tsar, all the more so when she discovers that Juan Antonio Samaranch was a follower of Franco and a Falangist (here's Andrew Jennings explaining it back in 2008, and here's one of the tasty photos he provides, with Samaranch fourth from the right giving the salute):

But, but, but, dictators do good, and look how Spain has become an unruly democratic mess since Franco left the stage.

Ah well, the world will just have to settle for Dame Slap becoming a strident democrat seeking to overturn the corruption of the Olympic movement by the magic strategy of shortening terms:

...the gravy train must come to a stop at an earlier station for all IOC members. It's time for new rules so that the IOC conductors, ticket collectors and other perk-laden IOC administrators get a shorter ride.

Uh huh. So you can still score all the perks, just on a shorter train trip. Make sure you slurp down that cocktail before you reach the station.

Now if Dame Slap had called for a reduction in funding for the Olympics in Australia, designed to remove an unhealthy national obsession with scoring gold medals (with gold the only measure for status and standing), she might have been taken seriously.

Even Paul Sheehan understands that when it comes to maintaining gold, the East German model must have its limits, though he somehow manages to confuse his own leg and mind cramps with the law of diminishing returns in Obsession with gold not worth the pain.

The point, as even Chris Berg understands, is that crypto-fascism is at the heart of the staging of the Olympics - the torch relay was a touch added by the Nazis for Berlin in 1936 - and if Coates and Gosper are replaced by similar lobbyists, things will stay the same, and all this talk of gold medals as a guide to mental national health will continue unabated.

Oh wait, was it only last week that Dame Slap proposed that No, Olympic silver is not the new gold (inside the Oz paywall, thank the absent lord for that).

Yes, only last week Dame Slap was sounding just like John and Kevan, sounding off about a nation humiliated by an accumulation of silver rather than gold:

... if we do hand out medals for second and third place, do we assume that the winners of those medals ought to show grace in what is, after all, a defeat. Silver is not the new gold. Not even for a nation now struggling in the gold medal count after a proud history of success.

You want coherence and consistency in the commentariat?

Sorry, not when populism is all the go.

(Below: speaking of populism, can the pond benefit from a Sarah Murdoch bump, in the way it achieved enormous success with the Bingle bump? And in other key questions, should the pond fight the tape, and what's a dead cat bounce?)

Keep calm and keep reading the Bolter for extraordinary scientific insights ...

(Above: evocative portrait of valiant climate science freedom fighter Andrew Bolt published by the HUN here).

Now where were we before Optus pulled the plug?

Here will do:

Andrew Bolt in February 2010: Arctic ice was pushed out, rather than melted.

No need to panic, everything normal here and there and everywhere.

Andrew Bolt in April 2010: Climate change, happening before your eyes.

Stay calm, everything normal here, there in the Arctic, and on Mars.

Andrew Bolt in April 2011: Gore and his fellow alarmists are on thin ice.

Keep calm, put the bacon on, and carry on as usual, and put the thin ice in the kettle.

Andrew Bolt exceptionally indignant in July 2008: you cackhanded climate slimers you.

Stay calm, all is well, seven graphs solve the problem, as you can read in Column - Seven graphs to end the warming hype.

Sea ice now isn’t melting, but spreading. The seas have not just stopped rising, but started to fall.

Stop the panic. How many times do you have to be told it's all okey-dokey? Keep calm and drink the kool-aid.

Andrew Bolt on 7th March 2012: No news for Fairfax: the Arctic ice is doing fine.

Everything's fine! Still fretting! Stop reading Fairfax publications! Has the thin ice boiled yet? Keep calm and make sure the coffee is decaf.

Andrew Bolt on 27th April 2012: Send Four Corners back to the Arctic to explain.

How many times do you have to be told, it's all under control! Sheesh. And while you're at it, take those bleeding heart cardigan wearers with you into the panic room. Stay calm and enjoy a nice cup of tea. Doesn't the melted ice have a clean pure taste, like a Chesterfield or an Alpine cigarette:

(More clean as a mountain stream pure cigarette advertisements here).

And so on and on at exceptional and tedious length, as the Bolter contemplates the Arctic ice more times than the Bolter's navel, and boy, does that navel get a workout.

Now what's this, coming over the horizon, under the radar?

Shock horror news from the Pravda of London, aka The Guardian, engaged yet again in an international conspiracy to undermine the epic findings of internationally renowned climate scientist Andrew Bolt.

Yep, there it is, fresh from the digital conspiracy press on 11th August 2012: Rate of arctic summer sea ice loss is 50% higher than predicted.

It wasn't the only place where the story got picked up.

In the tabloid fashion the pond loves, the Daily Mail led with Arctic sea ice could disappear within 10 years as global warming increases speed of melting.

Naturally the moment the pond was back online, the first thing was to check out Andrew Bolt,

and see what the Bolter had to say about this news.

Would he spare a moment from the important business of shoving it to the Gillard government and boat people?

To date, nothing, zilch, nada, not a word has disturbed his calm scientific demeanour, though the story has now been out and about for days. It even turned up in blogs more interested in climate science than the Bolter is in his navel (Arctic sea ice minimum 2012).

Never mind, the pond is standing by, waiting for yet another denunciation of conspiracists by the Bolter, as he targets these complacent folk who use satellites for observation, along with measurements by plane, by data from underwater sonar stations, and by surface measurements, and claim accuracy in relation to ice thickness of 10 cm, with the results suggesting that maybe the Fairfax press and the ABC were actually on the money.

Outrageous. Shocking.

Stay calm! What would these conspiracists know, up against the seer of Melbourne, and his scientific acumen?

They need to start writing for a tabloid if they're to ever going to be properly peer reviewed by the readers of the HUN.

As an aside, the Bolter reminds the pond of the A. E. van Vogt theory of angry men who must always be right. Even when they're wrong, they're right. Not that the Bolter is ever wrong ... and no doubt he'll produce, in due course, another fine flurry of floozies explaining how everything is right in the world, or at least how he's always right about the world.

Of course he could join Fairfax and the ABC in a fact-finding expedition to the Arctic, but that might sound like alarmist activism.

Anyhoo, how would actual research leave time for his home-grown insights into climate science? And what of his navel?

(Below: even worse, the jury is now out on Santa Claus. Sign the pond's petition to shift Santa to the south pole! Just in case, better safe than sorry).

The pond discovers a vast international conspiracy, perhaps involving Optus ...

(Above: so what do you know. First Dog has a choice image for Optus, and a few choice words to match, here).

Thanks Madame chair, I'd appreciate getting into today's agenda for the pond right away.

 1. IT Department:

Let the record of this meeting show that, after bitter personal experience, the pond's IT department has advice for the world in relation to broadband:
(a) if you're thinking about Optus for broadband, forget it. Life's too short, and you might end up with a nervous breakdown or a heart attack.
(b) if you're thinking about switching from another ISP to Optus for broadband, why? Are you a masochist, a loon or simply a glutton for punishment?
(c) if you're wondering about Optus broadband versus a carrier pigeon service, consider the pigeons. They cost less - wheat is relatively cheap, and they'll eat breadcrumbs - and they only need to deliver one message a year to put them way ahead of the 0% reliability offered by Optus (remember, you can buy a bunnch of breadcrumbs with the amount of moola Optus gouges on a monthly basis for a measly tapered peak and off-peak cap). 

2. International Conspiracy Involving the Singapore Government:

Madame Chair, thanks to extensive time spent with Andrew Bolt and Janet Albrechtsen and the like, the pond is fully trained in the art of spotting an international conspiracy.

It hasn't escaped the pond's eagle eye that Optus is owned by the Singapore government (if you delve into the deeper parts of the labyrinth), and has received all sorts of generous help from the Australian government, ostensibly on the basis of competition and improved service. With broadband and the service sector booming in Australia, think of the conspiratorial benefit of Optus providing a dodgy, half-baked, third rate service to its Australian customers.

Poor old Barners and the farmers have got it wrong, with all this chit chat about buying up the farms. Fuck up the intertubes and you're way ahead of Anonymous.

You see, where does stuffed connectivity leave Australian businesses and consumers up against Singapore suppliers? Up shit creek without an IT paddle.

 The pond has yet to discover what the Australian government thinks it gets out of coddling Optus, and cosying up to them, but it's easy enough to see how the double play benefits Singapore. Screw Australian customers up hill and down dale, and then point out how in Singapore citizens do IT much better. Next thing you know George Lucas is out of the old Sydney showground and off to Singapore (remember, you can make crappy animation anywhere, but it sure helps to avoid Optus).

 3. International Image of India, its government and people: 

Madame Chair, thanks to News Ltd, the pond is aware of the need for public relations and a good public image. It is therefore disturbing to consider the role of Indian call centres in relation to the image of India abroad, and more particularly those hired by Optus to deal with "problem Australian clients". 

Two hours of endlessly and fruitlessly discussing technical problems with Indian call centre staff might well lead to the conclusion that India isn't a land of IT specialists, so much as a land of cretins. A concerned soul suggested this word was a tad extreme. Perhaps it would be better if it was noted that India seems to have mastered the art of bureaucracy. But as Forrest Gump said, cretin is as cretin does. Or some such thing.

The pond comes to this conclusion reluctantly. The pond knows enough about connecting to the intertubes to be dangerous; Indian call centre workers seem to know enough about connecting Optus clients to make the head of a pin look exceptionally expansive.

In its reluctant research, the pond has discovered several fascinating tidbits. There are special levels of Indian call centre pin heads - the first lowly level seems to consist of employees given the job of asking "why are you bothering me, when it's all your fault, or the fault of your computer", even if it's clearly, obviously, blatantly, nakedly the fault of Optus equipment.

Then there's the higher level of consultant, experts at their work, and able to deliver a much higher level of gobbledegook - "yes our detailed analysis confirms that it's all the fault of Optus equipment, but unfortunately there's nothing much we can do about it at the moment. Just suck on it and see how it feels".

These are people hired not to sort a problem but simply to keep someone on the phone until exhaustion, depression and a deep sense of futility kicks in. Or better still, get them off the phone so they'll just go away and the call centre can operate efficiently and in peace. In much the same way that Fawlty Towers always ran better without any pesky guests.

Does the Indian government have the first clue how Indian call centres have made the country an international joke?

It's been suggested to the pond - by some of the most adept of Andrew Bolt's conspiracy spotters - that the Indian government might in fact be in league with the Singapore government, to reduce Australia's IT fitness and readiness, and introduce what is known as an "IT gap".

On the surface this is an attractive theory, but the presence of so many certified cretins in Indian call centres mitigates against it (the pond intends no denigration of useful idiots, or disadvantaged people, as opposed to wondering why useless idiots are given first call on jobs in Indian call centres).

An alternative theory, which takes account of the skills level of people hired by Optus in India suggests that the Singapore government might well be involved in a high level conspiracy to defame India and Indians. Think about it. India has a reputation for IT skills. How easy to dismantle it by getting them to fail in every imaginable way possible in an Optus call centre. Singapore wins!

 4. Conspiracy involving Malcolm Turnbull, the Indian government, the Singapore government, Optus call centres and Optus: 

Madame Chair, the pond is aware that dedicated conspiracy theorists - originally trained by Andrew Bolt in the matter of debunking climate science - have contended that Malcolm Turnbull is involved in this international conspiracy to produce third rate, half-arsed, weak as piss broadband for Australian users.

The pond once sacked Telstra for crimes as great as those of Optus, and can't go back because that way lies madness. The decline and fall of Telstra can be traced back to the Howard government and its cocked-up flotation (why not try a flotation tank instead), the three amigos, and the attempt by the federal government to buy the current flock of executives' silence in relation to the NBN.

Attempting to get a new modem from Telstra has been, and would be, like having all wisdom teeth extracted in one go without benefit of anaesthetic.

After breaking with Telstra, the pond spent a little time enjoying the delivery of broadband by in-ground copper wire using state of the art ADSL2. Talk about a stateless, graceless lack of art. The pipes were so comprehensively fucked it only needed a drizzle to produce drop-outs and dismal speed.

Oh sure it was a great anti-piracy device - you couldn't even watch the BOM Sydney radar to track the weather.

Download? Are we talking here about unionists going on strike? Or a dump of concrete? 

Contrary to rumour and Sydney Anglicans celebrating the sapphire city, it rains regularly enough in Sydney.

Now big Mal is running around explaining how fibre to the node, with delivery by copper for the last half mile, is more than fine for good broadband. Which means in the pond's neighbourhood, they'd have to install a new batch of state of the art nineteenth century copper wire to the home to deliver a half-way decent service. Which totally misses the point.

Whenever big Mal starts yammering about how copper is good enough, the pond feels like jabbing him with a corroded, corrupted strand of copper. Unless there happened to be an Optus consultant available nearby. Skewer him, skewer him …

After exhaustive, detailed examination, the Bolt-trained theorists concluded that big Mal isn't involved in the conspiracy, he's just a lick-spittle, obsequious, doofus given the job of parroting the luddite Tony Abbott line on broadband, and doing it in a way that disgraces his and his listeners' intelligence.

But not of course the intelligence of the editors of the AFR and The Australian, who are perhaps involved in a conspiracy with Optus and the Singapore government to drive broadband consumers back to tree-killing newspapers.

So this is the reward for the pond telling publishers, film producers and musicians and anybody else who'd listen that the future was broadband, and they'd better get their business plan together.

How foolish, what bad advice. Why didn't the pond factor in the sublime, complete incompetence of Optus, and the competitive strength of carrier pigeons and the telegraph (the wireless too has its charms).

 5. The solution: 

Madame Chair, we regret to advise that there is no solution. Optus has proposed fixing the problem, but when and how has been met with a wave of the hand. Why do consumers insist on asking tricky, problematic questions?

A belief in Optus's capacity to problem solve involves blind faith, and hope and trust.

This is equivalent to thinking that, on reaching Never Never Land, Optus will magically turn into Can Do land, when it's almost certain to be Campbell Can't Do Newman land.

There is simply no evidence for an Optus can-do miracle, which is way trickier than drumming up a few fish, a few loaves of bread, and heaps of wine.

The federal Labor government has ensured Kiama has access to the NBN right here, right now, but in the usual way, those in what are perceived as safe Labor seats can sing until the sparrow farts and the sun sets and still they won't see broadband.

By the time the Labor government is booted out, all the pond will be able to look forward to is a dose of sodden nineteenth century copper, courtesy of Big Mal. So this is the sound of one digital hand clapping ...

Is federal Labor in a conspiracy as well? Who knows, but why not. After all, if Optus is totally useless, think of the edge it gives the NBN. The problem here of course is that there needs to be an NBN rolling out with speed and enthusiasm. It makes no sense to subsidise Optus to hire totally inept people in Indian call centres when waiting for the NBN is like waiting for la la land to land.

Oh wait, Senator Stephen Conroy is in charge of the NBN. Fly, my pretties, fly, and let loose the hounds. Let's sniff out the depths of this conspiracy.

All in all, as a result of the current activities of Optus and the Singapore government, tremendous damage is being inflicted on Australian broadband and on the image of Indians abroad.

Now this involves delicate cultural issues. Indians are routinely portrayed sounding like characters and stereotypes fresh out of running a convenience store on The Simpsons, where it's easier to buy a slurpee than a solution to a simple question of domestic delivery of a barely adequate broadband service at substantial expense.

But what if the stereotypes are real, what if the portraits are nightmarishly accurate, and they take you into the wee hours listening to Apu with no more chance of a solution to your problems than finding a fresh doughnut in the store? By golly, hats off, they have mastered the British art of bureaucracy ...

6. Revenge: 

Madame Chair, as a result of the great IT breakdown of August 2012, the pond's expert committee advises that there is only one useful activity left.

That's apart from roaming the streets hoping for access via mugs who haven't password protected their service, or via visits to the library, or via convenience stores doling out fifteen minute spurts like a slurpee seller, or by just dropping a hat in the street and begging for some spare broadband from a kindly Sydney Anglican.

That activity involves mutually assured destruction, hatred, fear and loathing, and doing whatever damage can be done to the commercial functioning of Optus and the Singapore government in Australia (with relentless abuse of Indian call centres and Indian scammers a useful sideline for stress relief).

If the pond, through this post, persuades only one other person never to touch Optus's services with a ten foot barge pole, then its work on earth is done, and it will have struck a blow for truth, justice, humanity, light, harmony and the music of the spheres.

By this point, readers might have realised they've discovered the longest rant on the many ways that Optus is the vilest ISP in the land.

Put it another way way: loon pond is experiencing currently technical problems thanks to Optus.

No solution seems close at hand, but it's not for want of attempts by the pond to find an alternative solution. The latest is mixing the blood of a first born with the teeth of a vampire to wish Optus into satanic oblivion.

No doubt, normal service will resume, Optus and Satan willing. Or is Satan in on the conspiracy as well? Probably not. Up against Optus, Satan seems like a congenial sort of feller ...

(Below: Newtown graffiti in relation to Optus. What can you say? Optus drove one graffiti writer so mad they thought Vodafone was nice. You sick perverted filthy bastards, what noble mind was o'er thrown?)

In which the sins of Sydney and the joys of the iceberg lettuce are considered ...

(Above: okay let's not start off with a long rant about the sin of using the Opera House yet again to illustrate a story, the sin of trading off and passing off, the sin of a million graphic artists short of an idea, or the sin of the pond for repeating the sin by putting a plug for the Sydney Anglicans mis-using and abusing the Opera House at the top of the pond).

The good news is that Michael Jensen has promptly delivered his sixth meditation on the sins of Sydney for the Sydney Anglicans - The Second Last is not the last - but the bad news is that it's possibly the weakest in the series.

So many sins and already out of puff?

It's agreeable enough that Jensen leads off with atheist Paul Kelly's song in praise of Sydney as seen from a 747 - Kelly has always teased the religious with kindly references to god and religion and love - and let's not get into a detailed textural argument whether it should be a 727 rather than the updated lyrics involving a 747 - no-one's a purist these days, not Paul Kelly and not even hard line Calvinists - because straight away, there's a bigger issue, as Jensen commits the sin of parochialism:

It is kind of gauche the way the citizens of Sydney go all misty-eyed when they talk about their home town, but the truth is simply this: there is simply no better place to live in all the world (if you are relatively prosperous of course). There are moments living here when you simply cannot imagine life being better, at least for a moment.

Which is simply absurd. People spend an inordinate amount of time deciding the best place to live, and you can get strange results that see Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Osaka and Paris beat Sydney into fifth place (here).

Then if you turn to the astonishingly inept and silly Economist Intelligence Unit, you discover that Melbourne tops the charts as the world's most liveable city, followed by Vienna, Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary. Sydney only makes sixth (wiki the nonsense here).

No well-travelled sensible Sydney-sider gets misty-eyed about Sydney, a sea side town like many other sea side towns.

The real point is Jensen's out clause - if you are relatively prosperous of course.

Well of course if you happen to be relatively prosperous there are many fine cities in which to live - the pond would immediately score an apartment in New York, and thereafter not give a second thought about Sydney or its Anglicans (and Paris wouldn't be far behind).

From there, it's all downhill. Jensen commits the sin of hedonism over and over again, contemplating the sapphire blue sea, a barbie with quality beers, a nice red wine, a game of golf, a swim (and not even a warning about the dangers of skin cancer), and determines that Sydney is a kind of heaven.

To arrive at this picture, he has to commit the sin of omission, which is to say nary a mention of Parramatta Road at nine o'clock on a Monday morning commute.

And then Jensen commits the sin of over-compensation. After rabbiting on about how Sydney is paradise on earth - in a way no sensible Sydney-sider caught in traffic or on public transport could manage - he has to mutter darkly into his quality beer (which presumably isn't a beer made in Sydney):

We can believe Sydney is heaven on earth only if we don’t look too closely. Sydney is what other cities are: a mixture of all things human. Only, Sydney pretends it is somehow different. It has had plastic surgery to cover its wrinkles.

It's a classic bipolar Jekyll and Hyde strategy. Sell the sizzle, then sell the despair.

The pond has looked high and low for the plastic surgery that's covered the wrinkles of Parramatta Road and the 428 bus service, but buggered if it can be found. It's likely the wrinkles were there all along, and no miracle cream could help out.

Of course all this lyricism, followed by plastic surgery is only building up to a good old dose of Anglican remorse and Calvinist guilt and what sounds suspiciously like a sermon from the 101 school of reproaching indolent sinners who forgot to wear their cilice:

Jesus Christ – a name many Sydney-siders would still think favourably of – spoke strongly about the foolishness of our way of life. It is self-deluding. It is, for one, happy with far too little; it is too easily satisfied. We are satisfied that the truly complete human life involves a few passing pleasures on a day with nice weather. What we are offered in Christ is something far beyond this. The man who plans for bigger barns but dies suddenly could have lived in Sydney. He is caught unawares by his own mortality, and forgets that he is answerable for his life.

Indeed. But the man who plans for bigger barns and carks it could just have easily lived in Tamworth, and more to the point, been able to afford the real estate for his rustic lifestyle.

If Jensen is trying to make a point about mortality and answering probing questions by St Peter at the pearly gates, surely the entire point is that it doesn't matter where you live.

Sydney's got nothing to do with it, in and of itself, it's just a city, like a lot of other seaside cities, but should it come to pass, the pond will - in a grand and kindly way - forgive the long absent lord for what she has wrought on Parramatta road.

But by golly there's going to be a long hard chit chat about Sydney Anglican crimes against women and gays. And while we're at it, the failure to precisely locate heaven and hell, or as Joe Joe Hill would have it, pie in the sky when you die.

The funniest thing? The pond is reading about Jensen rabbiting on about nice weather on a weekend when gale-force winds, bitter cold, and rain have swept through good old Sydney town, with the beaches closed because of the raging seas. Now that'll teach those hedonistic sapphire water sinners a trick or two!

Never mind, confronted with the rich diversity of life, Jensen commits the sin of ingratitude by charging others with the sin of ingratitude:

This sin is a sin of ingratitude, for another thing. It craves the bliss of created life, but snatches it greedily without a thought for its source. It celebrates the created thing, and forgets the creator, whose eternal power and divine nature ought to be recognised in what is made.

And that's it, more a splutter and a putter than a knock-down thing, since the closest we've got to finding the creator at the moment is the discovery of the Higgs Boson, which so far as the pond can confirm seems to suggest that the Garden of Eden was established by the Big Bang about 13.75 billion years ago in a galaxy far away (yes there are still Sydney Anglicans who communicate regularly with the site on the literal accuracy of all that lies within the Old Testament, and one response to Jensen's piece even manages to drag Genesis into the discussion).

Jensen wraps up proceedings with a truly execrable song about Sydney by Tommy Leonetti, which confirms - if ever evidence was lacking - that Sydney can be a veritable purgatory on earth (not that the pond is arguing for purgatory or limbo, which would be dreadful theological lapses).

With dozens of songs about Sydney to chose from - and a wiki that helpfully lists them all here - Jensen commits the ultimate sin ... of bad taste. He should realise he's answerable for this.

It's not as if there aren't plenty of songs to chose from that berate Sydney for its expensive or tawdry or wicked ways.

Here's another Jensen favourite, atheist Richard Clapton - what is it with his taste for atheist-composed music? - brooding about the wrinkles, without any sign of plastic surgery:

Sitting out on the Palm Beach Road,
I'm so drunk and the car won't go,
And my crazy eyes keep looking out to sea,
The Sunday drivers are cruising round,
I wish they'd all go back to town,
What do they expect to find,
Sure as hell ain't peace of mind.

Not to worry Richard, thanks to Michael Jensen and the Sydney Anglicans, we know you can never find peace of mind in Sydney.

It's too pretty, it's too superficial, it's too ugly, it's hell on earth, repent Sydney, or be punished! And whatever you do, avoid catching the 428.

Finally let's throw into the mix a message from Cardinal George Pell, in these deeply troubled times, noted last week and found here:

At a deeper level of frustration no one in Rome who makes a salad has encountered an iceberg lettuce. The alternative greens range from ordinary to bad; but in Italy you can still find strawberries and tomatoes which taste like they should, although their appearance is unattractive.

You cannot judge fruit by its cover.

Dammit, so it's not just Sydney that has issues. Those damned Roman Italians pretend to offer sophisticated salad, but can they drum up a decent iceberg for a Cardinal? No way. Talk about suffering.

Now if only Michael Jensen had read that, he might have understood the truth about Sydney. Forget the sapphire blue water, forget the beer and the wine and the barbies and the brilliant winter weather. It's a town that delivers the very best iceberg lettuces.

All the Italians have got are romaine and red and butter lettuces, and rocket and Belgian endive and chicory and dandelion and escarole and other decadent stuff for the salad bowl, while arrogant Sydney is iceberg pure to to speak, and not just at Bondi with the icebergers ... (and more for your salad here).

Oh dear, distracted again, by a lettuce, but perhaps all this just goes to show the dangers of personifying a city, and then taking the personification seriously, as if it actually means something, when generally generalisations are worth generally little ...

And now, since it's Sunday, let's see what Sydney can really deliver, in Kenneth Slessor's Five Bells, about the loss of a friend in water (go here for the opening part of it where Melbourne scores a mention and here for a little background):

In Sydney, by the spent aquarium-flare
Of penny gaslight on pink wallpaper,
We argued about blowing up the world,
But you were living backward, so each night
You crept a moment closer to the breast,
And they were living, all of them, those frames
And shapes of flesh that had perplexed your youth,
And most your father, the old man gone blind,
With fingers always round a fiddle's neck,
That graveyard mason whose fair monuments
And tablets cut with dreams of piety
Rest on the bosoms of a thousand men
Staked bone by bone, in quiet astonishment
At cargoes they had never thought to bear,
These funeral-cakes of sweet and sculptured stone.

Where have you gone? The tide is over you,
The turn of midnight water's over you,
As Time is over you, and mystery,
And memory, the flood that does not flow.
You have no suburb, like those easier dead
In private berths of dissolution laid -
The tide goes over, the waves ride over you
And let their shadows down like shining hair,
But they are Water; and the sea-pinks bend
Like lilies in your teeth, but they are Weed;
And you are only part of an Idea.
I felt the wet push its black thumb-balls in,
The night you died, I felt your eardrums crack,
And the short agony, the longer dream,
The Nothing that was neither long nor short;
But I was bound, and could not go that way,
But I was blind, and could not feel your hand.
If I could find an answer, could only find
Your meaning, or could say why you were here
Who now are gone, what purpose gave you breath
Or seized it back, might I not hear your voice?

I looked out my window in the dark
At waves with diamond quills and combs of light
That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand
In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze,
And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys
Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each,
And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard
Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal
Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells,
Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out.
Five bells.

Tommy Leonetti, eat your heart out.

And speaking of the Opera House, as we did at the start, any visitor will likely enough have come across John Olsen's tribute to the poem. There's no way to appreciate the work without seeing it in the flesh and without understanding its source (and you can find more about his work here).

Sadly it's too easy to label Sydney a sin city.

There's more to life and art and Sydney harbour than is dreamed about in Michael Jensen's universe ...

(Aand if you've not read Slessor, why not try Beach Burial while you're at it).

(Below: and now back to the light tone, and there you go, it's all or nothing, Sydney or the bush, Rome or an iceberg lettuce, and Sydney Anglicans or rights for women and gays).

The pond goes off to lunch with Mark Latham again ...

(Above: the pond's preferred snap for its ongoing coverage of Mark Latham's lunches, found here).

It's an outrage, and the pond deeply sympathises with anyone who's suffered as a result.

When you head off to the AFR's opinion page today, you're offered gormless twits like Rowan Dean attempting to be funny about the NBN, in NBN runs rings around itself and all else.

Cor blimey guvnor, when someone starts off a comedy piece with cor blimey, you know that the shades of Norman Wisdom and Benny Hill live deep in Dean's gut.

It's part of a weekend rag this weekend given over to much NBN bashing, some of it ostensibly news, most of it deeply pathetic, as the AFR maintains its NBN rage and tries to work out a decent digital strategy for a changing world in which it's been left behind.

But that's not the real outrage. In an attempt to get the punters to fork over the readies, the AFR has denied the world the bizarre sight of Mark Latham doing lunch with Christopher Pyne, as recorded in Christopher Pyne's school lunch.

That's simply not acceptable. Such transformational gems of wisdom should be free to all, because there's a good chance the world might be saved simply by reading these profound insights.

Because it's a beauty, a ripper of a column, as the first par establishes from the get go:

For reasons I have never fully understood, I like Christopher Pyne. Perhaps it's the novelty of his posh South Australian accent and social graces - something I only encounter through politics. Perhaps it's the energy he brings to a conversation, a spinning top of irreverent humour, most of it self-deprecating. As hard as I try, I cannot bring myself to dislike him. Rare among Liberals, he has tamed my sharpest class-warrior instincts.

Yep, it's set the washing machine cycle to nausea, as the fearless class-warrior hunkers down with Pyne at the Great Century Restaurant in Bankstown, for a sizzling serve of steamed prawn dumplings, chicken spring rolls, steamed scallop dumplings, prawn rice noodles, steamed whole prawn dumplings, steamed spinach and prawn dumplings, broccoli in oyster sauce, a chinese tea and 1 soda water for a commendable comradely lumpenproletariat $47-80.

Now the pond has already used up the metaphor of the farmer and the pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm, which is a pity, because it could be rolled out yet again, though truth to tell, it would be impossible to guess who's the farmer and who's the pig in this story.

What we can say with absolute certainty is that the simpering Latham is right on side with Pyne as he sticks the boot into the Australian education system. This often involves an evocation of the fear of Asians and Latham is fast off the mark:

Hard work is the resident way of life, with the sons and daughters of these Asian migrants blitzing entry to the best schools in Sydney. By comparison, students who suffer from poor classroom teaching and do not compensate through long hours of homework have little hope. In understanding the realities of Australian schooling, there could not be a more appropriate location for lunching with the opposition spokesman for education, apprenticeships and training.

There could also not be a more appropriate way of conflating FUD in relation to the Australian education system, so that Pyne can then get on a roll and stick the boot in, with a similar bout of fear and loathing:

Pyne's starting point is to end the disconnection between education professionals and schools users. "There are two different worlds in school education," he says. "There is the world of academics and education professionals who have been around for decades, all defending the last 30 years of pedagogy in schools. Then there is the world of parents and students who have a very different view of the quality of education they are either paying for or receiving."

Yep, it's the straw man/woman/person of disconnected academics and professionals rolled out for yet another bashing, and it makes you wonder what the point of an education is, since it's likely to turn you into an academic or a professional, or even worse an elite expert, ripe for a bashing by two armchair boofheads hunkering down over a Chinese meal.

Anyhoo, let's skip over Latham remembering Paul Keating proclaiming a victory for the true believers in 1993, and Pyne being elected to parliament the same year - "the career parallels between Keating and Pyne are striking" with "both underestimated early in their careers" - perhaps pausing only to celebrate the way Pyne rejects fried morsels for steamed dishes - because his preference for steamed vegies provides a truly wonderful metaphor for the state of education:

He is no less discerning about teacher quality. "In every staffroom, 5 to 15 per cent of the teachers are not up to scratch, so it is commonly accepted that some students are going to be taught by underperforming teachers. This is unacceptable," he says, his speech intensifying above the clatter of the Great Century regulars. "The teachers' union has made excuses for this problem, but it's unacceptable. What we need is for underperforming teachers to be managed out of the system."

Indeed. If only the same could be said for self-congratulatory politicians. It's true that the system managed to get rid of the underperforming Mark Latham, but why on earth hasn't the system devised a way to get rid of the prattling poodle Pyne? This is simply not acceptable.

Back to the conundrum of education, which led to Mark Latham.

Pyne's solution? Why to make state schools just like private schools?

"... why is Labor trying to make non-government schools more like government schools? What we should be doing is making government schools more like non-government schools."

The supine Latham, an expert at Dorothy Dixers and sucking it up, doesn't bother to defend state schools or take it up to Pyne. Instead he spends a few pars having a bash at Tony Abbott and nattering negativity, before going on to hail Pyne as the new education messiah:

Most shadow ministers are reluctant to put a foot forward for fear of putting wrong. Pyne, by contrast, is willing to confront vested interests, to break the power of Australia's "education club" - the informal alliance of unionists, bureaucrats and public educationalists who have weakened our schools through a social worker approach to learning.

And remember this is a man who started off his opening par by referring to his class-warrior instincts. Now you might think - in an unguarded non-feminist moment - that he actually sounds like a complete and utter pussy, or perhaps tosser, but Latham is actually still stuck in the "harden the fuck up or I'll fuck you hard" mode of life, the usual home of boofheads and thugs.

It's not a club that welcomes the club of caring effete do-gooders:

The club believes that academic testing places too much pressure on children, that the most important function of schooling is pastoral care. This nonsense has led to the proliferation of counsellors, chaplains, facilitators and mental health assessors in schools. In many cases, there is more social work being completed in classrooms than school work.

Yes, harden the fuck up Australia, so that you too can learn how to assault taxi drivers.

Naturally Christopher is in complete agreement, and never mind that it was the Howard government that sprang school chaplains on the world:

Pyne is concerned by this trend, wanting school education to return to the basics of scholarly achievement.

So that we can turn out highly qualified academics and professionals who can be reviled by Pyne and Latham for being inept.

Never mind, there's several more pars, including a sideswipe at Jeff Kennet and Beyondblue, and at Dr Katherine Dix from Flinders University, along with a celebration of the value of NAPLAN testing - which should be more rigorous for primary school kids, not less - harden the fuck up primary school kids - before we cop this doozy from the class warrior:

As the yum cha trolleys empty and our lunch concludes, Pyne makes his way onto the streets of Keating country, glancing wistfully at the sports club opposite. I get the feeling that, just as Keating repaired Australia's economic policies, Pyne will do the same for school education. He might not have the appearance or the voice of a hard-edged reformer but in public life, such things can be mis-leading.

It's lucky that Paul Keating is still with us, or otherwise he'd be rolling in his grave. Poor Keating. Who'd have thought he'd have to cop a comparison between him and Christopher Pyne from a sharp class-warrior?

But still the yammering class warrior isn't finished with his Keating/Bankstown comparisons:

Who would have thought a young Bankstown branch-stacker like Keating would have liberalised economic policy and set Australia on the path to unparalleled wealth creation? In spotting a reformer, it's not image that matters but intent. It's the crusading passion of the 1 per cent of politicians dedicated to to making a difference. Over prawn dumplings and steamed broccoli, my lunch guest has proved his credentials - and I'm no pushover when it comes to judging someone's toughness.

Get it? The fawning class warrior has proved his toughness by hailing Christopher Pyne as the new Keating, Mr. one per cent, a passionate crusader who's going to make a difference. Oh dear sweet absent lord, why are you so cruel ...

After several false starts during the Howard years and the unfulfilled promise of Labor's "education revolution" Pyne is now the Great White Hope for Australia's parents and students.

Which perhaps proves that you can fool all the people some of the time, since anyone who thinks Pyne is the messiah, as opposed to just another naughty boy, is surely a Great White Dope.

If he delivers on his policy program, he will substantially boost national productivity and opportunity. In the new Bankstown, with its rising aspirational class in search of the best schools and the best teachers, this would be hailed as the sweetest victory of all.

Oh poor Keating, his line cruelly stolen and assigned to Pyne. Et tu dumb brute Latham?

And the Bankstown aspirational class will sweep to a life of glory. Or at least that's what the pigs told the animals (and the farmer) in Animal Farm.

So here's the thing. The pond gets its weekend comedy material flung over the front fence for free.

Did you willingly pay to access this gibberish? Sorry, that makes you a contender for great white dope status.

The meal might have only cost fifty bucks, but when the opinions are free, somehow it makes it all right that at the same time they're worth nothing.

Unless of course you're a teacher. Or perhaps a student.

Because the next few years might well turn into a nightmare, and not just a smorgasbord of dumplings, but of Christopher Pyne dumpings, aided and abetted by a class-warrior so sharp they flung him out of the cutlery drawer years ago ...

(Below: and so to a portrait of Mark Latham's lunch guest).

And so to a homily from the exceptionalist proselytisers ...

(Above: found here. It's a teacher joke).

The pond often gets stuck in a rut, but that's because it covers the night beat for the daily, where eccentrics, odd-bods and ruts are a way of life.

The Christian rut is now well grooved, having rutted away for a couple of thousand years, and there's plenty of rutting on view in David Hastie's piece Put ideology to one side for a moment and look at the work chaplains do.

Strangely initially it only turned up in The Age, which suggests that The Sydney Morning Herald's editors thought better of it. Well that's until this turned up on the front digital page of the SMH:

Thanks whimsical NZ subbie for a jolly jape amongst chums. Now we know what chaplains do.

Carry a bible hidden behind their backs in clutching hands, deviously putting theology, Adam and Eve, and the whole garden of eden thing into the game, while wearing a grim funeral black suit and matching missionary white shirt.

The joy of stereotypes.

Before we get into a tedious look at a thoroughly predictable piece, let's cut to the chase, and kick the tyre of the last par:

...ultimately for parents and schools, this is not an ideological question. It is a pastoral one. For those of us on the ground in education, when one extra child is comforted, when one extra class is helped, when a chaplain's extra smile is given, ideology can go and get stuffed.

Uh huh. Let's try a secular version of that for a state school system which is ostensibly secular, fair and balanced in the matter of religion, whether you be calathumpian or scientological, Christian or Islamic:

... ultimately for parents and schools, this is not a theological question. It is a physical and mental well-being one. For those of us on the ground in education, when one extra child is comforted, when one extra class is helped, when a counsellor's extra smile is given, theology can go and get stuffed.

There is simply no reason why there should be a chaplaincy program in schools, as opposed to a counselling one, except for John Howard's determination to dog whistle the conservative Christian vote, and the Labor government's determination to dog whistle to show they can be as doggy as Howard.

Counsellors could of course come from any belief set, provided they had the qualifications to be a school counseller adept in the ways of students - not for example wanting a gay student to renounce his or her sexuality on the basis that the bible said it made them unclean.

There's no reason to think that a secular or atheist counseller would be any worse at this sort of work, unless you happen to be David Hastie, in love with Christian exceptionalism:

Whatever its claim to rational truth, it is an empirical truth that secular atheism just doesn't produce a larger quantity of community generosity than religion. I am not saying that atheists don't generously give to the lives of others: many manifestly do, and many better than religious folk. But as a cause celebre, secular atheism just doesn't seem to have the ideological muscle to produce 2700 bright-eyed serving volunteers overnight: religion does.

Hastie clearly doesn't have the first clue how offensive that sounds, nor what it implies - religion's capacity to produce a bunch of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed unqualified zombies.

Thank the absent lord even the federal government has realised that there needs to be some basic standards and qualifications, rather than let loose a bunch of loons roaming around schools explaining how atheists can't cut the ideological muscle.

On and on the offensive exceptionalism rolls out. Generalisations and banalities, as if to the manner born:

Unlike school counsellors, chaplains tend to be public personalities, complete with antic dispositions, fulfilling a kind of community ''glue'' function.

Yes, that'd be as opposed to those dour Heathcliff counsellors who cast gloom and doom around them with their un-antic dispositions, ungluing everybody and making the community feel it's lost on Yorkshire moors.

Does Hastie mean to evoke the kind of unctuous do gooder clap happy kind of Ned Flanders Christian that sees sensible kids driven to a life of atheism (yes, yes, it was the chaplain program what done it for the pond, and Ned that did it for Homer, though you'd have to rate the Reverend Lovejoy a close second).

In the 2011 Commonwealth Ombudsman's inquiry, hardly any schools complained about what their chaplains were doing. Where counsellors mostly deal with abnormal psychology, chaplains deal with positive psychology, wandering around bus lines and chatting to mums and kids.

That's simply not true, which is why there were a set of recommendations arising from a national consultation process, which will change the way the scheme operates because even the feds realised the program's limited aims weren't being accomplished and some Christians - especially the Queensland division - were using it for proselytising (and you can access the reports and the Ombudsman's report from links available here).

And ain't it wondrous to read how counsellors are mostly weird, while chaplains are positive (clap your hands and say you're happy).

And ain't it wondrous to read how all chaplains have to do is smile at the EMOs and the gays, and calm the nerd-bashing bullying jocks - like the brothers Cheeryble on a dose of ecstasy - and throw in a bit of positive psychology and all will be well, thanks to the healing power of god. And there are other upsides:

When a little boy gets cancer - which sadly happens all too often in all school communities - the chaplain might get up during a school assembly and say something comforting, yet not religious, just when something needs to be said, and just when the school counsellor is flat out counselling the traumatised little brothers and best friends.

Yep, it's simply not possible for a secularist or a deviant perverted atheist to get up during a school assembly and say something comforting, yet not religious, and perhaps not even involving blather about pie in the sky by and by.

We could go on and on, because Hastie goes on and offensively on, decrying school counsellors, and praising chaplains to the sky.

C0unsellors are simply too toffy and too educated, don't you know, so it's much better to have a flock of chaplains running around offering a comforting word here and there, and perhaps, for all the pond knows, a nice ham and cucumber sandwich and a cup of tea (that seems to sort out everything, less you're feeling like a scone with jam):

School counsellors keep a strategically low (almost furtive) profile, and mostly deal reactively and formally to student trauma, abnormal mental health and mass school crisis. A school counsellor typically has a bachelor's degree, a post-grad in education, and a masters in educational psychology. This is (at least) an eight-year training process.

Hiss boo, that's simply way too over-qualified and educated. Damn these counsellors, and their overworked and underpaid ways, and filling an entirely different role to a chaplain doing a Ned Flanders routine to set the entire school laughing and smiling for joy (why was that one of the most instructional episodes of The Simpsons? Nedward it here, flandiddy-anders fans ).

All students need is a comforting word, and bright-eyed volunteers, which produces a huge upside:

Most importantly, most chaplains have beneficent and gregarious personalities and a capacity to connect with youth: things a formal qualification simply cannot guarantee. If they did not, under current arrangements the schools would sack them.

Yes you can be qualified to be a school counsellor but that doesn't mean you're qualified to be a school counsellor. You need the power of the long absent god in your heart, and be beneficent and gregarious - rather than a skulking, sulking secularist - and then everything will be alright, whether you have a formal qualification, or the kind of qualification and beatific smile that membership of the Scripture Union gives you.

Now there might be a downside, a kind of pervasive sense that somehow Ned Flanders is running around state school corridors:

And yes, chaplains owe much of their beneficent impulses to their personal religious beliefs. Despite the euphemising of chaplaincy organisations and churches about ''neutrality'' and ''non-proselytising'', it is a no-brainer that the presence of religious chaplains in state schools is an unspoken endorsement of religious worldviews. On this Ron Williams is absolutely right.

Yep, let shamelessness be your guide.

All this is intended by way of Hastie explaining how, despite being a progressive Green at heart, he simply can't tick the Green box when voting because whenever they mention that a state secular education system should be a state secular education system, the substantial demographic of Australian Christian progressives stampedes away in a panic, back into the arms of conservative politics.

As if any Hastie expects any secularist who's graduated from primary school to swallow that sort of hogwash.

Howard devised the chaplaincy program to make sure Christians stayed within the fold - he'd even talk the talk with rabid ratbags like the Exclusive Brethren (here), and sent a goodwill message to Catch the Fire while the likes of Costello went off to yodel with Hillsong. And now Labor is terrified to stand up to the god botherers, while Hastie purports to have a crisis of conscience:

And so again my voting pencil will hover uncertainly over the Green box. Milne and Williams are right to note that this is about secular versus pluralist education: whether we can cope with the idea that religious world views can be socially present in state schools (I think we can, and they should).

It's just so irritating, that sort of illogical logic. Of course religious world views are socially present in state schools. The question is whether there should be a school chaplain program paid for by government which gives religion an advantage in their relentless proselytising, or a better funded school counselling program which isn't done on the cheap.

The truth is, the mainstream religions are a bunch of proselyetising Ponzi artists always in search of conversions, always running a scam, and always hooked on state money, as if they didn't get enough of it through tax breaks, and funding charity works, and now for god's sake running unemployment schemes and the like.

Hastie can carry on about the wretchedness of school counsellors, praise Christian chaplains to the sky, and hold his vote back from the Greens, but at least can we abandon the pretence that we should put ideology and theology aside for a moment, a day, or a week.

Reading this sort of tosh just ensures the pond won't be voting Labor. Let the Christian progressives have their Tony Abbott, and their version of climate science, and let them show their Christian style with refugees, and so on and so forth, and let's see who gets to head up to the heavens above on the wings of the rapture.

Presumably the progressive Hastie will ban the Greens so he can stick with Labor and their chaplain program. In this crazy world, a vote for an atheist PM is a vote for school chaplains.

But if an atheist PM sticks in his craw, will he vote for Abbott? In which case talk of being a progressive is mere idle chit chat, and why did he waste everyone's time scribbling this tosh?

Naturally he doesn't answer this question. Somehow it's just meant to torment the Greens and make them change their watermelon ways.

While sensible secularists are actually tormented by a federal government which wants to be John Howard in thought and deed, with the bonus of Peter Garrett as the Minister of Education.

Which is why the pond will probably be voting for Mr. Jack or perhaps Ms Jennet at the next election ... (and you too can think of the virtues of Equus africanus asinus in the ballot box).

(Below: this one's been doing the Facebook rounds - a pity there's not an equivalent for David Hastie's effort).