An exclusive from the pond about yet another lizard Oz exclusive ...

(Above: there's bias and then there's just doing business).


This turned up in Crikey the other day:

...We heard this snippet from a tipster: 
 "The Australian is commissioning a nationwide poll to ascertain the degree to which householders believe the ABC (radio and TV) to be biased for or against the ALP, Lib/Nat coalition and The Greens in their coverage of national politics. Also, whether they think the ABC are biased in their reportage of climate change. If punters answer that they think they're biased, they're asked if it's toward climate change 'believers' or climate change 'rejectors'. They're also asked who they voted for last federal election in the House of Representatives and who they intend to vote for this year. They're not asked if they read The Australian." 
Interesting to know that anyone who accepts the vast majority of peer-reviewed science that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are affecting the climate is apparently a "believer". It's a religion, is it? We put this tip to the folks at News Limited but didn't hear back by deadline.

We'll probably never hear back from the folks at News Limited, by deadline or by drop dead time.

But it's a favourite distinction of the pond's, between abject belief, and contingent acceptance in relation to risk assessment and the viability of taking action.

The snippet also says everything you need to know about The Australian and the bulk of Murdoch hackery and commentary. Including the tendency to paint everything simplistically, into black and white corners, good and bad, foolish believers and sensible "rejectors" (any folks here up for a push-pull poll?)

The moment you attempt a little equivocation, a little balance, a middle of the road, well yes, but on the other hand ... you're gone, a dead rabbit in the mouth of the leaders of a pack of feral baying hounds (come on down baying Bolter, addled arfing Akker Dakker, snarling Janet, snapping Miranda, yipping and yapping poodle Tim Blair).

You're either for or against, or you're a lickspittle fellow traveller with the cardigan wearers at the ABC and Fairfax (come on down Guardian, we're waiting).

Once you reach this mindset - the pond is unable to cite Stalin for reasons of Godwin Law considerations - you have your enemies, and you continually pound away at them, like any decent paranoid obsessive compulsive conspiracy detector would.

There's a classic example at work today:

First let's consider the matter of the "exclusive". It turns out that the ratings season this year in Australia didn't start until February 10th, and thus we've yet to be blessed with a tracking on the performance of the ABC.

It turns out that the "exclusive" is actually quoting fluffery from that tedious Tasmanian wretch Senator Eric Abetz, and briefing notes for managing director Mark Scott's Senate estimates appearance ... last October.

Second let's consider how in the simplistic header the fate of one program is made to stand in for the entire ABC, so that a discussion of the Insiders becomes Viewers turning off ABC1.

Has there ever been a better example of a brazenly dumb subbie anxious to toe the corporate line?

Now let's address the bizarre notion that The Insiders is an ABC flagship Sunday morning current affairs program.

It might be in the addled brain of a raging ideologue, but Sunday mornings, in terms of ratings, is asterisk territory. Which is why the Ten network dropped the Bolter in to Sunday, to please Gina, and because, well, where's the harm ... all they've offended is the teenagers (and the pond) still mourning the loss of video hits.

Now if we were talking about meaningful prime time flagships ... like 7.30 or Four Corners or even outside the cusp of current affairs Lateline ... (it sticks in the pond's craw to say Q&A has anything to do with current affairs).

There's a not so hidden and bizarre agenda in this latest lizard Oz beat-up of Abetz speak, of course, and it goes way back to last December when someone in the ABC thought it was a good idea to invite Janet Albrechtsen to appear as a "conservative" voice on the Insiders.

Albrechtsen took the opportunity to sink in the slipper - well a kick to the temple with steel-toed boots might be a better metaphor - as you can read in Leftie insiders keep Aunty locked into groupthink, (happily inside the paywall so you can keep on not giving a stuff).

The fuss led to The Australian mounting a war on the program, for no discernible or apparent reason, except that Dame Slap had taken offence, and the rag was determined to make off with the gate.

It was amusing for a couple of reasons, for the way it shows the lizard Oz commentariat and its acolytes locked into group think, and for the way it fetishes people yabbering away about politics on a Sunday morning, as if anyone cares (disclaimer, the pond never watches political discussions on a Sunday morning when a fuck, a coffee, bacon or eggs or watching a fly crawling on the ceiling are available as alternatives).

At the time Albrechtsen dressed the invite up as people power:

More likely, the invitation arrived thanks to the power of The Australian's letters page. Last week, a stream of frustrated letter writers said "enough"; they were giving Insiders the flick because "Sunday mornings regularly lead off with a Labor or Greens press release" and "progressives lecture me on the evils of Tony Abbott while loosely guided by Barrie Cassidy as Julia Gillard's cheer-leader". Letter writers expressed disappointment about the "continued absence of any conservative voices" among ABC news and current affairs hosts; it is a "slap in the face to half of the Australian population that helps pay for its existence".

Please explain in what possible universe you'd want a conservative news presenter or host? Who gives a stuff if a newsreader is a conservative?

It completely and classically abuses the notion that there should be anything remotely resembling fair and balanced news reporting and news and current affairs hosting. But then the Murdochians have Fox News as their dream world.

Anyway, it seems that Senator Eric Abetz might have been one of the letter writers, but now he finds it easier to bend the ear of Christian Kerr:

Opposition leader in the Senate Eric Abetz, who lodged the FOI request, told The Australian: "I believe the ABC, and particularly its news and current affairs programs, need to focus on being increasingly objective and balanced if it is to lift its ratings."

This is a classic gotcha. No one in the commercial media wants the ABC to lift its ratings, they're quite happy it stays where it is. If the ABC lifted its ratings, what a squawking and a protesting there'd be ...

Which leads to a bigger question. Why are the politicians and the rabid right wingers always ranting about the ABC, which provides an alternative to the broad dominance of the media by Murdochians and commercial television interests?

Well because they fear and loath anyone who stands outside their particular tent, because these satanists, these heretics - or should that be believers - are always up to mischief, dissenting from the rejectors.

If the ABC was as bad as it was claimed, conservatives would organise a boycott. Not one of them would appear on The Insiders (and wouldn't the world be a happier and more contented place as a result, with nattering negativity waylaid).

Instead The Australian has orchestrated a crusading campaign with all the said relentless negativity at its disposal. And why?

Well the new triennial funding agreement is coming up, and because it was deferred for twelve months, it's now being negotiated in an election year, and the coalition, and tyre kickers and boofhead pedants like Abetz and Brandis, along with people like the Bolter, have been arguing that we're now mired in an election campaign, with a government that should be in caretaker mode, and with an ABC that should be acting as if the election period has begun, as opposed to the day the writs are issued (and never mind that the proposed election day could be overturned in a trice with the re-birth of the Ruddster or another miraculous event).

And so the ABC shouldn't get another penny. But if its ratings are dropping, shouldn't it get a little more to help it with its patently stretched resources? No, because if it's ratings are dropping, it should be abused, not supported ...

But back to the Insiders. What are the figures for the program that causes such consternation and concern in The Australian? Well according to Kerr it was averaging 228,000 views with an average 6,000 plays an episode on iView.

In a prime time context, these figures are pitiful, but no more pitiful than the figures for the Bolter's show in 2012. He might beat The Insiders, but he does so by counting both the morning and afternoon screenings, and only by averaging a pitiful 272,000 people (143,000 for the morning, 129,000 for the afternoon - or so Glenn Dyer proposes here).

So what have we established thus far?

Well for starters nobody gives a stuff about these alleged flagships - the general gentler polity doesn't give a stuff about The Insiders, Andrew Bolt, The Bolt Report, Janet Albrechtsen, or come to think of it, Christian Kerr and The Australian, because their weekly sales figures are even more pitiful than the viewing statistics for The Insiders.

How's a circulation figure around 125,000 grab you? And that includes some 23% for accommodation, airline, education and bundled categories ...

Yep, they were giving the lizard Oz away hand over fist in 2012, and right now they're giving it away at an airport near you (Newspaper circulation).

Why those pitiful circulation figures makes The Insiders look like mainstream television. No wonder The Australian is always bleating about taxpayer subsidy when it simply can't make a profit ...

More to the point, we now know that an "exclusive" is code for The Australian and Christian Kerr being a mouthpiece, sock puppet if you will for Eric Abetz...

And it isn't the first example in recent times.

On the 7th February readers of the lizard Oz had the benefit of another scoop ... GetUp! conflicted, says Eric Abetz. Now there's a scoop - a conflicted Abetz talking of others being conflicted (behind the wall so your brain won't be Abetzed).

But at least we know for certain what will happen to the ABC, if Tony Abbott and his team win, with baying Abetz leading the way, and the slobbering, slavering Murdochians like hounds ahead of the horses, keen to see any alternative to their failing, flailing newspaper world exterminated.

The world of the Daleks, gets closer everyday, and research will establish ever more clearly those who are for and those who are against, those who are foolish believers and those who are true believers, and those who accept climate science, and those who insist that the world must be viewed through a religious veil, good or evil, black or white ... and talk of the contingent acceptance of theories based on evidence will be banished as a heresy.

Something happened to Christian Kerr after he joined The Australian, and began to cosy up to the likes of Abetz. It's a pitiful, tragic story, so let's end by going back in time:

CHRISTIAN KERR: There is always a lot of knifing going on. You just work a line, you just work a line. You push a line in the ears of journos and sooner enough it becomes conventional wisdom. 
....It's a sly word. You go up there with what's your message of the day. You have your serious brief and then you have your chitchat. And if you have enough chitchat and enough ears, it all mounts up. People still swapping their chitchat - it will build up. It will become a solid commodity. (here)

Yep, and if you're cheeky, you even call it an exclusive ...

(Below: no wonder lexicographers, linguists, rhetoricians and philosophers have gone on strike).

And while we at it, and sssh, no one mention climate science or climate change, it'll take 3'49" of your time (and an ad) to watch Chasing Ice movie reveals largest iceberg break-up ever filmed. Come on down Guardian, time to give the lizard Oz a real fright ...

Out amongst the fringe dwellers ...

(Above: send in the flag-waving jingoist clowns - don't worry, they're here).


The pond doesn't watch much of 7.30 these days on the ABC - the Chris Ulhmann days ended the habit - but what a fun cameo turned up last night in Australia's newest political party courts controversial speaker.

Yep, it seems Lord Monckton (remember Screaming Lord Sutch before complaining) is even more controversial than flag-waving jingoist Pastor Danny.

His lordship ended his party-launching appearance with the usual rhetorical flourish, of the kind routinely deployed in his scientific approach to climate change:

CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON: Go and do your job and stop trying to pick nits when somebody like Pastor Danny, whose intentions are manifestly kindly, is thought to have something that you can have some fun with. Come on, grow up.

Manifestly kindly?

It's a nit when a nitwit claims to have risen someone from the dead? A Christ-like feat of supernatural powers? (I was raised from dead, woman tells, as breathlessly reported by a breathless Barney Zwartz)

It was hard to tell what was a more pitiful spectacle at the launch of Pastor Danny's new rabid party of zealotry and prejudice - Monckton or the aging grey-haired audience of true believing loons.

Actually there's one more pitiful spectacle, and that's the way the entire Murdoch commentariat and rags like The Australian are now no more than one degree of separation from the bizarre extreme.

Chris Mitchell as a sock puppet for Pastor Danny? Well he and his rag have been shills and sock puppets for Lord Monckton's climate science ...

Most of the onetime Monckton worshipping commentariat have tried to ignore the stench emanating from their past columns.

The Bolter put on a giant peg:

If you can't be bothered clicking to read the Bolter - who can blame you - under the header "Deep sigh", the Bolter scribbled: Why on earth was Christopher Monckton endorsing the nationalist Rise Up Australia Party? Great chance for warmists to paint climate sceptics as fringe dwellers.

But as you can see above, the fringe dwelling Bolter can't help himself, flinging a warmist here and a warmist there, like his fellow travelling fringe dwelling friend, whom he long ago elevated to iconic status.

And still supports.

This is what you get when you google the Bolter:

When you're a flea who likes to get down with fleas, chances are you'll get up a flea.

And if you promote Monckton's return, chances are you're promoting a man who's promoting Pastor Danny as the solution to Australia's political problems.

Fringe dwellers.

Speaking of fringe dwellers, who'd have thunk that Gerard "the prattling Polonius" Henderson - on the surface a conservative bespectacled scribbler - is in fact a super Jock seeking to right the wrongs of the world. Confirming the pond's belief that deep down we're all super men or women or girls or boys, unless we happen to be Batman and Catwoman.

In Ministers turn judge and jury in sport case (forced video at other end of link) Hendo's outraged that the Justice Minister and the Sports Minister have gone over the top in their response to the ACC report on organised crime and drugs in sport.

He urges Herald readers to put up their hands at this outrageous display of a minister being an investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury, besmirching unsullied Australian sports folk.

It may be that the ACC can sustain the suggestion Australian sport is riddled with illegal drug use and match fixing along with organised crime. Until, and unless, it does there is good reason not to blacken Australian sport in the eyes of the world. Hands down.

It gave the pond a hearty laugh.

Here's Hendo and Phil Gould at one - yes the pond has heard of Phil Gould, who sounds like the sort of bloatware Microsoft charges a fortune for (they give away Sunday tabloids at the airport for free, and Gouldie was striking up the same Johnny one-note tune as Hendo).

What's so funny is that anyone who has eyes to see knows that Australian sport was long ago blackened by cheats, ne'er do wells and inflammatory attitudes.

There's the racism and anti-gay attitudes embedded in the AFL, and the odd spectacular flame-out by a drug addicted player, and let's not mention the assorted sexual assaults and New Zealand capers of the NRL's best and brightest light bulbs.

Then there's rampant cheating at a club level, and the NRL took this to new heights, when the salary cap breaches of Canterbury-Bankstown were taken to a new level by Melbourne Storm
- look, here you go, speaking about blackening Australian sport in the eyes of the world, read the story in the UK Guardian, under the header Melbourne Storm stripped of NRL titles after after cheating salary cap.

Is it possible to imagine a worse spectacle than to have the NRL take away premiership titles for 2007 and 2009 on the basis of organised cheating? Not just a few points for a few games, but what the entire season is ostensibly all about ... the premiership.

At the time, the Lance Armstrong defence was run ... everybody does it, so we're just doing it to make sure we have a level playing field.

It was only a few weeks ago that everybody was cluck clucking and tut tutting about Armstrong, a man invited over and paid for by the South Australian government when there was already a cloud and a taint around the man.

Yet we've all been down this path before, even to the point where a player could get off by saying his mum gave him an illegal substance.

Now everybody expects the sort of sub-primate comedy stylings of boxing, as shown by Sonny Boy Williams Brisbane brave battle with the white buffalo Francois Botha, from the shortened ring count to a charge of a prohibited substance to a plethora of bullshitting "Bs". (ain't it grand what you can learn from the free Sunday tabloids).

But SBW, it turns out, is an admired rugby union and rugby league boofhead of the first water, and he's shortly to bring his professional boxing career CV to rugby league to enhance its elevated status.

What on earth makes our very own prattling Polonius think that professional football in this country is clean-skin and untarnished and only just blackened by the current report?

Professional football is an entertainment, now incapable of being taken any more seriously than professional wrestling.

You pays your money, and you enjoys the show, and you have a bet, and then you have another bet, and then you have another bet, and then the man on the television tells you the odds are good, and you bet again. (And yet in the United States, home of Las Vegas, you won't find anyone on the television urging you to bet as you watch a game).

It gets worse - a man who routinely repeats himself, from column to column, over months and years, and so makes the pond repeat itself - accuses the minister of repeating himself. Pot, say hello to kettle.

In fact, the pond had a guaranteed certainty, a bet which sadly went astray, all due to Polonius's desire to defend the maiden chastity and integrity of professional footballers.

You see, the pond bet heavily that Hendo would be once again blathering on about the election, and once again he'd blather on endlessly in his repetitive way about the western suburbs, and so the pond had lined up a quote from Mumble:

... we hear and read that the 2013 federal election “will be decided in western Sydney” (or “south and west Sydney"). 
But the election won’t be decided there. 
For one thing, it is nonsensical to talk about elections being “decided” anywhere in particular. Where was the last election decided? And the one before? They are decided across the country. 
If someone tells you the 2013 election will be so close it will come down to a few seats in that part of Sydney, that person is either a wishful-thinking Labor supporter or is hoping for an exciting, close contest. 
On current polling, the Coalition is set to make gains in Victoria, Tasmania, possibly South Australia, about 50-50 Lingiari in the Northern Territory—and, yes, NSW, including in the capital’s west and south-west. 
It will not come down to how many of its western Sydney electorates the ALP holds on to. But if national polling were to improve for the government things would probably also improve in western Sydney. 
There’s nothing special about western Sydney or its inhabitants. They don’t decide elections any more than anyone else. (Your 65 cents a year)

The pond just loved the notion that Hendo might be a wishful-thinking Labor supported and could barely wait to deliver the Sheldon bazinga.

And instead our very own prattling Polonius chose to write a spirited defence of professional footballers, many of whom spend their out of hours time having fun in Kings Cross when not enjoying themselves at the lower end of King street ...

As a result, the pond has lost very heavily, and in the usual way, must now double down. Anybody got a tip on a fixed horse or dog race, or a clue about who'll kick the first goal from a penalty right in front of the posts?

We leave you with this splendid logic:

... it is not the role of the Justice Minister to urge that individuals be arrested for criminal activity that has yet to be detected.  

No doubt this helps explain why sports management, the media, individual players, and suppliers of illegal drugs have suddenly gone into a complete tizz ...

Yes, before we got to the launch of Australia's latest and greatest political party, the pond sat through Former Essendon sports scientist describes AFL supplement culture  and worked out that the game was indeed afoot ...

What a fringe dweller Hendo is ...

The pond's prepared to bet that if he ever admitted to taking a toke, it would only be on the basis that he never inhaled ...

(Below: one of the better moments in Australian sport, but why was it necessary?)

My dear boy, why don't you just try writing a sensible column ...

(Above: the breaking news ... in March 2009. Yep, there it is in Queues, chaos: welcome to Sydney Airport)

There's nothing like arriving in Sydney late on a rainy night to be reminded that Sydney airport is comprehensively stuffed.

The federal government to lead the charge to develop the north, under crusader Tony Abbott? 

Only if we get that second Sydney airport in Cairns.

Because neither side of the federal aisle has managed to do anything about the airport since the days of Gough Whitlam ...

It turns out that the airport is an even handier place these days to find any newspaper you like, because they're strewn about like desperate confetti in search of a wedding.

That's how the pond came to read about Chris Short's excellent lunch with Lord Monckton at the Bambini Trust in Elizabeth Street Sydney (total cost a parsimonious $161.50, without alcohol that was deemed too expensive).

It's all there in Lunch with the AFR: Christopher Monckton, but sadly it's behind the paywall, which means you'd have to kill a few red backs in the purse to chow down with this pair. (Sadly the freebies handed out at Sydney airport are now lining the cockies' cages of the well-travelled).

Casual readers might have been expecting Short to raise the matter of Pastor Danny, as Mike Carlton did over the weekend when he celebrated the nutters of Europe being wont to flee the northern winter and blow into town down under:

First cab off the rank this month will be that loon, the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who believes the science of climate change is a Marxist plot to gain control of the world. Monckton would like you to think he is a member of the British House of Lords, which he is not. This time around he is being carted about the place by none other than Pastor Danny Nalliah, of the Melbourne-based Catch the Fire Ministries. Danny, you might remember, claimed that Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires of 2009, in which 173 people died, were God's punishment for the state's legalisation of abortion. He has also suggested that the Queensland floods of 2011 were ''God trying to get our attention'' after Kevin Rudd had delivered a speech critical of Israel. 
Enough said there. (Guards of dishonour march into court).

There we go, certified by Carlton himself that the Viscount is a certifiably appropriate subject for the pond.

Actually there's a lot more to be said about Pastor Danny, and the pond was expecting a brief mention of the issue in the piece by Short, if only to see it summarily despatched to the boundary by the mighty Monckton, but sad to say, there wasn't a squeak or a peep on the subject.

Instead there was the standard Godwin's Law routine in the matter of climate change, when it comes to experts and things being settled:

"I said, yes; there again, fascism is poking through or communism. I don't know which, they're all the same ... totalitarianism always says you have to defer to the authority of the experts. I can show you that in the statements of Mussolini, of Hitler in Mein Kampf.
"That cast of mind is still very active but it's not science..."

But not a mention of climate expert Pastor Danny, and his excellent insights into climate science, which seems entirely remiss.

Instead it just reminded the pond of that splendid insight offered by Adolf Hitler on the matter of propaganda:

Once understood how necessary it is for propaganda to be adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results: It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for instance. 
The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, and their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out. 
 Thus we see that propaganda must follow a simple line and correspondingly the basic tactics must be psychologically sound.

Ah so that explains how the highly contentious matter of climate science is absolute crap, and all the refinements of this limited understanding can be trotted out time after time without anyone saying boo to the goose (Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates carbon tax in the same breath)

Not to worry, towards the end of the piece, Short does make a brave, valiant stand, having spent the first ninety per cent of the piece allowing Monckton to spout his propaganda without let or hindrance, but with the occasional invocation of the likes of St. Maggie:

"When you get the Margaret Thatchers or the Christopher Moncktons who would be much more willing to let the people decide provided the people were given proper information by the media - by proper, I don't mean information I would agree with, I mean information that gives both sides of each political story ... then I think democracy can be made to work."

Yep, science is a political story, and democracy can be made to work by giving out information supporting both sides, which is a very handy way to teach the controversy, which is presumably all Pastor Danny is doing by scientifically proposing humans started hanging around on the earth 6,000 years ago ... (Climate change debate and the churches)

But as to the brave Short making a stand for truth and justice?

Well it's not about Pastor Danny, or climate science, because of all the useless bloody things, it's about cricket!

More specifically, it involves a reference by Monckton to the digging up of a Headingly cricket pitch in August 1975:

"The one thing that's sacred in Yorkshire is cricket," Monckton says. He explains that the match was a re-enactment of cricket's Wars of the Roses - Lancashire versus Yorkshire.
Except that it wasn't. It was the third match in a four-test Ashes series that ended in a draw because the pitch was so badly damaged Australian retained the Ashes.
The error is unfortunate because part of Monckton's power as a proselytister is his almost overwhelming battery of knowledge backed with boundless conviction. And his insistence on his opponents getting the facts right.

Indeed. The pond knows little of cricket but understands that confusing and conflating the matter of Davis and the pitch  is a bit like not knowing about Trevor Chappell bowling underarm.

So it's an entirely amiable gotcha of a "proselytiser":

1. To induce someone to convert to one's own religious faith. 
2. To induce someone to join one's own political party or to espouse one's doctrine. v.tr. To convert (a person) from one belief, doctrine, cause, or faith to another.

Which brings us back to Pastor Danny.

And how it's completely inexplicable and perverse that there's not a single mention of Pastor Danny in the entire Short piece about Monckton. Ssssh, no one mention the Pastor.

Generally the Short piece - which is long enough and so has plenty of room to be better - is as penetrating and as probing as being hit in the face with a lump of blancmange.

It made the pond understand why the AFR was being handed out for free at the airport like a common or garden suburban newspaper.

Meanwhile, over at at another part of Fairfax, one time Monckton admirer (Ten anti-anti-commandments and Lord Monckton's verbal bombs) the generally grumpy except when it comes to magic water Paul Sheehan starts off proceedings this morning, in Fiscal civil war needs Honest Al, with a bout of film criticism:

If Lincoln does not win film's triple crown on Academy Awards night - best film, best actor, best director - I will be surprised, for it is a brilliant combination of a great subject in the hands of the best actor of his generation, Daniel Day-Lewis, and one of the most successful filmmakers in history, Steven Spielberg, operating at their peak.

There you go. Sheehan is the sort of klutz who thinks the undiluted corn syrup routinely offered up by Spielberg, and the pompous, pretentious performance by Day-Lewis - method acting gone mad - is the stuff of Oscars, proving he doesn't have the first clue about film-making, let alone life.

But there's an explanation, and while the pond doesn't think much of Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock, he nails Day-Lewis and staying in character for the entire production:

“Who the hell wants to be with some miserable grump because he wants to get his performance right, so you have to call him this or call him that? It’s so boring. I’ve been with actors like that and they’re a pain in the ass, they really are.”

Indeed, and who'd want to be in the company of a miserable grumpy pain in the ass columnist praising a miserable grump for making everybody miserable, when all they need to do is try Larry Olivier's famous advice to Dustin Hoffmann: "my dear boy, why don't you try acting?"

My dear boy, why don't you try writing a sensible column?

Lordy lordy, it's a measure of how desperate things are that the pond should have read Chris Berg's Lincoln sheds little light on some of history's dark deeds, and felt a measure of sympathy, because at least while chasing bunnies down rabbit holes, he managed to trot out the word "cloying."

As for Lincoln, the pond is firmly in the four snore and seven years ago camp, and the rest of Sheehan's piece of fluffery - an ecstatically hagiographic piece about a US politician dubbed Honest Al - is in the seven snore category.

Sheehan uses the piece to berate Washington and debt and the failure to compromise, but it left the pond without any way forward when it came to recommending a movie which would illuminate the drivel that Sheehan once wrote about Lord Monckton.

Maybe Inherit the Wind?

Yes that'll do because Spielberg has turned into this generation's Stanley Kramer ...

Meanwhile, the pond continues to await a counter-perspective from Sheehan and other members of the fatuous commentariat who were once all over Monckton like a rash and are now singularly silent in the matter of Monckton and creationist Pastor Danny.

Don't hold your breath, we'll have colonised Mars and the north of Australia and that second Sydney airport in Cairns will be working a treat long before it happens ...

(Below: found here).

Off to Melbourne to prepare for the religion of football season ...

(Above: remember, if you can't fit it on a mug, it isn't real).

The pond is off to Melbourne for the weekend, which means business will resume on Monday, the long absent lord and the miracle of flying apartment blocks permitting.

This means the commentariat and politicians will have to get on as best they can by themselves, baying at the moon and doing other useful things which will help Australians stand proud on the footy field and surge up north like a torrent of lemmings.

It also means that angry Anglicans and climate science Pellists will be left to their own devices.

It also means that the pond can safely ignore the big push by scientologists to sell their cult to unsuspecting suckers.

Yes, instead, why not just read mUmBRELLA, and enjoy the frippery and nonsense contained in Church of Scientology plans publicity drive to quash 'misconceptions' about being secretive, controlling and believing in alien ancestry.

Amongst the great lines:

“Scientology is unique in that it does not require or tell anyone to ‘believe’ anything,” said Stewart. “Rather, Scientology believes every individual should think for themselves.”

Provided you don't think you should hang on to your cash. Provided you can pay, and then pay some more, so the church can explain how thinking for yourself is actually code for thinking like L. Ron Hubbard ... as crazy as any average lying, cheating, sci fi scribbling messiah.

Scientology has also been labelled secretive. 
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” said Stewart. “In fact, we seek freedom for the individual, we are always open and any person is welcome any time to come in and avail themselves of our courses and counselling,” she said.

Provided you remember to bring a bundle of cash with you. What, you think understanding the universe and Thetans should come cheap?

It reminded the pond of an amusing piece by Thomas Meaney in The New York Review of Books a few months ago, The Religion of Science and its High Priest, which used Mary Pickering's Auguste Comte An Intellectual Biography to celebrate Comte's attempt to make a religion out of science - and happily it's outside the paywall.

No-one thinks much about Comte these days - he didn't have the scientological cult's publicity machine, funded by the many Hollywood actors who are bears with little brains but vast up front fees and not too shabby residuals.

But positivism and the certainty that positivists know the truth at the heart of the universe lingers (come on down Milton Friiedman), which makes where Comte ended up either very funny or very sad.

Comte’s formal “Church of Humanity” turned out to be a satire of the Catholicism it was meant to replace. The pious positivist was to pray three times daily, once to each of his household goddesses: his mother, his daughter, and his wife. Women were to strive for Virgin-Mother status, which Comte hoped could soon be accomplished with vials of an artificial fertility stimulant that they could use whenever they chose. With their “vivifying fluid” rendered socially useless, he expected the sexual appetite of men to diminish to the point that their genitalia would wither away through evolution. 
 Comte instructed disciples to tap themselves each day three times on the back of the head, where the impulses of “Good Will,” “Order,” and “Progress” were stored. The positivist calendar dedicated a month of worship to each of the thirteen great men of humanity—Moses, Homer, Aristotle, Archimedes, Julius Caesar, Saint Paul, Charlemagne, Dante, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Descartes, Frederick the Great, and the French anatomist Bichat. 

Hang on, hang on, Bichat? A proponent of vitalism? Jostling up against Frederick the Great, the man who gave the world the Prussian war machine, and the man, next to Napoleon most favoured in von Clausewitz's On War?

Okay, the pond can fly with that. It can't be worse than blathering on about a man who preached about poverty while wearing a filthy rich rock in an extremely large and lavish cathedral. Do go on ...

There were nine positivist sacraments, beginning with Presentation, in which, as in Baptism, the infant was given two positivist saints drawn from the hundreds of historical figures Comte had selected to preside over each day of the year. 
 When he died, a positivist’s remains were to be interred in a sacred grove surrounding each positivist temple (Notre-Dame was to be requisitioned as the first of these). All dead positivists were to be worshiped by the living on special feast days determined by the Grand Pontiff of Humanity—Comte himself, not surprisingly. “Humanity is made up of more dead than living,” he wrote, “and the dead govern the living more and more.”

There's plenty more, all good fun, and the pond was inspired to discover that an actual Temple of Humanity is still functioning in Paris at this very moment. What on earth do they think about during a service? Are there still services? Is there any cognitive dissonance when the participants step into the street?

Comte only managed a few thousand followers, which just goes to show how hypnotic manipulation has progressed over the past century or so, all the way up to the E-meter.

It's times like these that you realise how ineradicable the religious impulse is, and why there's only one solution, which is to settle back and laugh at the folly of humanity - though perhaps occasionally a dry or hollow laugh in the style of the end of The Treasure of Sierra Madre is handy.

Now here's an old snap of that Paris temple:

And by golly Google shows it's still standing. The long absent lord be praised, and remember this weekend to enjoy your time with the visionary of the north (who makes Shackleton of the south seem like a rank amateur), the angry Anglicans and the posturing, frock-loving Pellists.

Go north, and please remember to take Canberra with you ...

(Above: a couple of discussion starters for the rising generation, who've been rising for a century or more).


A couple of things need to be said up front.

The pond has done as much as it can humanly and humanely do in relation to drugs in blogging, but of course we can always do more. Any recent visitor to a defined loon site will immediately be swabbed.

You can tell someone's been affected by their gait and the slur in their voice, much as you could guess that the bizarre behemoth shape of footballers suggested East German techniques played a hand.

Now let's not say anything more about it, or the matter of drugs in sport in Australia, because everyone else is, and most of them must have been blind Freddy, and now they can see.

Secondly, it's impossible for the pond to discuss the forced re-location of people (yes public servants are people too) to the north to defend it against the impending invasion by the yellow peril, because it would involve a serious, perhaps grave, breach of a sub-section of Godwin's Law.

It's a little known fact that references to Stalin are covered by the Law, and of course the megalomaniac dictator, with a yen for government diktat, was fond of moving people all over the place - if not into the grave, then certainly to Siberia (naturally there's a wiki on the subject of forced migration and forced relocation here).

Now it might be argued that Darwin isn't Siberia but there are many who would understand that the distinction mainly has to do with the weather. Certainly, a shot or two of vodka (with a twist please waiter) helps the more tender public servant survive both places.

Naturally that old Fairfax socialist turned free market Milton Friedman - Ross Gittens - took a childish, petulant view, because he simply lacks the vision.

Destined to be a failure, he furiously scribbled, which led to an equally harsh headline, Tropical tax zone plan destined to be a grand failure (along of course with a forced video).

The man simply lacks the grand vision, the sweep of a Napoleon sending people hither and yon at beck and call, all for the construction of a bigger, better pyramid (and to keep those invading Asians out).

The man babbled on and on about socialist dreamings:

Northern Development is not a new idea, it's an old, discredited one, brought to us by the same people who wanted to turn back the rivers and who wasted millions on the Ord River dam in the Kimberleys, then built an unneeded railway from Alice Springs to Darwin that has always run at a large loss. 
It's a close relative of the dreams of building a multifunctionpolis in South Australia and establishing ''growth centres'' at places like Bathurst-Orange. It's the 1950s dream of ''decentralisation''. 
It would be very hard to organise, facing constitutional and other legal barriers, active resistance from public servants and the need for huge monetary incentives to induce people to take part. On the experience of all previous such exercises, it would be a grand failure.

Oh dear, is there anything crueller you can add?

It would be the party of choice and free enterprise engaged in a massive exercise in social engineering.

Social engineering! Why that sounds dangerously close to socialism and a five year plan!

Naturally the pond went in search of the commentariat who would stand by the dream, who would assert the right of government to dictate to private individual lives, who would claim that it was necessary for the future of the nation for the government to intervene in this bold way. A kind of Arbeit Abbott Macht Frei, if you like (ouch, does that mean a triple GL penalty?)

Naturally the first response in the lizard Oz was considered and objective. None of this crazy talk about crazy. The statesman was considering:

Yes, these days you cop a paywall and a forced video at the lizard Oz. (here if you dare)

Naturally Barners was front and centre:

“A rebate scheme is not changing the tax rate,” Senator Joyce said. 
“It is a compensatory mechanism to make up for the fact that people live at a disadvantage in an area. It's completely legitimate”

Yep, the logic of an addled pea.

But at least now we can see that the Libs have been careful to keep their policies under lock and key, since Barners wondered in the same breath how disadvantaged the north, and places like Darwin might be (you can easily get vodka at a reasonable price) ...

Happily the Bolter was first to fall into line, what with being close to Gina and all, and thought it was all spiffingly splendid:

If it can be done, and makes economic sense, it seems just the kind of vision this country needs - spending billions not on overpriced school halls but a new zone of development (Go North)

Yes, who needs schools and education and toilets and school halls and all that stuff when you can take this sort of policy to your friendly mining magnate:

Tony Abbott will take to the election a radical plan to reshape Australia by splitting it into different personal tax zones and forcibly shifting tens of thousands of jobs to the Top End.

Is it the bit about forcible the Bolter loves?

No, no, he loves Darwin:

I’m not sure what’s so “embarrassing” about the leak. True, I grew up in Darwin and love the place, so may be biased about the North.

Which is why the pond was thrilled to read the Bolter volunteering - not being forcibly made to move - to head north, and like as not taking the entire HUN crew and company with him, and then sending the paper out digitally to the world by carrier pigeon, since there's very little point in having an NBN to connect to distant places.

We keed, we keed, you won't catch the Bolter bolting to Darwin, pioneering style, not when he can stay in Melbourne sobbing along to the finest opera recordings, a remarkably fine and presumptuous red clutched tightly in his paw. There's vision, and then there's Burke and Wills folly ...

Tim the bleagh simply didn't have time to consider the issue - he was too outraged at the ABC winning a bit more for its news budget, a clear case of market forces not applying. Which is completely different to appeasing Gina Rinehart, where market forces clearly apply by applying the blow torch to the soft Abbott policy belly ...

This sort of fantastical government scheme is usually the business of Labor governments - from the multifunction polis to the lost South Australian city of Monarto.

Naturally the Bolter's herd of loons was ecstatic for all sorts of reasons, not wondering for a moment why everyone abuses the federal government for being remote and dysfunctional because it's based in Canberrra, then urging a hunk of public servants to head north to even remoter pastures, where service delivery can be done by pigeon post because all of them thought the NBN was irrelevant to the nation's needs.

Some even thought it'd be an ideal destination for boat people and so kill two birds with one stone. After all these Asians like it hot, and they could do all the hard graft and in the process become dinky di nation builders. Why the north could become a gigantic paddy field!

Occasionally of course a government scheme can produce a winner but no one at the Bolter paradise seemed to realise that it was the Chifley and Curtin governments that set in motion the Snowy Mountains Scheme, and that the scheme had a very specific purpose, not some ramshackle notion of transforming the north.

These days of course such a development would be saddled with a bundle of PPPs, whereby the private sector and Gina's squad could make out like bandits, and everybody south - none of whom on the Bolter's page showed any signs of wanting to bolt north - would in due course wail and moan about the terrible expense and the waste and the unfairness of money being pissed against the wall on extravagant schemes and the uselessness of public servants in remote locations, when what's needed is government belt tightening, and a surplus.

Feel like adding up the amount of government money pissed against the wall on the Ord River Scheme so that the Chinese can now have an abundance of sugar? Feel free. While you're at it, why not tote up the cost over the years of the total failure of Humpty Doo as a rice growing venture?

And if you get it right, maybe some kind soul will throw in a couple of bottles from Alice Springs' winery. You can wash it down with some hot climate Chinese wine ...

Think it's delusional that government can pick winners, then turn around and argue how Liberal governments can pick winners? Are you a clone of the Bolter?

The most interesting - and unanswered question - is who amongst the Libs leaked the paper, no doubt expecting the kind of response that the draft got, and forcing Abbott to back off, issuing all sorts of disclaimers and denials?

Was it someone at war with the Nats and Barners? Was it someone who hadn't swallowed the Lang and Gina and Joh kool-aid? Was it someone who could spot good old-fashioned agrarian and mining socialism a mile off? Was it someone who could see a balanced budget and a surplus heading south by going north?

Who knows, but they deserve a little praise and thanks for a job well done. They've helped kill the idea in its current far-fetched form stone cold motherless dead, with Abbott already in retreat on all the major contentious ideas.

Today, it was back to business as usual, and as usual, The Australian, that fine journal of ideas and policies, was hot to trot on a more pressing issue:

Yes, through rain and hail and fog and Swiss bank accounts, the lizard Oz are fiendish commentariat policy wonks. Forget about the north, here's the Ruddster. Squirrel!!

Meanwhile, something wonderful and mystical happened overnight at the rag that broke the story, the Daily Terror (the story was then faithfully regurgitated in all the local Murdoch brandings in what is now the usual way of using extender instead of real seafood).

At first it had fun with Abbott:

(click to enlarge, no hot links, screen cap only)

Today they stuck with the story, but the tone had changed:

Click on Tony Abbott touts his Top End temptations, and you get a serious story with serious graphs about serious northern issues.

There are grand charts, grand statistics, and grand talk about how the public is hungry for big ideas and big imagination and bold brave policies (except the NBN), and yearned for the pissing of vast sums of public money against the wall. A CommSec economist was trotted out to talk of the merit of economic zones, and Bob Katter was hungry, hungry as hell, for bone idle, taxpayer wasting, bludging public servants to make the trek north, and enjoy tax breaks and more perks and nation-building indulgences.

The Terror, regretting its earlier satirical thrust, followed the story up with an editorial, Northern lights of nation's prosperity, which was wreathed in a golden glowing light bathing that northern hillock with a vision, a dream:

The knee-jerk rejection of the discussion paper by some quarters speaks of a distinct lack of imagination. 

Uh huh. the pond must remember that next time we're tempted to run Tony Abbott in satirical swimwear.

Australia's north stores a massive amount of our mineral wealth but only houses a tiny overall percentage of our population. 
Similarly, the north receives a huge proportion of our national average rainfall but only a tiny amount of that is utilised. 

Oh dear it's the Bradfield plan all over again, and that's only been around since 1938.

In a land that suffers frequent water shortages, and which is reliant on the minerals industry for our global economic strength, the north looms as a potential Australian powerhouse. 
This is a discussion Australia needs to have, regardless of its significance or otherwise as an election issue. Just as expansion into America's west was a cornerstone of US economic growth, so too might be our own northern expansion. 
Go north, young nation.

Actually it's a discussion Lang Hancock and Gina Rinehart and Bob Katter and Joh Bjelke-Petersen have been having these last thirty years or more, and to his credit, John Howard refused to bend to the National party and its acolytes, and piss said taxpayer money against the wall.

Why should it be different this time? Well Tony Abbott's a bubble-headed booby when it comes to policy and Murdoch la la land is a wasteland (or a free economic zone if you will) when it comes to a sensible discussion of policy.

While other papers were reporting on Abbott back-tracking (Abbott plays down leaked plan to lure workers north, forced video at end of link), the rag that broke the story was doubling down on the nonsense, and blathering about the need for the young nation to go north. Too right, Daily Terror, and close the door and switch off the lights on your way up there.

And now, since the Terror raised the subject of Abbott in visual form, the pond feels compelled to observe a photo used to illustrate a piece at The Monthly by Mungo McCallum, headed Too darn hot: Joe Hockey for PM?

It was taken just ahead of the March 2010 Port Macquarie Iron Man event, and if anyone wants to understand why some women have a problem with Abbott, just show them this photo. (Remind them that Abbott was born in 1957 and would have therefore been around 53 when the photo was taken)

There's too much posturing, too much posing, too much testosterone, too much macho, too much the tough guy routine, too much an aging man desperate to prove something though what it is, he's not quite sure.

Should a politician be judged by his appearance and his appearances? Of course not.

Should a politician pose like this? Of course they can, if they don't mind the consequences, and the surface superficial Daily Terror style judgments that follow.

And one of those consequences and judgments is to think of Abbott as a macho, preening coxcomb of the first water, yet ready to buckle under and tug his forelock to Gina Rinehart whenever he gets a policy chance (and never mind that he also looks like a walking talking advertising billboard). 

Oh he's tough alright, a real Raymond Chandler character, you can tell by looking, but is he Gina tough?

Here's the thing. Hollywood spends a lifetime trying to find the right men that'll appeal to the right demographic at the right time. Compare and contrast.

Oh lordy, he's so cute and fluffy and touchable.

And oh dear sweet lord, is Ryan Gosling cut or what.

Yum. And so ends another day of the serious discussion of serious policies, Daily Terror style.

Put it another way. It's okay to be fit, but when it comes to obsessive compulsive behaviour, and bizarre hot button-pushing policies, sometimes there's a need to just grow up. Grow up and get old gracefully and leave the delusions and the agrarian socialism behind...

The Bolter shaking the hand of fellow scientist Pastor Danny, now that would be something to see ...

(Above: a handy range of Bolter greeting cards from First Dog. Click on to enlarge, or visit the original cartoon here and enjoy the doggery).

It's unnerving to discover that people who drop by the pond have more intestinal fortitude than the pond.

Apparently some of them can even summon up the courage to step in to that steaming, festering pit of bile, anger, resentment, hatred, and fear and loathing known as the blog of Andrew 'the Bolter' Bolt.

This is like loading up on arsenic as a scientific experiment, when even professional Bolt watchers like the team at Pure Poison couldn't stand the pace. Sure after they closed it, they turned to a weekly Something Wonky, but there's something about the Bolter's relentless negativity and the love of failure that in the end only offers a mind warp.

Take the recent posting, though any posting will do, headed The warmists' electric car crashes.

Right there from the get go there's an instinct to say oh why don't you just fuck off with your relentless use of terms of abuse.

But of course that's what the Bolter wants. He wants hostility and negative energy. He feeds on it, like a devouring monster in a comic book. (for an example, look no further than the Parasite, a villain who absorbs the energy and knowledge of others and turns it to evil use).

Anyhoo, the Bolter spends an inordinate amount of time dancing on the grave of electric car technology, because it's another stab in the heart for the warmists. It seems that the Bolter is somewhere lost in gasoline alley, still sniffing the petrol fumes ...

There's no consideration of the actual state of electric car technology or hybrids or alternative technologies or the desirability of a sustainable planet, it's just a pure hate fest and utter delight that anybody seeking different, cleverer ways forward has failed, failed, failed ...

Even more unnerving, apparently some people have the fortitude to dip into Tim Blair, which is a bit like dipping into a mud bath without a peg over the nostrils.

Blair's idea of fun is to mock the drawings of children stuck on Manus Island by crediting their work to Sarah Hanson-Young. It's childish, beyond silly, and shows as much empathy for the lives of others as you'd expect from a robot who hadn't been introduced to Asimov's three laws.

In his spare time, amongst his hobbies, Blair undoubtedly pursues the fine art of picking wings off flies, if only because it keeps him dinki di and authentic.

Tim squatted on the brink catching flies and letting them go again without their wings — a favourite amusement of his (oh okay it's Joe, and here's chapter four of On Our Selection)

The pond's not up to this permanent, ongoing level of abuse.

And what to make of the alternatives, like Miranda the Devine, now back from China, and pushing out this sort of stuff?

Abbott and his family are refreshingly normal. They live in an unpretentious house in an unpretentious suburb surrounded by family and long-term friends. The kids work part-time in shopping malls and do volunteer work. The working mum does volunteer work. 
 The dad has an unusual job that often takes him out of town but he also volunteers. Demonising Abbott demonises any suburban family bloke. You can’t draw an imaginary line between them. And it will prove to be Gillard’s most profound own goal. (Gillard's kicking own goals)

Ostensibly it's meant to be merely supportive of Tony Abbott, but in fact it's nauseatingly dismissive of anyone who dares to be different, who isn't an average bloke drinking blood and munching on flesh at the local Catholic hoedown, and doing volunteer work without any thought of how the posturing might garner a few votes.

Apparently ensuring gays don't have full rights is so much better coming from Tones than coming from a barren atheist redhead in a de facto marriage doing the same social conservative routine.

The pond's first instinct is simply to retch into the nearest bush.

You'd swear the Devine, ostensibly presented as a commenter of some insight by the Murdochians, would have woken up to the fact that Abbott has got an unseemly low popularity rating, still lower than the low Julia Gillard enjoys, and by golly that's pretty low.

If that's how the average non-demonic suburban family bloke rates, then it's time for a make-over. Maybe less time in the public eye, and more time trying to be refreshingly normal, as opposed to alienating the women folk.

How is it possible to live 365/24/7 in a world of alternate reality?

No, the pond can only stand so much, which is why reading a lightweight like Niki Savva is so much easier.

In the usual lizard Oz way, her piece was presented by the desperate, diminishing subbies in two different formats, a classic bait and switch.

At the top of the page came this ominous and cryptic message, like the Delphic Oracle in overdrive.

Many things will go wrong, and not all of them for Gillard? What on earth did it mean? That was soon clarified by the bigger splash down the page:

It turns out that it's actually just more of the same. The Delphic Oracle doing doom and gloom. Gillard is mad, Tim Mathieson gauche, the Ruddster the only hope, but what a dismal hope he is, there are short circuits everywhere, and everything's a disaster. It was illustrated with a tasteful cartoon featuring Gillard:

The illustrator, Eric Lobbecke, could at least point to the text as an excuse:

...Which brings us right back to Rudd and the kind of scenario that gives Gillard, half the Labor Party and all the Liberals nightmares. 
 After trying to turn him into mincemeat last year, Labor ministers now want him to help them win the election by playing monkey to Gillard's organ grinder. 

Indeed. Which leads us right to the notion that Niki Savva is some kind of monkey to Tony Abbott's organ grinder.

Could someone please do up a portrait of Savva as an organ grinder?

Oh steady on.

Why, as a member of the fair and balanced commentariat, Savva also delivers a Delphic warning to Tones:

Many more things will go wrong between now and September 14, not all of them for Gillard. Apart from the obvious advantages knowing the date provides the opposition, it leaves no room for errors by Abbott and his team, not on candidate selection, or on logistics or costings.

Yep, after hundreds of words of abuse of Gillard, of the most idle gossip-laden kind, that's her dire prediction for Tones. Could the pond suggest a little re-wording?

Many more things will go wrong between now and September 14, not all of them for Gillard - planes will fall out of the sky, cars will crash - but in politics at least a hundred trillion quadrillion gazillion things (or 99.99%) of things will go wrong for Gillard. Given the obvious advantage knowing the date provides the opposition, there's now plenty of room for errors by Abbott and his team, on candidate selection, or on logistics or costings, because when in doubt Niki Savva and the team at lizard Oz will avoid them ... because they will always have Tim Mathieson to write about.

Yes, it's just another step in The Australian's long march of fair and balanced coverage of the longest election campaign ever launched, and never mind the complete and utter stupidity of the Liberal party's lower order of thinkers attempting to put the government in caretaker mode right here and now.

Meanwhile, the pond has saved a delicious sorbet to the end, and who better for a bit of acidic lemony froth all foamed up into a heap than generally grumpy Paul Sheehan.

Freedom fighter and freedom saviour Sheehan is shocked and appalled that people don't want to associate with a Dutch extremist whose star is on the wane in his homeland, with the last election giving him and his party a solid rebuff.

Gert Wilders stock in trade is fear, as is Paul Sheehan's - he just loves the smell of fear in the morning - which is why it's so funny to see this header at the top of Fairfax:

Sheehan shows himself a complete fool by opening with a reference to Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, and proposing that they show plenty of historical accuracy. Sure and Shakespeare didn't do a hatchet job on Richard III (the pond can say with heartfelt sorrow that Zero Dark Thirty is a total dud of a film).

Anyway, the fear and loathing of Islamics is a Wilders message much loved by Sheehan, who is outraged that nobody much wants to know about a minor European politician attempting to gear up a panic about Islamics down under. Venues have cancelled, PayPal is being naughty, why "It's been like an Orwellian nightmare".

And just in case you missed the organiser of the tour's invocation of Orwell, Sheehan offers it up one more time:

Robinson is disheartened by all the fearfulness. ''The Sydney event may have to be cancelled if I can't even get a venue. I'll have to refund everyone. This is supposed to be a democracy but something Orwellian is going on.'' 

Here's the fearfulness which the pond finds disheartening:

 ''Q Society is a volunteer, Australia-wide organisation whose charter is to educate Australians as to how Islam may change this country … We believe Islam is different from other religions and poorly understood … 
''If, in 20 years, some Australian politicians are living under armed guard because of comments they have made about Islam, we believe we would have failed as individuals, and collectively as a society, to protect our democracy and our freedom.''

Fear and loathing about an unknown unknown twenty years down the track, used for the moment to browbeat a small minority?

Now that's real fear-peddling, real fear-mongering, real fearfulness, and it doesn't need a visa, just Paul Sheehan ensuring the pond will never subscribe to Fairfax.

Sheehan presents as some kind of failure the fact that only four politicians accepted, out of 830 invitations sent out. The other 99.5% per cent of politicians declined or did not respond.

Who'd have thunk it. 99.5% of politicians with good sense and good taste, and no interest at all in Sheehan peddling the fear-mongers peddling fear ...

And speaking of failed tours, who'd know that Lord Monckton, once the star of the circus, indeed its top notch glittering clown, is currently in country and on tour.

Oh sure the Bolter has stayed engaged and attached, providing details of the speaking tour, here, which puts him in company with the Catch the Fire Ministries, who also provides news of the tour here. The Bolter and Pastor Danny, now there's a pretty pair ...

Even Menzies house, home of loons, was curiously subdued, here.

Try googling to discover mainstream coverage of the tour. Apparently Monckton has already delivered his first lecture in Adelaide (on February 2nd) but it's been given the dome of silence treatment. Where's Tony Abbott, or a local rep like Poodle Pyne to shake his paw?

Was hitching his Lordship to Pastor Danny a strategic mistake? Can an eminent climate scientist and a creationist agree on the science of global warming? Well they can if the scientist is a half-baked lord and the creationist is a scheming pastor on the make ...

As for the wretched mainstream media, and their double standards, and their forgetfulness, it's simply not good enough.

Apparently it's still full steam ahead for Lord Monckton to launch Pastor Danny's Rise Up Australia Party on the 11th February in Canberra and he'll also be addressing the Catch the Fire Ministries in Melbourne on the 16th February.

The pond expects saturation coverage, from the Bolter, to the Blairites, to The Australian, Miranda the Devine, Paul Sheehan, the baying Murdoch press, and all the other acolytes who once worshipped Monckto as a sage and a seer and an impeccable scientific guide, and now seem to have dropped his lordship like a hot potato.

The pond looks forward to a shot of the Bolter shaking the hand of Pastor Danny ... a bit like this ...

Please no correspondence on the title, the pond would never dream of taking away Screaming Lord Sutch's title either,  but please more correspondence about the work of the loons, retrieved by brave souls willing to plunge into the heart of darkness. So many loons, so little time ...