Memo Cori Bernardi: be alert and alarmed by the deviants at Foxtel ...

(Above: WTF Corey Bernardi!)

In its Sunday meditation and review of the week, the pond almost overlooked an alarming development of serious Concern to Corey Bernardi - so serious that it needs a capital "C".

Bernardi, it will be remembered, deplored where gay marriage might lead:

"The next step, quite frankly, is having three people or four people that love each other being able to enter into a permanent union endorsed by society - or any other type of relationship," Senator Bernardi said. 
"There are even some creepy people out there... [who] say it is OK to have consensual sexual relations between humans and animals. 
"Will that be a future step? In the future will we say, 'These two creatures love each other and maybe they should be able to be joined in a union'. 
"I think that these things are the next step." (Bernardi resigns after bestiality comment)

Yes, yes, it's the rantings of a crazed fundamentalist loon, but even worse, Bernardi couldn't get to the real root of the problem.

It turned out that gay marriage is innocent. Run wild and free gay marriage.

It turns out that being lured to watch Foxtel is the real root of the problem.

Rupert Murdoch and Telstra. Smut pedlars to Australia ....

Reminder: Do Not Show a Man Having Sex With a Pig on Your Billboard It never ends well.

WTF. Now get into 'em Corey.

And while the ad's been celebrated all over the place, if you develop a taste for Ad Freak, here's a more general link. Freaky stuff.

And another thing.

The pond first heard bits of  Celebrity, Gambling and Tom Waterhouse on Friday night on RN, and then they had the cheek to repeat it on Sunday (you can access it for downloading or streaming at the link, but wearing a cilice for a week - one that draws blood - is an acceptable alternative).

But by then the pond was prepared, and so devised a party game for your pleasure.

Here's what you do. Whenever Jason Di Rosso or Cassie McCullagh or "celebrity studies" academic Sean Redmond lead with yet another explanation as to why Tom Waterhouse, his ads and his presence on TV produce a "surprising" negative response, the first to give a satisfactory response wins the round.

Example: It's penis envy.

No, it's just that he's an irritating shit.

Example: It's agism v the young

No, it's just that he's an irritating shit.

Example: It's tall poppy syndrome.

No, it's just that he's an irritating shit.

And so on and  on. Trust the pond, there are plenty of other explanations provided, all deserving the same quick-witted response.

Keep your fingers on the buzzer. Remember first in is always best dressed.

You can also expand this game to cover ABC programs.

Example: The List: A set of astonishing insights.

No, it's just really irritating shit.

Example: RN Drive. A mind-expanding insight into the universe ...

No, it's just really irritating shit.

Sometimes the Facebook memes doing the rounds never lost their freshness, no matter how old.

So there you go.  A fun game for the whole family. It's guaranteed hours and hours of entertainment, right up there with Mousetrap, though you might have to change "shit" to "crap" if the youngsters are invited to play ....

If you want to score bonus points, you might note that the AFR, in its weekend edition, noted that Waterhouse's business plan involved spending some $20 million a year annually on advertising and marketing, with a customer base of 160,000 and turnover of annual betting around the $300 million mark, only 3.5% of the corporate online bookmaking market in Australia, and that Sportsbet and Sportingbet and Betfair and other big corporate bookmakers have a much bigger share of the $2.2 billion in betting turnover, and that Waterhouse can only aim at an 8-9 per cent gross profit margin from which comes taxes, fees to racing and sports bodies and marketing and staff costs, and so to date he hasn't turned a cent in profit, or so the AFR says, and one of his rivals has estimated that on this business model with that heavy marketing spend, he needs to turn over annually something close to $1 billion to make a profit ...

Which in all is pretty bizarre when you think about it, but it's easily gazumped. Because that advertising really is irritating shit.

Now back to that alert and alarmed Foxtel matter:

So it goes with the conservative commentariat, from homophobia to idle chatter about "abortion enthusiasts" ...

(Above: and as it turns out, from Fairfax journalists)


The pond's sympathy for Kate McClymont, whining about the difficulties of being a fearless journalist, evaporated the moment this line came up:

Jockey Jim Cassidy once spat on my back, well, given his size, the back of my knees, saying: "You fucking bitch, you've ruined my life." (Where angels fear to tread).

Cheap joke, cheap shot, though it's easy to understand why she did it. She was delivering a speech at the Australian Press Freedom Dinner on Friday, hosted by the MEAA and the Walkley Foundation.

No doubt everybody snorted into their beers, or their ports or their sherries or whatever else they were drinking, and a good laugh was had by all. Those short bloody jockeys, they're so bloody funny. Spit on your knees!

Oh slap my thighs and roll me all around.

It seems press freedom these days is the freedom to make midget jokes. It seems that's what serious journalists do. Make midget jokes.

Now Jim Cassidy wasn't a nice jockey, as you can see here, but if you're going to stand above the fray, stand aloof as a righteous crusader, should you be making midget jokes?

You see, midget jokes don't stand for much in a free and fearless press, they work much better In Bruges. No doubt it was nice to get in a short sharp dig at Cassidy - after all he did call her a fucking bitch - but is it wise to get down to the level of a midget?

You can see the problem the pond is having here, though it might pale against yarns of fearless fights against the Obeids, and bikies and legal actions and the rooting out of the evil that stalks the land, from which we're saved by Fairfax, and especially saved by Kate McClymont.

But who will save us from midget jokes?

Meanwhile, it seems nothing will save Niall Ferguson, one of the most fatuous of the neo-right, who stuck his foot and his tongue and his big mouth in it yet again, as reported in Niall Ferguson apologises for anti-gay remarks towards John Maynard Keynes.

Ferguson fatuously and infamously remarked that Keynes couldn't think about the future because he was homosexual and didn't have children.

Ferguson had to go to enormous lengths to try to dig himself out of the hole he'd prepared for himself, but here's where he continued to irritate the pond. As part of his grovelling apology, he said:

"As those who know me and my work are well aware, I detest all prejudice, sexual or otherwise"

What? He detests himself? He's full of self-loathing?

Wouldn't it be easier to say of course I'm a prejudiced git, what a pity I let my prejudices slip out that way. I do apologise for the slippage. And I love midgets.

As anyone who knows him and his work, Ferguson's full of prejudices and bilious bile, and the end of the western world is nigh clap trap, and he's a lightweight intellectual at that (remember his stoush with Krugman, encapsulated in The New Yorker summary here?).

You have to wonder whether it's all been buried in his noggin since the days when he was accused of hating Obama and having a Man-Crush On Paul Ryan.

Now there's nothing wrong with man crushes in general, but a man crush on Paul Ryan? Why that's as bad as a woman crush on mama/momma grizzly Sarah Palin...

Finally, there's a taste today for the sort of rhetorical excess and attack on rights to be expected during the Abbott years from fundamentalist Catholics like Miranda "let them eat two minute noodles" Devine,  as laid out in The reality of abortion is exposed.

Seizing on the Gosnell matter, Devine makes reference to local abortion enthusiasts, as if anyone sensible would be an abortion enthusiast.

What is always forgotten in this rhetoric is what it was like in the bad old days. Women had few choices, none of them pleasant - including a back yard abortion, with all its medical, physical and social risks. Sad to say, very few can remember what it was like before campaigners like Bertram Wainer brought some sanity and some rights to women ...

If you want a reminder, have a read of the opening of David Grudmann's paper Abortion and the Law: a 25 year personal perspective (pdf format):

At 2.30 am, on a Saturday morning in the last week of October 1969, a 23 year old woman was brought into the emergency section of the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne. She was very ill and in a great deal of pain. Her blood pressure was 80/40, her pulse was rapid and weak. Her temperature was 39.40C. Her breathing was shallow. A foul bloody discharge emanated from her vagina. She was clinically in septic shock. 
Emergency resuscitation procedures were started immediately. An intravenous line was set up and very high doses of broad spectrum antibiotics were commenced. She was admitted to the ward for observation and stabilisation prior to surgery. It was thought that she would need a hysterectomy. Twenty-four hours later she was dead. She was a victim of illegal backyard abortion.


In a just world, the politicians and the churches and their supporters like the Devine would have been had up on a charge of murder, because as surely as the backyard abortionist killed the woman by wielding the knife, so did they by wielding the words ...

Other alternatives were punitive. Imagine attempting to be a single mother without social or financial support, condemned to bringing up a bastard child.

So the usual solution was to have the child, by being placed in a house of shame, and then having the child snatched away, so that a lifetime of grieving could commence.

We all know how that worked out, with the Catholic church in the thick of it, though strangely if you google the story, and Julia Gillard's apology, it's British papers that turn up at the top of the page, such as the Daily Mail's 'Babies were snatched away before their mothers had even held them', and the UK Daily Terror, Australia's Roman Catholic Church apologises for forced adoptions.

That latter story suggests 150,000 women had their children taken away from them at birth, without their consent and often never to be seen again.

It's one of the most loathsome, sordid, pathetic and tragic episodes in the lives of women and the activities of assorted churches in this country.

In the pond's extended family, and typical of working class families, all three "solutions" were known - the rough abortion, the bastard child ignored by the family at large, and the snatched away child and the lifetime of grieving. None of them were easy, all of them were hard for the women involved. There is no easy solution, there are none without emotional risks and consequences.

And yet the Devine has the cheek to rabbit on about "abortion enthusiasts".

While at the same time, the Catholic church officially contains to condemn contraception outside the rhythm method as a sin. So they get you coming, and then they get you going ...

You won't find anything in the Devine's rhetoric about how she intends to avoid unwanted pregnancies - getting the church to accept the sensible, sane use of contraceptives - or what to do if abortion was banned and backyard abortions became viable again, or  how to deal with the consequent victimisation of people, as performed in the old days by the Catholic church and religious bodies anxious to get their paws on surplus stock.

You won't find the Devine standing in judgment of a church run for and by men, who espouse a complete absence of sex as a way of life, and instead propose a kind of mystical fucking with a long absent god tucked away somewhere in their head, the madness such that many resort to molesting children.

That's the way it goes with the conservative commentariat.

An incessant ranting homophobia and an incessant constant desire to take away the right of women to control their bodies (and if you want to find where a lack of control gets you, have a listen to Anne Summers describing her experience with a back yard abortionist - The operation that made me a criminal, forced video at end of link).

Some days it's impossible to maintain a sense of humour and conceal the profound contempt the pond feels for fundamentalist Catholics like the Devine.

This is one of them ...

(Below: but there's always room for a couple of condom jokes)

When all else fails, remember to wear a good frock ...

(Above: kourambiethes to the left, tsourekia to the right, chow down)


The good news is that the pond is finally enjoying Easter. And by golly the Greeks do good lamb and tsourekia.

What's that you say? It all sounds a little relativist and arbitrary, the long absent god seeming to have chosen a couple of different dates for the resurrection? Couldn't She have worked out a decent calendar and a settled date?

Never mind, there was good listening this week, suitable for a Sunday meditation, when A. C. Grayling took down Rachael Kohn, as you can still hear here, by streaming or downloading.

The pond has often meditated on why Rachael Kohn and her program should exist, dedicated as it is to superstitions (from primal screams to primal speaking in tongues) - but couldn't come up with a single reason, until A.C. Grayling stepped up to the plate, or the mike, and took her down.

Kohn was so befuddled, her only chance to strike back was to make interstitial remarks where Grayling had no chance to respond. The program copped 74 comments, more than the fairies you can usually find at the bottom of Kohn's garden, with the usual sprinkling for and against, and the odd loon (the voice of god seeking more work).

You can guess Kohn's manner and style - by golly did she try to put in the fix - by the way the program is titled A Secular Inquisition.

Grayling sounded as much like Tomás de Torquemada as Kohn manages to sound like a rocket scientist, but that's the way a casual, unthinking smear works.

Now if she'd said disquisition ... but no, the program had to be headed Secular Inquisition, and so a conversation which sounded like it was conducted over tea and scones, and with Grayling infuriatingly in support of taking pleasure in the banality of life, is headed up with a piece of verbal abuse and a reference to the worst of Catholic excesses.

What next? Kohn interviews Dawkins and titles it My Life as a Secular Struggle, kraft durch freude?

It's a pity there's no transcript, so the gazumping of Kohn could be quoted at length, but as it is, Grayling's insights aren't worth a second listen, interrupted as they are frequently by the inane twittering of Kohn. So you're on your own ...

Meanwhile, over at the Sydney Anglicans, it turns out that the site is down this morning. Perhaps Anonymous, realising that the SAs posed a greater threat to the world than scientology, launched a DOS attack. Or perhaps it's just that the wretched make-over of the site continues to be buggered  (because She's eternally unhappy with the SAs and stuck a gremlin in the code?).

Hopefully when it does return you can join pond in rolling Jaffas down the aisle at Graham Stanton, who generated a laugh fest with A Youth parable, a mangled version of Luke which sees Jesus in Sydney and getting the parents to send off the kids for the weekend to be indoctrinated in the faith, in the way Mao liked to indoctrinate the masses.

As a result, the bloody parents enjoy a weekend at home, the lazy ne'er do well bludgers, possibly drinking coffee and exchanging chaste kisses, while the youth ministers suffer and toil without reward, except for one family:

Then one of them, when they saw that their children returned home strengthened in their faith and spurred on to live more boldly for Jesus, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. And they fell on their face in the presence of the youth minister and youth leaders, giving Jesus thanks for the kindness and love these leaders had shown them and their family.

Moral? Well yes inflated righteous expectations showing both paranoia and delusions of grandeur.

Next time you meet a Sydney Anglican, it seems you must remember to fall on your face and thank Jesus, and love the Ministers and fall all over them, and if you can only do it by imagining that they look a little like George Clooney or Justin Bieber or Carey Mulligan, why do it.

Now they were a family who were not regular members of the church. Then Jesus answered, “were not ten families served by these leaders? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except these outsiders?” And he said to them, “Rise and go on your way; your faith has saved you and your family”.

Talk about needy and demanding. Are all Sydney Anglicans, especially youth leaders, this needy and emotionally demanding, and so insecure that they feel they must be lavished with heaps of praise, such that they propose people should fall on their faces in the presence of said youth ministers and youth leaders, and give Jesus thanks for their unrelenting indoctrination of their children into backward, wayward superstitions, which will in due course cause suffering, most notably for women and gays?

Seems so ...

Meanwhile, the Catholic church seems to have run a tight fiscal ship. It managed to contain any cost blow out in relation to child abuse by paying out a tidy $30 million to some 600 victims of child abuse in Victoria, or so the ABC reports here in Catholic Church paid $30m to child abuse victims.

By the pond's wretched maths, that's an average 50k a victim, a tidy sum when you think about lives ruined and nightmares endured .... and it turns out that the police were totally wrong and the Catholic church totally right.

Seems it's not only the SAs that wants people to fall on their faces, or swallow any old load of tripe.

It's a funny old world, and what to make of a Catholic woman who'd want to be a Catholic priest? (San Ramon woman to be ordained priest, angering Catholic church). It's enough for the pond to resort to the Marxist thought that any club that would have the pond as a member ...

All up, it might be enough to make people rush off to read Julian Baggini's Atheists, please read my heathen manifesto.

But apart from a preference for paganism, the pond has absolutely no need of any kind of manifesto. The traditional churches have that sort of nonsense, and routinely void the terms and conditions and warranties, and trash the brand ...

Monty Python said it without Baggini's length or verbosity:

Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, try to be generous to people in your care whom you've abused, especially if you're a cold-hearted, bloody minded aggregator of enormous wealth and treasures in Rome, try not to sound like a pompous git demanding people fall on their faces in front of you in gratitude and supplication, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations. 

Easier said than done it seems, so what else is there?

And finally, here are some completely gratuitous pictures of penises to annoy the censors and to hopefully spark some sort of controversy which it seems is the only way these days to get the jaded video-sated public off their fucking arses and back in the sodding cinema. Family entertainment bollocks! What they want is filth, people doing things to each other with chainsaws during tupperware parties, babysitters being stabbed with knitting needles by gay presidential candidates, vigilante groups strangling chickens, armed bands of theatre critics exterminating mutant goats - where's the fun in pictures? Oh well, there we are - here's the theme music. Goodnight.

Oh and do a little cross-dressing - nothing wrong with that:

And remember to wear a good frock:

The pond in a quandary until Peter van Onselen's mad hatter tea party turns up ...

(Above: Barangaroo dreaming, click to enlarge)

The pond is deep in a quandary.

First there came the matter of Paul Sheehan and Manly. There has never been so much tumult and tempest on the pond, the storming and the grieving. It's no consolation that the opening remarks reflect a similar deep angst amongst Fairfax readers, only overcome by their deep hatred of Manly.

There were dozens of messages of pain:

I never ever ever thought I'd agree with Paul Sheehan ...

Etc etc, cats kicked, dogs howling, the naked grief and the suffering.

And if that wasn't enough, along comes James Packer with glittering eye candy Dubai-style proposals for Barangaroo, featuring designs by some of the best eye-candy, glittering domes of Xanadu, international designers available in the 'build a pyramid' game.

Naturally this sent a lot of Fairfaxians and cardigan wearers into a frenzy, but the pond was tempted. After all, if you love New York, part of the reason has to be a love of towering eye candy of the timeless gothic or deco or modernist kind. And it follows that if you love tall buildings, especially ones that cut into the air like giant Dundee knives, they should be as tall as possible, and to hell with the height restrictions.

And if you're a futurist or a disaster movie follower, deep in your heart you've always known that Sydney was a little light on for landmarks. Oh sure, the harbour just a bowl of dust, the Opera House exploding, the bridge torn apart, but where's the tall buildings ripe for the toppling?

Now there might be a few issues - like James Packer not being able to pull together the finance, and once he's got the approvals ducking and weaving to deliver a second rate imitation, a pile of half-arsed tosh in his best Vegas manner. And he might discover the urgent need to open the casino to locals so he can do a Tom Waterhouse on them. And a casino in itself is a vulgar and wretched excuse to do a little urban design for a grand hotel. And the new proposals make the rest of the commercial buildings look like a heap of Keating stodge, designs with all the grace and airs of a rather tall can of Coke.

And yet the pond is tempted, and forgiving and hopeful and willing to do the dance. How is this possible?

Well it blows Star out of the water for starters. There's no way that wretched building can ever be fixed, only demolished. Just look at it:

And then there's the inside:

That's the up-market view without all the vulgar tat and the hideous lighting.

The pond once ended up by accident inside the place for a moment, and immediately fled into the night, shouting the horror, the horror, and has never returned. The chances of ending up inside Packer's dream are equally slim, but there's something about that phallic thrust into the Sydney air that calls to the pond, not least at last a chance to say "sod off Melbourne".

But that's enough of heresy for the moment, though it's also enough of the pond's familiar jousting partner Christopher Pearson, who has been feeling poorly for the past week, and so has turned in a mournful piece Panacea of great poetry (behind the paywall because you must pay to read the sick), which is all about having poetry read and playing Beethoven and the only thing left behind is love.

Naturally this sort of mawkish stuff was marked down by the editors of the lizard Oz and buried deep in the bowels of the opinion pages, as the important business of doling out hate must always continue apace.

The usual pack of baying, yowling hounds were at it again, as they are every day of the week. Dennis "the tie" Shanahan was gloating about how Tony hadn't been wedged over the NDIS, Greg Sheridan was howling that the white paper on defence was pure fantasy (as distinct from the fantasy world in which Sheridan lives in all the time), Troy Bramston was predicting an epic rout in the September poll, and Chris Kenny chattered about tea in Julia's wonderland, seeming not to understand that the lizard Oz is the real mad hatter's tea party, and that Kenny himself most closely resembles the dormouse.

Look, there he is, you can just see him:

By golly, the pond is glad News Ltd tore up Godwin's Law so that personal snidery is allowed without fear of the tinkle of coins in the GL Swear Jar.

But then a splash caught the eye, someone seemed to be swimming against the rats heading up the usual predictable set of drainpipes.

But when you click on Tony Abbott in danger of being a do-nothing PM, behind the paywall to help you have a happy weekend, what do you actually find?

Yep, Peter van Onselen is just another kool-aid drinker, and all he's done is find a new angle to maintain the neo-con rage, which is to propose that Abbott isn't conservative enough, in a big L, Ayn Rand, ratbag Menzies House, Liberal way.

Amazingly, van Onselen even has the cheek to present The Australian in its current guise as continuing the proud tradition established when it first launched in 1964 and dared to criticise the Menzies government.

Talk about the pygmies donning the clothes of the respectable. The first editor, Maxwell Newton, was a ratbag, and ironies of ironies, he supported free trade and the Vietnam war; Murdoch sacked him because in those days Murdoch was both a protectionist and a supporter of Left-Liberal causes (more on Maxwell Newton at the ADB here).

By the time Murdoch got to his third editor, Adrian Deamer, the tone was set, only for Murdoch to begin his march towards the right of Genghis Khan, and sack Deamer for daring to criticise the Springbok tour of Australia. Yes, already Rupe was at one with Maggie, supporting the rights of the whites, though it would be years before they'd trample the unions into the dust and think of Nelson Mandela as a terrorist ...

What's this got to do with van Onselen? Well he purports to be an academic, and yet he starts off his tale with sanctimonious righteous stories of a balanced paper undeterred by the need to criticise Liberal politicians.

Uh huh. Cut to the Whitlam sacking crisis, and seventy-five News Ltd journalists calling the paper's editorial policy "blind, biased, tunnel-visoned, ad hoc, logically confused and relentless."

Uh huh. Nothing much has changed over the years. Some of the journos even burned the rag in the streets, and the coverage gave Bill Hayden a chance to crack one of his better jokes which ran, if Whitlam had walked across Lake Burley Griffin The Australian's headline would be, 'Gough can't swim'!

So nothing has changed, and certainly not the stupidity of its commentariat. Van Onselen even holds up this bit of editorial chutzpah for inspection:

A few years later, when prime minister Harold Holt drowned off the Victorian coast, the paper boldly editorialised for McEwen to lead the Coalition rather than hand over to an inadequate second-tier Liberal.

Black Jack McEwen?

Boldly?

It was a stupid idea then, and it's an even stupider idea now for van Onselen to propose it showed bravery and a determination to be outspoken. A goose might squawk loudly, or a donkey bray, but listen to what it's saying. (check out Black Jack's bio at ADB here).

Never mind, this woeful, pathetic and ultimately shamelessly ignorant and distorting trawl through history is really just an excuse for an Onselen to be outspoken, but strangely he doesn't announce his firm believe that Barnaby Joyce should be the next PM, even though Barners and Black Jack have a lot in common.

Instead, as mentioned, it's just a chance to bash Tony Abbott for not being Liberal enough about the NDIS, and his paid parental leave scheme, and the need to do welfare reform so the weak and the poor can be punished even more.

Yep it's not enough to reverse out the carbon tax and implement a direct action socialist campaign to save the environment, or reverse out the mining tax so Gina and Clive - poor suffering billionaire Clive - can roam wild and free, the hapless, the helpless and the unemployed must be given even more of a hard time ...

And this is the moment when the pond started to roll the Jaffas down the aisle:

The Liberal machine likes to complain that the commentariat gives it a hard time. That's because it is "our duty to inform Australians everywhere of what is really happening in their country ... and how this affects our prosperity, our prospects, our national conscience and our public image". 

Yes, there he is, blathering on about how the hate machine is really doing its duty by sternly tackling Tony Abbott and the Liberals. Talk about being off in Wonderland  ...

A duty fulfilled when this paper scrutinised the AWB and Haneef scandals during the Howard years.

That's it? What about the war in Iraq, what about the WMD, what about the routine support of Howard rolling out the middle class bribery? And so on and on endlessly, where the rag and its commentariat in general supported Howard?

The Australian's commentariat gives the Liberal machine a hard time?

Oh he's a killer. If Gillard walked across Lake Burley Griffin, The Australian's headline - as proposed by Sheridan, Shanahan, van Onselen, Chris Kenny and the rest of the pack - would be that 'Gillard can't swim'!

And now van Onselen is proposing that the rag will be a keen critic and scrutineer of Abbott and his policies:

What's really happening is this: Tony Abbott is about to become PM because Labor has comprehensively failed during its time in power. But there is much we do not know about how Abbott plans to tackle the nation's challenges. We deserve to know, before electing him prime minister.

Oh just pull the other one.

You just said you wanted him more to the right of Genghis Khan. That's not scrutiny, that's just more of the rabid pack of kool-aid drinkers howling at the moon ...

And now let's get back to the party ...

The pond gets a dose of Zerg rush, the Bolter, Gra Gra, and a remarkable MAMIL ...

If the casual reader who stumbles on this page would avert their eyes so the pond can have a rant ...

Last night the pond had the misfortune to watch a dramadoc about Alamein. It was full of the usual under-done, half-baked, wannabe but under-funded feature film, mock-up footage of war action, with dubious extras posing, and looking completely unlike the real soldiers revealed in the stock footage that was also used.

But an even bigger crime was the way the creative team wheeled in sparkle (white specks), neg dirt and scratches to pretend that their footage was somehow derived from ancient film footage. As a result, the pond spent most of the time checking which footage was real and which was fake, and concluded that the entire program was a fake, a work of fiction, with bugger all to do with history, except for the interviews, which sounded genuine.

You may as well watch Saving Private Ryan for historical insight.

It got so bad that the pond began to re-live old nerd tricks on the browser. Type Zerg rush into your browser and you'll see how silly it can get. Or Let it snow, or Do a barrel roll, or Google Gravity, or Askew, or the hairy Chuck Norris gag, or ASCII art, or search for Recursion, or Mentalplex or Nessie or Mentalplex, or Ninja or Flight Simular (clues here, you'll need your browser set correctly for some to work), and when it's all done finish it off with a good hearty kekeke ...

Yes, that's what watching bad dramadocs can do for you. Now you might say the pond is being old school and that all docs cheat their footage or face Nanook of the North ethical issues, but this program had very little that was new, a lot that was dull, and a lot that suggested the creative team should have just made a really cheap feature film like Beneath Hill 60. It might have ended up feeling a bit more insightful.

Speaking of insight, that nattering ninny Andrew Bolt, the boasting, preening peacock of right wing demagoguery and rabble-rousing, has been at it again, as a reader thoughtfully noted. Here's the concept of fair and objective insight into the media that the Bolter would bring to the job of Media Watch host:

To help jog his judgement, I ask Scott to review all the times Media Watch has attacked global warming sceptics and how rarely - was there just the once? - it has gone hard on the ludicrous fear mongering of the media’s many warming evangelists. Let him explain the curious silence of Media Watch’s most recent episode. (here)

Of course it's all just childish - not even adolescent - attention-seeking and foot-stomping of a most petulant ratbag kind, and it really shouldn't be rewarded by having any attention paid at all.

Truly when all you can see of the world is automatically divided into Left and Right, you're right in the la la world of Dean Swift arguing over whether you should open a boiled egg from the little or the big end. Such is the Bolter's gigantic ego, he'd insist on opening the egg at the big end ...

The only real pleasure to be obtained reading the Fairfax report on the earlier Bolter open letter comedy routine - kekeke - was this mournful note explaining how hard it would be for him:

.. ABC ideologues would stone you for hiring me. (Could you compromise by picking Gerard Henderson?) 
"But it would be harder for me. I'd have to leave a successful show and betray a network that's been fantastic to me. Still, duty calls. I'm game. The real question is, are you?" (Paul Barry to return as Media Watch host)

That's where the real delusions of grandeur stand revealed. The Bolter actually appears on a wretched commercial network, the worst of the lot, driven into the ground by a thoroughly stupid board of ideologues who allegedly espouse capitalist principles, but don't know how to practise them.

He appears in a largely invisible show screened in a Sunday morning slot usually reserved for video clips, aged docs or in the good old days, church services. And now he doesn't even score an afternoon slot for a repeat, because, well because there's only so much pain you can inflict on viewers who don't give a stuff about the Bolter ...

The last time we checked the ratings at the invaluable TV Tonight, here, was for Sunday 28th April 2013:

The Bolt Report 146,000 (no repeats)
Insiders: 142,000/83,000/26,000

The Bolter did better than Meet the Press, but let's put him up against some real competition. Yep, The Octonauts did 238,000... the pick of the multichannels. Thank god some people out there think of the mental health of their children ...

The only reason the Bolter's show exists is through the indulgence of Gina and the Ten board. No sensible commercial programmer on such a badly performing network would bother with it. Ten has picked up a couple of points in its share of advertising - the only figure that ultimately matters to network heavies (Ten Network advertising rallies, behind the paywall but you know how to google) - but the network continues to wallow, well behind Nine, which is well behind Seven.

But if being up yourself isn't enough, the Bolter also gave us a good guide to his ethical standards:

Bolt even offered to ''rip up'' his contract with Channel Ten, where he presents The Bolt Report, if it meant hosting Media Watch.

Like a petulant Hollywood child, he'd tear up his contract? And walk out on Gina? Either he's delusional or he's a indulgent, self-serving, ship-jumping fop, or maybe he's both.

Anyway, the poll in Fairfax is running 70/30 against the Bolter, which you might think would wound his pride, but the point to remember is that it's very hard to wound a rhino because of its thick hide. It just keeps blundering around in the bush, bumping into things and shrieking about evangelists ...

Meanwhile, in other news the poor old head of Myers has copped a social media pasting for being a goose, while that grand goose Graham "Swiss bank accounts Gra Gra" Richardson could scribble this in the lizard Oz, under Working on monuments that may never be built (behind the paywall so you never have to know):

There may well be a couple of million Australians deeply concerned with the issue, but the rest of the nation has not got a clue about the NDIS. Apart from knowing that it is a scheme designed to help disabled people and their carers, I haven't met anyone that knows how the scheme will work.

Yes, bugger off wounded and the maimed, it's all too hard for Richo.

Now you might wonder why Richo didn't seize the moment, in his newspaper column written from the heart of the nation, and circulating around the nation - well at least to the ratbags who buy it - to explain how the scheme will work.

If he thinks everyone is so clueless, including himself, why didn't he provide a link or trot off to the website about the NDIS, put together in the usual bureaucratic way, and available here. In the usual way it even has a set of FAQs here.

Now you might have questions about the funding by way of levy or possible cost over-runs, but there's a deeper reality here, even deeper than Richo's wilful, wayward ignorance.

Which is that if you want to do something for the wounded and the maimed, it needs to be structural and far-reaching, and a damn sight more effective than a bunch of self-indulgent MAMILS hopping into lycra and cycling across country from Adelaide to Geelong, raising token amounts of money (and by token, we mean put $2.5 million for assorted charities, while having a jolly good time posing and preening for cameras, up against the billions re-jig involved in the NDIS).

The funny thing is that this year's theme, or so one MAMIL page assures the pond, has a deep message:

This year Pollie Pedal riders will again ride 1,000 kilometres to raise funds in support of Australia’s 2.6 million carers and help ‘Make Australia Carer Aware.’ (here)

Perhaps the MAMIL could start with Richo, who doesn't seem to have a clue about carers, or the couple of million Australians who might care about carers.

Instead here's Richo's capper:

If she wants to leave monuments she should take a leaf out of Kim Il-sung's book. He was called the Great Leader and was the grandfather of the idiot currently running North Korea. He built massive bronze statues of himself all over his country. They were 10m high and guaranteed he would be remembered after his death. She could well build one or two of those between now and September 14.

Could the pond just re-jig that a little? It's only a suggestion:

If she wants to leave monuments she should take a leaf out of Gra Gra Richo's book. He was called the Great Numbers Man and he knew how handy Swiss bank accounts were, and how much money you could make by selling out to Sky and the lizard Oz, pretending you were still a Labor man while helping to drive Labor into the ground. He looks like he lives pretty well, and is pleased as punch with himself, and he knows how not to give a single thought to those carers out there. Like any decent Labor man intent on selling his soul to several buyers would ... He might not have any statues to himself, but by golly the bank account will keep ticking over between now and September 14 ...

Finally, the pond has to report that there was considerable consternation within the pond at the news that Paul Sheehan has returned and that after a month's break, his first outing is a withering denunciation of the thuggish boofhead behaviour of Manly rugby league players (here, though most readers will be content to go on with their macrame). The pond's partner agreed with every single word, and almost immediately felt remorseful and possibly suicidal.

But as we all know, fish rot from the head, and footballers follow inspirational leaders. Who was hanging around Manly like a bad smell at the start of the season?

Tony Abbott has given the strongest indication yet that Brookvale Oval won't die if he is elected as prime minister. The leader of the federal opposition was a special guest at Manly's season launch at Brookvale Oval on Friday night. (here)

Bronnie was there too, of course, and that's the rub. The Opposition leader is the federal representative for Manly, Manly Vale, and sundry other northern suburbs in the seat of Warringah. See!

Yes the Manly rugby league team are simply emulating the coat-hanger, spear tackle, elbowing, nattering negative ways of their parliamentary leader. And Sheehan doesn't have a clue, because he lives in the style of an eastern suburbs ponce still brooding about magic sourdough breads and magic water.

Which brings us to our MAMIL of the week:

Which led to this cruel cartoon by First Dog. Click to enlarge and more First Dog here:

So here's your musical treat for the day:

We are the Manly boys, 
We had a win today, 
We are the boys you know of 
We showed them how to play, 
No matter where we’ll be 
Maroon and White you'll see, 
Oh aren’t we a wonderful credit 
To our locality, 
So cheer boys cheer, 
We are together, 
Every now and then we have a win…..have a win 
We will play them all around 
At our home or any ground, 
If they’ll always play a fair and honest game 
So it’s GUZZZLE GUZZLE GUZZLE 
As we pour it down our muzzle, 
And sing out the order loud and clear, 'MORE BEER', 
And we will drink all night 
Until we are very tired 
In the shade of the Manly Leagues Club.

Guzzle, guzzle, guzzle, more beer! Oh sheesh, can the pond just get back to Zerg rush?

Exclusive. The pond maintains a two minute noodle diet of exclusives at the lizard Oz ...

French history is tricky, as the pond has discovered to its cost, and it turns out that there is no firm evidence that Marie Antoinette said Let them eat cake, or even Qu'ils mangent de la brioche or Let them eat pastry (as always Phrase Finder provides a clue here).

The pond is on much surer ground recording that Miranda the Devine said, in a stern, stentorian way Let them eat two minute noodles, in the course of proposing belt-tightening for all, even those who prefer braces.

But dammit, it's tough. Couldn't she have said Let them eat plenty of cereals, like Jerry Seinfeld, and get them from Aldi if they want to shave costs, or perhaps Let them eat boiled rice, with a soupçon of flavouring. Or perhaps Let them buy cheap clothing from Bangladesh ...

Lordy, lordy, let them take lamb off the menu and let them eat two minute noodles? Won't someone think of the farmers? (here)

Anyhoo to afford a steady diet of two minute noodles, once more the pond has had to postpone subscribing to the lizard Oz to get a steady diet of protein-rich news exclusives.

Besides, there were only four exclusives on the digital page today, and one of them was a doozy:

Yes, it's amazing, seaside towns suffer a downturn in the winter, as you can read in Populations run hot and cold in havens hit by seasonal to-and-fro (behind the paywall so you can avoid an anxiety attack), thanks to those splendid and incisive investigative reporters Tess Bennett and Rick Morton.

In summer, their beaches and parks are swamped with holiday-makers and day-trippers keen to make the most of the glorious surrounds. Come winter, scores of Australian beach hamlets are rendered virtual ghost towns, with most properties remaining eerily empty until the cold subsides. 
Pearl Beach, on the NSW central coast, is one such town. Ringed by a long stretch of beach and a national park, it has a population that swells and contracts according to the demands of the seasons to such an extent that, in winter, 62 per cent of homes are empty.

That's as far as the pond got.

We already spend way too much time quoting Chance the gardener, and the temptation for the pond to note that there are four seasons, except when there are only two, wet and dry, and that in the winter it gets cold, and in the summer quite hot, except on a wind-blown beach in Victoria, when it's possible to experience ten seasons in one day ... why the temptation was almost irresistible ...

But resist we must, and so to another story, this time by splendid investigative reporter Antony Klan scribbling Gag order ensures silence at NBN nodes.

The biggest contractor handling the rollout of the $37.4 billion National Broadband Network has gagged its scores of subcontractors carrying out the work on the ground. 
Syntheo, a joint venture between major companies Lend Lease and Service Stream, has forced subcontractors seeking NBN work to sign strict gag orders preventing them from speaking publicly about any facet of their work.

That's as far as the pond got.

It turns out, like it or not, that commercial in confidence clauses, gag orders, egg beat them how you will, are like cockroaches when it comes to contracting.

Why it turned out that Fairfax had a gag order on its staff, and it only took a story by Fairfax journalist Paddy Manning for rival rag Crikey to discover that anyone breaching the gag order would cop the sack.

Come to think of it, the lizard Oz and the rest of the Murdochians have a gag order in relation to other media outlets. Try handing a genuine exclusive to a Fairfaxian and see how long you last, you gagged Murdochian ...

Yep, in its way, the story's as exclusive an insight as it gets cold in winter and so summer resorts suffer. The only art is on view in the header, which in its longer form manages to evoke Marxist thinking and worker oppression: Silence at the nodes as NBN contractor slaps gag order on workers.

Poor workers. And all they wanted to do was spill the beans and blow the whistle on the NBN to eager lizard Oz reporters, but were frustrated by gags.

How desperately do they beat the NBN fear-monger drums in Murdoch land? Desperately, desperately hard ...

But perhaps the most astonishing exclusive comes from that veritable Woodward and Bernstein, wrapped into one tight bundle of investigative energy, Christian Kerr, delivering up Protests lack link to Israel: BDS fan.

The basis for the exclusive?

Why, a video has been posted recently on YouTube by a graduate film-maker, thereby ensuring its complete anonymity and total invisibility, until Christian Kerr, rigorously exploring the vast full to overflowing intertubes discovered it.

A key supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement has been caught on camera admitting "there isn't really any connection" between Australian Max Brenner chocolate shops and Israel. 
Palestine Action Group spokesman Patrick Harrison made the admission in a video of a BDS protest last November at the Max Brenner outlet in Parramatta, in Sydney's west, posted recently on YouTube by a graduate filmmaker.

Yes, someone posted a video to YouTube and Christian Kerr exclusively reviewed it.

That was almost as far as the pond got, but we just had to know more.

Sure enough, there at the head of the Kerr story was an embedded offering of the YouTube posting:

So that's what you get: an exclusive link to YouTube.

Shot at a 2012 protest and published 2nd March 2013, with a humble 264 views, and you can find it directly by heading off here (though it has to be said it's heavy handed and laboured and let's hope film-maker Jeremy Moses did the right thing with his intellectual property right clearances - wouldn't want to get the United States upset).

As for the rest, Kerr attempted to talk with Patrick Harrison, featured in the video, but he didn't respond to calls. So instead Kerr spoke to a Max Brenner spokeswoman, with entirely predictable results, and Executive Council of Australian Jewry chief Peter Wertheim, with entirely predictable results, and a more general quotation from Uni of New South Wales officials reacting to anti-semitic comments on a Facebook page which had promoted a rally against the planned opening of a Max Brenner shop at the University.

That was it. The only way it could have been a meaningful exclusive would have been if Kerr had actually managed to speak to Harrison, and got something out of him. And he didn't. Not a word, not a whisper ...

As it is, the pond continues to boycott Max Brenner, but it's not because of Israel, it's because of their vile chocolate concoctions, sweet and nasty, and where would that leave us faced with Miranda the Devine's stern injunction, Let them eat two minute chocolates.

In fact, it would seem that the "exclusive" really only serves some point by offering a link to Clive Kessler's mournful opinion piece, Islam becomes the new guilt (behind the paywall, so you don't have to feel guilty, you've saved enough money for your daily two minute noodle diet).

It takes a considerable feat of imagination to write about the situation of Israel, Jews and Palestinians in the middle east without mentioning Benjamin Netanyahu or his cynical policies and his dragging of Israel into a paranoid extreme right wing aggro posture, but Kessler achieves that feat by indulging in breast-beating and pious suffering, bizarrely claiming that Islam is the new guilt for ...

Well for who exactly? At no point does Kessler identify actual people. Instead it's "the world" and "the West" or "The world, or much of it ..."

When it comes to the actual situation, all Kessler can produce is piffle:

So, regardless and independent of the facts and merits of the case - the case itself is complex, and the facts eminently arguable - 

Uh huh, here's the chance to say something about the arguable Netanyahu - once again dragging the chain, as reported in Ntanyahu cool to Arab land-swap initiative, always cool, always disdainful, always hostile, always aggro - but do go on ...

... Palestine, the Palestinian cause and the Palestinians as embodiments of the new guilt that has to be acknowledged and expiated have become the beneficiaries of that deep shift of feelings of guilt. Of a major redirection of the expression of Western political sympathies.

Now there's no actual evidence of that. There's some evidence that Netanyahu can't stand Obama, and that Obama returns the dislike with interest, but there has been to date no major redirection of the expression of Western political sympathies in the United States, Britain, the lizard Oz, or the rest of the western Murdoch empire.

The result is incredibly simplistic analysis, all the more astonishing coming from an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of NSW, where a minor demonstration on a minor campus is suddenly taken as symbolising a huge shift over three or four decades in "the world":

In short, across the past 30 or 40 years, at first gradually, but inexorably, the world has simply "fallen out of love" - or at least out of its former if temporary sympathy and empathy - with those always difficult Jews. Among the bizarre forms that it can take is a campaign against a chocolate on an Australian university campus.

This sort of rhetorical nonsense is almost enough to send the pond out on the street. If only two minute noodles generated more energy ...

Here's the thing. If people want to indulge in campaigns, better they wage war by polite, civilised, placard-waving demonstrations than by dropping bombs in the street.

The citizens of Newtown successfully drove a Macdonalds out of King street. Some might think it represented the worst of American imperialism, others simply objected to the crappy burgers ...

Hang on, hang on, you can get a burger on special for the same price as a two minute noodle.

Oh please Miranda, please. Let them eat crappy burgers as well as two minute noodles ...

Hang on a tic. Did you read that story? Over consumption of two-minute noodles puts students at risk of chronic illness ...

"There seems to be an acceptance out there that getting by on less nutritious food is a typical part of being a uni student,'' she (Dr, Danielle Gallegos) said. "But a diet of baked beans and instant noodles is not good enough when health and academic results are at stake. 
 "This culture is counterproductive to Australia becoming a 'smart' country.'' 
...She said low income groups who found it difficult to eat a healthy, balanced diet were more likely to be either overweight or underweight, and were at a greater risk of chronic diseases like diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

But at least that'll keep them off the street, eh Ms Devine?

The pond gets out the two minute noodles ... for a real insight into real education ...

(Above: work hard and if you get it wrong, cop a slap and if you get it right, why here, cop another slap. It's the Dame Slap way).


Poor hapless Bazza.

Janet "Dame Slap" Albrechtsen has taken out the cane and given him six of the best on the pants (or perhaps on the bare bottom, who knows, imagine it according to the richness of your fantasy life).

She starts - under the header Go to the bottom of the class, Premier (behind the paywall so you can avoid a caning) - this way:

April 22 marked the day when Barry O'Farrell finally signalled he was not a real Liberal.

Now you might start by wondering what makes a real Liberal in Dame Slap's eyes - doing a barking mad imitation of Ayn Rand or Paul Ryan perhaps - but the important point for the pond is that Albrechtsen has finally revealed her real persona - Dame Slap, she who first achieved fame at the top of Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree (and don't go politically correct and start yammering at the pond about how she should be called Dame Snap).

Oh yes, she's always grumpy.

Was it only the other day that the Miranda the Devine went as soft as a three minute egg over Gwyneth Paltrow (yes, she's fixed the typo) and wrote this?

“Experiments show that when some people punish others, the reward part of their brain lights up like a Christmas tree,” writes Douglas Preston, author of Trial By Jury. He says some people are born to be “punishers” and in our evolutionary hunter-gatherer past, they were needed to enforce social norms. Anthropologists call this “altruistic punishment”. 
But when Preston was researching his book on Knox, he saw a sickness in all the hatred online, “not unlike the witch-hunts of medieval Europe ... Never in human history has a system developed like the Internet, which allows for the free rein of our punishing instincts, conducted with complete anonymity, with no checks or balances, no moderation, and no accountability. On the Internet, our darkest evolutionary biology runs riot.” (here)

Indeed. The nauseating hate fest that runs riot in Murdoch land and fills the internet is something to see, and Dame Slap's meting out of the punishment - oh yes, she's the Punisher - is the most obvious example of all.

I mean, how cruel to say that big Bazza himself had come out and admitted he wasn't a real Liberal. Which is to say, instead he must be a phony, false, faux, imitation, surreal Liberal, as fake as a two bob watch or synthetic fabric strutting around pretending to be a real fox fur drape.

That's so cruel, so full of hate, our darkest evolutionary biology run riot and incarnate in Murdoch land.

(Though as an aside, it's no sterner than the Devine yesterday demanding in No dragons live in PM's perilous fiscal fantasy that fictitious wage earner John feed his family two minute noodles. Oh yes, tighten the belt, head off for a holiday to the Forster caravan park, hold off on the private schools until year eleven, practise thrift, just like the Devine, who only yesterday offered to slash her fee for blather in half to help out her needy employer. Even so, the pond couldn't help but marvel at the sheer luxury of two minute noodles. Why in pond's day after hard day's work at mill, we were ever so grateful for a one minute noodle rich in gravel and tar and knew how to curtesy in abject gratitude).

But we've been distracted - that's what a diet of one minute noodles will do for your short-term memory - and completely failed to mention big Bazza's crime:

The most that can be said about the NSW Premier signing up to the Gillard government's school funding package is he is reliably disappointing. Once again, O'Farrell has sided with the irresponsible members of the Left instead of NSW schoolchildren, parents, teachers and, of course, taxpayers. Once again he is too afraid of the teachers unions to demand real education reform.

There's that word again, this time in real education reform.

Sense you're in the presence of a parrot, spouting real as if it really means something, as opposed to the meaningless gibberish and rhetorical flourishes to be found in the Liberal party's nonsensical platform, Real Solutions for all Australians?

Real? Well it's really painful, so it must be real ...

Naturally the rest of Dame Slap's column turns into one long rant, about O'Farrell spending too much time with the Greenies (think a Carlton supporter ranting about people actually speaking to Collingwood supporters) and how he's a craven cowardly lick-spittle union lover and how the Gonski proposals are a disaster, a complete and utter disaster, and how only that Adelaide plains prat Christopher 'the poodle' Pyne knows about value of money and the meaning of reform (at which point you might be inclined to roll the Jaffas down the aisle, such is the fun).

Now you might think that Albrechtsen would mention that the idea of stealing money from tertiary education to fund primary and secondary education is a bold and strange manoeuvre which has attracted a public letter to the Gillard government from concerned academics around the land this very day. But Albrechtsen isn't interested in a sensible discussion of what is involved. She just wants a hate fest.

You see, everything that's wrong in schools and in education is the fault of unions and teachers, or teachers' unions, or teachers daring to be in a union, and pay should be related to performance, though Albrechtsen spends not a nano second explaining how you might compare and contrast the performance of a teacher given the job of teaching in some of the blighted suburbs of Sydney, up against the better eastern suburbs establishments.

Now if you wanted a compendium of stupid comments about education and educational practises, you couldn't do better than Dame Slap, who presumably has never gone within cooeeeh of a school as a teacher doing the daily grind.

Apart from the merit-based pay - a chimera when you get down to working out a workable definition of merit - there's the ability to hire and fire teachers and sound curriculum reform.

What does sound - or perhaps real - curriculum reform mean? Why it means adopting conservative values of choice, excellence, quality, values and discipline, though whether the discipline should come via cane, stinging nettles or a finely honed Percy Grainger whip, the pond will leave to you.

Yes, it's the usual blather, along with a hint of technophobia:

During her Gonski announcement in mid-April, Gillard mentioned putting smart boards and iPads into the nation's classrooms. Shiny tech devices won't lift student achievement. Rewarding the best teachers and getting rid of the worst is a better start.

Note the snark about shiny tech devices. 'Tis true, why in pond's day we were content with nib and ink and nothing wrong with that.

And note that fine old conservative value - punish, punish, punish, the punitive approach is always the best approach. Carrot and stick. Oh bugger the carrot, here's the bloody stick.

Now here's where the comedy rubber hits the road as Dame Slap sings the song of the poodle:

Long before Gillard came on board, Pyne advocated investing in improved teacher effectiveness as the single most successful way to improve student effectiveness.

Which calls for a re-statement of the bleeding obvious:

Schools matter only so much. The real problem rests with the social context in which schools operate— namely, the family, neighborhood, and peer environments that under this perspective make it difficult for low-income children to take advantage of educational opportunities. Adopting accountability or market-oriented reforms without changing social policy more broadly will punish educators for factors beyond their control, and potentially drive the most able teachers toward schools serving less-disadvantaged students. (Improving educational outcomes for poor children - pdf format)

Truth to tell, there's not too many problems if you trot off to a well-heeled private school, with amazing facilities, and a peer group that will provide you with useful contacts in politics, law or finance for the rest of your working life (oh yes the pond has mingled with the rich and seen how it goes down).

The notion that somehow fixing the teachers (and neutering the unions) will fix everything is so reductionist and simplistic, it could only come from the minds of Pyne and Albrechtsen, and presumably without contemplating the extensive literature and research available in relation to effective schooling.

But Dame Slap did achieve one strange outcome. Usually the pond has thought of big Bazza as a prime goose - how else can you describe a man who publicly supported the notion that Sydney's second airport should be in Canberra, connected by VFT. He actually said it, publicly and then stood by it, compounding absurdity with Beckett-ian absurdity.

But now the pond has a sneaking sympathy for him. He's not a real Liberal, and worse, he took the money and ran, betraying the thoughts of future chairman Abbott and his poodle Pyne. The shame, the horror:

And all for what? So O'Farrell can mimic the sinking Gillard who, like her predecessor Rudd, talks deliberately in ridiculously grandiose terms about revolutions and crusades to hide a lack of real reform. 

Yes, there it is again. Real reform! It seems only real Liberals can do real reform!

Please, Premier O'Farrell, reconsider your craven deal. Remember what Pyne said last year when he quoted a warning from Franz Kafka: "Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy."

Actually the pond hadn't thought this before, but perhaps Kafka was wrong. Perhaps there's something to be said for the slime of a bureaucracy, at least when compared to Dame Slap sliming poor old Bazza and calling him craven and foaming and frothing at the mouth and cheering on the poodle Pyne ...

But it also raised another deeper convoluted issue.

Is Dame Slap proposing that conservatives can avoid the slime of a new bureaucracy? Or an old one?

But, but, but where would that leave "real reform"? Which as we all know proposes a real revolution in real educational values?

Surely this means a state of constant real revolution? (Never mind the Maoist overtones).

Does this mean conservatives should pose and posture as the real revolutionaries, of a real educational or other real kind?

Does the real Pyne really fancy himself perhaps as a member of the French revolution? Perhaps a Georges Danton, first head of the Committee of Public Safety?

There's certainly more than a passing resemblance.

Perhaps Kafka should have written Every conservative eventually evaporates and heads off to the grave, leaving behind the slime of a well-fed, self-serving life ... but at least that means there are more packets of two-minute noodles for the poor.