The pond spends some more time in room 237 with Murdoch and Blairite reptiles ...

(Above: this portrait of the federal opposition caught the pond's eye. You have to love the NT News, not even up to the class of the old Melbourne Truth).

What's up Doc, or what's news, if you will?

Well today is Miranda the Devine day, and no news there, because she hoes into former Chairman Rudd and blames him for boat people, deaths at sea, and possibly the extensive use of kitchen sinks ... as you can read in Rudd's credibility is lost at sea.

Hang on, there is one interesting thing. The pond clicked on the click bait, and went straight through to the text.

What happened to News +√±×÷∉∑0?

Isn't the Devine the jewel in the crown the punters are supposed to scramble over broken glass to read, depositing precious subscriptions in the laps of management as rich reward for the rag having such a fine commentariat team ...

Not to worry, no doubt the Devine was pleased to read of the treatment of gays in Russia. So right, so proper, so Pellist ...

And dammit, the brekkie wrap was outside the paywall too, or at least it was the last time we clicked here. Turns out you can read about Devine the impaler and Vlad the impaler for free ...

Never mind, irregular readers of the pond might at some point have come across the pond's thesis that the reptiles in the lizard Oz swoop, soar and swirl together in unison, like birds flocking in the air. 

A flight or a gulp of swallows, a kettle of circling vultures, a host of sparrows, or given the noise of most of them, a pandemonium of parrots or a screech of mynah birds.

Now here's all the proof you need:

Yep, there's Dame Slap scribbling Rudd's home: be very afraid, but instead of corpses floating in the ocean, her chosen text is Kubrick's The Shining ...

Well the pond frequently thinks it spends way too much time in room 237 with the reptiles of the lizard Oz, and there's nothing in the story to distract - just the usual slapping around the head of the Labor party, the sort of thing that Dame Slap does in her sleep - until we come to the very last par:

Indeed, whatever happens with the leadership, Rudd will be roaming around the empty house of Labor after the election much longer than Nicholson's character, who mercifully was killed off by a fierce North Atlantic snowstorm.

Say what? North Atlantic?

Now as room 237 lovers know, The Shining was shot mainly at Elstree studios in Hertfordshire England, but let's go with the gloss proposed by Kubrick, which is that it's set at the Timberline Lodge, Mount Hood, in the Hood River area of northern Oregon, a mere 45 miles east of Portlandia (that's Portland for the lentil hip).

Now it's true that the North Atlantic generates a lot of activity over the United States, but the odds are that Oregon weather is likely to be dominated by systems over the Pacific, or sweeping down from the north or up from the south ...

Let's take the great 2012 Pacific Northwest snowstorm as a model - yes it has its own wiki here - which cranked up on the coast of British Columbia, and then swept down to dump a huge amount of snow on Oregon and sundry other north west states ... a long bloody way from the North Atlantic ...

Oh okay, you guessed it, got it, nailed it in one.

The pond is bored batshit crazy by reading Dame Slap doing her usual tirade, and besides, she really doesn't know what she's talking about.

Why any of the crazies who featured in Room 237 would eat her alive (and don't start talking about how the film was really made at the Stanley hotel, Estes Park in Colorado where King stayed and was inspired to write the original story, or the interior was based on the Ahwahnee hotel in Yosemite Park in California, in both cases the west coast principle still applies, and Dame Slap doesn't have a bloody clue where her metaphors might lead her).

Okay so what have we established so far? Well it's just another slow news day where the batshit crazy spend their time writing about the batshit crazies, you know, like Peter van Onselen scribbling furiously as lizard oz reptiles are wont to do:

At last, someone willing to call it as it is!

Janet "Dame Slap" Albrechtsen, with her Shining routine, and Miranda the Devine with her corpses in the sea are nothing but political terrorists!

Now you can read Emotional blackmail follows political terror if you like, and if you avoid the paywall, but it's the purest gossamer, fairy floss so thin the average showground shyster would fear selling because it might be judged too lightweight, but yes van Onselen really does say these things:

... as Gerald Seymour wrote in 1975, "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". Rudd is a freedom fighter seeking to reclaim a prime ministership the public regards as rightly his... 
The number of pre-emptive attacks on Rudd's character by the likes of Miranda Devine and Janet Albrechtsen are more akin to political terrorism - not to mention character assassination - than Rudd's understandable interest in reclaiming the job voters awarded him with in 2007.

Or some such thing - the pond suspects he might have been referring to Wayne Swan rather than the Devine and Dame Slap - but you catch the drift, and really... freedom fighter?! Freedom fighter v the terrorists?!!?

Van Onselen used to like to pretend he was one of the more sensible reptiles at the lizard Oz, but what a pathetic sight it is to see a mind o'erthrown by drinking way too much kool aid ...

Why the resemblance between Jack Nicholson, Kevin Rudd and van Onselen might be enough to send Janet Albrechtsen into a north Atlantic panic ...

Never mind, the pond was looking for a dose of nausea, and who better to offer it than Tony Blair.

Yep, Blair is today presented as one of the lizard Oz's commentariat reptiles:

But what's this?

Blair's piece has been dug up, exhumed, from the MailOnline where it was first published back on 2nd June 2013 under the header The ideology behind Lee Rigby's murder is profound and dangerous. Why don't we admit it?: Tony Blair launches a brave assault on Muslim extremism after Woolwich attack.

And what's more, it's outside the lizard Oz paywall, and freely available, yet the hacks at Oz want to charge you for your daily dose of nausea.

There's something profoundly nauseating to read Blair talking about killing, as if his behaviour in conducting a crusade and turning Iraq into a killing field (even worse than Saddam Hussein managed) somehow should be overlooked, rather than see him brought up on charges of being a war criminal.

All the more so as the news from Iraq continues deadly, with the latest car bombs, suicide blasts and gun battles killing more than 70 people, and there's ongoing talk of civil war and Iraq getting tangled in the mess that is Syria (Bombs and battles hit northern Iraq, more than 70 dead, Car bombings in Iraq kill at least 57).

Talk of Iraq has long drifted off the front pages down under but the mess that was left behind shouldn't be ignored.

For the moment, let's just put it this way and leave it at that. The ideology behind Tony Blair's career as a war criminal is profound and dangerous. Why don't we admit it?

And at the least, his scribbling shouldn't be hidden behind a paywall. It should be out in the world, ready to perform the useful task of mopping up cocky shit ...

As always, when thinking of Blair, the thinking person immediately thinks Steve Bell, and so let's wrap it up with a Steve Bell festival. Talk about The Shining ...

You can find more Steve Bell here, and don't forget to drop in on the down under edition of The Guardian ... and please pardon the pond for hoping the reptiles at the lizard Oz get trapped in a north Atlantic snowstorm ... or at least room 237 ...

A short promotion for Four Corners ...

And now, since sometimes words are tedious, a short promotion for Four Corners:

Catch the show here while it's still available ...

What's the bet that prattling Polonius can be even more tedious than Malcolm Fraser?

(Above: is that Gerard Henderson with a pitchfork in Ward O'Neill's portrait of head prefect Mal on the run?)


The pond is going to miss prattling Polonius on a Tuesday as the new strict non-Fairfax diet begins to take a grip on the bowels ...

There he is, leading off Fraser's green spin won't stop with Abbott win, with this:

Until the advent of the 24/7 news cycle, there was no clear role for former political leaders, including prime ministers.

It's nonsense of course. There was a clear role for Malcolm Fraser. He was put on this earth to torment and irritate and eventually drive poor Polonius into a prattling frenzy.

It's also meaningless blather about other former political leaders, but that should go without saying where Henderson is concerned.

In the past, some politicians chose to stay invisible in retirement - some were too embarrassed to do otherwise - and some tended to get involved in assorted ventures, some in the business world and some in the media. It's true there was no clear role for Harold Holt after his unexpected retirement, except to star in a variety of conspiracy theories, and it's also true that some were packed off, like Peacock, to foreign adventures, but quite a few didn't choose to ffffade away ...

The idle chatter about the advent of the 24/7 news cycle is a rhetorical device, unsupported by compare and contrast examples .... it's merely a way of leading in to Henderson's latest bout of wishing that Malcolm Fraser would just ffffade away ...

The mere existence of Fraser is a constant irritation to Hendo, and therefore a great source of chortling joy for those who want to maintain the rage.

Last Friday, former Liberal Party prime minister Malcolm Fraser sent out a tweet calling on Australians to "vote Green in Senate" since he does not want either Labor or the Coalition to get a majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives. 
Fraser has gone one step beyond Latham in that he is advancing the cause of the Greens, once a rival party, in the Senate. On the same day, Labor MP Chris Bowen wrote in his column in The Spectator Australia that these days Fraser "sounds like a Greens candidate for the Senate". 
When Fraser resigned from Parliament after losing the 1983 election, he said that he did not propose to become a commentator on Australian politics. 
Yet, over the past three decades, he has become precisely this.

The cad, the rogue, the wildebeest, how dare he speak out of turn, how dare he become a commentator.

(Pam Debenham, here)

But at least we know have a scientific, forensic dating of when the 24/7 news cycle begain.

It was some three decades ago ... Wet your finger, hold it in the air, and you too can confirm this ...

Now I know what you're betting on. How long will it take Henderson to get around to mentioning the "factual errors" in Fraser's memoirs?

He does it seemingly every time he writes about Fraser.

Henderson has a very small noggin, and the bees buzzing around in it are remarkably repetitive, droning on in a familiar way.

You might also take out a punt with Tom Waterhouse - oh never mind the children, let them learn that gambling is the Australian way - on whether Henderson will mention literary festivals.

After all, if you've got a monotonous chip on your shoulder, wear that tedious simple-minded giant-sized envy-laden chip with pride ...

Okay, the bets are on the table, but first you have to sit through a dismissal of Mark Lathan ("little standing", "erratic"), and then you have to endure a pumping up of the significance of Fraser:

He led the Coalition to victories in 1975, 1977 and 1980 and is a significant figure in Australian political history. As a former prime minister, Fraser has - and deserves - standing. This is why his stance in recent years on foreign policy and national security - which is to the left of Labor and close to the Greens - deserves scrutiny.

Actually Fraser's years in government were dismal years, with dismal policies and many policy failures,  and Liberals repaid Fraser by bemoaning the "missed opportunities" as the reason Fraser dropped the ball and got rolled by Hawke. If SBS is the best you have in your policy closet, you don't have much ...

Never mind, it turns out Fraser's greatest crime is to have changed his mind about the United States.

No doubt prattling Polonius is all in favour of Droney, and Droney going about his business in secret, and the persecution of Edward Snowden for revealing that there's bugger all difference between the Chinese spying apparatus and the spying apparatus deployed by the United States ...

Poor bugger, but don't expect anything to be said about that, not when we're reporting the "four legs good, two legs bad" literary scribbles of our prattling Polonius,  which unsurprisingly produce little interest or find any favour at literary festivals.

Now it's time for you to collect your odds-on favourite, can't lose bets ...

His autobiography Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs (which he co-wrote with left-wing academic Margaret Simons) is replete with factual errors and convenient omissions. Yet, it is telling, nevertheless. Towards the end of the book, it is recorded that, these days, Fraser receives applause at literary festivals "by the same kinds of people who had once reviled him". 

Yep you can almost feel the bile, the seething resentment, the fear and loathing, and see the chip on the shoulder ...

Fraser, who resigned from the Liberal Party in 2009, has offered to counsel Abbott if he becomes prime minister. He claims he "never had any cross words" with the Liberal Party leader. Yet, in October 2011, when interviewed by Robyn Eckersley for The Conversation, Fraser agreed with the proposition that Abbott is dangerous, criticised his unpredictability and declared that "the whole party is very much to the extreme right". 

Uh huh. Well any statement of the bleeding obvious is likely to get you in trouble with the prattling Polonius, and sure enough there's time for one more thrust through the arras:

If the Coalition defeats Labor, it seems likely that Fraser will remain a Liberal Party critic. This will keep him in the media and will delight the green-left types who frequent taxpayer subsidised literary festivals.

Oh yes! The literary festivals for a second time ...

What? You didn't bet?

But if you had, you could have used your winnings to buy yourself a nice snuff box, and then glared  into the mirror practising a supercilious, superior, lofty, condescending sneer ...

You know  ...
... those greenie-leftie types ...
... that latte-swilling inner city elite crowd ...
... those bloody chardonnay-swillers that ruin everything ...
... that taxpayer-subsidised literary festival crowd wearing green carnations and sporting a cane like the pinko perverts they are ...

And so on and so forth, for ever and a day ... and be given exposure of your art in Fairfax what's more, and Fairfax expecting you to pay for the pleasure ...

Well sadly this is one taxpayer who won't be subsidising a literary festival at Fairfax featuring the dull, monotonous, repetitive, insular, ever so predictable literary works of our prattling Polonius ... why it's almost enough to make the pond have some sympathy for Malcolm Fraser. Almost ...

(Below: speaking of Droney, have you kept up with Tom Tomorrow here?)

And speaking of Edward Snowden, a thoughtful friend sent this to the pond explaining how to maintain a Facebook page in this new and modern 24/7 news cycle. Hmm maybe it's time to explore social media ...)

Once more to the unto the fear-mongering Paul Sheehan breach, dear friends, once more, and close up the wall with an assortment of French loons ...

(Above: you can always rely on the English and Steve Bell here to take a view on Le Pen and the French).


The pond is tired and bored, and in view of the impending Fairfax paywall, has decided on some new editorial policies.

What's that? Editorial policies? Pretentious? Moi?

Well that's just a fancy pants way of saying the pond will stop linking to Fairfax stories, or at least the bilious hysterical Chicken Little 'sky is falling' outpourings of generally grumpy Paul Sheehan.

Why waste time on ratbags? Why spend too much time in room 237?

When last we caught sight of Sheehan, back on Thursday, he was acting as a wet sloppy sentimental shill for The Voice. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and there was music in the air. Hideous banal music, it's true, but music all the same.

True Sheehan wasn't to know that Oasis would win the JJJ top 100 with Wonderwall, or that Powderfinger came in a disappointing eighth and tenth, and hot favourite Gotye could only manage nine, while the Stones riff team The Verve placed fifth (and who on earth enabled Jeff Buckley at number three?). (Oh yes we could have given you a link to the Fairfax story, but instead of linking to the leeches, how about a link to triple J here?)

Sheehan could have mentioned that poor old Bernard Fanning now has his second solo album out in the marketplace (what's ARIA up to these days, here?) but as the pond noted back then, Sheehan has the middlebrow taste of a maiden Aunt. (Not that there's anything wrong with being a maiden aunt, or listening to Kamahl, just go to the outside toilet to do it, please).

Anyhow, anyone with a long memory will think back to the glory days of May 1968 and France and the de Gaulle administration being brought to virtual immobility as the result of student unrest and protests that spiralled into a wildcat general strike (as always, there's a wiki for you to walk down memory lane here).

At the time, there were chicken little conservative members of the commentariat running around announcing that the 'sky was falling down', and for a few moments there were a few wobbles, with de Gaulle on the run, but by the end of June, it was effectively over.

Once again the end of the world - devoutly wished for, bizarrely yearned for by the Sheehanites of the world - was postponed, at least in France ...

Never mind - nous sommes tous des marxistes - tendance Groucho - but it brings us to Sheehan this morning furiously scribbling Suicide a wake-up call for France and concluding his rabid fear-mongering diatribe thusly:

Another straw in the wind: the most famous citizen of France, Gerard Depardieu, has voted with his feet, away from the policies of President Hollande. He now resides in Belgium. 

What to say, apart from noting the fatuous stupidity of this straw in the wind.

For starters, Depardieu is just an actor, and he's no more famous that Brigitte Bardot and her weird animal-loving ways, or the legendary Jean Reno (or Jeanne Moreau or Jean-Paul Belmondo or if we're getting solemn, Truffaut and Godard and Chabrol and ... well anyone really except Luc Besson who should end his days directing The Voice).

Never mind, the point is Depardieu, who is up himself in much the same way as Sheehan seems to be up him, is just an actor, who scored himself a Russian passport and bunged on a do because he didn't want to pay tax.

Now if that's a straw in the wind, don't take your shotgun into the Irish countryside, because at one time it was packed with showbiz refugees anxious to avoid their homeland taxes, and so took up residence, encouraged by Irish tax breaks.

But let's wind back to the beginning, to Sheehan's first straw in the wind:

It was a Tuesday afternoon, May 21, but the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris was busy. About 1500 people were visiting or praying when a French historian, Dominique Venner, walked to the main altar, placed a sealed letter on the steps, then reached into a pocket for his gun. 
Venner, a conservative ultra-nationalist who as a young man had been jailed for violence against Communists, was 78, ailing, and had come to the extreme conclusion that French civilisation was dying and being replaced by an ''Afro-Maghreb culture'' and would give way to sharia law. The former colonies were overrunning the republic. In his final message before leaving for the cathedral, he wrote on his internet blog: ''Peaceful street protests will not be enough to prevent it … It will require new, spectacular, and symbolic gestures to wake up the sleepwalkers, to shake the slumbering consciousness and to remind us of our origins … and rouse people from their complacency … We are entering a time when words must be backed up … by new, spectacular and symbolic actions.'' 
He had his own spectacular symbolic action in mind. His timing was prompted by the passage, the week before, of a law legalising gay marriage in France. Venner regarded this as a key element in the dismantling of French culture. He also regarded the immigration of millions of Muslims as a demographic and cultural disaster for France. And he saw white French culture as being overwhelmed by Americanism.

Americanism?

You know you're in the hands of a nutter when Americanism is the issue du jour. By all means make a joke, but blow out your brains ...?

What to do? Well of course Sheehan promptly ignores the idle chatter about Americanism, and instead choses to rabbit on about the vast threat Islamics pose to France, because ... well because that's the Sheehan Islamophobic way ...

As for the significance of the matter, what he's seizing on and exploiting is an ailing ultra-conservative loon who decided to blow his brains out ...

As a straw in the wind, that has as much resonance and meaning as the painful and futile death of Yukio Mishima by way of seppuku (naturally Mishima has his own wiki here) - another ultra-right wing nationalist who thought he'd stage a coup d'état but who instead ended his life in a pitiful way (was this where his dream of ritual suicide would eventually leave him?)

Now you can if you like read the rest of Sheehan's piece, but please note that it reveals a lot more about his own obsessions, fears and loathings than it does about France.

And remember it's the business of the conservative commentariat to stir up alarm, and everything is grist to that mill. Unemployment, recession, right wing extremists, left wing extremists, Muslim hordes, the Euro, and political violence - a couple of stabbings, and never mind that on an average weekend in Sydney streets and pubs, you could see that violence and double it ...

And naturally the penultimate capper to Sheehan's closing note on Gerard Depardieu fleeing to Belgium is  ... seemingly unaware that British hit men go to Bruges after killing a kid while shooting a priest - oh wait that's just a movie and amazingly it didn't star Depardieu, how could they have resisted his vast talent ...

Let's start again, and naturally the penultimate capper to Gerard Deparieu fleeing to Belgium has to be ... da dah ... gay marriage:

The fraught nature of French politics explains why the campaign for gay marriage has been noticeably more volatile in France, with large hostile demonstrations and a suicide in Notre Dame Cathedral.

Now a sensible scribbler might have taken the time to note that anyone who thinks gay marriage and Americanism are the most serious problems facing France has to be in the grip of senility.

Sad, and with a sad futile pointless ending, without any resonance, and really without much in the way of general significance, as the rest of the world goes on about its business... unless you happen to be in the fear mongering business, in the manner of a Sheehan ...

Perhaps it says something about the virulent right-wing in France and its assorted phobias, a strain of wing nuttery that last had its fullest flowering during the days of Vichy ... and in those days, it wasn't a lone forlorn loon blowing his brains out in Notre-Dame, it was the French collaborating in the shipping of Jews to the gas chambers. It has always lurked in the eccentric French psyche, much as Stalin worship has never quite been eradicated ...

So where have we reached? Well until Sheehan decides to blow his brains out in St. Mary's cathedral, as a protest against gay marriage and Islam, the pond will just keep on keeping on ...

Second thoughts, no need for such extreme measures. He can just keep on watching and scribbling about The Voice, and senility will do its thing ...

(Below: madness takes many forms)

And so to a tour of the cults this Sunday meditation ...

Speaking of cults, it's hardly surprising that Will Smith et fils outing After Earth should have come a cropper at the box office.

These days anything to do with the cult is likely to cop a bout of mockery, of the kind to be found in Scientology Enthusiasts Start Support group for Will Smith.

And it doesn't help when the mainstream critics are terribly gloomy, as the NYT was in A Father-Son Outing Goes Terribly Wrong. In the usual way, the UK tabloid mentality saw reviewers go right for the jugular, in pieces such as Scientologists do sci-fi again ... and by Xenu it's another stinker.

Indeed the Mail Online tried to get all it feared and loathed about the film into its header, The striking similarities between Will Smith's new film After Earth and the teachings of SCIENTOLOGY as it tanks at box office and is panned by critics. 

Others kept their headers a little simpler, as in After Earth Is Will Smith's Love Letter to Scientology).

Indeed it's possible to spend a pleasant, diverting couple of hours reading about how Will Smith and his flick and scientology have copped an unholy pounding, right up there with the pounding that John Travolta copped for Battlefield Earth, one of the pond's all time favourite stinkers.

Never under-estimate the power of the cult of the bad movie ...

By reading's end, it was almost possible to feel deep sympathy for Will Smith. Almost, but how much better if he hadn't spent so much money supporting a cult and its more peculiar teachings about education ... (yes study tech cops a battering in many of the pieces, but here in Australia the federal government helps out by funding schools dedicated to the L. Ron Hubbard way).

Speaking of cults, The Age yesterday featured a story about one of the few survivors of the Waco massacre featuring David Koresh and a two-month standoff, and you can read more in Prophecy of doom. 

The survivor, Australian Graeme Craddock, made a poignant plea for the word "cult" to be avoided:

I don’t like the word “cult” – it can be used in a degrading way. The early Christian church – according to biblical record – had apostles, prophets and other people. They were part of the spiritual gifts. But anyone now claiming to be a prophet is automatically considered part of a cult. We believed David Koresh was a prophet. The attraction was that he was able to explain things in the Bible that no one else could.

The pond hung in with him up until the moment Koresh was in a dark hallway with a box of grenades, and handed one over to Craddock, asking him if he knew how to use it.

What that had to do with explaining things in the Bible that no one else could must remain a little obscure ...

It struck the pond as sounding a little cultish. After all, it's one thing for the pond to handle the shell of a grenade brought back from the Somme by grandpa, and quite another to grenade your way to heaven.

Speaking of cults, the big news through the week was that a couple of retired Catholic bishops were attempting the impossible, using an online petition - you can sign it here - to crank up reform in the church.

Geoffrey Robinson was out and about in the media all week, promoting his book For Christ's Sake: End Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church ... for Good, and giving interviews that ranged from Phillip Adams here to the National Catholic Reporter here.

Robinson had the support of fellow retired bishop Pat Power, and their proposals are so simple and elegant, the pond couldn't help but think they were destined to fail:

Bishop Robinson, who retired nearly a decade ago because of disillusionment with the church's efforts to deal with clerical abuse, released a book on Tuesday outlining what some will consider radical ideas to put the church on a modern footing. 
 His long list of changes includes making celibacy voluntary, moderating the moral authority conveyed on priests, and greatly expanding the role of women in the church. (here)

Naturally the likes of Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart and the Pellists have avoided the pair like the plague, and in the Catholic press, baying conservatives have described them as little short of Satanists, and certainly heretics deserving of a verbal stoning.

Robinson has said he doesn't want the stoush to turn into a Pell v. Robinson affair, but the pond remembers with fondness his willingness to describe Pell as an "embarrassment" to a lot of good Catholic people ... (here)

Well the pond has no dog in the fight, and wishing Robinson luck is likely to be a bad omen, but what a simple master-stroke it would be to make celibacy voluntary, mere centuries after the Protestants worked it out ...

But what chance that the Pellists of doing anything sensible? After all, it was only a few days ago that the Church was revising its figures yet again, this time lifting the victims from 620 to 849.

What's a couple of hundred extra victims when all's said and one (Victoria Catholic Church revises up number of child sex abuse victims).

According to the figures, the vast majority guilty of abuse were brothers (114) and priests (98), with lay people next (42), nine nuns, two seminarians, and two "unknown". No mention in this bald data of the tortured notions of sex and sexuality that lurks behind the abuse ...

Meanwhile, speaking of cults, it's business as usual over at the Sydney Anglicans, with Michael Jensen practising his sermons for the Eastern suburbs by brooding about group think in The problem of 'us'. Indeed.

More to the point perhaps, when discussing group think in the Sydney Anglicans, is the way that the group thinkers have now ensured one of their own has taken over Moore College, as you can read in Dr Thompson installed as new principal of Moore College.

Thompson is part of the conservative push, part of the old guard determined to stand at the gates and turn change aside, and he was deeply involved in the push to deny women a more senior role in the church, with this sort of unctuous blather a hallmark of his style:

...it is inevitable that those who voted down the bill would be demonized by the press and by the liberal majority in the General Synod. Some will be acting out of their disappointment and others from a deep seated opposition to evangelical Anglicanism. Still others, who had attempted to lead evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics into acquiescence to the proposed illusory protection, will be frustrated that they were not able to gain the confidence of enough to win the day. However, there will be no real progress until it is recognised that opposition to this proposal is not only perfectly legitimate, but arises from a deep conviction that men and women are equally valued by the God who created and redeemed them yet are intended to complement one another not simply duplicate one another. The teaching of Scripture on the distinction between men and women in the exercise of Christian ministry for the building up of the church and glory of Christ's name is not a time-bound relic of a bygone culture. It is God's good gift which enhances our unity and challenges Christian surrender to one of today's cultural juggernauts. It genuinely values women as opposed to devaluing them. (here)

Yes, it's an awesome example of Michael Jensen's group think at work, but it's also a reminder that the pond has no dog in this fight.

After all, the pond doesn't care to belong to any cult that would have the pond as a member ... and so enough of cults this Sunday.

It's all fear and loathing, unless you know how to spin the ball ...

Brooding about Mark Latham and the Ruddster quite distracted the pond, and we quite forgot to mention the more loathsome reptiles going about the daily business of spreading fear and loathing in the usual way, so let's pause to briefly celebrate the work of that most bilious reptile and stirrer Greg Sheridan scribbling furiously Police failure creating a monstrous problem (behind the paywall so you never have to care).

Never mind that some monstrous policy failure allowed Sheridan into the country, and some even more monstrous policy failure which allows him to stay, what's really funny is that the reptiles at the lizard Oz have attempted to tighten up the paywall, demanding money with menaces.

You know the routine, first comes the line read Greg Sheridan so you can reduce your intelligence by ten IQ points on the spot, and then better still pay for the GS pleasure of reducging your intelligence by ten IQ points, and then, best of all, if you don't pay to read Greg Sheridan, you can save both your mind and your purse.

Faced with that choice, which way would you go?

Now truth to tell, all the pond wanted to know was whether the goose Sheridan raised the issue of Pakistani refugee Faward Ahmed, and the generous treatment bowled up to him courtesy of both parties and the Australian parliament, as reported by PM in Spinner's dream raises questions for immigation: Independents.

Now don't get the pond wrong. Good luck to Ahmed and good luck to Australian cricket - by golly, it needs all the help it can get, and importing a leg spinner seems the logical solution if there isn't a local one to hand, since the other one retired and lives on the proceeds of hair treatments.

But you see Ahmed came by plane and overstayed his visa and claimed asylum as a refugee on the grounds that he had been subject to death threats from Islamic extremists for being involved with an NGO promoting women's rights (as reported in the Indian press here, and indeed noted all over the sub-continent).

Fair enough. The pond loathes Islamic extremists and in particular their attitudes to women, in much the same way as it has little time for the Pellists and the Jensenists and their attitude to women.

But then the pond and Sheridan are coming at this hysteria over refugees from completely different angles.

You'd think that the news of the deal would send Sheridan right off. After all, think of the hypocrisy and the confused message it sends to cricket-mad people in the sub-continent - India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan ... a special act of parliament no less ...

Yes you too can be a kanga!

Happily a thoughtful punter did a complete cut and paste of the Sheridan piece - because you know, information just wants to be free, and you can share a moment with the freed information here (scroll down to get to the juice).

It turns out that Sheridan - I know, I know, you've guessed it already - doesn't once mention the extraordinary inherent contradictions and bizarre contortions the 'fear and loathing' crowd have gone through in relation to the matter of Ahmed ...

This boatpeople phenomenon is essentially a determined Muslim immigration. It is important to confront the sensitivities of this situation head-on. The overwhelming majority of Muslims in Australia are law-abiding and productive citizens. They should not be made to feel unwelcome or uncomfortable because of the necessary debate about this huge, unregulated Islamic inflow. But to dodge the debate because of that sensitivity is a recipe for continued, disastrous policy failure. 

Yes but can anyone bowl a decent leg spinner? Even a decent off-spinner?

The case of convicted Egyptian terrorist Maksoud Abdel Latif illustrates how the security system is overwhelmed by the present numbers, but it is not the key policy question. 
Assume that 40,000 of those who have arrived so far are Muslims, mostly low skilled and with limited English. Assume that eventually they will all stay in Australia, which is the only rational assumption if policy doesn't change radically. Then assume that, on a very conservative basis, each is responsible, eventually, for one family reunion immigrant, whether a spouse, fiance, parent or sibling. That is a cohort, so far, of 80,000 low-skilled Muslims with poor English predominantly from countries that have the most radical and extreme jihadist traditions in the world. 

Oh okay how about a cutter or a seamer of the ball? Anyone know reverse swing?

Of course, most Muslims in any country are not extremists. But after the latest terrorist atrocity in London, former British prime minister Tony Blair, while acknowledging that most Muslims were moderates, commented: "There is a problem with Islam - from the adherents of an ideology which is a strain within Islam. We have to put it on the table and be honest about it. Of course there are Christian extremists and Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu ones. But I am afraid the strain is not the province of a few extremists. It has at its heart a view about religion and about the interaction between religion and politics that is not compatible with pluralistic, liberal, open-minded societies ... At the extreme end of the spectrum are terrorists, but the world view goes deeper and wider than it is comfortable for us to admit. So by and large we don't admit it." 

Oh okay, what about a googly? Anyone bowl a decent googly? Anyone got a bosie or a wrong 'un in the kit bag? (yes the pond is indebted to some off the field assistance in asking these questions)

The numbers coming to Australia will continue to rise dramatically unless the people-smuggling industry is broken. 
A former senior officer of the Immigration Department spoke to me this week, on condition of anonymity, on the way the illegal immigration trade to Australia has become regularised, from Iran in particular. When he first got involved in this issue, Iranians and others would go to Malaysia, then on to Indonesia, and it would be months before they could find a people-smuggler. Now, he says, it is more often like a travel agent service, with everything arranged inside Iran.

Uh huh. But we can arrange exceptions if you're fast enough to knock the block off those bloody devious Englishmen? How about it? Can you produce a sharp bounce off a goodish length and maybe take out a jaw or some teeth? Are you a demon bowler?

Security against jihadist violence from a small but dangerous minority, though extremely important, is not the only problem. A huge force in people-smuggling now consists of people who came to Australia as boatpeople themselves. Similarly, boatpeople families are, according to sources in the bureaucracy, heavily involved in financing one-way trips to Australia for extended family. 

Okay, perhaps you fancy yourself as a good all-rounder. Middle order batsman, nothing too flash, but solid. And you know how to generate a little movement off the pitch. Not much, just enough to tease the fish and catch an edge ...

Thus the boatpeople phenomenon entrenched in Australia is a big, organised crime industry. 
There will be many consequences beyond this.The Immigration Department's figures, released last year, revealed that five years after arrival the rate of employment - not unemployment but employment - of Afghans was 9 per cent, while 94 per cent of Afghan households received Centrelink payments. From Iraq, 12 per cent were employed while 93 per cent of families received Centrelink payments. Overall, households that came under the humanitarian program had 85 per cent receiving Centrelink payments after five years. The family reunion cohort had 38 per cent, and skilled migration 28 per cent.  

Yes, yes, don't listen to that man yammering over there in the corner. How are you with the gloves? Apparently there aren't too many good glove men down under. Can you bat a little and never drop a ball?

Taken together, these figures demonstrate the way in which the boatpeople phenomenon can overwhelm our immigration program. We are allowing, indeed attracting, a huge cohort of unskilled Muslim immigrants who have not been chosen by Australian policy or process. But there are almost no unskilled jobs, which is why we stopped unskilled migration in the 1970s. If it follows even remotely the European pattern, this cohort will be characterised by high unemployment, intergenerational welfare dependency, high crime rates, social problems across a broad spectrum and a minority tendency to extremism. For a nation to create this syndrome by avoidable policy failure, knowingly and with full foresight, is remarkable. Nonetheless, it is also wrong to dismiss short-term security problems.

You must be doing something right over there. Didn't the Australian team cop a right royal hammering from the Indians? And now they're going to cop a hammering in England, sure as seagulls on the field love a serve of chips. Are you a leftie? Can you move the ball away from right handers?

The Latif case illustrates this. ASIO told the Immigration Department Latif was a convicted terrorist. The Immigration Department sent a submission to the office of its minister, then Chris Bowen. Neither the minister nor the department took any action about the fact Latif was housed in a minimum-security facility. Later, after media attention, he was moved to a more secure detention facility. 
Yesterday, the pro-refugee lobby was screaming that Latif's conviction in an Egyptian court under Hosni Mubarak lacked credibility. This is truly a bizarre position. Is it the refugee lobby's view now that only terrorists convicted in exemplary courts can trigger security concern? 
Although ASIO is not primarily at fault in the Latif case because it eventually did flag his presence to the government, the case illustrates the impossibility of ASIO's task. About 80 per cent to 90 per cent of boatpeople arrive without documents. Among people-smuggling networks, it is widely known what the correct stories are to tell, indeed the correct form of words to use, to trigger protection under the refugee convention; these are widely promulgated and practised at length. 
Notionally, ASIO subjects all arrivals to a security check. This process has broken down and is now all but meaningless. The convention prohibits approaching the country someone is allegedly fleeing for identity or security checks. 

Now don't worry about any of this jibber jabber about checks. The only check that really matters is how you do out on the field.

You know the way to win. Bowl better, bat better, field better, catch better. How are you at catching? Remember there's some buggers out there can't bat, can't bowl, can't catch ...

So what can ASIO possibly do? It can run the name that the boatperson gives through its various databases, and the international databases to which it has access. It can watch and listen to the boatperson while they are in custody in Australia which, given the way the system is overwhelmed, is increasingly a short period. And, in quite rare cases, it can try to match bio-data, fingerprints, facial patterns and so on, with international databases. The Latif case demonstrates that even when putting the name through a database raises urgent red flags, the system is still too overwhelmed to respond meaningfully. But the broader idea that the tens of thousands of illegal arrivals have been subject to security clearance is farcical. 
Two other questions are central. One, are we dealing with a genuine refugee exodus or is this just determined immigration? The refugee acceptance rates in Australia are much higher than those in UN camps overseas or evaluations made by other countries. About half the applications are rejected at their first evaluation but then the vast majority of these are accepted on appeal, especially in the courts. There are multiple, lengthy layers of appeal in the Australian system. The courts handle these questions with integrity, but the overall elite legal/social atmosphere is extremely sympathetic to claimants. Once a claimant has disposed of identity documents and tells the correctly formulated story, there is no way of verifying, or falsifying, it. Therefore the courts overwhelmingly give the benefit of the doubt to the claimant. 

You see, the best way to get the benefit of the doubt is to show you can really spin the ball. Really, really spin the ball ... that'll send Greg Sheridan into a spin of love and he won't mention cricket once. Not once ...

Decades of involvement in refugee questions have convinced me of the absolute subjectivity of these judgments. There is probably a need for legislative change here. 
Second, can we do anything about the situation in policy terms? Laurie Ferguson's cri de coeur this week that the issue was killing Labor in western Sydney was accompanied by an important statement from Ferguson. These concerns were not expressed by rednecks or racists, he said, but by people of all backgrounds in his electorate, including immigrants - Muslims, Asians, everyone. Former Labor minister Gerry Hand, now resident in Melbourne's western suburbs, similarly reports that no one is more hostile to the boatpeople phenomenon than immigrants who have gone about coming to Australia in the regular fashion. 

Indeed. Which is why you should come by plane, it's the only sensible thing to do. There's no way any decent Aussie airline would charge you extra for your cricket kit. Bring a couple of pairs of boots ... if you trundle in hard, you'll always wear out the boots ...

Can Tony Abbott, and his immigration spokesman Scott Morrison, change all this in office? Morrison, Abbott's most successful frontbencher, has effectively won the debate on the government's performance because the facts were on his side - this is a woeful policy failure. But the challenge of fixing it will be immense. Because the Gillard government has applied a succession of confused half-measures, all of which have been ineffective, they have demonstrated the government's lack of will, strategic confusion and operational incompetence. Forcing the people-smugglers to unlearn these lessons will be very hard work indeed. 

Now don't worry. Tony and Scott love a good cricketer. Anyone who can help defeat the Poms is a friend. Just don't go anywhere near Indonesia. They don't really like cricket in Indonesia. Funny kind of country. In the sense of funny peculiar. Don't get upset. It's a Tamworth joke. They love cricket in Tamworth. Same as Tony and Scott. They vote for cricket in a trice. It sends a message to the sub-continent ...

The opposition's approach has four pillars: turning back the boats where possible; offshore processing where possible so the reward of getting to Australia is unavailable; temporary protection visas with no family reunion rights and work-for-the-dole requirements for minimum welfare payments; and regional co-operation. 
Abbott and Morrison's regional co-operation is the opposite of Labor's. Gillard's vision of regional co-operation is fast processing and rapid resettlement so that people don't need to take boats. This is a disastrous approach. It will guarantee many, many tens of thousands more people using smugglers, and it is unappealing to the region. 

Yes, all that and possibly more, but remember an ability to handle a six stitcher opens doors better than saying sesame seeds on a singularly sickening serve of fast food. Which you'll develop a taste for in due course ...

The Abbott-Morrison vision is the opposite: regional co-operation to deter and exclude illegal arrivals. The region is highly sympathetic to this as it is what almost all regional countries practise themselves. Nonetheless, Labor's epic policy failure has created a monstrous problem for Australia. If it is not solved Australia will be changed fundamentally in a way that no Australians want.

Except of course the ones that want a decent Australian cricket team.

Oh okay, it might consist of people from India and Pakistan, but where's the harm in that? After all, we pride ourselves on our multiculturalism ...

And so incidentally, we come to the end of Greg Sheridan's epic rant of fear and loathing, prejudice and biliousness, and with not one mention of the Australian cricket team's urgent need for new recruits.

Come on down y'all, and never mind the sickening prejudice and the fear and loathing you might encounter.

Spin that ball and all will be well ... and let's hope you change the nation in wanted ways ... like putting an end to vile prejudice, except when it comes to thrashing the Poms ...

The pond shouts out to mad as hell dogs everywhere ...

(Above: Nicholson back in February. Same as it ever was. More Nicholson here).


It's long been the standard routine to portray Mark Latham as a mad dog of politics - the pond has been as guilty of the crime as any of the reptiles in Murdoch la la land - but what happens if the mad dog barks the truth?

Unnerving truth to tell, Latham, in his spray at the egomaniac Ruddster, was saying what the pond was thinking, but without the wit to say it.

Yes, you'd have to be a lunatic - or a media dedicated to the pursuit of squirrels - to think that Rudd could say that at this late stage he's here to help.

Whatever he's doing, it isn't helping.

And yes, the two MPs - Alan Griffin and Daryl Melham - who packed up their offices in a way the world could see- run up the white flag in a shameless spineless way - were supporters of the Ruddster, who in the meantime amazingly bleated how the rah rah team shouldn't be running up the white flag.

And yes, on the very same day that the pond called Fitzgibbon a clown and an adolescent, Latham branded him a clown, a giggling schoolkid.

The major difference? Well Latham added the nicest of touches:

"This is the inevitable result - clowns like Fitzgibbon, a giggling schoolkid effectively peeing on his foot thinking it's clever," Latham said. 
"Well look, at the end of the day, all he's doing is peeing on his own foot." (Mark Latham lays into 'once-in-a-century egomaniac Kevin Rudd, forced video at end of link)

Now when it comes to the crunch, the pond prefers "pissing" - it's the Tamworth in the mad, and mad as hell, dog - over "peeing" or "piddling or even worse "widdling" - but all the same, we bow to the fine metaphor.

Henceforth we will never be able to look at that grinning clown Fitzgibbon without at the same time imagining he's peeing on his foot.

Now the pond has always swum against the Ruddster tide - it started with those twee debriefs outside a quaint church, more picket fence Howard than anything Howard could manage, and it reached a climax in the 2020 Summit, which amazingly happened in 2008 but still scars the pond's memory (why it still has its tombstone wiki here).

It deeply grieves the pond to say it, but as a result of the damage Rudd has inflicted, and continues to inflict, Gillard would be better off on the last day of this parliament's sitting, to hand the leadership over to someone else. Anyone else but Rudd.

She will in due course be remembered in a kindly way. There will come a time of collective guilt at the way she was treated, the vile hatred dished out (with more than a tinge of misogyny), and astonishment at what she achieved up against the malignant forces aligned against her, from squawking parrots to the dark overlord in the Death Star to the Sauron of negativity ...

If she stays, sadly, the next hundred days are going to be spent watching hapless twits like Shane Green at Fairfax fawning all over the Ruddster, as he does in Now showing: the magnificent Kevin:

At the end of it all, it was hard to escape the impression that Mr Rudd's campaigning was much more prime ministerial than backbencher. 
As he continued to declare he would not be Labor's saviour, his day in Geelong showed that he could be and, according to Beverly Edwards and her fellow shoppers, should be.

And the nauseating Mark Kenny proposing, in Ruddiculous? You wouldn't know it,  that the party may as well put the Ruddster back in the chair, because he thinks he can defeat Tony Abbott, and that's all that matters:

There is no doubt the proximity of the election is testing resolve in the caucus, as an abstract feeling of a likely loss hardens into a stark reality. 
The effect is being felt by MPs, and perhaps even by Julia Gillard herself. She either has 98 days left as prime minister, or something less. 
Viewed this way, one might be tempted to ask: ''What's the difference?'' 

Self-respect?

No, scrub that, it's a meaningless concept in politics.

Instead you get the likes of Geoff Kitney urging a complete lack of any kind of respect when it comes to rattish expedience, courtesy the AFR, in PM's friends must now make the only decision - choose Rudd (behind the AFR paywall so you can choose never to read cackling geese like Kitney).

Which is to say, choose a man two thirds of his colleagues thought was a complete failure as PM, and said so forthrightly and voted for his destruction, not once but a number of times, while stories of faceless men were trotted out, when the faces were right there, in public view sitting on the parliamentary benches.

But in the bizarre world of the lickspittle, think Peter Hartcher, as outlined in When even the unions yield, Gillard should consider stepping aside for the good of the party, for Rudd, thereby rewarding the recent behaviour of him and his supporters.

Dreams and delusions, and the pond is reminded of a word that Latham didn't use - sociopathic.

A lay definition of this personality disorder sees a sociopath well liked because of their charm and high charisma. On the other hand, they think mainly of themselves, hold grudges and slights, and blame others for what's happened to them. They don't care that much about others, though they frequently pretend to in order to get their way. They forgive their own behaviour and expect others won't notice the games they play ... (wiki it here)

And so on, and yes, if you like, it applies to many politicians, but at the least, it has to be conceded that Rudd is delusional if he thinks his help will really help at this stage of the game.

Now the pond has no dog in this fight - we will most likely end up voting for the drover's dog, since a nicely heeled sheep dog would have more to offer the country than Tony Abbott - but the current carry-on in the Labor party is more unseemly than the behaviour of J. Bruce Ismay (for those who came in late to the story, he was the owner of the Titanic who managed to get himself off the ship in good shape, as you can read in his wiki here).

Even good old Mike Carlton is "doing an Ismay" in Mystery curse sounds Gong on political careers:

As a latte-sipping chardonnay quaffer myself, I am stockpiling Abbott promises to take with me when I join the Maquisards in the hills.

Indeed, though these days the pond can only afford lesser quality chardonnay ...

In the meantime, Carlton consoles himself by noting the high farce surrounding big Bazza's NSW government, symbolised by the mystery man Greg Pearce, struck down by a mysterious 'Gong illness which results in 'Gong politicians dancing in their undies or going missing in drunken action, but more potently by the abject failure of Jillian Skinner as Minister for Health and the hapless Gladys Berejiklian, minister for CityFail, aka CityBus.

And there are other pleasures to be found, not least the news that Tony Abbott really was a firebrand rugger bugger boofhead of the first water in his student days, or so you might think if you read Swings and arrows of Abbott's outrageous uni life:

A spokesman for Mr Abbott declined to comment on the fresh allegations: ''These matters have been dealt with,'' he said.

No they haven't, they've been gilded over, elided around, skated above, and otherwise buried.

Why not just admit Abbott was a testosterone-laden rugger bugger boxing boofhead, so that the choice proposed by the reptiles at Fairfax (and in the Death Star) becomes clear: a sociopath or a boofhead?

Will someone please produce the drover's dog?

And now for a little praise.

The pond fastidiously attempts to note whenever links lead to forced videos. It's a minor gesture, but a gesture all the same.

Now The Guardian down under shows how it should be done. Hover your mouse - oh the joy of a pet mouse - over a Guardian story, and up floats a helpful little tag:

Well played. Yes, it's only ten lines of code, but what a clever ten lines (that's a joke for coders).

It's a very little thing, but if it helps the pond avoid just one forced video featuring Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbott, why then that coder will enter coder heaven ... where the pond and Mark Latham, everything forgiven and forgotten, will sit side by side howling at the moon ...

Time to get out the gallows and enjoy the humour ...

Is there any more irritating, delusional or currently wannabe omnipresent politician than former Chairman Rudd?

This morning he's been given the top digital slot at Fairfax (as above), and he's been all over the televisual experience, and he's topped the headlines like a cockroach at RN.

He's marked down a little at The Guardian down under:

After all, when you offer a photo of Bob Carr but not one of the Ruddster, as he helps the troops by reminding them of raising the flag at Rorke's drift but it's old chum Carr with the flag  ... Zulus to the left of them, Zulus to the right.

But in the world of Murdoch la la land, the reptiles seem like they're over Rudd. 

Here's the story as it was placed this morning in the lizard Oz:

Yep, there it is, below the bit about Woman's Day.

Scan the Daily Terror and there's a mention under breaking news that Rudd speculation is done and dusted: Clare.

Rudd scores a pic, a video link and a splash in the HUN but it's well down the digital page:

Yep, there he is, just ahead of Putin getting a divorce, before you head off to more top stories.

But the biggest test of all is the heart of toad land, The Courier-Mail, and it's all too predictable that Rudd should cop only two mentions on the digital front page, and not even a pic. 

There's the same one line about the Rudd speculation done and dusted in the breaking news, and there's a parochial angle, a one line link through to a story Rudd challenges his local electorate rival toa (sic) public debate.

The irony in that story?

Kevin Rudd has called out his local political opponent, challenging LNP candidate Bill Glasson to a school hall debate. 
The former prime minister yesterday threw down the gauntlet, accusing Dr Glasson - the former Australian Medical Association president who hopes to wrench Griffith from him - of hiding from the electorate.

Well you couldn't have accused the Ruddster of hiding from the electorate these past few days, but he's now strangely hidden in the world of Murdoch la la land.

Now it's well known that the birds flock together, swoop and swirl in unison for a reason, and that reason is surely a collective decision to deny the Ruddster oxygen. It might be unconscious, but it's surely visible, or should that be invisible ...

The Ruddster and his colleagues have now so poisoned the nest that the Murdoch reptiles don't even feel the need to give him the sort of space that they'd give exotica like Pauline Hanson running another challenge ... yawn ...

In fact the Ruddster's clown colleague Joel Fitzgibbon scored as much space with his destructive adolescent antics.

That's how confident they now feel about the ascension of Saint Tony.

The truth, one suspects, is that the Murdoch reptiles think they no longer need the Ruddster, the game is in the bag, no reason to keep stoking the feud, feeding more fuel on the fire, maintaining the John Howard/Andrew Peacock status of the battle, because the long absent lord knows, just how bloody tedious, how totally exasperating, what a complete and utter piss-off it is to hear Fran Kelly, once more and yet again, wonder whether Kevin Rudd is about to make a tilt for the ALP leadership, and in the process divine the runes, ferret through the entrails, quibble over the meaning of a word ...

We need to talk about Kevin, she said ...

No we bloody don't ... enough about bloody Kevin.

As always, there's a David Pope cartoon handy for the occasion:

(more David Pope here)

So what are the mice up to at the lizard Oz, while the bananas are at play?

Oh fuck.

The dickheads with their love of copper are out and about and romping in the lizard Oz once again. 

Yep, there's no room for the Ruddster, but over and over and over we get a dickhead, who clearly doesn't live in the pond's street, expounding on the joys of copper.

Now you can if you want, evade the paywall and read Tony Brown's report Copper phobia the big drag on NBN (inside the paywall, yes there is a merciful god and She charges you to access Murdoh la la land), on how there are all these spiffing solutions emerging designed to enhance the greater glory of copper rotting in the rain-sodden, possibly asbestos-infested - who knows - pits outside the pond's home,

It will allow you to contemplate wondrous claptrap like this:

Some European telcos report that up to 30 per cent of newly signed FTTP subscribers dump their subscription before installation when they realise that a technician must enter their residence to connect the service. 
As a result, European operators are planning self-installation models where subscribers buy their modems at retail outlets and don't require a technician to activate their high-speed broadband service - because the copper connection is already there.

There's a lot more, which, the pond being in a kind mood, can only describe as fatuous stupidity, but there is a takeaway message, a fat, bloated cheese-laden Domino's pizza message.

In the new world, in a bid to get an ordinary movie trailer streamed from the United States without incessant hanging, the pond will have to pay for the installation of high speed broadband and then spend hours on the phone with someone in India discussing the deplorable state of match-fixing in cricket in that country ... and somewhere around 2025 there might be sort of high speed broadband on tap.

Ah well, you've got to laugh, and pay, and pay to laugh, why just pay to live, and it could be worse, the pond could be Julian Assange looking for a helping hand as an Australian citizen:

Indeed, and Bob Carr is no concern of the pond, says the pond, so let's end on an up note by noting that Paul Sheehan, in his "soft" Thursday column - so soft it makes a marshmallow feel like stainless steel - was at it again yesterday with Treasure of talent: here are voices worth hearing.

When he gets in this mood, Sheehan reminds the pond of an aunt who could be relied on to drag out her collection of Kamahl and Perry Como records, and crush the life out of a party (heck, just crush the life, any life - she probably loved copper too, for its futuristic technology potential).

You can't go past Sheehan for sheer utter vacuity and fan twittering of the basest kind, which surely puts his political writing into some kind of richer Delta Goodrem context.

Meanwhile, down at the Opera House, the SSO and a talented gang of their brass and wood-wind playeres were, with the help of Charles Dutoit, making a hearty meal of Frank Martin's concerto for seven wind instruments, timpani percussion and strings - special mention without denigrating the excellent contribution of the others for Emma Sholl on flute.

Dutoit was inclined to the Glenn Goulds during the Mozart - he must have spent too long in Canada and not realised what the punters can hear from the front row - but it all came together in a spiffing Saint-Saëns' Third Symphony (oh yes David Drury, you can play with your organ any time in earshot of the pond).

Sure it's an old warhorse but that's what you expect of a band of professional musicians, to be able to turn a trick on a dime and give the warhorse fresh, energetic life (and if you can't get to the Opera House, you can hear it for free tomorrow night on ABC-FM at 8pm, details here).

So what's the take-home message? Well here's a band of top notch musos in a world class band, and Paul Sheehan blathers on like a homie about The Voice, as it drops in the ratings (here). He should get out a bit more, instead of staying home staring goggle-eyed at the box, frightened of shadows.

It might help improve his political writing too ...

Meanwhile, it's time for a little gallows humour, and as always First Dog is standing by on the gallows. More First Dog here, and if you're on a yearly sub, he remains the best reason to keep Crikey alive. We're shortly going to be in need of a hell of a lot of gallows humour.